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Jan. 21, 2016 - The Ben Shapiro Show
44:16
Ep. 59 - How Much Must Republicans Lie To Get Elected?

Trump vs. Cruz deathmatch continues, conservatism faces off with populism, and an extra-huge Ben Shapiro Show mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Is Donald Trump our density?
Or rather, is he our destiny?
We'll get to that.
We'll also get to Trump vs. Cruz, plus an extra heaping helping of The Ben Shapiro Show's second week mailbag, and it is really, really chock-full, so we'll save some extra time for that.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro show.
You tend to demonize people who don't care about your feelings.
So, you know, one of the things on the show that I like to say is that I told you so.
It's one of my favorite things to say.
And I get to say it all the time because I did tell you so because I'm right so often.
Which is why you listen to the show.
And it turns out that...
I told you so.
I'm right.
Nate Silver, who is a very, very, very good statistical analyst for FiveThirtyEight.com, he has a piece today about how Donald Trump is favored by the establishment.
I mean, it's not like I've been saying this for a week now, that in a fight between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the establishment favors Donald Trump.
But Nate Silver, who used to write for the New York Times and now runs FiveThirtyEight, he says, in the last election, he called all 50 states correctly.
as far as Obama versus Romney, he said, quote, in a nomination race like the Republican one, you could drop a list of reasons to be skeptical of any candidate's chances.
And he says, I used to be skeptical about Trump.
The reason I've been especially skeptical about Trump isn't listed above, nor is it because I expected Trump to spontaneously combust in national polls.
Instead, I was skeptical because I assumed that influential Republicans would do almost anything they could to prevent him from being nominated.
But, so far, the party isn't doing much to stop Trump Instead, it's making such an effort against Ted Cruz.
Which is what I have been saying.
The establishment does not fear Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is a creature of the moment.
Donald Trump is a creature of Trump.
Trump is... All that Trump is about, all Donald Trump is about is Donald Trump.
And all I have to do is read you some headlines from today.
Donald Trump today said... You remember a couple of days ago, Donald Trump was speaking at Liberty University, and he tried to quote the Bible, and instead of saying second Corinthians, he said two Corinthians.
You remember this?
So today, Donald Trump came out and he said, oh, that wasn't my fault, that was Tony Perkins' fault.
Right, the head of the Christian group, Tony Perkins.
Tony Perkins, when he sent me an email, he wrote 2 Corinthians.
Right, he wrote that to you assuming that you would know that meant 2 Corinthians, but he blamed Tony Perkins for that.
And then Donald Trump tweeted out that Ted Cruz is obviously worried about him.
And then Donald Trump, also today, suggested that it was he who urged Sarah Palin to address her son's problem with assault in Alaska.
Everything in the world is about Donald Trump.
There are zero things that are not about Donald Trump.
And the establishment can deal with that.
The establishment is okay with that.
They can deal with egoists.
What they can't deal with is conservative hardline ideologues.
Those are the people who scare them.
Which is why Bob Dole has now endorsed Donald Trump over Ted Cruz.
Bob Dole, you know, you like it, I like it, the American people like it.
That Bob Dole.
So he endorsed Donald Trump before falling off the stage.
I thought that the best take on Bob Dole, who was trending on Twitter, came from IowaHawk, who tweeted, Little harsh, but very true.
trending, buys wreath, sees reason.
Bob Dole is trending, returns wreath.
A little harsh, but very true.
So Donald Trump, he's been endorsed by Bob Dole now.
So Bob Dole, he said, quote, The party would suffer cataclysmic wholesale losses if Cruz was the nominee.
Donald Trump would fare better.
He said, I question his allegiance to the party.
He said this about Cruz.
I don't know how often you've heard him say the word Republican.
Not very often.
Instead, he says conservative.
Which is a bad thing, according to Bob Dole.
I also don't say Republican.
I like to say conservative because Republican is a mechanism and conservatism is an ideology.
If I'm a Republican, that's just the party that I use to get where I want to go.
It is not, in fact, an ideology.
It's just a name for a group of people who band behind it.
Dole said about Cruz, he's an extremist, he said, I don't know how he's going to deal with Congress.
Nobody likes him.
He said Trump could probably work with Congress because he's got the right kind of personality and he's a deal maker.
Right, so in the end, they support Trump over Cruz, as I have been saying.
And by the way, Donald Trump is now making the perfectly establishment case.
So for all the Trump supporters, I'm gonna get to the Trump can win argument in a minute and why I think that that's flawed and problematic in terms of the general election.
But there are two arguments for supporting Donald Trump.
One of them is at least passable, and one of them is deeply stupid.
The passable one is Donald Trump's a better fighter, he has more blue-collar appeal, he's more electable than Ted Cruz.
I actually think there's a case for this, although his unpopular numbers are very high.
The other argument is that Donald Trump is more conservative than Ted Cruz.
If you believe this, Then you are, as Sarah Palin might put it, on opium.
If you believe this, you are out of your damn mind.
There is no measure by which Donald Trump is more conservative than Ted Cruz, and even Trump is basically admitting this now.
Donald Trump, yesterday, he came out and he said, the problem with Washington is that we don't make enough deals.
I thought that Trump's whole pitch is that he was tough and he was going to stand up to people, but now the problem in Washington, they don't make enough deals, says Donald Trump.
Well, I've been making deals all my life, and that's why I'm worth many billions of dollars, more than $10 billion, because that's what I do.
I make deals, and you get it done.
And the problem with Washington, they don't make deals.
It's all gridlock.
And then you have a president that signs executive orders because he can't get anything done.
I'll get everybody together.
We'll make great deals for the country.
We'll take back our trade.
We'll strengthen our military.
We'll take care of our vets.
The vets are a huge problem.
They're being taken care of so badly.
So badly.
We'll strengthen up the borders.
Yeah, we're gonna make deals.
We're gonna make great deals.
And politicians don't know how to make great deals like a guy like Ted.
You know, he borrows money from Goldman Sachs.
He borrows money from Citibank.
He doesn't report it on his forms where you have to report it.
It's, you know, a violation at a very significant portion.
He doesn't report things like that.
You can't just say that.
I mean, it's very sad to see it.
Okay, so number one, it's not true.
Cruz did report those donations.
He reported them on the wrong form.
Number two, if you want to say that somebody is beholden to the bank because they have a loan from that bank, every person in America has a mortgage.
You know, everyone has taken student loans.
This idea that this makes you enthrall to the bank from which you have the loan is idiocy.
I mean, Donald Trump has hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from various entities.
Does that mean that he's beholden to those various banks?
Of course not, it's silly.
But, the bigger problem here is that Trump is saying that he's going to be a dealmaker, and this is why the establishment likes him.
And Cruz is noting this.
Right now, Cruz is saying, it's pretty clear the Washington establishment is behind Donald Trump.
Here's Cruz.
You know, Sean, I think it very much is becoming a two-man race between me and Donald.
And, you know, one of the really strong signs of that is you're seeing the Washington establishment dumping their candidates.
So, for example, a lot of the establishment had been behind Marco Rubio.
They've decided now he doesn't have a path to victory.
They're moving to Donald Trump.
And we're seeing that more and more.
And, you know, it's kind of curious.
Donald is publicly bragging about how all the big establishment Players are getting behind him.
And his criticism of me is he said, I went to Washington and actually stood up and fought in Washington and Donald has said, well, the problem he has with me is that I won't go along to get along in Washington.
I won't cut deals.
And Donald has promised he'll go to Washington.
He'll cut deals.
He'll go along to get along.
I got to tell you, Sean, you know the conservatives across this country.
I don't think the problem with Washington Is that we haven't had enough Republicans willing to cut deals with the Democrats.
The problem is Republican leadership cuts deals every day with the Democrats like this horrible omnibus bill that funded a trillion dollars funded all of Obama's big government priorities and and the establishment seems to have made a determination Donald Trump's a guy they can make a deal with who will continue the cronyism and corporate welfare and bailouts for big banks and and and I think that we're seeing conservatives
And this is exactly right.
Now, what's amazing about all of this is that, meanwhile, at Jeb Bush, there's a big article in Politico today that Jeb Bush's campaign is toast.
Well, welcome to the party, gang.
We've been saying this from basically Day one that Jeb Bush was going to be toast.
Jeb Bush made Donald Trump.
People should understand this.
Jeb Bush made him, okay?
Jeb Bush announced on June 15th, if you remember, the very next day Donald Trump announced for the presidency and name-checked Bush three separate times in his announcement ramblings and at that point said the establishment supports Jeb Bush, that's who's behind Jeb Bush, And then Jeb's people, not content to boost Trump that way, decided to have Jeb attack Trump in the debates, at which point Trump stomped him repeatedly, as we've covered on the podcast, which boosted Trump in the polls.
And then still not content, the Jeb people have now spent tens of millions of dollars knocking down Marco Rubio to try and clear the establishment lane for Jeb Bush, came out today.
$22 million have been spent in the last month against Marco Rubio in attack ads.
$20 million of those dollars came from Jeb Bush's super PAC.
So, we've had Jeb Bush clear the field, basically, for Donald Trump.
But Jeb is right about one thing.
He says, if Donald Trump is the nominee, Hillary Clinton wins.
I think this is probably correct.
Here is Jeb Bush.
Look, Trump's an entertainer.
He's not going to be commander-in-chief or leader of the free world.
He's not going to lead us to a safer and secure and freer America.
And so I'm going to stay the course.
The reason why he attacks me is he's scared of me.
He's insecure.
He doesn't believe that he can take me on.
And while I'm doing worse than him in the polls, the simple fact is, why would he spend his time tearing down someone who's so low compared to him?
This is because we're moving up.
And I believe that he believes that we're the real challenge for his winning the nomination.
And the tragedy of this is, we have a Democratic nominee, likely nominee, who's under investigation by the FBI.
The only chance that she could become president is if we nominate a guy like Trump.
Okay, so I want to talk about the electoral chance of Trump in a minute, but I just want to point out one thing.
When you watch this clip, it makes you pro-Trump.
Right?
It does.
I mean, I think Trump is terrible.
I think that Trump is a demagogue.
I think that Trump is bad in a variety of ways.
Every time I watch Jeb Bush talk about Trump, I want to vote for Trump.
And it's because, if you watch Jeb Bush talk about how Trump is- I mean, he's so disconnected.
The reason Trump is attacking him, obviously, is because Jeb Bush is a name.
Bush is connected with the Bush family.
He is the establishment.
The reason he's punching Jeb Bush is because it benefits him.
Not because he's afraid of...
Jeb Bush, give me a break.
What silliness.
By the way, before I move to the real substance of the discussion here, which is, is Trump electable?
Because I think it's almost a waste of time at this point to talk, is Trump conservative?
He's not.
We've spent a lot of time this week going over his positions on various issues.
He is not conservative.
But there's an argument still to be made that he's the most conservative guy who can win.
I want to talk about that.
Before we do that, a bit of comic relief from John Kasich.
Oh God, no.
Not John Kasich.
Yes, John Kasich.
John Kasich was on Hugh Hewitt's show the other day, and he explained how he wants to be viewed.
Well, I think it's some things.
I think, first of all, I have the experience, and I've had success, and I've been a reformer all of my life.
You can't come from McKee's Rocks, as you know, Hugh, and not be a reformer.
And I have a message that, you know, look, we have a lot of candidates that are like the Prince of Darkness.
You know, I consider myself the Prince of Light and Hope.
And I don't spend all my time getting people riled up about how bad everything is.
I acknowledge the challenges, but then I say, look, come together, the Americans first.
We can solve these problems, and people are hungry for that.
People do not want to live in the lane of depression.
They want to believe that in America, it can all work.
And I think it's working, but look, I've been doing this for a long, long time.
People weren't paying attention.
Okay, so it turns out his father apparently was not a mailman.
His father was God, which is exciting.
I mean, who knew, right?
So the Prince of Light and Hope over here.
By the way, the Prince of Light and Hope is now running second in New Hampshire according to a couple of polls, which means the end of the road for Marco Rubio.
Okay, I want to get to the real point of what I want to talk about today, which is really not reiterating how right I was about Trump versus Cruz.
Obviously, I'm right.
You all know it.
That's why you listen.
So, here's what I really want to talk about.
Rush Limbaugh.
Who is, I think, the best expositor of conservatism in America for the past 30 years.
He was the guy who made the 1994 Republican Revolution happen.
He was probably the guy who pushed George W. Bush over the top in 2000.
He's probably one of the main reasons Republicans did so well in 2010 and 2014.
He's a force.
There's no question.
He made a statement yesterday that I think is worthy of note.
He's talking about the rise of Trump.
And he, like a lot of conservatives, understands the anti-establishment appeal of Trump, but is concerned that Trump is not actually conservative.
And so he's trying to explain why Trump is so surefire popular, why he's so all-fired popular, and here is what Rush Limbaugh had to say about it.
So what's happening here?
Nationalism?
Dirty word.
Ooh, people hate it.
Populism?
Even dirtier word.
Nationalism and populism.
have overtaken conservatism in terms of appeal.
When this has happened and when it exposes what people in Washington are afraid of, and that is, you know, all this money we've asked people to send us and all these donations people have made, this movement, promote that, well, where is conservatism in Washington?
They're asking.
Where is it?
The Republican Party isn't conservative.
Where is all these conservative people that are Contributing to policy being implemented in Congress or in the Senate?
They don't see it!
So, the case Rush is making is at least partially right.
What he's saying is that conservatism has been outflanked by populism and nationalism.
That because conservatives in Congress, people who pledged to be conservative, were not, it waned in popularity and now it's being replaced by Donald Trump's brand of nationalism and populism.
Now, I think it's important to define terms for a second because these are words that get thrown around a lot.
Nationalism and populism are not actual coherent ideologies.
Nationalism just says, I want whatever is best for the country, but it doesn't define what's best for the country.
So you could be a nationalist like Hugo Chavez, right?
And you could be thinking that leftism is the best thing for your country, and you're a nationalist, right?
Hitler was a nationalist.
He's a national socialist.
Nationalism doesn't imply right-wing.
And populism also doesn't imply right-wing.
Populism just means that you're anti an ensconced group of elites who you think control things, and so you're fighting against those people.
That's what populism is.
And there are leftist populists like Bernie Sanders, and there are right-wing populists like Donald Trump.
What's been happening is because conservatism has become a notion of the elite, or it's at least perceived to be a notion of the elite, it's falling away in popularity.
And there are a couple of reasons for this.
One is that all the people who have campaigned as conservatives were basically lying.
And then they got to Washington, and they didn't do any of the things they said they were going to do.
They didn't stand up for the little guy.
They didn't stand up to the big guy.
But there's something deeper here than just the malfeasance of people in Washington, D.C.
and the inability of conservatives to stand up for principle.
There's something else.
That would be too easy an answer.
I want to talk a little bit about something I talked a little bit about yesterday, and I think it's problematic.
Andrew Klavan and I, just before the show, were having this conversation.
Drew has been putting a heavy, heavy emphasis on his podcast on the fact that Trump supporters are blue-collar people who may be losing their jobs to China or may at least feel they're losing their jobs to China in free trade or technological advancement.
That there's a group of people out there who feel like they're being left behind in the economy and that the Republican Party, that conservatism more specifically, isn't doing enough for these people.
And so these people are embracing Trump because Trump says he'll do something for them.
David French at National Review says the same thing.
He says that nationalism, you know, the reason that Trump's putting together this coalition is because there is a sort of three-legged stool for Trump supporters.
That is, nationalism, they don't feel like they want to be in second place anymore, right?
They're winning.
Two, is a sort of Abhorrence of the hardcore left extreme social issues pushing.
So they don't like the political correctness, right?
That's point number two.
And number three is economic opportunity, but economic opportunity defined in very personal terms.
So not an even playing field, not a free economy.
More like, what will you provide me so that I have what I believe on a personal level is a fair shot?
So that mirrors Clavin's point about the blue collar workers.
And one of the problems is... So what do Republicans do about this?
Because here's the truth.
The Republican Party was, basically from the end of the Civil War all the way until FDR, a protectionist, isolationist, anti-immigrant party.
The Republican Party voted- I mean, Calvin Coolidge had the single greatest immigration shutdown of the 20th century.
He shut down basically all immigration in the 1920s because he was afraid of the rabble coming in.
Who were the rabble?
I mean, Coolidge was a good president, but who were the rabble?
The rabble were Jews and Irishmen and Germans and Italians.
Those were the rabble.
It wasn't Mexicans, it was Jews.
It was a bunch of people who are now considered white in the United States, right?
They're now considered part of the white majority.
And if you look back at the economic policies of the time, Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, everybody was pushing this idea that the government has to get in there and bust up the big businesses.
They have to break up the big businesses.
So regulations on banks, going after the big guy in favor of the little guy.
These were people who were in favor of protectionism, higher tariffs on foreign goods.
The United States gradually integrated into the world economy, but we had pretty significant tariffs all the way through FDR, which is why the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were a thing.
That's why Herbert Hoover, who was a Republican, infamously pushed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs as a response to the drop in the stock market, which helped create the Great Depression.
So, populism, the draw of protectionism, has always been great.
Here's the problem with politics in general.
Here's the problem with politics in general.
The problem with politics in general is that things that you get from the government typically are things people don't want to give up.
Even conservatives, or people who consider themselves conservatives.
Most people, and when you look at a government program like social security, Social security is a disaster area.
It's in the red.
It's going to bankrupt the country.
It really is a problem.
Most people who are on social security, however, are not going to give it up.
And politicians know that by campaigning against social security, they're signing their own death warrant.
Why?
Because you come to somebody like me, I'm 32 years old, right?
You say to me, I'm going to reform social security.
I think two things.
Great.
That means I get 7% more on my paychecks.
And it also means that I may have a shot at keeping some of my money.
But then you go to somebody like my grandmother, right, who's actually living off of Social Security, and you say to her, we're taking away from you 90% of your monthly income.
Right?
It's going away.
Now, nobody's actually making the case Social Security should go away, but this is why, right?
This is the reason why.
The reason why is because Social Security, like every other government program, has a very specific set of beneficiaries, and a very diffuse set of people who are harmed by it.
So I pay a little bit of money into Social Security every month, but my grandmother takes a lot of money out of Social Security every month, which is, of course, why it's bankrupt.
But that means it's politically unpopular to go after Social Security, because, honestly, Social Security is not number one on my list of priorities, but for my grandma, it is number one on her list of priorities.
And the same thing is true of Medicare.
This is why Donald Trump says, I'm not gonna touch Social Security, I'm not gonna touch Medicare.
It's why Democrats say that.
Think about immigration.
Legal immigration is very good for the economy.
Legal immigration is good for the economy so long as people aren't taking welfare, obviously, because if you have a skilled set of people coming in and bringing their skill sets to bear, they're bringing better work for cheaper.
Better for cheaper is always good for the consumer.
Now, you come to me and you say, okay, is legal immigration good?
I say, yeah, it's great.
It means that I've got a bunch of talented people who are coming in, producing great product I can buy for cheap.
Sounds awesome.
As a consumer, it's great.
It means I get better stuff.
Now you go to the person who's just let out of a job because of the legal immigrant who was brought in.
So for me, I may have gotten a slightly better iPhone, but for that guy, he lost his job.
So when Donald Trump campaigns against legal immigration, what he's really saying is, I'm campaigning for the guy whose number one priority is keeping his job as against that legal immigrant, And, you know, all of the diffuse benefits, nobody's voting, that's not their number one issue.
In other words, everyone is basically a single-issue voter and their single issue is, what's good for me?
And what's good for me is almost invariably something that is not good for society as a whole.
Which is why morality matters, folks.
This is why religion matters.
If we were all self-interested voters, then, in the end, we would end up with a socialist, communist regime.
Which is what the founders always said.
The founders always said, if you can vote other people... This is why we have a Bill of Rights, to prevent government from doing this.
The founders always believed, if you could vote yourself other people's property, you would probably do it.
If you could vote yourself other people's money, you could probably do it.
And they were right.
And that's what's happening.
And so that becomes a problem.
Because if we were to get rid of, if we were to get rid of a lot of the policies that hurt the country, we're hurting a specific group of people and helping a broad group of people, but we're helping that broad group of people this much, and we're hurting that specific group of people this much.
Okay, that's a problem.
So, then the question becomes, okay, what do you do to get elected?
Because there's no question that if you lie to people, you can get elected.
Right?
If you're a Democrat, you can just lie to people.
I'm gonna make your life better.
I'm gonna give you free education.
No such thing.
I'm gonna give you free healthcare.
No such thing.
I'm going to give you free this and free that.
I mean, basically, the Democratic debates have been going like this.
Hillary Clinton says, free education for everybody!
And then Bernie Sanders says, free healthcare for everybody!
And then Hillary Clinton says, free crap for everybody!
And then Hillary Clinton says, free crap for everybody infinity!
And that's their pitch.
And that's a good pitch.
It's a good pitch.
And down in our gut, we know it's not true.
But it's appealing.
And Donald Trump is making sort of the same pitch.
So what Andrew Klavan has suggested is if you want to appeal to those blue-collar voters, the reason Donald Trump is getting people jazzed up is because he may be wrong on legal immigration.
He may be wrong on free trade.
He may be wrong on government crony capitalism, but he's appealing to that group of people.
So what Klavan says is, well, instead of arguing sort of the Donald Trump protectionism spiel, what if we start to argue for job training programs?
And I said to Klavan, well, there's only one problem.
There's not a government job training program in the world that actually works.
They're all failures.
That's not the way the economy works.
When somebody loses their job at GM, They don't get another job because they went to a government-funded job training program.
Hell, the people in government don't even know how to do jobs.
It's why they work for the government.
The way people get jobs is they look through the classifieds and they find a job.
Or they go drive for Uber.
They find private industry.
That's not a pitch.
So the question becomes, what lies are you willing to tell in order to get elected?
What lies are you willing to tell in order to get elected?
Because anytime you say that the government is going to be able to help you, You are basically lying.
The government is not capable of helping individuals without stealing money from other individuals.
And when it does steal money from other individuals, that's immoral.
So, what compromises are you willing to make in order to get elected?
This is a serious question, and it's a serious moral question that we should all consider.
Now, my way of dealing with this, I think, in political terms, is that Republicans ought to single out, they should understand how elections actually work.
Elections don't take place on the basis of policy, they take place on the basis of story.
And so, it's not about the story of the guy who's blue collar living in Ohio, it's whether you are better for that guy than Hillary Clinton.
And that guy's priorities are not only the priorities of, I need to keep my job.
That guy's priorities include, I don't want my kid indoctrinated by the government to believe in gay marriage.
I don't want Hillary Clinton coming in here and mandating that a man go into my daughter's restroom.
I don't want Hillary Clinton coming in here and forcing her priorities and values down on me.
In other words, you don't have to bribe people with government.
You just have to focus on the fact that the Democrats want to oppress.
There's an issue of emphasis here.
I don't think that the way Republicans end up winning blue-collar voters back is to lie to them about the glories of protectionism.
A lot of people on the right seem to think it is.
I think the problem is that once you give people the go-ahead on the premise, once you give people the go-ahead on the premise that you can steal other people's money in order to enrich yourself, then you're basically a Democrat.
It's just a matter of time until you get there.
It may take longer, but it's only a matter of time until you get there.
So I'm not offering no hope.
I'm not saying Republicans can never win because Clavin and I, Clavin was saying freedom is unpopular.
I don't think freedom is quite as unpopular.
You know, I think freedom is unpopular in the sense that people want free crap.
I do think people want free crap.
But I think that there are certain aspects of freedom that, for everyone, trump their desire for free crap.
Otherwise, this wouldn't be a free country.
So you have to find out what are those aspects of freedom for each individual and tailor your message of freedom to that individual.
So it's a mistake to go into a blue-collar area and start talking about the glories of free trade.
It's stupid.
Just like it would be a mistake to go into Iowa and make your central pitch how you're going to get rid of ethanol subsidies.
But, you can go into Iowa and you can say, Hillary Clinton wants to take your money, and she wants to spend it on stupid garbage, and she wants to restrict your religious practice, and she wants to destroy your livelihood.
In other words, you have to campaign on all the things that the establishment doesn't want you to campaign on.
The reason we're in the situation we're in, the reason blue-collar workers have been left aside, is because the establishment insists that Republicans not talk about social policy.
That Republicans not talk about Basic issues of religious freedom, for example.
That Republicans not talk too much about foreign policy and national security.
The reality is, the only reason America went free trade in the first place is because after World War II, we had to be free trade for national security reasons with all of the other countries the Soviet Union was trying to woo.
Our idea was that if we trade with them, they'll become rich, they'll become democratic, and they won't want to deal with the Soviet Union.
But that was a pitch on foreign policy grounds, not on prosperity grounds.
The prosperity just came afterward.
Republicans need to understand the message of freedom is the right message.
The message of bribery isn't.
And so, you know, compromising with populism is just a recognition that you don't emphasize the parts of the economic conservative agenda that are actually problematic for people who are in that small minority of people who are hurt by good economic policy.
Okay.
Time for some things that I like, and time for some things that I hate.
There's a great book called Tragedy and Comedy by Walter Kerr.
It's really good.
One of the great questions in drama is what's the difference between a tragedy and a comedy?
What's the difference between a tragedy and a comedy?
Because what makes you laugh and what makes you cry are very often very similar things.
Walter Kerr's theory in a great book called Tragedy and Comedy is basically that life is both tragedy and comedy, and the reason is because tragedy is Hamlet aiming for the stars, but understanding that he's going to end up like Yorick, right?
It's the fact that we are capable of reaching out to God and reaching out to the stars, but that we're always going to fall short, that we're always going to die.
And comedy is, we reach out to the stars, but we fart.
Right, and so it's the same argument, it's just that one sees it as, okay, it's kind of hilarious that we've got this immortal spirit trapped in this ridiculous body, and tragedy is, isn't it horrible that we have this immortal spirit and it's trapped in this ridiculous body?
So it's just two ways of viewing the same coin.
So that's interesting.
And I was going to talk a little bit of Sondheim, but we'll save Sondheim for things that I like next time.
Actually, I'll do Sondheim on Monday as a thing I like and a thing I hate, and I'll explain why.
Just remind me.
Alright, so.
Now, I promised some letters from the mailbag, and thank you for your letters.
Got lots and lots of mail this time, so we'll go through as many as we can.
If I don't get to it, folks, that's just because we literally got hundreds of inputs.
I mean, I'm blown away, actually.
So, Chris writes, Good morning, Ben.
First of all, I want to say I love your show.
Listen to it daily.
Daily Wire has become a must-read.
So, a couple of questions about Bernie Sanders.
One, if Bernie wins the Democratic nomination, how do you think that affects the GOP chances?
Also, I think we're seeing Bernie swing the Democratic Party further to the left, but if he wins the election, that will move Democrats further to the left.
How would it affect blue states?
Let some areas swing to red because they can't go that far left.
Okay, number one, I think Bernie Sanders is actually a more dangerous candidate than Hillary Clinton because Hillary is gravity-bound, right?
Bernie is off in the air somewhere.
I mean, Bernie's a nutjob.
Bernie's just flying up in the air and- and- and mention- I mean, yesterday he actually proposed that the post office should open a bank.
Okay, the most bankrupt institution in American government should do banking.
Yes, this is a grand idea, Bernie Sanders.
But because of that, he's got ideological purity, he's got passion.
Hillary is tired, she's an old crone, no one likes her, she's nasty.
Bernie Sanders is a slightly scarier candidate than Hillary because at least he appears sincere.
As far as him pushing people to the right, if I thought that he would push people to the right, I'd be in favor of his nomination.
I think he'd push people to the left because he at least is ideologically coherent.
I think that we have yet to see how far the American left is willing to push, and I think that they're willing to push even further.
Alright.
Letter number two.
This is from a guy named Dom.
He said he wrote to me a while back.
Today, something happened to him that was kind of surprising.
He wanted some advice.
So he says, Some friends and I were talking about one of the black kids at our school.
He's well known for being a white black kid.
By this I mean he does things that are typically associated with what white people do.
The kid has a gold membership to Starbucks, for God's sakes.
Anyway, he's proud to say he's a white black kid, so by calling him, it's not a negative connotation.
We were talking about we said he's the whitest black kid you'll ever seen, you've ever met, and at this comment, one of the black girls who sits at my table snapped at me and started calling me a racist.
The girl is a wild advocate, to say the least, for the rights of black people.
Did she have a right to be upset with me?
Am I the one in the wrong?
Okay, so, number one, I don't believe, obviously, a joke is a joke.
People say this kind of stuff all the time.
And by the way, people on the left usually say it when they mean that a black person isn't liberal enough, they'll say that he's white.
Right, so Stacey Dash yesterday made a comment about Black History Month, and leftists said she's not black enough.
So, no, they have no ground to stand on there.
As far as using that kind of language...
It's silly language.
They're rich black people?
Is Colin Powell more white because he's rich?
No, he's a black guy.
Is Condi Rice any less black than she was when she was a girl growing up in Birmingham while white people were bombing churches?
No, she's just as black.
So saying somebody is a white black kid is really just a way of saying they're a rich black kid, and it goes to a pathetic thing that's happened in our society, which is the assumption, really not even by white people, but by black people largely, that it is not black to be prosperous and successful in American society.
For all the evil things that Bill Cosby has done personally, one of the nice things about The Cosby Show is it actually set out the vision that black people can be middle class, they can be doctors, they can be lawyers, they can be dentists, they can do all sorts of wonderful things.
And I think it's a mistake to say that somebody is a white black kid because he goes to Starbucks.
He's just a black guy who goes to Starbucks.
I know white people who are, you know, who don't go to Starbucks.
Race has nothing to do with behavior, and this is one of the things we have to explode.
Alright, another letter here.
So somebody asks, "What tactics would you use to talk to people who are on the left and are personally close to you?" Because I've talked very often about how you talk to people on the left who are not.
If you want to destroy leftists in debate, there are easy ways to do it.
You can go pick up my pamphlet online at Amazon.
It's called 11 Ways to Talk to a Leftist or How to Destroy a Leftist in Debate.
There are a bunch of pamphlets I've written on this.
How to Destroy a Leftist in Debate is probably the easiest one.
The question, and I get this one a lot, is I have several family members that subscribe to leftism, including my wife.
Good luck to you, my friend.
I'm looking for a softer way to argue the facts with them, but it's difficult since they're close to me.
Okay, so there's my preliminary answer, and then there's my actual answer.
My preliminary answer is you should not associate with people on the left because they're generally terrible.
And what I mean by this is not... Look, I have family members who are on the left.
I have acquaintances who are on the left.
I don't like to surround myself with people with whom I have wildly differing values, and this doesn't mean people who just happen to be on the left.
I'm talking about ardent leftists, people who really believe this stuff.
Most people on the left are just sort of there by pro- they're just there by habit.
So let's talk about those people.
So if you're talking to those people, the number one thing you have to do is you have to make clear that you understand their position.
Even if you don't and their position is really stupid.
You have to make clear that you understand their position.
That you understand where they're coming from.
They just don't have their facts straight.
You have to get into the wrestling circle with them.
I understand where you're coming from, but have you considered that this may not actually benefit this person, or that may not actually be a moral point of view?
You have to gauge your level of argument to the level of argument on the other side.
So if they come in and they say, you know, I've been having real trouble understanding Ted Cruz's tax proposal.
Isn't it more beneficial for the wealthy?
Right?
That's a different question than, Ted Cruz hates poor people.
Right, if the person comes in at level 3, you can come in at level 3 and you can say, well, you know, I think that you're misconstruing Cruz's tax proposal, and I think that, you know, we should really talk about how the economy works for you on a personal level.
Right?
If they come in and they say Ted Cruz hates poor people, you say, well, you're a jackass.
And you don't know how economics works because you're ignorant.
Right?
So it depends on the level at which the conversation is initiated.
And, buddy, if you married the latter, good luck to you.
I mean, that was a personal choice that you made.
Unsolicited dating advice for everyone.
Don't date people of opposite values.
It's always a mistake.
But if you're already in the relationship, do your best.
Alright.
So, okay.
Dylan writes, Hey Ben, big fan for the last couple years.
I'm curious about your thoughts on the RNC cancelling the debates hosted by NBC.
So there was a debate that was supposed to be hosted by NBC, and the RNC cancelled it.
So there are two things happening.
One, good, I'm glad.
CNBC ran a crap show of a debate.
It's good that that debate didn't go forward.
Two, the RNC really canceled, they didn't just cancel the NBC debate, they also canceled the second debate, and this is why I don't trust the RNC.
The RNC canceled the second debate that was supposed to be moderated by Sean Hannity, and it was supposed to be a conservatives-only debate.
We were gonna have a bunch of conservatives asking questions to these candidates, and they canceled it.
Because that's how the RNC rolls.
So, I can both like their decision on NBC and not trust them.
Okay.
I have, let's see, let's do...
Let's do some comic book stuff.
I got a lot of blowback on comics, because earlier this week I critiqued comics and I said that backstory is overemphasized in the comic books and that most backstories of comics are crappy.
And I made the audacious statement that the only two good backstories in comics are Superman and Batman.
And Batman, because his angst is an interior part of him, that's who he is, and so you have to explain where the angst comes from.
And Superman, because he's legitimately an alien.
So you have to explain, you know, how he got here, and what makes him want to be a representative of the American way while he has unlimited powers, right?
Okay, so... Someone says that they want me to marry them, and not like actually marry to them, like perform their marriage ceremony, but secondly, He says Spider-Man and its origins are pretty lame.
Daredevil happens to be solid.
I got this a lot.
I got a lot of Daredevil.
A lot of people saying they like the Daredevil backstory.
So, let me talk about the Daredevil backstory for a second.
So, the Daredevil backstory... First of all, how he got his powers is a completely ridiculous, again, just... It's a ridiculous intervention by the author, right?
He gets hit by toxic waste, which is, like, the easiest way to get superpowers ever.
In reality, you die of cancer.
In the comic books, you end up with superpowers that are not cancerous.
So, the real Daredevil backstory, the part that's fun, is that he had a dad who was killed because his dad was a boxer and didn't give in to the mob, right?
That's the story.
So basically, he's Batman in the Marvel Universe.
So yeah, he's got a good backstory because he copied Batman's backstory.
I mean, that's cool.
I mean, I can also copy Batman's backstory.
Wow, he had a parent killed and now he has angst about fighting crime.
It's fine.
I mean, it's okay.
I'm not deeply in love with it.
Okay, another question from Ben.
It seems I'm always asking non-newsy questions.
I wanted to ask you, if you had unlimited funding to study a specific topic anywhere in the world, what would it be and why?
This is a pretty good question.
I mean, honestly, I have friends.
There's a guy who I deal with every single day.
Every morning, actually.
And he is constantly saying that he's very overweight and not healthy, and he's constantly saying that he doesn't understand why anyone would want to live forever.
And I get this from people.
You hear this a lot, right?
People say, oh, I wouldn't want to live forever.
For some religious people, it's their way of explaining death.
For some non-religious people, it's their way of explaining why they act like idiots.
But there are people who say, you know, I don't want to live forever.
There's so much cool stuff in the world.
There's so much stuff that I want to learn.
There's so much stuff, there's just not enough time in the day.
I mean, honestly, I love learning.
It's my favorite thing in the entire, reading is my favorite thing to the point where my wife has to make sure that she has my attention when she's talking to me.
You know, she's, she's, I have a book everywhere.
I don't think, like, right now I have two books in my backpack.
I don't go anywhere without books.
I mean, if I, if I had unlimited time and unlimited energy to study, Everything but math, and then even then probably math.
I mean, it's just I love learning so much.
So, you know, I've never understood the people who say that they wouldn't want to live forever.
If I could be healthy forever, I would want to live forever.
There's just too much to learn.
There's too much cool stuff that God put here.
I'm lucky.
I get to study the stuff I like every single day.
I get to study politics and human behavior.
I'm fascinated by social science.
I think human beings are fascinating.
I do.
And I think that studying human beings, there can't be something more interesting than that.
The human mind is just utterly riveting.
Alright.
This one...
It was about Islam.
And the question is, what rhetorical bombshell should I have dropped when somebody said in class, members of groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda have little to no understanding of Islam.
If they understood Islam, they wouldn't be terrorists.
The rhetorical bombshell you should have dropped is, okay, who knows more about the Quran, you or Bin Laden?
Right, that's the rhetorical bombshell you should have dropped.
Who knows more about the Quran, you or al-Baghdadi?
You don't know anything.
Everybody, invariably, people who say that ISIS and Al-Qaeda don't understand Islam know nothing about Islam.
Like, legitimately nothing about Islam.
It's always like Barack Obama, who studied the Quran briefly when he was in Indonesia.
Or George Bush used to say this, and it was like, George Bush... I mean...
There were questions as to whether George Bush could read English, let alone Arabic.
Like, the idea that George Bush was some sort of Quranic expert is absolutely absurd.
It's absolutely absurd.
Alright, so that's the line you should drop.
Will writes, and I'm trying to move through these quickly, folks.
Will writes, When it comes to your political stances, and one often found on the right, you're arguing from a set of morals from a Judeo-Christian thought.
When you talk about abortion, you refer to it as baby killing, which I agree with you on, but what about defending marriage?
Politicians like Ted Cruz believe in defining traditional marriage on a federal level, but isn't that discrimination to the gay community?
How would you go about the marriage issue?
Well, as I've said on the program, I don't think government should be involved in marriage at all.
No, I think actually that there is a... I believe in traditional marriage not because of Judeo-Christian values, but because I'm a sane and rational human being.
You know, the fact is that heterosexual marriage has benefits for society.
Homosexual marriage has no benefits for society.
It has benefits for the people involved, but how does anybody else benefit from two dudes schtuping each other?
No one has yet discovered this.
Right, the fact is that marriage benefits a male-female schtuping each other, because if they schtup each other and they happen to get pregnant, which up until birth control became prevalent was the way things were done, right, if that happened, if people happened to get pregnant, it was good that the kid be raised in a stable two-parent family where the people were bound to each other.
That was the purpose of marriage and it was good for society, and the breakdown of marriage has destroyed society.
Single motherhood has been an absolute disaster area for both the black and the white community, for every community, non-racially speaking.
So, you know, I don't think you have to be a Judeo-Christian advocate to be in favor of traditional marriage.
Alrighty, let's see what else we have here.
Oh, okay, another comic book one.
We'll do a couple more, and then we'll be done.
And these are both—three comic book ones?
Okay, we'll do a couple more comic book ones, but we'll summarize them.
Okay.
Mitchell writes, Mr. Shapiro, your representation of comics was a little off.
Superman is obviously a Moses rip, not Jesus.
His creators were Jews, after all.
Batman, the master race, is actually right-wing, if you read into the dialogue and narration.
Frank Miller is very right-wing and has written the best Batman comics, period.
Aquaman has a great origin story.
Wonder Woman's origin is completely intertwined with Greek mythology.
Green Arrow, beside the fact he is a loving liberal on par with Bernie Sanders, has a great origin story.
Marvel is going to have crap origins because of the time period its characters were created, so cut them some slack.
He says that I should stop criticizing Batman and I should criticize Green Arrow.
Yeah, Green Arrow in the comics, they actually made into basically a communist.
The show Green Arrow, he's not a communist.
So much.
At least, not as much as he is in the comics.
As far as Superman being a Moses rip, not a Jesus rip...
So, obviously the idea of the parents being under assault and then having to put their kid into a basket and float him down the river, right?
That is the beginning of the Superman origin story.
But once he gets here, he's Jesus.
Once Superman gets here, he is Superman suffering on the cross.
I mean, there's no way to read it otherwise.
He's a god in human form, right?
That's what he is.
So, I disagree on that.
Batman as a right-wing figure, yes.
The original Batman is a right-wing figure.
Frank Miller's Batman is a deeply right-wing figure.
And then, Frank Miller sort of went off the rails recently in his second Batman installment.
He turns Batman into like a full-fledged fascist who basically says, democracy doesn't work.
Superman, you're a good guy.
You run all this stuff.
It's kind of entertaining.
Wonder Woman's origin story is not good.
I disagree.
And Aquaman does have an okay origin story, but you don't really need it.
I mean, you need it because he's actually a Greek god.
I mean, Aquaman is a Greek god.
So, as I mentioned last time, comics are pagan, and so if you're in the pagan universe, you're just retelling Greek myths with pictures.
Okay, one last question.
When is your next book coming out, and any word, what it will be about?
Okay, so I have two books that are coming out, actually.
I have one that's going to be about political correctness.
I'm in conversations with publishers right now.
That'll probably come out early next year.
And I have a fiction book, actually, that is going to be coming out a little bit later this year, probably in September.
And it is an Ayn Rand-esque action thriller about the collapse of the United States and what that's going to look like.
I wrote it like a year and a half ago, and as always, my favorite four words, I told you so.
Like, everything that I wrote in this a year ago is now happening.
It's pretty amazing.
So, it's a really good, fast-paced novel.
It's the beginning of a series, so I'm looking forward to talking with you more about that as that happens.
Also, sorry, last question.
Spider-Man Peter Parker doesn't have a good backstory.
Right, that's what I said.
He doesn't have a good backstory.
He was bit by a spider.
And his uncle died.
Yeah.
Good.
Nice.
Okay, we're done.
I hope that you have a wonderful weekend.
I hope that you can sleep through some more of the Trump cruise debate.
And we will be back here next Monday with more Things I Like.
Plus, I promise, we will talk about Stephen Sondheim for you few diehard right-wingers who love musical theater.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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