The Ben Shapiro Show - November 09, 2017


Are We All Members Of Cults? | Ep. 414

Topics
so-called Southern Strategy cult politics chainsaw bayonet AR-15 modifications wealth disparity
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Charles Blow Mitch McConnell Linda West Michelle Obama Bush Steve Bannon Uma Thurman Michael Knowles Ed Gillespie Paul Ryan Bernie Sanders Warren Buffett Donna Brazile Barack Obama Chuck Norris Bill Gates Jeff Bezos Wink Wine and 30 more
The Democratic Tsunami, Or Just Another Ripple? | Ep. 413 Should Republicans Dump Moore? | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 415

Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

196.48

Word count

9,202

Sentence count

688

Harmful content

Misogyny

39

sentences flagged

Toxicity

54

sentences flagged

Hate speech

22

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On the one-year anniversary of President Trump's election, the left loses its mind even more than usual. And I want to talk about why bad things happen to good people, and why it's a good thing they're not like us. Ben Shapiro is a conservative commentator, writer, and host of the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show." He's also a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and other media outlets, and is one of the most well-known conservative columnists in the country. His work is widely read, especially by conservative readers, and he's a frequent contributor to conservative publications, including The Weekly Standard, National Post, and The Daily Caller. He is also a frequent guest on Fox News and other conservative media outlets. You can find him on social media at and . He can be reached at Ben.Shapiro@thedefinite.co.nz. Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your fellow podcasting friends! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about what you're listening to on the podcast. The opinions expressed in this podcast are our thoughts and opinions, not those of our employers. We do not, in any way affiliated with the podcast, recommendations, recommendations or other matters related to the podcast or products mentioned in the show. in any of our social media platforms. Thank you for listening to The Ben Shapiro Podcast. Ben's podcast, thank you for supporting the podcast! - Ben Shapiro's words are those of a friend who sent me a review of this podcast and review or review of a song by a friend of his work. - thank you Ben's work is very much appreciated. -- Thank you, Ben's review is a real thanks you're a rock star. Timestamps: 1:00 - 2:00 3:30 - I'll send me back to you'll get $20 off your first shipment of a bottle of wine? 4:15 - Thank you! 5:40 - What do you think of it? 6: What's better than that's better? 7: 8:00 What's your favorite thing? 9:00 How do you want me to send me a glass of wine or a glass or something like that? 11:30 12:30 Is that a good day?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 On the one-year anniversary of President Trump's election, the left loses its mind even more than usual.
00:00:05.000 The Republicans are still struggling to pass tax cuts, and I want to talk about why bad things happen to good people.
00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:17.000 So, what prompted me to think why bad things happen to good people is I'm sick as a dog, and I'm a good person.
00:00:22.000 Why, God, why?
00:00:23.000 But really, I am kind of sick, so bear with me today, even though my voice is lower and more manly than usual.
00:00:30.000 I appreciate you sticking with me.
00:00:31.000 So, before we jump into the leftists going absolutely insane yesterday on the one-year anniversary of President Trump winning the presidency,
00:00:39.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Wink.
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00:01:42.000 Okay, so.
00:01:43.000 I could not help but laugh, despite my personal discomfort.
00:01:47.000 I could not help but laugh yesterday, hysterically, as a bunch of people on the left went out into the streets of New York and decided to aimlessly scream at the sky.
00:01:56.000 No, I am not kidding.
00:01:57.000 It was the one-year anniversary of President Trump winning.
00:01:59.000 If you want to see my reaction to President Trump winning, all you have to do is go to YouTube and Google Shapiro laughing for two minutes, because that's exactly what happened.
00:02:06.000 We covered it on election night. 0.71
00:02:08.000 And Bill Little, a friend of ours, he said, President Trump, and it struck me for just a moment how ridiculous and hilarious that is and also that Hillary had lost. 0.55
00:02:16.000 And I just started laughing and I couldn't stop laughing for a fully two minutes. 0.57
00:02:20.000 It's pretty great.
00:02:20.000 But that is not how everyone reacted.
00:02:22.000 A bunch of folks on the left were heartbroken.
00:02:24.000 They're still heartbroken and they've lost their minds.
00:02:25.000 So yesterday in New York City, people gathered to scream at the sky.
00:02:31.000 Okay, now, these are probably the same people who say thoughts and prayers are useless, right?
00:02:35.000 Same people who say, you shouldn't say thoughts and prayers when something bad happens.
00:02:39.000 Now, they are gathering to scream at a sky where there is no God, presumably, and I could not help but laugh hysterically at this.
00:02:57.000 I don't think so.
00:03:18.000 They believe that their anger is its own justification.
00:03:20.000 So there are a couple of columns that I want to talk about today that demonstrate just how far gone the left is when it comes to policy and politics.
00:03:27.000 Now, it is possible that the Republicans can be bad enough at this to blow whatever advantages they have.
00:03:31.000 It seems like that's what they're in the business of doing.
00:03:33.000 We'll talk about what they're doing with their tax plan in just a second.
00:03:37.000 And we'll also talk about President Trump in just a second and the divide inside the conservative movement.
00:03:40.000 But on the left, they've completely lost their minds.
00:03:43.000 And so they feel that the only path back to power is twofold.
00:03:47.000 One, they have to be as angry as possible.
00:03:49.000 And two, they have to re-embrace identity politics.
00:03:52.000 These are precisely the things that brought them Trump.
00:03:54.000 It is their anger and their identity politics that caused the backlash that brought President Trump.
00:03:58.000 So maybe there's a backlash to the backlash.
00:03:59.000 That's quite possible, right?
00:04:01.000 That there was a backlash to the left's identity, politics, and rage, and that was brought about in the form of the Tea Party, and President Trump was the culmination of that.
00:04:09.000 It is also possible that there's a backlash to that backlash that's building right now.
00:04:13.000 Whatever it is, it ain't good for the country.
00:04:15.000 Two columns in particular I want to talk about today, both from the horrific New York Times.
00:04:19.000 So the New York Times, as Andrew Klaven calls it, a former newspaper, their op-ed page is filled with joy the last 48 hours.
00:04:25.000 My personal favorite column is from a woman named Lindy West, who writes on feminism and popular culture, which already makes you want to run through a wall so hard that it leaves a U-shaped hole in the wall, like a cartoon. 1.00
00:04:36.000 But here is what she says in the pages of the New York Times, and it's called Brave Enough to be Angry.
00:04:41.000 Really, this is what it's called.
00:04:42.000 Brave enough to be angry, which is like... I didn't realize it takes bravery to be pissed.
00:04:46.000 I really didn't realize this.
00:04:47.000 I like when you just take two emotions.
00:04:49.000 How about angry enough to be brave?
00:04:50.000 How about sad enough to be happy?
00:04:53.000 Such nonsense.
00:04:54.000 In any case, here's what the column says, and it's pretty amazing.
00:04:56.000 It says...
00:04:57.000 Last month, an Access Hollywood correspondent asked the actress Uma Thurman to comment on abusive power in Hollywood, presumably in light of the sexual assault allegations against the producer Harvey Weinstein.
00:05:07.000 Speaking slowly and deliberately, through gritted teeth, Thurman responded, Thurman is seething, like we all have been seething, in our various states of breaking open, or, as Thurman chooses, waiting.
00:05:27.000 We are seething at how long we've been ignored.
00:05:29.000 Seething for the ones who were punished long ago for telling the truth.
00:05:33.000 Seething for being told all our lives we have no right to seethe.
00:05:37.000 Has this woman ever met a woman?
00:05:39.000 Has she met, like, a girl?
00:05:41.000 Like, girls get angry. 0.99
00:05:42.000 My wife gets mad. 1.00
00:05:43.000 My mom gets mad.
00:05:44.000 My sisters get mad.
00:05:45.000 My three-year-old daughter definitely gets mad. 1.00
00:05:48.000 I was unaware that women are not allowed to be angry. 1.00
00:05:51.000 Women are definitely not allowed to be angry. 1.00
00:05:52.000 It doesn't mean that they're attractive when they're angry, because men aren't attractive when they're angry either.
00:05:55.000 In fact, people generally are not particularly attractive when they're angry, but... You're seething at how long you've been ignored?
00:06:02.000 Lady, you're writing in the pages of the New York Times! 0.99
00:06:05.000 Being ignored?
00:06:05.000 Okay.
00:06:05.000 So she continues along these lines.
00:06:07.000 God, the writing is so bad.
00:06:09.000 I don't know who edits over at the New York Times.
00:06:11.000 They should be fired immediately.
00:06:20.000 But a profound understanding of the ways that female anger is received and weaponized against women.
00:06:24.000 And now she's gonna go explain all the ways that women's anger is not taken seriously. 1.00
00:06:28.000 But does she cite sexual assault or rape?
00:06:31.000 Like women who have claimed they were raped or sexually assaulted and are angry about it and people told them to sit down and shut up?
00:06:36.000 No, she doesn't cite any of that because that's never happened.
00:06:38.000 Okay, no one says to women who say they were raped, why are you so mad? 0.55
00:06:42.000 You mad, bro? 0.87
00:06:43.000 No one says that to a woman who was raped. 1.00
00:06:45.000 You can't name anyone who says that to a woman who was raped.
00:06:47.000 So, what are the examples of female anger we've been ignoring? 1.00
00:06:50.000 Get ready for this.
00:06:50.000 From Lindy West.
00:06:51.000 Again, this is just indicative of the left's belief that anger is its own justification.
00:06:56.000 It's like the Huns out there. 0.90
00:07:26.000 The cases she just cited are not cases of sexual assault or abuse.
00:07:29.000 In one, the mayor of San Juan went out there and had shirts printed that said, we are dying.
00:07:34.000 So she could go on national television and rip into Trump. 1.00
00:07:37.000 No one would have paid attention to her otherwise.
00:07:39.000 And Frederica Wilson went out there and talked out of school about a conversation that really was between a military widow and the president of the United States.
00:07:45.000 And apparently, you know, may have misinterpreted Trump's comments.
00:07:50.000 So all of this is, we were saying, why are these women angry? 1.00
00:07:53.000 Not because they were raped or sexually abused, but because they were getting political.
00:07:56.000 We were more angry at what they were doing than their anger.
00:08:00.000 But the examples continue.
00:08:01.000 She gives the example of Julie Briskman, who's a government contractor who supposedly lost her job after a photo of her flipping off the presidential motorcade went viral.
00:08:08.000 She wasn't fired because she flipped off the motorcade.
00:08:10.000 She was fired because she made that her profile photo on Facebook and Twitter and works for a government contractor. 0.93
00:08:15.000 That's why she was fired. 1.00
00:08:16.000 And then here are some other examples of women who have been disrespected and their anger ignored.
00:08:21.000 This is just female identity politics at its best. 1.00
00:08:24.000 That if women are angry, we don't have to ask why they're angry, or if the anger is justified, we just have to get out of their way and honor their anger.
00:08:30.000 I don't honor anyone's anger.
00:08:31.000 Really, I don't think anger is something to be honored.
00:08:34.000 Not to quote Clavin too much today, but Clavin used a phrase I really like, he says, anger is the devil's cocaine, and I think that's pretty much correct.
00:08:40.000 Okay, here's what it actually, so here are the other examples of female anger that we have been ignoring. 1.00
00:08:46.000 Solange.
00:08:47.000 Yes, really.
00:08:48.000 Solange Knowles.
00:08:50.000 Okay, we weren't ignoring her anger. 0.91
00:08:51.000 She was beating the crap out of Jay-Z in an elevator. 0.99
00:08:53.000 Right?
00:08:53.000 I mean, that's what was happening there.
00:08:54.000 Britney Spears.
00:08:56.000 I don't recall when we were angry at her anger.
00:08:58.000 I just remember her getting, like, wildly out of control and attempting to beat on a paparazzi. 0.97
00:09:03.000 Shania O'Connor.
00:09:05.000 The Dixie Chicks.
00:09:07.000 Rosie O'Donnell.
00:09:09.000 What does any of this have to do with sexual assault or us disrespecting their anger?
00:09:11.000 Okay, and then it says, we don't even have to be angry to be called angry.
00:09:14.000 Accusations of being an angry black woman chased Michelle Obama throughout her tenure at the White House. 1.00
00:09:18.000 Well, I mean, to be fair, in 2008, she did say that she was not proud of the country until it nominated her husband.
00:09:23.000 That seems kind of angry to me.
00:09:25.000 And if you watched any of her speeches in 2008, they were kind of angry.
00:09:28.000 Later, she became kind of a model first lady.
00:09:30.000 But at the beginning, she had a very different persona.
00:09:32.000 It was very much like Hillary Clinton in her early years in the White House, and then shifting in her later years to be sort of more soft and cuddly. 0.98
00:09:38.000 And then she finishes, 0.96
00:09:52.000 Okay, so the smearing of Hillary Clinton as an unhinged shrew is not really a smearing, she's an unhinged shrew. 1.00
00:09:58.000 There have been actual reports of Hillary Clinton throwing lamps at her husband. 0.94
00:10:02.000 Hillary Clinton apparently was not nice to Secret Service members. 1.00
00:10:05.000 Hillary Clinton went out and complained about a vast right-wing conspiracy when her husband committed perjury while sexually harassing the help.
00:10:12.000 Hillary Clinton, in this campaign, there's tape of her shouting into camera, why am I not up by 50 points? 0.82
00:10:19.000 We all remember when she did a speech calling half the population deplorables.
00:10:22.000 Hillary Clinton is not a model of preternatural calm. 0.99
00:10:26.000 You have to be crazy to think this. 0.98
00:10:27.000 And then she says, this is my favorite line, Right, because you're a disapproving scold. 0.99
00:10:31.000 I mean, like, isn't that the definition?
00:10:32.000 You're scolding me and you're disapproving.
00:10:33.000 Like, what am I missing here? 0.99
00:10:44.000 And then she says, It's like America raping you, right? 1.00
00:11:01.000 I'm going to explain a little more on how stupid this is. 1.00
00:11:04.000 This is one of the worst columns I've ever read in the New York Times. 0.99
00:11:06.000 And then it was rivaled this morning by one from our good friend, I believe it's Charles Blow, writing this.
00:11:10.000 The aptly named Charles Blow, writing at the New York Times.
00:11:13.000 But before we get to any of that, first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
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00:11:47.000 I don't know.
00:12:06.000 So Lindy West, again, this is endemic to the feminist left, this belief that anger is the driving force and they have a reason to be angry. 1.00
00:12:13.000 She says that women are expected to weather sexual violence. 0.87
00:12:15.000 Who expects women to weather sexual violence? 1.00
00:12:17.000 Like really, who is it that says, yeah, women are getting raped, big deal. 1.00
00:12:20.000 The only person I can think of is somebody like maybe Gay Talese, the columnist who came out in defense of Kevin Spacey.
00:12:25.000 But who is saying that intimate partner violence is okay?
00:12:29.000 Or workplace discrimination?
00:12:31.000 The expectation of free domestic labor, I don't even know what that means.
00:12:34.000 Like, I expect my mother, I expect my wife to actually help with the chores. 0.94
00:12:38.000 Um, I help with the chores too.
00:12:39.000 Like, this is part of being an adult.
00:12:42.000 Like, I understand Lindy West doesn't want to wash her underwear, but tough. 0.76
00:12:45.000 It's just insane.
00:12:47.000 And finally, she says, Okay, so now she's saying that we're a sexist if we don't think that you should elect a woman based on her sex.
00:13:13.000 Which is sexist, by the way.
00:13:14.000 And then she says, No. 0.99
00:13:15.000 We just think Hillary was a crappy candidate. 1.00
00:13:17.000 I was perfectly willing to vote for, you know, Elizabeth Dole. 0.91
00:13:19.000 And I'd be perfectly willing to vote for Nikki Haley.
00:13:21.000 I'd be perfectly willing to vote for a bevy of women. 1.00
00:13:23.000 But not Hillary Clinton.
00:13:40.000 So, I love this.
00:13:41.000 This is the very end of her column. 1.00
00:13:42.000 She says, Well, actually, your column is basically teaching the world that feminists are ugly and ridiculous. 1.00
00:13:48.000 And she said, 1.00
00:13:54.000 Fail.
00:13:55.000 I wanted to be cool and desired by men, even as a teenager.
00:13:57.000 By the way, I'm not speaking physical ugliness.
00:13:59.000 I'm talking about ugly attitude.
00:14:00.000 I wanted to be cool and desired by men, because even as a teenager, I knew implicitly that pandering for male approval was a woman's most effective currency. 1.00
00:14:06.000 It was my best shot at success, or at least safety.
00:14:08.000 And I wasn't sophisticated enough to see that success and safety bestowed conditionally aren't success and safety at all.
00:14:13.000 What she's saying here is that I should be as much of a turd as I possibly want to be, and everyone should make way for me. 0.68
00:14:18.000 Well, maybe the reason that you're off-putting is because you're off-putting. 0.77
00:14:21.000 Is that possible? 0.99
00:14:22.000 Is it possible the reason that you haven't been as successful as you want to be is not because of sexism, it's because you're a nasty shrew? 0.99
00:14:27.000 Okay, because this column reads like a nasty shrew. 0.99
00:14:30.000 Okay, you call yourself a disapproving scold, that's what this column is. 1.00
00:14:33.000 You imply that all white men are out to harm women. 0.96
00:14:36.000 You imply that all conservatives don't care about women. 0.73
00:14:39.000 You imply that we are using the superstructure of power in order to keep you down.
00:14:42.000 I don't care about keeping Lindy West down, I don't even know who Lindy West is.
00:14:45.000 I don't spend my time thinking about Lindy West except when she writes in the pages of the New York Times and accuses people like me of being sexist for no reason, and then suggests I want to tamp down her anger.
00:14:54.000 Listen, Lindy.
00:14:55.000 Be as angry as you want to be.
00:14:56.000 I hope you're angrier.
00:14:57.000 I hope you continue to grow angrier, because the angrier you are, and the louder you yell, the more off-putting you are, and the more people see your agenda for what it is, which is baseless rage.
00:15:06.000 You're living in the freest country in the history of the world for women. 1.00
00:15:09.000 By far.
00:15:10.000 And you're sitting here complaining that you're being somehow downtrodden by men in the pages of the New York Times.
00:15:15.000 She says, it took me two decades to become brave enough to be angry.
00:15:18.000 Feminism is the collective manifestation of female anger. 1.00
00:15:21.000 Well, if that's what it is, no wonder so many people are rejecting it.
00:15:24.000 Because any movement that is a culmination of collective anger is not going to be a good movement.
00:15:27.000 And by the way, I've said that about movements both left and right.
00:15:30.000 I think that's what the alt-right is based on, is based on an unrooted, unevidenced anger.
00:15:34.000 Okay, so that is one perspective that the left is taking a year after Trump.
00:15:39.000 They're doubling down on the anger.
00:15:41.000 But that's not the only way they're doubling down.
00:15:42.000 So, Charles Blow, as I say, has a piece at the New York Times in which he says it's very important for the left to re-embrace identity politics.
00:15:50.000 He's very happy about what happened in Virginia.
00:15:53.000 He's suggesting that what happened in Virginia is a resuscitation of the Obama coalition.
00:15:58.000 Now, this is factually not true.
00:15:59.000 What happened in Virginia is a lot of college-educated white people went out and voted against Donald Trump.
00:16:04.000 In Northern Virginia, particularly.
00:16:06.000 Ed Gillespie actually won more of the black vote in Virginia than Donald Trump won.
00:16:11.000 Ed Gillespie won less of the college-educated white vote in Virginia than Donald Trump won.
00:16:16.000 Okay, so the fact is that when Charles Blow says that identity politics is the identity politics coalition of the left, you know, blacks and Hispanics and gays and young people, that this coalition is what's going to drive the left to victory, he's ignoring the fact that's not actually what drove them to victory in Virginia.
00:16:33.000 Widespread disapproval for the Republican Party and Trump drove them to victory in Virginia.
00:16:36.000 But here's what Blow has to say, he says,
00:16:38.000 Tuesday night's election results were a major shot in the arm for the anti-Donald Trump resistance and a major slap in the face for all the Democrats who caterwalled last November about how the party had focused too much on courting women and minorities and ignored angry white men.
00:16:51.000 Okay, well, Democrats weren't just caterwalling last November about that.
00:16:54.000 They should have been caterwalling for years. 0.96
00:16:56.000 Obama lost the House, he lost the Senate, he lost the governor's houses, he lost state legislatures across the country.
00:17:01.000 And he did that on the basis of identity politics.
00:17:03.000 The reason that they won in Virginia was not because of identity politics.
00:17:06.000 The reason they won in Virginia was actually because there was a lot of resistance to Trump personally that crossed a lot of these boundaries.
00:17:12.000 But according to Blow, it's because of identity politics.
00:17:15.000 So he says,
00:17:21.000 So when I say I don't like identity politics of white people or non-white people, when I say that we shouldn't have the politics of solidarity based on race, apparently I'm still standing up for white people. 0.79
00:17:29.000 This is basically the argument you hear very frequently on college campuses with regards to so-called white privilege.
00:17:35.000 Right?
00:17:35.000 That if you refuse to acknowledge white privilege, and you say instead people should be judged as individuals, this is you reinforcing white privilege after all.
00:17:42.000 Because the standards of society are standards that benefit white people. 0.60
00:17:44.000 So Blow is saying the same thing.
00:17:45.000 He's saying if you say no identity politics, what you're really saying is only identity politics for white people. 0.98
00:17:51.000 That's asinine, but here's what he says. 0.97
00:17:52.000 He says, he's quoting feminist author Lori Penny in Salon, which is always a good hint something crappy is about to happen. 0.98
00:17:59.000 He says, No.
00:18:15.000 That's not right.
00:18:15.000 When I attack identity politics, I'm suggesting that there are ideas that ought to unite us beyond the boundaries of our group identity.
00:18:21.000 And that holds true for white people and black people. 0.58
00:18:23.000 That holds true for Hispanic people and Jewish people.
00:18:26.000 I think ethnic identity is meaningless. 0.99
00:18:28.000 But Charles Blow thinks that if I say that, that's just me upholding white privilege, and so what we really need to do if you're Democrats is double down on the intersectionality politics.
00:18:36.000 He says, He's such a terrible writer.
00:18:38.000 So if you reject identity politics, apparently you won't hurt black people. 0.95
00:18:55.000 He says, There are about seven false statements in this particular paragraph.
00:18:57.000 False statement number one, Black people had started to vote for Democrats in large numbers by the 1930s because of FDR.
00:19:00.000 Number two,
00:19:16.000 The idea that the Republicans pursued the so-called Southern Strategy, and this is what won them the South, is just not true.
00:19:22.000 The Republican Party only dominated the South in the 1990s.
00:19:25.000 It remained all Democratic areas, in Congress particularly, throughout the 70s, 60s, and 80s.
00:19:30.000 It was only in the 90s that Republicans started to make inroads.
00:19:33.000 In other words, young people in the South moved Republican because industry had come into the South, not because of race issues.
00:19:39.000 Not because of race issues.
00:19:41.000 If race issues played a role, it was a pretty minor one.
00:19:44.000 I have a full thing debunking this.
00:19:45.000 Here's a full video I've done debunking this that we're going to be releasing pretty soon about the so-called Southern Strategy.
00:19:50.000 Also worth noting, Democrats were pandering along racial lines at the time.
00:19:53.000 George Wallace in 1968 was running as a Democrat, right?
00:19:56.000 And then he moved independent.
00:19:58.000 It was Democrats who were standing in the doorways of schools to prevent integration.
00:20:01.000 It was not Republicans doing that.
00:20:03.000 And the idea that in the 70s the party switched is just not true either.
00:20:07.000 Because if that were true, you would expect to see all these Democratic politicians in the South turn Republican.
00:20:12.000 None of them did except Strom Thurmond.
00:20:14.000 There are literally dozens and dozens and dozens of governors and senators.
00:20:17.000 They all remain Democrats.
00:20:19.000 So this is just not true. 0.98
00:20:20.000 Then he says, So in other words, he's saying, abandoned white voters who voted for Trump, they're all racist.
00:20:24.000 He says, In other words, the identity politics of black folks and Hispanic folks is better than the identity politics of white folks, and so the Democratic Party should turn away from the white vote. 0.92
00:20:32.000 He says,
00:20:48.000 If you are supporting Donald Trump, you are supporting Trumpism and all that goes with it.
00:20:51.000 That means you are supporting a modus operandi that attacks people of color on every term but keeps white supremacists safe.
00:20:56.000 You are supporting Trump's demeaning of women. 0.73
00:20:58.000 You are supporting his bullying.
00:20:59.000 You are supporting his corruption. 0.99
00:21:00.000 You are supporting his pathological lying.
00:21:02.000 You want to know how Democrats could blow it in 2018 by listening to Charles Blow?
00:21:05.000 Really.
00:21:06.000 Because what he's suggesting is that every Trump voter is a deplorable. 0.95
00:21:09.000 Every single one.
00:21:11.000 They didn't vote for Trump as the lesser of two evils.
00:21:14.000 They didn't vote for Trump because they wanted some policy wins.
00:21:16.000 They voted for him because they all silently approve of all of the bad things that Trump does.
00:21:21.000 I don't think that's true.
00:21:22.000 I don't think that's correct.
00:21:23.000 And I think if Democrats want to ignore the 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump in this last election cycle by writing them off, good luck winning elections.
00:21:32.000 Good luck winning elections.
00:21:34.000 He finishes by saying, So he says, inclusive identity politics is good, meaning identity politics not for white people, but for everyone else, that's good.
00:21:40.000 White identity politics is bad. 0.61
00:21:41.000 Now notice how the term anger is used here.
00:21:43.000 I'm gonna explain in just a second.
00:22:03.000 How the term anger has morphed between these two columns that I've just read you and why it's demonstrative of the fact that for the Democrats, everything is a tool, everything is a means toward victory, but they're actually undercutting their own agenda.
00:22:15.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Beachbody On Demand.
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00:22:53.000 I don't know.
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00:23:36.000 Okay, so,
00:23:39.000 Charles Blow's final comment here, that you shouldn't play to the identity politics of angry white men.
00:23:45.000 You know, this is why you see the reactionary politics happening from both sides.
00:23:50.000 On the one side, you see Charles Blow saying, Black people have a right to be angry.
00:23:52.000 Hispanic people have a right to be angry. 1.00
00:23:53.000 You have Lindy West.
00:23:54.000 Females have a right to be angry. 1.00
00:23:56.000 And anyone who denies the right to be angry, anyone who even suggests that maybe the anger isn't justified, those are all the bad guys.
00:24:02.000 And then they turn around and say, you know who the real angry people are?
00:24:04.000 They're the people on the right. 0.98
00:24:05.000 They're all the white people, the angry white people. 0.96
00:24:07.000 And then you know what that does? 0.96
00:24:08.000 A lot of angry people on the right, they say, yeah, you know what?
00:24:11.000 Screw it.
00:24:11.000 As long as we're gonna play this game.
00:24:13.000 As long as we're going to play this game, then we'll play this game.
00:24:16.000 This is how you end up with a reactionary politics that makes the entire country worse, regardless of who wins elections.
00:24:20.000 I don't think this will help Democrats win elections, by the way.
00:24:22.000 I don't think screaming at the sky, I don't think being angry at the patriarchy, I don't think being angry at the Constitution, or being angry at the vast bulk of Americans, who happen to be white, by the way.
00:24:31.000 69-70% of Americans are still white.
00:24:35.000 I do not think that this is smart politics by the Democrats.
00:24:38.000 But this is what they're going for anyway.
00:24:40.000 This is what they're going for anyway.
00:24:42.000 And meanwhile, the Democrats are attacking each other.
00:24:44.000 So despite their victories in Virginia, there are still some systemic obstacles Democrats have to overcome, including the fact that a lot of the districts that they won the other night are districts that were Hillary districts to begin with.
00:24:53.000 They're going to have to flip a few Trump districts in order for them to actually take the House. 1.00
00:24:57.000 So I would say right now that if you have to bet, you bet on the Democrats taking the House, but it's not an easy bet.
00:25:02.000 It's a bit of a stretch bet.
00:25:06.000 Look, Donna Brazile showed an enormous amount of courage.
00:25:28.000 In describing the truth as she saw it when she came into the leadership of the DNC.
00:25:37.000 I don't think there's any sane human being who doesn't believe that my campaign was taking on the entire establishment, including the DNC.
00:25:48.000 But Anderson, to be very honest with you, my job, our job, is to go forward
00:25:54.000 So one of the things I think that's happening inside the Democratic Party, aside from the internecine battles, is I think that you actually have a battle of cults.
00:26:07.000 I think you have a battle of cults.
00:26:09.000 Brazil said it herself.
00:26:10.000 She said that the Clinton campaign was basically like a cult.
00:26:12.000 But I think it's more than that, right?
00:26:13.000 Here's Donna Brazile saying that last night.
00:26:15.000 It was a cult.
00:26:16.000 I felt like it was a cult.
00:26:17.000 You could not penetrate them.
00:26:19.000 I mean, look, I'm a grassroots organizer.
00:26:22.000 I know street politics better than I know sweet politics.
00:26:26.000 I know how to touch people where they live, work, play, and pray.
00:26:29.000 But I cannot help a candidate, Joe, if I don't have the resources, if I cannot spend the resources that the party is raising.
00:26:37.000 Okay, so she was describing the Clinton campaign as a cult.
00:26:40.000 There's also the Bernie Sanders cult, and then there's still the Barack Obama cult.
00:26:42.000 So Charles Blow is a member of the Obama cult, right?
00:26:44.000 Lindy West is a member of the Hillary cult, and Bernie Sanders is a member of the Bernie Sanders cult.
00:26:49.000 So all of these various groups are battling with each other for supremacy inside the Democratic Party.
00:26:53.000 The only thing that unites them is opposition to President Trump, which is why President Trump needs to do a better job, because you can unify under the banner of opposing something like President Trump.
00:27:03.000 But these cults are exactly what have led the Democratic Party to its own demise, right?
00:27:06.000 What's created this is the Democratic Party let Obama have his way with the DNC, he ran up huge debt, he killed the party down ballot, and so they lost seats all across the country.
00:27:16.000 Then, they turned over the party to the cult of Hillary, who proceeded to destroy the party even further, right?
00:27:21.000 She helped shore them up financially, but she lost them the presidency to the worst Republican presidential candidate of my lifetime, President Trump.
00:27:28.000 And now,
00:27:30.000 The Bernie Sanders cult is trying to take over, and they're gonna throw out the non-believers.
00:27:34.000 These cult fights are not good for parties.
00:27:36.000 The reason that I bring this up is because I think that, on the right, there's a tendency to get into cult politics, too.
00:27:40.000 And this is something that I really have objected to for a couple of years now.
00:27:43.000 I have always said, the point of politicians is not to worship them.
00:27:46.000 They are people in a job with a job to do.
00:27:48.000 If they're not doing the job, you criticize them.
00:27:50.000 If they are doing the job, you praise them.
00:27:51.000 I've said this before, the presidency is a glorified DMV job.
00:27:55.000 Being the president means that you have a job, a constitutional-oriented duty.
00:27:59.000 You're supposed to fulfill those obligations.
00:28:01.000 That's all.
00:28:02.000 We're not supposed to worship you.
00:28:03.000 We're not supposed to pretend you're some great God-like figure.
00:28:05.000 We're not supposed to say that everything you do is right.
00:28:08.000 But there's a tendency on all sides, I think, to fall into this cult-like behavior.
00:28:11.000 And if Republicans imitate the cult-like behavior of Democrats toward Obama or toward Hillary or toward Sanders, they're gonna pay the exact same price.
00:28:18.000 You're seeing that happen with President Trump, that there's a feeling inside Republican halls of power that if you ever criticize Trump, or if you don't praise him sufficiently, even if you keep your mouth shut on Trump,
00:28:28.000 Then somehow you're undermining the great idol that is Trump.
00:28:31.000 And so you're seeing figures like Paul Ryan feeling the necessity to go out there and pay lip service to Trump, even when it may not be particularly beneficial to do so.
00:28:40.000 So here's Paul Ryan, who's trying to pass a tax cut into law right now.
00:28:43.000 We'll talk about that tax cut and why it's a problem in just a second.
00:28:48.000 But here is Ryan saying that the Bush era is over.
00:28:50.000 We're now living in Trump world.
00:28:52.000 Do you have to make a choice as Republicans, either you're going to side with President Bush and his policies, 43, of more free trade and maybe some type of immigration compromise, or do you have to go with Donald Trump?
00:29:05.000 Is it going to be a choice for Republicans, Bush or Trump?
00:29:09.000 We already made that choice.
00:29:09.000 We're with Trump.
00:29:10.000 We already made that choice.
00:29:11.000 That's a choice we made at the beginning of the year.
00:29:13.000 That's a choice we made during the campaign, which is we merged our agendas.
00:29:17.000 We ran on a joint agenda with Donald Trump.
00:29:20.000 We got together with Donald Trump when he was president-elect Trump and walked through what is it we want to accomplish in the next year.
00:29:26.000 This idea that we chose between Bush and Trump?
00:29:29.000 No, you didn't, okay?
00:29:30.000 You're there to implement a set of policy positions.
00:29:32.000 You don't have to choose Trump.
00:29:34.000 You don't have to choose Bush. 0.99
00:29:35.000 You can think both of them are crappy, right? 0.97
00:29:36.000 You can do all of these things.
00:29:38.000 But what you do have to do is have an agenda.
00:29:40.000 As I say, the cult-like politics of the Democrats with regard to Barack Obama really hurt them down ballot.
00:29:44.000 The cult-like politics of Hillary really hurt them.
00:29:46.000 Cult-like politics with regard to Trump will hurt them too, because if you are treating a president like he's a cult leader,
00:29:53.000 Then you are going to ignore warning signs that would allow you to pull the car away from the ditch.
00:29:58.000 Typically, if you're going to define a cult, typically the traditional way to define a cult is that it has three features.
00:30:03.000 It's exclusive, it's secretive, it's authoritarian.
00:30:07.000 So exclusive means that you're the only one with the truth.
00:30:09.000 Everyone who doesn't have the truth is sort of damned to hell, right?
00:30:13.000 And there's certainly this aspect here, right?
00:30:15.000 This is what Trump said about Ed Gillespie.
00:30:17.000 Basically, Trump said to Gillespie, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, and if you don't follow me, you got nothing.
00:30:21.000 He didn't embrace me strong enough, and that's why you lost.
00:30:23.000 Secretive means there's some sort of secret to it, like everyone inside the Trump group, you know, people who are ardently pro-Trump.
00:30:29.000 I'm not talking about everyone who voted for Trump, of course.
00:30:31.000 I'm talking about people like Bill Mitchell, right, people who worship the ground Trump walks on.
00:30:35.000 For those people, there is a secret decoder ring where everything Trump does is genius.
00:30:38.000 And finally, authoritarianism, this sort of unquestioning obedience of the leader.
00:30:42.000 When you do this with a party leader, you end up ignoring bad signs.
00:30:46.000 And you end up getting into useless wars.
00:30:48.000 You know, Steve Bannon is one of the chief architects of this sort of cult of Trump.
00:30:52.000 And Bannon is going around leading wars against members of his own party who are trying to pass Trump's agenda right now because it's more important to uphold the glory of the leader than it is to actually pass legislation that Trump says he wants to pass.
00:31:03.000 Here is Trump saying that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, ought to resign.
00:31:06.000 Again, I'm not a Mitch McConnell fan.
00:31:08.000 I've been bashing McConnell for years.
00:31:09.000 But the idea that McConnell has to resign because of what exactly?
00:31:13.000 Bannon can't say.
00:31:14.000 He just wants a scalp so that he can go back to Trump and say, listen, I got a scalp.
00:31:18.000 I tell you, Sean, I'm to the point that I think Mitch McConnell, to really bring unity to the Republican Party and get things done, I think Mitch McConnell ought to tender his resignation.
00:31:28.000 What he ought to do is offer to resign as soon as taxes are done.
00:31:31.000 We can't do it in the middle of taxes, but I think Mitch McConnell tomorrow should tender his resignation and say, hey, after we get taxes done,
00:31:38.000 I will step aside and we'll have a re-vote on Majority Leader.
00:31:41.000 Because I got to tell you, there needs to be a sense of urgency in the Senate.
00:31:44.000 You know, over the last week, they're now going to work six days a week.
00:31:48.000 They're talking about canceling Thanksgiving.
00:31:50.000 They passed the budget.
00:31:51.000 They're starting to move on federal judges.
00:31:53.000 But that's all because, quite frankly, we put the spotlight on Mitch McConnell and said that this guy is just not supporting the president.
00:32:00.000 Okay, that of course is utterly untrue, okay?
00:32:02.000 It's not that Steve Bannon put the spotlight on McConnell.
00:32:04.000 Everybody has been putting pressure on McConnell for years.
00:32:06.000 But what this comes down to is, does Trump want his agenda passed, or does he not want his agenda passed, or is it all just posturing?
00:32:14.000 If it's all just posturing, that's very Obama—it's an Obama way to govern.
00:32:17.000 We're good to go.
00:32:36.000 Caution!
00:32:55.000 Unicorn fart powered Priuses bothering you in the parking lot.
00:32:59.000 Thrive, you don't have to do that, right?
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00:33:10.000 If I just want kosher products, I just say, give me kosher products, they'll show me all the kosher products.
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00:33:16.000 It is hyper-curated, so instead of having to choose between 15 different almond butters at the local health store, instead,
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00:34:32.000 Okay, so...
00:34:34.000 As far as tax reform goes, the Republicans do need to pass tax reform, but not because it's going to win them any great credit from the American people.
00:34:41.000 They have to pass it because otherwise they've literally done nothing this year.
00:34:44.000 And there are a bunch of problems with the current tax plan that's being tried out by the Senate.
00:34:47.000 Senate Republicans are already watering this thing down.
00:34:49.000 They're revisiting key provisions in the GOP House proposal, including eliminating property tax deductions.
00:34:55.000 As well as state income tax deductions.
00:34:56.000 Everybody in California just gets jacked.
00:34:58.000 Increasing the size of child care credits.
00:35:00.000 Offering more help to small businesses, according to the LA Times.
00:35:03.000 And having corporate tax cuts phase in or expire, according to those familiar with the negotiations.
00:35:07.000 So in other words, this will not be a massive tax cut.
00:35:09.000 It will be a temporary tax cut with some tax increases.
00:35:13.000 Also that they can say they passed something.
00:35:14.000 I'd rather that they pass nothing than they pass a bad bill.
00:35:18.000 I haven't seen the final Senate bill, but it's not great.
00:35:21.000 They're not talking about increasing individual tax brackets.
00:35:24.000 This is not what I voted for the Republican Party for.
00:35:27.000 And this is not what I voted for the Republican Party for, but unfortunately,
00:35:31.000 It's all become a game of which leader do you follow, as opposed to which policy do you espouse.
00:35:35.000 I don't see Trump really espousing low-tax policies in a coherent way.
00:35:38.000 I don't see Brian doing it, and I don't see any of the Republicans doing it.
00:35:41.000 And that's incredibly frustrating to me, somebody who actually cares about the policy much more than I care about the personal infighting.
00:35:46.000 Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things I hate, and the big idea.
00:35:49.000 So, things I like, you know, well, first we have to go to break.
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00:37:04.000 All righty, so time for a thing I like.
00:37:05.000 So I could not help but laugh hysterically yesterday over this.
00:37:08.000 So USA Today ran a video in which they were explaining what weapon had been used in the Texas shooting, in the Texas church shooting.
00:37:16.000 It was a Ruger AR-556.
00:37:17.000 And here is, I need to show you some of this video because it's, there's some parts of it that are quite insane.
00:37:25.000 This is what we know about the Ruger AR-556.
00:37:28.000 Base model, buttstock, rear sight, front sight, handguard,
00:37:33.000 30 round magazine.
00:37:34.000 Trigger.
00:37:35.000 Okay, so they're teaching you what the parts of a gun are.
00:37:37.000 AR-15 style rifles have many aftermarket options, some common, some rare.
00:37:43.000 This is possible modifications.
00:37:45.000 100 round drum magazine.
00:37:49.000 Underbarrel 12 gauge shotgun.
00:37:53.000 Trigger crank.
00:37:56.000 Chainsaw bayonet.
00:37:58.000 And this is the, pause it there.
00:37:59.000 This is the one that got the internet going.
00:38:00.000 Chainsaw bayonet.
00:38:01.000 I don't know anyone who's ever attached a chainsaw bayonet to your rifle. 0.97
00:38:08.000 First of all, you set that sucker running, it's gonna throw off your shootin'. 0.84
00:38:10.000 Also, when's the last time you had to chop down a tree to shoot at a bear? 0.66
00:38:12.000 Like, you're in the middle of a forest and you're like, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
00:38:18.000 That doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
00:38:20.000 I mean, I guess it's perfect for Gears of War, or it's great for if you're on The Walking Dead and you need to saw through somebody's head or something, but chainsaw bayonet.
00:38:29.000 So obviously this spurred a lot of imitators. 0.75
00:38:32.000 Really ridiculous.
00:38:33.000 So people started making other possible modifications to tell USA Today about.
00:38:37.000 So here are some of them.
00:38:38.000 They're really funny.
00:38:40.000 Here is one with a miniature AR-15 attachment with an even smaller AR-15 attachment under that.
00:38:46.000 So it's a modification of a modification.
00:38:48.000 This one, I think, is very powerful.
00:38:50.000 This, of course, is the nuclear weapon bayonet.
00:38:52.000 So underneath the gun, you can actually see there's a nuclear bomb, which is, I think, very useful. 0.97
00:38:57.000 I don't know.
00:39:15.000 Because millennials have now ruined guns, too. 1.00
00:39:17.000 And there's a picture of the AR-15 with the selfie, the selfie stick attached to it as a modification.
00:39:24.000 And then, of course, the famous lightsaber AR modification that goes underneath the gun.
00:39:29.000 Very, just spectacular.
00:39:30.000 And this, of course, was, one of my friends put this one together.
00:39:34.000 This is the most deadly modification that you can put on an AR-15.
00:39:36.000 It's the AR-15 with the Chuck Norris modification up top.
00:39:39.000 They just released the Chuck Norris.
00:39:41.000 But really, guys, just,
00:39:44.000 Like, don't talk about guns anymore.
00:39:45.000 Like, if you don't know what you're talking about, please don't talk about guns.
00:39:48.000 And yes, it turns out there are many possible modifications.
00:39:50.000 Presumably you could put a tank on the bottom of your AR-15.
00:39:52.000 But that does not actually mean that it's something that people use, and nobody actually... USA Today had to issue a tweet clarifying they weren't saying a chaingun, a chainsaw...
00:40:01.000 Gun was used in Texas.
00:40:03.000 By the way, we're just saying it's a possible modification, not that the shooter actually used a chainsaw bayonet in the church.
00:40:09.000 Thanks for the clarification, USA Today.
00:40:11.000 Well done.
00:40:12.000 No wonder no one trusts you when it comes to gun stuff if you legitimately put out a video that shows a chainsaw bayonet as a possible modification to an AR.
00:40:22.000 Everyone who's ripping on the AR, just quick note, the guy who shot the bad guy was using an AR when he did it.
00:40:26.000 Okay.
00:40:28.000 Time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:40:29.000 So, a thing that I hate today.
00:40:33.000 There's an article from The Guardian, and you see these kind of articles all the time.
00:40:36.000 It says, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett are wealthier than poorest half of the United States.
00:40:40.000 Institute for Policy Studies, lefty center, warns of a moral crisis and says Trump tax change proposals will exacerbate disparities.
00:40:47.000 Okay, I hate this line of attack. 1.00
00:40:50.000 I think it's really stupid. 1.00
00:40:51.000 The idea that 1.00
00:40:53.000 Somebody is wealthy so you are poor is not true.
00:40:55.000 If that were true, capitalism would not have made lives better for the poorest people around the world radically better.
00:41:01.000 Half the world has been lifted out of desperate poverty over the last 30 years thanks to the rise of free trade and capitalism.
00:41:08.000 This idea that the economy is a zero-sum game belies truth.
00:41:11.000 It is just not true.
00:41:12.000 So what if Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett
00:41:15.000 are sitting on $250 billion of fortune.
00:41:18.000 Who cares?
00:41:18.000 You know how many people work for those people?
00:41:20.000 You know how many people are made rich by those people?
00:41:23.000 Tons of people.
00:41:25.000 An economist and co-author of the report, he says, How about more prosperity for everyone?
00:41:33.000 If you want to redistribute all the income, we could do that, I suppose, by killing the rich and just handing out their money to the poor.
00:41:38.000 Gets rid of a lot of the income inequality.
00:41:40.000 Also, it makes everyone's life a lot worse.
00:41:42.000 I hate this idea that wealth disparity means poverty.
00:41:45.000 That's just not true.
00:41:46.000 If I'm making $100,000 a year and you're making $1,000,000 a year, we have a bigger wealth disparity than if I'm making $10,000 a year and you're making $5,000 a year, right?
00:41:54.000 We have a $900,000 disparity as opposed to a $5,000 disparity.
00:41:57.000 Which one would you prefer?
00:41:59.000 If you answer the latter, I would say that you're a bad person.
00:42:02.000 Really, if you'd say that you prefer to make $5,000 a year just so I make $10,000, that shows that you're a jealous punk, not that you actually care about your living standard.
00:42:08.000 Okay, time for the big idea.
00:42:10.000 So on Thursdays, we talk about the big idea.
00:42:12.000 There's a lot of talk this week about thoughts and prayers, and so I thought that I would talk very briefly about the problem of theodicy.
00:42:16.000 Okay, so theodicy is the problem of how can God be omnipotent and good, and yet bad things happen in the world.
00:42:22.000 And it seems like every time something bad happens in the world, the left says, how could a good God allow this?
00:42:27.000 This is why I don't believe in religion, as though religion had never contemplated this question.
00:42:31.000 Despite the fact that every major religious thinker ever has contemplated this question.
00:42:35.000 Seriously, all of them.
00:42:37.000 The idea that God is benevolent and good is based on the idea that God is purely actual, right?
00:42:41.000 That everything that exists is due to God, because God is the purely actual.
00:42:47.000 Basically, in the Aristotelian model anyway, the idea here is the Aristotle-Aquinas-Maimonides model of God.
00:42:53.000 Basically, the idea here is that everything in life has aspects that are either actual or potential, right?
00:43:00.000 If you have a candle on your desk, and it's made of wax, and you melt it,
00:43:03.000 Okay, it had the potential to be a melted pool of wax before, but something actual had to act upon the wax in order to melt it, right?
00:43:09.000 A fire had to act upon the wax, which was actual, in order to melt it into a pool of wax so it wasn't in candle form.
00:43:14.000 This is true for all things in the universe, according to Aristotelian thought, except for if there is something that can actualize, if there's something that has no potential, right?
00:43:24.000 It just is the purely actual.
00:43:26.000 What it is is actuality, right?
00:43:28.000 Its essence is the actual.
00:43:30.000 Well, the idea in Aristotle's notion of good is that what the good is, what makes something good, is that it is fitted to its purpose.
00:43:38.000 So if something is good that is fitted to its purpose, then God, being purely actual, is fitted to God's purpose because His purpose is the actuality.
00:43:46.000 God's purpose is Him.
00:43:48.000 In other words, and so the idea here is that God is purely actual.
00:43:52.000 So this leads to the question, okay, so let's say God is purely good.
00:43:56.000 According to whose standard?
00:43:57.000 So is he good according to human moral standards?
00:44:00.000 So clearly this is something with which people struggle, right?
00:44:01.000 In the Bible, Abraham struggles with God, and he questions God, and he asks why God is doing certain things.
00:44:06.000 And at a certain point, God says, you know, I can't explain this to you.
00:44:09.000 This is supposedly what Moses asked God when Moses says, show me your face.
00:44:13.000 And God says, you can't see my face and live.
00:44:15.000 The idea there is that Moses is asking why bad things happen to good people and vice versa, and God is saying, you can't know the answer.
00:44:20.000 So the Jewish answer to theodicy, why bad things happen to good people, is twofold. 0.69
00:44:25.000 One is with regard to human action, and one is with regard to nature.
00:44:28.000 So the answer with regard to human action is, it is not God's responsibility if I decide to do something terrible today.
00:44:34.000 That's my responsibility.
00:44:36.000 The reason God created us as creative beings
00:44:39.000 Is that we have free will and we can choose to do differently.
00:44:42.000 If that's the case, then God, by nature, has to restrict his own dominance over the universe so that I can have free will and act out freely.
00:44:48.000 That means I'm responsible for my own evil.
00:44:50.000 That's why human evil exists, so that there's the potential for human good, so that we can discover our purpose and fulfill it.
00:44:55.000 As far as the notion of other evils like cancer, like a child with cancer,
00:44:59.000 Judaism basically does what a lot of other religions do and says, listen, anyone who presumes to give you an answer on this is full of it. 1.00
00:45:06.000 There are no good answers, right?
00:45:07.000 You just don't—we don't understand.
00:45:09.000 We don't understand, right?
00:45:09.000 Maimonides actually says that it's forbidden to ask those sorts of questions to the extent that there's no good answer to them.
00:45:16.000 Augustine says that evil doesn't really exist, right?
00:45:18.000 Augustine's take on evil is that evil doesn't exist, it is just the absence of good.
00:45:22.000 The idea being that if the good is fulfilled potential, then if potential is not entirely fulfilled, that is an evil.
00:45:29.000 So it's a diminishment.
00:45:30.000 The so-called privation theory, right?
00:45:31.000 It's privation of the good is what evil is.
00:45:34.000 Evil doesn't exist as an independent entity.
00:45:35.000 So when you see somebody who's blind, the evil of their blindness is that it is not a fulfillment of sight, right? 0.99
00:45:41.000 It's a lack of something.
00:45:42.000 So God limits himself in the universe so he can have free will, and that allows for lack of something to make good into evil, essentially.
00:45:51.000 There are many, many theories on theodicy, but the idea that I want to promote today is that theodicy is a serious question with which we should deal, but atheism has no problem with theodicy.
00:45:59.000 I don't even understand how an atheist can ask about whether God is good or evil, or whether a situation is good or evil, because all that exists in scientific materialist land is evolutionary biology.
00:46:10.000 There's nothing good or evil about evolutionary biology.
00:46:12.000 There's just scientific fact.
00:46:13.000 So why are you asking about the moral contents of things happening in the universe?
00:46:16.000 Why are you asking about the moral contents of even human action?
00:46:18.000 You don't ask, if a dog eats a snail, you don't ask about why the dog ate the snail.
00:46:24.000 You don't say, why is the dog so evil?
00:46:26.000 Moral components only enter into the picture when you are talking about the moral possibilities of a universe constructed by a God who is bound by the dictates of his own morality.
00:46:34.000 That's the only time that you even have these discussions.
00:46:36.000 So you've been asking the theodicy question is presupposing an orderly moral universe that you can ask God about.
00:46:41.000 Okay, so we will be back here tomorrow with more and the mailbag.
00:46:44.000 Hopefully I'll feel a little bit better and sound less like garbage, but we'll find out.
00:46:47.000 If not, you'll bear through it just like I am.
00:46:49.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:46:49.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.