The Ben Shapiro Show - No, Divorce Isn’t ‘Fine For The Kids’

00:00:00.000 Folks, we'll get to all the news in just a moment.

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00:00:12.000 Alrighty, so we have new details that are emerging on the suspect in the shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School.

00:00:18.000 According to the Washington Post, the student who's the suspect in this particular crime...

00:00:24.000 Killed two people, wounded six others at her small Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin.

00:00:29.000 It shows that she had a turbulent home life, according to court records.

00:00:32.000 Her parents divorced and remarried multiple times.

00:00:35.000 She had been enrolled in therapy.

00:00:37.000 The Madison Police Chief Sean Barnes said at a Tuesday news conference there are always signs of a school shooting before it occurred.

00:00:43.000 This teen is just one of nine female school shooters in the last 25 years, according to a database maintained by the Washington Post.

00:00:49.000 She's also among the younger recent suspects in a crime like this.

00:00:55.000 The parents did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

00:00:59.000 Her father, the suspect's father, is a Christian who often shared pictures of his dogs and his daughter according to a review of his Facebook profile.

00:01:06.000 The Washington Post confirmed the account as her father's by verifying its authenticity with the person who attended the school with him and by comparing the page's contents to public records.

00:01:15.000 But there's one post from August that has attracted more scrutiny than others, in that a photo appears to show the suspect wielding a gun and taking aim at a firing range.

00:01:23.000 So obviously this means that the left is going to focus in on gun control as the chief issue here.

00:01:29.000 But it seems to me that there is a bigger issue here, and that is family turmoil.

00:01:34.000 I know these are the issues that we are not supposed to discuss in American life.

00:01:37.000 We are supposed to believe in these sort of libertarian social ethos that says that when parents have a child and they break up for their own well-being and for the preservation of their own happiness, that this has no impact on children whatsoever.

00:01:51.000 And this has been a lie since it started to be told in the 1950s and 60s in the United States.

00:01:56.000 The divorce rate in those days?

00:01:58.000 Significantly lower, obviously, than the divorce rate today.

00:02:00.000 The divorce rate today in the United States, about half of all marriages end in divorce.

00:02:03.000 That does not mean that half of all married people end up divorced.

00:02:07.000 Divorce and remarry multiple times.

00:02:10.000 However, according to the Washington Post's review of court records, the suspect's parents first married in 2011, about two years after she was born.

00:02:17.000 By the way, this is always a bad predictor of exactly how long a marriage is going to last.

00:02:22.000 Living together before marriage, all social science demonstrates, is a very, very bad idea because it shows that people were not willing to make the commitment before they had a child, before they got married.

00:02:35.000 Marriage should be the predicate to sleeping together and then having children. 0.91

00:02:40.000 I know these are old-fashioned ideas, but they existed for a reason.

00:02:42.000 And I think that what we are now experiencing in the West is a new understanding that maybe the old ideas, those things that we didn't understand and so we just uprooted them, many of those things were there for a reason.

00:02:53.000 Many of those social institutions existed the way they did for a reason.

00:02:56.000 Maybe, for example, the focus on not sleeping together until you were married.

00:03:01.000 That focus, which was a focus for all of the West, and indeed most civilizations, for all of human history, maybe that was actually a smart idea because it channeled these sexual passions into family building.

00:03:12.000 It meant that a man, for example, had to give up his wayward ways and make a commitment to a woman before getting one of the things that he wanted out of the relationship with the woman.

00:03:22.000 And it meant that a woman would have to be pretty discriminating about just who she chose to have sex with because it might result in a child. 0.66

00:03:30.000 Again, that was not an evil of the system.

00:03:33.000 Maybe that was a good of the system.

00:03:34.000 Because it turns out the opposite has been quite bad for the West in general.

00:03:38.000 And that means declining birth rates.

00:03:40.000 I mean, unhappy families.

00:03:41.000 I mean, broken families.

00:03:42.000 All of that has not exactly been a boon to the West as a general matter.

00:03:46.000 Despite all of the left's promises that a libertarian sexual ethos would make everybody happier, there's literally zero evidence that this is the case.

00:03:53.000 Zero.

00:03:54.000 Not some.

00:03:55.000 The general happiness surveys across the West have been showing a radical decline since the 1970s, particularly among women who are supposed to be the people most liberated by the new sexual ethos.

00:03:55.000 Zero.

00:04:06.000 In this particular case, the mother of the shooter had been previously married and divorced.

00:04:10.000 She had another daughter with a different man to whom she was never married.

00:04:14.000 Court records indicate that this girl had other permanent legal guardians.

00:04:20.000 So the suspect's parents divorced for the first time in 2014, agreeing to joint legal custody of their shared daughter, but specifying she would live primarily with her mom.

00:04:29.000 The couple then remarried in 2017 and then divorced again in 2020, again agreeing to share custody.

00:04:35.000 But this time, the shooter's time was spent more evenly between them.

00:04:39.000 She would spend two days with dad and two with mom and then three more with dad before reversing the schedule the following week.

00:04:45.000 Then the couple remarried once more.

00:04:49.000 But by April 2021, they were petitioning for a third divorce.

00:04:52.000 The judge granted it, but noted, quote, parties were admonished concerning remarriage.

00:04:56.000 Like, stop doing this.

00:04:58.000 After seeking mediation to determine custody of the suspect, they agreed in July 2022 they would share legal custody, but that the girl would now mostly live with her father.

00:05:06.000 By this time, unsurprisingly, the suspect had been enrolled in therapy, which was supposed to help guide decisions about which parents should spend weekends with, according to records.

00:05:16.000 The custody papers show that the parents were on cordial terms.

00:05:19.000 The parents report a generally positive co-parenting relationship and will continue to communicate with one another by text messages and phone conversations.

00:05:27.000 Let's be real about that.

00:05:29.000 That is not a thing.

00:05:30.000 It doesn't matter if mommy and daddy get along when they're not living together.

00:05:34.000 The thing that matters is the impact on the child.

00:05:36.000 And this is what happens when you substitute the actual value of marriage For a sort of transitory perception of passion and romance.

00:05:46.000 Marriage is not, in fact, built predominantly on feelings.

00:05:50.000 It is predominantly built on duty.

00:05:53.000 And I know this is a strange idea to so many people who are living in the postmodern West.

00:06:00.000 But again, the reality of the world is that marriage was built on commitment.

00:06:04.000 Marriage itself is an institution that requires fealty to the institution, not merely to the other person who is part of the institution.

00:06:11.000 This bizarre notion that marriage was supposed to be about sort of the formalization of romantic love, as opposed to a shared value system that was capable of building the next generation?

00:06:22.000 That is a wrong idea.

00:06:24.000 And it has been a mistake for the West to embrace that idea.

00:06:27.000 It doesn't mean romance isn't a part of marriage.

00:06:28.000 Of course, romance is an enormous part of marriage.

00:06:32.000 But it is not the chiefly important part of marriage.

00:06:34.000 When children become secondary as opposed to the primary purpose, not only is marriage defeated, the children are defeated.

00:06:42.000 Again, I don't know when this idea took hold in the West.

00:06:47.000 It started to take hold probably during the Romantic period in the 19th century.

00:06:50.000 But it turns out that human biology sort of thwarted the plans of romantic love to overcome the institution of marriage.

00:06:55.000 The institution, like all institutions built by civilization, were built by human beings in order to channel human passions.

00:07:03.000 And then they were made sacred by human beings or by nature's God in order, again, to civilize the passions of human beings.

00:07:11.000 Human beings have all sorts of passions and we build entire civilizations in order to channel those passions in positive directions.

00:07:17.000 Obviously, one of the most fervent passions that people have, the most important passions they have, is the passion for sexual relationships.

00:07:24.000 It's very powerful.

00:07:25.000 It can also be incredibly destructive.

00:07:27.000 This is why marriage is such an important institution.

00:07:30.000 Channeling that institution toward the production and rearing of children as opposed to simply leaving little boys and girls all over the landscape without proper mothers and fathers in functioning households.

00:07:41.000 By the way, treating women like trash in a sort of free love system, which is how women currently feel. 1.00

00:07:48.000 They feel they are treated like trash by men.

00:07:51.000 And many of the men who are looking at the system say, well, hold up, we're a consensual system, so what's the problem?

00:07:56.000 The answer is that the consent that women are typically looking for is not merely sexual consent.

00:08:01.000 It is a consent to a long-term relationship that is meaningful, spiritual, and purposeful.

00:08:07.000 And when you have a society that lacks all of these things, what you end up with is tremendous human suffering, true human suffering.

00:08:15.000 And so these sort of free divorce situations Easy living.

00:08:19.000 Get back together.

00:08:20.000 Break up.

00:08:21.000 Get back together.

00:08:21.000 Break up.

00:08:22.000 Find new partners.

00:08:23.000 And the kids will just be fine because, you know, kids can take it.

00:08:26.000 No, you can take it.

00:08:27.000 You're the adult.

00:08:28.000 You're the adult.

00:08:30.000 Is this the parent's fault?

00:08:31.000 Well, given the fact that they were living the way they lived, it certainly is not not their fault.

00:08:37.000 If you treat your children like a bizarre form of chattel, shuttling them between parent and parent because you want to live your best life, guess what?

00:08:46.000 Once you have kids, you are no longer first priority.

00:08:48.000 You're not even second priority.

00:08:50.000 You're now third priority.

00:08:51.000 As a father, first priority goes kids, and then my wife, and then myself, maybe.

00:08:59.000 But I may come further down on the list than that.

00:09:03.000 Because when you build a family, it is all about the next generation.

00:09:05.000 And when we forget that, it is a serious problem.

00:09:09.000 Now, we won't have these types of conversations about this particular school shooting or the school shooter.

00:09:15.000 We won't have the conversation that suggests, for example, a heavy connection between children of divorce and tremendous acts of violence.

00:09:23.000 It turns out that a disproportionate number of people who go and commit acts like this are children of broken homes.

00:09:32.000 And it turns out that a disproportionate number of people who commit violent crimes are actually products of homes that are not intact.

00:09:39.000 Again, longstanding social science data to back all of this.

00:09:42.000 Delinquency, for example, is radically increased when there's no father in the home.

00:09:48.000 Crime, radically increased.

00:09:49.000 Teenage pregnancy, radically increased.

00:09:52.000 This is what happens when, as a society, you decide that it is very important to disengage from the institutions of civilization that channel the passions and instead just humor those passions and let everything else be left by the wayside.

00:10:07.000 These are the conversations that need to be had.

00:10:09.000 And I think that these are the conversations that are, in fact, beginning to be had.

00:10:13.000 I think the American people are ready for a conversation, a serious conversation about what the good life looks like.

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00:12:27.000 There's a lot of talk in politics these days about the common good.

00:12:30.000 What do we all hold together?

00:12:31.000 What are the sacred things?

00:12:33.000 What are the things that ought to be put beyond political debate?

00:12:35.000 The thing that used to be certainly beyond political debate for pretty much everybody was the idea that family comes first.

00:12:41.000 That family is the most important thing.

00:12:43.000 It is the most important social institution.

00:12:46.000 That has now been put to the side.

00:12:48.000 And the results have been quite terrible.

00:12:51.000 I've mentioned him before, but the sociologist and philosopher Robert Nisbet, he wrote a great book called The Twilight of Authority.

00:12:55.000 This is back, I believe, in the 1950s.

00:12:57.000 And in it, he talks about the importance of these social institutions and what happens when you break them down.

00:13:01.000 And here's what he writes.

00:13:02.000 He says, The stem family, LaPlay found, among the Jews, ancient Greeks, pre-imperial Romans, and most of the European peoples prior to the advent of the national state and its increasingly atomizing effect upon kindred, clan, and household.

00:13:25.000 It was a type of family, LaPlay observed, that combined communality and opportunity for individual expression in a way that avoided the corporatism of the ancient patriarchal type of family on the one hand and the egoistic particularism of modernity on the other.

00:13:37.000 So the stem family respected individuals within the family so long as they all...

00:13:43.000 Abided by the rules.

00:13:45.000 And that was different from sort of the ancient patriarchal family, where everybody just worked for the patriarch, or from the radical individualism of modernity.

00:13:53.000 LaPlay thought revival of the family, for purposes of both mutual aid and individual enterprise in all spheres, the sovereign need of a Western Europe that was fast becoming straightjacketed by national centralization and bureaucracy.

00:14:03.000 Every great age and every great people LaPlay discovered is characterized at bottom by the strength of the kinship principle.

00:14:09.000 We can, he argued, use the family as an almost infallible touchstone of the material and cultural prosperity of a people.

00:14:14.000 When the family is strong, closely linked with private property, treated as the essential context of education in society, and in sanctity recognized by law and custom, the probability is extremely high that we shall find the rest of the social order characterized by that subtle but puissant fusion of stability and individual mobility, which the probability is extremely high that we shall find the rest of the social order characterized

00:14:34.000 I believe that by common assent, the Greeks, Jews, and Chinese are the three most creative peoples in history of whom we have substantial record, observing all of these people, especially during periods of their greatest creative fertility, the immense strength of the family tie.

00:14:46.000 Family yet remains the greatest single element of a creative culture that is so far as social contexts are concerned.

00:14:51.000 So what exactly does that family look like?

00:14:53.000 What does marriage look like?

00:14:54.000 As Nisbet says, let us have no nonsense about love and unremitting devotion, among the most evanescent and rare qualities surely in the total picture of the family that history reveals.

00:15:02.000 For paradoxical as it may seem, it is not love, least of all sexual passion, that the family has been built around historically, but rather duty and obligation.

00:15:11.000 These are words that have fallen out of favor.

00:15:13.000 Duty and obligation.

00:15:14.000 But liberty springs from duty and obligation because you know that if your family owes a duty to you and you owe duties to your family, then you are free to do so many things.

00:15:23.000 You are free to fly because you know that you have a support system in your family.

00:15:28.000 And you are purposeful because you have a duty to actually act on behalf of your family.

00:15:35.000 And when those things are deprived of children, when those things go away, disaster occurs.

00:15:41.000 Now again, people want to look at the sort of surface level arguments when it comes to terrible events like what happened in Wisconsin.

00:15:48.000 Oh, what do we do to get rid of guns?

00:15:50.000 Okay, the reality is in this particular case, the suspect used a handgun, not a long gun, and obtained the gun presumably illegally because she was 15. Gun laws ain't going to fix that.

00:16:01.000 Some people are going to want to look at mental illness.

00:16:03.000 Okay, well, maybe this is a mental illness problem, or maybe, in fact, this is something much deeper and much more problematic.

00:16:09.000 And this is the most spectacular symptom of a far graver disease that has afflicted the body politic, and again, is responsible for a wide variety of symptoms, from low fertility rates to high divorce rates to lack of social mobility.

00:16:21.000 It turns out that social mobility is very much attached to your ability generation on generation to make lives better within your family.

00:16:29.000 My grandparents did better than my great grandparents.

00:16:31.000 My parents did better than my grandparents.

00:16:32.000 And my family is doing better than my parents.

00:16:34.000 That is perfectly normal in the context of a stable familial situation.

00:16:39.000 It is not normal in broken situations.

00:16:41.000 Now, again, that is not a rip on people who have gotten divorced.

00:16:45.000 This is not a rip on people who have made mistakes, had children out of wedlock.

00:16:48.000 This is not a rip on those people.

00:16:50.000 It is a recommendation that society must have a standard, uphold the standard, and forward that standard in order to have more of the thing.

00:16:57.000 If you want more of a thing, you have to subsidize it.

00:16:59.000 You have to talk about its importance.

00:17:00.000 You have to culturally prop it up.

00:17:03.000 Marriage doesn't exist in a vacuum.

00:17:05.000 As an institution, it requires societal approval and support.

00:17:09.000 And as those supports are removed, everything collapses.

00:17:12.000 And that is what you're watching right now.

00:17:13.000 Now, again, I think that we are in the middle of what could be a cultural renaissance.

00:17:17.000 The reason I say that is because I think the American people are tired of all this.

00:17:20.000 I think that the libertarian sexual ethos that has been basically the only promise kept by the Democrats in the 1960s.

00:17:27.000 So the Democrats in the 1960s promised that a gigantic, overweening, bureaucratic, centralized government Sure, it was going to control huge elements of your life.

00:17:36.000 Sure, it was going to cost oodles of money.

00:17:37.000 Sure, it was going to completely rejigger the entire social relation between people and the government.

00:17:44.000 But what you would get in compensation for all of those things, for economic stagnation, for higher crime rates, for worse poverty, what you were going to get in compensation for bigger government interventionism was that you'd be able to have sex with whomever you wanted without any sort of consequence.

00:18:00.000 And it turns out that was a bad promise.

00:18:02.000 It was true you could do that, but it turns out that is not what human beings are built for.

00:18:06.000 They are not built for that thing.

00:18:09.000 That thing does not make people happy.

00:18:11.000 And what people really are yearning for is the same thing that people have always yearned for.

00:18:15.000 That kinship principle.

00:18:17.000 To be with their family, in their home, to raise their children so that their children will have healthy children.

00:18:23.000 To be able to build familial wealth over the course of generations.

00:18:26.000 To be able to sit on the porch when you're 80 years old with your grandkids playing in the yard, knowing that you've lived a good, dutiful, purposeful life and that you will continue to give a contribution to future generations.

00:18:38.000 That is the thing that people actually, actually want.

00:18:44.000 I think that's starting to go away.

00:18:49.000 And I think the symptoms of, again, this cultural renaissance are being felt everywhere.

00:18:53.000 First, in kind of small sprigs of growth.

00:18:56.000 So to take what appears to be a perfectly anodyne example.

00:19:01.000 Disney is now pulling a transgender storyline from its new series, Win or Lose.

00:19:05.000 Now again, very small kind of sprig of grass coming up through the snow here.

00:19:09.000 But it is indicative of the change in social winds in the United States.

00:19:14.000 People are done with this.

00:19:16.000 People are done with left-wing social policy, which suggests that the key element of being a human being is how you feel about your own gender, sexuality, or who you want to screw.

00:19:25.000 And they certainly don't want that taught to their kids.

00:19:28.000 And here's the reality.

00:19:29.000 All the arguments that are currently being had about kids will be had about adults and they should be had about adults because many of the arguments that are had with regard to, say, transgendering the children Those are arguments really not just about what children should be forced to undergo by their parents or by perverse doctors.

00:19:50.000 The real underlying argument to all this is that transgender medicine, for example, is wrong and bad for human beings. 0.83

00:19:57.000 And even for adults who have gender dysphoria, this is not a solution to their problems.

00:20:01.000 And again, consent is not the end of the story.

00:20:04.000 If I consent to have my arm cut off, that does not mean that a doctor should cut my arm off.

00:20:08.000 And if someone consents to have their penis cut off, that should not be a consent that actually measures.

00:20:15.000 And the attempt to sort of relegate that conversation to the kids is an easy political win.

00:20:19.000 But that's not the real conversation that needs to be had.

00:20:22.000 The real conversation that needs to be had in a lot of these social spheres is what we think is good more generally.

00:20:27.000 Again, that's not that's going to differ across the country.

00:20:29.000 That doesn't mean the federal government ought to be involved in everything.

00:20:32.000 In a very diverse country with a lot of different viewpoints, presumably California is going to be ruled and reigned differently than Florida or Alabama or Mississippi or even New York.

00:20:42.000 However, there is a wind of change that is blowing.

00:20:45.000 According to the New York Times, Pixar, a division of Walt Disney Studios, removed a transgender storyline from its animated series Win or Lose, which is set to start streaming in February.

00:20:53.000 The series follows a middle school co-ed softball team in the week leading up to the championship game.

00:20:57.000 Each episode is told from the perspective of a different character.

00:20:59.000 The character will remain in the show, Disney said, but a few lines of dialogue focused on her gender, a plot point that appeared near the end of the eight-episode series, have been edited out.

00:21:07.000 Disney put out a statement, quote, When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timelines.

00:21:17.000 Okay, that is a good start.

00:21:19.000 As we know from Chris Rufo's excellent reporting, Disney itself, the highest levels of the animation studio particularly, have been very much involved in mainlining a bunch of LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign ideology into kids programming.

00:21:33.000 Because it is in fact a recruitment mechanism for an ideology.

00:21:36.000 That is what it is for.

00:21:37.000 And now, Disney is realizing that that is a loser.

00:21:40.000 Parents don't want their kids taught this stuff.

00:21:43.000 Parents do not want their kids taught this stuff.

00:21:45.000 But I think this is part of a broader cultural revelation that maybe, maybe, a system of thought that puts your own sexual desire at the center of your being as the only thing that matters.

00:21:55.000 I'm not even talking about sexual orientation here.

00:21:58.000 I'm just saying that anything that suggests that the sexual passions are the chief motivation in life that matters.

00:22:04.000 And satisfying those feelings should be the purpose of your life is insufficient to build a civilization and is bad for the community at large.

00:22:12.000 And by the way, is largely bad for individuals as well.

00:22:16.000 That, I think, is coming to fruition right now.

00:22:18.000 And I think you're seeing that in Disney backing off of all of this.

00:22:21.000 Because Disney is beginning to realize that the American people are not in favor of this sort of radicalism.

00:22:26.000 That the bargain that the left has been trying to draw since the 1960s, that substitutes individual sexual libertarianism in favor of a family ethos, has been a failure.

00:22:36.000 And people are feeling that failure.

00:22:38.000 The American people are not in favor of this sort of radical leftism.

00:22:41.000 Because the radical left is disconnected from reality.

00:22:43.000 One of those disconnect?

00:22:43.000 The radical left does not understand the profound unshakable bond between the Christian and Jewish communities in the United States.

00:22:48.000 While the secular left pushes their anti-religious agenda, Christians and Jews have stood together defending our shared values and religious liberties.

00:22:55.000 That's why I'm proud to partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

00:22:58.000 For over 40 years, they've been doing something remarkable, building bridges between our communities through faith, shared values, and mutual respect.

00:23:04.000 And the fellowship doesn't just talk, they act.

00:23:06.000 Right now, they're on the ground providing real help to vulnerable Jewish families and elderly around the globe.

00:23:10.000 We're talking about food, medical care, emergency assistance, and security to people who need it most.

00:23:14.000 I can tell you, this organization represents exactly what makes our alliance so powerful.

00:23:18.000 It's about Christians and Jews coming together to do what our faith's command, helping those in need.

00:23:22.000 If you want to be part of this amazing mission, visit benforthefellowship.org.

00:23:26.000 That is benforthefellowship.org.

00:23:28.000 Your support makes a real difference in people's lives.

00:23:30.000 Tons of people still suffering over in the Holy Land.

00:23:33.000 People who are living in Hotels still because they haven't been able to go back home.

00:23:36.000 People whose family members have been wounded during this war.

00:23:39.000 People whose family members have been killed.

00:23:40.000 Head on over to benforthefellowship.org to help support them.

00:23:44.000 Benforthefellowship.org.

00:23:45.000 God bless and thank you.

00:23:47.000 Also, this Christmas, as we celebrate the gift of life, you have an opportunity to share that same gift with a mother and her baby.

00:23:51.000 Imagine a young woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, feeling alone and unsure of what to do.

00:23:55.000 She's searching for hope.

00:23:56.000 This is where pre-born ministries comes in.

00:23:58.000 When Valeria found out she was pregnant, she was beyond terrified.

00:24:01.000 She'd often dreamt of being a young mom, but as a Christian and single, she now felt overwhelmed by shame and was seriously considering abortion.

00:24:06.000 Valeria began the search for an abortion. 1.00

00:24:08.000 It was upon that search, she called a nurse at a pre-born at Network Clinic who walked her through her options, including the true reality of ending a baby's life with the abortion pill.

00:24:15.000 When she heard that, She knew she couldn't end her child's life.

00:24:18.000 Valeria chose life. 0.90

00:24:19.000 Now she has a beautiful little girl.

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00:24:35.000 So donate.

00:24:36.000 Dial pound 250, say baby.

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00:24:40.000 Or visit preborn.com slash ben.

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00:24:45.000 preborn.com slash ben.

00:24:47.000 Now, over in Canada, Pierre Polyev, who is going to be the Prime Minister of Canada, he's a tremendous politician, member of the Conservative Party in Canada.

00:24:55.000 They're just awaiting a new election.

00:24:57.000 As we discussed yesterday on the program, the reality is that when it comes to Canada, Justin Trudeau is in almost the single digits in terms of approval rating.

00:25:06.000 He is going to resign at some point.

00:25:08.000 The only question is whether that is going to trigger a new election.

00:25:11.000 Poliev, if the election were held today, would easily be prime minister, probably with the largest conservative majority of any Western country right now.

00:25:18.000 There's a reason for that.

00:25:19.000 And the reason for that is because he is speaking in precisely these terms.

00:25:22.000 That the dream is family, house, dog, being able to earn, make sure that your kids have more wealth than your parents gave you.

00:25:31.000 These are the dreams.

00:25:32.000 Whether it's the Canadian dream or the American dream, that's the dream.

00:25:35.000 That's the thing people are seeking.

00:25:37.000 That is a very different dream from I get to screw whoever I want without any consequence and society needs to pay for it.

00:25:41.000 That is not the dream.

00:25:42.000 That was never the Canadian dream.

00:25:43.000 That was never the American dream.

00:25:44.000 That was never the Western dream.

00:25:46.000 And in fact, those two dreams are in direct opposition to one another.

00:25:49.000 And that is not an argument for government regulation of personal sexual relationships, for example.

00:25:54.000 Maybe it is on a local level, but it is certainly not on a sort of broad level.

00:25:58.000 But as a matter of morality and societal directionality, The direction needs to be directed toward family and away from radical sexual individualism as the ethos.

00:26:11.000 Here's Pierre Polyev.

00:26:13.000 I met another guy at the Le Brat Brewery a few days ago, and you can watch the video of me talking with him.

00:26:19.000 He walked up to me and he said, I have three jobs and I can't make it.

00:26:23.000 We're renting.

00:26:24.000 We have no hope.

00:26:25.000 We've given up on ever owning a home.

00:26:26.000 We're renting.

00:26:27.000 We can barely make it.

00:26:28.000 And he said to me, I feel ashamed when I talk to my kids.

00:26:34.000 Because they ask me why I'm never around.

00:26:36.000 And why we can never have a house.

00:26:38.000 And I feel like a failure.

00:26:41.000 But he didn't fail.

00:26:43.000 He has been failed.

00:26:46.000 He has been robbed of the promise of Canada.

00:26:51.000 It was a very simple promise.

00:26:53.000 That if you worked hard, you got a good life.

00:26:57.000 Now, it wasn't fancy or extravagant, but you got a house with a yard where you could have kids playing safely, and you could have a nice dog that you could afford to feed along with the kids, and your kids could play safely in the streets.

00:27:13.000 That was the promise.

00:27:15.000 Now, politicians break promises all the time, but you know what was bad about this promise?

00:27:20.000 This promise didn't belong to this prime minister.

00:27:25.000 It wasn't his promise to break.

00:27:27.000 Yeah, it belonged to all of us.

00:27:30.000 And that is exactly right.

00:27:32.000 Now, you could hear that same speech coming out of the mouth of somebody to the left.

00:27:36.000 But people on the left will then say it's the government's job to provide you the house, the dog and the wealth.

00:27:41.000 And you have no obligations.

00:27:42.000 That's not what Poliova is saying.

00:27:43.000 He is saying that the dream is that if you act responsibly and dutifully, you will get ahead in the West.

00:27:50.000 And that is the dream.

00:27:52.000 And here's the thing.

00:27:53.000 All you have to do is unchain the people.

00:27:55.000 That's all you have to do.

00:27:56.000 All you have to do is encourage them to act in a socially responsible fashion, to actually build families.

00:28:02.000 And all this sort of bizarre anti-woman hatred that you see from a reactionary right online sometimes that says, well, you know, what do you owe to women?

00:28:10.000 The answer that men owe to women is you owe it to them to be good husbands and good fathers. 0.77

00:28:15.000 And that is a direct response to the radical insanity of the radical left, which suggests what do women owe to men?

00:28:22.000 They owe it to men to be good wives and good mothers. 0.77

00:28:26.000 These things are owed to one another.

00:28:27.000 And on the basis of those mutual duties, you build a family.

00:28:32.000 On the basis of those families, you build an entire civilization.

00:28:36.000 All that has to be done once you have family structures that are actually intact is let them alone to thrive.

00:28:42.000 Leave them alone.

00:28:43.000 Let them actually do the things that families do.

00:28:46.000 Take care of one another.

00:28:47.000 There's a lot of statistics demonstrating that when men get married, they start to earn more.

00:28:51.000 When they have kids, they start to earn even more.

00:28:53.000 Because they feel a greater duty to go and work because now they're doing it on behalf of something that matters and is meaningful.

00:28:53.000 Why?

00:29:00.000 What are the things in our society that matter and are meaningful?

00:29:03.000 Well, it feels like for a long time, The answer is not much.

00:29:07.000 For a long time in the United States, because we are very rich and we're very privileged, and because God blessed us with borders that are two oceans, Mexicans and Canadians, and an incredibly rich continent that provides all of our needs, that because of all of that, the duties can sort of be put off to the side.

00:29:23.000 And all we need are our rights.

00:29:24.000 But the reality is the duties and the rights are two sides of the same exact coin.

00:29:29.000 You have a right to go and earn because you are earning on behalf of your family.

00:29:35.000 You have a right to go out and thrive, and in fact a duty to go out and thrive, because you're doing so on behalf of your family and your community and your civilization.

00:29:44.000 All that has to be done, guarantee private property rights, forward the family, forward the community.

00:29:49.000 These are not particularly difficult things to do.

00:29:52.000 Canada has done them wrong.

00:29:53.000 Why?

00:29:54.000 Well, because even if you suggest the sort of naive suggestion that many members of the left and the right actually want the same thing.

00:30:00.000 They want the families with the dog and the house and the kids. 0.87

00:30:03.000 I don't think that's true anymore, but let's assume that that's the baseline.

00:30:06.000 The problem with left-wing solutions to this problem or interventionist government solutions to this problem, once the government starts to intervene, once the government starts to sign the checks, once the government starts to substitute for the actual function that family was supposed to perform, families wither and die.

00:30:21.000 The intermediate social institutions provided by things like church that actually instilled community and rules and excellent social attributes on people, those go away.

00:30:33.000 So to take a quick example, when it comes to the government and churches.

00:30:36.000 So it used to be that if you had a problem in your life, so you lost your job, if you're a member of a church, then the church would help take care of you.

00:30:45.000 This is still true, by the way, in a lot of religious communities.

00:30:48.000 It's true in my religious community.

00:30:48.000 If somebody in our community loses a job, the first thing that happens, there's now a meal train.

00:30:52.000 That meal train is set up to make sure that the kids and the family are fed.

00:30:57.000 The next thing that happens, everybody starts passing around the resume.

00:30:59.000 Do we know a job for this person?

00:31:01.000 If we don't know a job for this person, can we create a job for this person so they can support their own family?

00:31:06.000 Because the highest form of charity in Jewish faith, I would assume in other faiths as well, is giving somebody a job.

00:31:11.000 So, go out and find them a job.

00:31:13.000 In the meantime, in order for that person to receive, they know they're receiving from people that they are neighbors with.

00:31:19.000 And they don't feel amazing about that because it turns out that receiving charity is not, in fact, a wonderful thing for the person who's the recipient.

00:31:26.000 Very often, it's very difficult.

00:31:28.000 And it should be difficult.

00:31:29.000 Not in the sense that it should be hard to get.

00:31:31.000 It should be difficult emotionally.

00:31:33.000 And it is for most people.

00:31:35.000 Because you know that you're taking from somebody else and you don't want to be doing that.

00:31:39.000 And so you feel you owe it back to the community to actually do the hard work, to go out and look for a job, for example, to live by the rules of the community.

00:31:45.000 The duties and the entitlements are two sides of the same exact coin when it comes to, for example, a church or synagogue community that is thriving.

00:31:53.000 When the government steps in and just starts signing checks, the entitlements remain, but the duties disappear.

00:31:58.000 And so what you end up with is an entitled people.

00:32:00.000 And it breaks apart families.

00:32:02.000 It makes things worse.

00:32:03.000 That's the story of the welfare state created in the United States since the 1960s.

00:32:07.000 It is not a coincidence that the populations most likely to receive welfare are also the populations with the highest levels of family dysfunction and family breakup.

00:32:15.000 That's not a coincidence at all.

00:32:16.000 Because again, the government is substituting itself for a functioning system that was not created particularly by man.

00:32:23.000 It was an evolutionary system evolved and then instituted by God, if you're a religious person, in order to form a functional civilization.

00:32:33.000 So Empoliev is talking about the dream.

00:32:35.000 The dream can only be accomplished.

00:32:37.000 By families allowed to live free, to keep their property, to live without the heavy hand of government dictating every aspect of how they raise their children, thriving communities that are allowed to make moves together communally.

00:32:50.000 These are the things that matter.

00:32:52.000 And when the government starts to inject itself, bad things happen.

00:32:57.000 By the way, this is true across the board.

00:32:59.000 There's been a lot of debate, for example, in the United States over the healthcare system, right?

00:33:03.000 How do you take care of the people who are unhealthy?

00:33:05.000 So again, the old style for most of human history was your family took care of you, your community took care of you.

00:33:11.000 When somebody got sick, if somebody didn't have the money, they'd go out and they'd go to their community members, and those community members would do their best to help out.

00:33:18.000 Now we scoff at that.

00:33:20.000 No, no, no.

00:33:21.000 That's what government is for.

00:33:22.000 The problem is government can't do the job.

00:33:24.000 Government is not capable of doing that job.

00:33:26.000 As Exhibit A, I present to you Canada.

00:33:29.000 So Canada, which is something that the left in the United States, the Canadian healthcare system, which is effectively a national healthcare system like Great Britain, It's got some problems.

00:33:37.000 Here's a story out of Manitoba today.

00:33:39.000 "A Manitoba woman had her right leg amputated after complications following a knee replacement surgery two months earlier.

00:33:46.000 Roseanne Milburn, 61, went ahead with the scheduled amputation last Friday after weeks of complications stemming from post-surgery infection.

00:33:53.000 In late November, a surgeon at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Center began removing dead tissue from her right knee with the intention of stitching her up later that day after she was seen by an orthopedic surgeon at Concordia Hospital.

00:34:02.000 She was sent to Concordia.

00:34:03.000 She couldn't be transferred back to HSC because there wasn't a bed available for the specialist to finish the procedure.

00:34:08.000 Instead, she spent eight days languishing at Concordia with a painful open wound.

00:34:13.000 Once she finally got to HSC, Milburn went under the knife for another infection.

00:34:16.000 Due to the long delay in stitching up the wound, she said her leg was not salvageable.

00:34:21.000 Sherrod Health, the entity that oversees healthcare delivery in Manitoba, that'd be a government entity, said last week it was up to Milburn to choose a preferred treatment option.

00:34:28.000 She stressed in interviews with CBC News, the other choice involving multiple surgeries and the chance her leg would still be amputated didn't make sense.

00:34:35.000 So in other words, they opened up her leg because of the shortages in the healthcare system in Canada.

00:34:40.000 She sat there for eight days without sewing it up and then they had to amputate her leg.

00:34:46.000 Government also is not good at even the things that it promises to be good at.

00:34:50.000 We need more evolved systems of human interaction.

00:34:55.000 Historically evolved systems.

00:34:58.000 Marriage, church, community, the intermediate institutions of society that make it work.

00:35:04.000 And I think it's about time for us to get back to all those things.

00:35:06.000 And I think that's part of what's happening in the West.

00:35:08.000 Those things are fragile, and once they're broken, it's very hard to put them back together.

00:35:11.000 But they do have to be put back together.

00:35:13.000 Alrighty, in just one moment, we'll get to Joe Biden heading for the exits.

00:35:17.000 First, at The Daily Wire, when we say, join us in the fight, these are not empty words.

00:35:19.000 These are real battles that affect the lives of every American every day.

00:35:22.000 We took the Biden administration's unconstitutional VAX mandate straight to the Supreme Court, and we won.

00:35:27.000 The groundbreaking documentary, What Is Woman?, changed the national conversation forever.

00:35:31.000 A major part of that fight is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.

00:35:33.000 Then we took on the box office with Am I Racist?

00:35:35.000 And Americans showed up in record numbers, making it the number one documentary of the decade, despite Hollywood pretending it doesn't exist.

00:35:41.000 At The Daily Wire, we fight the left and we build the future and we need you to help us.

00:35:46.000 Every dollar you invest goes directly back into these battles.

00:35:48.000 Join Daily Wire Plus today or give the gift of Daily Wire Plus this Christmas for 40% off.

00:35:53.000 Head on over to dailywire.com right now.

00:35:56.000 Meanwhile, the American Democratic Party is searching for answers in the aftermath of a shellacking at the voting booth.

00:36:02.000 Joe Biden is now heading for the exit.

00:36:04.000 I mean, that's not a shock because, again, he's been absent for pretty much, what, since June, July?

00:36:09.000 He's just been gone.

00:36:10.000 The fact that he's still the acting president of the United States is a disgrace.

00:36:13.000 It's a disgrace to the country.

00:36:15.000 The fact that Democrats have left him in office knowing that he is full-scale senile is insane.

00:36:20.000 And it's one of the reasons, by the way, why the American people don't trust the Democrats.

00:36:23.000 Whenever Democrats say Donald Trump is telling the biggest lies, you guys are still telling the lie that Joe Biden is capable of being president.

00:36:29.000 You're still telling that lie after you took him out of his own nomination.

00:36:32.000 It's unbelievable.

00:36:34.000 According to the New York Times, this is the twilight of Mr. Biden's presidency, the final days of the final chapter of an epic But it's hard to imagine that he seriously thought he could do the world's most stressful job for another four years.

00:37:00.000 It's funny the New York Times will now say this.

00:37:02.000 For a while, it was like, no, how dare you say this?

00:37:05.000 How dare you?

00:37:06.000 That does not make it any easier as Mr. Biden heads toward the exit.

00:37:09.000 Nothing that has happened since he was forced to drop out of the race in July has made that decision look wrong.

00:37:13.000 Yet Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris has been interpreted as a repudiation of Mr. Biden.

00:37:18.000 It's stung.

00:37:19.000 It still stings.

00:37:20.000 But unlike Mr. Trump four years ago, this president accepts that.

00:37:23.000 Oh, he's a hero.

00:37:24.000 He's a hero, according to the New York Times.

00:37:26.000 Determined to finish on a high note and shape his legacy as a consequential president, Mr. Biden wants to sprint to the finish line in these final weeks, as his chief of staff, Jeff Zients, put it.

00:37:34.000 He's checking a few last boxes on his presidential bucket list.

00:37:37.000 Angola?

00:37:37.000 Check.

00:37:38.000 A visit to the Amazon rainforest?

00:37:39.000 Another presidential first?

00:37:41.000 Check.

00:37:41.000 Wow.

00:37:43.000 That's definitely a presidential first.

00:37:44.000 He visited?

00:37:46.000 The Amazon forest.

00:37:47.000 Good for him.

00:37:48.000 The reason I mention this is because the Democratic Party is searching for a future and they don't appear to have much of one.

00:37:53.000 Kamala Harris says she's still not going to go away, by the way.

00:37:56.000 Kamala Harris, after losing to Donald Trump, after being handed the nomination by her party and a billion and a half dollars in campaign financing, she says she's not going away.

00:38:05.000 She's still wandering the landscape babbling nonsensically.

00:38:08.000 Here she was yesterday in Maryland babbling like a crazy person.

00:38:12.000 The true test of our commitment Is whether in the face of an obstacle, do we throw up our hands?

00:38:24.000 Or do we roll up our sleeves?

00:38:29.000 And as we approach...

00:38:31.000 And I ask you to remember the context in which you exist.

00:38:41.000 Yeah, I did that.

00:38:43.000 Uh-huh.

00:38:47.000 Oh, the crazed laughter.

00:38:49.000 I ask you to remember.

00:38:51.000 It's going to be so pleasant not having to listen to her voice for another four years.

00:38:55.000 Seriously, can you imagine?

00:38:56.000 We didn't just dodge a bullet, by the way.

00:38:58.000 Donald Trump dodged an actual physical bullet.

00:39:00.000 The American people dodged a nuclear missile.

00:39:03.000 In a possible Harris administration.

00:39:05.000 Truly incredible.

00:39:06.000 But the Democrats are still trying to figure out exactly which direction they go.

00:39:10.000 So one of the big problems for the Democrats in the aftermath of the Joe Biden-Kamal Harris combined defeat, because remember, they were both candidates in this election cycle, which is insane.

00:39:19.000 Which way do they go?

00:39:20.000 Or do they try to tack back to the center, recognizing that they've lost the trust of the American people so badly that Donald Trump won re-election in a historic comeback for the ages?

00:39:20.000 Do they split to the left?

00:39:30.000 Well, it appears that some of them would like to avoid tacking all the way to the left.

00:39:35.000 According to Axios, House Democrats on Tuesday elected Representative Jerry Connolly of Virginia as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.

00:39:41.000 According to multiple lawmakers familiar with the matter, Connolly is 74, and he defeated 35-year-old Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, withstanding a generational revolt that saw several of Democrats' septuagenarian committee leaders pushed out of their roles.

00:39:54.000 Ocasio-Cortez also lost a vote for the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on Monday.

00:39:59.000 Connolly defeated AOC 131-84.

00:40:02.000 He had the backing of several veteran lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who stepped into the frame to basically say, I don't want anybody like AOC at the head of the Oversight Committee.

00:40:13.000 The roll came open after current Oversight Ranking Member Jamie Raskin opted to run for the top Democratic spot on the Judiciary Committee.

00:40:20.000 Now, I know they're trying to play Jamie Raskin as though Jamie Raskin is sort of a young gun inside the Democratic Party, but Jamie Raskin is 62 years old, so he is not one of the young guns inside the Democratic Party.

00:40:31.000 So, the reality is that one of the things that the upper echelons of the Democratic Party are trying to avoid is a sort of McGovernite journey into the unknown.

00:40:42.000 Progressives are absolutely beside themselves because they see AOC as the future leader.

00:40:45.000 She, of course, is going to be old enough to run for president in the next election cycle. 1.00

00:40:50.000 Joy Reid was beside herself.

00:40:52.000 Here was Joy, again, the least joyful person ever to be named Joy, angry at the Democratic gerontocracy.

00:40:58.000 What is about this gerontocracy seems like it's intractable.

00:41:02.000 And I recall that when President Obama was elected, he kind of pushed aside the DNC and created his own organization because I think there's a frustration with the sort of creaky way the DNC operates.

00:41:12.000 Jamie, God bless him, couldn't really change it.

00:41:15.000 But it is run by donors and consultants and people who are locked into the old ways of doing things.

00:41:20.000 They want to...

00:41:21.000 Advertise on TV. And look, I'm for TV. Okay, I love TV. We work on TV. But they don't want to do the sort of new world media, right?

00:41:30.000 But that an AOC is so good at.

00:41:34.000 Again, the battle for the Democratic left is very much alive.

00:41:37.000 Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama boy, he says, valuing seniority over political and messaging chops is exactly how Democrats got into this mess in the first place.

00:41:45.000 And so, again, the idea here is that they need to put in place a bunch of wild progressives.

00:41:51.000 So that would include Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow's male doppelganger, who's ripping older Democrats for being unwilling to step aside.

00:42:00.000 It feels like a moment of genuine madness.

00:42:04.000 And look, no one wants to think about their own mortality.

00:42:08.000 I sure as heck don't.

00:42:10.000 There are lots of people who live very long, active lives, well into their 80s, 90s even.

00:42:14.000 John Paul Stevens lived years after he retired from the court at the age of 90. But as a general matter...

00:42:21.000 This is a very risky undertaking for everyone.

00:42:24.000 And Democrats are not taking this issue seriously, despite everything that's happened, but they need to.

00:42:33.000 Again, the Democratic Party, this is going to be a massive internal battle, and it'll be fascinating to see how it plays out over the course of the next few years.

00:42:40.000 Of course, it is going to be replete with intersectional arguments as well.

00:42:44.000 Here is a former Kamala Harris consultant named Delencia Johnson on MSNBC talking about how the party must be led by young females of color. 0.98

00:42:53.000 You know, it's also disappointing that the DNC, like the people that are running to lead the DNC are all white men. 0.66

00:42:58.000 And the thing is, I think about what the voter who was ride or die for Kamala Harris looked like.

00:43:03.000 It looked like the people at this table.

00:43:05.000 It looked like AOC. Latinas voted with her. 0.98

00:43:08.000 It was Latino men.

00:43:10.000 But so the reality is you're not bringing to the table the people who showed you how to win because they voted for her.

00:43:14.000 They were willing to ride with her.

00:43:15.000 You're chasing Republican voters who, no matter what Trump does, are going to vote for Trump.

00:43:20.000 It doesn't matter what he does.

00:43:21.000 Listen, the party should be led, to your point, by young women of color, right?

00:43:25.000 Because young women of color are the reasons that Democrats actually have some of these wins. 1.00

00:43:30.000 And we know how to communicate in ways that reach that more moderate voter, but also that progressive voter, because we talk about the issues that people care about, the kitchen table issues that Democrats like to talk about.

00:43:41.000 But we're able to talk about those issues in an intersectional way that reaches more people.

00:43:46.000 Okay, if you're able to talk in an intersectional way, you're not able to talk about those issues.

00:43:50.000 That's just the reality.

00:43:51.000 Kamala Harris tried this. 1.00

00:43:54.000 Gigantic historic fail.

00:43:55.000 Meanwhile, it's not as though everything is hunky-dory on the other side of the aisle.

00:43:59.000 Lot, a lot of passions being stirred by a debate over a bipartisan deal on Tuesday to keep the government funded through mid-March and provide more than $100 billion in relief to disaster victims and farmers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:44:10.000 But a lot of House Republicans are rightly ticked off at what is just another pork bill.

00:44:15.000 Now, let us be real about these sorts of pork bills.

00:44:18.000 Yes, you can strip out some of the pork.

00:44:20.000 When Donald Trump is president, you'll have a better opportunity to strip out some of the pork.

00:44:23.000 It is also true that sort of this pork barrel rolling is sort of, if you vote for a billion bucks for my constituency, I'll vote for a billion bucks for your constituency.

00:44:32.000 This is the way that things get done in a very closely divided Congress.

00:44:36.000 The reality is that Republicans basically have no votes to spare.

00:44:39.000 They drop two, three votes, and they ain't got a bill.

00:44:42.000 And that's just a reality of the situation.

00:44:45.000 The true systemic spending structure that needs to change is not going to be done by paring around the edges, by cutting a billion bucks here or a billion bucks there.

00:44:53.000 Again, that's not to say that this bill should pass as currently stated.

00:44:56.000 In the best of all possible worlds, I think that the vast majority of the spending would never occur.

00:45:00.000 It also happens to be the case that that's not going to happen.

00:45:03.000 And you know who I've noticed is not actually signing into chat to come out against this bill as of yet is President Trump.

00:45:09.000 President Trump does not want a government shutdown on the table when he comes into office.

00:45:12.000 He would prefer the government be at least funded through March, and then he can do his own deals with Republicans and try to use the power of his bully pulpit to get wavering Republicans to sign on to bills.

00:45:23.000 According to The Wall Street Journal, the legislation was released just days ahead of Friday's deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown while keeping federal operations running for several months.

00:45:30.000 The bipartisan proposal also includes a slew of other measures ranging from funding the rebuilding of Baltimore's collapse of Francis Scott Key Bridge to expanding the sale of ethanol to limiting some investments in China.

00:45:40.000 The proposal would extend current government funding until March 14th, punting until the next Congress decisions on how much money to allocate to each federal agency for the remainder of the fiscal year.

00:45:49.000 Now, again, there is a ton of pork in this thing.

00:45:52.000 It is an almost 1,600-page package that no one is going to read, except for Vivek Ramaswamy, who says he's actually going to read the thing, go through it for pork, which is fantastic.

00:46:01.000 It's why he exists over at Doge.

00:46:02.000 Speaker Johnson has aimed to give members roughly 72 hours to review bills.

00:46:05.000 He said that'd be unlikely this time.

00:46:08.000 And again, there's a lot of Republican heartburn over this, and that Republican heartburn is totally appropriate.

00:46:13.000 It is also worthwhile noticing, as I say, the systemic drivers of America's massive debt are not...

00:46:19.000 Allocations to the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

00:46:22.000 Which again, I don't even think should be federally funded.

00:46:24.000 That is a state bridge.

00:46:26.000 But let's be real about this.

00:46:29.000 This is not where the spending problem generally exists.

00:46:33.000 And we will see just how sanguine Republicans are about big spending when Donald Trump enters office.

00:46:37.000 My guess is pretty sanguine.

00:46:40.000 Speaker Johnson says we're working around the clock to get a continuing resolution done.

00:46:43.000 Again, Donald Trump does not want a government shutdown going into his presidency.

00:46:47.000 He does not.

00:46:49.000 We've been working around the clock to get the CR done.

00:46:52.000 It was intended to be, and it was until recent days, a very simple, very clean CR, a stopgap funding measure to get us into next year when we have unified government under the Republican Party.

00:47:05.000 But a couple of intervening things have occurred.

00:47:08.000 We had, as we say, as we describe them, acts of God.

00:47:11.000 We had these massive hurricanes, as you know, in the late fall.

00:47:14.000 Helene and Milton and other disasters.

00:47:17.000 We have to make sure that the Americans that were devastated by these hurricanes get the relief they need.

00:47:21.000 So we are adding to this a disaster relief package, and that's critically important.

00:47:26.000 Also important is the devastation that is being faced by our farming community.

00:47:32.000 The agriculture sector has really struggled.

00:47:35.000 They've had effectively three lost years, and commodity prices are a bit of a mess, and you've got input costs that are skyrocketed because of biodynamics.

00:47:46.000 You put all those factors together, droughts and all the other conditions, and you have a lot of small family farms and ranches and people who supply the food for the country in dire straits right now.

00:47:55.000 And so Congress recognizes that need, and so we've had to add a little bit to that as well.

00:48:00.000 So what would have been a very skinny, very simple, clean CR has been added.

00:48:06.000 These other pieces have been added to it and a couple of things that are related to all that.

00:48:12.000 I agree with every critique of this bill.

00:48:14.000 Also, the bill is going to have to pass because if you want the government funded, when Donald Trump comes into office, something's going to have to pass.

00:48:21.000 And again, I think that there's a tendency in the commentariat to say, well, nothing should pass.

00:48:26.000 You just shut everything down.

00:48:27.000 The reality is that's not going to happen.

00:48:29.000 The question is...

00:48:31.000 What is the strategy here?

00:48:32.000 If the strategy is longer term cuts that actually mean something, you need to get to the Trump era in one piece.

00:48:38.000 We're not quite there.

00:48:40.000 We still have about a month until Donald Trump takes office.

00:48:43.000 And that's when things are going to really start to change.

00:48:46.000 Because right now, if Republicans just pass a bill with a Democratic Senate, remember, the Democrats still hold the Senate up until January and everybody gets sworn in.

00:48:54.000 If that's the case, then just nothing will get done.

00:48:57.000 And Democrats will be happy to hand a government shutdown to President Trump coming into office.

00:49:01.000 That is the thing they would love most going into the holiday season.

00:49:04.000 So again, there's some strategy that comes into play, and there's always a question of politics.

00:49:09.000 Principle versus pragmatism is always the question of politics.

00:49:12.000 Ignoring that, you can do that, you'll do it at your own peril, politically speaking.

00:49:16.000 Joining me on the line is Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School, Alan Dershowitz.

00:49:19.000 Of course, you know Alan Dershowitz from a wide variety of endeavors, but right now he's building a dream team of top legal minds across the United States to defend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Joab Gallant against false charges and politically motivated arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.

00:49:34.000 He is also the author of a brand new book titled The Ten Big Anti-Israel Lies and How to Refute Them with Truth.

00:49:38.000 A million copies have been printed and are going out to campuses across the country.

00:49:42.000 Professor Dershowitz, great to talk to you.

00:49:44.000 Thank you.

00:49:45.000 It was great to talk to you.

00:49:46.000 I watched you last night.

00:49:47.000 You gave a great, great speech.

00:49:49.000 And I'm so proud you were once one of my students.

00:49:54.000 It's true.

00:49:55.000 Going all the way back to Harvard Law School, 2007. So let's talk in a second about the ICC. I first want to ask you about the news that Judge Juan Merchan in New York is not going to be waiving the charges against President Trump, these specious, ridiculous hush money charges that are trumped up out of nothing.

00:50:11.000 I mean, unprecedented finding in that case.

00:50:13.000 Now, what does this mean constitutionally?

00:50:15.000 What should be done about it?

00:50:17.000 Well, he's gaming the system.

00:50:19.000 What he's trying to do is rule against Trump.

00:50:22.000 Have a conviction, a jury verdict, hanging over his head for four years and not let him appeal.

00:50:28.000 Under New York law, you can't appeal unless there's a sentence.

00:50:31.000 The sentence is the verdict.

00:50:33.000 So he's trying to have it both ways.

00:50:35.000 He knows that his absurd conviction would never be affirmed on appeal.

00:50:39.000 There's no crime.

00:50:40.000 I've been doing this 60 years, teaching, writing, litigating.

00:50:44.000 I can't figure out what the crime is.

00:50:46.000 Thomas Jefferson once said, for a criminal statute to be valid, it has to be so clear that a reasonable person should be able to understand it if he reads it while running.

00:50:56.000 While running.

00:50:57.000 I'm sitting.

00:50:58.000 And I can't understand the case against Trump.

00:51:02.000 It's an absurd case and Marshawn knows it.

00:51:05.000 And so he's gaming the system by trying to prevent Trump from appealing.

00:51:09.000 That's not going to work because Trump's lawyers can bring what's called a writ of mandamus to the appellate court saying, look, They're trying to circumvent your jurisdiction.

00:51:19.000 You can't have a four-year conviction, a sort of Damocles, with pressure by the judge.

00:51:24.000 Think of this for a second.

00:51:25.000 You have a state court judge holding something over the President of the United States for four years, essentially saying, if you don't do what I want you to do, I will increase your sentence four years from now.

00:51:36.000 That is unthinkable under the Constitution.

00:51:41.000 So meanwhile, speaking of legal wrangling, the International Criminal Court, which is a ridiculous body that is basically staffed by a bunch of dictatorial nations as well as Europeans. 0.96

00:51:50.000 I may repeat myself depending on who we're talking about here.

00:51:53.000 The International Criminal Court has now issued arrest warrants against the Prime Minister of Israel as well as the former Defense Minister of Israel, Joab Gallant.

00:52:01.000 On the predicate that they have supposedly contributed to genocide, you're putting together a legal dream team to go up against the ICC. So what are you attempting to do?

00:52:09.000 Why even engage with the ICC in the first place?

00:52:12.000 Well, I think you have to engage with the ICC because they have the power to make somebody's life miserable.

00:52:18.000 My old friend can't go to Canada and visit Erwin Kotler in Montreal because the Canadian government will arrest him.

00:52:26.000 The Australian government will arrest him.

00:52:29.000 So it's important to fight back.

00:52:31.000 Just remember who the ICC did not indict.

00:52:34.000 As with digging up graves showing the poison gas being used by Assad Assad is a free man in Russia. 0.69

00:52:43.000 He has never been indicted by the ICC. Now, the ICC claims, well, Syria isn't subject to the court because it's not a signatory to the Rome Treaty.

00:52:52.000 Neither is the United States.

00:52:53.000 Neither is Israel. 0.97

00:52:55.000 So they just make it up as they go along.

00:52:59.000 There is no jurisprudence there in the ICC. And Ireland comes in and says, well, you know what we want you to do?

00:53:06.000 We want you to expand the definition of genocide to cover Israel, even though Israel wasn't covered when it allegedly engaged in the act.

00:53:14.000 We want you to redefine genocide, apply it retroactively to Israel. 0.91

00:53:19.000 So I've put together this great team, two former attorney generals in the United States, a former solicitor general, a Democrat, bipartisan, Lawyers, professors, great litigators, and we're going to be filing briefs against the ICC. Now, Israel hasn't decided quite how to deal with this.

00:53:39.000 Will they recognize the jurisdiction of the court?

00:53:41.000 We don't have that problem because we're just outsiders.

00:53:44.000 We don't have to recognize anybody's jurisdiction.

00:53:46.000 We can just show how absurd The court's arrest warrants are and why they have to be withdrawn.

00:53:54.000 But, you know, they won't withdraw them.

00:53:56.000 And Galant and Nachaneu will not be able to travel the world.

00:54:03.000 You know, Professor Dershowitz, on sort of a broader level, one of the phenomena I think that we're seeing internationally is as voters decide that they don't like particular sides of the aisle, the amount of lawfare that's now being unleashed in a wide variety of countries and internationally is absolutely astonishing and it's breaking the systems.

00:54:18.000 That's It's true in the United States, where lawfare was unleashed against President Trump in order to stop him from becoming president again and is still being unleashed against him.

00:54:25.000 It's true in Israel, where lawfare has been unleashed against Prime Minister Netanyahu in a sort of bizarre attempt to get him to abdicate his office.

00:54:32.000 You've seen lawfare used everywhere from South America to Europe to Korea.

00:54:37.000 The attempt to sort of avoid the consequences of elections by unleashing a quote-unquote independent attorney general or some other form of lawfare against leadership, this is now seeming to become almost de rigueur in a wide variety of countries.

00:54:51.000 It's really dangerous.

00:54:52.000 You know, I devised the term lawfare in the 1970s I used it in the context of guerrilla lawfare used by people like Abbie Hoffman back in the 1970s.

00:55:05.000 I was Hoffman's lawyer.

00:55:06.000 And now the term has been used by governments.

00:55:11.000 A dictator in South America once said, for my friends, everything.

00:55:14.000 For my enemies, the law.

00:55:16.000 You can use the law.

00:55:18.000 Justice Jackson, great Robert Jackson said, Once wrote, he was the prosecutor at Nuremberg, that there are so many laws in the book that any prosecutor could find many, many felonies against any political figure they wanted.

00:55:32.000 And the question is who they choose to go after.

00:55:35.000 A friend of mine, Harvey Silvergate, wrote a book called Three Felonies a Day.

00:55:39.000 Citing the Soviet Union, everybody commits three felonies a day and the Soviet Union just picks and chooses. 0.93

00:55:45.000 So lawfare is terribly, terribly dangerous.

00:55:48.000 I met with President Trump the other day, President-elect Trump, and we talked about lawfare and I told him I'm available to consult with him and with anybody in his administration on doing away with lawfare.

00:56:01.000 It's a primary issue that we have to see the end of because With Lawfare, we can't trust the American judicial system.

00:56:10.000 The polls show that Americans don't trust the American judicial system, and for good reason, because Lawfare has come to dominate the political aspects of using the law against people on selective partisan political basis.

00:56:28.000 Well, Professor Dershowitz, I really appreciate the time.

00:56:30.000 Folks, go check out his latest book.

00:56:32.000 It is the number one bestseller on Amazon in political commentary and opinion.

00:56:35.000 It is titled The Ten Biggest Anti-Israel Lies and How to Refute Them with Truth.

00:56:40.000 There have been a million copies printed.

00:56:42.000 It is definitely worth everybody, particularly if you're on a college campus.

00:56:45.000 If you're a student listening to this, you should totally read it because these arguments are going to come up a lot.

00:56:48.000 Professor Dershowitz, really appreciate the time and your hard work.

00:56:50.000 Thank you.

00:56:50.000 Nobody's making any money on this.

00:56:51.000 This is all charitable.

00:56:53.000 We want to get as many college students as possible to read this book and be able to rebut the lies that go on on college campuses today.

00:57:00.000 Thank you so much for having me on.

00:57:04.000 Thanks, Professor Dershowitz.

00:57:05.000 Really appreciate the time.

00:57:06.000 All right, you guys, coming up, we are going to get into some new stats.

00:57:10.000 Actually, out of Harvard, what happened after the demise of affirmative action there?

00:57:14.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:57:15.000 Use Code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 18, 2024

No, Divorce Isn’t ‘Fine For The Kids’

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