James Comey gets slapped by the inspector general, and we'll check the mailbag. A Washington Post columnist decides that Hitler had a dog, and you have a dog. Therefore, you are Hitler. James Comey is a hero of the republic. And yet, he's now facing criminal charges for leaking classified documents to the press through a friend. Is this a good or bad thing? Or is this just another day in the life of a hero who gets a slap in the face by an overzealous DOJ inspector general? And what will it mean for the future of the FBI and the DOJ investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails? And why is Donald Trump not under investigation by the DOJ for his alleged involvement in the leak of classified information to the New York Times and other media outlets? And is that a good thing or a bad thing, or is it just another bad thing at the end of the road for the president and his team? Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review in iTunes! Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your fellow Podulters! If you like what you hear, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast and/or sharing it on your social media! Subscribe, sharing, and sharing it with a fellow podulter! , and share it to your friends and family! to let us know what you thought of it! and what you would like to hear about it on the podcast! Ben Shapiro is a Ben Shapiro show! - The Weekly BONUS - Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's newest podcast, The Dark Side of the Hill and much more! Get in touch with Ben Shapiro on Anchor. Subscribe and become a supporter of Ben Shapiro s work on Podulterrific Podcasts! Learn more about him on Insta: Subscribe & Subscribe to his new podcast, Connect with him on social media on Instagaming or become a friend on Instafeed to get exclusive access to all his newest projects and posts on his newest podcast episodes, and more information about his newest book, The Best Podcasts, The Best of Ben's work and everything else going on there's more like that s going to be published in the world, including the best of the greats, including The New York Review of The New Adventures? and other things going on in the podcast
00:00:37.000Make sure that your family is taken care of in case you get hit by a bus in the next 10 minutes.
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00:01:52.000So James Comey, former FBI director, hero of the republic for a brief moment in time, brief shining moment in time.
00:01:59.000Well, a report came out yesterday from the Office of the Inspector General over at the DOJ, and basically what it found is that he leaked classified information to the press through a friend.
00:02:46.000So, James Comey was, he started off, you'll recall, as an enemy to the Democrats, right?
00:02:51.000Because in 2016, James Comey Made the grave error of going out in public and spilling on how Hillary Clinton violated the law six ways from Sunday.
00:03:01.000And then he said, but we're not prosecuting her because I've changed the law conveniently for her.
00:03:07.000She's not going to be prosecuted, but she did some bad stuff, guys, some bad stuff.
00:03:11.000And the Hillary Clinton campaign rightly said, well, if you're not prosecuting me, then why are you spilling all this crap out in public?
00:03:17.000Right now, irony layer number one, the entire Democratic Party was super happy that Robert Mueller then did the exact same thing to Donald Trump on the Trump-Russia and obstruction of justice stuff.
00:03:27.000Because that's what the Mueller report was.
00:03:28.000It was all the reasons why Trump is bad.
00:03:42.000Then, James Comey, right before the election, reopens the investigation into Hillary Clinton, and has to notify the entire world about it, like five days before the election, and then a couple days later, he says, oh yeah, by the way, we didn't really find anything, and this really hurts Hillary Clinton.
00:04:40.000Okay, so he ends up getting fired, and now he's a hero of the republic again.
00:04:44.000So he went from being democratic enemy to democratic hero, which in and of itself is a certain level of irony, especially because he probably cost Hillary Clinton the election in the view of Democrats.
00:04:53.000Okay, so for two years, He's hero of the republic because he was fired by Trump and this was obviously Trump trying to stop the Russia investigation.
00:05:38.000Not only was he not exonerated, the report's pretty damning.
00:05:41.000Basically, the OIG found, and this is a direct quote, that, consistent with the Inspector General Act and department regulations, this matter was referred to the OIG in July 2017 by then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe following the FBI's determination that Comey may have shared memos that contained classified information with his personal attorneys.
00:06:00.000And they say, yes, the memos were number one FBI records, so he called them personal records.
00:06:06.000Second, Comey violated department and FBI policies pertaining to the retention, handling and dissemination of FBI records and information.
00:06:14.000They say Comey's actions with respect to the memos violated department and FBI policies.
00:06:19.000And then they say that he failed to return memos after being removed as FBI director.
00:06:23.000He improperly disclosed FBI documents and information through a third party to a reporter.
00:06:29.000They say that he improperly disclosed the presence of this information to his attorneys.
00:06:34.000In other words, there are a bevy of violations here.
00:06:36.000They didn't rise to the level of the criminally prosecutable, but he definitely violated a bunch of internal FBI regulations, his employment agreement, and all the rest.
00:06:46.000And the OIG concluded that Comey's behavior really damaged the FBI.
00:06:52.000They said, quote, the responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement information falls in large part to the employees of the FBI who have access to it through their daily duties.
00:07:00.000On occasion, some of these employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges or higher ranking FBI and department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters.
00:07:11.000They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions.
00:07:17.000But even when these employees believe that their most strongly held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.
00:07:27.000Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility.
00:07:30.000By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees and the many thousands more former FBI employees who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.
00:07:48.000Comey said he was compelled to take these actions.
00:07:52.000But it doesn't matter, because they have previously faulted Comey for acting unilaterally and inconsistent with department policy.
00:07:59.000Comey's unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information about the Flynn investigation merits similar criticism.
00:08:05.000In a country built on the rule of law... I mean, this is the OIG just slapping Comey across the grill.
00:08:09.000In a country built on the rule of law, it is of the utmost importance that all FBI employees adhere to department and FBI policies, particularly when confronted by what appear to be extraordinary circumstances or compelling personal convictions.
00:08:22.000Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a special counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure.
00:08:29.000What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information obtained during the course of FBI employment in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.
00:08:38.000The DOJ declined to prosecute, but that is bad news for James Comey.
00:08:43.000And it also does speak to real questions that folks have about the honesty and objectivity of the FBI.
00:08:49.000And this is just another black mark for the FBI.
00:08:52.000On the left, the suggestion was that the FBI went after Hillary Clinton too hard.
00:08:56.000On the right, the suggestion is that the FBI basically concocted the Trump-Russia investigation to go after the Trump campaign under the Obama administration.
00:09:04.000And we still are awaiting an OIG report about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
00:09:08.000There are two plausible theories about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
00:09:12.000Plausible theory number one is that it was initiated in good faith based on information received by the FBI that there were several low-level aides to the Trump campaign who were meeting with Russian sources, and so they initiated the investigation, and then it spun out of control.
00:09:27.000That confirmation bias, people like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page at the FBI who hated President Trump and who were deeply suspicious of him, they started to find information where they were seeing it.
00:09:37.000They were just looking for data and they found the data they were looking for.
00:09:40.000It didn't matter that they were missing the entire forest.
00:09:42.000They spotted the trees that they wanted and they honed in on those trees.
00:09:46.000Initiated in good faith, but pursued wrongly.
00:09:49.000Theory number two was initiated always in bad faith.
00:09:51.000That basically the FBI received information via the Hillary Clinton campaign.
00:09:55.000And then they initiated the investigation based on a desire to harm the Trump campaign.
00:09:59.000And they were planning to spring that on the Trump campaign late in the campaign if they thought that he was going to They thought that he was going to win or post campaign if he actually did win.
00:10:10.000And we'll find out which one of these is true.
00:10:12.000What is certainly true is that faith in the FBI, in the competence, core competence of the people at the highest level in the FBI has to have been shaken by all of this.
00:10:19.000I mean, James Comey was the head of the FBI, and it turns out that not only was he incompetent, he was happy to violate departmental policy in order to in order to pursue his own personal agenda, which is exactly the accusation that critics of the FBI on behalf of Trump are making.
00:10:34.000Which is that the FBI is sometimes politically driven.
00:10:37.000By the way, the left has had similar criticisms of the FBI going all the way back to the FBI targeting Martin Luther King Jr., right?
00:11:00.000I mean, if we've been talking this whole week about the undermining of faith in institutions, if people in power at institutions do a crap job, it turns out that does a fairly solid job of undermining faith in those institutions overall.
00:11:37.000Well, I guess he can go be a nature photographer or something because he's never going to get a job anywhere near the intelligence community ever again, given his malfeasance here.
00:11:48.000I have to comment on a couple of pieces in the Washington Post yesterday.
00:11:52.000So apparently it was my birthday because the Washington Post decided to run not one but two editorials targeting me yesterday, which is just a party.
00:11:58.000There's nothing I love better than just sitting here doing my job and suddenly there are a couple of op-eds in the Washington Post.
00:12:04.000But thank you guys for really Making sure that my exposure continues to grow.
00:12:10.000So I appreciate that from the Washington Post.
00:12:13.000We'll get to that in just one second because not only are there two op-eds that were directed against me, they are both awful.
00:12:19.000I mean, just objectively, I'm going to be trying, I know, look, I'm invested in this.
00:12:24.000They are attacking me, but I'm pretty sure these are bad op-eds.
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00:14:02.000And they will make this argument till their face turns blue.
00:14:06.000It's one of the reasons why President Trump is president is because everybody who happens to be even slightly right of center is tired, sick of tired, of being labeled a white supremacist.
00:14:15.000They're tired of being labeled racist.
00:14:17.000They're tired of being labeled all the bad words in the universe simply because they disagree with Nancy Pelosi on tax policy and abortion.
00:14:24.000And as we'll see, the left doesn't understand this.
00:14:27.000So when people like me say, you know what?
00:14:29.000Why don't you have a conversation with us?
00:14:31.000Because we actually agree on white supremacy being evil.
00:14:45.000My whole argument is that we are having a tough time conversing with one another and people are getting angry and they are responding in dramatically Reactionary fashion.
00:14:55.000Because you keep calling them something they are not.
00:14:58.000If you keep calling people Nazis, eventually they just throw up a giant middle finger, and the middle finger has a giant T on it.
00:15:07.000You went at the right long enough, you kept calling us white supremacists, you kept calling us Nazis, and then Trump was out there basically saying you're all schmucks, and we're like, okay, fine, that guy.
00:17:15.000After the El Paso shooting, Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative podcaster, thank you very much, asked Americans to draw a line between the few conservatives who are white supremacists and those who, like him, aren't.
00:17:25.000First of all, no, I didn't ask Americans to draw a line between the few conservatives who are white supremacists and those like me.
00:17:31.000I said that it is non-conservative by definition to be a white supremacist, because conservatism is about values.
00:17:37.000Conservatism is about the sacrosanct nature of the individual.
00:17:42.000Conservatism is about judging individuals as human beings.
00:17:46.000That cuts directly against conservatism.
00:17:49.000So no, you get it wrong in the first sentence, and then it gets worse.
00:17:52.000Almost all Americans are on the same side, he said, and we should be mourning together.
00:17:56.000In his telling, we aren't for one simple reason.
00:17:58.000Too many on the political left are castigating the character of those who disagree, lumping conservatives and political nonconformists together with racists and xenophobes.
00:18:29.000It felt as if the arguments I was reading were eerily familiar.
00:18:32.000I found myself googling lines from articles, especially when I read the rhetoric of a group of people we could call the reasonable right.
00:18:38.000These are figures who typically dislike President Trump, but often say they're being pushed rightward, sometimes away from what they claim is their natural leftward bent, by intolerance and extremism on the left.
00:18:47.000The reasonable right includes people like Shapiro and radio commentator Dave Rubin, legal scholar Amy Wax and Jordan Peterson, a Canadian academic who warns about identity politics, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the New York Times columnist Barry Weiss, and the American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Summers, self-described feminists who decry excesses in the feminist movement, the novelist Bret Easton Ellis, and the podcaster Sam Harris, who believe that important subjects have needlessly been excluded from political discussions.
00:19:13.000They present their concerns as principally freedom of speech and diversity of thought.
00:19:17.000Ooh, I see why they gave her this space in the Washington Post.
00:19:26.000When I read Weiss, when I listened to Shapiro, when I watched Peterson or read the supposedly heterodox online magazine Quillette, what was I reminded of?
00:19:34.000Ooh, I see why they gave her this space in the Washington Post, because she was reminded of a thing.
00:19:39.000What was the thing she was reminded of?
00:19:50.000My childhood home is just a half hour drive from the Manassas battlefield in Virginia, and I grew up intensely fascinated by the Civil War.
00:19:58.000During my senior year in college, I studied almost nothing but Abraham Lincoln speeches.
00:20:02.000While I wrote my thesis on a key Lincoln address, Civil War rhetoric was almost all I read.
00:20:06.000Not just that of the 16th president, but also that of his adversaries.
00:20:09.000Thinking back on those debates, I finally figured out the reasonable rights rhetoric is exactly the same as the antebellum rhetoric I'd read so much of.
00:20:17.000The same exact words, the same exact arguments.
00:20:20.000Rhetoric, to be precise, in support of the slave-owning South.
00:20:24.000So, I say that we're on the same side, because Nazis suck, and she reads, from that, I'm a neoconfederate.
00:20:32.000And so is Barry Weiss, and so is Jordan Peterson, and so is Jonathan Haidt.
00:20:36.000All of us saying, why don't we have like a conversation and talk about stuff?
00:20:40.000We're just like the people who decided to fight a civil war to secede from the United States while enslaving millions of black people.
00:21:12.000She says, if it sounds absurd Shapiro and his compatriots aren't defending slavery after all, it may actually be because many Americans are unfamiliar with the South's actual rhetoric.
00:21:21.000When I was a kid in public school, I learned the arguments of Senator John Calhoun, who called slavery a positive good, and Alexander Stevens, the Confederacy's vice president, who declared that the South's ideological cornerstone rested upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man.
00:21:35.000But such clear statements were not the norm.
00:21:37.000Pro-slavery rhetoricians talked little of slavery itself.
00:21:40.000Instead, they anointed themselves the defenders of reason, free speech, and civility.
00:21:45.000This is such unbelievable horse bleep.
00:21:47.000Hey, you know who else called themselves defenders of reason, free speech and civility?
00:22:48.000Do you not know what slavery is, you stupid ass?
00:22:52.000She says, it might sound strange that America's pro-slavery faction styled itself the guardians of freedom and minority rights, and yet it did.
00:22:59.000In a deep study of antebellum Southern rhetoric, Patricia Roberts Miller, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Texas at Austin, characterizes the story that pro-slavery writers wanted to tell between 1830s and 1860s as not one of demanding more power, but of David resisting Goliath.
00:23:14.000They stress the importance of logic, facts, truth, science, and nature much more than Northern rhetoricians did.
00:23:20.000Um, does she have any, like, anything to back this up?
00:23:54.000Events were the most extraordinary spectacles that had ever challenged the notice of the civilized world, too alarming and threatened to destroy all that is valuable and beautiful in the institutions of our country.
00:24:58.000So she is saying that all of this sort of rhetoric is unique to the South and also to the reasonable right.
00:25:06.000She is literally making that argument about the right in this article.
00:25:10.000It's like everything that she says was the rhetoric of the antebellum South is exactly the sort of rhetoric she is using in the article itself about her own enemies.
00:25:18.000She says, in Ben Shapiro, who ascribes right-wing anger to unwise left-wing provocation, I hear a letter printed in the Charleston Mercury, which warned that if the mad career of the hot-headed abolitionists should lead to acts of violence on the part of those whom they so vindictively assail, who shall be accountable?
00:25:47.000The right is... I've never claimed that the right is a victim.
00:25:50.000I have said that the left-wing argument that everyone on the right lacks character is a nasty crap argument and that this article is garbage.
00:25:57.000That her entire perspective on the character of her opponents is malign.
00:26:18.000Not because of CNN, not because of the New York Times, not because of the Washington Post, but because you have excised more than half the country by calling them racist, sexist, bigots, and homophobes.
00:26:28.000So when I write a book that explicitly derides Sectionalism and tribalism and factionalism that explicitly rips on white supremacy multiple times.
00:27:05.000Well, if you're looking to upgrade your staff, what you actually need is ZipRecruiter.com.
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00:27:46.000Honestly, everybody here is fairly good.
00:27:48.000And we're constantly adding new producers.
00:28:34.000Sam Harris, a popular podcast host, has released three lengthy shows about Charles Murray, a political scientist who is often booed at campus speeches and whose 2017 talk at Middlebury College ended when students injured his host.
00:28:46.000Murray argues that white people test higher than black people on every known test of cognitive ability and that these differences in capacity predict white people's predominance.
00:28:54.000Well, actually, that's not exactly what Charles Murray argues, and if you read his books, what you would recognize is that he explicitly says that IQ differentials among races are At least largely not due to genetics.
00:29:04.000He says we don't actually know what IQ differentials based on race are based on.
00:29:17.000Okay, that's what Charles Murray says.
00:29:19.000But Sam Harris's point is we actually have to investigate science and then use the best data available when we make arguments.
00:29:25.000And she's saying that Sam Harris defending Charles Murray on the basis of we need to investigate science means that Sam Harris is a neoconfederate.
00:29:33.000She says Harris's claim is implausible.
00:29:35.000Hundreds of scientists produce controversial work in the fields of race, demographics, and inequality.
00:29:39.000Only one, though, is the social scientist nationally notorious for suggesting that white people are innately smarter than people of color.
00:29:46.000Well, because he wrote a best-selling book on IQ.
00:30:10.000So again, this piece started by pointing out that I had suggested that we're all on the same side against white supremacy and that it is bad for the left to declare everyone a white supremacist because that separates us artificially.
00:30:22.000And her response is, you know who would say that?
00:31:01.000She says the problems with online debate me culture.
00:31:04.000She says anyone who regularly expresses ideas on the internet, especially women who express ideas critical of men, has encountered that bane of online discourse.
00:31:12.000The man who appears seemingly out of nowhere to insist on a debate.
00:31:23.000Because, as we all know, the most vicious form of sexual abuse and harassment is to say, let's have a serious talk about marginal tax rates.
00:31:34.000That's how I hit on my wife, by the way.
00:31:47.000That actually did happen on our second date.
00:31:49.000In any case, this idiotic Washington Post column, the second one, again, on the same day, they're so good at their jobs.
00:31:57.000They say, a classic example came a few weeks ago after Barstool Sports founder and president Dave Portnoy threatened on Twitter to fire his workers if they tried to unionize.
00:32:04.000After representative AOC joined the chorus of critics suggesting that such threats violated labor law, Portnoy fired back, hey AOC, welcome to Thunderdome, debate me.
00:32:13.000She ignored the request and in a follow-up tweet, he naturally suggested that she had run from the challenge like a terrified child.
00:32:36.000But he's not the only bad man, and this is where I come in.
00:32:38.000Ocasio-Cortez is a popular target of debate-me dudes who can be high-profile media figures or not entities.
00:32:45.000In August 2018, the radio host and Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro offered her $10,000 to argue with him in a public forum.
00:32:51.000Well, actually, I offered her $10,000 to appear on the Sunday special, which, as anyone who has ever watched the Sunday special recognizes, is not actually a debate forum.
00:33:30.000I've debated a multiplicity of left-wing figures, ranging from Piers Morgan on guns on CNN to Cenk Igor over at Politicon.
00:33:37.000I've challenged, I believe, precisely two people to debate ever.
00:33:41.000One was AOC when it became clear that she was the fresh face, so fresh, so face of the Democratic Party.
00:33:45.000The other was Bernie Sanders, who is a man, as it turns out.
00:33:48.000So it's not sexual harassment because, number one, I was not sexually harassing AOC, and number two, I certainly would never sexually harass Bernie Sanders.
00:33:57.000That seems weird in a variety of ways.
00:33:59.000It says targeting both men and women, although he himself has ignored debate requests.
00:34:59.000I am lazy and I like to do stuff from my computer.
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00:36:05.000Socrates is... I'm sorry to inform you that several thousand years after his death, He has now been canceled.
00:36:11.000And it turns out that they were right to demand his suicide, according to this columnist for the Washington Post, because I once said that AOC should discuss politics with me.
00:36:19.000And so did Dave Portnoy, which is bad.
00:36:29.000You should do this thing because cancel culture is coming for everyone, including for this show, but you help protect us by becoming subscribers.
00:36:35.000We are growing by leaps and bounds, our team, and you should join up.
00:36:38.000Also, because you get all sorts of goodies.
00:36:40.000For example, you get our Sunday special on Saturdays, which is pretty spectacular.
00:36:52.000Everything that the left is trying to do is a threat to who we are as the nation.
00:36:57.000Everything that we are built on, all the principles that we're built on, is on the line when it comes to the policies that the radical left is putting forward.
00:37:05.000And if we don't stop those, the next generation, our children and our grandchildren, aren't going to know the same America that we know.
00:37:10.000If you didn't recognize that voice, that is indeed Liz Wheeler.
00:37:12.000It's a good, far-ranging conversation on politics.
00:37:15.000We disagree about Trump and his tweets.
00:37:18.000As you know, I am a little more divided on that question, but the discussion is really good.
00:37:22.000You get that early when you become a subscriber.
00:37:24.000You also get all sorts of great stuff behind the paywall, and it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout-out to a new Daily Wire subscriber.
00:37:31.000Today, it is Hunter Knox on Instagram, who clearly respects our show enough to dress up for viewings.
00:37:36.000In the picture, Hunter, a handsome German shepherd, sits at the coffee table donning a fantastic American flag bowtie, an elite beverage vessel, at the ready, right next to a laptop emblazoned with Ted Cruz for Senate, and taxation is theft stickers.
00:38:19.000So if you have a pet, if you have a pet and you want to take a picture of your pet next to the Tumblr, You have a great... Our people who select these, they really like the pets.
00:38:27.000So go check that out right now at Leftist Tears Tumblr.
00:38:32.000The Daily Wire has turned four years old.
00:38:34.000As a thank you to our fans, we are giving away one month of our premium monthly subscription to anyone who uses the code BIRTHDAY for all of August as we celebrate this milestone.
00:38:43.000We've been giving away that free first month for our new premium monthly subscribers.
00:38:46.000Bad news, August is over, like, right now.
00:39:43.000According to this brilliant classic scholar, Donna Zuckerberg in the Washington Post.
00:39:47.000Quote, as the editor of an online publication that runs articles about the intersections of classical antiquity and the modern world, often from a feminist and progressive perspective, I've gotten my fair share of debate me challenges.
00:39:58.000Many of these have come after I began writing about far-right interest in ancient Greece and Rome in 2016.
00:40:03.000Blocking some of my would-be adversaries on Twitter seemed to just energize them and convince them I was afraid to engage.
00:40:31.000Also, just to get this straight, apparently, according to that, you guys should coordinate.
00:40:36.000Walk down the hall to that other op-ed columnist, because the other column was saying that Lincoln-Douglas debates were bad because a lot of slaveholders wanted reasonable civil discussion.
00:40:44.000Now this one is saying that Lincoln-Douglas debates were good.
00:40:59.000By needling their interloculars with rapid fire questions, they aim to reveal, as they see it, their opponent's ignorance and stupidity, and their own superior intelligence and logic.
00:41:09.000And then she talks about how at one time a white nationalist YouTube personality decided to appear in her Twitter mentions and insisted that she called the classics inherently fascist.
00:41:18.000She said, My actual nuanced argument is that the long enmeshment of the classics and white supremacy both in Nazi Germany and in the pre-Civil War American South continues to inform how we understand the ancient Mediterranean and that progressive classical scholars should discuss that legacy and confront it.
00:41:34.000It is no surprise that someone like this whom I ignored would draw on stoicism, which has emerged as the favorite philosophy both of corporate executives and the far right.
00:41:47.000She says these modest men also identify with Socrates, the original debate-me troll.
00:41:52.000The Platonic texts show Socrates pulling any number of Athenians into debate, and although some are eager to argue with him, others can hardly wait to escape him by the end of the dialogue.
00:42:01.000Plato's Eurypthro concludes with Eurypthro insisting he has to leave, while Socrates calls after him, complaining they haven't yet figured out the nature of piety.
00:42:09.000Many of the dialogues end when the interlocutor has been bludgeoned into submission and seems to find it easier to agree with Socrates than continue further.
00:42:31.000If you call for a reasonable discussion, it's because you're a Nazi.
00:42:34.000Also, if you say, let's discuss or debate, it's because you're like Socrates, and Socrates was a pre-Nazi, so you're a Nazi.
00:42:41.000In other words, there is no argument to be had with you, because the very fact that you are asking for a reasonable conversation shows how unreasonable you are, you see.
00:42:50.000And the very fact that I refuse to engage with you shows how reasonable I am on the left.
00:42:54.000Because, premise reinforced, you're a bad person, guys.
00:42:57.000And then when all of us out here, we're like, okay, well, I guess we can't have a conversation.
00:43:01.000And they're like, well, now you don't want to have a conversation with me?
00:43:06.000Obviously, this is not good for the country.
00:43:09.000It's actually kind of dangerous to suggest that every one of your political opponents actually is a white supremacist for wanting a reasonable conversation, or that if somebody says, you know what, you have a different idea than I do, let's get together and discuss it or debate it publicly, that that is inherently an act of violent male oppression.
00:43:26.000How the hell do you think republicanism works?
00:43:29.000Discussions are inherently, but this is unfortunately becoming a thing on the left.
00:43:33.000And I'll provide you a perfect example.
00:43:35.000Okay, so there was a really fascinating study that came out yesterday.
00:43:38.000Okay, I knew about the study a few weeks in advance, because I had actually talked with one of the people who helped conduct the study, who is not on the political right.
00:43:45.000Okay, well, this study was all about the genetics of same-sex sexuality.
00:43:50.000Now, my perspective has always been that homosexuality, homosexual activity, and orientation, that this was, like most human activity, a combination of genetics and environment.
00:43:59.000I was never a believer because the evidence did not support it that you are quote-unquote born this way in a binary way meaning that genetics determines 100% of your sexual orientation.
00:44:09.000I think for some people that may be true.
00:44:10.000I think for the broad majority of people, that is not true.
00:44:13.000That genetics interacts with environments, interacts with epigenetics, and that you come out sort of how you come out, right?
00:44:19.000I mean, that seems like a perfectly reasonable position given the fact that there are already twin studies that showed that among genetically identical twins, only half of those genetically identical twins ended up either both straight or both gay, right?
00:44:31.000That when you had one gay twin, half the time the other twin was straight, which suggests obviously that this is not genetically encoded the same way that, for example, race would be, right?
00:44:40.000If you are genetically identical, one of you is black, you're genetically identical, the other one of you will be black, right?
00:44:45.000I mean, that's just the way that genetics works.
00:45:28.000It says, A study published Thursday in Science looked at DNA and sexual behavior of nearly 500,000 people.
00:45:34.000It found that the sex of your sexual partners is, in fact, influenced by your genes.
00:45:37.000But it also found it was not possible to predict your sexual behavior from your DNA alone.
00:45:42.000The study suggested, in other words, that biology shapes our most intimate selves, but it does so in tandem with our personal histories, with the idiosyncratic selves that unfold in the larger cultural and social context.
00:45:53.000The researchers, who included one of us, Dr. Wiedow, analyzed the genetic markers of people who responded to the question, have you ever had sex with someone of the same sex?
00:46:01.000From these data, the researchers estimated that genetic differences account for roughly one-third of the variation in same-sex behavior.
00:46:08.000Okay, so, not an extraordinarily high percentage.
00:46:10.000Not like 80%, it's not 90%, it's like a third.
00:46:13.000And as the study actually says, somewhere between 8% and 25%.
00:46:17.000The study also identified several DNA sequence variants associated with having had a same-sex experience.
00:46:22.000In other words, there's not a gene that turns on and says, okay, now you're gay, or now you're straight.
00:46:26.000Instead, there are genes that range from associations with more risky sexual behavior to Sort of a certain level of fluidity in terms of sexual desire.
00:46:36.000Again, all of this is nuanced, which is fine.
00:46:41.000So yes, your sex life is influenced by your genes.
00:46:43.000Now, again, I'm not sure who is arguing your sex life is not influenced by your genes.
00:46:47.000I mean, I think that, again, as biological entities, it would be bizarre if your sex life was not influenced by your genes at all.
00:46:54.000The entire binary argument that either you are born 100% this way or you are born 100% not this way and you just choose to be gay or something, I always thought that was a dumb argument and a waste of time.
00:47:03.000This conclusion fits with our personal experiences and intuitions.
00:47:06.000Sexual desire is typically stable, something we often are aware of from our first longings.
00:47:11.000Furthermore, one of the several DNA variants identified in Thursday's study is involved in gonad development, which accords with previous research that links sexual orientation to hormone exposure.
00:47:20.000But the study's findings also complicate the relationship between genetics and sexuality.
00:47:24.000For one thing, the results make clear there is no single biology of sexual behavior.
00:47:28.000It turns out, for example, that the genes influencing same-sex behavior in females are often different from those that shape behaviors in males.
00:47:35.000It also turns out that the genes associated with having occasional same-sex experiences are unlinked to having exclusively same-sex experiences.
00:47:43.000So, in other words, people who are bisexual have a different genetic profile than people who are exclusively homosexual.
00:47:49.000Or people who consider themselves straight, but have strayed into same-sex territory briefly, have a different genetic profile than people who exclusively are interested in same-sex experiences.
00:48:00.000In addition, people who only occasionally have same-sex partners tend to have genetic variants associated with having more sexual partners overall, and with personality traits like openness to new experience, which Makes perfect sense.
00:48:11.000Again, if you are a person who is experimenting, you would imagine that your genetic profile would probably be more risk-seeking, right?
00:48:17.000In contrast, the study found that exclusively same-sex behavior had little correlation with the biology of personality.
00:48:23.000For some people, same-sex behavior may be a form of exploration.
00:48:28.000Okay, so this seems like a study that is interesting.
00:48:33.000It does give the lie to the Lady Gaga, baby, I'm born this way, therefore I have no influence over my human behavior kind of stuff.
00:48:41.000But it doesn't undercut any of the arguments for same-sex civil rights, for example.
00:48:44.000It doesn't undercut the libertarian argument, again, the non-harm J.S.
00:48:47.000Mill principle, John Stuart Mill principle, that you should be able to do what you want so long as you're not hitting me in the nose, right?
00:48:52.000What it does do is it undercuts one of the key arguments that the left has been holding for 40 years and that is not true by evidence.
00:48:59.000And that argument is again that sexual orientation is just as genetically encoded as race.
00:49:39.000I mean, the only people who are undercut by this argument are the folks who suggest, on the one hand, that sexuality is entirely a choice, which is not true.
00:49:49.000I mean, your drive is not entirely a choice.
00:49:52.000And the people who suggest that sexual behavior is not at all a choice for anyone.
00:49:57.000That it is entirely ingrained and genetically based, entirely no environmental, no choice aspect of it at all.
00:50:03.000It turns out, again, like most things in life, This is a nuanced topic.
00:50:08.000Well, it's important, number one, because it does have some public policy ramifications.
00:50:12.000So, for example, you are a young person who's experiencing same-sex desire, and you don't want to experience same-sex desire, and so you go see a psychologist to talk about that.
00:50:21.000The entire left says, waste of time, you can't do that, it'll damage you, it's really bad.
00:50:24.000Okay, well, the evidence is not necessarily there for that.
00:50:28.000That's why the left likes to, when it talks about, for example, gay conversion therapy, they like to go to electrocuting people, which is insane and ridiculous and horrible.
00:50:35.000They're not talking about the 17-year-old who's conflicted about sexual desire and may have desires in multiple directions and wants to talk to somebody about it, right?
00:50:42.000But, more than that, the reason that this is relevant is because there is a push by the left to shut down this study.
00:50:51.000And so, the New York Times has a piece today called, Many Genes Influence Same-Sex Sexuality, Not a Single Gay Gene.
00:51:01.000And Benjamin Neal, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, one of the lead researchers, he said, I hope the science can be used to educate people a little bit more about how natural and normal same-sex behavior is.
00:51:11.000Now again, natural and normal does not mean moral in the traditional religious sense, because lots of people have lots of desires.
00:51:18.000That does not necessarily mean that fulfilling those desires in action.
00:51:38.000And again, I don't really see the problem with that.
00:51:42.000But there is a problem with the study, and it's the left objecting.
00:51:45.000Even before its publication Thursday in the journal Science, the study has generated debate and concern, including within the renowned Broad Institute itself.
00:51:52.000Several scientists who are part of the LGBTQ community said they were worried the findings could give ammunition to people who seek to use science to bolster biases and discrimination against gay people.
00:52:02.000In other words, shut down the science because it might not achieve the result we want.
00:52:06.000If the results had been that there is one gay gene, And that sexual orientation is immutable, unchanging, and entirely genetically based, not entirely environmental, then you release the findings.
00:52:16.000But if it cuts against that, then you can't release the findings because it undercuts our argument.
00:52:50.000Steven Reilly, geneticist and postdoctoral researcher who's on the steering committee of the Institute's LGBTQ affinity group said, quote, I deeply disagree about publishing this.
00:52:59.000It seems like something that could easily be misconstrued.
00:53:02.000In a world without any discrimination, understanding human behavior is a noble goal, but we don't live in that world.
00:53:07.000In other words, the narrative should trump science.
00:53:12.000The whole goal of science is to achieve objective, verifiable facts about the world so that we can operate within those facts.
00:53:19.000And you can still pursue exactly the same agenda that you are pursuing, Stephen Reilly.
00:53:23.000But maybe your arguments have to suck less.
00:53:25.000Maybe your arguments should be based on, I don't know, the science, since you are in fact a geneticist.
00:53:31.000Discussions between Dr. Neal's team and colleagues who questioned the research continued for months.
00:53:35.000Dr. Neal said the team, which included psychologists and sociologists, used suggestions from those colleagues in outside LGBTQ groups to clarify wording and highlight caveats.
00:54:08.000Okay, Dr. Neal, who's one of the leads on the study, is gay.
00:54:12.000He said, I definitely heard from people who are kind of, why do this at all?
00:54:16.000And so there was some resistance there.
00:54:18.000Personally, I'm still concerned it's going to be deliberately misused to advance agendas of hate, but I do believe that the sort of proactive way we've approached this, and a lot of the community engagement aspects that we've tried, were important.
00:54:28.000The moment the study was published online Thursday afternoon, the Broad Institute took the unusual step of posting essays by Dr. Riley and others who raised questions about the ethics, science, and social implications of the project.
00:54:40.000Joe Vitti, a postdoctoral researcher at the Broad Institute, said, quote, as a queer person and a geneticist, I struggle to understand the motivations behind a genome wide association study for non heterosexual behavior.
00:54:50.000I have yet to see a compelling argument that the potential benefits of this study outweigh its potential harms.
00:54:55.000Since when is the study of science about the potential benefits versus the potential harms?
00:55:02.000There was a solid case to be made in the 1850s by every religious person across the world that the potential benefits of discovering evolutionary biology outweighed, that the harms outweighed the benefits.
00:55:12.000Should that have shut down the study of evolutionary biology?
00:56:23.000Figuratively, a state in which all things seem to be engulfed in a whirlpool of terror.
00:56:27.000of the trailer for Vertigo, which still is enjoyable.
00:56:29.000Vertigo, a feeling of dizziness, a swimming in the head.
00:56:34.000Figuratively, a state in which all things seem to be engulfed in a whirlpool of terror, as created by Alfred Hitchcock in the story that gives new meaning to the word suspense.
00:57:48.000Are we gonna have... I'm waiting for rockauto.com to engage in racial statements about, like, mufflers.
00:57:56.000Why would you expect your corporations to engage in political statements about... I think we can all fairly assume that Cadbury opposes racism, since pretty much everybody does, who is of good heart.
00:58:06.000And I have no reason to suggest that the Cadbury...
00:58:09.000Like the old kind of eggs, the chocolate eggs, that those suggest some deep, dark plot against black people.
00:58:15.000In any case, Cadbury pushes the Unity bar in India, and we have a little bit of their ad for this.
00:58:23.000It says, India's first chocolate, dark, blended, milk, white.
00:58:32.000It's a bar that has united in one bar.
00:58:56.000You got the dark chocolate on the opposite end of the white chocolate.
00:58:59.000They can't come anywhere near each other.
00:59:00.000They are separated dramatically by race.
00:59:03.000So their Unity Bar was kind of a fail.
00:59:06.000Also, it is amazing to me, if you are buying your products based on the virtue signaling of the corporations that push this sort of stuff, you're an idiot.
00:59:14.000If you really believe that Nike cares about Colin Kaepernick kneeling, you're a moron.