United Airlines forcibly removed a passenger from a plane because he refused to give up his seat on a flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky. The airline offered a $400 travel voucher and a hotel stay in exchange for four seats, but no one volunteered. At that point, security personnel were called to the plane and removed the man who refused to leave the plane. United Airlines is now facing a lawsuit from the passenger who claims he was forcibly removed from the plane, but the airline says that the incident was self-defense and that he was the one who was the problem, not the airline's overbooking problem. Ben Shapiro talks about the incident and calls for government intervention in the airline industry, which is a good thing in the long-term, because the market is working in favor of the airline. He also talks about a recent article written by feminist advocate Jillian Gilchristchrist Christchrist and her new book, "Why Women Are All Sexist: A Feminist's Guide to Sexism in the 21st Century." And he talks about why we should all be worried about burglarizing our houses and stealing our valuables from our own homes. All that and more on today's episode of The Ben Shapiro Show! Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's newest podcast, The Weekly Standard, wherever you get your epsiode of the latest news and updates on what's going on in the world. Subscribe and let us know what you're listening to! on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Podchaser, Stitcher, or wherever else you re listening to the show is listening to your favorite podcast. Thanks for listening to The Ben and Ben Shapiro! and Good Morning America? Subscribe? Subscribe on iTunes? Subscribe on Podchats? Learn more about your ad choices? Leave us a rating and comment on your thoughts on the show? and we'll be giving us a chance to be featured on next week's episode on our next episode of the show next week on The Daily Mail's newest episode of Good Mythical Monday, Wednesday, May 15th, May 21st, May 22nd, and 27th, July 25th, 7/27th, 6/9/28th, 9/29th, 8/8th, and so on The Dark Side of May 9/9th, Thank you for supporting The Weekly Shout Out? Thanks for supporting Ben Shapiro s new podcast, Shoutout to .
00:00:00.000According to the Courier-Journal, a passenger on a flight from Chicago to Louisville was forcibly removed from an airplane after the airline overbooked the flight and no passenger was willing to give up his or her seat for a stipend from the airline.
00:00:11.000Three members of security apparently began speaking with the man who refused to leave.
00:00:15.000They then grabbed him and yanked him out of his seat and dragged him from the plane.
00:00:18.000Here's what the spokesperson for United Airlines had to say, quote, Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville is overbooked.
00:00:24.000After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave.
00:00:27.000The aircraft was voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate.
00:00:32.000We apologize for the overbooked situation.
00:00:34.000Further details on the removed customer should be directed elsewhere.
00:00:37.000The Courier Journal reports that passengers were told the plane had been overbooked by four seats.
00:00:41.000The airline offered a $400 travel voucher and a hotel stay, which nobody took them up on.
00:00:45.000At that point, they had the computer randomly select four travelers on the flight and tell them to give up their seats to United employees who were required in Louisville for the next day.
00:00:54.000One doctor, who said he needed to see patients in the morning, refused to get out of his seat, at which point security carted him off.
00:01:34.000Here's what the United Contract of Carriage states, quote, All of UA's flights are subject to overbooking, which could result in UA's inability to provide previously confirmed reserved space for a given flight or for the class of service reserved.
00:01:45.000Under Rule 25 of their Code of Carriage, United states that it will request volunteers, but that if nobody volunteers, they can deny people boarding involuntarily in accordance with UA's boarding priorities.
00:01:56.000If you're removed from a flight involuntarily, the airline pays you a multiple of the airfare beyond your original ticket.
00:02:01.000This isn't an unreasonable policy, actually.
00:02:04.000Passengers routinely miss flights, overbooking is common practice in order to fill planes instead of wasting money and time flying extra routes.
00:02:10.000But there are two elements here that are unreasonable, if not legally, then certainly in terms of business.
00:02:15.000First, there's the question of the airline employees bumping paying passengers.
00:02:18.000Yes, the airlines have contracts with their stupid unions that require a certain number of staffers on particular flights.
00:02:24.000But when the unions trump the customers, the business is doing a terrible job.
00:02:29.000I've been forced to miss a speech before hundreds of college students because the airline cancelled my flight, then refused to book me on the next flight in order to fly a bunch of its own employees.
00:02:42.000Keep upping the offer until somebody on the plane took it.
00:02:44.000$400 isn't a lot of money to give to somebody to compensate them for having to stay overnight in a location that prevents them from working the next day.
00:02:51.000Is there any question that if the company had simply upped its bid, somebody would have taken them up on it?
00:02:56.000In the end, people are going to call for government regulation because that's what they do.
00:02:59.000But this is actually a really good example of the market working.
00:03:02.000United is going to take a massive public relations hit today.
00:03:06.000They'll lose hundreds of thousands of dollars over this fiasco.
00:03:08.000Their stock price may even be affected.
00:03:10.000They'll change their policy to ensure this never happens again.
00:03:12.000Other companies will take advantage with better service, and customers will be served.
00:03:16.000And that customer who was removed will probably be amply compensated in settlement too.
00:03:20.000The market still works, even if people are going to want government action on stupidities like this.
00:04:19.000So Ring.com, what they do is they have a ring video doorbell.
00:04:22.000You put it on your fence or on your gate or on your front door and they ring the doorbell and then you can actually see a camera shot of the person who's outside the door and what's cool is that you can do it from anywhere.
00:04:30.000So if I'm sitting right here after the show and somebody arrives at my house and they ring the doorbell,
00:04:35.000I can pick up my phone, I can see exactly who's at the door, and I can determine whether or not this is somebody who is safe or not.
00:04:40.000This is really great for preventing burglaries, because most burglaries are, they ring first.
00:04:44.000They want to find out whether somebody's home, then they know you're not home, and then they rob the place.
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00:05:14.000Again, when I'm out of town, I rely on Ring to make sure that, you know, everything is okay at home.
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00:05:42.000Okay, so, the big news over the weekend, we'll get to Gorsuch in a little while, but Gorsuch was sworn in justice, now Gorsuch has been sworn in to the Supreme Court, which is cool.
00:05:53.000But the big story over the weekend was not that.
00:05:54.000The big story over the weekend was obviously what's been happening in Syria.
00:05:58.000So, the big question has been, what exactly is the plan here?
00:06:02.000And the Trump administration has not made very clear that there is a plan.
00:06:05.000So I offered two theories last week as to what could be going on.
00:06:08.000One is, Trump saw some stuff on TV and fired a few missiles at it.
00:06:12.000Very possible, because that would fit with his personality.
00:06:15.000The other is that Trump saw some stuff on TV, saw that it was really bad, and then went to his people and said, let's come up with a coherent, cohesive strategy, and the first step will be firing some cruise missiles at this particular airbase that was responsible for the gas attack.
00:06:26.000Now, it is worth noting that a couple of facts have happened here.
00:06:29.000One is that the Syrian government immediately launched a plane from the airbase that was supposed to be out of order.
00:06:35.000And began launching air raids against their enemies right afterward to demonstrate that they had not been hurt by the United States, which is sort of a black eye for the Trump administration.
00:06:43.000The other thing that's happened is that Russia has become very aggressive in its rhetoric.
00:06:47.000Russia obviously sees a central interest in Syria.
00:06:49.000One of the reasons is because Russia has propped up the dictator Assad there, and if he falls, then their credibility in terms of guarantees for the Iranian regime, in terms of the Iraqi regime, which is now at least partially sponsored by the Iranians,
00:07:02.000That guarantee seems to be worth a little bit less, and so the Russians want to make sure that they stand by their man in Syria.
00:07:09.000They're saying that they're going to treat any bombing like this in the future as an act of war.
00:07:13.000Now, the real question is going to be, do we want to go up against Russia here?
00:07:17.000Do we want to play a game of chicken with them?
00:07:19.000If we do play a game of chicken, are they actually going to try and shoot down an American plane?
00:07:22.000If they did shoot down an American plane, would we then be in a state of full-scale war with Moscow?
00:07:27.000Vladimir Putin is not in a strong position in his own country, other than the fact that he controls the military and the money.
00:07:32.000So, I mean, that sounds funny because those are the two most important things to control, but he does not control the population.
00:07:38.000The population clearly is not super fond of Vladimir Putin.
00:07:41.000And so one of the ways he has to maintain his power is by promoting this image of himself as a very, very powerful guy who will stand up to anyone, up to and including the United States of America.
00:07:51.000That means that he's going to want to play chicken.
00:07:53.000The United States may have more of an interest in allowing him to play chicken and give off a sense of superiority to his own people than in challenging the Assad regime.
00:08:03.000But if Assad keeps firing gas bombs, Trump has now set the red line.
00:08:12.000He's actually worse than Obama because he's shown
00:08:14.000That he's like Bill Clinton in 1998, after the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, that just wants to shoot a camel in the ass and be done with it.
00:08:20.000And that's not a winning strategy when it comes to deterrence.
00:08:24.000So, there are a lot of mixed messages coming out of the administration.
00:09:38.000Okay, again, we'll get to what the actual plan is in just a second.
00:09:44.000But first, I want to bring in to join us a special guest, Jillian Gilchrist, who is a feminist advocate from Connecticut.
00:09:50.000She champions public policy on issues of gender, gender-based violence, and reproductive choice.
00:09:54.000She's an organizer with the Women's March in Connecticut.
00:09:57.000And she currently teaches political advocacy at the UConn School of Social Work.
00:10:01.000Jillian Gilchrist is also a, she also wrote a column for her site in which she talked specifically about the idea that Judge Gorsuch would be terrible for women, and the reason that he would be terrible for women is because he's a proponent of originalism.
00:10:17.000Professor Gilchrist, are you actually a professor, or is it just Miss Gilchrist?
00:10:26.000So what you actually wrote is you wrote that Gorsuch, like Antonin Scalia, is a proponent of originalism, which means he believes a judge should attempt to interpret the words of the Constitution as they were understood at the time they were written.
00:10:36.000When the Constitution was written, women couldn't own property.
00:10:39.000In 1787, women didn't have the right to vote.
00:10:41.000It would be 133 years before women won that fight, a fight they fought for 72 years.
00:10:46.000Considering women had no rights when the Constitution was written and there was no mention of women in the Constitution, originalism is sexist.
00:10:52.000So, let me ask you first to expand on that.
00:10:55.000Is it the Constitution that's sexist, or originalism that's sexist, or both?
00:11:00.000Um, well, actually the original constitution is sexist.
00:11:04.000Um, and then the originalist perspective that actually looks to the original document is also sexist.
00:11:09.000And so, um, we know that when a judge practices originalism, they look backwards.
00:11:15.000Um, they don't try to see the constitution in the current context of society.
00:11:21.000And so by looking backwards, as I said in my piece, um, at the time the constitution was written, women didn't have any rights.
00:11:46.000Women were not property under the Constitution of the United States.
00:11:51.000I do have a basic question here, which is, what do you think a judge's job is?
00:11:55.000I mean, a judge, from where I sit, and according to the structure of the Constitution, his job is to interpret the law as it's written, not to make up what he wishes the law were.
00:12:04.000That's what we have legislatures for, that's why we have people who vote on things.
00:12:07.000The idea that you're going to have some sort of super legislature made up of the great wise men, or women, who decide what a text means that has nothing to do with the original meaning of the Constitution, what do you think a judge's job should be?
00:12:19.000Well, so what an originalist actually does, though, is goes even beyond that interpretation.
00:12:25.000An originalist thinks that the 14th Amendment, which would actually give women equal protection, based on what we know from Justice Scalia, he didn't actually think that that protected women.
00:12:37.000And so he thinks that equal protection does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.
00:13:28.000But what do you think a judge should do that is distinct from what a legislature does?
00:13:35.000Well, to answer that, I mean, what now is happening is so the legislature passes a policy to give women greater access.
00:13:42.000Let's use Hobby Lobby, since that's a case that Neil Gorsuch, you know, ruled on.
00:13:47.000The Congress passed health care reform to allow women to have greater access to birth control.
00:13:53.000And when that then went through the court process, because conservatives argued against that, when it went through the court process, it was ruled down.
00:14:09.000But with an originalist perspective, like Neil Gorsuch's and like Scalia's, when we try to progress women through public policy, it then is still being shot down in the courts because that originalist perspective, as I mentioned, is a sexist perspective.
00:14:23.000Okay, so, again, the problem is that, I mean, take Hobby Lobby as an example.
00:14:28.000It wasn't that Neil Gorsuch is against contraception, presumably.
00:14:31.000I mean, his church apparently is pro-contraception.
00:14:33.000The idea that Neil Gorsuch has a personal view that's anti-contraception, that's not accurate.
00:14:37.000I mean, Neil Gorsuch's view is that there's a First Amendment to the Constitution which protects the freedom of religion of people like the religious owners of Hobby Lobby and said that they don't have to violate their own religion in the provision of health care.
00:14:49.000Now, you may disagree with that policy.
00:14:51.000That's why we have an amendment process.
00:14:53.000The Constitution basically enshrines certain fundamental rights.
00:14:56.000If we disagree with those fundamental rights, there's an amendment process.
00:14:59.000Or do you think that we should just get rid of the Constitution completely?
00:15:01.000Because it seems to me that's sort of what you want.
00:15:07.000We should just have a legislature that does all the things that you want them to do, or judges that just say the legislature can do all those things.
00:15:24.000And so to your point about Hobby Lobby, it is the first decision where two competing interests, the religious freedom, religious rights of individuals, did actually then trump the rights
00:16:47.000Yes, but we use that text to interpret current day problems.
00:16:51.000And it seems that when it comes to women's rights, originalist perspective tends to side in the air of always looking backward and not looking at current day.
00:17:03.000Because they're trying to, because if you're looking, if I wrote a piece of legislation 10 years ago, and I said to you, okay, you and I write a piece of legislation today.
00:17:20.000If somebody wants to read what we're talking about today, and then it turns out that all the words that we're using now mean the reverse because things have changed, did our conversation mean the reverse of what it meant, or does it mean what we're talking about right now?
00:17:32.000Words have meaning at the time they are said, and to try and read new meanings into old words just because quote-unquote times have changed, you can end up with some really bizarre results.
00:17:41.000I mean, and the problem here is that, you know, you may not like what Neil Gorsuch is trying to do, but at least it's a rule of interpretation.
00:17:48.000In the constitutional structure, what we've had is the Supreme Court very often reversing itself on the exact same language by using the sort of rules that you want.
00:17:55.000So, for example, in Plessy v. Ferguson, you had the Supreme Court say that the 14th Amendment did not apply to black people insofar as segregation was okay.
00:18:04.000And then 50 years after that, they say, no, it turns out the 14th Amendment actually meant that segregation is not okay anymore.
00:18:11.000I mean, it either meant one or it meant the other.
00:18:13.000It didn't mean two different things at the same time.
00:18:14.000One of those decisions is wrong and one of those decisions is right.
00:18:17.000That's true for every judicial decision.
00:18:19.000The idea that we can just look to our hearts to determine what a text meant 200 years ago is silly when we can find out what they meant 200 years ago by reading what they're talking about now.
00:18:30.000And yes, I wouldn't disagree where you made the point, though, that our conversation we're having today, what we're saying to one another is what we're saying to one another.
00:18:40.000And if looked at a hundred years from now, it would still mean the same thing.
00:18:44.000But people using our conversation a hundred years from now would have to apply it to that current day because it's not going to look the same.
00:18:52.000And so we do need to look back at texts, but we need to interpret them with the current climate.
00:19:00.000To say that, I mean, Justice Scalia came out and said that the 14th Amendment does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.
00:19:09.000Justice Scalia came out and said that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution.
00:19:13.000Right, because there aren't any of those things in the Constitution.
00:19:15.000If you want to establish one, you create an amendment.
00:19:18.000There's no right to abortion in the Constitution.
00:19:21.000The right to privacy is not the right to have an abortion.
00:19:23.000The right to privacy also covers the right to access birth control.
00:19:30.000But the idea that the founders, the people who wrote the Constitution, were deeply concerned with access to birth control in the federal Constitution
00:19:41.000Again, this is why we have legislatures.
00:19:43.000The point is that I'm in favor of availability of contraception.
00:19:46.000This is why I would elect people who would be in favor of availability of contraception.
00:19:50.000If you just want the courts to do what you want them to do, why not just appoint a couple of oligarchs?
00:19:54.000We can have Ruth Bader Ginsburg be our queen, and then we don't actually have to have a legislature anymore.
00:19:58.000We can skip all these expensive election things.
00:19:59.000Donald Trump wouldn't be president, and the notorious RBG would just rule us all.
00:20:04.000The problem for women in this country is that when we pass public policies to increase our rights, they are then shot down by the court who doesn't believe what you just explained, that we don't have a right to privacy or that we don't have equal protection under the law.
00:20:23.000There are dozens of states that had already legalized abortion in large part before Roe v. Wade, and the courts had never struck that down on any grounds.
00:20:32.000I mean, the fact is that if a state legislature passes a law that makes availability of contraception a thing, that's still not the same thing as, for example, Hobby Lobby, where you're actually forcing people to pay for your contraception in violation of their religious obligations.
00:20:45.000So if you're just talking about access to health care, then a state is perfectly capable of passing whatever law that it wants, and the courts won't strike it down.
00:20:53.000There are countervailing interests in some of these cases under the Constitution, and that's what the Supreme Court is talking about in an originalist
00:21:00.000Jurisprudence, but if you want to pass a constitutional amendment go for it again I guess my final question is this and I unfortunately have to let you go to an interesting conversation But my final question is this why bother having elections?
00:21:14.000Why do you if the American people are?
00:21:16.000are constantly doing things that are stupid, or if the American people are constantly electing legislatures that are terrible, and if we can just have judges who are going to be able to apply the Constitution as you see fit, again, I ask, why not just appoint Ruth Bader Ginsburg the actual Queen of the United States, and she can rule from above, and she'll do all the things you want, and why isn't that okay with you?
00:21:34.000I mean, tyranny with someone who you agree with seems okay with you a little bit.
00:23:10.000She teaches political advocacy at the UConn School of Social Work, and if people want to find her work, what's the best way to get in touch?
00:23:17.000Great, they can find me on Twitter at Jill Crest.
00:23:24.000Okay, so, we have to say, I want to say thank you to our advertisers over at ZipRecruiter.com.
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00:24:22.000So, I want to discuss this Syria thing for one more second before we have to break on the podcast Facebook Live.
00:24:30.000So, as I say before, sorry, final note on that interview.
00:24:35.000I just would like to note, again, there is no reason that Ms.
00:24:39.000Gilchrist could come up with, none, that suggests that Ruth Bader Ginsburg should not be Queen of the United States.
00:24:44.000She says she's against tyranny, but then she says that Ruth Bader Ginsburg should be able to read whatever she wants into the Constitution in order to apply Ruth Bader Ginsburg's values.
00:24:52.000She says that she's in favor of checks and balances, and then explicitly says that she's angry that the Supreme Court would act to check and balance a legislature that oversteps its boundaries in violation of rights.
00:25:02.000This just demonstrates, once and for all, that when it comes to the left view of the judiciary, it is judicial tyranny they are after.
00:25:08.000They are not after any sort of consistent rule of law.
00:25:11.000They have no idea what judges should be doing, as opposed to legislatures.
00:25:14.000They think that judges should just be doing the things they want them to do, and they have no good answers on any of this.
00:25:21.000As I was saying before the interview, the fact is there's a lot of confusion on Syria.
00:25:26.000Two messages coming from the administration.
00:25:27.000One is that Assad should be left in place, and the other is get rid of him.
00:25:31.000So here's Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, saying that the first priority is to defeat ISIS, and for the moment, let's leave Assad alone.
00:25:37.000We believe that the first priority is the defeat of ISIS, that by defeating ISIS and removing their caliphate from their control, we have now eliminated at least or minimized a particular threat, not just to the United States, but to the whole stability in the region.
00:25:54.000And once the ISIS threat has been reduced or eliminated,
00:25:58.000I think we can turn our attention directly to stabilizing the situation in Syria.
00:26:04.000We're hopeful that we can prevent a continuation of the civil war and that we can bring the parties to the table to begin the process of political discussions.
00:26:14.000Clearly that requires the participation of the regime, with the support of their allies, and we're hopeful that Russia will choose to play a constructive role in supporting ceasefires through their own Astonotops.
00:26:27.000I don't think Tillerson is entirely wrong here.
00:26:29.000When Tillerson says we have to defeat ISIS and we just have to stop Assad from basically running roughshod over everybody, I think that's probably the right strategy.
00:26:35.000As I said last week, ousting Assad seems to me a secondary priority.
00:26:39.000It's not like, get rid of Assad, that'll make the country better and then go after ISIS.
00:26:43.000The question is whether Assad even cares about going after ISIS.
00:26:46.000I think we're going to have to do it ourselves.
00:26:48.000That said, we can keep Assad in check at the same time we are going after ISIS.
00:26:51.000The idea that we can't walk and chew gum at the same time is silly, but I do not think that we are in a position to rebuild the country at the same time that we're trying to protect people from Assad and ISIS.
00:27:54.000So to get that answer, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com right now and become a subscriber.
00:27:59.000You got a little bit of extra today, but normally you wouldn't.
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