Alfie Evans struggles for life, North Korea and South Korea meet, and we check the mailbag. The latest in the case of the 23-month-old boy with a degenerative brain condition that has left him with apparently 30% brain function, and his parents want to take him out of Great Britain and bring him to Italy for experimental treatment. And the British government has said, no, he must die here in this hospital, they have now removed him from life support, we re good to go! Now Alfie s family has issued a statement to supporters asking them to stand down as they negotiate with the hospital. Why? Because, according to the UK Telegraph, doctors told reporters that Alfie's parents must make a sea change in their attitude toward the medical system holding their son hostage. So what is the case being presented by the UK government in the Alfie Evans case? Is this a hostage situation, or is the government holding the kid hostage? And what does the counter argument being made by the parents say about the situation? What does the government have to do to make the situation better? And why is it so important that the government care about the child's best interests at all? And why should the parents care about what happens to a kid who is in need of help? in the first place? This is The Ben Shapiro Show, hosted by Ben Shapiro and his co-host, Alex Blumberg, and The Daily Beast's own Ben Shapiro. Go listen to the full show on the latest news and reaction to the latest in this story. on the case, The Ben and Alex's take on it. Subscribe to the Ben Shapiro's new book, and much more! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, wherever you get the latest updates in your favorite podcasting platform, wherever else you re listening to the most interesting stuff on the internet. Ben Shapiro is listening to Ben Shapiro s latest podcast on the most important things going on in the world, including the latest and the most influential podcast on social media? Subscribe and subscribe to his newest podcast on all things happening in the past 24/7. If you like what you're listening to, you can vlogging about it? You can become a supporter of Ben Shapiro, subscribe to Ben's newest podcast? Ben's new podcast, too? v=UoRJT-UoUdVYVZVYQ?
00:00:44.000Instead, you have the Texture app, and it gives you unlimited access to over 200 top magazines, including People, The Atlantic, Time, Vanity Fair.
00:00:51.000Okay, I've actually gotten guests on this show from reading some of the magazines that I subscribe to with Texture.
00:00:57.000With Texture, again, you get unlimited access to those 200 top magazines and all their back issues in a single app.
00:01:02.000So anytime you want to explore one, you can.
00:01:04.000And if you sign up right now at texture.com slash Ben, you actually get a seven-day free trial.
00:01:07.000Again, to start that free trial, go to texture.com slash Ben.
00:01:11.000You can start reading the latest issues of your favorite magazines today.
00:01:13.000There's a reason that there are so many of these magazines that are increasing circulation.
00:01:17.000The in-depth reporting at places like The New Yorker, which is included in the Texture app,
00:01:37.000The latest in the Alfie Evans case from Great Britain.
00:01:41.000So I wanted to talk a little bit about a counter-argument that's being made with regard to Alfie Evans.
00:01:45.000You'll recall that Alfie Evans is a 23-month-old baby who has an undiagnosed brain condition, a degenerative brain condition, that has left him with apparently 30% brain function.
00:01:54.000And his parents want to take him out of Great Britain and bring him to Italy for experimental treatment.
00:01:59.000And the British government has said, no, he must die here in this hospital.
00:02:02.000They have now removed him from life support.
00:02:36.000Because apparently, according to the UK Telegraph, Alfie's doctors told reporters that Alfie's parents must make a sea change in their attitude toward the medical system holding their son hostage.
00:02:44.000Quote, instead, the judge said the best Alfie's parents could hope for was to explore the options of removing him from intensive care to either a ward, a hospice, or his home.
00:02:52.000But a doctor treating Alfie, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that for Alfie to be allowed home would require a sea change in attitude from the child's family, and they feared that in the worst case, they would try to take the boy abroad.
00:03:02.000I mean, this is an astonishing claim that somehow the parents have to evidence a sea change in their attitude.
00:03:24.000That they have to change their attitude toward the government demonstrates once again that this is all about treating the government as God, not at all about the best interests of the child.
00:03:44.000So according to the statement from Kate James and Tom Evans, the parents say,
00:04:07.000We would now ask you to return back to your everyday lives and allow myself, Kate, and Elder Hay to form a relationship, build a bridge, and walk across.
00:05:52.000And my wife, who works at a hospital, we were talking about this case yesterday, and she was talking about some of the ways that she's seen people die, and they are horrific.
00:06:01.000I mean, there are certainly cases in which people would have died with more comfort if they had been moved to a hospice two weeks before their death and then been given morphine as they transition from life, right?
00:06:11.000I mean, that would be—there's no question that people die in a myriad range of unfortunate and horrifying ways.
00:06:18.000So, if your top priority is somebody dying with comfort, then you can say, okay, we want Alfie to die with comfort, and the experimental treatment will be too painful, and so we're arguing with the parents that they are not keeping the best interests of the child at heart, because what they really are doing is extending the, they're not extending his chances of getting better, they're making him suffer more, and we don't want him to suffer more, so our best interests are more aligned with the best interests of the child.
00:06:41.000That argument, I don't think, is a dispositive one.
00:06:44.000I don't even think it's a particularly good one.
00:06:45.000But I do think that it's an argument that has some merit.
00:07:15.000Dignity then is boiled down to the level of physical comfort you are experiencing at any given time.
00:07:20.000That if you are a person who is on your deathbed and you choose to suffer all the way through your last moments because you want to cling to life, because you think life is just that important, and you think that it is important that your children know that you struggled all the way to your last breath because you think that life is worth clinging to and you should never give up even when the situation is hopeless,
00:07:38.000If that's a lack of dignity, according to some people on the left, because the most dignified thing would be just die in comfort, because comfort and dignity are the same thing.
00:07:46.000But obviously, they are not the same thing.
00:07:48.000A death with comfort, again, is something that can be objectively determined.
00:07:52.000We can know that a woman who's dying of bowel obstruction and is choking on her own stool, we know that that person is dying with less comfort.
00:08:00.000But can you honestly say that person is dying with less dignity?
00:08:35.000They're talking about how much suffering can you take without actually becoming a burden on others.
00:08:41.000I'm talking about an emotional burden on others.
00:08:43.000But to equate comfort and dignity is a real mistake because great men and women die in horrible agony on a regular basis.
00:08:50.000Great men and women very often are trying to make a point by dying in agony.
00:08:54.000That they don't actually want to give up on life.
00:08:57.000Life is more than just the level of physical comfort they're experiencing at a given time.
00:09:02.000Dying with comfort might be a term that's applicable to this baby, to Alfie.
00:09:06.000You might say that maybe Alfie should die in more comfort than his parents want him to die in.
00:09:10.000Dying with dignity doesn't apply, because Alfie is 23 months old.
00:09:13.000He doesn't have the capacity to act in accordance with his own virtuous ideas, because Alfie's a baby.
00:09:18.000So that means that he can't act in accordance with that.
00:09:20.000And as far as dignity with regard to others, that also doesn't really apply to Alfie.
00:09:25.000Because the question now is whether his parents or the state get to determine what dignity looks like.
00:09:30.000Does the state get to determine that its version of dignity, i.e.
00:09:33.000comfort, is the governing standard, or do his parents get to determine what dignity looks like?
00:09:36.000Maybe they think dignity looks like you fight for life all the way until the end of your life, no matter what the consequences.
00:09:41.000OK, well, that is certainly an open question.
00:09:45.000That's certainly a question that's subjective in nature.
00:09:48.000There's no hard standard as to whether the state is right or whether his parents are right in their definition of dignity.
00:09:53.000And when in doubt, you've got to go with the parents, because the parents, again, are the ones who care more about Alfie.
00:09:58.000There's a famous story about Phil Graham.
00:09:59.000Phil Graham is a former senator from Texas in the United States.
00:10:02.000And Phil Graham apparently had an exchange he liked to tell about with this one leftist woman where he was saying to her, listen, the basis for my entire politics is that I care more about my children than you do.
00:10:19.000As much as the judge says that he cares about the child, as a parent, there's no one on earth who cares as much about my child as my wife and I do.
00:10:27.000Not grandparents, not siblings, no one.
00:10:30.000Until you've been a parent and experienced the bond that comes along with having a child, for anyone to step in between that bond for a subjective reason, like your definition of dignity, is just absurd, and it's also fascistic.
00:10:43.000Again, there's a reason that advocates of euthanasia like to use death with dignity rather than death with comfort, because they understand that if they use death with dignity, then they're making the implicit argument that you choosing to go out on morphine is a more dignified death, that it's morally superior.
00:10:58.000Death with comfort is a morally neutral term, because comfort is morally neutral.
00:11:17.000So, again, I think that there's no question that this should be left to the parents and it's an egregious miscarriage of justice that it's not.
00:11:23.000Particularly because, again, the doctors are assessing the situation.
00:11:26.000They don't even know what's wrong with Alfie.
00:13:48.000I stand here in the spirit of Martin Luther King, who said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but today it has bent towards justice.
00:13:58.000Last year, when I was sitting in the courtroom of the first trial, and the verdict was hung, I left with such a tremendous sense of disappointment.
00:14:09.000And it became evident to me that the justice system
00:14:28.000Obviously, I think this is a very good thing.
00:14:30.000I think the evidence against Bill Cosby was quite strong.
00:14:35.000They say, well, it was a he said, she said.
00:14:37.000Right, but there's a lot of credibility when you have this many victims who can testify against Bill Cosby, and it's the same story over and over and over and over again.
00:14:45.000It's also important to note here that this is the kind of stuff that Me Too was made for, right?
00:14:48.000Me Too was not made for the woman who says that she went on a date with a guy and she had sex with the guy and then she felt bad later.
00:14:56.000You know, that essay from The New Yorker, the woman who said that she gave every signal to the guy that she wanted to have sex with him and then she cut him off on texting and then he was mean to her.
00:15:12.000Stormy Daniels had consensual sex with President Trump.
00:15:14.000Okay, what Me Too was made for was cases like this where women are abused and then silenced and stay silent, and then when they come forward en masse, then the question is, do we believe them or not?
00:15:24.000And the answer is that, yeah, we should believe them, especially when the supporting evidence is there.
00:15:30.000Now, there's another issue with Bill Cosby here that I think is worth noting, and that is that, obviously, Bill Cosby is famous because he was the biggest television star on television, maybe in television history.
00:15:40.000The Cosby Show was one of the big hits in the history of TV, and of course, he was the first
00:15:45.000Not the first, but he was one of the first major black characters to be portrayed not as a blue-collar guy, but as a white-collar guy, or he's a doctor.
00:15:55.000And Cliff Huxtable was an icon for millions of Americans, and made the implicit promise that if you worked hard in America, you could actually get ahead.
00:16:02.000There are a bunch of people who are trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater now, saying that you should never watch The Cosby Show again, or Cliff Huxtable as a character,
00:16:43.000And he says that the hard thing about this verdict is the sorting of the ironies has been left to us.
00:16:48.000Mr. Cosby made blackness palatable to a country historically conditioned to the worst of black people.
00:16:52.000To pull that off, he had to find a morally impeccable presentation of himself.
00:16:55.000If you really think that a lot of people are going to throw away the image of Cliff Huxtable because of Bill Cosby, I think that's completely wrong.
00:17:00.000People watch TV, they identify with the characters, not with the actors.
00:17:16.000So, the evils of Bill Cosby do not, I think in any way, sully the character of Cliff Huxtable, who after all, was a character on TV.
00:17:25.000I think people are smart enough to recognize that.
00:17:29.000There's a lot of hubbub today over the situation in North Korea.
00:17:33.000So, a historic moment, because the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, who is indeed a human piece of debris, just a piece of crap, who has been, he and his family for three generations now, have been forcibly imprisoning
00:17:51.000The average South Korean is, I believe, three inches taller than the average North Korean, despite a common genetic heritage, because of malnutrition and starvation in North Korea.
00:17:59.000Hundreds of thousands of people in North Korea have been passed through prison camps.
00:18:03.000Hundreds of thousands of people have starved to death over the tenure of the Kim family.
00:18:06.000Well, Kim Jong-un met with the new prime minister, new president of South Korea.
00:18:12.000And this was a historic moment because this is the first time that anyone from North Korea has actually stepped across the border of South Korea for a long time.
00:18:21.000The South Korean president is Moon Jae-in.
00:18:23.000He's a member of what they call a Sunshine Cabinet, which means that they want to make a deal with North Korea.
00:18:28.000Kim Jong-un finally crosses the border, and this is being hailed as a historic moment for diplomatic relations between the two countries.
00:18:34.000But as we look at this picture, it cannot be overstated the historic nature of what we are witnessing now.
00:18:42.000These pictures coming to us outside the Peace House on the southern side of the demilitarized zone that divides the two countries.
00:18:50.000There you see the two leaders of North Korea and South Korea shaking hands in a demonstration of certainly attempted unity here.
00:19:02.000Okay, so people think this is like a major step forward, and you're seeing a lot of people today celebrating President Trump, saying President Trump made this happen.
00:19:08.000Okay, now, President Trump has been very harsh with the North Koreans.
00:19:19.000The real truth here is that the reason that Kim Jong-un is shaking the hand of Moon Jae-in is because Moon Jae-in is dedicated to the idea that he wants to get American troops off South Korean soil if he can.
00:19:29.000And he and Kim Jong-un share that priority.
00:19:31.000Moon Jae-in is a guy who is of the South Korean left.
00:19:58.000Moon's spokesman says Kim also made a reference to a South Korean island that became a target of the North Korean artillery attack that killed four in 2010.
00:20:05.000Kim says the residents of Yeonpyeong Island, who have been living under the fear of North Korean artillery attacks and also families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, have high hopes for the intra-Korean talks to help heal past scars.
00:20:16.000Apparently, they're going to sign a formal end to the Korean War.
00:20:19.000That does not mean demilitarization, of course.
00:20:21.000There are a lot of people, again, hailing this as a giant victory.
00:20:35.000It's a forgotten war in the United States, unlike the Vietnam War, which is, of course, championed by the left as an example of America losing, and they think that's great.
00:20:42.000Or World War II, which is an example of the United States intervening to stop a genocide.
00:20:46.000The Korean War is largely forgotten, even though the United States lost tens of thousands of troops in the Korean War.
00:20:53.000The Korean War started because essentially what happened is after World War II, the Russians occupied the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and the United States occupied the southern half.
00:21:04.000And then two flunkies at the State Department drew a parallel, the 38th parallel, and they said, OK, well, we're going to say that above this is North Korea and below this is South Korea.
00:21:12.000It was a completely arbitrary division.
00:21:13.000The Russians quickly turned North Korea into a communist proxy state, and the United States
00:21:19.000Was working with the with the more free market dictatorship that was existing in South Korea at the time in 1950, thanks to the United States, his failures to stop the rise of communist China.
00:21:32.000Which was largely due to both the FDR and the Truman administrations.
00:21:35.000Then the North Koreans walked across the border.
00:22:22.000I'm going to explain why it is that I'm skeptical of what's happening right now on the Korean peninsula.
00:22:27.000But first, I want to say thanks to our new sponsors over at eHarmony.
00:22:30.000So you've heard me talk over and over and over about the fact that values, the things that actually matter to you, are a better basis for a relationship than simply you were in a bar and you saw somebody good-looking and you decided to form a relationship with that person.
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00:22:51.000We're so grateful we were able to find each other.
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00:24:14.000Why am I skeptical of what is happening in North Korea?
00:24:17.000The reason I'm skeptical is because there are lots of these sorts of historic meetings, and some of them end well, and some of them do not end well.
00:24:24.000There are lots of cases in which the West has been played in situations like this.
00:24:27.000So, here's what could go wrong in this meeting.
00:24:30.000What could go wrong is that Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un come to an agreement.
00:24:34.000And the agreement is that Kim Jong-un is going to denuclearize the peninsula.
00:24:37.000He's going to stop developing nuclear weapons, or he's going to quote-unquote give up his nuclear weapons.
00:24:42.000There's no real way that he's going to do a verification regime that allows for anything like that.
00:24:46.000And Moon Jae-in says, well, in return for that,
00:24:49.000We don't need the American troops here anymore, because if we denuclearize the peninsula, then we don't need the American trigger force that would bring the United States into the war, because obviously you're not going to nuke us.
00:24:59.000If there's a conventional war, there's a conventional war, I guess, but we have warm relations, so we're really not too worried about a conventional war.
00:25:04.000At which point, President Trump, who has been saying over and over and over that he wants to get troops home and out of places like South Korea, he says, OK, you know what?
00:25:12.000We'll remove the troops from South Korea.
00:25:14.000And the next thing you know, we have a replay of the Korean War in which the North Koreans say, OK, well, now that the Americans aren't here, let's start making some moves on the border.
00:25:21.000Let's see if we can push that border further south.
00:25:23.000Let's see if we can launch a sneak attack.
00:25:25.000That's a possibility, especially given the instability of the North Korean regime and the fact that they are resource short.
00:25:41.000I'm not even talking about the Yalta Conference, in which the United States and Russia and Britain basically got played by Russia.
00:25:48.000Basically, Stalin played Churchill and played FDR, and the United States gave up far too much in the Yalta Agreement, leading to things like the Korean War, leading to the rise of a powerful USSR that had half of Europe under its thumb.
00:26:40.000The Israeli Prime Minister was shaking hands with an actual terrorist, Yasser Arafat, an evil terrorist, one of the worst terrorists of the 20th century.
00:26:48.000And Yasser Arafat then used the concessions that he had gained from Israel, backed by the United States, in order to stage a series of violent attacks against Israel that has lasted to the present day.
00:26:58.000That has not resulted in any sort of lasting peace.
00:27:00.000It's actually led to the rise of terrorist groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority, which is still a terrorist group and led by now Mahmoud Abbas, is the
00:27:09.000Next step in the evolution of Yasser Arafat's terror group.
00:27:14.000And I remember, I'm old enough to remember, I was I think nine at the time, I'm old enough to remember them shaking hands and the media swooning.
00:27:22.000Oh, peace is going to come to the Middle East.
00:27:25.000Peace didn't come to the Middle East because there were no common interests.
00:27:27.000So, the question is, is the West going to take a strong stand and require things of Kim Jong-un in this peace?
00:27:32.000Or is this just going to be Kim Jong-un's latest move in order to get a bunch of concessions from the West, and in return, the West gets very little, right?
00:27:42.000This is exactly what happened with Iran, okay?
00:27:44.000The United States made a deal with Iran, and now we are stuck with that deal with Iran, at least for the foreseeable future, because Barack Obama decided it was more important to have the photo op between the Iranian foreign minister and John Kerry than it was to actually uphold sanctions against an evil state on the brink of nuclear destruction, on the brink of having nuclear weaponry.
00:28:04.000The JCPOA, the Iran deal, is such a disaster, and you can see that this is
00:28:12.000You could see a situation in which the United States or South Korea offers a very similar deal to the North Koreans, and everybody proclaims victory.
00:28:20.000And within five years, the North Koreans are back making their nuclear weapons, except this time there are no troops on the South Korean peninsula.
00:28:45.000And it does demonstrate the lack of veracity in the media, or at least the lack of credibility in the media.
00:28:50.000The media are so biased that Trump gets no mention in what is, in fact, a historic summit that's happening between the two Koreas.
00:28:56.000But by the same token, they would have been orgasming over this if this had been President Obama, no question.
00:29:04.000Still, as a conservative, I'm just saying it might be worthwhile to withhold judgment for just a little bit.
00:29:10.000Now, meanwhile, James Comey appeared last night with Brett Baier, and James Comey just looks worse and worse.
00:29:15.000If you're a Democrat, you have to think at this point that James Comey needs to be put to the side because he is not helping your case in the slightest.
00:29:22.000Over and over, James Comey made contentions last night that were just unsupportable.
00:29:26.000So, this one actually, I believe, was not on Fox News.
00:29:29.000He was, he was asking how, how possibly this is on CNN.
00:29:32.000He was asking, how can Trump supporters explain to their grandchildren that they traded the rule of law for tax cuts?
00:29:37.000This is James Comey doing his best virtue signaling on CNN.
00:29:40.000Then he meets Brett Barron and things go wildly wrong for him.
00:29:43.000My question for the Republicans is, so where is that?
00:29:46.000Where is that commitment to character and values?
00:29:48.000And if people have convinced themselves, well, we'll trade it temporarily for a tax cut or a Supreme Court justice, as I say in the book, that's a fool's bargain.
00:29:58.000Because those values are all that you have.
00:30:00.000There'll always be another Supreme Court justice, always another tax bill.
00:30:26.000None of this suggests that the Republicans have abandoned rule of law, but James Comey identifies himself with rule of law, and therefore he is the only person that ought to be listened to, obviously.
00:30:36.000Then he goes on Bret Baier, and things go wildly wrong for him.
00:30:40.000So this whole perspective of James Comey as great lawbringer goes completely by the wayside, because it turns out James Comey doesn't know basics about
00:31:28.000Apparently, he never tried to find out who leaked the news of him informing Trump of the dossier to the press, which was used as the news hook by BuzzFeed to actually release the entire dossier.
00:31:37.000No, he never bothered to look into that.
00:32:12.000That's not true, that the dossier that Christopher Steele worked on was funded by Republicans?
00:32:17.000My understanding was his work started, funded by—as oppo research, funded by Republicans,
00:32:23.000So, Free Beacon said that they had Glenn Simpson and Fusion GPS on account of a retainer, but they did not fund the Christopher Steele memo or the dossier.
00:32:37.000Okay, my understanding was the activity was begun that Steele was hired to look into.
00:32:42.000It was first funded by Republicans, then picked up—the important thing was—picked up by Democrats opposed to Donald Trump's.
00:32:49.000Okay, so I like how even here he's futzing around.
00:32:51.000I mean, he really looked bad last night, and well, he should have, because he, again, is making a fool of himself.
00:32:56.000The fact the media keep trotting him out, I think they're undercutting their own credibility here.
00:33:00.000Okay, so, in just a second, I'm gonna get into the mailbag, because it is mailbag time here at the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:33:05.000But first, you're gonna have to go over to Daily Wire right now, and you're gonna have to subscribe.
00:33:09.000For $9.99 a month, you get a subscription to Daily Wire.
00:33:11.000That means you get the rest of our show live, you get the rest of the Michael Knowles Show live, you get the rest of the Andrew Klavan Show live.
00:34:13.000So, as Speaker of the House, I do like Jim Jordan.
00:34:16.000I think Jim Jordan would be very good at that.
00:34:19.000Well, you do need somebody who's going to be militant, particularly because they have to stand up to both Mitch McConnell, if they're in the majority, or the Democrats if they're in the minority.
00:35:06.000So I like the idea of Jim Jordan as majority leader or as a Speaker of the House or as minority leader.
00:35:13.000Mark says, as far as, sorry, majority leader of the Senate.
00:35:17.000I think that, you know, Senator Cruz has made a good case for why he should be Majority Leader of the Senate.
00:35:22.000I think there are probably some less controversial figures who would be similarly good.
00:35:25.000I mean, I'd love to see Mike Lee as Majority Leader of the Senate, but they're all my favorite senators who I'd like to see as Majority Leader of the Senate because I think those people would hold the line a little bit better than Mitch McConnell has.
00:35:36.000He's a guy who kind of, in the future, he'll be seen more as a Tip O'Neill type, you know, a guy who sort of got things done by using his various methodologies, but I'm not sure that
00:35:44.000Mitch McConnell is a lot to speak about when it comes to principled leadership.
00:35:48.000Mark says, Ben, a few days ago, Jordan Peterson asked Bill Maher's panel, if Trump is impeached, what are your plans to heal the rift between the left and the right?
00:35:55.000Of course, they didn't answer his question.
00:35:57.000So if Trump is impeached, how could the rift be healed?
00:36:00.000Well, it depends what he's impeached over.
00:36:01.000So if Trump were actually impeached over something that's legitimate, let's say that Trump committed an actual crime as president of the United States, a serious crime as president of the United States, and he is impeached.
00:36:10.000Then the rift would be healed by Mike Pence coming forward, becoming president, and saying, listen, criminal activity is not acceptable on either side of the aisle.
00:36:21.000That's the way that this would be healed.
00:36:23.000If he's impeached for no reason, if he's impeached because Democrats hate him, it's going to be very difficult to rectify that breach because Republicans are rightly going to say the Democrats have been misusing the tools of government in order to go after particular people they don't like in government, which only exacerbates the belief that Democrats should never
00:36:40.000Now, there is a conciliation possible there, too, and that is both sides eventually acknowledge that there should be no power of government over a wide variety of issues because we can't trust the other side with the power.
00:36:51.000A libertarian consensus, in other words.
00:36:54.000You can see that happening, but I think that that's a little ways away, and I don't think this cast of characters, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, I don't think this cast of characters is capable of getting that done.
00:37:08.000Well, I think that's usually true in argument.
00:37:09.000This is why I like to argue first principles.
00:37:11.000Data can be used to support first principles, but I think that most people are convinced on the basis of moral argumentation and first principles arguments, not on the basis of data.
00:37:17.000But the data do have to support your first principles.
00:37:36.000So data are a necessary bulwark for a good argument, but I'm not sure the data themselves make the argument.
00:37:42.000Data can provide the foundation for an argument, but even below that foundation there's a bedrock, and the bedrock is the value system that you're trying to promote.
00:38:00.000Norway is living on the basis of an extraordinarily large oil find.
00:38:07.000And they've been living off the basis of that oil production for a long time.
00:38:10.000I did an entire episode where I discussed what Norway's economy looks like.
00:38:14.000Second of all, Norway is essentially ethnically homogenous.
00:38:17.000There's not a lot of ethnic diversity in Norway.
00:38:19.000So, claiming that Norway is better than the United States, you have to consider the kind of folks who are living in Norway, and then you have to say, well, is it really comparable even?
00:38:28.000You'd also have to look at, for example, the level of economic mobility in places like Norway without state intervention.
00:38:36.000You have to look at the fact that the United States is the most powerful economy on Earth.
00:38:40.000If the United States did not exist, would Norway still be a powerful country economically?
00:38:56.000But to suggest that Norway is, for example, more tolerant than the United States, they don't have to deal with the same problems that the United States does in terms of trying to integrate so many different ethnicities.
00:39:05.000That's both a problem and a wonderful thing about the United States, obviously.
00:39:10.000Is Norway better than the United States in terms of the economy?
00:39:36.000A lot of that is based on the government essentially gathering an enormous amount of oil and then putting all the money from it into a state pension fund.
00:39:52.000My understanding is that most people who are religious believe that when you give to a private charity, that counts as part of your tithing, I think.
00:40:01.000It's one of the reasons why I think that if you're going to have a quote-unquote welfare state in the United States, instead of the government just seizing an enormous amount of cash from you and then using it through government means for redistributionism, if you're going to do something like this, you ought to mandate that people give a certain amount of their money to charity, and then they should be able to pick the charity the money goes to.
00:40:19.000David says, in a show I was watching they're referencing the 25th amendment to remove the president, but I read it only takes away his powers.
00:40:39.000Section 1 says, in the case of removal of the president from office or of his death or resignation, then the vice president becomes president.
00:40:45.000But the part that they are usually talking about in the 25th Amendment is the part about if the president loses his capacity.
00:40:52.000So the president can regain capacity under the 25th Amendment.
00:42:07.000At which point they have, and he has four days to do that.
00:42:12.000And then the VP, well, actually he transmitted right away.
00:42:15.000Then the VP and the majority transmit within four days, another written declaration that he's unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
00:42:22.000At that point, Congress decides the issue and they have to assemble within 48 hours.
00:42:28.000So, in other words, the president doesn't become not the president.
00:42:30.000He's just incapacitated for the period in which he's incapacitated.
00:42:51.000Okay, but it takes a two-thirds vote of each house to actually declare the president incapacitated to the level that he cannot regain his power if he attempts to regain his power.
00:42:59.000So Mark, as I said earlier on the show, I do think we should appreciate his contributions to comedy.
00:43:04.000I'm not somebody who believes that the art is completely inseparable from the artist.
00:43:08.000There have been lots of awful people who have been great artists, lots of awful people who have
00:43:20.000So I love the comedy, particularly the early comedy of Bill Cosby.
00:43:49.000My first advice is, if you want to be successful, apparently you have to remain silent up to the point where you're successful, then you can come out as conservative and be okay.
00:43:56.000That's at least the rule in Hollywood.
00:43:58.000If you start off as conservative, you're shutting an enormous number of doors, unless you're in the music industry, like the country music industry, but even Shania Twain gets raked over the coals if she says she's going to back Trump.
00:44:08.000Unfortunately, we live in a system in which people are routinely discriminated against on the basis of their politics, so I think that it is well worthwhile for you to
00:44:16.000Keep your politics as close to the vest as possible until you are successful enough that you don't have to worry about the blowback.
00:44:37.000My answer is, I believe yes, because I do think that there is a difference between doctors deciding that they have life-saving treatment they want to provide to a child, and the parents saying no, and parents deciding that they want their child to live, and doctors saying no.
00:44:53.000The Alfie Evans case is, parents say, we think we can save the kid, and the doctors say, no you can't, he has to die, which is evil.
00:45:00.000There's a case that comes up a lot with regard to, there's certain parents who say they don't want their kids to have medical treatment for simple diseases.
00:45:07.000And we're not even talking about chemotherapy for cancer, but their parents will say that they don't want kids to have simple blood transfusions because they think that it violates certain principles, and the kid will die without the blood transfusion.
00:45:17.000To me, that's child endangerment, and at that point, the state has the right to say, you don't get to decide for your kid that your kid has to die.
00:45:22.000Well, I think that the biggest barrier to, if we're gonna say,
00:45:35.000First of all, I don't think there's a barrier to modern-day democracy.
00:45:37.000I think America is a republic, and people vote in that republic, and there are no serious barriers to people voting in the United States.
00:45:43.000If the idea is, what's the barrier to us all getting along, and they said racism and sexism, I would say tribalism more than racism or sexism.
00:45:51.000I don't think that women are being barred from office.
00:45:52.000I don't think black people are being barred from office.
00:46:17.000And thanks to my producers for putting that up there, you jerks.
00:46:20.000Clay says, Hi Ben, I've been a listener for over a year now and you've been very influential in my beliefs about conservatism.
00:46:25.000I've spoken out a lot this year during my college classes, either during student presentations or unsolicited professor virtue signaling.
00:46:30.000Well, hey, I'd have Kanye on the show today.
00:46:31.000I mean, I think that'd be a lot of fun.
00:46:33.000And in a little while, I will tell you all about my inculcation into rap and how I got into rap.
00:46:49.000But first, as far as whether you're obligated, no, you're never obligated to say anything with regard to your politics.
00:46:56.000I think that as a moral human being, you should probably speak up when you are capable of speaking up.
00:47:01.000But if you are in a situation where your grades are going to suffer, I never tell students that it's their job to lose a grade because they have to speak up to no apparent purpose.
00:47:08.000OK, final question, and then we'll do a thing I like.
00:47:12.000If we get self-driving cars in the future, should we allow law enforcement to override the car's computer to bring people with warrants out for their arrest to the police station?
00:47:18.000Does an unconvicted person with an arrest warrant have a right to avoid being arrested?
00:47:23.000I mean, if they have the right to break into your house to effectuate an arrest warrant, then they have the right to take control of your car and bring you home.
00:47:40.000So as I said earlier this week, jokingly on Twitter, I am now apparently a rap maven because Kanye West, everyone on the right has now been legally obligated to like rap because Kanye West has come out and said that he likes President Trump.
00:47:54.000But my first inculcation into rap, the first song that really brought me, I think, into the world of R&B and rap and all of it, I think was probably
00:48:06.000It's just an amazing example, example of the true artistry and verbal acuity of so many of our nation's rappers.
00:48:15.000As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain, I take a look at my wife and realize she's very plain.
00:48:21.000But that's just perfect for an Amish like me.
00:48:24.000You know I shun fancy things like electricity.
00:48:26.000Okay, what's amazing about this particular music video, aside from the fact that Weird Al is the best, the best, okay, is that if you actually go back and watch the Gangster's Paradise video, there's so many great references to it.
00:48:38.000So, the best reference, of course, in the Gangster's Paradise video, it shows, I can't remember, which rapper does Gangster's Paradise?
00:49:13.000If you have a choice between listening to Amish Paradise and Gangster's Paradise, Amish Paradise is significantly better.
00:49:18.000If you have a choice between listening to the actual Hamilton soundtrack and listening to Weird Al's mashup on accordion of the Hamilton soundtrack, it is much better.
00:49:53.000Just because people are popular on the interwebs, OK, just because people are popular on the interwebs, Republicans in Congress, does not mean that you actually have to have them to Congress to say silly things.
00:50:05.000So Diamond and Silk are very popular on the interwebs.
00:50:07.000Diamond and Silk are, of course, sisters who are black and are big fans of President Trump.
00:50:10.000They gained a lot of credibility on the right because they were so pro-Trump and because they're conservative in some ways.
00:50:16.000Well, they had said that Facebook had shut down their page and prevented them from distributing their message.
00:50:22.000Uh, there is a fair bit of counter evidence to suggest that that may not, in fact, be wholly the case.
00:50:27.000Uh, what they say is that they reached out to Facebook, Facebook didn't reach out to them, Facebook says we did reach out to them, and they've ignored us.
00:50:33.000Okay, listen, I think the Facebook algorithm change is a disaster, and I think that it is, at least in part, politically motivated, even if the people who made it don't believe that it's politically motivated, but
00:50:41.000Diamond and Silk were testifying before Congress, and at one point they were, it was asked about them, it was asked of them, whether they had been paid by the Trump administration at any point, or the Trump campaign at any point.
00:50:52.000According to FEC filings, Diamond and Silk were paid about $1,200 at some point during the campaign.
00:50:56.000Diamond and Silk instead denied this under oath, which is in fact perjury, and you can just see that this thing just went sideways right out the gate.
00:51:58.000We're familiar with that particular lie.
00:52:00.000We can see that you do look at fake news.
00:52:03.000What happened is, and what should have happened is, you should have come to our mouths to see what exactly happened before a false narrative was put out there about the $1,274.94.
00:52:15.000So let me explain right now to you and the world.
00:52:20.000Hold on one second, because I want to give you the opportunity to explain, which is why I'm asking the question.
00:53:44.000So Tom Brokaw has now been accused of sexual misconduct, or rather, Ron Brokaw has been accused of sexual harassment.
00:53:51.000Apparently, he's been accused of sexually harassing Linda Vester, who's of course a famous war correspondent.
00:53:56.000Variety said Brokaw physically tried to force her to kiss him on two separate occasions, groped her in an NBC conference room, and showed up at her hotel room uninvited.
00:54:04.000And apparently there's another allegation against Brokaw from an anonymous woman.
00:54:07.000I have to say, dudes, famous dudes, what in the world?
00:54:30.000All of which suggests that human nature, there are a lot of men who give in to the human nature of being horrible to women.
00:54:37.000And that's why you need a civilization filled with men who are trained not only not to do these things, but also to protect women, is why the leftist view that being on the left somehow makes you a purer human being, your politics define your purity as a human being, this is not true and it's something the right has never actually believed.
00:54:51.000Okay, so we'll be back here on Monday with much, much more.
00:54:54.000I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:54:59.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.