Biden's first airstrikes in Syria, the Equality Act passed in the House, and Rand Paul grills a Biden nominee about whether governments can overrule parents seeking to prevent their kids from transitioning. Plus, Iran strikes back at the U.S. in Iraq and the White House says it's not a good thing, but it's actually pretty good. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use promo code: CRIMINALS at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase when you enter the discount code CRIMICAL10 at checkout. This offer expires on December 31st, 2020, but we can still get you a 10% discount when you buy your first month's worth of ExpressVPN membership by clicking here. You'll get access to all the best features and features, including the ability to sign up for an ad-free version of the show, unlimited web browsing, unlimited e-mail access, and access to the latest breaking news, and much more! Shout out to our sponsor ExpressVPN for sponsoring the show! Thank you, ExpressVPN! You're awesome, and we'll see you next Monday! Ben Shapiro's new book "The Dark Side of the Internet" is out now! - The Dark Side Of The Internet: How to Make It Real, Real, Not Fake, Not Factually Real, is out! on Amazon Prime Video, Kindle, iBook, Paperback, and Kindle Fire, and the Kindle, so you can read it, too! Subscribe to the show and watch it on Audible and Kindle, too? Kindle, and subscribe to the podcast, too, and get 20% off the Kindle Fire HD Maximalist, too. Kindle Fires, iWatch, and so much more. It's all over the web? - Subscribe to iBook and i'm listening to it on Podchaser and more than $5, and I'll be giving you'll get a copy of the paperback edition of The Dark Lord and other good stuff like that? Thanks for listening to the book "Goodbye, Goodreads, Too Good, Good Morning Coffee and Good Luck, Good Luck by Good Luck? by clicking Good Luck and Good Rows and Good Review, and Good Reviews by Bad Rows & Good Review by Good R Nights by Good G Rows?
00:00:00.000Democrats pass the Equality Act in the House, and Rand Paul grills a Biden nominee about whether governments can overrule parents seeking to prevent their kids from transitioning.
00:00:21.000Slash Ben will get to all the news of the day with regard to the Equality Act and the transgender propaganda that is now being put forth.
00:00:29.000You are just expected to buy into the overt lie that men and women are exactly the same in every way and that men and women are terms of art and that subjective self Assessment as to your own sex actually matters more than, you know, actual biological reality.
00:00:43.000We'll get to all that in just a second because what we are living through is something that is completely upside down.
00:00:51.000Even the very notion that the people who are being imposed upon here are members of the trans community as opposed to, you know, religious institutions, everyday Americans who would like to operate their businesses as they see fit.
00:01:02.000All of this is completely upside down.
00:01:03.000We're going to get to that in just one second.
00:01:04.000First, the breaking news at this hour is that the United States has now bombed Syrian facilities used by an Iranian-backed militia.
00:01:10.000These would be the first airstrikes under Biden.
00:01:12.000So quick note, bombing Syria is good again.
00:01:14.000Remember, if Trump does it, it's very, very bad.
00:01:17.000And if Trump knocks out Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian terror regime, that is super bad.
00:01:22.000But if Joe Biden fires a missile at an empty structure in Syria and hits a camel in the ass, that is absolutely wonderful.
00:01:29.000The same people in the administration, by the way, Jen Psaki, who today will be out there defending this activity, was sending tweets just a couple of years ago talking about how Trump didn't have any sort of congressional authority to fire anything at anything in Syria, right?
00:01:42.000Syria was a sovereign country, according to Jen Psaki.
00:01:44.000Apparently, when a Democrat is president, all you have to do is slap a Black Lives Matter label on a missile, and suddenly the missile is good.
00:01:52.000All you have to do According to USA Today, U.S.
00:01:55.000Trans Lives Matter on the front of a bomb, and you can drop it wherever you want.
00:02:00.000And that's how it was during the Obama administration, right?
00:02:02.000You just put a bunch of progressive slogans on the drones and everything is fine.
00:02:06.000So we are back to that, which is a lot of fun.
00:02:08.000According to USA Today, US airstrikes targeted bases in Syria used by Iranian militant groups suspected of attacking American and allied forces in Northern Iraq last week.
00:02:22.000So this means it's been over a week since that original attack that happened in Iraq, right?
00:02:27.000Iraq, Syria and Iraq, different countries you may have noticed.
00:02:29.000But the Biden administration said literally nothing about that attack on an American facility in Iraq.
00:02:36.000Because they were deeply afraid that if they mentioned this, that it might drive a wedge between the United States government and the Iranian government.
00:02:43.000They were afraid that if they said, hey, look, the Iranians are active in Iraq and they are pursuing terror against Americans in Iraq, then that might end all of this Iran nuclear deal bullcrap, because it is top priority for the Biden administration to reenter the horrible and ridiculous Iranian nuclear deal, which basically gives Iran a pathway to a nuclear bomb within 10 years, so long as they pledge They will absolutely give their Boy Scout pledge that they are not going to develop nuclear weapons for the next 10 years and we will hand them a bunch of money they can then use for ballistic missile development and terrorism.
00:03:13.000So this had made, the Iran deal had made the Obama administration essentially the PR wing of the Iranian government.
00:03:19.000Every time Iran did something bad, Obama and team would be out there downplaying it, pretending it had nothing to do with the Iranian regime.
00:03:24.000Well, now they're doing the same thing.
00:03:26.000So there's an attack on American troops in Iraq by the Iranians.
00:03:29.000And their reaction is to hit an Iranian backed militia in Syria.
00:03:41.000Apparently, the strikes hit multiple targets used by the militias the Pentagon blames for rocket attacks on a base in northern Iraq that killed a contractor and wounded a U.S.
00:04:35.000I don't have a problem with the terror outposts being hit either.
00:04:37.000All I'm pointing out is that they are hitting the wrong targets.
00:04:40.000Okay, they are hitting bases in Syria when the real problem is in Iraq and the real problem is in Iran.
00:04:46.000And they are doing so in order to obscure the connection between what is happening in Syria and the Iranian bosses with whom they are negotiating.
00:04:51.000Because it's very difficult to make the case to the American public that we need to be fighting the Iranians who are attempting to kill American troops at the same time that we're giving them a pathway to a nuclear weapon and funding their terror program.
00:05:01.000So instead, Biden's going to obscure that by doing what Democrats very often do, which is fire a missile pinpoint strike, right?
00:05:07.000The way a pinprick strike, the way that Barack Obama did, and then claim that you're being muscular in your own defense of your country.
00:05:14.000Alrighty, so that is the Biden foreign policy in a nutshell.
00:05:17.000Meanwhile, in bigger news for the United States, the House has voted to pass the Equality Act.
00:05:22.000Okay, the Equality Act is one of the most egregiously misnamed or welling in acts in modern American history.
00:05:30.000It is about imposition on Americans of a standard that is unreasonable.
00:05:34.000It is about ensuring that religious Americans are not allowed to practice their religion.
00:05:38.000It is about ensuring that non-religious Americans who believe in a differentiation between men and women are completely silenced under American law.
00:06:55.000The bill will be blocked by the Senate, undoubtedly, because you can't pass this thing through reconciliation, so it's going nowhere.
00:07:02.000It is likely also unconstitutional because it doesn't make any sort of religious carve-outs, but the truth is that it should be unconstitutional because it violates freedom of association.
00:07:10.000You should be allowed to associate with people you want to associate with.
00:07:13.000This is a core freedom, and I may not like how you use that freedom, but I'm in favor of freedoms even if I don't like how you use them.
00:07:19.000I'm in favor of freedom of speech, even if you are saying bad things without freedom of speech, with which I do not agree.
00:07:24.000I'm in favor of freedom of the press, even for places like CNN and MSNBC.
00:07:28.000But this is the difference between people on the right and people on the left.
00:07:30.000I like rights, even when people I don't like are exercising those rights in ways I do not like.
00:07:35.000If you are on the left, everything is either banned or mandatory.
00:07:40.000Good things are mandatory and bad things are banned, according to the left.
00:07:43.000And they have determined that it is very bad to say that men are men and women are women, And we must train every institutional gun in America on anybody who would note this basic biological fact that men exist, and women exist, and human beings, being a mammalian species, are dichotomous in their sex.
00:08:01.000That there are men and there are women.
00:08:04.000And the proof of this is that the procreation of the human species relies upon the differences, the biological differences, not the subjective self-assessment differences, the biological differences between men and women.
00:08:13.000We're going to ignore all of that and pass what is a truly egregious and authoritarian act.
00:08:18.000The Equality Act is an authoritarian bit of legislation.
00:08:20.000I'm gonna get to all the flaws with the Equality Act in one second.
00:08:24.000Because, of course, Democrats propose every bit of authoritarianism under the guise of tolerance.
00:08:29.000It's tolerance and diversity for their point of view.
00:08:32.000It is shut the hell up or we will prosecute you and or fine you if you have a differing point of view.
00:08:37.000We'll get to what the Equality Act actually does in just one second.
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00:10:03.000It is a semblance of how idiotic our society has become that we now say that a man with a mental disorder, namely gender dysphoria, is a woman.
00:10:12.000And yes, it is a mental disorder according to the DSM-IV.
00:10:15.000Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder according to the DSM-V, by the way.
00:10:19.000It used to be called Gender Identity Disorder, then they renamed it Gender Dysphoria because they added a requirement in the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5, that it's not just that you identify as a member of the opposite sex, it's that it causes you depression, which is the dumbest standard for diagnosing a mental illness ever.
00:10:40.000By that standard, if you walk around saying that you are Jesus Christ today, you are not suffering from any sort of mental disorder unless it also causes you distress to say that.
00:10:50.000It doesn't hold by virtually any other definition of a mental disorder, but that is what the pseudoscientists over at the American Psychological Association have to say about all this.
00:11:00.000In any case, what exactly does the Equality Act do?
00:11:05.000The Act updates the law Congress passed primarily to combat racism, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes akin to race.
00:11:14.000So if you have any reservations about gender ideology, as even many progressives do, you'd now be the legal equivalent of Bull Connor, right?
00:11:20.000To say that men and women exist and that they are separate, and that a man who believes he is a woman is not actually a woman, and that a man who enters a women's locker room Okay, now, to suggest that the differences between black people and white people are anywhere akin to the differences between men and women is patently crazy.
00:11:45.000The differences between black people and white people do not matter.
00:12:51.000Right, so sex, which is the only thing that we can objectively tell, that doesn't matter.
00:12:55.000Because gender identity, which a second ago was a set of stereotypes that were supposedly foisted upon you by an intolerant society, those are the only things that matter.
00:13:03.000So, if a man cross-dresses and dresses up as a woman, then this makes him transgender-interested, perhaps.
00:13:26.000It is not, in fact, scientifically rooted.
00:13:29.000It is based entirely on the fallacy that biological sex and gender characteristics are completely different, and yet gender characteristics matter more than biological sex.
00:13:43.000And then what you will see is the final move, which is, well, actually, we're gonna go back to that whole thing about sexual dichotomy.
00:13:48.000So you'll see this from the left a lot.
00:13:50.000You see, there are people who have XX chromosomes or XY chromosomes and who manifest as a member of the other sex because of a developmental disorder.
00:13:56.000Yes, it's called a developmental disorder.
00:14:00.000If I say that human beings walk upright, that is a true statement.
00:14:06.000Now, are there certain human beings who are born with a disability and cannot walk upright?
00:14:35.000It's all ridiculous, but this has become the new normal.
00:14:37.000So now they're trying to enshrine this into law.
00:14:39.000And this has some pretty dire ramifications for your freedoms.
00:14:41.000Everything from freedom of association, to freedom of religion, to freedom of the press, to freedom of speech, all of it is gonna be ground down under the boot heel of an authoritarian left that decides that basic truth should be verboten.
00:14:54.000It is a basic truth that men and women exist and exist on the basis of biological characteristics that are objectively verifiable.
00:15:02.000If you die today, there will be people a hundred years from now who will be able to look at your DNA and they will be able to tell whether you're a man or a woman and your subjective self-identification will matter not one whit because all you will be at that point is bones.
00:15:14.000We will be able to know whether you are in fact a man or a woman simply by looking at your bone structure.
00:16:00.000Bruce Jenner was always Caitlyn Jenner.
00:16:02.000Bruce Jenner was always a woman, you see, while winning medals at the Olympics, which makes him the most accomplished female athlete ever, by the way.
00:16:11.000So it turns out that biological men are even the best female athletes.
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00:17:41.000Okay, so as Ryan Anderson writes, Rather than finding common-sense, narrowly tailored ways to shield LGBT-identifying Americans from truly unjust discrimination, the bill would act as a sword to persecute those who don't embrace newfangled gender ideologies.
00:17:54.000It would vitiate a sex binary that is quite literally written into our genetic code and is fundamental to many of our laws, not least laws protecting the equality, safety, and privacy of women.
00:18:02.000And one of the self-defeating notions of the transgender movement and the combination, which is really bizarre, between LGB and T, T is not like those others.
00:18:17.000And not only is it a different thing, it militates directly against the notion that men and women are different, which is one of the bases of LGB thinking, right?
00:18:27.000Because you have decided that you are not sexually attracted to one sex, you are sexually attracted to another sex.
00:18:32.000Or you have been, or you are oriented that way by your genetic code.
00:18:47.000This is why you end up with these bizarre articles every so often from the left-wing press in which there will be a transgender woman, meaning a biological man, calling a man who does not want to have sex with a biological man a person who is not straight because this biological man now identifies as a woman.
00:19:04.000You're not truly straight unless you want to have sex with a transgender woman who has a penis.
00:19:10.000If this sounds confusing, it's because it's asinine.
00:19:41.000Quote, an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.
00:19:49.000So, you can keep separate facilities for men and women, but you have to redefine what men and women are.
00:19:53.000And again, if somebody says that they are a member of the opposite sex, you just have to take their word for it, because there is no objectively verifiable standard to tell.
00:20:03.000It's all subjectivity, all the way down.
00:20:06.000The Act would massively expand the government's regulatory reach.
00:20:09.000The Equality Act would coerce any establishment that provides a good service or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer, or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides healthcare, accounting, or legal services, along with any organization that receives any federal funding, and religious institutions are included.
00:20:27.000Under the Equality Act, religious schools, adoption agencies, and other charities would face federal sanction for upholding the teachings of mainstream biology and the Bible, modern genetics, and Genesis when it comes to sex and marriage.
00:20:38.000Which means that your church could see its non-profit status removed, or it could be hit with a bunch of fines.
00:20:43.000Because your church refuses to say that a man is a woman and a woman is a man.
00:20:47.000And teach its kids at religious schools, right?
00:20:49.000My kid goes to a religious day school.
00:20:50.000I'm not gonna send my kids to a school where they teach my kindergartner that a man is a woman and a woman is a man.
00:20:56.000Because not only is it biologically false, it confuses children and it makes them unhappy.
00:21:02.000That is, teaching kids lies and confusing them about their own biology is not just idiocy, it is dangerous idiocy.
00:21:10.000Outrageously, the Equality Act explicitly exempts itself from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
00:21:15.000Pope Francis would be treated as the legal equivalent of Jim Crow segregationist.
00:21:19.000According to Ryan Anderson, medical doctors, secular and religious, whose expert judgment is that sex reassignment procedures are misguided, would now run afoul of civil rights law.
00:21:27.000If you perform a mastectomy for breast cancer, now you would be forced, by federal law, to perform a mastectomy for a 15-year-old girl who wants to be a boy.
00:23:00.000So Enlightenment liberalism was predicated on the notion that government should treat you as an individual and you should be treated as an individual, right?
00:23:06.000This is the basis for all of our politics now.
00:23:08.000But there is an unspoken assumption, which is that in treating you as an individual, your job, your duty, right, the other side of the right, the other side of the rights that adhered to you by dint of the laws of nature and nature's God, is that you would use that liberty to pursue virtue.
00:23:23.000You would use your reason in order to pursue virtue and be a better person.
00:23:27.000And this is why removing the Judeo-Christian roots of the Enlightenment ends up with radicalism.
00:23:34.000Because when we remove the duty to be a good person or a virtuous person, when you remove all of that, all you end up with is just your belief that as an individual, you're entitled to define the world in any way you want.
00:23:45.000And you see this in language from people like Justice Anthony Kennedy, who suggested in an abortion case, right?
00:23:53.000He suggested that you have a right to define the universe and the meaning of life in any way that you want.
00:23:58.000Okay, well, that is all fun and games, up until the point where you demand that I accept and tolerate your meaning of life, right?
00:24:07.000That I accept your version of reality.
00:24:10.000This is what Robert Bella talked about.
00:24:11.000He called it expressive individualism.
00:24:12.000There's a difference between enlightenment individualism, which recognizes that, yes, you have rights as an individual, but you ought to use those rights in order to exercise your reason and pursue virtue, typically in a Judeo-Christian sense, And expressive individualism.
00:24:26.000Expressive individualism completely disconnects you from the community at large.
00:24:30.000It creates you as an atomic individual.
00:24:32.000You're an atomistic individual, rather.
00:24:34.000You're a separate individual from the rest of the community.
00:24:38.000And the only thing that matters is how you define the world.
00:24:41.000Expressive individualism is the basic idea that the goal of life and of government ought to be ensuring the ability of individuals to explore their own perception of the good life and to express it as they see fit in any way.
00:24:52.000Enlightenment liberalism, as I say, was built atop a basis of notions about Greek virtue and Judeo-Christian decency.
00:25:00.000Okay, but that was removed over the course of time.
00:25:03.000Expressive individualism obliterates those limits.
00:25:05.000So, if you find meaning in avoiding responsibility and living as basically a teenager your entire life, that is just fine and no one can judge you for it.
00:25:14.000If you find meaning in ignoring your kids, Nobody can really judge you for that because, after all, you don't have a duty.
00:25:24.000If you find meaning in defining yourself in a way that is directly contrary to either reality or decency, that is also liberty.
00:25:30.000So if you decide that you are a man when you are a woman, or that you are a woman when you are a man, that is just you defining reality for yourself.
00:25:44.000It's about finding your authentic self.
00:25:46.000And here's the thing, there's a corollary, okay?
00:25:49.000Anybody who stops you from expressing yourself this way is an obstacle.
00:25:54.000Anybody who stops you from expressing yourself this way is a problem.
00:25:56.000And we don't even mean rules that stop you from acting the way we want.
00:26:00.000We mean anybody who refuses to acknowledge your reality as reality writ large is a problem for you.
00:26:07.000O. Carter Sneed, philosophy professor at University of Notre Dame says, That according to philosopher Charles Taylor, individualism, expressive individualism, requires the approval of others.
00:26:16.000Taylor identified a new category of harm that emerges in a culture of expressive individualism, namely the failure to receive, accept, and appreciate the expression of others' inner depths.
00:26:25.000To fail to recognize the expression of other selves is a violation and a harm to them.
00:26:30.000Because after all, your deepest belief system is what we all seek in life.
00:26:35.000And if people refuse to acknowledge that your belief system is reality, then this means they have infringed upon you.
00:26:40.000So, if you choose to use the pronoun, G, and I say, nope, you're a dude, then I have infringed upon you.
00:26:49.000I've infringed upon you in such an egregious way that the federal government should step in and regulate it.
00:26:53.000Now, as you may notice, expressive individualism neglects a simple fact, which is that many people define reality in a different way.
00:27:00.000In a libertarian universe, We would be able to acknowledge that some people define reality in a certain way, but I don't have a responsibility to accept that in my life.
00:27:09.000I don't have a responsibility to accept unreality as reality.
00:27:12.000But the left wing believes that only secular expressive individualism matters, which is why religious conscience protections can be overwritten, which is why basic biology can be overwritten, because all that matters is what is in the heart of the individual.
00:27:23.000And if you refuse to accept their reality, you are imposing on them, right?
00:27:27.000This is the completely backwards world in which we live.
00:27:31.000There's only one group here who's pointing the government gun at somebody, and it is the advocates of the Equality Act.
00:27:36.000People on the right are not pointing the government gun at anybody.
00:27:39.000It is people on the left who are demanding that you acquiesce to a biological unreality, that you acquiesce to an ideological ridiculous notion, an ideologically silly notion, a self-contradictory notion, by the way, and that if you do not, they will point the government gun at you and then say that you are the intolerant, non-accepting one.
00:27:58.000The answer to all of this should be no.
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00:29:21.000Okay, so again, there are foundational legal problems with the Equality Act.
00:29:26.000It is outside the scope of typical non-discrimination law.
00:29:29.000It is a deliberate attempt to shut down all debate on an issue where the facts do not side with the left.
00:29:37.000And people, this is authoritarian stuff, it truly is.
00:29:41.000So for example, When asked whether there should be a religious exemption, whether religious people should be able to teach their children that men and women are different, people who are advocates of this bill say, nope, absolutely not.
00:30:15.000Okay, the reality is that if you have a deeply held belief about God and the nature of decency, and then you have people who are insisting that they cram down their version of decency on your children, you're gonna run into some resistance there, and you ought to, because this is authoritarian bull crap.
00:30:30.000And here is an LGBTQ plus reporter from the 19th, Kate Sosin, talking about religious exemptions.
00:30:37.000The Equality Act tries to insert protections for LGBTQ people into the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
00:30:47.000So, you know, people are protected on the basis of race.
00:30:52.000You can't turn away a black person from a restaurant.
00:30:57.000And the same thing will be true for a gay person.
00:31:02.000If you put religious exemptions into that bill, You're opening up a can of worms, right?
00:31:09.000So, this is going to be the sticking point.
00:31:12.000See, religious liberty and freedom of association and freedom of speech, by the way, all of this is just a can of worms.
00:31:18.000No, you know what opens up the can of worms?
00:31:20.000Trying to cram down a one-size-anti-reality-fits-all rule on every American.
00:31:25.000Because, by the way, this has free speech ramifications, too.
00:31:27.000We've already seen this in like the New York City Human Rights Council has suggested that if you misgender somebody, they are going to fine you.
00:31:33.000So in other words, if I call somebody by their biological pronouns, just like humans have done throughout nearly all of human history, then this means that I have actively discriminated against you for saying a true thing.
00:31:44.000Now, by the way, people have asked me about this all the time.
00:32:20.000In any case, The basic idea here, people have asked about using these sorts of pronouns, and here's what I've said.
00:32:26.000If I'm at dinner with a transgender person, I'll call them whatever they want.
00:32:28.000I don't care, because that's just being polite.
00:32:31.000But when I discuss, this is my basic rule, when I discuss people in general, You know, when I'm speaking about them on a broad level, when I'm speaking about politics, I refuse to use pronouns that do not apply to the biological sex.
00:32:43.000I will not do that because words have meaning.
00:32:45.000I'm not just going to not use words that have meaning on the basis that somebody's feelings might be hurt.
00:33:38.000I've suggested that censure might be appropriate for some of the comments that she has made in the past, including about Jewish space lasers, okay?
00:33:44.000But she happened not to have started this entire exchange over transgenderism.
00:33:50.000So what happened is that there's a congresswoman named Marie Newman.
00:33:53.000And Marie Newman gave a speech on the House floor in which she talked about her transgender daughter, meaning her biological son, And suggested that because she has a biological son who believes that he is a woman, this means that we ought to mandate all across the land that everybody simply overthrow basic notions of human biology and sexual dichotomy.
00:34:12.000This is what she had to say on the floor of the house.
00:34:14.000And again, I feel bad for her as a mother.
00:34:24.000That is not the same thing as mandating that hundreds of millions of Americans buy into the overt lie that men are women and women are men, and it is all just a matter of self-assessment.
00:34:34.000You take a little quiz every day and determine whether you're a man or a woman.
00:34:38.000In any case, here was Congresswoman Marie Newman.
00:34:40.000I rise today on behalf of the millions of Americans who continue to be denied housing, education, public services, and much, much more because they identify as members of the LGBTQ community.
00:34:54.000Americans like my own daughter, who years ago bravely came out to her parents as transgender.
00:35:00.000I knew from that day on, my daughter would be living in a nation where most of its states she could be discriminated against merely because of who she is.
00:35:09.000And yet, it was still the happiest day of my life.
00:35:13.000Okay, so in any case, this is what she said, and you have to have sympathy for her and have sympathy for her son.
00:35:18.000And again, you shouldn't mistreat people based on the fact that they suffer from gender dysphoria, of course.
00:35:24.000And by the way, there would be a tailored way to do some of these things, but they're not interested in doing this in a tailored way, obviously.
00:35:29.000Okay, so, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted out, and this happens to be correct.
00:35:34.000As much as broken clocks can be right, people I don't like can be right, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted out, Alright, that seems like a perfectly fine tweet.
00:35:40.000children, but your biological son does not belong in my daughter's bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams." All right, that seems like a perfectly fine tweet.
00:35:50.000Frankly, I don't disagree with any element of that.
00:35:55.000We are talking about public policy here.
00:35:57.000When it comes to shaping law, you have to have in mind what the actual legal standard is going to be.
00:36:02.000Okay, well this resulted in Congresswoman Marie Newman just posturing for the camera.
00:36:08.000So she decides that she is going to take a transgender flag and walk over to Marjorie Taylor Greene's office, which is across the hall, and plant the transgender flag outside Marjorie Taylor Greene's office.
00:36:23.000Right so she she posted transgender flag right outside her own office, right?
00:37:07.000In a second, we're gonna get to the most absurd exchange over all of this.
00:37:11.000The villain of the day now is Rand Paul.
00:37:13.000Okay, I'll explain why this is just not only Not only screwed up to make Rand Paul the villain in this particular situation, but our society has a deep and serious illness if it believes that Rand Paul is the bad guy in this particular situation.
00:38:32.000My Patriot Supply at preparewithben.com.
00:38:35.000Alrighty, in just a second, we'll get to Rand Paul having an exchange that just exposes how our society, honestly, we may be irrevocable, Irrevocably broken.
00:38:47.000First, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout-out to a Daily Wire member.
00:38:50.000Today, it is Fry Saucy on Twitter who perfectly sums up our newest colleague's last few weeks.
00:38:55.000In the picture, actress Gina Carano's action figure from The Mandalorian stands confidently on top of the world's greatest beverage vessel.
00:39:01.000The caption reads, Gina as Cara Dune on her supply of hashtag leftist tears.
00:39:05.000At Ben Shapiro, hashtag leftist tears tumbler.
00:39:06.000In a follow-up tweet, Fry Saucy writes, my husband asked me to tweet it because he's anti-Twitter.
00:39:43.000This is not available to the general public in our new series, Debunked.
00:39:46.000Every week, I will take facts and logic and I will put them up against a popular leftist argument, the kind you see your friends post and share all over the internet.
00:39:54.000Whether we are talking about transgender ideology or universal healthcare, I'm gonna help you completely dismantle these arguments.
00:40:00.000So, if you're not already a Daily Wire member, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
00:40:26.000You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:40:30.000All righty, so the latest example of authoritarians treating non-authoritarians as the villain is this exchange between Rand Paul and Rachel Levine.
00:40:43.000So Rachel Levine is most famous for being the transgender former head of the health services in Pennsylvania.
00:40:51.000And as former head of the health services in Pennsylvania, Dr. Levine took this person's mother, Out of a nursing home while simultaneously shipping COVID positive people back into nursing homes.
00:41:01.000This person has no qualifications whatsoever.
00:41:02.000I mean truly no qual- This is the thing that this person is most famous for.
00:41:06.000Other than being a transgender person.
00:41:08.000Right, upon the announcement of Rachel Levine as a undersecretary nominee, a deputy secretary nominee, all of the press releases were like, transgender doctor nominated.
00:41:16.000Okay, last I checked, I don't care whether a doctor is trans or not.
00:41:19.000I care whether that doctor is capable of providing the care that is necessary.
00:41:22.000In any case, Rand Paul asked this person who wants to be the Biden nominee for undersecretary of health and human services, deputy secretary of health and human services, asked a very simple question.
00:41:34.000As secretary of health and human services, are you in favor of Using the government to force parents to ignore when their children are undergoing hormone treatment or gender disfiguring surgery.
00:41:46.000I mean, that seems like a pretty easy answer there, right?
00:41:52.000And so here is Rand Paul questioning Dr. Rachel Levine.
00:41:55.000And of course, this makes Rand Paul the villain, you see, because Rand Paul is considered transphobic for saying that perhaps, you know, like 11-year-olds should not be given hormone treatments in the absence of parental approval This makes Rand Paul a transphobe.
00:42:11.000If folks on the authoritarian left say they're not coming for the kids, this is a pretty good example of how they are perfectly well coming for the kids, and if you question them about it, then they get very upset.
00:42:20.000Dr. Levine, do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one's sex?
00:42:28.000Well, Senator, thank you for your interest in this question.
00:42:31.000Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed.
00:42:40.000Will you make a more firm decision on whether or not minors should be involved in these decisions?
00:42:47.000Senator, transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field.
00:42:51.000Let it go into the record that the witness refused to answer the question.
00:42:54.000Okay, and that is a very simple question, right?
00:42:58.000Your kid comes home and says that he is a girl.
00:43:01.000And you say, okay, well, I want to do watchful waiting, which is the proper response, right?
00:43:04.000Because the vast majority of kids don't end up actually suffering from gender dysphoria.
00:43:08.000The vast majority of kids are confused.
00:43:12.000I mean, they end up having a different sexual orientation, but that doesn't manifest As they are a member of the opposite sex, or think they are a member of the opposite sex.
00:43:20.000There's pretty solid evidence to this proposal.
00:43:23.000In any case, here's a thing that should never happen in any free society.
00:43:28.000People who are under the age of 18 can't get a Tylenol from the school nurse, but now you're saying that a boy can walk into the school nurse and the government should just give that kid an estrogen pill, or go further and allow transgender surgery for that kid, or take the kid away from the parents if the parents refuse to go along with that kind of stuff.
00:43:44.000Okay, so that's what Rand Paul is asking Rachel Levine about.
00:43:46.000And Rachel Levine's response is, I'm not gonna answer that question.
00:44:15.000But to determine anything other than genital mutilation, to remove the actual genitals of a man, and then carve out of that man a fake vagina, there's no other way to characterize that other than genital mutilation.
00:44:36.000I don't think it's a, I don't think it's a, the evidence that this has a particularly salutary effect on your future is extraordinarily scanty.
00:44:44.000If I were a doctor, I would not perform these sorts of surgeries because of that lack of evidence.
00:44:50.000But adults are free to do what adults do.
00:44:53.000But if you're talking about doing that to a child?
00:44:54.000You're talking about doing that to a child?
00:44:57.000I mean, I don't understand how Rand Paul talking about genital mutilation of a child makes Rand Paul the bad guy.
00:45:05.000Paul said genital mutilation has been universally condemned.
00:45:07.000Genital mutilation is considered particularly egregious because, as the WHO notes, it is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children.
00:45:16.000He said American culture is now normalizing the idea that minors can be given hormones to prevent biological development of their secondary sexual characteristics.
00:45:24.000By the way, this is now being treated as standard of care by the left, not watchful waiting.
00:45:27.000If you say, listen, kids should be able to grow into their puberty and they should become adults before they make these decisions, this apparently is a massive imposition on an 11 year old who knows nothing about puberty, who knows nothing about sexual orientation, who knows nothing about what it is like to develop as a man or a woman.
00:45:43.000So watchful waiting is out the window.
00:45:44.000Instead, what we ought to be pursuing is active puberty blockers.
00:45:47.000We have no idea what the long-term effects of these things are.
00:45:49.000They're off-label, as Rand Paul points out.
00:45:54.000He said, Dr. Levine, you have supported both allowing minors to be given hormone blockers to prevent them from going through puberty, as well as surgical destruction of a minor's genitalia.
00:46:03.000Okay, and this apparently makes him bad.
00:46:09.000So, when you ask about authoritarianism here, who's the authoritarian?
00:46:13.000The guy who says we should not overrule parents and allow the government to force parents to let children mutilate their own genitals or have puberty blockers?
00:46:22.000We don't know the long-term side effects?
00:46:24.000Or do any, the government should step in and do it themselves?
00:46:28.000In a society that values expressive individualism above basic human decency, The person who is striving for basic human decency is now seen as indecent.
00:46:37.000That is why things are completely and utterly upside down.
00:46:40.000All right, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:46:43.000First, you cannot forget to end your week by checking out The Andrew Klavan Show.