Former MTV VJ and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro joins me on The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special to talk about his career as a VJ on MTV and how he transitioned into the world of politics. We talk about the early days of his career at MTV, how he got started in politics, and what it was like being a conservative in the music industry in the 90s and early 2000s. We also talk about what it's like to be a conservative political commentator in the post-9/11 era, and why it's so important to have a conservative voice in the world, even if you don't have a degree in politics or have any previous experience in the field of politics or media. And, of course, we talk about how to make the transition from MTV to politics and how to deal with the culture of the time and the people who treated you when you were a conservative musician in the '90s and '00s when things weren't the way they are now. Enjoy the Sunday Special with Ben Shapiro! Ben Shapiro is a writer, podcaster, radio host, and host of the show Kennedy at 9pm on Fox Business on the Fox Business Network's Fox Business Radio. He's also a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the Weekly Standard, and is a regular contributor to NPR. The Weekly Standard. Thanks to Ben Shapiro for coming on the show and for being kind enough to take the time to share his thoughts on this Sunday Special. Ben is a great friend of mine, and I hope you enjoy the show! - it was a blast! Thank you Ben Shapiro - Ben Shapiro: Sunday Special and thanks for stopping by to talk politics, Ben Shapiro's Sunday Special: The Ben's Show: is a Sunday Special is a must-listen Sunday Special? Tweet me to let me know what you thought of it! if you liked it. Tweet Me! or have a question or suggestion for Ben? or a suggestion for him to come back to the show? and I'll be listening to him on his podcast: ? or tweet him on Insta: . if he's listening to it on Instapod: or not listening to this episode? : or any other podcast you like it? Timestamps: , or what you think of it's a good one? Thanks for listening?
00:00:00.000Anytime something happens that feels like it's beyond our control, the knee-jerk is, we need more government, as if government is going to solve things.
00:00:50.000So, for folks who don't actually know your background, you have a really interesting background because, you know, I was political from a very young age, but you were a music person, right?
00:01:13.000So my parents didn't want me to just linger in Portland, so they gave me money.
00:01:18.000They paid me to leave, and I moved to Los Angeles to get into political consulting, because that's naturally where people go.
00:01:25.000And I ended up getting an internship at a radio station, a really great radio station, KROQ.
00:01:31.000And my boss there, Andy Schoen, I used to go into his office once a week as an intern, as an unpaid intern, and ask him to put me on the air.
00:01:40.000And eventually, once he did, and so he gave me an audition and I got to do overnights.
00:01:47.000And then Andy was hired at MTV as a Senior Vice President of Programming, and they needed new VJs, and he got me an audition, and they hired me, which was crazy.
00:01:56.000And even he admits that he couldn't believe that they hired someone with absolutely no television experience.
00:02:08.000on K-Rock driving back and forth to school.
00:02:11.000Because even though that wasn't my particular channel, the presets were already left on 106.7, so that is really, really funny.
00:02:18.000Yeah, I'll get into critiques of alternative rock.
00:02:21.000I've already gotten into trouble for critiques of rap, so I have to get into critiques of alternative rock a little bit later on in the program, but how did you make the transition from you're an MTV VJ to the world of politics?
00:02:33.000I was really into politics when I got to MTV, and I self-identified as a conservative Republican, and of course it was the beginning of the Clinton era.
00:02:43.000So, Bill Clinton was obviously elected in November of 1992.
00:02:47.000I started at MTV in September of that year.
00:02:51.000And so the Choose or Lose campaign was on its maiden voyage.
00:03:09.000I was already a skeptic, and I didn't really have a name for my political philosophy.
00:03:15.000I just knew it ran counter to the groupthink and what people were spouting that I felt was very spoon-fed, with very little critical thought.
00:03:26.000And I was interested in politics, and I loved Ronald Reagan, and was obsessed with Dan Quayle.
00:03:33.000And I was sad to see the first Bush presidency end, because that meant that J. Danforth Quayle III went with them.
00:03:42.000So, how did people treat you being a conservative in the music industry?
00:03:46.000I mean, being at K-Rock, I can't imagine there were lots of folks over there at the time who were very pro-conservative.
00:03:53.000I mean, this is the days of Jimmy Kimmel and all that.
00:03:59.000Um, but they, people were curious, and it was, a Republican in Southern California was a very funny thing.
00:04:06.000It was a very, like, Palm Springs country club, and obviously I didn't fit that mold, um, so I wasn't a typical cookie-cutter, I-wanna-hate-you Republican, and I liked debating with people, and, you know, for that, people were, by and large, More curious.
00:04:24.000And, you know, people would make fun of me.
00:04:25.000I remember the first time I met Dennis Leary.
00:04:28.000He was just relentlessly making fun of me.
00:04:31.000He's like, you're a Republican and your name's Kennedy?
00:04:33.000That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!
00:04:34.000And there was more discussion, whereas now we didn't have cancel culture.
00:04:41.000And, you know, people really took in information in longer form, whereas, you know, now it's really amuse-bouche.
00:04:52.000And so you have a little bit more room to defend yourself in your positions, whereas now— and I talked to Pat Smear a little bit about this in my book from The Germs and Nirvana and, of course, Foo Fighters.
00:05:07.000And he said that if I tried to come out as a Republican today on MTV, I, first of all, wouldn't have been hired.
00:05:12.000And the second that was sort of nationally consumed, I would have been fired or dismissed pretty quickly.
00:05:20.000So, you didn't graduate from high school, and then you were telling me that you went to college when you were 28, which is not usually when people go to UCLA.
00:05:29.000Because after you've worked a little bit, and, you know, you've tried your hand at a few careers, you figure out that you have gaps in knowledge.
00:05:36.000And you also figure out what you want to do and what you want to focus your time on.
00:05:40.000Because by the time you get further into adulthood, you realize that your time's a little bit more precious, and you don't have quite as much energy And you're also not as worried.
00:05:49.000You're not consumed by the same kind of anxiety you are when you're in your late teens and early twenties, where everything has to be immediate and you have to get it done.
00:05:59.000And so I found when I went to college late, I only wanted to study what I wanted to study and not what someone projected on me that I should study, like communications or business.
00:06:10.000Those sounded very, very boring to me.
00:06:13.000And so I started with history and philosophy and I really liked both of those and I also studied a lot of physics and science.
00:06:21.000I realized if I were going to get, if I were going to major in physics, it would have taken two years of just math before I got to any of my lower division classes.
00:06:31.000So philosophy it was because Every time I took a philosophy class, I loved it more and more, no matter what the subject matter was.
00:06:37.000And I really loved ancient Greek philosophy and philosophy of science.
00:06:42.000And I found that the two of them were asking the same kind of existential questions, and oftentimes those are unanswerable.
00:06:50.000And, you know, for people who love philosophy, that's fine.
00:06:55.000The fact that you're never really going to get to a terminus is acceptable, because what you find along the way, what you uncover, is in itself very satisfying.
00:07:06.000Okay, so I want to ask about what you did after college and how you end up at Fox Business Network, because that's a hell of a transition.
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00:08:11.000Alrighty, so let's talk about what you did after you were at UCLA.
00:08:15.000So you go to UCLA and you're in history and philosophy and you're out of the music industry now?
00:08:21.000Yes, so after MTV I moved to Seattle and did talk radio and then I moved to LA and did more talk radio and that's when I started going to college and hosted a couple of game shows on Game Show Network, which is the best job.
00:08:34.000No one should ever make fun of game shows or game show hosts because it is such an amazing job and it's such a positive, optimistic environment because people who are watching, they want to watch.
00:08:44.000And they really believe that they can achieve something in a short amount of time.
00:08:49.000Game show fans and gamblers are cut from the same cloth, and I really like that cloth.
00:08:54.000And then when I went to Santa Monica College and UCLA, I started doing a little bit more talk radio and then did kind of a talk soup for reality TV.
00:09:07.000Meanwhile, in 1993, I had met Roger Ailes at Politically Incorrect, at one of the very first episodes of Politically Incorrect when it was on Comedy Central.
00:09:16.000And I had a copy of his book that he signed.
00:09:19.000And then I met him a few times when I was at Fox Reality Channel.
00:09:22.000And in 2000, or sorry, in 1999, I wrote an advice book for girls.
00:09:28.000And I went on Bill O'Reilly's show to promote it.
00:09:31.000And Bill O'Reilly attacked me and I couldn't figure out why.
00:09:34.000Because here's this very conservative advice that I'm giving.
00:09:56.000Did VH1's Best Week Ever, which was like a clip show where comics and journalists comment on various pop culture stories, and that's what put me through college.
00:10:08.000And then afterward I had to start working.
00:10:10.000And then I got a job at KFI, which is a talk radio station.
00:10:15.000And I really found my political voice doing talk radio in Seattle, which was an interesting place because there's the dichotomy of the ultra-liberals in Seattle and then a lot of conservatives, libertarians, and survivalists in the outskirts and in the rest of Washington state.
00:11:26.000But I will say two of the most brilliant kind of modern, in the Ben Shapiro spectrum, modern musicians, Trent Reznor and Scott Ian from Anthrax, they are both inspired by jazz and classical music.
00:11:41.000And I remember driving, I was going snowboarding with Scott Ian and we were listening to classical music and he said, this is so much more hardcore than any hardcore music.
00:11:53.000And he's like, you know, listen to the chord structure.
00:11:56.000Listen to how the music and the tempo, how it changes.
00:12:00.000He's like, you couldn't get away with structure like this, even in hard rock.
00:12:05.000And I thought that was really great how, you know, these musicians were taking in music that probably would be considered contradictory to what they were putting out.
00:12:44.000And everyone has to find the music that resonates Within them.
00:12:47.000I believe it was Pythagoras who said that.
00:12:50.000Maybe you can educate me a little bit.
00:12:52.000One of the things that I've been big on, and I just had a discussion with a rapper named Zuby about rap, and one of the things that I suggested to him is that as somebody who grew up in the classical tradition where skill was greatly prized, you know, one of my problems with rap is I'm not sure that I see the skill always first and foremost from some of the rappers.
00:13:08.000But there are certain rock musicians who really know their stuff.
00:13:11.000So who do you think are the best musicians in that?
00:13:16.000I mean, I really like, I really like drummers.
00:13:19.000Like I'm always fascinated by the parts that you don't really pay attention to.
00:13:26.000And there's a duo, well they're kind of a trio because they do have an American singer, called Mike Snow.
00:13:33.000And they're Swedish and there's no, no one in the band is named Mike.
00:13:37.000And I think their stuff is really interesting and I like the way they use percussion and, you know, it's like the marriage of a melody that makes you feel something and a beat that actually moves you and then words that make you cry.
00:13:53.000It's so difficult to get all of those elements together and when people do it, I think it's such a high art form.
00:14:36.000He's got such incredible vocal range and he's got such a melodic voice and his songs are so honest and sad and sometimes they're very opaque and sometimes they're very transparent and I think that he has a beautiful artistry and And then, you know, I love Interpol.
00:14:59.000So do you think that the era of the music video is dead?
00:15:03.000And now it seems like MTV doesn't even broadcast music videos all that much anymore.
00:15:06.000No, I think shareholders killed the radio star.
00:15:09.000When I was at MTV, that's when they first started experimenting with long-form programming.
00:15:13.000It was really in 1992 with the real world.
00:15:16.000And when that took off, they realized because the rest of the day was video music day parts.
00:15:22.000And my boss, Andy, was the one who chopped it up and said, OK, well, let's do MTV Jams, UMTV Raps, MTV Rocks, Alternative Nation, and sort of segmented it throughout the day.
00:15:33.000So if you were a rap fan, you'd watch UMTV Raps and MTV Jams.
00:15:39.000And if you liked R&B, and then Alternative Nation was on every night at midnight.
00:15:44.000And, but they realized when they started inserting long-form programming that people were watching for longer periods of time, because after three minutes, if you didn't like the next music video, you would leave.
00:15:55.000The difference was then there really wasn't any place to go.
00:15:59.000But now, you know, I watch How My Girls Consume Media, and it's mostly YouTube.
00:16:07.000And they, I don't think they've, at least in my presence, they've never watched MTV, and they really don't watch TV anymore unless I make them watch a Yankees game.
00:16:17.000So now let's talk about politics, because I'm sure that my political audiences, many of them are interested in the music, but I think that probably they're more interested in your politics.
00:16:24.000So you went from being sort of a self-described conservative in opposition to Democrats in the L.A.
00:16:31.000How did you realize that you were a libertarian and not just sort of a straight-line conservative?
00:16:34.000It was really interesting because I didn't know what it meant to be a libertarian.
00:16:38.000I really didn't know what the word meant.
00:16:41.000And, you know, one night I was having dinner with Kurt Loder, and Kurt was a really great mentor because he was very honest and salty and didn't have time for a lot of people, but we developed a really great friendship.
00:16:56.000And we would talk about politics and, you know, he would rail against statism and he would rail against the Clintons, but at the same time he didn't have And I was like, you know, this is really interesting.
00:17:55.000So it was almost a conclusion that I had arrived at half blind, and then it took time to really illuminate what that meant, and what that meant to me, and how my personal feelings and beliefs interacted with the hyper-rationalism.
00:18:13.000So when it comes to libertarianism, people from the outside tend to see libertarianism as a very specific sort of mentality.
00:18:20.000But the fact is that there's a lot of variation within kind of strains of libertarianism.
00:18:25.000I know libertarians who are more hawkish on foreign policy.
00:18:27.000I know libertarians who have very different views on the size and scope of what government should actually be involved in.
00:18:35.000So what's your view of what is the role of government in American life?
00:18:39.000I think that we have way too much government, and we need to stop making excuses why we need more.
00:18:45.000And that's become a real knee-jerk reaction for people.
00:18:47.000Anytime something happens that feels like it's beyond our control, whether personally or culturally, the knee-jerk is, we need more government, as if government is going to solve things, or make things better, or streamline things, or do a better job.
00:19:03.000of taking care of people who are most vulnerable because government naturally doesn't do that.
00:19:12.000It's just layers and layers of suffocating bureaucracy that collapses under the weight of its own good intentions.
00:19:20.000And I think there are people whom I consider to be statists who want to expand the size of government, and they have good intentions.
00:19:27.000Like, they say they want to take care of people.
00:19:30.000The problem is they don't take the longer view of unintended consequences.
00:19:35.000And I think that's my biggest issue, particularly with this newest phase of socialism, and it's very unapologetic.
00:19:43.000You know, because growing up as a kid, my mom left Romania.
00:19:49.000They left and came over on a boat when the commies took their hemp farm.
00:19:54.000And if you have ancestors or parents who escaped Eastern Europe in that way, there's something in your bones that, you know, is really repelled.
00:20:11.000And so to have people talk about how great the collective and the state and communism is, because that's essentially the conclusion that they come to, I find it deeply offensive.
00:20:24.000So in a second, I want to ask you if there has to be a contrast between social conservatism and libertarianism.
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00:21:40.000Okay, so let's talk about the maybe mutual exclusion, or maybe not, of social conservatism and libertarianism.
00:21:47.000So I consider myself a libertarian when it comes to government, but I'm a social conservative when it comes to my own personal values and my religious values.
00:21:54.000The way that I square this is I say that basically you do need a very strong social fabric in order to support the bulwark of libertarianism, meaning that People have a natural tendency that when the government fails to do something, they think that the government ought to, that when things fall through the cracks, they want a collective to pick up the pieces.
00:22:11.000Normally in the past, that collective has existed in the form of social fabric.
00:22:15.000So churches and synagogues particularly tended to pick up a lot of that slack.
00:22:18.000Somebody in your community was suffering, you and your friends went together and helped them out.
00:22:22.000And this is still true in, you know, synagogues like mine, where if somebody is suffering, we all get together, the hat basically, and we pass it around until we funded this.
00:22:29.000And then there is a strain of libertarianism that seems very anti-religious in nature.
00:22:34.000It says that religion is deeply destructive to not just American life, but human life in general.
00:22:40.000That it's the opiate of the masses in almost a Marxist sort of way in terms of its description of religion.
00:22:45.000How do you see the social fabric and the religious social fabric squaring with libertarianism?
00:22:51.000I think that the religious social fabric and government are completely separate.
00:22:56.000And as a believer, I think that we are naturally designed to worship a creator.
00:23:04.000And, you know, obviously in human experience, that takes on many forms.
00:23:10.000I happen to be an Eastern Orthodox Christian.
00:23:12.000And I remember talking to my priest as I was studying philosophy, and he was very worried for me that, you know, not that he didn't want me to study, because the Eastern Church is academically very rigorous.
00:23:24.000And, you know, some of the most beautiful and profound writings that I've read about transubstantiation and belief in the nature of the soul come from Eastern Orthodox monks who spend time in the desert as ascetics, or they're hanging from baskets.
00:23:41.000And, you know, they cause themselves pain and deny themselves in order to be filled up by And they have a lot of time to think about and reconcile some of these questions.
00:23:53.000And I found that going through that process actually strengthened my faith and the belief in this unifying thing that we don't need government in order to feel and express.
00:24:09.000And, you know, it's actually government.
00:24:12.000It's not libertinism that has weakened that social fabric.
00:24:17.000It's this idea that, oh, I pay taxes, therefore, I don't have to go to church.
00:24:41.000On foreign policy, which brand of libertarian are you?
00:24:43.000I've heard sort of Larry Elder is a very hawkish brand of libertarian.
00:24:47.000And then you have sort of the Ron Paul libertarianism, which is the United States should absolutely minimize its military and that we're too active around the world.
00:24:54.000I think we are too active around the world.
00:25:01.000So, you know, people accept these premises without really doing any investigation.
00:25:08.000And I'm always open to having my mind changed.
00:25:10.000And if I have a smart person who's got a rational view of why we should be doing something specific in a certain part of the world, I'm more than willing to listen to that and to have My mind changed.
00:25:27.000But I think when we err toward peace and capitalism, because those two things to me are inextricable, that's when we are better off.
00:25:37.000And that's when you have fewer dead people and fewer poor people.
00:25:42.000And I think ultimately that's a much better equation.
00:25:45.000Is there a space for creation of free markets and capitalism without an interventionist America?
00:25:50.000Meaning that the argument made, I've made the argument myself, on behalf of interventionism is not that we should, that anybody wants military conflict, but that if we are not protecting shipping lanes, to take an example, Then the Russians or the Chinese are interfering with shipping lanes and then shifting those to their own economic benefit, typically to the effect of strengthening communism if you're China, right?
00:26:09.000If you're trying to take over the South China Sea and then move all those countries into your sphere of influence that they will trade with you and not with the United States and affect their governments that they're friendlier to you and your repression of a billion people, then that's a problem.
00:26:22.000I understand that, but that's what leads to the slippery slope of the United States being interventionist and reactionary.
00:26:29.000And then, all of a sudden, you have Afghanistan.
00:26:32.000Like, what's to prevent the next Afghanistan in some place like Iran?
00:26:39.000And there's no endgame, and there's also no victory.
00:26:45.000Victory is individuals making choices for themselves.
00:26:49.000And if that means building a supply chain and a factory in Vietnam versus China, where there's arguably more economic freedom now than there is in mainland China, then I'm fine with that.
00:27:02.000But I don't think that's up to the government.
00:27:04.000Those decisions are up to the individual.
00:27:07.000And we spend so much on the military, yet we deny the warriors what they really need, because the military is a lot like academia, in that there aren't a lot of great professors, and professors aren't the ones who are served.
00:27:24.000Learning is not served, just like warriors are not served, and freedom is not served.
00:27:30.000And that's what gobbles up these giant budgets.
00:27:33.000And in both aspects, you have unfettered spending and there is no incentive for either institution to cut down.
00:27:43.000I mean, that's an argument for smarter spending that I think everyone hawkish end of it should be able to get on board with.
00:27:47.000I mean, wasting money on golden toilets, I don't think is anything that Anybody should be in favor of.
00:27:52.000So for people in the military who really truly believe in fighting for and protecting freedom, they are the ones that I've had the most interesting conversations with about cutting spending because there are ways to do that that don't make you unpatriotic.
00:28:07.000It doesn't mean that you despise the military or that you vilify people who wear the uniform.
00:28:14.000Is there a deterrent effect to having a powerful, strong military and a willingness to intervene?
00:28:19.000Meaning that there are two ways that the United States ends up in war, typically.
00:28:23.000One is that we intervene in places that are not necessary, and we've seen that from everywhere from Libya to perhaps Iraq, given the information being wrong as it was.
00:28:33.000Then the other way that you end up in a war is that you end up Yes, and I think there's a difference between isolationism and anti-interventionism, and we can find that balance.
00:28:40.000because they've used that as a launching off point, which actually was what happened in Afghanistan, for example.
00:28:44.000Yes, and I think there's a difference between isolationism and anti-interventionism.
00:28:54.000We're smart enough, and we're capable of having difficult conversations.
00:28:59.000You know, what worries me are actually people on the left who have now grown very hawkish, who don't have great regard for human life, who I think would get us into worse conflicts.
00:29:11.000And, you know, I actually, I'm much more interested in the policy positions of people like Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard, who have, you know, been in war zones, and they've seen the cost of war firsthand.
00:29:25.000And it doesn't make you weak to strive for peace.
00:29:28.000I would hope that everybody is striving for peace.
00:29:30.000I think that the balance is one between deterrence and interventionism.
00:29:33.000Nobody actually wants to intervene, but the credible threat of force is obviously a necessary part of foreign policy.
00:29:38.000Unfortunately, that's a large gray area.
00:29:44.000Because whenever, I don't care if it's climate hysteria or military hysteria, You know, you always have to be very careful when someone is selling you a bill of goods in a lead briefcase.
00:29:57.000To take a couple of examples, right now, obviously we're watching it, Taiwan has been threatened by China for years.
00:30:05.000I mean, is that a situation where we should be signaling to the Chinese that we are willing to supply the Taiwanese with what they need for resistance, if China should do something?
00:30:13.000Or is that a situation where we should say that's very far away, that really doesn't have anything to do with us, they're on their own?
00:30:17.000I don't think that China's going to get into a hot war with Taiwan.
00:30:23.000I mean, I look at it like the stimulus spending.
00:30:26.000You know, we were bamboozled into two stimulus packages because what happens if we don't do anything?
00:30:33.000The exact same thing as if we do something, only we save a bunch of money.
00:30:37.000And, you know, there we save a bunch of lives.
00:30:39.000And is it worth making gold star families in Taiwan?
00:32:01.000So, you know, the idea of viability is a very slippery slope.
00:32:06.000I like that abortion has been going in the down direction.
00:32:10.000I like that people, that women are thinking about it seriously and, you know, there are a multitude of ways to engage in adoption that people didn't realize were open to them before because it was very scary and nebulous 20 or 30 years ago and now it's possible to have an open adoption where both sides meet each other and they know each other.
00:32:37.000And my mom and the adoptive mom are very close friends and they have always been in each other's lives and it's beautiful.
00:32:46.000So, you were also an early advocate of same-sex marriage, and that one libertarians seem to be pretty consistent about.
00:32:51.000They say that the state has no role in marriage.
00:32:54.000Now, do you believe that the state should be giving the same benefits to same-sex couples they give to married couples, or the state should give no benefits to any couples and it's none of the state's business?
00:33:02.000I feel like the state should be giving no benefits to any couples, and I'm sure that sounds very heartless, but... Oh, no, I'm with you.
00:33:08.000Yeah, your heterosexuality is not a precursor for state-sponsored benefits.
00:33:13.000Do you see the case, so the case for conservatives always was that the state does have an interest in the production and rearing of children, that without a future generation that there is no, that there's nobody to pay the taxes, there's nobody to actually provide for.
00:33:27.000But isn't it interesting because if the government wasn't tapping you on the shoulder going, Hey, have babies.
00:33:33.000I mean, this is why I'm on your side of the argument.
00:33:35.000It's a miraculous thing because people will still have children.
00:33:39.000You can really screw with families by having a one-child policy like they've had in China.
00:33:44.000And if you remember after the earthquake, when that school was crushed in China, there were families that were completely obliterated because their one child was killed in that natural disaster.
00:33:58.000So on same-sex marriage, just to clarify, is that a libertarian position governmentally or a libertarian position morally?
00:34:04.000Meaning that this is always one area where conservatives tend to butt up against libertarians.
00:34:25.000And if you find that with another human being, and your heart tells you that you have found your other half, and you've connected with that person, who am I to judge?
00:34:36.000So on a governmental level, I totally agree with you, meaning that if you want to perform a same-sex marriage, have at it.
00:34:43.000On a moral level, obviously, as a religious Jew, I feel very differently.
00:34:47.000Not only on a religious level, I think there are natural law reasons to oppose same-sex marriage, but not on a governmental level.
00:34:54.000I don't think you can make a solid Libertarian case for why the government should be even involved in this thing at all, which is why I've always suggested that one of the happy coincidences of libertarianism is you can disagree about some of the core issues in life and still leave each other alone.
00:35:08.000And that's that's what's so funny is like you really can and you just go, yeah, that's fine.
00:35:13.000And what's amazing to me is I look around at the people, you know, whether it's relitigating the Kavanaugh accusations or talking about impeaching the president and ushering in president number 46.
00:35:26.000Mike Pence, which, you know, will happen as a natural consequence of impeachment, which is very funny, is people are so deeply, personally hurt by the outcome of the election.
00:35:37.000And, you know, I've got friends like Kat Tinfaner always joking, like, try being a libertarian.
00:35:41.000Like, when's the last time one of my candidates won anything?
00:35:45.000So that's what I'm going to ask you about next.
00:35:47.000Why can't Libertarians get their act together?
00:35:55.000Right, there will be a Libertarian moment.
00:35:56.000Rand Paul will emerge from the shadows and suddenly be the Republican presidential candidate and then of course he flames out within the first three weeks of the campaign.
00:36:03.000Why is that Libertarian moment so long in coming if it's so obviously and eminently true, is the question.
00:36:11.000And, you know, it's really frustrating because I'm not a member of the Libertarian Party, but obviously they run a lot of candidates that I am ideologically aligned with.
00:36:21.000And the only thing I can think of is so much of politics today is emotion and hyperbole, and rationalism is a really tough sell in this climate.
00:36:32.000I don't know if you've seen these sort of studies that demonstrate the number of people who are socially liberal and fiscally liberal, socially liberal and fiscally conservative, socially conservative and fiscally conservative.
00:36:44.000The smallest number of people among those groups are people who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
00:36:50.000It's very popular in New York It's very popular in L.A.
00:36:52.000Even people who tend to be fiscally liberal like to pretend that they're fiscally conservative when it comes to cutting spending.
00:36:59.000But it is a very small number of people who consider themselves both socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
00:37:04.000Why do you think there is this culture gap between the coast and the middle of the country on this particular issue, among conservatives particularly?
00:37:28.000My family is from southern Indiana and I take my girls there every year so they can get a hit of real hospitality.
00:37:37.000And, you know, it's like life is It's a little simpler, and it's a little bit slower, and people take time to talk to each other, and it's not as rushed, and it's not as selfish, and people wave.
00:37:53.000It's funny because you can be running, and I have a friend from Minnesota, and we joke that you can be running in Los Angeles, and people don't look at each other.
00:38:02.000But in the Midwest, you see someone, and you're like, Even if you don't know it.
00:38:07.000I mean, I spent my entire life in LA and the first time I was in Oklahoma, you know, I mean, you know, because you're from LA, you walk down the street, you don't want to catch eyes with somebody that might kill you.
00:38:15.000If you walk down the street in Oklahoma and you catch eye, like the first time I was in Oklahoma, I walked down the street, caught eyes with somebody and she goes, Oh, hey, hello.
00:38:26.000But there is that there is this very different feel.
00:38:29.000And it You know, it's something I think people in big cities are really missing.
00:38:33.000I was discussing this with my wife, just even being in New York, it's like a nice place to visit.
00:38:36.000Not sure that I'd want to bring up kids here.
00:38:38.000I mean, how is family life having to live over on this coast?
00:38:41.000It's really, you know, it was all sort of encapsulated by my daughter who is, my youngest daughter who's six, when we moved here, and she said, I think, because there were a lot of homeless people in our neighborhood, she goes, I think I have an idea how some of those homeless people could get houses.
00:39:20.000But it actually makes children very empathetic, because they see so much of life in humanity.
00:39:27.000And they're not as fearful of other people, but they're more aware.
00:39:31.000And they have to be more self-sufficient by nature.
00:39:36.000And I think the world benefits from empathy and self-sufficiency because in helicoptering, we've deprived children of that, you know, of the joy of discovering their own communities and kind of fending for themselves.
00:39:51.000You know, it's like when you have kids in New York, they have to look out for other people.
00:39:54.000Like, you have to be able to tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy.
00:39:58.000And, you know, you tell your kids, if you ever get in trouble, find a mom with other kids or a cop or a firefighter and have them call me.
00:40:05.000So what do you make, I mean, this is switching topics, but what do you make of the rise of populism?
00:40:09.000So there's been this rise of populism on the left.
00:40:11.000It's really a strategy more than a basket of policies.
00:40:15.000But on the right, you've seen this rise of populism as well.
00:40:18.000I've been really disturbed by it to see this kind of big government conservatism, supposed conservatism that has come to the forefront.
00:40:25.000This idea that, frankly, President Trump campaigned on in 2016 that he was going to bring all the jobs back to Indiana and Ohio by levying tariffs and by granting subsidies.
00:40:35.000This idea that government is here to save you from yourself and you see there's this wide gap even on Fox News between various commentators on this sort of stuff.
00:40:44.000What do you make of the rise of the big government conservative and do you think that that's a durable message for the future considering that basically Bush was a big government conservative the same way that Trump is?
00:40:51.000They all were, yeah, and you can always tell the populace by how much they spend and what they veto and what they don't veto.
00:40:58.000And, you know, ultimately, I think it's very anti-individual, which means it's anti-creativity, and it's so overbearing, and it's just as bad on the right as it is on the left.
00:41:12.000And when government is making choices for you, we all lose.
00:41:16.000So let's talk about healthcare for a second, because this has obviously become a key issue for both the right and the left.
00:41:21.000People on the left suggesting that healthcare is right, people on the right basically giving in to that.
00:41:34.000It is things that are commodities that get cheaper and more competitive because people provide commodities for a price, whereas things that are rights are pried away from you against your will generally, unless you're talking about just a right to be free of somebody else doing something to you.
00:41:48.000But what- But that line between positive rights and negative rights has been completely blurred, And I blame the left for that, and I blame the right for not standing up to it.
00:41:59.000And not saying, no, healthcare and health insurance are services.
00:42:03.000Those are services that you pay for, that someone's got to pay for, and you're going to pay for it one way or the other.
00:42:07.000I don't want you robbing me of my tax money for your bad decisions.
00:42:10.000And that may sound heartless, but when people have less accountability, they're going to naturally make worse decisions.
00:42:18.000And you have to trust people to make better decisions.
00:42:23.000But with health care, I was having a conversation with a woman the other day and she said, health insurance companies should not be for profit.
00:42:38.000The problem is the insurance companies and the health care providers working in concert with each other, masking prices and masking choices.
00:42:47.000That's one of the bigger institutional issues.
00:42:50.000The fact that you don't know what things cost Before you have the service.
00:42:54.000So, if your insurance decides not to pay for something, you're on the hook for it the second you get a bill.
00:43:00.000A bill is a contract, and people don't know that they can negotiate stuff beforehand.
00:43:05.000So, if we adjusted some of our systems to engage in a little bit more negotiation, everyone would be better off.
00:43:15.000Because they would be able to make informed choices about who they seek care from and what they're willing to spend money on.
00:43:21.000So this becomes one of the issues where people have very strong critiques of libertarianism, specifically with regard to, say, people who are too sick, can't pay for their own health care, they have a pre-existing condition.
00:43:31.000So you've seen Republicans cave in on the idea that they need to force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, which is like forcing fire insurance companies to cover burned down houses.
00:43:39.000So what if you got in a car accident and totaled your car, and then you went up to GEICO and said, hey, can you insure my car?
00:44:16.000And that is what has allowed, basically, you know, the private insurance industry to run like Medicare.
00:44:23.000So there's been a whole critique of libertarianism from the sort of behavioral economic school.
00:44:27.000So there's the classical economic school, which basically treats every individual as homo economist.
00:44:32.000We're going to make rational decisions.
00:44:33.000And even if it's not true for you specifically, it's true for the majority of people over time, that rational decisions will be made, people will act in their own economic self interest.
00:44:41.000And then there's a group of behavioral economists.
00:44:43.000And they say, well, that's actually fantasy that most people are going to act as as a result of emotional response.
00:44:48.000They're going to react not in terms of their own best interest.
00:44:51.000And this undermines the premises of libertarianism.
00:44:54.000So to take a practical example, when you talk about drugs, so libertarians say, okay, well, listen, you choose to get hooked on a drug, that's a you problem.
00:45:05.000And not only that, if the government tries to get involved and stop you from getting those drugs, it's a violation of liberty that basically they're stopping you from getting something that you want to get.
00:45:15.000The behavioral economist would say, well, but people who get addicted to drugs don't have much of a choice and then buying the drug for the rest of time, you're addicted to heroin.
00:45:22.000It's not as though you're sitting there and making an economic calculation about whether another hit of heroin is going to be good for you or not.
00:45:27.000Yes, but what if you could make a calculation as to what was in the drug you were taking? - Then I think you would see fewer overdose deaths because if you have a black market, you know, that's the ultimate opacity.
00:45:40.000You don't know what you're putting in your body, even if you're the most rational person in the world.
00:45:45.000So if you were able to Seek the substance that you wanted, and you knew what you were putting into your body, the chances of you putting something deadly in there are much, much lower.
00:45:56.000So that might stop opioid deaths, but there's the other problem, which is that... It could also stop overdoses, which don't always lead to deaths.
00:46:03.000Putting aside even the most catastrophic cases of overdoses or death, let's talk about the innervation of people, their inability to work, inability to get a job, or to think rationally about Many, many issues.
00:46:16.000Is there an anti-libertarian case with regard to the drug war simply on the basis of you've actually deprived people of their own agency or they've deprived themselves of their agency and now they've become wards of the rest of society?
00:46:26.000No, but funding the drug war has deprived people of their agency in that, you know, half a million people have died and that's too many.
00:46:35.000You know, you've got people who are murdered, massacred by cartels, because although the drug war deals with the supply, kind of, it doesn't even do a good job of that, because there seems to be plenty of workarounds.
00:46:48.000And I went to the El Chapo trial several times and listened to the testimony, and it was fascinating when they were talking about the creative ways they got drugs into this country, and it had nothing to do with the border wall.
00:47:00.000They would find vehicles and fruit cans and everything else.
00:47:07.000And your drug war is not going to touch the demand.
00:47:11.000And there are people who are going to put substances in their body.
00:47:16.000And the government arbitrarily decides that this substance is bad, but this one is just fine.
00:47:22.000And you have people who are killing themselves in a myriad of ways.
00:47:27.000So do you think there's any distinction made among drugs at all, or just blanket libertarian policy on all drugs?
00:47:33.000No, I think there is a distinction, but I don't think that marijuana deserves to be scheduled with heroin and meth.
00:47:41.000Is that the distinction between heroin and meth and marijuana?
00:47:44.000I think it's an important distinction.
00:47:45.000I think that we should start, you know, and we're going to have to tackle drug policy incrementally because it doesn't make a lot of sense to just throw open the pharmacy cabinet and say, hey kids, have at it!
00:47:58.000You know, and as individuals and as parents, of course, that's not what we want and that's not what people are pushing for.
00:48:04.000But when you have a massive Black market.
00:48:07.000That's when people are forced into criminal activity.
00:48:12.000And, you know, they say marijuana is a gateway drug.
00:48:14.000Marijuana is a gateway to drug dealers!
00:48:17.000Drug dealers are the ones who have drugs.
00:48:19.000It's not like people smoke weed for the first time, and they're like, oh man, I gotta go get some ecstasy, and then I gotta get some meth, and then, you know, top it off with a little bit of heroin.
00:49:35.000And it's up to voters to separate his policies from his personality, because his personality at times can be very distracting, to the point of being annoying and unbearable, but then his policies and his swerve into deregulation and tax cutting, that's all great.
00:49:56.000It's incomplete, but that part is satisfying.
00:49:59.000If he can do more of that, it's all good.
00:50:03.000But if he distracts everyone with his stupid pronouncements and tweets and impulsivity, then it's just a question of whether or not a majority of people get tired of that and and they no longer wanna make the separation So when President Trump was elected, I was concerned about a few things.
00:50:21.000I was concerned about his policies, which have been much more conservative than I thought they would be, because who the hell knew what it was going to be.
00:50:26.000And then I was concerned that he was going to soul-suck the Republican Party to be the party of tariffs and the party of big government.
00:50:33.000Sort of happened, sort of, but not completely.
00:50:35.000They were already the party that was tending towards some of those things.
00:50:38.000And then I was concerned that he was going to cripple the ability of a non-democratic party, a Republican party, to win young voters, minorities, women.
00:50:47.000And that's the one where I feel most fulfilled, unfortunately.
00:50:50.000What do you make of the critique of President Trump that, in the long term, that the wins that we've gotten on policy may not outweigh the losses that we experience electorally?
00:50:59.000I think things happen so quickly, and so much can happen between now and November.
00:51:04.000You know, we've still got 14 months until the election.
00:51:08.000And if the economy continues to improve, I do think that's a sort of Captain America shield for him.
00:51:17.000And, you know, it allows him to defend against the slings and arrows of his own making.
00:51:23.000I don't buy into the idea like African-American unemployment and Asian-American unemployment is at an all-time low.
00:51:34.000It's like I don't know that those two things are directly correlated.
00:51:38.000And I think Michael Goodwin in the New York Post had a really great analysis of this after So let's take a look at the Democratic Party for a second.
00:51:47.000So it's turned into a complete horror show over there.
00:51:51.000There's no one who can take on the president, but the president can absolutely destroy his own chances of reelectability.
00:51:59.000So let's take a look at the Democratic Party for a second.
00:52:01.000So it's turned into a complete horror show over there.
00:52:03.000There used to be some people over there who are even mildly interesting.
00:52:06.000Elizabeth Warren back in 2003 was actually mildly interesting, believed in school choice and all of this, and now she's decided to go Bernie light.
00:52:13.000And why do you think that the Democratic Party has moved so radically in this really unattractive direction?
00:52:20.000I mean, all they had to do was not be crazy, and it appears that they have not been able to resist the impulse.
00:52:24.000No, and it's head-shaking for people when Beto O'Rourke stands on the debate stage and says, you're right!
00:52:46.000And, you know, it's interesting because Pete Buttigieg had to kind of correct him there.
00:52:52.000And Elizabeth Warren, while I don't agree with her on most things, I do think the fact that she has been staking out, you know, very surgically her policy positions over a number of years just speaks to her Political intuition.
00:53:08.000And she is the most politically intuitive person there.
00:53:11.000I don't know that she has the killer left hook necessary to end the nomination process.
00:53:19.000And, you know, Joe Biden isn't going anywhere, and it seems like the press is having a feed of the day, just tallying up his gaffes day after day, speech after speech, you know?
00:53:30.000Joe Biden couldn't remember the word escalator!
00:53:33.000You know, it's like, no matter what the headline is for the day.
00:53:37.000And if the president just stood back a little bit, you know, maybe gave us another tax cut, you know, God forbid tackled entitlement reform, maybe got a couple things passed in terms of health care and price transparency and the few things that he's talked about, he would be in better standing.
00:53:57.000And more people would feel good about that.
00:54:00.000You know, I talked to a lot of people in the middle of the country and a lot of the women I talked to were like, I can't stand him.
00:54:05.000He drives me crazy, but there's no way I'm voting for a socialist.
00:54:09.000I mean, when you look at the Democratic Party then, if you were going to handicap this race, do you think that more emerges or do you think that Biden is able to stick this thing out?
00:54:15.000I mean, just over the past couple of weeks, You know, Biden got past all the weird sort of pseudo sex stuff.
00:54:24.000And then, you know, he had his eye explode and the gaffes and the teeth and everything like that.
00:54:30.000And, you know, he's still there, but he's only going in one direction and it's not up.
00:54:35.000Whereas Elizabeth Warren is really figuring out.
00:54:38.000And her brain is interesting because she's obviously a person who understands systems.
00:54:44.000And so she's figuring out systems and where people have failed and where their inconsistencies are.
00:54:49.000And she makes herself more consistent.
00:54:51.000And Kamala Harris hasn't been able to do that.
00:54:53.000I thought Kamala Harris would be that candidate.
00:54:55.000I thought she would be the more analytical, shrewd candidate.
00:54:59.000And she's really kind of fallen off the map.
00:55:01.000Yeah, her collapse has been astonishing to watch because you really thought after that first debate, OK, well, now she was going to make a move into Biden's share of the black vote and then she would wrap it up.
00:55:10.000That's really Elizabeth Warren's hole in the electorate is the fact that there's not a single black person in the country apparently who supports Elizabeth Warren.
00:55:15.000And everybody supports Biden because he was stapled to Obama's pant leg.
00:55:18.000But now we're going to see how that plays out.
00:55:21.000So looking forward to the 2020 election, let's say that Biden is the nominee.
00:55:26.000You say that the economy is going to be sort of Sword and shield for President Trump.
00:55:30.000Obviously if the economy tanks, he's in serious trouble.
00:55:33.000Which candidate among the Democrats do you think stacks up best against Trump?
00:55:44.000I think there are more people, I think the more that Elizabeth Warren emerges, Bernie Sanders kind of fades and people still have great affection for him and they do love his authenticity.
00:55:56.000They love that he really believes in what he's talking about, even though they may disagree with the means to get there.
00:56:03.000And Elizabeth Warren every once in a while is like, no, I like capitalism.
00:56:13.000So, you know, and you don't even have to get into her fake heritage to find some flaws with her.
00:56:20.000But I do think she has filled the establishment gaps as well.
00:56:24.000And the fact that she is willing to help out in the down ballot races and that she's gone to the Democrat Party and said, I will give you all of my donors and all of my email lists and everything else, even if I'm not the nominee.
00:56:37.000And that makes them more likely to support her in, you know, the subtextual ways.
00:56:44.000So one more libertarian question for you.
00:56:47.000One of the areas that conservatives and libertarians are really at odds over is criminal justice reform.
00:56:51.000A lot of folks who are conservative, myself included, I'm very skeptical of the sort of, we're going to restructure criminal justice and release huge numbers of prisoners onto the streets.
00:57:01.000Yes, there are some people who are in jail for possession.
00:57:04.000I'm fine with those people not being in jail for possession, but the fact is that the vast majority of people who are in prison are not in jail for possession.
00:57:11.000They're there for drug dealing or they're there for violent crime, and the rehabilitation levels for people are exceedingly low.
00:57:16.000People have extraordinarily high recidivism rates.
00:57:20.000Well, they do for things like rape and sexual assault.
00:57:25.000Uh, child sexual abuse and things like that, and I think those people are monsters and they should not be walking the streets.
00:57:33.000They're homeless people who are mentally ill and they should not be in prison.
00:57:37.000I mean, is that, by the way, is that a place where the government should be active when it comes to taking care of the mentally ill, for example?
00:57:42.000So you see huge populations of the homeless in New York City where I'm from.
00:57:45.000I would rather, I would rather see homeless people given choices and given treatment and not involuntarily committed.
00:57:53.000You know, that has become a popular trend lately.
00:57:57.000And as a libertarian, I could never get on board with that.
00:58:00.000But I do think there are ways of treating people.
00:58:02.000And I think there are more humane ways of treating people than allowing them to live in their own feces and filth and tents on public sidewalks.
00:58:12.000And I think that Eric Garcetti should be ashamed of himself that he has allowed his city to malignantly become and mutate into something like that.
00:58:23.000I mean, I will admit, I'm an advocate for involuntary, involuntary treatment for people who are seriously mentally ill.
00:58:29.000My grandfather was a paranoid schizophrenic.
00:58:31.000And if there had not been, you know, if it had been up to him, he would have been trying to hang himself on a routine basis and thinking the radio spoke to him.
00:58:39.000And so it was only through treatment that he was able to get better.
00:58:41.000A lot of people who are severely mentally ill do not simply, they really do not have the capacity.
00:58:45.000Well, I'd rather see people like that receive treatment than Medicare for All or the Green New Deal.
00:58:52.000You know, people who have health insurance, we should not be diverting money in public programs to people who can seek gainful employment.
00:59:01.000But to people who truly are incapacitated, that's, you know, if you're going to have a safety net, that's where it should go.
00:59:09.000So, earlier you mentioned entitlement reform, and you sort of, among the list of things you think President Trump should do.
00:59:14.000President Trump campaigned in 2016, I never ever touched any entitlements.
00:59:18.000And that's a complete wish list of mine that has no basis in Trump reality.
00:59:23.000I'm wondering, I mean, listen, I'd love entitlement reform too, so would Paul Ryan, but the question is whether that has basis in any reality for the American people.
00:59:30.000Do you think that's something that the American people will ever get behind when Bush tried to touch it after 2004?
00:59:35.000It basically ended his term, his second term.
00:59:38.000Do you think that the American people have any desire or taste for entitlement reform, or is this thing going to go all the way down to austerity cuts?
00:59:45.000It's going to go to austerity, absolutely, because no one's going to have the nards to tell old people, especially, because that's the worry, is if you tackle the entitlement monster, it means that you're, you know, stopping checks to retirees who don't have any savings, and that's You can't have a system that works like that.
01:00:07.000Because you can't just abandon the most vulnerable, but also old people vote.
01:00:14.000And I think that's what most politicians are scared of.
01:00:16.000So, I have one final question for Kennedy.
01:00:18.000That is, what is the biggest problem facing the country?
01:00:20.000Also, I want her opinion on sex robots.
01:00:22.000Yes, that's actually going to come up.
01:00:23.000But, if you want to hear her answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:00:27.000To subscribe, go to dailywire.com and click subscribe.
01:00:30.000Kennedy, thanks so much for stopping by.