The Ben Shapiro Show - The Radical Left Rises | Ep. 512

00:00:00.000 Hillary Clinton goes off on gun control.

00:00:02.000 Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times tries to explain the Second Amendment.

00:00:06.000 And we check the mailbag.

00:00:07.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:13.000 All right, we have a lot to get to here today.

00:00:14.000 We have a particularly full segment of mailbaggery today.

00:00:18.000 A lot of people have written in in the mail and they want their questions answered.

00:00:21.000 And since it is our first week on syndicated radio, we are going to have a lot of opportunity to explore a broader than normal mailbag.

00:00:28.000 But first,

00:00:29.000 I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Bit IRA.

00:00:31.000 So you've heard all the stuff about millionaire next door and the Bitcoin millionaire next door.

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00:00:41.000 George Gilder, who's one of my economic mentors, a guy who I really believe when he talks about economics, says Bitcoin is the perfect libertarian solution to the money enigma.

00:00:49.000 Now, what you've heard about Bitcoin has been about the volatility, or maybe you've heard about the enormous amounts of money people are making in it.

00:00:55.000 But what Bitcoin really is is like gold or silver.

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00:01:21.000 So if you get in early on Bitcoin, you tend to do better over time, just as if you invested in gold very early before a mass supply was increased, then you do really well on gold as well.

00:01:31.000 Well, the folks from Birch Gold Group, the same people who help you purchase precious metals for your IRA,

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00:02:17.000 Hillary Clinton is back in the news again.

00:02:19.000 She just will not leave under any circumstances.

00:02:22.000 And no matter what, she cannot be pushed out.

00:02:25.000 No one will push Hillary Clinton off.

00:02:26.000 I mean, she's like the Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls, right?

00:02:31.000 She is telling you she's not going.

00:02:34.000 We're the best man she'll ever know, and she's not going.

00:02:36.000 So Hillary Clinton is just gonna stick around, and now she's gonna be talking about gun control. 1.00

00:02:41.000 So she is praising the Parkland teens.

00:02:42.000 She's saying they are changing the conversation.

00:02:44.000 This is the great myth of the left, is that the conversation is routinely being changed, even though the conversation is exactly the same as it ever was.

00:02:50.000 Here's Hillary Clinton, one of the worst, not one of the worst, the worst candidate in American history who will not leave, still talking about gun control in Parkland. 0.89

00:02:59.000 Very exciting to see the

00:03:03.000 The movement started by the students from Parkland about taking on the NRA and the gun lobby.

00:03:12.000 So what we've got to do is to say we're for the assault weapons ban, we're for universal background checks, we are going to hold elected officials accountable, and we're going to vote against those who will not agree with those particular policies.

00:03:32.000 And I think we've got a real shot to defeat the NRA again.

00:03:36.000 But the problem is, it never ends.

00:03:42.000 Oh, sorry.

00:03:42.000 I fell asleep.

00:03:43.000 Hillary Clinton was talking.

00:03:44.000 My bad.

00:03:44.000 OK, so we're back.

00:03:46.000 But she's not the only one who's pushing the idea that the gun control issue is now on the table and Democrats finally have the advantage because of the Parkland teens.

00:03:53.000 Ooh, the Parkland teens.

00:03:55.000 OK, so one of these folks who's pushing this idea is Nicholas Kristof, who is one of the worst columnists in America.

00:04:01.000 He writes for the New York Times op-ed page, which, of course, means that, by definition, he's one of the worst columnists in America. 1.00

00:04:05.000 The New York Times op-ed page is a trash heap of misery and stupidity. 1.00

00:04:10.000 But in any case, here is what he writes. 1.00

00:04:12.000 He has an entire column this week talking about the Second Amendment, and it's called,

00:04:18.000 So I thought to myself, well, if Nicholas Kristof knows how to win an argument about guns, maybe we'd better read those arguments, because maybe he's finally given a guide to the left on how they can defeat the Second Amendment agenda.

00:04:28.000 Wow!

00:04:28.000 I mean, maybe he's finally broken the code.

00:04:30.000 It turns out, not so much.

00:04:32.000 So here's what he writes.

00:04:41.000 Polls show that 9 out of 10 Americans favor basic steps like universal background checks before gun purchases.

00:04:46.000 But the exceptions are the president and a majority in Congress.

00:04:48.000 Now, this alone should make you stop and think.

00:04:52.000 Well, why is it that if 9 out of 10 people think one thing, but a majority of people in Congress who are elected by those same people think another thing?

00:04:59.000 Why that disparity?

00:05:01.000 Well, the answer is, of course, that 9 out of 10 people do not support universal background checks.

00:05:05.000 9 out of 10 people are told a slogan called universal background checks, and then when they are told that this means that you will not be able to give your gun to your kid, right, when this means that you will not be able to buy a gun for your brother, when this means that you won't be able to lend a gun to your friend to go hunting, they go, well, that seems weird.

00:05:21.000 Like, that's, I'm not up for that.

00:05:22.000 So, all these polls mean nothing.

00:05:24.000 In any case,

00:05:25.000 Nicolas Christophe continues,

00:05:43.000 So here is how Nicholas Kristof responds to this claim.

00:05:59.000 Um, there are already federal background checks on guns.

00:06:02.000 You cannot own a machine gun.

00:06:04.000 States across the country have gun legislation that restricts magazine size.

00:06:08.000 I was recently at a gun shop in California, and in California, if you buy a rifle, you cannot actually have a replaceable magazine.

00:06:14.000 You literally have to unscrew every magazine that you use.

00:06:17.000 You use a magazine, you use the limit, you have to unscrew the magazine.

00:06:20.000 You have to take out a screwdriver and release the magazine before putting in a new magazine and re-screwing it in.

00:06:25.000 Okay, so these gun

00:06:26.000 Laws exist all over the United States and Christophe apparently doesn't know that.

00:06:29.000 He says,

00:06:46.000 Sure, we could have just said that cars don't kill people, people kill people.

00:06:49.000 Or we could have said it's pointless to regulate cars because then bicyclists will just run each other down.

00:06:53.000 Instead, we relied on evidence and data to reduce the carnage from cars.

00:06:56.000 Why isn't that a model for guns?

00:06:57.000 Well, here's the part that's hilarious about this entire argument that he's now proclaiming.

00:07:00.000 He's saying that we've done a great job with cars, except that cars still kill more people than guns.

00:07:05.000 Right, so how does that follow?

00:07:09.000 Right, if the idea is that all these regulations on cars have made them less deadly, why is it that guns, as a percentage of the population, the number of guns in American society has increased wildly since 1994, and yet the gun death rate in the United States has decreased wildly since 1994.

00:07:24.000 He just sort of skips over that part.

00:07:26.000 Okay, Nicholas Kristof continues,

00:07:32.000 He says, Yes, but courts have found the Second Amendment does not prevent sensible regulation.

00:07:36.000 There is no constitutional objection to say universal background checks to obtain a gun.

00:07:39.000 It's crazy that 22% of guns are obtained without a check.

00:07:42.000 Again, he's right on this one.

00:07:44.000 OK, there is nothing in the Constitution that says you cannot have a universal background check.

00:07:48.000 It is also politically unpalatable because a lot of people don't want a universal background check.

00:07:53.000 Okay, first of all,

00:08:17.000 They're like five jumpers in the United States.

00:08:19.000 Okay, the number of people who die by jumping off bridges in the United States every year is really, really low, so that's not a great sample size.

00:08:25.000 And he says, likewise, almost half of suicides in Britain used to be by asphyxiating oneself with gas from the oven.

00:08:30.000 When Britain switched to a less lethal oven gas, the suicides by oven plummeted, and there was little substitution by other methods.

00:08:36.000 So it is about guns.

00:08:38.000 Well, no.

00:08:39.000 That's like saying that suicide was about ovens in Britain.

00:08:43.000 Suicide is much more common on a per capita basis in many countries in Europe than it is in the United States, where guns are not nearly as prevalent.

00:08:49.000 The suicide rates in Japan continue to be quite high, for example, and guns are essentially forbidden in that society.

00:08:56.000 To pretend that guns are the cause of suicide is just inane.

00:09:00.000 Suicide is something social scientists have been studying for nigh on 200 years, really since Comte.

00:09:06.000 And they're still waiting to figure out exactly how this functions.

00:09:09.000 People don't understand why people commit suicide.

00:09:11.000 There's no good one answer to it. 1.00

00:09:12.000 They suggest it's all about the guns, it's just dumb. 0.97

00:09:14.000 He says, no, it's more about our violent culture. 0.97

00:09:15.000 The Swiss and Israelis have large numbers of firearms and they don't have our levels of gun violence.

00:09:19.000 He says, yes, there's something to that.

00:09:21.000 America has underlying social problems and we need to address them with smarter economic and social policies.

00:09:26.000 But we magnify the toll when we make it easy for troubled people to explode with AR-15s rather than with pocket knives. 0.97

00:09:32.000 Well, there's not a lot of evidence to that, and that doesn't rebut the supposition, which is that a good person with a gun stops a bad person with a gun, and if a bad person gets a hold of a gun, you don't want to be armed with a pocket knife.

00:09:44.000 In fact, gun violence rates vary widely across American society, and if we're really looking to save lives, maybe we should stop with the gun confiscation rhetoric and start talking instead about how exactly we should stop all of these underlying social problems that are causing the crime in the first place.

00:09:58.000 And finally, Nicholas Christophe writes, So here's Christophe's response, Right, because the vast majority of people with firearms lock them up.

00:10:22.000 There are 300 million firearms in the United States.

00:10:26.000 There are 100 million gun owners in the United States.

00:10:29.000 My guess is that there are fewer pools than that in all of the United States because 300 million pools would be a lot of pools in the United States.

00:10:35.000 I don't think there are that many pools in the United States.

00:10:38.000 Well, no, that's more of a reason to be talking...

00:10:53.000 to be talking about why guns should stay away from kids and why, again, if we're, so apparently we're not allowed to talk about deaths from cars because something.

00:11:03.000 And we shouldn't talk about deaths from pools because guns, gun deaths are more common than pool deaths, even though if we talk about guns in pools then we come up with the conclusion that pools are more dangerous to children than guns.

00:11:13.000 None of this makes any sense.

00:11:14.000 Finally, he says, Note that a backyard pool isn't going to be used to mug a neighbor or to invade a nearby school.

00:11:18.000 Schools don't have drills for an active pool situation.

00:11:20.000 Okay, that's an emotional argument, not really a logical one.

00:11:23.000 He said, While some 200,000 guns are stolen each year, it's more difficult to steal a pool and use it for a violent purpose.

00:11:28.000 Okay, so now he's calling for a full-scale gun confiscation and then telling us why we shouldn't worry about that.

00:11:33.000 Okay, so again, Nicholas Kristof defeating his own arguments.

00:11:37.000 Well done there, Nicholas Kristof.

00:11:38.000 Just strong stuff from the New York Times columnist.

00:11:41.000 David French has an excellent column on all of this.

00:11:44.000 And he points out that all the straw man that Nicholas Kristof erects here do not even withstand Nicholas Kristof's attempt to undercut those arguments.

00:11:57.000 The arguments that he props up there are actually stronger than his counter arguments.

00:12:01.000 French says Kristof won't win his argument because he can't.

00:12:03.000 We've proven we can decrease crime while we protect

00:12:06.000 Thank you.

00:12:21.000 David French certainly is right about all of that.

00:12:23.000 Okay, so in just a second, I want to discuss the latest over at Facebook where disaster has broken out yet again, but this time over something that I don't really think is Facebook's fault.

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00:13:41.000 Okay, so meanwhile, Facebook has gotten itself into some hot water.

00:13:46.000 Why?

00:13:46.000 Because on Wednesday, they said that most of its users who had a specific search function enabled had had their profile scraped by third parties.

00:13:53.000 Zuckerberg sat on a call with reporters, quote, He says, I would assume, if you had that setting turned on, that someone at some point has access to your public information in some way.

00:14:09.000 The setting he's referring to is one where users let other users search for them by email address or phone number rather than just by name.

00:14:16.000 So, their Chief Technology Officer, Mike Shropfer, said most Facebook users could have had their public profile scraped.

00:14:21.000 He said, quote,

00:14:36.000 However, malicious actors have also abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery.

00:14:46.000 And given the scale and sophistication of the activity we've seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way.

00:14:53.000 So a lot of people are very upset about this because, oh, Cambridge Analytica was scraping public information and using it in order to cross-tabulate with political preference, and now other companies are doing this.

00:15:02.000 Guys.

00:15:03.000 The internet is not private.

00:15:04.000 If you put a profile on Facebook, other people can see it.

00:15:07.000 That is the purpose of it.

00:15:08.000 If you think marketing companies are not taking advantage of that, you don't know anything about social media.

00:15:12.000 So this one is not on Facebook.

00:15:14.000 What is on Facebook is that they have lost the trust of the American people because Facebook has not been transparent about what exactly their purpose is, about what it is that they do.

00:15:22.000 Are they a social media platform where you interact with friends and pick people you want to follow?

00:15:26.000 Or are they a publisher that decides what you see?

00:15:30.000 If they're going to act like this kind of panopticon company that is going to expose all of your information to various sites and then also going to dictate what it is that you see, then you feel a little more boxed in than if we say, listen, you have a profile, you put it up there, it is what it is.

00:15:45.000 If people take it and use it, that's their problem.

00:15:46.000 But at least you get to see what you see and interact how you want to interact.

00:15:50.000 Facebook has some real problems along all of these lines, specifically because they've not been clear about what it is that they do.

00:15:56.000 If they want to be clear about what they do, if they want to be transparent with the people who use Facebook, now is the time.

00:16:01.000 I understand that they don't want to give away proprietary trade secrets, but that's not what we're asking for.

00:16:05.000 All we're asking for is to know, how are you deciding what shows up in my feed?

00:16:10.000 How are you deciding what information is protected?

00:16:12.000 These are not difficult questions.

00:16:14.000 These are questions that should be easy to answer.

00:16:16.000 And if Facebook answers those questions, I think that consumers at that point can make an informed decision.

00:16:21.000 Okay, so now I want to talk a little bit...

00:16:23.000 about the latest on the Stormy Daniels scandal.

00:16:26.000 Ooh, Stormy Daniels.

00:16:27.000 So, the left is obsessed with the Stormy Daniels story because Stormy Daniels is a porn actress who has been in many a massive masterpiece, including The Witches of Brestwick, an actual film in which Stormy Daniels starred.

00:16:41.000 I'm not kidding.

00:16:42.000 And she also obviously had an affair with the President of the United States.

00:16:45.000 All the talk about Trump denying that, like, come on.

00:16:47.000 Come on.

00:16:48.000 Does anyone really believe President Trump on that?

00:16:50.000 Probably not, because it's just not particularly believable.

00:16:54.000 But, one of the things the media have done with Stormy Daniels is they have made her out to be a victim. 0.99

00:16:57.000 They've said that this porn star who had an affair with the President of the United States before he was President, knowing he was married, in an attempt to get him to put her on Celebrity Apprentice,

00:17:06.000 And then took $130,000 to shut up about it before the election.

00:17:10.000 Now she's some sort of great victim, and she's really a hero, Stormy Daniels.

00:17:13.000 You know, she's really coming out with information that the public needs to know.

00:17:16.000 Now, I'm not saying that Trump is innocent in all of this.

00:17:19.000 He's not.

00:17:20.000 He bribed a woman to shut up about an affair that he had while he was married. 0.98

00:17:22.000 That's disgusting. 0.99

00:17:23.000 Okay, plus, I mean, having sex with Stormy Daniels is not exactly virgin territory. 0.99

00:17:30.000 Okay, but in any case, you know, when President Trump 0.90

00:17:33.000 Is it illegal?

00:17:34.000 Maybe, maybe not, probably not.

00:17:35.000 Is it a campaign finance violation?

00:17:36.000 Probably not, which means that

00:17:50.000 I think it raises moral questions about the president, but those moral questions have been an offing for something like 40 years at this point.

00:17:56.000 I mean, there's nothing new under the sun here, and there's nothing new under Stormy Daniels' moon, apparently.

00:18:01.000 So, you know, this idea that the president has somehow violated the trust of his own base, like, everybody knew that this is what Trump was when they elected him.

00:18:09.000 Come on! 0.61

00:18:10.000 Melania was wife number three, okay?

00:18:11.000 This is not like, wow, this guy, he's a paragon of moral rectitude.

00:18:16.000 So why exactly is the media obsessed with this?

00:18:18.000 Because they think this is gonna take down Trump, and they've painted Stormy Daniels as some sort of victimized figure by President Trump. 0.84

00:18:23.000 Well, all of that sort of exploded on the Democrats yesterday, because Stormy Daniels, her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, was interviewed by Megyn Kelly.

00:18:32.000 Megyn Kelly is a fantastic interviewer.

00:18:34.000 She's a great prosecutor. 0.91

00:18:35.000 This is what she is best at.

00:18:37.000 Right?

00:18:37.000 The stuff that she's best at, I think she's okay at all of the kind of morning show host kind of stuff, but the stuff that Megan just dominates at, that she's terrific at, is when she asks hard questions to people.

00:18:48.000 She was great at this on Fox News, and she just grilled Michael Avenetti last night, and it was brutal.

00:18:54.000 Why would Stormy Daniels be leading the charge on whether that payment violated the election law? 1.00

00:19:00.000 Because, and I mean this is the honest to God truth, this is a principled woman at this point.

00:19:05.000 She wants the truth.

00:19:07.000 She wants the truth.

00:19:08.000 Now they're laughing at you.

00:19:10.000 She's so principled that 11 days before the election she had information about the possible next president having an extramarital affair with an adult film actress and she shut up about it in exchange for just over a hundred grand. 0.55

00:19:24.000 Yeah, and I think she's providing an explanation as to why that is.

00:19:26.000 Because she wanted the money.

00:19:29.000 She wants the truth to be known to the American people.

00:19:33.000 Then why'd she take the money?

00:19:34.000 Why didn't she just talk 11 days before the election? 0.97

00:19:37.000 You'd have to ask her that.

00:19:38.000 I don't have an explanation for that.

00:19:39.000 Come on.

00:19:40.000 She wanted the dough! 0.99

00:19:41.000 Okay, so this is where Megyn Kelly is fantastic. 1.00

00:19:44.000 If every show were like this with Megyn Kelly, her ratings would be phenomenal, because that's amazing television. 0.99

00:19:49.000 That is so good.

00:19:50.000 And she's exactly right, of course.

00:19:52.000 It's amazing how the media can't stand any of the psychological, cognitive dissonance that people experience every day.

00:19:58.000 In order for them to say that Trump did something bad here, they have to say that Stormy Daniels is some sort of heroine.

00:20:02.000 Stormy Daniels is kind of gross, okay? 1.00

00:20:05.000 This is a woman

00:20:05.000 Listen, if she didn't want the money, then why is it still in her bank account?

00:20:08.000 Like, she could just give the money back, right?

00:20:09.000 That could be a thing that would actually happen.

00:20:26.000 And that is not what happened, right?

00:20:28.000 I mean, so she did not actually give the money back, obviously.

00:20:31.000 And the impact of that is that she shut up for the duration of the election. 0.97

00:20:36.000 Pretty amazing stuff.

00:20:38.000 So good for Megyn Kelly for finally asking some questions.

00:20:40.000 It just shows the desperation of the left that they've tried to make some sort of martyr out of Stormy Daniels, who's anything but a martyr.

00:20:45.000 Anything but a martyr.

00:20:46.000 Amazing, amazing stuff.

00:20:48.000 Again,

00:20:49.000 I want more of this from Megyn Kelly.

00:20:50.000 I would watch this show every day.

00:20:51.000 Like this right here, I would watch that every day.

00:20:53.000 I would just replay that clip over and over because Megyn Kelly shellacking Michael Avenetti is something that is long overdue and demonstrates really the lack of objective media experience on the part of the media, right?

00:21:05.000 The media say they're objective, they're not.

00:21:06.000 If they're really objective, they all would have been asking Michael Avenetti these questions weeks ago.

00:21:10.000 But it took Megyn Kelly to ask it on a morning show on NBC News in order for them to be asked.

00:21:14.000 Okay.

00:21:15.000 All right, so now it is time for some mailbag, correct?

00:21:19.000 Is it mailbag time?

00:21:20.000 Yeah, let's do some mailbag. 0.69

00:21:21.000 All right, so we have some really good mailbaggery today.

00:21:24.000 So you all have sent us some great questions, and I want to take some time with them.

00:21:28.000 So we begin today's mailbag with an email from George.

00:21:31.000 George is a young guy who apparently lives in Sacramento, and he writes this.

00:21:40.000 I was wondering if there was any suggestion you could give me on how best to respond.

00:21:43.000 I'm an avid fan and subscriber.

00:21:45.000 OK, so here is what the video looked like.

00:21:48.000 Here's what the video sounded like.

00:21:50.000 And I will explain to you what exactly is happening in the video.

00:21:54.000 I'm looking at it as we do the show.

00:21:56.000 And now I'm going to explain to you what's in it so that you can actually hear what's going on.

00:21:59.000 So what it looks like is a young white guy is in a BMW.

00:22:02.000 He pulls up.

00:22:02.000 to a route that has been blocked off by protesters.

00:22:05.000 These protesters are protesting after the death of Stephon Clark, who's a black guy who was shot to death under what would be extraordinarily refuted circumstances in Sacramento.

00:22:14.000 The police were chasing, apparently, a black suspect through a neighborhood.

00:22:17.000 They ended up in this guy's backyard.

00:22:19.000 This guy was just out back on his cell phone, and they shot him to death for no reason.

00:22:23.000 It's an amazing, amazing story and really a travesty and demonstrates lack of police training and, you know, how bad things can get when you're in a crime-ridden neighborhood and the cops responsible are definitely going to spend some time in jail, I think.

00:22:37.000 And certainly for police malfeasance.

00:22:39.000 But in any case, these protesters have blocked off the intersection and the person who wrote me this letter, George, he steps out of his BMW to talk with the protesters because he's just standing there and they're blocking traffic.

00:22:51.000 And here's what it sounds like.

00:22:59.000 So he says, you can tell by the way he answered all the people yelling at him, he says, do you honestly expect this medium of protesting is going to serve your purpose well?

00:23:07.000 Do you truly believe that?

00:23:09.000 He said, I'm not going anywhere.

00:23:11.000 And then they're all yelling at him. 1.00

00:23:12.000 You're crazy. 0.99

00:23:13.000 We're not going anywhere. 1.00

00:23:14.000 This bleep crazy.

00:23:15.000 You can't go nowhere, man.

00:23:17.000 And then he says, I don't at all dispute or invalidate or devalue anything you're trying to do.

00:23:21.000 And then a guy yells at him, if your brother got killed, then you'd be saying different.

00:23:24.000 He says, my brother did get killed.

00:23:25.000 Okay.

00:23:26.000 And the other guy says, well, if you were, if you were shot by police for no reason, then it would be something different.

00:23:32.000 He says, you have every right to voice what you're doing, but what I'm getting at is you have sidewalks.

00:23:37.000 Right.

00:23:38.000 And they're yelling at him, and they're screaming at him, and they're saying that he's a terrible person.

00:23:42.000 He's saying, I can't speak, right?

00:23:43.000 You're not even letting me talk and make my argument.

00:23:45.000 And they all start talking about how he's a racist.

00:23:48.000 They're saying, you're shaking.

00:23:49.000 Come on, bro.

00:23:49.000 Just hop in your sweet car.

00:23:52.000 And people are telling the media not to pay attention to any of this.

00:23:54.000 So this went viral and Al Jazeera says, was this a meaningful conversation or was this guy just trying to exercise his white privilege to get home?

00:24:01.000 Okay, so let me start by asking a question.

00:24:04.000 Is it a white privilege to get home?

00:24:06.000 Is that a thing now?

00:24:08.000 Like why is it a white privilege to get home?

00:24:10.000 I wasn't aware that it was a racial thing if you want to get home.

00:24:13.000 Like seriously, I don't understand why that has anything to do with white privilege.

00:24:19.000 So the argument here is apparently that he is a racist for even objecting to the streets being stopped, presumably without a permit.

00:24:26.000 Because if there had been a permit, there would have been street signs directing people around the protest.

00:24:30.000 But instead, he gets stuck at this intersection and the idea is that everybody is supposed to just deal with it.

00:24:35.000 Okay, so, George, here's what I would say.

00:24:37.000 You did nothing wrong here.

00:24:38.000 I think that, you know, there's an attempt to do a race-based class war on the part of the left based on this video.

00:24:45.000 They're trying to say that because you're white and because you are driving a BMW, this means that your argument is no longer valid.

00:24:51.000 But your argument is valid.

00:24:52.000 If you were a Hispanic guy driving a Honda Civic, your argument would be just as valid. 1.00

00:24:56.000 You want to get home.

00:24:57.000 Why are people blocking the public thoroughfare?

00:25:00.000 And there's nothing wrong with you asking that question.

00:25:01.000 By the way, it is also true that what you are arguing, that you actually agree with the protesters, right, and that you want them to do something more effective for their cause, the data back you up.

00:25:10.000 Okay, the data show that there's polling data that shows this from the Atlantic, and what it shows is that if you block traffic, people are less likely to listen to your message. 0.98

00:25:19.000 People are more likely, in fact, to think that you're a jerk who's blocking traffic. 0.96

00:25:24.000 So what you were doing there was attempting to say to these folks, listen, I'm on your side. 0.99

00:25:27.000 And this isn't just about me getting home.

00:25:29.000 If you actually want to do something effective that raises sympathy levels, then go get a permit and then protest because no one's stopping you from protesting.

00:25:37.000 We just don't want you shutting down traffic in the middle of rush hour so you can't get home.

00:25:40.000 There's nothing unreasonable about that.

00:25:43.000 And by the way, it is worth noting that when people say, well, Martin Luther King, you know, he shut down highways.

00:25:49.000 Yes, there was a federal court order that was issued that allowed the Selma march to happen.

00:25:55.000 Okay, so the entire history of the Selma March is really, really interesting.

00:25:58.000 And there's an interesting column by a guy named Ronald Krastoszynski, that was written in 2015 for the LA Times, in which he talks about the legality of the Selma March.

00:26:06.000 So first of all, you have to, he's a professor at the University of Alabama Law School, is this professor.

00:26:11.000 And he served as a law clerk to Judge Frank Johnson in 1991, 1992.

00:26:15.000 So first you have to determine, is the purpose of the march to get arrested?

00:26:19.000 Sometimes the purpose of the march is to get arrested, because you want to show that you are being arrested for an unjust reason.

00:26:25.000 But it is also worthwhile noting that a lot of the time you can have a protest, and the goal of the protest is to gain public sympathy, and the worst way to do that is by shutting down traffic.

00:26:33.000 So here is what this law professor writes, quote, But we should also consider an important question.

00:26:50.000 Could a march like Selma happen today?

00:26:52.000 The 52-mile march down U.S.

00:26:54.000 Highway 80 on March 21st through 25th required more than determination.

00:26:58.000 It required a court order.

00:27:00.000 After Alabama state troopers and local sheriff's deputies attacked the 600 people crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, March 7th, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference went to federal court on Monday.

00:27:10.000 They asked for an immediate injunction ordering Alabama state officials to permit the march to proceed.

00:27:14.000 They didn't get it, but U.S.

00:27:15.000 District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr.

00:27:18.000 scheduled a hearing for later that week.

00:27:20.000 In the meantime, he ordered the SCLC not to march from Selma to Montgomery.

00:27:25.000 King was under tremendous pressure to proceed, even if doing so might land him in contempt of court.

00:27:29.000 In the end, what did King do?

00:27:30.000 He respected the court's order.

00:27:32.000 And so on Tuesday, marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but then returned to Selma.

00:27:36.000 After a four-day hearing, Johnson held the march could proceed.

00:27:39.000 And then they were protected by federal troops all the way.

00:27:42.000 Okay, so King abided by the law because he understood.

00:27:46.000 He understood that he didn't want the scene of people being beaten, presumably for breaking law.

00:27:51.000 Instead, what he wanted was if people were going to be attacked, he wanted them to be attacked while abiding by the law.

00:27:57.000 The whole goal of King's March here was to demonstrate that people could abide by the law and still be treated unequally.

00:28:03.000 That was the whole point.

00:28:04.000 So the question here is, number one, what are these people protesting?

00:28:06.000 Are they protesting police brutality?

00:28:08.000 Are they protesting for new police procedures?

00:28:11.000 That's one thing.

00:28:11.000 If they are protesting, however, the idea that the police are generally racist, or that America is generally racist, and then they're going to shut down traffic to do it,

00:28:18.000 I do not understand the logic of that.

00:28:20.000 So, George, your question was, how should you best respond?

00:28:24.000 I think that you should write all of this.

00:28:25.000 I think that you should write a letter, an open letter, saying, here is why I was talking to the protesters.

00:28:30.000 I was trying to help them.

00:28:31.000 It wasn't just about me getting home.

00:28:32.000 I was trying to recommend that they pick a better way of doing this.

00:28:35.000 So that their message is better heard and more concerted, and then I can join them, because I'd like to stand out there and march with them, but I can't march with them when I'm stuck in my car.

00:28:43.000 I can't just leave my car there, right?

00:28:45.000 So what I would like is a scheduled march at a legal time and place that I can join, because that will also be the most effective, with a message that I can join into.

00:28:53.000 Not saying the police are systematically racist and systemically racist without evidence, but saying that the police need new procedures, that we need to figure out how best to educate cops, that these sorts of mistakes don't happen in the U.S.

00:29:03.000 military.

00:29:03.000 When they do, they very often end with a court-martial.

00:29:06.000 So, again, the real travesty in that video is nothing that was done or said by you, George.

00:29:11.000 The real travesty is the people who are standing there shouting at you that you're a racist because you're asking a serious question, and the people who are on Al Jazeera claiming that it's white privilege for you to even ask the question. 0.85

00:29:21.000 As though a white person couldn't march with black people.

00:29:23.000 There were white people who were marching with MLK in Selma.

00:29:26.000 And I'm sure that there are white people who will march on behalf of Stephon Clark as they should because that shooting is egregious.

00:29:31.000 Okay.

00:29:32.000 Other questions from the mailbag.

00:29:33.000 Sarah says, Hi Ben.

00:29:34.000 Has there ever been a time in history the Democrats were actually a good party?

00:29:38.000 I can't say that Republicans are great right now, but we do carry the moniker Party of Lincoln as well as a few others.

00:29:42.000 Does the Democratic Party have a highlight like that that we as conservatives can look back at and say, Oh, why don't they go back to being like that?

00:29:48.000 Also, are there any books that give a balanced history about the history of both parties you might recommend?

00:29:52.000 Thanks for being awesome.

00:29:53.000 Well, Sarah, I appreciate it, and you're welcome for being awesome.

00:29:55.000 But here's the answer about the parties.

00:29:58.000 It's very difficult for me to say that the parties overall are great or bad.

00:30:02.000 There are certain policies that parties have embraced in the past that are very good.

00:30:05.000 So the Democratic Party, for example, did embrace the civil rights movement.

00:30:09.000 They did it a little bit late, but they did it.

00:30:11.000 The Democratic Party

00:30:13.000 Democrats have done great things in the past, and to ignore that would be to ignore history.

00:30:31.000 But to say the Democratic Party was ever great as a whole, I have a problem with that.

00:30:34.000 Just like I don't think the Republican Party was ever that great as a whole.

00:30:37.000 I think there have been things in the Republican Party that have been great.

00:30:39.000 I would say that Radical Reconstruction Republicans were great.

00:30:43.000 I would say that Lincoln was great.

00:30:44.000 I would say Reagan was great. 1.00

00:30:45.000 But there have been times that the Republican Party has backed some really pretty stupid policy. 0.99

00:30:50.000 You know, there was a time when the typical country club Republican was considered a guy who wouldn't open his golf club to Jews. 0.98

00:30:57.000 So what I would suggest is instead of following party banners and saying, you know, that the Democrats were always great or the Republicans were always great, you can say, here are good people.

00:31:05.000 Now, which party best represents those causes and people now?

00:31:08.000 That's the more important thing.

00:31:09.000 I don't think the labels matter nearly as much as people seem to think that they do.

00:31:13.000 Okay, well I have more of these questions that I want to answer, but first you're going to have to go over to DailyWire.com.

00:31:17.000 For $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to DailyWire.com.

00:31:20.000 When you do, you get the rest of my show live, you get the rest of Clavin's show live, you get the rest of the Michael Mullins show live, plus there's an episode of The Conversation coming up on Tuesday.

00:31:29.000 Andrew Clavin will be answering all of your questions live, as in you go on DailyWire,

00:31:34.000 And if you're a subscriber, you type questions into the chat box and we'll answer your questions.

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00:32:02.000 Alrighty, so more questions from the mailbag.

00:32:04.000 Here we go.

00:32:04.000 Okay, Scott, so here is why.

00:32:05.000 So, Jews lean left because most Jews are not observant.

00:32:07.000 Most Jews do not pay attention to Jewish law.

00:32:09.000 They do not pay attention to the Torah.

00:32:10.000 They do not really pay attention to Israel.

00:32:12.000 Jews are, by 0.91

00:32:25.000 polling numbers, the most atheistic religious group in America.

00:32:27.000 So when you poll Jews, you're polling a bunch of people who say they are ethnically Jewish but have never attended synagogue or do so once a year on Yom Kippur and then they break for lunch, right?

00:32:36.000 Even though Yom Kippur is a fast day.

00:32:37.000 So you can't take that seriously as a representative of Judaism. 0.98

00:32:42.000 So, when you say, why do Jews vote left?

00:32:44.000 For the same reason that most ethnically white people living in major blue states, in major blue cities, lean to the left.

00:32:52.000 With high levels of education and an upper class income.

00:32:56.000 That's the description of the normal, non-religious Jew. 1.00

00:32:59.000 That's reason number one.

00:33:01.000 Reason number two is that there are a lot of Jews who think that the best way... So, the reason that Jews have been active in leftist movements like socialism historically is because socialism promised that it was going to get over anti-Semitism.

00:33:12.000 Jews who were living in Tsarist Russia were victimized by anti-Semitism on a regular basis.

00:33:16.000 Now, as it turns out, socialism in the Soviet Union didn't cure that, right?

00:33:19.000 Anti-Semitism continued to be a thing.

00:33:21.000 Jews were still dramatically victimized

00:33:23.000 Under the USSR, but there were a lot of Jews involved in the socialist movement because they thought that if we could see each other as a brotherhood of man and get beyond religion, then maybe Jews would finally be treated with enlightenment equality.

00:33:33.000 That, of course, did not happen.

00:33:35.000 Plus, there are a lot of Jews who react to Christians with a certain level of antipathy, which I think is not justified by Christian behavior, at least in the modern era.

00:33:45.000 I think that there are a lot of Jews who go back

00:33:47.000 You know, a hundred years, and they say that a lot of anti-Semitism was driven by Christians, and so why would we ally with Christians now?

00:33:53.000 Whichever party is more pro-Christian is the one I'm not going to be a part of.

00:33:56.000 Again, this describes why secular Jews are anti-Republican and anti-right. 0.99

00:34:01.000 It does not describe why religious Jews are, because religious Jews aren't. 0.77

00:34:03.000 The dirty little secret is that Orthodox religious Jews vote about 70-30 Republican.

00:34:06.000 Okay, Timothy says, Hi Ben, I'm a senior in high school and I wondered what protections or rights you think animals should have.

00:34:12.000 What is your view on animal conservation?

00:34:13.000 Do you think it serves any purpose?

00:34:15.000 So, I'm in favor of animal conservation.

00:34:16.000 I think we should be saving as many of the endangered species as we can because we are given the earth to guard and cultivate.

00:34:23.000 Even biblically speaking.

00:34:25.000 As far as what rights animals should have, they have the right against excessive cruelty.

00:34:28.000 I don't think anyone should be cruel to animals.

00:34:31.000 As far as meat eating, it seems to me that, from what I've heard from my wife anyway, she says, and she is a doctor as you may know, she says that the human body does require a lot of the nutrients in meat.

00:34:44.000 So that is a reason for meat eating out of necessity.

00:34:47.000 The idea that animals should be cruelly treated, I think, is forbidden by virtually every major Western religion.

00:34:52.000 Daniel says,

00:35:06.000 Well, it wasn't like I thought that everything with kids was going to be wonderful rainbows and sunshine and unicorns.

00:35:12.000 As they say, when you have kids, the spectrum of happiness wildly expands, which means that you go from a possible 10 out of 10 to a 1,000 out of 10, but it also goes to a negative 1,000, right?

00:35:22.000 So that means that the worst suffering you will do is when your child suffers or when your child misbehaves or does something bad, and the best your life will be is when your child does something good.

00:35:30.000 But you should have kids because having kids makes you a better person and because I think you have an obligation to contribute as a solid thinker to the betterment of humanity through the next generation, creating a next generation of people who will help preserve values that matter.

00:35:44.000 So I think it's more a matter of obligation than enjoyment.

00:35:45.000 In other words, having children.

00:35:47.000 I think it's met expectations in terms of happiness.

00:35:50.000 I think it's exceeded expectations in terms of amount of work because it's an enormous amount of work to have children.

00:35:56.000 And it changes your life dramatically.

00:35:57.000 You will never sleep again, nor will you ever have a night off again.

00:36:01.000 At least until your kids hit 21.

00:36:02.000 And even then, you'll stay up nights wondering what your kids are doing with their life.

00:36:06.000 It's a lot of work.

00:36:08.000 I joke that it's sort of like a cult having kids.

00:36:10.000 Once you have kids, you have to convince other people to join the cult, but you can't tell people about the downsides, because then they won't want to join.

00:36:16.000 And then once they're in, they now feel a moral obligation to spread the good word.

00:36:21.000 But it is an amazing experience.

00:36:22.000 It will make you a better human being.

00:36:24.000 Okay, more questions from the mailbag.

00:36:25.000 Spencer says,

00:36:27.000 No, I definitely share that view.

00:36:28.000 I know Zell Miller, the senator from Georgia who recently passed away, he was a big advocate of changing the 17th Amendment so that it was elected by state legislators.

00:36:32.000 The reason for that is because when you directly elect senators,

00:36:54.000 Then they become your federal representatives, as opposed to being people who are standing there in favor of the state's interests.

00:37:00.000 They no longer represent the state, because the state's interests are best represented by the interests of the legislature.

00:37:05.000 Instead, they're representing the public at large, and it's easier to fool the public at large than it is to fool state legislators, who actually have a stake in maintaining a certain amount of state power.

00:37:14.000 People don't follow politics closely enough to elect senators who are going to stand up

00:37:20.000 For the for the values of the state.

00:37:23.000 But they do have the values to elect those people to state legislature and then the state legislature wants to guard its own its own power.

00:37:30.000 And so they tell the senators what to do and what not to do.

00:37:33.000 So we do not spank.

00:37:33.000 I'm not a big fan of corporal punishment.

00:37:35.000 And when I was growing up,

00:37:53.000 It wasn't that my parents had an ideological boundary against spanking.

00:37:57.000 I think I was spanked maybe once, my sister was spanked maybe twice in like her entire childhood, and a couple of my sisters weren't spanked at all. 1.00

00:38:04.000 The only time I think that it is appropriate to spank, honestly speaking, the only time I think it is appropriate to spank is when your kid is doing something dangerous.

00:38:11.000 So if you have a three-year-old who's continuing to run into the street, and you say, don't run into the street, and the three-year-old runs into the street, and you say, don't run into the street, because you will get hit by a car, and the three-year-old runs into the street,

00:38:21.000 I think it is appropriate, as a physical deterrent, to say, if you run into the street, you will get a potch.

00:38:26.000 And then, open palm, butt, I think is the proper way to do it.

00:38:29.000 And I know there are others who disagree, but I think this is the proper way to do it.

00:38:32.000 But, the only time to do it, really, is literally the same way you would with an animal, to train an animal not to run into the street, right?

00:38:38.000 And that's all it's for.

00:38:39.000 For moral suasion, I'm not a huge fan of spanking, because I think that kids then don't know the reason why they're doing what they are doing.

00:38:45.000 And kids should learn to obey you without you having to threaten them with physical punishment.

00:38:49.000 There are other forms of punishment that you can use.

00:38:51.000 Like, we're constantly saying, like, my daughter knows that if she disobeys, I say, sweetheart, if you do this, then you are violating the rules.

00:38:58.000 And the rules say you have to get a punishment.

00:39:00.000 I don't even have to tell her what the punishment is, and she immediately starts crying.

00:39:03.000 Like, she knows that she doesn't want the punishment.

00:39:05.000 Usually the punishment is something pretty anodyne.

00:39:07.000 Usually it's something like, you can't watch TV tomorrow, or you're not going to have any sweets this weekend, something like that.

00:39:12.000 And then you have to stick with it, right?

00:39:13.000 If you actually punish the kid, there has to be an actual punishment that attaches.

00:39:16.000 You can't keep playing chicken with the kid, because then the kid knows that if they cry a little bit, they get what they want anyway after being bad.

00:39:22.000 Wyatt says, Hi Ben, I'm a West Texas high school junior attending Central High School.

00:39:26.000 Currently, I'm taking all advanced level courses, along with one period devoted to helping a teacher grade papers, take roll, etc.

00:39:31.000 Throughout my years in high school, I've noticed the majority of students in my advanced classes are more inclined to agree with the left on politics and other issues.

00:39:37.000 I've also noticed that those in the regular classes tend to agree with the politics of the right.

00:39:41.000 I want to ask why this is.

00:39:42.000 In my mind, I feel there's a distribution should be the opposite, as statistically speaking, the members of the right are generally more educated and wealthy.

00:39:48.000 Thank you for reading this.

00:39:49.000 I hope your answer will help.

00:39:50.000 I think the reason why, frankly, is because one of the ways that you do well in school is by listening to teachers.

00:39:55.000 One of the ways you do well in school is by mirroring what teachers have to teach you, not by mirroring what your parents think.

00:40:01.000 And so many of our schools are dominated by teachers who are to the left that this is a problem.

00:40:06.000 I think also that people who tend to consider themselves highly educated, there's a high correlation between higher levels of education, PhDs, college graduates, and being of the left than among people who are just partial college graduates, for example.

00:40:21.000 It doesn't always line up with the earning power, but the studies that I've seen tend to show that higher levels of education tend to make you more of the left because you tend to feel that you can control society, that if only you, the greatest and wisest of all beings, were to control society, society would be better.

00:40:35.000 Example, when I went to Harvard Law School, which is, of course, the left's favorite institution, when I went there, the first day, Elena Kagan, who is now on the Supreme Court, was the dean, and she brought us into a room.

00:40:46.000 It was a mahogany, beautiful room, 500 students all sitting there.

00:40:49.000 It's our orientation.

00:40:50.000 We're all really excited to be there.

00:40:52.000 And she says this, she says, listen, you've heard a lot about how Harvard Law is really tough.

00:40:55.000 You've heard a lot about how the competition here is really brutal.

00:40:58.000 Well, I'm here to tell you, you've already won the competition, right?

00:41:00.000 You're in.

00:41:00.000 That means you're getting a job.

00:41:01.000 You're not gonna have to worry about anything.

00:41:02.000 And more than that, we have, I think at the time it was four out of nine Supreme Court justices or three out of nine.

00:41:07.000 We have 30 senators who've gone to Harvard Law.

00:41:10.000 You, one day, the people in this room will be the rulers of the universe.

00:41:14.000 You will be ruling the world.

00:41:15.000 And so what you learn here is what you're going to rule with, basically.

00:41:19.000 That's a pretty dangerous message.

00:41:21.000 But that is also the message that is being pushed to people who go to institutions of higher education, and they believe it.

00:41:27.000 Because when you're smart, you believe that you should be able to control people who are less smart.

00:41:30.000 And one of the things that's great about the Founders is that they realize that there will always be someone smarter, and those people will always try to control you.

00:41:36.000 So we need to set up an institution of checks and balances to prevent that sort of control from ever taking place.

00:41:41.000 Jake says,

00:41:44.000 So, the answer is that in Orthodox Jewish canon, the cycle of prophecy essentially stopped with, I believe, around the time of Ezra.

00:41:49.000 Ezra, the scribe.

00:41:50.000 The idea is that God sort of withdrew his presence.

00:41:52.000 He sort of hid his presence more in the universe.

00:42:14.000 Maimonides has a very interesting take on this in Guides to the Perplexed.

00:42:19.000 He says that essentially we lost access to prophecy because we stopped being able to access our reason in the same way, that we don't have as many cultivated people now, and if we were to cultivate ourselves, then maybe prophecy would be opened up to us again, but nobody would ever be a prophet like Moses.

00:42:33.000 But that's a controversial perspective.

00:42:35.000 The year of prophecy ended, and according to traditional Jewish perspective, it ended because the Jews essentially rebelled against God so many times that God withdrew his presence a little bit to let the Jews have the brunt of it, sort of.

00:42:45.000 That's a very blunt, that's a very basic way of understanding it.

00:42:49.000 John said,

00:42:50.000 Hi, Ben.

00:42:50.000 I'm a daily listener and a huge fan of the show.

00:42:52.000 My question comes from last week's mailbag when you said you were in favor of mandatory vaccination.

00:42:56.000 I agree they should be mandatory due to positive externalities, but who would fit the bill as it is now a mandatory purchase?

00:43:01.000 Would it be the consumer, a like-mandated auto insurance, or would it be covered by our taxes, or would it be something in the middle where low-income persons are covered?

00:43:08.000 Keep up the great work, thanks.

00:43:09.000 Well, I think that it would probably be if people can't afford it, then we help out with some sort of redistributionist program because it is mandatory, but

00:43:18.000 If you can afford it, then you should be paying for it because, again, it serves your child as well as it serves other children.

00:43:23.000 Like, you get in what you get out.

00:43:24.000 I have a takings perspective.

00:43:25.000 The Richard Epstein book, Takings, is really good about this.

00:43:28.000 Basically, what he says is the government can tax you to the extent it provides you services in return, and this would be one of those things, right?

00:43:33.000 It mandates that you spend money on a mandatory vaccine, and it's like car insurance.

00:43:37.000 You got to do it because it has externalities.

00:43:38.000 I think she's toast.

00:43:39.000 I think she just won't leave, which is not quite the same thing.

00:43:48.000 Michael says, Ben, of these three composers, how would you rank them?

00:43:50.000 Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, John Williams?

00:43:55.000 John Williams, Zimmer, Howard Shore.

00:43:57.000 The only reason that Howard Shore isn't ranked higher is because his only great score really is Lord of the Rings.

00:44:02.000 He has a bunch of kind of okay scores.

00:44:04.000 Hans Zimmer has a bunch of very good scores.

00:44:05.000 I think he has a couple that verge on the great.

00:44:07.000 John Williams, of course, has a bunch of great scores.

00:44:09.000 It is true, Michael.

00:44:24.000 As well, as far as the Federalists, the thing you should read, really, is the Anti-Federalist Papers, which are a great critique, contemporaneously, of the Federalist Papers.

00:44:32.000 Also, there's a great book on the history of political philosophy edited by Leo Strauss, and it has an entire little essay on the Federalists.

00:44:42.000 So check that out, it's really interesting.

00:44:44.000 Okay, Ashley says,

00:44:46.000 Hi, Ben.

00:44:46.000 Can you recommend any reading about the fabled platform swap that took place between the Democrat and Republican parties?

00:44:51.000 It's hard to find a good source out there that isn't completely biased.

00:44:53.000 I believe Dinesh D'Souza has written about it.

00:44:55.000 I've written about it as well.

00:44:56.000 And also, stay tuned because I will have a book coming out in the near future through Daily Wire that will be a refutation of all the leftist myths that are out there.

00:45:05.000 Like 101 Leftist Myths Debunked, this is one of them.

00:45:07.000 So we can check that out.

00:45:09.000 Okay, so, uh, should we get to things I like and things I hate?

00:45:12.000 Okay, let's do some things I like and some things that I hate.

00:45:14.000 So, things I like.

00:45:15.000 I've done a lot of Passover stuff this week.

00:45:17.000 Uh, and so, I've decided that it is time to do an Easter thing.

00:45:20.000 So, the greatest Easter movie, maybe the only really great Easter movie of all time, because Passion of the Christ really isn't about Easter, it's about Good Friday.

00:45:26.000 But the greatest Easter movie of all time, of course, is Ben-Hur.

00:45:29.000 Uh, that doesn't mean it's the greatest... Maybe I should rephrase.

00:45:32.000 The greatest movie that has Easter in it.

00:45:34.000 Is Ben-Hur.

00:45:35.000 Okay, maybe there are better Easter movies that are, like, about King of Kings or something and that actually tackle just Jesus' story.

00:45:40.000 But this movie ends, of course, with the Easter crucifixion of Jesus.

00:45:45.000 It ends with the crucifixion of Jesus and his blood washes away the leprosy of Ben-Hur's family members. 0.93

00:45:51.000 The movie itself is just a masterpiece.

00:45:53.000 The original.

00:45:54.000 Don't watch the remake, obviously.

00:45:55.000 The original with Charlton Heston is an amazing film.

00:45:58.000 William Wyler was the director.

00:46:00.000 And this, of course, I'm about to show you is one of the great scenes in movie history in which Ben-Hur is in a chariot race with Masala, who is his kind of lifelong former brother figure, but now enemy.

00:46:12.000 And Masala is trying to trying to kill him.

00:46:15.000 He's got blades on the spokes of his wheels. 0.70

00:46:17.000 So here's what this looked like.

00:46:46.000 Okay, so... I mean, it's an amazingly shot scene.

00:46:49.000 Look how this scene is shot, right?

00:46:50.000 This is all, like... This is not happening against background, right?

00:46:52.000 I mean, this is done with... It's just an ama... It's an amazing film.

00:46:56.000 It's an amazing film.

00:46:58.000 And it is, of course, the glass... The great classic epic.

00:47:02.000 It's so good.

00:47:04.000 And this particular scene...

00:47:06.000 It cost a fortune to shoot.

00:47:09.000 There was a rumor that Alex was bringing up to me that someone was killed during the making of the scene.

00:47:13.000 It's not actually true, so it's worth debunking.

00:47:15.000 But the movie itself is really worth watching, so check that out.

00:47:18.000 This is what Hollywood does best, right?

00:47:20.000 This is the epic stuff that Hollywood does best.

00:47:22.000 Just amazing.

00:47:23.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:47:29.000 So it is amazing whom the left will continue to trot out.

00:47:32.000 So they trot out Hillary Clinton's talk about gun control, even though no one likes Hillary Clinton.

00:47:36.000 And now they're trotting out Dan Rather to talk about how to avoid fake news, which is an amazing thing, right?

00:47:41.000 Dan Rather was ousted from his job in 2004 because he insisted that a letter that was put out, it was false, it was manufactured.

00:47:49.000 Number one, understand that trusting a news outlet does not mean they're perfect.

00:47:53.000 No one's perfect.

00:47:53.000 It means they tell you when they screw up.

00:47:55.000 Number two,

00:48:19.000 Don't rely on just one news outlet.

00:48:23.000 Number three, don't rely on just the news to understand an issue.

00:48:28.000 Read books.

00:48:29.000 Find the experts.

00:48:30.000 Okay, so here's the thing.

00:48:31.000 I actually agree with all the advice that Dan Rather gives here.

00:48:33.000 We can stop there, but I agree with a lot of the advice Dan Rather gives.

00:48:37.000 The question is why you can't find a better spokesperson for this than Dan Rather.

00:48:40.000 Like, I've said a lot of the same things, and again, I think what Dan Rather is saying here is fine.

00:48:44.000 But the left attaches to its people and will not let those people go, no matter how bad they are.

00:48:49.000 This is why you should go see Chappaquiddick this weekend.

00:48:50.000 Like really, if you want to see how bad it can get before the left will still not let you go, go view Chappaquiddick and see what Teddy Kennedy did and still survived politically.

00:48:58.000 I mean, the guy was elected a thousand times in Massachusetts and was considered the lion of the Senate after leaving a woman to die at the bottom of a river.

00:49:05.000 It's still an amazing, amazing thing.

00:49:07.000 Okay, final thing that I hate.

00:49:09.000 So Larry Kudlow is the new National Economic Council chair for President Trump.

00:49:14.000 And in that role, he is essentially backing Trump's plan, a lot of this stuff.

00:49:19.000 I think that what he's trying to do is convince Trump that Trump's actual economic policies can be turned toward a more free market way.

00:49:26.000 That's the sort of nice version of what Larry Kudlow is doing.

00:49:30.000 But Larry Kudlow came out and he backed Trump's war on Amazon.

00:49:33.000 I just think this is not correct.

00:49:36.000 I think the president's intent here is to develop a level playing field between online retailers and land-based retailers with respect to taxes and other issues.

00:49:48.000 I think that's his intent.

00:49:49.000 Create a level playing field.

00:49:50.000 There's always been confusion.

00:49:53.000 Positive steps have been made in some cases.

00:49:57.000 The Supreme Court's going to make a ruling very soon on this that will, again, move towards the level playing field.

00:50:03.000 There was a time

00:50:04.000 When we wanted the United States, as a matter of policy, wanted to protect, you know, nascent internet businesses by keeping down the tax burden, but that time is long gone.

00:50:16.000 So, I just think the level playing field is the best way to look at it.

00:50:19.000 But should the President be the one who's out front on this, tweeting like he has?

00:50:23.000 I mean, the President of the United States.

00:50:25.000 The President of the United States, the President of the United States, Stu.

00:50:28.000 If he wants to tweet, he's going to tweet.

00:50:30.000 That's the way it works. 0.99

00:50:31.000 Okay, again, this is really dumb. 0.95

00:50:32.000 Because what Kudlow is saying here, where he's saying that Trump just wants a level playing field. 0.93

00:50:36.000 Okay, if you really want a level playing field, call for an end to state sales taxes.

00:50:39.000 But Amazon is paying the state sales taxes in all of these places, right?

00:50:42.000 If they are mandated to pay state sales tax in 45 out of 51 jurisdictions in the United States, including Washington, D.C., they're paying the mandated sales tax in those states.

00:50:52.000 What Trump is really doing here is he's mad because he thinks that Amazon is killing brick-and-mortar retail shops because they're undercutting them.

00:50:57.000 You know why?

00:50:58.000 Because Amazon is a better company.

00:51:00.000 Sorry to break it to folks, but it's more expensive to run brick-and-mortar than it is to actually just send you stuff through the mail.

00:51:06.000 I've known this for years.

00:51:06.000 I'm one of the hypocrites who goes to the bookstore that I love, views the books online, finds the one that I want, I'll go to the bookstore, I'll look at it, and then I will take out my phone and I will see how much it costs on Amazon.

00:51:16.000 If it's like a $3 difference, I'll just buy it at the bookstore.

00:51:18.000 But if it's a $10 difference, I'll buy it on Amazon.

00:51:21.000 I'm not going to spend an extra $100 just to go to a brick-and-mortar shop.

00:51:25.000 I'm not sure why I should have to.

00:51:27.000 And I don't see why it's the President of the United States' responsibility to make me as a consumer pay more just because he has a fondness for brick-and-mortar when consumers clearly don't.

00:51:34.000 I'm not going to subsidize brick-and-mortar as a consumer.

00:51:37.000 Why should I subsidize it as a taxpayer?

00:51:39.000 Okay.

00:51:39.000 Well, we will be back here on Monday with much, much more.

00:51:41.000 Have a wonderful weekend.

00:51:42.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:51:43.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:51:48.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:51:50.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:51:52.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:51:53.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:51:55.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:57.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

00:51:58.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:52:00.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:52:03.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 06, 2018

The Radical Left Rises | Ep. 512

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