The Ben Shapiro Show - The Garbage Fires To End All Garbage Fires | Ep. 420

00:00:00.000 Even sexual harassment and assault can be made into partisan issues.

00:00:03.000 President Trump finally sounds off on Judge Roy Moore plus Al Franken, and we go to the mailbag.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:15.000 So yesterday I said that we were in the midst of a flaming garbage fire in American politics. 0.77

00:00:20.000 How wrong I was. 0.81

00:00:21.000 We were only on the edge of the flaming garbage pile yesterday, but today we are definitely in the center of the flaming garbage heap.

00:00:27.000 After all the fallout from Al Franken, after the fact that it now appears that every Democrat will end up standing with Al Franken, and it appears that every Republican, or a lot of Republicans, will end up standing with Roy Moore, it appears that no one really cares about bad conduct, which is very upsetting to me personally, because I don't like that.

00:00:43.000 But we will talk about all of these things in just one second.

00:00:45.000 First...

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00:02:01.000 Okay, so there's a bunch of fallout from Al Franken and Roy Moore.

00:02:07.000 And I want to begin with a piece in today's Washington Post.

00:02:10.000 So yesterday, there were a bunch of Democrats who sort of pretended that they cared about Al Franken.

00:02:13.000 So the allegation against Al Franken, again, is that he groped a woman while she was sleeping.

00:02:18.000 This woman, her name is Leanne Tweeden? 0.94

00:02:22.000 Yeah, Leanne Tweeden.

00:02:23.000 She's a talk show host out here in Los Angeles, and she alleges that Al Franken groped her while she was sleeping, and then during a rehearsal, 0.65

00:02:30.000 He had written a kiss into a scene when he was a comedian and said he rammed his tongue down her throat, which is just disgusting.

00:02:35.000 And so all of this had created an enormous amount of controversy.

00:02:40.000 In fact, we can start with Leigh-Anne Tweeden talking about Franken.

00:02:43.000 Here is what Leigh-Anne Tweeden had to say about Frankenstein's Clip 9.

00:02:46.000 The world that you're making for your children, for your two-year-old and for your four-year-old, you realize that you are making it better for them.

00:02:53.000 I don't know the genders of your children, but it actually doesn't even matter. 0.93

00:02:55.000 I have a boy and a girl.

00:02:56.000 Okay, well, but both of them need to be impacted by this, right?

00:03:00.000 Not just the girl.

00:03:04.000 You know, you always... Sorry.

00:03:10.000 Nothing to be sorry about.

00:03:15.000 I didn't think I was going to do that, but you know you do.

00:03:20.000 You want to leave.

00:03:22.000 You know, you try to set examples for your children, right?

00:03:25.000 You want to leave the world a better place.

00:03:27.000 Okay, and so the allegations against Franken are obviously serious enough that yesterday a bunch of people said, well, we'll start a Senate Ethics Committee investigation.

00:03:35.000 And Franken himself calls for a Senate Ethics Investigation.

00:03:37.000 There's only one problem with this.

00:03:39.000 It's total nonsense.

00:03:39.000 Between 2006 and 2017, or between, rather, 2007 and 2016, there were 613 different Senate Ethics Investigation requests.

00:03:49.000 How many punishments were handed down?

00:03:50.000 How many sanctions were handed down?

00:03:52.000 Zero.

00:03:52.000 Giant zero.

00:03:53.000 So, when Democrats say, yeah, we're treating Al Franken with the gravest seriousness, no, you're not.

00:03:59.000 Plus, what would you have an ethics investigation about? 0.98

00:04:00.000 There's a picture of him trying to grab her boobs while she's sleeping.

00:04:04.000 What exactly is the investigation going to be? 0.98

00:04:06.000 Senator Franken, did you try to grab that woman's boobs? 1.00

00:04:09.000 Senator Franken. 0.99

00:04:10.000 There's a picture of it.

00:04:12.000 But it was a joke.

00:04:13.000 Ethics committee.

00:04:14.000 Well, there's a picture of it.

00:04:15.000 Him.

00:04:16.000 I take the fifth.

00:04:16.000 Like, what is the investigation going to be about here?

00:04:19.000 Exactly.

00:04:20.000 And now we know, okay?

00:04:21.000 The fact is that the left is willing to throw people under the bus when they're no longer useful to them, but they want to stick with them when they are useful, right?

00:04:26.000 When it's Bill Clinton, now they can throw Bill Clinton under the bus. 0.77

00:04:29.000 There have been a bunch of articles this week about how Bill Clinton should have resigned in 1998.

00:04:33.000 Thanks for getting around to it 19 years late, gang.

00:04:35.000 And now, there are a bunch of articles about how Al Franken should stick around.

00:04:37.000 So there's a woman named Kate Harding, who's the co-editor of Nasty Women, Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America. 0.78

00:04:43.000 So she's a feminist, right? 1.00

00:04:44.000 She hosts a podcast called Feminasty, which sounds like death on the ears.

00:04:49.000 And here is what, and she wrote a piece for the Washington Post today called, I'm a feminist, I study rape culture, and I don't want Al Franken to resign. 0.99

00:04:56.000 Yeah, I'm freaking shocked. 0.75

00:04:58.000 She says, as a feminist and the author of a book on rape culture, I could reasonably be expected to lead the calls for Al Franken to step down, following allegations that he forced his tongue down a woman's throat, accompanied by a photo of him grinning as he moves in to grope her breasts while she sleeps. 0.99

00:05:11.000 It's disgusting. 0.56

00:05:12.000 He treated a sleeping woman as a comedy prop, no more human than the contents of Carrot Top's trunk, and I firmly believe he should suffer social and professional consequences for it.

00:05:19.000 But I don't believe resigning from his position is the only possible consequence, or the one that's best for American women.

00:05:24.000 Cynics on both the right and left will presume I am passing by this particular steam tray on 2017's smorgasbord of feminist outrage because Franken is a Democrat, and so am I. I was even his proud constituent for two years.

00:05:35.000 In the most superficial sense, this is true.

00:05:36.000 And that's not just the most superficial, that's like the only sense.

00:05:40.000 There is no deeper sense.

00:05:41.000 That you'd think Franken is going to vote the way you want him to vote, and so you're fine with this. 0.98

00:05:44.000 This is just a variation on the old Time Magazine columnist Nina Berle's comment about Bill Clinton that she'd be willing to offer him oral sex so long as he kept abortion legal. 0.99

00:05:53.000 And we're seeing this on both sides of the aisle now, and it's just gross. 0.95

00:05:56.000 And I think it's something we need to come to grips with, our own grossness as humans, before we can actually fix it.

00:06:01.000 People talk about raising awareness, so I'm not into raising awareness when it's counterproductive, but I think it is about raising awareness when it comes to examining your own political motives, because I think that we all have political motives, and that leads us into certain cul-de-sacs of partisan aggression that I think are negative.

00:06:17.000 She says,

00:06:18.000 It's meaningless to say it's because I'm a Democrat without asking why I am a Democrat.

00:06:22.000 If you understand what it means to be a Democrat today, that is, why it makes sense to vote blue over red in this highly polarized political environment, you can understand why it might not make the most sense to demand Franken's resignation effective immediately.

00:06:32.000 I'm a Democrat because I'm a feminist who lives under a two-party system. 1.00

00:06:35.000 I am not a true believer in the party, nor in any politician.

00:06:38.000 I'm a realist who recognizes we get two viable choices.

00:06:40.000 So this is the exact argument, the exact argument, that is now being used to back Roy Moore. 0.95

00:06:46.000 She says, isn't that hypocritical?

00:06:47.000 I hear you asking because Republicans won't do the right thing. 0.85

00:06:49.000 We shouldn't either.

00:06:50.000 But if the short-term right thing leads to long-term political catastrophe for American women, I think we need to reconsider our definition of the right thing.

00:06:56.000 Okay, so this is the exact opposite of the argument.

00:06:59.000 I mean, it's the same argument, actually, that's being made.

00:07:01.000 It's just the photo negative of the argument that's being made by a lot of people who are backing Roy Moore saying, listen, if Doug Jones gets in the Senate, he's going to vote for abortion.

00:07:08.000 I hate abortion.

00:07:09.000 So if I have to choose, I'll choose to vote for Roy Moore.

00:07:12.000 It's the photo-negative argument.

00:07:14.000 And the problem is, if both sides make this argument, we will get people who are alleged sexual molesters and sexual assaulters in the Senate Chaka Block. 0.52

00:07:21.000 They will be there all the time.

00:07:23.000 None of this is going to change.

00:07:25.000 Change comes about when we realize that the ends don't always justify the means.

00:07:29.000 We realize that, yes, I would not vote for Doug Jones.

00:07:32.000 Yes, I would not vote for Al Franken.

00:07:35.000 But that doesn't mean that just because somebody is bad, I have to vote for their opponent, or I can't find a third solution.

00:07:41.000 I can't find some sort of write-in solution.

00:07:43.000 So all of this is very upsetting and disappointing, and it makes us feel like we have nothing in common, because we don't.

00:07:49.000 We don't have anything in common.

00:07:50.000 If we're to the point where we believe that sexual molestation or sexual assault allegations can be put by the wayside because it's more important to defeat the other side, then we can't live in a republic with each other.

00:07:59.000 We just can't.

00:07:59.000 I mean, the end of the republic has basically come.

00:08:03.000 Now, with all of this happening, you can see that the politicians are using this particular mentality as a way to maintain power.

00:08:11.000 And this is happening on both sides.

00:08:12.000 So, you know, for example, Roy Moore has been hit with all of these terrible allegations.

00:08:18.000 He's coming back now, and he's saying that Mitch McConnell should step down.

00:08:21.000 So the more partisan Roy Moore gets, the more he knows he's protected.

00:08:24.000 The harder a position he takes, the more fiery a position he takes, the more he knows that there are people who are going to rally to his side to quote-unquote oppose the other side.

00:08:31.000 So here is Roy Moore attacking Mitch McConnell, saying McConnell should be the one who steps down, not me.

00:08:36.000 Well, I want to tell you who needs to step down.

00:08:38.000 That's Mitch McConnell.

00:09:05.000 There's been comments about me taking a stand.

00:09:08.000 Yes, I have taken a stand in the past.

00:09:10.000 I'll take a stand in the future.

00:09:12.000 And I'll quit standing when they lay me in that box and put me in the ground.

00:09:18.000 Well, that's weird.

00:09:19.000 And then Bob Menendez does the same thing from the other side.

00:09:21.000 So Bob Menendez was not acquitted, but there was a mistrial in his trial yesterday.

00:09:26.000 And so he comes out and he turns it into a partisan issue, knowing that his own side will rally around him as they were going to.

00:09:32.000 Democrats would not even answer the question whether if Menendez was convicted they would expel him from the Senate.

00:09:35.000 They might keep him there, right?

00:09:37.000 Now Menendez is coming out and making this partisan and making it even more partisan.

00:09:41.000 We now live in a dynamic where the more partisan you can make any issue, any personal issue, the better chance you have of surviving it, right?

00:09:48.000 Bill Clinton was able to turn sexual molestation allegations, sexual misconduct allegations.

00:09:54.000 He was able to turn those allegations in his own favor by suggesting that it was a vast right-wing conspiracy.

00:09:59.000 You're seeing more do the same thing.

00:10:00.000 It's a vast left-wing and establishment conspiracy.

00:10:02.000 You're seeing Bob Menendez do the same thing on corruption.

00:10:04.000 It's a vast right-wing and racist conspiracy.

00:10:06.000 Here's Menendez doing that yesterday.

00:10:07.000 To those who left me, who abandoned me in my darkest moment, I forgive you.

00:10:14.000 To those who embraced me in my darkest moment, I love you.

00:10:19.000 To those New Jerseyans who gave me the benefit of the doubt, I thank you.

00:10:25.000 To those who were digging my political grave so that they could jump into my seat, I know who you are.

00:10:32.000 So he's making it partisan, right?

00:10:34.000 Everyone who backed him, he'll remember and he will love you.

00:10:38.000 I mean, this is mafioso-type language, right?

00:10:40.000 And if you didn't back him, I'll remember you and I will never forget you.

00:10:44.000 Your name will be emblazoned on my memory forever.

00:10:47.000 Again, if you can use partisanship to distract from your own misconduct, then we're just gonna get the worst of the worst in every situation.

00:10:56.000 Okay, so finally, here's what happens.

00:10:58.000 The poll in Alabama right now with Roy Moore, the latest poll from Fox News shows that Roy Moore is down eight.

00:11:03.000 I don't believe that poll.

00:11:04.000 I think that a lot of people are lying to the pollsters, and I think that the race is actually much closer than that.

00:11:08.000 The reason I believe that is because if you look at the Alabama results for the last several election cycles,

00:11:14.000 What you see is that no Republican candidate in Alabama since 2002 has won less than 60% of the vote.

00:11:24.000 So Republicans outnumber Democrats in the state like 2 to 1.

00:11:27.000 So the idea that he's losing by 8 points would be truly shocking.

00:11:31.000 We're good to go.

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00:12:39.000 Okay, so, President Trump is finally sounding off about Roy Moore, but he's not actually speaking.

00:12:45.000 So he sends out Sarah Huckabee Sanders to talk about it.

00:12:48.000 So what is his position?

00:12:49.000 So Trump, who has a position on everything, right?

00:12:51.000 He had a position on Jemele Hill at ESPN.

00:12:53.000 He said she should be fired. 1.00

00:12:55.000 He said that Colin Kaepernick is a son of a bitch who should be fired. 1.00

00:12:58.000 Right, even though he wasn't really in the NFL at the time. 0.99

00:13:00.000 And, you know, I may agree with his assessments on people who kneel for the anthem, and I may agree that Jemele Hill, not that she should be fired, I don't think she should have been fired, but that she was wrong in her assessment of politics.

00:13:10.000 But he's been completely silent on Roy Moore for over a week, even though he endorsed Roy Moore after Roy Moore won the primary.

00:13:16.000 So finally, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is trotted out to answer questions about Roy Moore.

00:13:21.000 And what this does demonstrate, by the way, is that Sean Hannity and the White House are very much in coordination because, as you recall, Sean Hannity, the night before last, came out and said that he wanted to let the people of Alabama decide.

00:13:31.000 The White House is giving exactly the same message.

00:13:33.000 So that is a shift.

00:13:34.000 Apparently there were reports that Sean had been getting calls from Bannon and from the White House saying, back off Roy Moore a little bit.

00:13:40.000 So the White House is also backing off of Roy Moore.

00:13:42.000 Here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying that Trump thinks the people of Alabama ought to decide, which is a truism. 0.98

00:13:47.000 Again, I said this yesterday.

00:13:48.000 You know, when people say things like, let the people decide, what they're really saying is that they are not going to take a position.

00:13:54.000 That's really what they're saying. 1.00

00:13:55.000 And that's stupid, okay? 1.00

00:13:56.000 Trump has taken a position on everything. 1.00

00:13:58.000 I mean, literally everything.

00:14:00.000 All the things Trump has taken a position on, but here he chooses to go strategically silent.

00:14:04.000 The reason that that's bad is not just because I think it's immoral, even though I do think it's immoral.

00:14:08.000 The reason that I think it's bad is because Donald Trump is one of the very few people in America who could actually make a difference in this Senate race and actually make sure that Republicans keep the seat without that seat being Roy Moore's.

00:14:18.000 Here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders, though, basically kicking the can down the road. 1.00

00:14:21.000 The president believes that these allegations are very troubling and should be taken seriously, and he thinks that the people of Alabama should make the decision on who their next senator should be.

00:14:32.000 So that's a no, he thinks Roy Moore should stay in?

00:14:34.000 Look, the president said in his statement earlier this week that if the allegations are true, then that Roy Moore should step aside.

00:14:43.000 He still firmly believes that.

00:14:45.000 Okay, so, you know, that doesn't mean anything, right?

00:14:47.000 We now know what we know, okay?

00:14:50.000 Nothing further is really gonna come out here.

00:14:52.000 The idea that if true, he should step aside, but let the people of Alabama decide?

00:14:56.000 Again, the people of Alabama will decide, right?

00:14:58.000 But he can have an impact on this race.

00:14:59.000 If he were to come out and say, Roy Moore, get out.

00:15:02.000 People of Alabama, you know, don't lose this Senate race because of Roy Moore.

00:15:06.000 That would actually have an impact in this race, but that's not what's happening here.

00:15:10.000 And then, you know, and then Trump tweets, but so Trump doesn't say anything about Moore, right?

00:15:15.000 But he does have some things to say about Al Franken.

00:15:17.000 So the allegations come out about Franken.

00:15:19.000 He's been completely silent on Twitter, right?

00:15:20.000 He's been over in Asia.

00:15:21.000 This was the excuse for him not commenting on more.

00:15:23.000 He comes back, and now he's on Twitter late at night.

00:15:26.000 And so Trump starts tweeting about Al Franken.

00:15:28.000 So he tweets, the Al Frankenstein picture, and it's Frankenstein, right?

00:15:32.000 But he spells Frankenstein I-E instead of E-I.

00:15:35.000 Again, spell check.

00:15:35.000 He says, the Al Frankenstein picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words.

00:15:39.000 Where do his hands go in pictures two, three, four, five, and six while she sleeps?

00:15:43.000 And then he continues along these lines, and he says, and to think that just last week he was lecturing anyone who would listen about sexual harassment and respect for women.

00:15:50.000 Leslie Stahl tape?

00:15:51.000 The Leslie Stahl tape is a reference to him making jokes about sexually abusing Leslie Stahl while she's asleep or something.

00:15:58.000 Now, so, you know, Trump is perfectly willing to sound off about Franken.

00:16:02.000 Now, a lot of people on the right love this about Trump, that he's not shy about sounding off about political opposition.

00:16:06.000 And when it comes to the partisan battles, this is the thing that they really enjoy about Trump, is that Trump is always happy to throw a punch in the other direction. 0.99

00:16:12.000 This is also a really stupid strategy, okay? 0.99

00:16:14.000 The reason this is a stupid strategy is we are now going to get a full week of talk about all of the sexual harassment and abuse allegations against Donald Trump, okay? 1.00

00:16:23.000 There were something like 15 or 16 women who made sexual assault or harassment allegations against Trump at the end of the last election cycle. 0.98

00:16:29.000 We had not yet had the Harvey Weinstein blow up, so now we're gonna get to redo all of that, which is really, really exciting.

00:16:34.000 And it's one of the reasons, by the way, I think that Trump has not actually

00:16:38.000 Come out and openly condemn more.

00:16:40.000 Because the problem is that once you condemn more, once you get involved in these issues, now it comes back around to you.

00:16:46.000 Right?

00:16:46.000 Just as Trump says, you know, Al Franken was talking about sexual harassment in a negative way, but then he was sexually harassing people.

00:16:52.000 It's very hard for Trump to be the leader, the tip of the spear on sexual harassment and abuse.

00:16:57.000 Right?

00:16:57.000 Huckabee Sanders was specifically asked by a reporter over at Fox News about this, right?

00:17:00.000 Here's Huckabee Sanders being asked to comment on the allegations against Trump.

00:17:04.000 We should find one set of allegations very troubling and on the other we shouldn't pay attention to them at all or we should totally disbelieve them.

00:17:10.000 Well I think the president has certainly a lot more insight into what he personally did or didn't do and he spoke out about that directly during the campaign and I don't have anything further to add beyond that.

00:17:22.000 Okay, so basically, we're going to keep silent on this because we don't want the blowback to come back around.

00:17:27.000 This is the problem with having our standards.

00:17:29.000 We have our own double standard.

00:17:31.000 Okay, we have our own double standard, and then our politicians pay the price for the double standard. 0.99

00:17:34.000 On the one hand, we say that if they're on our side, we don't care.

00:17:37.000 And on the other side, on the other hand, we say if they're not on our side, we do care.

00:17:40.000 That double standard has ramifications for politicians, because it means that Trump is going to want to condemn Al Franken, but if he condemns Al Franken, it's going to come back around to Trump, and then the right is going to have to suggest that the allegations about Trump are not credible, but the allegations against Franken are super credible, which I don't buy, by the way.

00:17:55.000 I think the allegations against Trump were credible during the primaries, or during the general election.

00:18:00.000 I, again, don't say that you shouldn't have voted for Trump to stop Hillary, but I do think that

00:18:05.000 Yeah, I didn't.

00:18:05.000 You know, I didn't vote at the top of the ticket because I take these things very, very seriously.

00:18:10.000 So, you know, the idea that we can have as a people this double standard in our mind, that has to change.

00:18:16.000 So, either we're going to say as a public, we're going to say as a public one of two things.

00:18:19.000 We care about these allegations enough to get rid of people.

00:18:22.000 Doesn't matter their political affiliation.

00:18:23.000 Or we don't care enough to get rid of people.

00:18:25.000 Doesn't matter their political affiliation.

00:18:27.000 We're gonna have to make that decision. 0.93

00:18:29.000 Otherwise, we just have this hypocritical standard.

00:18:31.000 Now, I do want to talk a little bit about the generalized societal problem that's coming up with some of these sexual harassment allegations.

00:18:37.000 And that is, as I've said now for a couple of weeks, really six weeks since the Harvey Weinstein stuff broke,

00:18:42.000 We as a society do not have a consistent standard that we are applying with regard to what sort of allegations to take seriously and what sort of allegations not to take seriously.

00:18:51.000 So, the reason that I say this is because we are treating sexual harassment allegations where a guy, you know, said something nasty and untoward to a woman the same as we are treating rape allegations.

00:19:01.000 And that seems to me not correct.

00:19:03.000 I think that you can condemn both, but I don't think they are worthy of equal levels of condemnation.

00:19:07.000 You know, for example, there is the actress Ellen Page.

00:19:11.000 And Ellen Page had this whole thing about... 1.00

00:19:14.000 My director she worked with, or a fellow actor she worked with, I can't remember who she's talking about, who had said something, was it Ratner?

00:19:20.000 It was about Ratner, I guess, who's had a lot of sexual allegations made against him.

00:19:25.000 And she says that Brett Ratner at one point made some sort of nasty lesbian reference to her on the set.

00:19:31.000 And this is bad.

00:19:32.000 It is bad, okay?

00:19:33.000 And he deserves to be condemned for that, obviously.

00:19:36.000 And then she says in that same allegation, in the same Facebook post, she says that at one point she was sexually assaulted by a grip.

00:19:43.000 These are not the same kind of thing.

00:19:45.000 They're both bad, but they're not quite the same kind of bad.

00:19:48.000 Rape and sexual assault are not the same thing as sexual harassment, and conflating the two actually ends up making light of sexual assault, because it allows people to shluff it off.

00:19:55.000 It allows people to basically say, okay, that's the same as saying something nasty.

00:20:00.000 Well, sexually harassing a woman and sexually assaulting a woman are not quite the same thing.

00:20:03.000 They're both bad, but they are different levels of bad. 0.76

00:20:07.000 It's bad to hit a child. 0.99

00:20:08.000 It's worse to kill a child. 0.83

00:20:10.000 It's bad to yell at somebody. 0.93

00:20:11.000 It's much worse to hit somebody.

00:20:13.000 So I think that we need to be careful about the standards that we apply and also the credibility of particular standards.

00:20:20.000 The reason that I've been so harsh on Roy Moore is because I find the allegations particularly credible because they're supporting details.

00:20:26.000 It's the reason I found Juanita Broderick to be credible.

00:20:28.000 I think they're supporting details.

00:20:29.000 She was in the place she said she was at the time she said she was.

00:20:32.000 There were contemporaneous people that she had told at the time.

00:20:35.000 But I think that one of the things that is going to happen now is the hysteria is so loud and so much that there's the possibility that we're going to jump to conclusions.

00:20:45.000 We shouldn't jump to conclusions.

00:20:46.000 I've called for a certain level of credibility, but I think that we should determine for ourselves what exactly that level of credibility is.

00:20:52.000 In other words, I'm calling for a standard because otherwise sexual harassment, sexual abuse, these are just going to become clubs that you can wield against the other side rather than a real attempt to cleanse the society of a grave evil.

00:21:04.000 So I think that's worth commenting upon.

00:21:07.000 Other comment that I want to make.

00:21:09.000 So yesterday I tweeted something and all these feminists went nuts because they didn't understand what I was saying. 1.00

00:21:13.000 I tweeted that it seems like the only solution here is robot politicians. 0.63

00:21:17.000 I was not specifically speaking about sexual harassment. 1.00

00:21:19.000 I was saying all of our politicians suck and a lot of politicians are willing to cover for people who suck. 1.00

00:21:24.000 Kirsten Gillibrand is one of them. 0.99

00:21:25.000 She came out yesterday and she said that Bill Clinton should have resigned in 1998.

00:21:28.000 She was literally campaigning with him six months ago.

00:21:31.000 So, no, okay? 1.00

00:21:32.000 All of our politicians are garbage. 0.99

00:21:34.000 You may get less sexual harassment if women, there are more women in Congress, I think you probably would, but that doesn't mean that the legislation would be any better or that they wouldn't cover for bad behavior, okay? 0.99

00:21:42.000 That's just the reality of the situation.

00:21:45.000 We as a society have abandoned a particular moral standard, and that moral standard comes with consequences.

00:21:51.000 None of this arises in a vacuum.

00:21:53.000 Sexual harassment, sexual abuse, these have always happened.

00:21:56.000 But we also used to have certain standards of behavior that we demanded from our politicians and that we demanded from people more generally.

00:22:02.000 Now we live in a society where

00:22:04.000 Okay, so,

00:22:20.000 Before I go any further and I want to get to some things I like and things I hate and I really want to spend some time with the mailbag today.

00:22:25.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Upside.com.

00:22:28.000 So that business trip that you're about to book, do it at Upside.com and you'll get two fantastic gifts.

00:22:33.000 First, you get a free pair of Bose SoundLink wireless headphones so you can have some peace and quiet on your business trip.

00:22:38.000 And second, you get a better business travel experience.

00:22:40.000 We use Upside.com to book my business trips all the time, only Upside.

00:22:44.000 I don't know.

00:23:03.000 We're good.

00:23:23.000 Okay, so.

00:23:50.000 Let's just go to some things I like and some things that I hate.

00:23:54.000 Because I really, I always kind of give short shrift to the mailbag and I don't want to do that this week.

00:23:58.000 So, things I like and things that I hate.

00:24:00.000 So, we'll start with things I like.

00:24:03.000 Yes, on the plane I had some very long flights and I got to watch a couple of movies.

00:24:06.000 One was Wind River.

00:24:07.000 The other one that I saw was The Lost City of Z. The marketing campaign for this movie was really quite terrible.

00:24:12.000 One of the reasons the marketing campaign was terrible is if you looked at some of the original posters, it was not clear this was a period piece.

00:24:17.000 This is a better poster for Lost City of Z. Makes clear that this is a period piece about exploration.

00:24:22.000 It is also true that the title...

00:24:24.000 I'm not a big Charlie Hunnam fan, I find him mannered, but Robert Pattinson gives a terrific performance.

00:24:28.000 I didn't even know Robert Pattinson could act.

00:24:48.000 As Mathis was pointing out to me before the show, both Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart can act, but as Donald Trump said, she cheated on him like a dog, and she'll do it again, just watch.

00:24:59.000 So, Robert Pattinson is very, very good in this movie.

00:25:02.000 The movie is about an explorer named Fawcett, and he is searching for this city in the Amazon

00:25:10.000 He thinks that there is this lost city in the Amazon, this sort of city of gold, and he goes searching for it, and he sort of leaves his wife and children behind.

00:25:18.000 His wife's played by Sienna Miller, who's quite good in the film, and all the performances, actually, across the board, except for Hunnam's, are pretty good.

00:25:25.000 So here is a little bit of the preview.

00:25:27.000 To dream, to seek the unknown, to look for what is beautiful is its own reward.

00:25:35.000 A man's reach should exceed his grasp. 0.99

00:25:39.000 Or what's a heaven for?

00:25:44.000 You are the Explorer?

00:25:47.000 Give me your hand.

00:25:49.000 I wish to find a lost city.

00:25:53.000 What you seek is far greater.

00:26:00.000 Okay, so the preview is, you can see, it's beautifully directed, it's really well acted, it's really Oscar-bait, and it's been largely ignored.

00:26:08.000 It didn't do any sort of business at the theater so far as I can tell, even though it's got a bunch of big-name actors and a really big budget and it's beautifully shot, there's a whole World War I sequence that's really well done.

00:26:18.000 So it's well worth watching.

00:26:20.000 It is not an uplifting film.

00:26:22.000 It sort of tries to be, and it sort of tries to be politically correct at the same time.

00:26:27.000 There are a few kind of politically correct tropes in there, but it's well worth watching.

00:26:29.000 Okay, so I have more things that I like and some things that I hate in the mailbag, but for that you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:26:35.000 For $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to dailywire.com.

00:26:39.000 That means that you get the rest of my show on video live.

00:26:41.000 It means that you get to be part of the mailbag.

00:26:42.000 So if you subscribe right this minute,

00:26:44.000 You can be part of the mailbag, which we'll be doing in about five minutes, and you can ask me questions, and I'll have all your life's questions answered.

00:26:50.000 You also get the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live, the rest of Michael Knowles' show live.

00:26:53.000 We're gonna start doing a new show on Fridays that should be pretty great, where we just sit around and discuss culture, me and Klavan and Knowles and Jeremy Boring, the god-king of Daily Wire.

00:27:03.000 So that should be a lot of fun.

00:27:04.000 Plus, you are going to be able to get discounts at the Shapiro store when that does come.

00:27:08.000 It will come, I've been promising it.

00:27:10.000 It's like the wall.

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00:27:28.000 If you just want to listen later, go over to YouTube, subscribe, make sure that you go to iTunes and SoundCloud, subscribe there, and leave us a review.

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00:27:36.000 We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:27:43.000 Alrighty, so a couple of other things that I like.

00:27:45.000 So I'm trying to do a little more things I like this week because the news has been just such a dumpster.

00:27:49.000 It's just been terrible.

00:27:50.000 And speaking of bad news, it's now breaking that it looks like the tax reform bill is at least on the ropes.

00:27:55.000 Senator Ron Johnson has said he's not going to vote for it as it currently stands.

00:27:58.000 Lisa Murkowski's saying she's not going to vote for it as it currently stands.

00:28:01.000 So they're basically one vote away from the thing collapsing.

00:28:04.000 But let's do some good news, okay?

00:28:05.000 So this I thought was just super cute.

00:28:07.000 So this came from ABC News.

00:28:08.000 There's a little five-year-old kid who's coming back from kindergarten on the school bus.

00:28:12.000 If you can't see it, he's just giving her a big hug and carrying her around.

00:28:29.000 And then they're walking home.

00:28:30.000 It's super cute.

00:28:31.000 So, as a parent of two, this is the best thing.

00:28:35.000 The worst thing in the world as a parent is when your kids are beating the crap out of each other.

00:28:38.000 It's really hard to watch.

00:28:39.000 But when my daughter, who's older, she's three and a half, when she treats my son really well and when she gets up in the morning, he loves her.

00:28:46.000 I mean, he's obsessed with her.

00:28:47.000 She gets up in the morning, he gets up earlier than she does.

00:28:50.000 And then, her name is Leah, he goes,

00:28:52.000 I don't know.

00:29:11.000 Senator from Utah finally lost it with Sherrod Brown.

00:29:13.000 Sherrod Brown is a senator from Ohio, and just a terrible, terrible senator.

00:29:17.000 And he was ripping on the tax reform bill, suggesting that it hurts the middle class, which is absolutely untrue.

00:29:22.000 The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of Americans, particularly in the middle class, got a tax cut from this bill.

00:29:28.000 And Orrin Hatch basically laid the wood to Sherrod Brown for suggesting otherwise.

00:29:31.000 I come from the poor people.

00:29:35.000 And I've been here working my whole stinking career.

00:29:39.000 For people who don't have a chance.

00:29:42.000 And I really resent anybody saying that I'm just doing this for the rich.

00:29:46.000 Give me a break.

00:29:47.000 I think you guys overplay that all the time, and it gets old.

00:29:51.000 And frankly, you ought to quit it.

00:29:53.000 Mr. Chairman, the public believes that.

00:29:54.000 I'm not through.

00:29:57.000 I get kind of sick and tired of it.

00:30:00.000 True, it's a nice political play, but it's not true.

00:30:20.000 Okay, and then Hatch went off on him some more.

00:30:21.000 So, you know, again, it is a really tired talking point, this idea that it's the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

00:30:26.000 There's no evidence of that.

00:30:27.000 The poor have gotten richer, the rich have gotten richer over the past 30 years, for sure.

00:30:32.000 And the idea that tax cuts solely benefit the people at the top of the spectrum is just not true, considering that the people at the top of the spectrum are paying nearly all of the net income tax in the United States.

00:30:42.000 Okay, time for some things I hate, and then we'll mailbag it up.

00:30:48.000 Okay, so a couple of quick things that I hate.

00:30:50.000 So Hillary Clinton, yesterday, she was asked about an investigation into her.

00:30:54.000 And why is she still here?

00:30:56.000 Like, why is she still bothering everyone? 0.78

00:30:58.000 Someone suggested that she's sort of become the Rick Astley of politics.

00:31:02.000 That you just get Rickrolled into playing videos of Hillary Clinton.

00:31:05.000 I think that's basically correct.

00:31:06.000 Also, she apparently shops in the wardrobe fashioned by Maria in

00:31:14.000 By Julie Andrews in Sound of Music.

00:31:18.000 She gets all of her clothes made from curtains.

00:31:19.000 In any case, here is Hillary Clinton talking about why an investigation into her would be an abuse of power. 1.00

00:31:25.000 If I try to take myself out of it, which you know is kind of hard because it's personally offensive that they would do this, but taking myself out of it, this is such an abuse of power.

00:31:37.000 And it goes right at the rule of law.

00:31:41.000 Okay, so it goes against the rule of law when she's investigated, but it doesn't go against the rule of law when Jim Comey of the FBI coordinates with the Obama administration to let her off without evidence.

00:31:49.000 Yeah, so I love this for Hillary.

00:31:51.000 It's an abuse of power when she is investigated, but not an abuse of power when she's let off for no reason. 0.90

00:31:56.000 That's really exciting. 0.57

00:31:57.000 Also, I don't understand why she's wearing, like, a necklace made from balls from a ball crawl at Giggles and Hugs.

00:32:02.000 That's confusing, too.

00:32:03.000 Okay, so enough making fun of Hillary's wardrobe. 1.00

00:32:05.000 Let's make fun of art.

00:32:06.000 So, there is a Christie's

00:32:09.000 There's a Christie's auction the other day, and there are a couple of pieces of work that went for a lot of money.

00:32:15.000 So there was a da Vinci painting of Jesus that went for $450 million, which suggests that somebody has too much money on their hands.

00:32:23.000 And it doesn't look like Jesus.

00:32:24.000 It looks kind of like the Mona Lisa with a beard.

00:32:27.000 It's not good.

00:32:28.000 But that was not the bad painting.

00:32:30.000 The worst painting was this, okay?

00:32:31.000 So there is an artist, I guess, named Cy Twombly. 0.97

00:32:34.000 Now, I will acknowledge, I don't know much about modern art, mainly because I think most modern art is supreme garbage.

00:32:40.000 But Cy Twombly is a modern artist who executed a series called the Bacchus series.

00:32:46.000 Ooh, really deep, really meaningful.

00:32:49.000 Okay, this painting apparently sold yesterday, or a couple days ago, for $40 million.

00:32:56.000 For four zero million dollars.

00:32:58.000 Okay, do you see this painting?

00:32:59.000 Do you see this?

00:33:01.000 My one and a half year old made this for my fridge yesterday.

00:33:05.000 Okay, that's what this looks like.

00:33:06.000 It's a bunch of swirlies with paint.

00:33:09.000 But the care, the genius of it, my god!

00:33:15.000 Okay, if this is worth $40 million, then I can crap something out worth $10.

00:33:21.000 Okay, that's insane.

00:33:24.000 So I just want to read you from Christie's, because Christie's was marketing it this way.

00:33:28.000 Collectively marking the culmination of Twombly's 50 years of painterly practice, the series comprises three distinct sets.

00:33:33.000 The first of these, six 8-feet-high portrait-forming paintings, was completed in 2004.

00:33:38.000 Towering over the viewer at more than 10 feet high and 16 feet wide, how'd you like to walk into your house?

00:33:42.000 And this is the entire wall. 0.98

00:33:44.000 If this happened, I would immediately spank my son. 0.98

00:33:50.000 If they'd actually—I wouldn't. 0.90

00:33:52.000 He's great.

00:33:52.000 But I would repaint the wall.

00:33:54.000 I mean, for God's sake.

00:33:56.000 If this is your entire wall, it looks like Charles Manson's been inside your house. 0.99

00:34:00.000 Ridiculous.

00:34:01.000 It says, on November 15th, the masterwork will lead the post-war and contemporary art evening sale at Christie's in New York.

00:34:07.000 It was executed using a pole, to which was affixed a brush drenched in rich vermilion paint.

00:34:11.000 Its bright red spirals seemed to both climb and fall.

00:34:14.000 Twombly allowed each of his marks to run down the canvas, suggesting the dripping of wine.

00:34:18.000 Or blood.

00:34:20.000 Or, like, paint.

00:34:21.000 Right?

00:34:22.000 It says, the painting's basic looping motif was a recurring theme in Twombly's art.

00:34:25.000 This form fascinated him for several years.

00:34:27.000 In the meandering scrawl of the blackboard paintings of the late 1960s, he explored its capacity to convey, through repetition, a sense of single, continuous fields of energy.

00:34:35.000 Here, Twombly revisited and developed this line in an epic scale. 0.99

00:34:39.000 This is such bullshit. 0.99

00:34:41.000 Okay, this is like... I'm sorry. 0.99

00:34:44.000 This is garbage. 0.98

00:34:45.000 And the idea that everything is art... Okay, you want to call this art, call it art. 1.00

00:34:50.000 Okay, but it's finger painting.

00:34:52.000 It's bad art.

00:34:55.000 Not to get into deep philosophy here about art, but one of the things that makes art art is a certain amount of skill.

00:35:01.000 To be an artist means that you have perfected your craft.

00:35:04.000 There's a difference between somebody like me, who's very good at violin, and somebody who's legitimately virtuosic on violin, and the difference is that person has more craft than I do.

00:35:10.000 I've talked about art and craft before.

00:35:12.000 I've talked about the idea that craft requires skill, and what I hate about modern art

00:35:17.000 Is that it's much more about energy.

00:35:19.000 And it's all subjective.

00:35:20.000 I think that you can objectively say this is bad art.

00:35:23.000 I think there are certain objective standards.

00:35:25.000 And I think one of the standards you can apply is, how many people on earth could make this?

00:35:29.000 How many people on earth can make this?

00:35:30.000 Everyone.

00:35:31.000 Every person can make this.

00:35:33.000 There are elephants that can make this at the zoo.

00:35:36.000 They legitimately have zoos where elephants make art and they sell them for like 15 bucks and it supports the survival of the elephants.

00:35:41.000 That seems to be a much better spend than Cy Twombly's art. 1.00

00:35:47.000 The leftist idea that subjectivity creates its own value is so stupid. 1.00

00:35:54.000 That I can't even believe it. 1.00

00:35:55.000 Now listen, does this mean that the person who bought it has too much money?

00:35:58.000 Not necessarily.

00:35:59.000 It means that the person who bought it has terrible taste.

00:36:02.000 But the idea that art has no standards whatsoever is the death of everything, right?

00:36:07.000 It's true in music.

00:36:08.000 We look at people who play three chords and suddenly they're Beethoven.

00:36:11.000 We look at people who rhyme badly and suddenly they're Shakespeare.

00:36:16.000 The whole purpose of art is that you are supposed to be better at something than anyone else.

00:36:20.000 In no other arena of American life, or Western life, do we treat people like this.

00:36:25.000 Only in the artistic field do we do this.

00:36:27.000 You'd never do this with a plumber.

00:36:28.000 You'd never be like, the plumber wouldn't come in and screw up your pipes.

00:36:31.000 You'd be like, you know what?

00:36:32.000 He really used his creativity there.

00:36:34.000 You know, I can take a hammer and just beat on that pipe and it gives me a new sense of meaning.

00:36:39.000 Art is a job.

00:36:40.000 Art requires skill.

00:36:41.000 This is why all of the great artists spent years in apprenticeship.

00:36:44.000 They spent years perfecting their craft.

00:36:46.000 If I see something where I got up in the morning and all I would have to do is basically spit,

00:36:52.000 On a canvas?

00:36:53.000 And this would now be art? 1.00

00:36:54.000 It makes me angry and I think it's stupid. 1.00

00:36:56.000 Okay. 1.00

00:36:57.000 And the person who bought it is a moron. 1.00

00:36:58.000 I don't care how rich they are. 1.00

00:36:59.000 Okay.

00:36:59.000 Time for the mailbag.

00:37:00.000 Thank you.

00:37:01.000 Well, Hayek has a couple of books.

00:37:12.000 that are quite good on this.

00:37:16.000 The name of the Hayek book that is most famous, Roads of Serfdom.

00:37:19.000 That's the one that sort of explains the failures of socialist economics.

00:37:23.000 Economics in One Lesson is always the easiest economics book and it explains why Keynesianism is wrong.

00:37:29.000 There are a number of very good books.

00:37:30.000 Thomas Sowell's books on basic economics explain it as well.

00:37:33.000 Kyle says, do you practice the infamous Shapiro smirk in the mirror before your debates?

00:37:37.000 If I were to give it a name, like Blue Steel, what would you call it?

00:37:41.000 Well, I mean, I don't actually have a name for it.

00:37:43.000 I don't practice it.

00:37:44.000 It's been natural since childhood, I assume.

00:37:47.000 There are certain kind of facial tics that everyone has, and that's just one of mine.

00:37:51.000 The other one that I have is when I'm thinking, I tend to kind of roll my eyes a little bit, and I've been working on that one because it annoys me and my wife.

00:37:58.000 But I don't have a name for it.

00:38:00.000 We'll have to come up with one.

00:38:01.000 So if you have any suggestions, Kyle, we're perfectly willing to take those under advisement.

00:38:05.000 In response to that article, a liberal friend of mine commented, saying,

00:38:23.000 Well, actually Venezuela is a better example of socialism since it has more government running of resources.

00:38:28.000 So socialism and communism are based on state ownership of resources.

00:38:31.000 If you want to talk about heavy regulation and redistribution of resources, that really is less socialism than it is what they call sort of modified capitalism.

00:38:39.000 Germany is much more along those lines than it is, like Germany is closer in economics to the United States than it is to Venezuela.

00:38:46.000 And the idea that because Germany has extensive social programs that it is a socialist country is just not true.

00:38:53.000 In the same way that people say Denmark is a socialist country except that it has some of the lowest corporate tax rates on planet Earth and some of the laxest business regulations.

00:39:01.000 They have very high personal income tax rates.

00:39:03.000 And they have a social safety net that's very extensive.

00:39:05.000 They've had to cut all of that back because they're bankrupting themselves.

00:39:08.000 So even Germany isn't a good example of how you can have a lasting economic success.

00:39:12.000 Like, Germany has had some economic success in the European context compared to their economy in the United States.

00:39:16.000 It's not even close.

00:39:17.000 Well, it depends on which elements of the right you are talking about.

00:39:19.000 So, I would say this.

00:39:20.000 There are certain elements of the right that sort of

00:39:29.000 Our libertarian in orientation, not with regard to government, which I think is right, but with regard to human nature.

00:39:35.000 This idea that we are all atomistic individuals and that any social standards are dangerous and there is no communal social fabric.

00:39:41.000 You know, the left acknowledges that there's a social fabric, they just think that the government has to force what the social fabric is.

00:39:47.000 So, if I have to choose between the idea that there is a social fabric and there is no social fabric, or the social fabric doesn't matter,

00:39:53.000 Then I think the social fabric matters.

00:39:55.000 I don't think so.

00:39:55.000 You know, in terms of in terms of sort of the role of social fabric, it goes like this.

00:40:01.000 Libertarians are here and then there's the left and then there's the right over here.

00:40:04.000 So the left is actually closer to the right in terms of communitarian ideology with regard to social fabric than hardcore libertarianism.

00:40:10.000 But as far as generalized leftist ideology, I don't.

00:40:14.000 Thanks so very much.

00:40:15.000 Alex says, What's your favorite food to eat during Thanksgiving?

00:40:18.000 So stuffing is my thing.

00:40:20.000 I will put away entire pans of stuffing.

00:40:23.000 My mom makes an incredible turkey.

00:40:25.000 In fact...

00:40:26.000 My wife and I are going away for Thanksgiving, but we are doing Thanksgiving dinner in the evening early because we need to have my mom's cooking.

00:40:32.000 My mom is an excellent cook. 0.98

00:40:34.000 Mark says, God Emperor Shapiro.

00:40:35.000 That's flattering.

00:40:36.000 I guess that Clavin's been deposed.

00:40:38.000 I run a free speech group on my campus.

00:40:39.000 What would you say is the best way to deal with the radical leftists who try to silence us and heckle our event?

00:40:45.000 Expose them. 1.00

00:40:45.000 Get out a camera and show them being idiots and then get it to Daily Wire and we will put that up and we will mock them. 1.00

00:40:50.000 We're good to go. 1.00

00:41:05.000 Usually when I'm out, I'll order something like a Heineken or something.

00:41:08.000 So I am not a fundamentalist with regard to timelines in the Bible, particularly in the creation period.

00:41:23.000 So, there's a book that I like a lot by a guy named Gerald Schroeder.

00:41:26.000 I've recommended it on the show before, talking about how science melds with the Bible.

00:41:30.000 I mean, some obvious criticisms of the literalist interpretation of biblical dating.

00:41:36.000 Pretty clearly, for example, the Bible says at the very beginning, there was night and there was day the first day.

00:41:42.000 That happens before the earth has been created, before the sun has been created.

00:41:45.000 So, what is the timeline there?

00:41:46.000 Is that really a 24-hour period, or is that something very different?

00:41:49.000 So, I don't think that the Bible

00:41:51.000 Was meant to be taken supremely literally along those lines, but I'm not sure how you would convey that the Earth is hundreds of thousands of years old and evolution existed in a document that was created 3,000 years ago for people who had no idea what evolution is, had no idea what species were, had no idea about periods of time.

00:42:11.000 I mean, how do you explain carbon dating?

00:42:12.000 So, yeah, I think that God has a bit of a rough road to hoe in terms of communication with human beings. 1.00

00:42:18.000 He's always bound by the capacity of human beings to understand, which is pretty clear even from the biblical text.

00:42:22.000 When Moses said, to God, let me see your face, and God says, I can't let you see my face or you'll die.

00:42:26.000 I think that's pretty much correct.

00:42:28.000 Perfect communication between God and man is not a real possibility, in the sense that everything is always going to be filtered through the prism of the mind, and God knows that.

00:42:37.000 Josh says, if the founders were alive today to see what America has become,

00:42:40.000 What do you think they might wish they could go back and change or do differently?

00:42:43.000 Well, I think that the problem, well, listen, I think if the founders were alive today and, you know, many of them were not raised in a context in which slavery was appropriate, they would abolish slavery right off the bat.

00:42:55.000 I think that they would also be a little bit less sanguine about the power of the judiciary.

00:42:59.000 I think that they would also tremendously oppose the power of the bureaucracy and they would put restrictions in the Constitution against it.

00:43:06.000 But

00:43:07.000 The Constitution is a pretty good document.

00:43:08.000 I'm not sure what exactly they would change in order to prohibit what happened, because all of the problems with the Constitution in terms of government growth have been specifically variations from the Constitution.

00:43:18.000 So that's not because the founders embedded anything in there that's wrong.

00:43:21.000 They might have taken some of the anti-federalist critiques a little bit more seriously about the possibility of growth of federal power, but it's also important to recognize that at the time, they were fighting against the Articles of Confederation, which were the weakest form of government known to man, essentially.

00:43:33.000 Ryan says, So the idea here is that you are, you know, should you vote for somebody who is moral but disagrees with you?

00:43:37.000 Or should you vote for somebody who is questionable but agrees with you?

00:43:50.000 So I, again, I'm going to reject the false binary that we live in a system where we can't select moral men who agree with us.

00:43:56.000 But if the false binary is would I rather have people who are personally saints but vote for socialism versus would I rather have people who are child molesters but agree with me, if that is the false binary we are creating, of course you would have to say that you would vote for the person who most represents your priorities.

00:44:15.000 I get that.

00:44:16.000 But I don't think that that's the binary.

00:44:19.000 And I don't think that that is a recipe for a repeat election cycle.

00:44:24.000 So here's one of the things that I said about the 2016 election, and I'll say it again about Alabama.

00:44:28.000 Elections do not exist in a vacuum.

00:44:30.000 They're not one-time events.

00:44:31.000 The idea that how you vote in this election impacts how the country moves in future elections is a fact.

00:44:36.000 The moral character of a country is built off of repeated trials and errors.

00:44:40.000 Okay, you don't get to take one election and take it and crystallize it and say this is the only election that has ever mattered in the history of the world.

00:44:46.000 When you do that, you end up in a world of false binaries and that's how you end up with a bunch of bad choices.

00:44:50.000 I think that how you vote in elections, how you decide this, makes a difference.

00:44:54.000 So,

00:44:55.000 If you were to ask me, is it worth sacrificing one election so we can have a better country where there's the possibility that everyone requires good people to be in office?

00:45:03.000 And so next time my choice isn't between a questionable conservative and a socialist saint, it's between a socialist saint and a conservative saint, then that's something that I think is worth sacrificing for.

00:45:13.000 I think that if we all hold by that standard, then we'll have more saints in office and fewer sinners.

00:45:19.000 And more saints who agree with us in office, and fewer sinners who agree with us in office.

00:45:23.000 So, the whole premise of my logic on this, politically, is that sometimes you have to take a short-term loss in order to make a long-term gain.

00:45:32.000 But I think that we live in an era where

00:45:34.000 If you think that we can't take a short-term loss, that it's the end of the world if we lose something, or that even the possibility of losing means that we have to vote a certain way, everything is crisis point.

00:45:45.000 A lot of exigent circumstances require you to make bad decisions, and I think that that's where we are repeatedly in politics, and I don't think that's where we ought to be.

00:45:53.000 Ryan says, sorry I just read his.

00:45:55.000 Lynn says, Ben if you were given the task to run a high school without the Department of Education getting in your way, what would you be teaching the students and why?

00:46:01.000 So I would be inculcating virtue.

00:46:03.000 So I would spend some time actually talking about the virtues and why they are important in pursuing human happiness.

00:46:08.000 This is something that we don't teach in high schools anymore.

00:46:12.000 I would also be pushing apprenticeships as opposed to particular classes in certain study areas.

00:46:18.000 I think that learning skill sets is actually a lot more important sometimes than learning knowledge that you may never use.

00:46:25.000 But virtue is my key component.

00:46:27.000 I'd be teaching people that happiness is reliant on you being a virtuous human being and here are the ways that you can make your life more enlightened and more virtuous.

00:46:36.000 By the way, the founders agreed with me.

00:46:38.000 George Washington talked routinely about this being the role of education in a free society.

00:46:42.000 A society that does not inculcate virtue in the young is likely to crumble when they're old.

00:46:46.000 If not, how are judges able to block these executive actions?

00:46:53.000 So, no, it's not against the law.

00:46:55.000 The basic rule, I believe, is that the federal funding must be tied to something that has to do with it being a sanctuary city.

00:47:02.000 So this was ruled during, I believe, the Reagan era, because Reagan tried to remove federal funding from certain states that were not cracking down on drunk driving in the way that he wanted.

00:47:13.000 And so what they said is that the funding that he's removing has to be somehow logically connected to the cause that he's attempting to push.

00:47:19.000 You can't just randomly remove all funding

00:47:21.000 for a cause that is unrelated.

00:47:23.000 Michael says, So, the greater overarching cause that these sexual assault charges stem from is, again, failure to teach virtue.

00:47:28.000 Teaching boys not to rape is easy, but if it has no context, if you're not teaching boys an affirmative virtue,

00:47:45.000 Then they're likely to fall into temptation more often.

00:47:49.000 The same thing is true for young women who are being told that, listen, sexual assault is not the fault of women, it's the fault of the people who do the sexual assaulting.

00:47:56.000 But you're increasing risk when you tell people that a libertine sexual order in which consent is the only value is likely to lead to happiness.

00:48:04.000 That leads to riskier encounters.

00:48:06.000 Again, the evil is the fault of the evildoer.

00:48:09.000 But riskier encounters are likely to increase the proportion of encounters in which an evil event happens.

00:48:16.000 Roderick says, Ben, would you please explain net neutrality?

00:48:18.000 I've done that before, so I'm gonna skip that one.

00:48:20.000 You can look back at previous podcasts, because I have talked about that at length.

00:48:23.000 Christian says, hey Ben, I'm a big fan of the show from Switzerland.

00:48:26.000 I was wondering, is there any way in which the U.S.

00:48:28.000 could learn from the Swiss healthcare system?

00:48:29.000 I know it costs us a lot of money, but it seems to be working very well with the individual mandate.

00:48:33.000 Why hasn't the U.S.

00:48:33.000 considered such reform?

00:48:34.000 So Christian, as you may have seen, in my debates, when I say, if you're gonna have a government-run system, it should look like the Swiss healthcare system, I think that's right, but I don't think that a government-run healthcare system is the best healthcare system.

00:48:45.000 Switzerland provides universality and quality, but not affordability.

00:48:48.000 It costs a fortune.

00:48:49.000 It's very, very expensive in Switzerland, but is the United States willing to absorb those costs?

00:48:54.000 I'm not sure the United States is willing to absorb those costs.

00:48:57.000 Also, you need to worry about the creation of new products and services as opposed to the redistribution of existing ones, and a capitalist market is the best way to do that.

00:49:06.000 Okay, so final question here.

00:49:08.000 Braden says, Ben, I'm 22 years old and married, making a good living.

00:49:11.000 My wife wants a baby, as do I. However, I'm afraid to be a dad because I didn't have one growing up and don't have all great reference points to go off from my youth.

00:49:17.000 What, if any, is your advice on this?

00:49:19.000 Well, Braden, I think that the fact that you acknowledge this as a problem is one of the reasons why it sounds to me like you're going to be in good shape to have a kid.

00:49:25.000 Recognizing your own flaws as a person, recognizing your own shortcomings in your childhood, things you want to do better, is a great way to raise kids.

00:49:33.000 Because it means that you're going to be thinking.

00:49:35.000 I say this to people all the time.

00:49:36.000 If you're truly worried about sin, if you're truly concerned about your own level of sinfulness, you are less likely to sin than if you're blithe about your sin.

00:49:43.000 And if you're truly worried about making mistakes, that means you're gonna think twice before you make those mistakes.

00:49:47.000 So, what I would say is that you sound, I think you and your wife, it sounds like, would make very good parents.

00:49:53.000 And, you know, if you're looking for great reference points, then try to find people who you think are great parents, get close to them, and try to learn from them.

00:50:00.000 And try to put yourself in situations where you can learn from other men you admire.

00:50:05.000 My dad always said this when I was growing up, that he liked to have friends where I could look up to them also and admire them.

00:50:10.000 And people who treated me well as well.

00:50:12.000 I think that you can do that too, and I think that'd be a worthwhile thing.

00:50:14.000 Okay, so, we will be back here on Monday.

00:50:17.000 Hopefully the world will not implode in our absence.

00:50:19.000 It's gonna be Thanksgiving week next week, so let's try to have a happy week, that'd be nice.

00:50:23.000 Have a great weekend, I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 17, 2017

The Garbage Fires To End All Garbage Fires | Ep. 420

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