Ben Shapiro goes off on gun control, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times tries to explain the Second Amendment, and we check the mailbag. Recorded in Baltimore, MD! Subscribe to my new podcast, "The Ben Shapiro Show," wherever you get your podcasts. I am a regular contributor to the Baltimore Sun and the Sun-Herald, and have been for years. If you like what you hear here, please consider becoming a patron patron patron of the show. It helps spread the word about what's going on in the world of podcasts and other forms of media. The show is now available on most major podcast directories including Podcoin, Cracked, and The Huffington Post. Thanks to our sponsor, Bit IRA, for sponsoring the show this week. We are working on transcribing the show and putting it on a website, so please send us your questions and comments. Tweet me and we'll get them on the show! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - Hillary Clinton will not go away, no matter what 2:30 - Gun control is now on the table 3:20 - The Second Amendment 4:00 5:00 | Gun control and universal background checks 6:15 - Is there a way to win the debate? 7:00s: Does the left have the answer? 8:30s: How does the left know how to win an argument about the second amendment? 9: What are you going to do? 10:10: Why 9/10? 11:40s: What's better than 9/11? 12:15 15:00- Why do you think 9/16? 16:10sounds good? 17: Does he finally have a guide to the code? 18:00 s: What is the problem? 19:00 -- What does he have a problem with the code to defeat the gun control issue? 21:00es: Is he finally broken? 22:00-- Does he have it? ? 26:00+ 27: What would you like to know the code for the code on the code I d? 26) -- Does he've finally broken the code, or does he understand the code ? 27) -- does he really have a clue on the problem I d better than the problem we need to break it?
00:00:37.000Cryptocurrency is actually a good investment, or at least it can be a good investment.
00:00:41.000George Gilder, who's one of my economic mentors, a guy who I really believe when he talks about economics, says Bitcoin is the perfect libertarian solution to the money enigma.
00:00:49.000Now, what you've heard about Bitcoin has been about the volatility, or maybe you've heard about the enormous amounts of money people are making in it.
00:00:55.000But what Bitcoin really is is like gold or silver.
00:01:17.000So if there's a limited supply of Bitcoin, more people are buying in, the value goes up.
00:01:21.000So if you get in early on Bitcoin, you tend to do better over time, just as if you invested in gold very early before a mass supply was increased, then you do really well on gold as well.
00:01:31.000Well, the folks from Birch Gold Group, the same people who help you purchase precious metals for your IRA,
00:02:34.000We're the best man she'll ever know, and she's not going.
00:02:36.000So Hillary Clinton is just gonna stick around, and now she's gonna be talking about gun control.
00:02:41.000So she is praising the Parkland teens.
00:02:42.000She's saying they are changing the conversation.
00:02:44.000This is the great myth of the left, is that the conversation is routinely being changed, even though the conversation is exactly the same as it ever was.
00:02:50.000Here's Hillary Clinton, one of the worst, not one of the worst, the worst candidate in American history who will not leave, still talking about gun control in Parkland.
00:03:03.000The movement started by the students from Parkland about taking on the NRA and the gun lobby.
00:03:12.000So what we've got to do is to say we're for the assault weapons ban, we're for universal background checks, we are going to hold elected officials accountable, and we're going to vote against those who will not agree with those particular policies.
00:03:32.000And I think we've got a real shot to defeat the NRA again.
00:03:46.000But she's not the only one who's pushing the idea that the gun control issue is now on the table and Democrats finally have the advantage because of the Parkland teens.
00:03:55.000OK, so one of these folks who's pushing this idea is Nicholas Kristof, who is one of the worst columnists in America.
00:04:01.000He writes for the New York Times op-ed page, which, of course, means that, by definition, he's one of the worst columnists in America.
00:04:05.000The New York Times op-ed page is a trash heap of misery and stupidity.
00:04:10.000But in any case, here is what he writes.
00:04:12.000He has an entire column this week talking about the Second Amendment, and it's called,
00:04:18.000So I thought to myself, well, if Nicholas Kristof knows how to win an argument about guns, maybe we'd better read those arguments, because maybe he's finally given a guide to the left on how they can defeat the Second Amendment agenda.
00:04:41.000Polls show that 9 out of 10 Americans favor basic steps like universal background checks before gun purchases.
00:04:46.000But the exceptions are the president and a majority in Congress.
00:04:48.000Now, this alone should make you stop and think.
00:04:52.000Well, why is it that if 9 out of 10 people think one thing, but a majority of people in Congress who are elected by those same people think another thing?
00:05:01.000Well, the answer is, of course, that 9 out of 10 people do not support universal background checks.
00:05:05.0009 out of 10 people are told a slogan called universal background checks, and then when they are told that this means that you will not be able to give your gun to your kid, right, when this means that you will not be able to buy a gun for your brother, when this means that you won't be able to lend a gun to your friend to go hunting, they go, well, that seems weird.
00:07:09.000Right, if the idea is that all these regulations on cars have made them less deadly, why is it that guns, as a percentage of the population, the number of guns in American society has increased wildly since 1994, and yet the gun death rate in the United States has decreased wildly since 1994.
00:08:17.000They're like five jumpers in the United States.
00:08:19.000Okay, the number of people who die by jumping off bridges in the United States every year is really, really low, so that's not a great sample size.
00:08:25.000And he says, likewise, almost half of suicides in Britain used to be by asphyxiating oneself with gas from the oven.
00:08:30.000When Britain switched to a less lethal oven gas, the suicides by oven plummeted, and there was little substitution by other methods.
00:08:39.000That's like saying that suicide was about ovens in Britain.
00:08:43.000Suicide is much more common on a per capita basis in many countries in Europe than it is in the United States, where guns are not nearly as prevalent.
00:08:49.000The suicide rates in Japan continue to be quite high, for example, and guns are essentially forbidden in that society.
00:08:56.000To pretend that guns are the cause of suicide is just inane.
00:09:00.000Suicide is something social scientists have been studying for nigh on 200 years, really since Comte.
00:09:06.000And they're still waiting to figure out exactly how this functions.
00:09:09.000People don't understand why people commit suicide.
00:09:12.000They suggest it's all about the guns, it's just dumb.
00:09:14.000He says, no, it's more about our violent culture.
00:09:15.000The Swiss and Israelis have large numbers of firearms and they don't have our levels of gun violence.
00:09:19.000He says, yes, there's something to that.
00:09:21.000America has underlying social problems and we need to address them with smarter economic and social policies.
00:09:26.000But we magnify the toll when we make it easy for troubled people to explode with AR-15s rather than with pocket knives.
00:09:32.000Well, there's not a lot of evidence to that, and that doesn't rebut the supposition, which is that a good person with a gun stops a bad person with a gun, and if a bad person gets a hold of a gun, you don't want to be armed with a pocket knife.
00:09:44.000In fact, gun violence rates vary widely across American society, and if we're really looking to save lives, maybe we should stop with the gun confiscation rhetoric and start talking instead about how exactly we should stop all of these underlying social problems that are causing the crime in the first place.
00:09:58.000And finally, Nicholas Christophe writes, So here's Christophe's response, Right, because the vast majority of people with firearms lock them up.
00:10:22.000There are 300 million firearms in the United States.
00:10:26.000There are 100 million gun owners in the United States.
00:10:29.000My guess is that there are fewer pools than that in all of the United States because 300 million pools would be a lot of pools in the United States.
00:10:35.000I don't think there are that many pools in the United States.
00:10:38.000Well, no, that's more of a reason to be talking...
00:10:53.000to be talking about why guns should stay away from kids and why, again, if we're, so apparently we're not allowed to talk about deaths from cars because something.
00:11:03.000And we shouldn't talk about deaths from pools because guns, gun deaths are more common than pool deaths, even though if we talk about guns in pools then we come up with the conclusion that pools are more dangerous to children than guns.
00:11:38.000Just strong stuff from the New York Times columnist.
00:11:41.000David French has an excellent column on all of this.
00:11:44.000And he points out that all the straw man that Nicholas Kristof erects here do not even withstand Nicholas Kristof's attempt to undercut those arguments.
00:11:57.000The arguments that he props up there are actually stronger than his counter arguments.
00:12:01.000French says Kristof won't win his argument because he can't.
00:12:03.000We've proven we can decrease crime while we protect
00:12:21.000David French certainly is right about all of that.
00:12:23.000Okay, so in just a second, I want to discuss the latest over at Facebook where disaster has broken out yet again, but this time over something that I don't really think is Facebook's fault.
00:12:31.000First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Skillshare.
00:12:34.000So, Skillshare is the place to go for you to broaden and deepen your resume.
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00:13:46.000Because on Wednesday, they said that most of its users who had a specific search function enabled had had their profile scraped by third parties.
00:13:53.000Zuckerberg sat on a call with reporters, quote, He says, I would assume, if you had that setting turned on, that someone at some point has access to your public information in some way.
00:14:09.000The setting he's referring to is one where users let other users search for them by email address or phone number rather than just by name.
00:14:16.000So, their Chief Technology Officer, Mike Shropfer, said most Facebook users could have had their public profile scraped.
00:14:36.000However, malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery.
00:14:46.000And given the scale and sophistication of the activity we've seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way.
00:14:53.000So a lot of people are very upset about this because, oh, Cambridge Analytica was scraping public information and using it in order to cross-tabulate with political preference, and now other companies are doing this.
00:15:14.000What is on Facebook is that they have lost the trust of the American people because Facebook has not been transparent about what exactly their purpose is, about what it is that they do.
00:15:22.000Are they a social media platform where you interact with friends and pick people you want to follow?
00:15:26.000Or are they a publisher that decides what you see?
00:15:30.000If they're going to act like this kind of panopticon company that is going to expose all of your information to various sites and then also going to dictate what it is that you see, then you feel a little more boxed in than if we say, listen, you have a profile, you put it up there, it is what it is.
00:15:45.000If people take it and use it, that's their problem.
00:15:46.000But at least you get to see what you see and interact how you want to interact.
00:15:50.000Facebook has some real problems along all of these lines, specifically because they've not been clear about what it is that they do.
00:15:56.000If they want to be clear about what they do, if they want to be transparent with the people who use Facebook, now is the time.
00:16:01.000I understand that they don't want to give away proprietary trade secrets, but that's not what we're asking for.
00:16:05.000All we're asking for is to know, how are you deciding what shows up in my feed?
00:16:10.000How are you deciding what information is protected?
00:16:27.000So, the left is obsessed with the Stormy Daniels story because Stormy Daniels is a porn actress who has been in many a massive masterpiece, including The Witches of Brestwick, an actual film in which Stormy Daniels starred.
00:16:48.000Does anyone really believe President Trump on that?
00:16:50.000Probably not, because it's just not particularly believable.
00:16:54.000But, one of the things the media have done with Stormy Daniels is they have made her out to be a victim.
00:16:57.000They've said that this porn star who had an affair with the President of the United States before he was President, knowing he was married, in an attempt to get him to put her on Celebrity Apprentice,
00:17:06.000And then took $130,000 to shut up about it before the election.
00:17:10.000Now she's some sort of great victim, and she's really a hero, Stormy Daniels.
00:17:13.000You know, she's really coming out with information that the public needs to know.
00:17:16.000Now, I'm not saying that Trump is innocent in all of this.
00:17:50.000I think it raises moral questions about the president, but those moral questions have been an offing for something like 40 years at this point.
00:17:56.000I mean, there's nothing new under the sun here, and there's nothing new under Stormy Daniels' moon, apparently.
00:18:01.000So, you know, this idea that the president has somehow violated the trust of his own base, like, everybody knew that this is what Trump was when they elected him.
00:18:11.000This is not like, wow, this guy, he's a paragon of moral rectitude.
00:18:16.000So why exactly is the media obsessed with this?
00:18:18.000Because they think this is gonna take down Trump, and they've painted Stormy Daniels as some sort of victimized figure by President Trump.
00:18:23.000Well, all of that sort of exploded on the Democrats yesterday, because Stormy Daniels, her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was interviewed by Megyn Kelly.
00:18:32.000Megyn Kelly is a fantastic interviewer.
00:18:37.000The stuff that she's best at, I think she's okay at all of the kind of morning show host kind of stuff, but the stuff that Megan just dominates at, that she's terrific at, is when she asks hard questions to people.
00:18:48.000She was great at this on Fox News, and she just grilled Michael Avenetti last night, and it was brutal.
00:18:54.000Why would Stormy Daniels be leading the charge on whether that payment violated the election law?
00:19:00.000Because, and I mean this is the honest to God truth, this is a principled woman at this point.
00:19:10.000She's so principled that 11 days before the election she had information about the possible next president having an extramarital affair with an adult film actress and she shut up about it in exchange for just over a hundred grand.
00:19:24.000Yeah, and I think she's providing an explanation as to why that is.
00:20:38.000So good for Megyn Kelly for finally asking some questions.
00:20:40.000It just shows the desperation of the left that they've tried to make some sort of martyr out of Stormy Daniels, who's anything but a martyr.
00:20:51.000Like this right here, I would watch that every day.
00:20:53.000I would just replay that clip over and over because Megyn Kelly shellacking Michael Avenetti is something that is long overdue and demonstrates really the lack of objective media experience on the part of the media, right?
00:21:05.000The media say they're objective, they're not.
00:21:06.000If they're really objective, they all would have been asking Michael Avenetti these questions weeks ago.
00:21:10.000But it took Megyn Kelly to ask it on a morning show on NBC News in order for them to be asked.
00:22:02.000to a route that has been blocked off by protesters.
00:22:05.000These protesters are protesting after the death of Stephon Clark, who's a black guy who was shot to death under what would be extraordinarily refuted circumstances in Sacramento.
00:22:14.000The police were chasing, apparently, a black suspect through a neighborhood.
00:22:19.000This guy was just out back on his cell phone, and they shot him to death for no reason.
00:22:23.000It's an amazing, amazing story and really a travesty and demonstrates lack of police training and, you know, how bad things can get when you're in a crime-ridden neighborhood and the cops responsible are definitely going to spend some time in jail, I think.
00:22:39.000But in any case, these protesters have blocked off the intersection and the person who wrote me this letter, George, he steps out of his BMW to talk with the protesters because he's just standing there and they're blocking traffic.
00:22:59.000So he says, you can tell by the way he answered all the people yelling at him, he says, do you honestly expect this medium of protesting is going to serve your purpose well?
00:23:52.000And people are telling the media not to pay attention to any of this.
00:23:54.000So this went viral and Al Jazeera says, was this a meaningful conversation or was this guy just trying to exercise his white privilege to get home?
00:24:01.000Okay, so let me start by asking a question.
00:24:57.000Why are people blocking the public thoroughfare?
00:25:00.000And there's nothing wrong with you asking that question.
00:25:01.000By the way, it is also true that what you are arguing, that you actually agree with the protesters, right, and that you want them to do something more effective for their cause, the data back you up.
00:25:10.000Okay, the data show that there's polling data that shows this from the Atlantic, and what it shows is that if you block traffic, people are less likely to listen to your message.
00:25:19.000People are more likely, in fact, to think that you're a jerk who's blocking traffic.
00:25:24.000So what you were doing there was attempting to say to these folks, listen, I'm on your side.
00:25:27.000And this isn't just about me getting home.
00:25:29.000If you actually want to do something effective that raises sympathy levels, then go get a permit and then protest because no one's stopping you from protesting.
00:25:37.000We just don't want you shutting down traffic in the middle of rush hour so you can't get home.
00:25:40.000There's nothing unreasonable about that.
00:25:43.000And by the way, it is worth noting that when people say, well, Martin Luther King, you know, he shut down highways.
00:25:49.000Yes, there was a federal court order that was issued that allowed the Selma march to happen.
00:25:55.000Okay, so the entire history of the Selma March is really, really interesting.
00:25:58.000And there's an interesting column by a guy named Ronald Krastoszynski, that was written in 2015 for the LA Times, in which he talks about the legality of the Selma March.
00:26:06.000So first of all, you have to, he's a professor at the University of Alabama Law School, is this professor.
00:26:11.000And he served as a law clerk to Judge Frank Johnson in 1991, 1992.
00:26:15.000So first you have to determine, is the purpose of the march to get arrested?
00:26:19.000Sometimes the purpose of the march is to get arrested, because you want to show that you are being arrested for an unjust reason.
00:26:25.000But it is also worthwhile noting that a lot of the time you can have a protest, and the goal of the protest is to gain public sympathy, and the worst way to do that is by shutting down traffic.
00:26:33.000So here is what this law professor writes, quote, But we should also consider an important question.
00:26:50.000Could a march like Selma happen today?
00:27:00.000After Alabama state troopers and local sheriff's deputies attacked the 600 people crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, March 7th, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference went to federal court on Monday.
00:27:10.000They asked for an immediate injunction ordering Alabama state officials to permit the march to proceed.
00:28:11.000If they are protesting, however, the idea that the police are generally racist, or that America is generally racist, and then they're going to shut down traffic to do it,
00:28:18.000I do not understand the logic of that.
00:28:20.000So, George, your question was, how should you best respond?
00:28:24.000I think that you should write all of this.
00:28:25.000I think that you should write a letter, an open letter, saying, here is why I was talking to the protesters.
00:28:32.000I was trying to recommend that they pick a better way of doing this.
00:28:35.000So that their message is better heard and more concerted, and then I can join them, because I'd like to stand out there and march with them, but I can't march with them when I'm stuck in my car.
00:28:43.000I can't just leave my car there, right?
00:28:45.000So what I would like is a scheduled march at a legal time and place that I can join, because that will also be the most effective, with a message that I can join into.
00:28:53.000Not saying the police are systematically racist and systemically racist without evidence, but saying that the police need new procedures, that we need to figure out how best to educate cops, that these sorts of mistakes don't happen in the U.S.
00:29:03.000When they do, they very often end with a court-martial.
00:29:06.000So, again, the real travesty in that video is nothing that was done or said by you, George.
00:29:11.000The real travesty is the people who are standing there shouting at you that you're a racist because you're asking a serious question, and the people who are on Al Jazeera claiming that it's white privilege for you to even ask the question.
00:29:21.000As though a white person couldn't march with black people.
00:29:23.000There were white people who were marching with MLK in Selma.
00:29:26.000And I'm sure that there are white people who will march on behalf of Stephon Clark as they should because that shooting is egregious.
00:29:34.000Has there ever been a time in history the Democrats were actually a good party?
00:29:38.000I can't say that Republicans are great right now, but we do carry the moniker Party of Lincoln as well as a few others.
00:29:42.000Does the Democratic Party have a highlight like that that we as conservatives can look back at and say, Oh, why don't they go back to being like that?
00:29:48.000Also, are there any books that give a balanced history about the history of both parties you might recommend?
00:30:45.000But there have been times that the Republican Party has backed some really pretty stupid policy.
00:30:50.000You know, there was a time when the typical country club Republican was considered a guy who wouldn't open his golf club to Jews.
00:30:57.000So what I would suggest is instead of following party banners and saying, you know, that the Democrats were always great or the Republicans were always great, you can say, here are good people.
00:31:05.000Now, which party best represents those causes and people now?
00:31:09.000I don't think the labels matter nearly as much as people seem to think that they do.
00:31:13.000Okay, well I have more of these questions that I want to answer, but first you're going to have to go over to DailyWire.com.
00:31:17.000For $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to DailyWire.com.
00:31:20.000When you do, you get the rest of my show live, you get the rest of Clavin's show live, you get the rest of the Michael Mullins show live, plus there's an episode of The Conversation coming up on Tuesday.
00:31:29.000Andrew Clavin will be answering all of your questions live, as in you go on DailyWire,
00:31:34.000And if you're a subscriber, you type questions into the chat box and we'll answer your questions.
00:31:37.000Anyone can watch at YouTube or Facebook or on our website, but you can only watch on our website and ask questions if you go to dailywire.com and become a subscriber.
00:32:25.000polling numbers, the most atheistic religious group in America.
00:32:27.000So when you poll Jews, you're polling a bunch of people who say they are ethnically Jewish but have never attended synagogue or do so once a year on Yom Kippur and then they break for lunch, right?
00:33:01.000Reason number two is that there are a lot of Jews who think that the best way... So, the reason that Jews have been active in leftist movements like socialism historically is because socialism promised that it was going to get over anti-Semitism.
00:33:12.000Jews who were living in Tsarist Russia were victimized by anti-Semitism on a regular basis.
00:33:16.000Now, as it turns out, socialism in the Soviet Union didn't cure that, right?
00:33:19.000Anti-Semitism continued to be a thing.
00:33:21.000Jews were still dramatically victimized
00:33:23.000Under the USSR, but there were a lot of Jews involved in the socialist movement because they thought that if we could see each other as a brotherhood of man and get beyond religion, then maybe Jews would finally be treated with enlightenment equality.
00:33:35.000Plus, there are a lot of Jews who react to Christians with a certain level of antipathy, which I think is not justified by Christian behavior, at least in the modern era.
00:33:45.000I think that there are a lot of Jews who go back
00:33:47.000You know, a hundred years, and they say that a lot of anti-Semitism was driven by Christians, and so why would we ally with Christians now?
00:33:53.000Whichever party is more pro-Christian is the one I'm not going to be a part of.
00:33:56.000Again, this describes why secular Jews are anti-Republican and anti-right.
00:34:01.000It does not describe why religious Jews are, because religious Jews aren't.
00:34:03.000The dirty little secret is that Orthodox religious Jews vote about 70-30 Republican.
00:34:06.000Okay, Timothy says, Hi Ben, I'm a senior in high school and I wondered what protections or rights you think animals should have.
00:34:12.000What is your view on animal conservation?
00:34:25.000As far as what rights animals should have, they have the right against excessive cruelty.
00:34:28.000I don't think anyone should be cruel to animals.
00:34:31.000As far as meat eating, it seems to me that, from what I've heard from my wife anyway, she says, and she is a doctor as you may know, she says that the human body does require a lot of the nutrients in meat.
00:34:44.000So that is a reason for meat eating out of necessity.
00:34:47.000The idea that animals should be cruelly treated, I think, is forbidden by virtually every major Western religion.
00:35:06.000Well, it wasn't like I thought that everything with kids was going to be wonderful rainbows and sunshine and unicorns.
00:35:12.000As they say, when you have kids, the spectrum of happiness wildly expands, which means that you go from a possible 10 out of 10 to a 1,000 out of 10, but it also goes to a negative 1,000, right?
00:35:22.000So that means that the worst suffering you will do is when your child suffers or when your child misbehaves or does something bad, and the best your life will be is when your child does something good.
00:35:30.000But you should have kids because having kids makes you a better person and because I think you have an obligation to contribute as a solid thinker to the betterment of humanity through the next generation, creating a next generation of people who will help preserve values that matter.
00:35:44.000So I think it's more a matter of obligation than enjoyment.
00:36:08.000I joke that it's sort of like a cult having kids.
00:36:10.000Once you have kids, you have to convince other people to join the cult, but you can't tell people about the downsides, because then they won't want to join.
00:36:16.000And then once they're in, they now feel a moral obligation to spread the good word.
00:36:28.000I know Zell Miller, the senator from Georgia who recently passed away, he was a big advocate of changing the 17th Amendment so that it was elected by state legislators.
00:36:32.000The reason for that is because when you directly elect senators,
00:36:54.000Then they become your federal representatives, as opposed to being people who are standing there in favor of the state's interests.
00:37:00.000They no longer represent the state, because the state's interests are best represented by the interests of the legislature.
00:37:05.000Instead, they're representing the public at large, and it's easier to fool the public at large than it is to fool state legislators, who actually have a stake in maintaining a certain amount of state power.
00:37:14.000People don't follow politics closely enough to elect senators who are going to stand up
00:37:23.000But they do have the values to elect those people to state legislature and then the state legislature wants to guard its own its own power.
00:37:30.000And so they tell the senators what to do and what not to do.
00:37:53.000It wasn't that my parents had an ideological boundary against spanking.
00:37:57.000I think I was spanked maybe once, my sister was spanked maybe twice in like her entire childhood, and a couple of my sisters weren't spanked at all.
00:38:04.000The only time I think that it is appropriate to spank, honestly speaking, the only time I think it is appropriate to spank is when your kid is doing something dangerous.
00:38:11.000So if you have a three-year-old who's continuing to run into the street, and you say, don't run into the street, and the three-year-old runs into the street, and you say, don't run into the street, because you will get hit by a car, and the three-year-old runs into the street,
00:38:21.000I think it is appropriate, as a physical deterrent, to say, if you run into the street, you will get a potch.
00:38:26.000And then, open palm, butt, I think is the proper way to do it.
00:38:29.000And I know there are others who disagree, but I think this is the proper way to do it.
00:38:32.000But, the only time to do it, really, is literally the same way you would with an animal, to train an animal not to run into the street, right?
00:38:39.000For moral suasion, I'm not a huge fan of spanking, because I think that kids then don't know the reason why they're doing what they are doing.
00:38:45.000And kids should learn to obey you without you having to threaten them with physical punishment.
00:38:49.000There are other forms of punishment that you can use.
00:38:51.000Like, we're constantly saying, like, my daughter knows that if she disobeys, I say, sweetheart, if you do this, then you are violating the rules.
00:38:58.000And the rules say you have to get a punishment.
00:39:00.000I don't even have to tell her what the punishment is, and she immediately starts crying.
00:39:03.000Like, she knows that she doesn't want the punishment.
00:39:05.000Usually the punishment is something pretty anodyne.
00:39:07.000Usually it's something like, you can't watch TV tomorrow, or you're not going to have any sweets this weekend, something like that.
00:39:12.000And then you have to stick with it, right?
00:39:13.000If you actually punish the kid, there has to be an actual punishment that attaches.
00:39:16.000You can't keep playing chicken with the kid, because then the kid knows that if they cry a little bit, they get what they want anyway after being bad.
00:39:22.000Wyatt says, Hi Ben, I'm a West Texas high school junior attending Central High School.
00:39:26.000Currently, I'm taking all advanced level courses, along with one period devoted to helping a teacher grade papers, take roll, etc.
00:39:31.000Throughout my years in high school, I've noticed the majority of students in my advanced classes are more inclined to agree with the left on politics and other issues.
00:39:37.000I've also noticed that those in the regular classes tend to agree with the politics of the right.
00:39:42.000In my mind, I feel there's a distribution should be the opposite, as statistically speaking, the members of the right are generally more educated and wealthy.
00:39:50.000I think the reason why, frankly, is because one of the ways that you do well in school is by listening to teachers.
00:39:55.000One of the ways you do well in school is by mirroring what teachers have to teach you, not by mirroring what your parents think.
00:40:01.000And so many of our schools are dominated by teachers who are to the left that this is a problem.
00:40:06.000I think also that people who tend to consider themselves highly educated, there's a high correlation between higher levels of education, PhDs, college graduates, and being of the left than among people who are just partial college graduates, for example.
00:40:21.000It doesn't always line up with the earning power, but the studies that I've seen tend to show that higher levels of education tend to make you more of the left because you tend to feel that you can control society, that if only you, the greatest and wisest of all beings, were to control society, society would be better.
00:40:35.000Example, when I went to Harvard Law School, which is, of course, the left's favorite institution, when I went there, the first day, Elena Kagan, who is now on the Supreme Court, was the dean, and she brought us into a room.
00:40:46.000It was a mahogany, beautiful room, 500 students all sitting there.
00:41:21.000But that is also the message that is being pushed to people who go to institutions of higher education, and they believe it.
00:41:27.000Because when you're smart, you believe that you should be able to control people who are less smart.
00:41:30.000And one of the things that's great about the Founders is that they realize that there will always be someone smarter, and those people will always try to control you.
00:41:36.000So we need to set up an institution of checks and balances to prevent that sort of control from ever taking place.
00:41:50.000The idea is that God sort of withdrew his presence.
00:41:52.000He sort of hid his presence more in the universe.
00:42:14.000Maimonides has a very interesting take on this in Guides to the Perplexed.
00:42:19.000He says that essentially we lost access to prophecy because we stopped being able to access our reason in the same way, that we don't have as many cultivated people now, and if we were to cultivate ourselves, then maybe prophecy would be opened up to us again, but nobody would ever be a prophet like Moses.
00:42:33.000But that's a controversial perspective.
00:42:35.000The year of prophecy ended, and according to traditional Jewish perspective, it ended because the Jews essentially rebelled against God so many times that God withdrew his presence a little bit to let the Jews have the brunt of it, sort of.
00:42:45.000That's a very blunt, that's a very basic way of understanding it.
00:42:50.000I'm a daily listener and a huge fan of the show.
00:42:52.000My question comes from last week's mailbag when you said you were in favor of mandatory vaccination.
00:42:56.000I agree they should be mandatory due to positive externalities, but who would fit the bill as it is now a mandatory purchase?
00:43:01.000Would it be the consumer, a like-mandated auto insurance, or would it be covered by our taxes, or would it be something in the middle where low-income persons are covered?
00:43:09.000Well, I think that it would probably be if people can't afford it, then we help out with some sort of redistributionist program because it is mandatory, but
00:43:18.000If you can afford it, then you should be paying for it because, again, it serves your child as well as it serves other children.
00:43:25.000The Richard Epstein book, Takings, is really good about this.
00:43:28.000Basically, what he says is the government can tax you to the extent it provides you services in return, and this would be one of those things, right?
00:43:33.000It mandates that you spend money on a mandatory vaccine, and it's like car insurance.
00:43:37.000You got to do it because it has externalities.
00:44:24.000As well, as far as the Federalists, the thing you should read, really, is the Anti-Federalist Papers, which are a great critique, contemporaneously, of the Federalist Papers.
00:44:32.000Also, there's a great book on the history of political philosophy edited by Leo Strauss, and it has an entire little essay on the Federalists.
00:44:42.000So check that out, it's really interesting.
00:44:56.000And also, stay tuned because I will have a book coming out in the near future through Daily Wire that will be a refutation of all the leftist myths that are out there.
00:45:05.000Like 101 Leftist Myths Debunked, this is one of them.
00:45:15.000I've done a lot of Passover stuff this week.
00:45:17.000Uh, and so, I've decided that it is time to do an Easter thing.
00:45:20.000So, the greatest Easter movie, maybe the only really great Easter movie of all time, because Passion of the Christ really isn't about Easter, it's about Good Friday.
00:45:26.000But the greatest Easter movie of all time, of course, is Ben-Hur.
00:45:29.000Uh, that doesn't mean it's the greatest... Maybe I should rephrase.
00:45:32.000The greatest movie that has Easter in it.
00:46:00.000And this, of course, I'm about to show you is one of the great scenes in movie history in which Ben-Hur is in a chariot race with Masala, who is his kind of lifelong former brother figure, but now enemy.
00:46:12.000And Masala is trying to trying to kill him.
00:46:15.000He's got blades on the spokes of his wheels.
00:48:31.000I actually agree with all the advice that Dan Rather gives here.
00:48:33.000We can stop there, but I agree with a lot of the advice Dan Rather gives.
00:48:37.000The question is why you can't find a better spokesperson for this than Dan Rather.
00:48:40.000Like, I've said a lot of the same things, and again, I think what Dan Rather is saying here is fine.
00:48:44.000But the left attaches to its people and will not let those people go, no matter how bad they are.
00:48:49.000This is why you should go see Chappaquiddick this weekend.
00:48:50.000Like really, if you want to see how bad it can get before the left will still not let you go, go view Chappaquiddick and see what Teddy Kennedy did and still survived politically.
00:48:58.000I mean, the guy was elected a thousand times in Massachusetts and was considered the lion of the Senate after leaving a woman to die at the bottom of a river.
00:49:36.000I think the president's intent here is to develop a level playing field between online retailers and land-based retailers with respect to taxes and other issues.
00:50:04.000When we wanted the United States, as a matter of policy, wanted to protect, you know, nascent internet businesses by keeping down the tax burden, but that time is long gone.
00:50:16.000So, I just think the level playing field is the best way to look at it.
00:50:19.000But should the President be the one who's out front on this, tweeting like he has?
00:50:23.000I mean, the President of the United States.
00:50:25.000The President of the United States, the President of the United States, Stu.
00:50:28.000If he wants to tweet, he's going to tweet.
00:50:32.000Because what Kudlow is saying here, where he's saying that Trump just wants a level playing field.
00:50:36.000Okay, if you really want a level playing field, call for an end to state sales taxes.
00:50:39.000But Amazon is paying the state sales taxes in all of these places, right?
00:50:42.000If they are mandated to pay state sales tax in 45 out of 51 jurisdictions in the United States, including Washington, D.C., they're paying the mandated sales tax in those states.
00:50:52.000What Trump is really doing here is he's mad because he thinks that Amazon is killing brick-and-mortar retail shops because they're undercutting them.
00:51:06.000I'm one of the hypocrites who goes to the bookstore that I love, views the books online, finds the one that I want, I'll go to the bookstore, I'll look at it, and then I will take out my phone and I will see how much it costs on Amazon.
00:51:16.000If it's like a $3 difference, I'll just buy it at the bookstore.
00:51:18.000But if it's a $10 difference, I'll buy it on Amazon.
00:51:21.000I'm not going to spend an extra $100 just to go to a brick-and-mortar shop.
00:51:27.000And I don't see why it's the President of the United States' responsibility to make me as a consumer pay more just because he has a fondness for brick-and-mortar when consumers clearly don't.
00:51:34.000I'm not going to subsidize brick-and-mortar as a consumer.
00:51:37.000Why should I subsidize it as a taxpayer?