Mark Levin, author of the brand new book, Freedom of the Press, joins The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special with host Ben Shapiro to discuss his new book on the history of freedom of the press, and why it s important to have a healthy relationship with the media. Mark Levin's book is out now, and is a must-read for anyone who has ever been a journalist, or someone who wants to learn how to be a better one, and especially someone who doesn t want to be governed by the big government agenda pushed by the left. He also talks about why he thinks the media should be allowed to be left alone and why big government is not the answer to our problems, and what we should do about it. Thanks to Mark Levin for coming on the show and for all of the questions he answered! If you like the show, please consider becoming a patron patron and leaving us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Ben Shapiro is the most influential conservative commentator on the planet and is one of the most listened to conservative voices in the world. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal, among many other publications. Ben is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, The Huffington Post, and has been featured on CNN, NPR, CBS, and NPR. and many other outlets. . Ben's new book is available in paperback now! and is available for purchase on Amazon, Podchaser, wherever you get your copy of his work is available, if you search for it, and subscribe to Ben Shapiro's podcast, Ben Shapiro s podcast is available on Audible, you can also get a free copy of the book, "Un Freedom of The Press by Ben Shapiro will be listening to it on your favorite podcast on the internet, too! by clicking here. Enjoyed the book? Thank you for listening to this episode? Ben s book is also available in Kindle and Audible Subscribe to Ben s podcast on Podcharity and subscribe on PodCharity? Subscribe on Podcoin, and other good books on amazon, wherever else you get the best listening options are listening to the best of the best Ben Shapiro works best listening to Ben's work? and other things that Ben s listening to him on the best podcast on all things Ben Shapiro can be found on the podcast, too?
00:00:00.000Autocracy is a bad thing, whether it's practiced one-on-one in the playground or whether it's practiced by government.
00:00:05.000And that's why I started to say, wait a minute, I like liberty, I like individualism, I like to be left alone, I like to kind of do what I want to do.
00:00:12.000And if that's the way you think, then big government on the left is not your answer.
00:00:26.000This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.
00:00:28.000I am super excited to welcome to the show the great one, Mark Levin, author of the brand new book, Unfreedom of the Press.
00:00:32.000We're going to get to all of our questions from Mark Levin in just one second.
00:00:35.000But first, some topics in life are uncomfortable to talk about.
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00:00:44.000Studies show that 70% of dudes who experience erectile dysfunction don't get treated for it for just that reason.
00:00:49.000It can be awkward to discuss, but sometimes things just don't work the way they are supposed to.
00:01:11.000Just go to GetRoman.com slash Ben, complete an online visit.
00:01:15.000If your doctor decides treatment would be appropriate, they can prescribe genuine medication that can be delivered in discreet packaging direct to your door with free two-day shipping.
00:01:47.000So we have a new book out on freedom of the press, where you talk about really the history of the press, and obviously this has become hot topic, probably hot topic number one in the country, given President Trump's use of the phrase fake news so often.
00:01:58.000So let's talk a little bit about where we are with the press.
00:02:01.000So obviously you look at the polls, people hate the press, they don't trust the press.
00:02:06.000Aside from the obvious, which is that the press is left-wing, why do you think that that trust was undermined?
00:02:11.000Because 20 years ago people did trust the press and the press was similarly left-wing.
00:02:15.000You get a lot more competition in the press today.
00:02:17.000You've got the internet, you've got your show, you've got my show, you've got other platforms that are out there.
00:02:25.000A citizen can go on the internet and get news from anywhere in the world, different bloggers they may follow, different sites they may follow, and then they're watching CNN.
00:04:03.000And but for us, there wouldn't be Obamacare.
00:04:05.000So we should proudly say who we are and interpret the news and analyze the news and give it to the public, who are, number one, too stupid, they think, or too busy to understand it anyway.
00:04:17.000So this whole notion of objective truth-seeking, for the most part, is dying on the vine.
00:04:23.000Do you think that it was better when people called themselves objective truth seekers?
00:04:27.000There's sort of this weird bifurcation in conservative thought about what the media should be.
00:04:31.000There are some of us, I'm on the side that says, don't even bother to pretend you're objective.
00:05:05.000I think they're fighting among themselves in their newsrooms.
00:05:08.000Do we come out of the closet fully and say who we are, or do we continue to pretend that we're nonpartisan and objective?
00:05:14.000And about a hundred years ago, the rise of the progressive movement also infected the so-called press.
00:05:21.000We had the party press, where they were very transparent.
00:05:24.000You had papers like the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and the Arizona Republican, now the Arizona Republic.
00:05:30.000They aligned with political parties and candidates and ideologies, really starting about 1780, moving into the beginning of the Civil War.
00:05:38.000In the beginning of the last century you had this progressive movement and they were not going to leave the press alone, John Dewey and others, and so they decided we won't decide really what the news is, we of the masterminds and so forth, same people are going to run the government, run the economy, we're going to run the media too.
00:05:57.000And Walter Lippmann is very outspoken about this.
00:06:00.000He was iconic at the time, a reporter, and he said, so we're going to apply a scientific approach, a knowledge approach to all of this.
00:06:53.000Technology is people trying to figure out how to do things differently, how to do things better, to improve upon what is.
00:06:59.000And you can see some of that now, on the internet, these new platforms.
00:07:03.000And I was, George Gilder, who I had on my Fox show not that long ago, he said these current platforms, which in many ways are anti-speech, Facebook, Google, whatever you want to call it.
00:07:17.000He said they're going to go by the wayside because the Israelis and the Japanese are working on new platforms.
00:07:23.000And this is why I have a problem sometimes when people say technology puts Americans out of work, technology is a threat to America.
00:07:30.000No, technology is America because the freer the country, the more technology, the more creativity, the more productivity.
00:07:38.000So we develop our ways out of these things.
00:07:39.000We think our ways out of these things.
00:07:42.000I make a distinction between the modern mass media In a free press.
00:07:49.000The modern mass media is not upholding a free press.
00:07:51.000There's nothing to do with a free press, other than government not interfering.
00:08:17.000So I think free speech is in good shape, as long as we have technology, development, and no government interference.
00:08:24.000I think the mass media is in deep trouble.
00:08:26.000The New York Times would probably be out of business today, but for a billionaire out of Mexico, a telecommunications magnate bought about 20% of it.
00:08:35.000Washington Post would be dead, but for Bezos.
00:08:39.000CNN's ratings are in the tank just a matter of time.
00:08:41.000And MSNBC doesn't have a business plan after Trump leaves.
00:08:44.000When you talk about the contrast between the media outlets and a free press, I mean, you can certainly see that playing out even with the Blaze TV, where you do some work.
00:08:53.000You know, the fact is that, you know, over the past few weeks, we've seen, as Vox.com openly, I mean, they issued a letter, the editors issued a letter to YouTube asking for them to rewrite their rules to ban Steven Crowder, a comedian, because one of their journalists was offended by jokes that Crowder was making.
00:09:09.000It's amazing to watch pseudo-journalistic outlets that are basically activist outlets Calling for the silencing of an enormous number of voices on the other side.
00:09:18.000And they don't just do it by going to the big tech companies and telling them to silence.
00:09:21.000They don't just go to Facebook or YouTube.
00:09:23.000They also AstroTurf boycotts against shows like yours.
00:09:26.000They AstroTurf boycotts against shows like mine.
00:09:30.000They do this routine where a Huffington Post reporter will call up one of your advertisers and then say, do you agree with what Mark Levin just said on X?
00:09:38.000What does it matter what the advertiser thinks?
00:09:39.000The advertiser advertises on lots of stuff, but they're creating this pseudo-journalistic patina around an activist core, and I think that's what's driving people up a wall.
00:09:50.000The greatest threat to free speech is this phony journalism.
00:09:58.000It's an extension of freedom of speech.
00:10:00.000And really, freedom of the press is sort of a community, aggregate people communicating with each other.
00:10:06.000I mean, they're only press pushing for revolution, pushing America's principles, having debates, having discussions, all that sort of thing.
00:10:14.000The left has no tolerance for diversity of viewpoints, has no tolerance for independent thinking, it believes in conformity and uniformity.
00:10:23.000And so they're attacking these platforms and these platforms are buckling if they don't believe in themselves and promote that agenda.
00:10:31.000YouTube is going to die if it follows Vox.
00:11:37.000We support competition because we think the American people are smart.
00:11:41.000They'll discern one or the other what they like or what they don't like.
00:11:45.000What do you think ought to be done with some of these social media companies?
00:11:47.000There's a really interesting and sort of rich debate now happening inside the conservative movement about Facebook and YouTube and Twitter particularly.
00:11:53.000A lot of folks saying these are monopolies and they ought to be broken up.
00:11:56.000Some people suggesting that the government ought to come in and regulate them.
00:12:00.000I've made the argument in the past that either they're a platform or they're a publisher, that they don't get to act like Vox.com and then be treated as though they're an AT&T phone line.
00:12:09.000Do you think that the government has any role here or will the free market, should we just let the free market take its course, which is an argument I'm certainly I think the free market should take its course, but it's not.
00:13:48.000No protections and let them die or live.
00:13:52.000So in a second I want to ask you about sort of broader ramifications of that conversation, particularly in the conservative movement, the battle between the so-called nationalist populists and sort of free market slash libertarian folks.
00:14:03.000I'm going to ask you about that in just one second.
00:14:04.000First, the fact is going to the post office, a lot of good stuff at the post office, but you know what's not fun?
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00:15:02.000I want to talk a little bit about this division that's broken out inside the Republican Party.
00:15:17.000It seems like almost a tripartite division.
00:15:20.000There's sort of the libertarian contingent, people who say government should be as small as humanly possible, it shouldn't be involved in nearly any way in American life.
00:15:29.000social fabric should fill in the gaps, leave everybody to their own.
00:15:32.000That's the only way we're going to get along.
00:15:33.000Then there are folks who are sort of social conservatives who say, listen, government was left alone and government then started cramming down leftism.
00:15:41.000So we need to retake the means of production effectively and start promulgating a virtuous reform-econ agenda.
00:15:49.000We have to try and create certain incentives for people to get married.
00:15:53.000We have to start teaching certain values from the government side.
00:15:56.000And then we have to use the tools of government in order to promulgate certain messages.
00:15:59.000And then there are a group of folks who have come about who really suggest that the government ought to ratify A couple things here.
00:16:09.000They're afraid of technological development.
00:16:10.000They believe that the free market has led to the emptying out of the American family.
00:16:14.000They're afraid that market forces have hyper-individualized the country and that only government regulation can put all of this back together.
00:16:21.000Where do you come down in this debate?
00:16:23.000Where do you think the role of government lies? - Couple things here.
00:16:26.000That's a great question, it's very complex.
00:16:28.000First of all, I'm a constitutionalist when it comes to the government.
00:16:32.000I'm not a libertarian when it comes to the government.
00:16:56.000As far as libertarianism goes, I don't interpret the Constitution from a libertarian perspective.
00:17:02.000I interpret what it says, and I try to apply what was intended at the time.
00:17:06.000There's history or there's not history, and you do the best job you can.
00:17:10.000But in terms of libertarianism, I'm pretty much a libertarian when it comes to economic matters.
00:17:15.000I can be convinced that this matter or that matter, depending on what the situation is, but that's where I start from.
00:17:20.000I am not a national populist, because there's not a dime's worth of difference between national populism of Bernie Sanders and somebody on the right, because I can't define it, neither can they.
00:17:30.000As a matter of fact, they like to quote each other.
00:18:40.000Those same people are going to be making those same decisions in lieu of us, or in lieu of states, or in lieu of towns, or in lieu of families, or in lieu of so forth and so on.
00:18:50.000So nationalism clearly is not the answer.
00:18:59.000We have to do a better job, perhaps, of explaining constitutionalism and capitalism and all these things that have made us such a magnificent country.
00:19:06.000Any country can be nationalist, populist country.
00:19:09.000But that's not what our Constitution is.
00:20:24.000All that does is featherbed the states and the localities and they send in a big list and all it allows is the Democrats to put in about $800 billion worth of non-road stuff and so forth.
00:20:36.000I joke in my community, they wind a road from two to four lanes.
00:20:40.000Now we have more traffic than ever before because people, oh, there's now four lanes.
00:20:46.000So my attitude is, even at the state level, the less government the better, but it depends.
00:20:58.000Rather than a federal EPA, let's leave it to the state equivalent of the EPAs.
00:21:04.000When it comes to states, maybe they don't have more of a say in immigration, particularly if they're on the border than they should in Washington, D.C., where they're largely unaffected or even benefit from open borders and the politics that comes with that.
00:21:17.000So I am of the belief that states get it wrong a lot.
00:21:21.000There are some terrible, terrible states, places where I wouldn't want to live.
00:21:27.000The United States is a country. - One of the things that's been happening, and it's really, I think, a problem, is the nationalization of the locals.
00:21:34.000So you see this with abortion law, particularly, is that I haven't seen a lot of people from Georgia threatening not to go to New York, because New York liberalized its abortion law to the ultimate extreme.
00:21:43.000And yet I'm seeing businesses across the country say that they're not going to do business with the state of Georgia or with the state of Alabama because of their abortion law.
00:21:50.000Every local decision now becomes a national referendum on the issue itself.
00:21:54.000It's as though federalism, I mean, I think that it's probably dying.
00:22:10.000You know, for a lot of people in a lot of communities, they quote unquote evolve on these issues.
00:22:16.000You know, like the anti-sodomy laws that were used as an excuse in the 1960s for the federal government to get it, for the federal Supreme Court to get involved in a lot of these cases.
00:22:25.000Even though there were only 14 states that had them and they were dying on the vine anyway.
00:22:45.000But over time, and you can see it with Lawrence and other cases they went through, Anthony Kennedy in particular, they worked their way through.
00:22:53.000They knew they'd be there 20, 25 years on the bench, and they decided to nationalize that issue.
00:22:59.000And what people need to understand is there's winners and losers when that happens.
00:23:05.000And they may nationalize an issue you don't like.
00:23:08.000And it's just hard for me to believe that a 5-4 decision with one justice all of a sudden can determine what a fundamental right is and what a fundamental right isn't depending on whether the justice votes this way or votes that way.
00:23:21.000On the abortion issue, my view is that it ought to be absolutely a state issue.
00:23:24.000Everybody knows Roe v. Wade is a judicial joke.
00:23:28.000Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks it's a judicial joke.
00:23:32.000If they want abortion on demand nationally, then try and get it through an amendment.
00:23:36.000If it is that popular in every corner of the country, and if every woman in the country believes in this, then go get your amendment.
00:23:43.000They don't even try, because they can't.
00:23:46.000Abortion is one issue, but there's a whole host of issues that are being nationalized, centralized, imposed on the American people.
00:23:53.000And the problem with that is, you're right, it undermines the whole notion of diversity in this country.
00:23:57.000One of the things that has kept this diverse country together, people with different religions and backgrounds and histories and all the rest, is the fact that you have states that have different approaches.
00:24:09.000If they eliminate the death penalty all across the country, and they may one day, That means the death penalty in states that have them, aggressively, like Florida and Virginia, and I might add I have homes in both, thankfully, that will change the landscape of these states.
00:24:24.000And I think to myself, why is it that we don't leave people in these states alone to make these decisions?
00:24:29.000In other words, is it because they're dumber?
00:24:31.000Is it because, no, it's because they don't agree with us.
00:24:34.000So we're going to force our will on them.
00:24:36.000And when it comes to the Hyde Amendment, as an example, which is a question of whether the federal taxpayers should pay for abortion, we've now reached a point where they're saying we must pay for the abortions, even if we disagree with them.
00:24:58.000And it's close to fascism, quite frankly.
00:25:02.000So federalism, which allows mobility, which allows diversity, is the glue that keeps the country together, ironically enough.
00:25:11.000Centralization, uniformity, is what tears us apart and will destroy this country.
00:25:16.000I also noticed that Kamala Harris proposal, and I thought exactly the same thing, talked about it on my show.
00:25:20.000It feels like what's happened is that all authority has now been sucked up to the federal level and then delegated from the vestigial organ that is the legislature over to the executive, which basically runs like a dictatorship regardless of which party is in charge, though the bureaucracy does everything.
00:25:35.000You know what's interesting about this?
00:25:38.000Meanwhile, they're out there with their sanctuary cities, so they don't always support federal control.
00:25:44.000It really is the ends justifies the means for the left.
00:25:47.000They'll talk about free speech for Nazis marching in Skokie and then they'll try and shut down Stephen Crowder because they don't like his speech in particular because he's effective.
00:25:58.000But really, do they really believe in the vote?
00:26:04.000They believe every vote should count when they win.
00:26:06.000They don't believe every vote should count what they lose.
00:26:08.000Then they turn to the courts, or they turn to the bureaucracy, the unelected parts of the government, to impose their will.
00:26:16.000If the President of the United States says, you know what, I'm going to get rid of DACA, And then we have a federal judge appointed by Obama who says, no, that's the law.
00:26:54.000Do you think that the country is going to hold together?
00:26:56.000Because, I mean, I'm seeing... I talked recently with Baronelle Stutzman, who owns Arlene's Flowers up in Washington State.
00:27:02.000She's basically being shut down because, as a religious person living in a liberal state, she's being forced to cater same-sex weddings or they're going to shut her down.
00:27:10.000And I was talking with her lawyer, and one of the things that I said is, I don't even understand why this is a freedom of religion case.
00:27:14.000This seems to me like this should be a basic freedom of association case.
00:27:17.000Meaning, why do I have to serve anybody?
00:27:19.000And of course, the answer is that we have broadened out the provisions of the Civil Rights Act to include pretty much everything now.
00:27:24.000So, the government instituted segregation, and then the federal government came in and said, how about this?
00:27:28.000How about we not only overrule the states on this stuff, we also inject ourselves into private businesses, and then control that top down.
00:27:36.000How can the government, how can the country stick together under these circumstances?
00:27:40.000I think we're all, aren't we all just going to end up in areas where we agree with each other?
00:27:44.000There's no question about it, because you're attacking one of the strengths of the country, which is, you know, the left likes to talk about diversity, but they don't support diversity.
00:27:53.000It is their way or the highway, whether it's cases or whether it is what we've been talking about and so forth.
00:28:01.000And this is a problem, and I'm not sure how to fix it.
00:28:05.000And I'm not sure if it can be fixed, but we need to keep talking about it and keep exposing it because more and more people are going to feel like they're not part of society.
00:28:28.000When will we know that we've achieved paradise?
00:28:31.000And this is one of the things I wrote about in my book, Emeritopia, in the first chapter, which is they never are wrong.
00:28:38.000We just haven't tried hard enough, or we haven't had enough resources, or people are just too intransigent, or the wrong person was running it.
00:28:48.000I thought Obamacare was going to deliver everything we wanted.
00:28:50.000Nobody even talks about Obamacare anymore.
00:28:52.000It's now Medicare for all, you know, which is a single government, iron-fisted, Soviet-style health care from the top down.
00:29:01.000You know, Milton Friedman once said, that's why I'm not a national populist, you know, he once said, most of the problems we have Is with big government.
00:29:10.000So we have problems in our lives and problems, but the big problems we have mostly are with government, and I agree with that.
00:29:17.000And so people who believe there ought to be more of it, I just reject it on a hand.
00:29:22.000So, obviously, President Trump, controversial figure, not just now, but was in 2016.
00:30:04.000I mean, he's done things that I don't think any Republican would have done when it comes to the state of Israel.
00:30:10.000They've talked about it, but he actually did it.
00:30:13.000I like what he's doing with our military.
00:30:15.000He's trying to strengthen our military.
00:30:17.000I like his support for law enforcement.
00:30:19.000Law enforcement isn't always right, but they've been brutalized over the last 10 years, and he's making it clear that he, as a rule, stands with law enforcement.
00:30:28.000Spending is completely out of control.
00:30:32.000But you know, the spending bills come to him.
00:30:34.000And unfortunately, even when we had Paul Ryan in the House, I think Mitch McConnell, in my opinion, has been a disaster when it comes to the budget.
00:31:05.000I don't think there's any question about this.
00:31:07.000In the South China Sea, it's provocations in Africa, where it's building bases.
00:31:13.000It's provocations even in our own hemisphere.
00:31:16.000It now controls both ends of the Panama Canal.
00:31:18.000That was one of the things that Ronald Reagan was very concerned about, the Panama Canal.
00:31:22.000It's got killer satellites up there now.
00:31:24.000We don't, because Obama wouldn't fund them.
00:31:27.000China is a grave threat, every bit as dangerous as the Soviet Union, and they're getting worse and worse and worse.
00:31:33.000So I support tariffs, not because I believe that somehow there's this imbalance of trade, because I don't think people understand what that means.
00:31:40.000It doesn't count like money that flows into this country.
00:31:43.000And a very, very successful country needs raw materials and other things from other countries.
00:32:30.000You know, when you have Democrats who are of a different mindset, who are not going to allow him to do anything, and Republicans, when they control both houses, they did nothing about it.
00:32:38.000When you see that we're going to have 1.1 or 1.2 million illegal aliens in this country, the cost of these border states, and California's a border state, the cost of these school districts, law enforcement, these hospitals and so forth.
00:32:53.000I remember when I was in the Reagan administration, all the way back then they were saying, we're being overwhelmed.
00:32:57.000Now imagine today, I mean we are really overwhelmed.
00:33:01.000I think it's important, and I look at history, as you look at history, and is Trump really doing anything truly outrageous?
00:33:09.000You know, when Dwight Eisenhower was president, he's considered sort of a moderate Republican president and so forth.
00:33:15.000He had Operation, I didn't name it, he named it, Wetback.
00:33:19.000And they rounded up one million illegal aliens in a period of a year or so.
00:33:23.000And it was school buses and trains and trucks and moved them into the interior of Mexico and so it rounded them up.
00:33:31.000He didn't care about, oh, you're going to round them up?
00:33:35.000And he put out this military directive, and that's what they did.
00:33:39.000And I compare that to a 5% tariff, I think Eisenhower would be laughing right now.
00:33:43.000So again, I don't view it as wise economically.
00:33:46.000I view it as wise because we're trying to secure the border and he's run out of options.
00:33:51.000So, one of the things that I've said about President Trump is that on policy, like you, I'm very happy with a lot of his policy.
00:33:57.000His shortcomings, I think we agree on.
00:33:59.000I have been incredibly disappointed with spending, but he never pledged he was going to do anything about entitlements.
00:34:04.000In fact, he pledged the opposite, that he wasn't going to do anything about entitlements.
00:34:08.000There are other areas of policy, like some of the other There's a lot of tariffs that he's put in place that I think are mistaken, but on regulations, on judges, I'm happy.
00:34:17.000There's a second job the president does, and this is where I've been very critical of the president, for a couple reasons.
00:34:21.000One, because I think the president, unfortunately in some ways, is sort of tasked with this job.
00:34:27.000And two, because it actually makes a difference to the future of conservatism, and that is the job of conveying ideas.
00:34:32.000Now, I think a lot of conservatives, people like you, people like me, Who see him as a vessel for policy.
00:34:37.000We're very happy with him as a vessel for policy, generally speaking.
00:34:41.000The idea that he is promoting conservative ideas, I will say, on the mild end, I have been disappointed with that.
00:34:49.000Especially because the guy does have a unique capacity to draw cameras.
00:34:54.000This is an interesting point you raise.
00:34:56.000And yet the sort of material that he puts out into the public view is rarely conservative.
00:35:02.000Very often it's alienating for a lot of folks.
00:35:05.000And my great fear is that we will get a lot of good policy and then he will have alienated so many people, particularly people who are of my generation and younger, that we're going to be in the wilderness for a while.
00:35:15.000This is an interesting point you raise.
00:35:19.000I don't think Donald Trump is a philosophical conservative.
00:35:24.000I think he's come to his conservatism as a matter of practicality and in some ways principle.
00:35:30.000And so So I don't think he's any more a principled or philosophical conservative than George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush.
00:35:41.000I think there have really been two in the last little over a century.
00:35:47.000But other than that I can't think of any, just off the top of my head.
00:35:51.000Not Nixon, not Ford, not Eisenhower, certainly not Theodore Roosevelt and Harding and so forth.
00:35:59.000So I don't really hold that against him in terms of him promoting that kind of an agenda from a philosophical point of view, but I think it's kind of the Not our job, but our responsibility to try and explain that to a lot of people, what these policies are, our philosophy, and so forth.
00:36:21.000I even think a lot of so-called conservative websites and magazines have lost their way.
00:36:27.000They're fighting with each other over what conservatism means, or they've abandoned it in some ways because they hate Trump, or they love Trump, or whatever the situation is.
00:36:37.000I feel right now the intellectual conservative movement is very weak.
00:37:03.000I'm very troubled by some who've talked about conservatism all these years and then all of a sudden say, well, what has it ever done for us?
00:37:10.000And I say, let me tell you what it's done for you.
00:37:13.000Nine o'clock tonight, I want you to go into one of these supermarkets where I live.
00:38:38.000It's because of all the other reasons.
00:38:40.000And so, part of it is the responsibility of the individual citizen.
00:38:45.000Honestly, I don't look to the President of the United States or a senator or a politician of any kind to tell me, this is what you need to think.
00:38:52.000One of the things that we need to continue to teach people is think for yourselves.
00:39:09.000The first chapter of Liberty and Tyranny, I say one of the reasons why we don't really appreciate liberty is because we're surrounded by it.
00:39:17.000And one of the reasons we don't appreciate what we have is because we're surrounded by it.
00:39:21.000And so we get caught up in really stupid arguments, stupid things.
00:39:52.000And then we had D-Day, the anniversary, 75th anniversary of the other day.
00:39:56.000And I play these old clips from World War II and you really Your patriotism is just through the roof and you see how tremendous this country is and the sacrifices people have made for this country.
00:40:10.000So I think it's really on each one of us, more than a president, to really explain liberty and conservatism and constitutionalism.
00:40:20.000And this president doesn't do that anyway.
00:40:53.000I speak to groups of older Republicans and groups of younger Republicans a lot, and when I critique the president in front of older Republicans, they start to get a little uptight.
00:41:01.000They start to get a little upset because I'll say what I think of his character, and frankly, it's not complimentary generally.
00:41:08.000And then I'll say, and I love a lot of his policy and I'll vote for him.
00:41:11.000And a lot of older folks get a little upset with this.
00:41:12.000And if I say it's younger people, it's the only reason they would even consider voting for Trump is because I'm saying to them what I think they believe too.
00:41:19.000And what I've said is I think the reason for that is when you're older, you basically look at politicians and maybe you have the perspective, okay, well, you know, listen, he's a guy.
00:41:30.000And when you're younger, you spend an awful lot of time considering what other people think of you.
00:41:35.000And so how you view President Trump has now become a lens that other people view you with.
00:41:40.000So if you're 21 and you say that you like President Trump or that you're voting for President Trump, people immediately go to, well, that's because you're a terrible person who supports everything about him.
00:41:48.000And so the only way to talk to a lot of those folks is to say, OK, I like some of the stuff he's doing, but am I going to justify how he treats women?
00:44:43.000If you're going to remove a president, or try to remove a president, based on the arguments you're making, That is damaging to this country, and it's damaging to the Constitution.
00:44:52.000So if he calls Nancy Pelosi horrible or talks about somebody's looks because they've talked about his looks, it almost at this point, it just bounces off me.
00:45:04.000So let's turn to the other side of the aisle.
00:45:52.000He's double digits behind Biden and Bernie Sanders.
00:45:57.000And I look at politics almost as military operations in terms of getting votes, sneaking up, hitting them where they're not ready, stuff like that.
00:47:06.000Bush was running and was challenged in the Republican primary, I think, by Pat Buchanan and so on, Ronald Reagan endorsed his vice president.
00:47:13.000Obama won't endorse his vice president.
00:47:15.000Well, you know, we've got to take notice of that.
00:47:36.000I'm very, very hopeful Trump wins re-election because if he doesn't, it's going to give further motivation to our media to continue to do what they're doing, which I think is very destructive of this republic, let alone freedom of the press.
00:47:49.000It's going to continue to motivate the kook left in this country and their crazy agenda, which would fundamentally change the country.
00:47:58.000You know, as I think about this question, You know, early on in our, before our country, the colonies, the press, they wanted to fundamentally transform government.
00:48:10.000That is, you know, the monarchy, they wanted representative government, limited government, and so forth.
00:48:15.000The progressive movement likes government.
00:48:18.000They want to fundamentally transform man, and fundamentally transform the civil society.
00:48:26.000And whether the president is making that statement or not, He's the man we have to defend one kind of a society, and the Democrats are pushing another kind of society.
00:48:49.000But that's the direction they're pushing us in.
00:48:54.000I don't know who's going to win, but I'm going to be full-throated for this president against any of their nominees.
00:48:59.000I don't even see a so-called centrist running.
00:49:01.000I don't even know if there are any so-called centrists left in the leadership of the Democrats.
00:49:07.000I mean, it's supposed to be Biden, but in all fairness to him, Melissa Milano did call him on the phone and that changes everything, apparently.
00:49:27.000In my language, routinely, between leftist and liberal.
00:49:29.000Liberals are people I disagree with on politics.
00:49:31.000Leftists are people who want to shut down the debate, who are interested in polarizing people specifically on the basis of race for political gain.
00:49:38.000And it seems like the left has taken over completely the Democratic Party.
00:49:42.000It's interesting, I was watching with my wife an old movie the other night, a movie called Born Yesterday with Judy Holliday and Broderick Crawford.
00:49:48.000And the movie is, from 1950, it's an incredibly patriotic film.
00:49:52.000I mean, the entire film is basically William Holden showing Judy Holliday around the city of Washington, D.C.
00:49:57.000And he brings her to see the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
00:50:01.000And he's telling her all about the wonderful founding philosophy.
00:50:03.000And I turn to my wife and I said, there's no way this movie gets made today because the entire narrative of the left has shifted, even in my lifetime.
00:50:10.000I'm old enough to remember when the Democratic Party actually still at least paid lip service to the foundations of the country and talked about how wonderful founding philosophy was.
00:50:19.000And now it seems that the narrative is dominant in the Democratic Party that the founding philosophy was effectively just racism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia dressed up in fancy clothes and then sold to people.
00:50:30.000And that what we really have to do is cleanse the palate, get rid of all these documents and start afresh.
00:50:35.000Obviously, it scares the hell out of me.
00:50:37.000I'm seeing young people who don't know anything about history buying into it.
00:52:18.000He said, so the men, those men knew that slavery was wrong.
00:52:22.000But they also could not create a country because certain states like Georgia and South Carolina weren't going to go for it.
00:52:29.000But they knew that their children and their grandchildren would have to address this.
00:52:33.000That's why they wrote the Declaration of Independence the way that they did.
00:52:37.000And he says it's their Writing their constitution that will enable us to smite this.
00:52:45.000Because otherwise we wouldn't have had a country and you still would have had states or colonies with slavery and states and colonies without it.
00:52:57.000It certainly wasn't, even when I was in high school, I still got the same pablum, the same left-wing agenda.
00:53:03.000They have managed, the progressive movement, to really control ideologically Virtually every instrumentality of our culture right now.
00:53:12.000That's why we have these culture wars.
00:53:14.000Whether it's the courts, whether it's the bureaucracy, whether it's education, whether it's the media, we always start with the progressive foundation and we're always on defense trying to respond to these things.
00:53:27.000We've got to do something about Colleges and universities.
00:53:31.000And I think we the people need to start speaking with our wallets.
00:53:35.000And states need to start withholding funds.
00:55:14.000Most people have never heard of him before.
00:55:16.000He was a real-time historian about the Revolutionary War, which is why the later progressive historians attack him, because they want to change the history of America from a battle over government to a battle between classes, which is what they do.
00:55:31.000So I would suggest that people go look at the original document.
00:55:34.000You don't need people to explain the Declaration of Independence to you.
00:55:45.000In many ways, I don't even care what the Supreme Court says.
00:55:48.000I read the cases like you do because we need to explain them.
00:55:50.000But those are lawyers, justices, they have an effect.
00:55:55.000But that's their opinion on what the Constitution says.
00:55:58.000I want to read the Constitution and why it says what it says.
00:56:01.000Look at the history, English common law, other things, Montesquieu, separation of powers, Locke when it comes to the Declaration of Independence.
00:57:24.000He will not come on any of my programs because I want to talk to him.
00:57:28.000About Marx, and Engels, and Hegel, and Rousseau, and Dewey, and all these other guys, people who he embraces, rather than these shows he goes on to do.
00:57:44.000And these superficial interviews where he's just saying, you have a right to this, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's talk about this.
00:58:00.000So, many people who listen to you may not know kind of how you got into the commentary business in the first place.
00:58:05.000Like, I've been following you since I was old enough to listen to talk radio, but for a lot of people who have only heard of you that way, how did you even get into doing this sort of thing?
01:00:37.000So I don't like being pushed around, whether it's a regulation, a tax, a government talking down to me, a government telling me I can't think for myself.
01:00:47.000And by the way, I think this is how we appeal to younger and younger people, because I don't think they like it either.
01:00:52.000So it's not so much anti-authority, it's anti-authoritarianism.
01:00:57.000And so in other words, what I'm saying is, Autocracy is a bad thing, whether it's practiced one-on-one in the playground or whether it's practiced by government.
01:01:06.000And that's what I think, that's what I reject.
01:01:10.000That's why I started to say, wait a minute, I like liberty, I like individualism, I like to be left alone, I like to kind of do what I want to do.
01:01:17.000And if that's the way you think, then big government and the left is not your answer.
01:01:21.000Okay, so in a second, I want to ask you one final question.
01:01:24.000I want to ask you for your top five presidents and your bottom five presidents, because it's kind of a fun thought experiment.
01:01:29.000But if you want to hear Mark Levin's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
01:01:32.000To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com.