The Ben Shapiro Show


A Good Man With A Gun | Ep. 412


Summary

The fallout from the Texas shooting, Democrats are out over their skis again, plus some new information on the identity of the shooter and the man who took him down, a real American hero. Ben Shapiro's take on all that and much more on this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro! Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code: CRIMINALS to receive 20% off your first month with discount code CRIMIALS. Use the discount code "criminals" at checkout to receive $5 and contribute $5 to CIMPC if you purchase $10 or more of your choice in Cimicality Redeeming Redeemers, a program that helps reduce crime and keep people safe in our communities by preventing criminals from getting their hands on guns. CIMICALS REDUCING RACIST RACISM, Criminally Criminally Responsible Criminals is a program run by the Center for Victims of Trafficking and Trafficking, a non-profit organization that provides support for victims of crime and their families through food, shelter, legal services, and legal fees. CIMICIC has a mission to help victims and families affected by crime, education, and law enforcement services. Cimicicide prevention, prevention, and early intervention efforts to prevent, respond to, and respond to the effects of crime, and educate the public about the dangers of gun violence, and provide support to those in need. . The program is funded by a federal agency that serves as a resource for first responders, law enforcement, first responders and first responders. , law enforcement and emergency medical care, and other first responders in response to the needs of first responders across the country, including law enforcement agencies, emergency medical services, emergency medicine, and emergency services, law and social services, mental health, and the military, and community, and public schools, among other agencies, to respond to crime and public health, to provide resources to those most in need of immediate support and support, including those who find themselves in a difficult place in a violent, traumatic trauma, and trauma centers, and those who need immediate support. in order to provide support and care for those in the most immediate needs. In addition to providing support, the program also provides training, counseling, counseling and support for the most vulnerable, and support in the community, including the elderly, children, and families in the immediate and post-recovery efforts.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Fallout from the Texas shooting Democrats are out over their skis again, plus some new information on the identity of the shooter and the man who took him down, a real American hero.
00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:15.000 All right, so many things to talk about today, and I am looking forward to things I like today because there's some fun things I like.
00:00:20.000 In fact, it's so much fun that I actually didn't want to do the show today.
00:00:22.000 I just wanted to be on Twitter, hashtagging accurate movie summaries.
00:00:25.000 But we'll get to that in a little while, because some of these are really funny.
00:00:27.000 But before we get to any of that, and I really do want to talk at length about the hero who shot the Texas Massacre guy, the evil shooter who walked into a church and murdered 26 people, including somewhere between 12 and 14 children.
00:00:41.000 The guy who shot him is an amazing story and really gives the lie to a lot of democratic talking points.
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00:01:59.000 Okay, so.
00:02:01.000 We begin today with the update on all the information that you need to know about this awful shooting in Texas.
00:02:07.000 So, we now know, we now know, that the reason this man had guns, the reason this piece of human debris had guns, is because the government screwed it up.
00:02:15.000 So whenever you hear people talking about why the government needs more regulations, just remember this was a government screw-up in the first place.
00:02:22.000 This man was legally forbidden from owning or buying guns.
00:02:25.000 He was legally forbidden from doing so.
00:02:27.000 That's not stopping people like Ted Lieu, Democratic congressman from California, from legitimately walking out on a moment of silence for the victims in Congress.
00:02:36.000 He walked out on it in order to quote-unquote draw attention to gun control.
00:02:39.000 It's really just grandstanding.
00:02:40.000 I went after him on Twitter for it.
00:02:42.000 I asked him if he made a habit of walking out on funerals so that he could go to soup kitchens, or does he wait until after the funeral in order to do the things that he thinks are worthwhile?
00:02:49.000 Well, he wasn't, you know, happy to hear that.
00:02:52.000 Instead, he said that he was standing up for everyone because we need more gun control.
00:02:55.000 And this, of course, has been the consistent call from everyone on the left.
00:02:58.000 Gun control, gun control, gun control.
00:03:00.000 The government failed here.
00:03:02.000 Here is what we now know, according to Mediaite, okay?
00:03:05.000 We have our answer.
00:03:06.000 In a statement released by the Air Force today, a spokesperson confirmed that the shooter, his criminal convictions did not make their way into the federal database.
00:03:14.000 According to the Texas Tribune, the Air Force has launched a review of how the service handled the criminal records of former Airman Devin P. Kelly following his 2012 domestic violence conviction.
00:03:22.000 Kelly was convicted by a general court-martial on two charges of domestic assault against his wife and stepson under Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
00:03:31.000 He served 12 months in confinement at the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in California before being released with a bad conduct discharge in 2014.
00:03:38.000 He was busted down to E1.
00:03:41.000 Federal law prohibited him from buying or possessing firearms after this conviction.
00:03:45.000 He had a gun anyway.
00:03:47.000 Why did he have a gun anyway?
00:03:48.000 Because initial information indicates his domestic violence offense was not entered into the National Criminal Information Center database by the Holloman Air Force Base Office of Special Investigations.
00:03:59.000 Okay, so this is the fault of the Air Force that did not enter the information into the computer.
00:04:02.000 We've seen situations like this before.
00:04:05.000 I believe that it was, I think it was the Charleston shooter, who also was forbidden from buying guns, and there was a screw-up in the background check.
00:04:13.000 Just saying there ought to be background checks doesn't make the background checks actually happen.
00:04:16.000 And now, we know that there were tons of red flags about this, again, human piece of crap.
00:04:21.000 Here are some of the things we now know about this guy.
00:04:23.000 And again, this is why it's so foolish to suggest that the best way to weed out mass shooters is by confiscating guns from hundreds of millions of Americans.
00:04:32.000 Instead, we ought to be looking for red flags, because almost invariably, the only exception I can think of, actually, is the Las Vegas shooter.
00:04:38.000 Every one of these guys has a bunch of red flags in their history.
00:04:41.000 So here are just some of the red flags for this shooter in Texas.
00:04:46.000 in Sutherland Springs.
00:04:48.000 Number one, he tried to date underage girls, and I mean really underage.
00:04:51.000 According to the New York Post, when he was 18, he tried dating a 13-year-old and later reportedly suggested she live with him and his wife as a topless maid, and that 13-year-old suggested that Kelly essentially stalked her.
00:05:02.000 His court-martial for domestic violence was not just him hitting his wife or hitting his stepson.
00:05:05.000 He cracked the skull of his infant stepson multiple times, okay, on purpose, according to court records.
00:05:12.000 He assaulted his then wife.
00:05:13.000 She divorced him, he remarried.
00:05:15.000 He was arrested for animal cruelty a few years back.
00:05:17.000 He was arrested at a Colorado Springs RV park for punching a dog, throwing it, and dragging it.
00:05:22.000 He was given probation after an hour-long standoff with police resulted in his arrest.
00:05:26.000 So you beat the living crap out of a dog, and then you beat the living crap out of your infant stepson.
00:05:30.000 And not only don't you end up in jail for life for these offenses, you then can buy a gun because the government screws it up.
00:05:35.000 So there are a bunch of problems here.
00:05:36.000 The first problem I would suggest is why are you out on the street after you beat the living crap out of a dog?
00:05:41.000 Why are you out on the street after you fracture repeatedly an infant's stepson's skull?
00:05:46.000 He should be in jail for attempted murder, presumably.
00:05:49.000 Instead, he's out on the street.
00:05:50.000 Not only that, the government fails to report his criminal activities so that the laws that are on the books don't work, right?
00:05:56.000 You saw actual people like David Frum saying yesterday, I think we should bar all mentally ill people and people with criminal convictions for domestic violence from owning guns.
00:06:03.000 Good idea, David.
00:06:04.000 That's been part of federal law for the last 20 years.
00:06:07.000 It's already been part of it.
00:06:08.000 It doesn't help if the government can't enforce.
00:06:10.000 This is the problem with how the government, how people on the left like to think about gun control.
00:06:14.000 The government is big and inefficient.
00:06:16.000 It lets things slip through the cracks.
00:06:17.000 Whether you're talking 9-11, the JFK assassination, or this shooting, they let things slip through the cracks they should have known about.
00:06:23.000 And then later, we say, well, if we just passed a few more laws, that would fix it.
00:06:26.000 Making a big and inefficient government bigger and more inefficient is not the way to stop these things.
00:06:31.000 The only way to stop these things is to either give the government fewer things to do and make them better at it, or, presumably, to allow armed citizens to walk around with guns.
00:06:41.000 And this is where we get to the final thing here.
00:06:43.000 This guy was threatening his mother-in-law.
00:06:44.000 So his mother-in-law went to the church.
00:06:46.000 This was apparently sort of a family dispute.
00:06:48.000 There was a domestic situation going on within this family.
00:07:15.000 The suspect's mother-in-law attended this church.
00:07:18.000 We know that he had made threatening text from him.
00:07:24.000 And we can't go into details about that domestic situation that is continuing to be vetted and thoroughly investigated.
00:07:34.000 But we want to get that out there that this was not racially motivated.
00:07:37.000 It wasn't over religious beliefs.
00:07:40.000 There was a domestic situation going on within the family and the in-laws.
00:07:43.000 We can confirm that the suspect did not have a license to carry.
00:07:46.000 The suspect did have a non-commissioned, unarmed private security license similar to a security guard at a concert type
00:08:14.000 Situation private security background checks including fingerprints and criminal history checks with the Texas Crime Information Center and National Crime Information Center databases were checked and he was clear
00:08:28.000 Okay, so this, again, is a government failure, and we're told that the solution here is government.
00:08:33.000 I'll tell you, sometimes there's just not a solution.
00:08:37.000 This is something that the left will say about terrorist attacks, and I think there is some truth to it.
00:08:41.000 I think there are measures that we can take to minimize the possibility.
00:08:44.000 But when you are talking,
00:08:46.000 We're good to go.
00:09:08.000 was owning a firearm.
00:09:09.000 John Adams talked about the fact that everyone in Massachusetts was mandated, mandated by law in colonial times, to own a gun for purposes of being part of the state militia, protecting their lives and their liberty.
00:09:19.000 This has always been part of the American creed, and I think it's a very good part of the American creed.
00:09:24.000 Elizabeth Warren, however, says the NRA is responsible.
00:09:26.000 You see a bunch of people on the left saying things like, the NRA just doesn't care if there are terrorist attacks.
00:09:29.000 The NRA doesn't care if there are mass shootings.
00:09:31.000 The NRA is behind these things.
00:09:33.000 It benefits the NRA somehow for there to be mass shootings.
00:09:36.000 Well, here is the lie for that.
00:09:38.000 This gives the lie to that.
00:09:39.000 The guy who shot and presumably killed this shooter, this mass shooter.
00:09:46.000 The mass shooter was shot, I guess, three times.
00:09:48.000 Twice he was wounded.
00:09:49.000 And the man who wounded him was this man right here, Stephen Williford.
00:09:53.000 So, Stephen Williford is a lifelong NRA member.
00:09:57.000 Stephen Williford is an NRA instructor.
00:09:59.000 And here is Stephen Williford.
00:10:00.000 Stephen Williford represents everything that the left hates about American gun ownership.
00:10:05.000 But here they have to pay homage to him because he actually saved lives.
00:10:07.000 I mean, this guy could have gone with his gun and shot up many more places if Stephen Williford hadn't hopped in.
00:10:12.000 I mean, this is an amazing thing that happened in Texas that wouldn't happen nearly anyplace else.
00:10:16.000 There were two separate people who came running to the situation, carrying guns, and then chased this guy down with their truck, knowing that not only was he armed and dangerous, he just murdered dozens of people.
00:10:26.000 Every time I heard a shot, I was thinking that was a sign to someone else.
00:10:29.000 That shot
00:10:46.000 He was shooting at another person every time I heard a shot fire.
00:10:52.000 And I didn't have time to put shoes on.
00:10:54.000 All he had for a shot for me is my head because I was behind the truck and using it for cover.
00:11:00.000 Okay.
00:11:02.000 And we exchanged fire and he hit the neighbor's car's windshield.
00:11:06.000 He hit the neighbor's house.
00:11:09.000 And he got into the vehicle and I fired at him again.
00:11:15.000 And he fired two more shots through his side, well actually he fired two shots through his side window first.
00:11:22.000 And I noticed the two distinct pistol shots coming through the sides of the window.
00:11:28.000 And I fired my AR-15 again and it took the window down, it fell.
00:11:34.000 Okay.
00:11:34.000 And I took another shot.
00:11:36.000 And at this point I'm shooting where his head would be.
00:11:39.000 Okay, and he ended up actually shooting and wounding the guy twice, once in the leg and once in the body.
00:11:44.000 He was using his own rifle, the rifle that the left wants to ban, the AR-15.
00:11:48.000 He was using his rifle to take down this guy.
00:11:51.000 This guy obtained his guns illegally.
00:11:52.000 Again, for the ninth time, this guy obtained his guns illegally.
00:11:55.000 What would have happened if he had the guns and Stephen Willefer did not have the guns and was not an NRA instructor?
00:12:00.000 I was scared to death.
00:12:02.000 I was.
00:12:25.000 I was scared for me, and I was scared for every one of them, and I was scared for my own family that just lived less than a block away.
00:12:33.000 I'm no hero.
00:12:37.000 I am not.
00:12:42.000 I think my God, my Lord, protected me and gave me
00:12:49.000 The skills to do what needed to be done.
00:12:52.000 And I just wish I could have gotten there faster.
00:12:56.000 I didn't know.
00:12:57.000 I didn't know what was happening.
00:13:19.000 But being scared is what makes him a hero, right?
00:13:21.000 I mean, he was scared.
00:13:21.000 He ran out there barefoot, loading his gun while he was running toward the sound of the fire.
00:13:27.000 And he was not the only person who did this, by the way.
00:13:29.000 He wasn't the only guy.
00:13:30.000 But the fact that, you know, he's a deeply religious person, obviously.
00:13:34.000 The fact that the left does not... I'm seeing a lot of folks on the left today, and, you know, it's not everyone on the left, obviously, but I think that I'm seeing a lot of folks on the left today who are disparaging the thoughts and prayers stuff.
00:13:44.000 And they're also suggesting, how could you be religious?
00:13:46.000 This is such a, it's such a, honestly, teenage take on religion.
00:13:50.000 How could you be religious when people in a church just got shot and killed?
00:13:54.000 The problem of theodicy, the problem of how does evil exist in a world where God has providence?
00:13:58.000 How does that work?
00:13:59.000 This has been something that religious thinkers have been thinking about for legitimately thousands of years.
00:14:03.000 This is nothing new.
00:14:04.000 And religious people have come to the conclusion there are certain things that we just don't understand about God's action.
00:14:08.000 That doesn't mean that God doesn't have a plan, and it also doesn't mean that I don't have a duty.
00:14:13.000 And it's that duty, that godly duty that drove Stephen Williford.
00:14:16.000 He is a hero.
00:14:17.000 He did own a gun.
00:14:18.000 He needed to own the gun.
00:14:19.000 He was a member of the NRA.
00:14:20.000 He was an NRA instructor.
00:14:22.000 I keep hearing the NRA is behind these shootings, the NRA likes these shootings.
00:14:26.000 Name for me now how many members of the NRA have been responsible for mass shootings.
00:14:31.000 The answer is zero.
00:14:32.000 The whole purpose of the NRA is to arm people like Stephen Williford, not to arm people like this piece of crap who shot up the church.
00:14:39.000 And again, the law barred that guy from owning a gun.
00:14:42.000 What the left wants is for the law to also bar Stephen Williford from owning a gun.
00:14:46.000 How would that have gone, exactly?
00:14:48.000 I want to give some time to the other hero in this situation, a guy named Johnny Langerdorf, and talk about a misconception of my own in a second.
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00:16:07.000 Okay, so the other hero of this story is a guy named Johnny Langerdorf.
00:16:10.000 So what happened is that Stephen Willefer charged out of his house after being told by his daughter there was some shooting going on at the church.
00:16:16.000 He charged out of his house barefoot.
00:16:18.000 Uh, with his gun, trying to load his magazine as he went, pulled it out of his gun safe because he keeps it safe like most gun owners do.
00:16:24.000 He charged out and he started shooting.
00:16:26.000 The shooter jumped in his car, I think it was a truck, and began driving away.
00:16:31.000 And Williford flagged down Johnny Langerdorf and jumped in Langerdorf's car and they started chasing the guy.
00:16:36.000 Remember, these are civilians chasing a bad guy.
00:16:39.000 I can promise you, in Los Angeles, when there's a bad guy, civilians don't chase the bad guy.
00:16:42.000 They wait for the cops to come.
00:16:44.000 In Texas, okay, I've lived my entire life in LA.
00:16:46.000 The same thing is true in Cambridge, where I lived for three years.
00:16:48.000 In Texas, when there's a bad guy, people understand that they may be the only, the last dividing line between that bad guy and bad thing happening, and bad things happening, and so they hop in their car and they follow.
00:16:58.000 It's one of my favorite things.
00:16:58.000 There's a movie called Hell or High Water, which is kind of a fun movie, and it's one of my favorite things in that film, is that there's a bank robbery, and
00:17:05.000 Everyone at the bank pulls out a gun, and then they all begin chasing down the bank robbers.
00:17:10.000 It's one of my favorite things in the film.
00:17:11.000 And that was true to life, because that's exactly what happened in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
00:17:15.000 Here is Johnny Langerdorf talking a little bit, and I believe this is his wife, talking with Anderson Cooper about whether he would have done this again if he knew that the guy was armed and dangerous.
00:17:25.000 It's not surprising at all.
00:17:27.000 He's a great guy, great man.
00:17:29.000 He's very courageous and super humble about the whole situation, and that's just awesome.
00:17:32.000 It doesn't surprise me at all.
00:17:34.000 That's just the way he is?
00:17:37.000 Yes.
00:17:39.000 Johnny, knowing what you know now, I mean, would you do the same thing over again?
00:17:45.000 I would do it a hundred times over, sir.
00:17:48.000 Okay, so, you know, one of the things that I was gonna say about misconceptions, look at this guy.
00:17:51.000 I mean, he's got a neck tattoo, he doesn't look like he's necessarily, you know, going to the Ivy League colleges, and it's very easy for those of us who live on the coast to look at somebody like Johnny Langerdorf, neck tattoo, and say, oh, what a hick.
00:18:02.000 What a hick.
00:18:04.000 This is the kind of guy, you know, not everyone with a neck tattoo is Johnny Langerdorf, but not everyone without a neck tattoo is Johnny Langerdorf either.
00:18:11.000 And the fact is this guy is the guy who is on the spot and he did the right thing.
00:18:14.000 Don't judge a book by its cover.
00:18:15.000 And that's a good lesson to people like me who sometimes make judgments based on things like this as well.
00:18:21.000 Heroism comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes, but it does share a belief system.
00:18:24.000 And that belief system is that when someone has to stand between the evil and the innocent, you're the person who has to stand up and do something.
00:18:32.000 Okay, and we can treat government like it's God, we can pretend that government is capable of protecting us against all evils, it's just not true.
00:18:39.000 It is just not the case that government can protect us against all evils, and that's why an armed populace is very often necessary to stop this stuff.
00:18:46.000 You know, the Washington Post put out an article yesterday with the headline, one thing mass shooters have in common, they're men with guns.
00:18:52.000 Well, yes, in a mass shooting situation you would assume they have guns.
00:18:56.000 And you would assume that criminals are typically men.
00:18:59.000 But there's something they neglect.
00:19:01.000 In a mass shooting situation, the person who typically stops the mass shooting is also a man with a gun.
00:19:07.000 Whether it's a police officer or whether it is a civilian, as in this case, and it is much more likely that an NRA member is going to stop a mass shooting than that an NRA member is going to perpetrate a mass shooting, despite what the left would have you say.
00:19:19.000 Well the media, of course, don't care about any of this.
00:19:21.000 The media don't want to hear any of this.
00:19:23.000 The media simply want to talk gun control.
00:19:24.000 And if you don't believe in media bias, let me show you this clip of President Trump in South Korea.
00:19:28.000 So he's in South Korea now, and he was asked by an NBC News reporter, I guess he's still in Japan, he's heading South Korea today, but he's asked by an NBC News reporter about
00:19:39.000 You've talked about wanting to put extreme vetting on people trying to come into the United States, but I wonder if you would consider extreme vetting for people trying to buy a gun?
00:20:01.000 Well, you know, you're bringing up a situation that probably shouldn't be discussed too much right now, but it's okay if you feel that that's an appropriate question, even though we're the heart of South Korea.
00:20:12.000 If you did what you're suggesting, there would have been no difference three days ago, and you might not have had that very brave person who happened to have a gun or a rifle in his truck go out and shoot him and hit him and neutralize him.
00:20:31.000 And I can only say this, if he didn't have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, he would have had hundreds more dead.
00:20:41.000 And are you considering any kind of gun control policy going forward?
00:20:44.000 Can you look at the city with the strongest gun laws in our nation is Chicago.
00:20:51.000 And Chicago is a disaster.
00:20:53.000 If this man didn't have a gun or a rifle,
00:20:56.000 You'd be talking about a much worse situation in the great state of Texas.
00:21:00.000 Okay, Trump is of course right, and this is why so many people on the right like Trump, is because, you know, at least Trump is and Hillary actually applies here.
00:21:07.000 Because if you imagine Hillary Clinton in this situation, she's pushing for widespread gun confiscations in all likelihood.
00:21:11.000 She's praised Australia's gun buyback program and confiscation program.
00:21:15.000 She's praised Canada's gun laws.
00:21:17.000 Hillary Clinton would be saying something very, very different.
00:21:20.000 I don't think so.
00:21:39.000 It is emanating from her.
00:21:41.000 The difference between owning a gun and entering the country is I have a right to own a gun to protect my life and my family's life.
00:21:47.000 I do not have a right to become a citizen of the United States.
00:21:50.000 Extreme vetting is necessary for people coming into the country because they don't have a right to enter the United States because we have to protect ourselves.
00:21:57.000 That same decision to protect ourselves undergirds our ability to own a gun and use a gun in our own self-defense.
00:22:04.000 Okay, it is the exact same reason.
00:22:06.000 The reason you have extreme vetting with regard to people entering the country is the reason why you don't have extreme vetting for American citizens who have not committed a crime and want to own a gun to protect themselves.
00:22:16.000 That doesn't mean no vetting.
00:22:17.000 Of course no one wants to have criminals with guns.
00:22:19.000 Of course no one wants to have mentally ill people with guns.
00:22:22.000 And Ted Cruz makes a really good point here.
00:22:24.000 Ted Cruz is specifically asked about people who are violating the law by owning guns, and here's what Senator Cruz has to say.
00:22:30.000 This should have been stopped beforehand.
00:22:33.000 Under federal law, it was illegal for this individual to purchase a firearm.
00:22:39.000 He had a conviction for a crime that's punishable by more than a year in prison, and he had a conviction for multiple domestic violence crimes.
00:22:47.000 Both of those, it's already ineligible.
00:22:50.000 But, several things happened.
00:22:51.000 Number one, the Air Force, the Obama administration, didn't report those convictions to the NCIS database.
00:22:59.000 That's an endemic problem.
00:23:00.000 It's a problem with the federal government.
00:23:02.000 It's a problem with the states.
00:23:03.000 And so, when he went in to buy the guns, they ran the background check.
00:23:07.000 And they didn't find it because it wasn't in the database.
00:23:10.000 Okay, and Cruz here is exactly right, of course.
00:23:12.000 Now, a lot of people have been saying, well, you know, if we just had gun confiscations like Australia, then the number of mass shootings would go down.
00:23:18.000 The problem is this.
00:23:19.000 Mass shootings are so statistically uncommon.
00:23:21.000 I'm not saying they're uncommon in the sense, like, colloquially, they never happen.
00:23:24.000 But they're statistically uncommon as compared to other types of murder, and so there is no good comp in terms of looking at a system where, okay, there's a massive gun confiscation and the number of mass shootings went down.
00:23:33.000 It may have gone down from three to zero.
00:23:35.000 It wasn't like Australia had mass shootings every five minutes.
00:23:37.000 Australia had very few mass shootings, and now they have no mass shootings.
00:23:40.000 But, their murder rate actually declined at a lower rate than the U.S.
00:23:43.000 murder rate over the same period since their gun confiscation.
00:23:46.000 The U.S.'
00:23:47.000 's murder rate declined faster, even though more people were purchasing guns, not fewer people.
00:23:51.000 Okay, before I go any further, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Blinkist.
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00:25:34.000 Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers.
00:25:56.000 Don't get me wrong.
00:25:56.000 Prayers are important.
00:25:57.000 They really are.
00:25:58.000 But can we just be honest for a moment?
00:26:00.000 And this isn't about religion.
00:26:01.000 It's not about politics.
00:26:03.000 Democrats do it too.
00:26:04.000 President Obama has responded similarly in other shootings.
00:26:07.000 And it's not about religion.
00:26:08.000 As I said, I'm not anti-thoughts and prayers by any means.
00:26:12.000 I grew up in a very, the very religious Deep South.
00:26:15.000 A Baptist who went to a Catholic school where we prayed at least four times a day, plus mass on Fridays and church on Sundays, sometimes twice.
00:26:23.000 So spare me the anti-religion tweets.
00:26:25.000 You can keep them.
00:26:26.000 I won't even read them.
00:26:27.000 I don't care.
00:26:28.000 These God-fearing Christians were in church.
00:26:31.000 They were already praying.
00:26:34.000 Thoughts and prayers did not stop an oversight from the justice system which enabled a guy who attacked his stepson and assaulted his wife from getting a gun.
00:26:43.000 Thoughts and prayers didn't stop a troubled person from buying assault-grade weapons that took the lives of 26 people in an instant.
00:26:51.000 Okay, so we can stop it there.
00:26:52.000 Again, this is not what thoughts and prayers are designed to do.
00:26:55.000 Prayer is not always designed to get you what you want.
00:26:58.000 If people prayed and they got what they want, God would be a gumball machine.
00:27:01.000 That's not what religious people believe.
00:27:03.000 I assume that Don prays.
00:27:04.000 I mean, he says he does, but I'm not sure what he
00:27:07.000 Expect from God.
00:27:08.000 Again, the problem of the Odyssey has been one that religion has taken up time and time again.
00:27:12.000 When it comes to human evil, the idea here is that human beings have free will and we can pray that those human beings don't use that free will in the worst possible ways.
00:27:19.000 We can pray that God protects us, but God sometimes says no.
00:27:23.000 I have a difficult time praying.
00:27:24.000 I pray three times a day.
00:27:25.000 It's not something that I particularly enjoy doing because in Judaism,
00:27:39.000 Prayer can be relatively formulaic.
00:27:41.000 When I say relatively, I mean very formulaic.
00:27:43.000 You say the same prayer three times a day.
00:27:44.000 The idea is that it's supposed to be almost like a mantra.
00:27:47.000 It's supposed to provide you a leaping off point to actually think about God and think about your relationship with Him.
00:27:52.000 But prayer can be very difficult unless you're actually just sitting there concentrating on what the purpose of prayer is.
00:27:56.000 So, I've really done a lot of thinking myself, for myself, about what I think prayer does, particularly prayer in the aftermath of tragedy.
00:28:04.000 I think that prayer does really three things.
00:28:06.000 I think prayer does three things.
00:28:07.000 First,
00:28:09.000 It reminds us that while it is our job to strive to prevent evil from succeeding each day, God's plan is not ours, right?
00:28:16.000 Half of prayer is about recognizing that your plan is not God's.
00:28:19.000 You are not God, right?
00:28:20.000 The point of prayer is for you to say to God, I understand that you are the creator of the universe and you are beyond my logic.
00:28:26.000 I don't understand.
00:28:27.000 I mean, the ineffability of God is a sacred notion in virtually all major religions.
00:28:31.000 The idea that you are not in control of the universe and
00:28:34.000 The suggestion that you can prevent all bad things from happening with prayer, that's not what prayer is for.
00:28:37.000 That's why religious people get upset when they hear things like what Don Lemon is saying, because he's misconstruing what prayer is for.
00:28:42.000 No one who believes in prayer believes that prayer is going to prevent a Justice Department oversight.
00:28:47.000 No one believes that that's what prayer is designed to do.
00:28:49.000 One of the things prayer is designed to do is remind us not to be utopian, not to believe that we can stop every tragedy from happening, not to believe that there's any power in the universe that is capable of implementing
00:28:59.000 Our will, specifically, and making it the rule for everyone.
00:29:02.000 Prayer is designed to do the reverse.
00:29:03.000 It's designed to remind us not to be utopians in what Karl Popper would call a sort of utopian negative model that would help us run roughshod over the rights of other people.
00:29:14.000 Because, remember, half of what Don Lemon is saying here about we need to change the law, every law is an imposition on somebody.
00:29:22.000 So whose rights are you imposing on?
00:29:24.000 Prayer reminds us that you don't actually get to do that.
00:29:27.000 All the time, right?
00:29:28.000 That utopia is not something that you can aim for while violating the rights of others because God in the end is the actual judge, right?
00:29:34.000 When somebody dies, Jews say, Baruch Dayan Emet, right?
00:29:37.000 Baruch Dayan Emet.
00:29:38.000 So that's what Jews say.
00:29:39.000 What that means is blessed is the true judge, meaning that I don't get to make the call as to whether something that just happened is according to God's plan.
00:29:46.000 Only God can make that call and I may not understand it and I can mourn it.
00:29:48.000 I mean, we cry at funerals.
00:29:50.000 We're not crying because we question God's justice.
00:29:53.000 We're crying because it's sad, right?
00:29:55.000 We may not understand.
00:29:56.000 In the same way that children cry when their parents are trying to implement justice and the kids don't understand.
00:30:02.000 We don't understand.
00:30:02.000 There's no way for us to understand.
00:30:04.000 That's what faith is.
00:30:05.000 Okay, prayer also helps us see the value in other human beings and convey that we understand that value to other human beings.
00:30:11.000 You know, we're atheists, we're irreligious people, see prayer as nothing but empty verbiage.
00:30:15.000 It doesn't accomplish anything.
00:30:16.000 How many people have been bettered by communities that pray?
00:30:20.000 Right?
00:30:20.000 Prayer takes place in communal settings, not just individual prayer.
00:30:22.000 I think that individual prayer is valuable, but Judaism believes, and I believe so does Christianity, that communal prayer is more valuable than individual prayer.
00:30:29.000 That individual prayer is useful, but you're supposed to get together in a community.
00:30:32.000 Because the idea is that that community draws other people in.
00:30:35.000 How many bad people, how many would-be shooters, have been converted by going to places like churches and praying with others?
00:30:42.000 A lot.
00:30:43.000 How many evil people have been drawn into the nexus of a community that prays and sees the value of other individuals before God?
00:30:50.000 That has prevented bad action.
00:30:51.000 You never see it.
00:30:52.000 You never see it because you only see the bad stuff.
00:30:54.000 Remember with the Charleston, South Carolina shooter?
00:30:57.000 There was a report that came out shortly afterward, I'll have to look it up, where this piece of garbage white supremacist who murdered a bunch of people in the church, he said he had trouble pulling the trigger because when he went in there, there were all these black people who were really nice to him and were praying with him.
00:31:11.000 He was evil enough that he was able to overcome that drop.
00:31:13.000 There are a lot of people who aren't.
00:31:14.000 There are a lot of people who are turned away from dark paths by communities that pray together and value one another.
00:31:19.000 Prayer is valuable in a communal setting.
00:31:21.000 But neither of these things has to do with what the left believes.
00:31:23.000 The left believes the only thing that is actually impactful in the world is not
00:31:28.000 Our communities reaching out to each other, those soft kind of touches, that stuff doesn't work.
00:31:33.000 They don't believe that us accepting a godly justice is a worthwhile thing.
00:31:37.000 We should fight against that.
00:31:38.000 We should be like Ahab, fighting against God, trying to stab through the pasteboard mask of Moby Dick.
00:31:43.000 That's what we should be doing every day.
00:31:45.000 And there's something to the notion of struggling with God.
00:31:47.000 I mean, Judaism believes that, you know, that struggle is ongoing.
00:31:51.000 But the idea in the end is that God is right and you're wrong, right?
00:31:54.000 But in any case, that's not an excuse for inaction when action is called for.
00:31:58.000 But here is the problem, right?
00:32:00.000 Prayer, obviously, is supposed to motivate you to go out and do better things.
00:32:02.000 It's supposed to motivate you to do better.
00:32:03.000 It's supposed to be fuel in your gas tank.
00:32:05.000 But the left assumes that if I disagree with the direction you're steering the car, I don't have fuel in the gas tank.
00:32:11.000 That prayer didn't put fuel in my gas tank.
00:32:13.000 Prayer was useless because I don't agree that you ought to be aiming the car at gun control.
00:32:17.000 Well, I don't believe you should be aiming the car at gun control because I don't think that the additional laws that you've been proposing are useful.
00:32:22.000 By the way, I have said when I think an additional law might be useful or at least called for after Las Vegas.
00:32:27.000 I said that I would not vote against a law that prevented the sale of bump stocks.
00:32:34.000 So it's not like I'm against ever- I'm in favor of better enforcement against people who have been mentally ill and have been in mental hospitals owning weapons.
00:32:43.000 Cruz pointed out, and he's right, that there were like 40,000 people who illegally owned guns in the United States and 44 of them were prosecuted.
00:32:49.000 There was 40,000 people who tried to illegally buy guns and Obama prosecuted 40 of them.
00:32:53.000 And we need to implement the laws that we already have on the books.
00:32:56.000 We don't need new laws.
00:32:57.000 But that doesn't mean that my prayers are ineffective.
00:32:59.000 It means that I'm not praying for the same thing that you are, or the action to which I have devoted myself is not the action you choose.
00:33:06.000 But your suggestion that my prayer is not accepted by you, I'm not praying to you and I don't care what you think of my prayer.
00:33:11.000 When I pray, I'm talking to God, not to you, because you're not God and neither is government.
00:33:16.000 You know, this brings up a sort of broader conversation about the role of religion in public life.
00:33:20.000 I want to get to that in just one second because there's a big controversy that's now broken out.
00:33:25.000 Over a Hillsong pastor and abortion.
00:33:28.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at NatureBox.
00:33:31.000 Listen, we all want to eat better.
00:33:32.000 When it comes to snacks, that usually means for you, you're hungry at the office and you grab a candy bar and you shove it down your face and now you're fat.
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00:33:40.000 At the aisle, you got a bag of potato chips and a bunch of garbage snacks and you just need that quick boost of energy because four o'clock, you're just trying to get to five.
00:33:46.000 And so you do that and now you have to work it off on the treadmill if you work it off at all.
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00:34:04.000 That one is a particular favorite around the office as well.
00:34:08.000 I get favorites from everybody else in the office, because not all the NatureBox snacks are kosher, but these ones are very popular around the office, and I've been told they are just delicious.
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00:34:28.000 And they rotate these snacks all the time.
00:34:30.000 The list is really, really long of these snacks, and they are all apparently really delicious.
00:34:35.000 And they have like almond butter.
00:34:37.000 We're good to go.
00:35:02.000 This brings up a broader critique of the role of religion.
00:35:05.000 So it's really funny.
00:35:05.000 The left says prayers are good, but only if they are directed in our direction.
00:35:10.000 Now, what people who are conservative believe, conservative religious people, is that the direction for the prayer is basically toward God, which means that you actually have to look at what God's agenda is in particular circumstances.
00:35:20.000 God is not just something out there that is non-discoverable.
00:35:23.000 The Bible is pretty clear about this.
00:35:25.000 In Deuteronomy, Moses specifically says,
00:35:28.000 It is not in heaven where you can't understand it.
00:35:30.000 It's down here.
00:35:31.000 God, the whole purpose of having a revelation is that you understand things.
00:35:34.000 Now, not everyone has to believe in revelation.
00:35:35.000 You don't have to believe in revelation, right?
00:35:37.000 You can be skeptical of revelation.
00:35:38.000 But if you say you believe in revelation, at the very least you should be adherent to the revelation.
00:35:42.000 And if you say you're a Bible-believing person, you should at least believe in the Bible.
00:35:45.000 In the same way that if you believe in global warming, you should at least believe in global warming.
00:35:49.000 Whatever you're going to believe in, believe in it.
00:35:51.000 Otherwise, you're a liar.
00:35:52.000 Well, Hillsong, there's a megachurch pastor.
00:35:55.000 I don't know Hillsong particularly well, but there's a guy named Carl Lentz, apparently, who's quite popular and dresses in very odd fashion.
00:36:04.000 And he was on The View wearing glasses that he apparently got from a Forever 21.
00:36:09.000 And a medallion that I don't know what it represents, but he looks kind of like Marky Mark from 1991.
00:36:15.000 In any case, Carl Lentz is a very popular pastor.
00:36:18.000 Maybe he's great, I don't know.
00:36:19.000 But what he said here was not great, right, on The View.
00:36:21.000 So he's on The View, and he is asked about abortion, saying abortion is sinful.
00:36:26.000 And here is his answer.
00:36:28.000 This is where religion does fail.
00:36:30.000 Religion doesn't fail just because you don't support gun control.
00:36:32.000 Religion does fail if your Bible says abortion is bad, and then you give this answer.
00:36:37.000 And it makes our church special.
00:36:37.000 So it's not a sin in your church to have an abortion?
00:36:39.000 That's the kind of conversation we would have.
00:36:44.000 Finding out your story, where you're from, what you believe.
00:36:47.000 Work through it.
00:36:48.000 Yeah, I mean, God's the judge.
00:36:49.000 People have to live to their own convictions.
00:36:51.000 And I think if I have to tell you...
00:36:55.000 That's such a broad question.
00:36:57.000 To me, I'm going higher.
00:36:58.000 I want to sit with somebody and say, where do you believe?
00:37:01.000 So it's not an open and shut case with you.
00:37:04.000 Some people would say it is.
00:37:05.000 I think, to me, I'm trying to teach people who Jesus is first, find out their story.
00:37:09.000 Before I start picking and choosing what I think is sin in your life, I'd like to know your name.
00:37:15.000 Nonsense.
00:37:16.000 Nonsense.
00:37:18.000 Sin is still sin.
00:37:18.000 That doesn't mean that you have to be mean to people who have sinned.
00:37:21.000 The whole purpose of talking to people is to find out their story.
00:37:24.000 But we have to start from a certain basic premise.
00:37:26.000 Yes, abortion is a sin.
00:37:28.000 Of course abortion is a sin.
00:37:30.000 And soft-pedaling it for the left is not going to win you adherents or converts.
00:37:33.000 Soft-pedaling bad, you know, evil is not going to... Soft-pedaling sin is not going to draw more people to you.
00:37:39.000 It's going to alienate more people from religion because that's what gets people to believe in this I'm spiritual but not religious nonsense.
00:37:45.000 Okay, whoop-dee-doo, you believe in the force.
00:37:47.000 Congratulations.
00:37:48.000 I mean, can you move objects with your mind?
00:37:49.000 I don't really care if you're spiritual but not religious.
00:37:51.000 The question is what standards you uphold.
00:37:54.000 One of the purposes of religion is to uphold a higher standard, because God has demands of you, not just you making demands of God.
00:38:00.000 This guy got a lot of flack for it, as well he should.
00:38:02.000 Alicia Krauss on Daily Wire went after him.
00:38:04.000 She's invited him to come into the Daily Wire offices.
00:38:07.000 I'm sure we would all like to chat with him and find out whether he actually believes abortion is a sin or not.
00:38:11.000 Okay.
00:38:11.000 So I have some things I like and some things that I hate that I want to talk about today, and it's going to be fun things I like, so you're going to want to stick around for that.
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00:38:34.000 Also,
00:38:34.000 Be sure to tune in to watch our next episode of The Conversation on Tuesday, November 14th at 5 p.m.
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00:38:41.000 And if you're a subscriber at The Daily Wire, then you can write in and send your questions directly to Michael Mowles, who will give you the world's worst answers, but they will probably be amusing.
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00:39:45.000 Okay, so I'm going to go directly to things I like and things I hate today, I think.
00:39:48.000 So, things I like.
00:39:49.000 There is a book that I read, very quick read, by a guy named Alan Jacobs.
00:39:54.000 It's a bestseller now called How to Think.
00:39:56.000 And it is sort of a short-form review, essentially, of ways that we are biased and how best to conquer those biases.
00:40:05.000 I love reading these kinds of books, right?
00:40:06.000 I've recommended Daniel Kahneman's book before.
00:40:08.000 I've recommended the book Flow and the book Drive.
00:40:10.000 I've recommended a lot of books about how it is that we have cognitive biases, and this book is about that, but it's also about why we shouldn't despair of our ability to overcome these challenges to bias.
00:40:21.000 The book, again, is How to Think by Alan Jacobs.
00:40:23.000 It's like 150 pages, very slim, very easy to read, very conversational.
00:40:28.000 Go ahead and check it out.
00:40:29.000 It's a fun read.
00:40:30.000 Okay, other things that I like.
00:40:31.000 So, just for fun today,
00:40:33.000 John Podhortz and I like to go back and forth on movies.
00:40:35.000 John is the editor over at Commentary Magazine.
00:40:38.000 And so, not related to that, I decided that I was going to start a hashtag called Accurate Movie Summaries.
00:40:43.000 Kind of taking a lead from the famous accurate movie summary about The Wizard of Oz, which is three friends gather to kill witch, then band together to kill again.
00:40:54.000 Or, Young Girl Kills Witch, then bands together with three friends to kill again, which is the summary of Wizard of Oz.
00:41:00.000 So, the hashtag, accurate movie summaries, was trending on Twitter, and I do love some of these, so I have to read you some of them.
00:41:07.000 Noseless guy has a unhealthy obsession with a teenage boy.
00:41:11.000 That would be Harry Potter.
00:41:13.000 Young boy who sees ghost talks to a ghost.
00:41:16.000 Fair.
00:41:16.000 That's the entire summary of the Sixth Sense.
00:41:19.000 For those who have seen Life, skip the next 15 seconds, or who have not seen it because it's a spoiler.
00:41:24.000 A space octopus kills some astronauts and all of humanity, but more importantly, the astronauts.
00:41:29.000 This one I love.
00:41:30.000 This is Ratatouille.
00:41:31.000 Rodent cooks dinner.
00:41:32.000 Critics wowed.
00:41:33.000 Fair.
00:41:34.000 This one I did about It's a Wonderful Life.
00:41:37.000 Man bankrupts bank in subprime mortgage scheme, is bailed out by well-meaning but economically ignorant friends.
00:41:43.000 Cheating woman, sleeps with homeless guy on ship, ends up losing jewelry.
00:41:47.000 That's Titanic.
00:41:49.000 Old man grows beard, convinces little girl he's Santa Claus, which is Miracle on 34th Street.
00:41:54.000 This one is Mrs. Doubtfire, it's pretty great.
00:41:56.000 Cross-dressing unemployed man disguises himself to stalk his estranged family.
00:41:59.000 Family eventually takes him back in.
00:42:01.000 This one I think is my favorite.
00:42:03.000 See if you can guess the movie.
00:42:05.000 Man gets stuck on an island after plane crash.
00:42:07.000 Wife moves on with another man.
00:42:09.000 Man moves on with volleyball.
00:42:12.000 Cast away.
00:42:13.000 And then, of course, this one.
00:42:15.000 Self-righteous juror cudgels more sober-minded colleagues into releasing a patricidal murderer.
00:42:19.000 That, of course, is twelve angry men.
00:42:21.000 I also... There are a bunch of them.
00:42:24.000 This one is pretty great.
00:42:26.000 You've heard this one before, I'm sure.
00:42:27.000 Teenager destroys military installation at the behest of an elderly religious zealot with the aid of a wanted criminal, killing millions of active military service members.
00:42:35.000 Star Wars.
00:42:38.000 That is indeed.
00:42:39.000 I will say I like this one too.
00:42:42.000 This one is a little harder.
00:42:43.000 A professor prevents Hitler from opening a historic Jewish artifact that would have killed Hitler and ended World War II.
00:42:48.000 That's Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
00:42:51.000 Because think about it for a second, guys.
00:42:52.000 Think about it.
00:42:53.000 If he just lets Hitler get the actual Lost Ark, and Hitler opens that sucker, then Hitler dies at the end of Indiana Jones.
00:42:59.000 The whole thing is a giant misdirect, right?
00:43:00.000 He's chasing the Ark, chasing the Ark, chasing the Ark, and then it turns out the Ark is his friend.
00:43:04.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:43:07.000 So, there are a lot of things that are out there to hate today, but I choose John Kerry.
00:43:12.000 John Kerry, John Kerry!
00:43:15.000 Former Secretary of State, and he says that it's Donald Trump's fault that North Korea is seeking a nuclear weapon.
00:43:26.000 I was just out water sporting in my yacht, John Kerry.
00:43:32.000 Go.
00:43:35.000 I think what the president needs to do is make sure that he's not feeding into North Korea's fear of regime change or of a unilateral attack or otherwise.
00:43:49.000 And I think the rhetoric to date has, frankly, stepped over the line with respect to the messages that are being sent.
00:43:55.000 It's given North Korea a reason to say, hey, we need a bomb, because if we don't have a bomb, we're going to, you know,
00:44:02.000 Not be able to protect ourselves, and they'll come after us.
00:44:06.000 Okay, so, no.
00:44:07.000 Okay, the idea that you're mean to North Korea, and so that's why they're developing a bomb.
00:44:11.000 They started developing the bomb under the auspices of the Clinton administration, which signed a North Korean framework in 1994 and said the problem was ended.
00:44:17.000 They continue it through the Bush administration.
00:44:18.000 They accelerate it under the Obama administration.
00:44:21.000 Say, wouldn't it have been nice if there had been a Secretary of State who could have done something about that?
00:44:24.000 I'm just trying to think of a secret— Oh, wait.
00:44:26.000 He was Secretary of State, wasn't he?
00:44:28.000 My bad.
00:44:29.000 Also, I do have—you know, I'm going to be mean to John Kerry now, but he deserves it after slandering our troops in Vietnam and spending his entire career being awful at everything.
00:44:37.000 The man's face is at a stage of full structural collapse.
00:44:40.000 It's like a mudslide in the Hollywood Hills at this point.
00:44:43.000 At a certain point, you do too much Botox, and you start to look like Lurch.
00:44:48.000 I mean, pretty amazing.
00:44:49.000 Okay.
00:44:49.000 In any case, deconstructing the culture, we'll do for five seconds here.
00:44:54.000 First, I do want to mention that there's a new report from the New Yorker about Harvey Weinstein and how he was attempting to cover up his sexual assault and sexual harassment.
00:45:03.000 Ronan Farrow released a blockbuster expose.
00:45:06.000 Multiple women have accused him, Weinstein, of rape.
00:45:09.000 And now, apparently, Weinstein had these extensive efforts to silence people.
00:45:12.000 He hired private investigators and ex-spies to suppress allegations.
00:45:16.000 They hired Kroll, one of the world's largest corporate intel companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run by former officers of Mossad, and they used false identities to meet with Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her.
00:45:31.000 He directed efforts to kill accusation stories from the New York Times and New York Magazine, and he used his lawyer, David Boies, to lead his effort to prevent the New York Times from doing any of these reports.
00:45:42.000 David Boies, as you remember, was an attorney
00:45:45.000 Okay, so, um,
00:46:12.000 Should we save the rest of Deconstructing Culture for next week?
00:46:14.000 Are we out of time?
00:46:15.000 We're out of time, so we'll have to save some Deconstructing Culture for next week.
00:46:18.000 I was going to do Post Malone, but we'll have to save that for next week.
00:46:23.000 And remind me, and we'll do it next week as well.
00:46:25.000 Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest news.
00:46:28.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:46:28.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.