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?
00:00:31.000So, before we jump into the leftists going absolutely insane yesterday on the one-year anniversary of President Trump winning the presidency,
00:00:39.000First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Wink.
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00:01:43.000I could not help but laugh, despite my personal discomfort.
00:01:47.000I 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.
00:01:57.000It was the one-year anniversary of President Trump winning.
00:01:59.000If 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.
00:02:08.000And 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.
00:02:16.000And I just started laughing and I couldn't stop laughing for a fully two minutes.
00:03:18.000They believe that their anger is its own justification.
00:03:20.000So 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.
00:03:27.000Now, it is possible that the Republicans can be bad enough at this to blow whatever advantages they have.
00:03:31.000It seems like that's what they're in the business of doing.
00:03:33.000We'll talk about what they're doing with their tax plan in just a second.
00:03:37.000And we'll also talk about President Trump in just a second and the divide inside the conservative movement.
00:03:40.000But on the left, they've completely lost their minds.
00:03:43.000And so they feel that the only path back to power is twofold.
00:03:47.000One, they have to be as angry as possible.
00:03:49.000And two, they have to re-embrace identity politics.
00:03:52.000These are precisely the things that brought them Trump.
00:03:54.000It is their anger and their identity politics that caused the backlash that brought President Trump.
00:03:58.000So maybe there's a backlash to the backlash.
00:04:01.000That 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.
00:04:09.000It is also possible that there's a backlash to that backlash that's building right now.
00:04:13.000Whatever it is, it ain't good for the country.
00:04:15.000Two columns in particular I want to talk about today, both from the horrific New York Times.
00:04:19.000So the New York Times, as Andrew Klaven calls it, a former newspaper, their op-ed page is filled with joy the last 48 hours.
00:04:25.000My 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.
00:04:36.000But here is what she says in the pages of the New York Times, and it's called Brave Enough to be Angry.
00:04:57.000Last 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.
00:05:07.000Speaking 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.
00:05:27.000We are seething at how long we've been ignored.
00:05:29.000Seething for the ones who were punished long ago for telling the truth.
00:05:33.000Seething for being told all our lives we have no right to seethe.
00:07:26.000The cases she just cited are not cases of sexual assault or abuse.
00:07:29.000In one, the mayor of San Juan went out there and had shirts printed that said, we are dying.
00:07:34.000So she could go on national television and rip into Trump.
00:07:37.000No one would have paid attention to her otherwise.
00:07:39.000And 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.
00:07:45.000And apparently, you know, may have misinterpreted Trump's comments.
00:07:50.000So all of this is, we were saying, why are these women angry?
00:07:53.000Not because they were raped or sexually abused, but because they were getting political.
00:07:56.000We were more angry at what they were doing than their anger.
00:08:01.000She 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.
00:08:08.000She wasn't fired because she flipped off the motorcade.
00:08:10.000She was fired because she made that her profile photo on Facebook and Twitter and works for a government contractor.
00:08:16.000And then here are some other examples of women who have been disrespected and their anger ignored.
00:08:21.000This is just female identity politics at its best.
00:08:24.000That 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.
00:08:31.000Really, I don't think anger is something to be honored.
00:08:34.000Not 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.
00:08:40.000Okay, here's what it actually, so here are the other examples of female anger that we have been ignoring.
00:09:25.000And if you watched any of her speeches in 2008, they were kind of angry.
00:09:28.000Later, she became kind of a model first lady.
00:09:30.000But at the beginning, she had a very different persona.
00:09:32.000It 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.
00:09:52.000Okay, so the smearing of Hillary Clinton as an unhinged shrew is not really a smearing, she's an unhinged shrew.
00:09:58.000There have been actual reports of Hillary Clinton throwing lamps at her husband.
00:10:02.000Hillary Clinton apparently was not nice to Secret Service members.
00:10:05.000Hillary Clinton went out and complained about a vast right-wing conspiracy when her husband committed perjury while sexually harassing the help.
00:10:12.000Hillary Clinton, in this campaign, there's tape of her shouting into camera, why am I not up by 50 points?
00:10:19.000We all remember when she did a speech calling half the population deplorables.
00:10:22.000Hillary Clinton is not a model of preternatural calm.
00:10:44.000And then she says, It's like America raping you, right?
00:11:01.000I'm going to explain a little more on how stupid this is.
00:11:04.000This is one of the worst columns I've ever read in the New York Times.
00:11:06.000And then it was rivaled this morning by one from our good friend, I believe it's Charles Blow, writing this.
00:11:10.000The aptly named Charles Blow, writing at the New York Times.
00:11:13.000But 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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00:12:06.000So 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.
00:12:13.000She says that women are expected to weather sexual violence.
00:12:15.000Who expects women to weather sexual violence?
00:12:17.000Like really, who is it that says, yeah, women are getting raped, big deal.
00:12:20.000The only person I can think of is somebody like maybe Gay Talese, the columnist who came out in defense of Kevin Spacey.
00:12:25.000But who is saying that intimate partner violence is okay?
00:14:00.000I 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.
00:14:06.000It was my best shot at success, or at least safety.
00:14:08.000And I wasn't sophisticated enough to see that success and safety bestowed conditionally aren't success and safety at all.
00:14:13.000What 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.
00:14:18.000Well, maybe the reason that you're off-putting is because you're off-putting.
00:14:22.000Is 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?
00:14:27.000Okay, because this column reads like a nasty shrew.
00:14:30.000Okay, you call yourself a disapproving scold, that's what this column is.
00:14:33.000You imply that all white men are out to harm women.
00:14:36.000You imply that all conservatives don't care about women.
00:14:39.000You imply that we are using the superstructure of power in order to keep you down.
00:14:42.000I don't care about keeping Lindy West down, I don't even know who Lindy West is.
00:14:45.000I 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.
00:14:57.000I 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.
00:15:06.000You're living in the freest country in the history of the world for women.
00:15:41.000But that's not the only way they're doubling down.
00:15:42.000So, 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.
00:15:50.000He's very happy about what happened in Virginia.
00:15:53.000He's suggesting that what happened in Virginia is a resuscitation of the Obama coalition.
00:16:06.000Ed Gillespie actually won more of the black vote in Virginia than Donald Trump won.
00:16:11.000Ed Gillespie won less of the college-educated white vote in Virginia than Donald Trump won.
00:16:16.000Okay, 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.
00:16:33.000Widespread disapproval for the Republican Party and Trump drove them to victory in Virginia.
00:16:36.000But here's what Blow has to say, he says,
00:16:38.000Tuesday 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.
00:16:51.000Okay, well, Democrats weren't just caterwalling last November about that.
00:16:54.000They should have been caterwalling for years.
00:16:56.000Obama lost the House, he lost the Senate, he lost the governor's houses, he lost state legislatures across the country.
00:17:01.000And he did that on the basis of identity politics.
00:17:03.000The reason that they won in Virginia was not because of identity politics.
00:17:06.000The reason they won in Virginia was actually because there was a lot of resistance to Trump personally that crossed a lot of these boundaries.
00:17:12.000But according to Blow, it's because of identity politics.
00:17:21.000So 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.
00:17:29.000This is basically the argument you hear very frequently on college campuses with regards to so-called white privilege.
00:17:35.000That 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.
00:17:42.000Because the standards of society are standards that benefit white people.
00:18:15.000When I attack identity politics, I'm suggesting that there are ideas that ought to unite us beyond the boundaries of our group identity.
00:18:21.000And that holds true for white people and black people.
00:18:23.000That holds true for Hispanic people and Jewish people.
00:18:26.000I think ethnic identity is meaningless.
00:18:28.000But 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.
00:20:20.000Then he says, So in other words, he's saying, abandoned white voters who voted for Trump, they're all racist.
00:20:24.000He 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.
00:21:23.000And 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.
00:21:34.000He 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.
00:22:03.000How 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.
00:22:15.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Beachbody On Demand.
00:22:18.000So next week, I will be traveling, and when I travel and I'm in my hotel, I do not typically go to the gym.
00:22:22.000Instead, I stay in the room and I use Beachbody On Demand.
00:24:11.000As long as we're gonna play this game.
00:24:13.000As long as we're going to play this game, then we'll play this game.
00:24:16.000This is how you end up with a reactionary politics that makes the entire country worse, regardless of who wins elections.
00:24:20.000I don't think this will help Democrats win elections, by the way.
00:24:22.000I 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.
00:24:35.000I do not think that this is smart politics by the Democrats.
00:24:38.000But this is what they're going for anyway.
00:24:40.000This is what they're going for anyway.
00:24:42.000And meanwhile, the Democrats are attacking each other.
00:24:44.000So 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.
00:24:53.000They're going to have to flip a few Trump districts in order for them to actually take the House.
00:24:57.000So 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.
00:25:06.000Look, Donna Brazile showed an enormous amount of courage.
00:25:28.000In describing the truth as she saw it when she came into the leadership of the DNC.
00:25:37.000I 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.
00:25:48.000But Anderson, to be very honest with you, my job, our job, is to go forward
00:25:54.000So 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.
00:26:19.000I mean, look, I'm a grassroots organizer.
00:26:22.000I know street politics better than I know sweet politics.
00:26:26.000I know how to touch people where they live, work, play, and pray.
00:26:29.000But I cannot help a candidate, Joe, if I don't have the resources, if I cannot spend the resources that the party is raising.
00:26:37.000Okay, so she was describing the Clinton campaign as a cult.
00:26:40.000There's also the Bernie Sanders cult, and then there's still the Barack Obama cult.
00:26:42.000So Charles Blow is a member of the Obama cult, right?
00:26:44.000Lindy West is a member of the Hillary cult, and Bernie Sanders is a member of the Bernie Sanders cult.
00:26:49.000So all of these various groups are battling with each other for supremacy inside the Democratic Party.
00:26:53.000The 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.
00:27:03.000But these cults are exactly what have led the Democratic Party to its own demise, right?
00:27:06.000What'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.
00:27:16.000Then, they turned over the party to the cult of Hillary, who proceeded to destroy the party even further, right?
00:27:21.000She helped shore them up financially, but she lost them the presidency to the worst Republican presidential candidate of my lifetime, President Trump.
00:28:03.000We're not supposed to pretend you're some great God-like figure.
00:28:05.000We're not supposed to say that everything you do is right.
00:28:08.000But there's a tendency on all sides, I think, to fall into this cult-like behavior.
00:28:11.000And 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.
00:28:18.000You'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,
00:28:28.000Then somehow you're undermining the great idol that is Trump.
00:28:31.000And 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.
00:28:40.000So here's Paul Ryan, who's trying to pass a tax cut into law right now.
00:28:43.000We'll talk about that tax cut and why it's a problem in just a second.
00:28:48.000But here is Ryan saying that the Bush era is over.
00:28:52.000Do 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?
00:29:05.000Is it going to be a choice for Republicans, Bush or Trump?
00:30:07.000So exclusive means that you're the only one with the truth.
00:30:09.000Everyone who doesn't have the truth is sort of damned to hell, right?
00:30:13.000And there's certainly this aspect here, right?
00:30:15.000This is what Trump said about Ed Gillespie.
00:30:17.000Basically, Trump said to Gillespie, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, and if you don't follow me, you got nothing.
00:30:21.000He didn't embrace me strong enough, and that's why you lost.
00:30:23.000Secretive means there's some sort of secret to it, like everyone inside the Trump group, you know, people who are ardently pro-Trump.
00:30:29.000I'm not talking about everyone who voted for Trump, of course.
00:30:31.000I'm talking about people like Bill Mitchell, right, people who worship the ground Trump walks on.
00:30:35.000For those people, there is a secret decoder ring where everything Trump does is genius.
00:30:38.000And finally, authoritarianism, this sort of unquestioning obedience of the leader.
00:30:42.000When you do this with a party leader, you end up ignoring bad signs.
00:30:46.000And you end up getting into useless wars.
00:30:48.000You know, Steve Bannon is one of the chief architects of this sort of cult of Trump.
00:30:52.000And 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.
00:31:03.000Here is Trump saying that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, ought to resign.
00:31:14.000He just wants a scalp so that he can go back to Trump and say, listen, I got a scalp.
00:31:18.000I 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.
00:31:28.000What he ought to do is offer to resign as soon as taxes are done.
00:31:31.000We 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,
00:31:38.000I will step aside and we'll have a re-vote on Majority Leader.
00:31:41.000Because I got to tell you, there needs to be a sense of urgency in the Senate.
00:31:44.000You know, over the last week, they're now going to work six days a week.
00:31:48.000They're talking about canceling Thanksgiving.
00:31:51.000They're starting to move on federal judges.
00:31:53.000But that's all because, quite frankly, we put the spotlight on Mitch McConnell and said that this guy is just not supporting the president.
00:32:00.000Okay, that of course is utterly untrue, okay?
00:32:02.000It's not that Steve Bannon put the spotlight on McConnell.
00:32:04.000Everybody has been putting pressure on McConnell for years.
00:32:06.000But 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?
00:32:14.000If it's all just posturing, that's very Obama—it's an Obama way to govern.
00:32:55.000Unicorn fart powered Priuses bothering you in the parking lot.
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00:34:34.000As 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.
00:34:41.000They have to pass it because otherwise they've literally done nothing this year.
00:34:44.000And there are a bunch of problems with the current tax plan that's being tried out by the Senate.
00:34:47.000Senate Republicans are already watering this thing down.
00:34:49.000They're revisiting key provisions in the GOP House proposal, including eliminating property tax deductions.
00:34:55.000As well as state income tax deductions.
00:34:56.000Everybody in California just gets jacked.
00:34:58.000Increasing the size of child care credits.
00:35:00.000Offering more help to small businesses, according to the LA Times.
00:35:03.000And having corporate tax cuts phase in or expire, according to those familiar with the negotiations.
00:35:07.000So in other words, this will not be a massive tax cut.
00:35:09.000It will be a temporary tax cut with some tax increases.
00:35:13.000Also that they can say they passed something.
00:35:14.000I'd rather that they pass nothing than they pass a bad bill.
00:35:18.000I haven't seen the final Senate bill, but it's not great.
00:35:21.000They're not talking about increasing individual tax brackets.
00:35:24.000This is not what I voted for the Republican Party for.
00:35:27.000And this is not what I voted for the Republican Party for, but unfortunately,
00:35:31.000It's all become a game of which leader do you follow, as opposed to which policy do you espouse.
00:35:35.000I don't see Trump really espousing low-tax policies in a coherent way.
00:35:38.000I don't see Brian doing it, and I don't see any of the Republicans doing it.
00:35:41.000And that's incredibly frustrating to me, somebody who actually cares about the policy much more than I care about the personal infighting.
00:35:46.000Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things I hate, and the big idea.
00:35:49.000So, things I like, you know, well, first we have to go to break.
00:35:52.000First we're gonna break, and we're gonna, on Facebook and YouTube.
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00:36:13.000There's something called The Conversation, which is coming next Tuesday with Michael Knowles at 2 p.m.
00:36:27.000You can be one of the people asking questions to Michael, God love him, over at our Facebook or Daily Wire website when you subscribe and then log in to Daily Wire in order to ask questions.
00:38:01.000I don't know anyone who's ever attached a chainsaw bayonet to your rifle.
00:38:08.000First of all, you set that sucker running, it's gonna throw off your shootin'.
00:38:10.000Also, when's the last time you had to chop down a tree to shoot at a bear?
00:38:12.000Like, you're in the middle of a forest and you're like, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
00:38:18.000That doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
00:38:20.000I 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.
00:38:29.000So obviously this spurred a lot of imitators.
00:39:45.000Like, if you don't know what you're talking about, please don't talk about guns.
00:39:48.000And yes, it turns out there are many possible modifications.
00:39:50.000Presumably you could put a tank on the bottom of your AR-15.
00:39:52.000But 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...
00:40:12.000No 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.
00:40:22.000Everyone who's ripping on the AR, just quick note, the guy who shot the bad guy was using an AR when he did it.
00:41:46.000If 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?
00:41:54.000We have a $900,000 disparity as opposed to a $5,000 disparity.
00:41:59.000If you answer the latter, I would say that you're a bad person.
00:42:02.000Really, 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.
00:42:37.000The idea that God is benevolent and good is based on the idea that God is purely actual, right?
00:42:41.000That everything that exists is due to God, because God is the purely actual.
00:42:47.000Basically, in the Aristotelian model anyway, the idea here is the Aristotle-Aquinas-Maimonides model of God.
00:42:53.000Basically, the idea here is that everything in life has aspects that are either actual or potential, right?
00:43:00.000If you have a candle on your desk, and it's made of wax, and you melt it,
00:43:03.000Okay, 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?
00:43:09.000A 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.
00:43:14.000This 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?
00:43:30.000Well, 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.
00:43:38.000So 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.
00:44:36.000The reason God created us as creative beings
00:44:39.000Is that we have free will and we can choose to do differently.
00:44:42.000If 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.
00:44:48.000That means I'm responsible for my own evil.
00:44:50.000That's why human evil exists, so that there's the potential for human good, so that we can discover our purpose and fulfill it.
00:44:55.000As far as the notion of other evils like cancer, like a child with cancer,
00:44:59.000Judaism 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.
00:45:42.000So 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.
00:45:51.000There 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.
00:45:59.000I 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.
00:46:10.000There's nothing good or evil about evolutionary biology.
00:46:13.000So why are you asking about the moral contents of things happening in the universe?
00:46:16.000Why are you asking about the moral contents of even human action?
00:46:18.000You don't ask, if a dog eats a snail, you don't ask about why the dog ate the snail.
00:46:24.000You don't say, why is the dog so evil?
00:46:26.000Moral 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.
00:46:34.000That's the only time that you even have these discussions.
00:46:36.000So you've been asking the theodicy question is presupposing an orderly moral universe that you can ask God about.
00:46:41.000Okay, so we will be back here tomorrow with more and the mailbag.
00:46:44.000Hopefully I'll feel a little bit better and sound less like garbage, but we'll find out.
00:46:47.000If not, you'll bear through it just like I am.