The California dream used to be that you would come out to California, get a job, maybe work at JPL or Hollywood, and then you'd be able to afford a house in Burbank or San Fernando Valley amidst the orange groves. With a white picket fence and two and a half kids, and a life of peace and prosperity. This was the promise of California. And yet, in the past 50 years, California has devolved into a dystopic hellscape. And if California is sort of the harbinger of the future from the left, then it behooves us to take a look at what California has become. Ben Shapiro argues that California has been blessed with some of the greatest assets that God has ever bestowed upon mankind. It s beautiful, beautiful scenery, incredible natural resources, a huge bustling population, and high levels of intellectual capital. Yet, somehow, they are turning California into a dystopian hellscape it truly is an unbelievable thing It truly is amazing how governance makes a difference, and it s amazing how that really does make a difference. The California dream has become a smoldering ash heap, apparently. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN, your data is your business protected at ExpressVPN. Shout out to ExpressVPN for making your data protected, and your privacy protected at your fingertips. Shoutout to: for making the news in just one moment, Ben Shapiro will get to all the news you need in just a few seconds! Ben Shapiro is a writer, comedian, podcaster, and all-around great guy who loves to talk about things that don t need to be talked about, talk about, so much, so you don t have to be mad about it, right? Thanks to: Ben Shapiro for being a good guy. - Ben Shapiro - and David Brooks for being good at it, David Brooks, for making it so good, right here in the first place, and for doing it right here, right in the second place, right at home, right on time, and in the middle of it all, in this episode of the Ben Shapiro show, and so much more, and we re gonna talk about it all. . Thank you for listening to Ben Shapiro's show, Ben is a friend of mine, and I hope you like it, and thanks for listening, and good vibes, too, David, for coming on the show.
00:00:00.000California unveils a plan to become an abortion sanctuary if Roe vs. Wade is overturned, and David Brooks rips the state of modern conservatism.
00:00:38.000I'm getting great nationwide 5G coverage that is the same coverage as the big guys because they use the same Cell phone towers as one of the big guys.
00:01:33.000And frankly, I feel like I was a couple of years too late.
00:01:36.000I'd been discussing with my wife the possibility of leaving California for a while.
00:01:39.000I'd been discussing with my business partner, Jeremy Boring, the possibility of taking our company and moving it out of state for quite a while.
00:01:46.000But finally, we pulled the trigger in 2020.
00:01:48.000And not a moment too soon, as it turns out, because California has now reduced itself to a smoldering ash heap, apparently.
00:02:19.000And the vision for California has changed.
00:02:21.000And if California is sort of the harbinger of the future from the left, then it behooves us to take a look at what California has become.
00:02:30.000The California dream used to be that you would come out to California, you get a job, maybe working at JPL or maybe working in Hollywood, and then you'd be able to afford a house in Burbank or a house in San Fernando Valley amidst the orange groves.
00:02:45.000With a white picket fence and two and a half kids, and you'd be able to create a life for yourself.
00:02:58.000Now, obviously, this is not to pretend that there were no problems in California or in the country in 1953, the most obvious being segregation.
00:03:04.000Although in California, segregation was lower than it was in most other places in the country.
00:03:54.000This is Hollywood Boulevard and the world-renowned Grauman's Chinese Theater.
00:04:00.000In the forecourt of this celebrated cinema house are the footprints of the outstanding stars of the screen.
00:04:06.000It is almost unnecessary to say that among the chief attractions of the Southern California picture is its many miles of beaches where you can be as athletic as you choose or just loll around and build up a beautiful tan.
00:04:18.000Okay, so if you went back to California right now, and you went to each one of those sites, they're hellholes.
00:04:37.000And then they show Grauman's Chinese, right on Hollywood Boulevard.
00:04:42.000They're close to Sunset and Vine over there.
00:04:44.000That's kind of the center of Hollywood.
00:04:46.000That place has been taken over by the homeless.
00:04:48.000A couple of years ago, there was a person who literally had a bucket of feces thrown on her at the intersection that they show in that video.
00:04:54.000And then they show Santa Monica Beach, which used to be clean and nice.
00:04:57.000Santa Monica Beach is so bad that the weekend before my family left California, we were getting kind of nostalgic because my wife and I had gone on our first date at the coffee bean near Santa Monica Beach.
00:05:07.000And then we had gone for a walk along the beach.
00:05:34.000And they seem to be morally invested in wrecking California.
00:05:38.000They seem to feel good about wrecking California.
00:05:42.000It's as though they've decided that all of the benefits of living in California have to go away, and the way that they're going to make up for the complete failure of their system of thought is by proclaiming their own moral superiority.
00:05:54.000So the latest round of this sort of insanity comes courtesy of the Associated Press.
00:06:16.000So you have decided that your state's tourism industry is now going to be based on women coming to kill their babies within your borders.
00:06:23.000So, my new state of Florida, we're paying police officers like 10 grand bonuses to come and help protect the population.
00:06:30.000California, they're literally now saying that they will pay the hotel bills for women who wish to decamp to California to kill their unborn children.
00:06:42.000We'll get to this story in just one moment, because it really does, if this is the future of the country, we are so screwed, we are screwed beyond all comprehension.
00:06:48.000First, let's talk about your sleep quality.
00:06:50.000So if all of this messes with your sleep quality, as it would with mine, you need a mattress that is going to do you well.
00:06:56.000So, I'm at a hotel right now, I'm not on my mattress at home, and I'll be honest with you, I slept like crap.
00:07:01.000I need my mattress at home, I need my Helix Sleep Mattress, it was made just for me.
00:07:17.000They have several different mattress models to choose from.
00:07:19.000They've got soft, medium, and firm mattresses.
00:07:21.000Mattress is great for cooling you down if you sleep hot.
00:07:23.000Mattress is great for spinal alignment to prevent morning aches and pains.
00:07:26.000Even a Helix plus size mattress for plus size sleepers.
00:07:28.000So if you're looking for a mattress, you take the quiz, you order the mattress you're matched to, the mattress comes right to your door shipped for free.
00:07:34.000You don't ever need to go to a mattress store again.
00:07:48.000Go to helixsleep.com slash pen, take their two-minute sleep quiz.
00:07:51.000They'll match you to that customized mattress that'll give you the best sleep of your life.
00:07:54.000Helix is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders and Alright, so according to the Associated Press, California is seeking to become what they now call an abortion sanctuary.
00:08:07.000So first of all, I just want to point out the linguistic insanity of that phrase.
00:08:12.000The word sanctuary comes from the same root as the word sanctified.
00:08:18.000A sanctuary is a place that is sanctified.
00:08:22.000And in the before times, when there were ecclesiastical courts throughout Europe, you were able to rush to a church, if you wish to avoid criminal culpability, people would rush to churches for sanctuary, right?
00:08:37.000This is obviously a major plot point in, for example, in Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame.
00:08:43.000Is people rushing into, is Esmeralda rushing into the Cathedral of Notre Dame and claiming sanctuary?
00:08:49.000I think that she wishes to be subject to ecclesiastical law as opposed to the king's law.
00:08:55.000Sanctuary was a way of claiming God's providence over you and not the state's providence.
00:09:00.000Now you have the state of California declaring sanctuary for either illegal activity in the form of illegal immigration or for the worst sin in American life, abortion.
00:09:13.000It's now going to be a sanctuary, a sanctified place, protected from all others for abortion.
00:09:19.000You're not rushing to avoid culpability for an act for which you believe you are innocent.
00:09:25.000You instead are rushing to a sanctified place where your abortion can be protected.
00:09:31.000The language is so paganistic as to shock the conscience.
00:09:36.000According to the Associated Press, with more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the United States Supreme Court gives them okay next year, California clinics and their allies in the state legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a sanctuary for those seeking reproductive care.
00:09:49.000Including possibly paying for travel, lodging, and procedures for people from other states.
00:09:54.000So they're not just saying we're going to keep abortion legal in California, which is exactly what you would expect, of course.
00:09:58.000They're literally saying that they will take the taxpayer dollars of the people who pay taxes in California to pay women to come to the states to kill their unborn children.
00:10:09.000So remember, the California dream was, come here, raise a family, buy a house, get a job, lead a law-abiding life, and contribute to the building of the world's greatest economy.
00:10:20.000And now the California Dream is, move to California, get a crappy one-bedroom studio apartment, have a homeless guy sitting directly outside your door, shooting heroin into his feet, and if you need an abortion, we'll pay your hotel and maybe medical bills.
00:10:35.000The California Dream is, come on over here, we'll put you up at the Hilton, and we'll carve that baby right out of you.
00:10:40.000That is a rather astonishing change and bespeaks a suicidal society.
00:10:45.000Any society that is actively incentivizing abortion is a suicidal society.
00:10:50.000You're literally destroying your fertility rates.
00:10:53.000You're destroying your future on a literal level.
00:10:55.000If kids are the future, as the left constantly agrees, right?
00:10:59.000We all agree kids are the future because there literally is no future without kids.
00:11:02.000Then actively fomenting the killing of unborn children Seems to be anti-future.
00:11:08.000But California isn't about building a future anymore.
00:11:10.000California is about a vision of a utopian society in which full stasis has been reached.
00:11:17.000If you found a company in California right now, you're an idiot.
00:11:20.000I've talked to some of the biggest industrial founders in California.
00:11:23.000I've talked to some of the biggest tech people in California.
00:11:25.000People like with, I promise you, the biggest tech companies in California.
00:11:29.000And they've told me personally, if they were founding their companies today, there is no way in hell they would put those companies in California.
00:11:35.000There's a reason that Elon Musk just moved Tesla's headquarters out of California.
00:11:40.000This is a dying state and they are choosing the death.
00:11:43.000This is a suicidal state in terms of policy.
00:11:46.000And a morally benighted state at that.
00:11:48.000The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, according to the AP, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion.
00:12:03.000The recommendations are not just a liberal fantasy.
00:12:05.000Some of the state's most important policymakers helped write them, including Tony Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings.
00:12:13.000Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom started the group himself and in an interview last week with the AP said some of the report's details will be included in his budget proposal in January.
00:12:22.000We will be a sanctuary, Newsom said, adding he's aware patients will likely travel to California from other states to seek abortions.
00:12:27.000We're looking at ways to support that inevitability and looking at ways to expand our protections.
00:12:33.000California already pays for abortions for many low-income residents through the state's Medicaid program.
00:12:37.000And California is one of six states that require private insurance companies to cover abortions, although many patients still end up paying deductibles and copayments.
00:12:45.000But money won't be a problem for state-funded abortion services for patients from other states.
00:12:50.000California's coffers have soared throughout the pandemic, fueling a record budget surplus this year.
00:12:54.000You know why the California coffers soared?
00:12:55.000Because the federal government pumped so much money into the economy that California actually increased its tax take.
00:13:02.000For all the jabbering about how states were gonna go bankrupt because of COVID, states made money during COVID because the federal government pumped an unprecedented amount of money into the economy, and then California just taxed it.
00:13:13.000They actually had a state surplus last year.
00:13:16.000Next year, the state's independent legislative office predicts California will have a surplus of about $31 billion.
00:13:21.000Of course, none of that takes into account the structural debt that the state of California has, which probably run into the hundreds of billions or trillions at this point.
00:13:31.000California's abortion providers are asking the state to make it easier for people to get to the state.
00:13:36.000The report recommends funding, including public spending, to support patients seeking abortion for travel expenses like gas, lodging, transportation, and childcare.
00:13:44.000So some states try to incentivize you to come to their state by giving you a job or giving you a child tax credit or something.
00:13:49.000The state of California is encouraging people to come to the state of abortion, to the state of abortion, come to the state of California and be paid to perform abortions.
00:14:03.000They're asking lawmakers to reimburse abortion providers for services to those who can't afford to pay.
00:14:09.000A huge influx of people from other states will definitely destabilize the abortion provider network, said Fabiola Carreon, the Interim Director for Reproductive and Sexual Health at the National Health Law Program.
00:14:18.000She said out-of-state abortions would also likely be later-term procedures, which are more complicated and more expensive.
00:14:23.000The report asks lawmakers to help clinics increase their workforce to prepare for more patients by giving scholarships to medical students who pledge to offer abortion services in rural areas, help them pay off their student loans, and assist with their monthly liability insurance premiums.
00:14:37.000So now we are going to pay up-and-coming medical students to violate Hippocratic Oath.
00:14:45.000And again, speaks to the morality of California, where it is all about a feeling of consonance with left-wing morality, and not at all about the quality of life or future of the state.
00:14:56.000Which is why, if you are in California, and you do not agree with this stuff, get the hell out now.
00:15:01.000I've been telling people this since we left.
00:15:04.000I stuck around for as long as I thought it was possible to stay around.
00:15:06.000I do not understand why people are sticking around in California if they have a shred of sanity about them at this point.
00:15:10.000This is not getting better, it is getting worse.
00:15:13.000There is no point in California where they are going to turn around and realize that they've completely botched this thing beyond all recognition.
00:16:23.000And California is becoming a hellscape for the vast majority of its citizens at this point.
00:16:28.000We'll get to more on California in just one second because as goes California, so goes the entire left.
00:16:32.000If you think this is going to stop at California, you're wrong.
00:16:34.000It starts in California and then it moves throughout all of the blue states.
00:16:38.000First, let's talk about the fact that you're going to spend probably a little bit too much this holiday season because everybody spends too much this holiday season, but you should be giving yourself the gift of extra money in your pocket you can pay off your credit card balances and save with a credit card consolidation loan from Lightstream.
00:16:51.000Roll your high interest credit card payments into just one payment at a lower fixed rate.
00:16:55.000Lightstream's credit card consolidation loans have rates as low as 4.98% APR with auto pay and excellent credit.
00:18:45.000When you subsidize things, they become more common.
00:18:47.000And when you find crime down, crime becomes more common.
00:18:49.000So if you take a felony and you treat it as a misdemeanor, you will get more of that behavior.
00:18:53.000And if you take a misdemeanor and you treat it as a non-crime, you'll get more of that behavior.
00:18:57.000This is exactly what you're hearing from the Beverly Hills police chief who said yesterday that the big problem here is that we are catching the same criminals over and over and over again and then just releasing them back onto the streets.
00:19:07.000I have great technical systems here to catch criminals.
00:19:11.000And that's the thing, we're catching the criminals, and the problem is we're catching them over and over again, and they're being released very quickly without bail, and they're not staying in prison.
00:19:20.000So we just continue to deal with the same people again and again.
00:19:27.000He said this is a confluence of about 10 years of laws and policymaking, starting with Prop 47, then AB 109, then Prop 57, which essentially decriminalized many of the crimes in California.
00:19:37.000And it makes people in California feel good about themselves that they are doing this.
00:19:40.000I mean, sure, it's completely destroying quality of life.
00:19:42.000Sure, it's making street crime a thing again in California, but it makes the liberal elites feel so good about themselves.
00:19:49.000Meanwhile, a Safeway store in San Francisco, according to Daily Wire, is now investing heavily into security systems to prevent smash and grab robberies.
00:19:55.000The move comes as major metro areas, especially San Francisco and other California cities, combat a wave of group thefts in which large crowds of armed people rob stores and overwhelm employees.
00:20:05.000According to KPIX 5 San Francisco, customers say they've noticed more security guards inside and outside the store.
00:20:11.000Now they're seeing more security gates and barriers at the entrance.
00:20:13.000An automatic gate closes after each person to make it harder for thieves to make a run for it.
00:20:17.000Safeway added poles to its shopping carts to make them difficult to remove from the store.
00:20:22.000It added a wall of water bottles directing customers to the front exit.
00:20:26.000According to a statement from Safeway, like other local businesses, we are working on ways to curtail escalating theft, to ensure the well-being of our customers, and to foster a welcoming environment for our customers.
00:20:43.000I mean, this is what California has fostered.
00:20:44.000Meanwhile, the homeless crisis in California continues to get worse and worse and worse.
00:20:49.000According to Mike Madrid, writing for the Sacramento Bee, Of all the disturbing societal trends that have been normalized over the past few years, it's homelessness that stands alone as the most morally outrageous and shameful.
00:21:01.000The visible daily reminder of the collapse of one of the government's most basic responsibilities is a blight on California and the policymakers who created the problem and simultaneously demonstrate complete incompetence in addressing it.
00:21:12.000One in four homeless people in America lives on California streets.
00:21:16.000Remember, the population of California is about 40 million.
00:21:18.000The population of the United States is about 330 million.
00:21:21.000One in four homeless people in the entire country live in California.
00:21:25.000Most of California's homeless problem is the result of policy failures in Sacramento, which is why no other state has anywhere near the problem California does, according to Mike Madrid.
00:21:35.000says next year will mark 10 years since the elimination of the most powerful tools cities had to house low-income residents. Redevelopment allowed cities to designate areas in their community for future development opportunities and keep sales tax revenue generated by future projects. Cities could borrow against that revenue stream and set aside money for affordable housing, but it's not about the affordable housing. It's about the fact that California has decided to incentivize homelessness by saying that the police can't do anything about it. California now says that you're not allowed to move the crap that homeless people leave on the streets because it
00:22:03.000is their crap. California has suggested it's a fundamental freedom for people to live on the streets.
00:22:09.000And then you're surprised that homeless people are rushing in droves to California?
00:22:16.000And how about basic taxpayer services?
00:22:17.000Are we getting any of that in California?
00:22:23.000They're not handling the basic day-to-day functions of government.
00:22:27.000But they're going to pay people to come do abortions in California.
00:22:31.000By the way, 34,000 LAUSD students are going to not be able to attend school because of simultaneous regulatory mandates put down by the state of California.
00:22:39.000According to KTLA yesterday, about 34,000 students have not yet complied with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in LAUSD.
00:22:46.000There's no longer enough time for students who haven't gotten their first shot to be fully vaccinated by January 10th.
00:22:51.000Which means that you could have tens of thousands of LAUSD students who are not even allowed to attend school.
00:22:57.000So California is not performing basic functions.
00:22:59.000They're just performing out the left-wing fantasies of the fantasists.
00:23:04.000And presumably, this is the sort of policy that Democrats would like to see adopted across the nation.
00:23:08.000After all, Gavin Newsom is a national hero to members of the left.
00:23:12.000And people, by the way, are making that move with their feet.
00:23:16.000If they're in California, New York, Illinois, people are leaving.
00:23:20.000They've decided they want no more of this.
00:23:22.000And the left just continues along with it.
00:23:24.000In just a second, we're going to get to the critique of conservatism put forth by David Brooks, who used to be the quote-unquote conservative at the New York Times, because I think it speaks to the conflict, the ideological conflict that is happening in the country and the complete ignorance of a certain level of elite quote-unquote conservative.
00:23:42.000to deal with the realities on the ground of our current situation.
00:23:46.000First, let's talk about the perfect gift.
00:23:49.000The perfect gift this holiday season is steak.
00:24:50.000Keyword Shapiro for the perfect gift package today.
00:24:53.000Okay, so if California is governed like garbage, and if life is getting worse in places like California, and if businesses are fleeing, and if the state has decided that its top priority is not to enforce the law and protect its taxpayers, but to in fact tax the taxpayers in order for people to get abortions, then how exactly... Why do Democrats keep voting for this?
00:25:41.000And the answer is the unearned feeling of moral superiority.
00:25:43.000The belief that you're just better than those other guys.
00:25:45.000There's a piece in Salon.com ...today, which really sums this up from the ex-Gribble, Amanda Marcotte.
00:25:52.000She has a piece today titled, Young Democrats are Right, There is No Reason to Date or Befriend Trump Voters. So she's talking about a new poll from Axios.
00:26:01.000The new poll from Axios shows that only 5% of Republicans said they wouldn't be friends with someone from the opposite party.
00:26:08.000But 37% of Democrats say they would not be friends with a Republican.
00:26:13.000Also, 71% of Democrats would not go on a date with someone with opposing views versus 31% of Republicans.
00:26:19.000Now, I'll be honest with you, I think there's a big difference between being friends with somebody and dating somebody.
00:26:23.000Because my vision of dating is that you end up marrying somebody, I really think that you should share values with somebody that you marry.
00:26:28.000So, on a dating level, I sort of agree with the notion that you should have a baseline agreement on values.
00:26:33.000But, I understand that's not how people actually date.
00:26:35.000People now date for pleasure, or date for sex, or date for a variety of other reasons that don't involve marriage at the end of that chain.
00:26:42.000But the basic finding of the survey is pretty clear, which is that Republicans are pretty tolerant of Democrats, but Democrats are absolutely intolerant of Republicans.
00:26:50.000According to Amanda Marcotte, this is a good thing because Democrats are superior human beings.
00:26:54.000And this is the argument you are seeing throughout American politics.
00:26:56.000This has been going on for a long time.
00:26:58.000I wrote a book in 2012 called Bullies, the basic premise of which was that the left liked to claim that the right was the bullying force in American public life.
00:27:06.000But the real bullying force in American public life were people of the left who truly believe that they are morally superior to the people with whom they share a country.
00:27:13.000And Amanda Markham makes that case quite beautifully.
00:27:15.000She says, she says, this is about desirability, not tolerance.
00:27:20.000Democrats are desirable as friends and lovers, not just to their fellow party members, but to Republicans as well.
00:27:25.000You see, Democrats are so wonderful that even Republicans want to hang out with Democrats.
00:27:29.000Republicans are so garbage that Democrats don't want to hang out with them.
00:27:32.000Only, only stupid Republicans would want to deal with other Republicans.
00:27:36.000So she says, Democrats are desirable as friends and lovers, not just to their fellow party members, but to Republicans as well.
00:27:41.000But Republicans, they apparently don't have much to offer to Democrats as friends and certainly not as lovers.
00:27:46.000Digging into the polling shows why this is.
00:27:49.000As the Axios write-up by Neil Rothschild notes, young Democrats believe that GOP positions spearheaded by former President Trump are far outside of the mainstream and polite conversation.
00:27:58.000In particular, human rights and not just policy differences are at stake.
00:28:02.000These would be the human rights like killing the unborn.
00:28:05.000These would be the human rights, according to the left, like pretending that a boy is a girl and indoctrinating kids to believe that they can be members of the opposite gender.
00:28:12.000These would be human rights, like saying that it is a good thing for people to live in their own filth on Sunset Boulevard, shooting heroin into their feet.
00:28:19.000These are the human rights that Democrats definitely need to maintain, and if you disagree with them on policy, this means that you oppose human rights.
00:28:28.000Just last week, the GOP-controlled Supreme Court made it clear they plan to strip basic bodily autonomy rights from everyone with a uterus.
00:28:35.000The Republican Party is rallying around violent white supremacist rhetoric.
00:28:40.000Relatedly, a Harvard poll from last week shows more than half of young Americans feel democracy in the country is under threat.
00:28:45.000Over a third think they may see a second U.S.
00:28:49.000This isn't about a dispute over marginal tax rates.
00:28:51.000If you, quite correctly, believe that Republicans are plotting to destroy democracy, why would you want to be friends with people who support that?
00:28:58.000And this is the case that Amanda Marcotte is, and this is the case that California Democrats are making.
00:29:03.000As their governance gets worse and worse, the specter of the opposing party has to get worse and worse to justify that.
00:29:09.000You have to somehow make an excuse to yourself for why you suck at your job, and your excuse is, well, the other guy is so much worse.
00:29:20.000According to Amanda Marcotte, the anger on the right over this polling shows this isn't really about liberal intolerance, but an ugly sense of entitlement among conservatives.
00:29:27.000It's fueled by a belief that they should be as obnoxious, cruel, and bigoted as they want, without having to pay any social penalty for it.
00:29:33.000That attitude is especially troubling when it comes to dating, and is tied to long-standing sexist assumption that women owe men their time and attention, even when they don't find them attractive.
00:29:46.000So you're going to boil down Republicans pointing out that if you won't be friends with somebody from the opposing side of the aisle, this means that it's very difficult to share a polity.
00:29:54.000You're going to boil that down to men feel a sense of entitlement from women?
00:29:59.000She says that the bottom line here is that Republicans need to suck less.
00:30:06.000You need to just be a Democrat and then we will deal with you.
00:30:09.000But otherwise, quote unquote, good is what she says.
00:30:13.000Good on young Democrats for seeing clearly what the Joe Scarboroughs of the world don't want them to see, which is that Republicans are bad people and you should never, ever treat them as fully human.
00:30:21.000Hilariously, she then claims that Republicans don't treat people as fully human.
00:30:25.000The entire column is about treating Republicans as not fully human, and then her complaint about Republicans is that they dehumanize people.
00:30:32.000But this lies behind so much Democratic rhetoric these days.
00:30:34.000It lies behind half of what Joe Biden says.
00:30:37.000The entire Democratic agenda right now is to paint political opposition as people who oppose democracy.
00:30:45.000It's so deeply rooted that Joe Biden is about to have a quote-unquote democracy summit.
00:30:50.000And at this democracy summit, there's a serious pitch for Joe Biden to tell other democracies that American democracy is on the verge of extinction.
00:31:02.000If we're talking about why American democracy is on the verge of extinction, there's some pretty good systemic reasons, such as an authoritarian administrative state that is not answerable to the people, creating regulations from whole cloth that apply to tens of millions of Americans.
00:31:55.000You shouldn't be storming the Capitol building in the hopes of harming the Vice President of the United States or of delaying the business of constitutional government.
00:32:03.000You were involved in a riot and you should go to jail.
00:32:05.000Also, if you believe that we are really on the verge of democracy ending in America on January 6th, it's because you are an idiot, or you are politically motivated, or both.
00:32:15.000People are literally being charged right now for participating in January 6th, who are posting on Instagram saying, I don't always drink, but when I'm invading the Capitol and drinking, I drink Coors Light.
00:32:26.000Does that sound, so it's the light beer hall pooch, as someone put it online.
00:32:32.000But according to the Democrats, it is.
00:32:33.000Because again, the entire thing here is that if they can't justify their own failures, they can at least pretend that their opponents are Hitler.
00:32:42.000According to Politico, Joe Biden is now going to go in front of the world and lament the state of American democracy.
00:32:48.000On Thursday, Biden is going to open the Summit for Democracy, says Politico.
00:32:51.000Reduced by the pandemic to a giant two-day Zoom conference, leaders of 110 countries will make public commitments to fortify their own, in some cases rather notional, democracies.
00:32:59.000Biden seems to have been mugged by reality.
00:33:02.000Unlike his predecessors of whatever persuasion, this president has taken office at a moment when a democratic future in the United States can no longer be taken for granted.
00:33:31.000No task seems more urgent than protection of democracy at home and abroad.
00:33:34.000According to Politico, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, quote, And it's fundamental for the U.S.
00:33:38.000I've heard Joe Biden have with a foreign leader.
00:33:40.000The centerpiece of the conversation has been that he sees the fundamental struggle of our time as the face-off between autocracy and democracy.
00:33:47.000And it's fundamental for the US to lead the effort toward the democratic resilience and reinvigoration around the world.
00:33:53.000Biden hopes to reassert America's faith in democracy after four years in which former president Donald Trump toadyed to dictators to lead the world's democracies in the heart of struggle with autocratic states above all China for the hearts and minds of the world's citizens and to agree on strategies to fortify democracies against internal and external threats.
00:34:14.000If this effort should fulfill even a part of those hopes, Biden will be remembered as the FDR-like figure whom he aspires to be.
00:34:21.000First of all, we should note here that FDR was not the great apex of American democracy.
00:34:27.000That dude was engaged in some behaviors like, for example, the complete imprisoning of all Japanese-American citizens.
00:34:34.000FDR is a bad example of the nation's best Democrat, like small-D Democrat.
00:34:38.000But this is the basic outline that has now been created by the left, is that we will be incredibly radical, and our radicalism is justified because the other side is just so evil.
00:34:52.000Well, the right should be able to meet this with good policy.
00:34:55.000The right should be able to meet this with good policy and with good ideas and with tried-and-true ideas.
00:35:01.000But it seems that many on the right have bought into this rhetoric because their brains were fried by Trump.
00:35:06.000There's no question that Trump was a reaction to the left.
00:35:10.000American politics, just like all politics, is incredibly reactionary.
00:35:13.000And people tend to react very strongly to things and then to sort of put aside qualms in pursuit of the reaction.
00:35:20.000But there are some people on the right whose brains are so fried that they think that the future of democracy is indeed in the hands of Democrats.
00:35:28.000And this is how you end up with an entire wing of the establishment Republican thinking that is dedicated to the proposition that you should be a Democrat.
00:35:38.000This is why you will see the conservative case for California, or you'll see the conservative case for Drag Queen Story Hour, or according to David Brooks, essentially, the conservative case for voting Democrat.
00:35:47.000We'll get to that in just one second, because it is delusional.
00:35:50.000First, let's talk about the fact that you should, right now, if you own a home, refinance.
00:36:04.000Everybody knows that next year mortgage rates are going to rise.
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00:36:30.000Our consultants can help you save up to $1,000 a month.
00:36:33.000You might even skip two mortgage payments, creating greater upfront savings.
00:36:36.000And you can pre-qualify for free by calling 866-721-3300.
00:36:59.000First, as the Biden administration continues to try to cram down their vaccine mandates, it's more important than ever that we continue to fight it.
00:37:07.000Not only has the OSHA mandate received a nationwide stay, this week the federal court enjoined the Biden administration This is great news, but we would not be receiving that news without the continued application of pressure because the Biden administration is not backing down.
00:37:22.000Recently, Biden announced his winter COVID plan, which sounds less like pumpkin spice latte and a lot more like mandates and more mandates and then mandates to fly and to vaccinate in order to fly and all the rest of this.
00:37:32.000This would be a wrench in travel plans for millions of Americans.
00:37:35.000Anthony Fauci yesterday said that That if you're having a holiday party, you should try to force all your family members to vax.
00:37:55.000If you haven't signed our petition against Joe Biden's vax mandate, I need you to head on over to dailywire.com slash do not comply to add your name.
00:38:02.000We need to send an overwhelming message to this administration.
00:38:30.000Well, because his book not only sold out within the first 24 hours, it is now the number one LGBTQIAPZ ampersand backslash colon Hebrew bet.
00:38:43.000Little tilde thing that goes over the N in Spanish.
00:39:11.000Head on over to Amazon, reserve your copy of Matt's timely masterpiece, Johnny the Walrus, today.
00:39:15.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:39:18.000Okay, so just as I have said that the left is justifying its bad behavior by pointing to the evils of the right, there are some people on the right who will do the same, who will justify bad behavior by pointing to the evils of the left.
00:39:34.000My view of conservatism has always been that you don't get to be non-virtuous just because the other side is being non-virtuous.
00:39:40.000Now, you do have to protect yourself, you have to stand up for yourself, and you have to be muscular in doing all of those things, but there is a wing of the Republican Party, the establishment Republican Party, The kind of thinking man over at the New York Times editorial page, the David Brooks character, who believes that the best way to demonstrate your fealty to decency is to simply kowtow to the left because you're so embarrassed by the right.
00:40:03.000And these are people who just never got over Trump.
00:40:06.000It's not a shot coming from David Brooks, who once praised, I kid you not, the pleat in Barack Obama's pants.
00:40:10.000That's a thing that David Brooks once did.
00:40:12.000But this guy was considered the in-house conservative at the New York Times.
00:40:15.000Now he has a piece in the Atlantic, which is definitely where you're going to want to write about American conservatism.
00:40:19.000The same magazine that dumped Kevin Williamson for the great sin of being pro-life.
00:40:22.000He has a piece there called, What Happened to American Conservatism?
00:40:25.000The rich philosophical tradition I fell in love with has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression, says David Brooks.
00:40:31.000He says, I fell in love with conservatism in my 20s.
00:40:34.000As a politics and crime reporter in Chicago, I often found myself around public housing projects like Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor Homes, which had been built with the best of intentions, but had become nightmares.
00:40:43.000The urban planners who designed those projects thought they could improve lives by replacing ramshackle old neighborhoods with a series of neatly ordered high-rises.
00:40:50.000But, as the sociologist Richard Sennett, who lived in parts of the Cabrini Green complex as a child, noted, the planners never really consulted the residents themselves.
00:40:58.000By the time I encountered the projects, they were national symbols of urban decay.
00:41:02.000Back then, I thought of myself as a socialist.
00:41:04.000Seeing the fallout from this situation prompted a shocking realization.
00:41:07.000This is exactly what that guy I read in college had predicted.
00:41:10.000Human society is unalterably complex, Edmund Burke argued.
00:41:13.000If you try to re-engineer it based on the simplistic schema of your own reason, you will unintentionally cause significant harm.
00:41:20.000Right, this is one of the fundamental bases of conservatism, is the idea that rationalism is not proof positive that you should do a thing.
00:41:27.000That we are, human beings are uniquely capable of coming up with bad reasons to do things.
00:41:32.000And so, wisdom of the past is a really good guide to what has worked and what has not, right?
00:41:36.000This is the argument that Edmund Burke made in the face of the sort of floating rights of the French Revolution.
00:41:41.000His idea was that if you try to re-engineer society ground up, you're going to fail.
00:41:45.000Because society is really, really complex and you shouldn't screw with it too much.
00:41:50.000Chesterton quote about the difference between a wise conservative and a foolish liberal.
00:41:55.000A wise conservative comes across a fence in an empty field, doesn't know why it's there, and says, I'm not going to tear that down until I know why that was there in the first place.
00:42:04.000A liberal comes across the fence and says, I don't know why that's there.
00:42:07.000And so accepting the reality of people making decisions in the past and that you have a tradition that has been handed down to you is really important.
00:42:14.000So conservatism is very much about tradition.
00:42:16.000Now, that tradition is also tied into human reason and it's tied into received rights.
00:42:21.000So David Brooks talks about his version of conservatism.
00:42:24.000He says, What passes for conservatism now, however, is nearly the opposite of the Burkean conservatism I encountered then.
00:42:31.000Today what passes for the worldview of the right is a set of resentful animosities, a partisan attachment to Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson, a sort of mental brutalism.
00:42:39.000The rich philosophical perspective that dazzled me has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression.
00:42:45.000He says, I recently went back and reread the yellowing conservatism books I've lugged around with me over the decades.
00:42:49.000I wondered whether I'd be embarrassed or ashamed of them.
00:42:51.000I have to tell you, I wasn't embarrassed.
00:42:55.000And I came away thinking conservatism is truer and more profound than ever, and that to be a conservative today, you have to oppose the Republican Party.
00:43:02.000The conservative case for the Democratic Party, which currently is rejecting all wisdom of the past, right?
00:43:07.000This is the soft-headedness of some of the Republican establishment.
00:43:10.000When I say Republican establishment, I mean people, the Lincoln Project gang and the David Brookses of the world and the entire...
00:43:18.000Literati of the bulwark, a group of people who have basically decided that they are going to side more often than not with Democrats because Democrats hold the keys to the future because they're just so angry at Republicans for going overboard on Donald Trump.
00:43:37.000Because if you are trying to decide which party is more likely to mirror your priorities of preserving the wisdom of the past and not following rationalistic desires to destroy everything that we know to be true already in the pursuit of some sort of aimless utopia, then I don't know how in the world you can side with the Democrats.
00:43:55.000This is a party that currently denies the reality of biological sex.
00:44:00.000This is a party that suggests that racial essentialism is a functional feature of American life.
00:44:07.000This is a party that believes that centralized power through government is the solution to your problems.
00:44:14.000And people like David Brooks are saying that future lies with the Democratic Party?
00:44:22.000Says David Brooks, this essay is a reclamation project.
00:44:24.000It's an attempt to remember how modern conservatism started, what core wisdom it contains, and why that wisdom is still needed today.
00:44:31.000He points out the history of conservatism, which springs from the Enlightenment and from the Peace of Westphalia and the end of the religious wars in Europe.
00:44:41.000He says, One camp, which we associate with the French Enlightenment, put its faith in reason.
00:44:45.000Some thought a decent social order can be built when primitive passions like religious zeal are marginalized and tamed, when individuals are educated to use their highest faculty, reason, to pursue enlightened self-interest, and when government organizes society using the tools of science.
00:44:58.000Another camp, which we associate with the Scottish or British Enlightenment, of David Hume and Adam Smith, did not believe human reason is powerful enough to control human selfishness.
00:45:05.000Most of the time, our reason merely rationalizes our selfishness.
00:45:08.000They do not believe that individual reason is powerful enough to even comprehend the world around us, let alone enable leaders to engineer society from the top down.
00:45:16.000This is one of core conservatives' principles, epistemological modesty, or humility in the face of what we don't know about a complex world, and a conviction that social change should be steady, but cautious and incremental.
00:45:28.000Down the centuries, conservatives have always stood against the arrogance of those who believe they have the ability to plan history.
00:45:43.000He says, Conservatism certainly has an acute awareness of sin, selfishness, greed, lust.
00:45:49.000Conservatives also believe that in the right circumstances, people are motivated by the positive moral emotions like sympathy and benevolence.
00:45:54.000These moral sentiments move you to be outraged by cruelty, to care for your neighbor, to feel proper affection for your imperfect country.
00:45:59.000They motivate you to do the right thing.
00:46:02.000Your emotions can be trusted, conservatives believe, when they are cultivated rightly.
00:46:06.000The key phrase, of course, is cultivated rightly.
00:46:08.000The only way to govern an unformed creature would be through a prison state if a person has not been trained by a community.
00:46:41.000Natural right and natural law are related.
00:46:44.000Natural law, which is the idea that human beings have the capacity to understand much of the universe, and then they can derive fundamental propositions for life from the nature of that universe.
00:46:54.000That has an outgrowth in natural rights, which is the idea that along with those laws comes fears of liberty.
00:46:59.000Okay, so conservatism is about all of that, because that is part of the received wisdom of the past.
00:47:06.000But somehow, David Brooks then comes to the conclusion that the future lies with Democrats who hate you, and hate conservatism, and hate the wisdom of the past, and wish to level all of it.
00:47:18.000So, David Brooks continues, He says, I realize that every worldview has the vices of its virtues.
00:47:24.000Conservatives are supposed to be epistemologically modest, but in real life, this modesty can turn into British anti-intellectualism, a contempt for learning and expertise.
00:47:32.000Conservatives are supposed to prize local community, but this orientation can turn into narrow parochialism, can produce xenophobic and racist animosity toward immigrants, a tribal hostility toward outsiders, a paranoid response when confronted with even a hint of diversity and pluralism.
00:47:45.000Conservatives are supposed to cherish moral formation, but this can turn into rigid and self-righteous moralism.
00:47:50.000And conservatives are supposed to revere the past, but this can turn into an abject deference to whoever holds power.
00:47:58.000And he thinks this is what's happened to American conservatism.
00:48:01.000He says that American conservatism is now hardening into xenophobia and brutalism.
00:48:11.000He says that he thinks that the tension between America and conservatism is too great.
00:48:17.000He thinks that Donald Trump is the opposite of Burkean conservatism.
00:48:21.000He thinks that the future of conservatism lies, again, in moving away from these traditional American values.
00:48:29.000And even from, just in order to distance himself from Trump, he's basically willing to go side with Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, seems to be the main pitch here.
00:48:37.000He says that conservatism makes sense only when it's trying to preserve social conditions that are basically healthy.
00:48:42.000America's racial arrangements are fundamentally unjust.
00:48:44.000Okay, now he's speaking the language of the left.
00:48:47.000America's race relations were fundamentally unjust in 1965.
00:48:49.000They're not fundamentally unjust in 2021.
00:48:53.000Okay, but he has embraced this because it makes him feel good about himself and he gets to hang out with his liberal friends.
00:48:59.000He says that conservatives have fallen down the rabbit hole of believing too much in free markets.
00:49:05.000Which, of course, is incredibly silly if you've seen the Republican Party these days.
00:49:09.000But, again, the reason that I point out this essay is to point out that there's an entire wing of... Democrats understand that the only way to justify their own agenda is to see Republicans as enemies.
00:49:22.000And there are a bunch of people on the right who are so self-doubting and so self-loathing because so many of their friends did something they don't like in backing Donald Trump that they're willing to go along with it.
00:49:32.000It's an amazing transformation, and it's an amazing and debilitating move.
00:49:39.000David Brooks says that he is content to plant himself in the rightward edge of the leftward tendency in the more promising soil of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party if its progressive wing sometimes seems to have learned nothing from the failures of government and to remote cultural stances that divide America, at least the party as a whole knows what year it is.
00:49:56.000In 1980, the core problem of the age was statism.
00:49:59.000In 2021, the core threat is social decay.
00:50:01.000And he thinks that Social Decay is going to be arrested by the Democratic Party?
00:50:05.000The Democratic Party is the party of Social Decay.
00:50:17.000If you cannot see that the party of Social Decay is the party that wants taxpayer-funded abortion magnets, Then I do not know what to tell you at this point.
00:50:27.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon as the Matt Wall Show airs 1.30 p.m.