The Ben Shapiro Show - August 13, 2026


Why Tucker Carlson Wants You Demoralized

Topics
American dream American dream process food inflation college debt solutions demoralization efforts law and virtue education American dream as process
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Tucker Carlson Hassan Piker Zoran Mamdani Harvard Law Bernie Sanders Legacy Box Neil Patel Woodstock Michelli Hence Burrito Gate Andrew Kolvet Jason Zengerly Michael Malice Hunter Biden Andrew Tate Max Faber Exeter Susie
Look at This Before You Attack Capitalism The Surrogacy Dispute Tearing Reproductive Ethics Apart

Episode Stats


Length

38 minutes

Words per minute

193.19

Word count

7,470

Sentence count

623

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

27

sentences flagged

Hate speech

26

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Tucker Carlson was shouting at the walls of his cosplay cabin in Maine about boy slop and burritos and Israeli influence operations. 0.94
00:00:09 Alp does a body good.
00:00:11 Because there is actually a metric ton of anti American slop being shovel fed to all of us these days.
00:00:16 I want to do something slightly different today.
00:00:18 I want to talk about the actual American dream what it is, what it means, and what it most certainly isn't.
00:00:24 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:33 So, as I said, I spent yesterday going to New York talking business with some of the most successful and brilliant business people in America.
00:00:39 You know what my main takeaway was? 0.99
00:00:41 America kicks ass. 0.99
00:00:42 America is great. 1.00
00:00:44 This is a great country.
00:00:45 I know.
00:00:46 We are all supposed to be demoralized and upset.
00:00:49 And we're all supposed to believe and claim that no one anymore has any shot at getting ahead in America, that the American dream is dead, that we need something brand new, by which most people mean some idea that was tried centuries ago, four centuries.
00:01:03 And then fail like over and over and over.
00:01:05 And most of those bad ideas revolve around a very, very basic failed idea that people are addicted to that there ought to be a special cadre of elite people who direct the economy toward their specific ends, that your individual freedoms are actually destructive, that you ought to have your choices circumscribed so that they can build whatever it is they want to build.
00:01:26 For Hassan Piker, total economic leveling in poverty.
00:01:30 For Zorhan Mamdani, third world ascendancy in American weakness.
00:01:33 For Tucker Carlson, an agrarian feudal state. 0.95
00:01:35 For the Muslim Brotherhood, Dar al Islam. 0.79
00:01:37 So, today I want to talk about what the American dream actually is and what it actually is not. 0.97
00:01:43 So, you're constantly hearing the American dream is the house and the white picket fence and the dog and the 2.2 children.
00:01:48 That's not what the American dream is.
00:01:50 The American dream is a process, it is not, in fact, an outcome.
00:01:55 The American dream is a process.
00:01:59 That process says that there is a relationship between cause and effect, that you, if you make good, virtuous, smart decisions, if you perform dutiful and smart things throughout your life, You will end up better off than you did.
00:02:15 And then your parents did.
00:02:16 And then if you pass those values on to your kids and they do the same thing, they will be better off than you.
00:02:21 That is the American dream.
00:02:23 That was the thing.
00:02:24 It is not that you will instantaneously go from being the poorest person in America to the richest person in America.
00:02:29 That might happen to some people, but that's not the American dream.
00:02:31 The American dream says that your talents and abilities should be able to take you as far as possible.
00:02:38 And that you will be better off if you do all those things because, again, the process is the thing.
00:02:43 And as long as you protect the process, you get your shot.
00:02:46 That's the American dream.
00:02:48 When my great great grandparents got here at the beginning of the 20th century, they came here without a dollar in their pocket.
00:02:55 They only knew Yiddish.
00:02:57 And then they did those things.
00:02:59 And they weren't rich.
00:03:01 Their kids did better than they did.
00:03:02 And they weren't precisely rich.
00:03:05 And my parents did better than my grandparents, but they weren't rich.
00:03:10 And now I'm pretty rich.
00:03:11 It's an intergenerational process very often.
00:03:14 This is true for all Americans.
00:03:17 And that process, in order to work, has to include certain preconditions.
00:03:21 There are certain conditions that make the process work.
00:03:24 Free markets.
00:03:25 So private property.
00:03:26 You own your labor.
00:03:27 You own the products, goods, and services that you produce.
00:03:30 Your innovation is your own.
00:03:32 And you can trade it with other people.
00:03:33 And you can rent it to people if you want. 0.93
00:03:35 That's what wage labor is. 0.92
00:03:36 And you can build businesses.
00:03:37 You can do those things.
00:03:39 That's what a free market is. 0.94
00:03:40 We also need things like equal justice before the law, right?
00:03:43 We need a law that is equally applied.
00:03:46 Not, there's justice For my friends and just beat downs for my enemies.
00:03:50 That is not equal justice.
00:03:52 And it doesn't protect the process because that's not a process.
00:03:54 That is just the Schmidtian friend enemy distinction.
00:03:57 We need freedom of mind, so freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
00:04:00 So we can think things through, debate them out, so we can actually pursue that process.
00:04:06 And of course, we need a social fabric that promotes virtue.
00:04:08 You need actual people doing good things.
00:04:11 You need to know what a good decision looks like, what a moral decision looks like.
00:04:14 Those are all the preconditions for the American dream.
00:04:17 And free markets, free minds, equal justice before law, social virtue.
00:04:23 Those are the things, those are the preconditions.
00:04:25 And when you have that, and then you have a government that protects those things and protects the process, that's when the American dream happens.
00:04:33 The process not only protects and promotes freedom, it also happens to have the happy effect of promoting insane, unprecedented human prosperity.
00:04:40 Because it turns out the best way for innovation and competition to happen is to access the diverse knowledge and opinions of all humanity, that free people innovate, free people compete, free people are able to access each other's knowledge levels, they're able to aggregate those knowledge levels.
00:04:58 And we are much better off that no single human being knows more than the rest of humanity.
00:05:05 That's not a thing.
00:05:06 And that's true when it comes to prioritization as well.
00:05:09 Free markets mean that everyone can prioritize what they want on a material level.
00:05:13 You get to make your own decisions about what makes your life better.
00:05:17 You get to decide whether you wish to trade your labor for X number of dollars or whether you wish to trade X number of dollars for a lottery ticket or for a share of stock, right?
00:05:25 Those are the decisions.
00:05:27 You get to decide what you are willing to do.
00:05:29 That's what the free market pricing system is.
00:05:31 It is a set of aggregated choices by millions upon millions of individual consumers.
00:05:36 And again, free markets also mean that we value everybody's knowledge base.
00:05:41 I, as a petty tyrant, I don't get to dictate to you what is the best way to fix a toilet because I have the government gun.
00:05:48 Because there are lots of people who can aggregate their knowledge and fix the toilet better.
00:05:52 And if you don't know how to do it, somebody else probably does.
00:05:54 So again, the American dream is a process.
00:05:57 That's the process we have to preserve.
00:05:58 It is not an outcome.
00:05:59 And that's exciting because the American dream.
00:06:03 A process that is reliant on your freedom makes it your adventure.
00:06:07 It's your journey.
00:06:08 You make the decisions about your life.
00:06:10 You make the decisions about what you think is important.
00:06:13 You make the decisions about what you think things are worth or what you are willing to trade for what or which profession to go into.
00:06:20 You make those decisions.
00:06:21 I don't make those decisions.
00:06:23 Hassan Piker doesn't make those decisions.
00:06:24 Tucker Carlson doesn't make those decisions.
00:06:26 You make those decisions.
00:06:28 And that's incredible.
00:06:29 Do you understand how rare that is in human history?
00:06:32 That is absolutely rare across human history.
00:06:35 For most of human history, people were just told what to do all the time.
00:06:39 The American dream isn't that.
00:06:42 That's what I want.
00:06:42 I just want the shot.
00:06:43 I want the shot to make that choice. 0.77
00:06:45 I think it's what we all want the shot, right?
00:06:46 We want the process protected.
00:06:48 That process still works.
00:06:48 And guess what?
00:06:49 There are people who lie to you and they say the process doesn't work.
00:06:52 Now, the process doesn't work as well as it should, thanks to the impositions of people like Hassan Piker on the left or Tucker Carlson on the right.
00:07:00 Statists inhibit the process, but the process still works and it works really, really well.
00:07:05 We'll get some more on this in just one second.
00:07:08 First, when it comes to your upward mobility, one thing that people do need is access to capital, right?
00:07:14 That is a thing that you need.
00:07:15 What you don't need is a financing process that takes three months and a mountain of paperwork.
00:07:19 And this is where Cardiff comes in.
00:07:22 Cardiff offers business owners up to $500,000 in application that takes less than five minutes with no impact on personal credit and the potential to get approved in minutes and same day funding.
00:07:30 If you want bank rates without the bank delays, you need to check out cardiff.co slash Shapiro for up to $500,000 in same day funding.
00:07:38 Again, We are a business.
00:07:39 That means that we constantly have to be seeking overnight funding, all the rest of that sort of stuff.
00:07:44 That's the kind of stuff a lot of businesses need.
00:07:46 Small businesses, particularly.
00:07:47 Cardiff has the key that unlocks this problem.
00:07:51 If you've been in business for at least a year and are pulling at least $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in same day business funding at cardiff.co slash Shapiro.
00:07:59 Again, that's cardiff.co slash Shapiro.
00:08:02 Real growth, fast funding, Cardiff.
00:08:04 Again, that's cardiff.co slash Shapiro.
00:08:06 Go check it out right now.
00:08:08 Cato Institute did a 2023 study on income mobility.
00:08:11 Looking at findings from Pew and Raj Chetty, who's a statistician at Harvard and his tax record.
00:08:18 He had a big study of this, an AI study.
00:08:20 And what they found, inflation adjusted, is that 93% of kids who grew up in the bottom quintile were better off than their parents were by the time they reached their 30s.
00:08:28 93%, nearly everyone.
00:08:30 86% of kids from the middle of three quintiles were better off than their parents were by the time they reached their 30s.
00:08:35 And 70% of children from the top quintile were better off than their parents by the time they reached their 30s.
00:08:41 And again, all of this correlates with making just basic, smart, good decisions.
00:08:47 There's something called the success sequence.
00:08:49 If you follow the success sequence, you will not be permanently poor in the United States.
00:08:53 Statistically speaking, you will not.
00:08:56 97% of millennials who follow the so called success sequence were not in poverty by their mid 30s.
00:09:04 One, graduate high school.
00:09:05 Two, get a full time job.
00:09:06 Three, get married before you have kids.
00:09:07 By the way, the most important thing here is get married before you have kids for a couple of reasons.
00:09:11 One, because if you have kids before you get married, then you have high costs and less income.
00:09:17 But number two, it turns out that when people get married, they change how they view their life goals.
00:09:22 This is true for every young dude.
00:09:24 It's why it's important for young men to get married, particularly.
00:09:27 Because income trajectory goes steeply up.
00:09:30 When you're a single dude, you are perfectly happy to live in kind of a crappy apartment with a box for a chair and a futon for a bed and eat ramen every night.
00:09:38 It's true for me in law school.
00:09:39 It's true for a lot of people in college.
00:09:41 It's true for a lot of people in their early work life.
00:09:43 Then you get married and it turns out you want to provide for your family and income grows.
00:09:47 You make different decisions about your life.
00:09:50 Right?
00:09:50 So the American dream, the process is still there.
00:09:54 It is still there.
00:09:56 But, but, There's a different view of the American dream, and this is the perverse view of the American dream, and it actually destroys the American dream.
00:10:04 That different view of the American dream is that the American dream is a set of outcomes, right?
00:10:10 That the American dream isn't that if you make good, smart, virtuous decisions, you will live better than your parents did and your kids will live better than you.
00:10:17 That actually the American dream is the house with the white picket fence, or two kids and a dog, or a nicotine factory in India.
00:10:25 Now, listen, I may want all those things except for the factory, and you might too.
00:10:29 But when the government, which is at the end of the day, all the government is, is a big gun pointed at people.
00:10:33 That's what the government is.
00:10:35 It has a monopoly on legitimate use of force. 0.86
00:10:37 That's what the government is.
00:10:38 And sometimes you need it, but you shouldn't use it that much.
00:10:42 When you use that gigantic gun pointed at people, directed at achieving certain ends, not protecting the process, but achieving the ends, you end up actually destroying the process.
00:10:53 And by the way, never achieving the ends to boot.
00:10:55 So now let's talk about prices.
00:10:57 Listen, I get it.
00:10:58 Everyone is worried about prices.
00:11:00 I totally get it.
00:11:01 Things are way too expensive.
00:11:03 Of course, I've said this all along.
00:11:05 So let's talk about those prices, right?
00:11:06 The prices are high and people are worried about the prices as they should be.
00:11:10 People are correctly upset about inflation on a wide variety of topics.
00:11:14 Let's start with food, right?
00:11:15 Hence Burrito Gate, right?
00:11:17 This bizarre discussion about the price of burritos.
00:11:19 Now, again, I want to start off with a basic, with this sort of basic primer.
00:11:23 For those who missed it, Andrew Colvitt, who's one of the guys who helps run TPUSA, put out a tweet where he was saying that some 20 year old was complaining about $20 burritos and this is the problem with America.
00:11:34 And As usual, the conversation sort of degraded into the dumbest form of itself because two things can simultaneously be true.
00:11:41 Food is too expensive.
00:11:42 And also, $20 for a burrito is a lot of money for a burrito.
00:11:46 You can get a burrito a lot cheaper than that.
00:11:48 And so the conversation sort of bifurcated into two areas. 0.96
00:11:53 People claiming that certain of us were saying that food wasn't too expensive, which is dumb.
00:11:57 We all agree food is too expensive.
00:11:59 And other people saying, guys, there is some virtue to making responsible decisions with your money.
00:12:04 And if you're 20 and you're having trouble making the rent, Going out for dinner to buy a $20 burrito is probably not the wisest expenditure of cash.
00:12:11 In any case, let's be real about how food inflation works.
00:12:15 Free markets create better and cheaper burritos, to use the burrito as an example.
00:12:20 Because again, the byproduct of human choice and widely disseminated knowledge and innovation and free competition is better and cheaper burritos.
00:12:31 Now, here are some things that do not create better and cheaper burritos tariffs that are meant to protect the American working man.
00:12:37 If you increase the price of the inputs, the burrito price goes up.
00:12:41 Or let's say lower interest rates that are designed to make credit easier for the American family.
00:12:46 Because that creates inflation.
00:12:49 Or even policies I agree with.
00:12:50 There are some policies I agree with that make burritos more expensive.
00:12:53 Like if you deport a bunch of people who make burritos, it turns out that probably the price of burritos will go up.
00:12:59 Okay, but let's not lie and pretend that all of your favorite policies somehow make burritos cheaper.
00:13:06 This, by the way, is a great way to tell the people who whine from the people who solve problems that life is a series of trade offs.
00:13:10 And people who solve problems acknowledge these trade offs and then try to get to the answer to the problem.
00:13:15 Okay, but here's the bottom line.
00:13:17 When you use the government guns, you focus everyone on cheaper burritos through subsidies and regulations.
00:13:22 You inhibit freedom and you break the process and you end up making burritos more expensive.
00:13:28 This is also true for housing.
00:13:29 A lot of people today screaming about the evils of free markets and econ 101.
00:13:34 Oh, right.
00:13:35 And all those people are talking about how the rent is too expensive.
00:13:38 It is too expensive.
00:13:39 I agree.
00:13:40 You know whose fault that isn't the free markets and the process and the American dream.
00:13:47 The reason that Housing is too expensive right now, is because some people decided the American dream was not the process.
00:13:55 It was the house.
00:13:56 And then they mobilized the American government to ensure that everyone could get a house.
00:14:01 And they ended up pushing a basket of policies that made housing way more expensive.
00:14:06 So if you look at a chart of rent as a percentage of income, it basically stays stable up through 2000, and then it just explodes.
00:14:15 Why?
00:14:16 Well, because the government decided everyone needed a house.
00:14:18 So what did they do?
00:14:19 The government started.
00:14:20 Subsidizing and mandating subprime mortgages inherently backed by the government.
00:14:26 Subprime mortgages were low rate mortgages for people who were very unlikely to repay the mortgage.
00:14:32 They also decided that they would artificially keep the interest rates low, meaning keeping the mortgage rates low.
00:14:37 So you got cheap mortgages plus subprime mortgages for bad borrowers.
00:14:43 What do those things do?
00:14:44 Well, that artificially spurs demand.
00:14:46 That creates artificial demand for people who really shouldn't be getting a mortgage.
00:14:51 And those people push up.
00:14:53 The price, because you have many, many more people entering the housing market.
00:14:58 And as the prices go up, more people want to get in as an investment.
00:15:01 And then the prices spiral.
00:15:03 And then eventually, it turns out those people can't pay their bills, and then the housing market collapses.
00:15:08 And then people stop building because the housing market collapsed.
00:15:11 That is the story of the real estate collapse of 2007, 2008, and the subsequent drop off in the building of new units, which is what happened in the aftermath of 2007, 2008.
00:15:20 Add on top of that other government policies designed to achieve affordable housing, like, for example, rent control.
00:15:25 Rent control destroys affordable housing.
00:15:28 It controls a few apartments at the cost of all future development.
00:15:32 Why would I possibly build an apartment building where I lose money?
00:15:36 Not going to happen.
00:15:37 And then there are a bunch of people who have engaged in so-called NIMBY policies and not in my backyard policies.
00:15:43 These are people who already have a house and they say, I want to maintain the value of my house and make it more expensive.
00:15:47 That means no more building on my street.
00:15:50 So it turns out that using the government to achieve the kind of housing that you desire ends up making housing more expensive and less affordable.
00:15:58 In other words, when you inhibit the process of the American dream, again, the American dream is very simple free markets, free minds, equal justice before law, social virtue, government's there just to protect those things.
00:16:09 When you start using the government to achieve the end, you end up achieving the opposite.
00:16:14 This is also, by the way, true for college education, right?
00:16:16 People are correctly complaining about college debt.
00:16:19 How do you think that happened?
00:16:21 How do you think it happened that so many Americans, a huge percentage of Americans, have gigantic college debt?
00:16:27 The answer is we artificially increased demand through government subsidy and we did not do anything about the supply.
00:16:35 And in fact, we started supplying crap degrees that are worth nothing to people just because we had this dumb idea that because people who went to college earned more, therefore everyone should go to college and then they will all earn more. 0.53
00:16:47 That's not how that works. 0.68
00:16:49 So, we gave out tons, like trillions of dollars in loans, billions and billions and billions of dollars in loans that are unpayable.
00:16:58 We did that on a governmental level.
00:16:59 We spurred demand without increasing supply.
00:17:04 Right?
00:17:04 That is a thing that we did.
00:17:07 Again, there are a lot of real solutions out there to make life affordable on a personal level.
00:17:12 By the way, there are also solutions you don't have to wait for the government on, you can implement right now.
00:17:16 Again, for a limited time, you can switch your plan, get any plan, including unlimited, for just 15 bucks a month for your first three months.
00:17:21 No contract required.
00:17:22 Simply go to puretalk.comslash Shapiro to claim this offer.
00:17:26 Also, by the way, I'm sure we're going to debate some of this today.
00:17:28 We have a Friendly Fire episode.
00:17:31 That is tonight, 7 p.m. Eastern.
00:17:34 Obviously, there are those at Daily Wire who disagree with my vision here.
00:17:36 Tune in live on the Daily Wire.
00:17:38 Watch it the next day, wherever you get your podcasts.
00:17:39 If you haven't seen Friendly Fire yet, that's a show where we all argue with each other for your entertainment.
00:17:44 This episode, you're going to get me and Michael Moles shooting from the hip.
00:17:47 No moderator, no safe words.
00:17:48 Don't miss it.
00:17:49 All righty.
00:17:50 So, again, the American dream is a process.
00:17:53 It is not a set of outcomes.
00:17:54 When the government pursues the outcomes, it typically destroys the process and also doesn't even achieve the outcome.
00:18:00 Okay, fine.
00:18:01 Say the economic tyrants. 0.99
00:18:03 Their first goalpost was affordability.
00:18:06 And sure, we're not going to achieve affordability with any of our actual policies.
00:18:12 And you're giving us solutions that would actually achieve affordability.
00:18:15 But in the end, we don't like free markets.
00:18:17 That's really the thing.
00:18:18 So, let's get to the real reason so many of these people hate free markets.
00:18:22 I really despise free markets and think they're bad.
00:18:24 Free markets are an extension of your individual autonomy.
00:18:28 Your individual autonomy is an obstacle to all of these people, left, right, and Islamist, from achieving their specific version of utopia.
00:18:37 So the next goal becomes demoralization. 0.95
00:18:39 We have to tell you that your individual autonomy is a ruse. 1.00
00:18:42 Your life sucks. 1.00
00:18:43 Everything sucks. 1.00
00:18:43 You can't control your life. 1.00
00:18:45 You should give me and my friends power because your life actually sucks. 0.99
00:18:48 This is the demoralization effort. 0.98
00:18:50 This is what Zorhan Mamdani says.
00:18:51 It's what Bernie Sanders says.
00:18:52 It's what Hassan Piker says. 0.98
00:18:53 Hell, the Muslim Brotherhood says that.
00:18:55 It's also what Tucker Carlson has been saying as well.
00:18:58 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
00:18:59 First, disasters don't give advance notice.
00:19:01 Fires, hurricanes, tornadoes.
00:19:02 An entire home can be damaged or destroyed in minutes.
00:19:05 Most possessions can eventually be replaced by your family's old VHS tapes, the film reels, the photos.
00:19:09 They can't.
00:19:10 Once they're gone, they are just gone.
00:19:11 And this is why you are going to love Legacy Box.
00:19:13 Legacy Box is awesome.
00:19:15 I've worked with them for years.
00:19:16 They are great.
00:19:16 They're doing something super important.
00:19:18 They are making permanent your family records.
00:19:20 That's what they do.
00:19:22 Those old VHS tapes, camcorder tape, film reels, photos, DVDs.
00:19:25 They take all that stuff and then They send it back to you and it's all digitized.
00:19:30 It's digitized by hand in Tennessee.
00:19:32 You receive your original media back along with digital copies stored in the cloud or on a thumb drive.
00:19:36 LegacyBox handles more than 15 types of aging media, so stop trusting your irreplaceable memories to a cardboard box in the attic.
00:19:42 Preserving your family's collection is the only way to ensure your legacy is safe for generations.
00:19:46 Join over 1.5 million families who have already trusted LegacyBox.
00:19:49 Don't wait, the risk is too great.
00:19:51 Visit legacybox.comslash Shapiro to get started today and save 50%.
00:19:55 That's legacybox.comslash Shapiro.
00:19:57 Again, legacybox.comslash Shapiro.
00:20:01 Tucker Carlson is a statist.
00:20:02 If he thought it would achieve his ends, he would call for full scale nationalization of industries with Lord Carlson at the helm, a petty tyrant ruling America from his flannel, all in the name of your spiritual welfare.
00:20:17 This is what Tucker's doing, right?
00:20:18 This is why Tucker constantly does this routine where he says that America is like the post Soviet Russian oligarchy, which, by the way, is kind of hilarious since he loves the post Soviet Russian oligarchy.
00:20:27 He goes over there to talk about how wonderful their bread is, how we need feudalism.
00:20:31 But again, don't expect any sort of internal consistency from this rather addled human.
00:20:38 As I hear your big picture description of this transition through which we're moving, the first thought that comes to mind is boy, that sounds a little bit like what happened after the Soviet Union collapsed in the summer of 1991.
00:20:52 And all of a sudden, Russians woke up 10 years later and all state industries were owned by a small group of people. 0.97
00:20:57 It was correct. 1.00
00:20:59 That's kind of what it sounds like.
00:21:02 So, again, I'm not sure exactly why he's complaining about that since he loves Russia.
00:21:02 Okay.
00:21:05 I mean, he's very, very, very into it.
00:21:07 Again, the goal is to demoralize you with all this, right? 1.00
00:21:09 America sucks. 1.00
00:21:10 You don't have free choice. 1.00
00:21:11 The free choice is a lie.
00:21:12 You're experiencing false consciousness put in your head by whomever.
00:21:17 Again, in the end, all these people are quite happy for you to be poorer, for you to be less free, so long as they can build whatever utopia they want to build.
00:21:26 So, again, on the left, that takes a bunch of forms.
00:21:27 For Zorhan Mamdani, it's a third worldist utopia in which America is really brought to heel.
00:21:33 For Hassan Piker, it's a complete leveling. 0.71
00:21:36 For the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists, It is Dar al Islam, presumably. 0.91
00:21:41 On the right, this takes the form of what is now called post liberalism. 0.96
00:21:45 Post liberalism basically argues that individualism, and that includes individualism and free markets, saps us of our virtue.
00:21:52 What we actually need is a top down state run by oligarchs so that we can have virtue again.
00:21:57 This is a bad idea, and it was tried for many centuries, and it was horrible.
00:22:01 It turns out that one of the premises of the American founding is that virtue is a thing that you should pursue in your church and in your community and on an individual level.
00:22:12 And that government has a role protecting people from insidious infectious problems.
00:22:19 Government does have social standards.
00:22:19 Right?
00:22:21 But there is no idea in the American founding that somehow there's an inherent link between being wealthy and having no virtue.
00:22:30 You know what actually saps virtue?
00:22:32 What really saps virtue in individuals?
00:22:35 If you are told that you are not in control of your own destiny, that your decisions don't matter, if people keep telling you over and over and over, That you can't do anything about your life, but you deserve everything.
00:22:46 This makes you a worse person.
00:22:48 Take this to parenting for a second.
00:22:51 If your kid comes home, didn't study for the test, gets an F, and you say, listen, it's not your fault.
00:22:58 You don't ask any questions about did you study?
00:23:00 Did you understand the concept?
00:23:01 You just go, it's not your fault.
00:23:01 Nothing.
00:23:03 You are always bound to fail.
00:23:04 The system is rigged.
00:23:05 Your teacher was going to fail you.
00:23:06 Doesn't matter how hard you studied, doesn't matter how much work you put in, you were going to fail because the system is rigged against you.
00:23:13 And you deserved an A. You deserved an A.
00:23:17 And because you deserve an A and there's nothing you could do about it, go to your room and what do you think the kid's gonna do?
00:23:22 Is the kid gonna go study?
00:23:24 Is the kid gonna try to get better at the thing?
00:23:27 Is the kid going to work?
00:23:29 Or is the kid gonna go to the kid's room and eat candy and play video games?
00:23:34 This is a bad way to do life.
00:23:37 But you know who says this kind of stuff all the time?
00:23:39 The status.
00:23:40 Their entire idea is promote ingratitude. 0.96
00:23:42 You can't do anything about your life, it's a Russian oligarchy. 0.94
00:23:45 And also, you should be ungrateful for America. 0.53
00:23:48 And if people tell you to be grateful, it's because they're probably neocons.
00:23:52 Which, again, Tucker never defines the term neocon because we all know what he means, but here he is.
00:24:00 So it's clearly coordinated.
00:24:04 But it's not just coordination that gets us to a talking point like that.
00:24:08 There was deep feeling behind it.
00:24:10 And that feeling was contempt.
00:24:13 That was loathing of the people complaining.
00:24:17 That was loathing of the population.
00:24:19 And that is part and parcel of this whole program.
00:24:21 And this ultimately is the reason that the neocon worldview is a cancerous worldview.
00:24:28 Not simply because it's wrong about which countries we ought to invade.
00:24:32 Which leaders we ought to topple, which democracies we ought to erect in countries whose languages we don't speak.
00:24:37 Okay, that's obviously all wrong.
00:24:40 But that's not the worst thing about it.
00:24:41 The worst thing about it is not just its inattention to the fortunes of actual Americans, it's hostility, it's hatred of Americans.
00:24:52 Because there's no other way to describe the kind of feelings that could get you to give a lecture like the one Ben Shapiro gave.
00:25:00 I feel like if I say that we all ought to be grateful, me, you, all of us ought to be grateful for America, I don't know if that's hostility to Americans.
00:25:00 I don't know.
00:25:06 It feels more like love of Americans because it turns out that the greatest country in the history of the world is the place that you are currently living.
00:25:12 It is an amazing place and it has all these problems.
00:25:14 The problems we've talked about, mostly statist interventions like the ones that Tucker promotes. 1.00
00:25:19 But if you're ungrateful for America, you're either an idiot or malevolent. 1.00
00:25:24 And sure, the law is a teacher. 1.00
00:25:25 We get this a lot, right?
00:25:27 The law is a teacher. 0.98
00:25:28 The government needs to inculcate virtue.
00:25:30 Obviously, I believe in an educational system in which traditional virtue is upheld.
00:25:36 It is also true that when the law says you cannot handle your own choices and freedoms, when the law says that basically all your freedoms and choices are bad for you, the law then teaches you to be a child and dependent and incapable.
00:25:51 And this is what the post liberals are now arguing for ingratitude, because if you're ungrateful for the freedoms, if you're ungrateful for the process, if you say the process is rigged and crap, and what you actually need is someone telling you what to do, how virtue ought to be constituted, what you ought to do with your money, what decisions you ought to make with your life, how you ought to bring up your kids.
00:26:08 If you have people who are saying that to you, That somehow individual rights that undergird capitalism destroy your spiritual fulfillment.
00:26:15 They're selling you a bag of goods. 0.83
00:26:18 There's a reason that Max Faber talked about the Protestant work ethic.
00:26:22 It is indeed an Anglo American Protestant tradition that leads to the rise of free markets.
00:26:29 You do not need to be poor or poorer in order to reach spiritual fulfillment.
00:26:34 People who argue that you do typically just want an excuse for making you poor.
00:26:38 Here's what I want I want for you to be wealthy and also to go to church.
00:26:42 These two things are not mutually exclusive at all.
00:26:45 Most of the biblical prophets were wealthy.
00:26:48 Why are we, who says that Americans can't have both?
00:26:51 Who says we can't have both prosperity and virtue?
00:26:56 The very same people who are telling you that I'm somehow feeding you goy slop are sitting in mansions across from Hunter Biden and Andrew Tate and claiming they have the high ground on virtue and they're totally full of it.
00:27:06 So I do have a theory about some of these folks. 0.95
00:27:09 I don't like to go into motivations, but we can look at personal histories.
00:27:13 I have a theory about some of these folks.
00:27:14 Here is one of my theories.
00:27:16 That many, many, many of the people who say the American dream is dead and that the American dream isn't a process, it's a set of ends that they alone can achieve if you give them power, never actually lived within the American process.
00:27:27 They never were part of the American process.
00:27:29 Hassan Piker didn't live the American dream.
00:27:31 Hassan Piker was born in America.
00:27:32 He was brought up in Turkey.
00:27:33 He came back.
00:27:34 He was already well to do. 1.00
00:27:35 Zarn Mamdani did not live the American dream.
00:27:38 Zarn Mamdani grew up alternatively in a mansion in Uganda or in a series of hoity toity areas of the United States with his Columbia University father.
00:27:49 And his mom, who made documentaries for Disney.
00:27:50 Bernie Sanders didn't live the American process.
00:27:53 The dude's been living essentially rent free off the back of taxpayers his entire life.
00:27:58 And neither did Tucker Carlson.
00:27:59 He didn't live the American process either.
00:28:02 That's amazing to watch the projection here.
00:28:03 Truly amazing.
00:28:04 Really kind of, and kind of insulting.
00:28:07 So Tucker Carlson claims, for example, he has to claim that somehow I rigged the system.
00:28:13 So Tucker yesterday spilled out this stuff about how I got into Harvard Law.
00:28:18 And his claim is that I was kind of Nepo babied into it, probably by the Israelis.
00:28:24 Yes, I'm sure that the state of Israel had nothing better to do than sit on top of my Harvard law application in the year 2004.
00:28:34 I'm sure that's when I was 20.
00:28:37 Here is Tucker Carlson.
00:28:41 Can you imagine four or 500,000 American 18 year olds plucked at random from cities across the country in a field this summer, this month, August, 57 years after Woodstock?
00:28:54 Can you imagine what they would look like with their shirts off? 0.83
00:28:57 Which is not to make fun of their lumpy physiques.
00:29:00 That happens to a lot of us over time.
00:29:02 But can you imagine what their faces would look like?
00:29:06 Would they look as cheerful as the kids you see in the pictures of Woodstock?
00:29:10 You hope so.
00:29:12 Probably not.
00:29:14 So maybe the last thing they need is to be lectured by people who are clearly the beneficiaries of unearned privilege, like Ben Shapiro, who somehow got into Harvard Law School despite a middling IQ.
00:29:27 How did that happen?
00:29:28 Never asked.
00:29:30 People like that have no standing at all to lecture the rest of America's young people.
00:29:39 Okay.
00:29:40 Put aside the fact that he's using Woodstock as an example of American happiness, which is a bunch of young drug addled people banging in the mud, which is weird.
00:29:48 And his weird imaginings of people with their shirts off.
00:29:54 I'm just going to point out the reason I got into Harvard Law is because I had a 3.85 GPA from UCLA and a 176.
00:30:03 On my LSAT and a published book and a syndicated column at age 17.
00:30:06 That would be the reason.
00:30:09 You know, it's very funny.
00:30:10 Tucker is constantly trying to rip on my IQ.
00:30:13 Dude, I mean, if you want to have an IQ off, I suppose we could do that.
00:30:17 I've offered Tucker for the past, I don't know, how many years at this point?
00:30:20 Years and years and years, an open opportunity to have a public talk about anything or everything.
00:30:25 He has never taken me up on it, of course.
00:30:28 Okay, but I just want to point out Tucker Carlson never lived within the American process.
00:30:33 He thinks everything was rigged because everything was rigged for him.
00:30:36 I'm going to give you a brief capsule history of my own life.
00:30:38 And here's the thing I don't even like doing this.
00:30:39 I really don't.
00:30:40 I don't talk about it a lot on the show.
00:30:41 Why don't I talk about it a lot?
00:30:42 Because I don't think that there is some sort of virtue that is attendant upon whether you grew up in a richer family or a poorer family.
00:30:49 I do not associate wealth with virtue inherently.
00:30:52 These are not qualities that must be correlative.
00:30:57 But I'm just going to make clear my own personal history for just a second. 0.73
00:31:02 This idea that I was some sort of like Nepo baby who got into Harvard is just. 0.76
00:31:06 It's made up out of whole cloth.
00:31:07 The reason Tucker thinks this is because he was an EPO baby.
00:31:09 We'll get to more on this in a moment.
00:31:10 First, the window to reach a woman facing an unexpected pregnancy has now gotten incredibly, incredibly small.
00:31:15 Today, she can order the abortion pill online from her phone without ever walking into a clinic, sometimes before she's spoken to anyone who can remind her that she's not alone and that there's help and there is another option. 0.86
00:31:25 This is why the work preborn does really, really matters.
00:31:29 At preborn network clinics, women are met with compassion, practical support, and a free ultrasound. 0.76
00:31:33 That ultrasound can change everything.
00:31:35 More than 80% of abortion vulnerable women who see their baby on an ultrasound at a preborn network clinic. 0.86
00:31:40 Choose life.
00:31:41 And I have five kids.
00:31:42 I met all of them well before they were born, thanks to ultrasound.
00:31:46 And it does change how you think about legitimately everything in the world.
00:31:49 For just 28 bucks, you can provide that moment for another mother.
00:31:52 One life saving ultrasound, 140 bucks, helps rescue five babies.
00:31:55 You're not simply helping save a child.
00:31:57 Preborn walks alongside these moms with support.
00:31:59 So please don't wait.
00:32:00 Dial pound 250, say keyword baby.
00:32:03 That's pound 250, baby, or give securely at preborn.comslash Ben.
00:32:08 That's preborn.comslash Ben.
00:32:10 Together, we can save lives one heartbeat at a time.
00:32:14 So I grew up in what would probably best be termed a lower middle class to pure middle class home in Burbank, California in the late 80s.
00:32:24 1990s.
00:32:25 I was born in 84.
00:32:28 Until 1995, until I was 11 years old, my parents and I and my three younger sisters lived in a two bedroom, 1100 square foot house in Burbank, California with one bathroom for six people.
00:32:41 It was a great life because America's awesome.
00:32:43 I had great parents.
00:32:45 We had good neighbors.
00:32:47 It was a clean town.
00:32:49 Okay.
00:32:49 It was great.
00:32:51 But we certainly were not wealthy.
00:32:53 My mom started off as a secretary at a small television company.
00:32:58 And my father played piano on Monday and Tuesday nights at a restaurant called Michelli's.
00:33:04 I spent most of my childhood Monday and Tuesday nights at Michelli's, hanging out with the waiters and the bartender while I waited for my mom to finish work so she could pick us up from the restaurant.
00:33:17 Me and my younger siblings.
00:33:20 And then when I was 11, my parents, quote unquote, got wealthier.
00:33:24 And by got wealthier, I mean they moved into a gigantic mansion.
00:33:26 By mansion, I mean a 2,400 square foot home where we spent the rest of my childhood.
00:33:31 And it was great.
00:33:32 Again, I'm very grateful for all these things because only in America, because America's awesome. 0.99
00:33:36 America kicks ass. 0.97
00:33:37 Okay, so we moved into, I finally had my own room. 0.99
00:33:40 And that was, you know, basically for the rest of my childhood in North Hollywood.
00:33:45 We're on scholarship at a local private school.
00:33:47 But the reality is that sort of my own sort of educational history was public school through grade four, skipping grade three, private school five and six.
00:33:54 We couldn't afford private school for seven and eight.
00:33:56 So I went back to public school for seven and eight.
00:33:59 And then private school again for 10, 11, 12, because I skipped ninth grade and I was on scholarship.
00:34:03 Because my parents were by this point middle class to probably upper middle class.
00:34:08 Because again, they made responsible decisions and their life progressed.
00:34:12 And then I got into UCLA, a state school that does not cost tons of money.
00:34:18 And then I got a 3.85 GPA and a 176 on my LSAT.
00:34:25 I got one problem wrong on my LSAT.
00:34:27 And then I went to Harvard Law and I took out a bunch of private loans that I paid off myself.
00:34:33 That is my story.
00:34:34 I did not know anyone at Harvard Law.
00:34:37 I did not know anyone in the Israeli government when I was 20.
00:34:39 I had visited Israel one time at that point in my life when I was 16 with my family for two weeks. 0.86
00:34:46 This is psycho.
00:34:47 But the reason that Tucker thinks this is because, again, Tucker has never engaged in the American process.
00:34:52 He has not.
00:34:53 He is not someone who got better and stronger and more powerful because he made smart, wise, and virtuous decisions.
00:35:01 That is not the story of Tucker Carlson's life, just as it is not the story of Hassan Piker's life or Zorhan Mamdani's life.
00:35:07 Or sheet of Tlaib or El Hanau, like this is not their life.
00:35:11 Hey, here's what Tucker Carlson's childhood was like Tucker Carlson grew up silver spoon rich in a frozen food empire.
00:35:22 He went to a Swiss boarding school for high school.
00:35:27 He, according to Jason Zengerly in his book about Tucker Carlson, although Carlson found religion in high school, he continued to drink and smoke and began doing drugs, marijuana, acid, cocaine, even ether.
00:35:41 He went to St. George's, which wasn't Exeter or Andover, but it still sent a smattering of graduates each year to Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.
00:35:49 His grades and test scores were nowhere near good enough to get into any of those schools.
00:35:54 His academic record at St. George's was sufficiently poor, he had a difficult time at gaining admission to any prestigious university, not just those in the Ivy League.
00:36:03 So he got into Trinity College because his then girlfriend Susie's dad, who was the headmaster of St. George's, helped grease the wheels to get him in.
00:36:12 There, he was an abysmal student.
00:36:14 He stopped showing up to class.
00:36:17 When Patel, Neil Patel, with whom he became business partners later, and most of Carlson's other friends received their Trinity diplomas, Carlson was not among them.
00:36:24 His 1.9 GPA was deemed too low.
00:36:28 He never graduated from college.
00:36:30 Then Carlson's daddy called up his friends at the Heritage Foundation, where he landed a $14,000 a year internship fact checking a quarterly journal at Heritage Foundation, and the rest is history.
00:36:41 Okay, so again, I'm happy for Tucker that he is richer than he once was.
00:36:45 But I think the reason why he despises the American dream as process is because he never lived that process.
00:36:51 I love that process.
00:36:53 That process is glorious.
00:36:55 That is the thing that needs to be protected.
00:36:58 The American dream as the process where if you make wise, smart, virtuous decisions, you get ahead.
00:37:04 And then if you teach those to your kids, they get ahead of you.
00:37:08 I want the American dream.
00:37:09 I want my kids to have that process.
00:37:11 I do not want the petty tyrants on the left or the right deciding for me what things are worth.
00:37:17 Or what they think is fair, because I don't know what they mean by fair, or what I materially require in order to reach spiritual fulfillment.
00:37:24 They can all f right off.
00:37:28 I would like the freedom that is the process of the American dream.
00:37:33 Here's the thing a lot of these people have problems with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
00:37:37 They'll say so openly.
00:37:39 The Declaration of Independence was right, the Constitution of the United States was right.
00:37:45 And all of your crappy, rewarmed oligarchic theories have been tried, and they have failed.
00:37:51 You want feudalism? 0.95
00:37:52 Awesome.
00:37:53 Go back to medieval Europe.
00:37:55 You want Marxism?
00:37:56 Sweet.
00:37:56 Head on over to Cuba.
00:37:57 You want Islamism? 1.00
00:37:59 You can get the hell out and go to Qatar. 1.00
00:38:02 People like this.
00:38:02 They like to say America first.
00:38:03 But here's the thing Americanism first.
00:38:05 Americanism first.
00:38:07 You know, the thing that makes us different from every place else.
00:38:10 The thing that makes America exceptional and awesome.
00:38:13 Those first principles free markets and free minds and equal justice before law and social virtue.
00:38:18 Those are the things.
00:38:19 That's what government is there to protect.
00:38:22 Let's get back to those first principles.
00:38:24 And for the love of all that is holy.
00:38:27 Will someone please buy Tucker Carlson a burrito?
00:38:31 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:38:33 Wasn't that amazing?
00:38:34 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.