The Ben Shapiro Show - The Conversation Ep. 19: Ben Shapiro LIVE BOOK SIGNING

00:00:00.000 Let's do it live.

00:00:01.000 You wrote it, because you wrote this book here in front of us, but we are doing it live.

00:00:05.000 Hello, everyone.

00:00:06.000 This is the newest episode of The Conversation.

00:00:08.000 I am your host, Elisha Krause, and with me is the one and only Ben Shapiro, who will be taking your questions live for an entire hour.

00:00:16.000 So, usually at this point, I lecture you guys about how you should become Daily Wire subscribers and only subscribers get to ask the questions.

00:00:28.000 Well, this time, we want to kick things off by announcing that this is a very special episode of The Conversation because we're actually doing a live signing of Ben's new book, The Right Side of History.

00:00:39.000 And so for this episode, you don't have to be a subscriber to ask a question, because when you purchase a copy of Ben's book, you can write in a question for him to answer live on the air as he's over here signing your book and getting cramped hands.

00:00:53.000 We're going to give you arthritis today.

00:00:55.000 We've got so many questions and so many books to sign.

00:00:57.000 So head on over to premiercollectibles.com slash Ben Shapiro and get your signed copy now.

00:01:03.000 And don't worry, because if your question isn't answered, you will still get a signed copy of the book.

00:01:09.000 That's premiercollectibles.com slash Ben Shapiro.

00:01:12.000 And can't wait to get started.

00:01:14.000 You have so many over here.

00:01:17.000 You're like, no, let's just go for it.

00:01:19.000 Let's go.

00:01:19.000 You got to flap it and open it up to the right page.

00:01:21.000 Exactly.

00:01:22.000 Where do you like to sign?

00:01:23.000 So now they've got the sticker here.

00:01:24.000 So normally, I sign on this here page.

00:01:28.000 So you're not supposed to sign on that here page.

00:01:30.000 I don't know, that's what they did at the Reagan Library yesterday.

00:01:33.000 How did that event go?

00:01:34.000 It went great.

00:01:34.000 It was a blast.

00:01:35.000 I mean, first of all, you're speaking at the Reagan Library, which is super awesome.

00:01:38.000 Yeah.

00:01:38.000 So this question is from Kelly.

00:01:40.000 So this book is going to be for Kelly, which is super fun.

00:01:43.000 And she asks, She, so she asks about when abortion is outlawed and even prior to this happening, what are your solutions to help women and their babies who are faced with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy, specifically unwed and young mothers?

00:01:56.000 I mean this is where the social fabric comes in.

00:01:58.000 What I talk about, I do talk about a lot in this book, the fact that You can't have a free society where we're not compelling people to help each other unless people are voluntarily helping each other.

00:02:06.000 In our community, in our Jewish community, when people have problems, then the first place you go is to your family, and then more largely to your religious community, and then after that maybe you go to local government, then state government, then federal.

00:02:16.000 The problem is we've reversed that process.

00:02:18.000 So, one of the rips on folks on the right when they say they're pro-life is, well, you don't care about the kids after they're born.

00:02:23.000 Absolutely false, which is why people on the right tend to give per capita a lot more charity than people on the left.

00:02:29.000 I mean, in my family, we personally help out a lot of folks in our community who are in need.

00:02:34.000 In fact, today is a fast day, but tonight is Purim.

00:02:39.000 And on that holiday, one of the commandments is matanot le'ev yanim, which is to give gifts to the poor.

00:02:43.000 So, I mean, this is something that religious people, of course, have long been famous for.

00:02:47.000 All right.

00:02:48.000 Do you give the gift baskets?

00:02:49.000 Yeah, that's another one.

00:02:50.000 And you guys dress up?

00:02:51.000 Yep.

00:02:52.000 This year, my kids are going as the dragons from How to Train Your Dragon.

00:02:56.000 My daughter's going as the female dragon.

00:02:59.000 Oh, the one that's invisible?

00:03:01.000 Or does she disappear?

00:03:03.000 My son is the black one, my daughter is the white one.

00:03:05.000 Yeah.

00:03:06.000 I haven't seen the new one yet, but this one was so cute.

00:03:08.000 Nor have I.

00:03:10.000 It's out in theaters though, you should go take the kiddies to see it.

00:03:13.000 Alright, this next question and this next book are for Zachary.

00:03:16.000 He says, Hi Ben, I'm a middle school math teacher in an extremely impoverished and rural region.

00:03:21.000 The average income in my county is less than $17,000 per capita.

00:03:25.000 I've noticed a complete lack of values in my area, and many do not graduate high school due to simply being passed on by the school system without ever having to do work in school.

00:03:35.000 To give you an idea, my 8th grade math classroom had less than 20% proficiency coming into the year, with many on a 4th to 5th grade math level.

00:03:43.000 I have students who refuse to do a lick of work because at the end of the day, it is my tail on the line being held fully responsible for their failure even when no effort is put forth.

00:03:53.000 What can you tell me about an area would you come to this?

00:03:57.000 Yeah.

00:03:57.000 And what do you think it would take to turn this situation around?

00:04:01.000 I mean, the truth is that when it comes to the educational system generally, there's a lot of pressure put on teachers.

00:04:06.000 But the vast majority of education and educational values start with parents.

00:04:09.000 And that's why you're seeing in New York City right now a lot of pressure on the elite high schools, divest in high school, because they're not admitting enough black and Hispanic students.

00:04:17.000 And the complaint is that somehow this is racist.

00:04:19.000 Well, the vast majority of students who go to that school who are impoverished are Asian students.

00:04:23.000 There is a difference in cultures of poverty and non-cultures of poverty.

00:04:27.000 That's not racially broken down.

00:04:28.000 There are black cultures in which, in the United States, in which education is highly valued.

00:04:32.000 There are black cultures in which it is not. 1.00

00:04:33.000 There are white cultures in which it is highly valued.

00:04:35.000 There are white cultures in which it is not. 0.95

00:04:37.000 It all starts at home, obviously, with parents, and then the teacher just has to do what the teacher can do.

00:04:42.000 But if you're not in charge of that, all you can do is do your best for the students.

00:04:48.000 The only way to inculcate the value of education is to recognize from an early age that it's the parent's job to make sure that their kids are educated, which is why When my ancestors got here, when my great-great-grandparents got to the United States about 1907, they didn't know English, they didn't have any money.

00:05:04.000 The first thing they made sure is that their kids spoke English and that their kids were interested in being well-educated.

00:05:08.000 This has been true in the Jewish community for a very long time, for example.

00:05:11.000 Alright, Joshua has the next question.

00:05:13.000 What do you believe is the best way we can fight to protect the life of the unborn?

00:05:16.000 Politician after politician says they will get right against it, and then they get in and do absolutely nothing.

00:05:23.000 Have we already lost the battle?

00:05:24.000 Well, we haven't lost the cultural battle, and that's why you're seeing a year on your decrease in the number of abortions in the United States, and the abortion rate has been going down consistently for years.

00:05:31.000 You're also seeing the rate of people who are pro-life rising continuously because there are so many people who are seeing ultrasound pictures and understanding that these are, in fact, actual children in the womb.

00:05:44.000 As far as legislation, I think that you are seeing a gradual pushing back of the dates at which you can perform an abortion.

00:05:51.000 In some states, they've gone so far as to actually do heartbeat bills, where they say once the baby's heart is beating, which is 22 days, that at that point, you can't have an abortion.

00:05:59.000 So you are seeing those restrictions being broadened.

00:06:03.000 The question is how far the Supreme Court is going to allow those restrictions to be broadened.

00:06:07.000 I think it's probably going to be a gradual process.

00:06:08.000 On a federal level, the fact that the Republicans in Congress did not shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood, but did shut down the government for the border wall, I think tells you something about their priorities, and I think that thing I'm for the border wall.

00:06:20.000 I still think that prioritization is incorrect.

00:06:22.000 It's really sad when you see that happen.

00:06:28.000 Oh, yeah.

00:06:31.000 Also, what year are you running again?

00:06:33.000 What did the Daily Wire t-shirt say?

00:06:34.000 Oh, the t-shirt says 2024.

00:06:36.000 The real answer is never, but... Come on!

00:06:39.000 I want to be your Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

00:06:42.000 Really?

00:06:42.000 Yeah!

00:06:43.000 That's your aspiration?

00:06:44.000 I think I'm pretty good at that.

00:06:45.000 Well, not totally.

00:06:46.000 Yeah, I mean, come on.

00:06:47.000 But, I mean, I could be the Sarah Huckabee Sanders of the Shapiro White House. 0.87

00:06:51.000 Also, if I do that, everyone in a 500-foot radius of where I sit loses their job if I do that.

00:06:55.000 So, I think that I'm going to go with no on that.

00:06:58.000 No, they wouldn't.

00:06:59.000 They wouldn't?

00:06:59.000 What, they wouldn't for the campaign?

00:07:01.000 We're planning this too far in advance.

00:07:03.000 Okay.

00:07:03.000 You can raise more than beta.

00:07:04.000 Well, I can't even remember the question.

00:07:06.000 What was the question?

00:07:06.000 So what would your top priority be if you were president?

00:07:09.000 My top priority would be cutting the size of the executive branch.

00:07:12.000 So I think the president has two jobs.

00:07:14.000 One is to implement policy.

00:07:15.000 The other is to educate the public.

00:07:16.000 I like to educate the public.

00:07:19.000 I mean, that's what I'm interested in doing, what I'm doing with the book.

00:07:22.000 And then on the other side, what you're trying to do is implement policy.

00:07:25.000 My view is that the executive branch is far too large.

00:07:27.000 The one thing I can do without congressional approval is simply slice the executive branch to ribbons.

00:07:32.000 That's what I would do.

00:07:33.000 I would fire nearly everyone in the executive branch, and I would get it back to enforcing the laws that are on the books, and pretty much that's it.

00:07:41.000 Looking to eliminate full departments, including the Department of Education.

00:07:45.000 There are two million people who work for the executive branch of the government.

00:07:48.000 That's insane.

00:07:49.000 That's insane.

00:07:49.000 Zachary wants to know, are there any Republicans you could feel could currently primary against Trump in 2020?

00:07:55.000 And be successful?

00:07:56.000 The answer is no.

00:07:58.000 And that's because President Trump has 70 to, depending on the polls, 70 to 90% approval rating inside the Republican Party.

00:08:04.000 I also think that it would be counterproductive, because I think the media would then try and suggest that there is a dichotomy in the Republican Party between the true conservatives who vote for John Kasich or something.

00:08:14.000 And the people who vote for Trump.

00:08:15.000 And that, of course, is not the real story.

00:08:17.000 A lot of people will vote for Trump.

00:08:18.000 They feel he has the best chance to win.

00:08:20.000 A lot of them will vote for him because they don't like John Kasich.

00:08:22.000 That's not a divide between conservatives and non-conservatives.

00:08:24.000 And then anybody who votes against Trump will be seen as some sort of traitor, a heretic who has to be cast out. 0.96

00:08:31.000 It creates divisions in the service of pretty much nothing because Trump's going to win the nomination anyway.

00:08:35.000 Alright, Brittany wants to know, by the way, I love all these questions from females. 1.00

00:08:39.000 I didn't even notice that, but sure.

00:08:41.000 I didn't notice that.

00:08:42.000 I don't see, I don't see.

00:08:44.000 You don't see gender?

00:08:45.000 No, that's not my thing.

00:08:45.000 Do you identify as a pregnant blonde lady today?

00:08:49.000 Would you like to swap?

00:08:51.000 Not at all.

00:08:51.000 It's real uncomfortable.

00:08:54.000 But it's wonderful.

00:08:55.000 Brittany wants to know, what do you think would be the first thing we should change to make America the land of opportunity again?

00:09:00.000 Well, I think the first thing that we have to change, honestly, is our own mentality about America.

00:09:04.000 Because America is a land of opportunity.

00:09:06.000 And right now, I think there are politicians on both sides of the aisles and political figures on both sides of the aisle who are maintaining that you're a victim of circumstance if you live in the United States.

00:09:14.000 You see this from the populist right.

00:09:15.000 Well, we should shut down automatic driving.

00:09:17.000 We should worry about trade. 0.83

00:09:19.000 We should worry about Mexico. 1.00

00:09:20.000 And China, instead of saying, listen, there are 7 million unfilled jobs.

00:09:24.000 Go out there and adventure.

00:09:25.000 You're not guaranteed anything in this life, and certainly in the United States, except for that adventure.

00:09:29.000 So make the decisions that are most likely to bring you success.

00:09:33.000 If you actually want to have opportunity, you have to seize opportunity.

00:09:37.000 And opportunity is knocking every day that you live in the freest country that's ever been created.

00:09:40.000 All right, Alicia has an interesting question.

00:09:42.000 She wants to know, if you ever had to leave America, would you consider moving to Japan?

00:09:47.000 To Japan.

00:09:48.000 I've never even visited Japan, so I hesitate to say I would move to a place I've never visited.

00:09:52.000 I want to visit Japan though, apparently it's pretty amazing.

00:09:54.000 I've heard there's some good food, there's some beautiful scenery.

00:09:57.000 I doubt lots of kosher restaurants, so that might be a problem.

00:10:01.000 But also it's really cold there.

00:10:02.000 Yeah, people don't realize that but it's quite cold there because I've had some friends that are based in the military that over there Dino wants to know you have mentioned having more children before how many kids are you planning to have and can you speak about large?

00:10:14.000 Families versus small families.

00:10:15.000 Thank you for your honest commentary for for your information I'm a married father of four and an NYPD lieutenant with 26 years on the job First of all, thanks for what you do, because you're out there in the line of duty doing stuff to protect us every day.

00:10:26.000 We are aiming for, I hope, God willing, at least four kids.

00:10:30.000 That's what we'd like to do.

00:10:31.000 Maybe we end up with fewer, maybe we end up with more.

00:10:33.000 But four, my wife has four in her family, I have four in my family, four seems like a nice number.

00:10:39.000 The social studies tend to show, interestingly enough, that parents are happiest, that couples are happiest when they either have no kids or lots of kids.

00:10:47.000 When you have one or two kids, you put so much stake in the one or two kids that you invest all your time and energy in the perfect life.

00:10:54.000 And then as you have more kids, you notice this between kid one and kid two.

00:10:57.000 I mean, you have a couple of kids now and you notice this.

00:10:59.000 With kid one, you're like, I'm going to be so meticulous about every little thing.

00:11:03.000 And by kid two, you're like, fine, eat off the floor.

00:11:04.000 I don't even care anymore.

00:11:05.000 Just do what you need to do.

00:11:06.000 Because this is the real world, man.

00:11:08.000 Learn to survive.

00:11:09.000 And by the time you hit kid four, kid one is taking care of kid four.

00:11:12.000 So it really does create A sense of camaraderie, and there's a constant fun going on.

00:11:17.000 I loved having three younger siblings, and I think that as a parent, having more kids as opposed to fewer kids, I think is a pretty wonderful thing.

00:11:26.000 I mean, the religious Jewish community, of course, is famous for having lots of kids.

00:11:30.000 It's so funny, when my parents would go out in public in the secular community, everybody would look at them like, what the hell did you do?

00:11:34.000 There are four of them.

00:11:35.000 And then they'd go in the religious community, and somebody would be like, knew what happened?

00:11:39.000 Where are the rest?

00:11:41.000 I was at Ralph's the other day, and some man who does not deserve to be called a gentleman was like, oh my god, why would you have three?

00:11:50.000 Because there are three girls in tow. 1.00

00:11:52.000 And I was like, four!

00:11:54.000 I got so pissed at him.

00:11:56.000 I was like, who does that?

00:11:58.000 Well, you should have said to him, you know what, I'm having the kids, so you don't have to.

00:12:02.000 Yeah.

00:12:02.000 Just, you don't.

00:12:03.000 This is my plan for conservatism to take over, is we're just going to be for the whole time.

00:12:07.000 The demographic argument for conservatism remains pretty strong.

00:12:09.000 I mean, I'm just saying.

00:12:10.000 Elijah wants to know, hey Ben, how do you justify religiously based political views to adamantly non-religious people?

00:12:16.000 So I don't justify religiously based political views.

00:12:19.000 I justify reasonably based political views.

00:12:23.000 I believe that every public policy has to have a secular rationale, otherwise we can't have a common conversation.

00:12:27.000 Now with that said, religious values can back that rationale.

00:12:31.000 So what I mean by that is To take an example, this entire book is about how secular values that we all hold dear, things like freedom of speech and free markets, are actually rooted in Judeo-Christian values about the fact that we are all made in God's image, that we are individuals with creative capacity, that the universe is an understandable place where we ought to be able to use reason.

00:12:47.000 These are religious assumptions.

00:12:49.000 These are not assumptions you can make if you are a scientific materialist.

00:12:52.000 Those are religiously based.

00:12:53.000 But making those assumptions, now you have to make a secular argument for why public policy ought to prevail along some lines or other lines.

00:13:00.000 But the assumptions that you make from the outset are very rarely based in simple evidence.

00:13:05.000 Assumptions that you make politically or values-wise are generally based in a religious underpinning, which is why, when I debated Sam Harrison, I asked him, you know, why do you think our values are so similar, even though you're a militant atheist and I'm an orthodox Jew?

00:13:17.000 The answer is because we grew up in a Judeo-Christian society with 3,000 years of common history 10 miles from each other.

00:13:22.000 Do you think that he's read this book?

00:13:24.000 Not yet.

00:13:24.000 I hope he does.

00:13:25.000 I mean, I do mention him in it.

00:13:26.000 Really?

00:13:27.000 Yeah, I talk about him.

00:13:28.000 Michael Shermer has interviewed me about the book.

00:13:29.000 I mentioned Michael in here.

00:13:30.000 I mean, these are all people, I think, who are trying to do something good, which is restore enlightenment values.

00:13:35.000 But they're doing so on the basis of a secular materialism that I think is insufficient to support the superstructure of enlightenment values.

00:13:43.000 Enlightenment was not purely secular.

00:13:45.000 It was based on a long history of religious values.

00:13:47.000 There was an interesting conversation I saw on a Twitter thread earlier.

00:13:50.000 Yes, interesting things do still happen on Twitter, guys, but stay away.

00:13:54.000 And someone said he wondered how many people would convert to Judaism after reading this.

00:13:58.000 And then somebody else was like, oh, I actually wrote a thought piece about how I actually think people would convert to Christianity after reading this.

00:14:03.000 Yeah, somebody did a review of the book.

00:14:04.000 It's actually a really good review of the book by a Catholic person who was reading it and saying, you know, what you really need is more Jesus in the book.

00:14:08.000 And OK, I mean, if you're Catholic, fine, sure.

00:14:10.000 Yeah, more Jesus.

00:14:12.000 Also, we get to eat bacon, so there's that.

00:14:14.000 I mean, I'm starving today.

00:14:15.000 I'm sorry.

00:14:16.000 Eating anything would be good.

00:14:17.000 I feel like I don't even want to take a sip of my water in front of you right now.

00:14:20.000 I feel really bad.

00:14:20.000 You can.

00:14:21.000 You're pregnant. 0.99

00:14:21.000 You're allowed. 0.99

00:14:21.000 By the way, pregnant women don't have to fast, even in Judaism, if it endangers the kid. 0.99

00:14:25.000 And I ain't Jewish, so... Yeah, so double whammy.

00:14:28.000 You don't have to worry about it under any... If I converted you right now, you still would not have to worry about it.

00:14:31.000 Great.

00:14:32.000 Sarah says, what books would you recommend for a young man who's 12 years old and is interested in being a wise leader?

00:14:37.000 Well, there are...

00:14:39.000 If you're interested in leadership qualities and being a valuable human being, there's this series that my dad grew up on and then passed on to me.

00:14:47.000 It's an older series.

00:14:48.000 They've done a rewrite of the series to make it more Christian in orientation, but it was originally a non-religious series at all.

00:14:55.000 It's called the Chip Hilton series.

00:14:56.000 It's a series of sports books.

00:14:57.000 If you're a 12-year-old boy, it's just fantastic stuff.

00:15:00.000 It dates back to the 1950s.

00:15:03.000 replete with just good values.

00:15:05.000 It is racially diverse and all of that.

00:15:07.000 It's really, these books are really fantastic.

00:15:09.000 They're very hard to find.

00:15:10.000 The full series of the Chip Hilton books is worth thousands of dollars, but they've brought out reissues that have some Christian themes in them, and they made people more openly religious.

00:15:20.000 And so, I'm sure those are quite good as well.

00:15:23.000 I obviously prefer the older versions because they're the original. - I would also have to add, I don't know how much they've changed, but the original Boy Scout Code of Conduct.

00:15:33.000 It's like a great place to start for a young man.

00:15:35.000 Yeah.

00:15:36.000 The only problem is that the state of California threatened to revoke their 501c3 exemption if they actually held to it.

00:15:41.000 Of course.

00:15:42.000 Toby wants to know, do you believe the Cuban people will ever rise up against their government similar to the Venezuelan people?

00:15:48.000 Well, it depends.

00:15:48.000 I mean, I think that the army is being paid off by the, in the same way as in Venezuela, the army is being paid off by the administration in Cuba.

00:15:54.000 It's one of the reasons why I'm not largely in favor of the quote-unquote opening of Cuba, absent other measures of pressure that we can bring to bear.

00:16:02.000 I think that tends to re-enshrine the people who are in power.

00:16:05.000 It doesn't really tend to help the people who are at the bottom of the ladder, who are going to have their wealth seized, and then the people in power just take the money and then redistribute it to all their friends.

00:16:13.000 Honestly, I don't know the answer to that.

00:16:14.000 I'm not, I'm not, Knowledgeable enough about the internal politics of Cuba right now.

00:16:19.000 I mean, obviously you hope, right?

00:16:20.000 You hope that the people in Iran rise up. 0.95

00:16:22.000 You hope that the people in Cuba rise up.

00:16:24.000 You hope that Venezuela's revolution is successful as well.

00:16:27.000 All right, Cherie wants to know, why do you think some people are so easily led to believe non-scientific things like boys can become girls and girls can become boys, or that a 40-week-old fetus is not an actual baby?

00:16:38.000 I think because we have chosen to do away with... I talk about exactly this stuff in this book.

00:16:44.000 I think that we have chosen to do away with the notion of objective facts and scientific rationales, because we're finding more meaning in our feelings.

00:16:53.000 We're finding more meaning in subjectivism.

00:16:55.000 Objective reality?

00:16:57.000 It's harsh.

00:16:57.000 I mean, you don't get everything you want.

00:16:59.000 Reality is what it is.

00:17:01.000 And sometimes that doesn't meet your expectations of what you think reality should be.

00:17:05.000 And in an era where we have decided that we're going to find our happiness in self-esteem, we're going to find our happiness in how we feel today, if reality doesn't meet our self-esteem, then we seek to change the reality around us.

00:17:16.000 Now we're going so far as to change the actual biological reality of sex and suggest that your subjective perception of your own sex somehow is more important To society at large and to yourself than is your actual sexual biology.

00:17:29.000 That's a pretty radical statement that we've made about the non-value of science.

00:17:34.000 And it's why, again, I think that the attempt to crack down on this stuff via the use of government is the highest form of tyranny.

00:17:42.000 I mean, there's a case in the last couple of days in which a woman in Britain is now being investigated by the police for, quote unquote, misgendering somebody.

00:17:48.000 So, terming somebody by their biological pronoun is now considered a crime in parts of Britain.

00:17:53.000 I mean, that's an insane contention and obviously a rejection of both Judeo-Christian values and Enlightenment values, which are based on the same belief, that there is an objective reality and you can understand it.

00:18:03.000 There was even that recent case in Canada where the parents were told by the court that they could not refer to their daughter as her birth name that was on her certificate, or they could face jail time.

00:18:14.000 It's madness.

00:18:15.000 And it's scary, I mean, but it is the slippery slope of when is it going to come here?

00:18:18.000 You can see it coming to California.

00:18:20.000 I mean, the only thing that's preventing this, presumably, is the First Amendment, but we'll find out.

00:18:24.000 Trina wants to know, if you could choose to be remembered for a single thing, what would you choose?

00:18:30.000 I think Lewis Howes asked you a similar question, like at the end of your life.

00:18:33.000 Yeah.

00:18:33.000 When you're gone, how do you want to be remembered?

00:18:35.000 You know, so there's something that occurred to me after George H.W.

00:18:39.000 Bush passed away, which is that George H.W.

00:18:42.000 Bush was, he was a good man, but he was not a great man.

00:18:47.000 What I mean by that is that great men are the people you think of, they're in historic conflict situations, and now they step forward.

00:18:53.000 The Winston Churchill's, the Ronald Reagan's.

00:18:54.000 And part of that is just having fate thrust on you certain responsibilities, and then you rise to the occasion.

00:18:59.000 Being a good man is, to a certain extent, being more anonymous.

00:19:02.000 It's doing the little things every day that make civilization work.

00:19:07.000 I mean, the stuff that makes civilization work, yes, you need the guy who is there standing in the breach when something terrible happens, but you also need people who are out there building that social fabric, and that's the stuff that goes non-celebrated.

00:19:18.000 So, listen, we all want to be remembered because we think that that somehow gives us eternal life, is in the memory of other people.

00:19:26.000 And if I'm talking about what I want my intellectual legacy to be, I think that this book is a very good place to start.

00:19:30.000 I think it really does encompass a lot of my philosophy.

00:19:33.000 But if you're talking about what is the stuff at the end of my life that I'm going to value the most, it's the same stuff that I think most people are going to value the most.

00:19:38.000 My relationship with my wife, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with God.

00:19:41.000 And that's not the stuff that will be remembered.

00:19:43.000 That's just the stuff that mattered.

00:19:44.000 All righty.

00:19:45.000 This next question comes from Connor.

00:19:47.000 He wants to know, are there aspects of Eastern philosophies and religions that have helped out the West?

00:19:55.000 Sure.

00:19:55.000 I mean, I think that if you take a look at some of the ideas in Buddhism about how to deal with reality, that the essential notion, which is that it is your choice how to react to the reality around you.

00:20:07.000 I mean, there are lots of good concepts there.

00:20:09.000 Obviously, cultural appropriation is a very good thing. 0.55

00:20:11.000 It's one thing that the West is actually unique in pursuing, is taking the best of other cultures and then trying to integrate them into our own culture.

00:20:18.000 That's why when people rip on cultural appropriation, I think to myself, why?

00:20:22.000 Why?

00:20:23.000 And if you're talking about You know, discoveries of the East, obviously mathematics being discovered in India, the discovery of gunpowder.

00:20:31.000 I mean, there are all sorts of great inventions that happened outside the West.

00:20:34.000 The point of the book is that the vast expansion, the almost big bang of human development in terms of wealth, in terms of freedom, that did happen in the West.

00:20:42.000 So why did it happen in the West and not there?

00:20:44.000 Alright, this question comes from John.

00:20:46.000 Why, I'm sorry, who are your favorite and least favorite Supreme Court Justices?

00:20:49.000 So, currently, my favorite Supreme Court Justice is Clarence Thomas.

00:20:54.000 It has been, I mean, just a lot, even when Scalia was alive, Thomas was my favorite Supreme Court Justice because Scalia has views of stare decisis that I don't think are correct.

00:21:03.000 He was always talking about which precedent he would obey and which he wouldn't.

00:21:06.000 And Thomas' basic take was, I'm not going to obey a precedent if it's wrong, which I think is correct.

00:21:10.000 So he is my favorite Supreme Court justice, and he's a very underrated writer as well.

00:21:14.000 Least favorite Supreme Court justice.

00:21:16.000 Notorious RBG is quite terrible.

00:21:18.000 I mean, she really is.

00:21:19.000 Her opinions have nothing to do with the Constitution.

00:21:21.000 They're obvious political polemics.

00:21:23.000 They're really radical. 0.97

00:21:25.000 So she is really, really awful.

00:21:27.000 Historically, we're Supreme Court justices.

00:21:29.000 Obviously, you have to go with Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision.

00:21:33.000 And if you're talking historically, great Supreme Court justices, then you would have to pick, presumably, maybe John Marshall at the outside of the court, though I disagree with Marbury versus Madison.

00:21:42.000 And then you would have to, honestly, I think Thomas is an all-timer.

00:21:45.000 I think he's that good.

00:21:46.000 That's awesome.

00:21:47.000 So John wants to know, what point should government intervention be used for the environment?

00:21:52.000 This conversation came up a lot recently, I think, with the The Green New Deal?

00:21:56.000 Yeah.

00:21:57.000 I mean, the answer is when externalities prevail, then you have to have government intervene. 0.97

00:22:01.000 So the general rule of politics, John Stuart Mill says this, and I generally agree with this, is that I get to wave my fist around until I hit you in the face.

00:22:09.000 At that point, I violated your rights.

00:22:11.000 Well, the same thing is true environmentally.

00:22:12.000 I don't get to pump sludge onto your land.

00:22:14.000 If I do that, I'm violating your rights.

00:22:16.000 Well, if I'm pumping materials into the air that are doing damage, air pollution, then the government has to regulate that, and they have to regulate that so that the commons don't become Overrun with garbage.

00:22:26.000 And it's not just you pumping sludge onto my property.

00:22:29.000 If there's a public park and we all own it in common and you decide to pollute that, then you have taken advantage and you've created externalities.

00:22:35.000 The problem I see with a lot of environmental policy these days is that the environmental policy should, in fact, be decided at the legislative level, not at the regulative level.

00:22:43.000 And then beyond that, the left is attempting to regulate The environment in a way that is not actually going to even be useful.

00:22:51.000 So, the Green New Deal is counterproductive.

00:22:53.000 I've said before, I'm fully willing to accept and I do accept the mathematics of the IPCC.

00:22:59.000 Orrin Kass makes this argument, I agree with him.

00:23:03.000 The IPCC argument that we are going to warm perhaps three degrees Celsius by the end of the century, I'll assume that that's true.

00:23:09.000 They know the math better than I do.

00:23:11.000 I'm not a scientist, so I'll take their word for it.

00:23:14.000 I will also take their word for it when they say that none of the solutions that are currently on the table come close to working.

00:23:18.000 And that when AOC talks about the Green New Deal, if we brought the United States' emissions to zero today, that would lower the total amount, the total amount of global warming by the end of the century by 0.173 degrees Celsius out of three degrees Celsius.

00:23:32.000 So in other words, if we completely destroy the American economy, that's what we achieve.

00:23:35.000 That does not seem like a solution to me.

00:23:36.000 What do you think about the kind of outrage that Beto and AOC and others are creating about this 12-year deadline?

00:23:43.000 Well, I mean, this is being exaggerated because they're assuming that if we hit the end of that 12 years, then we just sort of fall off a cliff.

00:23:50.000 But the fact is that if we blow past that 12 years, human beings have an innate capacity to adapt.

00:23:54.000 How do they think that human beings got to the United States?

00:23:56.000 How do you think people got to America?

00:23:57.000 This entire continental shelf was not populated originally by human beings.

00:24:02.000 I mean, human beings originated in Africa.

00:24:04.000 According to most theories, and then spread out all over the various continents.

00:24:07.000 Well, that was human migration.

00:24:08.000 Human migration has always been a part of what we do in response to climate.

00:24:11.000 All right, Miranda wants to know, what do you think our founding fathers would say about the great divide between Democrats and Republicans in America today?

00:24:19.000 I think our founding fathers would be utterly bewildered by both parties.

00:24:22.000 I think that we have moved so far from the vision of the founders in terms of what the state government was supposed to do versus what the federal government was supposed to do, what the social fabric was supposed to do versus what the government was supposed to do.

00:24:32.000 They would look at the Republican Party, they'd say, okay, you guys are going to spend Trillions of dollars this year.

00:24:38.000 You're going to set up a trillion dollar deficit this year.

00:24:41.000 What are you even talking about?

00:24:43.000 And then they look at the Democrats and they'd say, I legitimately have no idea what you're talking about.

00:24:47.000 Like, I don't know what any of the terms you're using mean.

00:24:49.000 I don't know what you are talking about when you suggest getting rid not only of key institutions, but of key concepts like biology.

00:24:57.000 Like, what are you, what now?

00:24:59.000 So I think that they would be incredibly confused by everything that both parties, virtually everything that both parties are doing.

00:25:05.000 It'd be kind of fun to have a time machine.

00:25:08.000 John Adams would be, I mean, can you imagine?

00:25:11.000 If you're going to go through historic figures on Twitter, who would be just phenomenal on Twitter.

00:25:15.000 Oh, man.

00:25:15.000 Adams would have been amazing on Twitter.

00:25:18.000 And Trumpian on Twitter, right?

00:25:19.000 From the Oval Office, that dude would have been tweeting everything that came through his head because he was incessantly writing.

00:25:24.000 Alexander Hamilton would have been vicious on Twitter because he was vicious in writing.

00:25:28.000 Do you think he would have rapped, though?

00:25:31.000 No.

00:25:32.000 No, Elisha.

00:25:33.000 He would not have.

00:25:33.000 Sorry.

00:25:35.000 Ryan wants to know, who do you admire the most in the political world?

00:25:41.000 I feel like that's like, because it's like somebody that you admired two years ago you cannot admire anymore.

00:25:45.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:25:46.000 You know, like it happens so much in politics.

00:25:48.000 So, I mean, I know a lot of the politicians and never meet the people you admire is the general rule.

00:25:52.000 That's particularly true in politics.

00:25:54.000 They have a different job than I do.

00:25:55.000 It's hard.

00:25:56.000 You know, I have an easier job than they do.

00:25:57.000 I get to sit here and tell you about the purity of my ideas and that's a wonderful thing.

00:26:02.000 And then they have to go and try and implement those ideas.

00:26:05.000 And that's difficult.

00:26:06.000 So you see people failing to do that in a variety of ways, but people who I like and I think are trying to do their best.

00:26:12.000 I mean, I've had many of them on the show.

00:26:13.000 Dan Crenshaw, I think, is trying to do his best in the House, even though we disagree on some things.

00:26:18.000 Mike Lee, Senator Lee, he is certainly an honest man who's trying to do his best in the Senate, even though we disagree on some things for sure.

00:26:29.000 I think Ben Sasse has the right things in his heart, although I don't know why he voted in favor of the National Emergency Declaration other than pure politics.

00:26:36.000 That's exactly what I was thinking of when I asked that question because there's so many people that the day before would have said Ben Sasse forever.

00:26:43.000 And then the next day were very disappointed.

00:26:44.000 Right, but this is just true generally of politics is that you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain because sooner or later the political stars are going to align such that you're going to have to compromise your own principles.

00:26:54.000 The question is whether you are honest enough to say, I'm compromising my own principles, or whether you maintain that you're standing up for principle when you really are not.

00:27:00.000 I'm really excited about this next question from Andy, who wants to know, what are the top five things schools should be doing in America right now that are different?

00:27:07.000 OK, so the first thing they should be doing is they need to set teacher standards, meaning that Michelle Reid did this in Washington, D.C.

00:27:14.000 She tied teacher performance to teacher pay, and then the lower performing teachers were fired.

00:27:19.000 So that needs to be done immediately.

00:27:21.000 Also, we should be paying teachers more to teach in downtrodden communities as opposed to upscale communities.

00:27:25.000 We have precisely the reverse.

00:27:26.000 If you live in Los Angeles and you're a teacher, if you are senior in the American Federation of Teachers, you'll be teaching at Beverly Hills High.

00:27:33.000 If you're not senior, you'll be teaching in South Central.

00:27:35.000 It should be precisely the reverse.

00:27:36.000 We need better teachers who are more experienced and paid more to do a harder job.

00:27:41.000 We also have to change the curriculum and we have to get back to teaching Simple basics as opposed to whatever politically correct garbage people decide to shovel into the public education system today through social studies classes.

00:27:53.000 And that means how about we read and write and learn about the value of the American Constitution and the American Declaration and the ancients.

00:28:00.000 Like this book, honestly, you know, The Right Side of History, the new book.

00:28:04.000 This book, if people had read it in like 1900, this would have been a high school textbook.

00:28:10.000 Maybe.

00:28:10.000 It might have been a junior high textbook, honestly.

00:28:13.000 And now it's, you know, a post-college textbook because people don't know any of this stuff.

00:28:17.000 So those are a few things.

00:28:18.000 Also, more local control of education.

00:28:19.000 It's not the job of the federal government to teach parents how to educate their children.

00:28:23.000 Also, we have to have vouchers.

00:28:24.000 We have to have parents moving their kids from school to school. 0.81

00:28:28.000 The money should follow the kid.

00:28:29.000 It should not follow the teachers.

00:28:30.000 And finally, you know, that's four.

00:28:33.000 So the fifth is that you actually do have to break the teachers' unions.

00:28:35.000 The teachers' unions should not be legal.

00:28:38.000 Public sector unions generally should not be legal.

00:28:40.000 Teachers' unions.

00:28:41.000 Unionizing against the taxpayer is not an actual union, especially when the government is forcing people to work for the union in order to gain employment.

00:28:50.000 We saw this with the Janus decision, though.

00:28:52.000 And even in states like California, though, the unions are still making it so difficult for teachers to no longer be in the union.

00:28:58.000 Right, to opt out.

00:28:59.000 Yeah, to opt out.

00:29:00.000 Exactly.

00:29:01.000 I like this question because it's actually been kind of a question in pop culture recently because of a favorite of ours.

00:29:08.000 Chris Pratt has been hit by people for the church that he goes to for, you know, believing the Bible.

00:29:13.000 Right.

00:29:13.000 And teaching the Bible.

00:29:14.000 So Adrienne says that she recently converted to Christianity and her friend Who's a homosexual, says that Christians, by default, hate gay people because Christians want gay people to sacrifice love and happiness simply because of how they are born. 0.76

00:29:29.000 How would you respond to this?

00:29:29.000 Okay, so everybody is born, obviously, with different challenges in their life.

00:29:33.000 I'm going to give the religious perspective here, because this has nothing to do with secular policy.

00:29:37.000 This is just the religious perspective.

00:29:38.000 So, in Judaism, the Orthodox believe, and the Bible suggests, that homosexual activity is a sin.

00:29:44.000 Okay, so this is common to the Judeo-Christian value system.

00:29:47.000 That does not mean that people should be prosecuted on the secular level for any of this activity.

00:29:52.000 I don't think that's right.

00:29:52.000 In fact, I'm libertarian on marriage because I think the government should be completely out of all of this.

00:29:55.000 So, putting aside secular policy and defending religion against this charge.

00:29:59.000 It is obviously a lie.

00:30:00.000 The fact is that Christians, Jews, people who are religious, are constantly living alongside other people who they believe are committing sins.

00:30:07.000 And we ourself believe that we are committing sins on a fairly regular basis. 0.99

00:30:10.000 This idea that we see somebody who is committing a sin and that we hate you because you're committing a sin, something we consider to be a sin, is absolutely asinine. 0.90

00:30:18.000 If that were the case, we'd all hate ourselves. 0.83

00:30:19.000 We all understand that we sin and that we are not perfect.

00:30:22.000 This is a basic religious principle.

00:30:23.000 Hating the sin, but loving the sinner.

00:30:25.000 You know, people try to brush that off, but that's the reality.

00:30:28.000 If the question is, your standard requires sacrifice of me, then yes, if you were to live up to my standard, it requires sacrifice of you.

00:30:36.000 That is absolutely true, and that is true of any religious standard.

00:30:38.000 It is true across a wide variety of human interactions.

00:30:41.000 Is that sacrifice enormously large when you're talking about people who are biologically attracted to people of the same sex?

00:30:46.000 Of course that sacrifice is enormously large.

00:30:48.000 It's an incredible challenge to be a religious person who's abiding by those religious scriptures.

00:30:52.000 And that's why I think religious people try to treat folks who are gay with tremendous amounts of sympathy, or at least they should, because from a religious perspective, Even if you believe people are committing a sin, you understand that people have biological drives to do things.

00:31:07.000 In the religious perspective, however, and this is an important point, in the religious perspective, a biological drive to do a thing is not, in fact, a moral excuse to do a thing.

00:31:14.000 And that is a key component of building Now, maybe you don't want to live up to that standard.

00:31:21.000 Maybe you feel that the standard is ill-based.

00:31:22.000 That's fine.

00:31:23.000 That's your prerogative.

00:31:24.000 It's a free country.

00:31:24.000 You can do what you want.

00:31:26.000 But the original question was, do Christians hate people who are gay? 0.91

00:31:29.000 And the answer, of course, is no, in the same way that I, a Jew, do not hate Jews who violate the Sabbath. 0.97

00:31:34.000 It's an absurdity.

00:31:35.000 And it's a slander.

00:31:37.000 And that's why it's so bizarre when you see people who are tweeting out photos of Mike Pence. 0.98

00:31:41.000 Oh, he's next to a gay guy. 0.99

00:31:43.000 So the hell what? 0.99

00:31:44.000 Who was that? 0.85

00:31:44.000 The Irish Prime Minister? 0.85

00:31:45.000 They were so excited.

00:31:46.000 Right, the Irish Prime Minister and his husband. 0.61

00:31:48.000 It's like, you think Mike Pence gives a damn?

00:31:50.000 Like, you think Mike Pence is just in the other room quivering in fear or hatred? 0.99

00:31:54.000 My favorite is when people on the left suggest, well, Mike Pence really holds these views because he's a latent homosexual. 0.93

00:31:59.000 He can't actually hold the views.

00:32:00.000 First of all, why would you possibly, if the idea is to hit Mike Pence and say that he's doing something bad, That's not an insult.

00:32:10.000 I mean, from your perspective, that's not an insult in any way at all.

00:32:12.000 I don't think it is an insult, period.

00:32:14.000 But the whole logic of it is bizarre, and it's designed to make a character attack on you that you know is not true.

00:32:20.000 Your friend knows you don't hate gay people.

00:32:22.000 You just converted to Christianity. 0.99

00:32:25.000 Your friend is gay. 0.97

00:32:25.000 They are your friend. 0.97

00:32:26.000 They should know that you do not hate gay people.

00:32:29.000 If they are bigoted enough that they believe that your worship of Christ somehow now means that you hate them, Then that means that they're thrusting a character description on you that is simply not apt.

00:32:39.000 Alright, we want everyone to remember that this is a very special episode of our conversation, because not only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions, if you have bought a copy of Ben's book that he's signing today, this is a live signing for that book, The Right Side of History, and you can get your signed copy and ask Ben a question over at PremierCollectibles.com The next question in this next book is from James.

00:33:00.000 He wants to know, would you agree that our nation, if we don't stay the course with conservative presidents like President Trump, we could possibly end up with an America such as the one in Orwell's 1984 or Rand's Atlas Shrugged?

00:33:07.000 to get your copy now and submit your question for Ben.

00:33:10.000 The next question in this next book is from James.

00:33:13.000 He wants to know, would you agree that our nation, if we don't stay the course with conservative presidents like President Trump, we could possibly end up with an America such as the one in Orwell's 1984 or Rand's Atlas Shrugged?

00:33:26.000 If not, why?

00:33:26.000 Yeah, I mean, of course we can always end up in a dystopia.

00:33:29.000 I mean, it was Reagan who said that freedom is always one generation away from extinction.

00:33:32.000 So, absolutely.

00:33:34.000 I don't know that political figures alone are going to be enough to stop that transition.

00:33:38.000 I think that in the end, we do live in a republic, which means that if we go that direction, it's because the voters of America don't know what they're doing or they've made a poor moral decision.

00:33:46.000 It's why our job is not just to vote.

00:33:49.000 Our job is to also tell everybody around us and teach our children the values that we would like to see America preserve.

00:33:54.000 Jason says, what are your thoughts on the Green New Deal?

00:33:57.000 Obviously, it would be nice at some time to transition to renewables.

00:34:00.000 What would your plan be, or what would you continue to do with the progress that we have going towards fossil fuels?

00:34:07.000 I mean, the fact is that there are a couple of things that I would obviously do.

00:34:12.000 One is that we need to actually Lower taxes so that people have more capacity to invest in the new energy that is going to help us.

00:34:20.000 In fact, the United States has radically reduced its carbon emissions.

00:34:23.000 We're the number one emissions-reducing country on planet Earth over the last several years, specifically because of fracking, which the left hates.

00:34:29.000 Also, nuclear power.

00:34:31.000 What the hell?

00:34:32.000 If you guys are going to proclaim that we need to get rid of carbon-based fuels, then why would you rule out, in the Green New Deal itself, the building of new nuclear factories? 0.99

00:34:39.000 Are you insane?

00:34:41.000 There is no reality to this notion that you can get to net carbon emissions of zero without understanding that the single most powerful method of generating energy ever devised by man must be utilized.

00:34:53.000 You know how many windmills it would take to simply compensate for the amount of fossil fuels for the energy grids around the United States?

00:35:02.000 How many windmills?

00:35:03.000 The entire area of the state of California would have to be covered in windmills.

00:35:07.000 It's not a thing that's going to happen.

00:35:08.000 Although I'm sure some conservatives would be fine with that if it meant California falling off the face of the planet.

00:35:14.000 Solar power, wind power, these do not represent a significant percentage of the amount of power that is generated in the United States.

00:35:19.000 What you need is fracking replacing coal generation if you're worried about carbon emissions, and you need nuclear power replacing a lot of this stuff if you want to worry about carbon emissions.

00:35:27.000 Alright, AJ says, what are the most important values that should be shared between spouses regardless of politics?

00:35:32.000 So I will say that I think that politics are a good indicator of values.

00:35:36.000 So whenever I hear people say, well, I'm a Republican, I'm dating a Democrat, I think, OK, well, then either one of you doesn't understand your own political viewpoint or you have wildly differing value systems, because the Democratic and Republican parties do represent differing value systems.

00:35:51.000 Conservatives still believe that the messages of the past, the values of the past, the Judeo-Christian values have something to say to us and teach us.

00:35:58.000 And the left believes that we are living in a world-changing scenario where human beings are innately malleable if we can simply change the system under which we live.

00:36:07.000 These are radically different views of human nature, and it's difficult to see how they live together.

00:36:12.000 As far as values you have to share, think about raising a kid.

00:36:16.000 What are the values you want to actually Teach your children.

00:36:19.000 If you differ on those values, it's going to be difficult for you to have a solid marriage.

00:36:23.000 The truth is, you can have a marriage in which you disagree on values, so long as you don't talk politics, as long as your goal is simply to have fun with the person.

00:36:31.000 You can have fun with pretty much anybody.

00:36:32.000 I can have fun with lots of people with whom I disagree.

00:36:34.000 But when the goal is raising a child, when the goal is forming a life together, then your common goal has to be met with the same means and the same ends.

00:36:43.000 And the only way to do that is to look at those things.

00:36:45.000 So in the book I talk about what my wife and I are looking to teach to our children, the belief that you're not a victim in the freest society in human history, that Judeo-Christian values mean something, that you are You didn't build the building upon which you are sitting, right?

00:36:58.000 You're sitting on the top of a building.

00:36:59.000 You didn't build that building, so you need to know about everything that is underneath that.

00:37:03.000 These ideas didn't come to you.

00:37:04.000 The world didn't start spinning when you were born.

00:37:05.000 You actually need to engage with the ideas of the past in order to understand what makes your life so great now.

00:37:11.000 That you have a responsibility to see the people around you as made in God's image, and that you have a responsibility on an individual level to care for them, not on a governmental level to force you To do something, but on an individual level, it is your job to take care of your neighbors and build social fabric.

00:37:24.000 And your life has meaning.

00:37:26.000 And for your life to have meaning, that means that you have to, to a certain extent, believe that there is a broader, something broader in the universe to which you are subject.

00:37:34.000 These are values I think you have to hold in common.

00:37:36.000 So, as easy proxies, you have to hold religious values in, you have to hold in common religious values.

00:37:45.000 And you also have to hold in common basic modes of how you address issues.

00:37:51.000 I think you use reasons, you use evidence.

00:37:54.000 It's very difficult to deal with people.

00:37:55.000 If you are a reason-based person and your spouse is a deeply emotion-based person, you're going to have a real gap in how you communicate.

00:38:02.000 So I was just totally distracted by the Barack Obama lingo that you were using over there.

00:38:06.000 First, the book is right side of history.

00:38:08.000 You just said you didn't build that.

00:38:10.000 Right, well, I may as well address the right side of history thing right now. 1.00

00:38:13.000 So a bunch of idiots online, and they're pointing out a tweet that I wrote when Obama was president about the right side of history being a stupid phrase. 0.99

00:38:18.000 Right, when you use it to say that my view on same-sex marriage Is going to be justified by history and therefore you are on the wrong side of history. 1.00

00:38:26.000 History hasn't decided yet.

00:38:27.000 OK, OK, history doesn't have a side.

00:38:29.000 If there is a right side of history, first of all, to play on the idea, you know, like the right side of history as opposed to the left side of history.

00:38:35.000 But if you are going to talk about history having a right side, you have to look at the things that are good right now and say, where did they come from?

00:38:41.000 You can't just say, here is my opinion on something.

00:38:43.000 And if you disagree with me, you're on the wrong side of history.

00:38:46.000 You know how I can tell that the United States is on the right side of history?

00:38:49.000 Because the United States is freaking unbelievably awesome.

00:38:52.000 That's how I can tell.

00:38:53.000 I can't tell you, however, if my tax policy is on the right side of history because I don't have future spectacles.

00:38:58.000 All righty.

00:38:58.000 Dustin wants to know, in your opinion, who is the most logical choice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

00:39:03.000 Amy Coney Barrett.

00:39:05.000 Shortest answer ever.

00:39:06.000 There you go.

00:39:06.000 I mean, I didn't even have Stephen's book ready and you were already done with Dustin's book.

00:39:11.000 Honestly, it should have been the replacement for Justice Kennedy.

00:39:14.000 I'm still bewildered as to why Brett Kavanaugh was chosen.

00:39:18.000 I mean, that ended up being an interesting fight, though. 0.90

00:39:20.000 Listen, once he was in it, he had to be confirmed because that was absurd and disgusting.

00:39:24.000 But I was always ambivalent about whether Brett Kavanaugh would be an actual originalist or whether he would form a new swing center with John Roberts.

00:39:32.000 I opposed Roberts' nomination.

00:39:33.000 I was very torn on Kavanaugh.

00:39:35.000 I expressed my ambivalence about it.

00:39:37.000 And so far, not to say I'm always right about Supreme Court justices, but I'm kind of always right about Supreme Court justices.

00:39:43.000 Stephen says, what do you believe would be the best solution for there to be peace in Israel?

00:39:48.000 I understand it's a hard question, but as I am a Jew and a dual citizen of both America and Israel, I wonder your opinion in the matter.

00:39:55.000 So there will be no peace in Israel until the Palestinians decide that they no longer wish to kill Jews simply for the sake of being Jews and to liberate Israel from the river to the sea. 0.52

00:40:06.000 And it's very simple.

00:40:07.000 They've elected three governments. 0.62

00:40:08.000 All three are terrorist governments. 0.97

00:40:09.000 The Palestinian Authority, Islamic Jihad, Hamas are all terrorist groups.

00:40:13.000 Now, maybe the Palestinian people are starting to wake up to this, which would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

00:40:18.000 Now, years ago, obviously, they were not awake to this when they elected Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2005 after Israel voluntarily vacated the place.

00:40:25.000 They burned down all the Jewish greenhouses and then elected a terrorist group.

00:40:27.000 But if you're going to talk about Palestinians rising up in the same way we've talked about Cubans rising up or Venezuelans rising up, that would be a wonderful thing.

00:40:34.000 You think Israelis don't want to be left alone?

00:40:37.000 You think Israelis really want to be drafted at age 18 and then do years in the military because there are threats on every border? 0.87

00:40:43.000 The thing Israelis want most is to be left alone. 0.99

00:40:45.000 Seriously.

00:40:46.000 And Dennis Prager uses this argument all the time and it's exactly correct. 0.99

00:40:51.000 If all the Israelis were to put down their guns today, tomorrow there would be no more Israel. 0.99

00:40:55.000 If all the Palestinians were to put down their guns today, tomorrow there would be peace. 1.00

00:40:59.000 All right.

00:41:00.000 Shane wants to know, Ben, I'm an atheist, but respect and appreciate the values in society Judeo-Christian values have created and cultivate.

00:41:07.000 I can't bring myself to have faith in a deity, but I think raising a child with religious values and church attendance would be an overall positive influence on their life.

00:41:16.000 How do you recommend reconciling these two conflicting points?

00:41:20.000 I don't want to lie to my child and say that I am religious, but I also don't want to try to explain to them why I don't believe while they should.

00:41:26.000 Thanks for your dedication to the American way of life.

00:41:28.000 I mean, this is a great question, and I really do think that you should engage your child in religious education, even if you don't believe.

00:41:35.000 And when your kid is old enough to have these discussions, you can have these conversations.

00:41:39.000 What I would suggest is that there are a lot of people who don't believe that they are deistic, who actually are deistic.

00:41:43.000 So if you believe in the concept of personal responsibility and free will, it's very difficult to argue that on the basis of pure atheism.

00:41:51.000 Maybe on agnosticism, maybe you can just make the assumption, but to believe that you have the ability to make decisions outside of your biology, or at least to overcome your own biological drives, that you have the ability to change and plan and do these things, requires you to believe in something beyond the purely physical.

00:42:07.000 The purely physical suggests you're just a ball of meat wandering through the universe without any will of your own.

00:42:11.000 If you believe that the universe is a place where objective truth is possible, where you can understand the things in the universe, not just things that are useful.

00:42:18.000 Darwinism suggests that our understanding should allow us to find the most useful solutions to problems, but not necessarily the true solution to problems.

00:42:26.000 If you believe there is such a thing as objective truth, then you have to believe there is something outside of the materialist system that is larger than we are and that has built the system, that there is an order to the universe.

00:42:38.000 The arguments in favor of God are not simply God gave a bunch of words on a mountain, or God was walking around in the Galilee one day, and it's an actual argument for the logic and rigor of the universe, for your ability to act independently within that universe.

00:42:53.000 That's how you can come to God.

00:42:54.000 That doesn't necessarily mean that you come to Scripture the same way.

00:42:57.000 But I think that coming to a realization about the nature of God was certainly not foreign to the Greeks.

00:43:02.000 I mean, Aristotle believed in the idea of the unmoved mover.

00:43:04.000 All right, Aaron wants to know, should common ground be something always worthy of striving for, as it is something that is commonly seen as the goal by many of our modern debates and dialogues?

00:43:15.000 No, I think that the first thing, look, the end goal is to define positions.

00:43:18.000 And then if you can find common ground, great.

00:43:20.000 But in order to have a rational discussion with somebody, you first have to define the ground upon which you are standing.

00:43:25.000 One of the big problems I see in a lot of the debates I do and the discussions I do is failure to define terms.

00:43:31.000 So people will say things like, are you in favor of immigration reform?

00:43:35.000 And they're not defining the term immigration reform.

00:43:37.000 I mean, I don't know.

00:43:38.000 You have to tell me what immigration reform means.

00:43:40.000 What are you talking about?

00:43:41.000 People will suggest that it is not compassionate for me not to believe in a certain policy.

00:43:46.000 And I'll need the policy defined, and also I need you to define compassion.

00:43:48.000 If by compassion you mean that I get to leverage government to do what I want, I disagree with your definition of compassion.

00:43:53.000 If by equality you mean equality of outcome rather than equality of rights, then I disagree with your terminology.

00:43:58.000 In order for us to have useful conversations, you first have to define terms.

00:44:02.000 And then you can, from there, Decide where you disagree.

00:44:05.000 And maybe through that clarity, you find agreement.

00:44:07.000 Maybe you clarify each other's positions.

00:44:09.000 You find that you agree more than you thought you did.

00:44:11.000 Or maybe you find that you don't agree at all.

00:44:13.000 And that's fine, too.

00:44:15.000 But Dennis Prager is right about this, too.

00:44:17.000 Clarity before agreement, I think, is correct.

00:44:19.000 But discussion before all is also correct.

00:44:22.000 All right.

00:44:22.000 Aaron says, Hey Ben, I'm a huge fan.

00:44:25.000 Are you excited for opening day and what two teams will be in the World Series come October?

00:44:29.000 So I am a huge baseball fan as well.

00:44:32.000 I am excited for opening day despite the fact that my team is not slated to be very good this year.

00:44:36.000 Chicago White Sox missed out on Manny Machado, which I think is a good thing, actually.

00:44:40.000 But with that said, the rest of the roster is lacking.

00:44:43.000 They're probably three years away from being truly good.

00:44:46.000 Maybe they'll surprise me.

00:44:47.000 If I have to pick the teams in advance, you've got to take the Yankees in the American League.

00:44:50.000 They've spent a boatload of money.

00:44:53.000 I think that you may see a slight regression to the mean from the Boston Red Sox.

00:44:57.000 And then in the National League, I know that the trendy pick is a little bit the Phillies, but I'm gonna, I'll stick with the Dodgers.

00:45:04.000 I think it'll be a Yankees-Dodgers World Series.

00:45:06.000 That could be fun.

00:45:07.000 That'd be a blast.

00:45:08.000 It's a throwback World Series.

00:45:10.000 I don't even pay attention to, I don't even know what that meant.

00:45:13.000 But I do hope to win the March Madness bracket again here at the Daily Mail.

00:45:16.000 No, you're not allowed to win.

00:45:17.000 So Elisha won last year based on sheer, unbelievable ignorance.

00:45:21.000 She picked an underdog team from Oklahoma to win a couple of games. 0.87

00:45:25.000 No, I picked Oklahoma, Boomer Sooner, to win it all.

00:45:29.000 And they lost their first game.

00:45:32.000 And I'm going to frame the tweet from this author of The Right Side of History, Ben Shapiro.

00:45:35.000 I said there's no way she could possibly win, so I was on the wrong side of history.

00:45:38.000 And I won, guys.

00:45:40.000 She did win, but that was because- Apparently it was such an upset year, blah, blah, blah.

00:45:43.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:45:44.000 People just had their brackets wrecked.

00:45:45.000 And then, of course, there was Jared in our office who cheated.

00:45:48.000 So we have a prize for the winner and the loser.

00:45:49.000 So shout out to Jared right now if you're watching.

00:45:51.000 Jared, up in the office, let me tell you something.

00:45:53.000 None of this crap where you win the March Madness bracket For worst bracket by picking all the 16 seeds. 1.00

00:45:59.000 That's garbage. 1.00

00:46:00.000 You're not allowed to throw the thing, man. 1.00

00:46:02.000 It's just a douche move.

00:46:03.000 Oh, maybe I should do that this year.

00:46:05.000 I mean, I kind of want to go out as reigning champ, though.

00:46:09.000 I'm doing a whole book about values and decency, and you're talking about how you can cheat at the March Madness brackets.

00:46:13.000 It's not cheating if it's an option.

00:46:15.000 What are you going to teach this child in your belly, Alicia Krauss? 0.70

00:46:17.000 Come on.

00:46:19.000 How not to work here.

00:46:22.000 That book is for Angel, and she wants to know, what are the steps that you took to prepare for college, and did your mentor help you?

00:46:29.000 Well, honestly, I felt like I was pretty well prepared for college just because I was always reading.

00:46:34.000 And that really is the key.

00:46:34.000 You have to have good work ethic.

00:46:36.000 Thank God.

00:46:36.000 I've always had really strong work ethic, and I'm somebody who likes to get ahead of the game, so I always like to study early.

00:46:41.000 My wife is precisely the opposite. 0.68

00:46:43.000 She's a massive procrastinator, and it drives me up a wall. 1.00

00:46:46.000 I love it.

00:46:47.000 A doctor, right?

00:46:48.000 Indeed.

00:46:48.000 Okay.

00:46:49.000 Indeed.

00:46:50.000 But she will always wait till the last minute, so whenever there's a test date that she has to schedule, there's, you know, an open period.

00:46:57.000 She can take it near the beginning or the end. 0.84

00:46:58.000 I always just say to her, do it on the last day.

00:46:59.000 I know you're gonna schedule it at the beginning, and then you'll push it off all the way till the end.

00:47:03.000 But, you know, it really is about work ethic and willingness to do outside reading.

00:47:08.000 And that's what gets you through college while still being a sane human being.

00:47:11.000 All right.

00:47:11.000 Brian says, Why do you think certain ideologies dominate particular industries?

00:47:16.000 I work in tech, but not for much longer as I plan to leave partly because of the environment.

00:47:20.000 That's really sad.

00:47:22.000 Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of it has to do with location.

00:47:24.000 So Silicon Valley was founded in Silicon Valley.

00:47:27.000 I mean, it's in California, in San Francisco.

00:47:29.000 It tends to draw a lot of local people right from the very outset.

00:47:33.000 It's also true that people who are well-educated and white-collar tend toward the left, politically speaking, because smart people have a real tendency to think that they can control other people.

00:47:43.000 When I was at Harvard Law School, one of the first things that happened, the very first day, is Elena Kagan, now justice on the Supreme Court, and in my opinion, not a very good one, she was the dean of the law school, and we were all sitting there in Memorial Hall, beautiful hall, and she walks out on the stage and she says, listen, the competition is over.

00:48:00.000 You're here.

00:48:01.000 You won.

00:48:02.000 You all have jobs.

00:48:03.000 So here's how many senators we have. 0.98

00:48:04.000 Here's how many congresspeople we have.

00:48:06.000 Here's how many Supreme Court justices we have.

00:48:07.000 You're going to be the rulers of the universe.

00:48:09.000 And I remember thinking to myself, why?

00:48:11.000 Like, because we're smart? 1.00

00:48:14.000 I know a lot of smart people and they're kind of dumb. 0.96

00:48:16.000 Like smart people, it's great to be smart, but that doesn't mean I know anything about your life or about how to control your family or how you should raise your kids. 0.98

00:48:24.000 You know, that's your job.

00:48:25.000 I think there are basic values that over time have been proved worthy.

00:48:29.000 And that's what I talk about in the book.

00:48:30.000 I mean, there's nothing new in the book.

00:48:31.000 It's a lot of old stuff.

00:48:33.000 But I think that there's something to be said for that.

00:48:35.000 Basically, a lot of the high IQ industries tend to go toward the left because people want to control other people's lives.

00:48:42.000 You see this particularly in tech where you're seeing Facebook and Twitter say, we're here to make the world a better place.

00:48:47.000 How about you're here to provide a platform so that we can talk with each other?

00:48:49.000 And then you leave us alone.

00:48:50.000 How about that?

00:48:51.000 And not spying us.

00:48:52.000 How about spare us?

00:48:53.000 How about do the Bill Gates thing?

00:48:55.000 How about spare us the I'm making the world a better place stuff with Microsoft?

00:48:58.000 Just give us a good product.

00:48:59.000 And then you want to make the world a better place.

00:49:01.000 Go do it on your own time.

00:49:01.000 Give a bunch of money to charity.

00:49:02.000 All right.

00:49:04.000 This question comes from Christopher Hennig.

00:49:05.000 How can you defeat abusive, delusional, and violent people with words and passivity?

00:49:10.000 I mean, you can't, is the answer.

00:49:12.000 I mean, passive resistance... I'm assuming he's talking about, like, Antifa versus... I mean, you can't, but this is why we have law enforcement.

00:49:17.000 So I think it's also a mistake to give Antifa what they want by getting in fights with them, because then they get to claim that you're just as violent as they are, and they get to claim that they're actually the aggressors against fascism and all this kind of stuff.

00:49:28.000 This is why I've always said at all of my events, you know, people have said, can we come to your events and defend you against Antifa?

00:49:32.000 I'm like, that's what the police are for.

00:49:34.000 I pay lots of taxes in this state.

00:49:35.000 It is their job to do that.

00:49:36.000 All right.

00:49:37.000 This question comes from Daniel.

00:49:39.000 Oh, God.

00:49:41.000 Do you think Michael Knowles had more difficulties writing his book than you writing this book?

00:49:45.000 I think I had more difficulty writing more words in Michael Knowles' book than he had in writing his book.

00:49:49.000 How Michael Knowles made hundreds of thousands of dollars from a book that sold because I wrote the word thorough on the cover is beyond me.

00:49:55.000 And the fact that he still has a job here is a testament to his friendship with Jeremy Boring.

00:50:00.000 I can't believe, I really thought as like a baby gift y'all would get me him fired.

00:50:05.000 Listen.

00:50:06.000 You know what?

00:50:07.000 Good idea.

00:50:08.000 I'll talk to Jeremy about it.

00:50:10.000 Michael, you're on notice.

00:50:10.000 You've got how many months left here?

00:50:12.000 July 5th due date.

00:50:13.000 So put in your notice, severance package, a couple of months here.

00:50:16.000 I'm really rooting for 4th of July, baby, because that'd be awesome.

00:50:19.000 That would be awesome.

00:50:20.000 I mean, 4th of July backstage, baby, maybe?

00:50:22.000 I mean, honestly, my daughter, my first kid, was born during the State of the Union address that Obama was giving, and it was fantastic.

00:50:28.000 I didn't have to cover the State of the Union, and I got a baby out of it.

00:50:31.000 It was great.

00:50:31.000 It's amazing.

00:50:32.000 Zachariah says, have you read any of the Star Wars books, and if so, which one is your favorite?

00:50:37.000 I have, indeed.

00:50:38.000 The Thrawn books are very, very good.

00:50:39.000 I like the Thrawn books.

00:50:40.000 I've recommended them on the show, and that's what they should have done. 0.99

00:50:43.000 When they reset Star Wars, you stupid idiots, that you have two choices when you reset Star Wars. 0.99

00:50:47.000 Now, see, when you talk about values, I'm, you know, into it, but when you talk about Star Wars, then I get passionate. 0.99

00:50:52.000 So here is the deal about Star Wars. 0.99

00:50:56.000 You fools. 1.00

00:50:57.000 You absolute jackasses. 1.00

00:50:59.000 Here is the story about Star Wars. 1.00

00:51:01.000 You had two choices and you blew it.

00:51:03.000 Okay, choice number one.

00:51:04.000 You fast forward a hundred years.

00:51:05.000 And then you just take up from there.

00:51:07.000 And everybody is in the past.

00:51:08.000 They sort of went off and had their happy lives.

00:51:10.000 And now you're still in the same universe with the same sort of machinery and you can have You can have people discovering stuff about Han, and Leia, and Luke, and Ben Kenobi, and the books, and all this kind of stuff.

00:51:20.000 And that's fun, right?

00:51:20.000 That's 100 years in the future.

00:51:21.000 Everybody had their happy life.

00:51:22.000 And you didn't ruin my childhood.

00:51:24.000 Number two, you could just recast the series.

00:51:27.000 You actually did this with Alden Ehrenreich, right?

00:51:28.000 You actually did this with the solo movie, which, by the way, I kind of enjoyed.

00:51:32.000 I liked the solo movie.

00:51:32.000 I thought it was that and Rogue One were the two best of the new Star Wars movies.

00:51:36.000 The actual Star Wars canon movies are terrible.

00:51:39.000 And the reason is because they decided to do exactly What Kylo Ren suggests they should do in the last Star Wars movie.

00:51:45.000 Kylo Ren says we need to kill off all the oldies so we can make room for the newbies. 0.99

00:51:49.000 And he's the bad guy. 0.87

00:51:50.000 You know what Disney is doing with Star Wars? 0.93

00:51:52.000 Killing off all the oldies. 1.00

00:51:54.000 All the people from my childhood. 1.00

00:51:55.000 Making them losers and then killing them. 1.00

00:51:57.000 So that they can make room for a bunch of boring, boring characters that you don't care about. 1.00

00:52:01.000 They turn Han Solo into a divorced loser father who's driving around in his old caddy. 0.97

00:52:05.000 And what the hell? 0.87

00:52:06.000 He was the coolest guy in the original Star Wars.

00:52:08.000 And then you turned Luke into some reprobate who lives on a planet where he milks giant space aliens.

00:52:13.000 Like, what?

00:52:14.000 What was the decision making here?

00:52:16.000 What was it?

00:52:17.000 If you're going to go for the nostalgia play, you actually have to be nostalgic.

00:52:20.000 You can't just destroy the characters I grew up with.

00:52:22.000 I pretend those movies aren't part of canon.

00:52:24.000 All right.

00:52:25.000 Grant says, why has politics become a religion for many on the left and the right?

00:52:31.000 Good question.

00:52:32.000 I have a book for you.

00:52:34.000 That's legitimately the thesis of the book.

00:52:39.000 Why is it that we are treating politics as religion?

00:52:42.000 And the answer is because we've lost our religion.

00:52:43.000 Human beings have a religious instinct.

00:52:45.000 We are looking for something more important for us to be a part of.

00:52:48.000 We are looking for something that motivates us and gives us a sense of meaning.

00:52:50.000 You can find that in tribalism.

00:52:52.000 You can find that in anger.

00:52:53.000 You can find that in a victimhood mentality.

00:52:56.000 You can find that in communalism, the idea that the community matters more than the individual.

00:53:00.000 Or you can find that in the values and traditions that brought us to the greatest country in the history of the world.

00:53:04.000 All right.

00:53:04.000 Dustin says, Ben, that he's a longtime fan.

00:53:07.000 So his question is, if you could pick one thing and only one, what do you think is the biggest problem that we as a country need to address today?

00:53:14.000 I mean, so on a political level, abortion is obviously the biggest problem. 0.71

00:53:18.000 The continued killing of the unborn is a great evil.

00:53:21.000 And as Thomas Jefferson suggested about slavery, When you think that God will not sleep forever, or God's justice will not sleep forever, it's a little bit disquieting.

00:53:30.000 As far as generalized problems, the problem of soul, the problem of motivation, the problem of meaning and purpose that I think is lacking in people, and that we have to re-inculcate.

00:53:39.000 People have to understand what an opportunity they have been given.

00:53:42.000 Gratitude.

00:53:44.000 Gratitude is the big one.

00:53:45.000 And if we can install a sense of gratitude in our kids, then I think that we'll be fine.

00:53:48.000 All right.

00:53:49.000 Gratitude in kids is so important.

00:53:51.000 I play a game with my kids whenever we go to the store that they can't ask for anything.

00:53:55.000 Oh, wow.

00:53:55.000 How does that go for you?

00:53:57.000 If they ask for something, they have to go to bed 30 minutes early.

00:53:59.000 Whoa.

00:54:00.000 You're very hardcore.

00:54:01.000 Alicia's a more hardcore parent than I am, is the truth.

00:54:04.000 Like, Alicia will, like, I mean, she takes out the belt. 0.98

00:54:07.000 Don't get CPS called on me now.

00:54:09.000 I take him to church.

00:54:11.000 I send him to religious school.

00:54:12.000 The state of California is going to kick me out.

00:54:14.000 Exactly.

00:54:15.000 You have a small closet where you lock them for days.

00:54:18.000 No more wire hangers.

00:54:20.000 This next question comes from Christian.

00:54:23.000 It's about religion.

00:54:24.000 So, brace yourself.

00:54:25.000 He says, Hi, Ben.

00:54:26.000 If God is perfect, then why did Lucifer become Satan and humans became corrupt?

00:54:30.000 Thank you so much for all you do and inspiring me to become my school's first editor-in-chief.

00:54:35.000 If you're going to ask me Christian theology questions, then probably you should direct those there. 0.98

00:54:39.000 Because in the Jewish view, Satan is not, in fact, a fallen angel.

00:54:44.000 He's not at war with God.

00:54:45.000 Satan is called the accuser.

00:54:46.000 I mean, that's literally what Satan means in Hebrew, is the accuser.

00:54:49.000 And his job is to be the prosecutor against human beings.

00:54:51.000 And you see this in, for example, the story of Job, where Satan actually shows up and has a conversation with God.

00:54:56.000 And he says, do you think this guy here believes in you because you've done all these great things for him or because he actually believes in you.

00:55:03.000 That's Satan's job.

00:55:04.000 Satan is like any of the other angels.

00:55:05.000 In Jewish philosophy, the angels basically have one purpose and one purpose only, and they're God's emissaries.

00:55:12.000 That's why the word in Hebrew for angel, malach, literally means messenger.

00:55:15.000 So messenger, like a human messenger, and an angel, it's the exact same word in Hebrew.

00:55:19.000 And so for angels, it is not that Satan, who's an angel, is now a bad angel or a fallen angel.

00:55:24.000 That's not how Judaism sees it. 0.87

00:55:26.000 So if you want a Christian theological view, you should ask Knowles or Clavin or Jeremy or Elisha or anyone else around here, actually.

00:55:33.000 Matt Walsh.

00:55:34.000 Paul Bois.

00:55:35.000 The Cardinal.

00:55:37.000 I'm listing all the authors at Daily Wire that would love to answer this question.

00:55:41.000 Exactly.

00:55:43.000 I won't take up your time.

00:55:43.000 I'll beg off, yeah.

00:55:44.000 Yeah.

00:55:45.000 Alright, we only got about five minutes left, so let's try to roll through some more.

00:55:47.000 Marvin says, greetings, Ben.

00:55:49.000 For my daughter, who, uh-oh, she's a leftist, please explain the absurdity of the coalition between feminist organizations and people like Linda Sarsour. 0.98

00:55:57.000 So, how is it possible for them to coexist when they allegedly have these two opposing ideologies?

00:56:03.000 So the truth is they should not be able to coexist.

00:56:05.000 Linda Sarsour is an advocate openly of what she has called Sharia law. 0.61

00:56:09.000 She is associated with terrorists like Rasmia Oda. 0.76

00:56:12.000 She has praised Saudi Arabia as liberal. 0.95

00:56:16.000 Linda Sarsour is a disaster area of a human being. 0.83

00:56:20.000 And for her to be treated as a feminist icon is simply bizarre, except that the philosophy of intersectionality suggests that none of this actually matters.

00:56:28.000 Intersectionality has destroyed everything. 0.93

00:56:30.000 Basically, the idea of intersectionality started with a basic truth, like all philosophies, and then proceeded to spin off a web of garbage. 0.92

00:56:37.000 The basic truth was that if you look at a black woman, a black woman may be treated differently than a black man because she's both black and a woman, right? 0.54

00:56:45.000 The intersection of black and woman is different than the intersection of black and man. 0.51

00:56:48.000 Well, that may be true on a generic level.

00:56:50.000 That should not trump individual experiences.

00:56:52.000 Intersectionality, however, suggests that individual experiences no longer matter.

00:56:56.000 We can tell by the membership in a group, your membership in a group, what experiences you have had.

00:57:01.000 And therefore, we can determine whether your opinion ought to hold more or less weight in any discussion.

00:57:06.000 And in fact, people from different groups can't listen to each other.

00:57:08.000 Because if we listen to each other, that suggests a common humanity that overrides the assumptions of intersectionality in the first place.

00:57:15.000 So what that means is that intersectionality, says Linda Sarsour, can be a good feminist while also being a rabid anti-Semite and terror supporter. 0.99

00:57:21.000 Because after all, she is a woman and a Muslim woman, which means that she has been victimized in the United States.

00:57:26.000 She's part of the Victims Coalition.

00:57:28.000 More important that we hug the other members of the victimhood group here than that we actually hold fast to anything that remotely resembles, you know, actual honest feminist values. 0.92

00:57:36.000 All right, Paige says, "Hi Ben.

00:57:38.000 "I'm a woman in the military, "and I'm naturally surrounded by conservatives "on a daily basis.

00:57:43.000 "However, I've had friends who've called me "a misogynist for voting for Trump.

00:57:47.000 "How do you suggest I open up a civil dialogue "with someone who cannot see past identity politics "and things for what you do?" - So, honestly, I think that you have to be honest about this.

00:57:55.000 The reason that you voted for President Trump is not because you were like on the fence and then you heard the Access Hollywood tape and you're like, yeah, that's my guy.

00:58:00.000 That was no one, right?

00:58:02.000 Legitimately no one in the United States was like, you know what? 0.97

00:58:05.000 I can't decide between Hillary and Trump, but now that he says that he randomly grabs women by the genitals, I'm in. 0.83

00:58:10.000 Now I'm there, man. 0.96

00:58:11.000 There was no one who did that.

00:58:12.000 People voted for Trump in spite of that stuff.

00:58:14.000 I'm sure you voted for Trump in spite of that stuff.

00:58:16.000 You are not embracing every aspect of Donald Trump by voting for him.

00:58:19.000 All you are saying is that you do not see how you can vote for the person on the other side.

00:58:24.000 Now, there are reasons that I expressed during the 2016 election for why I didn't think that the choice was purely binary, and also what I hoped to forestall by not voting for President Trump.

00:58:34.000 I understand why everyone did vote for President Trump, and it seems like a fairly decent rationale, saying, I would rather that his policies be put in place with all of the drawbacks of him as a human being, than the opposite.

00:58:44.000 So, I don't have to defend everything Trump does in order to defend his policies, nor do I have to defend my vote for his policies on the basis of him saying terrible things about women.

00:58:52.000 I've been saying for literally years, on this program and elsewhere, that President Trump's treatment of women historically has been garbaggio.

00:58:58.000 And this maintains, this continues to this day.

00:59:01.000 I'm not sure what has changed or why, if I then say I like his tax cuts, this makes me a misogynist.

00:59:07.000 I'm confused.

00:59:07.000 Alright, this final question comes from, I hope I'm saying this right, Duong, who says, Hi Ben, what movie or movies are you the most excited for that are coming out in 2019?

00:59:18.000 Well, I mean, there's the show, right?

00:59:19.000 Game of Thrones is coming back, so I'm excited about that.

00:59:21.000 I've never watched an episode.

00:59:23.000 Yeah, you're missing out.

00:59:24.000 Game of Thrones is pretty spectacular.

00:59:26.000 They blew it a little bit last season, but Game of Thrones is really, really good.

00:59:29.000 Is there a movie that you're excited?

00:59:31.000 Because you're a theater guy.

00:59:32.000 You like to go to the movie theater and see a movie.

00:59:34.000 This is true.

00:59:35.000 Well, Nolan's next movie comes out next year.

00:59:38.000 OK.

00:59:39.000 I will say that just like everybody else, I'm looking forward to the final installment of Infinity War, because you sort of have to say that.

00:59:46.000 I'm not looking forward to it as much as Elisha is, because Elisha's a crazy person.

00:59:50.000 The trailer looks so good.

00:59:51.000 I'm just pissed that they... Again, now you've got me going.

00:59:53.000 I know.

00:59:54.000 Okay, so here is the deal. 1.00

00:59:55.000 If you cried when Spider-Man or Black Panther disappeared at the end of the last movie, you're an idiot. 1.00

00:59:59.000 No, I didn't. 1.00

01:00:00.000 Okay, I'm not accusing you.

01:00:01.000 Was I looking at you?

01:00:02.000 Well, I don't know.

01:00:03.000 There are people I know who are like, yeah, I was so sad when Spider-Man died. 1.00

01:00:05.000 I'm like, you're an idiot. 1.00

01:00:06.000 He's not dead. 1.00

01:00:07.000 It's a billion dollar industry.

01:00:08.000 What are you... Yeah, you're right.

01:00:09.000 They killed off Black Panther, the most iconic hero they've created in the last 15 years.

01:00:13.000 I'm sure they killed him off for no reason at the end of Infinity... And he's never coming back, guys.

01:00:17.000 What a joke.

01:00:18.000 But I'm looking forward to that.

01:00:20.000 I saw the trailer for the new Tarantino film.

01:00:22.000 I'm not a huge Tarantino fan, actually.

01:00:24.000 But there's always something interesting in the Tarantino films.

01:00:27.000 I think Scorsese has a new movie that is coming out, The Irishman, that looks kind of interesting.

01:00:32.000 So I'll check that out as well.

01:00:34.000 Those are the ones that come to mind.

01:00:35.000 All right.

01:00:36.000 That was the last question.

01:00:37.000 But don't worry.

01:00:38.000 That's all the time we have for today.

01:00:40.000 But we thank you to everyone who watched this very special episode of The Conversation and asked Ben questions.

01:00:44.000 And it's, I mean, you still got books over here.

01:00:47.000 So I'm just going to keep putting them in front of you.

01:00:49.000 And you can still get your, if you're like, oh no, it's over.

01:00:52.000 I can't get a signed copy.

01:00:53.000 Not true, guys.

01:00:54.000 You can still get your signed copy over at PremierCollectibles.com slash Ben Shapiro.

01:00:59.000 And be sure to tune in next month to ask Andrew Klavan your questions on his episode of The Conversation.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 21, 2019

The Conversation Ep. 19: Ben Shapiro LIVE BOOK SIGNING

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