The Ben Shapiro Show - The Truth About America: Where Do We Go From Here?

00:00:00.000 The truth about America has been obscured and deleted by the far American left. But in this week's Sunday special, we will be bringing it to you.

00:00:20.000 Our show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:26.000 Slash Ben.

00:00:27.000 As you all know, I have a new book out.

00:00:28.000 It's called How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.

00:00:30.000 And this week's podcast, we're going to go down memory lane with some folks who talk about what about America is worth preserving, because that really is the battle right now.

00:00:38.000 It's not between right and left so much as it is between people who wish for the country to continue and people who wish for the country to be destroyed.

00:00:44.000 Well, if you wish for the country to continue, you have to find some points of commonality.

00:00:48.000 In my viewpoint, that means a common philosophy, culture, and history, a belief that the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence were indeed self-evident and correct, that you have natural rights that pre-exist government, that limited government was designed in order to protect those rights, and that if the government were to invade those rights, it would lose its reason for being.

00:01:05.000 We have to share a culture, a culture where we tolerate each other's exercise of rights, even if we don't necessarily like how those rights are being exercised.

00:01:11.000 We have to cultivate a culture of adventure and entrepreneurship where the only thing guaranteed is adventure and you are basically expected to pick up the slack.

00:01:20.000 You're expected to make the right decisions.

00:01:22.000 We have to cultivate a culture where social institutions are valued and where we value our neighbors.

00:01:26.000 Without that culture, all of this falls in on itself.

00:01:28.000 And finally, we have to share a common history, a belief that the history of the United States is the perfection of a principle.

00:01:34.000 It is not, in fact, a headlong rush away from founding principle.

00:01:37.000 We have to believe that American history is the story of living up to the principles set out in the Declaration of Independence, not the story of various groups clubbing each other over the head for purposes of power relations.

00:01:47.000 If we believe that, the country is going to fall apart.

00:01:49.000 But one thing is obvious.

00:01:51.000 There is a vast group in the United States that is seeking to dissolve all the bonds that tie us together.

00:01:56.000 There are normal conversations that happen between people on the right and the left about just how far founding principles extend, about just how much further we have to go.

00:02:04.000 But then there are folks who just want to bathe the entire thing in acid.

00:02:07.000 And this is what you see from the Robin DiAngelo crowd.

00:02:09.000 This is what you see from Ibram Kendi. 0.90

00:02:11.000 The basic idea being that the American system itself is deeply disgusting.

00:02:15.000 The American system itself is rooted in brutality and evil and racism and bigotry.

00:02:19.000 And the only way to fight against that is to tear down the system Well, if we don't know what we're standing for, it's going to be very difficult to stand against the winds that are about to blow.

00:02:28.000 Increasingly in the United States, we don't know what we stand for.

00:02:31.000 Increasingly in the United States, our cultural institutions have fallen down on the job or been taken over by the disintegrationists who wish to see all of these common ties fall apart.

00:02:41.000 I think on this week's episode, you'll see the reasons why we have to hold together.

00:02:44.000 You're going to see a lot of people disagree about a variety of topics, but they are all operating inside the rubric that suggests that the American flag stands for freedom, that the Declaration of Independence was, in its essence, correct, and that the future of America lies in recognizing what we share rather than what divides us.

00:02:59.000 We're bringing you the best moments from the last two years of shows with unique perspectives surrounding a topic and some of my own reflections on the collection.

00:03:06.000 This week, we focus on several guests discussing the things that unify and the things that break down America, highlighting the aspects of America we must hold on to in order to take back the country and fend it off from utter destruction.

00:03:18.000 The topics in this video are also covered extensively in my brand new bestselling book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.

00:03:24.000 It's crushing sales records.

00:03:25.000 It's coming in at the top of every bestseller chart. 0.99

00:03:27.000 If you want an antidote to divisive stupidity like white fragility and how to be an anti-racist, head on over to Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com and pick up your copy today. 0.97

00:03:35.000 Now, before we continue, we're going to look at a couple of awesome responses we received from past guests. 0.98

00:03:40.000 First, from William Lane Craig, who is featured in our Judeo-Christian Values collection.

00:03:44.000 Asked about the chaos we're seeing around America the past few months, Dr. Craig says, quote, As we go through these tumultuous times, it's important for each of us personally to keep in mind the ethics of Jesus, including respect for all persons, love of one's enemies, turning the other cheek at personal insult, submission to governmental authorities, and above all, love for God.

00:04:03.000 Dr. Craig, thanks so much for sending the letter.

00:04:05.000 It's always great to hear from you.

00:04:07.000 We also released a collection of favorite moments from The Intellectual Dark Web.

00:04:10.000 In response to her segment, Christina Hoff Summers sent this letter to us, quote, Hey Ben, enjoyed your retrospective on The Intellectual Dark Web.

00:04:18.000 I was just thinking back to November 2016, when I replaced you as a YAF speaker at DePaul University.

00:04:23.000 You'd been banished from that campus by some frightened, clueless, pusillanimous administrators.

00:04:27.000 We hatched a plan to subvert the ban.

00:04:29.000 You were going to sit in the audience and I would invite you on stage.

00:04:31.000 Unfortunately, campus security nabbed you and forbade you to set foot on campus.

00:04:36.000 So am I to understand that if I take three steps forward, you'll attempt to have me arrested?

00:04:39.000 If you create a problem and you will not, you know, leave the campus, yes.

00:04:43.000 Okay, so... Undeterred, you called my cell phone from off-campus and invited me and the 200-plus audience to join you in a nearby bar.

00:04:49.000 It had sort of a theater dungeon in the basement.

00:04:51.000 If you want to hear me speak and you want to hear Christina finish her lecture, just head over to the Green Room Theater, about .7 miles away.

00:04:57.000 You can follow us there.

00:04:58.000 It'll be great.

00:05:00.000 Okay, did you hear that?

00:05:01.000 We're going to- We happily marched off the little island of repression known as DePaul U into the sea of freedom called America.

00:05:06.000 But now I'm worried about that sea of freedom.

00:05:08.000 The sad fact is, we may look back at our DePaul events as the good old days.

00:05:12.000 At least we had the dungeon.

00:05:13.000 There seems to be a new level of woke fanaticism and safe space neo-Marxism permeating the culture.

00:05:19.000 As Andrew Sullivan says, we all live on campus now.

00:05:22.000 Suddenly, identity politics and its dreary, mind-numbing, thought-annihilating lexicon—white supremacy, toxic masculinity, interlocking oppressions—is everywhere.

00:05:31.000 Large swaths of elite journalism—Hollywood, Silicon Valley, even corporate America—are not simply going the way of the campus.

00:05:36.000 They are going full evergreen state.

00:05:38.000 So, am I pessimistic?

00:05:40.000 Not entirely.

00:05:41.000 At least no sane person can any longer deny the existence of cancel culture.

00:05:45.000 As Air Force vet Rob Henderson said on Twitter, when people say, there's no such thing as cancel culture, it reminds me of season 1 episode 5 when Tony Soprano tells his daughter there is no mafia.

00:05:54.000 And as more people realize what is going on, resistance to it will grow.

00:05:57.000 It's already happening.

00:05:58.000 No movement so bereft of humor, forgiveness, rationality, basic sanity, can survive in the land of the free for too long.

00:06:04.000 At least I hope not.

00:06:06.000 So keep doing what you're doing.

00:06:07.000 I'll see you on stage at DePaul when this is all over.

00:06:09.000 All the best, Christina.

00:06:11.000 Christina, thanks so much for sending the letter.

00:06:12.000 It's always great to hear from you.

00:06:13.000 I hope you're doing well.

00:06:15.000 We're going to jump in with our first guest, Tucker Carlson, in just a minute.

00:06:18.000 But before that, we are so grateful for our advertising partners.

00:06:21.000 I want to remind you that this show can be brought to you mainly because our advertisers advertise it with us.

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00:06:27.000 They appreciate it.

00:06:28.000 We appreciate it, too.

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00:07:42.000 On the topic of free speech and the threat to it in the country right now, we start with Tucker Carlson.

00:07:46.000 This past week, Tucker talked on his show about the New York Times releasing a story revealing the location of his family's home.

00:07:52.000 Tucker, like many of us, has been long harassed and threatened by people who disagree with him.

00:07:56.000 Tucker is without a doubt one of the leading political voices in the country.

00:07:59.000 He's been the host of the Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight for the past four years.

00:08:03.000 This year, he became the highest rated primetime cable news show in the country.

00:08:07.000 Before Fox News, Tucker was a host for programs at CNN and MSNBC, totaling over 10 years of hosting cable news TV.

00:08:14.000 Tucker is one of the most fascinating minds in American public life.

00:08:16.000 There's so much that we agree on and so much that we disagree on.

00:08:19.000 I think we disagree very largely on the role of government in American life.

00:08:22.000 Government choosing winners and losers.

00:08:24.000 Is it the job of government to push certain social institutions at the expense of other social institutions?

00:08:29.000 How should government be used in order to prop up certain institutions as opposed to general rules of liberty and then social and cultural institutions Filling the gap, the way that I propose.

00:08:39.000 But one thing we certainly agree on is the neo-Marxist left and their absolute willingness to destroy every hallmark of the country.

00:08:45.000 Tucker is extraordinarily strong on that stuff.

00:08:47.000 He and I are in total agreement on all of that, for sure.

00:08:50.000 In episode 26, Tucker notes the inversion of truth in the phrase diversity is our strength and how our ruling class has divided the country.

00:08:56.000 Issue number one is sort of the free speech issue.

00:09:08.000 People should be able to say what they want.

00:09:09.000 People should be able to lead their families how they want to lead them.

00:09:12.000 There we're in complete agreement.

00:09:13.000 Right.

00:09:14.000 And I think that, you know, the unity of the right is largely based on agreement on this particular point.

00:09:18.000 That's right.

00:09:19.000 The foundational questions, without which none of the rest is possible.

00:09:22.000 Right.

00:09:22.000 And free expression would be one, of course, and freedom of conscience.

00:09:27.000 Right.

00:09:27.000 And you talk a lot in Ship of Fools, particularly, about the threat to these sorts of ideas from a left that is focused on a sort of forced diversity.

00:09:35.000 And you've been labeled racist by folks at Media Matters for this, of course, because they label everyone a racist.

00:09:40.000 I'm a Nazi, according to Media Matters, because of my yarmulke, apparently.

00:09:43.000 But your viewpoint on diversity is basically, as I see it expressed in the book, that diversity is a neutral.

00:09:50.000 It's not good or bad inherently.

00:09:52.000 It's not a value.

00:09:52.000 It's a description.

00:09:53.000 Right, and so where do you see the conflict lying between right and left on that particular issue?

00:09:57.000 Well, so where I agree with you is that, you know, while, as I noted, I am distrustful of complex ideologies, I do think that you need to start with certain things that you believe are true and act on them if you want to get to the place you deserve to be.

00:10:13.000 So, what I just noticed, just as an American, and I'm not an intellectual, I'm a talk show host, so this is a very obvious thing, That our national motto has been redefined to its mirror image.

00:10:24.000 So of course it was, out of many, one.

00:10:27.000 And now it is diversity is our strength.

00:10:30.000 So I think it's fair if you, without asking my consent, replace the core principle of our country.

00:10:36.000 It's fair for me to ask if that principle is worth organizing a country around.

00:10:41.000 So I'll just ask the obvious question.

00:10:44.000 Is diversity our strength?

00:10:45.000 And of course, like so much they say, it's not only untrue, it's the opposite of what is true.

00:10:50.000 It is never true that diversity is our strength.

00:10:52.000 I'm for all kinds of diversity, but they're not our strengths.

00:10:57.000 In other words, is it true in your marriage?

00:10:58.000 The less you have in common with your wife, the stronger your marriage is?

00:11:02.000 We don't even speak the same language.

00:11:03.000 That's why we love each other so much.

00:11:05.000 Is it true in your business?

00:11:06.000 We don't know what we're all doing here.

00:11:07.000 Is it true in the military?

00:11:07.000 No, it's insane, actually.

00:11:09.000 It's the opposite, once again, of what is true, what is observably true.

00:11:13.000 So I just noted that.

00:11:14.000 And by the way, at the same time I noted it, as I did, you know, 50 nights in the past 200 nights, I made the case explicitly against racism.

00:11:25.000 Which is, you are not responsible for your immutable qualities.

00:11:28.000 You can't control your height, your hair color, your DNA, what your parents did.

00:11:33.000 None of that is your fault, and you should not be punished for it or rewarded for it.

00:11:38.000 That is an argument against racism.

00:11:40.000 Explicitly!

00:11:42.000 And so for that, I'm a racist!

00:11:43.000 It's like, no, you don't understand.

00:11:44.000 I'm arguing against all kinds of racism.

00:11:47.000 I think it's a really dangerous way to see the world.

00:11:51.000 And anyway, whatever.

00:11:53.000 They don't mean anything they say.

00:11:55.000 They throw at you the very things that they are doing in order to silence you and I just happen for this brief window of my life to have the freedom to say what I think is true and I'm going to.

00:12:06.000 There's a lot of talk these days about political realignment, and I wonder if it's not really political realignment that's taking place, but a hunkering down of the far left into the diversity politics, identity politics, and then just the backlash to that.

00:12:18.000 Because it seems to me that was the real dividing line between Obama and Trump.

00:12:22.000 It's not even on economics, where in some areas there's actually some sort of populist agreement.

00:12:27.000 But it's really on these sort of cultural divisions where President Obama was basically saying, you know, we can be divided into various ethnic groups, all of whom have been victimized by America, and then we can create a coalition of the dispossessed to come back in and sweep into power, and the new demographic shift will basically buoy our boat all the way to victory from now until the end of time.

00:12:46.000 And then the backlash to that was, well, wait a second.

00:12:48.000 You know, you guys don't get to do identity politics when you've been saying that identity politics is what's wrong with America for generations, correctly.

00:12:54.000 So why are you doing that now?

00:12:56.000 Well, as a practical matter, it just doesn't work.

00:12:58.000 I mean, countries don't hang together by accident, particularly large, diverse ones that don't have a majority in any category.

00:13:04.000 So there's no—if you don't even have a shared language or history or culture, You know, why would you remain united as a country?

00:13:13.000 And the answer, which I actually believe in, is that you could hang together around a common idea, a common set of beliefs.

00:13:20.000 You know, here's what we're all for.

00:13:22.000 But our ruling class, and I do think this is the least responsible, the most reckless thing they have done, is they have not only failed to come up with what that set of common beliefs is, they have argued against the fact That it should exist.

00:13:36.000 And so, like, what they're doing clearly is, I mean, it's not complicated.

00:13:40.000 They're dividing in order to rule, of course, what the British did in India. 0.80

00:13:44.000 But that's the shortest term thinking.

00:13:46.000 I mean, that's like day trader thinking.

00:13:48.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:13:48.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:49.000 So what do you think are those common ideals?

00:13:51.000 You say that, you know, there are certain things that you think are just basic to being American.

00:13:54.000 What are those common ideas?

00:13:55.000 I mean, I guess I'd start with the Bill of Rights.

00:13:57.000 I mean, that's not hard.

00:13:58.000 Since it is a founding document, it's the foundational document.

00:13:58.000 Do you know what I mean?

00:14:02.000 And I think, look, You'll notice the book is long on diagnostics and short on solutions because that reflects who I am and what I do.

00:14:14.000 I'm not a policymaker at all.

00:14:16.000 I'm an observer.

00:14:17.000 I'm not a deep systematic thinker.

00:14:19.000 Again, I'm a talk show host.

00:14:21.000 So I'm pretty good at telling you what I think is wrong.

00:14:23.000 It's not as clear how you fix it other than go back to the obvious things.

00:14:29.000 Like, demand that everybody who comes to this country for economic opportunity, for example, or for the safety of our rule of law, also buy into the things that make all of us Americans.

00:14:42.000 Like, it's not complicated, really.

00:14:45.000 So yeah, I would start with the Bill of Rights.

00:14:46.000 You have an absolute right, as defined in 1967 by the Supreme Court, but also by centuries of tradition here in this country, which we inherited from another culture across the ocean, to believe what you believe.

00:15:02.000 Unmolested, period.

00:15:03.000 It's an absolute right.

00:15:05.000 You can't violate my conscience.

00:15:07.000 And that right is under assault, not by a political party, but by, in effect, a secular evangelical faith, which we're calling progressive or liberal or whatever, but it's not.

00:15:15.000 It's a species of religion that seeks to convert by force. 1.00

00:15:19.000 And that is deeply anguished and concerned that other people disagree.

00:15:23.000 So, like, I doubt you go home tonight and fret at any length over the idea that somewhere in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, someone disagrees with you on an issue.

00:15:31.000 Don't care, don't care.

00:15:32.000 I'm not famous for my care.

00:15:32.000 Exactly.

00:15:33.000 But I can promise you somewhere in Williamsburg, right now, someone is lying in a studio apartment fretting that in the, you know, the far reaches of red clay Alabama, someone's not fully on board with the bathroom program.

00:15:46.000 And they need to do something about it.

00:15:48.000 So actually, it's an asymmetrical contest between one group that wants to affect policy outcomes and the other group that wants to convert by the sword.

00:15:56.000 So it's the religious people versus the political people, and I don't even think we acknowledge that most of the time.

00:16:02.000 Larry is the host of the radio talk show, The Larry Elder Show, which has been on the air in Los Angeles since 1994.

00:16:08.000 He's the author of the best-selling book, The Ten Things You Can't Say in America, amongst others.

00:16:12.000 Just last month, a documentary Larry produced, Uncle Tom, was released.

00:16:16.000 The film explores what it's like to be a minority within a minority, a black conservative.

00:16:20.000 You can find that film right now at UncleTom.com.

00:16:22.000 I love Larry.

00:16:23.000 Larry is just fantastic.

00:16:24.000 Actually, the first radio show I ever did was The Larry Elder Show.

00:16:27.000 I was 16 years old, I was at UCLA, and Larry hosted me on the show to talk about radicalism at the UCLA Daily Bruin.

00:16:34.000 So Larry and I have a long, glorious history.

00:16:36.000 I'm a big Larry Elder fan, one of the most formative people in my thinking when it came to libertarianism, for sure.

00:16:42.000 In episode 39, Larry discusses all the ways that President Obama, a full-on disintegrationist, contributed in dividing America and stressed our race relations.

00:16:50.000 Looking back on this conversation, Larry sent us some thoughts.

00:16:53.000 We're in a new place when someone as respected and as respectable as New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees feels a need to apologize for saying he would quote, never agree with anyone who disrespects the flag.

00:17:03.000 The next day he apologizes again and again the following day and then his wife apologizes.

00:17:07.000 Whoever said compound interest was the greatest force in the universe never encountered white guilt.

00:17:11.000 Where are we with this cancel culture? 1.00

00:17:13.000 Some activists are petitioning to remove John Wayne's name from the John Wayne Airport because of remarks considered racially intemperate Wayne made in a 1971 Playboy interview.

00:17:22.000 In 1958, Martin Luther King wrote an advice column for Ebony Magazine.

00:17:26.000 A gay black teen in the closet wrote him seeking advice on what the young man considered his sexual confusion.

00:17:31.000 King gave advice that today would be considered homophobic, if not abusive. 0.93

00:17:34.000 King told him to pray and consult a psychiatrist.

00:17:37.000 Harry Truman, without whose support as president the modern state of Israel might not have come into existence, in a 1911 letter to his future wife, referred to Jews as the K-word and New York as K-town and used a number of other ethnic slurs.

00:17:49.000 Do we cancel him?

00:17:50.000 Trump was criticized for referring to Haiti and some African countries as bleephole countries.

00:17:55.000 President John F. Kennedy, according to a former New York Times investigative reporter, once derisively referred to some African countries as, quote, boogie republics.

00:18:03.000 Do we remove his name from JFK Airport?

00:18:05.000 Here, Larry and I discuss the recent surge in division and in intersectionality, and refute the idea that America is a racist country.

00:18:12.000 So, Larry, I want to ask you about a philosophy that seems to have taken over the Democratic Party almost wholesale, and that is the philosophy of intersectionality.

00:18:28.000 As a precursor to that, I want to get your opinion on the legacy of Barack Obama, because it's my opinion that intersectionality really became a thing under the Obama presidency.

00:18:38.000 People tried to blame President Trump for the rise in increased racial tensions in the United States.

00:18:42.000 But if you look at the polls, what the polls say is that Americans were pretty optimistic across the racial spectrum before Barack Obama became president.

00:18:47.000 Barack Obama became president, and then things started to sink pretty quickly.

00:18:51.000 And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Americans elected President Obama under the auspices of he was going to be a great uniter, somebody who tried to get us beyond race.

00:18:59.000 He, in his own persona, was a unification of black and white, considering his father was black and his mother was white.

00:19:04.000 This is what he ran on.

00:19:05.000 And then instead of coming forth and saying, listen, We can all call out racism together when we see it, but not every problem is a race problem.

00:19:12.000 A lot of problems are just people problems.

00:19:14.000 And maybe we should do that.

00:19:15.000 Instead of him doing that, he decided to build an intersectional coalition around himself and then suggest the people who disagreed with him were inevitably racist.

00:19:23.000 I want to get your opinion on Barack Obama's impact on sort of the race debate in the United States.

00:19:27.000 You know, I was in the Boston arena in 2004 when Obama gave that speech for John Kerry.

00:19:34.000 And he brought the house down.

00:19:35.000 I was with my producer.

00:19:37.000 And people were cheering, there's no blue America, there's no red America, there's just United States of America, yeah! 0.51

00:19:43.000 There's no black America, yeah! 1.00

00:19:44.000 And I said to him, this guy's going to run for president, he's going to get elected. 0.98

00:19:48.000 He didn't say a damn thing, but he said it well. 0.90

00:19:51.000 And so Brahma gets elected, and you're absolutely right, I believe that people voted for him in large part because they thought that He was going to put the nail in the coffin that America is a racist society. 0.81

00:20:03.000 Finally, we can now move on.

00:20:04.000 A number of people, I think, pulled the lever for him because of that.

00:20:08.000 And he proceeds to do just the opposite.

00:20:13.000 Before he became president, he gave a speech as a senator at a church in Atlanta.

00:20:19.000 And he was talking about how much racism there is in America.

00:20:22.000 And he said, the generation of MLK, the Moses generation, has, quote, gotten us 90% of the way there, close quote, to realizing MLK's dream of a society where people evaluate you based on content of character. 0.86

00:20:34.000 And I thought that was reasonable, 90%.

00:20:36.000 10% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive.

00:20:38.000 8% believe if you send him a letter, he'll get it.

00:20:40.000 7% of adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

00:20:46.000 25% of adults say they're not sure.

00:20:48.000 So you can't get much below 10%.

00:20:51.000 And then he said, my generation, the Joshua generation, he said, has to get us that additional 10%. 1.00

00:20:58.000 That was before he got elected, let alone reelected, let alone back-to-back attorneys general who are black.

00:21:03.000 So I would think that 10% has been worked into just a little bit.

00:21:06.000 When he ran in 2008, you wouldn't find him and Al Sharpton on the same plane together.

00:21:11.000 Second time he ran, Al Sharpton come to the White House something like over 70 times over the course of his presidency.

00:21:19.000 The first opportunity that Obama had to reconcile, to do what people thought he was going to do, was the Cambridge police incident.

00:21:25.000 You remember that.

00:21:26.000 The professor from Harvard had forgotten his door key.

00:21:30.000 He was on vacation, came home, realized he didn't have his door key, and he and the cab driver pushed the door in, broke into his own home.

00:21:38.000 A neighbor sees this, calls 911.

00:21:40.000 Don't you want neighbors to do that? 0.96

00:21:42.000 A cop shows up very politely, asks Skip Gates to come out of his house, and he cops a tude and says something like, I'll come out if your mama tells me to come out.

00:21:50.000 And instead of Obama going on television saying, look, Skip, I know you're a friend of mine.

00:21:54.000 You and I have been friends a long time.

00:21:56.000 But you have done exactly the wrong thing for young black boys. 0.94

00:22:01.000 Instead of being respectful, instead of responding to the request, you copped an attitude. 0.96

00:22:06.000 This is exactly why a lot of young black people are getting killed by the police, because they look at this as a confrontation instead of following instructions.

00:22:12.000 My father told me, whenever I'm pulled over by the police, make sure your hand's at 10 o'clock, your right hand's at 2 o'clock, you say yes sir, say no sir, make sure your paperwork is in order, And if you feel you're mistreated, get a badge number, write it down, and you and I will deal with it while we're both still alive.

00:22:26.000 That's what Obama could have said and should have said and didn't. 0.98

00:22:28.000 Instead he said, the Cambridge police acted stupidly. 0.98

00:22:31.000 And the cops then realized that he was not on their side. 1.00

00:22:34.000 And Obama fumbled around with that stupid beard thing to try and walk it back a little bit. 0.99

00:22:38.000 But he also had several chances. 1.00

00:22:41.000 Trayvon Martin.

00:22:42.000 If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.

00:22:43.000 I don't even know what that even means.

00:22:46.000 And, of course, Trayvon Martin was found not guilty, and the jurors said race never even came up.

00:22:52.000 There were no blacks on the jury, but there was a black alternate, and the alternate said he would have voted the same way, not guilty, and race was not a factor.

00:22:59.000 Obama gave a speech before the United Nations and invoked Ferguson.

00:23:03.000 Now, this is while Ferguson was still being investigated.

00:23:07.000 This cop was assumed to have been a racist.

00:23:09.000 Michael Brown allegedly had his hands up, don't shoot.

00:23:12.000 And Obama mentions this to a United Nations address and says, we have our own problems, a place called Ferguson.

00:23:17.000 Ferguson turned out to be a complete farce, as you know.

00:23:20.000 And the DOJ comes in, exonerates the cop, but nevertheless says that the Ferguson PD is institutionally racist.

00:23:28.000 And their biggest takeaway was this.

00:23:31.000 Sixty-seven percent of the population of Ferguson is black. 0.70

00:23:33.000 Eighteen percent of those who are stopped for traffic stops are black.

00:23:37.000 Eighteen point gap. 0.81

00:23:38.000 Ergo, racism.

00:23:39.000 The Ferguson PD, they had two or three blacks.

00:23:42.000 Outside of that, there were 50 whites.

00:23:45.000 If that's true, why isn't the NYPD even more institutionally racist?

00:23:48.000 Twenty-five percent of the population of New York is black. 0.96

00:23:52.000 Fifty-five percent of the traffic stops, though, are of black people. 0.74

00:23:55.000 That's a 30 point gap. 0.76

00:23:56.000 Yet the majority of New York cops are either women or people of color. 1.00

00:24:00.000 So how come that isn't more racist?

00:24:02.000 And the answer is you can't do it by numbers.

00:24:04.000 You have to do it by differences and offending.

00:24:06.000 And there's a report that came out in 2013 under the Obama administration by the National Institutes of Justice, which is a research arm of the DOJ called Race and Traffic Stops.

00:24:16.000 And they looked at this.

00:24:17.000 75% of the black motorists admitted that they were stopped for legitimate reasons.

00:24:21.000 And the commission found that differences in offending and differences in driving counted for the difference.

00:24:26.000 Couldn't find any evidence of racism.

00:24:28.000 Years ago, in New Jersey, black motorists were being stopped disproportionately by the New Jersey troopers, and they were yelling and screaming about racism.

00:24:37.000 Christie Todd Whitman ordered a study.

00:24:39.000 The study came back and said, The faster the car, the more likely it is to be a black guy.

00:24:45.000 Couldn't find any evidence of racism.

00:24:48.000 Didn't like the study, didn't like the conclusion, threw it out.

00:24:51.000 Hired a different person, different methodology, same conclusion.

00:24:53.000 Sorry, just not there.

00:24:55.000 These things have been measured and studied over and over again.

00:24:59.000 Every two or three years, DOJ conducts something called the Police Public Contact Survey.

00:25:04.000 Have you been stopped by the police?

00:25:06.000 How are you treated? 0.85

00:25:07.000 Are you black?

00:25:08.000 Are you white? 0.78

00:25:09.000 Did anything happen?

00:25:10.000 Nothing.

00:25:11.000 No pattern.

00:25:12.000 It's just a lie.

00:25:13.000 And so people like Eric Holder, the NAACP, Barack Obama have been perpetuating this BS lie.

00:25:20.000 And in my opinion, they do it because they want that 95% monolithic black vote without which they cannot succeed. 0.98

00:25:25.000 And if blacks started thinking of themselves as individuals and not as an aggrieved group and started looking at things like the crappy public school that I'm mandated to go to.

00:25:35.000 job-killing laws like minimum wage, they would rethink their assumptions with the Democratic Party, and their Democratic Party is definitely afraid of that, and that's why they have to malign people like Larry Elder's Uncle Tom's and slam other people as racist, because you cannot get 95% of people to think a certain way unless you lie to them.

00:25:55.000 Well, speaking of that, one of the ways that this has been intellectualized is in this philosophy of intersectionality.

00:26:00.000 And the philosophy has been put out there basically that historically a lot of groups in the United States, specifically black people most of all obviously, have been victimized by the power hierarchy.

00:26:10.000 The hierarchy was set up for that end and then the only way to fight back against that power hierarchy and institutions of power is to band together in groups that they can get then get together themselves and then attack that hierarchy and tear it down from the inside out.

00:26:23.000 The only way if you are on the top of the power hierarchy, if you're if you're a white male for example, the only way that you get out of this unfortunate situation is by acknowledging and reading Ta-Nehisi Codes apparently.

00:26:35.000 The problem with all of this is that in order to escape poverty and get to the middle class, this has been studied by the left and by the right and they agree.

00:26:42.000 If you look at the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation, they're diametrically opposed on many issues, but on the formula to get from poverty to the middle class, they all say the same thing.

00:26:52.000 Finish high school first.

00:26:53.000 Number two, don't have a kid before you're 20.

00:26:55.000 Number three, get married before you have a kid. 1.00

00:26:58.000 And they phrase it a little bit differently, but that's what all three of them have said.

00:27:01.000 And if you argue, as Obama did, that a kid raised without a father is five times more likely to be poor, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in jail, that is the number one problem facing America.

00:27:12.000 And if slavery and Jim Crow had this effect, how do we go from having 25% black out-of-wedlock birth in 1965 to almost 70% now?

00:27:23.000 I would think that anybody would argue we're less racist today than we were in 1965, so you can't attribute it to that.

00:27:29.000 In fact, during slavery, a black child was more likely to be born under a roof with his biological mother and biological father than today.

00:27:37.000 It is the number one problem facing this country, not racism.

00:27:40.000 Take a magic wand and wave it over America and remove every smidgen of racism from the hearts of white America.

00:27:45.000 50% inner city dropout rate in some schools.

00:27:48.000 70% of black kids born outside of wedlock, as I mentioned.

00:27:50.000 25% of young black boys have criminal records.

00:27:52.000 The CDC just said that a young black man is 10 times more likely to be the victim of a homicide compared to a white person.

00:27:59.000 And the number one cause of preventable death for young white men are accidents, like car accidents. 0.91

00:28:04.000 The number one cause of preventable cause of death for young black men is homicide, almost always at the hand of another black person. 0.99

00:28:10.000 Chicago, A third black, a third white, a third Hispanic, 70% of the homicides are black-on-black, and about 75% of those, Ben, are unsolved.

00:28:18.000 And we're talking about intersectionality?

00:28:20.000 Get out of here! 0.99

00:28:21.000 Get out of here! 0.99

00:28:23.000 Now let's look at someone I admire who speaks to the experience of growing up being taught the value and blessings of liberty in America, and later found herself in the debate over the historical symbols in the American South.

00:28:33.000 Nikki Haley is perhaps best known as the U.S. 0.66

00:28:35.000 Ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2018 under the Trump administration.

00:28:40.000 So, as you all know, Nikki Haley is my spirit animal.

00:28:41.000 I love Nikki Haley.

00:28:42.000 She's just the sweetest person on earth.

00:28:44.000 I also happen to know her family.

00:28:45.000 Wonderful, wonderful human being.

00:28:46.000 And a true conservative in every sense of the word.

00:28:48.000 and grays. So as you all know Nikki Haley is my spirit animal. I love Nikki Haley. She's just the sweetest person on earth. I also happen to know her family.

00:28:56.000 Wonderful, wonderful human being and a true conservative in every sense of the word. She really thinks through the policies that she promotes and she is strong and stands up against people who refuse to give her the respect to which she is due, which is something that I think feminists should take note of when they rip her down in a couple of years when she runs for president. 1.00

00:29:13.000 In June 2015, while Nikki was governor, a tragic shooting occurred at Mother Emanuel, an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.

00:29:20.000 A hateful shooter proudly displayed a Confederate flag on his manifesto, and as a result, Nikki made the decision to remove the flag from the state capitol.

00:29:27.000 In this discussion from episode 49, Nikki details that decision and explains why removing a confederate flag is different than removing a confederate monument.

00:29:34.000 But first, listen to us discuss the virtue of hard work and patriotism she learned being raised by an immigrant family.

00:29:40.000 Well, you know, first I was born in a small rural town in South Carolina.

00:29:52.000 We were the only Indian family.

00:29:54.000 We weren't white enough to be white. 0.54

00:29:56.000 We weren't black enough to be black. 0.89

00:29:58.000 My father wears a turban.

00:29:59.000 My mom at the time wore a sari.

00:30:01.000 No one knew who we were, what we were, or why we were there.

00:30:05.000 And so growing up like that, I was always different.

00:30:08.000 I was always an other. 0.97

00:30:10.000 And I remember coming home after being bullied, and my mom would always say, your job is not to show how you're different.

00:30:17.000 Your job is to show how you're similar.

00:30:19.000 And it's interesting because going through life, I've treated everything like that.

00:30:25.000 So the same thing that happened as a five-year-old on the playground is the same thing I did when I was a governor.

00:30:33.000 It's what I did as an ambassador, is when you have challenges, it's a lot easier if you will go through all the things you agree on first and then go to the challenge.

00:30:43.000 Because it puts everybody's guard down.

00:30:46.000 It all of a sudden lets them relate to you a little bit more.

00:30:48.000 And so, those kinds of things really impacted everything I did.

00:30:53.000 I started doing the books for my parents' business when I was 13.

00:30:57.000 I did not know that wasn't normal until I got to college.

00:31:01.000 Now I know it's child labor. 0.96

00:31:03.000 And I tell them that all the time.

00:31:05.000 But it was there that I learned the value of a dollar.

00:31:08.000 You know, when times were tough in our small business, I knew that we had to hunker down, we got creative, we got lean, and we got smart.

00:31:17.000 And then when times were good, we never celebrated, because we knew it wouldn't last forever.

00:31:22.000 And I carried that whole mindset to my love of numbers.

00:31:25.000 And that's when I went to Clemson, go Tigers, and graduated with a degree in accounting, went to corporate America, and worked there for a bit, and then I came back home to the family business.

00:31:37.000 And it was there that, again, my mom heard me saying how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it.

00:31:47.000 And my mom said, quit complaining about it. 1.00

00:31:48.000 Do something about it.

00:31:50.000 How did your family react when you said that you were running for office?

00:31:52.000 Your husband, your kids?

00:31:53.000 How did they react to that?

00:31:54.000 Because it's a difficult life, obviously.

00:31:55.000 My kids were little.

00:31:57.000 I think they were three and six at the time.

00:31:59.000 So they didn't really know.

00:32:00.000 They would cheer on every time they'd see like a four by eight billboard.

00:32:03.000 They'd be like, Mom!

00:32:04.000 And they'd cheer me on.

00:32:04.000 They were my only cheering committee because no one knew who I was.

00:32:08.000 So Michael has always been unbelievably supportive.

00:32:13.000 He's never said no.

00:32:15.000 He's never said don't do it.

00:32:16.000 He's always said, Yeah, you can do this.

00:32:19.000 You should go ahead.

00:32:21.000 Of course, my parents, being immigrants, when you have immigrant parents, they're so patriotic.

00:32:31.000 They're so grateful.

00:32:34.000 My parents, literally, there was not a day that went by where my brothers, my sister, and me didn't hear from my parents about how blessed we were to be in this country and how we had to remember that.

00:32:45.000 And so that feeling, they always encouraged us to do anything.

00:32:50.000 My husband was always supportive at everything.

00:32:53.000 And then the kids, I think, just went along for the ride.

00:32:55.000 So as governor of South Carolina, I think the first time that a lot of people saw you on the national stage was the controversy with regard to the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the war monument that was outside the state capitol building, I believe.

00:33:08.000 Yes.

00:33:08.000 So maybe you can take us through your thinking on that.

00:33:13.000 The whole controversy emerged in the aftermath of the horrible terrorist attack on the historically black church in South Carolina.

00:33:18.000 Maybe you can take us through your logic on that, because I know that that raised a lot of ire on both sides, and obviously you had to take a tough position.

00:33:26.000 It was painful.

00:33:27.000 It was absolutely painful.

00:33:29.000 Here was, on a Wednesday night, twelve people did what a lot of people in South Carolina did.

00:33:36.000 They went to Bible study.

00:33:38.000 Mother Emanuel is one of the oldest African-American churches.

00:33:42.000 It's a beautiful church, and people, typically families for generations, go to that church.

00:33:50.000 But on that night, someone else showed up.

00:33:54.000 And he didn't look like them.

00:33:55.000 He didn't sound like them.

00:33:57.000 He didn't act like them.

00:33:59.000 But they didn't kick him out.

00:34:01.000 They didn't call the police.

00:34:03.000 They pulled up a chair and they prayed with him for an hour.

00:34:08.000 And in that last prayer, when they bowed their heads, he started to shoot.

00:34:15.000 These were people who lived their life every day just trying to be good.

00:34:21.000 They took care of their families.

00:34:22.000 They had jobs.

00:34:23.000 They went to church.

00:34:24.000 It was what every South Carolinian did.

00:34:27.000 And the pain of that And the fact that it was in the most sacred of places, that was the part I couldn't get my heart around, was when you go to a place of worship, you're with God.

00:34:44.000 That's your closest feeling to God, and you feel the safest, and you feel like you can let your guard down, and you're your most vulnerable.

00:34:54.000 And the idea that someone could do this in a church, was just pure hate. 0.69

00:35:00.000 And I remember going to my law enforcement director, and I said, Chief, please tell me he had a mental illness.

00:35:08.000 I so wanted him to say that, and he said he didn't.

00:35:13.000 So once we knew it was hate, I knew that I had to protect the state, but my bigger problem was I had to keep the national media out.

00:35:22.000 They so wanted in on this.

00:35:23.000 They wanted to define it.

00:35:25.000 They wanted to talk about it in their terms.

00:35:27.000 They wanted to talk about the solutions.

00:35:29.000 And I literally had to just push them off and say, stop.

00:35:34.000 We're going to have these funerals.

00:35:35.000 We're going to give the respect to these families.

00:35:38.000 And during that time, it was a presidential primary, so all the candidates wanted to weigh in on it.

00:35:43.000 So I was on the phone with the candidates, telling them to stay out.

00:35:46.000 But the beautiful part was, that next day, when the killer presented himself for the first time in front of the judge, those families, unscripted, unrehearsed, not having talked to each other, walked up, looked the killer in the eye, and forgave him.

00:36:06.000 I mean, that kind of forgiveness through their pain.

00:36:11.000 They forgave him and prayed for him.

00:36:14.000 And there's so many lessons that can be learned through that.

00:36:18.000 And the people of South Carolina, they didn't protest.

00:36:20.000 They had vigils.

00:36:22.000 They didn't have riots.

00:36:23.000 They had hugs.

00:36:25.000 And so from that standpoint, it was a healing time.

00:36:30.000 The problem was that the killer did a manifesto, and the very picture on the manifesto was him standing there with the Confederate flag.

00:36:41.000 So now the Confederate flag in South Carolina, by many, was viewed as heritage, service, family, history.

00:36:53.000 There was a real traditional component to it.

00:36:58.000 And then the others who know it as, you know, what people remember in slavery and all of those things.

00:37:03.000 So you had this one group of people that saw it as a part of them, saw it as a part of their tradition.

00:37:10.000 But literally, after I saw that image, and that image went all over the world, I knew that something had to be done.

00:37:18.000 And so, that next day we announced that we were going to bring the flag down.

00:37:24.000 It was a tough debate.

00:37:26.000 What made it hard is we had to have two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate.

00:37:32.000 And, you know, it was just a matter of, I think there was a little bit of You know, just communication, a lot of prayer, and just believing in the people in South Carolina.

00:37:45.000 And so, yes, it was a tough debate.

00:37:49.000 What I made sure I communicated was a flag is a living, breathing, representative symbol.

00:37:57.000 A monument is very different.

00:38:00.000 A monument represents a moment in history, a past moment in time.

00:38:07.000 So I made it very clear to my estate that, look, the flag needs to come down because I don't want a single child to look at that flag and feel pain or see the killer's face or any of that.

00:38:19.000 But we're not going to start taking down monuments because those are monuments we learn from.

00:38:26.000 That's how we make sure we never forget.

00:38:28.000 So what we did on the monument side was an African-American museum went up.

00:38:33.000 A monument to the Mother Emanuel in tribute went up.

00:38:36.000 That's how that needs to be handled.

00:38:38.000 If you take down a monument, you're not erasing history.

00:38:43.000 You're just taking something down thinking you proved a point when you didn't.

00:38:46.000 You just erased a lesson.

00:38:50.000 To better understand American history, we have David Barton, a historian and the founder of WallBuilders, an organization that presents America's forgotten history and heroes with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage.

00:39:02.000 He's authored many bestselling books, he serves as a consultant to state and federal legislators, and even helped to develop the history and social studies standards for states like Texas and California.

00:39:11.000 Newsmax named him one of America's top 100 most influential evangelicals, Time Magazine put him in the top 25.

00:39:18.000 So meeting David Barton was super cool, especially because he brought a ton of historical items.

00:39:22.000 I am a historic memorabilia nut.

00:39:24.000 I mean, his collection is just astonishing and wonderful.

00:39:27.000 Literally, the only person I know whose collection is anywhere near this is Glenn Beck.

00:39:30.000 But David Barton's, I think, even trumps his.

00:39:33.000 I also have his Founder's Bible sitting on my desk at home.

00:39:36.000 So we actually just heard from David Barton.

00:39:37.000 He sent us a letter.

00:39:38.000 Here's what he had to say.

00:39:40.000 Ben and I had an extensive discussion about the substantial positive impact religious thought, belief, and practice had on America's founding fathers.

00:39:47.000 The overwhelming majority of the more than 200 of them, with only a few exceptions, were men of deeply devout and pious biblical faith.

00:39:52.000 They took deliberate steps to ensure that America would never become secularist in education, government, or the public square.

00:39:58.000 But today, most Americans know so little of our history that they believe just the opposite, which has led to bad public policy.

00:40:03.000 We are seeing this same pattern repeated with the current attacks on our foundational, cultural, and historical ideas and symbols.

00:40:09.000 Many of the statues being torn down were actually early pioneers leading the fight against racism and had historic breakthroughs in changing the policies of their day.

00:40:16.000 None of them were perfect, but even Thomas Jefferson was the first to announce to the world that America wanted to end the slave trade, and he was the first leader of any nation to sign a law banning the international slave trade.

00:40:26.000 As a result of the efforts of so many founding fathers, America became the fourth nation in the world to ban slavery, making us one of the earliest anywhere on the globe.

00:40:33.000 Yet we want to tear down the statues of those who helped move the world in the right direction.

00:40:36.000 The portrayal of American history today is too often reduced to historically inaccurate memes and ridiculously simplistic soundbites.

00:40:43.000 Our historical knowledge affects our public policy.

00:40:45.000 If our laws are built on an inaccurate view of the past, then they will be ineffective at best and onerous at worst.

00:40:50.000 But if they are built on a foundation of truth, they can be effective in achieving good.

00:40:55.000 David, thanks so much for sending that in.

00:40:56.000 Obviously, our conversation was great.

00:40:58.000 You can go listen to that in the back catalog or part of it today.

00:41:00.000 From episode 57, David and I discuss the founding fathers and their reliance and encouragement of religious thought, George Washington's warnings and wise words from his farewell address, and the real meaning of the separation of church and state.

00:41:12.000 One of the things that you've been talking about a lot and is really important to me, I mean I wrote a book that largely concerns this, is the impact of religious thought on American founding thought.

00:41:29.000 So, obviously, you've mentioned it a couple of times, we should hone in on it.

00:41:32.000 There's this idea that's taught in schools that effectively America is a secular country, that it was founded along the idea of separation of church and state.

00:41:40.000 To this end, the First Amendment is often cited, the idea that you can't establish a religion.

00:41:45.000 And then forgetting about the second half, which is that there's freedom of religion.

00:41:48.000 So what exactly, in your view, was the relationship of founding thought to religion?

00:41:53.000 How much did the founders rely on religious thought and what did they think in terms of governance and religion, how those two should be balanced?

00:41:59.000 They were very adamant that you do not separate religious principles.

00:42:04.000 Now, doctrines are one thing, religious principles are something else.

00:42:08.000 And so when they said there should be no establishment of religion back then, an establishment of religion was a state-established religion.

00:42:15.000 They had no trouble with religion.

00:42:17.000 They promoted it.

00:42:18.000 The first federal law that was passed dealing with how you become a territory in the United States is called the Northwest Ordinance.

00:42:25.000 George Washington signed that on August the 7th of 1789.

00:42:29.000 That's how 32 states became states in the United States.

00:42:33.000 And that law specifically says, Article 3, religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged.

00:42:46.000 So, to this day, if you look in constitutions like the current North Carolina constitution, you look in Iowa, Kansas, etc., it says forever in the public schools of this state, religion and morality will be taught as well as knowledge.

00:42:58.000 So, they saw that as a mandate that you can't be part of America if your schools don't promote religion and morality.

00:43:04.000 Which particular denomination?

00:43:06.000 No, we're not doing that.

00:43:08.000 But the principles of Bible, principles of how we control ourselves, behave, our morality, it all comes from there.

00:43:16.000 And so they were huge into promoting that.

00:43:19.000 I mentioned that there were two documents that just kind of turned me around.

00:43:23.000 One of them was I actually got a copy of George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address, and that's considered one of the most significant presidential speeches ever given.

00:43:34.000 It's interesting that we have state laws from 1820, where then in 1820, You were required in states to take a written exam on four documents every year for the first eight years of school.

00:43:47.000 And those four documents were the U.S.

00:43:49.000 Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the State Constitution, and George Washington's Farewell Address.

00:43:55.000 You had to study that, you had to know that, a written exam for the first eight years of school once a year.

00:43:59.000 It's interesting that in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln actually issued a general order to all the Union troops and said, guys, if you're not fighting the enemy today, I want you to spend the whole day reading George Washington's Farewell Address, meditating on his principles, thinking about what he said.

00:44:15.000 Same happened in World War I with Woodrow Wilson.

00:44:18.000 Read the Farewell Address.

00:44:19.000 So we really thought this was significant.

00:44:21.000 And in the farewell address, Washington is saying, okay, here we are at two terms.

00:44:27.000 I'm leaving, retiring.

00:44:29.000 You all know what we've been through.

00:44:30.000 And he talks about economics.

00:44:32.000 He talks about what happened with the revolution.

00:44:34.000 And he says, and now my fellow citizens, as I leave, here's a few Thoughts.

00:44:40.000 And they're almost like warnings.

00:44:41.000 I mean, one of the things he says is, don't let the federal government get into deficit spending.

00:44:45.000 You know, it's one of his great warnings.

00:44:47.000 He talks about avoiding foreign entanglements, you know, try to keep sovereignty here and don't get tied in foreign wars.

00:44:54.000 And so all this wise stuff, but what he says, he says, of all the habits and dispositions that lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports.

00:45:06.000 He said, in vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars.

00:45:12.000 So he goes out saying, guys, anybody that tries to separate religion and morality from public life, from politics, They're not patriots.

00:45:20.000 They're trying to destroy the nation.

00:45:22.000 That's a big litmus test.

00:45:23.000 I was told that Washington was a great deist, that he was not a faith guy.

00:45:28.000 Here he's saying, guys, if anybody tries to take faith out of the public square, they're not a patriot.

00:45:34.000 I'm going, oh my gosh, that's not what I was taught.

00:45:37.000 And so when I read his farewell address, it really got me thinking, what else did I not get taught right?

00:45:44.000 And so separation, church, and state is one of those phrases that the way we use it today, probably the best way to explain it, the phrase did not originate with Jefferson.

00:45:54.000 It originated back in the 14 and 1500s.

00:45:57.000 John Greenwood, a pastor in Great Britain, is probably the first guy credited with saying it back in the 1500s.

00:46:03.000 And so they wrote about it for hundreds of years before Jefferson picked it up.

00:46:07.000 So he was repeating what historical writers had said.

00:46:10.000 But even in Jefferson's letter, which he wrote on January the 1st, 1802, that's the famous letter the courts quote today on separation of church and state.

00:46:18.000 That letter is 233 words long, it's three paragraphs, it's easy to put a footnote in any court case, and since 1947, no court has quoted more than eight words.

00:46:31.000 A wall of separation between church and state.

00:46:33.000 That's it.

00:46:35.000 Every court that used it before 47 quoted the whole letter, like Reynolds v. United States in 1878, and every time they quoted the whole letter of Jefferson, they said, look, based on what Jefferson said, separation church and state means you can't stop a public religious activity.

00:46:51.000 And so we always kept religion in public life using the separation phrase until a case in 47 called Everson v. Board of Education, and the court said, oh, look what Jefferson said, separation, we can't have any religion alive.

00:47:04.000 No.

00:47:06.000 There's a reason they don't put the whole letter in there.

00:47:08.000 When you read the whole letter, it's obvious what Jefferson said, because he had a group in Connecticut saying, we're afraid the government's going to shut down our religious activities and expression.

00:47:18.000 He said, no, there's a wall of separation between church and state.

00:47:21.000 They will not stop your religious activities.

00:47:24.000 That's not what we get today.

00:47:26.000 So that's the kind of stuff that really started turning me over and saying, I wasn't taught this.

00:47:32.000 I got a whole different line, even on separation church and state.

00:47:35.000 And so if you go back and look at what Jefferson did, oh my gosh, Jefferson started church in the U.S.

00:47:42.000 Capitol building.

00:47:43.000 Every week we had church in the Capitol.

00:47:45.000 By 1857, the largest Protestant church in the United States met in the Capitol every week.

00:47:51.000 Jefferson started that.

00:47:52.000 He invited preachers to preach at that church.

00:47:56.000 How's that separation?

00:47:57.000 Well, that's why we don't look at what he actually did or said.

00:48:00.000 We just use a phrase from it.

00:48:04.000 Next, to take on some of the criticisms of American nationalism and to make the argument that America isn't simply held together by common ideas, we go to Rich Lowry from episode 78.

00:48:14.000 Rich began his career as a research assistant to Charles Krauthammer and was selected by William F. Buckley to lead National Review as editor in 1997.

00:48:22.000 He's a columnist for Politico.

00:48:23.000 He's a frequent guest on programs like Meet the Press.

00:48:26.000 Rich has authored books like Lincoln Unbound, The Case for Nationalism, How It Made Us Powerful, United and Free, and Legacy, Paying the Price for the Clinton Years, a New York Times bestseller.

00:48:35.000 Rich is one of the most creative and intelligent minds in conservative circles.

00:48:38.000 His defense of nationalism is particularly fascinating, especially because it's come under such bad odor in modern American society. 0.75

00:48:45.000 If you say you're a nationalist, everybody in the media simply says you're a Nazi, which is insane and crazy.

00:48:49.000 Nationalism has an actual meaning, and there's a lot of complexity to the idea.

00:48:53.000 Rich and I have discussed this at length, and we discussed it in our interview as well.

00:48:57.000 In that discussion, Rich addresses criticisms of American nationalism and explains what a truthful history of the United States should look like, how the 1619 Project is unprecedented, what separates group identity from national identity, and what truly makes us American.

00:49:10.000 So let's talk about American nationalism.

00:49:21.000 The chief critique of American nationalism is that we're not actually a nation, that we're a set of different competing interest groups and that we have been bound together by fate or by military power, depending on how you see it.

00:49:33.000 But realistically, The idea of a common American nation that spans both slaves and slaveholders, that spans Native Americans and the people who drove them off their land, that spans oppressors and people who were oppressed, that that is a fantasy or a mirage and that it's history written by the winners.

00:49:49.000 How do you respond to that?

00:49:51.000 Well, there's been an American nation for a very long time, and my contention is that it predates the revolution in 1776.

00:49:58.000 I can't tell you exactly when the American nation arises, but it's sometime between the early 17th century, where the settlement starts here, and the revolution.

00:50:09.000 Where you have people who become used to governing themselves, that have their own governing institutions, most importantly these colonial assemblies that are governing for a hundred years.

00:50:19.000 That's a very long time.

00:50:20.000 You don't get the revolution if you don't have a nation prior to it that feels that it has its own claims and rights that need to be vindicated.

00:50:29.000 Now the shortcomings of the nation, African-Americans are part of the cultural nation from the very beginning, but their rights aren't recognized by the government and the state.

00:50:38.000 Native Americans are pushed aside by the American nation. 0.95

00:50:42.000 So these are two shameful aspects of our history.

00:50:45.000 And I spent a lot of time talking in the book how we need a truthful history of the United States that includes our sins, but it shouldn't necessitate lying about ourselves, which is what we see now in the 1619 Project, the New York Times, and elsewhere, which is something I think really unprecedented in human history.

00:51:04.000 Usually the national tendency is you lie about the other guy.

00:51:07.000 You lie about the other country to drag them down. 0.97

00:51:10.000 We have people now who are dragging our own country down.

00:51:13.000 So when we talk about people joining the stream of American history, being admitted to the, The broader stream of American history in the case of freed slaves, for example, or Native Americans who decide not to live in tribal reservations, which are a separate governed area.

00:51:26.000 How do people join the American nation?

00:51:29.000 Because if America is a creedal idea, that makes sense, but if America is more than a creed, how do you join with a nation that has a separate history or a separate culture?

00:51:37.000 Yes, I think one of the pillars of the American nation is a cultural core.

00:51:42.000 And African-Americans were contributing to that from the very beginning. 0.98

00:51:46.000 I spent some time talking in the book about how Southern culture is really impossible to disaggregate in certain important respects.

00:51:53.000 What's the African influence and what's the European influence?

00:51:56.000 Because it's all mixed up.

00:51:59.000 Native Americans, again, a different case. 0.98

00:52:01.000 They were pushed aside, they were excluded, and that's part of the original sin of this country.

00:52:08.000 But you become an American fundamentally by you learn the language, you adopt the mores, you thrill to the stories and the heroes, you honor the symbols.

00:52:19.000 And you believe in the ideals.

00:52:21.000 That makes you an American.

00:52:23.000 And something I say in talks about this topic is if, hypothetically tonight, take a tourist metaphor, an African American meets a white American on the streets, on the stairs of the Paris Opera House, they instantly have more in common than anyone around them.

00:52:42.000 It doesn't matter whether their ideologies are different, their politics are different, where they are from this country, they have a common language, a common mode of dress likely, common cuisine, tend to like the same kind of food, and a huge stock of common cultural references.

00:52:56.000 And I just don't think you can minimize the importance of that to what it is to making an American.

00:53:04.000 So yes, the creed is important and is part of that, and the culture and the creed interact with one another and support one another, but it's not just a creed entirely.

00:53:12.000 So, philosophically, what separates group identity from national identity?

00:53:17.000 So, you know, we can say that, for example, black Americans obviously are part of the American story, but there are some black Americans who say, well, we're not.

00:53:25.000 We were left out of the American story, and our chief loyalty lies to the black American story, which is different from the general national American story, and trying to pretend that we are just one part of a broader American history is selling us short.

00:53:36.000 Why should loyalty be to a nation, and in some cases, a nation that victimized the group to which it belonged?

00:53:42.000 As opposed to the group to which you, which seems closer to you in terms of proximity.

00:53:47.000 Well, I mean, I think they're overlapping loyalties, right?

00:53:50.000 We're all loyal, most of all, to our family.

00:53:54.000 We might have an affiliation, you know, if you're an Irish American, you might be particularly have a connection to Ireland and St.

00:54:03.000 Patrick's Day and aspects of that language and culture.

00:54:08.000 But ultimately, I think we're all in this together.

00:54:11.000 And none of us are what we are if it weren't for this country.

00:54:17.000 And being born in this country is something none of us are responsible for.

00:54:21.000 It's just an incredibly gratuitous blessing that we're here.

00:54:26.000 So for me, that argues for loyalty to the nation.

00:54:30.000 Now, African Americans, it's a much more difficult case, because they were Treated unjustly for 150 years, horrifically.

00:54:39.000 You know, I've been reading up on slavery because I've been arguing with some of the people who wrote for the 1619 Project, and the Atlantic passage is something it's almost impossible to read about.

00:54:49.000 It's so nauseatingly horrifying.

00:54:53.000 But the story of African-Americans is of loyalty to this country.

00:54:58.000 The emphasis on African-American has to be American.

00:55:02.000 And the lead essay in the New York Times' 1619 Project, I think, was actually moving and correct on this topic.

00:55:08.000 Participated in every American war, even when they had no rights or returning to a country that was going to oppress them.

00:55:16.000 And it's a very moving anecdote in that essay where the author describes being a little girl in school and the teacher has some project where all the students are going to point to the country on the globe that their family is originally from, and her African-American friend, they have no idea. They have no idea where to point because they're so American. 0.74

00:55:35.000 Exactly because they're so American. And because of various factors, including that we didn't import many slaves here compared to Caribbean islands, and our immigration policy was racist, and we didn't welcome African-Americans.

00:55:49.000 For that reason, if you're an African-American and your family didn't emigrate fairly recently, your lineage in this country probably goes way, way, way back.

00:55:58.000 And in that sense, you're more American than any of the European-American neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, for instance.

00:56:08.000 I get into the philosophy of conservatism in episode 56 with the great one, Mark Levin, host of The Mark Levin Show, one of the most respected political radio shows in the country.

00:56:16.000 He also hosts Life, Liberty, and Levin on Fox News, hugely rated show.

00:56:19.000 He was the first editor-in-chief of Conservative Review, and he's authored several New York Times bestsellers, including his latest on Freedom of the Press.

00:56:26.000 Prior to his radio and TV days, Mark served as an advisor to many members of President Reagan's cabinet, eventually becoming chief of staff to Attorney General Ed Meese.

00:56:34.000 Mark was awarded the American Conservative Union's Ronald Reagan Award for his work at Landmark Legal Foundation, an American conservative legal advocacy group where he served as president.

00:56:43.000 I'm a longtime admirer of Mark Levin.

00:56:45.000 Meeting him was one of the great thrills of my young life, and becoming a colleague is an even bigger thrill.

00:56:50.000 Mark is one of the most intelligent commentators on the political scene.

00:56:53.000 He knows his founding philosophy down to his marrow.

00:56:56.000 He understands the law, and he understands the threat from the left.

00:56:59.000 Frankly, I'm honored to be considered a colleague of my friend Mark Levin.

00:57:02.000 In our conversation, Listen to us discuss the fight to define conservatism, what we need to teach every American, the narrative shift away from appreciation of our founding, and how the Declaration of Independence, as originally written, is what enabled this country to abolish slavery.

00:57:15.000 I don't think Donald Trump is a philosophical conservative.

00:57:27.000 I think he's come to his conservatism as a matter of practicality, and in some ways, principle.

00:57:33.000 I And so I don't think he's any more a principled or philosophical conservative than George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush.

00:57:45.000 I think there have really been two in the last little over a century.

00:57:48.000 That would be Coolidge and Reagan.

00:57:50.000 But other than that, I can't think of any, just off the top of my head.

00:57:55.000 Not Nixon, not Ford, not Eisenhower, certainly not Theodore Roosevelt and Harding and so forth.

00:58:02.000 So I don't really hold that against him in terms of him promoting that kind of an agenda from a philosophical point of view, but I think it's kind of the Not our job, but our responsibility to try and explain that to a lot of people, what these policies are, our philosophy, and so forth.

00:58:25.000 I even think a lot of so-called conservative websites and magazines have lost their way.

00:58:30.000 They're fighting with each other over what conservatism means, or they've abandoned it in some ways because they hate Trump, or they love Trump, or whatever the situation is.

00:58:40.000 I feel right now the intellectual conservative movement is very weak.

00:58:46.000 I really do.

00:58:48.000 I think you and I and others try to present that case, but from a broad-based perspective, it's quite weak.

00:58:57.000 And I think that's a problem because some people are abandoning it.

00:59:03.000 I'm not sure why 100%.

00:59:06.000 I'm very troubled by some who've talked about conservatism all these years and then all of a sudden say, well, what has it ever done for us?

00:59:13.000 And I say, let me tell you what it's done for you.

00:59:16.000 Nine o'clock tonight, I want you to go into one of these supermarkets where I live.

00:59:21.000 They have a place called Wegmans.

00:59:22.000 I don't know if they have them in California.

00:59:24.000 It's as big as a football field.

00:59:27.000 And I want you to walk down every aisle.

00:59:30.000 Ten different types of toothpaste.

00:59:32.000 You can get battery-operated toothbrushes or handheld, soft, medium-hard.

00:59:37.000 Then I want you to go to the meat section.

00:59:39.000 And I want to see how many types of meat.

00:59:42.000 The chicken section.

00:59:43.000 Go to the wine section.

00:59:45.000 Wine from all over the world.

00:59:47.000 Just look.

00:59:48.000 Stop telling me conservatism doesn't work and capitalism doesn't work.

00:59:52.000 We have more material things.

00:59:58.000 In this country.

00:59:59.000 And any king or queen had 200 years ago.

01:00:02.000 We get on an airplane, we fly across the country.

01:00:04.000 That's not socialism, that's not big government.

01:00:07.000 Those are airplanes.

01:00:08.000 That's technology.

01:00:10.000 That's creativity.

01:00:11.000 And we complain whether they have peanuts or pretzels on the plane or whether we're sitting on the tarmac for an extra half hour, right?

01:00:18.000 We need to put things in perspective.

01:00:20.000 The things we have in this country, almost no other country has.

01:00:24.000 Certainly two-thirds of the world doesn't have.

01:00:26.000 Why do you think millions of people are trying to claw their way into this country?

01:00:30.000 Because why?

01:00:31.000 Because the middle class is under attack, because we have systemic racism, because we're not socialist enough?

01:00:40.000 No.

01:00:41.000 It's because of all the other reasons.

01:00:43.000 And so, part of it is the responsibility of the individual citizen.

01:00:48.000 Honestly, I don't look to the President of the United States or a senator or a politician of any kind to tell me, this is what you need to think.

01:00:56.000 One of the things that we need to continue to teach people is think for yourselves.

01:00:59.000 That's a good thing.

01:01:00.000 Learn for yourself.

01:01:01.000 Most of the stuff I've learned about the Constitution, I sure as hell didn't learn it in public school.

01:01:06.000 I've learned it since I've been in school.

01:01:08.000 And that's a good thing.

01:01:09.000 The learning process goes on and on and on.

01:01:12.000 But not again.

01:01:13.000 The first chapter of Liberty and Tyranny, I say one of the reasons why we don't really appreciate liberty is because we're surrounded by it.

01:01:20.000 And one of the reasons we don't appreciate what we have is because we're surrounded by it. 0.99

01:01:25.000 And so we get caught up in really stupid arguments. 0.99

01:01:27.000 Our focus is so off. 1.00

01:01:30.000 And then we had D-Day, the anniversary.

01:01:32.000 75th anniversary of the other day.

01:01:35.000 And I play these old clips from World War II.

01:01:38.000 And you really Your patriotism is just through the roof and you see how tremendous this country is and the sacrifices people have made for this country.

01:01:48.000 So I think it's really on each one of us, more than a president, to really explain liberty and conservatism and constitutionalism.

01:01:58.000 And this president doesn't do that anyway.

01:02:00.000 Most presidents don't do that.

01:02:02.000 Like I said, I can think of two who basically did.

01:02:04.000 But I will say this.

01:02:06.000 Strongly, in support of the president.

01:02:08.000 He doesn't preach the other, too.

01:02:10.000 How rotten America is, you know, how racist America is, the wage gaps in America.

01:02:16.000 I mean, people can't get healthcare in America.

01:02:19.000 So he's not one of them.

01:02:20.000 And so, at his core, I know he loves this country.

01:02:25.000 This is one of the things that's been troubling me so much about the Democratic Party.

01:02:28.000 I make a distinction in my language routinely between leftist and liberal.

01:02:32.000 Liberals are people I disagree with on politics.

01:02:34.000 Leftists are people who want to shut down the debate, who are interested in polarizing people specifically on the basis of race for political gain.

01:02:41.000 And it seems like the left has taken over completely.

01:02:43.000 The Democratic Party is interesting.

01:02:45.000 I was watching with my wife an old movie the other night, a movie called Born Yesterday with Judy Holiday and Broderick Crawford.

01:02:51.000 And the movie is from 1950.

01:02:53.000 It's an incredibly patriotic film.

01:02:55.000 And the entire film is basically William Holden showing Judy Holiday around the city of Washington, DC.

01:03:00.000 And he brings her to see the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

01:03:03.000 They go to the Jefferson Memorial.

01:03:04.000 And he's telling her all about the wonderful founding philosophy.

01:03:07.000 And I turned to my wife and I said, there's no way this movie gets made today, because the entire narrative of the left has shifted even in my lifetime.

01:03:13.000 I'm old enough to remember when the Democratic Party actually still at least paid lip service to the foundations of the country and talked about how wonderful founding philosophy was.

01:03:22.000 And now it seems that the narrative is dominant in the Democratic Party that the founding philosophy was effectively just racism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia dressed up in fancy clothes and then sold to people.

01:03:33.000 And that what we really have to do is cleanse the palate, get rid of all these documents and start afresh.

01:03:38.000 Obviously it scares the hell out of me.

01:03:40.000 I'm seeing young people who don't know anything about history buying into it.

01:03:43.000 How do you combat all of that?

01:03:45.000 You know.

01:03:47.000 The institution that really needs to be dealt with in one form or another is education.

01:03:54.000 Public education in universities and colleges.

01:03:56.000 And you and I fund them.

01:03:57.000 The American people are funding our own demise. 0.95

01:04:00.000 Somehow people get tenure.

01:04:02.000 Not all, but too many.

01:04:03.000 A vast majority.

01:04:04.000 In our public schools, the NEA, the AFT, in our colleges and universities, they get tenure.

01:04:11.000 And they are people who reject our founding principles.

01:04:15.000 I mean, I always wonder, how many battles of the Civil War are actually taught in high school?

01:04:21.000 Each battle is so incredible, so unique.

01:04:24.000 How many battles in World War II?

01:04:25.000 How many battles of the Revolutionary War?

01:04:28.000 Do kids today know what Lexington and Concord's all about?

01:04:32.000 These are things that would inspire patriotism and support for the country.

01:04:36.000 Instead, you're right.

01:04:38.000 The founders had no And yet it was Abraham Lincoln who did the greatest job of explaining the founding and the founders and did more for African-American slaves in this country than any left-wing professor or any leftist on TV that you can imagine.

01:05:01.000 He led the Civil War.

01:05:03.000 And what Lincoln said in 1858 and beyond, and he loved the founders, He said, those men wrote the Declaration of Independence.

01:05:12.000 There's not a word about slavery in the Declaration of Independence.

01:05:16.000 Every individual is created by God, unalienable rights.

01:05:21.000 He said, so those men knew that slavery was wrong, but they also could not create a country because certain states like Georgia and South Carolina weren't going to go for it.

01:05:33.000 But they knew that their children and their grandchildren would have to address this.

01:05:36.000 That's why they wrote the Declaration of Independence the way that they did.

01:05:40.000 And he says it's their writing, their constitution, that will enable us to smite this.

01:05:48.000 Because otherwise we wouldn't have had a country, and you still would have had states or colonies with slavery, and states and colonies without it.

01:05:58.000 But history is not taught.

01:06:00.000 It certainly wasn't even when I was in high school.

01:06:02.000 I still got the same pablum, the same left-wing agenda.

01:06:06.000 They have managed, the progressive movement, to really control ideologically virtually every instrumentality of our culture right now.

01:06:15.000 That's why we have these culture wars. 0.96

01:06:17.000 Whether it's the courts, whether it's the bureaucracy, whether it's education, whether it's the media, we always start with the progressive foundation and we're always on defense trying to respond to these things.

01:06:30.000 We've got to do something about colleges and universities.

01:06:34.000 And I think we, the people, need to start speaking with our wallets.

01:06:38.000 And states need to start withholding funds.

01:06:40.000 You're going to be subsidized?

01:06:41.000 Well, don't be subsidized so much.

01:06:44.000 Make sure when you send your kid to college, if you're involved in that decision, that you don't send them to an indoctrination mill.

01:06:50.000 You know, just because it's an Ivy League school doesn't mean they have to go there.

01:06:53.000 There's other schools out there where they'll get a more traditional education and so on.

01:06:57.000 But this is something I've been thinking a lot about.

01:06:59.000 Maybe one day I'll write about it and give it more focus thought, but it is a huge, huge problem.

01:07:06.000 To end with an uplifting guest from the show discussing some of the aspects and values that all Americans can and should get behind, let's go to episode 41, Arthur Brooks.

01:07:14.000 Arthur is the former president of the American Enterprise Institute, conservative think tank, committed to defending human dignity and building a freer world.

01:07:21.000 He is now faculty for Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School.

01:07:25.000 He's written the New York Times bestsellers, The Road to Freedom, How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise, The Conservative Heart, How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America, and several others.

01:07:34.000 Arthur Brooks is legitimately the nicest person in the entire world.

01:07:37.000 When he writes books about how we should be nicer to each other, you think, who is this guy?

01:07:41.000 And what sort of saccharine nonsense is this?

01:07:43.000 And then, you read the books, and they are filled with content and depth, and it turns out that Arthur is just a deep, abiding, loving person, just a wonderful guy.

01:07:52.000 Also, he happens to be a classical French hornist.

01:07:54.000 You don't find that very often.

01:07:55.000 I'm a classical violinist, so at some point we'll have to play duets.

01:07:58.000 Listen to us discuss finding commonality between all Americans and recognizing the blessings of capitalism and our free enterprise system.

01:08:04.000 In your book, you talk about, and we've talked a little bit here, about the gradations in terms of who's worthy of contempt.

01:08:18.000 So the Taliban, worthy of contempt. 0.99

01:08:20.000 But, you know, in the United States the idea is that we are, while we think that we may be enemies, we're actually not enemies, we're brothers in the sort of Lincolnian formulation.

01:08:28.000 I want to ask if that's really true.

01:08:29.000 And the reason I want to ask that is because as certain people on both sides become more radical, I think right now the left is moving in a radical direction faster than the right is.

01:08:37.000 Donald Trump is actually in policy somewhat of a moderate Republican.

01:08:41.000 The left seems to be moving pretty dramatically in a far left direction, including embrace of democratic socialism.

01:08:48.000 You talk about these sort of moral values that you still think unite Americans.

01:08:51.000 What do you think those moral values are?

01:08:54.000 And are you overstating the case?

01:08:56.000 Do you think that we have more in common than we may actually have in common?

01:08:59.000 I may be overstating the case, but I want to err on that side.

01:09:03.000 Because one of the things that I've noticed is that leaders throughout history who are truly aspirational, they're not populist.

01:09:03.000 Why?

01:09:09.000 Because, you know, populism is fundamentally not leadership, it's followership.

01:09:12.000 It's basically, and you've made this point a hundred times, I stole this from Ben Shapiro, but there's a parade going down the street, a populist is a guy who says, there's a parade, I better get out in front of it, they need a leader.

01:09:22.000 Leadership is something that says, there's a better future, can you see it?

01:09:25.000 There's a guy who teaches at Harvard Business School named Daniel Goleman, and he talks about authoritative leadership, which is not, you must come with me.

01:09:33.000 It's not coercive.

01:09:34.000 It says, do you see a better future?

01:09:37.000 Do you want it?

01:09:38.000 Maybe people don't want it, but in point of fact, you have to look at the horizon.

01:09:41.000 You have to look at the moral horizon.

01:09:43.000 You have to say, this is something better, and to hold Americans to their highest and best values.

01:09:48.000 That's a good thing to do.

01:09:50.000 No.

01:09:50.000 Are we there?

01:09:51.000 Am I there?

01:09:52.000 Not every day.

01:09:53.000 But I want to be there, and I want America to be there, and so I'm looking for what I think is kind of the moral DNA of this country.

01:10:00.000 And the moral DNA of this country unambiguously believes in the radical equality of human dignity.

01:10:05.000 Why?

01:10:06.000 Because you make this point in your new book.

01:10:08.000 Everybody's got to get this book.

01:10:10.000 Because it talks about how these Judeo-Christian values, these Western values, are a gift to the world.

01:10:16.000 People, even if they're not religious, we have a lot of people watching us who are atheists, who are secular completely, but they believe in the equality of human dignity.

01:10:24.000 Why?

01:10:24.000 Because we have a culture that's based on the idea that each one of us is made in God's image.

01:10:29.000 God is worthy of respect.

01:10:31.000 That's the essence of dignity.

01:10:32.000 And so each one of us is worthy of dignity.

01:10:34.000 That's what Americans actually believe.

01:10:36.000 Furthermore, The reason that the people came here in the first place is because we believe in the limitlessness of human potential.

01:10:44.000 So let's call Americans to dignity and potential.

01:10:47.000 Are they living up to it?

01:10:48.000 No.

01:10:48.000 Will they ever live up to it completely?

01:10:49.000 Not in my lifetime.

01:10:51.000 But I'm going to work in a social movement, in an intellectual movement, and in a media movement.

01:10:56.000 I'm going to work with you.

01:10:57.000 We're going to work together to try to help Americans live up to those standards, even though we haven't hit them yet.

01:11:02.000 I mean, I certainly agree with all of that.

01:11:04.000 I wonder if there are active opponents to some of that.

01:11:06.000 And the reason I say that is because you point out Jonathan Haidt's moral matrix.

01:11:09.000 Jonathan's been on the program, Professor Haidt, and we talked about the five factors, maybe six if you include liberty, which he added later.

01:11:17.000 And you talk about how conservatives and liberals still believe in a couple of them.

01:11:22.000 Compassion and fairness.

01:11:23.000 Compassion and fairness.

01:11:24.000 But even those ones, As Professor Haidt has recognized, are seen in almost diametrically opposed ways.

01:11:30.000 So fairness for conservatives is fairness in the meritocratic sense, the idea that we all have equal rights, but that the outcome's not going to be equal.

01:11:37.000 And fairness for many on the Democratic side is fairness of outcome, which is directly opposed to fairness of meritocracy.

01:11:43.000 When it comes to compassion, on the right side of the aisle, the value system tends to be, well, compassion is me helping you find a job, develop a skill set, care for yourself.

01:11:43.000 Right.

01:11:51.000 And compassion on the left side of the aisle is, how do I create a system whereby you don't have to care for yourself, whereby we are caring for you.

01:11:58.000 That's real compassion.

01:11:59.000 So if that's the case, then even the most basic values, the ones that are necessary for us to be playing the same game, so to speak, have those been radically undermined, or do you think that there are bridges that can still be built?

01:12:08.000 I think there are bridges.

01:12:09.000 And the reason is because, let's take something like fairness, where the right really does focus on meritocratic fairness.

01:12:15.000 It's don't take something that somebody else earned.

01:12:18.000 And the left really does focus much more on redistributive fairness.

01:12:22.000 The idea of redistributing, somebody has more, somebody has less, the person who has less needs more, you take it from the person who has more.

01:12:27.000 Okay, I got it.

01:12:28.000 But that doesn't mean that you and I, who are guys on the center right or on the right, don't believe in any redistribution.

01:12:34.000 That's wrong.

01:12:34.000 You believe that there should be a welfare state, and so do I. I mean, I believe that the free enterprise system, one of the greatest accomplishments ever of the free enterprise system, was our ability to support people we've never even met.

01:12:45.000 It's an incredible thing that no system in history has been able to accomplish, and it's because of capitalism.

01:12:51.000 Because of the largesse that came from capitalism, and it's such a blessing.

01:12:53.000 I'm so proud of it.

01:12:55.000 And that means I believe in some amount of redistribution.

01:12:57.000 I'm just more meritocratic in that balance.

01:12:59.000 You know, I know a ton of people on the left.

01:13:01.000 I have tons of friends and family.

01:13:03.000 I mean, I used to be a musician and a college professor, and I come from Seattle, Washington, for Pete's sake.

01:13:08.000 I know a lot of people on the left. 0.98

01:13:10.000 And they don't think that merit's garbage.

01:13:13.000 They think that America's great because they want their kids to achieve, and they're kind of proud to live in a country where people can start companies and do great things.

01:13:20.000 They just, they want a little bit more redistribution.

01:13:23.000 Now, you find radicals, and when I say this, I mean that approximately, depending on how you count it, the 7% of people who are true polarizing radicals in this country who don't see any common ground.

01:13:34.000 But if 93% of us, give or take, I actually do believe that there can be some common ground, that we can work together in some way, shape, or form, that I'm going to be bridging that meritocratic redistributive divide, and I'm going to be really forgiving.

01:13:46.000 I'm going to be as generous as I possibly can to the people who don't agree quite as much with my meritocratic values, so that I can try to get some fairness that bridges that gap.

01:13:54.000 And I think it can be done.

01:13:56.000 This is why I love your new book so much, because it really spoke to me.

01:13:59.000 It reminded me of this epiphany I had in my late 20s when I was studying for my bachelor's degree.

01:14:03.000 I took economics for the first time, and I learned this crazy thing that 80% of the world's poverty had been eradicated since I was a kid.

01:14:12.000 You know, I thought that hunger was worse.

01:14:14.000 I thought that the world was worse.

01:14:15.000 And furthermore, I thought capitalism was great for rich people and bad for poor people.

01:14:19.000 And you know, I grew up in a left-wing environment, I knew nobody who cared about economics or business, but I was learning that two billion of my brothers and sisters had been pulled out of poverty since I was a child.

01:14:31.000 And I learned that it came from five things.

01:14:34.000 Five things.

01:14:35.000 And all economists, left, right, and center, this is not controversial stuff, this is not, this is propaganda.

01:14:40.000 Five things pulled two billion of Ben and Arthur's brothers and sisters out of poverty since 1970.

01:14:44.000 It was globalization, Free trade, property rights, the rule of law, and the culture of free enterprise spreading from America all around the world.

01:14:54.000 And I thought, huh.

01:14:56.000 You know, my favorite composer in those days was Johann Sebastian Bach.

01:15:00.000 You know, the greatest composer who ever lived.

01:15:01.000 And he was asked near the end of his life, why do you write music?

01:15:05.000 His answer was, the aim and final end of all music is nothing less than the glorification of God and the refreshment of the soul.

01:15:11.000 And I thought to myself, How can I answer like Bach?

01:15:16.000 I wasn't answering like Bach as a French horn player in the orchestra.

01:15:19.000 I thought, I want to do something that glorifies God and that refreshes the lives of other people.

01:15:25.000 And I became an economist.

01:15:28.000 From the sublime to the dismal.

01:15:31.000 If you've enjoyed hearing from our past guests in this collection, be sure to check out their full episodes and hear more of The Conversation.

01:15:38.000 Links to those are in the description.

01:15:39.000 Also be sure to leave us a comment about who some of your favorite past Sunday Special guests have been, and who you'd like to see me talk with next season.

01:15:45.000 We'll see you next time.

01:15:58.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

01:15:59.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

01:16:01.000 Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynard.

01:16:03.000 Post-production is supervised by Alex Zingaro.

01:16:05.000 Editing is by Jim Nickel.

01:16:07.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.

01:16:09.000 Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

01:16:10.000 Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

01:16:12.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 26, 2020

The Truth About America: Where Do We Go From Here?

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