Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 19, 2019


Ep 139 ｜ Ben Shapiro


Episode Stats

Length

30 minutes

Words per Minute

220.81017

Word Count

6,672

Sentence Count

356

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

25


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the podcast. Today, I am talking to my friend Ben Shapiro. You may have heard of him.
00:00:07.000 He kind of like just got into the game, has this little podcast. I'm just doing my best to kind of,
00:00:11.960 you know, give him a boost. Okay, if you didn't really know who Ben Shapiro was,
00:00:15.760 and you thought I was serious, I am not serious. This is someone who really sets the pace for
00:00:22.740 young conservatives. That doesn't mean that every young conservative agrees with him. I find myself
00:00:26.940 agreeing with him on the majority of things that he talks about. But regardless of where you land on
00:00:31.840 the conservative spectrum, Ben Shapiro has really shattered the, can I call it a glass ceiling if
00:00:39.600 we're just talking about conservatives? Kind of. I feel like there has been kind of this ceiling
00:00:44.200 that conservatives can really hit as far as mainstream success goes. But he has broken the
00:00:49.720 mold. I'll say that. He's broken the mold when it comes to conservative commentators. He has been
00:00:55.000 a pioneer in the young conservative movement, the original, the conservative millennial,
00:01:00.240 if I do say so myself. And also he's been someone who has stood up for biblical values and biblical
00:01:06.800 principles when it's been especially unpopular. And that's something that we as Christians,
00:01:12.060 even though I disagree with him, obviously, on a lot of theological issues, that's something that
00:01:17.540 we as Christians can admire and be thankful for, that there has been a representative
00:01:21.120 in the media that has as big of a platform as he does that is willing to talk about really
00:01:27.460 contentious issues like same-sex marriage. And so today I just wanted to get his insight on where
00:01:32.620 we are as a country as far as the intersection of faith and politics goes, what we can be looking
00:01:39.080 forward to in 2020 as far as the election goes, and then also the issues that we're facing when it
00:01:48.120 comes to the limiting of the freedom of religion and religious people's role in the civic dialogue
00:01:55.100 that just sometimes seems filled with darkness and craziness.
00:01:59.700 Ben, thanks so much for joining me.
00:02:01.740 You bet.
00:02:02.620 Okay. So I listened to your book, my husband and I both did, and I know it came out a few months ago,
00:02:08.160 Right Side of History, and so you're not here to promote that. But I do think that the ideas that
00:02:12.820 you talked about, particularly that our country, that the West in general was founded on and fueled
00:02:17.740 by Judeo-Christian values, is going to be a topic that we talk about probably increasingly,
00:02:23.620 especially over the next couple of years or so with the election going on. Because as you've pointed
00:02:29.100 out so many times, they're values that people don't just forget about, but tend to demonize as if
00:02:36.640 they are the source of all of our problems rather than all of these good things. And so my question is,
00:02:42.460 particularly, how do we convince our fellow Christians and the people in the Jewish community
00:02:48.740 that these are the principles that our country was founded on? Because unfortunately,
00:02:52.840 we kind of see this progressive social justice secular mentality taking over even in the faith
00:02:59.400 communities.
00:03:00.440 You know, I think that it's important for folks, particularly in faith communities,
00:03:04.120 to understand the relationship between their faith and the modern world. There seems to be this
00:03:07.720 weird divide that is broken out in both progressive Jewish and progressive Christian communities
00:03:11.420 that says all the good stuff that you like is the result of secularism. All the bad stuff that
00:03:15.620 makes you feel bad about your stuff, that's the result of religion. And of course, that's not
00:03:18.860 historically accurate. The Enlightenment happened in a particular time and in a particular place
00:03:22.980 after a couple of thousand years of philosophical development. The notion that all of this just
00:03:28.080 sprang full blown into the mind of John Locke in 1760 is a bunch of nonsense. And the fact that
00:03:34.060 everybody on the left seems to have accepted this premise because it's flattering to them.
00:03:37.760 And then they separate off atheistic movements that have no religious backing, like communism or
00:03:43.120 Nazism and fascism, like those sorts of movements. They separate those off from secularism and claim
00:03:48.720 that they have religious roots. It's pretty astonishing and it's a rewrite of history. That's
00:03:52.040 what the book was seeking to do, was at least tell a historical story about how we got here.
00:03:56.340 And that's a story I think everybody at least needs to address before they get to the idea that
00:04:01.320 modern technology, science, prosperity, free markets, that all these things just sort of magically
00:04:06.160 happened in 1780 with the rejection of God. And at one point I felt like our churches and probably
00:04:11.920 our synagogues as well, although I'm less familiar with the political side of, or the political views
00:04:17.120 of the Jewish community, they used to hold fast to those values, know where they came from, and be the
00:04:23.200 part of the country that was advocating for those values the most. But now it seems like
00:04:30.200 religious people, their stance is kind of weakening on those things, at least among Christians who have
00:04:36.540 bought into the lie that being progressive is being compassionate. So what do you think happened
00:04:41.520 there? I would say especially over the past 10 or so years to make that happen.
00:04:45.780 Well, I mean, I think that one of the things that has happened is that the conservative religious
00:04:50.100 folks have basically allowed a division to take place between the area of religion and the area of
00:04:57.340 technology and modern living. We've sort of accepted the Stephen Jay Gould definition of the universe
00:05:02.260 that religion is here to explain the why and everything else is here for the how. And I don't
00:05:07.980 think that that is purely accurate, because the reason that we are asking how is because we have a
00:05:12.400 reason why. In other words, meaning and the content of our lives are inextricably intertwined. And the
00:05:19.120 religious community sort of accepted this basic premise that if we kept religion to its prescribed
00:05:24.080 boundaries, we would be left alone. So we could live our religious lives. And then everybody on
00:05:27.740 the left would basically leave us alone. And we could agree to enjoy the same TV shows and have
00:05:31.660 the same technology. And then they wouldn't bother us anymore. And that obviously has not happened.
00:05:36.460 Instead, the religious community basically tried to keep to that bargain. And the left
00:05:40.740 ever more encroachingly decided to intervene in the meaning space and decided to rewrite religion
00:05:46.780 itself. So now religious people felt like they were under attack and started to either stand up more
00:05:52.200 strongly and get more vocal or to cede ground. And so the religious community decided it was going to
00:05:56.800 many parts of the religious community decided to cede ground. It was uncomfortable to talk about
00:06:01.180 these things. It was alienating to talk about hot button issues of the day, particularly with regard
00:06:05.320 to, for example, abortion and same sex marriage. These things became uncomfortable because they were
00:06:08.860 afraid of alienating folks. Whereas and because the left kept saying all of this is regressive,
00:06:13.700 all of it is retrograde, that it's anti women's rights. And as we all know, all of the great
00:06:19.300 wonders of the modern world were brought about by modernity. They weren't brought about by these
00:06:23.440 old, terrible ideas. Again, it's that stark division between the old ideas and the good stuff
00:06:27.840 that the left sought to draw. I think that the religious community was was complicit in that,
00:06:31.560 unfortunately. And now we're seeing the results of it. I've seen an exchange, especially in
00:06:36.400 Christianity, an exchange of the God of scriptures with the God of self. And they still use, especially
00:06:44.940 among progressive Christians, they still use biblical texts to try to justify their love of
00:06:50.380 abortion or love of socialism or love of same sex marriage or something like that. But really, it's
00:06:55.880 a disregard for what the Bible says. It's a disregard for biblical principles. And it seems like
00:07:01.220 theological liberalism always is tied to political liberalism. But what I've noticed is that Christians
00:07:08.660 are very scared to speak into that, even conservative Christians, because they don't want to be called
00:07:14.140 bigots. They don't want to be called whatever it is that their friends are, their friends are
00:07:19.940 calling people that they disagree with. Do you think that there is, do you think that now is an
00:07:26.940 opportunity for religious people to talk to those that they share a faith with, but disagree with
00:07:32.380 politically? Or do you think our churches and our synagogues, our religious places need to be almost a
00:07:38.080 safe space, a safe space without the partisanship and the craziness that we're seeing in our political
00:07:45.380 dialogue? Well, I mean, I do think that you do have to speak what the principles of the Bible are.
00:07:50.080 And those do include commandments with regards to things that people find uncomfortable, right?
00:07:53.760 There's a difference in that and saying that the government ought to push things. So, for example,
00:07:57.220 on homosexuality, the Bible is pretty clear about how it feels about homosexual activity.
00:08:00.880 I think most conservatives, most Christians are not in favor of the government regulating that sort of
00:08:05.040 behavior from the top down. I think that, you know, the attempt to drive sin out of the public
00:08:09.580 square via government is usually unsuccessful, although this is a rich and interesting debate
00:08:14.040 that's happening right now between, for example, Sourabh Amari and David French that I think is worthy
00:08:18.400 of addressing. But with that all said, you know, I think that it's, we sort of have to define what
00:08:24.380 exactly we're talking about. What I've seen is a deliberate confusion in terms. So, if we are talking
00:08:28.680 about the secular moral basis of a society, then citing the Bible is not going to be particularly
00:08:34.580 useful in that conversation. And so, what you see from the progressive left is, well, how do you
00:08:38.880 justify that you, a religious person, think this is a sin? Now, religious people say, well, there's
00:08:42.880 an easy answer to that. The Bible says it's a sin, so it's a sin. And then the left will say, well,
00:08:47.280 yeah, but then you say it's a sin. Why do you think it's immoral? Okay, now what they're trying
00:08:50.700 to do is make you justify God, effectively speaking. And that's something that most religious
00:08:56.960 people are wary to do because they don't judge God. God judges us. If you're talking about public
00:09:02.020 policy, then it becomes a different story. If you're talking about how the government ought to
00:09:05.860 address things, then you have to get into things like externalities, how the government should
00:09:08.840 perceive certain human behavior. What I've noticed is that the left wants to conflate the two because
00:09:12.360 for the left, the only good or evil is defined by the government itself. This is why, for example,
00:09:17.240 in the Obergefell case, the Supreme Court talked about how it was important that the government
00:09:21.560 grant, you know, these quote-unquote innate human dignities to particular activity. Well, when I'm
00:09:26.280 looking for innate human dignity, I don't look to the government for that. I look to the government to
00:09:29.800 protect my rights. I look to the government to stop other people from doing bad things to me.
00:09:33.400 I don't look to the government to grant me a sense of dignity or inner meaning. But for the left,
00:09:37.820 the only sense of dignity or inner meaning can be granted by government. And so every discussion
00:09:41.900 becomes, if you refuse to allow government to do X, aren't you denying people their dignity? And it's
00:09:47.240 like, well, no, I'm saying that the government doesn't have a role there and your dignity is up to
00:09:51.660 you, right? I'm not forcing my opinion on you, but my belief that what you are engaging in is a sin,
00:09:57.140 that's frankly none of your business. Like if you don't like it, tough. It's always a debate that
00:10:04.420 I find absolutely puzzling. People will ask me, for example, I'm a religious Jew. That means that
00:10:08.560 I think that homosexual activity is a sin. This is very obvious. All orthodox Jews believe this,
00:10:13.580 right? This is not. But this has become obviously a very hot button issue because to say that means
00:10:17.660 that you're quote-unquote a bigot. And what I always say to folks is, listen, I can give you natural law
00:10:22.000 reasons why I think the Bible considers particular sexual activity a sin. Because not only does it
00:10:27.100 consider homosexuality a sin, it considers premarital sex a sin. It considers adultery a
00:10:30.940 sin. It considers a wide variety of activities. Sex with particular relatives is spelled out in
00:10:36.320 Leviticus. All of those things are considered sinful. But if you're asking me just in order to
00:10:43.140 browbeat me, my question is this. Why do you care what I think? I'm not trying to impose my views on you.
00:10:48.220 So why are you suddenly so concerned with how I feel about you? Are you really that insecure that
00:10:52.600 you need my imprimatur of approval on your behavior? I'm not trying to stop you from doing
00:10:56.460 anything. What the left has tried to do is make people who are conservative on these social issues
00:11:01.540 or biblical on these social issues feel guilty about feeling the way that they do, even if those
00:11:06.560 people are not imposing in any way in public life on those issues. And even when we just want to bring
00:11:11.020 up our kids the way we want to bring up our kids. I think that it also goes back to a confusion
00:11:15.440 on the left of rights versus privileges. And we see that a lot with the Equality Act,
00:11:20.700 that they believe that people of a certain inclination have a right not to be denied a
00:11:26.320 particular service by a doctor, for example, who maybe he is against performing a sex change
00:11:33.540 surgery or prescribing some kind of hormonal therapy to a minor. Well, according to the Equality Act,
00:11:39.360 unless I'm wrong and you can correct me on this, there wouldn't be probably a lot of conscience
00:11:44.100 protections for that particular doctor who objects to this. There would be some, but not
00:11:49.860 as many as we would like as advocates of religious liberty. And so I think that we really see their
00:11:54.960 concern, that it's not so much of this kind of personal insecurity. It's that they believe they
00:12:00.300 have a right to be, I don't know, their identity to be affirmed in every even surgical way that they
00:12:05.980 want it to be affirmed. And so I think for Christians and for conservatives, this is a very confusing,
00:12:12.940 it's a very confusing time to have to combat some kind of line of thinking like that. It's really
00:12:19.540 hard for me to wrap my mind around how you believe that that's a right, but the religious liberty of a
00:12:24.700 doctor or a counselor, for example, is not. Well, I think that what the left has successfully done
00:12:29.600 is they have attempted to equate everything with the civil rights movement of the 60s. So basically,
00:12:34.580 the gay rights movement is exactly the same as the civil rights movement. Gay rights are exactly the
00:12:38.180 same as being black. Being gay is exactly the same as being black. It's an innate characteristic that
00:12:42.760 is unchangeable and unchanging, despite the fact that the attitude of religious people is that
00:12:48.160 your behavior is what counts, not your innate inclination. There's no way for anybody to judge
00:12:52.800 anybody's innate inclination. I'm perfectly comfortable. I've always found it bizarre that
00:12:56.240 the left wants to ask whether the drive to have sex with particular people is biological or not.
00:13:00.680 I'm happy to assume that it's biological. I think the evidence suggests that it's some biological
00:13:04.020 and some environmental. That has nothing to do with the religious perspective on whether it's okay
00:13:07.740 to commit a particular act or not. The attempt to conflate these two very different sort of
00:13:13.580 categorizations into one categorization and then to treat them the way that we've treated race in the
00:13:17.540 country is a compelling argument that the left uses. But this is where I think that the conservative
00:13:23.320 right and religious people also get themselves into trouble. And that is what they will very often
00:13:27.200 say about the Equality Act, for example, is they'll say, well, we need conscience protections.
00:13:30.660 We need specific protections of religious people. And what the left will say is, okay,
00:13:34.120 so you're a bigot and you're just hiding behind God, right? Because if you weren't religious and
00:13:37.860 you didn't want to perform the sex change surgery, then we would just say you're a bigot. But now
00:13:41.600 you're religious and you hold up this really old book at me and you say that you don't want to
00:13:45.960 perform the sex change surgery and I'm supposed to take that more seriously. And so my argument has
00:13:49.500 always been, no, it's not about freedom of religion. It's not about freedom of conscience. This is
00:13:54.520 about freedom of association. I don't believe that the government has the inherent right to compel me
00:13:59.620 to do anything that I do not want to do so long as I am not forcibly damaging someone.
00:14:04.140 I think that you can use basic John Stuart Mill, which is a libertarian principle the left
00:14:07.340 supposedly agrees with. I think you can use basic freedom of association arguments without falling
00:14:12.560 into the trap of saying, no, there are special protections for religious people and now it's
00:14:16.020 religious rights versus transgender rights. No, everybody has the same rights. And that is,
00:14:19.940 you do not have the right to demand service from me and I do not have the duty to provide a service
00:14:23.520 to you. And this is true regardless of who you are. And if that results in things that you don't
00:14:27.480 like, good news, there are other doctors other places. Good news, there are other businesses
00:14:31.140 other places. This is why I've stated for the entirety of my career that while I would have
00:14:35.340 voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and 1964 because I believe that overall it is a good act,
00:14:43.160 I certainly would not have agreed with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act that apply
00:14:46.500 to private business. I think that is a wild overstep on the part of the federal government
00:14:49.640 and it has opened the door to government control of every aspect of our lives and you're starting
00:14:54.160 to see the left use it that way. So should we make the argument, what is the context in which
00:14:59.660 we should be making the argument for religious liberty? Because I think that's something that
00:15:04.060 Christians talk about a lot and are scared of is the removal of our religious liberty and the freedom
00:15:09.720 of conscience. Do you think that's basically when you're discussing this kind of issue with the
00:15:14.120 left, something that we really shouldn't bring up because it doesn't resonate with them?
00:15:18.020 Yeah, well, I do think that the idea that there is a specific religious liberty is a corollary to the
00:15:22.680 small government that the founders envisioned. So there are two clauses that people read separately
00:15:26.580 but really are the same clause. One is the free exercise clause and one is the freedom of,
00:15:32.440 there's the free exercise of religion and then there's the separation of church and state, right?
00:15:35.500 There's the, there's no establishment of religion and also there's the free exercise clause.
00:15:39.700 You can worship however you want. Well, those two things ought to be read in tandem, meaning that
00:15:44.120 the government cannot establish a religion from the top down so you have the freedom to worship,
00:15:48.760 right? It is not that the government separates church from state so that the state can now cram down
00:15:52.600 its views on your religion. The idea was that there was going to be a small government and that
00:15:56.540 that government would not have the power to encroach on your practice of religion. I think
00:16:00.120 that conservatives ought to be focusing on that, that first argument, meaning leave me the hell
00:16:03.900 alone. I think that is a much more compelling argument than my religious practice is important
00:16:08.060 to me and so you should leave me alone because for folks on the left, your religious practice is
00:16:12.280 simply not important to them. They think that you're a bigot in disguise. So would we, I mean,
00:16:15.900 this is the argument actually that you saw, did you see that exchange with Senator Howley and this
00:16:21.060 judicial nominee and this judicial nominee was talking about an anti-discrimination law in his
00:16:25.320 local area and in his writings, he had compared the, in his brief for the city, he had declared
00:16:31.940 that a Christian, that basically Catholics who wanted to practice their religion were equivalent
00:16:36.700 under the law to the KKK wanting to practice their religion. And Howley was like, why are you
00:16:40.640 equating these two things? They're not the same thing. And Howley is right. But what the lawyer was
00:16:45.280 saying, and from the left perspective, this is the case, is that if you can use God to serve as an
00:16:50.300 excuse for anything you do, well then we can't have a common space because obviously your view
00:16:56.360 of God can't trump particular law, right? This is one of the kind of interesting rulings of Justice
00:17:00.460 Scalia, for example, uh, in employment division versus Smith is, is the question of a neutral law
00:17:04.900 or a broad, a general law of neutral applicability. Can that trump religious freedom? This has always
00:17:10.440 been a serious problem. So the, the answer to that problem in my view is not that religious freedom
00:17:15.200 is a special freedom. Just as I don't think that freedom of the press is a special freedom.
00:17:18.780 It is a restriction on what government can do generally. It is not that the government can
00:17:22.800 do a bunch of stuff and then we carve out this little hole right here for religious people,
00:17:25.780 or the government can do certain stuff and we carve out a little hole for the press. The idea is the
00:17:29.060 government is not allowed to do all this stuff, period. And because the government is not allowed
00:17:32.640 to do all this stuff, that is why for religious freedom is, is available to you. And it's because
00:17:38.360 we want to protect religious freedom. The government is not allowed to do all this stuff.
00:17:41.480 We have exceeded in the baseline false assumption that the government is allowed to do all this crap.
00:17:47.400 And then we're going to try and backfill these particular areas to make sure that religious
00:17:50.740 people can be free. How about the government doesn't have any role in forcing anybody to do
00:17:54.460 anything they don't want to do unless they are harming somebody. And then you don't have to worry
00:17:58.620 about whether my bakery caters your same-sex wedding. Yeah, that's a good point. And I think
00:18:02.460 when we talk about religious liberty, for some reason, the left tends to jump to the conclusion of
00:18:07.220 we want a theocracy. We do want the establishment of religion. We want everyone to agree with us,
00:18:12.260 which of course is not the argument at all that you just made or that people who talk about religious
00:18:17.360 liberty are making. Actually, it kind of seems like the left wants their own version of theocracy a lot
00:18:22.800 more than we do. I know that you probably saw Kamala Harris. She said that she's advocating
00:18:27.340 for some kind of law that would make any abortion legislation that the state tried to pass. It would
00:18:33.980 have to go through the Department of Justice to see if it matched up with Roe v. Wade, which I believe
00:18:39.340 is a violation of federalism. So it seems to me like they're the ones that actually want to impose
00:18:45.080 their ideological views on everyone, no matter what state you live in, no matter what religion you
00:18:49.920 have, no matter what your view is. It seems like they are the ones trying to impose their views on
00:18:57.380 us, not the other way around. And I think a lot of people are confused about how do we confront that?
00:19:03.800 Well, there's no question that's the case. I mean, take another example that's come up in the past
00:19:07.040 several weeks. So the Trump administration put forward a regulation that redrew Obama-era
00:19:11.280 regulations and said federal funding is now available to adoption agencies that prefer
00:19:14.720 traditional couples over same-sex couples. This seems absolutely uncontroversial to me.
00:19:19.460 They will fund adoption agencies that adopt out to same-sex couples, and they will fund adoption
00:19:23.500 agencies that do not adopt out to same-sex couples, mainly Catholic adoption agencies. And the left
00:19:28.380 went nuts. Their suggestion was that the federal government cannot fund in any way an adoption agency
00:19:34.360 that prefers traditional couples, even though there are perfectly logical secular reasons why
00:19:38.280 you might want to do that, namely that a child needs a mother and a father, and that women and
00:19:41.640 men are different, and that mothers and fathers provide different things to children, as every
00:19:45.020 social study science study ever done suggests. There are plenty of reasons for that. The left said
00:19:50.320 this is going to result in discrimination. How? We're not defunding any of the adoption agencies
00:19:55.120 that allow same-sex adoptions. The answer, according to the left, was, well, because this regulation
00:20:00.860 is now allowing traditional couples to adopt through these adoption agencies, because of that,
00:20:07.160 what they are really doing is they are allowing these Catholic agencies to continue to discriminate.
00:20:12.920 So the federal government has to force the Catholic agencies into the box that we want them to be in,
00:20:17.920 or they have to shut down. And we would prefer that they shut down to children being adopted by
00:20:22.300 traditional couples through a Catholic adoption agency. Okay, that is government compulsion,
00:20:27.240 and the left wants that sort of government compulsion. My answer to that, what the left
00:20:31.320 would say to this is, well, you know, if they're discriminating, they shouldn't be funded by the
00:20:34.720 federal government. And the answer to that is, again, you do not have control over freedom of
00:20:39.560 association, determining that you do not want to fund a group because they have a different take
00:20:44.180 on who should associate from whom. That's a recipe for disaster, because how are you going to like it
00:20:48.980 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.
00:24:16.000 Hey, thanks a lot.
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.
00:24:57.720 Yeah, I know. We'll see how she does.
00:24:59.680 Yeah, exactly. Well, if she keeps her mouth shut, it'll be fine.
00:25:02.580 Okay. I think she can do that probably.
00:25:04.560 Okay. So when are you due?
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.
00:25:11.040 Yes. It's a girl.
00:25:11.860 Although we can't actually judge its gender, correct?
00:25:13.460 One of two choices. Just a girl. Yeah.
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.
00:25:23.040 Okay.
00:25:23.200 She's a girl.
00:25:23.820 Okay.
00:25:24.300 Yeah. I'm not going to give her that option.
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.
00:26:25.160 Yes, they've completely killed it.
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.