On Wednesday, a far-left Bernie Sanders supporter who despised President Trump opened fire on Republican congressmen practicing for a charity baseball game, injuring six members of Congress, including Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La., a fellow Trump supporter) and injuring others in the process. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the left and right are quick to point the finger at each other, blaming the other for the crimes of a random person. But is there a clear line between passion and violence in our political discourse? And are we blurring the lines between passionate rhetoric and actual advocacy toward violence? Ben Shapiro argues that both sides of the political aisle are to blame for creating a climate of hate and violence, and that we need to move beyond the use of words and toward actual violence in order to make sense of the current political climate and our own words. The Ben Shapiro Show is on all of the social medias, wherever you get your news feeds, if you search for it, you'll find the latest episode of the Ben Shapiro show. The latest episode is available on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe, Like, and Share, and Retweet! Subscribe to The BenShapiro Show! Learn more about your ad choices. Become a supporter of the show by becoming a patron patron. Rate, review and subscribe to our new podcast, and help spread the word to your friends about the show! Ben Shapiro's new book, "The Dark Side of Politics" out there! is out now! coming out on Nov. 22nd! The Dark Side Hustler is out on Amazon Prime Day! Subscribe on Audible Subscribe and review the show on Podcoin Subscribe for a chance to win a FREE 7-day VIP membership! Thank you get 20% off your first month only discount when you shop with VIP access to Ben Shapiro s newest book "The Ben Shapiro Podcast! and other VIP memberships! Get all the latest releases only through Audible and VaynerSpeaker s new ad-free VIP membership plan! All exclusive VIP membership plans are available on Prime Video, including VIP membership, Best Fiends, PODCAST, Skypes, and Vimeo? Subscribe & Vimeo, and Pizzazz? All other places to watch the show that gets the most professional reviewers get the best deals on the best of the best places in the world, including the best vids and more!
00:00:00.000On Wednesday, a far-left Bernie Sanders supporter who despised President Trump opened fire on Republican congresspeople practicing for a bipartisan charity baseball game.
00:00:08.000Now, we all know that if the situation had been reversed, if a President Trump supporter and Bernie hater had opened fire on Congressional Democrats, we would be treated to the full spectacle of media foe outrage.
00:00:19.000We'd get long-winded stemwinders about Republicans creating a climate of hate and violence.
00:00:23.000We've received stern talking tos about gun culture and polarizing rhetoric.
00:00:27.000We know this because it's been a strategic mainstay for Democrats for half a century, going all the way back to the left blaming the right for a climate of hate that supposedly led to JFK's assassination by a commie in 1963.
00:00:37.000The left has blamed talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing, Sarah Palin and the right for the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords by a mentally ill man, by the way.
00:00:45.000Bernie Sanders even attempted to raise money off that canard.
00:00:48.000Confederate flag owners for a massacre at a historically black church.
00:01:06.000The bulk of its supporters know this and support violence.
00:01:09.000A solid contingent of its followers participate in violence.
00:01:12.000The same is not true for American brand political leftism, as vile as it is.
00:01:16.000For the right to equate verbiage with violence, no matter how inflammatory the verbiage, is to fall prey to the same snowflake syndrome the right condemns on college campuses.
00:01:24.000There is no logical gap between attempting to blame right-wing speakers for supposed violent speech in opposing Black Lives Matter and attempting to blame Sanders for the sins of a random follower.
00:01:33.000This leaves two questions on the table.
00:01:36.000Are we living through a more toxic political climate than ever before in American history, promoting individual acts of violence among the mentally unstable?
00:01:43.000And second, are we in danger of blurring the lines between passionate rhetoric and actual advocacy toward violence?
00:01:49.000Well, as far as the first question goes, the answer is obviously no.
00:01:52.000It would take really a lot of ignorance of American history to believe that our current political climate is worse than Civil War era America or even late 1960s America, if only because our underlying problems are significantly less horrifying.
00:02:06.000Just yesterday, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who attempted to blame gun control for the shooting, suggested that the Trump campaign or someone associated with it had acted treasonably with regard to Russia.
00:02:15.000The entire resistance is built on the rhetoric of a wartime underground.
00:02:19.000By the same token, the right has taken to using war language far more regularly even than it did in the Obama era.
00:02:35.000Which brings us to the second question.
00:02:37.000Are we moving beyond purple language and into the realm of actual violent advocacy?
00:02:41.000On both left and right, the answer seems to be yes.
00:02:43.000On the left, thanks to politicians attempting to capitalize on public anger, groups like Antifa run free in major American cities, acts of violence against Trump supporters are brushed off or treated by the media as he said, she said situations.
00:02:55.000On the right, too many Republicans ignore or downplay incidents like the Greg Gianforte incident in Montana or then-candidate Trump's talk about people paying their bills if they assaulted protesters.
00:03:05.000There are two ways to deal with the problem.
00:03:07.000First, we have to establish a bright line rule.
00:03:14.000Second, we should all probably take a deep breath before we hit send.
00:03:17.000It's not our fault if fringe characters take advantage of our language to do violence we never suggested and don't support, but let's all do our best, and yes, I'm including myself here,
00:03:25.000To use language we can defend morally.
00:03:27.000That doesn't mean tamping down our passion with regard to politics.
00:03:30.000It does mean thinking twice before hitting send on a tweet or Facebook post comparing Republicans to ISIS, thanks to their healthcare policy.
00:03:37.000Or suggesting that Democrats are eager to watch Americans die in a fiery incident, in a terrorist incident, because they oppose President Trump's travel ban.
00:03:44.000Perhaps the language of civil war is perfectly appropriate and we're willing to stand by it.
00:04:01.000So in the aftermath of yesterday's horrific congressional shooting, and all prayers for Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, who apparently is still in critical condition, was undergoing surgery all throughout the night, and everybody should take a moment today and just say a prayer for Congressman Scalise.
00:04:15.000But in the aftermath of that, there have been a bunch of reactions that are quite fascinating.
00:04:21.000It seems like we are now on the verge of going too far in the other direction.
00:04:26.000What I mean by that is that if we were on the verge of going too far in the everyone is angry, let's shout at each other and hit each other with sticks direction, now it seems like we're in danger of going too far along the everybody just needs to never say anything that could offend anyone.
00:04:40.000About what we say are the kinds of speech that are appropriate.
00:04:43.000I'm talking about people on the right and the left.
00:04:44.000I want to be careful and go through what kinds of speech I think are really damaging and dangerous, and which kinds of speech are just typical political rhetoric.
00:04:53.000Because this is the sort of situation where people could say, okay, Nutcase went crazy and shot a bunch of people,
00:04:59.000Let's all get rid of all offensive rhetoric.
00:05:00.000Let's get back to this kind of faux civility.
00:05:02.000We'll never say anything inflammatory.
00:05:05.000We'll never use language that is evocative.
00:05:08.000We all have to check ourselves all the time at the door.
00:05:11.000I want to go through, I think there are three different types of language, and I want to go through those in a second and discuss which ones are acceptable, which ones are not.
00:05:18.000Obviously, none of this should be regulated, but which ones are acceptable and which ones are not in sort of everyday use because
00:05:23.000I'm a little bit frightened that the snowflake syndrome that now attends to college campuses is being picked up by the right in response to the left.
00:05:30.000So the left always says, people like me speaking on college campuses, well that creates a climate of violence and people are going to get hurt.
00:05:37.000I don't want to see the same thing happen on the right with regard to people on the left.
00:05:41.000Us saying, well, you know, when they say that Trump is un-American or when they say Trump is a tyrant, that's just bad and it gets people killed.
00:05:48.000I don't want to do that because, again, I like having the same moral standard for everyone.
00:05:53.000So I'm going to talk about that in just a second.
00:05:55.000But before I get to that, I first want to say thank you to our advertisers over at Wink.
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00:07:34.000So, the amount of time we're nice to each other after a horrific incident that really goes to the heart of America has now been reduced to less than the amount of time that it takes for a yogurt to spoil if you leave it out of the refrigerator.
00:07:47.000But, yesterday, people said the right things in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
00:07:52.000It was, we'll remember, one of his volunteers who went out and shot somebody, the shooter.
00:07:57.000I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice this morning is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.
00:08:28.000I am sickened by this despicable act, and let me be as clear as I can be.
00:08:37.000Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society, and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.
00:08:52.000Through nonviolent action and anything else runs counter to our most deeply held American values.
00:09:03.000I know I speak for the entire country in saying that my hopes and prayers are that Representative Scalise, Congressional staff, and the Capitol Police officers who were wounded make a quick and full recovery.
00:09:19.000I also want to thank the Capitol Police for their heroic actions to prevent further harm.
00:09:25.000Okay, so there's Bernie Sanders saying exactly the right thing.
00:09:28.000Obviously, violent activity needs to be put aside.
00:09:31.000We're going to talk in a minute about whether the left is indeed putting aside violent rhetoric and violent activity, because I think the answer is, in large measure, no.
00:09:39.000But Sanders has actually been pretty consistent on this point, right?
00:09:41.000He was one of the guys who said that the riots at Berkeley, when Ianopolis went to Berkeley,
00:11:18.000An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
00:11:25.000Okay, so Paul Ryan, of course, saying the right things as well.
00:11:27.000Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, she said much the same thing.
00:11:31.000She said she was praying for Scalise and Trump.
00:11:33.000And then she, of course, came out immediately today and said that the climate of toxic political rhetoric in the country is the fault of Republicans.
00:11:39.000So that lasted for five entire seconds.
00:11:42.000Now, I want to go through, I think, some of the types of speech that are out there and whether we should hold them responsible for violence.
00:11:51.000John Nolte, I thought, had a really great piece over at Daily Wire today.
00:11:56.000Uh, Nolte is, uh, is a firebrand for sure.
00:11:58.000And Nolte got a piece today talking about the case, basically, that CNN is responsible for this by CNN's own standard.
00:12:05.000CNN has said over and over and over that it was, it was the Confederate flag that caused the shooting down at that historically black church in Charleston.
00:12:13.000They said that it was the Pizzagate conspiracy that caused Pizzagate guy to go and shoot up a restaurant.
00:12:18.000They said that it was Sarah Palin responsible for Gabby Giffords, all of it.
00:12:21.000And then they go out there and they say that the Shakespeare in the Park assassination of Trump thing is awesome.
00:12:26.000They hire Kathy Griffin and then reluctantly fire Kathy Griffin.
00:12:30.000CNN makes comments all the time about how, I mean, they tried to connect Steve Scalise, this congressman, to the KKK.
00:12:38.000All of this is, it goes to the hypocrisy of the left.
00:12:42.000And I think that it demonstrates, the left is rightly getting batted around for this today, it demonstrates that the right should not make the same mistake.
00:12:48.000We should not make the same mistake where we say, okay, political rhetoric is connected to individual actions because the next time some kook happens to have listened to Rush Limbaugh at any point and then goes and shoots somebody, the entire left is going to say, well, it's Rush Limbaugh's fault.
00:13:01.000You know, this guy who shot up the Congress people, he was a big Rachel Maddow fan.
00:13:06.000No, I don't think that it's Rachel Maddow's fault.
00:13:09.000There are three sorts of speech that I think are worthwhile considering.
00:13:15.000And I think that we need to be exact in how we do this, because I sort of argued it vaguely yesterday, but I didn't think I was exact enough.
00:13:20.000So, there are three types of speech that are worth considering as to whether they cross a line or not, whether we ought to think twice before using them.
00:13:29.000And two of them, I think that they do cross a line, and they are becoming more and more prevalent.
00:13:33.000So, number one, speech that actively advocates violence.
00:13:37.000It's actually illegal to tell people, go hit that guy, right?
00:13:39.000You're not actually allowed to say that in the United States, but there's something that sort of borders on it, which is, violence is kind of great, you should go do it.
00:13:45.000Not like a specific direction that you should do violence to any one person, but a generalized notion that you should go do violence to people generally.
00:13:53.000Jesse Benn is a columnist for the Huffington Post, and he wrote that a violent response to Trump would be, quote, as logical as any.
00:13:59.000He wrote that last week, in the Huffington Post.
00:14:02.000He has a cartoon pinned to the top of his Twitter feed,
00:14:06.000There is this this element of the left that actually is good with violence and advocates for violence and makes room for violence.
00:14:19.000You see it more broadly on the left when it comes to people like Maxine Waters who said that the LA riots were an LA uprising.
00:14:26.000Or Marilyn Mosby, or rather not Marilyn Mosby, the mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings Blake, who had said that she made room for rioters in Baltimore when things went bad, or even President Obama sort of incentivizing rioters in Ferguson.
00:14:41.000You know, that sort of stuff is really dangerous, and there is a link between that sort of rhetoric and violence.
00:14:47.000When Antifa pushes actual violence at Berkeley, we're in that category.
00:14:51.000And yes, when President Trump says, or when he was then-candidate Trump, when he says that he's going to pay the legal bills of people who punch other people, we're in that category.
00:15:10.000This is a bigger group of people, a very small group of people who actively advocate violence.
00:15:13.000Then there are people who defend violence.
00:15:15.000And that is, on the left, everybody at the Middlebury University administration who said it was okay for people to assault a professor at the Charles Murray event.
00:15:26.000These are the mayor of Berkeley who allows Antifa to run roughshod through the city and hit people and assault people.
00:15:56.000A greater violent climate in the country.
00:15:57.000There's a third type of rhetoric, however, that I want to be very careful about, because I think that we are now in danger of falling into the snowflake trap, which I'll describe in just a second.
00:16:05.000But before I get to that, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Blinkist.
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00:16:41.000So if you have an hour drive, you can basically read four books
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00:18:20.000Do you think that the hateful rhetoric has gotten just too hot?
00:18:26.000I agree with Rodney wholeheartedly in that the hateful rhetoric serves no positive purpose.
00:18:32.000In fact, today it obviously served a negative purpose.
00:18:35.000But unfortunately, and I'm looking at all the media in the eye when I say this,
00:18:41.000Friendships and cordial relationships don't make good news.
00:18:45.000So I can tell you, especially as the president of the freshman class of Republicans, we are united along with our Democratic freshman counterparts to bring civility back to the 115th Congress.
00:18:59.000Okay, that's all wonderful and that's all good, but the idea that the media is to blame here I think is over the top, and I'll explain why in a second.
00:19:04.000Eric Bolling on Fox News, who's used some colorful language in his time, he said sort of the same thing.
00:19:09.000He said, how many innocents have to die before we realize that words matter?
00:19:15.000Snoop Dogg's gun, Kathy Griffin's head, Shakespeare's bloody rampage, it goes on and on.
00:19:21.000How many innocent people have to die before we realize that words do matter?
00:19:25.000Crazy people act on the crazy things they hear from politicians and celebrities.
00:19:30.000Think before you utter those blind, hateful words next time, liberals, because there are crazy people out there taking your metaphors literally.
00:20:22.000They want to prevent the debate taking place.
00:20:26.000Okay, and I think that that's a good example, but where I see this going off the rails, I don't think Bolling or Stein say anything deeply wrong there, and the examples they use are from the first two categories of speech, but what I do see is a lot of people today saying things like,
00:20:38.000Well, you know, the resistance, Ann Coulter is a columnist, the resistance finally goes live fire.
00:20:43.000Okay, we called ourselves the Tea Party.
00:20:45.000The Tea Party, if you recall, was actually a resistance movement to the government.
00:20:49.000Okay, that didn't, was not averse to using, it was not averse to using violence back in the day.
00:20:54.000I mean, the Tea Party ended up becoming the American Revolution.
00:20:56.000The idea that if you use rhetoric that is charged, that this is the same thing as using rhetoric that defends violence or advocates violence, I think it is a dangerous precedent that we are setting.
00:21:07.000And I can see it being flipped very, very easily.
00:21:10.000I don't see an innate problem with saying that a president is acting tyrannical.
00:21:14.000I don't think that's calling for the president to be assassinated.
00:21:16.000I don't think the vast majority of Americans think that's calling for the president to be assassinated.
00:21:20.000When people call themselves the Tea Party or the Resistance, I don't think just because you say you're a member of the Resistance that means that you're like a member of the French Resistance and you're gonna go out there and start shooting Republicans.
00:21:29.000You know, when people who are pro-life talk about the killing of babies in the womb, I don't think that that's an implicit call to murder abortionists.
00:21:41.000And the same thing is true on the left when they say that, on the left, that Republicans want to kill Granny, that they're murderers, they're like ISIS because of Trump's healthcare plan.
00:21:58.000I mean, you know, when I wrote the book Bullies, which is a New York Times bestseller, and Bullies is all about the left's attempt to demonize us, to attack us on a character level for our political views.
00:22:07.000It is morally wrong, but it is not necessarily connected with violence.
00:22:11.000So the left is constantly attempting to say everybody's a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
00:22:15.000That doesn't necessarily mean that they want everybody to be killed and
00:22:19.000Well, I object to the language on the grounds that you should have evidence for the assertions that you put forth.
00:22:24.000I think there's a bigger risk right now than in a climate like this.
00:22:28.000People are going to immediately start saying, well, you're not allowed to say charged things.
00:22:32.000Because if you say charged things, that means some crazy is going to go off.
00:22:35.000If we judge the value of political rhetoric by the crazy who goes off, there's not going to be a lot of political rhetoric left.
00:22:41.000If we're going to play this game where some nutcase shoots up congressional staffers and shoots up a congressman,
00:22:48.000And he watches Rachel Maddow, so we blame Rachel Maddow.
00:22:50.000Then we can't be surprised when the left turns around.
00:22:52.000They already do this because they're awful.
00:22:54.000We can't be surprised when the left turns around and says, well, it's Sean Hannity's fault if somebody goes nuts and shoots up a Democratic Congress office.
00:23:34.000I think that that's basically, you may be wrong, you may be stupid, what you're saying may be dumb, but I don't think that it's linked to violence.
00:23:41.000If you say my opponent is a Nazi and it's okay to punch Nazis, I think that you start to get into really morally dicey territory.
00:23:48.000So I wanted to make those distinctions because I don't want a standard set whereby anything political anybody says, we're going to now judge the value of that politics based on the outlier who is vulnerable to suggestion and then goes out and shoots people.
00:24:02.000I just think that's a dangerous thing.
00:24:03.000Well, as we continue here on The Ben Shapiro Show, we're going to be talking about President Trump and what he says is a witch hunt against him, this obstruction of justice news Washington Post breaks last night that Robert Mueller, who is the special counsel, is now investigating Trump for obstruction of justice.
00:24:18.000We'll talk about that, what it means, why it's happening, and why Trump is actually kind of right on this one.
00:24:22.000We'll talk about that, but you have to subscribe over at Daily Wire for that.
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