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Dec. 8, 2015 - The Ben Shapiro Show
36:52
Ep. 37 - Yes, Religious Profiling Is Necessary

Ben talks about behavioral profiling and San Bernardino, plus Taylor Swift. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Here we are, it is a Tuesday, and we have the very first photo of that delightful American couple, Syed Farouk and Tashfeen Malik, entering the United States.
We'll show you that picture, we'll talk about it, we'll talk about racial profiling, and then we'll get to some Stuff I Hate, Taylor Swift edition.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
And if there's anybody who's involved in a crime to kill more children...
Alrighty, so the fact is that today we finally have the photo of what's been happening over at ABC News 8.
ABC News has obtained the photo of the two terrorists who entered the United States in 2014.
Syed Farouk was an American citizen.
Tashfeen Malik was his brand new lovely bride.
He was bringing her back to the United States to be part of the greatest country on the face of the planet.
And it did not work out as planned, obviously.
They decided that it would be more fun to produce a six-month-old baby and then to kill As many Americans as humanly possible.
So, as they were doing that, they decided to enter the United States.
We have this picture that's now been revealed of these guys entering the United States.
Here's what that picture looks like.
Oh, look at that newlywed couple.
So charming, so cute.
And you do wonder, you know, why would anyone possibly have the picture of these folks as possible terrorists?
You know, are there any giveaways that we can spot here?
You know, things that we might think about as possible terrorists.
You know, connections.
Things to look for.
Anybody.
I know it's a big mystery.
I know it's a big mystery.
And I know that President Obama has declared that if Caitlyn Jenner says that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, then Caitlyn Jenner is a woman.
But these people are not Muslims.
They're not.
We know that because they ended up being terrorists.
And because they ended up being terrorists, that means that they're not Muslims.
In fact, it's actually racist to show this photo because the fact is that she ended up being a terrorist and not a Muslim.
See how they're mutually exclusive?
So we can never, ever, ever think, hey, wait a second, she looks like a very religious Muslim.
Doesn't mean she's a terrorist, of course, because that would be stupid.
And that is stupid.
But, would it not be one checkmark among many that might lead to identification of a terrorist?
After all, if she was coming in wearing a nun's habit, that'd probably be a checkmark against Islamic terror.
See, Islamic terror actually has to do something with Islam.
Well, according to the left, this is the big question.
The big question isn't racial profiling, it's whether we ought to frontally lobotomize ourselves.
Because nobody is in favor of the idea that Muslims should be targeted just because they're Muslims.
However, when it comes to Islamic terror, then we are talking about descriptions of a suspect.
And when you talk about descriptions of a suspect in Muslim terrorism, there are a bunch of factors, right?
So if you're gonna name the factors, you'd probably say, okay, comes from a Muslim country, of age between 18 and 45, probably somebody who has attended mosque pretty regularly, has some Facebook postings, all of these things would be on the list, right?
All of these things would be on the list.
And if there was something that were counter to that on the list, then it would probably make you take them off the list.
So, for example, posting a lot of stuff on Facebook that's weird and crazy, right?
But doesn't attend mosque ever and isn't Muslim, right?
Probably a weird and crazy person, but not probably a Muslim terrorist, right?
If we're trying to find Muslim terrorists, you actually want to go with the description of the suspect.
But what's hilarious about all of this is that the left now wants frontal lobotomy.
It's not just we have to treat every Muslim Just as we would treat anybody else in the United States, which of course is what we should do, as somebody who wears a yarmulke and benefits from this sort of protection in the United States.
You know, the idea that you dress differently, you wear something different, you should still be treated the same.
I'm fully on board with that.
However, when it comes to law enforcement and their level of suspicion, then it's going to tick up slightly, if you are Muslim, slightly more than if you are Christian or Jewish, just statistically speaking, because that is called a description of the suspect if you're looking for Islamic terrorism.
Or if you're looking for overall risk of terrorism.
But according to the left, we have to frontally lobotomize ourselves.
So, Melissa Harris Perry, who... She always hashtags Nerdland for some reason.
This is one of the things that she likes to hashtag, Nerdland.
And she is the least nerdy nerd.
Of all time.
Because to be a nerd, you're supposed to be smart, actually.
And Melissa Harris Perry definitely is not.
So she was on MSNBC on Sunday, and she said that the New York Times should not have shown a picture of this woman wearing her hijab.
And they shouldn't have done that because that, of course, is racist.
It's racist to show a terrorist in a hijab.
So here is Melissa Harris Perry along with Linda Sarsour from the Arab American Association of New York talking about this.
And I'm extremely disturbed.
I mean, I looked at the New York Times cover today.
Here you have a whole op-ed on gun control.
Great.
Right next to it is pictures from the apartment of things that I have in my house.
Yes!
Like, these are things that all Muslims have in their house.
There's nothing about that that tells you a story about what terrorism looks like.
So you're telling me that when my friends who are not Muslim come to my home and see a Koran or see frames on the wall with a scripture from my religion, is that supposed to tell you something?
I mean, it's absolutely outrageous.
We would never do that to anyone, and we didn't do that to deer.
We didn't do that to roof.
I'm tired of the double standards of how we treat Muslims.
I mean, that image and then also right next to it, an image of the shooting suspect there in hijab.
And that idea that, like, okay, this is what terrorism looks like, for me, that is a difference.
And it is a material and meaningful difference in how we... So on the one hand, again, I want to be able to talk about what the thing is that is terrorism.
On the other hand, I have to reflect that this happens only for a specific community.
It only happens for a specific community.
Okay, I'll tell you what only happens for a specific community.
This kind of conversation only happens for a specific community because the fact is when it came to Robert Deere, they did try to dig up anything they possibly could on his level of Christianity, and when that ended up failing because he was a nut job, then they gave up on it.
With Dylan Storm Roof, they went after everything he could buy.
His Confederate flag turned into a national issue, right?
Everyone with a Confederate flag was now implicated in Dylan Storm Roof's shooting of people in Charleston.
So, by the way, if you do walk into somebody's home, first of all, if you walked into her home, I assume you would know that she's a Muslim because you're walking into her home unless you're breaking in.
She's clearly a Muslim, this lady, because she's wearing the hijab.
And it is not racism to show a picture of the suspect.
The only pictures of her available are ones of her with hijab.
It actually makes me wonder.
There was a long delay last week between the time that this broke And the picture of this woman coming out, Tashfeen Malik, and people were wondering why didn't the picture come out right away?
We had pictures of Dylan Storm Roof almost immediately, even as the attack was still underway.
And I'm wondering if it's possible the media were desperately searching for a picture of her without hijab that they could show, and it turns out that no pictures of her exist without hijab, which is not surprising.
There are not any pictures of me so far as I'm aware, very few pictures of me without my yarmulke and my hat.
And again, as somebody who covers their head all the time, so it's a very similar situation, I wear a headgear for religious reasons, right?
I wear a yarmulke for religious reasons.
I understand that that makes me visible as a Jew.
Wearing a hijab makes you visible as a Muslim.
To pretend there is no linkage whatsoever between Islam and terrorism is idiotic.
And when they show the front page and they show that there's a Quran there and they show that there's various Islamic scriptures there, If you walked into the apartment, would you think they were a terrorist?
No, you wouldn't.
Would you think there's a higher likelihood that this person might be associated with Islamic terror than, say, the Irish nun next door?
Yeah, because you're not stupid.
Right?
That doesn't mean that the chance is high.
It doesn't mean that the chance is huge.
But it does mean that it is an indicator.
It is one factor among many that people should be looking at, just like any crime description.
Is one factor among many.
When there's a suspect who robs a store, they don't just say, okay, he's a black guy if he happens to be a black guy.
They say black guy of a particular height and a particular weight wearing a particular set of clothing.
Right?
It would be stupid not to include black in that description because it is a physical descriptor.
The same thing is true when it comes to Islam.
Right?
Practice behavior is a descriptor.
If you were to describe a Muslim terrorist, it would be relevant that this person attended mosque five times a day, for example.
Prayed five times a day.
That would be an indicator.
Wouldn't be the chief indicator, wouldn't be the only indicator, but it would be something that you might want to give a little more attention than somebody you can categorically rule out in terms of Islamic terror, like, for example, the 85-year-old Swedish lady who lives next door.
And it's really stupid.
This is the game that we're now going to play.
And what's amazing is that it makes Americans less safe.
So you've got Republicans today saying that it's just terrible what Donald Trump had to say.
So Donald Trump, he came out on Sunday and he was asked about racial profiling.
And here's what Donald Trump had to say about racial profiling.
I believe he was appearing on Meet the Press and there are a couple clips of him talking about racial profiling.
Here he is talking about racial profiling.
They were just normal people with kids, with a kid.
They went to work.
They were unsuspected.
What would you do?
Well, I don't know if they were regular people.
I heard the apartment was loaded up with bombs and with guns.
But nobody would ever assume that it was the case.
What would you do to... Well, I don't know.
When you have pipe bombs lying all over the floor, I don't think they're regular people.
I mean, you have pipe bombs all over the floor, so I don't think they're regular people.
Where's your camera, by the way?
Well, this man has a microphone.
Well, again, there were people that knew bad things were going on.
I mean, people knew that bad things were going on, and they didn't report it because of racial profiling.
But I don't think they were regular people.
To me, they're not regular people.
To me, they were criminals, and it's too bad somebody didn't find out about it sooner.
You know, it's amazing.
What he's saying is, of course, true.
They're not regular people.
They were building pipe bombs.
A lot of people knew that they were doing things that were nefarious, apparently including members of the family.
Syed Farouk's father came out and he said, yeah, my son liked ISIS and he was really super anti-Israel and wanted to destroy Israel and I knew he'd been buying weapons.
Yeah, call 9-1-1, ya idiot.
I mean, if you don't want to be lumped in, unless you're part of it, if you're part of it, then don't call 9-1-1, but I guarantee you, if somebody in my family said, by the way, I'm a fan of ISIS, and also I just bought a shotgun, I'd be like, okay, well, I'm gonna call the cops on you, and at least they're gonna check you out, right?
But no, we now have to blind ourselves.
Notice the way the reporter is phrasing that.
They're just regular people who happen to have pipe bombs lying around.
Just regular folks.
No indicators whatsoever.
You know, just like you walk into any apartment in San Bernardino, you'd expect to see the same thing, except for the pipe bombs.
The pipe bombs were sort of the giveaway, but aside from the pipe bombs, they were just regular people.
You know, last week we talked a little bit about the AIDS epidemic.
And we talked about how one of the stupid things that the left did is they suggested that anyone was equally susceptible to getting AIDS.
Right?
You could be walking down the street and boom!
It hits you like a bird crapping on you.
All of a sudden you've got AIDS.
Right?
Now it turns out that it's sort of behaviorally linked.
Islamic terrorism is behaviorally linked.
It's not like you're walking down the street and boom!
You get hit and you're an Islamic terrorist all of a sudden.
Now it turns out there are a few prerequisites that are there.
And those prerequisites are important to watch.
And if you don't, it's because you're being stupid.
And this has nothing to do with quote-unquote Islamophobia.
It has to do with the fact that if you are looking for Jewish terrorists, then you would look for people who practice Judaism, wouldn't you?
The fact is that it would be a ridiculous goal because there are so few Jewish terrorists on planet Earth.
There's one every five years or so.
Whereas Islamic terror is actually a pretty common occurrence around planet Earth.
It would be foolish to spend your time looking for Christian terrorists because there are so few of them.
But if you were going to look for a Christian terrorist, presumably you would look for somebody who had some Bibles in their home.
Presumably you would look for someone who went to church.
This is sort of the point, folks.
The point that I'm making here is that religious terrorism does exist in all religions, but it's the percentage that matters.
It's the level of the perversity inside the particular religion that matters.
President Obama admitted on Sunday that this is a perversion of Islam, which is the first time I've heard him actually say that it's Islam.
He said there's a problem within Islam.
That's the first time he said that.
But there was a... there's something fascinating.
Over the weekend in London, there was a terror attack.
And this Muslim guy ran into the subway station carrying a machete, and he macheted three people.
He injured three people, and the police tackled him to the ground.
And the video keeps going, and as the video is going, there's a guy who's walking by, presumably a Muslim guy.
Presumably, I would say probably a lower class Muslim guy, based on his accent.
And as he walks, I mean lower economic class, and as he walks by, he yells at the guy on the ground, You ain't no Muslim, bruv.
Right?
You have to do it in a cockney accent for it to make sense, but you're not a Muslim brother, right?
You ain't no Muslim, bruv.
And this has gone viral.
This trended on Twitter, this trended on Facebook.
You're not a Muslim, right?
This guy's not a Muslim.
David Cameron in the UK, he said the same thing.
He's not a Muslim.
No, he sort of is.
And actually you're doing a grave disservice if you think that Westerners are going to cleanse Islam of its more unsavory aspects.
That's not my job.
It's not President Obama's job.
It's not Melissa Harris Perry's job.
Well no, it turns out that if you're going to cleanse a religion of its radicalism, the only people who are capable of cleansing a religion of its radicalism are the people on the inside of that religion.
Radicalism in Christianity was cleansed by the people who were living in Christendom.
It wasn't because Muslims suddenly started treating Christians well in the Middle East.
Radicalism in Islam is going to have to be cleansed by people inside Islam who are doing the hard work.
And they're actually not helped by you saying things like, these guys are not Muslim.
Because all that does is it relieves them of responsibility.
Because now, what does it matter?
We've already told you, we don't think you're Muslim.
We don't think these guys are Muslim.
See, we've crafted this bizarre dichotomy in which real Islam means non-terrorism and fake Islam is terrorism.
But that's not our job.
Because the truth is what we're now doing is we're now crafting... So what's your identifier going to be?
How are you going to identify the terrorists now?
They're fake Muslims.
Right?
They're fake.
So how do you know?
You've just gotten rid of one of the aspects of catching the suspect, presumably, if you're trying to check out Islamic terror.
If you take Islamic out of the equation, it's going to be a lot harder for you to figure out who did this or who made the prospective suspect be.
President Obama, of course, feels that profiling of Muslims for terrorism is just like him being profiled personally.
You know, President Obama, a while back, he talked about how racial profiling was awful, how it had happened to him personally, and he's extended that same logic over to profiling of terrorists.
Loretta Lynch Who's the Attorney General?
What's amazing is that Donald Trump, of course, is right.
Donald Trump would go on on the Sunday shows.
This is worth playing.
Donald Trump said, you know, if there are people here and they are Muslim immigrants, then we may want to track them beyond just checking them once.
As evidenced, Tahseen Malik got into the country.
We knew she was Muslim.
We knew she was hardcore.
And we didn't track her at all.
And then she and her husband went and shot 14 people.
Here's Donald Trump from I Believe Face the Nation.
But there were no red flags.
So, how do you stop this from happening again?
Well, I think there are red flags.
And a lot of people knew what was going on in that house or that apartment.
And people were not wanting to call because they thought it would be inappropriate to call.
Inappropriate why?
Well, they were saying that they would have been profiling.
And a person said, we sort of knew what was going on, but we don't want to profile.
Can you believe that?
Should there be profiling?
Well, I think there can be profiling.
How would that work?
If they thought there was something wrong with that group, and they saw what was happening, and they didn't want to call the police because they didn't want to be profiling, I think that's pretty bad.
People are dead.
A lot of people are dead right now.
So everybody wants to be politically correct, and that's part of the problem that we have with our country.
Have people been too politically correct with Muslims in America?
I think so.
I think so.
And with maybe other things too, but I think certainly so.
And as you know, I came out with, I want vigilance.
I want real vigilance.
And whether it's mosques or whatever it has to be.
But a lot of bad things are happening.
Whatever it has to be.
Does that include, I know you, where are you on the question of tracking Muslims in America?
Well, look, we are having a problem with radicals in the Muslim group.
Let's not kid ourselves.
And you can say it, or you don't have to say it, and maybe you won't even want to, but I've been saying it loud and strong.
So if you have people coming out of mosques with hatred and with death in their eyes and on their minds, we're going to have to do something.
We can't just say we're not going to look at it.
Now, I made that statement a number of weeks ago.
It took a lot of, you know, a lot of whatever.
A lot of people were not exactly thrilled with it.
And now everybody seems to agree with me.
But this idea of tracking Muslims in America, that's the thing.
Where are you on that?
You have people that have to be tracked.
If they're Muslims, they're Muslims.
But you have people that have to be tracked.
And we better be... I use the word vigilance.
We have to show vigilance.
We have to have it.
And if we don't, We're foolish people.
You know, we're being led by people that don't know what's happening.
When you have President Obama talking about global warming as our biggest problem, we have a president that is just not with it at all.
There are 3 million Muslims in America.
What should they feel about their place in American life now?
Look, we are having a tremendous problem.
With radical Islamic terrorism.
I mean, well, you can say it, or you don't have to say it.
And we have a president that won't issue the term.
He won't talk about it.
So we're having this tremendous radical Islamic terrorism.
Okay?
A lot of people don't want to even say it.
Not a lot of people.
We have one person that I really know of, and it's called President Obama.
Until he admits that this is a problem, we're never going to solve the problem.
But he's only going to be there, fortunately, a little bit more than a year.
Because the problem will get solved when he gets the hell out.
And of course, Donald Trump is exactly right here.
He's getting all sorts of flack, by the way, from left and right.
Hillary Clinton, she actually said, the same day that Donald Trump was saying this, she was saying, no, no, no, no, I will never say Islamic terror because it might offend Muslims.
It might offend Muslims to say Islamic terror.
Okay, when people say Jewish terror, I'm not offended by it if the person who was actually engaging in the terrorism was Jewish.
And if the person was a religious Jew, then it makes me sick to my stomach, and that's why you see universally, not like with a few exceptions, universally, if they're an act of Jewish terrorism, everyone, including the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, comes out and condemns it.
Okay, when was the last time that you saw the entire Muslim world condemn things?
It doesn't happen.
It just doesn't happen that way.
But Trump's rivals are jumping on him.
Jeb Bush said on ABC's This Week that the FBI already has the tools it needs to monitor everybody, which of course, if that were true, then what would have happened in San Bernardino wouldn't have happened.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie He said that his comments highlighted his inexperience.
He said, we don't need to be profiling in order to be able to get the job done.
What you need is a president who's had experience, and they know how to do this, and not someone who's going to talk off the top of their head, which is about as vague as it's possible to be.
Every criminal profile is a profile, right?
I mean, there used to be a show on CBS called The Profiler.
This is what criminality is.
When you are searching for criminals, you actually have to look for the people who fit the particular bill.
But again, the Obama administration is more focused on changing our notions of reality than in protecting us.
So Loretta Lynch, the Attorney General, she said last week in the same environment, in which Trump is right by the way, he's right that there was a neighbor who said he saw a group of Middle Eastern men going into this apartment at weird hours, carrying packages, and he didn't call the cops because of racial profiling, he was afraid he'd be labeled.
At the same time that President Obama is saying, if you see something, say something, he's sending out his Attorney General to target the Irving Police Department.
Here's Loretta Lynch, the Attorney General of the United States, at the Muslim Advocates' Annual Dinner, explaining that really the great threat here is that we would be too anti-Islamic, and so she's going to go after the Irving Police Department for having the temerity to investigate Clock Boy, that's Ahmed Mohammed, that 14-year-old kid who brought a clock that looked like a bomb to his school and then got invited to the White House for his trouble.
Here's Loretta Lynch.
Everything need not result in a lawsuit, but some things do have to go to that area.
We have, as you may know, opened an investigation into the case of the young men in Irving, Texas.
We will see where that investigation goes.
So you have extreme situations like that, but you also have those everyday things that happen, and we have an important, important role to play.
So please, please think of us there as well.
Great.
Think of us there.
Anytime you see something that somebody comes and asks a question from law enforcement or there's a detention and then a release, think of suing.
Think of suing and think about going after the person who actually reported you in the first place and humiliating them and making them lose their job.
There'll be no downsides to any of this.
Again folks, this is not to argue that all Muslims are terrorists because that would again be so stupid and idiotic and no one in history has argued this.
This is not even to argue that if the only thing you know about someone is that they're a Muslim, that that person has to be a terrorist, because obviously that's idiotic.
What it is to argue is that if you are going to create a description of a suspect in Islamic terror, that person would have to be Muslim.
End of story.
And that has actual practical ramifications, like when you see two people come into the country and you don't even bother to check their background, and you don't bother to check where Tashfeen Malik was from, you don't bother to check the fact that she gave a fake address from Pakistan where she was from, you just assume she's going to be a good little American.
When you talk about importing 25,000 Syrian Muslim refugees and saying that everything is going to be hunky-dory, it'll all just be fine.
When you do this routine, All you are doing is setting yourself up for a fall.
Not because the vast majority of people coming in want to commit terror, but because there will be some people who want to commit terror, and there will be others who are willing to be radicalized and on knife's edge.
Of course you have to look where the suspects are.
And if you don't, you're gonna get yourself in all sorts of trouble.
And again, what's the other side?
I mean, there seems to be this other side where if you have your wits about you, right?
And this is true across racial lines and religious lines and ethnic lines.
We profile for different types of crime in this country.
If you have a white guy who's driving around in South Central Los Angeles late at night, the police will pull him over for being white.
Right?
And the reason they'll pull him over for being white is because white guys driving around in South Central at night are probably there to purchase drugs.
They're not there just to take in the scenery.
They don't live there.
There are not a lot of white people who live in South Central Los Angeles.
Whenever you come up with a description of a suspect, and by the way, Israel does this all the time.
Israel has behavioral profiling.
This is how they do it.
And behavioral, and again, this is not having to do with your ideas or what's in your head, it has to do with your behavior.
If you reach out on Facebook to a terrorist group, if you attend a mosque that has terror ties, if you go to that mosque frequently that has terror ties, if you're having large groups of young men over to your apartment at odd hours of the night, and you go to a mosque with terror ties, and that mosque happens to be the place where you go five times a day, And it turns out that you are posting on Facebook about how Jews are the worst and Israel is the worst and ISIS may have a point.
Maybe we ought to take you a little more seriously.
Does that seem out of the world to you?
That's not saying that we arrest the person, but it is saying you might want to keep an eye on them, right?
And if you don't keep an eye on it, how stupid do we have to be here?
How much do we have to frontally lobotomize ourselves for the purposes of political correctness?
How many indicators are we going to put to the side just because we don't wish to offend anyone?
And if you're a moderate Muslim, and you are somebody who goes to mosque often, wouldn't you be offended that your mosque was funded from abroad by people who want to commit terrorism?
Wouldn't it be a problem to you if people who are in your mosque or a group of people who are interested in committing terrorism, wouldn't you want to throw them out?
Donald Trump, very recently there was a guy who showed up at one of Donald Trump's rallies carrying a confederate flag.
Donald Trump had his security escort him out.
He understood this is bad optics.
He understood that you have to disassociate from people.
But when it comes to the left, you never have to disassociate from anybody.
Barack Obama didn't even have to disassociate from Jeremiah Wright.
For God's sake, Barack Obama launched his original congressional campaign in the home of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers.
No wonder he doesn't take terrorism particularly seriously.
No wonder he's willing to have us all frontally lobotomize ourselves.
It really is truly amazing.
And it's pervaded the media, too.
You can see the skepticism from that guy on Face the Nation toward Trump when Trump is saying, well, maybe we ought to look at some of the indicators here, not just that they're Muslim, but also things like coming from Saudi Arabia, things like her being essentially a mail-order bride coming back from Saudi Arabia with him, things like members of her family things like her being essentially a mail-order bride coming back from Saudi Arabia with him, things like members of her family engaging in, I When you have indicators, Always in retrospect, you see the red flags.
But the truth is that you only don't see the red flags if you don't want to see the red flags.
There are plenty of red flags here.
There almost always are.
It's just that we are so shy.
And we are.
And I understand the tendency to be shy.
I really do.
I understand this tendency.
My wife and I were in Israel around the time we got married, so about eight years ago.
And when we went to Israel for our wedding, one of the things that we were told is, when you get in a cab, make sure that you get in a cab driven by a Jew.
Because there have been cases in which people, Jews, young Jews, had gotten into cabs driven by Palestinians, and the Palestinians would drive them over to Palestinian areas, and they would be murdered.
Or kidnapped, as it actually happened.
So, my wife and I, we're driving around Jerusalem, or we're tooling around Jerusalem, and we need to grab a cab.
And so we grab a cab, and we open the cab, And we get in, and it's hard to tell some Sephardic Jews from Arabs, because they're Jews from Arabic countries.
They look very similar.
So you get in the cab, and then we look up, and we see that the guy's name is clearly Arab.
I mean, this is clearly a Muslim guy.
It's Mohammed something.
And we turn to each other, and I remember this vividly.
We turn to each other, and we could see in each other, are we being xenophobic?
Or should we tell this guy to pull over?
Right?
Is it nasty?
Is it racist?
Is it Islamophobic if we decide to pull over?
And, we, and so I was sitting, I remember this, I was sitting next to the door, and I was thinking to myself, okay, if we get to a red light, and he starts to turn in the wrong direction, I'm pulling, I'm popping this door, and I'm hopping out immediately.
If I have to smash this window, like, I started thinking that way, so, now instead of me just saying to the guy, pull over, I'm thinking, okay, if I have to jump out of a moving car with my wife next to me, should I do, all in the name of political correctness, when the reality is, that if I want to be safe, what I do is I just say, pull over.
And what's the cost?
Okay, so the guy loses the fair.
But at least I don't lose my life, potentially.
And maybe I'm wrong.
And maybe I'm Islamophobic for doing that.
But I can guarantee you that the stories of people being driven to Palestinian areas and being murdered, those weren't stories.
The fact is, right now, Israel is under a spate of terrorist attacks by random Muslims chopping at people with knives.
Are we just supposed to pretend that doesn't exist if you're in Israel?
Are you supposed to pretend the little old lady on the other side of the street, the little old Jewess on the other side of the street, is just as much a threat as the middle-aged Muslim woman who's got her hand in her purse?
We all behaviorally profile.
It's part of risk aversion.
All of us do it.
We've been doing it since the beginning of time.
And we've tried to overcome it so that we don't treat people badly on an individual level for no reason.
But when you see a red flag, you have to say something.
Islam isn't the only red flag, but it puts you in the box of if there are more red flags, at least you've checked that initial box.
Because we're looking for, again, people who are more likely to commit terrorism, and Muslim terrorism is significantly more likely than Christian or Jewish terrorism.
This isn't a matter of hating Islam.
This is a matter of, what do Muslims do?
I don't know that much about Islam.
I've read the Quran.
That doesn't make me an expert.
I don't really care.
I'm not one of these people who feels the need to read verses of the Quran to prove that all of this is rooted in Islamic theology.
It makes no difference to me.
All that matters to me is the behavior of a group of people, and the behavior of the individuals within that group.
And if you are Muslim, and you never have any other ties to terror, And you're never meeting with young Muslim men in your apartment?
And you're never ordering pipe bombs?
And you're never getting guns from your neighbors?
And you're never shooting people up?
I don't care about you.
You make no difference to my life.
But, you know, we have to create this alternative reality for ourselves.
And the media, by the way, are part of all of this.
If you believe that the media actually care about keeping you safe, you're out of your mind.
I saw the most insane thing that I've ever seen happen last Friday, talking about just the media incompetence and the media willingness to compromise your safety.
Last Friday, the media went to the apartment of Syed Farouk and Tashfeen Malik.
They went to the apartment.
And apparently they went up to the apartment and they asked the landlord could they have access to the apartment and he being an idiot said yes.
Okay, it's against California law.
You can't do this.
And so what then happened is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen on live television.
Here's what it looked like on live television when these reporters literally took a crowbar and broke into the apartment with the landlord's permission And started rifling through evidence from the terrorist apartment, despoiling it, getting rid of fingerprints, getting rid of evidence that could actually have linked these terrorists to other terrorists, perhaps.
Here's what it looked like on MSNBC.
We can see some of the other items here.
I can kill the light.
Let me turn the light off.
There we go.
But I don't see anything really on the wall.
I want to take a look at the calendar and see if anything's marked on the calendar.
And I don't see anything.
That's November, so let's go to December.
Just see if anything of importance was marked on the calendar here.
And nothing there.
And it's just a typical sort of calendar with pictures.
Ah, now as I turn around here, I think I find something interesting.
As we look at the floor here, this is a prayer rug.
So this prayer rug here may have been, I'm not sure which way, but you would face it towards Mecca.
It's possible that that prayer rug has been left exactly in the position where it was.
What kind of computer equipment, Kerry?
Karen, can you take a look?
Wait a second.
Let me take you over here.
This is interesting.
Look in this bin.
Here you can see all types of things have been shredded.
The FBI must have decided that whatever was in here was not important.
Oh, they must have decided it!
Okay, let's stop it right there.
This goes on for ten minutes.
There were 70 people who rushed this apartment, including people who weren't even members of the media.
There's a report of a lady who literally just walked in with her dog.
Just walked into the apartment.
That's shredded documents from terrorists sitting right there, and now none of it can be used as evidence because you've had media members in there.
And if somebody messed around with the shredded documents, forget about being able to put them back together if any of the members of the media started filing through all of that.
It is truly amazing.
There's a legal expert on CNN.
He said this is the worst screw-up I've ever seen from the media.
In investigative history, this is the worst screw-up.
It's truly, it was amazing.
And watching this on live television and recognizing how little these people care about your safety.
These are the same people who are telling you that racial profiling and behavioral profiling, because racial profiling is really not what it's about.
There's no such thing.
Islam is not a race.
They're Muslims of every conceivable race.
It's not even religious profiling because it sort of depends on the brand of Islam that you're practicing.
And there are plenty of people who are born into Muslim families who are completely irreligious.
It is behavioral profiling, and behavioral profiling is something that everybody does.
And it is, in fact, birthplace profiling, because depending on where you're coming from, it may have more or less of an impact on your likelihood of being a terrorist, because even Muslim populations in London are not quite the same as Muslim populations from, for example, Syria.
Okay.
Now on to things that I hate.
Okay, so a couple of things that... I'm trying to think of something I like.
Something that I like.
Hmm.
Okay, so there's a very... I'll tell you what I'm enjoying right now.
I'm enjoying Arrow.
I like the show Arrow.
It's a fun show.
It still engages in the comic book conceit that you never kill the bad guys ever.
And that's just a way of bringing villains back.
If you never kill the villain, you never have to worry about writing a new villain.
But that's sort of irritating.
But the show itself is fun and well plotted, and it really is enjoyable.
So, if you get a chance, catch Arrow.
Go back, get it on Amazon or Netflix.
It's a lot of fun.
Okay, time for things that I hate.
Here we go.
Here's something that I hate.
So Taylor Swift is, to me, not a deeply talented person.
I know that there are people who just love Taylor Swift.
They worship at the altar of Taylor Swift.
She's so wonderful.
She's so beautiful.
She's so cutesy.
She's so... She's so clean.
I mean, this was her original thing, right?
Was that she was sort of the clean artist.
She wasn't the one who was... She wasn't Miley Cyrus.
She wasn't getting naked.
That wasn't her routine.
Her routine was really much more about, you know, being clean, and she would sing kind of these love songs, and they were...
Very basic things, you know, musically non-complex, but melodic.
I mean, she's not untalented.
She's a lot more talented than Miley Cyrus, which is not saying much.
I mean, that's like saying that you're more talented than a dog turd, but...
In any case, she is not an untalented person, but in the last couple of years she's really decided she's going to take ownership over her public image.
And the way that she did this is she launched her pop album, and on her pop album she sort of mixed up the whole nerdy white girl routine with, also I'm a little bit naughty.
And that was her new routine, was nerdy white girl who's a little bit naughty.
And so her entire album was a little bit naughty stuff.
And then she decided, I'm going to show that I'm really a Hollywood person.
And so I have a whole new slate of BFFs, right?
I have a bunch of people who I'm new best friends with, and they're all Hollywood.
And aren't we just cute?
Aren't we just cute?
Aren't we just fun?
And so here is, for example, here is Taylor Swift with, who is this, Blake Lively?
And they're jumping around.
Here she is with Blake Lively.
Oh, they're just best friends.
Isn't it cute?
That's not staged at all.
I don't know how many times they had to take that picture with a solid camera in order to get them both jumping at the same time.
But in any case, they're just best friends.
And that isn't her only best friend.
She's also best friends with Lena Dunham.
Oh, there we go.
Aren't they cute together?
And Lena Dunham, of course, was in the music video for Bad Blood, which is just an insanely bad song and an insanely stupid music video.
But they're best friends, too.
And we know that Taylor Swift has to be friends with Lena Dunham because Lena Dunham, aside from sexually molesting her sister, also happens to be the person who taps you on the shoulder and turns you into a magical feminist.
To get your feminine credibility in line, you have to go to the great pope of feminism, Lena Dunham, and she taps you on the shoulder, and you pretend to be friends with her, and she's your chubby friend, and then she tells you that you're a feminist.
Lena Dunham, by the way, is happy to do this for anyone, because she's so desperate for attention and love.
Now she's hanging out with the cute girl, and she's the uggo.
And Taylor Swift gets to gain her feminist credibility from Lena Dunham.
And then, of course, she's also best friends with Jennifer Lawrence.
Oh, they're going to be besties, Jennifer Lawrence and Taylor Swift.
For a while, it wasn't clear they were going to be besties, but then they were both so popular, then now they're just best friends.
And by the way, Jennifer Lawrence and Lena Dunham are also besties.
They're all besties together.
Okay, now, little secret, folks.
None of these people care about each other.
None of them spend any time together.
They have their own posses that they roll with.
There are very few people in Hollywood who actually hang out with other stars in Hollywood.
That's because most stars in Hollywood want to be seen as the star of the party.
If there's more than one star at the party, then your attention is divided.
If it's just Taylor Swift and a bunch of her hangers-on, She gets to be popular.
So one of the things that I hate is the fake friendship between all of these Hollywood starlets.
Oh, we're all best friends and we share a set of values and principles.
The other thing that I hate that's sort of an extension of this is the interminable extension of teenagehood.
It's also teenage-y.
I mean, it really is.
All these girls are in their mid-twenties.
I mean, most of these girls are edging toward thirty.
I mean, Lena Dunham, I believe, is twenty-eight years old.
How old's Taylor Swift now?
Twenty-five?
Twenty-six?
She's getting up there.
Jennifer Lawrence, same deal.
They're all young, obviously, but they're edging—I mean, that's not young-young.
That's not seventeen-young.
But it's all like, oh, we're gonna go to parties together, we love each other, and we hang out together, and we have our little parties, and we drink our- we drink our- our- our pathetic girly drinks on our little boats, and we jump off the boats together, and it's just like so much fun.
At what point do they mature?
And what's amazing is that because our society has said that nudity equals maturation, they are, of course, mature women.
Now, a real mature woman would be looking to, I don't know, get married and settle down and have a family at this point, but I know that's sexist.
By the way, I think a mature man is why it's not sexist.
I think a mature man would be looking to settle down and get married and have a family and become a responsible human being at this point.
I think if you're 30 years old and you're a man and you're not thinking of getting married, that's probably because you're a loser.
And the same thing is true of these women, but they're convincing a whole generation of women that the real fun to be had is with your girlfriends, listening to Taylor Swift songs.
Oh, we're broadening our audience, don't you see?
It's all part of the marketing machine.
The more single... Not a lot of married girls listen to Taylor Swift.
Not a ton of married women who are... That's not her chief audience.
Her chief audience is single girls.
The more single girls there are hearing about her angsty breakups with her latest dude, the better her crowd is.
So there it is, Things That I Hate.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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