The left launches its war on children. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declares that a high school football coach can't kneel at the 50-yard line and pray. Plus, we do the mailbag. Plus, President Trump sinks the possibility of the Republicans retaining the House in 2018 and the Senate in 2018, and we'll get to all that plus The Mailbag! If you're gonna buy a subscription, today's the day to do it because that means you get to be part of the Mailbag. We'll do live questions later, but first I want to say thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring the show. You get a month of unlimited access to unlimited access, absolutely FREE, when you redeem your FREE month at Skillshare.com/ShapiroPlus and you get access to all of the tools and resources you need to get the most out of your time, your brain, your skills, your knowledge, your experience, your education, your life, and everything else you need in order to be successful in life. You can't ask for more than one thing and get it all for free. You're not going to get more than that if you don't buy a month's worth of access to everything you need, you're getting it for free, right now. You can get it for a low monthly price, no obligation, for as little as $99 a month, no credit card, no monthly fee, no strings attached, no shipping, no minimum wage, no insurance, no broker, no lifetime guarantee, no tax, and no credit, no free training, no matter what you want. You'll never have to pay for it all you want, and you can do it for it! Plus we'll talk about all that, plus we'll have access to the best in the world. You won't have to wait for a month to redeem your free month, but you'll get it, you'll just be getting access to it all, no questions asked, no commitment required, all you need it, and all the same access, no commitments required to get access, you won't even when you sign up for it, it'll be awesome, right? You'll get the same thing you want to know what it's all that and more of it, right here, free, guaranteed, no fee-free, all day, no worries, no need to pay anything else will be able to access it, all the access you want?
00:00:18.000It's a Friday, and I want to talk to you about something that's been disturbing me for a long time.
00:00:23.000And no, I'm not talking about my loss of hair.
00:00:26.000I'm talking about the fact that the left is moving in significant fashion to impact how we raise our kids.
00:00:33.000And it really is upsetting and a problem and I want to talk about all of that plus we'll talk about is President Trump actually sinking the possibility of the Republicans retaining the house in 2018 and the Senate in 2018 which is nearly impossible.
00:00:45.000We'll get to all that plus the mailbag so if you're gonna buy a subscription today's the day to do it because that means you get to be part of the mailbag.
00:00:50.000We'll do live questions later but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Skillshare.
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00:01:06.000The fact is that we live in a job market where if you're not constantly increasing your skill set, then you are less and less competitive in the job market, especially with new people graduating and moving into the job market every single year.
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00:01:59.000Add to that resume because your income ain't going up unless your skill set increases.
00:02:22.000And she's probably going to be a garbage presidential candidate.
00:02:24.000She's obviously looking toward running in 2020.
00:02:27.000And there's always been this very weird relationship between the left and kids when it comes to politics.
00:02:33.000Hillary Clinton made her bones on this book, It Takes a Village, all about how it really took all of us to define how we were going to raise particular children.
00:02:41.000They weren't your children, they were the village's children.
00:02:44.000And then you see people on the left who don't care about unborn children suggesting that they're the only ones who care about children.
00:02:51.000So Kamala Harris tweets this out yesterday.
00:02:53.000She tweeted out, So again, weird that she doesn't care about them up to the point where they're born.
00:03:04.000Up to that point, you can kill them at will.
00:03:06.000And in fact, if you stand in the way of somebody killing them at will, that means you're a bad person.
00:03:09.000But also, this notion that children are the nation's future, and so we have to listen to them about what they care about and give them a voice in our government.
00:03:18.000So, one of the big problems in Western civilization has been this weird notion that's really cropped up since Rousseau in the early 19th century.
00:04:37.000But that's also because you know they're going to develop beyond that.
00:04:39.000If they're 20 and still acting like they're 3, that means they're a garbage human being.
00:04:42.000The whole point of civilization is to civilize children.
00:04:45.000Your job as a parent is to civilize children and to make them better people.
00:04:49.000Because children are not instinctively good.
00:04:52.000Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote this book called Émile, which was a novel about a child who is basically left free in the state of nature.
00:04:59.000Rousseau's whole theory is that in a state of nature, man is inherently good, and then the state puts us all in chains, right?
00:05:04.000Man is free, and everywhere he is in chains.
00:05:06.000This is Rousseau's theory, and so what he says in Émile is basically, if you just let a child wander around in nature, then that child would become a noble savage.
00:05:15.000That child would be a beautiful, wonderful person, capable of navigating the vicissitudes of life.
00:05:22.000Number one, if you leave a three-year-old alone in nature, the kid will be dead in two days.
00:05:25.000Number two, if you leave a ten-year-old alone in nature, the kid will turn into something from Lord of the Flies, killing animals and other children.
00:05:31.000The idea that people are born civilized is just stupid.
00:05:35.000That's the whole point of civilization.
00:05:39.000Religion is based on the notion that you, as an adult, have to civilize and raise your children, and you have to acclimate them to acting morally.
00:05:54.000It means literally a baby that was found.
00:05:56.000So there are certain basic rules in Judaism that you're not supposed to violate, and even if you're not Jewish, you're not supposed to violate these rules.
00:06:02.000And these are simple ones, like don't murder people, don't commit idolatry, right?
00:06:05.000These are certain basic rules for everyone.
00:06:07.000If you want to get into heaven, according to Judaism, you don't have to be Jewish, but you do have to fulfill what they call the seven mitzvos of Noah.
00:06:13.000You have to fulfill the seven commandments of Noah.
00:06:15.000Right, because Noah existed before the Torah had been given.
00:06:18.000These are commandments that you're supposed to be able to suss out from the surrounding universe, but if you don't actually do a lot of the... Let's say there's a kid who's born Jewish, right?
00:06:27.000Born to a Jewish family and left in the middle of nowhere, and doesn't fulfill any of the 613 mitzvot, any of the 613 commandments.
00:06:34.000That's where this concept of tinoch shenishba comes in.
00:06:36.000We don't blame that person because that kid was basically like a kid who was found in the woods, right?
00:06:41.000So you don't expect Mowgli to be civilized.
00:06:43.000And in fact, remember a few years ago, there was this story about a little girl who was basically left alone for years and years and years.
00:06:49.000They found her when she was like 12 years old, and she acted like an animal.
00:07:00.000This idea that children are going to, that they have some sort of God-given innocence and wisdom that is something that we should listen to.
00:07:07.000No, they have a God-given wonder about the world that is amazing to behold and lovely and it reminds you how beautiful life is because when you view the world through a child's eyes, it reminds you that things around you are really cool and really interesting, but
00:07:20.000Kids' moral notions are usually really, really stupid because kids are little immoral cretins.
00:07:28.000Again, their brains are not developed to the point where they can actually have smart moral thoughts.
00:07:33.000This is why even teenagers are not really developed to the point where they have smart moral thoughts.
00:07:38.000The reason that teenagers act like idiots all the time is because their amygdala, which is their emotion center in their brain, is overdeveloped, and their prefrontal cortex, which is the inhibition center, is underdeveloped.
00:07:47.000So that's why teenagers do stupid stuff.
00:07:49.000So when she says, we have to give children a voice in our government, what, you want three-year-olds to vote?
00:07:54.000But what really underlies this perception?
00:07:57.000What really underlies this perception?
00:07:59.000The left doesn't really believe that children ought to be making their own decisions.
00:08:02.000The left believes that they ought to be making decisions for your children.
00:08:07.000The left doesn't believe that children ought to be making decisions for society.
00:08:10.000They believe that they ought to be making decisions for your children, and the only reason that your children are growing up in the way they are is because of you.
00:09:03.000We have to protect that three-year-old from you, the oppressive, evil parent who's putting your notions about God and heaven and hell on kids.
00:09:14.000It's because of you that your kid is growing up with all of these problems.
00:09:17.000If your kid were just allowed to make their own decisions, just like Emile, then everything would be fine, and it's our job to step in and make sure that kids can make their own decisions.
00:09:27.000Like this story from Rockland Academy Schools, which is a Sacramento area charter school.
00:09:32.000This is Paul Bois of Daily Wire reporting.
00:09:35.000A kindergarten teacher at Rockland Academy Schools, a Sacramento area charter school, recently held a transition ceremony to celebrate what she believed was the transgenderism of a five-year-old boy in her class who fancies himself a girl, and she did it without obtaining consent from or even notifying parents.
00:09:52.000Facing legal trouble from parents rightly outraged over having their children exposed to transgenderism without their knowledge, Rockland Academy Schools maintains they had no obligation to inform the parents since California laws require consent only in matters of sex education.
00:10:22.000If somebody did this to my kid, seriously, if somebody did this to my kid, they would be in physical danger from me.
00:10:27.000If you did this to my kid, if you decided to take my parenting power away from me, and pretend that you are going to raise my child as the opposite sex, and thereby stamp their psyche with gender confusion, and put the premature of societal approval on that gender confusion, you're doing something truly evil.
00:10:47.000Jonathan Keller is a representative for California Family Group, who's a group involved in counseling some of the kids.
00:10:53.000He said parents only learned of the ceremony from their kids, which began with a lesson on transgenderism that involved two books, I Am Jazz and The Red Crayon, that were both about the subject.
00:11:03.000I Am Jazz, of course, is about that kid who's on reality TV who, quote, from the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl's brain in a boy's body.
00:11:10.000Again, this is biologically incorrect and it's asinine, okay?
00:11:13.000There is no such thing as a girl's brain in a boy's body.
00:11:16.000Again, and that's true because you don't actually have evidence of what a girl's brain looks like.
00:11:21.000It's so funny, the feminists who say there is no difference between a girl's brain and a boy's brain, suddenly they go completely silent when you say it's a girl's brain and a boy's body.
00:11:28.000You have to show me the actual parts of the brain that operate more like a girl's than a boy's and then we can decide whether or not this is true.
00:11:34.000It is possible that there are people who have brain development that is more similar to a girl than a boy.
00:11:38.000Those would presumably be genetically intersex people.
00:11:40.000But the idea that any boy is capable of having a girl's brain in his body if he thinks it so,
00:12:52.000That's when Buddy called USCCA, and because he knew that his membership gave him exclusive access to a network of pro-Second Amendment attorneys, upfront funding for bail and legal fees, and the peace of mind that someone was on his side, he was okay.
00:13:03.000The USCCA got Buddy back to his daughter, back to his wife and his life, and they can do the exact same thing for you.
00:13:40.000USCCA does wonderful work, and you should go give them a look.
00:13:46.000The ceremony, getting back to the ceremony in this kindergarten class, LifeSite News described it this way.
00:13:50.000After the teacher introduced the five-year-old student to the class as a boy, he then went into the bathroom and emerged dressed as a girl.
00:13:57.000The teacher then reintroduced her to the children, explaining that she was now a girl who now had a girl's name and was to be called that from now on.
00:14:03.000According to Keller, who's this guy from the family group, he said kids were left really deeply emotionally bothered and traumatized.
00:14:09.000There were several of the little girls that went to their parents and were crying, saying, Mommy or Daddy, am I going to turn into a boy?
00:15:02.000And yet this is what they say, because there's an agenda, right?
00:15:04.000The agenda is to make it clear to children that gender identity is fluid.
00:15:09.000This is one of the things the left wants to do, is tear down the basic building blocks of Western civilization in order to build something anew.
00:15:15.000If we're all widgets, if we're all just claymation figures in their little parable of life,
00:15:21.000Then they get to morph us however we want.
00:15:23.000They get to mold us and morph us however they want.
00:15:25.000And that means taking over our children and using them against us and using them against our standards of right and wrong.
00:15:32.000So the left, which will say that they have the power to go in...
00:15:36.000And tell your five-year-old child that he may be a girl.
00:15:39.000This is the same left that says that if a teacher preys on the 50-yard line, that that teacher ought to be fired.
00:15:45.000There's a case out in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today.
00:15:49.000Bremerton School District is a school district in Washington state.
00:15:54.000And the assistant football coach at one of their high schools, a guy named Joseph Kennedy, prayed at the 50-yard line after football games and before them as well.
00:16:03.000He would also give them religiously-oriented motivational speeches.
00:16:06.000The school district tried to punish him for doing this.
00:16:09.000He settled for praying alone after games, but then he began praying at the 50-yard line before everyone had gone home.
00:16:14.000So instead of waiting until everyone left and then praying at the 50-yard line, he would go over right after the game, the game is over, he goes over, he prays at the 50-yard line, and surprise, surprise, a lot of the kids started joining him.
00:16:25.000And people started coming down out of the stands to join him, praying on the 50-yard line.
00:16:43.000He suggested religious discrimination under the First Amendment.
00:16:46.000The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the school district had every right to dismiss Kennedy.
00:16:49.000So there were two legal questions here.
00:16:51.000First legal question was, was he a public employee?
00:16:54.000Second was, as a public employee, did he violate his job description as a public employee by doing this?
00:17:00.000So there are two separate legal questions.
00:17:02.000The court said, when Kennedy kneeled and prayed on the 50-yard line immediately after games, while in view of students and parents, he spoke as a public employee, not as a private citizen, and his speech, therefore, was constitutionally unprotected.
00:17:13.000The case they make in favor of this idea is, one, he's still wearing all of his high school gear.
00:17:17.000Second, if you were just a citizen, you couldn't walk out to the middle of the 50-yard line, right?
00:17:21.000You have to be a member of the high school staff in order to do this.
00:17:23.000So I think that this is actually legally arguable.
00:17:25.000Is he doing this as a private citizen, or is he doing this on school grounds, on school time, and therefore he's doing it as a public employee?
00:17:32.000It's a little bit more confusing than that, because the fact is that if you're at school, like if I'm a public school teacher, and I decided to dovah mincha, which is the second Jewish prayer of the day, and I went in a broom closet somewhere and prayed mincha,
00:17:45.000That doesn't mean that I would necessarily be acting as a public school employee.
00:17:47.000Clearly, I'm attempting to separate myself.
00:17:50.000The court found he was acting, however, in his auspices as a public school employee.
00:17:57.000The worst part is that the court then said what he did violated his job description.
00:18:02.000Okay, praying at the 50-yard line, doing a voluntary prayer that people decide to join, violates his job description.
00:18:07.000Now, let me explain what his job description was.
00:18:11.000Okay, Kennedy's job included becoming, quote, a coach, mentor, and role model for the student-athletes.
00:18:16.000It included an explicit job requirement to attempt to create both good athletes and good human beings.
00:18:21.000It is directly in his job description.
00:18:24.000Kennedy's postgame prayers originally lasted a grand total of 30 seconds.
00:18:27.000They were a brief, quiet prayer of thanksgiving for player safety, sportsmanship, and spirited competition.
00:18:32.000Over time, they morphed into motivational speeches given to students of both teams.
00:18:35.000Even people on the other team would come over because they enjoyed what he was saying about sportsmanship and the games.
00:18:40.000Students voluntarily wanted to hear him.
00:18:42.000The district suggested these activities violated school board policy that said that, quote, staff shall neither encourage nor discourage a student from engaging in non-disruptive oral or silent prayer or any other form of devotional activity.
00:19:01.000He didn't tell people that if they showed up, if they didn't show up, then they would be kicked off the team or suspended.
00:19:06.000The school board openly acknowledged that Kennedy didn't force anyone to pray with him.
00:19:11.000But the school board insisted that Kennedy not allow students to pray with him at all.
00:19:15.000That he should forcibly turn them away.
00:19:16.000That if he goes to the 50-yard line and kneels down, and he starts to pray, and a bunch of students crowd around him, that this is some sort of evil.
00:19:25.000That he's violated his public school duties.
00:19:27.000And he should tell them forcibly, get out of here, you're not allowed to be here.
00:19:31.000They said that any activity had to be, quote, physically separate from any student activity, and students may not be allowed to join such an activity.
00:19:41.000What actually started all of this is, of course, he did this 50-yard prayer thing.
00:19:44.000And the Satanists, being good Satanists, devotees of Satan, suggest that they wanted their own right to pray on the field.
00:19:51.000Because, obviously, there's no difference between Satanists praying on the field and people of Judeo-Christian values praying on the field.
00:19:56.000Not all religions are created equal in quality.
00:19:59.000If you're gonna bring up a child in the Church of Satan, I don't think that child ends up exactly the same as if you bring, the average child, as if you bring up a child in the Judeo-Christian value system.
00:20:09.000If it were, then Satanism would have created the greatest civilization in the history of mankind.
00:20:14.000So the district responded by telling Kennedy he had to pray only when the stadium was empty.
00:20:18.000He disobeyed and he started praying right after the games because he said, listen, it doesn't make any sense for me to pray an hour after the game on the 50-yard line.
00:21:10.000Do you feel preached to every time I wear my yarmulke?
00:21:13.000Because if you do, I would suggest that maybe you need to get a life.
00:21:16.000If you feel preached to because you don't like what I wear on my head, then this is because you're a loser.
00:21:21.000Okay, and if you feel preached to because a high school coach by himself goes to the 50-yard line and prays, then you are a doofus, and a loser, and you need to get a life.
00:21:32.000But obviously that's not the priority here.
00:21:34.000The court said, by kneeling and praying on the 50-yard line immediately after games, Kennedy was fulfilling his professional responsibility to communicate demonstratively to students and spectators, yet he took advantage of his position to press his particular views upon the impressionable and captive minds before him.
00:21:48.000So they're saying, okay, so his viewpoint means something because he was acting as an employee.
00:21:51.000That brings us to the second question.
00:21:53.000And the second question is, did that violate his job, which is to create better human beings and better students?
00:22:12.000I've listened to a few episodes of it.
00:22:14.000It asks you, why are there states, countries, taxes, wars, and it traces the history of all of the institutions under which we currently live all the way back to the 13th and 14th centuries.
00:22:23.000He takes on time periods from the fall of Rome and the rise of the early modern empire.
00:22:28.000He talks about the roots of the modern world.
00:23:02.000This all talks about the period of time during the Renaissance just before the Enlightenment, which is a really kind of under-examined period of history.
00:23:08.000We all like to look at Enlightenment philosophers.
00:23:10.000We all like to look at the... some people like to look at the Dark Ages.
00:23:15.000The so-called Dark Ages of the Roman Empire, but the period of time that's most ignored is the Renaissance, and that really was the birthplace of modern civilization.
00:23:21.000Go listen to the first episode of Tides of History on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, or Google Tides of History to find the podcast today.
00:23:36.000So this coach, Kennedy, kneels on the 50-yard line, and the court has decided that he's a public employee.
00:23:40.000Which, as I say, that may be arguable, that he's a public employee.
00:23:44.000Was he a public employee who was acting under private auspices, or was he a public employee who was doing, basically, preaching?
00:23:51.000And so here's what the court said, and even if he was doing preaching, was it violating his job description?
00:23:55.000Like if I go into a classroom and I say, listen, the Judeo-Christian value system is the best value system and it generates better human beings.
00:24:02.000Is that preaching or is that teaching?
00:24:04.000Now, I would suggest that living in a Western civilization that is based on Judeo-Christian tradition, that would actually be teaching, not preaching.
00:24:11.000I'm not saying you have to believe in the Bible.
00:24:13.000I'm not saying you have to believe that God gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.
00:24:16.000I am saying that those beliefs were the foundation stone of Western civilization, which is true.
00:24:21.000Okay, so, Judge Milan D. Smith wrote this in concurrence, and this is the crux of the matter.
00:24:26.000He writes, The context would bolster the perception that the district was endorsing religion,
00:24:45.000Hey listen, teachers don't have the absolute right to do and say what they want as employees of school districts.
00:24:51.000Did they have the right to fire this guy?
00:24:53.000Maybe, but to suggest they have an obligation to fire him, that's what the court's now saying.
00:24:56.000Not just that they have the right, but they have the obligation.
00:24:58.000Because no public school teacher can pray on the 50-yard line without imposing his religious views on others.
00:25:05.000Let's make something absolutely clear.
00:25:06.000That is an imposition of a religious view on others.
00:25:09.000That ruling is an imposition of a secular religious view on others.
00:25:12.000It is the imposition of the idea that religion must be disfavored.
00:25:16.000That the First Amendment must be applied in reverse.
00:25:19.000That freedom of religion is not to be protected.
00:25:21.000That instead we have to disestablish, forcibly disestablish anybody's religious belief no matter whether they're forcing it on anybody or not.
00:25:29.000Again, this isn't even the equivalent of the guy going into the classroom and preaching.
00:25:33.000This is the equivalent of him doing something.
00:25:34.000People are free to show up or not show up.
00:25:59.000That's not about protecting the innocence of children.
00:26:01.000It's about depriving them of certain types of choice that they don't like, and giving them types of choice that they do like.
00:26:06.000And when I say types of choice, I mean screwing them up permanently, in many cases, because it is important to promulgate a leftist view of social politics.
00:26:49.000There's a point that Phil Graham made at one point.
00:26:51.000There was some lefty that he was interviewing on a Senate committee, and the senator was questioning the leftists, and the leftist said, I care about your children as much as you do.
00:26:59.000And Phil Graham said, what are their names?
00:27:04.000Parents have the ability to raise their children, and not only the ability, the duty.
00:27:08.000You have the duty to raise your child, and you have the duty to raise your child under a rubric of values that makes them a better human being.
00:27:16.000For our society to ignore that and fight actively against it is a true evil, and what we're looking at right now is a serious battle against truth and decency.
00:27:31.000President Trump has been spending the last few days ripping on Senate Republicans.
00:27:35.000He went on Twitter this morning again, ripped on Senator McConnell, ripped on Bob Corker, the senator from Tennessee.
00:27:41.000And I understand him ripping on McConnell.
00:27:42.000He doesn't feel like McConnell's doing a good job.
00:27:44.000Ripping on Bob Corker, it's kind of weird since he actually interviewed Bob Corker for his Secretary of State.
00:27:49.000It seems more like Trump is angry at these people than like he is actually interested in changing their behavior, except as regards to him.
00:28:06.000But I think that right now, Trump is sort of lashing out at senators because he doesn't like them personally.
00:28:10.000So, you know, in that rally on Tuesday that President Trump did in Phoenix, he attacked both of the senators from Arizona, McCain and Flake.
00:28:17.000He attacked McCain because McCain didn't vote for the Obamacare repeal.
00:28:21.000He attacked Flake because Flake was mean to him.
00:28:24.000You know, that seems to me less productive.
00:28:26.000Right now, there's a serious possibility that Republicans lose Flake's seat if Flake were to lose the primaries.
00:28:31.000If Flake loses the primaries, right now, a better shot that Flake wins the general than Kelly Ward, who's his primary opponent.
00:28:36.000Kelly Ward may be great, I don't know that much about her, but the fact is that when you're talking about primarying people, not because you want a change in their vote, but because they're mean to you,
00:28:46.000The polls show that people disapprove of Trump's behavior largely.
00:28:49.000For all the talk about Trump propping up Republicans in 2016, it was really the other way around.
00:28:54.000Trump underperformed every single Republican Senate candidate throughout the country, except perhaps from, I think there was a Senate race.
00:29:21.000Remember, Senators are elected once every six years, and we rotate.
00:29:24.000So only a third of the Senate is up every two years.
00:29:27.000This two-year cycle is very, very bad for Democrats.
00:29:29.000But Trump's activities could hurt Republicans.
00:29:33.000There's a new George Washington University battleground poll trying to get a sense of how Americans feel about Trump's behavior, and it ain't good.
00:29:40.000Okay, basically asked if they agree or disagree with the statement that Trump's behavior is not what I expect from a president.
00:30:22.000on what's happening in this hurricane in Texas.
00:30:26.000We'll see how bad the hurricane is, but if there is some sort of disaster and Trump is not immediately on it, I promise you they're looking for another Hurricane Katrina situation.
00:30:34.000And they know that the public is predisposed to think that Trump is chaotic and doesn't know how to govern, so Trump better do a great job with it.
00:30:39.000Trump is at 34-35% approval rating right now.
00:30:42.000He has not experienced any serious crisis.
00:30:55.000Gary Cohn, who is President Trump's top economic advisor, he said, quote, the administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning groups like white supremacist groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.
00:31:10.000He said he felt compelled to, quote, voice my distress over the events of the past
00:31:28.000I understand you're in a difficult situation when you work for Trump because if you feel like you're doing a good job, you don't want to give up the power to help the American people, but you still are working for Trump.
00:31:38.000You know, if somebody at the company had a severe disagreement with me publicly, it would be a problem.
00:31:42.000And it is a problem for Trump when people inside his own administration are ripping him publicly and openly, like Gary Cohn is.
00:32:20.000The leftist tier's hot or cold tumbler.
00:32:23.000It is the greatest thing that you will ever see in your entire life.
00:32:25.000Once you hold it in your hands, you'll understand both the weight and the gravitas of this particular piece of kitchen item, of kitchenware.
00:32:45.000We are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.
00:32:56.000So I agree with a lot of what Gary Cohn is saying about Trump's response to Charlottesville, but I don't work for Trump.
00:33:01.000I understand Trump making a move against Gary Cohn now, if he were going to do so, and I do wonder if Gary Cohn is setting himself up for that.
00:33:07.000I wonder if Gary Cohn, as Trump's economic advisor, is setting himself up so that when Trump fires him, he can say that Trump fired him for insubordination,
00:33:14.000On an issue where Trump was wrong rather than firing him for being a globalist, right?
00:33:17.000Which is sort of what Breitbart wants him to be fired for.
00:33:20.000But there is this burgeoning attempt by people on the left and some people on the right to cast Trump as a crazy person.
00:33:28.000A Democratic Congresswoman yesterday suggested that there are signs that worry us about Trump's mental health.
00:33:34.000This is Zoe Lofgren of California comparing Trump to a person who has Alzheimer's.
00:33:39.000Actually, the legislation urges the Vice President, along with the Cabinet, to secure the assistance of medical professionals.
00:33:48.000As has been noted by your prelim into this, a lot of people are concerned about the President's behavior.
00:34:12.000Okay, so this kind of nonsense, you're not supposed to say this stuff publicly, generally, because, I mean, this is what they call the Goldwater Rule, that you're not supposed to psychologically assess people that you don't know very well.
00:34:22.000I mean, we used to do it all the time with Obama, say that he had narcissistic personality disorder, but that's not quite the same thing as saying the president is legit crazy.
00:34:29.000Like, Obama was clearly a narcissist, but that doesn't mean he can't do his job.
00:37:49.000So there was a baseball brawl yesterday between the Tigers and the Yankees.
00:37:51.000The funny thing about baseball brawls is basically the way they work is one person gets in a punch, and then everybody just tackles each other.
00:38:17.000And he says that, uh, in one of these brawls, he and a guy from the opposite team were friends, and so they would actually just, like, fake punch each other.
00:38:23.000They'd, like, dance around and they'd fake punch each other and look like they were really clocking each other.
00:38:41.000But that's what baseball brawls always remind me of.
00:38:43.000The number of great baseball brawls is really low.
00:38:46.000There was one last year where there was, I think it was between Texas and the Blue Jays, where the second baseman threw a punch that was like a first-class cross.
00:38:56.000But mostly these baseball fights are not very good.
00:38:59.000Okay, time for a quick thing I hate and then I want to get to the mailbag.
00:39:06.000Okay, so the thing that I hate today, one of the things that really annoys me is how there's a double standard with regard to the sorts of racist jokes that people make.
00:39:13.000So, there's this Game of Thrones parody that is not very good, that was pushed by Huffington Post.
00:39:20.000A woman named Carolina Moreno wrote about this Game of Thrones parody called Gente of Thrones.
00:39:26.000It says, this Juan Snow knows something.
00:39:55.000I can't wait to try one of those chopped cheese everybody's been talking about.
00:40:06.000It shows a bunch of Hispanic people, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rican saying we have to get together, and then they go up to the north of New York, and who's coming in is a bunch of hipsters carrying coffee, gentrifying the place.
00:40:23.000We can all kind of laugh at that, I guess, but can you imagine if the situation were reversed?
00:40:27.000Imagine if, for example, there were a bunch of people who made a parody video of Game of Thrones about building a wall to keep out the White Walkers, and it turned out it was a bunch of illegal immigrants from Mexico.
00:40:37.000Can you imagine the number of racist accusations that would appear, and that would likely be partially right?
00:40:45.000When you say that a bunch of urban hipsters are white walkers who must be prevented from entering Manhattan because they're ruining the city, listen, New York's garbage anyway, okay?
00:41:26.000So, the answer is that they have a greater-than-average chance of being accepted to college, but they have a less-than-average chance of graduating from high school with the proper grades.
00:41:35.000Okay, that's just the statistical fact.
00:41:37.000If you graduate from high school with the same grades as a kid, who is, like, I don't want to compare apples and oranges, it is a complex social phenomenon.
00:41:44.000Schools in the inner city are not very good.
00:41:46.000Parenting in the inner city is largely not as good as parenting in the suburbs.
00:41:50.000And that's not just because of the quality.
00:41:52.000That's not because of the quality of people, per se.
00:41:54.000It's because of the qualities of the decisions made by parents.
00:41:56.000If you're a single mom, it's going to be very hard for you to provide the same sort of environment, learning environment, in a crime-ridden area that it is for a two-parent household in the suburbs to provide that environment for a kid.
00:42:08.000It has nothing to do with black and white.
00:42:09.000A black two-parent family in the suburbs is going to be better off than a single mom in the inner city.
00:42:14.000But it means that kids tend to underperform in the inner city academically, which is why when you see a lot of those kids move to charter schools outside those neighborhoods, they suddenly perform really well.
00:42:22.000This is why we shouldn't lock kids down to the public school in their neighborhood.
00:42:25.000We should allow them freedom of choice to go to schools outside their neighborhood.
00:42:28.000Then there's the question of affirmative action.
00:42:30.000Affirmative action is constructed in order to make it easier for black kids from the inner city to get into school.
00:42:36.000I mean, that's what it's constructed to do.
00:42:38.000So, of course it's easier by that standard.
00:43:01.000Unless you're gonna grow, like, a Tormund Giantsbane-style, like, heavy beard, and just look like I was gonna crack someone's skull all the time, then maybe.
00:43:08.000That seems like a lot of work, and a lot of grooming, and food gets caught in it, so I'm not so big on it.
00:43:14.000So, my view on taxation is, as I say, as I've said before, read Richard Epstein's book Takings.
00:43:19.000Basically, taxation is theft unless you're getting back the amount of services that justify the taxation.
00:43:26.000And it has to be you getting back the amount of services, not society at large, you.
00:43:30.000So if you are taxed for the Defense Department, it is the purpose of tax, not the amount of tax that's really at issue.
00:43:36.000So the purpose of taxation, if I'm going to tax you because there's an imminent nuclear assault on the United States and we need to build up our defense capabilities, you're getting back the benefit, right?
00:43:44.000You are being taxed for a collective benefit of which you receive.
00:43:48.000If you tax me for welfare, I'm not receiving the welfare, so you're just taking my money and giving it to someone else.
00:44:01.000I mean, I think that your degree should always be focused toward job prospects.
00:44:06.000I think that, you know, if you want to go get a degree in Western Civ, go for it.
00:44:09.000But that doesn't necessarily come along with a job offer.
00:44:13.000I think that it is very important that people be educated and be ready to work even if they are not currently doing so.
00:44:19.000Even before I was married, I always wanted to marry someone who had the capacity to get a good-paying job specifically because I think that it's important, if God forbid something should happen to me, that my wife be able to take care of our kids.
00:44:30.000I think that's a decent measure of getting an education.
00:44:35.000But you shouldn't get a degree if you're better off not getting a degree.
00:44:38.000If you're better off moving to Nebraska and working on a pipeline, then do that.
00:45:04.000On the other hand, as I say, I think libertarians look at Republicans and conservatives and they say, you people with your crazy churches and your crazy God, why can't you just read Ayn Rand?
00:45:13.000And the reality is that without that church-based social fabric, without that Judeo-Christian value-based social fabric, you can't have a libertarian society.
00:47:11.000As far as why do we not have an epidemic of crime among atheists?
00:47:13.000Because atheists were raised in a Judeo-Christian value system and still believe in the fundamentals of that value system, even if they don't believe in the God that provided them.
00:47:24.000The idea that the human mind reflects God's mind on morality, I think obviously there are certain basic things that most human societies have in common, like don't murder, right?
00:47:32.000I think that the Judaic take on what are the things that, I actually mentioned this earlier in the show without even reading this letter, basic takes on things like don't kill people, that I think is pretty well embedded in the human code, but
00:47:45.000Don't kill people versus war is an interesting distinction because a lot of societies have discovered don't kill people, but there are also very few societies that have discovered that don't kill people applies to everyone.
00:48:37.000But I think the answer is that when you stack a lot of people in a very small amount of space, then there's a lot of conflict that inherently rises up.
00:48:46.000And there's two ways of dealing with the conflict.
00:48:48.000One is with tyranny, and the other is with libertinism.
00:48:51.000When you have people who are separated and they're in family units and there's not a lot of people right around them, you have to focus in on how do you make your family good, right?
00:48:59.000And there's less friction from the people right around you.
00:49:01.000But think of living in an apartment, like I live in a house now, but we lived in a condo for a while.
00:49:12.000That conflict means we have to come up with a basic agreement.
00:49:14.000That agreement's either going to be that we abide by a certain set of rules together, or, and that can very quickly devolve into tyranny because we all want to control each other's behavior, or it can devolve into, you do whatever you want on your side of the wall, I'll do whatever I want on my side of the wall, never the twain shall meet, but then when you piss me off I'll kill you.
00:49:30.000And very often that's how it ends in big cities.
00:49:33.000People, as much as we like to talk about people, need other people.
00:49:36.000We do, but too much of other people will make you crazy.
00:49:38.000So I do in fact have a Scrooge McDuck money bin.
00:49:50.000I do enjoy swimming around in it and just bathing in my cash, my oodles of cash.
00:49:54.000But what do I have to stop myself from buying?
00:49:56.000So, I don't—I mean, books, typically, but I don't stop myself from buying books because it's part of my ongoing quest to learn things.
00:50:25.000So I thought that the best version of that was guy walking next to the girl and the girl's his girlfriend.
00:50:30.000And the girlfriend was book on my bedside stand.
00:50:33.000And then the one who he's checking out is new book that just came out.
00:50:37.000And that's sort of my problem, is that I have a bunch of books that I have to read and have been sitting there for months, and then I see a new book that came out and I want to read it.
00:50:47.000My violin is like, I got it from my grandfather.
00:50:49.000It's probably worth maybe six or seven grand, but a really nice violin costs a minimum of 25 grand, probably.
00:50:55.000And so I am definitely stocking up for that.
00:50:58.000Emanuel says, do you think Republicans will ever win statewide elected office in California again, or are we doomed to sink further and further into the abyss of the left?
00:51:04.000The answer is yes, I do think that Republicans will win again through one of two things.
00:51:08.000One, things get so bad that Republicans are just the default position and people react, people wise up.
00:51:14.000Second, all of the leftists eventually leave California after ruining the state.
00:51:17.000Republicans reoccupy the state in 100 years and it becomes red again.
00:51:21.000This is my theory of population movement, is that Republicans come, conservatives come, make a place awesome.
00:51:28.000Conservatives leave, the place devolves further into crap.
00:51:30.000Leftists leave, conservatives reoccupy and make it good.
00:51:40.000Do you think there's a chance Republicans completely abandon Trump so he can go on to create his own political party and they can get some things done in Washington?
00:51:49.000I don't think that Republicans will abandon Trump.
00:51:51.000I think Trump may abandon Republicans.
00:51:53.000I think Trump may get so frustrated that he decides screw you I'm forming my own little coalition and he goes some people on the left and some people in the Republican Party and tries to get things done.
00:52:01.000The problem is the people who love him from the Republican Party are not even close to the people who are sort of okay with him on the left.
00:52:07.000The people okay with him on the left like big government.
00:52:09.000The people who are okay with him on the right are typically very much in favor of his regulatory cuts, for example, so there's not a lot of common ground there.
00:52:17.000Okay, so here are a couple of live questions.
00:52:19.000What is your favorite Monty Python skit or movie?
00:52:24.000So, my favorite Monty Python movie is Holy Grail, obviously.
00:52:30.000And my favorite skit in that movie is still the duck skit.
00:53:57.000It's quite possible that they made decisions in their life that were bad, or that they started from different places and society didn't do anything to them.
00:54:04.000Okay, Zachary says, Hey Ben, as a Christian who is exploring my faith, I am interested in learning more about Judaism.
00:54:10.000How welcoming is the synagogue to Christians?
00:54:13.000I mean, like, no one's gonna throw you out.
00:54:15.000We don't do conversions, so it's difficult to convert to Judaism.
00:54:19.000We actually discourage conversions, mainly because you're taking on an enormous number of commandments that you actually don't need to do to get into heaven.
00:54:26.000But if you're interested in learning about Judaism, there are a lot of books on it.
00:54:29.000The synagogue probably wouldn't be the best place to start, is the truth, because
00:54:32.000We mumble a lot to ourselves for two hours, basically.
00:54:34.000That's what an Orthodox service looks like.
00:54:36.000There's some singing, but there's a lot of mumbling.
00:54:38.000And so if you're not ensconced in that, then it probably does not... It's not like... It's not where you go for a great time in the synagogue.
00:54:46.000But if you're looking to learn about Judaism, I would start with the Old Testament.