The push to the left is not going to stop if Joe Biden becomes president, and the pendulum swings back to zero. But that does not mean that the swing at the other end of the "wobble" is going to immediately stop, because that's not what the American people really want to see. The problem is that politicians misinterprets an election victory as a mandate for their particular program. And that's why we have seen American politics swing wildly like a pendulum, because the politicians don't allow themselves to stop at the center of the political pendulum. And if they do, they'll end up endorsing wholesale all of the big ideas they think they are endorsing. That's why you'll never see a return to "normal" once Joe Biden is elected president, because they won't allow anything to go back to normal once they realize that they've won the election, because it's not about what they thought it was going to be, but about what's going to happen after that election, and how they'll react to it. Ben Shapiro explains why this is a symptom of a broken political system, and why it won't stop once Joe becomes president. This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to express.vpn.co/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code "ELISSA" at checkout to receive $10 and receive 10% off your first purchase when you shop at ExpressVpn. Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show. Don't like the show? Then visit expressvpn to stay anonymous! to get 10% all month and receive 5% off the entire month, plus a FREE 7-day VIP membership offer when you sign up for VIP access to the VIP membership plan when you become a patron gets a discount of $99 or more? Learn more about your ad discount code: Ben Shapiro is a supporter of the show and get $5 and get 5 VIP membership when you enter the VIP discount when you buy a VIP membership? Subscribe for 5 stars and get 20% off my ad discount starts starting at $99 and get an ad discount when they get my VIP discount starts in the show starts in two months, they get 5 years get my discount starts at $49 and I get a discount, they also get 7 days and I also get a complimentary rate of $25, and get access to VIP discount, and a discount gets 4 VIP discount?
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00:00:26.000Okay, well I hope that you had a safe and happy weekend.
00:00:28.000We're going to get to all the news because there is plenty of it.
00:00:31.000We begin today with a simple observation.
00:00:34.000The push to the left is not going to stop if Joe Biden becomes president.
00:00:37.000I think there are a lot of people who believe that Joe Biden becoming president simply will let everything get back to normal.
00:00:41.000And once Joe Biden is president, and the polls seem to reflect this, and once Joe Biden is president, everybody can go back about their business, all the crazy stops, everybody calms down.
00:00:49.000The left calms down because Trump is no longer president, and the right calms down because Trump is no longer president, and slow old Joe just is kind of there, and everything goes back to quasi-normal.
00:00:59.000I think that this is really missing the boat.
00:01:01.000I think the reason this is missing the boat is because we have had this pattern in American politics for quite a while, where everybody misinterprets an election victory as a mandate for their particular program.
00:01:10.000And to be fair, This is a bipartisan issue.
00:01:12.000So in 2004, after George W. Bush won, and he beat John Kerry, instead of interpreting that as, I just beat John Kerry, he interpreted it as, well, I guess that my program is popular now, so I'm gonna move forward with social security privatization and immigration reform.
00:01:25.000Both of those things, dead on arrival.
00:01:27.000And they died immediately, and within two years, the entire Congress has been lost.
00:01:31.000A 12-year dominant run for Republicans in Congress is gone.
00:01:34.000And the same thing happened for Barack Obama in 2008.
00:01:36.000So after 2008, he wins a sweeping victory over John McCain.
00:01:41.000And his first thought is, you know what I'm going to do?
00:01:44.000And the Americans were like, you're going to do what now?
00:01:47.000And in 2010, the Republicans sweep back into power in the House, two years after Obama wins this sweeping victory.
00:01:54.000So if Joe Biden were to win a sweeping victory in 2020, I don't think that he would interpret that as, oh, I guess people just really didn't like Donald Trump.
00:02:01.000Instead, he would interpret that as, well, now it's time for my LBJ FDR type program.
00:02:08.000The American people, when they elect people to government, It's very rare that they are endorsing wholesale all of the big movement-type changes that the politicians think they are endorsing.
00:02:19.000See, what's funny about this is that politicians deep down, they know this.
00:02:22.000Deep down, politicians know that politics is basically about personal appeal and how you appear to voters.
00:02:28.000They understand that politics is very rarely about policy.
00:02:31.000They understand that the policies they espouse are like number four on the list of why people generally vote for them.
00:02:36.000People vote for them because they feel comfortable with them, or because they feel that they're going to maintain the status quo, Or because maybe they're going to trim around the edges.
00:02:42.000But most Americans, generally speaking, are somewhere in the center of politics, right?
00:02:46.000There are people like me who are out on the right, and there are people on the left.
00:02:50.000And we are fighting over sort of the ideological turf.
00:02:53.000And the people in the middle are kind of like, okay, well, if you swing too far out, there's going to be a natural backlash.
00:02:57.000And that's why you've seen American politics swinging wildly like a pendulum.
00:03:02.000Because the politicians keep misinterpreting the movement of the pendulum as an endorsement of their position, instead of interpreting the movement of the pendulum as just a natural movement of the pendulum, meaning the pendulum swings.
00:03:14.000But that pendulum swing does not mean that the ball at the end of the pendulum, or the razor at the end of the pendulum, is going to immediately stop in your corner.
00:03:23.000Right, it's going to swing back because the pendulum really wants to go to zero, right?
00:03:26.000The pendulum really wants to stop down there at the center, but American politics doesn't allow anybody to do that.
00:03:31.000This is why if President Trump had actually come into office and then governed as a centrist, which I would have opposed, he'd probably be relatively popular today, right?
00:03:39.000If he had pushed forward a giant infrastructure package and if he had endorsed a bunch of big government programs, but if at the same time he had also scaled back some of the regulations, right?
00:03:47.000That kind of stuff is kind of popular, which is what Bill Clinton did during his second term, which is why he left office popular despite being impeached.
00:03:53.000So my going inclination here is that Joe Biden, especially if he wins a big sweeping victory, which is what the polls tend to suggest is what's going to happen, at least right now.
00:04:27.000If that happens, I don't think Biden is going to interpret that the way he should, which is, I'm dead and people hate Trump, right?
00:04:33.000Which is the actual reason why people would vote for Biden.
00:04:35.000He will interpret that as, this is an endorsement of all the liberal principles I've ever stood for.
00:04:39.000This is an endorsement of my entire career.
00:04:41.000Because contrary to popular opinion, Joe Biden was one of the left-most senators in the United States Senate for nearly his entire career.
00:04:47.000He has sort of these outlier moments where he supported things that were not wildly left, like the criminal reform, the criminal justice reform bill in 1994.
00:05:03.000It means, number one, that if Biden were to be elected in a landslide, I think the left would declare that this was the end of politics and they would go for broke.
00:05:09.000And by going for broke, they would actually push the American public back against them.
00:05:12.000In other words, you could have a situation where Republicans lose the presidency, lose the Senate, and two years later, the Republicans are back in Congress.
00:05:19.000That is a very significant possibility.
00:05:21.000But the other problem is that with every election, and this is where the right really misses the boat, because the right tends to focus in on politics, I talked about this, been talking about this for weeks, the right tends to focus in on electoral politics, they don't tend to focus in on the cultural underpinnings of politics, and so the deck of the ship keeps tilting to the left.
00:05:43.000And so even though the pendulum does swing back and forth, if the entire base of the pendulum is sliding to the left, that means that the swing between right and left is happening on a ground that is not even.
00:05:52.000It means that the entire move of the United States is in the wrong direction.
00:05:55.000We're going to get to this in just one second.
00:05:57.000Why the debate matters and why the shift of the debate really, really matters.
00:06:00.000How the Overton window is shifting far to the left.
00:06:02.000We're going to get to that in one moment.
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00:07:35.000If he does, he's making an awful mistake because the fact is Republicans will eventually retake the Senate and that will come back to haunt him in exactly the same way that getting rid of the judicial filibuster ended up haunting Democrats when Donald Trump became president.
00:07:47.000But whatever changes he makes over the next two years, I think the American public is going to say it's too much and they're going to swing back to the other side.
00:07:53.000They're going to say, listen, we were reacting to Trump.
00:07:56.000We were reacting to, we weren't that big on this Trump guy.
00:07:59.000If Biden is to win a sweeping victory.
00:08:01.000But that doesn't mean that the ground can't shift.
00:08:03.000So I'm not sanguine about this and no one should be sanguine about this.
00:08:06.000There's a piece by a law professor named Amna Akbar, a law professor who studies leftist social movements and apparently teaches at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.
00:08:19.000And this person has a piece called The Left is Remaking the World.
00:08:22.000The professor writes, The uprisings in response to the killing of George Floyd are far different from anything that has come before.
00:08:28.000Not just because they may be the largest in our history or that seven weeks in, people are still in the streets, but also because for the last few years, organizers have been thinking boldly.
00:08:35.000They've been pushing demands from defund the police to cancel rent to pass the Green New Deal that would upend the status quo and redistribute power from elites to the working class.
00:09:20.000The videos that come out, obviously it's going to undermine your faith in police officers.
00:09:24.000But, at the same time, we have something like...
00:09:27.000It literally tends to hundreds of millions of interactions between police and American citizens every year.
00:09:31.000There are 800,000 law enforcement agents in the United States.
00:09:35.000It turns out what the polls show is that while people may express distrust with police in general, when asked about their local police, they're very much in favor of their local police.
00:09:42.000The goal of some of these movements is to delegitimize that, to make room for later on, five, 10 years down the line, to make room for some of the more radical policies.
00:09:50.000What radicals understand is that given time, And given energy, they can accomplish anything.
00:09:57.000They need the time and they need the energy.
00:10:04.000These things all seem very silly, but in the end, I'm not sure they're so silly.
00:10:08.000I think that's why the left is fighting for them.
00:10:10.000Because if you are fighting to get rid of all of the cultural totems that remind you that the police are the good guys, well then it's a lot easier 10 years from now to say, yeah, you don't think of the police all that well, do you?
00:10:18.000Well, what if we just got rid of them?
00:10:27.000No one is going to stand in favor of canceling rent right now.
00:10:29.000But if the idea is that landlords are inevitably evil and terrible and are trying to cheat you, and they're very bad people, and then 10 years from now there's another economic collapse, and they're like, you know what?
00:10:41.000We're just going to seize property and nationalize it.
00:10:43.000The more you push the culture to the left, the more you are seeding the ground for the future leftist crops to grow.
00:10:48.000And this is what this law professor understands.
00:10:51.000This professor says these movements are in conversation with one another, cross endorsing demands.
00:10:58.000The defund the police group is a small group.
00:11:00.000The past of the Green New Deal group is a small group.
00:11:03.000But then what they do, and you've seen this on college campuses, they unite forces against the broader infrastructure.
00:11:08.000It's not like everybody in the defund the police group gives a damn about the Green New Deal.
00:11:11.000It's not like everybody in the Green New Deal gives a damn about defund the police.
00:11:14.000But when you put them together in opposition to X, X being the system, well, then you can sometimes forge a coalition of power.
00:11:21.000Cancel the rent campaigns have joined the call to defund the police.
00:11:24.000This month, racial climate and economic justice organizations are hosting a four-day crash course on defunding the police.
00:11:29.000Each demand demonstrates a new attitude among leftist social movements.
00:11:32.000They don't want to reduce police violence or sidestep our environmentally unsustainable global supply chain or create grace periods for late rent.
00:11:39.000These are the responses of reformers and policy elites.
00:11:42.000Instead, the people making these demands want a new society.
00:12:01.000A break from carbon means basically every fuel that you use right now goes away immediately.
00:12:07.000A break from rent means no one builds another unit ever, right?
00:12:11.000There's no more real estate development anywhere in the United States, and all the landlords man in their buildings, and then who takes care of the buildings?
00:12:23.000They want counselors in place of cops, housing for all, a jobs guarantee, which really spells what we really want in the end, is government to take over all the functions of the private market.
00:12:32.000We'll get rid of energy, we'll get rid of police, we'll get rid of prisons, we'll get rid of rent, and then what'll come in?
00:12:36.000A big, friendly government to give you a hug!
00:12:41.000Polls, participation in protests, and growing membership in social movement organizations show these demands are drawing larger and larger parts of the public toward a fundamental critique of the status quo and a radical vision for the future.
00:13:45.000This is why they've been pushing consistently for years.
00:13:46.000I use the example of same-sex marriage.
00:13:49.000Because no matter what you think of same-sex marriage, it's an excellent example of how a leftist movement progressed from one idea to another.
00:13:55.000All the while suggesting that they had basically reached the end point in their crusade, right?
00:13:59.000Originally, it was, we just want the right for anybody to sleep with whomever they want, and that's none of your business.
00:14:03.000And most Americans were like, okay, sounds good.
00:14:05.000And then, they were like, well, you know what?
00:14:06.000We want civil unions, so that a gay couple So a gay partner isn't barred from the hospital if their partner is dying in the hospital.
00:14:14.000And most people are like, okay, well, you could deal with a contract or you could just do a contract.
00:14:17.000But I suppose if you want to make that the default, that you can form a civil union and then you can do that and you can will property, then sure, go for it.
00:14:23.000And they said, don't worry, we definitely do not want marriage.
00:14:26.000And then people are like, okay, well, civil unions sound good.
00:14:28.000And they're like, well, no, we want marriage because marriage is exactly the same as a civil union.
00:14:31.000We're just changing the terms and we deserve respect for our relationship.
00:14:34.000And actually, most Americans eventually started to be like, well, you know, I'm not comfortable with equating traditional marriage and same sex marriage, but.
00:14:43.000Your argument that it's not gonna affect my marriage and it doesn't really affect my life, okay, okay.
00:14:49.000And then it was, well, actually, now we're going to require your business to subsidize same-sex marriage, even if you are a religious person.
00:14:56.000We're going to require you to bake a cake for the same-sex wedding.
00:15:00.000This started at, you just wanted people to be left alone, and now it's your coming into my business and demanding of me that I celebrate your behavior, right?
00:15:10.000This is how the left changes the conversation consistently in order to push forward an agenda that would have been unpalatable to most Americans when the first agenda was put forward, right?
00:15:17.000The gay rights movement begins in the late 1960s.
00:15:20.000It takes 50 years to get to the point where you're demanding that bakers be forced to bake cakes for your same-sex wedding, right?
00:15:29.000And again, that's not an argument against any element of that process, although obviously I have personal arguments against same-sex marriage being upheld on a traditional level or on the same level as traditional marriage, and I have serious problems with the idea that anybody should be forced to do anything in their business that they don't want to do as a general matter.
00:15:44.000But the argument I'm making is really not about same-sex marriage.
00:15:46.000It's really about looking at how, when you keep shifting the ground, eventually the policy follows.
00:15:52.000You don't have to shove the rock down the hill.
00:15:54.000All you have to do is increase the slope of the hill.
00:16:07.000And that's exactly what the left is doing right now.
00:16:09.000We're going to get to more of this in just a moment and how Joe Biden, he may not be the one pushing the rock, but he is certainly the guy who is clearing all of the detritus off the ice in preparation for the rock to be put.
00:16:19.000First curling metaphor in the history of political radio.
00:16:21.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:16:23.000First, let's talk about the fact that you have a broken car and you cannot go to an auto body shop right now because, first of all, you don't want to stand in line.
00:16:31.000Second of all, you don't want to be overcharged.
00:16:33.000And third of all, the guy in front of you is sneezing.
00:16:34.000You should instead check out rockauto.com.
00:16:37.000It is much easier than walking into the store and someone demanding quick answers to things like, is your Odyssey an LX or an EX?
00:16:43.000And then they usually just have to order the part online anyway, and it's an energetic part, and then they upcharge you.
00:17:35.000Okay, so Joe Biden is the curling guy, right?
00:17:39.000He's gonna be the person who sweeps away all of the little chips of ice in precisely the correct pattern.
00:17:46.000is that the leftist stone hurled down the ice can land in the target area.
00:17:50.000Matt Viser writing at the Washington Post says, Joe Biden is looking at building 500 million solar panels, slashing US carbon emissions within 15 years, and rapidly expanding a government-sponsored healthcare plan.
00:18:00.000He wants to overhaul the way policing is conducted on American streets and the way success is measured in primary schools.
00:18:05.000Wait a second, doesn't that sound like a very soft version of everything that we just read about in that piece one second ago?
00:18:10.000The overhauling the way policing is conducted, That is the soft corollary of defund the police.
00:18:17.000Building 500 million solar panels, that is the soft corollary of the Green New Deal.
00:19:10.000But then, basically, I mean, when James Monroe was president, no one ran in opposition.
00:19:15.000The federal government was so weak that people were like, are we really?
00:19:19.000There were some hard-fought presidential campaigns, but the reality is that if you ask most Americans between, like, Let's say Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln to name two of those presidents today.
00:19:34.000If you ask most Americans to name two presidents between Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt, they probably could not.
00:19:41.000I'm not just speaking of general American ignorance, I'm talking about the role of American government in American life.
00:19:46.000Now, most Americans are like, I need my president to be a great moral leader.
00:19:52.000I've never thought you need a president to be a great moral leader.
00:19:54.000I'd prefer he be a moral person, but I don't think that you need the president to be the, he's not the person you go to for great moral advice or for a vision of the world.
00:20:01.000But because government has become so powerful, the part of the presidency that involves speaking about the nature of American culture and America herself has become more and more important.
00:20:13.000And the policymaking end has become sort of the trailing after effect.
00:20:17.000The direction in which we move the country ends up being the chief forward-going factor, and then what follows is the policy.
00:20:25.000This is why, for example, the bleed-over from Reagan, really reshifting the conversation, doesn't even happen during the Reagan administration.
00:20:31.000It happens when Bill Clinton has to cut capital gains taxes, and when Bill Clinton has to put in place welfare reform.
00:20:36.000That is the trailing aftereffect of Reagan's reshifting the idea of how government is supposed to work in American life.
00:20:42.000And what we are seeing now is really the trailing after effect of really Barack Obama.
00:20:47.000And we're going to see that continue into Joe Biden.
00:20:50.000And if Joe Biden continues to forward that, you're going to see that continue past Joe Biden, which is why he calls himself a transitional figure.
00:20:56.000Over the past week, according to the Washington Post, the presumptive Democratic nominee has offered the biggest burst of policy proposals since he effectively won the nomination, including a plan to spend $700 billion on American products and research.
00:21:07.000It marks a significant move to the left, from where Biden and his party were only recently, on everything from climate to guns to healthcare and policing, and reflects a fundamental shift in the political landscape.
00:21:17.000Well, because number one, Biden thinks he's going to win big, and so he can get very, very progressive.
00:21:21.000According to the Washington Post, it's a remarkable turn for a candidate who was once defined by incrementalism, but is now attempting to show voters how he'd grappled with tens of thousands of Americans dying from a global pandemic, an economy in tatters, and a country wracked by a reckoning over racism.
00:21:34.000And so he's moving far to the left, and he's doing so very quickly.
00:21:37.000Now, again, that bears political danger for the Democratic Party in the near term, but it does mean that everything is being shoved to the left.
00:21:42.000It also explains why, on the show, I spend a lot of time focusing on what I call the radical left, because I think the radical left becomes the mainstream Democratic Party within about five years.
00:21:51.000Basically, it's just a lead time to either stop the radical left now, or that is going to be the mainstream Democratic Party that you are fighting within the next five years to a decade.
00:22:01.000Whatever starts on the radical left ends up in the mainstream.
00:22:05.000I mean, it really is quite fascinating how this works, this sort of bleed over.
00:22:09.000And so when we look at the attempt to quash free speech, for example, when we looked at the defund the police movement, we look at the cancel culture, and we realize that the unofficial cancel culture, which is becoming more and more prevalent in America, eventually is going to find its way into the halls of democratic power and then into government.
00:22:25.000That's when things start to get incredibly, incredibly scary.
00:22:28.000Because there you're not just talking about expanding the size and scope of government, you're talking about encroachment on fundamental freedoms.
00:22:33.000In other words, I don't think that simple social pressure is going to be sufficient for people on the left.
00:22:39.000I think if people on the left had their way, they would be encoding hate speech laws in American law today.
00:22:45.000And I think within five to ten years, that will be the common sense position of the Democratic Party.
00:22:49.000I think within two election cycles, you're going to see the Democratic Party openly promulgating directives at hate speech, and hoping to appoint enough justices to overturn the First Amendment.
00:23:00.000I think right now you'd have the support of at least two.
00:23:02.000I think that Ginsburg and probably Sotomayor would support the idea of encroaching on free speech on behalf of quote-unquote hate speech.
00:23:13.000And over the years, I think that'll become a more and more common position in the Democratic Party.
00:23:16.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:23:17.000First, you know that I believe in individual liberty.
00:23:20.000I've been talking about individual liberty and fundamental freedoms and the attack on individual liberty and fundamental freedoms.
00:23:25.000Our founding fathers knew these were cornerstones to a great civilization, which is why they created the Second Amendment to protect all of those fundamental freedoms.
00:23:32.000Owning a rifle is an awesome responsibility.
00:23:35.000That's why I love the people over at Bravo Company Manufacturing.
00:23:38.000The people at Bravo Company MFG support the right of responsible private individuals to have the access and ability to employ the same tools as civilian law enforcement as a means of defending ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and our freedoms should a threatening situation ever arise.
00:23:51.000BCM assumes when a rifle leaves their shop, it will be used in a life or death situation.
00:23:56.000The point of a gun is that you have to have it work in case, God forbid, there's someone breaking in the front door of your home.
00:24:01.000As an American, You have the luxury of living in a free society where you can improve your life through education and religious exploration, the open exchange of ideas.
00:24:09.000You have rights if and when your life and liberty ever come under fire.
00:24:12.000Firearms are, first and foremost, a means to preserve the lives and liberties of yourself and others.
00:24:16.000To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to BravoCompanyMFG.com, where you can discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news.
00:24:32.000Okay, so where does this cross streams with the cancel culture?
00:24:35.000Well, this is the most powerful cultural movement on the left right now is the cancel culture.
00:24:38.000If you say the wrong thing, we are going to come after you with everything we've got.
00:24:42.000And principles of freedom and justice require that freedom and justice themselves be put to the side.
00:24:47.000So last week we discussed a letter that was printed in Harper's Weekly.
00:24:52.000By 153 left and center left individuals, old school liberals, people who disagree with me on politics, but also agree that freedom of speech is pretty important and don't like cancel culture very much.
00:25:02.000And we're talking about people I think are just atrocious in their politics, people like Noam Chomsky.
00:25:06.000But we're also talking about people who are sort of old school, classical liberals like Francis Fukuyama.
00:25:10.000There are a bunch of people on that list.
00:25:15.000The counter came out from a bevy of cancel culture mavens who are very upset, very, very upset that people would speak out against cancel culture.
00:25:24.000And it's worth looking at their point of view simply because, number one, a lot of these people are in positions of power, and number two, because this will be the dominant position inside the Democratic Party within five years.
00:25:34.000This will be the dominant position inside the Democratic Party in five years.
00:25:52.000Also, I'm not going to sign my name to this letter because I'm afraid that I will be canceled or fired, right?
00:25:56.000So apparently, cancel culture does not exist except that they're afraid of it.
00:25:59.000Anyway, their letter says, a more specific letter on justice and open debate.
00:26:04.000They say the signatories to that original letter, many of them white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms, argue they are afraid of being silenced, that so-called cancel culture is out of control, that they fear for their jobs and free exchange of ideas, even as they speak from one of the most prestigious magazines in the country.
00:26:17.000This is a very common argument, is that if you are concerned that there's a group of people who trot around going after your advertisers if you're on TV, or there's a group of people who will go to your boss if they disagree with what you say, and if you are powerful, if you're in a powerful position, but you're afraid of what might happen, Well, obviously you're powerful right now, so why are you afraid of what might happen?
00:26:39.000That was just the voice of the people.
00:26:42.000The letter, according to this response letter, was spearheaded by Thomas Chatterton Williams, a black writer who believes that racism at once persists and is also capable of being transcended, especially at the interpersonal level.
00:26:53.000Since the letter was published, some commentators have used Williams' presence and the presence of other non-white writers to argue the letter presents a selection of diverse voices.
00:27:01.000The irony of the piece is that nowhere in it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing.
00:27:09.000So in other words, we should be able to cancel people because we believe the system itself results in injustice.
00:27:16.000This is the Robin DiAngelo view of racism again.
00:27:19.000Any system that results in a balance, a racial mix we don't like at the end of it, the system is to blame.
00:27:26.000And thus the system must be torn down.
00:27:27.000And if you are complicit in the system, you're a racist and it doesn't matter if you're black like Thomas Chatterton Williams.
00:27:32.000The content of the letter does not deal with the problem of power.
00:27:36.000Harper's is a prestigious institution backed by money and influence.
00:27:39.000Harper's has decided to bestow its platform, not to marginalize people, but to people who already have large followings and plenty of opportunities to make their views heard.
00:27:46.000So, basically, you're simultaneously complaining that these people are powerful and therefore they shouldn't be able to complain, and you're complaining you don't have enough power and that people should give you power.
00:27:56.000It seems like mainly your viewpoint is a power viewpoint.
00:27:59.000It seems like your viewpoint is driven by a desire for other people's power that you have not yourself earned.
00:28:05.000This entire letter is about how free speech is really about power and how truly the attempt to cancel speech, the attempt to crack down on people, that is actually a force for good.
00:28:17.000That force for good is making the world a better place.
00:28:23.000They say, it is impossible to see how signatories to this letter are contributing to the most vital causes of our time during this moment of widespread reckoning with oppressive social systems.
00:28:31.000In other words, we disagree with you and we don't like you, so they shouldn't have their letter in Harper's Weekly.
00:28:34.000Also, cancel culture doesn't exist and it's good.
00:28:37.000Right, so this is the viewpoint increasingly of groups on the left.
00:28:41.000The good news about that letter is at least now we have a long list of people who believe cancel culture is good.
00:28:45.000But how does this manifest in real life?
00:28:47.000Well, it manifests as things like boycotting Goya.
00:28:49.000Right, so Goya is this major Latino-owned company.
00:28:53.000And now it's subject of an online attempt to boycott, with NBC News cheering along the progress.
00:29:39.000Goya Food CEO Bob Yunanou might be regretting his Rose Garden endorsement of a president he called a blessed leader.
00:29:46.000His remarks at a Thursday White House event where President Trump hosted a group of Hispanic supporters came at a time when U.S.
00:29:51.000Latinos are facing a disproportionate effect from COVID-19 and experiencing a 14.5% unemployment rate.
00:29:57.000He certainly struck a chord with Latinos, but not the one he or Trump hoped for.
00:30:00.000Instead, his comments were met with massive calls to boycott Goya, the iconic mostly East Coast Latino food brand that has been both a staple and a nutritional pariah for the country's largest non-white population.
00:30:10.000Well, maybe because he didn't think he was risking his company's future when he said something nice about the sitting president of the United States.
00:30:16.000Maybe he didn't realize that you guys were such jackasses.
00:30:17.000head of one of the richest Spanish-American families would be willing to risk his company's future by siding with this president of all presidents.
00:30:23.000Well, maybe because he didn't think he was risking his company's future when he said something nice about the sitting presidents of the United States.
00:30:39.000The attempt to boycott people based on the great evil of a man said a nice thing about the president of the United States is utterly insane, but it is quite real.
00:30:46.000It is not the only example these days.
00:30:48.000There are many examples these days, and it will lead to a predictable effect.
00:30:52.000As I say, everything that begins in the culture ends in the government when it comes to the left.
00:30:55.000Everything that begins in the culture ends in the government.
00:30:58.000That, because there's a simple rule on the left, as my friend Eric Erickson has said, That if something is tolerated, eventually it will be mandated.
00:31:09.000According to the left, if something is to be tolerated eventually, the government will make it mandatory.
00:31:13.000And everything that is not tolerated will be banned.
00:31:17.000There is no third category called, we disagree but we leave you alone, in the world of the left.
00:31:23.000Like they're forced to right now because of institutional structures, but that's why they're thrashing up against the glass of the institutional structures, trying to break out of that barrier.
00:31:31.000In one second, we'll get to more of this, and then we'll get to the COVID updates and everything else.
00:31:35.000First, let us talk about a simple fact.
00:31:38.000Sleep may be difficult to come by these days.
00:31:40.000This is why you need a Helix Sleep Mattress.
00:32:05.000Matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you.
00:32:08.000Whether you're a side sleeper or a hot sleeper, whether you like a plush or a firm bed with Helix, there's no more confusion and no more compromising.
00:32:13.000Helix Sleep is rated the number one mattress by GQ and Wired Magazine.
00:32:16.000CNN calls it the most comfortable mattress they've ever slept on.
00:32:19.000Just head on over to HelixSleep.com slash Ben.
00:33:08.000You can pre-order your signed copy and write in your question at dailywire.com slash Ben.
00:33:14.000The book covers two fundamentally different visions of America that are currently on the table.
00:33:18.000One is the disintegrationist vision, a vision of America that says that America's history is evil, that America's philosophy is evil, and that America's culture of rights is actually just cover for brutal power hierarchies.
00:33:39.000People who wish to see the country come apart, to fray and break, or for 51% of the population to simply dominate the other 49% of the population.
00:33:47.000Then, there's a unionist vision of America.
00:33:49.000That is a traditionalist vision of America that says America's history is flawed but great.
00:33:54.000It says that America's philosophy is unparalleled in the annals of human history.
00:33:58.000That says that America's culture of rights is the fundamental framework within which we should all operate.
00:34:04.000You need to be a unionist, not a disintegrationist.
00:34:07.000The disintegrations are using the cancel culture, they're deleting or silencing people they don't like.
00:34:11.000The book not only explicates everything that is going on here in, I think, a pretty thorough and deep fashion, it also debunks it in a way that you can use to argue with friends and family and arm yourself against these bad ideas.
00:34:22.000How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
00:34:24.000Details how the disintegrationists have gained so much cultural ground so quickly and offers a penetrating view of our culture at a time in our history when it is absolutely vital that you be familiar with it.
00:34:32.000Again, that's dailywire.com slash Ben to order your signed copy today and join my live signing on Tuesday, July 21st.
00:34:39.000If you're not already a Daily Wire member, by the way, you should head on over to dailywire.com and subscribe and get the reader's pass for $3 a month when you sign up, $0.99 for the first month.
00:34:46.000You also get access to our mobile app, our articles ad free, access to exclusive editorials like this one from Michael Schellenberger on behalf of environmentalists.
00:35:32.000Well, he said, for example, that data matters, right?
00:35:36.000He actually declared that police don't shoot blacks disproportionately.
00:35:39.000They want to kick him off the Linguistic Society of America for pointing out that police do not shoot blacks disproportionately, which is 100% true.
00:35:46.000Also, Pinker is blamed for referencing a 2017 New York Times op-ed suggesting a way to reduce the terrible toll of killings by police.
00:35:54.000Pinker tweeted, police kill too many people, black and white.
00:35:57.000Focus on race distracts from solving problems as we do with plane crashes.
00:36:01.000Which, again, is like, obvious, isn't it?
00:36:10.000Because, in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Why Violence Has Declined, he noted that in 1984, Bernie Getz, a mild-mannered engineer, became a folk hero for shooting four young muggers in a New York subway car.
00:36:20.000Apparently, because he said mild-mannered, this was Pinker's tendency to downplay very real violence, and so they attempted to get him kicked off of the Linguistic Society of America.
00:36:28.000Now, Pinker's pretty powerful, and so he didn't go down easily.
00:36:31.000The LSA executive committee issued a letter to Pinker affirming the group is committed to intellectual freedom.
00:36:36.000But again, the assault simply does not stop.
00:36:38.000And here's the thing, it's not going to stop in the end until it becomes legislation.
00:37:42.000West Midlands police have arrested a 12-year-old boy after Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha received racist messages on social media ahead of the club's Premier League clash with Aston Villa on Sunday.
00:37:54.000Zaha27 shared the obscene messages on Twitter before the match, and Via said they would investigate the incident with police.
00:38:00.000After VIA's 2-0 win over Palace, a police statement read, We were alerted to a series of racist messages sent to a footballer today, and after looking into them and conducting checks, we have arrested a boy.
00:38:08.000The 12-year-old from Solihull has been taken into custody.
00:38:12.000Thanks to everyone who raised it, racism won't be tolerated.
00:38:15.000Before the match, the Palace manager Roy Hodgson was asked about the incident and told Sky Sports, It is very saddening on the day.
00:38:23.000that a player wakes up to this cowardly and despicable abuse.
00:38:25.000I think it is right that Wolf made people aware of it.
00:38:26.000I don't think it's something you should have kept quiet about.
00:38:28.000I think it's very good that our club, Aston Villa and the Premier League are doing everything they can to find out who the despicable individual is.
00:38:34.000And one can only hope they will get identified and they will get called to account and they will pay for these actions.
00:39:00.000If you believe that 12-year-old boys should be arrested for sending nasty, racist tweets to adult soccer players, I've got some questions to you about your priorities.
00:39:09.000Should somebody take the kid aside and say, you've done something wrong?
00:39:14.000Should that be how we normally, I mean, that's normally how we handle things, right?
00:39:17.000As adults, that's how we handle things.
00:39:18.000If we treated, what's amazing is, if we treated each other like people we actually like, the world would be a much more reasonable place.
00:39:24.000If somebody you knew and were acquainted with said something kind of nasty to you, Wouldn't you take them aside and be like, you know, dude, that was really a terrible thing to say, and I would appreciate it if you didn't say it again like that?
00:39:59.000First of all, I think that your application of cancel culture is a moral negative.
00:40:02.000I think it is ugly that you are attempting to boycott a company because the head of that company supports a political cause you don't like.
00:40:08.000I buy from tons of companies I don't like.
00:40:10.000Right now, on my feet, are Nike shoes that I bought a couple of years ago.
00:40:14.000I disagreed with the political priorities of Nike.
00:40:16.000I still disagree with the political priorities of Nike.
00:40:38.000But would that be a rationale for boycotting Apple, per se?
00:40:42.000I think pretty bad for the country when this becomes the way that we do business as a general rule.
00:40:47.000This is what the cancel culture wants, but more than that, I don't think the cancel culture stops with this.
00:40:50.000I think the cancel culture goes directly in the position, toward the position held by Canada or the UK, that free speech is not an absolute, and that free speech should instead be essentially quashed by government.
00:41:00.000I think that we are moving very quickly toward what just happened in the UK.
00:41:05.000And that should scare the hell out of anybody who believes that rights are a fundamental thing and pre-exist government to begin.
00:41:09.000Okay, meanwhile, on the COVID front, We have seen this extraordinary uptick in the number of positive cases in states across the country.
00:41:18.000It is not merely happening in Florida.
00:41:23.000It seems to be largely dependent, again, on how much time people are spending with air conditioning.
00:41:27.000The reason I point this out is because Colorado opened up at the same time as Georgia.
00:41:30.000Colorado has seen a 41% decrease in day-over-day Diagnoses of COVID-19, and that's because right now the weather in Colorado is pretty temperate, so people are outdoors a lot.
00:41:39.000They're not spending a lot of time in indoor spaces, you know, in Florida, in Texas, in California.
00:41:45.000In California, it was like 106 degrees yesterday.
00:41:46.000So people are spending time in indoor spaces a lot.
00:41:50.000My favorite thing by the media, by the way, my favorite aspect of dishonesty by the media is this new pitch for New York.
00:42:32.000That is not a great leadership moment.
00:42:36.000By the way, if you actually take the chart of New York, what you will see in the chart of New York's death is exactly the chart that they told us we were supposed to avoid.
00:43:19.000Because Sweden is going to go through it.
00:43:21.000And then on the other end, there's not going to be a second wave.
00:43:23.000Because Sweden will have already gone through it.
00:43:25.000And that's exactly what you're seeing.
00:43:26.000You're seeing rising caseload in Sweden, and the death toll continues to decline in Sweden, because it's already run through the population.
00:43:32.000And you're seeing that in New York as well.
00:43:36.000But at the time, everybody was like, look at Sweden's numbers today.
00:44:02.000Okay, with all of that said, with the cases spiking and with the death rate seeming to rise in a lot of these states, there've been over a hundred deaths in places like Florida and Texas the last few days, President Trump finally put on a mask.
00:44:32.000The president, because he's a stubborn dude, he had a moment there where he really could have taken the leadership position on all of this, when he could have basically said to the Democrats, you guys are out there saying that everybody should just be able to protest as they see fit, and it'll just be fun and games.
00:44:46.000And I'm taking this thing real seriously.
00:45:21.000So that increase in absolute number of tests, that one actually is due to the increase in how many tests are done, right?
00:45:28.000So the increased number of people who have it is not pure testing, but the increased identification of people who have it is at least partly testing, right?
00:45:35.000It's not all testing, but it is partly testing.
00:45:37.000And yesterday is a good example of that.
00:45:52.000Pennsylvania is largely governed by Democrats, has a Democratic governor.
00:45:55.000Therefore, we're not supposed to talk about Pittsburgh too much.
00:45:58.000But big battle has broken out over Anthony Fauci, who's been a little bit sidelined here, according to the Washington Post.
00:46:06.000For months, Fauci has played a lead role in America's coronavirus pandemic.
00:46:09.000But as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttling some of his planned TV appearances and largely keeping him out of the Oval Office for more than a month, even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.
00:46:24.000In recent days, the 79-year-old scientist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has found himself in the president's crosshairs during a Fox News interview.
00:46:33.000Trump said Fauci is a nice man, but he's made a lot of mistakes.
00:46:36.000When Greta Van Susteren asked him last week about Fauci's assessment the country was not in a good place, Trump said flatly, I disagree with him.
00:46:42.000So this sort of conflict is exactly, Fauci is a new resistance hero, because obviously, even though Trump basically made Fauci famous, right?
00:46:49.000Nobody knew Fauci's name, unless you were a real maven of this stuff, until the last six months or so.
00:46:53.000Now Trump's the bad guy for attacking Fauci and all of that.
00:47:03.000A White House official released a statement saying, several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things, and then included a lengthy list of the scientists' comments from earlier in the outbreak.
00:47:25.000Like, pointing out that scientists have basically not had a handle on this thing from the beginning and continue to not have a handle on this thing is not actually Wrong.
00:47:34.000I know you're supposed to basically say that Fauci is the godhead at this point, but as I pointed out, I think he's a man trying to do his best in a situation where he has not a ton of leverage and also a situation where nobody really knows anything.
00:47:46.000I mean, the most incredible thing about this virus is that we are now Four months into this pandemic, everybody's been partially locked down.
00:48:06.000And so Fauci's opinion is as good as yours, maybe better than yours, but it's no better than John Ioannidis over at Stanford.
00:48:13.000There's no reason that Scott Atlas knows tons less than Dr. Fauci about this stuff.
00:48:17.000But if you quote anybody who contradicts Fauci, Fauci because he's repeating points that the left likes right now that we should shut down schools and that we are in a bad position and that bad governance has been responsible for all of this.
00:48:28.000Again, other countries are experiencing a spike too.
00:48:34.000There was a super spreader event at a school and they had to shut down again.
00:48:37.000Admiral Girard, who is one of the White House's top officials on this stuff, he's really heading the response effort, he says, listen, Fauci's not 100% right.
00:48:46.000I respect Dr. Fauci a lot, but Dr. Fauci is not 100% right, and he also doesn't necessarily, and he admits that, have the whole national interest in mind.
00:48:56.000He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view.
00:48:59.000But let me just say, there is absolutely open discourse, I feel, Absolutely free saying anything to the vice president within those rooms.
00:49:06.000The vice president, I know, briefs the president on a daily basis, so nobody feels like anything is held back.
00:49:41.000But you can see how this is breaking down purely politically because Trump says something and immediately he's like a catalyst added to some sort of bizarre concoction where both the elements in the concoction are polarized because the catalyst has been added.
00:50:20.000So the New York Post reports, New York's plague of gun crime continued this weekend with 15 people shot in the same number of hours Since midday on Saturday, police sources told the Post of 15 shootings in 15 hours in New York City.
00:50:32.000The shootings, including a 21-year-old man left fighting for his life after being shot in the head while sitting in a car in Sheepshead Bay early on Sunday, were more in one day than the whole of the same week last year, according to sources.
00:50:43.000They kept 43 shootings so far this week, more than triple last year's tally of 13 for the same period.
00:50:48.000I'd gone to bed early, and the next thing I knew, I heard two pops out my window that sounded just like fireworks, said a neighbor.
00:50:53.000who identified herself as Lucy of the Sheepshead Bay shooting.
00:50:57.000I heard plenty of fireworks around here a week ago.
00:50:58.000I didn't think anything of it until I heard someone screaming.
00:51:01.000And then there were police lights and ambulance lights.
00:51:04.000So there are tons and tons of shootings over the weekend.
00:51:08.000Commissioner Dermot Shea has blamed bail reform and prisoner releases over the coronavirus pandemic for the alarming rise in gun crime, which has brought increased criticism for Mayor Bill de Blasio.
00:51:19.000Criminal justice experts say the cops should focus on the flow of illegal guns into the city instead of just playing the blame game.
00:51:23.000So you're never supposed to blame the politicians for cutting the cops.
00:51:27.000You're supposed to blame the cops for not doing a better job policing while you're cutting the cops.
00:51:31.000By the way, crime is surging around the country.
00:51:35.000According to the Wall Street Journal, in Milwaukee, homicides are up 37% so far this year, on pace to break the record of 167 in 1991, which included 16 murders by Jeffrey Dahmer.
00:51:45.000Homicides so far this year in Chicago are ahead of the pace in 2016.
00:51:49.000That was the city's highest tally since 1996.
00:51:51.000In New York and LA, killings this year are up 23% and 11.6%.
00:51:55.000In Kansas City, Missouri, they've recorded 99 killings since January, far outpacing any record for the first six months of the year.
00:52:02.000Community groups acknowledge the crime increase, but say more aggressive policing to combat it shouldn't come at the expense of enacting broader reform.
00:52:10.000Oh, is that what's happening right now?
00:52:13.000It is not a shock that as you continue to slash police budgets and signal to criminals that they can basically get away with it, and that if a cop attempts to defend a citizen, that that cop may be hauled up for arrest.
00:52:22.000That's going to be a bit of a problem.
00:52:24.000City leaders and law enforcement officials say the months of lockdown, rising unemployment, more guns on the street, and the fallout from mass protests over the George Floyd killing helped create conditions for more violence.
00:52:33.000At the same time, law enforcement officials say they are weighing the risks of aggressively enforcing the law, concerned that a backlash from activists, protesters, and residents could trigger attacks on police or a replay of the riots and looting that marked some of the earlier protests.
00:52:45.000In some cases, officials say police are backing away from some kinds of petty crime arrests that give them a higher profile on the street, hoping to quell tensions, which, of course, is exactly the wrong tactic.
00:52:55.000Broken windows policing, which was utilized in New York City in the aftermath of the great crime wave beginning in the 60s and stretching all the way to the early 1990s, Broken window policing was the idea that you have to stop ignoring the people who are jumping turnstiles.
00:53:09.000You actually have to start policing small-level crime, because if you don't, then people will engage in larger-scale crime.
00:53:14.000Police departments all over the country have decided they're no longer going to do this.
00:53:17.000And so, naturally, you're seeing more violence.
00:53:20.000And that violence is becoming politicized.
00:53:22.000There's an awful, awful case out of Indianapolis.
00:53:25.000According to the Post Millennial, a 24-year-old named Jessica Doty was fatally shot early on Sunday, allegedly following an argument with supporters of Black Lives Matter.
00:53:33.000The victim's family said the dispute was sparked by an argument involving Black Lives Matter and language, according to Fox 59.
00:53:38.000The two sides parted ways before witnesses claimed the perpetrator opened fire from a bridge nearby and then ran away.
00:56:53.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas, executive producer Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, assistant director Pavel Lydowsky, technical producer Austin Stevens, playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan, associate producer Katie Swinnerton, edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
00:57:13.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
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