Ben Shapiro answers your questions live on-air as he does a live signing of his new book, The Right Side of History. You don't have to be a Daily Wire 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 air as he is over here signing your book and getting cramped hands! We ve got so many questions and so many books to sign, we re going to give you arthritis today! Thanks to our sponsor, Premier Collectibles, you get a signed copy of the book now! And don t worry, because if your question isn t answered, you will still get your signed copy! If you don t want to wait until next week for the next episode of The Conversation, head on over to premiercollectibles.com/TheConversation and let us know what questions you have for Ben to answer in the future episodes of The Conversation! The Conversation is brought to you by The Daily Wire. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. All rights reserved. Used by permission. The opinions expressed in this episode are our own and not those of our companies unless otherwise stated in the article or any other paid for by our patrons' expressed by us. Thank you for your support. Ben Shapiro is a friend and supporter of The Weekly Standard. We do not own any of the rights to the music used in this piece, and we do not claim any other credit for the music included in the piece, other than that was produced or provided by any other third-party services provided by the song used in the song written or produced by us at any other source other than our patrons chose. We are not compensated for any other authorship. This work is not in any other person s use of this piece of music used at any expense. It was produced, except that of any other compensation. except that which is credit given to be used in any credit given or received by us in this work. in any way is for this piece was done by the work of any third party or service provided by our clients or service received. . The work of anyone else is not being compensated for the work done by us, other authors or service rendered by us is being compensated in this article or service is not otherwise acknowledged.
00:00:06.000This is the newest episode of The Conversation.
00:00:08.000I 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.
00:00:16.000So, usually at this point, I lecture you guys about how you should become Daily Wire subscribers and only subscribers get to ask the questions.
00:00:28.000Well, 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.
00:00:39.000And 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.
00:00:53.000We're going to give you arthritis today.
00:00:55.000We've got so many questions and so many books to sign.
00:00:57.000So head on over to premiercollectibles.com slash Ben Shapiro and get your signed copy now.
00:01:03.000And don't worry, because if your question isn't answered, you will still get a signed copy of the book.
00:01:09.000That's premiercollectibles.com slash Ben Shapiro.
00:01:40.000So this book is going to be for Kelly, which is super fun.
00:01:43.000And 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?
00:01:56.000I mean this is where the social fabric comes in.
00:01:58.000What 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.
00:02:06.000In 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.
00:02:16.000The problem is we've reversed that process.
00:02:18.000So, 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.
00:02:23.000Absolutely false, which is why people on the right tend to give per capita a lot more charity than people on the left.
00:02:29.000I mean, in my family, we personally help out a lot of folks in our community who are in need.
00:02:34.000In fact, today is a fast day, but tonight is Purim.
00:02:39.000And on that holiday, one of the commandments is matanot le'ev yanim, which is to give gifts to the poor.
00:02:43.000So, I mean, this is something that religious people, of course, have long been famous for.
00:03:10.000It's out in theaters though, you should go take the kiddies to see it.
00:03:13.000Alright, this next question and this next book are for Zachary.
00:03:16.000He says, Hi Ben, I'm a middle school math teacher in an extremely impoverished and rural region.
00:03:21.000The average income in my county is less than $17,000 per capita.
00:03:25.000I'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.
00:03:35.000To 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.
00:03:43.000I 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.
00:03:53.000What can you tell me about an area would you come to this?
00:03:57.000And what do you think it would take to turn this situation around?
00:04:01.000I mean, the truth is that when it comes to the educational system generally, there's a lot of pressure put on teachers.
00:04:06.000But the vast majority of education and educational values start with parents.
00:04:09.000And 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.
00:04:17.000And the complaint is that somehow this is racist.
00:04:19.000Well, the vast majority of students who go to that school who are impoverished are Asian students.
00:04:23.000There is a difference in cultures of poverty and non-cultures of poverty.
00:04:28.000There are black cultures in which, in the United States, in which education is highly valued.
00:04:32.000There are black cultures in which it is not.
00:04:33.000There are white cultures in which it is highly valued.
00:04:35.000There are white cultures in which it is not.
00:04:37.000It all starts at home, obviously, with parents, and then the teacher just has to do what the teacher can do.
00:04:42.000But if you're not in charge of that, all you can do is do your best for the students.
00:04:48.000The 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.
00:05:04.000The first thing they made sure is that their kids spoke English and that their kids were interested in being well-educated.
00:05:08.000This has been true in the Jewish community for a very long time, for example.
00:05:11.000Alright, Joshua has the next question.
00:05:13.000What do you believe is the best way we can fight to protect the life of the unborn?
00:05:16.000Politician after politician says they will get right against it, and then they get in and do absolutely nothing.
00:05:24.000Well, 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.
00:05:31.000You'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.
00:05:44.000As far as legislation, I think that you are seeing a gradual pushing back of the dates at which you can perform an abortion.
00:05:51.000In 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.
00:05:59.000So you are seeing those restrictions being broadened.
00:06:03.000The question is how far the Supreme Court is going to allow those restrictions to be broadened.
00:06:07.000I think it's probably going to be a gradual process.
00:06:08.000On 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.
00:06:20.000I still think that prioritization is incorrect.
00:06:22.000It's really sad when you see that happen.
00:07:33.000I 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.
00:07:41.000Looking to eliminate full departments, including the Department of Education.
00:07:45.000There are two million people who work for the executive branch of the government.
00:07:58.000And that's because President Trump has 70 to, depending on the polls, 70 to 90% approval rating inside the Republican Party.
00:08:04.000I 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.
00:08:55.000Brittany wants to know, what do you think would be the first thing we should change to make America the land of opportunity again?
00:09:00.000Well, I think the first thing that we have to change, honestly, is our own mentality about America.
00:09:04.000Because America is a land of opportunity.
00:09:06.000And 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.
00:10:02.000Yeah, 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?
00:10:15.000Thank 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.
00:10:26.000We are aiming for, I hope, God willing, at least four kids.
00:10:31.000Maybe we end up with fewer, maybe we end up with more.
00:10:33.000But four, my wife has four in her family, I have four in my family, four seems like a nice number.
00:10:39.000The 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.
00:10:47.000When 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.
00:10:54.000And then as you have more kids, you notice this between kid one and kid two.
00:10:57.000I mean, you have a couple of kids now and you notice this.
00:10:59.000With kid one, you're like, I'm going to be so meticulous about every little thing.
00:11:03.000And by kid two, you're like, fine, eat off the floor.
00:11:09.000And by the time you hit kid four, kid one is taking care of kid four.
00:11:12.000So it really does create A sense of camaraderie, and there's a constant fun going on.
00:11:17.000I 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.
00:11:26.000I mean, the religious Jewish community, of course, is famous for having lots of kids.
00:11:30.000It'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?
00:12:10.000Elijah wants to know, hey Ben, how do you justify religiously based political views to adamantly non-religious people?
00:12:16.000So I don't justify religiously based political views.
00:12:19.000I justify reasonably based political views.
00:12:23.000I believe that every public policy has to have a secular rationale, otherwise we can't have a common conversation.
00:12:27.000Now with that said, religious values can back that rationale.
00:12:31.000So 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.
00:12:53.000But making those assumptions, now you have to make a secular argument for why public policy ought to prevail along some lines or other lines.
00:13:00.000But the assumptions that you make from the outset are very rarely based in simple evidence.
00:13:05.000Assumptions 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?
00:13:17.000The answer is because we grew up in a Judeo-Christian society with 3,000 years of common history 10 miles from each other.
00:13:22.000Do you think that he's read this book?
00:13:30.000I mean, these are all people, I think, who are trying to do something good, which is restore enlightenment values.
00:13:35.000But they're doing so on the basis of a secular materialism that I think is insufficient to support the superstructure of enlightenment values.
00:13:45.000It was based on a long history of religious values.
00:13:47.000There was an interesting conversation I saw on a Twitter thread earlier.
00:13:50.000Yes, interesting things do still happen on Twitter, guys, but stay away.
00:13:54.000And someone said he wondered how many people would convert to Judaism after reading this.
00:13:58.000And 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.
00:14:03.000Yeah, somebody did a review of the book.
00:14:04.000It'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.
00:14:08.000And OK, I mean, if you're Catholic, fine, sure.
00:14:39.000If 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.
00:15:10.000The 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.
00:15:20.000And so, I'm sure those are quite good as well.
00:15:23.000I 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.
00:15:33.000It's like a great place to start for a young man.
00:15:48.000I 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.
00:15:54.000It'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.
00:16:02.000I think that tends to re-enshrine the people who are in power.
00:16:05.000It 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.
00:16:13.000Honestly, I don't know the answer to that.
00:16:14.000I'm not, I'm not, Knowledgeable enough about the internal politics of Cuba right now.
00:16:20.000You hope that the people in Iran rise up.
00:16:22.000You hope that the people in Cuba rise up.
00:16:24.000You hope that Venezuela's revolution is successful as well.
00:16:27.000All 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?
00:16:38.000I think because we have chosen to do away with... I talk about exactly this stuff in this book.
00:16:44.000I 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.
00:16:53.000We're finding more meaning in subjectivism.
00:17:01.000And sometimes that doesn't meet your expectations of what you think reality should be.
00:17:05.000And 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.
00:17:16.000Now 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.
00:17:29.000That's a pretty radical statement that we've made about the non-value of science.
00:17:34.000And 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.
00:17:42.000I 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.
00:17:48.000So, terming somebody by their biological pronoun is now considered a crime in parts of Britain.
00:17:53.000I 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.
00:18:03.000There 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.
00:18:33.000When you're gone, how do you want to be remembered?
00:18:35.000You know, so there's something that occurred to me after George H.W.
00:18:39.000Bush passed away, which is that George H.W.
00:18:42.000Bush was, he was a good man, but he was not a great man.
00:18:47.000What 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.
00:18:53.000The Winston Churchill's, the Ronald Reagan's.
00:18:54.000And part of that is just having fate thrust on you certain responsibilities, and then you rise to the occasion.
00:18:59.000Being a good man is, to a certain extent, being more anonymous.
00:19:02.000It's doing the little things every day that make civilization work.
00:19:07.000I 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.
00:19:18.000So, listen, we all want to be remembered because we think that that somehow gives us eternal life, is in the memory of other people.
00:19:26.000And 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.
00:19:30.000I think it really does encompass a lot of my philosophy.
00:19:33.000But 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.
00:19:38.000My relationship with my wife, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with God.
00:19:41.000And that's not the stuff that will be remembered.
00:19:55.000I 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.
00:20:07.000I mean, there are lots of good concepts there.
00:20:09.000Obviously, cultural appropriation is a very good thing.
00:20:11.000It'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.
00:20:18.000That's why when people rip on cultural appropriation, I think to myself, why?
00:20:23.000And if you're talking about You know, discoveries of the East, obviously mathematics being discovered in India, the discovery of gunpowder.
00:20:31.000I mean, there are all sorts of great inventions that happened outside the West.
00:20:34.000The 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.
00:20:42.000So why did it happen in the West and not there?
00:20:44.000Alright, this question comes from John.
00:20:46.000Why, I'm sorry, who are your favorite and least favorite Supreme Court Justices?
00:20:49.000So, currently, my favorite Supreme Court Justice is Clarence Thomas.
00:20:54.000It 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.
00:21:03.000He was always talking about which precedent he would obey and which he wouldn't.
00:21:06.000And Thomas' basic take was, I'm not going to obey a precedent if it's wrong, which I think is correct.
00:21:10.000So he is my favorite Supreme Court justice, and he's a very underrated writer as well.
00:21:29.000Obviously, you have to go with Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision.
00:21:33.000And 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.
00:21:42.000And then you would have to, honestly, I think Thomas is an all-timer.
00:21:57.000I mean, the answer is when externalities prevail, then you have to have government intervene.
00:22:01.000So 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.
00:22:09.000At that point, I violated your rights.
00:22:11.000Well, the same thing is true environmentally.
00:22:12.000I don't get to pump sludge onto your land.
00:22:14.000If I do that, I'm violating your rights.
00:22:16.000Well, 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.
00:22:26.000And it's not just you pumping sludge onto my property.
00:22:29.000If 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.
00:22:35.000The 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.
00:22:43.000And then beyond that, the left is attempting to regulate The environment in a way that is not actually going to even be useful.
00:22:51.000So, the Green New Deal is counterproductive.
00:22:53.000I've said before, I'm fully willing to accept and I do accept the mathematics of the IPCC.
00:22:59.000Orrin Kass makes this argument, I agree with him.
00:23:03.000The 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.
00:23:11.000I'm not a scientist, so I'll take their word for it.
00:23:14.000I 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.
00:23:18.000And 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.
00:23:32.000So in other words, if we completely destroy the American economy, that's what we achieve.
00:23:35.000That does not seem like a solution to me.
00:23:36.000What do you think about the kind of outrage that Beto and AOC and others are creating about this 12-year deadline?
00:23:43.000Well, 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.
00:23:50.000But the fact is that if we blow past that 12 years, human beings have an innate capacity to adapt.
00:23:54.000How do they think that human beings got to the United States?
00:23:56.000How do you think people got to America?
00:23:57.000This entire continental shelf was not populated originally by human beings.
00:24:02.000I mean, human beings originated in Africa.
00:24:04.000According to most theories, and then spread out all over the various continents.
00:24:08.000Human migration has always been a part of what we do in response to climate.
00:24:11.000All 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?
00:24:19.000I think our founding fathers would be utterly bewildered by both parties.
00:24:22.000I 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.
00:24:32.000They would look at the Republican Party, they'd say, okay, you guys are going to spend Trillions of dollars this year.
00:24:38.000You're going to set up a trillion dollar deficit this year.
00:26:06.000So 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.
00:26:12.000I mean, I've had many of them on the show.
00:26:13.000Dan Crenshaw, I think, is trying to do his best in the House, even though we disagree on some things.
00:26:18.000Mike 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.
00:26:29.000I 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.
00:26:36.000That'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.
00:26:43.000And then the next day were very disappointed.
00:26:44.000Right, 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.
00:26:54.000The 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.
00:27:00.000I'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?
00:27:07.000OK, 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.
00:27:14.000She tied teacher performance to teacher pay, and then the lower performing teachers were fired.
00:27:26.000If 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.
00:27:33.000If you're not senior, you'll be teaching in South Central.
00:27:36.000We need better teachers who are more experienced and paid more to do a harder job.
00:27:41.000We 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.
00:27:53.000And that means how about we read and write and learn about the value of the American Constitution and the American Declaration and the ancients.
00:28:00.000Like this book, honestly, you know, The Right Side of History, the new book.
00:28:04.000This book, if people had read it in like 1900, this would have been a high school textbook.
00:28:41.000Unionizing 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.
00:28:50.000We saw this with the Janus decision, though.
00:28:52.000And even in states like California, though, the unions are still making it so difficult for teachers to no longer be in the union.
00:29:14.000So 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.
00:30:00.000The fact is that Christians, Jews, people who are religious, are constantly living alongside other people who they believe are committing sins.
00:30:07.000And we ourself believe that we are committing sins on a fairly regular basis.
00:30:10.000This 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.
00:30:18.000If that were the case, we'd all hate ourselves.
00:30:19.000We all understand that we sin and that we are not perfect.
00:30:23.000Hating the sin, but loving the sinner.
00:30:25.000You know, people try to brush that off, but that's the reality.
00:30:28.000If 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.
00:30:36.000That is absolutely true, and that is true of any religious standard.
00:30:38.000It is true across a wide variety of human interactions.
00:30:41.000Is that sacrifice enormously large when you're talking about people who are biologically attracted to people of the same sex?
00:30:46.000Of course that sacrifice is enormously large.
00:30:48.000It's an incredible challenge to be a religious person who's abiding by those religious scriptures.
00:30:52.000And 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.
00:31:07.000In 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.
00:31:14.000And that is a key component of building Now, maybe you don't want to live up to that standard.
00:31:21.000Maybe you feel that the standard is ill-based.
00:32:26.000They should know that you do not hate gay people.
00:32:29.000If 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.
00:32:39.000Alright, 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.
00:33:00.000He 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?
00:33:07.000to get your copy now and submit your question for Ben.
00:33:10.000The next question in this next book is from James.
00:33:13.000He 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?
00:33:34.000I don't know that political figures alone are going to be enough to stop that transition.
00:33:38.000I 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.
00:33:49.000Our job is to also tell everybody around us and teach our children the values that we would like to see America preserve.
00:33:54.000Jason says, what are your thoughts on the Green New Deal?
00:33:57.000Obviously, it would be nice at some time to transition to renewables.
00:34:00.000What would your plan be, or what would you continue to do with the progress that we have going towards fossil fuels?
00:34:07.000I mean, the fact is that there are a couple of things that I would obviously do.
00:34:12.000One 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.
00:34:20.000In fact, the United States has radically reduced its carbon emissions.
00:34:23.000We're the number one emissions-reducing country on planet Earth over the last several years, specifically because of fracking, which the left hates.
00:34:32.000If 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?
00:34:41.000There 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.
00:34:53.000You know how many windmills it would take to simply compensate for the amount of fossil fuels for the energy grids around the United States?
00:35:03.000The entire area of the state of California would have to be covered in windmills.
00:35:07.000It's not a thing that's going to happen.
00:35:08.000Although I'm sure some conservatives would be fine with that if it meant California falling off the face of the planet.
00:35:14.000Solar power, wind power, these do not represent a significant percentage of the amount of power that is generated in the United States.
00:35:19.000What 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.
00:35:27.000Alright, AJ says, what are the most important values that should be shared between spouses regardless of politics?
00:35:32.000So I will say that I think that politics are a good indicator of values.
00:35:36.000So 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.
00:35:51.000Conservatives 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.
00:35:58.000And 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.
00:36:07.000These are radically different views of human nature, and it's difficult to see how they live together.
00:36:12.000As far as values you have to share, think about raising a kid.
00:36:16.000What are the values you want to actually Teach your children.
00:36:19.000If you differ on those values, it's going to be difficult for you to have a solid marriage.
00:36:23.000The 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.
00:36:31.000You can have fun with pretty much anybody.
00:36:32.000I can have fun with lots of people with whom I disagree.
00:36:34.000But 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.
00:36:43.000And the only way to do that is to look at those things.
00:36:45.000So 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?
00:36:58.000You're sitting on the top of a building.
00:36:59.000You didn't build that building, so you need to know about everything that is underneath that.
00:37:04.000The world didn't start spinning when you were born.
00:37:05.000You actually need to engage with the ideas of the past in order to understand what makes your life so great now.
00:37:11.000That 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.
00:37:26.000And 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.
00:37:34.000These are values I think you have to hold in common.
00:37:36.000So, as easy proxies, you have to hold religious values in, you have to hold in common religious values.
00:37:45.000And you also have to hold in common basic modes of how you address issues.
00:37:51.000I think you use reasons, you use evidence.
00:37:54.000It's very difficult to deal with people.
00:37:55.000If 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.
00:38:02.000So I was just totally distracted by the Barack Obama lingo that you were using over there.
00:38:06.000First, the book is right side of history.
00:38:10.000Right, well, I may as well address the right side of history thing right now.
00:38:13.000So 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.
00:38:18.000Right, 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.
00:38:29.000If 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.
00:38:35.000But 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?
00:38:41.000You can't just say, here is my opinion on something.
00:38:43.000And if you disagree with me, you're on the wrong side of history.
00:38:46.000You know how I can tell that the United States is on the right side of history?
00:38:49.000Because the United States is freaking unbelievably awesome.
00:39:06.000I mean, I didn't even have Stephen's book ready and you were already done with Dustin's book.
00:39:11.000Honestly, it should have been the replacement for Justice Kennedy.
00:39:14.000I'm still bewildered as to why Brett Kavanaugh was chosen.
00:39:18.000I mean, that ended up being an interesting fight, though.
00:39:20.000Listen, once he was in it, he had to be confirmed because that was absurd and disgusting.
00:39:24.000But 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.
00:39:37.000And so far, not to say I'm always right about Supreme Court justices, but I'm kind of always right about Supreme Court justices.
00:39:43.000Stephen says, what do you believe would be the best solution for there to be peace in Israel?
00:39:48.000I 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.
00:39:55.000So 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.
00:40:09.000The Palestinian Authority, Islamic Jihad, Hamas are all terrorist groups.
00:40:13.000Now, maybe the Palestinian people are starting to wake up to this, which would be a wonderful, wonderful thing.
00:40:18.000Now, 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.
00:40:25.000They burned down all the Jewish greenhouses and then elected a terrorist group.
00:40:27.000But 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.
00:40:34.000You think Israelis don't want to be left alone?
00:40:37.000You think Israelis really want to be drafted at age 18 and then do years in the military because there are threats on every border?
00:40:43.000The thing Israelis want most is to be left alone.
00:41:00.000Shane wants to know, Ben, I'm an atheist, but respect and appreciate the values in society Judeo-Christian values have created and cultivate.
00:41:07.000I 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.
00:41:16.000How do you recommend reconciling these two conflicting points?
00:41:20.000I 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.
00:41:26.000Thanks for your dedication to the American way of life.
00:41:28.000I 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.
00:41:35.000And when your kid is old enough to have these discussions, you can have these conversations.
00:41:39.000What I would suggest is that there are a lot of people who don't believe that they are deistic, who actually are deistic.
00:41:43.000So 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.
00:41:51.000Maybe 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.
00:42:07.000The purely physical suggests you're just a ball of meat wandering through the universe without any will of your own.
00:42:11.000If 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.
00:42:18.000Darwinism suggests that our understanding should allow us to find the most useful solutions to problems, but not necessarily the true solution to problems.
00:42:26.000If 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.
00:42:38.000The 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.
00:42:54.000That doesn't necessarily mean that you come to Scripture the same way.
00:42:57.000But I think that coming to a realization about the nature of God was certainly not foreign to the Greeks.
00:43:02.000I mean, Aristotle believed in the idea of the unmoved mover.
00:43:04.000All 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?
00:43:15.000No, I think that the first thing, look, the end goal is to define positions.
00:43:18.000And then if you can find common ground, great.
00:43:20.000But in order to have a rational discussion with somebody, you first have to define the ground upon which you are standing.
00:43:25.000One of the big problems I see in a lot of the debates I do and the discussions I do is failure to define terms.
00:43:31.000So people will say things like, are you in favor of immigration reform?
00:43:35.000And they're not defining the term immigration reform.
00:46:50.000But 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.
00:46:57.000She can take it near the beginning or the end.
00:46:58.000I always just say to her, do it on the last day.
00:46:59.000I know you're gonna schedule it at the beginning, and then you'll push it off all the way till the end.
00:47:03.000But, you know, it really is about work ethic and willingness to do outside reading.
00:47:08.000And that's what gets you through college while still being a sane human being.
00:47:22.000Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of it has to do with location.
00:47:24.000So Silicon Valley was founded in Silicon Valley.
00:47:27.000I mean, it's in California, in San Francisco.
00:47:29.000It tends to draw a lot of local people right from the very outset.
00:47:33.000It'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.
00:47:43.000When 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.
00:48:14.000I know a lot of smart people and they're kind of dumb.
00:48:16.000Like 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.
00:49:12.000I 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.
00:49:17.000So 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.
00:49:28.000This 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?
00:49:32.000I'm like, that's what the police are for.
00:49:41.000Do you think Michael Knowles had more difficulties writing his book than you writing this book?
00:49:45.000I think I had more difficulty writing more words in Michael Knowles' book than he had in writing his book.
00:49:49.000How 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.
00:49:55.000And the fact that he still has a job here is a testament to his friendship with Jeremy Boring.
00:50:00.000I can't believe, I really thought as like a baby gift y'all would get me him fired.
00:51:08.000They sort of went off and had their happy lives.
00:51:10.000And 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.
00:53:04.000Dustin says, Ben, that he's a longtime fan.
00:53:07.000So 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?
00:53:14.000I mean, so on a political level, abortion is obviously the biggest problem.
00:53:18.000The continued killing of the unborn is a great evil.
00:53:21.000And 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.
00:53:30.000As 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.
00:53:39.000People have to understand what an opportunity they have been given.
00:54:46.000I mean, that's literally what Satan means in Hebrew, is the accuser.
00:54:49.000And his job is to be the prosecutor against human beings.
00:54:51.000And you see this in, for example, the story of Job, where Satan actually shows up and has a conversation with God.
00:54:56.000And 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.
00:55:49.000For my daughter, who, uh-oh, she's a leftist, please explain the absurdity of the coalition between feminist organizations and people like Linda Sarsour.
00:55:57.000So, how is it possible for them to coexist when they allegedly have these two opposing ideologies?
00:56:03.000So the truth is they should not be able to coexist.
00:56:05.000Linda Sarsour is an advocate openly of what she has called Sharia law.
00:56:09.000She is associated with terrorists like Rasmia Oda.
00:56:12.000She has praised Saudi Arabia as liberal.
00:56:16.000Linda Sarsour is a disaster area of a human being.
00:56:20.000And 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.
00:56:28.000Intersectionality has destroyed everything.
00:56:30.000Basically, the idea of intersectionality started with a basic truth, like all philosophies, and then proceeded to spin off a web of garbage.
00:56:37.000The 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?
00:56:45.000The intersection of black and woman is different than the intersection of black and man.
00:56:48.000Well, that may be true on a generic level.
00:56:50.000That should not trump individual experiences.
00:56:52.000Intersectionality, however, suggests that individual experiences no longer matter.
00:56:56.000We can tell by the membership in a group, your membership in a group, what experiences you have had.
00:57:01.000And therefore, we can determine whether your opinion ought to hold more or less weight in any discussion.
00:57:06.000And in fact, people from different groups can't listen to each other.
00:57:08.000Because if we listen to each other, that suggests a common humanity that overrides the assumptions of intersectionality in the first place.
00:57:15.000So what that means is that intersectionality, says Linda Sarsour, can be a good feminist while also being a rabid anti-Semite and terror supporter.
00:57:21.000Because after all, she is a woman and a Muslim woman, which means that she has been victimized in the United States.
00:57:28.000More 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.
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.
00:57:55.000The 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.
00:58:12.000People voted for Trump in spite of that stuff.
00:58:14.000I'm sure you voted for Trump in spite of that stuff.
00:58:16.000You are not embracing every aspect of Donald Trump by voting for him.
00:58:19.000All you are saying is that you do not see how you can vote for the person on the other side.
00:58:24.000Now, 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.
00:58:34.000I 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.
00:58:44.000So, 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.
00:58:52.000I've been saying for literally years, on this program and elsewhere, that President Trump's treatment of women historically has been garbaggio.
00:58:58.000And this maintains, this continues to this day.
00:59:01.000I'm not sure what has changed or why, if I then say I like his tax cuts, this makes me a misogynist.
00:59:07.000Alright, 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?
00:59:18.000Well, I mean, there's the show, right?
00:59:19.000Game of Thrones is coming back, so I'm excited about that.
00:59:39.000I 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.
00:59:46.000I'm not looking forward to it as much as Elisha is, because Elisha's a crazy person.