Republicans sending mixed signals on the budget, John Bolton joins the Trump administration, and we do a tour of the mailbag with a special guest in the Things I Like segment. Ben Shapiro is a conservative commentator and host of the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show." He is also the host of "The Weekly Standard" and hosts the conservative think tank "The Civility Project." He has a regular radio show on SiriusXM Radio and is a regular contributor on Fox News Radio's "The HOSTAGE" and "Fox News Radio AM Radio" and is also a frequent contributor on the conservative radio show "The Ocasio-Cortez Show". You can reach Ben Shapiro at or and his e-mail address is ben.shapiro@dailycaller.co.nz. Thanks to our sponsor, Dollar Shave Club, for sponsoring the show! Today's After Show Was Hosted By: Ben Shapiro Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Become a supporter of the show: bit.ly/support-and-subscribe to our new sponsor, to get 10% off your first month with discount code: CRIMINALS at $10 or more than $25 a month, and get 20% off the entire month for the rest of the month, plus a FREE stock like Apple Watch membership when you shop using the promo code CRIMES UNLEVEL. at apple.fm/CRIMESUNDERSTAKE at $25 or $35 and get 5% OFFER $10 OFF OFFER FREE Shipping when you become a patron gets a VIP membership when they begin shipping their first month, they receive $5 or more, they get $5 PRICING $5, they also get 5GBRING OFF $4,000 OFF OFFING VIP SUPPORTING VIP PACKAGE AND VIP PRODUCING AND VIP 4 MONTH AND VIP OFFER VIP PROMO CODE CHECKING IS A MONTH GET $4 PRICORDSIPPING ISRAID? Learn more at $5 OR $5 OFF + VIP PRIVOTION ISRAILOR BABY BIZ IS A FRIEND FREE TO BUY A VOTING TO CHECK OUT THE SHOW AND PATREON AND VIP IS A MODE? Subscribe To Our NEW DEED AND PATRONE PRODCAST?
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00:02:27.000The whole purpose of an omnibus is to put a bunch of stuff you like in there with a bunch of stuff you don't, and then say to folks, if you don't vote for this bill, you're voting against all the good things, right?
00:02:37.000Yesterday we went through how the bill doesn't cover anything for the border wall essentially.
00:02:41.000How it doesn't do anything about DACA.
00:02:43.000How the bill continues to ensure that Planned Parenthood gets funded.
00:02:47.000It doesn't remove any of the Obamacare regulations.
00:02:50.000There's a bunch to really dislike about the bill.
00:02:52.000What's there to like about the bill is that there is a push
00:02:56.000In the bill for greater military funding, which, of course, is necessary after the Obama years in which we slashed our military pretty dramatically.
00:03:39.000I am considering a veto of the omnibus spending bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have not been totally abandoned by the Democrats, not even mentioned in bill.
00:03:49.000And the border wall, which is desperately needed for our national defense, is not fully funded.
00:03:55.000Number one, it's fascinating that he's saying that he wants to veto the omnibus spending bill based on the fact that DACA isn't taken care of.
00:04:04.000So, several times—three separate times—there was an attempt to make a deal during this bill negotiation with regard to DACA.
00:04:09.000And what the Trump administration offered was—and what Paul Ryan offered—was three years of continuation of DACA.
00:04:16.000People could still sign up as DREAMers for DACA.
00:04:19.000Three years of continuation of DACA, but not final status negotiations on the people who are actually here.
00:04:23.000You know, it's not a pathway to citizenship for them.
00:04:25.000They just get to stay here for three more years for three years of wall funding.
00:04:29.000And the Democrats turned that one down flat.
00:04:30.000They instead suggested that they wanted full legalization of 1.8 million illegal immigrants.
00:04:35.000Well, Trump had already basically offered that, right?
00:04:38.000Like, a few weeks ago, he offered $25 billion in wall funding, plus end-to-chain migration and a few other goodies in exchange for legalizing 1.8 million DREAMers.
00:04:49.000They weren't able to come to an agreement, and now Trump is saying the Democrats walked away from the table.
00:05:33.000One, military pay increase already went into effect, I think, a couple months ago.
00:05:35.000But beyond that, this is a very pro-omnibus package tweet.
00:05:39.000This is Trump saying, I like the omnibus package.
00:05:41.000We even got a little bit of wall funding.
00:05:44.000Well, number one, Mexico ain't paying for the wall, gang.
00:05:46.000And this is going to be up to Trump and the Republicans to do it.
00:05:48.000But it's fascinating to see how Trump flipped on this on his own bill, right, within 24 hours.
00:05:54.000Literally yesterday, Mick Mulvaney, his head of Office of Management and Budget, he came out and he said, listen, Trump isn't going to veto this.
00:05:59.000We may not like the bill very much, but Trump isn't going to veto it.
00:06:11.000We've talked for the last, I don't know, three, four, five, six months about trying to get the President's priorities funded, and this omnibus bill does that.
00:06:21.000So all things considered, when we look at the bill, we have to weigh what we asked for and what we had to give away to give it.
00:06:49.000How does that make any sort of political sense?
00:06:51.000Now, if Trump actually did veto it, it would be a sign that maybe Trump actually wants to get involved in the policymaking process, but it also means that it's very difficult for anybody to know what he's going to do.
00:07:02.000Trump always says that he wants to be unpredictable with regard to his enemies.
00:07:05.000Well, you can't be unpredictable with regard to your allies.
00:07:08.000Put aside the fact that he's right that the bill's bad.
00:07:11.000The question is, why didn't he say this a week ago?
00:07:13.000Why didn't three days ago he go to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and say, listen, I don't like this bill.
00:07:19.000Why didn't he throw his weight on the side of the House Freedom Caucus?
00:07:22.000And how is it helpful for him to jump in late when opinion turns against the bill and then take the legs out from underneath his own party?
00:07:29.000If you're Paul Ryan, you're Mitch McConnell, and you're sitting around going, listen, we went to the White House, we updated them every step on this negotiation, and they said fine, and now they're killing us?
00:07:38.000How do you trust the president to have your back if the president doesn't have your back?
00:07:42.000It is a serious problem for Republicans in Congress.
00:07:44.000Now, again, that's a separate issue from whether Trump is right about the bill.
00:08:44.000When there's a government shutdown, people still get their social security checks.
00:08:47.000So, that's what needs to be restructured.
00:08:50.000So, if it were the case that we're trading this omnibus package in favor of an entitlement reform, like Paul Ryan says, listen, I just want entitlement reform.
00:08:59.000We'll pass this budget so we don't have to spend our political capital here, but entitlement reform's next on the docket, I'd make that trade in a heartbeat.
00:09:05.000That is not the trade that's being made.
00:09:07.000The reason people are upset is because they feel like Republicans promised for years and years and years that they care about the spending, and it's pretty obvious that Republicans do not, in fact, care deeply about the spending.
00:09:15.000Okay, so in other big administration news, the National Security Advisor, H.R.
00:10:14.000To define neocon, there are really two definitions of neocon.
00:10:16.000Definition number one is the historical definition, which is somebody who was a lefty during the 1960s and then realized the errors of their ways.
00:10:23.000They were, in the popular phrase, mugged by reality and became more conservative.
00:10:28.000It was a specific movement of very heavily Jewish people in the 1960s, like Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell, who's not Jewish, but was a member.
00:10:38.000These were the neocons in the 1970s, the people who had shifted over to the other side.
00:10:44.000So, by that definition, he's not a neocon.
00:10:47.000The other definition that's used is about people like Paul Wolfowitz, who are very into nation-building, the idea that we're supposed to go into Iraq, knock over Saddam, and then stay there and build up the nation.
00:10:55.000That was actually not something that Bolton suggested doing.
00:10:57.000He said we had to get rid of Saddam because Saddam was funding terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction, according to every intelligence agency on Earth.
00:11:04.000But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have turned the country back over to the Iraqis as soon as humanly possible, instead of sticking around and pouring hundreds of thousands of more troops
00:11:13.000So, he's been called a nation-building neocon for a while, and that's not true.
00:11:17.000He wasn't in favor of the Arab Spring, for example.
00:11:19.000He's not averse to leaving American allies, who happen to be dictators, in power.
00:11:24.000He was in favor of leaving Hosni Mubarak in power in Egypt.
00:11:27.000So, he is not a democracy-first neocon in that sense.
00:11:30.000So, people are mischaracterizing the situation.
00:11:33.000Democrats, of course, are going nuts over this.
00:11:34.000Chris Matthews, I don't know what to say!
00:11:53.000John Bolton, Mr. Hawke, because he promised the working men and women of those states that voted for him, the gritty factory workers and other people who didn't like these wars because their kids do all the fighting and getting killed and losing their legs and everything else.
00:12:25.000He was in favor of a broader Syrian intervention.
00:12:26.000I want to go through John Bolton's record a little bit.
00:12:28.000And in a minute, I'm going to go through his record in rather fulsome fashion.
00:12:32.000We'll discuss what his actual views are and how they will impact the administration, whether we should be worried about him.
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00:14:13.000Again, use that slash Shapiro so they know that we sent you.
00:14:15.000Okay, so what exactly is John Bolton's actual record?
00:14:18.000So, here's an editorial that he wrote in 2012 about the situation in Syria.
00:14:23.000What he said was, as hostilities in Syria roll on unabated, the civilian casualties rise because of combat operations in urban areas and execution-style killings.
00:14:32.000military intervention of one sort or another continue to aid the opposition increase, while the Obama administration dithers over whether to continue relying on the U.N.
00:14:43.000But what are America's interests at stake, and what is the best way to protect them?
00:14:47.000Although it is easy to concentrate on the stomach-churning television images, we should operate on the basis of strategy, not emotion.
00:14:53.000That doesn't mean doing nothing, but neither does it mean knee-jerk reactions instead of careful analysis.
00:14:58.000He says that regime change in Syria is prima facie in America's best interest, as well as the interests of Israel and our Arab friends in the region, who see nothing but danger for themselves if Iran's hegemonic ambitions unfold successfully.
00:15:09.000He says there's no reason to coddle Assad.
00:15:12.000He says that we should have supported the Syrian opposition.
00:15:15.000He says the possibility of getting rid of Assad is now more remote, given the widespread infiltration of the anti-Assad forces by al-Qaeda and other terrorists.
00:15:23.000In truth, we don't know enough about the opposition's political or military leadership to predict who would prevail in the immediate aftermath of Assad's overthrow.
00:15:29.000This is John Bolton writing about Syria in 2012.
00:15:32.000In such circumstances, the risk of a radical Islamist replacing Assad is considerably higher than it would have been if we had moved to Al-Sham years ago.
00:15:39.000A relatively orderly exit by Assad is one thing.
00:15:42.000A disorderly, indeed chaotic exit is quite another, especially given the risk that Syria's chemical and biological weapons assets, and maybe even nuclear assets, might fall into the hands of people even worse than Assad.
00:15:52.000And then he talks about the humanitarian considerations, and he says without substantial on-the-ground troop presence, we cannot prevent all of that brutality and evil.
00:16:00.000So, he sort of evaluates the whole situation.
00:16:04.000And he says, his bottom line is, Obama's not up to the job in Syria.
00:16:07.000The greatest risk of American involvement is that his administration and Iran might find common ground in the Middle East chess game.
00:16:12.000Iran would allow Assad to fall, losing its pawn, and in exchange Obama would agree to do even less than he's doing now to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program.
00:16:19.000So he says we should cut Syria off from its major supporters.
00:16:22.000Cut Syria off from its major supporters.
00:16:24.000Russia should be told in no uncertain terms it can forget about sustained good relations with the United States as long as it continues to back Assad.
00:16:30.000We should resume full-scale, indeed accelerated, efforts to construct limited missile defense systems designed by George W. Bush to protect America's territory against Russia and other rogue states.
00:16:40.000He says we should announce our withdrawal from the New START arms control treaty.
00:16:43.000And then we should tell Iran that our patience with their decade-long ploy of using diplomacy to gain time to advance their nuclear weapons program has ended.
00:16:49.000Tehran should face a stark choice, and we can leave to their imagination what will happen if they fail immediately to dismantle all aspects of their existing nuclear effort.
00:16:57.000And we should also reverse the fantasy that despite its repeated violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that Iran is entitled to a peaceful nuclear program.
00:17:04.000And then he says, finally, in Syria itself, we should do now what we have begun to do 10 years ago.
00:17:07.000Find Syrian rebel leaders who are truly secular and who oppose radical Islam.
00:17:31.000For all the people on the left who are claiming that Trump is enthralled to the Russians, John Bolton certainly is not enthralled to the Russians.
00:17:37.000In fact, I have the evidence that John Bolton is not enthralled to the Russians.
00:17:40.000Here's what John Bolton had to say about Russian sanctions just a few months ago.
00:18:43.000He said that there was a risk of terrorist takeover.
00:18:46.000He says, one of the things the administration should be doing is identifying pro-American, pro-Western leaders in the opposition and assisting them.
00:18:52.000I don't see any evidence they're doing that now.
00:18:53.000But this is a rare case of a Gaddafi on the one hand and the unknown on the other.
00:20:33.000And was what happened subsequently the way we wanted it to be?
00:20:37.000The answer to the first question, to me, despite the events of the six years after the invasion, is still unquestionably yes.
00:20:45.000The regime itself, Saddam Hussein, his Ba'ath party, were threats to peace and security in the region and the larger world.
00:20:53.000Okay, so a lot of people on the left are very upset about that because it's become conventional wisdom to say that the Iraq War was wrong.
00:20:59.000Based on the evidence that we had at the time, the Iraq War was not wrong.
00:21:02.000The pursuit of how we did the Iraq War was wrong.
00:21:06.000Wrong, and members of the Bush administration have acknowledged as much.
00:21:10.000Again, you can only go to war based on the evidence that you have in front of you.
00:21:13.000Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, every Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, all of them supported the Iraq war because the evidence that was put in front of them was very different from the evidence that was later gathered.
00:21:24.000Now, the real reason that people are upset about Bolton in the NSA position is because they're afraid that he's such a hawk, he'll go to Trump, he'll talk a bunch of hawkery into Trump's ear, and suddenly we'll be at war.
00:21:33.000And the reason they're saying this is because Bolton has been particularly harsh on North Korea.
00:21:37.000So he just wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on February 28, 2018, so not even a month ago, in which he talked about the legal case for striking North Korea first.
00:21:48.000He talked about preemption, and what he said is this, He's not actually making the case for a preemptive strike.
00:22:15.000He's saying, this is how we should think about the threat of nuclear warheads delivered by ballistic missiles.
00:22:19.000In 1837, Britain unleashed preemptive fire and fury against a wooden steamboat.
00:22:22.000It is perfectly legitimate for the United States to respond to the current necessity posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons by striking first.
00:22:28.000Now, do I think Bolton's gonna walk into that office and say to Trump, let's attack North Korea?
00:22:35.000I do not think that Ambassador Bolton will now, NSA Bolton, is a guy who is going to pander to Trump's worst instincts in terms of hitting buttons that fire missiles.
00:22:44.000I think that he knows he's now part of an administration where the guy at the top is not
00:22:48.000Supremely stable with regard to the use of force, for example.
00:22:51.000And I think that knowing that he is going to be pretty careful about what he says to the president.
00:22:55.000The good news is the president trusts Bolton.
00:23:04.000I mean, there's no question that's a better team overall in terms of a conservative foreign policy, a Bushian but non-neoconservative foreign policy, which I think is more realistic, but not paleoconservative.
00:23:18.000He is not a paleocon, and his team proves it.
00:23:21.000Okay, so, I want to get to guns, I want to get to a little bit on foreign policy, and then I want to get to the mailbag.
00:23:26.000First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Genucel.
00:23:29.000So, Genucel is actually one of my oldest advertisers.
00:23:32.000Okay, Genucel, these are folks who were advertising with me long ago when I was doing a radio show in Seattle.
00:23:37.000I love these guys because their product is great.
00:23:39.000My wife particularly loves that they are an advertiser on the show now because she's getting their products again, and their products are just fantastic.
00:23:45.000Okay, what they do is they get rid of all the bags under your eyes.
00:23:48.000They get rid of the bags and the puffiness.
00:23:49.000They're a problem for millions of men in America, American men and women.
00:23:53.000But they have something called GenuCell, right?
00:25:29.000So, uh, the, it's, the only kids who get to make the time cover are the kids who hate guns, right?
00:25:35.000It's David Hogg, and Emma Gonzalez, and Cameron Kasky, and all of them posing in very dramatic fashion, and then it says, enough, across the front.
00:25:43.000Now, I don't know why one of them's not wearing shoes.
00:25:45.000But besides that, I'm just wondering why it is that only a certain number of these kids get on the cover.
00:25:50.000Kyle Cashew, who we've talked about on the show before, and who I've mentored a little bit, there's no reason why he shouldn't be on the cover there.
00:25:56.000He's a student there, he's been extraordinarily vocal, and he's been much more useful in the gun debate than any of these kids.
00:26:01.000Kyle's actually been going around meeting with legislators to talk about the Stop Gun Violence Act.
00:26:06.000He's been working on that with legislators.
00:26:09.000These kids are just going on TV and jabbering to Ellen.
00:26:12.000I understand they experienced tragedy.
00:26:14.000They're entitled to their perspective.
00:26:16.000But the only perspective the media wants you to hear is their perspective.
00:26:19.000And the perspective of people like David Hogg, I'm sorry, his perspective on guns is just not that valuable.
00:26:24.000He doesn't have anything to say that has any merit to it.
00:26:26.000Here's an interview that was done with him yesterday.
00:26:29.000This is David Hogg jabbering on about the NRA.
00:26:32.000They're pathetic f***ers that want to keep killing our children.
00:26:35.000They could have blood from children spattered all over their faces and they wouldn't take action.
00:26:40.000Because they'll still see those dollar signs.
00:26:41.000It just makes me think what sick f***ers are out there that want to continue to sell more guns, murder more children, and honestly just get re-elected.
00:26:48.000What type of person are you when you want to see more f***ing money than children's lives?
00:26:59.000But these are the people that the media choose to focus on, which is, of course, that makes perfect sense because these are the people pushing the media's agenda.
00:27:05.000OK, so now I want to do something special today.
00:27:08.000And I think we may change the format of the show in order to do this.
00:27:10.000I want to do the mailbag earlier today so that all of our friends who watch over at Facebook Live and watch YouTube Live, that they can check this out right now by watching the mailbag.
00:27:18.000If you want to subscribe, by the way, you can be part of the mailbag.
00:27:20.000So if you want to subscribe right now, then you get your questions answered.
00:27:22.000We will answer your questions live early on the show today.
00:27:37.000I think there are two arguments in favor of nationalism.
00:27:48.000And then there's a bad argument that people use for nationalism.
00:27:50.000So here are the two good arguments in favor of nationalism.
00:27:53.000The first one is that nationalism isn't nationalism, it's patriotism.
00:27:55.000What you are defending about the United States, why America is a great place, is because America has a special creed, and that creed ought to be defended.
00:28:04.000So I'll defend American nationalism, but I'm not as interested in the nationalism of nations that have crappy founding principles.
00:28:10.000I don't really care about their nationalism, because why would I find that particularly convincing?
00:28:17.000Therefore, America's nationalism is a good thing, because a stronger America and the world is a better thing for the world and for the citizens of the United States.
00:28:23.000Okay, that's argument number one, is that the principles upon which a country is founded should be the basis for nationalism, which means patriotism over nationalism.
00:28:31.000Not globalism, not nationalism, patriotism.
00:28:33.000Okay, the second argument is one that was made in the Federalist Papers that we talked about a few weeks back, and that is that there is a natural drive for people to feel a kinship with the people that they occupy a country with.
00:28:44.000That people do feel, you know, for better or worse, they do feel ethnic kinship, they do feel familial kinship, they do feel cultural kinship, they do feel that if you share a religion with somebody, these are all things that you share, and nationalism helps congeal all of that into a fighting force on behalf of tribe.
00:29:03.000This can devolve really quickly into a romantic nationalism that's really nasty and terrible.
00:29:07.000I'm not in favor of that romantic nationalism.
00:29:09.000That's why I don't buy into the sort of ethno-nationalism you hear from the alt-right.
00:29:13.000It's why I have a hard time with some of the far-right movements in Europe that say, we're nationalists, but we can't explain to you why we're nationalists.
00:29:20.000We just know that France has to be defended, but we have no central principles upon which France is based that we're trying to defend.
00:29:24.000But I think the way to defend nationalism is to say,
00:29:27.000That the nation-state is a useful tool in the promulgation of good ideas.
00:29:32.000It's also a useful tool in the promulgation of really bad ideas.
00:29:34.000So, the case for nationalism is good nationalism, nationalism on behalf of countries that have good ideas, as, like, I don't care about Saudi Arabian nationalism, per se.
00:29:41.000I care a lot about American nationalism.
00:29:44.000I care much more about British nationalism, for example, because it connects to an Anglo-American heritage.
00:29:49.000And the same, I care about French nationalism a lot more than I care about Libyan nationalism, for example.
00:29:58.000It's me saying that you and your friends look alike and you want a nation.
00:30:02.000That's not a good enough reason for you to have a nation.
00:30:04.000It's more important that you actually have some centralizing principles.
00:30:06.000Globalism, by contrast, basically says that we should treat all of these perspectives as equal and we should never privilege our own perspective over that of anyone else.
00:30:14.000If I had to rank these things in order of usefulness, importance, and worth, I would say patriotism, nationalism, globalism.
00:30:22.000OK, Anne says, most of my reading these days is done via audiobooks.
00:30:25.000Is there any chance you will read your upcoming books?
00:30:57.000There are some modern classical composers who I am not a fan of.
00:31:00.000You know, obviously Cage, Philip Glass.
00:31:02.000These are people who I don't really like very much.
00:31:03.000But as far as older classical composers,
00:31:07.000There are a lot of people who are very fond of Mahler.
00:31:08.000I just find that it's sections of beauty enmeshed in long swaths of boring.
00:31:15.000Wagner needed an editor with an axe because he has these incredible moments of uplift, but every opera is 18 hours long and filled with fat people singing at each other.
00:31:58.000Well, I spent my entire career enmeshed in stats and statistics and reading.
00:32:00.000Earlier this week, for example, I did a 15-minute segment, maybe a 20-minute segment, on one specific study that was cited in high profile by the New York Times.
00:32:24.000I spent a lot of time reading those studies because I want to know them, right?
00:32:26.000If I don't have the data right, I'm happy to be reappraised for this.
00:32:30.000Like, for example, in some of the speeches in the last couple of years, I mistakenly said the transgender suicide rate was 45%.
00:32:36.000What I meant to say, and this is just a slip of the tongue, I actually knew this, was that the transgender suicide attempt rate was 45%.
00:32:42.000Obviously, the suicide rate's not 45%, or in five years, everybody would be dead, right?
00:32:48.000When people correct me on stats, I'm happy to be corrected on them.
00:32:51.000The UCLA, the conversation I had with the guy at Susquehanna, he was quoting from the same study that I had already cited because I'd read that study.
00:34:03.000Speaking of which, time for a Facebook sign-off.
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00:35:05.000So Robert asks, what is my least favorite historical myth?
00:35:08.000We're continuing with the mailbag here.
00:35:09.000Robert asks, what is my least favorite historical myth?
00:35:12.000Well, I think that leftist revisionist history about America's founding is probably my least favorite historical myth.
00:35:17.000They've created an entire mythical history of America in which America is a garbage place filled with racism and inherently unchangeable, right?
00:35:24.000It's built into our DNA, as Barack Obama liked to say.
00:36:10.000My biggest qualms with anarcho-capitalism really are just lack of understanding about how law enforcement needs to work, for example.
00:36:25.000So, the argument for anarcho-capitalism is that you'll just have roving bands of people who hire each other for protection, and everything will go fine.
00:36:32.000I think you do need a basic gridlock of—a basic framework, rather, of laws that guarantee, for example, possession of private property and be protected by a police force that is applicable to everybody, because otherwise private property is not a central concept.
00:36:47.000You know, all the bases of capitalism require somebody to protect those bases.
00:36:50.000Blake says, hey, Ben, do you think a conservative can become governor here in California?
00:37:16.000The other, goodness gracious, I told him over and over, Anil Kashkari, when Anil Kashkari ran for governor here in California, I kept telling him, why are you not running on crime?
00:37:23.000He said, no, I want to run on education.
00:37:24.000I said, then you will lose and lose really badly, which indeed he did.
00:37:28.000I think that it is, maybe that would have happened anyway, but the only time Republicans win in blue areas is when they talk about crime.
00:37:35.000Rudy Giuliani, Richard Reardon here in Los Angeles.
00:37:38.000That's when you get a Republican winning, is when they talk about crime and quality of life issues.
00:37:50.000Here in Ireland, the student visa to USA and a wee overstay is seen as a rite of passage.
00:37:54.000Many Irish go on to become undocumented, illegal workers in the U.S.
00:37:57.000who maintain a strong passion and love for life out there.
00:37:59.000Ovary Paddy's Week, our Keogh Siach Prime Minister was visiting and proposing solutions to this, with one scheme being put forward as the new scheme would see new visa benefits and protections for Americans in Ireland, in return for them doing something similar for the undocumented Irish in the United States.
00:38:16.000Having lived and worked in both countries, there's a lot of Yanks who are eager to come across the Atlantic.
00:38:19.000How would you feel about a nation-by-nation solution to illegal immigration, as well as the above in particular?
00:38:24.000I mean, I'm in favor of a person-by-person solution to illegal immigration, not even a nation-by-nation one.
00:38:28.000I'm not sure that we should be doing foreign exchange programs with Ireland, but I do think that if there's somebody who wants to come over here and they're an asset to the United States, I'm not sure that Ireland should have to give up anything for that.
00:38:38.000I think that, you know, if people want to go work in Ireland, they should be able to go work in Ireland, they should get a work visa, and if they want to work here, they should come here and get a work visa.
00:38:45.000I really don't think immigration is all that difficult an issue.
00:38:47.000I think people make it more complicated than necessary because they're afraid of objective standards that they think are going to end up with some sort of racial or ethnic disparity.
00:38:57.000When I was 17 and I was writing a syndicated column, one of the things that was happening, one of the reasons that my column was picked up, is because it wasn't just my opinions, it was also me doing reportage from college campuses.
00:39:23.000So, if you actually want people to take your opinion seriously, first you have to offer something that no one else can offer.
00:39:30.000So, either you've uncovered a fact, or you have reported on something that people haven't known before.
00:39:36.000And when you do that, then people actually start to take your opinion a lot more seriously because you're bringing information they haven't heard.
00:39:41.000This creates a bond of trust between you and the reader, and now they actually want to hear what you think about the issues that you've brought to the forefront.
00:39:46.000So, you have a phone, as my mentor Andrew Breitbart said, your phone is a camera, that means you're a reporter now.
00:39:50.000Logan says, Hey, Ben, I was wondering what your stance on military intervention is.
00:39:53.000Do you take the more libertarian isolationist stance or do you believe that as leader of the free world, we have a moral obligation to involve ourselves in conflicts we have otherwise no business in?
00:40:01.000Thanks for the awesome content, Logan.
00:40:05.000We generally should not get involved in conflicts in which America has no interest.
00:40:09.000That said, if we can stop a humanitarian crisis from occurring with very little sacrifice of American blood and treasure, then that may be worth considering, simply because we may end up winning allies in that place.
00:40:19.000We may end up making that country into a better country.
00:40:22.000I'm not in favor of us being there for long periods of time and nation building, but I think that
00:40:27.000Muddling through is the basic principle of American foreign policy.
00:40:31.000And what that means is that you have to take every situation as it comes and calculate it based on a risk-reward assessment.
00:40:36.000I don't think that it's one size fits all.
00:40:38.000I don't think it's like, it meets minimum standards, now we're going to get involved.
00:40:41.000I think you have to look instead at what it costs, you have to look at how much money, how much blood we're going to have to spend, how many soldiers we're going to have to send over there.
00:40:51.000Case-by-case basis is necessary, which is why I was in favor of the Iraq invasion, but not in favor of the intervention in Libya to overthrow Qaddafi, for example.
00:41:32.000This has always been true for all of world history.
00:41:34.000I think that a lot of young white males are doing this right now because there's a tremendous lack of meaning that's said in American society.
00:41:41.000And also, there are not enough parents in the home to provide that meaning.
00:41:43.000I think that's the really simplistic solution.
00:41:50.000So Elise says, why is it that almost all people of the same occupation, example teachers, all seem to have the same politics?
00:41:55.000Well, the answer there is that there actually is a teacher's guild.
00:42:00.000And in order for you to be a member of the teacher's guild in many states, you actually have to be a member of the union.
00:42:04.000The union is a leftist union, because you are a state employee.
00:42:08.000I think one of the reasons teachers tend to swing to the left is because state employees tend to swing to the left, because when you work for the state, you happen to think the state is your friend.
00:42:15.000This is something Ludwig von Mises argued in his pamphlet slash book, Bureaucracy, which is worth a read.
00:42:54.000I mean, Harriet Tubman was just awesome.
00:42:56.000And better we should put Harriet Tubman on a dollar bill than we should, you know, find a, you know, do kind of affirmative action for women and find somebody who wasn't as badass as Harriet Tubman.
00:43:10.000First, the actual thing I like today is a book called The End of Europe by Jamie Kerchick.
00:43:15.000Jamie is a columnist, I believe, for Daily Beast.
00:43:17.000And this book, The End of Europe, is about—he traveled around Europe and he looked at sort of the rise of right-wing nationalism in contrast to the collapse of the multicultural ethos in Europe.
00:43:57.000All right, so here we are and I have the pleasure of sitting next to Glenn Beck, one of the iconic figures in the conservative thought movement and a mentor of mine and somebody who I've been listening to since I was literally a child.
00:44:08.000I have to tell you, thank you for that.
00:44:11.000I was flying in and we were talking about coming in to see you and I thought,
00:44:15.000Every time Ben says he's a fan of mine, it feels so weird, because I'm such a fan of yours.
00:44:30.000Well, you know, let's talk about AI, because I know that you've been very into it.
00:44:32.000I mean, we were talking a little bit before we started about sort of the big problems facing humanity, because I think one of the things that we have in common when we've talked and we're friends is that we actually enjoy talking about the big ideas more than we enjoy talking about the people fighting it,
00:45:20.000In maybe 10 years, we'll have AGI, which is Artificial General Intelligence, which right now, you know, Watson can play chess or he can do Jeopardy, but it can't do everything.
00:47:19.000You know, you're already seeing bionics that, you know, they say in about three years, the bionics will be able to just think and it will be attached to your thinking.
00:47:31.000Ray Kurzweil says that by 2030, all disease, all disease will be wiped out through nanobot technology, etc, etc.
00:47:40.000So we're experiencing this great explosion of
00:47:44.000Freedom of Life that we can't even imagine but we're not having the conversations that I think are really important Because they're too uncomfortable.
00:47:56.000They're uncomfortable for Because the labels all have to be dropped for instance Right now we're looking at unemployment rate.
00:48:20.000Which then says, well, where do people find meaning?
00:48:24.000How are we going to be giving people money?
00:48:28.000It leads to the min-cum kind of conversation, which I'm not a supporter of the min-cum, but we have to start having the conversation because those who are shaping the world of tomorrow are having those conversations.
00:48:40.000And this raises a second question, which really is the primary question, which is, what are human beings and what are we here to do?
00:48:47.000And that's a crisis of meaning that's been taking place in the West for a really long time.
00:49:33.000The ADL just started an algorithm that they just announced and they said, we've started an algorithm that 76% of the time will find and identify hate speech.
00:51:40.000But the nice thing is that the left's move to the radical left, their radicalization, has meant that there is this sort of new consensus that is arising that we have to get back to some of these central values.
00:51:51.000The big question is going to be, how far back do we go?
00:51:53.000Meaning that Steven Pinker sort of wants to turn back the clock to 1785 in terms of Enlightenment thought and says that this sort of thought is the future, right?
00:52:02.000to the general principles of the American Enlightenment, for example.
00:52:24.000You have to actually go back further than the Enlightenment and look back to the roots of what caused the Enlightenment to arise in the first place.
00:52:38.000I mean this is my big problem with Pinker's book is it's 500 pages on the Enlightenment and there's not, I mean I checked the index, there's not one mention of the French Revolution in a 500 page book about the Enlightenment.
00:53:19.000I mean, there is a butterfly effect to philosophy, and if there are these minor differences end up having major variations, they cause tsunamis in world history based on the difference between American-style exceptionalism and Fick-style German romantic nationalism.
00:53:32.000And one leads to the Nazis, and one leads to the people fighting the Nazis.
00:54:08.000And thinking, this is only cool because everybody says it's not cool, it's not good, you shouldn't read it.
00:54:17.000And I thought, someday, maybe Jefferson, who's a real thinker, you know, Jefferson and Adams and Madison, someday they'll become cool again.
00:54:29.000I think we're at the beginning of that.
00:54:30.000I think the American founding is becoming cool again, and I think that the battle is going to be rejoined because we're going to keep repeating the mistakes of the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment until we get it right.
00:54:40.000So maybe this time we actually get it right.
00:54:42.000In a post-God world, that's the only battle that could be had.
00:54:44.000We're just going to keep repeating it until things either go ultimately wrong or ultimately right.
00:55:38.000Next week I believe Senator Cruz is going to be coming on and Thomas Sowell is coming on.
00:55:43.000So it's been fun to do some of these interviews.
00:55:44.000I like putting them in things I like segments so we can do all the news analysis first and then folks can get a little bit of different perspective and conversation a little bit later in the show.
00:55:52.000So I like your feedback on that by the way.
00:55:54.000Email me at bshapiro at Daily Wire and tell me if you've been enjoying the interviews or if you think they suck, but I'm really enjoying them.
00:56:42.000Their context and intent apparently don't matter and it's a case of no, you don't get to decide what you mean, we decide what you mean.
00:56:50.000Because that's literally what happened today.
00:56:52.000See if it takes me going to jail for a year to show everyone how ridiculous and overreaching hate speech laws are where a YouTube comedian, just an internet shitposter like myself can go to prison
00:57:03.000Okay, so here's what he actually did, right?
00:57:04.000What he's saying here is actually right.
00:57:18.000So what he actually did was he taught his dog to do the Nazi salute every time he said stuff like Sieg Heil and gas the Jews.
00:57:27.000Okay, so he may be like a P.O.S., right?
00:57:29.000He may be like a bad guy, but welcome to the Western world where you're allowed to say nasty things so long as you don't actually do anything nasty.
00:57:35.000I'm defending this as an Orthodox Jew.
00:57:37.000Not the activity, but the right to participate in this sort of activity.
00:57:41.000If we can't agree on that, then freedom disappears pretty quickly.
00:57:44.000Okay, one final thing that I hate, and then we will break for the weekend.
00:57:47.000What advice do you have for young patriots and conservatives on campus that support your agenda that are being ridiculed and silenced because of administrators that are clamping down on free speech?
00:58:18.000If they have one campus or two campuses and we know what they are, it gets all the publicity.
00:58:23.000We have campuses where you have a vast majority of people that are perhaps like many of the people in this room.
00:58:31.000You could call it conservative, you call it whatever you want.
00:58:34.000Okay, so Trump basically saying it's not a big deal what's happening on the campuses, which is not the answer that Charlie was looking for, nor is it correct.
00:58:40.000Now, no one is claiming that campuses everywhere are shutting down conservative speakers.
00:58:45.000I speak on a lot of campuses all the time.
00:58:47.000Do they put restrictions they wouldn't put on a lefty speaker?
00:58:50.000But I've never claimed that every campus I go to is a hotbed of disaster waiting to happen.
00:58:55.000In fact, I always think it's ridiculous I even have to bring security to go speak on campuses.
00:58:59.000I will say that there is a well an overwhelming bias in the administrations of universities across the country and in the faculty against Republican positions and polls show this.
00:59:15.000Everybody on campus loves me, because everybody loves me.
00:59:17.000Which is, of course, silly, because if you take polls of college students, that is not the case, and conservatives on campus, who I talk to every single day, are having a tough time dealing with the political bias on campus.
00:59:27.000Okay, we'll be back here on Monday, and I'm sure there'll be more news breaking, because there always is.
00:59:32.000Don't ruin things over the weekend, just have a nice, relaxed weekend.
00:59:34.000We'll be back here on Monday to ruin your life again, at that point.
00:59:37.000I'm Ben Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:59:43.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.