The Ben Shapiro Show - August 03, 2026


The Dumbest Dinner in Politics Just Happened


Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

190.09

Word count

5,047

Sentence count

360


Transcript

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00:00:00.000 It turns out that when your brain is eaten by worms, it doesn't function correctly.
00:00:03.000 As it turns out, one of the best symptoms of brain rot is that everything in the world you think is because of you wait.
00:00:09.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:00:10.000 The you wouldn't.
00:00:11.000 We'll address the latest conspiracy theories to emerge online.
00:00:14.000 Plus, we address the gathering of the most brilliant members of our voted out political class, our now resigned political class, who gathered over the weekend in Tucker Carlson's cabin in Maine, where he wore flannel like a man of the people who's worth tens of millions of dollars.
00:00:28.000 Plus, it's high time I talk about common good conservatism.
00:00:31.000 Here we go.
00:00:32.000 There's been a weird, fascinating new phenomenon on the Horseshoe Right.
00:00:35.000 We've talked about it before.
00:00:36.000 This weird embrace of radical Islam, right?
00:00:38.000 Tucker Carlson traveling to every Muslim country he can find and talking about the magic of Sharia law, or Candace Owens apologizing to Muslims all over the world for the evils and predations of the United States and all the rest.
00:00:48.000 Now, I mean, this is obviously tied to the Horseshoe Right's deep desire to shift the focus to wait for it, always the Udin, always focusing on the Jews.
00:00:58.000 The Horseshoe Right has joined the left on economics and they've joined the radical Muslims on Jews and it all fits beautifully together.
00:01:03.000 So, in the aftermath of 60,000 Muslims invading Ceuta, which is a Spanish city on the coast of Africa, again, so you have a story that involves only, only a socialist government in Spain that is Christian oriented in history and Muslims.
00:01:22.000 Somehow they came up with the Jews as the causative factor here.
00:01:26.000 The situation, again, was created purely by the factors of Islamic migration and invasion, the insane open borders, multiculturalism, and anti Westernism of Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Spain.
00:01:37.000 And somehow, both the horseshoe right and the left found a way to blame.
00:01:40.000 Wait for it, wait for it, wait.
00:01:41.000 You know, yep.
00:01:42.000 They found a way to blame the Jews.
00:01:44.000 Of course, what can't the Jews do?
00:01:46.000 Apparently, other than telling people to stop saying stupid things and being successful at this, what can't they do?
00:01:52.000 So, Thomas Massey, who again has decided that the Jews are his bugaboo, after losing his Kentucky seat by focusing specifically and only on the Jews in a district with 500 Jews, he put out a tweet saying, Don't fall for the fake Fox GOP outrage over Souta.
00:02:07.000 Two weeks ago, the House passed a bill that green lighted the transfer of Spanish territory to Morocco.
00:02:12.000 Every Republican except for me voted for it, but now they are acting shocked at the invasion.
00:02:15.000 Well, no, actually, these were notes on what the committee was talking about.
00:02:20.000 This was not what was in the approved text of the bill.
00:02:23.000 In any case, the idea that somehow the GOP, the neocon GOP was responsible for a Moroccan invasion of a Spanish city because in an obscure bill, the committee had notes.
00:02:40.000 That's insane.
00:02:43.000 MTG, of course, did the same thing.
00:02:44.000 Of course.
00:02:45.000 She said Republicans paid 40 million of your tax dollars to Morocco to invade Spain.
00:02:51.000 What now?
00:02:52.000 And then they all pretended like borders matter and clutched their pearls like invasions are offensive.
00:02:56.000 R's and D's are the same, and the Uniparty has put us $40 trillion in debt and Americans last.
00:03:04.000 No.
00:03:06.000 You're going to have to connect the dots between we gave aid to Morocco and then we told.
00:03:15.000 We told the Moroccans to invade Souta.
00:03:17.000 They've done this before, by the way.
00:03:18.000 This is not like the first time.
00:03:19.000 A few years ago, 8,000 people crossed the border.
00:03:22.000 Candace Owens, of course, suggested that this is all about the flag.
00:03:25.000 She's discerned the signs and the symbols.
00:03:28.000 Candace Owens tweeted out Did you know the Star of David, a cult ball symbol?
00:03:35.000 Used to be on the flag of Morocco before modern Israel existed.
00:03:38.000 May want to look into the history of the Alawite dynasty.
00:03:41.000 We discussed this in my Becoming Brigitte series.
00:03:43.000 It all connects.
00:03:44.000 Pedophiles, like Emmanuel Macron's favorite author, Andrejid would regularly go to Morocco with the express purpose of raping Muslim boys.
00:03:50.000 Occult worshipers always harm children.
00:03:53.000 Spain stays strong.
00:03:53.000 The world knows what is happening and exactly who is behind it.
00:03:57.000 So because the Moroccan flag, like a century ago, something like that, had the Star of David, which was the Star of Solomon, which was a symbol that was recognized in both the Islamic and the Jewish world and really became sort of an exclusive Jewish symbol in the 19th century.
00:04:15.000 Because of the symbol, that means that when Muslims invade a Christian territory, it was the Jews because it was on the flag.
00:04:22.000 I hate to imagine what Candace Owens thinks happened.
00:04:25.000 In like Hindu India, hundreds of years ago.
00:04:28.000 Did the Nazis take a time machine to emblazon all the swastikas on the artwork?
00:04:32.000 So now, when India does something in Pakistan, is it actually the Nazis who did it?
00:04:38.000 Meanwhile, Anna Kasparian, who appears to have fallen off the conspiracy tree and hit every branch on the way down, she put out a tweet People are finally waking up, replying to, I was fairly reasonable toward Israel, but this Morocco thing makes it clear Israel has become an enemy of the West.
00:04:54.000 It's Morocco.
00:04:55.000 What are you talking about?
00:04:56.000 What are you even talking about?
00:04:57.000 People are finally waking up.
00:05:00.000 Said Anna Kasparian.
00:05:03.000 I hate to attribute this to stupidity because I know Anna.
00:05:04.000 I don't think Anna's stupid.
00:05:06.000 The problem is that the only alternative explanation is nefarious or brainwormed.
00:05:10.000 Those are really the only other possible explanations.
00:05:13.000 But again, this is all part and parcel of a horseshoe right that is trying to form its own new kind of conspiracy laden third party.
00:05:22.000 What they really hate in the end is the same thing the left hates, which is the system.
00:05:26.000 The system.
00:05:26.000 Because what they think is that the system is rigged.
00:05:28.000 They constantly talk about it.
00:05:29.000 They hate the meritocracy.
00:05:30.000 The meritocracy is bad.
00:05:33.000 The meritocracy, and this means, by the way, that because the meritocracy is bad, the people who are the most successful in the United States must be torn to the ground.
00:05:43.000 That's true everywhere from tech CEOs to real estate CEOs.
00:05:46.000 And if Jews are disproportionately present in positions of finance or, or education, this means the Jews must have rigged the system, right?
00:05:55.000 That's the whole shtick here.
00:05:56.000 Because the anti-Semitism in the end is just a conspiracy theory about power focusing in on the Jews.
00:06:02.000 Well, all of these, uh, dolds, all these clods decided to get together.
00:06:04.000 They have formed A new third party.
00:06:08.000 Yay, a third party.
00:06:09.000 Okay, so the third party will involve all of the most brilliant members of our horseshoe right.
00:06:16.000 Just genius level stuff.
00:06:17.000 So Tucker Carlson, still cosplaying as a man of the woods, this Silver Spoon Jack,
00:06:26.000 with his gigantic complex up in Maine, where apparently he just stole Gaston's antler chandelier from Beauty and the Beast.
00:06:37.000 He had a dinner at his all wooden cabin that he built with his own two bare hands and lots of labor from other people.
00:06:49.000 And then he's like a rail splitter.
00:06:53.000 And he hosted at this dinner the greatest collection of minds since the Coca Cola company decided to try new Coke.
00:07:03.000 The blazing intellect at this table could.
00:07:08.000 It has the wattage of a whale oil candle.
00:07:14.000 It is just a, this is the kitty table of brains over here.
00:07:17.000 All the chairs should be 13 inches high.
00:07:22.000 Who was he joined by?
00:07:23.000 He was joined by all of the best people.
00:07:25.000 He was joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene and her husband.
00:07:29.000 Imagine being her husband, honestly.
00:07:30.000 Like Marjorie Taylor Greene's husband was like, man, that lady who is like nailing her gym coach,
00:07:37.000 she is so brilliant.
00:07:38.000 She is so wonderful.
00:07:39.000 Need that.
00:07:40.000 So he married hers.
00:07:40.000 That's great.
00:07:42.000 So they're sitting there at the table.
00:07:43.000 Marjorie Taylor Greene sitting down there next to Tucker Carlson at the far end.
00:07:47.000 Tucker looking like Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate.
00:07:51.000 And then you have Thomas Massey, who is sitting there looking free of the congressional life because he's basically given up on life, except for his quixotic presidential run, which he will certainly make in the next few months.
00:08:05.000 Joe Kent is at the end of the table, also.
00:08:08.000 That would be the counterterrorism guy who was basically cut out of all informational loops because everyone knew he was a nut job inside the administration.
00:08:16.000 Again, what a blazing collection of just geniuses at this table.
00:08:19.000 These are the people who are going to quarterback the revivification of the American dream.
00:08:24.000 So Marjorie Taylor Greene put out on X.
00:08:27.000 We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise, but he's betrayed us all.
00:08:32.000 Our commitment is America first for all Americans, right, left, and center.
00:08:36.000 The movement has begun.
00:08:39.000 Wow.
00:08:40.000 Wow.
00:08:41.000 Look at, look at the size of that movement.
00:08:41.000 That movement.
00:08:43.000 Fit those people inside a phone booth.
00:08:44.000 Look at that movement.
00:08:45.000 It's huge.
00:08:46.000 Got some more on this in a moment.
00:08:47.000 First, I saw this new Pure Talk offer and my first thought was that is cheaper than a burner phone in a spy movie, really.
00:08:52.000 Except it's actually a real phone.
00:08:54.000 Unless you need a burner phone or a business phone or a phone for your teen for a limited time.
00:08:58.000 Any Pure Talk plan is just 15 bucks a month for your first three months.
00:09:02.000 No contracts, no cancellation fees, outstanding US based customer service, and Consumer Reports gave them five stars in every single category.
00:09:09.000 Pure Talk is great.
00:09:10.000 I've been using it for years.
00:09:11.000 Go do it yourself with the best deal they've ever offered.
00:09:13.000 Head on over to puretalk.comslash Shapiro before this offer disappears.
00:09:16.000 That's puretalk.comslash Shapiro.
00:09:18.000 Again, remember, I'm just going to remind you that the leaders of this movement are people who literally think that Gestapo is called Gaspacho.
00:09:26.000 I mean, I understand that they may be planning the invasion of Poland at that table, but Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:09:34.000 These are the kinds of leaders you need.
00:09:37.000 Not only do we have the D.C. jail, which is the D.C. gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi's Gaspacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff,
00:09:50.000 and spying on American citizens that want to come talk to their representatives.
00:09:56.000 Oh, yeah, she seems like a leader.
00:09:58.000 She seems like somebody that you should get behind.
00:09:59.000 Probably she knows what's going on.
00:10:00.000 How about Joe Kent?
00:10:01.000 Joe Kent also, I mean, he was in counterterrorism.
00:10:03.000 I mean, he did vote for Bernie Sanders, but then later he wasn't.
00:10:06.000 And I mean, sure, he said that he would testify as a witness for Tyler Robinson in the trial for the murder of Charlie Kirk, and that he might make statements about a foreign nexus that he has no information about.
00:10:20.000 Sure, he might do that.
00:10:21.000 Again, just what a collection of brilliant, blazing geniuses, just geniuses over there.
00:10:26.000 Forget about the genius of it.
00:10:27.000 Obviously, people with great central American principles, people who really care about things like demon attacks, and also AIPAC, and also Jews, and also AIPAC, and also demons.
00:10:41.000 And also gym trainers.
00:10:43.000 Like it is just that these are the people.
00:10:45.000 And you want Tucker Carlson sitting on the ground, you know, I'm not doing this because I'm, I'm, I'm an American.
00:10:52.000 I'm doing this because I love Trump.
00:10:54.000 I mean, I hate Trump, but I also love Trump.
00:10:56.000 What is love?
00:10:57.000 Do I even know what love?
00:10:58.000 Third party.
00:10:59.000 I've never said I was going to launch a third party.
00:11:01.000 A third party.
00:11:02.000 I would never.
00:11:03.000 I mean, I would if I knew what third meant.
00:11:05.000 Do I even know what three means?
00:11:06.000 What is three?
00:11:07.000 Is three a number?
00:11:08.000 I don't even know what that means.
00:11:09.000 I don't even know.
00:11:10.000 What is three?
00:11:11.000 Who is three?
00:11:11.000 Is three a person?
00:11:15.000 Good luck.
00:11:15.000 Good luck.
00:11:16.000 Yeah.
00:11:16.000 Okay.
00:11:16.000 So, why am I talking about this aside from the fact that it's kind of hilarious?
00:11:19.000 Um, so there, there, there are a few things.
00:11:21.000 There's a one, there's one big reason though.
00:11:23.000 Okay.
00:11:23.000 It's a question.
00:11:24.000 It's just a question.
00:11:26.000 So, I have been told for months and months and months at this point no enemies to the right.
00:11:33.000 The conservative movement must unite against those who would divide and destroy it.
00:11:37.000 Coolsies.
00:11:38.000 So, would all those people who have been saying this, when will they start calling out Tucker Carlson and his friends?
00:11:48.000 I mean, like the vice president should probably start calling out people like Tucker Carlson and his friends.
00:11:52.000 I mean, I think that the vice president would like for the Republicans to do well in the midterms, and I think he would like to be president in 2028.
00:11:58.000 So now might be a good time to start calling out people who are openly threatening to destroy the Republican Party, attacking President Trump every single day, ripping the Republicans before the midterms, ripping into the administration daily, and talking about founding a third party.
00:12:12.000 That might make things complicated.
00:12:15.000 I mean, I don't think that the VP's team can pretend ignorance about this.
00:12:20.000 And the VP is very concerned about rando tweets on X, who criticize his negotiation of the MOU.
00:12:25.000 And they say that this is somehow an attack on him.
00:12:27.000 But when you have people who overtly say they are going to start a third party to run against you, that's not an attack on him.
00:12:32.000 Weird.
00:12:32.000 Weird.
00:12:33.000 It might be nice to spare just a thought, just one single solitary thought occasionally for the destructive people who actually would love for the Democrats to win in 2026.
00:12:41.000 And maybe 2028.
00:12:43.000 All of which brings us to a broader conversation that's been happening in the online space about so called common good conservatism.
00:12:49.000 Okay, so there is a battle happening right now on the right, and it's not about anti Semitism or Israel.
00:12:54.000 I know everybody wants to direct it in that direction for, I think, nefarious reasons because they don't want to have the central debate.
00:12:54.000 It isn't.
00:13:02.000 There's an actual really interesting and vital debate for U.S. conservatism.
00:13:06.000 Should American conservatism stand for individual rights and free markets and checks and balances and, yes, social institutions that are powerful outside the government, like churches and families?
00:13:16.000 Or should American conservatism take a hard turn into a government that is extraordinarily powerful, designed to impose a vision of the good life from above?
00:13:28.000 Without reference to individual rights or free markets or private property or any of that stuff.
00:13:32.000 That is the real question when we are talking about traditional conservatism versus common good conservatism.
00:13:37.000 Common good is in scare quotes there.
00:13:40.000 Now, I first want to dispel a semantically overloaded tactic that's being used here.
00:13:48.000 When you talk about common good conservatism, let's first define what common good means.
00:13:52.000 Here's what we're not talking about.
00:13:53.000 We are not talking about utilitarianism.
00:13:55.000 Utilitarianism is the most good for the highest number, right?
00:13:59.000 That's what utilitarianism is.
00:14:00.000 That is not what we're talking about here.
00:14:02.000 First off, conservatives do not and should not believe as a rule in utilitarianism as a rule for what the government ought to do.
00:14:09.000 Conservatives believe generally in either a sort of natural law or deontological framework.
00:14:15.000 Okay, natural law is the idea that there are discoverable rules for life, that they are discernible from the workings of the world itself.
00:14:22.000 So, for example, a good example of a sort of natural law ideology would say that sex ought to be reserved for marriage and procreation because sex produces children.
00:14:32.000 That has nothing to do with the highest good for the greatest number.
00:14:35.000 That's just a reality about the world.
00:14:36.000 That's what natural law is.
00:14:39.000 Deontology, which is a fancy word, just means rule based ethics.
00:14:43.000 There are rules that we ought to follow.
00:14:45.000 And there are a bunch of forms of deontology.
00:14:48.000 You can have a Kantian based deontology where he tries to establish, without reference to God, a set of rules.
00:14:52.000 But religious people very often are deontological thinkers, meaning God said to do a thing, therefore it's right and good to do the thing.
00:15:01.000 Conservatives generally don't do utilitarian ethics predominantly.
00:15:05.000 It's presumably utilitarian to murder all infants with Down syndrome, the elderly and the infirm.
00:15:10.000 If you're quote unquote doing the best for the best number, you get rid of all the people who are inconvenient.
00:15:15.000 No conservative or a decent person, by the way, would say that that is acceptable logic, of course.
00:15:19.000 So when we're talking about common good conservatism, what are we actually talking about?
00:15:24.000 Well, typically, people who are talking about common good in this way are saying common as opposed to individual.
00:15:32.000 They want to have an argument about good, but that really is not the argument.
00:15:34.000 The argument is common versus individual.
00:15:37.000 These people call themselves more specifically post liberals.
00:15:40.000 They argue that the failure of our social institutions in the West, like church and family, the reason that happened is because of individualism and individual rights.
00:15:49.000 That individual rights, the focus on what we are allowed to do without the government forcing us to do it, turns us into atomized fragments who are destined to conflict with one another.
00:15:59.000 Their idea is that individual rights are inherently relativistic because we all have different priorities and rights can be abused.
00:16:05.000 So, therefore, what we need is a common good crammed down by the government.
00:16:09.000 Individual rights should be put to the side because individualism automatically fragments, atomizes, and people end up doing bad things to each other, and you end up with anarchy, basically.
00:16:17.000 So you need a common good that is enforced at the top by the government.
00:16:20.000 Now, this is a radical simplification of the founding idea of individual rights.
00:16:27.000 It suggests that what individual rights are really about is you being able to do a bunch of terrible things.
00:16:31.000 And this is how they talk about individual rights, right?
00:16:34.000 Like the post-liberals will say that they're against individual rights because do you really have a right, a moral right, to access pornography.
00:16:42.000 That's not the argument.
00:16:44.000 That's not the argument.
00:16:45.000 Now, again, this is a radical simplification of individual rights.
00:16:47.000 It suggests individual rights are about you being able to do a bunch of terrible things.
00:16:51.000 So when these people talk about individual rights, what they mean is they say, you, you say you have an individual right to pornography?
00:16:57.000 I didn't say you have a moral right to pornography.
00:16:57.000 No, no, no.
00:16:59.000 The question is what government should be allowed to do.
00:17:01.000 So they think that terrible things can only be prevented by the government and terrible things that harm the common good must be prevented.
00:17:09.000 Therefore, We should curb individual rights.
00:17:13.000 And by we, we mean the government.
00:17:15.000 And this is why the post liberals, openly, by the way, again, this is not an empty accusation.
00:17:19.000 They openly hate the American founding.
00:17:22.000 The post liberals hate the Constitution.
00:17:24.000 They want something fundamentally un American, a tyranny from above that crams down their version of virtue on everybody else.
00:17:32.000 Now, again, maybe I agree with some of their versions of virtue, but what they really want is an overarching government that forces down their version of what they call the common good.
00:17:39.000 One of the authors who's a big sort of founder of this kind of thing is a guy named Patrick Deneen.
00:17:44.000 He wrote a book called Why Liberalism Failed.
00:17:47.000 And he says that the American founders erred in, quote, not foreseeing that their atomistic philosophy would act as a solvent on our civic institutions.
00:17:53.000 So, for example, he opposes capitalism.
00:17:56.000 He believes that individual rights are bad.
00:17:58.000 Here he is.
00:17:59.000 Again, this is not me mischaracterizing the position.
00:18:01.000 They say it.
00:18:01.000 I mean, they're not hiding the ball.
00:18:04.000 Here's Patrick Deneen talking about the American founding.
00:18:08.000 When I say liberal, I mean the political philosophy of liberalism that has a kind of inaugurated in the kind of social contract tradition of late 17th century.
00:18:18.000 18th century Britain and gets imported to the United States.
00:18:22.000 It's articulated by our founding fathers.
00:18:25.000 And then it's further developed from its kind of classical liberal origins into its progressive liberal form.
00:18:33.000 And what makes it, in some ways, continuous, even though today we think of classical liberalism, what we call conservative, and progressive liberalism, progressivism, as opposites, its core similarity is the ideal of being liberated from any kind of unchosen.
00:18:50.000 Sense of self, any unchosen inheritance, any unchosen form of identity.
00:18:55.000 It's a kind of idealized form of autonomy that's pictured or imagined in the fictional imaginary state of nature.
00:19:04.000 And you could say that our entire political, social, economic, cultural order is organized around the creation of this radically autonomous, liberated self.
00:19:14.000 Okay, so as I'll explain in a second, there's a radical oversimplification of the intellectual legacy of the founders, like a radical oversimplification and a direct attempt to conflate things.
00:19:24.000 So, these people argue, post liberals, they argue that what government really should be is a club to bash enemies and a cement to rebuild social institutions.
00:19:32.000 So, for example, there's an author named Terry Schilling.
00:19:34.000 He argues in First Things, which is a post liberal publication that's heavily rooted in Catholic thought, that, quote, a new conservatism is being born, one less interested in managing our nation's decline than in using political power to promote virtue, public morality, and the common good.
00:19:47.000 Conservatives need to overcome their fear of governing the nation that elected them.
00:19:51.000 Now, he uses language of elections there, but let's be clear.
00:19:56.000 In this vision, the common good does not have to be linked with democracy, right?
00:19:59.000 Democracy is about your individual right to vote, but they don't believe in individual rights per se.
00:20:04.000 So if democracy cuts against the common good, then the common good should override the democracy.
00:20:09.000 So in 2019, in First Things, again, which is a journal largely about this sort of stuff, a series of authors, including Deneen, spelled out an attack they titled Against the Dead Consensus.
00:20:18.000 And here's what they wrote in Against the Dead Consensus We oppose the soulless society of individual affluence.
00:20:25.000 Our society must not prioritize the needs of the childless, the healthy, and the intellectual competitive.
00:20:30.000 We want a country that works for the workers.
00:20:33.000 The Republican Party has for too long held investors and job creators above workers and citizens, dismissing vast swathes of Americans as takers unworthy of its time.
00:20:41.000 We believe in the potential of a political movement that heeds the cries of the working class as much as the demands of capital.
00:20:46.000 Americans take more pride in their identity as workers than their identity as consumers.
00:20:50.000 Economic and welfare policy should prioritize work over consumption.
00:20:54.000 If that sounds like left-wing talk, like it could come out of the mouth of people on the left, that's because it could.
00:20:54.000 Okay.
00:21:00.000 Trusting an elite caste to determine which groups ought to benefit at the expense of other groups is directly against a rights-based society.
00:21:07.000 And again, they admit this stuff.
00:21:08.000 It's not like I'm making this up.
00:21:10.000 Okay.
00:21:10.000 They cut directly against both individuals and the success of the nation.
00:21:14.000 Markets are natural outgrowths of human nature and natural rights.
00:21:17.000 You own yourself.
00:21:18.000 You own your labor.
00:21:20.000 No one has the right to remove that labor from you for the good of the collective without just compensation.
00:21:25.000 The success of free markets rests precisely on the fact that it does reflect basic truths about human nature that we have a desire to create and to acquire and to own and to control the environment around us.
00:21:36.000 The common good governance here is a utopian scheme that would have been very familiar to Plato in the Republic.
00:21:42.000 The idea that you have to have a government that is tutelary in nature.
00:21:45.000 And sits as a heavy hand on everyone by suggesting that it is the job of the economic system to pursue quote unquote the common good.
00:21:56.000 These common good conservatives are committing a pretty serious category error.
00:22:00.000 Basically, they are saying that the way to promote the common good is through economic systems.
00:22:04.000 That economic systems are about promoting the common good.
00:22:07.000 That is economic systems.
00:22:09.000 That's like, again, I've said this before.
00:22:11.000 Economic systems are not designed to inculcate morality in you.
00:22:14.000 That is not what an economy does.
00:22:16.000 Economic systems create prosperity if they work.
00:22:21.000 That is what economic systems are designed to do.
00:22:24.000 Economics is the study of the distribution of goods and resources, particularly when it comes to scarcity, which is a common feature of human life.
00:22:33.000 That's what economic systems are about.
00:22:36.000 Trying to go to economic systems to explain why people are good or bad is like trying to use a hammer as a scissors, it is not the same thing.
00:22:44.000 Spiritual and cultural systems that work create functional families, economic systems that work create prosperity.
00:22:50.000 And the history proves this.
00:22:51.000 For thousands of years, people living in the worst sort of economic privation married and had families and went to church.
00:22:56.000 And by the way, still do.
00:22:59.000 And then the free market started, and guess what?
00:23:01.000 There was still family structure.
00:23:03.000 It remained present for a couple of centuries.
00:23:07.000 It was not capitalism that destroyed the family, it was the welfare state and the birth control bill.
00:23:13.000 Pretty obviously, because the decline of the family really does not happen until the 1960s.
00:23:18.000 But back to individual rights for a second.
00:23:20.000 So, again, the argument of the post liberals is that individual rights are bad because they allow you to do bad things.
00:23:24.000 So, if you don't like the bad things, you should oppose individual rights and you should root for the so called common good to prevail.
00:23:30.000 That is not what the founders were talking about.
00:23:32.000 The founders were pragmatic.
00:23:34.000 They believed in virtue.
00:23:34.000 They talked about virtue all the time.
00:23:36.000 You can read the founders.
00:23:37.000 They use the word virtue a lot.
00:23:38.000 But they also recognized a government powerful enough to cram down its version of virtue would be a government powerful enough to destroy virtue.
00:23:47.000 When the founders talked about natural rights, they were talking about what could more logically be called immunities, assertions against government power.
00:23:55.000 That is the argument that government should not have the power to do a thing.
00:23:59.000 It's a limitation on government power, not a moral assertion that your abuse of the limitation is somehow good.
00:24:04.000 So, for example, I believe in free speech.
00:24:06.000 What does that mean?
00:24:07.000 That means I don't think the government should have the power to restrict your speech.
00:24:09.000 That does not mean I think it's a good idea if you use the N word.
00:24:13.000 Okay, now what post liberals say is that you cannot defend individual rights without arguing that it is morally good for people to say the N word or to be sexually profligate or to never give charity again.
00:24:24.000 That's not true.
00:24:26.000 I think all those things are bad.
00:24:28.000 I'm saying the government should not have the power to compel those things because, as the founders recognized, men aren't angels.
00:24:34.000 This is the entire case against an Aristotelian aristocracy or a monarchy.
00:24:38.000 That's what the founders were arguing.
00:24:40.000 That's what the Declaration and Constitution are, which is why the common good conservatives don't like them.
00:24:44.000 So, why does this matter?
00:24:45.000 Because if the common good post liberals win, then we're just having a competition in this country over which side gets to invade your life.
00:24:52.000 And I'll agree, I'm sure, more with the common good conservatives about the principles they are trying to pursue.
00:24:57.000 But if government gets bigger and stronger, no checks and balances, we will sometimes lose.
00:25:03.000 And the entire premise of the Constitution is that even when you lose, you have rights that can't be destroyed by the power of government.
00:25:09.000 Well, if that premise disappears, What you get on the one side is a call for a mobocracy on the left.
00:25:15.000 That's why they want to get rid of the Senate and the judiciary.
00:25:18.000 And calls for fascistic tyranny on the right, like true calls.
00:25:20.000 But there are people out there, like, say, Jack Posobiak, who literally calls for Francisco Franco in the United States.
00:25:26.000 I don't know.
00:25:26.000 I'm an American.
00:25:27.000 I don't like Francisco Franco.
00:25:28.000 I don't think we need Francisco Franco in the United States.
00:25:30.000 And I don't care about the ironic wink wing nudge nudge bullshit.
00:25:32.000 Like, I don't care.
00:25:34.000 I don't want tyranny in the United States.
00:25:36.000 I don't know.
00:25:38.000 Call it like just a knee jerk opposition to tyranny.
00:25:42.000 If you find yourself spending time talking about the magic of Hitler or Stalin or Franco, you're not talking about America.
00:25:49.000 You're talking about someplace else.
00:25:53.000 That's a battle that's been happening in Europe for a very long time between a left that wishes to dominate you and a right that wishes to dominate you.
00:25:58.000 It has a long and vicious and hideous history in Europe.
00:26:01.000 The founders would have hated this, hated it.
00:26:04.000 That's the thing traditional conservatives are actually trying to conserve.
00:26:08.000 You know, those old fashioned but somehow weirdly new ideas like individual rights and free markets and checks and balances.
00:26:13.000 And yes, social virtue that can flourish.
00:26:16.000 In a system where people do their religious duty.
00:26:19.000 If the traditional conservatives lose, America loses, no matter who wins next.
00:26:24.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:26:26.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:26:27.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.