Breaking news: Al Franken resigns on the floor of the Senate, we'll talk all about it. Plus, the media do their best to ensure that a wave of terrorism hits Israel, and President Trump stands tall in the face of withering attack over his talk about Jerusalem. Ben Shapiro is on the Ben Shapiro Show, wherever you get your news and information. Subscribe, Like, and Share to stay up to date with the latest Ben Shapiro news and discuss all things going on in and around the world of politics, pop culture, entertainment, and social media. Enjoy and spread the word to your friends about what's going on! Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from Ben Shapiro's Top 10 Podcasts of 2019! Subscribe and Share this with your friends and family to help keep us all safe and secure this holiday season. You can get 20% off any bouquet or plant of $29 or more this Holiday Season! Use code "BENSHOW" at checkout to receive 20% OFF your entire order. Proflowers is a great option for the holiday season! ProFlowers is giving you more bloom for your bouquet and plant this year! They make great, fresh, beautiful flowers that last longer than you can imagine! and they re going to keep you in bloom for the entire month of December! You won t want to miss out on any blooming bouquet you order from them! No matter what you choose! - they re gonna make you'll get it in a box of 20 or more! you won t get any more blooming flowers! It's going to make you feel like you re gonna be in good vibing up your holiday season, you ll get it better than you'll be in a good place in the best place you can do it, and you ll feel like that you can be there, and it won t miss it, you won't have to wait for it, it's gonna get it, they're gonna make it, no matter where you go, you'll have it in the world, it'll be there! it's not gonna be anywhere else, it s gonna get you a whole bunch of blooming like that, you're gonna feel good, you can have it, yay! That's right there, right they said it, right? proflowers, right you'll feel like it'll make you better than that, right?!
00:00:47.000We'll talk all about that, plus I want to give you the latest from the State of Israel, as well as a couple of stories that are just insane that you haven't heard yet today.
00:00:54.000Before I go any further, though, I want to say thank you to my sponsors over at ProFlowers.
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00:02:34.000Speaking of people who could use a little bit of career insurance, Al Franken is gone, and he just came out and said, as I said, that he is innocent, that he didn't do any of these things, that all of these women are either liars or misconstruing his actions.
00:02:47.000It seems to me it's hard to misconstrue somebody grabbing your a** in the middle of a photo line.
00:02:54.000So, Franken stepped down after the Democrats turned on him.
00:02:57.000They turned on him in the last 48 hours, really not because of the new reports about Franken, but because they wish to throw Republicans under the moral bus.
00:03:06.000The pretext they used for throwing Franken out was this report from The Atlantic that Franken had sexually harassed a woman at a Media Matters party.
00:03:18.000There's a woman named Tina DePuy who wrote for The Atlantic.
00:03:26.000Not only had we just elected the first African-American president of the United States, but Franken's race had triggered a recount, leaving leftists giddy we would soon have a supermajority in the Senate.
00:03:33.000As you recall, Al Franken stole that Senate seat from Norm Coleman.
00:03:36.000They just kept recounting the votes until enough felons recounted that Al Franken was the senator from Minnesota.
00:04:22.000So Franken gave a statement in which he said all of this has been misconstrued he's totally innocent but he's leaving anyway and then he blabbered on for a while about activism and the wonders of activism and again he just kept calling them liars over and over and over hoping that he would have another shot at this.
00:04:38.000Al Franken is hoping that he leaves in quote-unquote disgrace that he does his penance and then he comes back in a couple of years having cleansed himself of the stigma of this
00:04:47.000And in order to ensure that, he immediately wheeled and hit Trump and Roy Moore.
00:04:50.000Roy Moore, of course, the Senate Alabama Republican candidate who's been credibly accused of child molestation.
00:04:55.000Now, what's hilarious about all of this is watching the Democrats swing to push Franken out.
00:05:00.000So just a couple of days ago, we played the audio yesterday of Kirsten Gillibrand saying that she didn't know whether Franken should step down, he should really make his own decision.
00:05:08.000And then yesterday, she actually said Franken should step down.
00:05:12.000Kirsten Gillibrand, who's been treated as a possible 2020 candidate,
00:05:15.000There is no better weather vane than Kirsten Gillibrand.
00:05:18.000I mean, there are no better weather vanes on planet Earth than Kirsten Gillibrand.
00:05:21.000And the woman has her finger in the air at all times, seeing which way the wind is blowing.
00:05:25.000She realized that she wanted the—she realized the wind was blowing against Franken, so she stepped out in front of that and said Franken should resign, is what she said yesterday.
00:05:32.000Well, obviously, there were new allegations today.
00:05:38.000I mean, this is a conversation we've been having for a very long time.
00:05:41.000And it's a conversation that this country needs to have.
00:05:44.000And I think when we start having to talk about the differences between sexual assault and sexual harassment and unwanted groping, you are having the wrong conversation.
00:05:54.000You need to draw a line in the sand and say, none of it is OK.
00:06:36.000Some of these activities are truly horrifying and your career should be ended and you should end up in jail.
00:06:41.000And some of these activities are bad, you're a creep, but I'm not sure that it rises to the level of the same outrage as a Harvey Weinstein, for example.
00:06:48.000In any case, what this is really about for Democrats, and we all know it, what this is really about is seizing the moral high ground.
00:06:53.000What Democrats truly want to do here is not push out Franken because they care about Franken.
00:06:57.000Not push out John Conyers because they care about John Conyers.
00:06:59.000They want to push all these people out so that they can turn and swivel and hit
00:07:04.000So Senator Mazie Hirono, the Democrat of Hawaii, she came out yesterday and she said, you know, now that Franken's going, you know what would be really great is if Trump and Moore stepped aside.
00:07:11.000And they say, what Al Franken did was wrong, but it's not even in the same ballpark.
00:07:17.000And why not also be calling for President Trump and Roy Moore to step aside?
00:07:22.000Well, I would love it if both of them stepped aside, because I have said publicly that President Trump has admitted to being a sexual predator, and as for Roy Moore, the credible allegations of him being a child molester, basically, should cause both of them to look at themselves and step down.
00:08:05.000The fact is that the Democrats suffer zero repercussions for getting rid of Franken.
00:08:09.000The Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, is about to appoint his lieutenant governor, her name escapes me for the moment, but he's about to appoint her, a Democrat, to fill Franken's seat so Democrats don't lose a seat in the Senate.
00:08:19.000Forcing out John Conyers means nothing because some relative of John Conyers will fill that seat.
00:08:24.000It's very easy to take the moral high ground when it doesn't mean actually sacrificing anything.
00:08:27.000Anytime Democrats have to think about sacrificing something, they rally around the flag of the sexual abuser the same way that Republicans are currently rallying around the flags of alleged sexual abusers.
00:08:36.000So, there's no question that there's a bunch of hypocrisy going on here, and a bunch of political posturing.
00:08:44.000He came out yesterday, or this morning rather, and he said that Donald Trump and Roy Moore should both step down because Al Franken is going... Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders was literally running away from the cameras when he was asked about Al Franken.
00:08:55.000So what's happened here is that the Democrats waited until the Republican National Committee and Trump re-endorsed Moore, and then they said, here's our chance to draw a contrast.
00:09:38.000Maybe you don't want to get rid of Al Franken.
00:09:39.000Maybe that's a bad idea to get rid of Al Franken.
00:09:41.000It's all political partisanship at its finest.
00:09:44.000Here's Gingrich with Ingram suddenly defending Al Franken, a guy who routinely grabs women by the butt in the middle of photo lines, apparently.
00:11:01.000We've got Laura Ingraham and Newt Gingrich defending Al Franken.
00:11:04.000You think they're doing that because they really like Al Franken or they think Al Franken ought to get a fair shake?
00:11:08.000I mean, they were both calling for the prosecution of Hillary Clinton based on less evidence than Al Franken here.
00:11:12.000Hillary Clinton, by the way, should have gone to jail.
00:11:14.000The idea that they are out defending Al Franken today, the only reason they're defending Al Franken is because they want to defend Roy Moore, obviously.
00:11:31.000I would be happy if they had, and maybe we can force them into doing so.
00:11:35.000But I don't really see the purpose of pretending that there's no politics at work here at all, because that's just silly.
00:11:42.000In a second, I want to play you what Al Franken actually had to say, but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
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00:12:05.000That's why you should at least be hedging your bets.
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00:12:43.000I talked to my friends over at Birch Gold Group.
00:12:45.000They are trustworthy folks, and you can see I did an interview with them that you can view online as well.
00:12:49.000Okay, so we do finally have tape of Al Franken.
00:12:52.000The fact that Democrats thought this guy was a viable 2020 contender tells you everything you need to know about the state of the Democratic Party.
00:12:57.000But here is Al Franken on the floor of the Senate resigning, but not before claiming that he's innocent and that he's being martyred.
00:13:04.000Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate.
00:13:16.000I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office
00:13:33.000And a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls' campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.
00:13:43.000Yeah, and so that's the line the Democrats are going to use.
00:13:46.000So when you say this isn't political, of course it's political.
00:13:48.000Now, if Franken were smart, if he had any sense of the moment, what he would do instead is he would do a full mea culpa, right?
00:13:53.000He'd get up there and instead of denying that the accuser, instead of saying the accusers are a bunch of terrible people who are lying about him and that he's a wounded innocent, he then went on to say, I'll be fine.
00:14:02.000You know, I was a comedian before this.
00:14:12.000I apologize fulsomely for the mistakes that I've made.
00:14:15.000And in this new America, I hope to change for the better.
00:14:18.000And President Trump is evidence that the Republicans are not changing for the better.
00:14:21.000If I have to step down, as I should, then I call on President Trump to step down as well, right?
00:14:26.000He should have actually turned it into a rallying cry, but he's not smart enough to do that.
00:14:29.000He doesn't have the wherewithal to do that.
00:14:30.000If he'd done that, the media would have actually orgasmed.
00:14:32.000Like, people actually would have experienced physical pleasure.
00:14:36.000And at that point, he could have run for president in 2020, but he doesn't have the brains to do that.
00:14:41.000As I say, the Republicans, meanwhile, are rushing to defend Roy Moore.
00:14:44.000And this is something that I think is both stupid and backwards.
00:14:47.000So there are a bunch of people saying, well, you know, the Democrats are only doing this for political reasons, so why should we cave?
00:14:52.000And there is this mentality on the right now that when the Democrats want something, you don't give it to them just because they want it, right?
00:15:00.000But that's not the case with Roy Moore, okay?
00:15:02.000There's this new mentality that I think has
00:15:42.000of how a lot of Republicans are thinking right now, which is that Roy Moore must be innocent because the Democrats say he's guilty.
00:15:48.000That Roy Moore must be defended because the Democrats want him out.
00:15:51.000I don't see why you would surrender the moral high ground this way on a race that Republicans, you know, if they had thrown Moore out earlier or if Moore resigned, they would have won this race walking away.
00:16:00.000Even if Roy Jones or Doug Jones, the Democrat, were to win this seat, Republicans would be able to regain the seat in four years when it comes up again.
00:16:09.000But instead, the Republicans seem to be pushing the high ground away with both hands, saying, listen, the Democrats got to play in the muck for a while, now we're going to play in the muck.
00:16:53.000And they'll use the polarization in politics as an excuse to get there.
00:16:57.000And Republicans aren't wrong that a lot rides on politics, that a lot is at stake.
00:17:01.000But they are wrong when they think that the way that they are going to win is by embracing the worst elements of their own egos and their own ids.
00:17:14.000I understand why there's so much frustration among Republicans, why there's so much frustration that Democrats have been getting away with this stuff for 20 years, and not just on the sexual assault front, but on the corruption front.
00:17:24.000This is a story that sort of went unmentioned, but it's amazing.
00:17:27.000The New York Times has a report on the operation of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau under the command of Interim Director Mick Mulvaney, and in the article is a real piece of news, that a group of bureaucrats have decided to hijack the CFPB as much as possible and operate in secret to defy Mulvaney.
00:18:13.000Not every reference has to be about Harry Potter.
00:18:15.000But second of all, there's an actual band of bureaucrats inside the CFPB trying to buck Trump and calling themselves Dumbledore's army.
00:18:20.000And then you wonder why Republicans are so frustrated that they say, we need someone who's willing to break the rules to stop a bunch of people who are willing to break the rules.
00:18:27.000The frustration with partisan politics has driven both sides mad.
00:18:30.000And if the standard can only be restored through hypocrisy, then better that the standard should be restored through the hypocrisy of going after Al Franken in order to get to Roy Moore than that the standard never be restored at all.
00:18:40.000OK, so in other news, there's a lot of fallout over what's happening in Jerusalem right now.
00:18:45.000So the president of the United States yesterday made the announcement that Jerusalem was, in fact, to be recognized as the capital of Israel by the American government.
00:18:53.000After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
00:18:57.000It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.
00:19:23.000Therefore, I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
00:19:36.000While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver.
00:21:03.000Hamas, 1980, this is their covenant, this is their founding document, quote, Israel, Judaism, and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people.
00:21:12.000PLO Charter, this is the Palestinian Authority, right, this is Mahmoud Abbas's group, quote, The establishment of Israel is illegal and null and void.
00:21:19.000That was in 1964, before Israel even controlled the old city of Jerusalem.
00:21:23.000Before they even controlled East Jerusalem.
00:21:25.000And they were calling for the destruction of Israel.
00:21:27.000But no, something has definitely changed.
00:21:29.000Abbas, by the way, made a speech yesterday where he, quote, noted long Christian and Muslim history in Jerusalem
00:21:36.000Okay, so it's not the Jews not recognizing that Muslims have connections to Jerusalem.
00:21:38.000I mean, it's the Jews, we Jews, and Israelis in particular, who have acknowledged that holy sites should remain open.
00:21:58.000But the fact that the Muslim population over there doesn't want Jewish sites to remain open, that, as I talked about yesterday, when the Muslims controlled Jerusalem, they refused to allow access to holy sites to Jews, and actually started riots if Jews brought so much as a folding chair for the ill and the infirm to pray at the Western Wall.
00:22:17.000And now the media is blaming Trump for acknowledging a reality?
00:22:34.000The idea that they are going to go out there and go out in the middle of the Gaza Strip or Judea and Samaria and put a camera on a bunch of people burning stuff and treat this as though it's Trump's fault.
00:22:44.000All that's doing is fostering terrorism.
00:23:29.000Well, now would be a good time for you to replace the filters in your house, folks.
00:23:33.000The fact is that you probably haven't thought about replacing the air filters in your house because that's not something you think about until three years too late, you open it up and there's black mold in there.
00:23:40.000That's why you need to go to filterbuy.com right now and get the best price on top quality air filters shipped within 24 hours, plus free shipping.
00:23:49.000We spend 90% of our time indoors, and according to studies, the air at your family breathe contains up to 100 times greater air pollution than the air outside, which is one of the reasons why you need
00:23:58.000Good air filters filterbuy.com sends you the size you need within 24 hours plus free shipping plus you can even get on a schedule so they send you all of the new filters as they as they come up so you're changing your HVAC filter regularly you can set it and forget it at filterbuy.com and again you save five percent when you sign up for auto delivery so go to filterbuy.com sign up for the auto delivery and then you won't ever have to worry about when you check your filters again when they arrive you replace them it's that simple just like
00:24:24.000You're replacing your toothbrush head, or just like you'd be replacing any other regular product that arrives at your door, you're replacing your air filters.
00:24:30.000It's a great idea and you should engage.
00:25:16.000I was talking to some people who are in Jerusalem yesterday.
00:25:18.000They were ecstatic, as well they should be.
00:25:20.000And again, this is just a recognition of reality.
00:25:22.000It's not that something fundamentally has changed.
00:25:25.000If you aren't going to recognize the reality of how the world works, you're never going to be able to achieve peace.
00:25:31.000The media don't want to accept this, though.
00:25:32.000The media are trying to treat this as though this was some sort of crazy move by Trump, because Trump's a crazy man, and Trump's going to set the world afire.
00:25:39.000Let's be really clear about one thing.
00:25:40.000One of the things that's really ironic here, Saudi Arabia doesn't give a crap about Jerusalem.
00:25:44.000The Jordanians don't give a crap about Jerusalem.
00:25:46.000The Egyptians don't give a crap about Jerusalem.
00:25:48.000They're not going to back any Palestinian uprising against the Israelis.
00:25:55.000Because Barack Obama made Iran a regional power.
00:25:57.000And now Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt are all siding with Israel in an attempt to create a coalition to check Iranian growth in the region.
00:26:05.000So if you're lamenting the poor Palestinians being on their own against the big bad Israelis, talk to President Obama, not President Trump.
00:26:11.000Because the fact is that coalition only exists on the back of President Obama's decision to make Iran a regional power.
00:26:29.000And the reason I said that is because CNN always covers these conflagrations not as a bunch of terrorists who have decided to murder Jews as an excuse for media attention and an attempt to pressure Israel, but they treat it as a spontaneous outbursting of rage.
00:26:46.000Apparently, there's basic lockdown in the city of Jerusalem right now.
00:26:49.000Jews have been told to stay home, stay indoors, not take public transportation because of the fears of terrorism.
00:26:55.000Again, the Israelis have been pressured into many concessions, including the full withdrawal of Jews from the Gaza Strip, making it completely Judenrein.
00:27:01.000They pulled out 6,000 Jews from their homes in the Gaza Strip.
00:27:17.000They rioted earlier this year when three Palestinians stabbed someone to death and tried to shoot some people up on the Temple Mount, and the Israelis installed metal detectors.
00:27:25.000There were riots in Jerusalem over metal detectors.
00:27:27.000So, as I say, basically, day ending in Y, Palestinians are going to riot, and the media is going to treat it as though they have a legit excuse to do so because they really despise the Israelis, and they despise the Israeli government led by Bibi Netanyahu.
00:27:38.000Chris Matthews is one element of this.
00:28:20.000Or is he talking about this myth that all evangelical Christians want all the Jews to go back to Israel so that Armageddon will come and Jesus will return?
00:28:26.000Because that's a very small minority of evangelical Christians.
00:28:30.000I've spent a lot more time with Evangelical Christians than Chris Matthews has, and he is just ignorant.
00:28:35.000I talk with Evangelical Christians all the time.
00:28:37.000The reason they support Israel is because they believe that they are the branch of which Israel was the root.
00:28:41.000That Israel was the root, the people of Israel were the root, God's promise to Israel was the root, and they are the branch from the same tree, and they believe that the Jews are God's chosen people, and they don't just believe that because they want Armageddon to come.
00:28:52.000That's a tiny minority of Evangelical Christians.
00:28:58.000If you want to see the level of support for Israel from people like Pastor John Hagee, for example, and CUFI, the Christians United for Israel, they're not doing that because they think that Jesus is going to come back and they're going to get raptured up to heaven and that's why they're doing this.
00:29:11.000But Chris Matthews has to slander all of the people who support Israel among the Christians in the United States because the left really despises Israel.
00:29:19.000This is one area where it's become increasingly partisan and it's really sad.
00:29:22.000The fact is that 90-nothing, you're seeing people like Dianne Feinstein come out and say, it's just terrible that Trump did this.
00:29:27.00090-nothing, including Dianne Feinstein's vote, they voted in June to say that Jerusalem was the undivided capital of Israel.
00:29:39.000And now they're coming out and saying it's the end of the world that Trump announced all this.
00:29:42.000And then of course you have media flacks like Fareed Zakaria on CNN.
00:29:46.000Saying that Trump isn't really siding with Israel.
00:29:48.000You see, when Trump declares that the Israeli capital, Jerusalem, is the Israeli capital, Jerusalem, and that the eternal capital of the Jewish people is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, he's not really siding with Israel.
00:29:57.000He's just siding with Netanyahu and the Israeli government.
00:30:00.000Israel doesn't need the United States as an ally anymore in the sense that they are the most powerful force on the ground by far.
00:30:07.000Israel is sort of a regional superpower, and compared to the Palestinians, the disproportion is now just gigantic.
00:30:14.000What they need is for the United States to have credibility with the Palestinians so that there can be a meaningful negotiation.
00:30:21.000If the United States is seen as blatantly one-sided, it doesn't help.
00:30:24.000And by the way, this is an issue on which the United States would be siding not with Israel, but with the
00:30:30.000Okay, this is absolute, sheer, unmitigated nonsense.
00:30:34.000The Labor Party, the left of Israeli politics, supports President Trump's decision on this.
00:30:39.000The left likes President Trump's decision on this, in Israel.
00:30:42.000When Fareed Zachariah says that America needs to be seen as an honest broker in order to broker a peace, that's not true.
00:30:48.000The United States should be throwing its weight on the side of the people who actually are in favor of liberty.
00:30:53.000Why should there be another terror state in the region?
00:30:55.000If there's going to be peace, the Palestinian Authority has to go.
00:31:00.000And what you need instead is something like a regular liberal government.
00:31:05.000You can't just say that the United States should be an honest broker between Al Qaeda and the government of Pakistan.
00:31:11.000And you can't say that, in a far worse way, you certainly can't say that the United States should be an honest broker between Israel and its terrorist enemies.
00:31:20.000Okay, so, meanwhile, in other news, I want to talk a little bit about some trends in American thinking, particularly among young people, because this is pretty crazy stuff.
00:31:30.000There's an article today about capitalism and how young Americans feel about capitalism from the Wall Street Journal.
00:31:36.000And it is pretty stunning how few Americans, young Americans particularly, know what capitalism is.
00:31:41.000So there's an article that says that in a 2016 survey for Harvard University's Institute of Politics, 42% of younger Americans said they support capitalism.
00:31:50.000Only 19% identified themselves as capitalist.
00:31:53.000This is according to John Della Volpe, who's been polling millennials for 17 years.
00:31:58.00042% of young Americans said they support capitalism, which means 58% do not.
00:32:02.000And 19% identified themselves as capitalists.
00:32:05.000The reason that I think this is the case is because the Democrats, and Bernie Sanders in particular, have done a wonderful job of redefining capitalism away from this meeting, and Republicans have never discussed capitalism in moral terms.
00:32:15.000It's something I like talking about a lot.
00:32:16.000The reason that capitalism is a good is not just because it's more efficient and creates better products.
00:32:21.000It's because it says that the stuff that you create, you get to keep.
00:32:25.000The stuff that you create, you get to keep, and no one can be the master of your time or labor.
00:32:30.000No one gets to enslave you just because they have needs.
00:32:36.000This is the John Locke view of capitalism.
00:32:38.000John Locke's view of property ownership is that you combine your labor with the land, and that's why you have a right to land.
00:32:52.000And the idea that anyone can take that money away from you just because they want the money for their own purposes is morally obtuse.
00:33:00.000But people on the right don't talk about capitalism this way.
00:33:02.000Instead what we'll say is, well, you know, capitalism is just sort of the best available system.
00:33:07.000And there's also this tendency, I think, to say, as many have said in the past, that, you know, sort of two cheers for capitalism, that capitalism is the best possible system, but it doesn't tell you that you have to be moral.
00:33:20.000But when you're talking about economics, socialism doesn't tell you that you have to be moral either.
00:33:23.000There's nothing moral about socialism.
00:33:25.000And when you're talking about economic systems and why economic systems ought to be upheld, from a moral standpoint, you have to start from the basic notion that human beings have liberty, that individuals are guaranteed liberty, and they're all made in God's image, and we are all equal in our rights before God.
00:33:38.000That does not mean that we all get to steal stuff from one another.
00:33:45.000Instead, what they see is greedy plutocrats who are combining with the government.
00:33:49.000And capitalism itself is slandered in the media.
00:33:51.000So every time there is an actual greedy plutocrat who makes a deal with the government, anytime Wall Street gets rich off an insider crony deal with Congress, instead of people responding by saying, that's not capitalism, even the right will call it crony capitalism.
00:34:11.000There is no reason to describe anything as crony capitalism because capitalism is about the free investment in exchange of goods.
00:34:19.000But the right never describes capitalism that way, and so young people don't know any better, and so they end up in this sort of weird spot where they think capitalism is bad.
00:35:09.000Turkey's an interesting one because 50... I'm not sure, to be honest with you, where Turkey was 50 years ago, but in recent years they've obviously slid.
00:35:18.000And then you have the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Spain.
00:35:20.000A lot of countries that are from the former Soviet bloc.
00:35:31.000Only 37% of Americans say that Americans are better off today than they were 50 years ago.
00:35:37.00041% of Americans say that they are worse off than they were 50 years ago.
00:35:41.00050 years ago, in 1967, in the middle of riots in the United States, in the middle of the Vietnam War, with economic development that, you know, having a nice car was still a luxury.
00:35:56.000You know, where you didn't have the internet, the houses were smaller, air conditioning was still not universal, central air, central heating.
00:36:05.000There weren't such a thing as computers.
00:36:07.000The living standard in the United States is so much higher than it was in 1967, and yet Americans believe that this is not the case, that they were better off then.
00:36:15.000And this is one of the problems, I think, in American politics right now.
00:36:18.000There's this sort of nostalgia for a better time.
00:38:04.000But unfortunately, we have a tendency to be pessimists about reality and this leads us down some dark roads and toward a nostalgia on one side that says that we can rectify everything with big government and a nostalgia on the other side that says that we have to freeze everything in place lest we fall into the abyss.
00:39:01.000If you want to ask questions as a subscriber, log into our website dailywire.com and then head over to the conversation page to watch the live stream.
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00:39:55.000Alrighty, so let's do some things I like, some things I hate, and then the big idea, because it's a Thursday.
00:40:01.000Can't believe it's a Thursday already, and also this week has been endless.
00:40:04.000So, okay, time for some things that I like.
00:40:06.000So the other night, my wife and I went to see a movie, which was just a pleasure.
00:40:09.000Once in a while, I actually get to see my wife, and it's nice when that happens.
00:40:12.000And the movie was Murder on the Orient Express.
00:40:17.000So this is one of those things where it's really fun to watch if the person you're watching with does not know the ending to Murder on the Orient Express.
00:40:23.000Because if you don't know the ending, it's one of the great endings in kind of murder mystery literature.
00:40:29.000The middle of the movie, where Poirot is sort of investigating the crimes, is not my favorite.
00:42:41.000So there are a few things in the movie that would have made it better.
00:42:44.000One is that the murder takes place on a train, on a moving train.
00:42:49.000What would have been nice, of sleeper cars that are right back to back, it would have been nice to have like a map of the sleeper car.
00:42:54.000There's a point made by Sonny Bunch on the Weekly Standard podcast, and I think it's right, that one shot from above that shows where everybody was in the cars would be very helpful, but you don't actually get that.
00:43:05.000Particularly the end of it is pretty effective, I think.
00:43:07.000Okay, so time for some other things that I like.
00:43:10.000So, this I thought was just hilarious.
00:43:12.000So yesterday, or a couple days ago on the show, I said that it was a lifelong dream to appear on The View, and I was very excited about this.
00:43:19.000Paula Faris, who is an occasional co-host on The View, and she's on Good Morning America, she tweeted out, hey Ben, I heard on your podcast that one of your lifelong dreams is to appear on The View.
00:43:27.000I'm running it by the incomparable Joy Behar.
00:44:32.000That's piece of college news number one.
00:44:34.000Piece of college news number two is that a sociology professor at the University of California, Merced, told students that he wouldn't debate me
00:44:42.000But he would enjoy ripping my arms out of the socket.
00:44:47.000Here's a little bit of the audio that was gotten a hold of by Campus Reform.
00:44:51.000I wouldn't debate him because being in the same room with that fool is putting this nonsense fascist ideologue on equal footing with me using my real degree to legitimize garbage politics that are at best nonsensical.
00:47:40.000It's a percentage that is a favorable impression of each character.
00:47:42.000But I'll tell you what the worst injustice here is, okay?
00:47:44.000The worst injustice, obviously, is that the people who are at the top of the list, okay, Leia is number one, fine, you know, men have a good impression of Leia, and so do women, that's cool.
00:47:54.000But Luke Skywalker is number two, at 72%, and Han Solo is at 68%.
00:48:40.000So on Thursdays we talk about a big idea that requires elucidation and so today we'll talk about freedom of association.
00:48:46.000Freedom of association is not an actual stated constitutional right.
00:48:50.000It's pretty obvious that the constitution means that you get to hang out with whoever you want to hang out with because freedom of speech and freedom of assembly both mean freedom of association, right?
00:48:57.000I get to say what I want and the government can't
00:49:00.000And I also get to assemble for petition and assemble in groups however I want.
00:49:07.000And the Supreme Court has found in cases like the NAACP versus Alabama in 1958 that the NAACP did not have to reveal to the Alabama Attorney General the names and addresses of NAACP members in the state because that would violate freedom of association.
00:49:20.000In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could revoke the membership of a former Eagle Scout when it found out that he was a gay rights activist because they said they have freedom of association.
00:49:30.000Freedom of association is vital because it seems to me that this should be applied to the business space as well.
00:49:36.000I don't have to associate with anybody else.
00:49:38.000And I understand that there are lots of things that people do that are bad and of which you don't approve.
00:49:43.000And that historically speaking, there have been lots of people in the United States who have engaged in discriminatory practices against various members of the population.
00:49:49.000That does not mean the government gets to, at least the federal government, does not get to come in and force you to cater to audiences that you don't want or to perform businesses with people you don't want.
00:49:59.000Now, this is an extreme version of the argument that is being made in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case.
00:50:04.000In that case, they're not even basing it on freedom of association.
00:50:06.000They're saying, I have freedom of speech, you can't force me to express a message.
00:50:54.000Barry Goldwater was a civil rights activist, by the way.
00:50:56.000And people proclaimed that he was racist because he said that people have the right to choose with whom they do business, even if you don't like the choices that they make.
00:51:03.000And he was portrayed as some sort of evil racist for all of this.
00:51:07.000There is no principled argument for freedom of association if the government gets to decide with whom you associate.