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Dec. 22, 2015 - The Ben Shapiro Show
38:40
Ep. 45 - How ISIS Really Recruits -- It Ain't Trump

Ben explains how ISIS recruits, plus he talks about Hillary getting schlonged -- and a very special holiday Things I Hate! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome, welcome.
Here we are here on a Tuesday, just a couple of days before Christmas Eve, so everybody's very excited.
And there's a lot to talk about.
We're going to talk about Donald Trump saying that Hillary Clinton got schlonged by Obama in 2008.
He actually used that word, which of course is totally false.
Hillary Clinton has not been, she was not schlonged by President Obama or Senator Obama in 2008.
Fact is, she hasn't been schlonged for at least 30 years.
But we'll get to all of that.
We will also get to ISIS recruitment videos, plus some things that I hate, including Hillary Clinton, who is apparently trying to schlong the pharmaceutical companies.
We'll talk about all of that.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is Ben to demonize people who don't care about your feelings.
Alrighty, so here we are.
And I want to start today's show by talking a little bit about something that the Democrats have been pushing.
And that is this notion that Republicans, Donald Trump in particular, they are the people who are creating all of this impetus for recruitment to ISIS.
That ISIS is using Donald Trump to recruit.
Now you remember Hillary Clinton in Saturday night's debate, in that little watched, little seen, they tried to hide it like Gollum tried to hide the ring, that debate.
But they hid that debate on a Saturday night.
But still, Hillary Clinton did say in that debate that Donald Trump was ISIS's best recruiting tool ever.
Their best recruiting tool.
And she said that they were creating videos with Donald Trump in them.
And then, Barack Obama, over the weekend, he did an interview with NPR.
And in this interview with NPR, he says that the only reason people even fear ISIS or fear terrorism is because of media exaggeration.
Here's President Obama blaming the media for ISIS's awareness and the fact that ISIS is rising.
You know, ISIL combines viciousness with very savvy media operations.
And as a consequence, if you've been watching television for the last month, all you've been seeing, all you've been hearing about is these guys with masks or black flags who are potentially coming to get you.
And so I understand why people are concerned about it, and this is a serious situation.
What is important is for people to recognize that the power, the strength of the United States and its allies are not threatened by an organization like this in the same way that Al Qaeda was able to carry out one spectacular attack.
We ended up making some significant changes to harden homeland defenses.
It then took a while for us to ultimately snuff out core Al Qaeda in the Fatah, and there are still lingering remnants.
But at no point was there ever a sense that, in fact, it could do catastrophic damage to us.
Okay, let's stop it there.
The president says that there was no sense Al Qaeda could do catastrophic damage to us.
And then he says, we hardened our defenses.
By we, he means George W. Bush, who hardened our defenses seven years before Barack Obama ever entered the public fray.
But it is amazing how Obama will take credit for everything.
When he says that ISIS isn't an existential threat, this dichotomy that Obama tries to draw between existential threat and non-existential threat, Let's be real about this.
In the entire history of the United States, the entire history of the country, there really have been only two existential threats.
Three if you count the American Revolution and the War of 1812.
The Civil War was an existential threat to the United States, although even then, not really, because the South didn't really want to take over the North.
And then there was an existential threat with regard to the Soviet Union.
But even the Nazis weren't really an existential threat to the United States because the Nazis didn't have the capacity to come across the oceans and attack the United States.
Even Japan wasn't really an existential threat to the United States during World War II.
The fact is that the United States would have a lot easier time defending our homeland than we would defending, for example, the Wake Islands.
But in any case, what Obama seems to be saying is that if it's not an existential threat, then we can take it easy.
That if ISIS isn't an existential threat, if they just kill 14 people every couple of years in San Bernardino, or if they kill 130 people in Paris every so often, that's something we can live with.
It's not that big a deal.
It's really the media blowing all of this out of proportion.
Now, it is true that media coverage does create a heightened awareness and a heightened sense of fear among members of the public.
This has been true with everything from Ebola to climate change.
The question is, how much of a threat are these things really?
With Ebola, the threat was exaggerated.
With climate change, the threat is exaggerated.
Is the threat exaggerated with ISIS?
I really don't think so.
I don't think that most people think that ISIS is going to conquer the United States, but I think most people are concerned, rightly so, that somebody from ISIS could walk into a movie theater and shoot it up, or that somebody from ISIS could walk into a community center and shoot 31 people, including 14 dead.
That is not an idle worry, and I think that the American people are right to be worried about that.
But President Obama and Hillary Clinton, they make all of these excuses for why ISIS is rising.
I think it is worthwhile going through exactly why ISIS is rising in their own words.
So ISIS has released now, they did this last month, they released an English language recruitment video.
And we're gonna go through it, and we're gonna pause it every so often so I can explain what they're saying, because some of the words are in Arabic.
But, the recruitment video, the first thing that you'll notice, and folks, this is why you should subscribe, because the visuals are kind of important to this particular piece of audio.
You can still hear what's going on, obviously, but the visuals make it much more striking.
The visuals in this video are extraordinarily good.
I mean, really, really high quality.
This is not done in a cave somewhere.
There's an actual production facility.
Apparently, we know where it is, but they housed it in a civilian area, so we're not bombing it.
But this is something I, Jeremy Boring, managing editor of Daily Wire, he does videos for a lot of various different enterprises, including Prager University, and he's done videos, obviously, for Daily Wire.
We used to do videos for Truth Revolt.
And I asked him, how much would a video like the one you're about to watch cost?
on the high end.
He said this thing could cost $100,000 to produce.
If this is a high-end video, this could cost six figures to produce.
Now, they're not paying anybody six figures.
They're putting a gun to people's heads, maybe, or they're telling people that they get 72 virgins, maybe.
But in any case, this is a very, very high-level operation, and it shows the level of propaganda sophistication.
And what you'll notice in this ISIS recruitment video is that nothing the left says about why ISIS is doing what it is doing, nothing they say about why ISIS is doing what they are doing has anything to do with what ISIS actually says about what it's doing.
The left will say it's about climate change, or it's about the media, or it's about Donald Trump.
ISIS is pretty clear that the reason that they are doing what they are doing is one, they're Muslim.
Two, they think the West is a place of emptiness with no central value to it.
And three, they've won a string of victories over leftist governments.
This is really the theme of the video.
And I think it's worthwhile watching because we need to hear the enemy in their own words.
It is worthless.
My little sister is writing a graphic novel right now.
And in doing that graphic novel, she has to create a villain.
And so one of the things she's doing for research on the villain is she's reading Hitler's Mein Kampf.
And I told her it was a worthwhile endeavor to do that.
She started reading it, and she turned to me and she said, this is actually creepy because you read it, and it's well written, and the beginning is moving, it's all about Hitler and his father, and it's not the rantings of a total nutjob.
This is somebody who obviously was a rational human being with a deeply evil set of beliefs, and I said, right, that's sort of the point.
If we're going to take ISIS seriously, we have to figure out what it is that they think.
We'll take a look at this ISIS recruitment video and we'll break it down for you.
Here we go.
This is our Khilafah, in all its glory, remaining and expanding.
It was established in the year 1435 Hijri.
Its leader, from the tribe of Quraysh, is Shaykh Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and its territory is already greater than Britain, 8 times the size of Belgium, and 30 times the size of Qatar.
Okay, let's pause it there for a second.
Okay, so, Khalifa is their Islamic state, the Islamic regime.
So when they say our Khalifa is this size, that's what they mean.
They're already promoting the idea that they've created a state, which is more than Al-Qaeda ever could say, right?
This is why ISIS is different from Al-Qaeda, because ISIS actually tried to create an Islamic state, as opposed to Al-Qaeda, which said, we're going to live in Islamic states and then go target the West.
Their territorial integrity is vital to their case.
Right?
They have to say that they're winning.
This is the way that they recruit.
They say, we've taken over all this territory.
Now, how could they have taken over all this territory?
Hmm... Could it have had something to do with America pulling out all of its troops from Iraq and leaving the place wide open for 5,000 troops from ISIS to walk across the border?
5,000 people basically took over half of Iraq.
And this is their pitch.
And so far, this is a strong propaganda effort.
Let's continue.
It's a state built on the prophetic methodology, striving to follow the Qur'an and Sunnah.
Not a secular state built on man-made laws, whose soldiers fight for the interests of Tawhid legislators, liars, fornicators, corporations, and for the freedoms of Saudis.
We are men, honored with Islam, who climbed its peaks to perform jihad, answering the call to unite under one flag.
This... Okay, is there for a second?
Alright, so, there are a couple things that are going on here.
So, folks, if you can't see this, it's actually, it's really well made.
It's stunningly well made.
I mean, this is a very, very good video, in terms of aesthetic quality, obviously.
Its ideology is completely evil.
What they say is that they are men of Islam.
President Obama says they're not men of Islam.
Who do you think people are going to believe?
President Obama, who, according to these folks, is an emissary of the freedom of sodomites?
Or the people who are standing there with the ISIS flag pledging their allegiance to Allah?
Right?
Who do you think they're going to believe?
And when they say, when ISIS says, look at the West, Right where they're fighting for dominant politicians and liars and and and what do they call it?
Fornicators?
They call Bill Clinton a fornicator?
So Hillary says Donald Trump's in this video.
Donald Trump is not in any of these videos.
Bill Clinton is in these videos and he doesn't even merit the title of politician.
He's called a fornicator by ISIS here.
They also showed George W. Bush and they showed Barack Obama here.
And what they say, basically, is that we live an empty lifestyle on behalf of corporations.
Now, what's amazing, of course, is that there's one other group in American life that says that America is built for the sake of corporations.
The American left.
They're using the dominant themes of the American left in order to push their own routine, and you're going to see them do more of this.
The pitch that ISIS makes is basically that conservative America is their enemy.
Leftist America is their enemy because they fight for the freedom of sodomites, and sodomites, of course, are gay people, in their parlance.
But what they are really saying here is they are saying that the real enemy are people who fight on behalf of corporations, which is the language of Bernie Sanders, So all these attempts to paint them as this radical right-wing group, they're not radically right-wing.
In fact, they mirror a lot of the arguments of the left.
Osama bin Laden liked to argue that climate change was a Western imperialist effort to defeat the third world, which is basically what the American left says.
You wonder why the left sides with radical Muslims so often?
ISIS, but certainly they've been very kind to radical Muslims in Hamas, and even with ISIS, the truth is that they're not siding with ISIS, but they're okay with the rise of ISIS.
It doesn't bother them too much.
It bothers them significantly more if the U.S.
were to get deeply invested in war with ISIS, or Al-Qaeda, or Saddam Hussein, or any other Muslim.
But what's amazing about this is that their philosophy is a mash-up of radical Islam, and also they're taking tropes from the American left, which they realize are popular, in order to recruit people And so the question is, and this really is a question, where does ISIS draw its crowd?
Where do they draw their crowd?
They're drawing their crowd from disaffected Muslims in the West.
And those disaffected Muslims are not conservative Americans.
We're not talking Republicans.
We're talking people who believe that the West has subjugated the third world and is a bad place and has done terrible things.
And so they're drawing from Muslims in America and abroad who also tend to believe bad things about the West.
I mean, the American left has lent some severe firepower to ISIS with their case that America's a bad place.
You're going to see that throughout.
There's a bunch of arguments that ISIS flips on its head.
The American left makes the arguments, then ISIS flips it on its head and uses it against America.
So we'll continue the video.
This is the source of our glory, our obedience to our Lord.
We are uncompromising in our call to Tawhid.
We only bow to Allah, unlike the countless deviant factions raising their false banners and changing with the winds of Jahili politics.
Yes, we are the soldiers who stopped the idols of nationalism, demolished the shitty symbols of Palmyra and Nineveh, and destroyed the Sykes-Picot borders.
We have to explain what he's talking about there.
So Keanu Reeves, who's narrating this video, Islamic Keanu Reeves, he says that they have demolished the idolatry.
The word that he's using in Arabic means idolatry.
The idols in Nineveh Uh, and, uh, and Palmyra, which are, which are these, these 3,000, 4,000-year-old statues, and ISIS went in and blew them up, because after all, the Qur'an says that you're not supposed to tolerate idolatry.
So they went and they blew up these historic structures, these historic statues.
The Sykes-Picot borders that they're talking about are borders that were set up after World War I by the British, that separated Iraq from Syria, and drew a bunch of arbitrary lines in the Middle East.
Uh, and, and when they say that they're fighting the, uh, they're fighting the idol of nationalism, uh, again, I seem to remember just a few weeks ago, we were playing a song on this very program that talked about a world without borders, a world without nations, right?
Nations are bad.
ISIS combines the worst elements of the radical left with radical Islam, and you're gonna see that continue.
This is a consistent theme.
This is not cherry-picking the points.
You'll see it.
It's over and over in this video.
...no honor to be found in the remnants of shirk and nationalism, and no difference between an Arab and a non-Arab, or a black man and a white man, except through piety.
This is the glory of faith that unites us.
Justice is served with the establishment of the Islamic court... ...and pause it again.
So basically, they're doing the same thing the Soviet Union did back during the Soviet Union's heyday.
They're saying that America is bad because America is racist.
Right, so now they're hijacking the Black Lives Matter language.
Right, America's racist.
There's no difference between black and white and anyone else, except in allegiance to Allah, meaning that if you have allegiance to Allah, then you are part of the group, and if you're not, then you're not.
But there is no racial differentiation, and that's a slap at the supposed racism of the West.
They're taking every criticism that the left has leveraged against the right in the West, and they are using it in order to promote their own agenda here.
This is why everybody on the left is trying desperately to pretend that Donald Trump Is the language that is driving ISIS.
The truth is, it's the American left that's driving the language of ISIS.
We'll continue.
There are thousands of Masajid in schools for our Cubs and Pearls, where they prepare themselves to share in the great rewards of expanding this caliphate.
America, you claim to have the greatest army history has known.
You may have the numbers and weapons, but your soldiers lack the will and resolve.
Still scarred from their defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, they return dead, or suicidal, with over 6,500 of them killing themselves each year.
So while you go around cooking the facts on the results of your military airstrikes, we continue to haunt the minds of your soldiers and sow fear into their hearts, with 18 of your soldiers committing suicide each day.
Okay, we'll pause it there.
So, again, this is a leftist trope.
How many movies have you seen just in the last few years about American soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who are suicidal, and depressed, and suffer from PTSD, and can't handle themselves, and they can't handle what they've done, and they come home and they kill themselves or they alienate their families?
This is how the media covers the military, because the left, in essence, really does not like the American military, which is why they're attempting to slash it.
They see it as a tool of colonialism and imperialism and therefore they have to portray America.
They can't say that American soldiers are bad.
That went out in the 60s.
Instead what they say is that American soldiers are victims.
There's no draft anymore.
Everybody volunteered.
But everybody who comes back from the military is a victim and has to be treated as a victim and they're dying of suicide every day.
So the way that ISIS plays this is actually smart.
What they say is the reason that you're committing suicide is because we defeated you.
We defeated you so badly that you cut and you ran, and then you killed yourself later.
Okay, now these statistics are not true.
There's 18 suicides each day.
That includes anyone who has ever served in the military, and the majority of people who are killing themselves are people who are above the age of 50.
So it's not people who are coming home and are young.
There is an elevated suicide rate lately for members of the military who are younger, but it's not 18 suicides a day.
Every year it's about 350 active duty service members who kill themselves, which is still a lot of people, but it isn't 6,500 people.
Every single year, but the point that they're making is the same point the left is making, which is that our soldiers are crazy or mentally fragile, that they don't have the will to fight.
Now, the truth is, the truth is our soldiers definitely have the will to fight.
I mean, if you've ever talked to anybody in the military, they are ready to go over there and kick some ass right now.
And the people who were pulled out from Iraq as a general rule were very much against the idea that we're going to hand over the country to a bunch of people who are going to give it away.
They saw it as a betrayal of the sacrifices made by them and their friends, and they were right.
This is why whenever people argue with me, I'm a young guy, and they say, well, why didn't you go into the military?
Are you a chicken hawk?
You didn't go in the military, and yet you argue in favor of American interventionism in places like Afghanistan.
And I say, okay, I'm very happy.
If you want to, we will make a deal.
Only current and former members of the military get to vote on foreign policy.
And the left immediately shies away from this because the truth is, as a general rule, members of the military agree with me.
Members of the military are ready to go and kick ass right now.
It's our politicians who are the cowards.
Our politicians are the cowards, not the men and women of the military.
But ISIS is using the fact That we cut and ran in Iraq and Afghanistan thanks to President Obama.
They're using that as a recruitment tool.
So, is Trump the problem here?
No.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who created this policy are the problem and you'll see that is the theme of this video over and over and over again.
Let's continue.
...before you've even advanced.
And in addition to the $6 trillion price tag on your war against the Muslims, you're now too weak to put boots on the ground.
You opt instead to attack us from the air with missiles, each worth $250,000, while we send your proxies to hell with 50-cent bullets.
Then, there's your new coalition of devils, with Iran, Turkey, and Russia joining the fray.
That's because the Milav Khufr will always unite you together to fight the truth.
So bring it on, all of you.
Your numbers only increase us in faith, and we're counting your banners, which our prophets said would reach 80 in number.
And then, the flames of war will finally burn you on the hills of death.
Bring it on, for we echo the mighty call of our prophets.
Gather your allies.
Plot against us, and show us no respite.
Our ally is the greatest.
He is Allah, and all glory belongs to him.
Okay, so.
And then we, uh, and then we cut into the universe and suddenly we're underneath the, the Star Destroyer.
And then we go to Star Wars.
But it, but, uh, but what they're talking about at the very end When they say that we're going to have wars in the hills of Dabiq, Dabiq is a place in northern Syria, and according to ISIS, according to their Islamic prophecy, no, not their Buddhist prophecy, their Islamic prophecy, there will be an Armageddon battle there between 80 nations, an alliance of Christians and the Muslims, and that will eventually usher in the Messianic Age for Muslims.
So, notice also in that last portion there, There are a couple other elements of politics that were brought in by ISIS.
One was, you guys can't afford to keep boots on the ground because you spend too much money on the wars.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Right?
We've spent trillions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We've bankrupted ourselves.
We spent so much money and now we can never put troops on the ground, no boots on the ground.
And they're saying, well, okay, you know, you're going to proclaim that you're winning from the air, but you're not winning from the air because you're dropping these really, really expensive bombs on us and we're shooting bullets at your proxies and killing them.
And there is some truth to this.
I mean, this is not completely false.
In every horrible lie, there is a grain of truth, and there is a grain of truth to the idea that the West does not have the willpower to put people on the ground to actually take out ISIS.
The truth is that were we to actually do this, ISIS would stop singing this bring it on game.
I mean this would end really quickly.
If we were to actually surge the number of American troops in the region and if we were to just fight them, this would not be a long war.
This would actually be a pretty short war.
The mop-up would be long, but the war itself would be pretty short.
They don't want us to do that, they claim they do because it makes them feel masculine and powerful, and it makes their followers feel masculine and powerful.
So did anything in there smack of Donald Trump to you?
Did anything in there say Donald Trump is ISIS's chief recruiting tool?
Donald Trump has said we shouldn't allow Muslims to immigrate to the West without better security checks.
Did you notice anything in there about Donald Trump is mean to Muslims, therefore you should come join ISIS?
Did you notice anything in there about that?
I didn't either.
What I noticed is we are strong, you are weak.
That's their pitch.
Their pitch is we are ideologically and militarily powerful.
We are men fighting from the hills on the basis of Allah.
And you guys are weaklings!
That's their basis.
And their basis is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The greatest recruiting tools that ISIS ever had were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The proof is in the pudding.
ISIS did not exist until 2011-2012, when it grew under President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
Now, meanwhile, I mean, it's amazing how the left has to create this massive disconnect with reality with regard to ISIS and Syrian refugees and the nature of radical Islam.
There's another video that came out yesterday with a Syrian refugee talking about Islam and Islamic radicalism and talking specifically about what he thinks Muslims ought to do in Europe, and it is not what the left has been suggesting.
It's not a bunch of people who are just desperate to leave, at least this guy says.
It's not a bunch of people desperate to leave because they're just looking for a better life outside of the helter-skelter of Syrian war.
Here is a Syrian Muslim refugee talking online about his reason for leaving Syria.
I'll read you the subtitles because obviously if you aren't subscribing, again, you should, but if you aren't subscribing, then I'll read you the subtitles.
He's speaking in, it looks like he's speaking in German.
This is my main goal for leaving Syria is to lead people to the acceptance of Islam.
If my wish comes true, I will gladly forego the whole world.
For this purpose, I would not only sell Syria, but also my parents, who are more valuable to me than Syria.
I swear by Allah, I only came here for this one goal.
But this will be very demanding work for me.
And for this reason, I've met with a few men and women who want to know more about Islam.
I've observed that they are curious and willing to get to know Islam through us.
So he's not coming to interpolate himself into Western culture.
He's not coming to integrate himself into Western culture.
He's coming to convert people.
Right?
That's why many Muslims are coming.
And this idea that they're coming because Donald Trump doesn't want them to come is just asinine and silly.
But don't worry, Hillary Clinton lying about the rationale for ISIS.
See, this is actually an important thing.
This is something the media should be covering.
The media should be covering, why is it that ISIS is thriving?
Why is ISIS doing well?
They're not going to cover that.
They will, however, Let me just tell you.
Trump when he makes off-color references about Hillary Clinton.
So Hillary Clinton lies about the rationale for ISIS, which seems kind of important if you want to be president of the United States.
But Trump said something that's vulgar about Hillary and therefore it's the end of the world.
Here's Donald Trump saying something vulgar about Hillary.
Guess which one generated more headlines?
Let me just tell you, I may win, I may not win.
Hillary, that's not a president.
That's not.
She's not taking us to the- Everything that's been involved in Hillary has been losses.
You take a look.
Even her race to Obama!
She was gonna beat Obama!
I don't know who'd be worse.
I don't know.
How does it get worse?
But she was gonna beat, she was favored to win, and she got schlonged.
She lost.
I mean, she lost.
Okay, schlong, for people who don't understand the reference, is a Yiddish term, and schlong is a penis.
And apparently, there's another Yiddish term that is called schlogen, or schlagen, and so some people were suggesting that maybe he mixed it up.
I doubt it.
But, as I said earlier, he's totally wrong.
Hillary did not get schlonged by Obama in 2008.
She hasn't been schlonged for three decades.
But this is generating more headlines because, oh, vulgar Donald Trump.
How could he be president?
Vulgar, vulgar Donald Trump.
It's just so terrible.
Okay, which disturbs you more?
Donald Trump's language or that ISIS video?
If it's the ISIS video, then you know who should never be president.
The people who give that impetus to ISIS.
The ISIS video, just for me, for my money, is a lot more scary than the Donald Trump video.
But not to President Obama.
President Obama thinks that Donald Trump is the scariest guy because Donald Trump is generating all sorts of nasty feeling about people.
Nasty feelings.
President Obama said back in, I think it was Audacity of Hope, his second autobiography, President Obama said that if it ever came to Americans versus the Muslims.
He knows that he would stand with the Muslims.
He said that because he thought Islamophobia would be the worst thing in the world.
He's continuing along those lines.
The only reason that white men are following Trump is because Trump is scaring them into following him with talk about those crazy Muslims.
Here's President Obama's clip 5.
Because of the financial crisis, because of technology, because of globalization, the fact that wages and incomes have been flatlining for some time and that particularly Blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy where they're no longer getting the same bargain that they got when they were going to a factory and able to support their families on a single paycheck.
You combine those things and it means that there's going to be potential anger, frustration, fear.
Some of it justified, but just misdirected.
And I think somebody like Mr. Trump's taking advantage of that.
I mean, that's what he's exploiting.
All right, enough of this.
So Trump is exporting the hate.
It's the bitter clingers language all over again from 2008, right?
Everybody who supports his opponent is somebody who's bitter, and they lost their job, and they're living in a Rust Belt town, and they're the father from Footloose, and they're all just these terrible downtrodden people Like Christian Balin out of the furnace and they're just being exploited by Donald Trump.
And that's really what we should fear.
We should fear the Trump movement.
We shouldn't fear the fact that President Obama has made ISIS an actual power in the region as well as a threat to people outside the region.
That's something that we shouldn't fear.
Again, if you are looking at the geopolitical situation right now and you're still thinking of voting Democrat, please slap yourself in the face repeatedly because it's just, it's absurd.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is pushing her new routine, and Hillary Clinton's new routine is that she says that she's going to end Alzheimer's.
Presumably that won't help her remember exactly where she put all those emails, of course, but she says she's going to cure Alzheimer's, and the way she's going to cure Alzheimer's is that she's going to spend $2 billion a year in research funding for Alzheimer's, and this is nothing new.
It all sounds good.
This is one of those things that sounds good even to Republicans.
Oh, let's dump a bunch of money into research for Alzheimer's.
Who could oppose money for research to Alzheimer's?
I don't oppose money for research to Alzheimer's.
There's only one problem with all of this, which is that Hillary Clinton, like all of the Democrats before her, is a snake oil salesperson.
Like an actual snake oil salesperson.
She's selling snake oil.
The government can cure Alzheimer's if you throw enough money at the problem.
Really?
Are all the researchers and Alzheimer's just sitting around waiting for those government grants?
They've just been sitting on their hands with their thumb up their butt waiting for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to sign them a check?
Here's the fact.
John Edwards, if you remember back to 2004, he actually said at a campaign rally that Christopher Reeves, the guy from Superman, he would get up and walk again if John Kerry was elected president in 2004.
He said, we will fund all of this research into paralysis and we will cure paralysis if John Kerry is elected president.
Joe Biden, just a few weeks ago, when he announced that he was not in the race any longer, Joe Biden said that he wanted a moonshot to cure cancer, as though the only thing that separates us from curing all of these terrible diseases is government intransigence.
If it just weren't for all of these government actors standing in the way, we could just drop a bunch of money, and boom, cancer would be cured.
There's only one problem with all of this, which is it's complete and utter hogwash.
And I think it's important to explain this because there are too many people who buy into it.
It's just nonsense.
The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of all useful drugs in the world are created by private pharmaceutical companies.
They are created by drug companies with a profit margin and a necessity for creating profitable products.
And there's an old joke about the Greeks versus the Romans.
The old joke about the Greeks versus the Romans, that the reason the Roman Empire defeated the Greeks and eventually ended up supplanting the Greeks is because while the Greeks were sitting around talking about the theory of building, the Romans were inventing cement.
And the idea is that there is sort of a dichotomy between making products that work and the worries about theory.
The theory of government-funded research is that government-funded research will create the underlying scientific theory, and then building on that scientific theory, drug companies will create the profitable drugs.
There's only one problem, which is that that Actually, it's not typically the way things work when it comes to scientific development.
It wasn't that somebody developed the theory of the lightbulb.
It's that there were tons of people competing to develop the actual lightbulb.
And then afterward, you figure out the theory of the lightbulb.
The theory of the lightbulb actually didn't matter all that much.
The mechanics of the lightbulb mattered a lot.
Ask your plumber if he knows the theories of water pressure.
Like, why does water pressure work the way it works?
Your plumber probably doesn't know the answer, but he certainly knows how to fix your toilet.
Well, the drug companies are in the business of fixing the human body.
Right?
These government-funded agencies are in the business of basic science.
This is not a case against all government funding of scientific research, but it is to say that Hillary Clinton said, in the first Democratic debate, she said it openly, Hillary Clinton said, who are your enemies?
The drug companies.
She said her enemies are the drug companies, so if you are going to say that you're defeating Alzheimer's, don't go after the only people who have any history of actually defeating Alzheimer's and actually fighting these things.
Okay, it's all private companies that are doing that work.
Okay, it's time for some things that I like and some things that I hate.
Something that I like.
There's a great short story.
I'm trying to remember the author, but the name of the short story is The Most Dangerous Game.
It's a phenomenal short story.
If you haven't read it, it's kind of a great horror-adventure short story.
You can find it online, you can buy it at Amazon, and it'll take you maybe 20 minutes to read, 25 minutes to read.
And it's just, it's fantastic.
There have been more movies that are kind of softly based on The Most Dangerous Game than probably any other short story.
It really is terrific.
So, check that out.
Okay.
Things that I hate.
I was driving yesterday and I noticed that there was a Kia Soul in front of me.
First of all, if your car is your soul, then you're stupid.
But the Kia Soul is in front of me and the Kia Soul is one of these cars that screams, I'm an environmentalist, right?
There are certain cars, the Nissan Leaf, right?
There are certain cars that just scream at you, I'm an environmentalist and therefore I'm a better human being than you are.
If you drive a Prius, You can beat little children in your backyard, and it won't matter.
Everybody thinks that you are just grand and glorious.
Here in California, you are crunchy, and you are wonderful, and you are just... you're a cut above.
You're the greatest person who ever lived, if you drive a Prius, in the state of California.
And in fact, they've done studies, and what they found, actually, is that if you drive a Prius, you're more likely to be an a-hole.
What the studies actually, and anybody who's driven in California where there are lots of Priuses knows this is true.
That whenever you drive around people with Priuses, they drive as though they are entitled to the road because they are driving a low emissions vehicle.
Well, there's this guy in the Kia Soul and he's in front of me.
And I noticed that as he's pulling onto the freeway over at Havenhurst, I think, he's pulling onto the freeway and down rolls the window and boom, litter right out the window.
Right out the window.
And I thought to myself, well, yeah, this is sort of the Feeling of justification and decency that people get from worshiping the idol of nature.
Here I am.
I've done my part for nature.
I bought this really crappy car that fits like a person and a half and gets a lot of miles per gallon because I can literally pick it up and fold it up and put it in my pocket when I'm done for the evening.
And I've done enough for the environment today.
I'm tossing this hamburger wrapper out the window.
Well, the mother of all of these people is this woman apparently named Megan Kimball.
Maybe she's a very nice person.
I don't know her.
But, her column is really stupid.
She has written this book, and she wrote a column in the Washington Post called, quote, I ate only unprocessed foods for a year.
Okay, and so, the idea is she ate only unprocessed foods for a year.
I know people, by the way, who eat nothing but unprocessed foods their entire life.
They're called poor people and they live in the third world and they die at age 30.
The fact is that, the reality is that processed foods, for all of the crap that processed foods get, and there's a lot of bad stuff about processed foods, I tend to eat healthy, I like eating healthy, but the idea that processed foods are the worst threat to people, talk about first world problems, but there's a virtue that attaches to you if you say that you eat unprocessed foods.
So only two groups of people, Adam Corolla does rich man, poor man, where he says there are certain things that only a rich guy can get away with and a poor guy can get away with, Right, and so he talks about, for example, if you have a car in your front yard, right, something only a rich guy can get away with and a poor guy can get away with, in one case it's like a beat-up old Chevy from 1956 with all the wheels missing, and in the other case it's a Rolls-Royce that you park on your front lawn to show how rich you are, and this is a rich man-poor man scenario.
The people who eat unprocessed foods in the world are the people who literally have access only to unprocessed foods, and uber-wealthy people living in the first world who shop at Whole Foods, which is the most expensive store On Planet Earth.
So she writes this whole long piece about how she is a better person for eating unprocessed food.
She says, I wanted to stop eating processed food for a lot of reasons.
There was the environment.
We live in an era of climate change, when natural resources are becoming scarce, and our food system is increasingly dependent on fossil fuels.
Okay, first of all, let me just point out, there is no shortage of fossil fuels, okay?
All of that was crap.
Everybody who said there was a shortage of fossil fuels, we're gonna run out in the 70s, it's nonsense.
Look at your gas prices today.
Your gas prices?
Let's put it this way.
How much is a gallon of milk now at the store?
I haven't bought a gallon lately.
I buy the half gallons.
I'm going to say a gallon of milk is at least $5.
A gallon of milk is at least $5.
It costs significantly more for a gallon of milk than a gallon of oil.
Right?
And milk is a replenishable resource.
Unless you eat the cow, which is delicious.
But, milk is a replenishable resource.
It just goes to show you... I mean, in fact, how much is a gallon of water?
A gallon of water now is like a buck fifty at the store.
So, there are places in the country where oil is cheaper than water.
So you're telling me that we're running out of oil?
No, we are not.
It's just there are political reasons.
I consider the enormous influence food companies wield in our national politics.
There is truth to the idea, by the way, that food companies wield influence in our national politics.
That's why the government is corrupt and should never set nutrition standards.
If you remember the old food pyramid, and you remember the bottom of the food pyramid was all grains?
If you ate that many grains, you would die of obesity at age 26, right?
But that was because the corn industry and a bunch of wheat granaries and members of the food industry were pushing the national government to push that kind of stuff.
She says there were economic reasons.
I wanted to spend what little money I earned.
Oh, she's, by the way, virtue in poverty right there.
I wanted to spend what little money I earned.
I'm not a rich person, I'm a poor person.
Endorsing my local food system, one that I hoped was visible, accountable, and scalable.
My local food system?
So I've never understood this local food system nonsense.
So you want to impoverish the guy living in China growing your food by helping the guy living in Detroit growing your food.
Isn't that a little bit nationalistic of you?
Isn't that a little bit xenophobic of you?
She says, I was tired of reading about what I should do.
I wanted to explore what I could do.
And then this thing goes on for like 3,000 words about how all she ate was unprocessed foods and how this makes her a better person.
She says, she feels better, stronger, and fuller.
I found a sense of community in the place I live.
While it's true that dollars spent on local businesses are dollars withheld from unaccountable corporations, it's also true that spending money better can make a more lovely Sunday morning and a more delicious Sunday dinner.
Listen, I'm fine.
You want to eat organic?
Eat organic.
You want to eat local?
Eat local.
You want to eat natural?
Good for you.
My great downfall as an eater is that I think vegetables were created by Satan.
But this idea that you are a better person because you are eating Unprocessed food, as opposed to processed food.
See, I consider you a better person based on what you do with your life.
I consider you a better person based on how many people you help.
And let's just make one thing clear about these corporations.
These corporations employ a lot of people.
And those unprocessed foods that everybody's whining about, one of the reasons that processed foods sell so well is because they last on the shelf forever.
Right?
One of the problems that we have for most of human history is that if you cut a piece of meat, You couldn't freeze it.
There were no freezing mechanisms and it was spoiled within a day and a half.
Right?
So you really had to sell it out.
Because of freezing, because of processing, because we can now maintain foods for periods of years, lots of people aren't starving specifically because of that.
When you go to your food drive and you figure, I'm going to ship this food to Africa, you know, a hundred years ago you couldn't ship that food to Africa because it would spoil halfway there.
It would spoil halfway out of town actually.
This is not a case that unprocessed foods are better than processed foods.
If you find virtue In eating unprocessed foods versus processed foods, you need a better moral system.
You need better opponents to fight.
Because now you're ghost hunting.
Now you're just patting yourself on the back for doing something that really has very little impact on the world in a positive way.
And I'm sorry.
I hope it makes you feel better.
I hope that if you eat unprocessed foods and raw fish and all the rest of it, it makes you feel all clean on the inside.
But if it makes you feel spiritually clean, as opposed to, you know, actually helping people, then you're not helping anybody.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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