The Ben Shapiro Show - Is The Left Creating A New Agenda? | Ep. 574

00:00:00.000 New calls emerge for Republicans to abandon their party, Tom Perez says the wave of the future is socialism, and Supreme Court talk gets even dumber. 0.93

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro. 0.64

00:00:08.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 Well, believe it or not, even though it's the day after Independence Day, there's still a lot of news going on.

00:00:19.000 I know everybody's groggy.

00:00:20.000 I know everybody's just getting back to work and everybody's depressed about it, but don't worry.

00:00:23.000 We'll get through it together.

00:00:24.000 First, I have to remind you that this August, I'm taking The Ben Shapiro Show live to audiences in Dallas and Phoenix.

00:00:29.000 You'll be able to see me in person and join in an audience Q&A.

00:00:32.000 Tickets are going fast.

00:00:33.000 We're nearly sold out in Dallas and we are approaching near sold out in Phoenix.

00:00:36.000 Visit dailywire.com slash events to get your seats and additional info.

00:00:40.000 So go check that out.

00:00:40.000 Dailywire.com slash events.

00:00:42.000 I look forward to seeing you there.

00:00:43.000 It should be a blast.

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00:02:16.000 Okay, so. 0.96

00:02:18.000 On July 4th, it's time for all Americans to come together in scaling the Statue of Liberty and making fools of themselves.

00:02:24.000 So, the left has decided that everything is political, up to and including Independence Day itself.

00:02:28.000 July 4th is a time for political protest.

00:02:31.000 We now know that a vast majority of Democrats are not extremely proud of their country.

00:02:35.000 This led Brit Hume of Fox News to tweet out that Democrats don't love their country.

00:02:38.000 I think that's a little much.

00:02:39.000 I think Brit Hume deleted the tweet because it was a little much as well.

00:02:42.000 There's no question that the inherent patriotism of Democrats is very different from the inherent patriotism of Republicans.

00:02:47.000 We discussed this a little bit earlier in the week.

00:02:49.000 The idea that for Democrats, they're only proud of their country when their country is doing stuff that Democrats like.

00:02:54.000 For Republicans, they are proud of their country because of the foundational principles upon which the country stands.

00:02:59.000 And so the president can change, but those foundational principles never do.

00:03:03.000 And that means that you're proud of your country, whether Obama is president or whether Donald Trump is president.

00:03:06.000 And indeed, that's what the Gallup polls show.

00:03:08.000 They show that over 70% of Republicans were proud of America when Obama was president, and over 70% of Republicans are proud of America when Trump is president.

00:03:16.000 When Obama was president, by contrast, 56% of Democrats were proud of America.

00:03:20.000 That has now dropped all the way down to the low 30s, like 32% of Democrats are proud of the United States.

00:03:26.000 That means that it's time to virtue signal on July 4th.

00:03:29.000 It's time to talk about why Donald Trump is ruining July 4th.

00:03:32.000 He's ruining America.

00:03:33.000 The most obvious example of this sort of tomfoolery happened

00:03:36.000 Yesterday, when a woman tried to scale the Statue of Liberty. 0.99

00:03:39.000 Now, this is just asinine. 0.97

00:03:40.000 It's just bad tactics. 0.96

00:03:41.000 The reason it's bad tactics is because they had to then evacuate all of Liberty Island. 0.79

00:03:46.000 They actually had to evacuate the entire island because this dolt decided to go up there and protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 0.88

00:03:54.000 At the Statue of Liberty.

00:03:55.000 There's certain irony to that, given the fact that the Statue of Liberty, right, is inherently tied with immigration, and that everyone who was legally going through the system was doing so by, you know, following the Statue of Liberty, and then going over to Ellis Island, where they would then be integrated into the American system legally.

00:04:12.000 It was not that there was no ICE back in the day.

00:04:15.000 There was ICE's equivalent, right, there were

00:04:17.000 Actual law enforcement mechanisms in place to vet people who are entering the country when they were entering the country, particularly in the early 20th century.

00:04:24.000 In any case, this lady hates ice. 1.00

00:04:27.000 And so she gets up on the on the foot of the of the Statue of Liberty with a giant sign that says abolish ice.

00:04:33.000 So here's a little bit of tape of that.

00:04:34.000 I will narrate it for you.

00:04:35.000 So here is here's the lady. 1.00

00:04:37.000 She's climbing around.

00:04:37.000 She's sitting there.

00:04:38.000 She's waving, carrying up a shirt that says that she wants to abolish ice.

00:04:43.000 And and then eventually the cops get up there.

00:04:46.000 And they take her away.

00:04:47.000 She's just a delight.

00:04:48.000 You know, crawling around up there for the media attention.

00:04:51.000 Finally, here come the cops.

00:04:52.000 They hook themselves up to ropes on their day off, and they go up there, and they grab her, and then they bring her down. 0.92

00:04:57.000 So, just brilliant stuff.

00:04:59.000 It's very important that Liberty Island had to be evacuated. 0.99

00:05:01.000 People's entire Independence Day had to be ruined because one idiot decided that she was going to climb up there with some of her friends. 1.00

00:05:08.000 She spent nearly two hours on the base of the statue. 1.00

00:05:10.000 At times, she sat under Lady Liberty's foot. 0.99

00:05:12.000 She claimed she refused to come down at all until all the children had been released.

00:05:16.000 She failed because they have not been released and she is still in jail right now.

00:05:21.000 She also waved a t-shirt reading, Trump makes us sick and rise and resist.

00:05:24.000 And then finally after being nabbed by police, she relented and came down from her dangerous perch.

00:05:28.000 The reason this is foolish is because anybody who's watching this thinks, I may agree with you, but why are you getting, you know, 3,000 people kicked off Liberty Island because you decided to pose?

00:05:39.000 Why was that an important thing to do? 0.94

00:05:40.000 Plus, the radicalism of Democrats who are now embracing the abolish ICE position is pretty insane.

00:05:44.000 They're not actually suggesting a replacement.

00:05:46.000 They're not suggesting that ICE should be reassessed and that it should be put again under the Department of Justice.

00:05:51.000 Remember that Immigration Enforcement, Border Patrol, all this stuff was under the auspices of the Department of Justice, not under the Department of Homeland Security until after 9-11.

00:06:00.000 Before that, it was under the DOJ.

00:06:02.000 I have a good sense that Democrats would not be fond of the idea of taking ICE and putting it under the auspices of Jeff Sessions.

00:06:09.000 I have a feeling that they don't want Jeff Sessions to determine border policy.

00:06:17.000 But to be clear, this is a 70-30 issue.

00:06:18.000 Most Americans do not want to abolish ICE.

00:06:20.000 Most Americans want the borders enforced. 0.63

00:06:22.000 President Trump knows that.

00:06:23.000 And President Trump is saying so.

00:06:24.000 He says, listen, we're not abandoning ICE, guys.

00:06:26.000 I mean, this is not a thing that's happening.

00:06:28.000 I hear Democrats saying, we want to abandon ICE.

00:06:32.000 We want to abandon.

00:06:33.000 We're not abandoning ICE.

00:06:35.000 And we're not abandoning our law enforcement.

00:06:39.000 Just the opposite.

00:06:41.000 Okay, and this is actually a popular issue for President Trump.

00:06:44.000 It always was a popular issue for President Trump.

00:06:46.000 The left is misconstruing things.

00:06:48.000 Just because people don't like the policy of separating parents from children at the border does not mean that they don't want the border enforced at all.

00:06:55.000 And it is so like the reactionary nature of the times that the left has decided this means that no border enforcement should be the replacement for border enforcement that they don't like. 0.89

00:07:03.000 Also, the utter kind of asinine reactionary nature of some members of the left is coming out in spades now.

00:07:09.000 Kamala Harris, who is the senator from my state of California and is a full-fledged adult, she tweeted out a reminder this 4th of July. 0.93

00:07:17.000 It was eight immigrants who signed the Declaration of Independence.

00:07:20.000 Happy Independence Day!

00:07:21.000 Well, no, that's not right, actually.

00:07:25.000 It was 56 British citizens who signed the Declaration of Independence.

00:07:28.000 It was 48 people who were born in the United States.

00:07:31.000 There were 56 people, not 8.

00:07:32.000 It was 48 people from the United States who were born in, you know, what existed prior to the United States, in the British colonies in America.

00:07:40.000 48 of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were born here, and then 8 of them were born in Great Britain.

00:07:46.000 I think it was 4 were born in England, and 2 were born in Wales, I believe, and 2 were born in Scotland, 1 was born in Wales, 1 was born in Northern Ireland, 2 were born in Ireland itself.

00:07:59.000 So that's the 8.

00:08:00.000 So Kamala Harris, giant fail once again. 0.69

00:08:01.000 But all of this is just about trying to pretend that America was built by quote-unquote immigrants or illegal immigrants.

00:08:05.000 Like, listen, I'm a very pro-immigration person.

00:08:07.000 America was built by British citizens.

00:08:22.000 Okay, really, America was built by British citizens in the inception, and then over time, it was built by a lot of people, including many immigrants who came over across the centuries.

00:08:30.000 So the answer is both.

00:08:32.000 If you consider American colonists to be immigrants, I suppose that America was built by immigrants, but all of the founders were British citizens.

00:08:38.000 So there's a bit of an odd argument to be making.

00:08:41.000 Meanwhile, the ire against the right has driven some people absolutely out of their mind.

00:08:45.000 One of those people, obviously,

00:08:47.000 So Max Boot wrote a piece yesterday in the pages of the Washington Post called, This is echoing George Will.

00:08:57.000 George Will, the syndicated columnist, who has said that Republicans should no longer hold office because Republicans are just too

00:09:04.000 Well, Max Boot goes even further.

00:09:07.000 He says the entire Republican Party is now similar to Japanese fascism or Nazism, because this is where we have to go. 0.98

00:09:15.000 He tweeted that out yesterday.

00:09:16.000 He said like Japan after Japanese fascism or Germany after Nazism, the country has to be cleansed of sort of the stain of Republicanism.

00:09:24.000 Which is a weird thing to say.

00:09:26.000 So here is what Max Boot writes.

00:09:28.000 And this is, you know, this is sad because the reality is that Max Boot is a guy who's written some really good stuff in the past, right?

00:09:34.000 I like Max Boot's work on war.

00:09:36.000 He's written several very good books.

00:09:37.000 I've recommended some on the program, actually.

00:09:39.000 But there's a certain cadre of people who consider themselves conservative who really have been driven mad by President Trump.

00:09:47.000 I'm somebody who didn't vote for President Trump, but that didn't change the fact that when President Trump does conservative things, I cheer.

00:09:53.000 And he's the President of the United States.

00:09:55.000 And he's governed a lot more conservatively than anyone could possibly have expected.

00:09:58.000 He's governed more conservatively than pretty much anybody in my lifetime.

00:10:02.000 So the idea that President Trump is now representative of an evil, brutal, terrible Republican Party

00:10:07.000 It doesn't make any sense to me. 0.79

00:10:08.000 Max Boot, however, has been apparently just driven nuts by this.

00:10:11.000 He says,

00:10:27.000 First of all, that's insane.

00:10:30.000 In what world is the Republican Party a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe?

00:10:34.000 How exactly are you coming up with that as an answer?

00:10:39.000 I mean, I talked about during the election cycle how I hated the fact that President Trump sort of winked and nodded at the alt-right.

00:10:44.000 But now he's kicked out Steve Bannon, the alt-right are persona non grata inside the Trump administration, and the fact is that this is a conservatively governing party.

00:10:53.000 Trump himself is actually a rather peripheral figure when it comes to the Republican Party itself.

00:10:58.000 He's important in the sense that people have to negotiate with him, but to identify Donald Trump as the root and branch of the entire Republican Party is to ignore the fact that there are elected Republicans in majorities in the Senate, in the House, in a majority of state legislatures, in governor seats in a majority of states.

00:11:14.000 I just don't understand this argument that this is now a white nationalist party.

00:11:17.000 It just doesn't make any sense to me.

00:11:18.000 It's clearly not a white nationalist party.

00:11:20.000 This is just factually false.

00:11:21.000 It's a conservative party, and if you want to say that there's a white nationalist fringe, I would say that even that is a little bit exaggerated.

00:11:29.000 At least you can make the argument for that.

00:11:30.000 Say it's a white nationalist party. 0.96

00:11:31.000 It seems to me fully crazy.

00:11:33.000 He says veteran strategist Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, is the latest Republican to say no more.

00:11:39.000 Recently, he issued an anguished Twitter post.

00:11:41.000 29 years and nine months ago, I registered to vote and become a member of the Republican Party, which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life, he wrote.

00:11:49.000 Today, I renounce my membership in the Republican Party.

00:11:51.000 It is fully the party of Trump.

00:11:53.000 And he talks about how George Will, Gordon Humphrey, Joe Scarborough, Peter Wehner, and other Republicans have left the party and he says he is now re-registered as an independent.

00:12:02.000 He says, I noticed that, he said, I noted that Trumpkins want to transform the GOP into a European-style nationalist party that opposes cuts in entitlement programs, believes in deportation of undocumented immigrants, white identity politics, protectionism and isolationism, backed by hyper-macho threats to bomb the living daylights out of anyone who messes with us.

00:12:18.000 I still hope then that traditional conservatives might eventually prevail, but I wrote, I can no longer support a party that doesn't know what it stands for, and that in fact may stand for positions that I find repugnant.

00:12:27.000 Now, many of the things Trump has said, I am not a fan of.

00:12:30.000 When it comes to the transformation of the GOP into a European-style nationalist party, I've said the same thing, that this is a concern for me.

00:12:36.000 But Trump has not governed that way.

00:12:38.000 The Trump administration has not governed in that manner.

00:12:42.000 They just haven't.

00:12:43.000 The only evidence I'm seeing of a European-style quote-unquote nationalist party is with regard to Trump's tariff policy.

00:12:48.000 But otherwise, Trump has not become an isolationist.

00:12:50.000 Trump has not actually attempted to grow government radically in size and scope.

00:12:56.000 The main policy agenda that he's driven, domestically speaking, has been regulation cutting and tax cuts.

00:13:01.000 I'm not sure where you get all of this.

00:13:02.000 I'm going to explain a little bit more why Max Boot is off the rails in just a second.

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00:14:08.000 Okay, so Max Boot in the Washington Post.

00:14:28.000 He says that Republicans ought to think about leaving the Republican Party, despite the fact that the Republican Party is currently more conservative than it has been any time in my lifetime in terms of its governance.

00:14:37.000 It could be more conservative.

00:14:39.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:14:40.000 I'm not supremely happy with all aspects of how the Republicans have governed.

00:14:43.000 They haven't taken on entitlement reform.

00:14:45.000 My understanding is they're going to take on welfare reform, which is something that is deeply necessary.

00:14:48.000 But to pretend that this is a party of quote-unquote white nationalism, of deep immorality.

00:14:53.000 Again, when Trump says stuff that's immoral, I'm happy to say that I think it's immoral.

00:14:57.000 And when I say I'm happy to say, I mean, I'm willing to say that it's immoral.

00:14:59.000 I think it is important to say that it is immoral when people do immoral things. 0.99

00:15:02.000 But to pretend the entire party is immoral because of President Trump seems to me utterly asinine. 1.00

00:15:07.000 To pretend everything Trump does is tainted by the touch of Trump is similarly asinine. 0.98

00:15:13.000 Now, I guess the counter argument to this is that if you believe that Trump really is the death of the Republican Party, then everything good that he does contributes to his success, which contributes to the death of the Republican Party. 0.96

00:15:22.000 I don't see it that way.

00:15:23.000 I really don't think that that's accurate.

00:15:25.000 I think that the good stuff that President Trump does is good stuff that President Trump does, but this is why it's necessary when President Trump commits heresies for us to sound out on that, for us to spout off and say, listen, that's wrong.

00:15:36.000 Because if we don't, then it is true that Trump will have hijacked the Republican Party in every sense.

00:15:40.000 But I don't think that we have to take the bad along with the good.

00:15:43.000 I think that we can say this is really good and a lot of stuff has been really good.

00:15:47.000 Max Boot says, I'm more convinced than ever I made the right decision.

00:15:50.000 The transformation I feared has taken place.

00:15:52.000 Just look at the reaction to President Trump's barbarous policy of taking children away from their parents as punishment for the misdemeanor offense of illegally entering the country.

00:16:01.000 That's not what happened.

00:16:03.000 There was a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that mandates that when you arrest somebody at the border, you have to remove their children from them.

00:16:09.000 That is just the reality.

00:16:11.000 But Max Boot suggests that he has thrown up his hands in despair at the debased state of the GOP.

00:16:16.000 I don't want to be identified with the party of the child snatchers.

00:16:19.000 And then he says that these people are political ostriches.

00:16:21.000 He says, when I can't respect our head-in-the-sand conservatives who continue to support the GOP by pretending that nothing has changed.

00:16:28.000 He says, like post-war Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.

00:16:32.000 If this is your perspective on the Republican Party, I think that you are missing the fact that the left in this country is incredibly radical, and you are missing the fact that the Republican Party has not, in fact, been completely taken over by every element that has to do with President Trump.

00:16:45.000 But this sort of crisis mentality isn't just on the right, it is also extending to the left as well, and it's driving everybody mad.

00:16:51.000 Trump's election has driven nearly everybody up a wall.

00:16:54.000 So, on the left, the Democrats have decided to move as radical, as humanly possible, as well.

00:17:00.000 How do I know?

00:17:01.000 Well, let's take, for example, Michael Avenatti.

00:17:02.000 Now, you may only know Michael Avenatti as the guy who represents porn star Stormy Daniels, who once had sex with Trump, and now is claiming that Trump threatened her in some way.

00:17:11.000 Michael Avenatti is famous for being her lawyer. 0.72

00:17:13.000 She's the lawyer of a porn star. 1.00

00:17:14.000 That's his entire credential.

00:17:16.000 He now says he wants to run for president of the United States if Donald Trump runs for re-election.

00:17:21.000 Michael Avenatti, who has set up a pup tent over at the CNN headquarters, he appears so often.

00:17:26.000 He actually has set up a fax machine from the CNN green room just so he can do his minor legal work for Stormy Daniels between sending off press releases about immigrant children.

00:17:35.000 He says he wants to run for president.

00:17:36.000 Why?

00:17:36.000 Because Trump is president.

00:17:38.000 I think I'd be qualified because I have three things that this president lacks, Jim.

00:17:43.000 Brains, heart, and courage.

00:17:46.000 And I think I have those in spades compared to this president.

00:17:50.000 Didn't he just say brains, smarts, and courage?

00:17:52.000 Is that what he just said?

00:17:53.000 Brains, smarts, he has three things.

00:17:54.000 Brains, smarts, and courage.

00:17:56.000 Brains and smarts are the same thing.

00:17:59.000 Brains, heart?

00:17:59.000 Okay, brains, heart, and courage.

00:18:01.000 I see, okay, so he's like, so now he's like the characters in The Wizard of Oz.

00:18:05.000 He's got brains, he's got heart, and he's got courage. 0.74

00:18:06.000 He's the cowardly lion, he's the scarecrow, and he's the tin man.

00:18:10.000 He literally just named the things that people lack, the characters lack in Wizard of Oz.

00:18:14.000 Brains, heart, and courage.

00:18:16.000 So he went to the lizard,

00:18:18.000 All the way in the wonderful city of Oz.

00:18:21.000 And he receives all of those things so he can fight the Wicked Witch of the West, Donald Trump. 0.99

00:18:25.000 His entire base of credentials is that he represents a porn star. 0.99

00:18:30.000 That's everything. 0.98

00:18:31.000 That's the entire thing.

00:18:33.000 That he's a lawyer who represents a porn star who stripped the president consensually and then is whining about it after signing a non-disclosure agreement that paid her $130,000, allegedly.

00:18:43.000 So yeah, this guy's gonna run for president.

00:18:45.000 The left may have lost its way a little bit here.

00:18:47.000 Now, there's some folks who are suggesting that I'm giving the left short shrift.

00:18:51.000 I'm not giving the left enough credit.

00:18:54.000 The left has new ideas.

00:18:56.000 It's not just that the left is about identity politics and reaction to Trump, although it seems that they're bases.

00:19:00.000 It's not just that the left is ensconced in this view of the United States as deeply nasty and bigoted, and that it's a coalition of the dispossessed, the racially and sexually dispossessed, who are going to come together to swamp the system and destroy the hierarchy.

00:19:13.000 That's me just strawmanning them.

00:19:18.000 The left is a party of ideas that they've hit upon a new way of doing things.

00:19:23.000 And as evidence of this, they have now presented this woman, Ocasio-Cortez, who's first, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:19:29.000 I always forget her name because it's kind of long.

00:19:31.000 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this minor candidate who beat Joe Crowley in New York.

00:19:37.000 This is sort of like if the Republicans had suggested that Dave Brat, defeating Eric Cantor, Dave Brat was now going to run for president of the United States.

00:19:43.000 That's basically what the Democrats have done.

00:19:45.000 They're so desperate for direction that they now say that

00:19:47.000 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old former bartender with an econ degree, because apparently an econ degree comes along with the belief that everything is free, that she represents the future of the party. 0.64

00:19:58.000 Tom Perez is the head of the DNC.

00:20:00.000 He says that she does, she indeed represents the future of their party.

00:20:04.000 My daughters, they were both texting me about their excitement over Alexandria, because she really, she represents the future of our party. 0.83

00:20:13.000 She ran a spirited campaign. 0.96

00:20:15.000 Now, I've been saying this for a long time, is that she represents the future of the party.

00:20:18.000 That Bernie Sanders represents the future of the party.

00:20:21.000 And people have been telling me, apparently on the left, people are upset about this.

00:20:24.000 Because they say, well, I'm giving short shrift to Bernie Sanders' ideas.

00:20:27.000 I'm not giving short shrift to Bernie Sanders' ideas.

00:20:29.000 I'm giving no shrift to Bernie Sanders' ideas. 1.00

00:20:31.000 They're stupid. 1.00

00:20:32.000 They've resulted in the destruction of economies all around the world, the destruction of hundreds of millions of lives, the ideas that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is proposing with her brains and her heart and her courage. 1.00

00:20:43.000 are exactly the same policies that were proposed by Karl Marx 150, 200 years ago, 180 years ago.

00:20:50.000 And those policies have resulted in the worst suffering in human history.

00:20:54.000 So I'm not sure why I should be giving lengthened shrift just because a good-looking 28-year-old woman from the Bronx is now promulgating these ideas publicly. 1.00

00:21:04.000 Well, why should they get any more shrift?

00:21:05.000 In a second, I want to go through some of those ideas that are supposedly going to be earth shattering.

00:21:10.000 These ideas that are going to cure how everyone thinks in the United States and going to make America a better place.

00:21:15.000 Because I've been told that she is the future of the Democratic Party.

00:21:18.000 I've been told that she is the future of America.

00:21:19.000 Indeed, people very excited about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the same people who are excited about Bernie Sanders.

00:21:24.000 I said before that the Democratic Party was split along three lines.

00:21:27.000 There's the Hillary Clinton establishment, folks. 1.00

00:21:29.000 There are the people who are the intersectional politicians.

00:21:31.000 And then there was the Bernie Sanders wing.

00:21:33.000 The intersectional politicians and the Bernie Sanders wing have been in a bit of a battle because the Bernie Sanders wing says socialism overcomes all and the intersectional politics wing says socialism doesn't overcome racism.

00:21:42.000 But it seems like the socialistic wing is winning.

00:21:46.000 And I'm going to talk about some of their brilliant ideas in just a second because there's an article that directly addresses this.

00:21:50.000 First, I want to talk about Skillshare.

00:21:52.000 So, in today's economy,

00:21:53.000 You're not going to be at the same job that you are at right now for the next 30 years.

00:21:57.000 It's just not going to happen.

00:21:58.000 You need to be constantly making your resume better.

00:22:00.000 You need to be constantly making your resume stronger and bringing more skills to bear.

00:22:06.000 This is why Skillshare exists.

00:22:07.000 It's an online learning platform with over 20,000 classes in business, design, technology, and more.

00:22:11.000 You can take classes in social media marketing, illustration, data science, mobile photography, creative writing.

00:22:16.000 You name it, they've got it.

00:22:17.000 And whether you're trying to deepen your professional skill set, or start a side hustle, or just explore that new passion, Skillshare is there to keep you learning and thriving.

00:22:23.000 We here at the office have taken a bunch of these classes.

00:22:25.000 I have taken classes in not only watercolors, as I have explained to you before, but I've also taken classes in social media marketing as well.

00:22:34.000 As well as data science, because I think it's more important to know how my business operates.

00:22:38.000 They have classes taught by experts, and all of these are like 45-minute classes, and they are first-rate.

00:22:43.000 Much better than anything that you can find on any normal social media site.

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00:22:52.000 Two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for just $0.99.

00:22:56.000 Sign up.

00:22:56.000 Go to Skillshare.com slash Shapiro.

00:22:58.000 That's Skillshare.com slash Shapiro to start your two months right now.

00:23:01.000 That's $0.99 for two months.

00:23:03.000 Skillshare.com slash Shapiro.

00:23:04.000 You're going to love it.

00:23:05.000 You're going to want to keep doing it.

00:23:06.000 You're going to want to keep making your skill set broader and better.

00:23:08.000 That's what Skillshare does. 0.99

00:23:09.000 Skillshare.com slash Shapiro.

00:23:10.000 Use that slash Shapiro for the special offer.

00:23:12.000 Okay, so, there's an article in a place that I'd never heard of, The American Interest, which I guess is a left-wing news magazine, I guess, online.

00:23:24.000 It's an article by a guy named Ben Judah, and it says,

00:23:28.000 Here's what it says.

00:23:29.000 One of the most exhausting tropes in American conservatism is that the left has no ideas.

00:23:33.000 I've lost count of the amount of times I've been informed that all they have to offer is identity politics.

00:23:37.000 It is all the more exhausting because it is simply not true.

00:23:39.000 Rather than look, conservative think-fluencers have built themselves a straw leftist, an irate, dogmatic, anti-Semitic campus activist with a gender-fluid agenda railing against the patriarchy and campaigning against white privilege.

00:23:49.000 But the right's straw left has become something of a comfort blanket, easy to beat up in op-eds and own in stand-up politics acts.

00:23:55.000 Okay, so, first of all, that is how it is on campus.

00:23:58.000 This irate, dogmatic, anti-Semitic campus activist with the gender-fluid agenda. 1.00

00:24:01.000 That's basically what's happening on campus.

00:24:04.000 And it is still a strong wing of the Democratic Party.

00:24:06.000 But, I think that Ben Judah is right to point out that there is the socialist wing of the Democratic Party that has taken prominence when it comes to electoral politics.

00:24:13.000 Here's what he says.

00:24:14.000 The shock win of 28-year-old socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be a wake-up call because, whilst the right was feeling smart watching the Ben Shapiro show,

00:24:22.000 Because you are.

00:24:23.000 The left, the real left that is, not the confused democratic establishment, has been living through the most dramatic policy renaissance in decades.

00:24:30.000 Hint, it has nothing to do with bathrooms.

00:24:32.000 Not only is a populist policy platform coming together, but the left has increasingly found the persuasive policy wonks and the campaigners like the Democratic Socialists of America to exert real influence among the ranks of the Democrats.

00:24:42.000 I love this.

00:24:43.000 It's a dramatic policy renaissance.

00:24:44.000 Where are they getting their ideas?

00:24:45.000 From FDR.

00:24:46.000 Legitimately.

00:24:47.000 Like, this is their policy renaissance.

00:24:48.000 Their policy renaissance is they're going to go back to FDR's policies during the Great Depression, which lengthened the Great Depression by somewhere around eight years, according to economists at UCLA.

00:24:57.000 This is the policy renaissance they're talking about.

00:24:59.000 We're going to reinstate policies and expand policies that have bankrupted half of Western Europe.

00:25:04.000 So here are some of these ideas.

00:25:06.000 Whoever ends up running, says Ben Judah, a federal jobs guarantee is the big idea already set to dominate the Democratic primaries in 2020.

00:25:13.000 This simple idea would see the government guarantee a job to 13.1 million Americans who are currently unemployed or underemployed.

00:25:20.000 The go-to report on the topic from the Center on Budget Policy Priorities suggests a guaranteed wage which would go with each one of these jobs to the tune of $32,500.

00:25:29.000 Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about this.

00:25:31.000 So, after reading Ben Judah's stunning piece on the brilliant ideas that I am ignoring, apparently, I actually went and I read the entire Center on Budget and Policy Priorities piece on why we need a federal job guarantee.

00:25:42.000 The piece is by Mark Paul, William Darity Jr., and Derek Hamilton.

00:25:46.000 And here is what the piece says.

00:25:47.000 The piece says that we need full employment brought to you by the permanent establishment of a National Investment Employment Corps.

00:25:54.000 The NIEC will provide universal job coverage for all adult Americans.

00:25:57.000 The permanent establishment of the NIEC would eliminate involuntary unemployment.

00:26:02.000 The elimination of poverty wages through the pay structure of the NIEC.

00:26:04.000 First of all, what jobs would they be doing?

00:26:06.000 They'd be doing all infrastructure jobs.

00:26:07.000 So, does this sound like a new idea to you?

00:26:09.000 Infrastructure jobs paid for by the government?

00:26:12.000 Hmm.

00:26:13.000 It seems to me that every single politician ever has proposed this, including Donald Trump.

00:26:17.000 Every one of them.

00:26:18.000 Bernie Sanders proposed it.

00:26:19.000 Barack Obama proposed it.

00:26:20.000 This is what the stimulus package was supposed to do.

00:26:21.000 It was a giant fail.

00:26:23.000 FDR did this as well.

00:26:24.000 Virtually every president talks about the need for infrastructure.

00:26:27.000 Let's just hire a million people and go build some roads. 0.89

00:26:30.000 It turns out those are temporary jobs.

00:26:32.000 And then unless you have a plan to keep those people permanently on the government payroll, those people are going to end up doing make work projects.

00:26:38.000 It's going to be a tax suck from people who work. 0.96

00:26:40.000 Two people who are doing jobs that are more useless. 0.94

00:26:43.000 It is mudslinging jobs. 1.00

00:26:44.000 It is digging a hole and filling that hole back in.

00:26:46.000 That's what all these jobs end up being, or at least a lot of them.

00:26:48.000 Okay, so here's what the report continues.

00:26:50.000 It would eliminate poverty wages through the pay structure of the NIEC.

00:26:54.000 The federal job guarantee would provide a job at a minimum annual wage of $24,600 for full-time workers, poverty line for a family of four, and a minimum hourly wage of $11.83.

00:27:04.000 Well, isn't that weird?

00:27:05.000 I thought Democrats were calling for a $15 minimum wage.

00:27:07.000 I guess now it's only just $11.83 when it's the federal government doing it.

00:27:10.000 So the federal government will pay you $12 an hour, but the private sector will have to pay you $15 an hour.

00:27:16.000 Is it just me or does that make the private sector somewhat less competitive?

00:27:19.000 Hmm, maybe there's another agenda here.

00:27:22.000 They say workers would have the opportunity to advance within the program, rising from minimum wage in the program to an estimated mean salary of $32,500.

00:27:31.000 The wage would be indexed to the inflation rate to ensure that the purchasing power of enrollees is maintained and the wage will vary to allow for some degree of regional variation.

00:27:39.000 The minimum wage rate in the program will also rise to meet the national minimum wage if it were to exceed the wage rate recommended here.

00:27:44.000 So that raise, that rate of wage would continue to rise paid for by the government as inflation increases.

00:27:51.000 Well, there are a couple of problems with this, okay?

00:27:53.000 One of the problems is that taking money and injecting it into the system via government spending immediately creates a certain level of price inflation, which means you're going to have to increase the minimum wage as well that you're paying the members of the government, right?

00:28:04.000 These new government workers.

00:28:06.000 If you increase prices and everything is indexed to price inflation, not to actual monetary inflation, to price inflation, then this wage will continue to rise and rise and rise, pushing up monetary, pushing up price inflation, and then pushing up

00:28:19.000 And then pushing up the wage that has to be paid for by the federal government.

00:28:23.000 This would also include fringe benefits.

00:28:25.000 To provide a true non-poverty wage and meet the fundamental rights of American citizens, the policy would include health insurance for all full-time workers in the program.

00:28:31.000 So it's not $32,500 a year, it's $43,000 a year that the federal government is going to pay all of these people for make-work programs. 0.92

00:28:39.000 And then most of the report is a long rant about how great FDR was, even though FDR was basically garbage when it came to the economy.

00:28:47.000 My favorite part of this is when they say this.

00:28:49.000 They need a true floor in the labor market. 0.99

00:28:51.000 While minimum and living wage laws have historically been implemented to place a floor in the labor market, they fail to provide viable pathways to employment or out of poverty for those looking for work but unable to obtain employment in the first place.

00:29:02.000 The job guarantee would function as a de facto floor in the labor market, greatly increasing the bargaining position of workers throughout the economy.

00:29:09.000 What they're saying is that if you can get 12 bucks an hour from the federal government,

00:29:13.000 You're not going to work for $7 an hour or $8 an hour over at the local McDonald's, which is true.

00:29:17.000 That also means that it's going to be an increased cost to businesses, private businesses.

00:29:21.000 Those private businesses are then going to have to increase their prices to consumers, which is going to create exactly the price inflation that leads to that spiral I was talking about before.

00:29:30.000 Beyond that, it is also going to lead to increased costs that is going to lead to layoff of workers.

00:29:34.000 Where will those workers go, you ask?

00:29:36.000 Oh, they'll go work for the federal employment program.

00:29:39.000 Look how magical this is, right?

00:29:40.000 You're going to create a higher necessity for wages in the private sector by creating an artificial floor for wages.

00:29:46.000 And then when people are laid off, they will then work for the federal government.

00:29:50.000 And then when the federal government continues to increase its wages to deal with the price inflation that's happening thanks to its own regulations, then more workers will be laid off.

00:29:57.000 Yeah, I can't see how this is going to go wrong in any way.

00:29:59.000 This will be great.

00:30:00.000 So they say, well, you know, let's use this as a substitute for all these welfare programs. 1.00

00:30:04.000 They say that this will get rid of a lot of the welfare programs because then people won't have to be on welfare.

00:30:10.000 This is sort of like UBI as proposed by Milton Friedman.

00:30:12.000 I'm going to explain in a second why I have some problems with this, why this is still a problem.

00:30:17.000 And why the program they are maintaining is not exactly the same as UBI, Milton Friedman's Universal Basic Income.

00:30:22.000 First, I want to talk a little bit about Puppy Spot.

00:30:25.000 So, you want a dog, okay?

00:30:26.000 It's time for you to get a dog.

00:30:28.000 I have not gotten a dog.

00:30:29.000 I've been encouraged by many people to get a dog.

00:30:32.000 I have two kids, so I'm a little bit busy, but

00:30:34.000 When my daughter gets older, I am sure that she is going to want a dog.

00:30:36.000 I mean, she loves dogs.

00:30:38.000 My sister has a dog, and every time the dog comes over, my daughter is on the floor playing with the dog.

00:30:42.000 So I think this is in my future.

00:30:43.000 Well, the best place to find the perfect puppy is over at Puppyspot.com.

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00:31:45.000 Okay, so I want to talk a little bit more about the brand new magical ideas I apparently have been ignoring among leftists.

00:31:50.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.

00:31:52.000 So over at dailywire.com for $9.99 a month, you will get the rest of this show.

00:31:56.000 When you get the rest of the show, you also get to be part of the mailbag, which we'll be doing tomorrow.

00:32:00.000 Ask all of your questions and get all of your answers.

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00:32:22.000 It is awesome.

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00:32:26.000 I'm Sam Harris, and I'll be speaking to Ben this weekend on the Ben Shapiro Sunday Special.

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00:32:47.000 So there's a difference between this federal jobs guarantee that is being talked about and the universal basic income proposed by Milton Friedman.

00:32:53.000 So there are a bunch of people who have proposed this.

00:32:55.000 Charles Murray, who's a libertarian, has proposed this.

00:32:57.000 Elon Musk has proposed this.

00:32:58.000 Zuckerberg has proposed this.

00:32:59.000 There are a lot of people suggesting this.

00:33:01.000 There are a few problems with a comprehensive universal basic income policy.

00:33:04.000 Number one,

00:33:05.000 It would transfer funds away from certain vulnerable people to more rich people because it's universal, right?

00:33:10.000 It applies to everyone.

00:33:11.000 This is according to Heritage Foundation.

00:33:13.000 I agree with this analysis.

00:33:24.000 Which means that you are redistributing income from people who are more vulnerable to people who are less vulnerable.

00:33:28.000 Also, it increases government spending and the scope of government.

00:33:31.000 Current government policy makes a distinction between elderly and disabled.

00:33:35.000 Universal basic income does not actually distinguish between the elderly and the disabled who can't work and able-bodied non-elderly adults.

00:33:43.000 It could also reduce work, increase recipient dependence, and it could increase pressure for greater redistribution to eliminate income inequality.

00:33:50.000 So, you know, there are many problems with UBI.

00:33:53.000 This federal jobs program seems to be more specifically problematic.

00:33:56.000 The notion that you are just going to be able to pay people for make work programs and this is going to fix everything makes no sense.

00:34:01.000 What they are talking about

00:34:04.000 In order to come to this conclusion, they have to say that minimum wage doesn't actually cost jobs, which is false.

00:34:08.000 Minimum wage does cost jobs.

00:34:09.000 They have to assume that this is not going to cause price inflation, which it undoubtedly will.

00:34:13.000 They have to assume also that the costs of the program are not going to be exorbitant, which is a lie.

00:34:17.000 The cost of the program will be exorbitant, according to this report that I was referred to by Ben Judah over at the American Interest.

00:34:23.000 He says that this is the best report.

00:34:25.000 They say that this total annual program cost will be $543 billion, 3% of GDP.

00:34:32.000 It will likely be a lot more than that.

00:34:33.000 Any talk about how it's going to be less than that or how it's going to be that, anytime you say there's a government program, try doubling it and it's more along the lines of what it's actually going to cost.

00:34:42.000 And then they say that, don't worry, we'll be able to cut in certain places.

00:34:45.000 Yeah, I am sure that Democrats who are going to propose a federal jobs guarantee

00:34:49.000 I'm sure that that's what's going to happen.

00:34:56.000 They're not going to leave any of those things in place.

00:34:57.000 Yeah, yeah, sure.

00:34:58.000 Okay, so, back to the article.

00:35:00.000 What they're really arguing in the end is that money grows on trees.

00:35:03.000 Seriously.

00:35:04.000 This is literally what they are arguing.

00:35:05.000 So according to Ben Judah, he says, By revolutionizing how we think about government spending.

00:35:09.000 Not revolutionizing government spending, mind you.

00:35:11.000 By revolutionizing how we think, using our brains, about government spending.

00:35:25.000 Here is what Bendrita writes.

00:35:26.000 According to Kelton, money doesn't grow on rich people.

00:35:28.000 It is in fact a product produced by the government.

00:35:43.000 The only limits on which is inflation.

00:35:45.000 Kelton is a founding fellow at the Sanders Institute and the latest Bloomberg columnist.

00:35:49.000 She's pushing the Democrats to embrace a fiscal revolution, immense deficit spending, because she argues this isn't an automatic trigger for inflation.

00:35:56.000 And crucially, the government doesn't have to balance the books for a resource it creates.

00:36:00.000 Okay, let me explain to you what this is saying.

00:36:03.000 What this is actually saying here is that the government can spend any amount of money that it wants because the government does not have to make up its bonds, the government does not have to tax you, the government doesn't have to do anything, and so long as it doesn't inflate things out of control, it can continue to pour money into the economy in unlimited fashion. 0.99

00:36:17.000 This is the stupidest idea ever. 1.00

00:36:19.000 It's legitimately a dumb idea. 1.00

00:36:20.000 Now, everybody is buying into this idea because it's convenient, but even Paul Krugman, 0.98

00:36:25.000 Who's on the left on economics. 1.00

00:36:26.000 He says that this is idiotic. 0.99

00:36:28.000 So back in 2011, Paul Krugman, right? 1.00

00:36:31.000 Not me, Paul Krugman, who's as left on econ as it comes.

00:36:33.000 He says, I wish I could agree with this view.

00:36:35.000 And it's not a fight I especially want, since the clear and present policy danger is from the deficit peacocks of the right.

00:36:39.000 But for the record, this just isn't right.

00:36:50.000 The key thing to remember is that current conditions, lots of excess capacity in the economy, a liquidity trap in which short-term government debt carries a roughly zero interest rate, won't always prevail.

00:36:59.000 In other words, people are buying American bonds at exorbitant rates.

00:37:02.000 Well, that doesn't mean that you actually are going to be able to just pump money into the economy endlessly.

00:37:06.000 At a certain point, people are going to realize that we're not paying back their bonds or that we're going to pay back their bonds with inflated debt.

00:37:13.000 Or, in the alternative, it is possible that we're going to have to raise taxes dramatically, because at a certain point, people are just going to realize that the money isn't worth anything.

00:37:22.000 That if you just are printing out money, like literally going in the back room and just printing out dollars and throwing them into the economy, that those dollars aren't worth anything.

00:37:28.000 People are going to start trading currencies in currencies that are not the U.S.'

00:37:32.000 's currency.

00:37:33.000 Now, a lot of people say, well, yeah, but you have to pay your taxes in U.S.

00:37:35.000 currency.

00:37:36.000 You have to do commerce in the United States in U.S.

00:37:37.000 currency.

00:37:38.000 Well, if you got a credit card, how easy would it be for the credit card companies to start doing business in another currency, and you only convert the currency at point of transaction?

00:37:48.000 It's not that hard for credit card companies to do this, since all money is basically electronic at this point.

00:37:53.000 So, their big idea is that the federal government should hire everyone, and that won't hurt anybody.

00:37:59.000 It won't drive up the cost of doing business, won't make business more uncompetitive, won't cripple us on the foreign markets, won't do any of those things.

00:38:06.000 And it won't be a suck from tax dollars to other people to make work jobs.

00:38:12.000 It won't be any of those things, it'll just be great.

00:38:14.000 That's an idea that I apparently have not thought about enough, apparently.

00:38:17.000 And then, there's also the idea that money is magical, and that the government can just throw it out there, and nothing will happen.

00:38:23.000 And you can do this endlessly.

00:38:23.000 You can just have the government continue to pump money into the economy.

00:38:26.000 Just pump it in.

00:38:26.000 Pump it in.

00:38:27.000 And eventually, the government can raise interest rates if things get bad enough, or they can tax, but we won't talk about that stuff.

00:38:32.000 We won't talk about any of that stuff.

00:38:34.000 OK, that's the other idea that apparently I missed when I was talking about owning the libs.

00:38:37.000 OK, then finally, there's this idea that is being proposed.

00:38:40.000 Are you ready for this one?

00:38:41.000 This one is great.

00:38:42.000 Government bank accounts for everyone.

00:38:44.000 This is going to solve everything.

00:38:45.000 In new report, Treasury veterans Morgan Ricks and Lev Menand argue that every American citizen should be given an account at the Federal Reserve.

00:38:51.000 Currently a privilege only banks can enjoy, these Fed accounts would revolutionize banking, bringing in the 35.5 million Americans with little to no access inside the financial system and insulating American citizens from the too-big-to-fail curse.

00:39:02.000 First of all, how many people actually lost their bank accounts in too-big-to-fail?

00:39:06.000 Can we count?

00:39:07.000 The answer is approximately zero.

00:39:09.000 Very few people in the United States lost actual bank accounts during the too-big-to-fail curse because the banks were bailed out by the government.

00:39:15.000 The banks were bailed out.

00:39:15.000 Right?

00:39:17.000 Now, if you want to put your money with the federal government, and you want to have a low-interest bank account, right, you want to have a very low-interest bank account with a bank that basically just puts your money in a lockbox, you can find those banks, they exist.

00:39:27.000 But, if you actually would like to earn a little bit of interest on your money, then you're going to put your money in a bank that actually invests that money.

00:39:33.000 What they're really talking about here is sucking money out of, like, they're talking about guaranteeing a certain interest rate from the federal government, undercutting the entire banking system, and then preventing banks from actually having enough capital to go expend it on venture capital and investment.

00:39:47.000 Yeah, none of this is going to be— It's all going to be great.

00:39:48.000 It's all going to be just great.

00:39:50.000 And I love this.

00:39:51.000 But the right has no interest in what is being developed at the Sanders Institute. 1.00

00:39:54.000 Right, because it's stupid. 1.00

00:39:56.000 Did you not get that part where I said it was dumb? 1.00

00:39:57.000 Okay, I've gone through these ideas. 0.62

00:40:00.000 I'm happy to consider them, but I'm going to need some better evidence that they will work.

00:40:04.000 So, this guy concludes, he says, there are no killer owns on the Ben Shapiro show for this.

00:40:09.000 He says, the right, by beating up a straw left, has not only missed the ferment among their opposites, it has missed how it has opened a door. 0.88

00:40:15.000 Because by embracing everything about Donald Trump, it has embraced the idea that something is terribly wrong with America, and that the country needs big, beautiful solutions for terrible, awful problems.

00:40:23.000 When the right becomes populist, embraces deficits, dunks on free trade, and rails against elites, it suddenly becomes a lot tougher for it to ridicule a populist left that is credibly offering more.

00:40:31.000 I agree with that part.

00:40:32.000 I agree with that part.

00:40:34.000 That's why the United States and Republicans should not embrace big, beautiful solutions because they're really these quote-unquote terrible, awful problems are generally best solved by the free market.

00:40:43.000 I'm not a populist.

00:40:44.000 I'm not embracing deficits.

00:40:45.000 I'm not dunking on free trade.

00:40:47.000 This is why I think it's dangerous to play in these waters.

00:40:49.000 But when he says there are no killer owns on the Ben Shapiro show for this, we're going to have to have better economic proposals than spend endless amounts of money and then pretend that none of it matters.

00:40:58.000 This is the brilliance that I'm apparently ignoring.

00:41:00.000 Alright, okay.

00:41:01.000 That's the new left.

00:41:02.000 Congratulations, guys.

00:41:04.000 I guess you got something solid going on here.

00:41:06.000 Okay, now.

00:41:07.000 The Supreme Court

00:41:08.000 The picks continue to roll in.

00:41:11.000 We are now down to three.

00:41:13.000 Apparently we are now down to three, and that is Amy Coney Barrett, who is on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. 0.97

00:41:17.000 I believe she's from Indiana, because she's a former Notre Dame law professor.

00:41:22.000 And then there is Judge Kavanaugh, Brett Kavanaugh from the D.C.

00:41:25.000 Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:41:26.000 And then there is Kethledge, Judge Kethledge.

00:41:29.000 Who I believe is on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, if I'm not messing this up.

00:41:32.000 And my order of preference goes Barrett, Keflage, Kavanaugh.

00:41:36.000 I think that Kavanaugh is too clever by half.

00:41:38.000 Keflage, from what I've seen in his decisions, seems to be quite solid, particularly on the administrative state.

00:41:42.000 I don't know where he stands on Roe, because he hasn't really spoken about it.

00:41:46.000 But what I've seen of his judicial philosophy looks pretty good to me, and he's written some pretty strong decisions.

00:41:50.000 There's some misinformation going out about him right now that I think is false about him being soft on immigration.

00:41:54.000 I haven't seen evidence of that.

00:41:56.000 Barrett is still my top pick among the three that Trump is considering.

00:41:58.000 Mike Lee is the best pick.

00:41:59.000 You know how he's going to vote.

00:42:00.000 You know who he is.

00:42:02.000 I don't see a reason why you should do anything that, like, I don't see the purpose in risking anything.

00:42:07.000 Mike Lee is the most solid pick.

00:42:08.000 Now, the left is going nuts over all of this because they say that Trump is going to undermine the Supreme Court. 0.99

00:42:12.000 The stupidest line over the weekend came courtesy of Neil Katyal. 0.99

00:42:15.000 Apparently, Neil Katyal is, I guess, a Supreme Court lawyer and law professor and former acting solicitor general. 0.99

00:42:22.000 Here's what he had to say about the Supreme Court pick.

00:42:26.000 You know, if you think about our Supreme Court, it's the crown jewel of our democracy.

00:42:29.000 It's the one institution that gave us

00:42:31.000 Brown v. Board of Education, the marriage equality cases, and so many other things that have moved this society forward. 1.00

00:42:39.000 Okay, this is so stupid. 1.00

00:42:40.000 I cannot even begin to tell you how stupid this is. 1.00

00:42:42.000 Well, I can, so let's begin. 1.00

00:42:43.000 The reality is that the Supreme Court is not the crown jewel of our democracy.

00:42:47.000 The Supreme Court is a judicial institution.

00:42:49.000 A judiciary exists in all parts of the world.

00:42:52.000 The judiciary in the United States was not given tremendous power.

00:42:55.000 It was, quote unquote, the least dangerous branch, according to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 78.

00:42:59.000 It was not the Supreme Court that integrated the United States.

00:43:02.000 It was the federal government, the federal legislature, through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

00:43:06.000 Brown v. Board happened in 1954.

00:43:08.000 Very little integration actually happened until the federal government got involved.

00:43:11.000 Then you want to talk about the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board.

00:43:15.000 And how the Supreme Court has made same-sex marriage legal.

00:43:20.000 Legislatures all over the country are already moving toward doing that.

00:43:23.000 The Supreme Court has been responsible for a lot of awful decisions. 0.92

00:43:26.000 And to claim that it's the crown jewel of our democracy is just foolishness.

00:43:29.000 But this is how the left thinks of the Supreme Court as a sort of magical legislature that does the things they want.

00:43:34.000 It's not elected.

00:43:35.000 It's lifetime appointments.

00:43:36.000 We did not create a system with an oligarchy here.

00:43:40.000 The idea that this is an oligarchic system where we should worship at the altar of the Supreme Court is a complete misread.

00:43:46.000 Another thing that is a complete misread is the notion that if we leave democracy to the states, then somehow this will be something that will lead to a civil war.

00:43:53.000 Jen Rubin, who's just been awful lately, she suggested that if Roe versus Wade were overturned, we would go to 50 civil wars. 0.95

00:44:01.000 If they're not able to withstand this onslaught, not able to hold back a justice that would reverse Roe, what happens?

00:44:10.000 In essence, we go to 50 civil wars in each of the states plus the District of Columbia.

00:44:15.000 Well, that'd be 51, number one.

00:44:16.000 Number two, if you're going to talk about civil wars, who thinks there's going to be a civil war over abortion in California?

00:44:22.000 Anybody?

00:44:23.000 Civil war?

00:44:23.000 This is the point.

00:44:24.000 There won't be a civil war in each state because most of these states have pretty solid views on abortion.

00:44:29.000 Ain't gonna be a civil war in Alabama or Texas over abortion. 1.00

00:44:31.000 Ain't gonna be a civil war in California over abortion. 1.00

00:44:34.000 Won't be a civil war in New York or Massachusetts over abortion.

00:44:36.000 There are very few states where there is not a consolidated view on abortion.

00:44:40.000 So actually what you'll end up with is a wide diversity with regard to abortion across the United States.

00:44:46.000 So, again, this is an exaggeration, but the left view of the court as the greatest arbiter of liberty, as the great protector of left policy priorities, betrays the fact that they are an anti-democratic party in the end, that this is a party that doesn't care about legislatures and doesn't care about elections.

00:45:01.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate, and then we'll do a Federalist paper.

00:45:05.000 So, things I like.

00:45:06.000 Today, there's a great book out by Ian McGilchrist from, I think, 2009, called The Master and His Emissary.

00:45:12.000 The basic idea of the book

00:45:13.000 Is that there are two sides to our brain for a reason, that it exists in all mammalian species, this bifurcated brain, and that the brain function of the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere are not equivalent, that basically the right hemisphere is geared toward, if I'm not screwing this up, that the right hemisphere is geared toward coping with chaos and the left hemisphere is geared toward exaggerating chaos, if I'm not mistaken on this.

00:45:38.000 I'd have to check it out again.

00:45:40.000 But in any case, the book is all about sort of

00:45:42.000 Brain biology, how brain biology has played into the development of the Western world.

00:45:47.000 It's a long book, it's like 500 pages of really dense text, but it is really fascinating.

00:45:52.000 It's a great kind of Western philosophical history as well, great Western history, as well as a good social science book.

00:45:58.000 So go check it out.

00:45:58.000 Ian McGill, Chris, the master and his emissary, well worth the read.

00:46:02.000 Okay, let's do a couple of things that I hate here.

00:46:08.000 So Scarlett Johansson is apparently evil. 0.95

00:46:11.000 Why is Scarlett Johansson evil? 1.00

00:46:12.000 Scarlett Johansson is evil because she has now been cast in a movie called Rub and Tug, a film based on the true story of transgender massage parlor owner Dante Tex Gill, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. 0.85

00:46:24.000 And she is joining this movie.

00:46:26.000 She's playing the transgender massage parlor owner. 0.99

00:46:29.000 Who apparently is a transgender woman in the movie. 0.98

00:46:33.000 So number one, sounds great. 0.98

00:46:35.000 Can't wait to see the movie about the transgender massage bar owner running a prostitution ring. 1.00

00:46:39.000 I think it'll just be spectacular. 0.89

00:46:40.000 I just can't wait.

00:46:42.000 But the part of this that is hilarious is all of these people are very upset because they say that no woman should play a trans woman.

00:46:49.000 Only a trans woman should play a trans woman, meaning only a man who believes he is a woman or who has had surgeries to prove the point, only that sort of person should play a trans woman on screen. 0.60

00:46:59.000 Because it would be like having a white person play a black person on screen.

00:47:02.000 Okay, there's only a couple of problems with this.

00:47:05.000 Problem number one is that you should then presumably be okay with having a biological man play a trans woman on screen. 0.64

00:47:12.000 So, like, Eddie Redmayne was nominated for an Oscar for playing a trans woman on screen.

00:47:17.000 And there were some similar screams about it.

00:47:19.000 Like, Jeffrey Tambor has been nominated, I think he's won, a couple of Emmys for playing a transgender woman on screen.

00:47:25.000 And there's been some screaming about that.

00:47:27.000 Why can't we have a trans woman playing a trans woman? 1.00

00:47:29.000 Well, either the trans woman is a biological man or a biological woman. 0.96

00:47:32.000 You're going to have to pick.

00:47:33.000 If the trans woman is a woman. 0.66

00:47:36.000 Because I've heard this, right?

00:47:37.000 We keep hearing trans women are women.

00:47:39.000 Trans women are women. 0.90

00:47:40.000 Now, there's two ways to read that sentence.

00:47:42.000 Trans women are women. 0.90

00:47:43.000 One is that trans women are a subset of women. 0.71

00:47:45.000 In other words, they're not actually women, right? 0.99

00:47:47.000 They're kind of distinct from women, but they are also in the category of women. 1.00

00:47:51.000 And then there is transwomen are women, as in they are equivalent. 1.00

00:47:54.000 Transwomen equals women. 0.99

00:47:56.000 Well, if that's an equal sign, then women are also transwomen. 1.00

00:47:59.000 Hmm.

00:47:59.000 Because that way, women and transwomen are exactly the same in every way.

00:48:02.000 I've heard.

00:48:03.000 This is what I've been told.

00:48:04.000 So I see no problem.

00:48:05.000 Either transwomen should be played by biological men or they should be played by biological women. 1.00

00:48:10.000 But the idea that they have to be played by biological men who have cut off parts to more closely resemble biological women is silly. 0.97

00:48:17.000 Right? 0.95

00:48:17.000 Because the fact is that if we are really going to get specific about this, this is not like a white man dressing up as a black man. 0.95

00:48:24.000 This is like a white man dressing up as a white woman.

00:48:27.000 Because that's actually what trans women are doing, physically speaking. 1.00

00:48:31.000 Forget about whether they think that what they're doing is a reflection of their genuine identity.

00:48:31.000 Okay?

00:48:36.000 From an objective level, if you were just an alien, you came down from outer space, and you looked at a trans woman, what you'd be seeing is a man dressing up as a woman, or having surgeries to more look like a woman. 0.78

00:48:46.000 That's what Hollywood does all the time. 1.00

00:48:48.000 So now I'm confused.

00:48:49.000 Also, if you're a transgender woman, I assume that there are transgender women who want to look more like women.

00:48:54.000 Wouldn't you be flattered that Hollywood is now casting very good-looking women like Scarlett Johansson as trans women?

00:49:01.000 None of this makes any sense.

00:49:03.000 Scarlett Johansson responded exactly correctly.

00:49:04.000 She said,

00:49:10.000 Good for her.

00:49:10.000 Good.

00:49:11.000 That's about right.

00:49:12.000 But all these people on the left say, no, this is just terrible.

00:49:14.000 Charlotte Clymer says, yeah, I'm going to avoid Scarlett Johansson movies moving forward after her response, even if this topic were complex.

00:49:20.000 And it's not.

00:49:21.000 Trans people should play trans people.

00:49:23.000 Flippantly dismissing concerns over this new role really says a lot about her views regarding trans people. 0.99

00:49:28.000 This is just ridiculous. 0.94

00:49:30.000 I'm sorry. 0.91

00:49:31.000 The whole thing is ridiculous.

00:49:32.000 But that's where we have come. 0.89

00:49:34.000 That's how far we've come in society.

00:49:35.000 We are through the looking glass.

00:49:37.000 Okay.

00:49:37.000 In other ridiculous stuff, Elizabeth Brunink, who is the socialist columnist for the Washington Post, or at least a big socialist advocate at the Washington Post.

00:49:44.000 There are a couple of them.

00:49:45.000 She has a column today called,

00:49:50.000 And she makes the case that we shouldn't pay attention to the fact that Bernie Sanders has three houses, or the fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grew up in a relatively wealthy suburb of New York.

00:49:59.000 She says,

00:50:01.000 It doesn't matter how comparatively humble your background is or how relatively modest your means in the context of a political class at large, it'll always be news if Bernie Sanders wears a $700 coat or buys a house by a lake because his political position on inequality is so obviously moral that the only way to impeach it is to make him seem dishonest about it.

00:50:17.000 That's why I'm attacking Bernie Sanders.

00:50:17.000 Right?

00:50:19.000 Because his position is so obviously... it's so obviously moral.

00:50:19.000 Right?

00:50:22.000 That's my only attack on him is that he's a hypocrite. 0.99

00:50:24.000 Now, in the past, I've made the argument that hypocrisy is not the worst thing in the world. 0.97

00:50:28.000 That upholding a moral standard, even if you yourself are unable to meet that standard, does not undercut the moral standard.

00:50:34.000 So, if she's making the argument that just because Bernie Sanders owns three houses doesn't mean he's wrong about the economy,

00:50:40.000 That's a perfectly fair argument. 0.82

00:50:41.000 But if she's arguing that he's not actually a hypocrite, that's another thing. 1.00

00:50:44.000 He is a hypocrite. 1.00

00:50:44.000 Right? 1.00

00:50:45.000 And by the way, the underlying argument that I'm making about Bernie Sanders' hypocrisy is that Bernie Sanders doesn't even want to live like that.

00:50:52.000 Bernie Sanders' own standard does not meet the standard that he is espousing, not just in terms of, here's my standard and I admit I don't live up to it.

00:50:59.000 Bernie Sanders will not admit that he doesn't live up to it.

00:51:01.000 Bernie Sanders won't say, listen,

00:51:04.000 I am a socialist through and through, but I personally can't live up to that standard because I really like my lake house, right?

00:51:09.000 Bernie Sanders won't admit that.

00:51:11.000 There are people on the right who will admit this sort of thing, right?

00:51:13.000 There are people on the right who say, listen, pornography is bad.

00:51:16.000 I really think I ought to live up to it, but I just have not been able to overcome my own pornography addiction, right?

00:51:20.000 There are people on the right who will say that.

00:51:21.000 There are people on the right who will say adultery is bad, right?

00:51:23.000 Divorce is bad. 0.57

00:51:24.000 But I in my own life was not able to live up to that standard, and that's tragic.

00:51:28.000 Would you ever get that statement from Bernie Sanders?

00:51:28.000 That's bad.

00:51:30.000 Would he ever say it's tragic that he owns three houses, including a lake house?

00:51:33.000 Of course not.

00:51:34.000 He's never going to say that.

00:51:35.000 So, that is actual hypocrisy.

00:51:37.000 It is not hypocrisy to say that there is a standard you can't live up to that is the actual standard that you ought to meet.

00:51:42.000 It is hypocrisy to say, this standard should apply to everyone else on earth, but it shouldn't apply to me because I am special and I am the chosen one.

00:51:50.000 But that's exactly what Bernie Sanders does.

00:51:54.000 I love all of this.

00:51:55.000 So, Elizabeth Bernie concludes by saying,

00:51:58.000 Conservatives will continue to skewer as hypocritical anyone who takes exception to the unfair anti-egalitarian system outlined above by fighting for equality, even if they come from inequality's better side.

00:52:08.000 They will do this to the detriment of anyone on its worse side, and for that reason should be ignored.

00:52:12.000 So we should just ignore everybody who points out that Bernie Sanders has three houses, or that Elizabeth Bruning pulls down a rich salary from the Washington Post, half of which she is not donating to the poor, I assume.

00:52:21.000 You know, again, the question is not whether you are living up to the standard.

00:52:25.000 The question is whether you are sad that you are not living up to the standard.

00:52:29.000 If the standard is the standard, then presumably you should try to live up to it at the very least.

00:52:33.000 You shouldn't walk around and be praised for not living up to the standard.

00:52:36.000 Okay, time for a quick Federalist paper.

00:52:38.000 So, earlier in the week we missed it, which is a bad week to miss it, because it's Independence Day weekend, week, so we really should have covered Federalist 35 earlier, but we'll do it today.

00:52:47.000 So, Federalist 35, every week we go through a Federalist paper.

00:52:50.000 Alexander Hamilton is still trying to make the cases saying that the federal government should not be explicitly limited in the kind of taxes that it can use.

00:52:58.000 So everyone understood that the federal government could not charge direct income taxes.

00:53:01.000 That's why there's an amendment to the Constitution allowing the income tax.

00:53:04.000 But there are a variety of other taxes that they were allowed to use, and there are arguments that perhaps the federal government should be explicitly told what kind of taxes it could use.

00:53:11.000 So, for example, they could only use tariffs.

00:53:13.000 In the course of making the argument that the federal government should have access to a bunch of different kinds of taxes, Alexander Hamilton makes a really interesting case against tariffs.

00:53:22.000 He says we shouldn't use tariffs only as tax-increasing instruments.

00:53:25.000 He says, quote, and Donald Trump should read this, Exorbitant duties on imported articles would beget a general spirit of smuggling, which is always prejudicial to the fair trader and eventually to the revenue itself.

00:53:35.000 They tend to render other classes of the community tributary an improper degree to the manufacturing classes, to whom they give a premature monopoly of the markets.

00:53:43.000 So now he's made two arguments against tariffs.

00:53:44.000 One is that people will smuggle.

00:53:45.000 Two is that you're benefiting certain people at the expense of other people.

00:53:48.000 All of this is true.

00:53:50.000 Hamilton says, So now he's saying that it benefits less qualified industries rather than more qualified industries.

00:53:54.000 Again, which is true. 0.53

00:53:55.000 So he's saying in order to keep competitive, merchants still have to take the hit.

00:54:10.000 Okay, so Alexander Hamilton, not a tariff fan, because Alexander Hamilton understood basic economics.

00:54:15.000 Okay, and then he goes on in Federalist 35 to discuss a Marxist idea, this is actually a proto-Marxist idea, that instead of having a legislature that is represented by people at large, instead we should separate it by industry.

00:54:25.000 We should have, like, the merchants' block, and then we should have the bankers' block, and we should have the property owners' block.

00:54:31.000 And here is what Alexander Hamilton says about this silly idea.

00:54:34.000 He says, the idea of an actual representation of all the classes of the people by persons of each class is altogether visionary.

00:54:40.000 Unless it were expressly provided in the Constitution that each different occupation should send one or more members, the thing would never take place in practice.

00:54:46.000 So you're saying you'd have to limit people to voting inside their industry because otherwise, people in manufacturing might want to vote for a priest.

00:54:52.000 Because why not?

00:54:53.000 Right?

00:54:54.000 I mean, we want to vote for people who are not in our— I don't only want to vote for political pundits.

00:54:58.000 It says, it is said to be necessary that all classes of citizens should have some of their own number in the representative body in order that their feelings and interests may be better understood and attended to.

00:55:06.000 But we have seen that this will never happen under any arrangement that leaves the votes of the people free.

00:55:10.000 So this is Alexander Hamilton directly responding to Elizabeth Bruning, who says that we have to make sure that Bernie Sanders stays in Congress because there are not enough poor people in Congress.

00:55:19.000 Right? 0.93

00:55:20.000 Elizabeth Bruning says that we need to have more people who are poor, but since we won't get more people who are poor, we're going to have to get rich people who apparently are hypocrites. 0.89

00:55:27.000 And Alexander Hamilton says, Well, actually, you should just elect people you like. 0.83

00:55:31.000 How's that?

00:55:32.000 He says,

00:55:43.000 But where is the danger that the interests and feelings of the different classes of citizens will not be understood or attended to by these three descriptions of men?

00:55:50.000 So you're saying, listen, I understand it's mostly going to be property people who are in Congress.

00:55:54.000 It's mostly going to be people who are in commerce, people who have actually studied things.

00:55:58.000 But who's to say they won't represent a wide variety of interests?

00:56:01.000 In other words, is Alexander Hamilton coming down against the idea of guild representation under Marxism and identity politics of the left?

00:56:07.000 Federalist 35, go check it out.

00:56:09.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest as we draw ever closer to President Trump's big announcement on the Supreme Court.

00:56:14.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:56:19.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:56:25.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:56:29.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:56:31.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:56:33.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:56:34.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:56:37.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 05, 2018

Is The Left Creating A New Agenda? | Ep. 574

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