The Ben Shapiro Show - The Children’s Crusade | Ep. 479

00:00:00.000 The Left trots out students as their point people, everything is about race, and the media spin wildly for gun control in every possible direction.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 So this is our last day of the week until Friday, broadcasting from Los Angeles.

00:00:17.000 We're headed off to Washington, D.C.

00:00:19.000 for CPAC.

00:00:19.000 I will have some notes on CPAC because a little bit of controversy has broken out about one of the invited speakers.

00:00:24.000 Suffice it to say, I disagree with the invitation, but I also don't control the invite.

00:00:29.000 I am looking forward to seeing everyone at CPAC.

00:00:31.000 However, before we get to any of that, plus the news of the day, first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Zeal.

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00:02:41.000 All right, so the debate over gun control continues.

00:02:44.000 And as I said yesterday, I think there are some things that we actually can do.

00:02:48.000 There is what has been called the gun violence restraining order.

00:02:52.000 This is something I talked about yesterday.

00:02:54.000 David French at National Review spoke about the possibility of having laws on the books that allow immediate family or close friends to go to the court and petition to have your capacity to own a gun temporarily removed from you if a court finds that you are a threat to yourself or others.

00:03:09.000 That would be a useful measure, in my view.

00:03:11.000 Another useful measure would be dramatically heightening security.

00:03:14.000 I talked about this on Fox & Friends this morning.

00:03:16.000 I've talked about it this week.

00:03:18.000 The idea here would be that you have to harden the defenses around schools.

00:03:20.000 Our banks have tremendous security.

00:03:22.000 There's no reason why our dollars should be guarded more closely than our children.

00:03:26.000 There's been a lot of talk about arming teachers, and some people object to this.

00:03:28.000 Well, I don't understand why a trained armed teacher would be a threat to your child.

00:03:32.000 You trust your child in the classroom with that teacher every single day.

00:03:35.000 And right now, we are leaving teachers at the whim of mass killers.

00:03:39.000 There's that coach in Parkland who was shot to death while he was attempting to defend students.

00:03:43.000 Wouldn't it have been better if he'd actually been licensed to carry a handgun and had a gun with him, so he maybe could have done something about it?

00:03:49.000 They should build schools.

00:03:51.000 From now on, they should build schools with fail-safe mechanisms, so that if a mass shooter were to enter the school, there would be a capacity to actually lock down separate parts of the school.

00:03:59.000 They have this lockdown capacity at a lot of hospitals.

00:04:01.000 There's no reason why they shouldn't use it when it comes to schools as well.

00:04:05.000 And another thing that ought to be done is something that we here are now doing at Daily Wire.

00:04:09.000 So at Daily Wire, as I've said on the show, I said it in the last week that I wasn't going to name the shooter on the show.

00:04:15.000 I wasn't going to show pictures of the shooter on the show.

00:04:18.000 And somebody emailed me and said, well, then why is your website naming the shooter and showing pictures?

00:04:21.000 And I thought, well, that's a good point.

00:04:23.000 And so we at Daily Wire will no longer be showing the names or the faces of mass shooters.

00:04:27.000 The reason being that studies tend to show that mass shooters are driven by a need for media attention.

00:04:33.000 And so this time we are going to try to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

00:04:37.000 The media, the race to show faces, the race to show names in the media is obviously ratings driven.

00:04:41.000 It's obviously click driven because people are curious.

00:04:43.000 People want to know what the guy looks like who went and shot up a school.

00:04:46.000 We're not going to be part of that game because we can give you all the relevant information as we have been doing on the show.

00:04:50.000 We've told you who the guy is.

00:04:51.000 We've told you everything about him.

00:04:53.000 We've told you what you need to know for the public policy debate.

00:04:55.000 We're just not going to put a name and a face on him because we don't want to give him any sort of unearned notoriety.

00:05:00.000 We don't want him to be unintentionally given levels of exposure that will drive the next mass killer.

00:05:07.000 There's no reason why we should know the names of mass shooters particularly except out of just normal human curiosity or why their pictures should be flashed across the news.

00:05:15.000 We can give you all the information that you need to know without that pictorial evidence behind it.

00:05:19.000 The reason we're doing this is because there are a series of studies that have shown, again, that mass shooters tend to feed off media attention.

00:05:25.000 So, Professor Jennifer Johnston and Andrew Joy of Western New Mexico University found in a paper presented to the APA, that's the American Psychological Association, in 2016, quote, media contagion can help make mass shootings more common.

00:05:37.000 Unfortunately, Johnston says, we find that a cross-cutting trait among many profiles of mass shooters is desire for fame.

00:05:43.000 They say that the rise of such a trait in mass shooters

00:05:45.000 So, some studies say that the dramatic reduction won't be that dramatic, but there is a similar conclusion, which is that a lot of these shooters are driven by the need for fame.

00:05:51.000 So, we're going to do our part.

00:06:13.000 We can give you all the details that you need to know without speaking the name of the person who did it, because, again, there's a lot of people out there who want the world to know their name, but we're not going to help them in that quest.

00:06:22.000 That's not something that we think is a worthwhile thing.

00:06:26.000 The media, of course, are not going to—a lot of other outlets in the media are not going to do this, unfortunately.

00:06:31.000 Cable News is not going to do this.

00:06:33.000 CNN shows the names and faces of the shooters.

00:06:34.000 Fox News shows the names and face of the shooter.

00:06:37.000 The Washington Post, The New York Times, all the major outlets, I believe, still show the names and faces of mass shooters.

00:06:42.000 Because they said the public has a right to know.

00:06:45.000 Well just because you have a right to know doesn't mean that I have an obligation to show you.

00:06:49.000 And I do not feel the obligation to show you the face of a shooter outweighs my obligation as a human being to prevent the dissemination of material that helps possibly create the next shooter.

00:07:00.000 That's not something that I want to be a part of.

00:07:03.000 Speaking of media malfeasance and the left's malfeasance on the gun control issue and the fact that every mass shooting now has become a cause celeb, that this has become the club to wield against law-abiding gun owners, the media have really done an outsized job here.

00:07:19.000 I just want to show you some of the things the media have been doing because they're truly insane.

00:07:22.000 So, ABC News had a tape of a guy named Scott Pappalardo.

00:07:27.000 You've never heard of Scott Pappalardo.

00:07:28.000 Scott Pappalardo is some dude who they found on Facebook.

00:07:32.000 Why are they putting him on ABC News' Twitter feed?

00:07:35.000 Well, because he's a gun owner and he decided to destroy his gun for some odd reason.

00:07:39.000 Here's a video of him talking about it.

00:07:41.000 Hi, my name is Scott Pappalardo and this is my pre-ban.

00:07:47.000 Legally registered AR-15, which I purchased over 30 years ago.

00:07:52.000 Now, I'm a firm believer in the Second Amendment, and I even have it tattooed on my arm.

00:07:56.000 And a lot of people have said to me, well, what do you need to own a weapon like that for?

00:08:01.000 It's only purpose is to kill.

00:08:03.000 And I'll be honest, it's a lot of fun to shoot. 0.98

00:08:08.000 I remember, after Sandy Hook happened,

00:08:13.000 I said to my wife, I'd gladly give this gun up if it would save the life of just one child. 0.64

00:08:19.000 I've decided today, I'm gonna make sure this weapon will never be able to take a life.

00:08:25.000 The barrel of this gun will never be pointed at someone.

00:08:29.000 Is the right to own this weapon more important in someone's life?

00:08:35.000 A weapon like this that can cause so much death and destruction.

00:08:38.000 And then he goes ahead and he takes a saw and he proceeds to saw the gun in half essentially.

00:08:44.000 So he actually walks out there.

00:08:46.000 You can see him doing this routine.

00:08:47.000 Now people have always said there's so many of them out there.

00:09:00.000 Okay, so first point here is that what he actually just did is sort of illegal, you know?

00:09:05.000 Saw off long weapons and make them into shorter weapons. 1.00

00:09:08.000 Second of all, it's stupid. 1.00

00:09:10.000 The reason it's stupid is because that gun was not going to be used to shoot a child. 1.00

00:09:12.000 I mean, it's been in his hands for 30 years. 1.00

00:09:14.000 Has it ever been used to shoot a child?

00:09:15.000 Has it ever been used to shoot anyone?

00:09:17.000 Listen.

00:09:17.000 Would I be willing to give up my Mossberg 500 and my 9mm Glock?

00:09:21.000 Would I be willing to give those guns up to save the life of a child?

00:09:25.000 Sure!

00:09:25.000 I'd be willing to give those guns up to save a life of a child, right?

00:09:28.000 You have a guy standing next to me and he says, I'm going to shoot this child unless you give up your guns.

00:09:32.000 Obviously, I give up the guns. 0.92

00:09:32.000 It's a no-brainer. 0.92

00:09:33.000 But that's not the choice.

00:09:34.000 That's a false choice.

00:09:35.000 My guns are not going to be used to kill the child and nobody is blackmailing me to give up my guns or they're going to shoot a child.

00:09:41.000 That gun had never been used in anger against another human being.

00:09:45.000 And this guy seems like a decent fellow.

00:09:47.000 My presumption is that if he saw a mass shooting taking place, he would go grab his gun and try to take down the mass shooter.

00:09:52.000 He wouldn't go and join the mass shooter.

00:09:54.000 But this is the false binary that's been created. 0.94

00:09:56.000 Every gun is the threat.

00:09:57.000 That gun was not a threat.

00:09:58.000 Because the guy who owns the gun is not a threat.

00:10:00.000 My gun is not a threat.

00:10:01.000 It's locked up in my safe.

00:10:03.000 My gun is only a threat to somebody who would harm my family and hurt people I love.

00:10:07.000 And this is true for the vast, vast, vast 99.9% of law-abiding gun owners.

00:10:11.000 This is the truth for.

00:10:13.000 And yet the media pushed this out as though this is some sort of great act of heroism, Olympic gold in virtue signaling for Scott Pappalardo, who made no one safer in this act.

00:10:21.000 No one was made safer in this act.

00:10:23.000 But he got his name on the news, and the news got to put out this sort of propaganda, which I guess is very exciting.

00:10:28.000 I'm going to show you some more media malfeasance on the gun control issue in just a second, plus we still have to get to the Children's Crusade, which is something that the left is now pushing.

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00:12:04.000 Okay, back to the media coverage of the gun control issue.

00:12:07.000 The media obviously have a deep and abiding agenda.

00:12:11.000 The media, as I say,

00:12:12.000 What's something the media could do to actually help prevent shootings, according to studies?

00:12:16.000 They could do what we're doing over at Daily Wire and not mention the name or face of the shooters.

00:12:19.000 That they could do.

00:12:19.000 They're not doing that.

00:12:20.000 So instead what they do is they put out a bunch of people talking about how gun control is obviously the thing that has to happen here.

00:12:26.000 So CNN is having an entire special, I believe it's tomorrow night, and that special tomorrow night is going to feature all of the students over at Parkland basically talking about why they want gun control.

00:12:35.000 And the reason this is stating the news is because the media have decided to use the children over at Parkland in order to push their agenda.

00:12:41.000 And we'll talk about whether it is moral to use children in order to push an agenda, teenagers to push an agenda in just a second.

00:12:46.000 But first, I'm going to show you some more elements in the news that are just plain false, that are just fake news.

00:12:51.000 So CBS News put out this promo saying that in Florida, it's easier to buy an assault rifle than it is to obtain cold medicine.

00:12:57.000 This is just not true.

00:12:58.000 It says, here's what's more difficult to purchase than a gun in Florida.

00:13:05.000 Sudafed contains pseudofedrin, which can be used to legally manufacture methamphetamines.

00:13:10.000 Federal regulations require it be sold behind the pharmacy or service counter, and customers need to show they're over 18 years of age.

00:13:17.000 Okay, and then it says, customers are limited to purchases of 9 grams per month about two 15-dose boxes of 24-hour Claritin D, or three 10-dose boxes of Aleve cold and sinus, or six 24-dose boxes of Sudafed.

00:13:31.000 In Florida, you can buy as many guns as you want at one time, according to the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action.

00:13:35.000 Right, but there's no federal background check for cold medicine.

00:13:38.000 There's no federal background check for Sudafed.

00:13:40.000 It says you don't need a permit to purchase a rifle or shotgun.

00:13:43.000 Right, but there is a federal background check that happens at every federally licensed firearms dealer.

00:13:46.000 It says there are restrictions on the amount of fertilizer one can purchase because ammonium nitrate, when mixed with other substances, can become explosive.

00:13:52.000 Right, because you don't have a right to explosives, you do have a right to keep and bear arm for your own safety.

00:13:57.000 But the headline here that it's easier to buy a gun than it is to buy Claritin-D is just not true.

00:14:04.000 Try buying Claritin-D.

00:14:05.000 Go to a pharmacy, try to buy Claritin-D.

00:14:07.000 It is much easier to buy Claritin-D than it is to go to a gun shop and buy a gun.

00:14:12.000 In California, you actually have to take a test.

00:14:14.000 In California, in certain other states, you don't.

00:14:16.000 In Florida, you have to have a federal background check.

00:14:19.000 They check you through the system.

00:14:20.000 That doesn't happen with cold medicine.

00:14:21.000 By the way,

00:14:22.000 I think that from a libertarian perspective, there's a solid argument that I should be able to buy as much Sudafed as I want at a given shot.

00:14:28.000 And I'm not sure that the government has a place in regulating how much Sudafed I can buy.

00:14:31.000 So I have problems with that on a libertarian basis just automatically.

00:14:36.000 I know I should have to go back to the store every so often to buy Sudafed if I just want to stock up and use it later.

00:14:41.000 And if I'm producing meth, then the government can bust me.

00:14:43.000 And the government can prosecute me.

00:14:44.000 But again, this is the media pushing falsehoods, the idea that it's difficult to buy guns, that it's easier to buy lots of other things in the United States than it is to buy a gun.

00:14:56.000 Just not true if you're doing it legally through a federally licensed firearms dealer.

00:15:00.000 That's not the only piece of propaganda being put out.

00:15:02.000 CNN has a commentator named Gagliano, and this person says that James Gagliano, who's the FBI supervisory special agent, retired.

00:15:13.000 Who says that the Founding Fathers never could have envisioned an 18-year-old kid buying a gun.

00:15:18.000 Invented gunpowder in 700 A.D.

00:15:20.000 The first guns were mid-14th century invented.

00:15:23.000 The 1791, the Second Amendment comes online, and here we are in 2018, and we're hanging on to this and we're going, we just can't talk about this because if we do that, we're somehow going to tick off the Founding Fathers.

00:15:37.000 The Founding Fathers could not envision that an 18-year-old kid could go into a gun store

00:15:42.000 He can't buy beer, but he could buy a semi-automatic weapon, and it's a weapon of war, Dave.

00:15:47.000 We've spoken about this.

00:15:48.000 Okay, this is absolute sheer nonsense.

00:15:50.000 The Founding Fathers were fully aware that 18-year-old kids could buy weapons of war.

00:15:54.000 Who do you think was in the American Revolutionary Army?

00:15:57.000 Well, the Founding Fathers would mostly be shocked by his regulations on age of consent to buy beer, right?

00:16:01.000 They would be like, wait a second, you have to be 18 to get a beer?

00:16:04.000 You have to be 18 to get an ale around here?

00:16:06.000 What kind of nonsense is that?

00:16:07.000 There are people in the Revolutionary Army who are 14 years old, 15 years old.

00:16:11.000 If you actually go and watch Mel Gibson's movie, The Patriot, there are a lot of kids in there.

00:16:15.000 The reason that they're in there is because that was true.

00:16:17.000 There were a lot of kids who were in the American Revolutionary Army.

00:16:20.000 And by the way, virtually everybody in the United States at the time of the founding owned a weapon and brought it home, and then they would drill on the green together as part of a well-regulated militia, but it was personal gun ownership.

00:16:31.000 Everyone owned a gun back in the day, including people who were young.

00:16:34.000 18-year-old kids, by the way, were not kids in 1791.

00:16:39.000 In 1791, 18-year-old people were expected to be looking to get married and have a family already.

00:16:45.000 We're only considering 18-year-old kids because this is our modern society where 18-year-olds are considered kids, except if they have something to say about gun control, in which case we consider them adults, as we'll get to in just a second.

00:16:56.000 That's not the end of the propaganda.

00:16:57.000 Simone Sanders, commentator on MSNBC, said, well, you know, what this is really about is race, because everything is always about race.

00:17:02.000 Invariably and always, everything is about race.

00:17:10.000 We wouldn't be talking about the types of legislation we could and could not make happen.

00:17:14.000 Because if he was yelling Allah Akbar, Congress and the President, one would have been tweeting about it and they would have swooped in and did whatever they felt needed to.

00:17:22.000 That's not true.

00:17:22.000 They didn't change the gun laws after Islamic violence.

00:17:24.000 Did they change the gun laws after San Bernardino? 1.00

00:17:27.000 We have a Muslim ban, dammit! 1.00

00:17:29.000 Did we change the gun laws after San Bernardino? 1.00

00:17:31.000 What I am saying is this... You know, you don't have to demagogue this.

00:17:34.000 No, I'm not demagoguing anything, but what I am saying is... You don't have to make it about race.

00:17:39.000 Okay.

00:17:39.000 Okay, Bill Kristol here actually doing Yeoman's work is on CNN and MSNBC.

00:17:43.000 Of course, he's exactly right.

00:17:44.000 That's him saying, we didn't change any of the gun laws after San Bernardino.

00:17:47.000 We didn't change any of the gun laws after the Orlando massacre.

00:17:50.000 And it's worth noting that when everybody says, well, there was a Muslim ban after that, you're messing up the timeline.

00:17:55.000 OK, San Bernardino happened.

00:17:57.000 The San Bernardino shooting was, I believe, in 2015.

00:17:58.000 That was two years before any Muslim ban was actually attempted.

00:18:04.000 I don't know.

00:18:21.000 The reason that the issues are demagogues is because the left wants to push this notion that anyone who disagrees with them is a bad person.

00:18:26.000 David Brooks has a good column on this over at the New York Times.

00:18:29.000 It's rare that I recommend a David Brooks column because he's one of the in-house conservatives over at the New York Times, which means he's not particularly conservative.

00:18:35.000 He's a fan of gun control.

00:18:37.000 But what he said today is basically correct, but the left is fighting angry over it.

00:18:41.000 They are spitting mad over this.

00:18:43.000 What David Brooks said today

00:18:45.000 As he said, many of us have walked this emotional path.

00:18:47.000 We may end up doing more harm than good.

00:18:49.000 If there's one thing we've learned, it is that guns have become a cultural flashpoint in a nation that is unequal and divided.

00:18:54.000 The people who defend gun rights believe that snobbish elites look down on their morals and want to destroy their culture.

00:18:58.000 If we end up telling such people that they and their guns are despicable, they will just despise us back and dig in their heels.

00:19:03.000 So if you want to stop school shootings, it's not enough just to vent and march.

00:19:07.000 It's necessary to let people from red America lead the way and to show respect to gun owners at all points.

00:19:11.000 There has to be trust and respect first.

00:19:13.000 Then we can strike a compromise on guns as guns and not some sacred cross in the culture war.

00:19:18.000 This, of course, is 100% true.

00:19:20.000 One of the reasons that no agreement has been reached here is that gun owners will say, why don't we talk about these issues that have nothing to do with guns?

00:19:25.000 And the left will say, I don't want to talk about any of those issues.

00:19:27.000 You're just doing that because you want to distract from guns.

00:19:30.000 And the right will say, gun owners will say to the left, well, the only reason you want to talk about guns is because you hate guns.

00:19:34.000 It's not because you actually think this is going to prevent school shootings.

00:19:37.000 And you've provided no evidence that this will prevent school shootings other than a mass gun confiscation, like a regime in Australia or Britain, where the sample size is too small to really identify it anyway.

00:19:46.000 The number of school shootings in Australia prior to the gun ban, the gun confiscation, the gun buyback program was so low that when it went to zero, that is within margin of error.

00:19:57.000 But the left has a real stake in avoiding the consequences of having real discussions about real issues, and the right knows that.

00:20:04.000 People on the right, gun owners, feel insulted by this, as well they should. 0.97

00:20:07.000 When ABC shows that video of that guy cutting his gun in half, and then suggests to me, a law-abiding gun owner, that if I were a good person, I would saw my gun in half, my answer is no. 0.67

00:20:18.000 If I were a good person, I would maintain my gun, keep it in good working condition, and shoot bad guys when they attempt to shoot innocent people.

00:20:24.000 It's always the cops who take down these folks, by the way. 0.70

00:20:27.000 It's always people with guns who take down mass shooters.

00:20:30.000 It is always the threat of another gun that stops a mass shooter in the end. 0.92

00:20:33.000 That's why it's so foolish to cast doubt on all law-abiding gun owners.

00:20:38.000 Now, you want to talk about measures that you can take because you think that they are reasonable with regard to buying guns and owning guns.

00:20:45.000 You're going to have to show, number one, how that connects to the issue at hand, school shootings.

00:20:50.000 And number two, you're going to have to explain why it is that gun violence in the United States has been dramatically declining for the last two decades, despite skyrocketing numbers of guns in circulation in the United States.

00:21:00.000 The rate of gun ownership has gone down overall, I believe, among households.

00:21:04.000 But the number of guns in the United States on an absolute level has gone up pretty tremendously over the last 20 years.

00:21:10.000 Meanwhile, the rate of gun violence has gone down.

00:21:11.000 So if the absolute number of guns were supposed to be a good measure of how much gun violence was taking place, it simply is not.

00:21:19.000 It just isn't.

00:21:20.000 But in their drive, their desire to ignore the evidence in front of them, the left seeks to avoid the consequences of these discussions.

00:21:29.000 And instead, they cast aspersions at people on the right.

00:21:31.000 When people on the right say, guys, we're all on the same side here, people on the left say, no, we're not, because the NRA kills people.

00:21:37.000 They've—there was literally a tweet yesterday asking how many people the NRA had killed today, how many children the NRA had killed today.

00:21:43.000 The answer is zero.

00:21:44.000 There's not one documented case of a mass shooter being a member of the NRA.

00:21:48.000 But it doesn't matter.

00:21:49.000 You know, who cares?

00:21:50.000 New York Daily News ran that headline.

00:21:52.000 Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids did you kill today?

00:21:54.000 Again, the answer is zero.

00:21:57.000 But we're never going to hear conversations, by the way, about organizations that actually do kill children like Planned Parenthood.

00:22:03.000 How many kids did they kill today?

00:22:04.000 Well, on average, they kill about 1,000 children a day, 1,000 unborn children a day.

00:22:08.000 So that seems like a good place to start if you're going to talk about dead kids because of organizations.

00:22:13.000 Not the NRA.

00:22:14.000 OK, we're going to get to the student crusade, the children's crusade in just a second, and whether we should listen to the children, whether the children should lead us, because this is the new pitch from the left.

00:22:22.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Texture.

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00:24:06.000 Okay, so, the left has been calling now for a children's crusade.

00:24:10.000 They know they've been making these gun control arguments consistently for a long time.

00:24:13.000 And they know that these gun control arguments have not been particularly effective.

00:24:16.000 The gun control laws have not been put on the books.

00:24:19.000 The gun control laws that are on the books have not really been enforced well.

00:24:22.000 So now the left is looking for new spokespeople.

00:24:25.000 Because they figure that it can't be the message that's wrong.

00:24:27.000 It can't be that the American people don't particularly like the message.

00:24:30.000 It has to be something else.

00:24:31.000 And what it probably is, is that we've been using the wrong messengers.

00:24:34.000 The messengers that we truly need in this crusade are children.

00:24:39.000 As you know, this is a pet peeve of mine.

00:24:41.000 When Jimmy Kimmel trotted out his small child, his baby, who has no political views from what I can see, to talk about Obamacare and suggested that his child's heart surgery at Children's Hospital with Dr. Von Starnes was an excuse for maintaining Obamacare, I said that this was immoral.

00:24:56.000 I said it was immoral because my daughter had the same surgery at the same hospital with the same—well, a different surgery, but an open-heart surgery, same hospital with same doctor.

00:25:03.000 This did not confer expertise upon me regarding Obamacare.

00:25:07.000 You actually have to study the issues.

00:25:08.000 I objected when Democrats under President Obama would routinely trot out children and use children's letters as an excuse to talk about public policy.

00:25:16.000 They did this a lot on guns.

00:25:17.000 They would find a letter in the mail from a seven-year-old, probably written by mommy and daddy, about gun control.

00:25:22.000 Why can't we just make all the guns go away?

00:25:24.000 It's really interesting.

00:25:25.000 The other day, my parents brought over a box of old papers, stuff I'd had from when I was a little kid.

00:25:30.000 And I went to a public school, and I found a paper in there that I'd written when I was maybe six or seven years old.

00:25:36.000 And the entire thing was about environmentalism and how human beings are ruining the environment.

00:25:40.000 And the reason that I was writing that paper when I was six or seven years old is because this is basically what they teach in public school.

00:25:45.000 They teach you that you're supposed to care about the environment, which is fine, but then they teach you that man is ruining the environment.

00:25:50.000 Man, responsible for the death of all the geese.

00:25:54.000 This is the routine that they teach in public school.

00:25:57.000 It's not necessarily true.

00:25:58.000 In fact, the facts don't tend to back up the idea that human beings are solely responsible for degradation in every aspect of the environment.

00:26:06.000 In many ways, the environment has gotten better in the last few decades.

00:26:09.000 But this is what I was writing when I was seven.

00:26:12.000 Should I have been deciding gun policy?

00:26:14.000 Probably not, because what I'd probably be parroting is what I'd heard from my teachers and from my parents.

00:26:17.000 Because this is what children do.

00:26:19.000 Adults teach children, and then children parrot what the adults have to say because they think adults are smart. 1.00

00:26:23.000 It's only later, when children become adults, that they realize that adults are just as stupid as kids most of the time. 1.00

00:26:28.000 One of the great disappointments of being an adult is realizing that all the people who have houses and cars are just the same stupid kids, but a little bit more mentally developed. 1.00

00:26:37.000 That said, 1.00

00:26:39.000 Adults are adults and children are children. 0.99

00:26:40.000 But because there are a bunch of high school kids who are now speaking out about gun control and the media wants to confer upon them virtue, the media wants to confer upon them the capacity for leadership, it's quite shocking and quite fascinating and quite stupid. 0.99

00:26:55.000 So here, as I showed you before, is these kids chanting, hey, hey, NRA, how many kids did you kill today? 0.98

00:27:02.000 I don't know.

00:27:23.000 Which doesn't change anything.

00:27:24.000 It just suggests that he had a political agenda and still has a political agenda.

00:27:27.000 It wasn't like he was pro-gun and then flipped because of what he saw in front of him.

00:27:31.000 You know, new evidence changing his position.

00:27:33.000 This is always his position.

00:27:34.000 But David Hogg, he came out and was ripping anybody who has taken money from the NRA and, of course, being treated with full seriousness by the anchors on this show, even though there is no credibility to the actual words that this human being is speaking.

00:27:48.000 Emma Gonzalez, another shooting survivor, doing the same thing.

00:27:52.000 We would hope that you have the decent morality to support us at this point.

00:27:56.000 And not take money from people that want to keep lessening gun legislation and making it even easier for these horrifying people to get guns.

00:28:04.000 Because if you can't get elected without taking money from child murderers, why are you running?

00:28:26.000 Who are the child murderers?

00:28:27.000 Is it Planned Parenthood?

00:28:29.000 No, it's the NRA.

00:28:30.000 And the NRA gives money to politicians because they think that the politicians are going to support gun rights.

00:28:35.000 One of the memes that was going around yesterday that is an absolute falsehood, it's an absolute lie, there was a meme going around yesterday suggesting that the NRA had paid for the gun training of this kid.

00:28:46.000 No, of the shooter.

00:28:48.000 No, what actually happened is that the NRA gave money to the Junior ROTC, which is a training program for future military members.

00:28:55.000 JROTC is a fantastic program.

00:28:57.000 ROTC is a great program.

00:28:59.000 This kid, this shooter, this terrible human being, went to some of these shooting programs with JROTC.

00:29:06.000 And the media ran with this as NRA had a training program for the kid.

00:29:10.000 That's not remotely true.

00:29:12.000 That's not true.

00:29:13.000 That's what the media was pushing, because again, the message matters more than the actual truth of the message.

00:29:19.000 And just because these kids experienced pain and suffering,

00:29:22.000 Our hearts go out to them for experiencing pain and suffering, but it doesn't mean that what they're saying makes any sense.

00:29:26.000 Lots of people experience pain and suffering.

00:29:28.000 Jim Garrity was making this point yesterday with regard to the Jersey girls.

00:29:31.000 These are the women whose husbands were lost in 9-11.

00:29:36.000 They were very radically left, and they were conferred what some people on the left, I think it was Maureen Dowd, suggested was absolute moral authority.

00:29:43.000 Give them absolute moral authority.

00:29:45.000 Now, there's no such thing as absolute moral authority for any statement.

00:29:48.000 Either a statement is true or a statement is false.

00:29:50.000 Moral authority means nothing.

00:29:52.000 You don't have moral, moral authority to say something simply because you've suffered.

00:29:56.000 The question is whether what you are saying is effective and truthful and whether it forwards a proper agenda for the American people, not whether you have personally suffered in doing this.

00:30:05.000 There are lots of people who have personally suffered and then do terrible things.

00:30:07.000 It doesn't mean that they're allowed to do terrible things or say terrible things.

00:30:10.000 Personal suffering does not make something more legitimate.

00:30:14.000 It's a real pet peeve of mine.

00:30:16.000 But what Gary was pointing out is that the Jersey Girls were treated with this tremendous respect by the media.

00:30:20.000 They would go on national television shows and say things like it was an inside job, like 9-11 was an inside job.

00:30:26.000 There were certain members of the Jersey Girls who said that.

00:30:28.000 And members of the media would give exactly the reaction you're seeing from Alison Camerota there, the kind of shakehead, serious tone, like pretending that this is OK, what you're saying, just because you went through something terrible.

00:30:41.000 Well, you going through something terrible doesn't make what you say any more or less true.

00:30:44.000 It's either true or it's not.

00:30:46.000 But again, the left has an agenda here, and the agenda here is to put up the most sympathetic faces possible in order to push an agenda that the left already wants.

00:30:53.000 As I said yesterday, CNN's town hall they're holding tomorrow night, with regard to gun control, I don't remember them doing the same thing after the Boston Marathon bombing.

00:30:59.000 I don't remember them doing the same thing after San Bernardino, at least not for people who are stumping for a travel ban.

00:31:04.000 They would never do the same thing with regard to people who are looking for better screening of illegal immigrants.

00:31:09.000 I don't remember them doing a panel with Kate Steinle's family talking about why we need Kate's law.

00:31:14.000 Instead, they push stories about sanctuary cities every day.

00:31:18.000 One of the things that happens in the media that people tend to ignore is selection bias.

00:31:21.000 So CNN will say, yes, we covered the pro-gun control position and the anti-gun control position.

00:31:26.000 Yes, but how did you cover it?

00:31:27.000 What stories did you choose to cover?

00:31:29.000 Fox News is biased in a particular way because they choose what they want to put on TV.

00:31:34.000 And CNN is biased in a particular way because they choose what they want to put on TV.

00:31:38.000 The segments that you choose to put on TV are just as important as how those segments are actually presented.

00:31:44.000 So CNN spending blanket coverage on a bunch of students who don't know anything about gun control or gun laws or the efficacy of various proposals being trotted out because they're sympathetic faces, I just find really disheartening.

00:31:58.000 It gets even worse than that.

00:31:59.000 In a second, I'm going to show you what a Harvard Law professor, Lawrence Tribe, who's gone completely crazy,

00:32:04.000 We're good to go.

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00:33:09.000 So Harvard professor Lawrence Tribe is pushing what he calls now a children's crusade.

00:33:14.000 And what this crusade is, is letting the children speak for us.

00:33:18.000 Now, it's always interesting to watch as folks on the left trot out children in support of certain propositions but not others.

00:33:25.000 So if we had, for example, a bunch of 15-year-old girls said, listen, I think that we should cut back on pornography. 0.83

00:33:30.000 Pornography is really bad. 0.98

00:33:31.000 It's turning boys into pervs. 0.95

00:33:33.000 It makes boys more likely to treat us badly.

00:33:35.000 What we need is a crusade against pornography across the country.

00:33:39.000 Then all of a sudden it would be, these kids don't know what they're talking about.

00:33:41.000 These public policy experts, really?

00:33:42.000 Like 15-year-old girls? 0.67

00:33:44.000 Come on.

00:33:45.000 When you talk about children, when whenever people in the pro-life movement show pictures of aborted babies.

00:33:51.000 Or show pictures of non-aborted babies, and they say, this is what you are killing. 0.99

00:33:54.000 Then it turns into, how dare you use children as a crutch for your argument?

00:33:58.000 Even though it's children's lives that are really at stake.

00:34:00.000 They're calling this gun control march, they're planning a gun control march for March 24th, and they're calling it the march for our lives.

00:34:07.000 The thing about the unborn is they can't have a march for their lives, because by definition, they are unborn. 0.98

00:34:12.000 But the march for our life is really stupid, at least in the way that it's termed. 0.99

00:34:16.000 You can march for whatever you want. 0.99

00:34:17.000 It's a free country.

00:34:18.000 The terminology, March for Our Lives, is silly, because nobody is suggesting that they want you to die.

00:34:23.000 The March for Civil Rights mattered, because there were a lot of people who wanted to actively deprive you of civil rights.

00:34:28.000 I don't know a single person in the United States, outside of some evil mass shooters, who actually wants to deprive any of these kids of their lives, their liberty, or their pursuit of happiness.

00:34:36.000 I don't know anyone in the United States who actually wants to do that.

00:34:38.000 We're all talking about different ways to assure that these kids can be protected, even if the left refuses to acknowledge that fact.

00:34:45.000 Lawrence tried, because he's so eager to push the idea that kids can lead us, a child shall lead us.

00:34:50.000 He suggested, quote, This is certainly not true.

00:34:59.000 This is certainly not true.

00:35:00.000 If that were true, it would not be easy to get kids who are 14 to smoke pot. 1.00

00:35:03.000 Kids who are 14 are dumb. 0.99

00:35:05.000 Okay, I speak to lots of kids who are 14. 1.00

00:35:08.000 At some point, my daughter will be... I remember being 14.

00:35:10.000 Kids between 14 and 18, when I say they're dumb, I don't mean they don't have the capacity to be smart. 1.00

00:35:14.000 I mean, they literally have underdeveloped brains. 0.99

00:35:17.000 Brain science suggests that your brain does not stop developing until you are 25.

00:35:20.000 Your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that is responsible for higher function, it's the part of your brain that is basically the brakes on your amygdala.

00:35:26.000 Your amygdala is your emotional response center.

00:35:28.000 That is really overdeveloped when you're a teenager.

00:35:30.000 And then, your prefrontal cortex, because it's underdeveloped, doesn't stop you from doing stuff.

00:35:34.000 So you say,

00:35:35.000 Hey, car surfing.

00:35:35.000 Your amygdala goes, car surfing, that sounds awesome!

00:35:38.000 That'll be fun!

00:35:39.000 And adrenaline!

00:35:40.000 Yeah!

00:35:41.000 And then your prefrontal cortex, when you're an adult, goes, right, but you'll die. 1.00

00:35:44.000 And that's stupid. 1.00

00:35:45.000 When you're a teenager, the prefrontal cortex goes, well, maybe. 1.00

00:35:50.000 And then you do something dumb. 0.96

00:35:52.000 There's a reason that 16-year-old drivers are the worst drivers on the road. 1.00

00:35:55.000 There's a reason that teenagers make the worst sexual decisions imaginable. 0.99

00:35:58.000 There's a reason that teenagers make dumb life decisions about drugs. 0.94

00:36:01.000 Teenagers are not known as a typical matter, especially in our infantilizing era where we don't actually confer responsibility on children. 0.95

00:36:09.000 In that infantilizing era, kids are not capable of making good public policy decisions as a general rule.

00:36:15.000 This is not necessarily true for every individual, but it is certainly true as a broad generality, which is why the age of consent in most states is 16 years old or higher.

00:36:22.000 It is why the age for voting is 18 years old.

00:36:24.000 There's a good case to be made.

00:36:25.000 It should be raised back to 21 based on modern brain science.

00:36:28.000 But anyway, Lawrence Tribe says, wouldn't it be great if the voting age were lowered to 16?

00:36:32.000 Just a pipe dream, I know, but Children's Crusade?

00:36:35.000 Couple notes about the Children's Crusade.

00:36:37.000 If he's talking about the original Children's Crusade, which took place in the 13th century...

00:36:41.000 That was a giant fail.

00:36:42.000 The idea there was that a bunch of children were going to go to the Middle East, and they were going to convince all of the Muslims in the Middle East to become Christian, or at least give up control over Jerusalem. 0.88

00:36:50.000 It ended, variably, by various accounts, with the enslavement of thousands of children, or with them becoming homeless on the streets of Rome.

00:36:58.000 So that was a giant fail.

00:36:58.000 If you're talking about Martin Luther King's Children's Crusade, in which a bunch of children marched for civil rights, the idea there was to demonstrate just how evil the anti-civil rights forces were by showing Bull Connor sticking dogs on eight-year-old children.

00:37:11.000 I mean, honestly, there are some questions about whether it's moral to do that, really, but not the sickening of the dogs.

00:37:21.000 That is immoral.

00:37:21.000 There are questions about whether it is moral to put children in the line of fire, to push even a useful political agenda, but at least there was a use here.

00:37:29.000 If there were a children's crusade now for gun control, which apparently there's going to be, no one is going to stop them.

00:37:33.000 No one is stopping these kids from lying down and getting on TV and making whatever point they want to make.

00:37:38.000 But the left has a very bifurcated view of when children are responsible for their actions.

00:37:44.000 So when children parrot the left agenda, then all of a sudden, they're responsible for their actions.

00:37:48.000 When they don't parrot the left agenda, then they are not responsible for their actions.

00:37:51.000 That's the way that this works.

00:37:52.000 So the left is constantly pushing more sexual autonomy for youngsters.

00:37:56.000 They say that laws restricting minors' access to abortion and contraceptives are unconstitutional, that children have a capacity to declare themselves men or women, even if they are members of the opposite sex, and that they should go through gender transitioning, regardless of what their parents have to say.

00:38:09.000 This week, a judge in Ohio ruled that a custody of a 17-year-old girl

00:38:13.000 So, you want to lower the voting age to 16, but you want to increase the gun purchase age to 21.

00:38:16.000 Weird how that works.

00:38:39.000 If kids are so good at stuff, if kids are so capable of making fully grown people decisions, then why would you not lower the age of consent for buying a gun to 16?

00:38:48.000 After all, these kids have far better BS detectors on average than adults.

00:38:52.000 They're more responsible than adults, apparently.

00:38:53.000 They're really good at things.

00:38:54.000 So why shouldn't we have a children's crusade?

00:38:56.000 Let's arm up all the kids. 0.99

00:38:57.000 I mean, if the kids are the ones who are the best among us, but of course the left doesn't want to do that.

00:39:01.000 So they want to say that 16-year-olds should vote.

00:39:04.000 Why?

00:39:04.000 Because when you're 16, you're on the left.

00:39:06.000 And then they want to say that 16-year-olds should not be able to drink or have a gun.

00:39:09.000 So responsibility without any accountability is, I guess, the order of the day.

00:39:15.000 These are the same folks who suggest, by the way, that children are disadvantaged if they are not on their parents' health insurance until they're 26 years old.

00:39:22.000 They actually say that the criminal justice system should try you as a juvie until you're 25, because it's not until you're mid-twenties that your brain finally reaches complete maturity.

00:39:31.000 So which is it?

00:39:31.000 Are kids fully autonomous agents?

00:39:33.000 Or are kids actually innocents to be protected?

00:39:36.000 Now my perspective on this is pretty clear.

00:39:37.000 I think that children are innocents to be protected.

00:39:40.000 I don't think that children and teenagers are fully rational actors.

00:39:43.000 And I think that it is adults

00:39:45.000 It is the job of adults to stand up and teach children.

00:39:48.000 It is adults' jobs to lead. 0.75

00:39:49.000 Now, what the left would say is adults aren't leading.

00:39:51.000 They aren't leading.

00:39:52.000 That's why we need children to lead.

00:39:54.000 No, what the left means is adults aren't doing what you want them to do, and therefore you want to get a bunch of sympathetic, cute faces to do it.

00:40:01.000 Listen, my kids are really, really cute.

00:40:02.000 As I've said before, they've been judged by an objective scale as the cutest children on planet Earth.

00:40:08.000 But they don't get to make policy in my house.

00:40:10.000 I make policy in my house because my kids are not good policymakers.

00:40:14.000 If my kids were good policy makers, then I'd listen to my son every time he waddles out of his bedroom at 8 o'clock at night, waddles over to the refrigerator, opens it up, and then says, ice cream, ice cream.

00:40:23.000 Okay, he doesn't get the ice cream.

00:40:25.000 I'm the parent.

00:40:27.000 It's bad parenting, and it's bad adult responsibility to say that children should lead the way on this stuff.

00:40:36.000 Again, if these kids are capable of making a good argument, make the good argument.

00:40:39.000 Then I'll respect the argument.

00:40:40.000 But I'm not going to respect your authority to make the argument just because.

00:40:44.000 This is why it's so weird.

00:40:45.000 Like Nate Silver, who is somebody who believes in expertise.

00:40:48.000 He spends his life talking about why expertise matters.

00:40:50.000 He's somebody who spends his life analyzing numbers.

00:40:54.000 He was very angry because there was an argument that was made

00:40:57.000 Over at the Federalist about shooting survivors don't have additional legitimacy when it comes to public policy arguments.

00:41:04.000 And here's what Nate Silver tweeted.

00:41:13.000 What relevant life experience is it to actually see a shooting?

00:41:17.000 Does that make it more relevant when you make a statistical argument?

00:41:20.000 Nate Silver is captain statistics, and yet that all seems to go out the window when there's a personal experience that is had.

00:41:26.000 Personal experience is not an argument, it's an emotional appeal.

00:41:29.000 If we all understand that, then we can withhold the emotional appeals. 0.98

00:41:33.000 I mean, we can stand up to them or we can take them as they are, but to use that as a substitute for actual logic is really, really dumb. 0.95

00:41:41.000 Now, speaking of really, really dumb, there are a series of articles over the last couple of days about homelessness in California. 0.96

00:41:46.000 This is something I know a little bit about because there's a serious homeless problem in my community. 0.97

00:41:49.000 There's a serious homeless problem in Los Angeles.

00:41:52.000 Last check, I think there were 53,000 homeless people on the streets of Los Angeles, so basically Dodger Stadium filled with homeless people.

00:41:59.000 In San Francisco, it's just horrifying.

00:42:03.000 Apparently, in San Francisco, the NBC Bay Area investigative unit surveyed 153 blocks of downtown San Francisco in search of trash, needles and feces.

00:42:12.000 The investigation revealed trash littered across every single block.

00:42:16.000 The survey also found 41 blocks dotted with needles and 96 blocks sullied with piles of feces.

00:42:23.000 Just beautiful.

00:42:25.000 Just how glorious.

00:42:27.000 It's wonderful that they've really done a good job with one of the most beautiful cities in the world by littering with needles.

00:42:32.000 I mean, again, this is happening everywhere.

00:42:35.000 A block from my house, right on the street, we saw a needle the other day.

00:42:39.000 And that's because there are homeless people who are wandering around.

00:42:41.000 They're drug users.

00:42:42.000 There are some of them who are drug users.

00:42:43.000 Not the overwhelming majority, but certainly a significant percentage of homeless people are drug users or alcoholic or mentally ill.

00:42:49.000 And there are a bunch of people who are saying, in the richest cities in the world, San Francisco, should there be this homeless problem?

00:42:55.000 A couple of things to note about that.

00:42:57.000 One, if you are a believer that homeless people are created by the price of housing, then maybe it's the high level of regulation in San Francisco that's driving the homeless problem.

00:43:05.000 When you create rent control, when you prevent developers from actually building new buildings, that sends the prices skyrocketing.

00:43:10.000 And that means that if you are a believer that it's people who are on the fringes, people on the economic margins, who end up homeless, if that's your take, then you should really be against regulations with regard to building new units of housing.

00:43:22.000 But folks on the left aren't.

00:43:23.000 They foolishly cling to this idea that rent control is going to somehow bring about cheaper housing, which it never has done anywhere for any large scale of people.

00:43:32.000 Only additional development does that.

00:43:34.000 I'm not a believer that that's what causes the homeless problem.

00:43:36.000 What causes the homeless problem, in my view, and there are a number of good books,

00:43:40.000 The ACLU.

00:44:01.000 has actually sued to allow people to keep their stuff on the streets in Los Angeles.

00:44:05.000 So there have been judges in the state of California, of course, who have suggested that you have a state and federal constitutional right to sleep on the streets in Los Angeles.

00:44:13.000 And then we wonder why the streets are littered with feces and needles.

00:44:17.000 That's why.

00:44:18.000 When you leave mentally ill people on the streets, when you leave people who are drug addicts on the streets, you end up with poop and drugs on the streets. 0.89

00:44:24.000 It's just something that happened.

00:44:26.000 And it is not mean or cruel to people who are mentally ill to suggest that they ought to be given treatment that they need.

00:44:31.000 The whole point of a functioning republic is that we are seeking to allow people rational choice.

00:44:38.000 When you are not in your rational mind, you cannot make good choices.

00:44:41.000 When you are a drug-addled person, you cannot make rational choices. 0.98

00:44:44.000 When you are a mentally ill person, a severely mentally ill person living on the street, 0.96

00:44:48.000 These are not good choices in a very high percentage.

00:44:50.000 The studies vary, but a very high percentage by every study of people who are living on the streets are mentally ill and or drug addicts.

00:44:56.000 And yet the laws have been specifically constructed by the left to allow those people to live in their own filth on the streets.

00:45:02.000 It is not good for them.

00:45:03.000 It is not good for the society.

00:45:04.000 It's not good overall.

00:45:06.000 This is a result of bad left policy, not just poverty.

00:45:08.000 Left wants to make it about communism, as though there are no homeless people in communist societies.

00:45:12.000 It's not about that.

00:45:13.000 It's about bad policy that is happening in our nation's democratic cities, which is where the vast majority of homeless people are living at this point.

00:45:20.000 Okay, so, time for a couple of things that I like, and then some things I hate.

00:45:24.000 And then we'll do a Federalist paper, since we did not do one yesterday.

00:45:27.000 So, things I like.

00:45:29.000 So I am currently reading a biography of Andrew Carnegie by David Nassau.

00:45:32.000 Andrew Carnegie was, at one point, the wealthiest person in the United States, which is to say, probably on Earth.

00:45:37.000 One of the great industrialists.

00:45:39.000 And all the myths about him as a robber baron who decided to give back to the poor as he was old and dying, that's not true.

00:45:46.000 From the time that he was middle-aged, he knew he wanted to give away all his wealth, which is why the Carnegie Endowment is so large, it's why there's Carnegie Hall, it's why there are libraries named after Andrew Carnegie.

00:45:54.000 It demonstrates, again, that just because you become wealthy doesn't mean that you become non-virtuous.

00:45:58.000 Now, the way that he got his wealth is a little more controversial.

00:46:01.000 So Carnegie was involved with a lot of insider deals.

00:46:03.000 He got wealthy the way a lot of people got wealthy in the Gilded Age, which is to say that he got a bunch of insider contracts from government-connected players.

00:46:11.000 I'm not in favor of that sort of cronyism, obviously.

00:46:14.000 But the historical read on Carnegie is that he was a bad man, a cruel man.

00:46:19.000 At the end of his life, he had sort of a Scrooge-like Reformation.

00:46:23.000 Then decided to give away his money.

00:46:23.000 That's not factually true.

00:46:25.000 The biography is quite good.

00:46:26.000 David Nassau, Andrew Carnegie.

00:46:28.000 Check out the book.

00:46:28.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:46:29.000 So Fergie has now apologized for her version of the national anthem.

00:46:34.000 She says,

00:46:44.000 OK, well, that's fair.

00:46:46.000 That's fair.

00:46:47.000 You know, I got enjoyment out of it.

00:46:49.000 I'll say that.

00:46:50.000 I found it hilarious and enjoyable.

00:46:53.000 It was less about being disrespectful to me than it just being bad. 0.99

00:46:58.000 But good for Fergie for at least recognizing that the anthem that she sang was garbage. 1.00

00:47:01.000 So kudos there. 0.99

00:47:03.000 OK, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:47:10.000 So the controversy over Laura Ingraham continues.

00:47:12.000 As I said yesterday, this is a deeply intellectually dishonest conversation. 0.95

00:47:15.000 Laura Ingraham said to LeBron James, shut up and dribble. 1.00

00:47:17.000 She literally wrote a book called Shut Up and Sing. 1.00

00:47:19.000 Okay, this is 15 years ago.

00:47:21.000 This has been part of her shtick for a very long time.

00:47:24.000 When she says that celebrities should shut up and do whatever it is that they do, what she is saying is that we don't really think that your opinion matters very much.

00:47:30.000 Not that you have to shut up, not that you don't have a right to speak, but that why would we take your opinion that seriously if you don't have any expertise on the issue?

00:47:38.000 Yet, the entire media decided that it was time to call her a bigot on this basis.

00:47:41.000 So, Kevin Durant, the star player for the Golden State Warriors, he says that this was racist.

00:47:47.000 He says, quote,

00:47:54.000 So we know it's coming. 0.98

00:47:55.000 We know if we use our voice, and it's not what some people may agree with, of course they're going to say ignorant things like that.

00:47:59.000 But we are the American dream.

00:48:00.000 We come from nothing.

00:48:01.000 We rose up in our profession to be able to take care of our families forever, all of which is fair.

00:48:05.000 But then he says, I kind of feel sorry for her because she's not looking through the lens of being free and what that's about.

00:48:10.000 It feels bad that she doesn't know what we came from or who we are personally.

00:48:12.000 She might actually enjoy being around us, but might actually feel inspired by being not just around me or LeBron, but guys in our position, anybody of color who has risen up and done something positive in life.

00:48:21.000 This is putting some accusations on Laura Ingraham that do not exist.

00:48:24.000 I'm sure that Laura Ingraham knows a lot of black people.

00:48:26.000 I'm sure she would enjoy hanging out with a lot of NBA players.

00:48:28.000 I'm sure I would enjoy hanging out with a lot of NBA players.

00:48:30.000 They seem like pretty cool folks, some of them.

00:48:33.000 But that doesn't mean they have any political expertise, or that if I criticize LeBron James for not knowing what he's talking about, that's somehow a racist take.

00:48:39.000 Michael Wilbon was doing the same thing on ESPN.

00:48:43.000 He's a columnist for The Washington Post.

00:48:45.000 And he says that Laura Ingraham comes off like a bigot. 1.00

00:48:48.000 Shut up and dribble. 1.00

00:48:49.000 And I realize she was playing off the title of something, whether it's a book or lecture or whatever she's getting. 1.00

00:48:54.000 But shut up and dribble. 1.00

00:48:55.000 You take yourself that seriously? 1.00

00:48:56.000 You're that smart? 0.99

00:48:58.000 It's interesting that all these, again, uber-conservatives who talk about how, what stable geniuses they are, but yet they sound like morons when they try and dictate to other people what they should talk about, what they're intelligent enough to talk about. 0.99

00:49:10.000 And she comes off like a bigot. 0.99

00:49:11.000 I don't know her.

00:49:12.000 I don't know her work.

00:49:13.000 I turn as frantically off Fox as I can.

00:49:16.000 OK, well, if you don't know her and you don't know her work, then why are you calling her a bigot?

00:49:19.000 And she says she comes off like a bigot.

00:49:21.000 And then he acknowledges at the very beginning of that statement that Laura Ingraham wrote a book called Shut Up and Sing about the Dixie Chicks, who are as white as white can be. 0.97

00:49:29.000 Now, I will say that there are a bunch of people on the right who say, why should celebrities have opinions on politics?

00:49:34.000 And then when it's Kid Rock running for Senate, then suddenly they're fine with it. 0.94

00:49:37.000 That's silly.

00:49:38.000 There are people on the left who are doing the same thing, by the way. 0.98

00:49:39.000 They're saying that Kid Rock running for Senate is super crazy.

00:49:43.000 Why would he do that?

00:49:44.000 And now, today, at Drudge Report, he's linking to Showbiz 411.

00:49:47.000 George Clooney is talking about running for president, apparently.

00:49:50.000 Apparently, they're going to speak.

00:49:52.000 He and his wife Amal are going to appear at the March for Our Lives.

00:49:56.000 He says that only kids will be speaking at the event, but he's going to show up anyway.

00:49:59.000 And then he says, would I like to be the next president?

00:50:01.000 Oh, that sounds like fun.

00:50:02.000 Can I just add, like, anybody to be the next president of the United States right away, please?

00:50:06.000 And Clooney took in an Iraqi refugee last September in Kentucky.

00:50:09.000 The refugee is now a student at the University of Chicago.

00:50:12.000 And so there's a good case to be made that they're going to try and push George Clooney or some other celebrity into the presidency.

00:50:19.000 Listen, I'm not happy with the emerge of celebrity in politics.

00:50:22.000 I think it's backwards. 0.96

00:50:24.000 I think that celebrity, when people take people's fame as a measure of their aptitude, that's foolish. 0.56

00:50:29.000 One of the great lines in Fiddler on the Roof, the musical Fiddler on the Roof, is Tevye, he's talking about if I were a rich man.

00:50:34.000 He's talking about if you were rich.

00:50:36.000 And then people would come to him, and they'd ask him questions that would cross a rabbi's eyes.

00:50:39.000 And he says, and it would not matter if I answer right or wrong.

00:50:44.000 When you're rich, they think you really know.

00:50:45.000 Okay, the same thing is true about fame in the United States.

00:50:48.000 When you're famous, people think you actually know what you're talking about.

00:50:50.000 Usually when you're famous for something, that doesn't mean that you know anything about any other topic.

00:50:54.000 I'm not an astrophysicist.

00:50:55.000 Neil deGrasse Tyson knows more about astrophysics than I do. 0.82

00:50:57.000 By the same token, Neil deGrasse Tyson is not a politician, and he doesn't know anything about politics, and when he speaks about politics, he sounds like a doof. 0.98

00:51:04.000 So, areas of expertise do matter.

00:51:06.000 Okay.

00:51:07.000 Quick Federalist paper.

00:51:08.000 We didn't do it yesterday.

00:51:08.000 So we are on Federalist 16.

00:51:10.000 Alexander Hamilton continuing to talk about the insufficiency of the Articles of Confederation and why they should be replaced by the Constitution.

00:51:16.000 He says, confederacies tend to devolve into civil war because there's not a strong enough centralized government.

00:51:21.000 If there's not enough that the federal government does, if it's basically just there, then the only way to enforce the rules is with a large standing army, whereas if there's a broad

00:51:30.000 A broad federal government with large pockets of agreement, then people actually have a stake in the preservation of that government.

00:51:36.000 And he says, if a confederacy breaks down into civil war, then it's going to get really bloody.

00:51:41.000 Now remember, all of this is 80 years before the Civil War, or 70 years before the Civil War, and it all comes true. 0.99

00:51:46.000 He says, once the sword is drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

00:51:51.000 The suggestions of wounded pride, the instigations of irritated resentment, would be apt to carry the states against which the arms of the Union were exerted.

00:51:57.000 Of course, it very nearly did.

00:51:58.000 He also said states cannot be trusted to do the work of the federal government.

00:52:00.000 So if you were to have a confederacy where you'd say, the federal government will pass a law and then we won't have any federal

00:52:14.000 That's a distinction that still has some relevance for today's constitutional law, particularly when it comes to the federal government

00:52:45.000 All righty.

00:52:45.000 We will be back here tomorrow from Washington, D.C., where we are headed for CPAC.

00:52:49.000 I ran out of time to talk about CPAC.

00:52:51.000 I'll hopefully talk about it a little bit tomorrow.

00:52:52.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:52:53.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:58.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:53:00.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:53:02.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:53:03.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:53:05.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:53:07.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:53:08.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:53:10.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:53:13.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 20, 2018

The Children’s Crusade | Ep. 479

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