The Ben Shapiro Show - Canadian On The Moon | Ep. 615

00:00:00.000 A new blockbuster movie revises history, the Weinstein scandal makes headlines again, and both parties endorse populism.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 Oh man, hear it here first.

00:00:13.000 Before President Trump tweets about it, we'll get into the new movie biopic about Neil Armstrong and the controversy springing there from.

00:00:20.000 But first, let's talk about the economy.

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00:01:35.000 Okay, we begin today with a scandal that's not really a scandal, but is at least worth talking about because it does say something about the left's perspective and Hollywood's perspective on America.

00:01:46.000 It is, as they say, one of the reasons President Trump is president.

00:01:50.000 This particular scandal comes courtesy of Damien Chazelle.

00:01:53.000 Now, this makes me sad, because Damien Chazelle is one of the best directors working today.

00:01:57.000 He did Whiplash, and then he did La La Land, and his new movie looks great.

00:02:00.000 It's a biopic titled First Man about Neil Armstrong, who was the first man to walk on the moon.

00:02:05.000 And it stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong.

00:02:08.000 But there's one problem.

00:02:09.000 The movie apparently omits the American flag.

00:02:13.000 Why is that a big deal, you say?

00:02:14.000 Because the most crucial moment, the picture that everyone cares about from the actual moon landing, is Neil Armstrong raising the American flag on the moon.

00:02:22.000 This is sort of like doing a movie about the Battle of Iwo Jima and not having the guys raise an American flag.

00:02:27.000 Instead, they just decide to raise an empty flagpole with, like, an emoji sticker on it or something.

00:02:33.000 It makes no sense at all.

00:02:35.000 It's an iconic moment in American history.

00:02:37.000 But Ryan Gosling, who is Canadian, says that he thinks that Neil Armstrong saw himself more as a world citizen than as an American hero, which makes no sense at all.

00:02:45.000 He says, Well, not by Americans, it wasn't.

00:02:52.000 Not by Americans. 0.73

00:02:53.000 It turns out that when America was putting a man on the moon, China, which is the real reason why they're not putting the American flag in this film, is because they're afraid that it'll piss off the Chinese censors, and they want to make sure that the Chinese market goes to see the film, so they've removed the American flag.

00:03:05.000 It's the same reason that long ago, when they made Superman Returns, they omitted truth, justice, and the American way.

00:03:11.000 They turned it into truth, justice, and all that other stuff.

00:03:14.000 That Hollywood is really, really afraid of ticking off foreign audiences with all of the America?

00:03:19.000 There's only one problem with that logic, which is that nobody in foreign countries actually cares whether American films promote America, because it turns out America's a pretty fricking amazing place.

00:03:27.000 Like, we put a man on the moon.

00:03:28.000 That's one of the pieces of proof, actually.

00:03:30.000 So Ryan Gosling, Canadian, says, I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts.

00:03:36.000 And time and time again, he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.

00:03:41.000 Those 400,000 people would have been Americans, by the way, who worked for the American government.

00:03:44.000 He was reminding everyone that he was just the tip of the iceberg.

00:03:47.000 And that's not just to be humble.

00:03:48.000 That's also true.

00:03:49.000 So I don't think Neil viewed himself as an American hero.

00:03:51.000 From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite.

00:03:55.000 And we wanted the film to reflect Neil.

00:03:56.000 Alternatively, Hollywood is just catering to foreign audiences.

00:03:59.000 And so they are going to omit the American flag in a blatant attempt to grab Chinese money.

00:04:05.000 But let's be clear.

00:04:06.000 Putting a man on the moon was an American mission.

00:04:08.000 It was not a world mission, it was an American mission.

00:04:10.000 JFK, who announced the original mission to put a man on the moon, when he did this, when he talked about why we would put a man on the moon, he explicitly linked it to America's special role in the world as a provider of freedom.

00:04:20.000 Remember, this is the middle of the Cold War, and there was a lot of talk in those days, like right about this time, about the Russians putting a man into space on the Sputnik satellite.

00:04:29.000 And JFK decided, OK, we're going to fight back against that by actually going far beyond that.

00:04:33.000 We'll put a man on the moon.

00:04:34.000 Putting an American flag on the moon was the point of the endeavor.

00:04:36.000 It wasn't ancillary to the endeavor.

00:04:37.000 It was actually the point of the endeavor.

00:04:39.000 Here's JFK talking about the original moon mission.

00:04:42.000 We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

00:04:50.000 Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.

00:04:58.000 Okay, and then he explicitly links the mission to, guess what?

00:05:01.000 The American flag.

00:05:02.000 Here's what he had to say about the American flag in announcing this mission.

00:05:05.000 He's talking about this at Rice University.

00:05:06.000 It's a very famous speech, obviously.

00:05:08.000 For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon, and to the planets beyond.

00:05:17.000 And we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom.

00:05:27.000 And peace!

00:05:29.000 So it turns out that the American flag was sort of the point, right?

00:05:32.000 That we didn't want the Russians to be up there on the moon using it as a base. 0.92

00:05:35.000 We didn't want the Chinese up there. 1.00

00:05:37.000 By the way, at the time that we were actually throwing ticker-take parades for Neil Armstrong, the Chinese were busy stringing up people who were dissenting from government policy. 0.99

00:05:44.000 So the fact that we are now catering to a Chinese government that remains a fascistic dictatorship, the fact that we are catering to that government in order to downplay the role of America, it has a lot to say with the nature of free markets.

00:05:55.000 Free markets are not by nature

00:05:58.000 Moral when it comes to who they take into account.

00:06:00.000 Markets are moral only in the sense that they recognize that our property is the fruit of our labor.

00:06:05.000 That's what makes markets moral.

00:06:06.000 But there's nothing that says a free market is moral when it comes to which audience you are catering to.

00:06:10.000 And if Hollywood feels it can cater to a Chinese market by getting rid of American messaging, it will do so despite the immorality of that basic idea.

00:06:18.000 But there's something deeper happening here, and that is that Hollywood and the American left are deeply embarrassed by the idea that America is a nation that is a force for good in the world.

00:06:25.000 There's a hardcore of the left that believes that America historically, it's the Howard Zinn left, believes that America is historically a force for evil in the world.

00:06:33.000 If you go listen to the radicals over at like Chapo Trap House or something, another podcast on the left,

00:06:38.000 What you will see is that they're constantly talking about historically how America has been a force for tyranny and fascism around the world.

00:06:43.000 And maybe it would have been better if America had just backed off the world stage and allowed the Soviets and the communists to dominate Africa, dominate South America. 0.87

00:06:50.000 It's all about America backing tyranny.

00:06:52.000 It's the Noam Chomsky view of history.

00:06:54.000 And that is being indicated here.

00:06:56.000 Every good thing America did is actually a world achievement.

00:06:58.000 And every bad thing America did is America's burden alone.

00:07:01.000 So slavery was America's alone, but putting a man on the moon, that was a world achievement.

00:07:05.000 In reality, it's sort of the reverse.

00:07:06.000 Slavery was universal in human history.

00:07:08.000 America fought a bloody war to get rid of slavery.

00:07:10.000 That does not mean that folks who engaged in slavery and back slavery in the United States are off the moral hook.

00:07:15.000 Far from it.

00:07:16.000 But, what is uniquely American is not slavery.

00:07:18.000 That was a universal world institution that was also enacted in the United States and was evil. 0.70

00:07:23.000 But what is uniquely American is what we did after slavery and the foundations of the country and the Constitution.

00:07:29.000 There are certain things that are unique about America.

00:07:31.000 The left reverses all of these historical truths.

00:07:33.000 Everything that is bad about America, in reality, the vast majority of things that have been bad about America were not unique to America.

00:07:39.000 They were rather universal.

00:07:41.000 And most of the things that are good about America tend to be pretty unique to America and not universal, which is why America's rise is coincident with the greatest reduction in world poverty in the history of mankind.

00:07:50.000 Why America's rise in terms of economic power is coincident with the dramatic decrease in child death.

00:07:58.000 In health problems, even in pollution in the last 20 years, America's been reducing its own pollution by leaps and bounds.

00:08:07.000 The fact is, America is a uniquely wonderful place.

00:08:09.000 And because Hollywood doesn't choose to recognize that, they will remove any indicator that anything good that was ever done under American auspices was done under the auspices of that American flag.

00:08:20.000 They will champion people kneeling 1.00

00:08:22.000 for the American flag with regard to isolated instances of police misconduct, but they won't put the American flag on the moon.

00:08:29.000 It's more representative of the American flag when there's a bad cop than it is of the American flag when we legitimately expend billions of dollars to put a human being on the moon and put the American flag up there.

00:08:40.000 That's insanity, but unfortunately, that's a pretty prevalent view among a lot of folks on the radical left, and I would say even on the mainstream left.

00:08:47.000 Now, meanwhile, I think it's important to point out some news regarding some of the beloved candidates of the Democratic Party on the left.

00:08:53.000 One of the candidates who is rising fast in the polls is Beto O'Rourke.

00:08:57.000 He's running against Ted Cruz for the Senate in Texas, and the polls have him pretty close.

00:09:01.000 I mean, in spitting distance, some polls have him within the margin of error.

00:09:04.000 Democrats are, of course, extraordinarily excited about this.

00:09:06.000 If they could turn Texas blue, then they'd never lose another election.

00:09:10.000 I mean, basically, once Texas goes blue, the country goes blue.

00:09:13.000 Texas is certainly a bellwether state.

00:09:15.000 And what you saw in the last election, it was actually very interesting, is that while President Trump turned Ohio red, and he turned Florida red, and Wisconsin red, and while he turned Michigan red,

00:09:24.000 Texas was trending more blue.

00:09:26.000 He actually won Texas by fewer points, I believe, than Mitt Romney won Texas in 2012, if I'm not mistaken.

00:09:32.000 In any case, Beto O'Rourke was expected to be far behind Ted Cruz in the Texas race.

00:09:37.000 Turnout is going to be very high on the Democratic side.

00:09:40.000 And I think Cruz's camp is worried about O'Rourke in a way that is pretty shocking, given the fact that Texas is a deep red state.

00:09:46.000 It is not a blue state.

00:09:48.000 And the proof is in the pudding.

00:09:50.000 Republicans dominate the state legislature.

00:09:51.000 They dominate the governor's office.

00:09:52.000 They have for years.

00:09:54.000 Beto O'Rourke, though, is being held up as the new face of the Democratic Party.

00:09:57.000 Should Beto O'Rourke win the Senate seat in Texas, there's very little doubt that he would be the frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2020 from the Democratic side of the aisle.

00:10:05.000 He is a pretty good speaker.

00:10:07.000 They're trying to paint him as a sort of Obama-like figure, that he came out of nowhere, and therefore he is somebody who ought to be with a formidable resume.

00:10:17.000 But apparently his campaign has now run into a bit of a speed bump.

00:10:21.000 The speed bump being that he was involved in a DUI 20 years ago and actually apparently tried to flee the scene of the crime.

00:10:26.000 This is according to the Houston Chronicle.

00:10:28.000 U.S.

00:10:28.000 Representative Beto O'Rourke has long owned up to his drunken driving arrest 20 years ago, describing it in a Houston Chronicle op-ed piece earlier this week as a serious mistake for which there is no excuse.

00:10:36.000 Although the arrest has been public knowledge, police reports of the September 1998 incident, when the Democratic Senate candidate had just turned 26, shows more serious threat to public safety than has previously been reported.

00:10:46.000 State and local police reports obtained by the Chronicle and Express News show O'Rourke was driving drunk at what a witness called a high rate of speed in a 75 mile per hour zone on Interstate 10 about a mile from the New Mexico border.

00:10:57.000 He lost control and hit a truck, sending his car careening across the center median into oncoming lanes.

00:11:03.000 The witness, who stopped at the scene, later told police that O'Rourke had tried to drive away from the scene.

00:11:09.000 So he's involved in a DUI.

00:11:10.000 Allegedly, a DUI hit and run after crossing into oncoming traffic.

00:11:14.000 O'Rourke blew a 0.136 and 0.134 on police breathalyzers, which means that basically that he was made of alcohol at that point.

00:11:22.000 That is not a mild drunk driving arrest.

00:11:24.000 That is, you have been drinking incessantly for hours, and then you get in a car and rush into oncoming traffic and then try to flee the scene.

00:11:30.000 This is well above the legal limit.

00:11:31.000 The legal limit in Texas is .08.

00:11:33.000 So he's driving almost twice the legal limit.

00:11:35.000 He was arrested at the scene, charged with DUI, completed a court-approved diversion program, and had the charges dismissed.

00:11:40.000 Now listen, as somebody who's had their license suspended for speeding, I've never driven drunk.

00:11:45.000 I have had my license suspended.

00:11:46.000 I would say that there is a major difference between

00:11:49.000 A speeding ticket or even a DUI where you're pulled over and you blow above the legal limit.

00:11:54.000 And you rushing into oncoming traffic, hitting other cars and then trying to flee.

00:11:58.000 That's a significant amount worse.

00:12:00.000 So Beto O'Rourke's candidacy could be in trouble.

00:12:02.000 We'll talk about that.

00:12:03.000 Plus another Democratic candidate who could be in trouble for even more insane reasons in just one second.

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00:13:24.000 OK, so Beto O'Rourke could be in trouble in his Texas race to the great consternation of Democrats.

00:13:28.000 That's not even the craziest Democrat story of the day.

00:13:31.000 The craziest Democrat story of the day comes courtesy of state Senate candidate Julia Salazar.

00:13:36.000 So, Julia Salazar is running for the State Senate in New York, and she is, according to City and State New York, she has attracted significant, often fawning media coverage, an army of enthusiastic volunteers, endorsements from politicians and activist organizations, and now withering scrutiny.

00:13:50.000 A series of articles have dug into her childhood religion and activist history, exposing facts that either contradict or provide relevant context to some of her biographical claims.

00:13:58.000 Based on interviews with her mother and brother, and Salazar herself,

00:14:01.000 City and State has discovered additional, previously unreported instances of Salazar falsely presenting her background and others that are, while not technically untrue, misleading.

00:14:09.000 But the deeper one digs into the competing narratives of Salazar's upbringings, the less it appears to be a simple matter of truth or lies or he said she said.

00:14:16.000 Salazar has told a few outright falsehoods.

00:14:18.000 She claimed her family immigrated from Colombia, when in reality, she, her brother, and mother were born and raised in the United States.

00:14:23.000 And her father first came to the United States as a teenager and was naturalized before Salazar was ever born.

00:14:29.000 And she also claimed that she had Jewish background.

00:14:31.000 She has no Jewish background.

00:14:32.000 At all.

00:14:33.000 But she's anti-Israel.

00:14:34.000 She wanted to claim that she was Jewish, that she could get away with the anti-Israel nonsense.

00:14:38.000 She also claimed that she grew up working class in an economically stressed family.

00:14:43.000 It turns out that is not true.

00:14:45.000 According to her brother, my family immigrated to the U.S.

00:14:47.000 from Colombia.

00:14:47.000 So she said, my family immigrated to the U.S.

00:14:49.000 from Colombia when I was a baby.

00:14:51.000 My mom ended up raising my brother and me as a single mom without a college degree and from a working class background. 0.99

00:14:55.000 That's what she told Jacobin Magazine, the socialist magazine.

00:14:58.000 Her brother says he remembers them being financially comfortable, living in a big house along a river in Jupiter, Florida.

00:15:04.000 Each of the siblings had their own rooms.

00:15:06.000 The six-figure income their father, Luis Hernan Salazar, earned as a pilot meant the family could afford to set aside college saving funds of about $6,000 for each child.

00:15:14.000 He says, we were very much middle class.

00:15:15.000 We had a house in Jupiter along the river.

00:15:17.000 It was in a beautiful neighborhood.

00:15:18.000 I feel very strongly about my family, and I want to tell the truth.

00:15:22.000 So all of this is basically a lie.

00:15:23.000 So that's pretty awesome.

00:15:27.000 She also claimed that she didn't have permanent residence in the United States.

00:15:33.000 That is not true.

00:15:33.000 Everyone in her family was a U.S.

00:15:34.000 citizen because her father became a U.S.

00:15:36.000 citizen sometime around 1984.

00:15:38.000 So all sorts of good stuff from Julia Salazar.

00:15:42.000 And, uh, she is, uh, she's kind of a crazy person, it sounds like. 0.79

00:15:46.000 But the Democrats are defending her because, obviously, she fulfills certain intersectional boxes.

00:15:50.000 And that's, of course, why they're defending Beto O'Rourke as well, because those intersectional boxes matter a lot more than being qualified to actually be a legislator in the United States.

00:15:59.000 The Democrats are much more interested in this sort of intersectional racial politics than they are in anything else.

00:16:04.000 And this is a broader trend in American politics right now.

00:16:08.000 It's very weird what's happening in American politics.

00:16:10.000 On the left, you have people jumping into a sort of left-wing populism that is wrapped around identity politics.

00:16:17.000 So populism, to describe what populism is in sort of policy context,

00:16:22.000 It's difficult, because populism is more a tactic than it is natural policy.

00:16:25.000 Populism is when people say, I speak for the people.

00:16:28.000 That's populism.

00:16:29.000 When people say, I speak for a policy, that's usually not populism.

00:16:32.000 But if you had to sort of peg down the populist attitude toward policy, it's usually distrust of major institutions.

00:16:37.000 That's how Jamie Kerchick puts it, and I think this is right.

00:16:39.000 Distrust of major institutions, so sort of conspiracy theorizing about the power of institutions in life.

00:16:45.000 We're good to go.

00:17:04.000 On the right, this manifests as anti-immigrant attitude, a belief that we have to maintain a quote-unquote white majority.

00:17:10.000 There are parts of the right that have actually argued this, that the real problem with immigration is not people immigrating from cultures that may not be well assimilated in the United States, but it's actually the people themselves coming from countries that we don't like.

00:17:26.000 That's a bad attitude, and that's sort of right-wing populism with regard to immigration.

00:17:30.000 On the left, it's actually manifested as the out-group is white Americans, in many cases, and the in-group is minority citizens who have been put under the thumb.

00:17:38.000 Anti-institutions, on the right you see this as the deep state, right?

00:17:43.000 Everything that the government does is conspiratorial and an attempt to get you.

00:17:47.000 And while I am on board with a lot of suspicion of government interventionism in the economy, I have real doubts that the government is a malevolent force in American life. 1.00

00:17:54.000 I think it's much more to do with radical incompetence and stupidity, because most people are radically incompetent and stupid, than it has to do with conspiracy theories inside the government. 0.98

00:18:02.000 And on the right, the anti-free market attitude, which we'll talk about in a second, has taken the form of big corporations are backing the leftist agenda. 1.00

00:18:10.000 So we'll talk about all those three from the right.

00:18:11.000 On the left, these three attitudes manifest in a different way.

00:18:14.000 So the in-group loyalty is loyalty to this idea of a majority-minority country, that that's very important. 0.97

00:18:20.000 We have to push that and we have to say that the future of America is non-white. 1.00

00:18:24.000 You see this in an article in the New York Times today.

00:18:27.000 The anti-free markets attitude is evident on the left in virtually every respect.

00:18:31.000 And then you have the distrust of institutions, which is America is systemically racist, America is institutionally biased, and all the rest.

00:18:37.000 And so there's this meeting of the minds when it comes to distrust of institutions, distrust of the markets, and belief that the in-group is paramount.

00:18:45.000 So let's talk about, I think that the populism of the right has in large part been driven by the populism of the left.

00:18:51.000 I think that a lot of the populism of the right is a reactionary response to the populism of the left, particularly on issues racial.

00:18:57.000 So I mentioned Julia Salazar, I mentioned also Beto O'Rourke.

00:19:01.000 Obviously, a lot of the enthusiasm for Andrew Gillum in Florida has to do with the fact that he's black, not just the fact that he is a democratic socialist.

00:19:07.000 By the way, I mentioned, quick correction, yesterday I suggested he was gay because it's just a mistake.

00:19:11.000 He's not gay, he has a wife.

00:19:12.000 In any case, the intersectional politics of the left is very evident and the proof today comes courtesy of the New York Times.

00:19:19.000 There are two separate pieces in the New York Times talking about the threat of whiteness in America.

00:19:23.000 And why it would be good if there was a white minority in America. 0.92

00:19:26.000 This is the identity politics populism of the left that has led them to embrace a bunch of radical candidates on their own side.

00:19:31.000 There's a piece by Thomas Edsel talking about demography in the United States and the fact that there are a lot of people, he's very against this, there are a lot of people who are Hispanic who now identify as white.

00:19:43.000 Now normally we would think, okay, maybe that's a fine thing, like how you self-identify racially

00:19:49.000 Maybe that's an indicator that you feel comfortable in the United States. 0.86

00:19:51.000 If there's this line that's being put out by the press that America is a whites-only country and that whites are comfortable in America, and then you started self-identifying as white, maybe that isn't you being a race traitor. 0.54

00:20:03.000 Maybe that's you basically saying, I don't care about my race anymore.

00:20:06.000 I'm just going to identify as what the media would identify me as because I'm successful.

00:20:11.000 The reality is I think that our focus on race in the country is extraordinarily over the top in the most tolerant and diverse country in human history.

00:20:19.000 But this article by Edsel in the New York Times suggests that it's really bad that people are self-identifying as white instead.

00:20:25.000 We should cudgel them back into particular racial groups so that we can have this majority-minority America and then identify voters by their particular strain of race.

00:20:34.000 This is something Edsel is pushing over at the New York Times.

00:20:37.000 That's not the only column.

00:20:38.000 There's a piece in the New York Times today that's even worse, which I'm going to get to in just a second.

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00:21:47.000 Okay, so the left's populism on race takes the form of identity politics.

00:21:51.000 There's a piece by a person named Pankaj Mishra.

00:21:54.000 He's a contributing opinion writer focused on ideas and politics of the New York Times.

00:21:57.000 The title is, The Religion of Whiteness Becomes a Suicide Cult. 0.66

00:22:01.000 And the basic idea is that everything she disagrees with is whiteness. 0.78

00:22:04.000 Everything she doesn't like is whiteness. 1.00

00:22:06.000 Because white men are bad. 1.00

00:22:07.000 And whiteness is bad. 0.99

00:22:09.000 And what would be better is if we were ruled by an intersectional coalition of people who have been victimized in the past by American whiteness. 0.99

00:22:15.000 So this is what this idiot writes, Pankaj Mishra, who is representative of a serious strain of thought in the left-wing community. 0.98

00:22:23.000 White men, an obscure Australian academic named Charles Henry Pearson predicted in his 1893 book, National Life and Character, a forecast would be elbowed and hustled and perhaps even thrust aside by people they had long regarded as their inferiors, black and yellow races. 0.99

00:22:35.000 China in particular would be a major threat.

00:22:37.000 Pearson, prone to terrors of racial extinction while living in a settler colony in an Asian neighborhood, thought it was imperative to defend the last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely for the higher civilization.

00:22:47.000 His prescriptions for racial self-defense thunderously echoed around the white Anglosphere, a community of men with shared historical ties to Britain.

00:22:54.000 Theodore Roosevelt, who held a complacent 19th century faith buttressed by racist pseudoscience that non-white peoples were hopelessly inferior, reported to Pearson the great effect of his book among all our men here in Washington.

00:23:04.000 In the years that followed, politicians and pundits in Britain and its settler colonies of Australia, Canada, and the United States would jointly forge an identity geopolitics of the higher races.

00:23:14.000 Today, this ideology has reached its final and most desperate phase.

00:23:29.000 With existential fears about endangered white power feverishly circulating once again between the core and the periphery of the greatest modern empire.

00:23:36.000 The fundamentalist question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive, President Trump said last year in a speech hailed by the British journalist Douglas Murray, the Canadian columnist Mark Stein, and the American editor Rich Lowry.

00:23:46.000 More recently, Mr. Trump tweeted falsely about large-scale killing of white farmers in South Africa, a preoccupation deepened by Rupert Murdoch's media of white supremacists around the world.

00:23:56.000 So, in other words, because Trump said that the West may be losing its will to survive, that is an indicator of white supremacy.

00:24:02.000 But the West is a unique thing in human history, and it is not because of race.

00:24:07.000 It is actually because of not caring about race.

00:24:10.000 The West was shaped by a couple of cultural forces.

00:24:12.000 Judeo-Christian values and Greek reason, none of them are exclusive to race.

00:24:17.000 I mean, Augustine was from North Africa.

00:24:20.000 The idea that everybody who was a part of Western civilization was of one race.

00:24:28.000 There were legitimate racial battles between Italians and between the Irish and the British.

00:24:32.000 It's only now that we consider whiteness a thing.

00:24:35.000 And that is largely, yes, due to racism of whites, but now it's being re kind of vivified by this idea of the left that whiteness is the prevailing culturally dominant hierarchy and we have to get rid of it.

00:24:46.000 And so in this article, this is the part that's amazing.

00:24:49.000 This this author basically connects whiteness to every conservative idea.

00:24:52.000 So if you're a conservative, this means that you are an advocate of whiteness, which means that we need an identity politics of the left.

00:24:58.000 We need a populist identity politics of the left to fight the white overstructure. 0.70

00:25:02.000 Here's what Mishra writes.

00:25:03.000 Mr. Trump appears to some of these powerful but insecure men as an able-bodied defender of the higher races.

00:25:09.000 The Muslim-baiting British conservative politician Boris Johnson says that he is increasingly admiring of Donald Trump.

00:25:14.000 Mr. Murray, the British journalist, thinks Mr. Trump is reminding the West of what is great about ourselves.

00:25:18.000 The Canadian YouTube personality Jordan Peterson claims that his loathing of identity politics would have driven him to vote for Trump.

00:25:25.000 So, in other words, all of these guys are apparently white supremacists because Trump is a white supremacist and Trump was reading Teddy Roosevelt.

00:25:32.000 I find all of this highly doubtful, but it's this identity politics of the left that has driven the left into a populist area with regard to race.

00:25:41.000 Now, they're obviously in a populist area with regard to opposition to free markets.

00:25:44.000 Bernie Sanders represents that side of the party.

00:25:47.000 And then finally, you have the Democrats embracing this distrust of institutions, the idea that all of our institutions are riddled with corruption and evil, and therefore must be torn down from the inside.

00:25:55.000 This has been matched on the right by the rise of a sort of comparative populism.

00:26:00.000 This looks a lot more like European politics, by the way.

00:26:02.000 Far-right politics in Europe look a lot like what's happening on the populist right here in the United States, which is big government but distrust of big corporations.

00:26:11.000 Anger at immigrants and a belief that free markets are corrupt, inherently.

00:26:16.000 And we're starting to see that on the right, and it's disquieting.

00:26:19.000 I don't like it on the left.

00:26:20.000 It's really ugly on the left, and I think the reactionary right is doing some of the same stuff.

00:26:25.000 As an example, President Trump yesterday was giving a speech in which he was talking about the quote-unquote, old corrupt globalist ruling class.

00:26:31.000 Now remember, President Trump is the President of the United States.

00:26:33.000 He is the head of a government that has Republicans in charge of the House and the Senate.

00:26:38.000 The executive branch is incredibly powerful.

00:26:40.000 The Supreme Court is largely stacked with Republican appointees.

00:26:44.000 And yet here he is, railing against the idea of this old corrupt globalist ruling class, which is the populist language of distrust of institutions and free markets.

00:26:52.000 This sort of populism...

00:26:53.000 is anti-classical liberalism.

00:26:55.000 It is.

00:26:56.000 When he says globalist ruling class, I'm not sure what he means.

00:26:58.000 He's very unclear about this terminology, but it perpetuates this myth that people are losing their jobs because there's a cabal of people in power on the coast who are attempting to remove jobs from people in the middle of the country and send them to China, which is not actually accurate.

00:27:12.000 Free trade policy is not responsible for the vast majority of job loss in the United States.

00:27:16.000 Free trade policy is really involved with the vast majority of growth in the United States.

00:27:20.000 Technological progress

00:27:23.000 The so-called resistance is mad because their ideas have been rejected by the American people.

00:27:27.000 They're the old and corrupt globalist ruling class that squandered trillions of dollars on foreign adventures.

00:27:51.000 I mean, that foreign adventures language, that's like Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders stuff, right?

00:27:55.000 The idea that we've squandered money on foreign— We are still involved, by the way, in a war in Afghanistan.

00:28:00.000 The president of the United States has spent an enormous amount of money on the military, as he should.

00:28:04.000 But this populism of the right, which is rising to meet a populism of the left, is not good.

00:28:09.000 The best indicator of this last night was Tucker Carlson, who's very into a lot of this populist rhetoric.

00:28:13.000 Now, I think Tucker's a really talented host.

00:28:14.000 I think Tucker has a lot of intelligent things to say.

00:28:16.000 But here he was yesterday,

00:28:17.000 Legitimately repeating Bernie Sanders' talking points to go after Amazon.

00:28:20.000 Now, going after Amazon has become a preoccupation since President Trump decided particular corporations are worth targeting.

00:28:27.000 Amazon is a fine American corporation that provides literally hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, keeps other businesses in business because you can sell your product via Amazon.

00:28:37.000 I've never understood the attacks on Amazon.

00:28:38.000 It doesn't make any sense to me.

00:28:39.000 Bernie Sanders' attacks on Amazon have been that Amazon doesn't pay its workers enough.

00:28:44.000 But the reality is that Amazon pays the workers what they are willing to accept because no one is being forced into a job.

00:28:50.000 The chief reason that Amazon, like a lot of major corporations in the United States, doesn't pay very much to its workers is because, number one, they don't have to.

00:28:57.000 Right?

00:28:57.000 Supply meets demand in the labor market as well.

00:28:59.000 And second, because the government provides an enormous amount of aid in the form of food stamps and welfare programs to supplement the income that people are earning from corporations like Amazon.

00:29:09.000 If you actually want Amazon's pay rates to go up, all you have to do is remove a lot of these government subsidies, and then Amazon will start paying higher wages because no one can accept a job that is not a quote-unquote living wage.

00:29:18.000 You hear this phrase a lot from the left.

00:29:19.000 A living wage.

00:29:20.000 Amazon's not paying a living wage.

00:29:22.000 Well, by definition, Amazon is paying a living wage or you would be dead, right?

00:29:26.000 Any wage that you choose to accept is by definition a living wage because if you were dead, you couldn't accept it.

00:29:31.000 Or if it were going to kill you, you couldn't accept it.

00:29:33.000 What you mean is that it's a wage you don't like, but the worker likes it enough to take it.

00:29:36.000 So here's Tucker Carlson, nonetheless, using the same populist rhetoric as Bernie Sanders.

00:29:40.000 Again, not trusting free markets because it's more important to distrust institutions and therefore call for a sort of bizarre centralized government control.

00:29:48.000 It's certainly enough to pay his employees well, but he doesn't.

00:29:52.000 A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits.

00:29:59.000 According to data from the non-profit group New Food Economy, nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year.

00:30:08.000 Jeff Bezos isn't paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars.

00:30:14.000 Next time you see Jeff Bezos, make certain that he says thank you.

00:30:18.000 Okay, it's actually the opposite.

00:30:19.000 Jeff Bezos is not paying those people because they are on, and paying them less because they are on welfare.

00:30:24.000 The welfare exists, and therefore he is paying them less.

00:30:27.000 That's just the way markets work.

00:30:28.000 Again, if there's a subsidy, more people are going to be on that subsidy, and you are subsidizing the business on the other end.

00:30:34.000 The reason that I bring all of this up, really, is because I think that we're moving toward a darker time in American politics, where certain basic principles of classical liberalism are going by the wayside.

00:30:42.000 There are inherent contradictions in the populist ideology and philosophy.

00:30:45.000 These inherent contradictions are pretty simple.

00:30:48.000 Let's say that you're an in-group.

00:30:49.000 You trust the members of that in-group.

00:30:51.000 That's an institutional in-group.

00:30:53.000 But you don't trust institutions.

00:30:54.000 So why is it that you trust your in-group, but you don't trust institutions?

00:30:57.000 That doesn't make any sense.

00:30:58.000 You don't trust free markets, but you also don't trust the institutions that are there to restrict the free markets.

00:31:02.000 So who do you trust?

00:31:03.000 Which is why populism basically ends up being a lot of anti-sloganeering and fulmination about problems without any real solutions.

00:31:10.000 But I guess that angry fulmination has become the culmination of our politics. 0.98

00:31:13.000 And then, the most irritating part is that we have politicians who engage in this sort of crap on a regular basis and then gloss over it the minute that it rears its ugly head. 0.98

00:31:22.000 In a second, I'm going to talk about that. 0.98

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00:31:56.000 We have some pretty good stuff coming up on the Sunday special this week.

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00:32:05.000 We're the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:32:13.000 As I say, one of the elements of deep irritation is that populism, because it is seductive.

00:32:18.000 The basic picture of populism is, it's not your fault.

00:32:21.000 That is the basic picture of populism.

00:32:23.000 You got a problem in your life?

00:32:24.000 Well, blame it on the failure of markets, or blame it on the failure of institutions, or blame it on the out-group that is targeting your in-group.

00:32:31.000 Never blame it on yourself.

00:32:32.000 Never say, maybe the problem in my life is I live in a free country with a free market, with institutions that are largely trustworthy, and I'm just effing up my life.

00:32:39.000 Populism says, it's not you, it's everybody else.

00:32:41.000 And so you see that on the right and on the left, and it makes politics nastier, because now you have two in groups that see the out group as an enemy.

00:32:50.000 And that means that the battles are going to become worse and worse.

00:32:52.000 I was talking with my mom about this last night with regard to the Catholic Church, because she was suggesting, she was saying, I don't understand how it is that there are so many people in various institutions that are willing to go along with, for example, the abuse of children,

00:33:06.000 Just to protect their institution.

00:33:07.000 And I was explaining to her that human psychology is such that we like to belong to groups and these groups make us feel protected.

00:33:15.000 This is the in-group mentality that is so endemic to populism.

00:33:18.000 But it's also endemic to the human condition.

00:33:20.000 If you're part of a group, you are safer.

00:33:22.000 If your group is threatened, you're going to rise to the defense of the group.

00:33:25.000 And it does not matter whether the group is threatened for good reason or for bad reason.

00:33:28.000 So, if you read a child sex abuse scandal as an attack on your group, rather than on as a good-hearted attempt to cleanse the group of something bad,

00:33:36.000 You are likely to respond by defending your group, even if it means defending the bad thing.

00:33:40.000 And you're now seeing this inside both political parties as well.

00:33:43.000 You're seeing Democrats respond to legitimate criticisms of their policies, ideas, and politicians as you're attacking my identity and my identity group.

00:33:51.000 Therefore, you're evil and I will fight you and I will try to shut you down.

00:33:53.000 I will censor you and I will use every method at my disposal to silence you. 0.71

00:33:57.000 And then you see on the right, every time President Trump, for example, does something that's actually morally bereft,

00:34:01.000 People on the right say, well, you're actually attacking my in-group.

00:34:04.000 It's not that you're attacking Trump.

00:34:05.000 I understand your real motive is to destroy my in-group.

00:34:08.000 And the problem is that in both cases, that's sort of half right.

00:34:11.000 The right does want to destroy the left's in-group, and the left does want to destroy the right's in-group.

00:34:15.000 The only way to get past this is to get past the in-groups themselves and to say, listen, I'm not interested in destroying your in-group.

00:34:21.000 I don't like your ideology, but that's not a group, right?

00:34:24.000 The groups that we're talking about that are really dangerous are these identity politics in-groups, the identity politics of whiteness or of blackness or of Hispanicness. 0.95

00:34:32.000 Those are the in-groups that I'm not threatening any of that stuff.

00:34:36.000 I see you as an individual, and your rip on President Trump for schtupping a porn star and then paying her off $130,000, that is not necessarily an attempt to destroy whiteness.

00:34:45.000 But I think that the radicals in each group have an advantage.

00:34:49.000 Once people are engaged in a certain tribal loyalty to their in-group, radicals are able to take advantage of that, because the more radical you are, the more you're threatened by the out-group, which means that your in-group comes to your defense.

00:34:59.000 You say that again slower.

00:35:00.000 The more that you are radical, the more outgroups have reason to attack you.

00:35:04.000 But those attacks, the very presence of the attacks, drives the in-group to greater solidarity.

00:35:09.000 So it's easy for radicals to take footholds in in-groups that feel threatened.

00:35:13.000 That's a very, very dangerous thing.

00:35:14.000 You're seeing it happen with populism across the country.

00:35:17.000 What's truly irritating is some of the people who have been pushing exactly this sort of populism, exactly this sort of in-group, out-group division.

00:35:23.000 Those people now claiming that they had nothing to do with it.

00:35:25.000 So, for example, Joe Biden was speaking at John McCain's eulogy yesterday.

00:35:30.000 And former Vice President Biden, who obviously wants to run in 2020, says that he saw John McCain as a unifying figure.

00:35:38.000 And he thinks that we need to get past the attacks on each other's motives.

00:35:41.000 What he says here is correct and good and anti-populist. 1.00

00:35:45.000 There's only one problem.

00:35:47.000 It was always appropriate to challenge another senator's judgment.

00:35:51.000 But never appropriate to challenge their motive.

00:35:55.000 When you challenge their motive, it's impossible to get to go.

00:36:00.000 But all we do today...

00:36:24.000 Look at their budget and what they're proposing.

00:36:27.000 Romney wants to let the, he said in the first hundred days, he's gonna let the big banks once again write their own rules.

00:36:33.000 Unchain Wall Street.

00:36:38.000 They're going to put y'all back in chains. 1.00

00:36:40.000 He was speaking at a historically black church. 0.98

00:36:43.000 At a historically black church.

00:36:44.000 He was saying that Mitt Romney was going to put y'all back in chains.

00:36:46.000 But don't worry, he wasn't questioning anybody's motives.

00:36:48.000 Joe Biden also likened the Tea Party to terrorists.

00:36:51.000 Back during that campaign in 2000, in 2011, actually, he said that.

00:36:55.000 And even going all the way back to 2008, when he was running against John McCain, right?

00:36:59.000 He was on the VP side, running with Barack Obama against John McCain.

00:37:02.000 He said that it was unpatriotic not to back his tax program.

00:37:06.000 We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.

00:37:10.000 Anybody making over $250,000 is going to pay more.

00:37:13.000 You got us.

00:37:14.000 Time to be patriotic, Kate.

00:37:16.000 Time to jump in.

00:37:17.000 Time to be part of the deal.

00:37:19.000 If you don't back his program, you're not a patriot.

00:37:22.000 All these people who are engaging in this exact sort of populist political rhetoric, now they turn around and say they don't like it when Trump does it.

00:37:28.000 They were the creators of it.

00:37:29.000 So let's be clear where all of this came from, and let's also be clear that standing for a certain moral standard when it comes to classical liberalism and politics is actually an important thing.

00:37:38.000 There are central principles in American politics, and those principles do include seeing ourselves, seeing America as the big in-group, and unified by principle, and seeing free markets as a good thing, and seeing our institutions as bedrocks of American honesty.

00:37:55.000 We're spoiled in this country.

00:37:56.000 We really are when it comes to the honesty of our institutions.

00:37:59.000 We like to talk about the corruption of American institutions.

00:38:01.000 Yes, there are certain institutions that have corruption embedded in them.

00:38:03.000 There are certain individuals who are corrupt.

00:38:07.000 But try another country and see how corrupted it is where you're actually paying off police officers to get your business done.

00:38:12.000 I mean, the idea that one of America's great virtues is the fact that our institutions

00:38:16.000 I don't know.

00:38:34.000 On the DL, on the down low, because there's a lot of blowback in every institution in California if people know that you're a conservative.

00:38:42.000 There have been a few cases where patients have gone in and seen my wife and known who she was, and she always finds that hilarious and flattering.

00:38:48.000 But, like, a lot of her co-workers don't know what I do for a living, which is pretty hilarious.

00:38:56.000 I'm not sure why you wouldn't add the duties to the Air Force.

00:38:58.000 I'm not enough of a military expert to know the answer to that question.

00:39:01.000 But I do like the idea that we ought to have some sort of military understanding of space, because that is a space that we are going to have to protect.

00:39:08.000 Obviously, there are foreign nations that are attempting to militarize space.

00:39:11.000 Melissa says,

00:39:13.000 My relationship for four years just ended.

00:39:14.000 The main reason given was that my now ex didn't want to marry me or possibly ever get married if it meant that there would be times of struggle in the relationship.

00:39:21.000 He comes from a broken home with a sort of Elizabeth Taylor story on one side.

00:39:24.000 My parents have been married for 34 years, so I've watched them work through all the tough times and come out stronger.

00:39:28.000 As someone who has what appears to be a strong marriage, what is your advice to a millennial looking to find a future spouse willing to build a life together, including overcoming adversities?

00:39:35.000 All the best, Melissa." 0.77

00:39:36.000 Well, honestly, this is an entry-level question that you need to be asking the person you're dating.

00:39:42.000 You shouldn't find out four years into the relationship that the person doesn't want difficulties in the relationship and doesn't want marriage.

00:39:49.000 You should be dating for marriage.

00:39:50.000 In my view, this is the only purpose to date.

00:39:53.000 I really, I do not understand the idea of dating to live together.

00:39:55.000 I don't understand the idea of dating for sex.

00:39:57.000 It doesn't make any sense to me.

00:39:59.000 The entire purpose of dating for marriage, of dating should be that you want to create a long lasting relationship within which to build a family.

00:40:06.000 And that means asking tough questions on like the first date.

00:40:08.000 And by the way, as soon as you date with direction in mind, your dating life is going to change because you're actually going to be able to dismiss people who are a waste of your time.

00:40:17.000 You're not going to be wasting time with losers who latch on to you for four years and then decide they don't want to get married.

00:40:22.000 And ladies, you're not going to draw a man in by living with him. 1.00

00:40:26.000 That's not how this works.

00:40:28.000 The old saw, no one buys the cow if they can get the milk for free.

00:40:31.000 There's a large grain of truth to that.

00:40:33.000 You know what kind of women men want to marry? 1.00

00:40:36.000 The kind of women who make it clear that they want to be married. 1.00

00:40:39.000 If men can get away with not marrying women, then they will do it. 1.00

00:40:42.000 Because that's how men are.

00:40:44.000 If you want to get married, make clear to the dude you're not doing anything until you get married, and he will marry you.

00:40:49.000 Really.

00:40:50.000 There's an entry level... There's... In any relationship, whether it is business or whether it is personal, in order for somebody to fully commit to a business relationship, they have to have skin in the game.

00:41:00.000 The only way to get skin in the game when it comes to actual marriage is to say, you are not going to get anything out of me, basically.

00:41:07.000 And I mean, in terms of sex, particularly.

00:41:10.000 Until marriage actually happens.

00:41:12.000 I think that virginity until marriage is not just a good idea for your own protection.

00:41:15.000 I think, and for your spiritual good, I think it's actually a pretty good negotiating tactic is the reality.

00:41:20.000 So, do what you want.

00:41:21.000 It's free country.

00:41:22.000 But, if you want my advice on how to actually snag the kind of person worth marrying, make clear to the person that that's what you're looking for.

00:41:29.000 Because it draws a different kind of person.

00:41:31.000 Every job has a job description.

00:41:33.000 The job description of husband is not the same as the job description of guy I want to live with for four years and then get dumped by.

00:41:38.000 Well, again, I think the number of people who truly believe that religion dictates socialism is very low.

00:41:42.000 I think there are a lot of socialists who like to use religion as a guise, but the sort of progressive social justice religious folks

00:41:58.000 Very often these are the same people who suggest that the Bible is fine with abortion.

00:42:02.000 So I have a very tough time believing the sincerity of those particular motives.

00:42:06.000 And I say I don't like questioning people's motives, but when the motive clearly does not line up with the purported motive, I have a tough time understanding where exactly the gap takes place.

00:42:16.000 That said,

00:42:17.000 You know, it does say in the New Testament that he who does not work nor shall he eat.

00:42:22.000 The New Testament focus on sharing in common among us, which is one that the left likes to use a lot, is specifically talking about the disciples who are being treated more as a family.

00:42:30.000 There is something worth noting when it comes to religious talk about the quote-unquote sharing among people.

00:42:36.000 Religious communities were designed to build out family to larger levels.

00:42:40.000 That's basically the idea.

00:42:41.000 You're a socialist.

00:42:42.000 I'm a communist in my own family, right?

00:42:43.000 From each according to his ability to each according to her need when it comes to my daughter, right?

00:42:47.000 That's the way it works inside families. 0.56

00:42:50.000 That's not the way that works in society at large and trying to apply the rules of religious redistributionism in a communal context to a broader society that

00:43:00.000 Compels redistributionism is actually a form of theocracy so all these all these SJWs who are quoting the Bible Ask them whether they're for theocracy because it's kind of weird Bobby says hey, Ben.

00:43:10.000 My son was finally born My question is considering you like classical do you also like opera if so what were your top five operas be?

00:43:16.000 Can't wait to see you in Pittsburgh this November.

00:43:17.000 Thanks, so I do really enjoy opera Bizet's Carmen

00:43:23.000 I do like Fidelio, which is an underrated opera by Beethoven.

00:43:44.000 I don't think so.

00:44:06.000 All women do, which is she gets dressed and she puts on makeup and she looks very pretty. 1.00

00:44:11.000 And then she says, do you like this outfit?

00:44:12.000 And I say, yes, I think you look beautiful.

00:44:14.000 And she says, well, I don't feel beautiful.

00:44:15.000 And then I say, facts don't care about your feelings.

00:44:17.000 Right.

00:44:17.000 So that is so I have actually used that line before.

00:44:21.000 But as far as fights with my wife, we don't typically tend to fight. 0.59

00:44:26.000 I mean, really, we don't fight a lot when we do disagree.

00:44:29.000 I think that

00:44:31.000 I've tried to develop over the years the capacity to understand where my own upset is coming from.

00:44:36.000 Is it coming from her being unreasonable?

00:44:38.000 Or is it coming from me?

00:44:40.000 Being unreasonable or glomming on too hard to my own emotional state because sometimes you're just stuck in an emotional state and now you're going to lash out about it.

00:44:50.000 Very often fights come because you bottle stuff up for a long time.

00:44:53.000 But there are a few key things, I think, in fights.

00:44:56.000 Number one, never say always or never.

00:44:58.000 When you say always or never, it's always inaccurate.

00:45:01.000 That's the one time you can use always.

00:45:02.000 So when you say to your spouse, you always do X.

00:45:06.000 It's a recipe for failure, because your spouse doesn't always do X. Your spouse sometimes does X, and it drives you nuts.

00:45:12.000 Right?

00:45:12.000 Your spouse does something sometimes that drives you nuts, but it's important to recognize that the sometimes is not always.

00:45:16.000 Also, I would say that most of the major fights that you're going to have, most of the major character flaws you're gonna have, get them settled while you're young, because by the time you hit 65, you're set in your ways, and it's very difficult to change.

00:45:25.000 You see this with people who are above the age of 60, and I think that it's important to try and iron all that stuff out as fast as possible. 0.99

00:45:32.000 That said, do I fight with my wife sometimes? 0.98

00:45:34.000 Yeah, my wife and I had a bit of a tiff on Sunday.

00:45:37.000 It was actually really, really funny.

00:45:39.000 It ended up being really funny.

00:45:40.000 So basically, here's the story, and she's going to be so pissed I'm going to tell this on air. 0.77

00:45:43.000 So here's the story.

00:45:44.000 So my wife was really, really tired. 0.86

00:45:46.000 She'd been tired because she'd been working the previous night.

00:45:49.000 I think so.

00:46:08.000 She doesn't look for 10 minutes and then say, I've lost my phone.

00:46:11.000 She immediately says, I've lost my phone, which makes me feel like she's losing it even when she's not because she'll say, I've lost my phone.

00:46:16.000 Then five seconds later, she'll look down and it's right there.

00:46:18.000 So in any case, we're about to leave and we have both our kids in the house and my parents are taking care of the kids.

00:46:24.000 And my wife turns to me and she says, I don't have my phone.

00:46:27.000 And I say, well, is that a big deal?

00:46:28.000 Like I've got my phone.

00:46:29.000 My parents can call me.

00:46:30.000 It's not really a big deal.

00:46:31.000 She said, well, I feel more comfortable with my phone.

00:46:32.000 I said, okay.

00:46:34.000 Why don't you just go back in the house and get it?

00:46:35.000 We're sitting right outside the house.

00:46:37.000 And she says, I'm too tired.

00:46:38.000 Can you get it?

00:46:40.000 I said, you know, OK, fine.

00:46:41.000 We're already late to this party.

00:46:43.000 OK, OK, fine.

00:46:44.000 And, you know, I'm not I'm not happy about it.

00:46:46.000 My son right now is very attached to me.

00:46:48.000 So if I walk back in the house, we both sneaked out of the house.

00:46:50.000 He doesn't make a fuss.

00:46:51.000 If we walk back in the house, my son is going to jump on me like a barnacle on a whale.

00:46:55.000 Right?

00:46:56.000 This is what he does.

00:46:56.000 He's two and a half and he just runs to me and he grabs my leg and will not let go.

00:46:59.000 And it's very cute, but when you're trying to leave and then he breaks down into a crying fit, it's not quite as cute.

00:47:03.000 So I say, you know, it would be better if you went inside because he's not going to bother you as much.

00:47:07.000 He says, no, I'm really tired.

00:47:09.000 I just, I don't care enough.

00:47:11.000 I don't care enough.

00:47:11.000 Let's just go.

00:47:12.000 I said, well, now you've got me, right?

00:47:13.000 Because you've just said that you want the phone and you don't want to go.

00:47:16.000 And now you're telling me that you don't care and let's go.

00:47:19.000 So fine, I'll go inside.

00:47:20.000 I'll go look for the phone.

00:47:20.000 So I go inside.

00:47:22.000 I have no idea where the damn phone is. 0.99

00:47:23.000 Well, how would I know where the phone is? 0.99

00:47:24.000 I don't know where she's been in the house.

00:47:25.000 So I'm searching around the house, and sure enough, like a shot, out comes my son, running to me and grabbing my leg and screaming.

00:47:31.000 So I pick him up.

00:47:32.000 I'm walking around the house.

00:47:34.000 I look around for five minutes.

00:47:35.000 I can't find it.

00:47:35.000 We're even later to this party.

00:47:37.000 I walk out to the... I finally kind of...

00:47:39.000 Push my son off to my dad, and I start to walk out of the house, and I walk back to the car, and then my son comes charging out the front door after me.

00:47:48.000 And I walk back to the car, I said, sweetheart, I don't know where your phone is. 0.97

00:47:51.000 Can you get up off your butt and go in the house and look for your phone? 0.96

00:47:53.000 You know where your phone is, right? 0.98

00:47:54.000 Like, you know where it is, or at least you have a better idea, because you know where you were in the house.

00:47:58.000 She says, no, no, I don't need it.

00:48:00.000 It's not important.

00:48:01.000 I said, well, now you've made me go in the house, and my son's running after me, and I'm going to have to go back in the house now.

00:48:06.000 And by this point, I'm ticked.

00:48:08.000 I said, I'm going to go back in the house,

00:48:09.000 Mm-hmm and I go back in the house.

00:48:11.000 I look some more can't find the phone, right?

00:48:13.000 I finally come out I say sweetheart.

00:48:14.000 You're being really really unreasonable.

00:48:16.000 This is not reasonable and she says well, I don't care anymore Let's just go so she consents.

00:48:21.000 I'm extraordinarily pissed because I'm very angry at this point And when I go angry, I tend to go silent rather than yelling.

00:48:27.000 I'm not a yeller so I go silent and we drive for about three minutes and now the car is on and because we're driving and Then strangely a phone begins to ring

00:48:39.000 In the car.

00:48:40.000 Through the speakers of the car.

00:48:42.000 And we've tried calling her phone before.

00:48:44.000 We got nothing.

00:48:44.000 It turns out that it's ringing in the car because even when your phone is on silent, it rings through the car speakers, right?

00:48:49.000 But the car wasn't on when she was sitting in it.

00:48:51.000 Where was the phone the entire time? 0.99

00:48:53.000 Beneath her butt. 0.97

00:48:54.000 So if she had just gotten up for 10 seconds, she would have seen that the phone was right there. 0.99

00:49:00.000 And we would not have had to do any of this.

00:49:02.000 It was my dad calling just to tell me that the kids were fine.

00:49:04.000 And I said, Dad, if I come home in the car by myself, it's because I tossed my wife's body in a lake.

00:49:09.000 And, you know, don't tell the cops.

00:49:12.000 We both started laughing because sometimes it was something out of a sitcom.

00:49:16.000 So that's typically how our fights kind of go.

00:49:18.000 They usually end with us laughing about most of them.

00:49:21.000 I will say my wife is an incredibly understanding and giving person.

00:49:24.000 And so when I have critiques of her, she takes them really well.

00:49:28.000 And I've tried to do the same.

00:49:29.000 And it means that our fights become less fights and more discussions about how we can improve in the future, which is the best way to handle things.

00:49:35.000 And it has to be less accusatory for fights.

00:49:37.000 It has to be less accusing and a lot more sort of, um,

00:49:41.000 Here's how we can fix the problem.

00:49:43.000 Fights have to be problem solving oriented.

00:49:46.000 They have to start off as understanding oriented and then move to problem solving.

00:49:49.000 They can't start off as problem solving and then move to understanding.

00:49:51.000 Because if you start off with, I want to solve this problem, the other person doesn't feel understood.

00:49:55.000 That's a hard one for me.

00:49:56.000 Okay, let's see.

00:49:58.000 Gabriel says, So I think that we should know how everyone feels politically, and then we can take it with a grain of salt.

00:50:03.000 And you can say, listen, I'm a conservative, but I'm trying to cover this story straight.

00:50:06.000 I do this on the show all the time, actually.

00:50:08.000 I say all the time on the show, I'm a conservative.

00:50:25.000 But I'm gonna try and be as objective as possible on this story.

00:50:28.000 You can take my objectivity with a grain of salt, but at least I'm gonna try and separate my opinion out.

00:50:32.000 That seems to me the honest way to do things.

00:50:33.000 Being completely transparent is the best way.

00:50:35.000 Okay, final one.

00:50:36.000 Mark says, Hey Ben, I'm addicted to all things Ben Shapiro.

00:50:38.000 The first thing I do when my feet hit the floor every day is check Daily Wire.

00:50:41.000 My question is what sites do you check?

00:50:43.000 What are your first couple of go-to sites when you start your day?

00:50:45.000 Thanks.

00:50:45.000 Your biggest fan, Mary.

00:50:46.000 Please come to Tampa soon.

00:50:48.000 So, honestly, I'm a Twitter guy.

00:50:51.000 Obviously, I'm on Twitter all the time.

00:50:52.000 One of the reasons I tweet so often is because it's also where I get my news.

00:50:56.000 A lot of my retweets, the reason I retweet so often is to remind myself of stuff that I want to talk about or write about a little bit later in the day.

00:51:02.000 Twitter is still the central source of news.

00:51:04.000 So, I think that's something worth noting.

00:51:06.000 Okay, you know what?

00:51:07.000 I lied.

00:51:07.000 One more.

00:51:07.000 Sorry, guys.

00:51:08.000 Here it is.

00:51:11.000 Oh, there's so many good questions today and I'm so mad.

00:51:13.000 Jacob says, Hey Ben, my name is Jacob.

00:51:16.000 I'm a 19 year old college student.

00:51:17.000 I'm also a proud third degree member of the Knights of Columbus and a proud Catholic.

00:51:20.000 With the recent news of the scandals inside the Vatican, a lot of hate for my church has come to light.

00:51:24.000 It pains me to hear people talk like this about my faith.

00:51:26.000 As a very religious person, and since people of the Jewish faith are no strangers to hate, do you have any advice on how to deal with it? 1.00

00:51:30.000 Thank you, Jacob.

00:51:31.000 Well, I think you have to determine what the cause of the hatred is.

00:51:33.000 Very often people

00:51:35.000 are using the hatred of a particular incident or thing as an excuse for hatred of the church generally.

00:51:41.000 You see this with anti-semitism all the time.

00:51:42.000 It's like, they just, people hate the Jews and they just find some sort of hook to latch on. 0.97

00:51:46.000 So, people hate the Jews because all the Jews are communists. 1.00

00:51:49.000 No, people hate the Jews because all the Jews are capitalist pigs. 1.00

00:51:52.000 No, people hate the Jews because of the state of Israel. 1.00

00:51:54.000 No, people hate the Jews because they're a rootless, nationless people. 1.00

00:51:57.000 The same thing happens with regard to any outgroup.

00:52:00.000 If you hate the outgroup, you can find an excuse to hate the outgroup.

00:52:02.000 And trying to identify whether this is an honest critique of the ingroup is a worthwhile endeavor.

00:52:08.000 Try to determine from where all of this is coming.

00:52:12.000 Okay, you know what?

00:52:13.000 I lied again.

00:52:14.000 It's a good question.

00:52:15.000 So this is, I promise, this is the actual last one.

00:52:18.000 And we'll do a very short Things I Like and Things I Hate just to round it up.

00:52:21.000 Gregory says, Dear Supreme Overlord Shapiro, Recently, I got into a debate with one of my good friends over the definition of racism.

00:52:26.000 My friend contends that according to people with PhDs who study the issue, true racism is when the race that holds power or privilege in a society uses that power or privilege to suppress other people of other races.

00:52:36.000 My friend went on to say, because of white privilege, it is only possible for white people to be racist.

00:52:40.000 Well, I totally agree with you.

00:52:40.000 Now, does that mean that all racism is inherently equally dangerous?

00:52:43.000 Of course not.

00:52:43.000 Racism combined with power is a lot more dangerous than racism combined with non-power.

00:52:45.000 But racism itself is a toxic brew, and even if you are victimized and you engage in racism,

00:53:09.000 What you are doing is poisoning your kids.

00:53:11.000 And you never know in a free country, and even in non-free societies, which race is going to end up on top again. 0.88

00:53:17.000 This is the problem with the argument that racism is inherently connected to power.

00:53:20.000 Well, so if a group, let's take Zimbabwe, for example. 0.95

00:53:24.000 Whites were racist against blacks in Zimbabwe. 0.97

00:53:27.000 Clearly, clearly. 0.99

00:53:28.000 Now, let's say that, and so blacks, many blacks were racist against whites in Zimbabwe.

00:53:34.000 Was that a good thing? 0.53

00:53:35.000 Was that an okay thing?

00:53:36.000 Well, maybe the argument would go they didn't have any power, so they couldn't actually be racist.

00:53:40.000 But then it turns out that black folks took power in Zimbabwe, and then that regime has now reduced white farmers in Zimbabwe to almost a subject state by seizing their land. 0.96

00:53:51.000 Is it only become racism when they gain power, or is it just that racism itself is something toxic, evil, and terrible, and it is made a lot worse in terms of real-world effect by power?

00:54:03.000 It's not that racial hatred plus power equals racism.

00:54:05.000 It's that racial hatred equals racism.

00:54:07.000 Racism plus power equals something a lot more dangerous.

00:54:10.000 I think that's the easiest way to explain it.

00:54:12.000 Okay, time for things I like and then things I hate.

00:54:14.000 So the thing I like today is a book called The Diversity Delusion by Heather MacDonald.

00:54:17.000 We're going to have Heather MacDonald on the Sunday special at some point in the future. 0.94

00:54:20.000 It's a really, really good book.

00:54:22.000 It's all about, and the subtitle is how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture. 0.77

00:54:27.000 Our colleges have become a repository of leftist thought.

00:54:30.000 That leftist thought has led to exactly the sort of identity politics populism we are seeing right now, and exactly the sort of rise of democratic socialism and hatred of Central American principles we've seen.

00:54:39.000 Heather MacDonald details all of the nuttiness going on at our university level, with which I am intimately familiar.

00:54:44.000 Go check out The Diversity Delusion by Heather MacDonald, who, full disclosure, I am friends with, and we became friends because I like her writing so much, so go check it out.

00:54:51.000 Heather MacDonald, The Diversity Delusion.

00:54:53.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:54:58.000 Stephen A. Smith said something dumb on ESPN because it's a day ending and why and he was talking about Serena Williams and he said about Serena Williams that if she were a man we would call her the greatest ever.

00:55:08.000 You just say to her, if she were a man, what would we be saying? 0.80

00:55:12.000 We'd be calling her the greatest ever.

00:55:14.000 There would be no dispute.

00:55:15.000 We wouldn't even be talking about Michael Jordan.

00:55:18.000 We wouldn't be talking about Muhammad Ali.

00:55:21.000 We would be talking about Serena Williams because of the sustained level of greatness.

00:55:28.000 And I think the only reason we haven't is because she's a woman. 0.99

00:55:30.000 Well, no, the reason that we haven't is because, I mean, I guess so, in that she would lose to the 200th ranked men's player.

00:55:37.000 So there's that.

00:55:38.000 We can say she's the greatest woman ever.

00:55:40.000 If he really believes that it's only sexism that prevents us from calling her the greatest ever, then why don't we just have open brackets at the US Open?

00:55:46.000 Really, we can just do that, like no sex discrimination at all.

00:55:50.000 We'll just have men and women compete in the same brackets, and then we'll see if she is indeed the greatest ever, or if she's the greatest woman. 0.98

00:55:55.000 I don't see what's wrong, by the way, with being the greatest woman ever.

00:55:58.000 Like, what's so bad about this?

00:56:00.000 Why is that so terrible?

00:56:01.000 It doesn't...

00:56:02.000 Why can't we just acknowledge that men are more physically powerful than women on average, and also far more physically powerful at the upper end of the bell curve?

00:56:10.000 Why is this so difficult? 1.00

00:56:11.000 It's because everything is stupid. 1.00

00:56:13.000 Somebody tweeted out today, there's a big story about income disparity when it comes to tennis. 1.00

00:56:18.000 You know why?

00:56:19.000 Because far more people care about men's tennis than care about women's tennis.

00:56:22.000 The ratings are far higher for men's tennis.

00:56:23.000 The players are far better in men's tennis.

00:56:25.000 The players are more popular in men's tennis.

00:56:41.000 I mean, this is like saying, well, you know, the pay in the NBA is just orders of magnitude larger than the WNBA.

00:56:47.000 Right.

00:56:47.000 Because no one in history has ever wanted to see the WNBA for basketball reasons.

00:56:52.000 No one.

00:56:53.000 Right?

00:56:53.000 People want to see the WNBA for political reasons, or for gender parity reasons, or to show their daughters that girls can play basketball too?

00:56:59.000 Oh, that's fine.

00:57:00.000 But if you're looking for a display of physical athleticism and skill, you're not actually going to want to watch the WNBA. 0.97

00:57:07.000 WNBA championship teams could be beat by the leading high school teams, men's high school teams, boys' high school teams in America.

00:57:13.000 The women's World Cup soccer team?

00:57:15.000 There's the story that came out when they won the World Cup in, I think, 2000, something like that?

00:57:19.000 They played, like, a good high school or good college men's soccer team in Australia and lost 6-0 or something.

00:57:25.000 Again, none of this is to suggest that women can't be great at sports.

00:57:28.000 They're a hell of a lot better than I am.

00:57:30.000 I mean, I wouldn't get on the court with Serena Williams.

00:57:31.000 She'd blow me away, obviously, but... 1.00

00:57:34.000 If we are going to be honest about discrepancies and disparities, we can't attribute them all to discrimination. 1.00

00:57:38.000 Otherwise, we are just being idiots. 0.99

00:57:40.000 OK, we'll be back here next week. 0.99

00:57:42.000 Have yourself a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

00:57:44.000 Enjoy it.

00:57:45.000 Come back refreshed on Tuesday.

00:57:46.000 I'm sure the world will have imploded in some fashion and we'll talk about all of it.

00:57:49.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:50.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:57:55.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:58:01.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:58:05.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:58:07.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:58:08.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:58:10.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:58:13.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 31, 2018

Canadian On The Moon | Ep. 615

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