The Ben Shapiro Show - The 1,000 Words You Can’t Say At Stanford | Ep. 1635

00:00:00.000 Stanford University ceased to change its websites to ban particularly dangerous words.

00:00:04.000 Evidence mounts that the left's push for economic change truly amounts to a push for economic stagnation.

00:00:09.000 And the Twitter files continue to provide shocking surprises.

00:00:12.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:19.000 Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:27.000 Well, college is a weird place these days.

00:00:30.000 It has become weirder and weirder since I left college, which was approximately 2004.

00:00:33.000 I was in law school until 2007.

00:00:36.000 So I left full campus time about 2007.

00:00:38.000 So it's been 15 years since I was full time at a college campus.

00:00:41.000 Things were strange then.

00:00:42.000 I wrote an entire book about indoctrination on college campuses circa about 2004.

00:00:48.000 This is going back a ways, but the reality remains that college is getting weirder and weirder.

00:00:53.000 And now here's the thing. 0.83

00:00:54.000 All of the wokest and most foolish ideas have been mainstreamed into the algorithmic world.

00:01:00.000 And since we all live in a virtual world, this means that all the stuff that we never thought was going to bleed over into the real world has bled over into the world that we actually live in, the virtual world.

00:01:09.000 It was very easy back in 2004 when I wrote my book, Brainwashed, about indoctrination on college campuses, for people to say, okay, well, you know, that's just kids in college, who cares?

00:01:17.000 They're gonna grow up, they'll pay taxes, they'll have kids, they'll buy property, and then they'll move into the real world.

00:01:22.000 But what if your real world is online?

00:01:23.000 And what if the people who are defining the online space, the virtual space, are people who believe all of this nonsense?

00:01:29.000 Well, the pedal is hitting the metal when it comes to Stanford University.

00:01:32.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Stanford University administrators in May published an index of forbidden words to be eliminated from the school's websites and computer code, and provided inclusive replacements to help re-educate the benighted.

00:01:45.000 And they actually put out like a full list, it's a very long list, of words that you should no longer use.

00:01:50.000 They call it the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.

00:01:53.000 It's a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford.

00:01:58.000 So you thought this was all just in the liberal arts programs?

00:02:00.000 It is now in the engineering programs.

00:02:00.000 Wrong!

00:02:02.000 Because again, there has to be some sort of content for the engineers to encode.

00:02:06.000 And if the left creates the content, then the coders are going to have to just encode that content.

00:02:12.000 And this is the big problem with things like chatbots and AI is that whatever are the premises of the technology, those matter an awful lot because the engineers are there just there to translate the ideas into workable code.

00:02:24.000 And so you have somebody in the back room saying that we can't use X word, then it just never enters the algorithm and that's what's happening right here.

00:02:29.000 The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, which sounds about as Orwellian as it's possible to be, is one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford CIO Council and the People of Color and Technology Affinity Group in December of 2020.

00:02:45.000 The goal, according to Stanford, of the Elimination of Harmful Language initiative is to eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent and biased language in Stanford websites and code.

00:02:54.000 The purpose of the website they put up is to educate people about the possible impact of the words we use.

00:02:58.000 Language affects different people in different ways.

00:03:00.000 We're not attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on the site.

00:03:03.000 We're not attempting to address all informal uses of language.

00:03:06.000 This website focused on potentially harmful terms used in the United States, starting with a list of everyday language and terminology, and then they provide possible Alternatives as well.

00:03:16.000 And then they have a giant content warning on the front of this saying this website contains language that is offensive or harmful.

00:03:21.000 Please engage with this website at your own pace.

00:03:24.000 You have to take it slowly guys because you never know somebody could be offended.

00:03:28.000 So they break down the language that they would like to see banned at Stanford University on their websites and all of their tech into several categories.

00:03:36.000 They start with ableist language.

00:03:38.000 This would be language that is offensive to people who live with disabilities and or devalues people who lives with disabilities, who live with disabilities.

00:03:45.000 Some of the some of the things they would like to see banned are things like blind review.

00:03:51.000 So that'd be like a blind review of papers or a blind review of a study, meaning you don't know who created the study and so you have no bias in the study.

00:03:59.000 They say instead you should use anonymous review because it unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.

00:04:07.000 No, it literally means you can't see a thing.

00:04:11.000 That's what the word blind means.

00:04:12.000 They say that you shouldn't use the term blind study anymore.

00:04:15.000 You should use the term masked study.

00:04:18.000 Instead of saying that somebody committed suicide, you should say somebody died by suicide.

00:04:21.000 Because if you say somebody committed suicide, this implies that they killed themselves, whereas if they died by suicide, what?

00:04:26.000 Somebody else killed them?

00:04:27.000 That would defeat the purpose of it being a suicide. 0.87

00:04:29.000 You're not supposed to use the word crazy.

00:04:31.000 Instead, you should say surprising or wild, because this trivializes the experience of people living with mental health conditions.

00:04:38.000 They say that you're not supposed to use the word dumb because it was once used to describe a person who could not speak and implied that the person was incapable of expressing themselves.

00:04:46.000 Now, let me just ask you this. 0.93

00:04:47.000 When was the last time that you described somebody as a dummy?

00:04:50.000 And what you actually meant is the way that the word was originally used.

00:04:53.000 The use of words changes over time.

00:04:55.000 If you say something is insane, again, saying it like crazy, you're not supposed to use it. 0.91

00:05:00.000 You're also not supposed to say that someone is mentally ill.

00:05:03.000 Instead, you should say that someone is living with a mental health condition.

00:05:06.000 Which is, as they might say, wild.

00:05:10.000 Because, again, the problem is that some mental health conditions are illnesses and others are things like a concussion.

00:05:17.000 What exactly are we talking about right here?

00:05:20.000 And they say you shouldn't say paraplegic, you shouldn't say quadriplegic.

00:05:25.000 I don't even know what's supposed to be offensive about paraplegic or quadriplegic, but apparently this is now very offensive.

00:05:30.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

00:05:32.000 First, what's playing out right now over at the big tech and social media companies is that it's a pretty dangerous precedent.

00:05:36.000 It doesn't matter what your politics are or who you voted for.

00:05:38.000 Everybody should have the right to express themselves freely, but the big tech monopolies, they're not all that interested in that. 0.90

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00:07:28.000 Hey, then there's ageism.

00:07:30.000 So instead of saying that somebody is senile, you're supposed to say that the person is suffering from senility, which doesn't actually change the meaning of the word senile.

00:07:38.000 You're not supposed to use colonialist language.

00:07:39.000 What is some colonialist language that's in constant use?

00:07:43.000 Apparently, some of that colonialist language is, uh, if you say the, um, if you say the Philippine islands, you're supposed to say the Philippines.

00:07:51.000 All right, culturally appropriative.

00:07:54.000 You're not supposed to use the word brave anymore.

00:07:56.000 Stop using the word brave, everybody, because brave was the originally the description of Native American, Native American warriors, because and so that apparently is bad.

00:08:07.000 So to use a term that people consider good that was originally appropriated from Native American culture, but you're using it for a good thing somehow is bad for Native Americans.

00:08:18.000 Chief.

00:08:19.000 That has to be changed.

00:08:21.000 Because if you call a non-Indigenous person chief, it trivializes both the hereditary and elected chiefs in Indigenous communities.

00:08:29.000 I'd just like to point out that the word chief has been long in use in the English language.

00:08:37.000 I'm not sure that it originated with Native American language.

00:08:41.000 You're not supposed to call anybody a guru.

00:08:41.000 Guru.

00:08:44.000 In the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, the word is a sign of respect.

00:08:47.000 Using it casually negates its original value.

00:08:48.000 Does it?

00:08:49.000 If I say someone's a guru, again, that's a compliment.

00:08:51.000 This one is one of my favorites.

00:08:53.000 You're not supposed to say Pocahontas.

00:08:54.000 This one, clearly, Stanford just wrote this because Donald Trump kept calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas.

00:08:58.000 Which, of course, was him blowing the joke.

00:09:00.000 The joke was Focahontas, right? 0.95

00:09:01.000 So she's fake Pocahontas? 0.99

00:09:03.000 They say you're not supposed to call someone Pocahontas because this is a slur and should not be used to address an indigenous woman unless that is her actual name.

00:09:09.000 But what if you're addressing a woman who's pretending to be a Native American that way? 0.96

00:09:12.000 Is that also terrible?

00:09:14.000 You're not supposed to use the term spirit animal anymore.

00:09:18.000 There's gender-based words that you're not supposed to use either.

00:09:20.000 Remember, this is Stanford University, one of the top universities in the country, telling you that there's certain language you just should not use.

00:09:25.000 You're not supposed to use the term preferred for pronouns anymore.

00:09:29.000 This is amazing.

00:09:30.000 Amazing.

00:09:31.000 Just propaganda right here.

00:09:34.000 Instead of saying preferred pronouns, somebody's preferred pronoun is different than their biological pronoun, you're supposed to just say pronoun.

00:09:40.000 Their pronoun is X. Why?

00:09:42.000 Well, because the word preferred suggests non-binary gender identity is a choice and a preference.

00:09:49.000 It is a choice.

00:09:50.000 No one is born non-binary gender.

00:09:54.000 That doesn't exist.

00:09:54.000 There's no third category of human that is non-gender binary.

00:09:57.000 There are intersex people, but those are not the same.

00:10:00.000 The proof of this is that people routinely change their pronouns.

00:10:04.000 Again, this is part of the full-on leftist agibrop that suggests that your gender choices are entirely biological, but your biological sex is entirely arbitrary.

00:10:14.000 So apparently you choose your sex, but you don't choose your gender, which is absolutely nonsensical nonsense. 0.88

00:10:19.000 It's just crazy.

00:10:20.000 You're not supposed to use the term ballsy anymore, because that distributes personality traits to anatomy.

00:10:28.000 You're not supposed to use fireman or firemen.

00:10:30.000 You should say firefighters instead because you're implying that most firefighters are men.

00:10:37.000 Which they are.

00:10:38.000 Because, once again, sexual dichotomy exists.

00:10:43.000 You're not supposed to use the term he.

00:10:45.000 Unless you know the person you're addressing uses he as their pronoun, it is better to use they, or ask the person which pronouns they use.

00:10:51.000 Which makes every conversation insanely awkward, obviously.

00:10:55.000 You're not supposed to use the term ladies. 1.00

00:10:57.000 You're not supposed to use the term man.

00:11:00.000 At all.

00:11:01.000 You're not supposed to use mankind. 0.78

00:11:01.000 Like ever. 0.78

00:11:04.000 Because the term reinforces male-dominated language, even though everyone has understood for all of mankind's history that mankind refers to both men and women.

00:11:12.000 You shouldn't use she. 1.00

00:11:14.000 You shouldn't use transgendered like with the ED. 1.00

00:11:17.000 Instead you use transgender. 0.86

00:11:19.000 The term avoids connections that being transgender is something that is done to a person or that some kind of transition is required.

00:11:26.000 Because after all, they weren't transgendered. 0.95

00:11:28.000 They weren't changed in any way.

00:11:29.000 They are transgender in that they identify in a particular way.

00:11:32.000 You also shouldn't say you guys.

00:11:36.000 Imprecise language.

00:11:37.000 Imprecise language is terms that utilize euphemisms, vagueness, or inaccurate words to not say what one is trying to say.

00:11:43.000 So after spending all of this time trying to make your language more inexact, now they're saying you should no longer use inexact language.

00:11:50.000 You shouldn't use the term abort.

00:11:52.000 Instead, you should use the term cancel or end because the term could unintentionally raise religious or moral concerns over abortion.

00:11:58.000 You shouldn't, this one's one of my favorites, you shouldn't use the term American anymore, according to Stanford University.

00:12:04.000 You shouldn't use the term American.

00:12:06.000 The term often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the U.S.

00:12:09.000 is the most important country in the Americas.

00:12:13.000 See, we've always said American to refer to members of the United States population.

00:12:17.000 And now they're saying American could refer to somebody from El Salvador because they're Central American or Latin American.

00:12:25.000 Mm-hmm.

00:12:25.000 Instead, they say you should consider using the term U.S.

00:12:28.000 citizen, which is gonna make language extraordinarily difficult to use.

00:12:31.000 Because, for example, if I say, if I'm a leftist and I say, the Dreamers are just as American as anyone else, now I have to say, the Dreamers are just as U.S. 0.65

00:12:39.000 citizen as everyone else.

00:12:41.000 Which they are not.

00:12:42.000 That's the entire issue.

00:12:44.000 You should no longer use the term Hispanic.

00:12:46.000 Latinx is what they suggest, obviously, because there's not a Latino person alive who uses the term Latinx.

00:12:53.000 It's made up by a bunch of Karens. 1.00

00:12:55.000 Sorry, another term you're not supposed to use.

00:12:59.000 You should not use the term straight, because the term implies that anyone who is not heterosexual is bent or not normal.

00:13:07.000 You should also not use the term thug.

00:13:09.000 Although the term refers to a violent person or criminal, it often takes on a racist connotation when used in certain circles.

00:13:15.000 Oh, so it's only sometimes racist, and it depends who says it.

00:13:17.000 So if a Democrat says the word thug, then it's okay. 1.00

00:13:19.000 If a Republican says the word thug, we're supposed to read black person in there. 0.99

00:13:22.000 I'll leave it to your imagination who's more racist, the person who immediately flashes to a black person when you say thug or the person who just used the words thug to describe a violent person. 0.55

00:13:32.000 Now, the reason that I'm pointing all this out is because all of this stuff, it starts off on the fringes of society and then it is mainstreamed into the rest of society.

00:13:42.000 And what it amounts to is a flattening of communication.

00:13:46.000 It amounts to a new code that we all must use in order to appear in well Groomed public circles.

00:13:54.000 We must all abide by these imaginary rules and we must flatten out the language to be less descriptive in more areas and significantly more descriptive in other areas.

00:14:02.000 We wouldn't want to use the term cakewalk.

00:14:04.000 We wouldn't want to use the term black box.

00:14:07.000 We wouldn't want to use the term ghetto anymore.

00:14:10.000 None of these the word master is no longer useful because obviously it's about masters and slavery.

00:14:16.000 Even though the word master, again, has been used in a wide variety of contexts.

00:14:19.000 If you're a master at a particular craft, this does not mean that you have slaves.

00:14:24.000 You're no longer supposed to use the term white paper because it assigns racial value connotations based on color.

00:14:29.000 White as in good.

00:14:30.000 We're talking about a white paper, like a position paper.

00:14:32.000 Would you call it a black paper?

00:14:33.000 How could you even print text on a black paper? 0.84

00:14:34.000 What the hell are you talking about?

00:14:38.000 Again, the attempt to change language is in essence an attempt to change the way that people think. 0.62

00:14:43.000 And this is part and parcel of a broader left-wing agenda about changing how people think.

00:14:47.000 So this happens to be with regard to changing sort of the way in which we communicate with each other so as to foreclose the ability for us to contribute clear and cohesive ideas to one another and then have conversations about them, which by the way is the predicate to having a functioning Republican, a functioning Republic.

00:15:04.000 But that is not the only way in which the left wishes to change things dramatically.

00:15:09.000 So, I've been spotting over the course of the last month or so, a massive uptick since the Democrats won the last election cycle, or at least did better than expected.

00:15:18.000 A massive uptick in the number of posts that are coming out from people on the left, encouraging us to think differently about our expectations.

00:15:26.000 The idea being that as we shift, as we move, as we transition into new eras, we should become more accepting of less.

00:15:33.000 We should be looking to live with less.

00:15:34.000 We should look for a less rich language, for example.

00:15:38.000 We should try to cleanse the language of all implications.

00:15:41.000 We can speak in binary code, presumably, but only binary code that has been pre-approved by gender diverse counsel.

00:15:48.000 And then when it comes to the economy, we're supposed to live with less.

00:15:52.000 We're supposed to adjust our expectations to a better world.

00:15:54.000 What defines that better world?

00:15:55.000 Well, the left defines that better world, a fairer world.

00:15:57.000 Now, there's no actual gauge of fairness in life.

00:16:00.000 Your fairness may be somebody else's unfairness.

00:16:03.000 Your version of fairness may include actually oppressing somebody else.

00:16:06.000 But the idea is that if prosperity has to be put by the wayside for the sake of the better world, that is exactly what we will do.

00:16:14.000 And this is why you see, for example, the dramatic drive on the left, policy-wise, to pay people for not working.

00:16:23.000 To increase welfare benefits, to spend up the wazoo, to inflate the currency.

00:16:27.000 All this creates the conditions for mediocrity.

00:16:30.000 We talked about linguistic mediocrity, but economic mediocrity is something else that the left prefers.

00:16:34.000 See, the thing about this is, the thing about the state and state redistribution, the state can only redistribute resources created by somebody else.

00:16:41.000 Elizabeth Warren always likes to say, you didn't do it on your own, which in a technical sense is true.

00:16:45.000 Nobody succeeds economically on their own.

00:16:47.000 They're born into a particular system.

00:16:48.000 They have particular resources.

00:16:50.000 They're educated in a particular way.

00:16:51.000 We are all part of a giant social fabric.

00:16:53.000 However, the reverse is also true.

00:16:55.000 The government has no money of its own.

00:16:58.000 The government does not magically have the ability to create and innovate.

00:17:01.000 In fact, what government typically does is it redistributes the innovation and creativity of others.

00:17:06.000 And the more redistribution it does, the more it changes the incentive structure, the less innovation gets done.

00:17:12.000 The less actual creativity happens, the more things stall out, the more mediocrity you have to redistribute.

00:17:17.000 When government is particularly heavy, what you end up with is something like the Soviet Union. 0.80

00:17:21.000 No innovation, no growth.

00:17:23.000 No creativity.

00:17:25.000 Redistribution of the seven potatoes left in the country so everybody is equal in their misery.

00:17:30.000 Well, that seems to be the agenda more and more of the Democratic left in the United States.

00:17:36.000 The New York Post has a good piece by Steve Moore, Casey Mulligan, and E.J.

00:17:38.000 Antoni talking about the extent to which we are expending extraordinary amounts of money on people who refuse to work in the United States.

00:17:49.000 Most Americans believe, they say, in a reliable government safety net in America so that when people fall on tough times or lose their jobs, their families will not go hungry, lose their homes, or suffer deprivation.

00:17:57.000 But most Americans also believe that government assistance should be short-term and aimed at quickly getting people back on their feet, into a job, and on the roads, being financially self-sufficient and a contributor to our economy.

00:18:06.000 Today's welfare programs are failing to accomplish that goal.

00:18:09.000 Did you know that families earning half a million dollars a year can receive Obamacare subsidies?

00:18:13.000 Or that in some states, unemployment insurance benefits can be equivalent to a job with an annual pay of $100,000?

00:18:19.000 It's shocking, but true, and it might explain why so many businesses can't get workers back on the job almost three years after COVID-19 hit these shores.

00:18:26.000 Today, there are still at least 3 million fewer Americans working than there were in 2019.

00:18:30.000 There are many reasons for the worker shortage.

00:18:33.000 One is that in many states, welfare actually pays you more or nearly as much as respectable middle-class jobs.

00:18:39.000 Under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, many of the highly effective work requirements which were instituted in the 1996 Bipartisan Welfare Reforms have been eviscerated.

00:18:47.000 Often, limits for public benefits have also disappeared, while Congress and states have made benefits more generous.

00:18:53.000 Many programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Food Stamps, are means-tested, so only low-income people qualify for them, but other handouts are not.

00:19:03.000 Which means that in 24 states, unemployment benefits and Obamacare subsidies for a family of four with no one working are the annualized equivalent of at least the national median household standard.

00:19:13.000 In 24 states, in other words, you get paid as much to stay at home as you do to make the median in the United States.

00:19:20.000 In a dozen states, the value of unemployment benefits and Obamacare subsidies exceeds the salary and benefits of the average teacher, construction worker, electrician, firefighter, truck driver, machinist, or retail associate In New Jersey, a family of four can receive benefits equal to an annualized earned income of $108,000 with no one working.

00:19:38.000 In Connecticut, New Jersey, a family earning $300,000 a year can receive Obamacare subsidies.

00:19:43.000 New Jersey is a state where a family can earn the equivalent of $100,000 a year if both parents are collecting unemployment and Obamacare subsidies for health care.

00:19:50.000 In Connecticut, the benefits reach $80,000.

00:19:53.000 Now, unemployment insurance is at least time-limited to six months in most states.

00:19:56.000 But while Americans are receiving those benefits, the financial incentive to jump into the job market is low.

00:20:04.000 And again, a lot of this has to do with a restructuring of how work is supposed to work.

00:20:08.000 About how life is supposed to work.

00:20:11.000 The job, in the view of much of the Democratic Party now, is radical redistributionism with the goal of mediocrity for everyone.

00:20:19.000 Equality and mediocrity.

00:20:22.000 This apparently is the case of Jamal Bowie over at the New York Times.

00:20:25.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

00:20:26.000 First, it is very difficult to find good employees.

00:20:28.000 I mean, really, really rough.

00:20:30.000 We've had a labor shortage in this country for a long time.

00:20:32.000 There are 3 million fewer people working now than there were in 2019.

00:20:35.000 A lot of people are just staying out of the workforce and that means that you really have to find the best people to fill that job opening.

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00:22:29.000 So Jamal Bowie has a piece at the New York Times today, titled a 200-year-old argument on behalf of the many against the few.

00:22:37.000 And the argument that Jamal Bowie makes is that individual rights ought to be completely curbed in favor of a majoritarian mobocracy that crams down redistribution of all wealth in the United States.

00:22:49.000 Jamila Bui says, In my column this year, I've tried to emphasize the extent to which there are competing traditions, competing notions, of American freedom and Republican democracy.

00:22:56.000 One says that freedom is a matter of non-interference and limited government, that we are free when the state steps aside and individuals are left to flourish or fail of their own accord.

00:23:04.000 It says that government, or at least the national government, has no real role to play in shaping our social and economic order, and that as the aphorism goes, the best government is that which governs the least.

00:23:12.000 The other tradition takes a more activist view of government and a more expansive view of democracy.

00:23:16.000 Ah, it's more democratic.

00:23:17.000 See, the most democratic is where you have no individual rights, but the people, writ large, can decide what you ought to have and what you ought not to have.

00:23:24.000 It says that economic domination by wealthy entrenched interests is just as dangerous to liberty as an overbearing government, and that majoritarian democracy is the necessary and essential safeguard against the narrow interests of an otherwise unaccountable elite.

00:23:36.000 Now, of course, that's true, that democracy is supposed to counter the tendency of oligarchy.

00:23:41.000 However, if the oligarchy is creating rules in which the government does not interfere to steal people's property and redistribute it, the oligarchy is not acting on its own behalf in that.

00:23:52.000 Everybody is still playing by the same rules.

00:23:54.000 Oligarchies typically centralize resources to themselves. 0.92

00:23:57.000 They do not seek to divest power from the centralized government.

00:24:00.000 Oligarchies want more power in the centralized government.

00:24:03.000 They don't wish to spread it down to the lowest levels of American government.

00:24:06.000 Charles Beard tried to make this case, a very famous American economist in the early 20th century.

00:24:11.000 He tried to make the case that the founding fathers were essentially oligarchs trying to preserve their own private property.

00:24:16.000 His historical case has been widely debunked.

00:24:18.000 It is not true, but it still stands as sort of the high watermark for lefty economic thought when it comes to the American founding.

00:24:25.000 And Jamal Bowie is still echoing it.

00:24:28.000 He highlights in his column a treatise from a person named Thomas Skidmore, who you've not heard of because pretty much nobody has heard of Thomas Skidmore.

00:24:36.000 And he wrote a treatise called The Rights of Man to Property, being a proposition to make it equal among the adults of the present generation.

00:24:43.000 So what exactly does Skidmore say?

00:24:46.000 Skidmore was at the time of his writing a machinist who had taken a prominent role in the newly formed New York Working Men's Party.

00:24:51.000 He wrote the platform, which included a call for land redistribution to every man and unmarried woman over the age of 21, an end to commercial monopolies, and an end to the hereditary transfer of wealth.

00:25:02.000 So, in other words, what Jamal Bowie is calling for is for the great centralization of all property in the national government, and then a redistribution of the property on a per capita basis, but no hereditary passing down of the property.

00:25:16.000 So you build up your property over the course of your life and then your kids are left back at square one the minute that you die.

00:25:21.000 Now how that would work in actual operation makes no sense because obviously some people live longer than others.

00:25:25.000 So what do you redistribute the property every seven years?

00:25:28.000 Is it done on a time calendar?

00:25:29.000 Is it done on the basis of as each person dies we redistribute the property back into the general population?

00:25:35.000 And how exactly does property get added or subtracted along those bases?

00:25:39.000 But it's enough to suggest that equality is the motivating factor in American life for Jamel Bowie to be into this.

00:25:44.000 The plan was straightforward, says Jamel Bowie.

00:25:46.000 The people of New York, to whom he was primarily writing, would adopt a new constitution that would abolish all debts and renounce most private property.

00:25:53.000 Now, of course, abolishing all debts means that no one will ever lend again.

00:25:56.000 If you keep abolishing debts, it means that there is no purpose to lending because people can just avoid the debt.

00:26:01.000 If you renounce private property, it reduces all incentive for innovation and creativity.

00:26:07.000 But, Jamal Bowie says, all of this is good.

00:26:10.000 He says, nearly 200 years later, Skidmore's book still stands as a powerful rebuke to the twin ideas that some Americans are deserving, while others are not.

00:26:17.000 And that some are more equal than others, to coin a phrase.

00:26:19.000 Well, I mean, you didn't coin that phrase.

00:26:21.000 George Orwell coined that phrase in Animal Farm to refer to the treatment of people under communism.

00:26:25.000 And some animals are more equal than others.

00:26:28.000 In any case, He suggests that whatever you think of Skidmore's proposals, his vision of radical democratic equality resonates in the face of our deep and persistent material and political inequality.

00:26:39.000 Now this is what the left has to push because they cannot push the idea that there has not been radical increase in living standard for virtually everybody on earth over the course of the last 50 years.

00:26:48.000 Your living standard today in the United States is significantly better than it was 50 years ago.

00:26:48.000 There has.

00:26:52.000 Your living standard, no matter which bracket of income you actually live in now, is way better than it was 30 years ago.

00:26:58.000 Because of innovation, products and services.

00:26:58.000 Why?

00:27:00.000 No one had a cell phone in 1980.

00:27:02.000 Very few people had two TVs in 1980.

00:27:06.000 All of the things that we take for granted in modern life, like the fact that you can literally punch into a phone any product on earth and it will arrive at your door in three days or less for a price that you can probably afford.

00:27:16.000 That is a testament to freedom and innovation.

00:27:19.000 It's a testament to the basic notion that human creativity is a key to expressing not only the spirit of the individual, but to the prosperity of everyone.

00:27:31.000 But the left doesn't believe in that because it means some people are going to succeed more than others.

00:27:35.000 The byproduct of innovation is that some people succeed more than others.

00:27:38.000 Some people are better at innovation.

00:27:39.000 Some people are worse.

00:27:39.000 Some people get lucky.

00:27:40.000 Some people don't.

00:27:42.000 All of that can be true, but the byproduct of an innovative system is one where everybody does better.

00:27:46.000 The left's economic plan, however, is economic flattening.

00:27:49.000 And so the way that you convince people this is a good idea is by telling people to lower their standards.

00:27:54.000 If we all just lower our standards, everything would be better.

00:27:56.000 It's the same way they address education.

00:27:58.000 Sure, a lot of people are failing out.

00:27:59.000 Sure, a lot of people can't go to top-notch schools because they're not doing well in school.

00:28:03.000 Well, the best thing to get rid of the tests.

00:28:05.000 Get rid of the MCAT for medical school.

00:28:07.000 Get rid of the LSAT for law school.

00:28:09.000 Get rid of the SAT.

00:28:11.000 Just flatten out the standards and everyone will be better off, except everyone is worse off.

00:28:14.000 Because a society in which there are some people who succeed and some people who fail, but everybody generally moves up is better than a society where no one succeeds and no one fails.

00:28:23.000 But overall the society stagnates. 0.99

00:28:26.000 Now there's a very simple test that I've talked about before that I often use when distinguishing whether someone is a smart person or a stupid person. 0.99

00:28:32.000 The test is this. 1.00

00:28:33.000 Would you rather be the smartest person in a given society or would you rather be the stupidest person in a given society? 1.00

00:28:40.000 Most stupid people will say they would rather be the smartest person in a given society because this means that you dominate. 1.00

00:28:46.000 In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. 1.00

00:28:48.000 You'd rather be the king of Afghanistan than to be a welfare case in the UK. 0.99

00:28:56.000 Well, the thing is that that's probably not true.

00:29:00.000 That's probably not true.

00:29:01.000 If you live in absolute primitive standards, That's not materially better. 0.97

00:29:05.000 That's why smart people will say, I'd rather live in a society of geniuses and be the dumbest guy on the line.

00:29:11.000 Because that means, in a world filled with geniuses, you know how amazing life is going to be?

00:29:16.000 As the world gets more innovative, as the world gets more creative, the world gets better.

00:29:20.000 Point made by Marion Toopey and Superabundance.

00:29:23.000 It's very clear, for example, that you can literally take any product on earth and it has gotten cheaper over the course of time.

00:29:28.000 The most obvious example is light.

00:29:29.000 The number of hours that you would have had to expend in the year 1700 to get a couple of hours of light at night.

00:29:35.000 Remember, the sun went down, nobody had an artificial source of light except for things like whale fat or seed oil or something.

00:29:43.000 The stuff that you used, wax, the stuff that you used in order to power your lamp.

00:29:48.000 was very expensive at the time.

00:29:50.000 Now, you flip on your lights, you leave them on all night, and you don't even think about it.

00:29:54.000 That is because of human innovation and human creativity.

00:29:56.000 So if you want to even everything out, what you have to do is make the actual case people should live worse lives.

00:30:00.000 This is how you end up with a piece, like this one over at the Atlantic, called The Home Ownership Society Was a Mistake.

00:30:06.000 By Jerusalem and Demsas, real estate should be treated as consumption, not investment. 0.82

00:30:12.000 So instead of aiming at buying your own home, we should, you know, go to the European model in which everybody rents your home and then you die.

00:30:18.000 Or you rent an apartment and then you die.

00:30:19.000 Because after all, if we get caught behind the real estate eight ball, then we may have to pay the price for that.

00:30:24.000 But of course, the basic idea of homeownership is independence.

00:30:28.000 That's the difference between owning and renting.

00:30:30.000 If you're renting, then you are subject to the whims of somebody else.

00:30:33.000 Your rent can be raised on you.

00:30:34.000 The rules can be changed on you.

00:30:36.000 Or maybe you're just not paying enough rent and you get tossed out.

00:30:39.000 You buy your own home and now you're in control of your fate.

00:30:41.000 That's always been an American ideal.

00:30:42.000 But we're supposed to lower our expectations now because of this stagnation to come.

00:30:48.000 Says Jerusalem's MSAS.

00:30:50.000 It's a truth universally acknowledged that an American in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a mortgage.

00:30:54.000 I don't know if you should buy a house nor am I inclined to give you personal financial advice, but I do think you should be wary of the mythos that accompanies the American institution of homeownership and of a political environment that touts its advantages while ignoring its many drawbacks.

00:31:06.000 Now listen, obviously there are costs to owning a home.

00:31:08.000 It's more expensive in many cases to own than to rent.

00:31:10.000 However, the independence that comes with owning a home and the wealth creation that occurs if you buy in a smart way obviously is good.

00:31:20.000 Says this columnist for The Atlantic, Renting is for the young or financially irresponsible, or so they say.

00:31:24.000 Home ownership is a guarantee against a lost job, against rising rents, against a medical emergency.

00:31:28.000 It's a promise to your children you can pay for a college or wedding or that you can help them one day join you in the vaunted halls of ownership society.

00:31:34.000 In America, home ownership is not just owning a dwelling in the land it resides on.

00:31:37.000 It is a piggy bank where the bottom 50% of the country stores most of its wealth.

00:31:40.000 It is not a natural market phenomenon.

00:31:42.000 It's propped up by numerous government interventions, including a 30-year fixed rate mortgage.

00:31:45.000 America's put a lot of weight on this one institution's shoulders.

00:31:48.000 Too much.

00:31:48.000 Now, it is true the government should be less involved in home ownership.

00:31:51.000 You should only buy a home if you can afford it.

00:31:54.000 But the answer here is to get the government less involved and to continue to push home ownership as like an actual value that is worth promulgating.

00:32:02.000 This person is saying we should all just get out of the home ownership mode and go back to renting.

00:32:05.000 Live in small apartments along the Champs-Élysées or something.

00:32:11.000 The consensus that homeownership is preferable to renting obscures quite a few rotten truths about when homeownership doesn't work out, about whom it doesn't work out for, that its gains for some are predicated on losses for others.

00:32:20.000 Speaking in averages masks the heterogeneity of the homeownership experience.

00:32:24.000 That's the key line.

00:32:25.000 That's the key line for all democratic policy proposals at this point.

00:32:29.000 If you speak in averages, you mask the heterogeneity of the homeownership experience.

00:32:33.000 Just get rid of the word homeownership and that is the whole deal.

00:32:36.000 Get rid of freedom.

00:32:38.000 Search for mediocrity instead.

00:32:39.000 Why?

00:32:40.000 Because if we speak in terms of averages, then what you're going to do, if I say, for example, as I have, that the average living standard in the United States has risen dramatically over the course of the last 30 years, this forgets the fact that some people win and some people lose.

00:32:52.000 No, it doesn't.

00:32:53.000 It speaks in terms of averages, because when you're making public policy, it's the greatest good for the greatest number.

00:32:57.000 That's why it's public policy.

00:33:01.000 When you're making the rules for the road, of course you're going to speak in terms of averages.

00:33:04.000 Because literally every system, including the quote-unquote most equal systems, have winners and losers.

00:33:09.000 As Stalin could have told you from his Dasha. 0.69

00:33:12.000 But the idea here is that when you remove all of the vicissitudes, the ups and downs of life, the winners and the losers, and by the way, most of us across the course of our life will in fact experience the winning and the losing.

00:33:24.000 People are wealthier at the age of 50 than they were at 20.

00:33:26.000 People go up and down in terms of income brackets.

00:33:28.000 When you remove all those vicissitudes, when you remove the idea of winners and losers, you end up with a middle.

00:33:33.000 But the middle happens to be a much lower middle than it would be if you averaged out the winners and losers in a free society.

00:33:40.000 In just a second, we'll see how this actually reflects itself in terms of the media pushing systems that are destined to fail with absolute alacrity and enthusiasm.

00:33:51.000 They're going to convince you that your life is going to be better off if it's more mediocre.

00:33:55.000 We'll get back to this in just one second.

00:33:56.000 But before I continue, I wanted to pay tribute to a person who's a continual source of positivity, inspiration in my day-to-day experience here at The Daily Wire.

00:34:05.000 One of the most emotionally knowing people out there.

00:34:08.000 One of the people who is most in touch with his inner being.

00:34:11.000 As the saying goes, hire people who are better than you are.

00:34:14.000 I helped hire Matt Walsh several years ago when he was changing the world from the driver's seat of his van.

00:34:19.000 Now he's not just changing the world at large, but he's changing my world by actually forcing me to read a one minute ad.

00:34:25.000 for Matt Walsh because I lost a dumb election bet to him that I never should have made.

00:34:29.000 I sincerely mean every single word of all the compliments I'm about to pay to Matt Walsh.

00:34:33.000 He was the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful person I've ever met.

00:34:37.000 Matt's documentary, What is a Woman?

00:34:40.000 Might be the best piece of journalism ever to appear on film.

00:34:42.000 His books are spectacular.

00:34:44.000 Perhaps the most extraordinary of all is the giant walrus plushie.

00:34:48.000 It is big, soft, and cuddly.

00:34:49.000 I didn't steal it.

00:34:50.000 I don't know where it is.

00:34:50.000 I don't have it.

00:34:52.000 It may have taken four grown men to carry it into the Daily Wire building, but on more than one occasion, I've seen Matt carry it around with just one hand.

00:34:58.000 And now that it's missing, Gotta say, wasn't me.

00:35:01.000 If there is one man who truly lives up to his pronouns of handsome and brilliant, even though that makes no sense because those are adjectives, it is THE Matt Walsh.

00:35:09.000 I'm eternally thankful to have the opportunity of working alongside this intellectual and emotional giant of our era.

00:35:16.000 One day, I hope to have a beard that is just as wonderful as Matt Walsh's.

00:35:20.000 And frankly, I hope that my wife allows me to have a beard.

00:35:23.000 Matt Walsh does need the beard, but it's not because he's really ugly underneath the beard.

00:35:26.000 It's because he's just so darn handsome that the beard festoons his face, that glorious visage with just the world's most lumberjacky, odd.

00:35:36.000 Anyway, The Matt Walsh Show streams every Monday through Friday.

00:35:39.000 Eastern on dailywire.com.

00:35:42.000 Also, my book club, Ben Shapiro's book club, is back tomorrow for our final episode of 2022 at 8, 7 Central, only on Daily Wire+.

00:35:49.000 This month's book is The Screwtape Letters by C.S.

00:35:52.000 Lewis.

00:35:52.000 It's a fantastic book.

00:35:53.000 It really is moving and it is brilliant.

00:35:56.000 It's funny.

00:35:56.000 It is witty.

00:35:57.000 You have to be an All Access member to join in on the fun.

00:35:59.000 Head on over to dailywire.com slash Ben and become a member today.

00:36:01.000 Join us tomorrow at 8, 7 Central as we discuss The Screwtape Letters.

00:36:05.000 That is dailywire.com slash Ben.

00:36:07.000 I will see you there.

00:36:08.000 So again, the push for the mediocre is something that the left has to push because the outcome of their programs is generally not widespread prosperity.

00:36:08.000 All right.

00:36:16.000 It is ever shrinking prosperity, but in equal measure.

00:36:19.000 This is why you see every so often, there's just an article in a mainstream publication talking about why you should eat bugs.

00:36:24.000 And most of us look at that like, I'm not eating a bug.

00:36:25.000 Why would I eat a bug?

00:36:27.000 You're going to eat bugs and you're going to like eating bugs.

00:36:27.000 And they're like, well, no, no, no.

00:36:30.000 You will love eating bugs.

00:36:33.000 For example, late November, the Washington Post runs an article called Salted Ants, Ground Crickets, Why You Should Try Edible Insects.

00:36:41.000 I'm gonna go no on that, Bob.

00:36:43.000 That sounds awful.

00:36:44.000 But no, you're gonna love it.

00:36:45.000 On a clear August morning in southeastern Pennsylvania, more than a dozen adults and children stood in a park pavilion listening to mealworms sizzling in a hot pan.

00:36:53.000 They were learning about entomophagy, the human consumption of insects, from Lisa Sanchez, a naturalist with the Lancaster County Department of Parks and Recreation, who has taught the practice for 25 years.

00:37:03.000 Suddenly, one mealworm sputtered out of the pan.

00:37:06.000 Six-year-old Adeline Welk popped it into her mouth.

00:37:08.000 The crowd cheered.

00:37:10.000 It's not bad, she explained.

00:37:11.000 It kind of tastes like kettle corn.

00:37:13.000 It's not that bad is the slogan of the left.

00:37:15.000 It's not that bad!

00:37:19.000 Well, maybe it is, and you're just convincing yourself it's not that bad. 0.97

00:37:22.000 Maybe it really does suck, like a lot, to eat bugs.

00:37:25.000 Maybe we've spent entire periods of human civilization trying to avoid eating the bugs.

00:37:30.000 And yet now you're trying to convince everybody that eating the bugs is like the best thing that you could do, apparently.

00:37:37.000 Again, this is a widespread notion that if we live a worse life, suddenly things will be better.

00:37:43.000 It's something that has been pushed by, for example, Klaus Schwab, The international supervillain who leads Davos and the World Economic Forum.

00:37:52.000 He literally writes in his book, The Great Reset, about how it might not be so bad if we actively lower living standards.

00:38:00.000 He argues that we should try to decrease global GDP in the name of priorities like climate action, sustainability, inclusivity, global cooperation, health and well-being.

00:38:08.000 This is a direct quote.

00:38:09.000 Quote, we might even find we can live with such a scenario quite happily, meaning a lower GDP, a worse economic life.

00:38:16.000 We can do all that in the name, not of the future, in the name of equality, in the name of fairness. 0.93

00:38:22.000 Now, the reality is, of course, that what you end up with is just garbage. 0.53

00:38:26.000 This is what's happened with the National Health Service in Britain. 0.89

00:38:28.000 So, remember that the left would love a nationalized health system.

00:38:32.000 In fact, they make the argument explicit.

00:38:34.000 There's an entire article by a columnist over at the New York Times, Thomas Frank, the person who wrote What's the Matter with Kansas, in which he suggested that Kansans should get on board with socialism.

00:38:45.000 It didn't work out that well for him.

00:38:47.000 But in any case, he's been arguing for literally years that the left needs to push for more leftism, hard leftism.

00:38:55.000 The Democratic Party needs to push harder and harder and harder.

00:38:58.000 So, for example, when he talks about health care, he says that they need universal health care.

00:39:03.000 Right, sizable majorities of Americans definitely want universal health care.

00:39:06.000 But as I've talked about before, every policy comes with attendant drawbacks and benefits.

00:39:11.000 When you look at the National Health Service in Britain, it is a bleep show.

00:39:15.000 And it is a bleep show specifically because when you redistribute and change the innovation standards, when you change all of the incentive structures, what you end up with is a significantly worse world.

00:39:26.000 There's actually, believe it or not, a fabulous article in the New York Times about this, this week, titled, One Day with an Ambulance in Britain.

00:39:32.000 Long wait, rising frustration.

00:39:35.000 Rachel Perry and Wayne Jones, two paramedics with the Wrexham Ambulance Service, pulled up to a hospital in northern Wales with a patient just after 10 a.m.

00:39:41.000 one early December morning.

00:39:42.000 That's when their wait began.

00:39:44.000 It would be 4.30 p.m.

00:39:45.000 before their patient, a 47-year-old woman with agonizing back pain and numbness in both of her legs, would be handed over to the emergency department of Wrexham Mailer Hospital.

00:39:53.000 It was more than 12 hours since she had first called 999, the British equivalent of 911.

00:39:59.000 So imagine that in the United States, you fall down, you now have numbness in both of your legs and agonizing back pain, and it takes the ambulance 12 hours to reach you.

00:40:08.000 12 hours, not 12 minutes, 12 hours.

00:40:10.000 First of all, if it were 12 minutes in the United States, people would scream at you.

00:40:13.000 Now it's 12 hours in the UK.

00:40:16.000 Harry says we start with an apology now.

00:40:17.000 Every job is like they open the front door.

00:40:19.000 Hi, we're sorry we're late.

00:40:20.000 That has become the norm.

00:40:22.000 The sight of ambulances lined up for hours outside hospitals has become distressingly familiar in Wales, which last month recorded its worst wait times ever for life-threatening emergency calls.

00:40:30.000 But the problem is far from isolated.

00:40:32.000 Ambulance services in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are also experiencing record high waits.

00:40:36.000 It's a near-crisis situation experts say signals a breakdown of the compact between Britain's and their revered National Health Service, that the government will provide responsible, efficient healthcare services, mostly free, across all income levels.

00:40:47.000 Inequality is the byword, and the result is 12-hour wait times for an ambulance.

00:40:51.000 The issue will be cast into sharp relief on Wednesday, when ambulance service staff in England and Wales staged the first of two strikes over low wages and deteriorating work conditions.

00:41:00.000 They're scheduled to walk out again next week.

00:41:02.000 So you have a nationalized health service in which the doctors, nurses, ambulance workers can strike against the public interest over low wages and bad work conditions.

00:41:13.000 Yeah, things are going great over there.

00:41:15.000 This will be the latest walkout in a period of intense labor strife in Britain, with a series of strikes planned across the country during the holidays.

00:41:20.000 Nurses are staging their second one-day strike on Tuesday.

00:41:23.000 Rail workers and border control workers at airports will begin several days of strikes later in the week.

00:41:27.000 Countless harrowing incidents have called attention to the ambulance problem in Britain, including that of an elderly man whose family covered him with a tarp as he waited seven hours after falling outdoors, and a 17-year-old soccer player who waited for four hours lying on a rainy field after suffering a neck injury.

00:41:43.000 Apparently, there's an acute lack of beds in the accident and emergency departments.

00:41:48.000 They're overcrowded because of an inability to find room for patients elsewhere in the hospital.

00:41:51.000 That's because patients ready to be discharged from the hospital often have nowhere else to go as a result of dwindling social care services, which have been hobbled by a lack of government funding and severe staffing shortages.

00:42:00.000 So now they're blaming it on lack of government funding.

00:42:02.000 We need more government funding.

00:42:02.000 That'll solve the problem.

00:42:04.000 Or maybe the problem is when you shifted all the incentive structures, you have now entered an infinite regress of government dependency.

00:42:10.000 We need the government to fund this.

00:42:11.000 How do you get the government to fund it?

00:42:12.000 You raise the taxes.

00:42:13.000 On whom?

00:42:14.000 The businesses produce less.

00:42:14.000 On the businesses.

00:42:15.000 How do we get them to produce more?

00:42:16.000 Gotta nationalize the businesses.

00:42:18.000 Now the nationalized businesses don't produce nearly as well as they did before.

00:42:21.000 We raise the taxes.

00:42:21.000 What do we do?

00:42:22.000 Well, you can't do that.

00:42:23.000 You spend more.

00:42:24.000 You spend more, and it turns out you've now debased the currency.

00:42:28.000 Well, what do you do now?

00:42:29.000 Well, maybe you try to borrow.

00:42:30.000 Well, nobody actually wants to borrow because they see that your industry is struggling.

00:42:33.000 So what do you do now?

00:42:33.000 Well, austerity measures.

00:42:34.000 You cut the services.

00:42:35.000 But if you cut the services, that's the whole problem in the first place.

00:42:39.000 Once you screw up the incentive structures, the mediocrity gets worse.

00:42:42.000 It is not as though you just freeze things in place.

00:42:44.000 You freeze things at the beginning.

00:42:45.000 Then things get worse, and they get worse, and they get worse, and they get worse.

00:42:48.000 So there's only one thing that advocates for this sort of policymaking can do.

00:42:52.000 And that is to get you used to the new normal.

00:42:55.000 The new normal in which they pay you to stay home if you're in the United States and you say that you're on disability even when you're not.

00:43:01.000 The new normal in which in Britain you wait 12 hours for an ambulance.

00:43:04.000 The new normal in which you think about eating bugs.

00:43:07.000 These are extreme examples, obviously, although the ambulance situation in Britain is an actual real crisis.

00:43:11.000 But if the left can convince you that a mediocre standard of living is what you should be shooting for, maybe you'll give them a little bit of a break when in fact their preferred policies result in a worse life for you materially and a worse life for future generations.

00:43:25.000 All in the name of some utopian goal of fairness that has never existed in heaven or on earth.

00:43:32.000 This belief system, Thomas Sowell called it the quest for cosmic justice, that you can create the curative for human inequality, that you can destroy innovation in the name of a better redistribution of intelligence, means, the world's resources.

00:43:48.000 Work ethic.

00:43:49.000 You can do all that?

00:43:50.000 You cannot.

00:43:50.000 You cannot, nor should you.

00:43:52.000 Because if you do, you make life worse for literally everyone.

00:43:55.000 Alrighty, folks, the rest of the show is continuing right now.

00:43:57.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:43:58.000 We will be getting into all of the latest on the Twitter files from reporter Michael Schellenberger, who broke some astonishing information about the collusion between the FBI and Twitter.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 21, 2022

The 1,000 Words You Can’t Say At Stanford | Ep. 1635

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