Did President Trump just defeat the NFL? And is that good for America or just good for President Trump? We'll talk about that and much more in today's mailbag mailbag. Plus, President Trump is actually winning the battle against the NFL, and we're going to talk about what it means for him to win, whether that means the country is winning or just Trump winning. And as always, thank you for listening to The Ben Shapiro Show! Ben Shapiro is the host of the popular conservative podcast, "The Weekly Standard" and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of several books, including "The Conscience of a Conservative" and "The Ethics of Ignorance" and has been featured on CNN and other media outlets. If you're looking for a safe, secure place to keep your money and your mind, then you'll want to check out the "No Cost, No Obligation" kit from the Birch Gold Group. Get your FREE information kit, a 16-page document that outlines how you can move your savings into a precious metals and precious metals IRA, and then move your money from traditional investments into an IRA backed by physical gold. Get your no-cost, no-obligation kit at birchgold.com slash ben.co/birchgold and get all the gold you need to be prepared for an emergency. You'll get 20% off of your first month of gold and silver, and 20% of your brokerage account, plus a free 3-month VIP membership when you sign up for a spot on the birch gold account! Subscribe to our newest e-only offer, plus an additional 3-day shipping plan when you become a member starting in January 2020! You won't have to pay any other option, they'll get an ad-free version of the show starts in-depth training and access to the show, plus I'll get access to all the best deals, plus all the insider tips and pricing, plus the ability to access all my best practices, tips, and access throughout the world, plus everything else I'm talking about the world's best tips and everything else that I get, including the best of the world gets a chance to watch me, the whole world gets to do it, plus more, plus access to everything you'll get, plus so much more! ENJOYING it?
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00:02:28.000Okay, so, President Trump looks like he's beginning to win big on the NFL.
00:02:31.000What I mean is that a lot of teams are now backing down.
00:02:32.000And this is why I really think it had less to do with President Trump purposefully picking
00:02:51.000A smart fight, and much more to do with the left's knee-jerk reaction to everything Trump says, and them going over the top no matter what Trump says.
00:02:59.000So, to recapitulate what exactly happened here, for those who have been in sleep in a cave for the last couple of weeks, President Trump said that Colin Kaepernick was an SOB, and that owners should fire players who kneel on the sidelines for the national anthem.
00:03:11.000Now, if you or I said that, we're private citizens.
00:03:14.000The President of the United States is the President of the United States.
00:03:17.000Governmental actors should not be telling private actors how to do their business.
00:03:23.000If the shoe were on the other foot, and Barack Obama were telling people on the right that they should be fired by their left-leaning employers,
00:03:46.000That the smart thing to do would be to, and the right thing to do, would be to claim the mantle of the National Anthem and the Star Spangled Banner, rather than ripping on it and trying to divide the country along those lines.
00:03:57.000Today, in 2017, there really is no excuse for kneeling for the National Anthem.
00:04:02.000If you have problems with a specific police department, then protest that police department.
00:04:05.000If you have a problem with a specific police officer, protest that police officer.
00:04:08.000But to suggest that America is through and through a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe country?
00:04:52.000And the left, because they're really dumb, they decide that instead of reacting by saying, listen,
00:04:57.000We may agree about the National Anthem, but everybody has a right to express themselves the way they want to, and we don't think people should be fired for doing that in the NFL.
00:05:04.000And then standing up for the National Anthem while some people kneel, that would have been the smart thing to do.
00:05:08.000Instead, what they did is they started to kneel.
00:05:11.000And they allowed Trump to polarize this debate.
00:05:12.000So now, instead of this being sort of a messy debate where some people were against kneeling, but against Trump, and some people were for Trump,
00:06:02.000He realized that most Americans don't like people kneeling.
00:06:05.000He realized that if he could grab the mantle of the flag and the national anthem, then he would end up winning that debate.
00:06:11.000Because people like the flag and the national anthem more than they like the people who are kneeling.
00:06:14.000And if the last election proved nothing, it should have proved that we are all binary thinkers, or at least a huge number of Americans are binary thinkers.
00:06:21.000We can't think in three dimensions, and so that means that instead of thinking about two issues at once,
00:06:25.000Censorship of people who kneel, and the actual kneeling, we just boil it down to the actual kneeling.
00:06:30.000And the left was, again, dumb enough to fall for this.
00:06:33.000So, Bryant Gumbel over on HBO, the left thought that they had won this debate, which is an amazing thing.
00:06:37.000There are a bunch of people on the left saying, oh, Trump made a big boo-boo here.
00:06:40.000I've been saying since the beginning of this, Trump did not make a big boo-boo.
00:06:43.000What I think Trump did was not great for the country, because I think there was a broad consensus.
00:06:46.00085% of Americans don't like kneeling, and a similar number of people are fine with people not being fired for kneeling.
00:06:54.000Right, so there was a pretty broad consensus.
00:06:57.000I don't think it's good to split that consensus, because I agree with both halves of that whole.
00:07:01.000But the left immediately jumped into bed with the Colin Kaepernick crowd, and here's Brian Gumbel saying that he thinks that, great, the athletes are all energized now.
00:07:09.000Now, for sure, they're going to win this battle.
00:07:11.000Really dumb stuff from Brian Gumbel over on HBO.
00:07:15.000Finally tonight, a quick thanks to the current occupant of the White House for energizing the social conscience of the modern American athlete.
00:07:22.000That occupant's weekend series of racist, churlish, and childish comments drew a variety of stunning rebukes and actions, which suggest jocks may finally be realizing that apathy won't cut it anymore, that in conjunction with their fame, they have important civic roles to play, especially now.
00:07:40.000Many suddenly seem not just willing but also eager to follow in the giant footsteps of Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Billie Jean King, Roberto Clemente, Arthur Ashe and many others who courageously use their athletic platforms to challenge authority in the pursuit of justice.
00:07:55.000Okay, we can stop it there for a second.
00:07:57.000So first of all, I think that it's important to note that a lot of the people who we now hail as heroes in this area, I'm thinking specifically here of Muhammad Ali, were at the time not seen that way.
00:08:07.000And there's a bit of a heavy golden gloss that's being put on Muhammad Ali's history.
00:08:12.000I mean, at the time he was deeply associated with the radical racist nation of Islam, under pre-Louis Farrakhan Elijah Muhammad.
00:08:20.000And the idea that he was doing some sort of great service to the country, Muhammad Ali, at the time, I really disagree with that pretty strongly.
00:08:26.000In fact, many Americans disagreed with it, which is why when he had his first fight with Joe Frazier, a lot of Americans were on the side of Joe Frazier.
00:08:32.000Muhammad Ali helped exacerbate racial divides.
00:08:35.000Joe Frazier was a guy who grew up poor in Philadelphia.
00:08:39.000Muhammad Ali grew up middle class in Louisiana as Cassius Clay, and Joe Frazier
00:09:19.000But beyond that, if Brian Gumbel thinks that the sports world is going to win by continuing to politicize itself in ways that are really not well thought out or well calibrated,
00:09:29.000That athletes doing simplistic things like kneeling for the national anthem is somehow great for the country.
00:09:35.000This is a battle that Brian Gumbel and those athletes are not going to win.
00:09:38.000And I'm frankly confused as to why they think they would.
00:09:40.000Most Americans don't believe that this is a racist country or should be castigated as such.
00:09:46.000Most Americans also believe that if you can name a specific racist incident, then we'll fight it with you.
00:10:45.000Louis Rams players perpetuating the lie that hands up, don't shoot was a real thing in Ferguson, which they did a couple of years ago and were not punished by the NFL.
00:10:53.000You see this from people in the NBA, too.
00:10:54.000The 76ers, their first round draft pick is a guy named Ben Simmons.
00:10:57.000He's supposed to be a very good player.
00:10:59.000And he comes out and he starts ripping Trump by name and play that in just a second and suggest that this is not smart strategy.
00:11:05.000And you will see that Trump is going to win this particular battle, which is a big win for Trump.
00:11:10.000We'll talk about whether it's a win for the right and a win for the culture, because I think
00:11:14.000It's not quite as easy as some people want to make it out to be.
00:11:16.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the U.S.
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00:12:25.000Okay, so again, polarizing along Trumpian lines.
00:12:40.000Usually wouldn't be a problem for athletes.
00:12:41.000Polarizing along Trumpian lines when Trump is standing with the flag and with the army is really not a good idea for these athletes.
00:12:48.000So here is Ben Simmons, who is a 76ers forward, I believe, talking about how much he hates Trump.
00:12:56.000If we were in Australia right now, a lot of people would call him a dickhead.
00:13:36.000We disagree about the usefulness of the pause pod.
00:13:40.000We disagree about all of these things, but what we don't disagree about is that the flag is a good thing and the national anthem is a good thing, so what are you doing?
00:13:45.000And so now the NFL has basically been forced to back down.
00:13:49.000The way that they're backing down is that they are standing and linking arms for the national anthem.
00:13:53.000This is their sort of subtle way of backing down.
00:13:56.000I said that on Sunday what they should have done if they wanted to show solidarity is the people who are going to kneel should have been the exact same people kneeling six months ago, and everybody else on the field should have stood next to the people who are kneeling.
00:14:05.000You're showing solidarity by being next to the person, right?
00:14:10.000What's the point of elevating the issue?
00:14:12.000In any case, these players last night, it was the Bears-Packers game, they were standing and linking arms for the National Anthem, and this is a... it basically is a back down.
00:14:25.000Ladies and gentlemen, to honor America, please stand, remove your hats, and join Country Recording Artist Tyler Farr as he sings our National Anthem.
00:14:39.000Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's
00:15:14.000He's the center for the Pittsburgh Steelers and one of the longest tenured players on their roster.
00:15:17.000He came out yesterday and he said, I promise you, this week we are all going to stand for the anthem.
00:15:22.000I promise you one thing, this week we'll all be standing out there for the National Anthem, trust me.
00:15:26.000We respect our flag and we respect the military and everything that goes a part of it, man.
00:15:30.000I think the bigger message is that people were just trying to stay out of it, you know, and that we should have, you know, just united inside.
00:15:36.000And everyone was in there, you know, standing up and it was all about the flag and, you know, it was a big misunderstanding.
00:15:41.000Trust me, I'm very sorry to anyone that probably feels the way that they do and, you know, rightfully so, but, you know, there's a lot of arguments in them points.
00:15:49.000I care about the flag dearly and trust me, this team would be out there standing.
00:15:53.000Right, basically they're saying it was a big mistake.
00:17:16.000The NBA's Adam Silver, he came out, he said he now expects the players to stand.
00:17:21.000As Coach Popovich said the other day, people need to engage and have these discussions.
00:17:26.000And they're not always easy discussions to have.
00:17:28.000Sometimes they are painful discussions, but they need to be had.
00:17:32.000And I'm hoping, once again, that this league can play a constructive role there on, you know, the anthem and specifically
00:17:42.000We have a rule that requires our players to stand for the anthem.
00:17:46.000It's been our rule as long as I've been involved with the league and my expectation is that our players will continue to stand for the anthem.
00:17:55.000Okay, so nothing actually changed in the NBA, and this is the important thing to note.
00:17:58.000It looks like the NBA is backing down because some of the players were really loud about this stuff, but nothing actually changed.
00:18:03.000I mean, in 1996, there was a guy named Mahmoud Abduraouf.
00:18:06.000He was a guard for, I believe it was at the time, was he on the Golden State Warriors?
00:18:13.000He was on the Denver Nuggets at the time.
00:18:15.000And he refused to stand for the National Anthem.
00:18:19.000Instead, he decided that he viewed the American flag as a symbol of oppression and racism, and he said that standing for the anthem would conflict with his Muslim faith.
00:18:27.000He said, you can't be forgotten for oppression.
00:18:29.000It's clear in the Quran, Islam is the only way.
00:18:31.000I don't criticize those who stand, so don't criticize me for sitting.
00:18:33.000So the NBA suspended him for a game, and they cited a rule that the players had to line up in a dignified posture.
00:18:40.000The players' union supported him, and he reached a compromise with the league that allowed him to stand and pray with his head down during the anthem.
00:18:49.000You know, his career basically tanked after that because he lost his entire fan base, but that was basically the end of that.
00:18:55.000So the idea that this battle started just last week is not really true, or the idea that the NBA switched its position on this is not really true, but the impression left in the minds of the public is that all these people were going to kneel.
00:19:10.000Now, is it a big political victory for the right?
00:19:13.000Well, on the one hand, a victory for Trump against people who are kneeling is sort of a victory for the right, except that more Americans thought that Colin Kaepernick was doing a dumb thing before Trump intervened than after he intervened.
00:19:23.000If you look at the polls, again, there was like 85% of Americans thought that Colin Kaepernick was doing the wrong thing.
00:19:29.000Now it's about 60% of Americans, 65% of Americans.
00:19:32.000That's not actually a victory for the right.
00:20:44.000Now I want to talk about what else this means in terms of the Republican agenda stalling, because while Trump is fighting these culture war battles that really get the base jazzed up and get people excited, because the truth is, as I've said before, people are much more interested in talking about cultural issues than in tax cuts.
00:20:59.000Are the Republicans even going to be able to do anything?
00:21:01.000And what is the divide inside the Republican Party?
00:21:05.000It's confusing, because you hear the term establishment, and then you see people who are clearly not establishment being called establishment, and people who are working with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer being called anti-establishment.
00:21:16.000What do these terms even mean anymore?
00:21:18.000Rush Limbaugh was on with Sean Hannity last night.
00:21:20.000Two guys who I've been very friendly with and people I grew up listening to.
00:21:25.000And they were talking about Trump versus sort of the Republican Congress.
00:21:29.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at DaVinci.
00:21:32.000So yesterday I was in Utah and we didn't have a place to broadcast.
00:21:36.000So, we used DaVinci to book a boardroom in this really nice building, beautiful boardroom, and we filmed from the boardroom there for a very, very low cost.
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00:22:37.000So everyone, listen, we have offices but when we're on the road we use DaVinci.
00:22:43.000This is the way that we operate here at the business, and that's how you should operate whether you have offices or not.
00:22:47.000If you don't have offices, it's even better, because then no matter where you are, you're in your home city, and you need an office for the day.
00:23:33.000That's why Donald Trump can go from a guy who was commenting on Twitter about birtherism four years ago to the President of the United States.
00:23:39.000Culture wars matter a lot more than the political battles.
00:23:43.000But what does that mean for the political battle?
00:23:44.000In some ways it means that it's harder to get people on the same page because
00:23:48.000All you have to do is virtue signal in the culture wars, and then we don't actually have to pass anything.
00:23:53.000So there are some pretty significant and fundamental differences inside the Republican Party, and it's always interesting to watch people like Sean and Rush, both of whom have been strongly supportive of President Trump, talk about what the Republican Congress is doing to buck Trump.
00:24:07.000Instead of suggesting that everyone has a duty to get on the same page, the idea is that if the Republicans would just follow Trump, he would lead them to the promised land.
00:24:14.000I don't think that this is exactly correct.
00:24:16.000I don't see them embracing strong ideas and going and selling them, which I think they'd win on the... I don't think they're conservative.
00:24:53.000Okay, so Russia's actually making a slightly different point.
00:24:56.000He's not making the point about conservatism.
00:24:58.000He's making a point that there are all these career politicians who haven't been doing anything.
00:25:01.000If Trump comes in and fixes things, he makes them look bad.
00:25:03.000I don't think that that's actually what's going on here.
00:25:05.000I don't think there are a lot of career politicians who are sitting around going, you know what, if I thwart Trump, I look better today.
00:25:10.000How many Republicans feel like if they thwart Trump on things they want passed, that that is actually going to make them look better in the eyes of their own constituents?
00:27:15.000Trump's tax policy here, when he's saying he wants to raise the taxes on the people who are paying the majority of the taxes in the country, you know, that is not a conservative thing to do.
00:27:25.000So what, and you know, all of the hubbub around Trump and Trumpism, this idea of nationalist populism.
00:28:10.000He should continue nominating terrific justices to fill these slots.
00:28:13.000But the suggestion that Trump is across the board a consistent guy or he has any sort of through line to what he believes is just not true.
00:28:21.000Ann Coulter, I think, is sort of making the same mistake here.
00:28:23.000Again, I've known Ann since I was 16 years old.
00:28:25.000Here's Ann talking about Roy Moore, the guy who just won the Alabama Senate primary.
00:28:29.000It's very controversial because not only did he bring in a Ten Commandments monument and put it on the lawn at the Alabama judicial... at the state courthouse, I guess.
00:28:41.000He refused to remove it when he was ordered to remove it and he was ousted from his job there.
00:28:52.000He's made some pretty ridiculous comments about people like Keith Ellison not being able to be seated in Congress because Keith Ellison is a Muslim.
00:29:48.000Okay, so this is the message that people are trying to do now.
00:29:52.000So now that it's clear that Trump does not actually have an ideology, people are trying to actually construct one and then separate it from Trump.
00:29:58.000But we'll call it Trumpism, which is incoherent.
00:30:02.000You want to know why the Republican Party is having difficulty governing?
00:30:05.000The reason they're having difficulty governing is because the only unifying thread between Trump and the Trumpists
00:30:11.000The people who like Trumpism or whatever they're calling that these days, the nationalist populists, and the people who are traditional conservatives and libertarians, the only thing that unites them is opposition to the left.
00:30:23.000Listen, we don't, we're not big on the left here, right?
00:30:25.000I mean, we give you a mug, right, that says, leftist years, hot or cold.
00:30:28.000Like, this is, well, we're not huge on the left, but you actually have to push a certain ideology if you hope to unify and actually be able to govern.
00:30:35.000The fact that Republicans are not really speaks to the idea that opposition is a lot easier than governing, and this is where Trump's, I keep saying this over and over, Mr. President,
00:30:53.000Let's just talk about getting things done.
00:30:55.000If you want to get things done, you need to buckle down, and you need to force through your agenda by taking it directly to the public, and by wheeling and dealing what you say you're great at, you need to do all of these things.
00:31:06.000Because otherwise, it's just going to be the Republicans unable to push an agenda, and you sitting on the sidelines sniping at them.
00:31:12.000That's not a recipe for legislative success in any way, shape, or form.
00:31:17.000Well, we're going to get to things I like, things I hate in the mailbag.
00:31:19.000But first, you're going to have to subscribe if you want to see that live.
00:31:21.000So, you can always listen later on audio, but if you want to subscribe and see the rest of the show live and be part of the mailbag, get your questions in.
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00:32:03.000We are the largest, fastest-growing podcast in the nation.
00:32:11.000I should say we're the largest and fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:32:15.000In any case, let's talk about some things I like and some things that I hate.
00:32:18.000So one of the things that is really, it's pretty fascinating actually, about the way that we approach racial issues in this country today, is we sort of put a different spin on history in the 1960s and 70s than what was actually being lived at the time.
00:32:32.000So at the time, the people who were actually making a dent were not people like Malcolm X, it was people like Martin Luther King.
00:32:37.000Those were the people who were convincing good-hearted white folks to join on the bandwagon.
00:32:43.000Not a lot of white folks were joining Malcolm X's bandwagon.
00:32:45.000A lot of white folks were joining Martin Luther King's bandwagon, as well they should have.
00:32:50.000In the 1960s and 70s, the move toward racial reconciliation by the media was an attempt toward reconciliation.
00:32:57.000Not toward the idea that we have to continue dividing ourselves so we can be more self-aware and this will lead to reconciliation, but the idea that white people and black people treating each other as individuals was the way forward.
00:33:08.000Which is a traditionally American idea.
00:33:10.000Now, I want to contrast the way that the football
00:33:41.000It is at the time, I believe, the biggest and highest rated TV movie of all time.
00:33:47.000And it is about Gale Sayers, who's the famous running back for the Chicago Bears, and Brian Piccolo, a backup running back for the Chicago Bears.
00:35:13.000These should be unifying factors, not dividing factors.
00:35:16.000It's one of the pet peeves for the right.
00:35:17.000We look at culture and we say, listen, that should be bringing us together.
00:35:20.000You know, we can have uplifting stories like this.
00:35:22.000Yes, of course we can tell stories about terrible things that have happened to black people in the past and happened to black people in the present, but we also need a message of reconciliation or we're never going to be able to move beyond this.
00:35:32.000This is what Obama promised in 2008 and then didn't deliver over the next eight years, instead opting for the intersectional politics of the left that suggests that America is innately divided and can never be reconciled.
00:35:50.000Speaking of things that should be unifying, Steve Scalise, the Louisiana congressperson who was shot by the Bernie Sanders supporter.
00:35:57.000Again, not Bernie's fault, as I've said a thousand times, but he was shot by a guy who's a far leftist in the congressional baseball shooting.
00:36:03.000He finally came back to the house yesterday after a long recovery, and here he was arriving there.
00:37:07.000The reason I did it is because he actually infiltrated Antifa over at University of Utah.
00:37:11.000And you can see, he was there, he put on a wig, he put on contact, and they went and they got encrypted apps from the, like Antifa wouldn't allow them in unless they got encryption on their phone, and they were messaging each other.
00:37:23.000Here is actual video of an Antifa member offering Steven Crowder's producer a knife, and then you'll see, you'll see, I'm not sure if this is a man or woman, it's a transgender person, offer the knife and then an ice pick.
00:38:44.000And it is amazing that, again, I think more journalistic outlets should be doing work like this.
00:38:50.000One of the things that I talk about when I talk about journalism is that there's an attempt by the media to separate acts of journalism from being a journalist.
00:38:59.000So I'll say, well, my career is I'm a journalist.
00:39:02.000But, then there's a suggestion that if you're not a journalist, and you go and do an act of journalism like Crowder is doing, Crowder, again, is a comedian, and not Gage Harris' producer, that that is not journalism because they're not quote-unquote journalists, right?
00:39:13.000They don't have the magic journalist fairy dust, and therefore...
00:39:23.000They are quite violent, and they're quite willing to engage in violence.
00:39:26.000Okay, one more thing I hate, and then we'll get to the... Should we do one more thing I hate and get to the... Okay, one more thing I hate.
00:39:31.000Okay, so that is Jimmy Kimmel last night.
00:39:33.000I hate to rip on Jimmy Kimmel so much lately, because I think Jimmy Kimmel's a talented guy, but Jimmy Kimmel...
00:39:39.000He did a whole tribute to Hugh Hefner.
00:39:41.000And yesterday, if you want to take my take on Hugh Hefner, I did 20 minutes on Hugh Hefner yesterday.
00:39:46.000The short take is everybody is treating a seedy old pornographer like he was some sort of great force in American life for good.
00:39:52.000And here's Jimmy Kimmel saying about a guy who legitimately was worse to women than Donald Trump by about a thousand times.
00:39:59.000I mean, his grotto was described as a sex prison by people who used to work there.
00:40:05.000Here's Jimmy Kimmel talking about how wonderful Hugh Hefner was and he'll be disappointed after he dies and goes to heaven.
00:40:12.000I was thinking about it last night, Hugh Hefner is probably the only person ever to be disappointed by heaven.
00:40:17.000It's with all these harps, let's get some naked girls in here!
00:40:23.000Okay, first of all, a couple of suggestions.
00:40:24.000I think it's highly doubtful that the place, if there is an afterlife, that Hugh Hefner will end up is initially heaven.
00:40:31.000But in any case, this idea that Hugh Hefner is just somebody we joke about, Hugh Hefner, he may have helped individual women who are trying to make their way in the world.
00:40:40.000He was not good for women as a whole, and he was not good for men as a whole.
00:40:45.000Pornification of American culture has not been a good thing for men who have become desensitized to sex and treat women as sex objects more often because they see more naked women all the time.
00:40:55.000Airbrushed naked women in most of these cases.
00:40:58.000And it's not been great for women who are seen as the objects by these guys.
00:41:01.000I mean, it has not been good for the culture.
00:41:03.000So the celebration of Hugh Hefner is quite odd.
00:41:05.000These are the same people who when Clay Travis said First Amendment and boobs on CNN.
00:41:20.000And by the way, there's an awful article over at Politico today saying that Clay Travis is somehow an alt-righter, and then they provide no evidence that he's actually an alt-writer.
00:41:26.000I guess that he's an alt-writer because he says that kneeling for the flag is bad and that Trump is right.
00:41:31.000I may disagree with him, but that doesn't make you alt-right.
00:41:33.000Okay, in any case, let's get to the mailbag.
00:41:35.000Again, if you're a subscriber, write your
00:41:38.000Messages now and we will do some live.
00:41:40.000Isaac says I'm 21 I have no idea what I want to do with my life.
00:41:43.000I have no real interest either How do I find out what I should do for my career?
00:41:46.000Well, you're asking me if you're like a lump if you're like an amoeba, what should you do with your life?
00:41:50.000um, so you have no real interest and You have no idea what you want to do with your life, and I'm supposed to fix that for you So normally I fix your problems.
00:41:59.000Let me start with this one if you are bored with things It's because you're boring
00:42:03.000If you're bored with life, it's because you haven't searched enough.
00:42:06.000If you decide to be bored with life, you're not going to make a career or a happy life out of being bored.
00:42:09.000So you do have to find something that you are enthusiastic about, something that you're interested in.
00:42:14.000Listen, you're interested enough to become a subscriber to this show, which means that you're obviously interested in pop culture and politics.
00:42:19.000So there are certain things you're interested in.
00:42:21.000You may not be interested in becoming an electrical engineer, but there are certain aspects of life that you are interested in enough and fascinated enough to engage with.
00:42:27.000You need to find out what those are and what aspect of that you can be good with.
00:42:32.000And there's so much crossover in the economy.
00:42:34.000You can be interested in politics and you don't have to sit behind a mic like me.
00:43:05.000Balei Tshuva means owners of repentance, literally.
00:43:08.000Most of my siblings have left religion.
00:43:10.000I'm the only one still as religious as my parents.
00:43:12.000I'm also 14, so I don't have much of a choice.
00:43:14.000Why do children of ultra-religious parents abandon religion?
00:43:17.000So I think one of the reasons is that ultra-religious parents very often don't feel that there's a real balance in the religious community.
00:43:24.000Between cloistering your child and exposing them to ideas so that you can inoculate them against bad ideas.
00:43:58.000Or have you ever considered that religion may be false altogether, and God doesn't exist, so you can do whatever you want, and hey look, there are a bunch of hot girls, let's go to a party?
00:44:05.000These things actually affect people who are religious, and this is why I think it's very important to have open and honest conversations about the nature of faith, about the nature of your faith, about why it is that going to the party with the hot girls, it may be worth foregoing that,
00:44:20.000In order so that you have a better life in the future.
00:44:22.000Like, I have a very fulfilled life, thank God.
00:44:57.000It's sort of like the polio virus in the 1930s.
00:44:59.000Well, one of the funny things about the polio virus is that it tended to affect, uh, it tended to inflict more damage on people who are very wealthy than people who are very poor.
00:45:07.000And people are wondering, why is that?
00:45:08.000Well, the answer is that a lot of poor people were playing outside in the mud and exposing themselves to germs.
00:45:15.000If you keep a kid, a baby, in a bubble, and they never have to deal with antigens, then there's never going to be a situation in which their immune system has developed enough for them to actually fight those things off.
00:45:26.000You have to expose your kids to enough ideas that are foreign to your culture, and then defend your culture against those that your kids have heard of before, and it's nothing new and seductive.
00:45:34.000By the way, I feel this way about when you talk to your kids about sex.
00:45:37.000I think that half of the things that go wrong with regard to kids and sex is that we say to kids, you can't talk about that.
00:45:54.000It's certain parts going in certain places.
00:45:55.000When you remove the mystery from sex, what you end up doing is suggesting that in order for it to be more than that, there needs to be some sort of feeling attached to the sex.
00:46:03.000I think the mistake a lot of religious parents make is they say, ooh, we can't talk about that.
00:46:14.000So I think it's a big mistake not to be open and honest with your kids about this kind of stuff.
00:46:18.000Mitch says, what is your favorite musical period, classical, romantic, et cetera, and why?
00:46:22.000Well, I think probably the border between classical and romantic.
00:46:25.000So for people who don't know classical music that well, classical music was
00:46:30.000Basically, there's the Baroque period, which is sort of Bach, and then there's the Classical period, which is considered Mozart and Beethoven.
00:46:37.000Beethoven really sort of spans the divide between Classical and Romantic, and by the time it gets to Tchaikovsky and Brahms, you're in the Romantic period.
00:46:43.000So, Beethoven is the best composer who ever lived, although there is a strong argument for Bach.
00:46:48.000The most listenable music, in terms of just, you turn on the radio and it's easy listening, is Baroque slash classical music, like Bach.
00:46:57.000If I had to pick one composer to take to a desert island, it would be Bach.
00:47:01.000Benjamin says, Hey Ben, I've been reading up on Israel and I'm becoming frustrated with the fact that Israel's public perception has shifted so negatively when it's blatantly obvious that they are not the hostile actors in the region.
00:47:09.000When did this shift in public opinion occur?
00:48:37.000Confusing small children about heterosexuality versus homosexuality seems to me a really bad move.
00:48:44.000Because if you're trying to inculcate a set of values, and you say that it is better for
00:48:49.000For your child to be straight than gay, which is a perfectly respectable non-homophobic position.
00:48:53.000Just talking about what will lead to your perception of human happiness, that's not irrational in any way.
00:48:59.000If you say to this lesbian family member, listen, you're welcome to come over, you're welcome to say that this is your partner, this is a person who you live with, but we don't like using the word wife because I don't want to explain to my child
00:49:15.000Because I don't believe in same-sex marriage.
00:49:34.000When I wrestle with doubts, the doubts that I tend to wrestle with are doubts about
00:49:50.000How much of faith can be based on rationality and how much of faith has to be based on faith?
00:49:53.000So there's never been a time where I've really thought...
00:49:58.000Where I've really thought that God didn't exist.
00:50:01.000I've wondered whether there's a rational basis for God's existence, and that's where I'm really doubtful.
00:50:05.000I also have never responded to tragedy that has occurred in my family by doubting God's existence.
00:50:11.000That's just, it's, a lot of people do.
00:50:13.000A lot of people see terrible, terrible things and they doubt God's existence.
00:50:16.000I've never really had a problem with the theodicy part of the issue, the issue that why, if God exists, why does evil exist?
00:50:21.000It seems to me that God created a system where free will has to exist, which means that he has to shield himself because
00:50:26.000If everything God did were immediately visible in terms of acts and consequences, free will would go by the wayside.
00:50:32.000That said, you know, I think that that's why I'm constantly reading about religion.
00:50:35.000A little bit later today, actually, I'm going to do a Facebook Live with a professor named Edward Fazer, and I welcome you to go over to our Facebook page and watch.
00:50:42.000He wrote a book called Five Proofs of God's Existence.
00:50:44.000And I want to talk to him about those proofs and what they mean and how much of faith can actually be based on reason and how much you have to actually take a leap of faith.
00:50:51.000I would also say that one of the things that brings me a little bit of comfort here, maybe it's foolish, but I think that it's true anyway, is that every system of thought has leaps of faith attached to it.
00:51:02.000Sam Harris has as many leaps of faith in his system of thought as I do.
00:51:05.000And what'll be fun is I'm doing an event with Sam Harris in December in San Francisco.
00:51:24.000So it seems to me that the best argument against physician-assisted suicide is that it's physician-assisted.
00:51:29.000So I think there's an interesting moral argument with regard to assisted suicide in general.
00:51:35.000Like, the truth is that when we have palliative care, it's not assisted suicide formally because we're not injecting enough morphine to kill you, but we're basically making you comfortable until you die.
00:51:44.000Putting physician-assisted suicide on the table means that you have to start drawing lines now.
00:51:48.000Even people who are in favor of physician-assisted suicide usually want to require
00:51:52.000That the person who is receiving the physician-assisted suicide should have to go through some sort of background check.
00:51:57.000That if you're an 11-year-old who's having thoughts of suicide, but you're perfectly healthy in every way, that we shouldn't allow you to do that.
00:52:03.000Well, now you're putting your standards on the person who wants to commit the suicide, which denies the fundamental argument you're making about autonomy.
00:52:56.000On those particular verses, by the way, the Talmud says that no child has ever been, uh, has never been held accountable for what they call ben-sorah or morah, which is the rebellious child who is stoned.
00:53:06.000Also, all of the death penalty offenses in the Bible require, according to Jewish law anyway, two eyewitnesses who not only witness the event, but warn the person beforehand.
00:53:18.000And the guy says, screw you, I'm gonna kill him!
00:53:21.000And then they both see the guy and then they go and testify.
00:53:23.000So this is why it also says in the Talmud that a beit din, a Sanhedrin, that issued a death penalty once every 70 years was considered a murderous beit din.
00:53:33.000So all of the talk about, you know, all the death penalty stuff in the Bible was really not applied.
00:53:46.000I think at some point he's just going to turn to infrastructure.
00:53:48.000He's going to grab about 20 Republicans and 40 Democrats and try to ram through a giant infrastructure package.
00:54:01.000It's quite possible, though, that the political landscape is so polarized at this point that the Democrats just say, we're not going to help you with anything.
00:54:47.000I have real serious problems with this.
00:54:50.000I don't want to get too graphic here, but let me just suggest that I think that there is a solid correlation, unless you have like a serious sexual dysfunction, which is something that you probably would know beforehand, or if you don't know beforehand, there are treatments for, then the idea that you are sexually incompatible generally means that you're personally incompatible as well.
00:55:08.000These are all issues that should be discussed up front, but
00:55:12.000This making sex super complicated, like you have to try it out because you're comparing cars, it seems like idiocy to me.
00:55:19.000First of all, if you and the person that you're having sex with have had no basis for comparison, then it's the best sex you've both ever had.
00:55:26.000So there is that convenient little fact.
00:55:30.000If the only beer you've ever had is Bud Light, it's the greatest beer you've ever had.
00:55:33.000So you don't really have to worry about it.
00:55:34.000But also I think sexual compatibility is really more just about being willing to give, just being a giving person.
00:55:39.000And if you're a giving person, then sexual compatibility is actually pretty easy.
00:55:50.000Well, usually there's state or federal laws, anti-discrimination laws.
00:55:54.000You can file a lawsuit if they violate those discrimination laws.
00:55:58.000One of the questions that I have is whether those laws should be on the books in the first place.
00:56:01.000Not because I'm pro-discrimination, I hate discrimination, but because in a free market, I think that discrimination should be punished by other businesses destroying the discriminatory business in open competition.
00:56:12.000But the appropriate legal route to take, just as a lawyer, is you'd have to actually go look at the applicable state or federal law and see if it's technically been violated.
00:56:19.000Vincent says, for a guy in the workplace, how many buttons can be undone on a collared button-up shirt?
00:56:23.000At a social scene, a bar barbecue family event, how many buttons can be undone?