Ep 139 ｜ Ben Shapiro
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Summary
Ben Shapiro joins me to discuss his new book, The Right Side of History, and why he believes Judeo-Christian values were the founding principles of our country. He also talks about his views on the intersection of faith and politics, and what we can be looking forward to in 2020.
Transcript
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Welcome to the podcast. Today, I am talking to my friend Ben Shapiro. You may have heard of him.
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He kind of like just got into the game, has this little podcast. I'm just doing my best to kind of,
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you know, give him a boost. Okay, if you didn't really know who Ben Shapiro was,
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and you thought I was serious, I am not serious. This is someone who really sets the pace for
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young conservatives. That doesn't mean that every young conservative agrees with him. I find myself
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agreeing with him on the majority of things that he talks about. But regardless of where you land on
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the conservative spectrum, Ben Shapiro has really shattered the, can I call it a glass ceiling if
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we're just talking about conservatives? Kind of. I feel like there has been kind of this ceiling
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that conservatives can really hit as far as mainstream success goes. But he has broken the
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mold. I'll say that. He's broken the mold when it comes to conservative commentators. He has been
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a pioneer in the young conservative movement, the original, the conservative millennial,
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if I do say so myself. And also he's been someone who has stood up for biblical values and biblical
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principles when it's been especially unpopular. And that's something that we as Christians,
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even though I disagree with him, obviously, on a lot of theological issues, that's something that
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we as Christians can admire and be thankful for, that there has been a representative
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in the media that has as big of a platform as he does that is willing to talk about really
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contentious issues like same-sex marriage. And so today I just wanted to get his insight on where
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we are as a country as far as the intersection of faith and politics goes, what we can be looking
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forward to in 2020 as far as the election goes, and then also the issues that we're facing when it
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comes to the limiting of the freedom of religion and religious people's role in the civic dialogue
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that just sometimes seems filled with darkness and craziness.
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Okay. So I listened to your book, my husband and I both did, and I know it came out a few months ago,
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Right Side of History, and so you're not here to promote that. But I do think that the ideas that
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you talked about, particularly that our country, that the West in general was founded on and fueled
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by Judeo-Christian values, is going to be a topic that we talk about probably increasingly,
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especially over the next couple of years or so with the election going on. Because as you've pointed
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out so many times, they're values that people don't just forget about, but tend to demonize as if
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they are the source of all of our problems rather than all of these good things. And so my question is,
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particularly, how do we convince our fellow Christians and the people in the Jewish community
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that these are the principles that our country was founded on? Because unfortunately,
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we kind of see this progressive social justice secular mentality taking over even in the faith
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You know, I think that it's important for folks, particularly in faith communities,
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to understand the relationship between their faith and the modern world. There seems to be this
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weird divide that is broken out in both progressive Jewish and progressive Christian communities
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that says all the good stuff that you like is the result of secularism. All the bad stuff that
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makes you feel bad about your stuff, that's the result of religion. And of course, that's not
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historically accurate. The Enlightenment happened in a particular time and in a particular place
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after a couple of thousand years of philosophical development. The notion that all of this just
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sprang full blown into the mind of John Locke in 1760 is a bunch of nonsense. And the fact that
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everybody on the left seems to have accepted this premise because it's flattering to them.
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And then they separate off atheistic movements that have no religious backing, like communism or
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Nazism and fascism, like those sorts of movements. They separate those off from secularism and claim
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that they have religious roots. It's pretty astonishing and it's a rewrite of history. That's
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what the book was seeking to do, was at least tell a historical story about how we got here.
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And that's a story I think everybody at least needs to address before they get to the idea that
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modern technology, science, prosperity, free markets, that all these things just sort of magically
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happened in 1780 with the rejection of God. And at one point I felt like our churches and probably
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our synagogues as well, although I'm less familiar with the political side of, or the political views
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of the Jewish community, they used to hold fast to those values, know where they came from, and be the
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part of the country that was advocating for those values the most. But now it seems like
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religious people, their stance is kind of weakening on those things, at least among Christians who have
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bought into the lie that being progressive is being compassionate. So what do you think happened
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there? I would say especially over the past 10 or so years to make that happen.
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Well, I mean, I think that one of the things that has happened is that the conservative religious
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folks have basically allowed a division to take place between the area of religion and the area of
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technology and modern living. We've sort of accepted the Stephen Jay Gould definition of the universe
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that religion is here to explain the why and everything else is here for the how. And I don't
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think that that is purely accurate, because the reason that we are asking how is because we have a
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reason why. In other words, meaning and the content of our lives are inextricably intertwined. And the
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religious community sort of accepted this basic premise that if we kept religion to its prescribed
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boundaries, we would be left alone. So we could live our religious lives. And then everybody on
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the left would basically leave us alone. And we could agree to enjoy the same TV shows and have
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the same technology. And then they wouldn't bother us anymore. And that obviously has not happened.
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Instead, the religious community basically tried to keep to that bargain. And the left
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ever more encroachingly decided to intervene in the meaning space and decided to rewrite religion
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itself. So now religious people felt like they were under attack and started to either stand up more
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strongly and get more vocal or to cede ground. And so the religious community decided it was going to
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many parts of the religious community decided to cede ground. It was uncomfortable to talk about
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these things. It was alienating to talk about hot button issues of the day, particularly with regard
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to, for example, abortion and same sex marriage. These things became uncomfortable because they were
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afraid of alienating folks. Whereas and because the left kept saying all of this is regressive,
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all of it is retrograde, that it's anti women's rights. And as we all know, all of the great
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wonders of the modern world were brought about by modernity. They weren't brought about by these
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old, terrible ideas. Again, it's that stark division between the old ideas and the good stuff
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that the left sought to draw. I think that the religious community was was complicit in that,
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unfortunately. And now we're seeing the results of it. I've seen an exchange, especially in
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Christianity, an exchange of the God of scriptures with the God of self. And they still use, especially
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among progressive Christians, they still use biblical texts to try to justify their love of
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abortion or love of socialism or love of same sex marriage or something like that. But really, it's
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a disregard for what the Bible says. It's a disregard for biblical principles. And it seems like
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theological liberalism always is tied to political liberalism. But what I've noticed is that Christians
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are very scared to speak into that, even conservative Christians, because they don't want to be called
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bigots. They don't want to be called whatever it is that their friends are, their friends are
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calling people that they disagree with. Do you think that there is, do you think that now is an
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opportunity for religious people to talk to those that they share a faith with, but disagree with
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politically? Or do you think our churches and our synagogues, our religious places need to be almost a
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safe space, a safe space without the partisanship and the craziness that we're seeing in our political
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dialogue? Well, I mean, I do think that you do have to speak what the principles of the Bible are.
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And those do include commandments with regards to things that people find uncomfortable, right?
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There's a difference in that and saying that the government ought to push things. So, for example,
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on homosexuality, the Bible is pretty clear about how it feels about homosexual activity.
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I think most conservatives, most Christians are not in favor of the government regulating that sort of
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behavior from the top down. I think that, you know, the attempt to drive sin out of the public
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square via government is usually unsuccessful, although this is a rich and interesting debate
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that's happening right now between, for example, Sourabh Amari and David French that I think is worthy
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of addressing. But with that all said, you know, I think that it's, we sort of have to define what
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exactly we're talking about. What I've seen is a deliberate confusion in terms. So, if we are talking
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about the secular moral basis of a society, then citing the Bible is not going to be particularly
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useful in that conversation. And so, what you see from the progressive left is, well, how do you
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justify that you, a religious person, think this is a sin? Now, religious people say, well, there's
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an easy answer to that. The Bible says it's a sin, so it's a sin. And then the left will say, well,
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yeah, but then you say it's a sin. Why do you think it's immoral? Okay, now what they're trying
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to do is make you justify God, effectively speaking. And that's something that most religious
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people are wary to do because they don't judge God. God judges us. If you're talking about public
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policy, then it becomes a different story. If you're talking about how the government ought to
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address things, then you have to get into things like externalities, how the government should
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perceive certain human behavior. What I've noticed is that the left wants to conflate the two because
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for the left, the only good or evil is defined by the government itself. This is why, for example,
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in the Obergefell case, the Supreme Court talked about how it was important that the government
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grant, you know, these quote-unquote innate human dignities to particular activity. Well, when I'm
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looking for innate human dignity, I don't look to the government for that. I look to the government to
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protect my rights. I look to the government to stop other people from doing bad things to me.
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I don't look to the government to grant me a sense of dignity or inner meaning. But for the left,
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the only sense of dignity or inner meaning can be granted by government. And so every discussion
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becomes, if you refuse to allow government to do X, aren't you denying people their dignity? And it's
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like, well, no, I'm saying that the government doesn't have a role there and your dignity is up to
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you, right? I'm not forcing my opinion on you, but my belief that what you are engaging in is a sin,
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that's frankly none of your business. Like if you don't like it, tough. It's always a debate that
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I find absolutely puzzling. People will ask me, for example, I'm a religious Jew. That means that
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I think that homosexual activity is a sin. This is very obvious. All orthodox Jews believe this,
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right? This is not. But this has become obviously a very hot button issue because to say that means
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that you're quote-unquote a bigot. And what I always say to folks is, listen, I can give you natural law
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reasons why I think the Bible considers particular sexual activity a sin. Because not only does it
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consider homosexuality a sin, it considers premarital sex a sin. It considers adultery a
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sin. It considers a wide variety of activities. Sex with particular relatives is spelled out in
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Leviticus. All of those things are considered sinful. But if you're asking me just in order to
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browbeat me, my question is this. Why do you care what I think? I'm not trying to impose my views on you.
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So why are you suddenly so concerned with how I feel about you? Are you really that insecure that
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you need my imprimatur of approval on your behavior? I'm not trying to stop you from doing
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anything. What the left has tried to do is make people who are conservative on these social issues
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or biblical on these social issues feel guilty about feeling the way that they do, even if those
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people are not imposing in any way in public life on those issues. And even when we just want to bring
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up our kids the way we want to bring up our kids. I think that it also goes back to a confusion
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on the left of rights versus privileges. And we see that a lot with the Equality Act,
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that they believe that people of a certain inclination have a right not to be denied a
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particular service by a doctor, for example, who maybe he is against performing a sex change
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surgery or prescribing some kind of hormonal therapy to a minor. Well, according to the Equality Act,
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unless I'm wrong and you can correct me on this, there wouldn't be probably a lot of conscience
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protections for that particular doctor who objects to this. There would be some, but not
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as many as we would like as advocates of religious liberty. And so I think that we really see their
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concern, that it's not so much of this kind of personal insecurity. It's that they believe they
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have a right to be, I don't know, their identity to be affirmed in every even surgical way that they
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want it to be affirmed. And so I think for Christians and for conservatives, this is a very confusing,
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it's a very confusing time to have to combat some kind of line of thinking like that. It's really
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hard for me to wrap my mind around how you believe that that's a right, but the religious liberty of a
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doctor or a counselor, for example, is not. Well, I think that what the left has successfully done
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is they have attempted to equate everything with the civil rights movement of the 60s. So basically,
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the gay rights movement is exactly the same as the civil rights movement. Gay rights are exactly the
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same as being black. Being gay is exactly the same as being black. It's an innate characteristic that
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is unchangeable and unchanging, despite the fact that the attitude of religious people is that
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your behavior is what counts, not your innate inclination. There's no way for anybody to judge
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anybody's innate inclination. I'm perfectly comfortable. I've always found it bizarre that
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the left wants to ask whether the drive to have sex with particular people is biological or not.
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I'm happy to assume that it's biological. I think the evidence suggests that it's some biological
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and some environmental. That has nothing to do with the religious perspective on whether it's okay
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to commit a particular act or not. The attempt to conflate these two very different sort of
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categorizations into one categorization and then to treat them the way that we've treated race in the
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country is a compelling argument that the left uses. But this is where I think that the conservative
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right and religious people also get themselves into trouble. And that is what they will very often
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say about the Equality Act, for example, is they'll say, well, we need conscience protections.
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We need specific protections of religious people. And what the left will say is, okay,
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so you're a bigot and you're just hiding behind God, right? Because if you weren't religious and
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you didn't want to perform the sex change surgery, then we would just say you're a bigot. But now
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you're religious and you hold up this really old book at me and you say that you don't want to
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perform the sex change surgery and I'm supposed to take that more seriously. And so my argument has
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always been, no, it's not about freedom of religion. It's not about freedom of conscience. This is
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about freedom of association. I don't believe that the government has the inherent right to compel me
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to do anything that I do not want to do so long as I am not forcibly damaging someone.
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I think that you can use basic John Stuart Mill, which is a libertarian principle the left
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supposedly agrees with. I think you can use basic freedom of association arguments without falling
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into the trap of saying, no, there are special protections for religious people and now it's
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religious rights versus transgender rights. No, everybody has the same rights. And that is,
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you do not have the right to demand service from me and I do not have the duty to provide a service
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to you. And this is true regardless of who you are. And if that results in things that you don't
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like, good news, there are other doctors other places. Good news, there are other businesses
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other places. This is why I've stated for the entirety of my career that while I would have
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voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and 1964 because I believe that overall it is a good act,
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I certainly would not have agreed with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act that apply
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to private business. I think that is a wild overstep on the part of the federal government
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and it has opened the door to government control of every aspect of our lives and you're starting
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to see the left use it that way. So should we make the argument, what is the context in which
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we should be making the argument for religious liberty? Because I think that's something that
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Christians talk about a lot and are scared of is the removal of our religious liberty and the freedom
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of conscience. Do you think that's basically when you're discussing this kind of issue with the
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left, something that we really shouldn't bring up because it doesn't resonate with them?
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Yeah, well, I do think that the idea that there is a specific religious liberty is a corollary to the
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small government that the founders envisioned. So there are two clauses that people read separately
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but really are the same clause. One is the free exercise clause and one is the freedom of,
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there's the free exercise of religion and then there's the separation of church and state, right?
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There's the, there's no establishment of religion and also there's the free exercise clause.
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You can worship however you want. Well, those two things ought to be read in tandem, meaning that
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the government cannot establish a religion from the top down so you have the freedom to worship,
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right? It is not that the government separates church from state so that the state can now cram down
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its views on your religion. The idea was that there was going to be a small government and that
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that government would not have the power to encroach on your practice of religion. I think
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that conservatives ought to be focusing on that, that first argument, meaning leave me the hell
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alone. I think that is a much more compelling argument than my religious practice is important
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to me and so you should leave me alone because for folks on the left, your religious practice is
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simply not important to them. They think that you're a bigot in disguise. So would we, I mean,
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this is the argument actually that you saw, did you see that exchange with Senator Howley and this
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judicial nominee and this judicial nominee was talking about an anti-discrimination law in his
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local area and in his writings, he had compared the, in his brief for the city, he had declared
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that a Christian, that basically Catholics who wanted to practice their religion were equivalent
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under the law to the KKK wanting to practice their religion. And Howley was like, why are you
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equating these two things? They're not the same thing. And Howley is right. But what the lawyer was
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saying, and from the left perspective, this is the case, is that if you can use God to serve as an
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excuse for anything you do, well then we can't have a common space because obviously your view
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of God can't trump particular law, right? This is one of the kind of interesting rulings of Justice
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Scalia, for example, uh, in employment division versus Smith is, is the question of a neutral law
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or a broad, a general law of neutral applicability. Can that trump religious freedom? This has always
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been a serious problem. So the, the answer to that problem in my view is not that religious freedom
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is a special freedom. Just as I don't think that freedom of the press is a special freedom.
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It is a restriction on what government can do generally. It is not that the government can
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do a bunch of stuff and then we carve out this little hole right here for religious people,
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or the government can do certain stuff and we carve out a little hole for the press. The idea is the
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government is not allowed to do all this stuff, period. And because the government is not allowed
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to do all this stuff, that is why for religious freedom is, is available to you. And it's because
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we want to protect religious freedom. The government is not allowed to do all this stuff.
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We have exceeded in the baseline false assumption that the government is allowed to do all this crap.
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And then we're going to try and backfill these particular areas to make sure that religious
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people can be free. How about the government doesn't have any role in forcing anybody to do
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anything they don't want to do unless they are harming somebody. And then you don't have to worry
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about whether my bakery caters your same-sex wedding. Yeah, that's a good point. And I think
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when we talk about religious liberty, for some reason, the left tends to jump to the conclusion of
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we want a theocracy. We do want the establishment of religion. We want everyone to agree with us,
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which of course is not the argument at all that you just made or that people who talk about religious
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liberty are making. Actually, it kind of seems like the left wants their own version of theocracy a lot
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more than we do. I know that you probably saw Kamala Harris. She said that she's advocating
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for some kind of law that would make any abortion legislation that the state tried to pass. It would
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have to go through the Department of Justice to see if it matched up with Roe v. Wade, which I believe
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is a violation of federalism. So it seems to me like they're the ones that actually want to impose
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their ideological views on everyone, no matter what state you live in, no matter what religion you
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have, no matter what your view is. It seems like they are the ones trying to impose their views on
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us, not the other way around. And I think a lot of people are confused about how do we confront that?
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Well, there's no question that's the case. I mean, take another example that's come up in the past
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several weeks. So the Trump administration put forward a regulation that redrew Obama-era
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regulations and said federal funding is now available to adoption agencies that prefer
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traditional couples over same-sex couples. This seems absolutely uncontroversial to me.
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They will fund adoption agencies that adopt out to same-sex couples, and they will fund adoption
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agencies that do not adopt out to same-sex couples, mainly Catholic adoption agencies. And the left
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went nuts. Their suggestion was that the federal government cannot fund in any way an adoption agency
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that prefers traditional couples, even though there are perfectly logical secular reasons why
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you might want to do that, namely that a child needs a mother and a father, and that women and
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men are different, and that mothers and fathers provide different things to children, as every
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social study science study ever done suggests. There are plenty of reasons for that. The left said
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this is going to result in discrimination. How? We're not defunding any of the adoption agencies
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that allow same-sex adoptions. The answer, according to the left, was, well, because this regulation
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is now allowing traditional couples to adopt through these adoption agencies, because of that,
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what they are really doing is they are allowing these Catholic agencies to continue to discriminate.
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So the federal government has to force the Catholic agencies into the box that we want them to be in,
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or they have to shut down. And we would prefer that they shut down to children being adopted by
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traditional couples through a Catholic adoption agency. Okay, that is government compulsion,
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and the left wants that sort of government compulsion. My answer to that, what the left
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would say to this is, well, you know, if they're discriminating, they shouldn't be funded by the
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federal government. And the answer to that is, again, you do not have control over freedom of
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association, determining that you do not want to fund a group because they have a different take
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on who should associate from whom. That's a recipe for disaster, because how are you going to like it
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when the federal government is controlled by someone more conservative than President Trump on social
00:20:53.100
issues? And they just decide to ban all federal funding for adoption agencies that adopt out to
00:20:57.960
same-sex couples, because they could easily do that, too, and then just ignore the Supreme Court,
00:21:01.440
or maybe the Supreme Court is controlled by conservatives at that point. The question here,
00:21:05.700
and it really has come up a lot right now, is what is the government there to do? And there are really
00:21:10.280
three visions. One is the vision of the left, which is the government is there to cram down their
00:21:13.900
social values on you and your church and your life and your children. And then there is the vision of
00:21:17.920
sort of the libertarians, and I count myself in this group, and that is government is there to do none of these
00:21:21.540
things. Government is there to stay out of your business, and you're there to build a social fabric
00:21:24.620
in the absence of government, and culture precedes politics. And so the law is not going to protect
00:21:30.260
you from the impositions of the left if the left takes over the government. And then there is the
00:21:34.120
view of a lot of cultural conservatives who are saying, listen, there is no common space anymore.
00:21:37.400
You libertarians, you're assuming that there's a common space, and that if we shut down government
00:21:42.160
or make it smaller, that the left will then leave us alone with the means of government. No, we need to
00:21:46.800
take over the means of government and use it for ourselves. I think that that is an interesting debate,
00:21:50.880
but I think that in the end, I don't know how you get to, in today's day and age, explaining to
00:21:55.940
Americans that the government should be forcibly imposing itself in favor of conservative social
00:22:00.940
issues when the government is currently, from Republicans and Democrats, cramming down social
00:22:05.780
issues leftism on the American people. It seems to me a lot easier argument and a lot more logical
00:22:10.040
argument, and one that I think is true to Founding Vision, to say at least on the federal level,
00:22:13.680
that the government does not have a role in all of this leave people alone.
00:22:16.460
Yeah. Okay, one last quick question. People who are going into 2020 scared of what they're hearing
00:22:21.580
from Democratic candidates, scared of where the country is going, especially if President Trump
00:22:26.400
loses, can you give some practical advice for people not to lose hope, not to disconnect just
00:22:32.540
because this election cycle happens to be just as crazy as the last one, how to stay informed and
00:22:37.640
engaged and encouraged despite all of the madness that's going on?
00:22:41.340
You know, they're all going to be crazy from here on in. I mean, all the election cycles,
00:22:45.400
it's not going to end. The left continues to grow more radical, which means every election cycle is
00:22:49.020
going to feel like life and death. The fact is, history continues. The Bible is pretty clear about
00:22:52.800
this. So from a religious point of view, you know, until we reach sort of apotheosis, either from the
00:22:57.860
Jewish or the Christian point of view, it's going to be, you know, turtles all the way down. Well, what that
00:23:02.480
means is that the real work that we all have to do on the ground as religious people, and politics still
00:23:06.240
matter. It still matters if you vote. It still matters if you talk to your friends. Most politics is done at the
00:23:10.380
social level, and that means be a good person, get involved in your church, give to charity, teach
00:23:14.420
your children values that matter. And if the government makes it unlivable for you in a
00:23:18.680
particular place, well, then you have to either fight back against the government politically or
00:23:22.200
you have to move. You know, this battle is going to continue. I do think that over time, the woke
00:23:27.800
leftist tyranny that is being promulgated by so many members of the Democratic Party, I don't know that
00:23:32.820
the American people have a taste for it. It is really boring. It is really annoying. And I think that
00:23:37.460
one of two things is going to happen. Either the left is going to have to get over this or the
00:23:40.960
country is headed for a breakup. And if the country is headed for a breakup, then that's where it's
00:23:44.960
headed. I promise you that the it's so funny, folks on the left think that folks on the right are going
00:23:49.940
to, you know, are interested in separation over tax rates. No, if you're going to prompt any sort of
00:23:54.500
separation in American culture, it will be on the issue of religion. I don't know a religious person in
00:23:59.000
America who isn't willing to to leave over what they believe God wants of them. And if the left keeps
00:24:05.480
pushing this stuff, if I have to choose between obeying a government that tells me to violate my
00:24:08.540
religious dictates and following my religious dictates, that is not a choice at all.
00:24:12.480
Right. Amen. Thank you so much, Ben. I really appreciate your insight.
00:24:16.800
Always a wealth of insight and knowledge from Ben, and I really appreciate him being here.
00:24:21.580
If you haven't seen the interview that I did with Ben for the Sunday special a while ago,
00:24:28.940
I think it was back in April that it came out. I encourage you to go watch that.
00:24:35.280
It's on YouTube. Of course, it's on his podcast as well. I think it is. I think it's just titled
00:24:43.340
my name. And so you can go listen to that. And here is a little clip of the interview.
00:24:49.220
I think that this makes you the fourth woman we've ever had on the show out of some 40 guests. So
00:24:53.760
we're doing great. And the first pregnant woman.
00:24:55.620
Right. This is the first time I've interviewed two people at once.
00:24:59.680
Yeah, exactly. Well, if she keeps her mouth shut, it'll be fine.
00:25:05.700
I'm due in June. The end of June. So got a little bit of time.
00:25:09.080
And obviously you already know the sex of the baby.
00:25:11.860
Although we can't actually judge its gender, correct?
00:25:15.300
Okay. But I don't want to be cisgender. So I don't want to assume the sex of the baby.
00:25:18.540
I think it's probably going to be safe to assume. I'm just going to go ahead and put that on her.
00:25:25.960
Good to know. So how are you feeling? I mean, this is first baby. So how are you feeling about all this?
00:25:29.580
So are you in the impatient phase yet? Just get it out phase yet?
00:25:32.000
Kind of. I mean, you remember, I'm sure your wife was pregnant twice. Once you get in the third trimester where I am now, you're just like, okay, I'm huge.
00:25:39.780
I'm uncomfortable. I'm so ready to be done with this. I'm not even quite there yet. I'm only 28 weeks.
00:25:45.640
And so it's when you get into that like 35 and beyond that you're like, I am done being pregnant. But it's good. Obviously, it's a blessing and I'm enjoying it.
00:25:55.940
I mean, the good news is that it's not a baby yet, right? I mean, like it's not, we've been told that it's not a baby until it's like five.
00:25:59.940
It's just, it's just like this club. It's so weird because I actually feel her moving around, but I'm trying to reconcile that with the idea that she's just this blob of tissues. It's, it's crazy how that happens though.
00:26:10.560
So you're the host of a show called Relatable. For folks who haven't seen it, go check it out over at Blaze TV.
00:26:16.100
And you've been in the headlines a lot over the last couple of years, particularly for having a thing called a sense of humor, which I believe the left has near made illegal at this point.
00:26:26.520
And well, one of your most famous non-humorous bits, it was not satire. I was informed. It was just fake videos, bad editing. Was you making fun of Alexander Ocasio-Cortez?
00:26:36.580
Yes, which was really easy to do because all we had to do was take things that she actually said and ask her questions and make her answer them to show, hey, this lady doesn't actually know very much.
00:26:48.460
And so we didn't even have to satirize it all that much. We didn't have to, you know, take her words out of context that much.
00:26:54.880
We just kind of showed, hey, this is who she is and what she believes. And it worked.
00:26:58.800
I mean, I was, I was pretty amazed by the media reaction to that because it is astonishing to me how they suddenly forget what a sense of humor is.
00:27:05.020
They forget what a joke is. Like suddenly it's the jokes don't exist.
00:27:07.920
You're perfectly serious and you deliberately cut her out of context to make her look bad.
00:27:11.980
Not as a joke, just because you're a vicious personality.
00:27:14.780
Yeah, it was dishonest. And I think that we all knew that.
00:27:17.440
I love the sanctimony too of them saying, well, we know that it's satire, but there were a lot of people online that just didn't know it.
00:27:24.120
So we need to explain this to you, that this interview that was spliced together from a PBS interview that you saw last week, that it's not real.
00:27:31.600
I mean, it couldn't have been more obvious that it was a joke. I was surprised by that.
00:27:35.620
I knew people wouldn't like it, but I was surprised a little bit by people pretending not to know that it was spliced together in a humorous way.
00:27:45.080
Yeah, I was, I was shocked by that too, especially because this has been a typical thing that's been done on Comedy Central forever.
00:27:50.040
I mean, Stephen Colbert does it on his show regularly with President Trump where he pretends that he's interviewing Trump and then he cuts it out of place.
00:27:55.400
It really is astonishing. So you gained a lot of notoriety based on that. What's, what's life been like since the rise of your notoriety in the last couple of years?
00:28:03.920
I mean, why don't we start from the beginning? How did you get to the point where you do what you do now?
00:28:08.700
Yeah. So it was about three and a half years ago. So fall of 2015, I was in PR and social media. I just graduated from college.
00:28:15.200
2014. I lived in Athens, Georgia, which is a college town where the University of Georgia is. And I was extremely interested in this election, probably not for the first time in general.
00:28:28.080
I wasn't interested in politics for the first time in general, but this election seemed extremely important in that our nation was at a tipping point, especially for young people.
00:28:38.360
And I was surrounded by these college students and surrounded by other people my age who knew a lot and were well educated, but had no idea what we're going, what was going on in the primaries, no idea who they were going to vote for, if they were going to vote at all.
00:28:50.920
And I just kind of looked around and thought, OK, this is this is a problem. I've got all these smart people around me and they have no idea what their values are.
00:28:57.760
And so I just kind of randomly had an idea and called my mom one day in the fall of 2015 and said, I think that I want to go to sororities and tell them why they should vote in the primaries.
00:29:09.020
I just think that's something that I would like to do. And so I started reaching out to the presidents of these sororities at the University of Georgia saying, hey, I've got a nonpartisan presentation.
00:29:18.600
It was nonpartisan about why you should vote in the primaries. I want to do it for free.
00:29:22.820
I just want to tell you guys why this is important. And so I started doing that.
00:29:27.740
And then I started getting a bunch of emails from students saying, hey, can you answer my question about this?
00:29:32.160
And I just I loved it. I kind of fell in love with that idea of helping people form their beliefs.
00:29:37.200
And then I kind of ditched the nonpartisan thing pretty quickly, started the blog, The Conservative Millennial.
00:29:42.740
After a few months of doing that and just writing posts and then doing videos that kind of took off at the end of 2016, the beginning of 2017, we moved to Texas.
00:29:51.880
That's when I got a job at the Blaze. And that's when it kind of became a full on career.
00:29:56.200
So it was about a year and a half of, you know, speaking for free, writing for free, doing my own thing until I got hired somewhere.
00:30:04.020
And then it turned into a media career that I was actually doing.
00:30:08.080
OK, guys, thank you so much for listening. We will be back here on Monday.