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June 15, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
25:10
Ep. 320 - Are The Speech Police Coming?
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On Wednesday, a far-left Bernie Sanders supporter who despised President Trump opened fire on Republican congresspeople practicing for a bipartisan charity baseball game.
Now, we all know that if the situation had been reversed, if a President Trump supporter and Bernie hater had opened fire on Congressional Democrats, we would be treated to the full spectacle of media foe outrage.
We'd get long-winded stemwinders about Republicans creating a climate of hate and violence.
We've received stern talking tos about gun culture and polarizing rhetoric.
We know this because it's been a strategic mainstay for Democrats for half a century, going all the way back to the left blaming the right for a climate of hate that supposedly led to JFK's assassination by a commie in 1963.
The left has blamed talk radio for the Oklahoma City bombing, Sarah Palin and the right for the attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords by a mentally ill man, by the way.
Bernie Sanders even attempted to raise money off that canard.
Confederate flag owners for a massacre at a historically black church.
No, it isn't.
Okay?
Rhetoric is not directly responsible for violence unless it advocates violence.
Bernie Sanders supporter.
But is it right to blame Sanders and leftist ideology more broadly for Wednesday's shooting?
No, it isn't.
Okay, rhetoric is not directly responsible for violence unless it advocates violence.
Radical jihadism advocates violence.
The bulk of its supporters know this and support violence.
A solid contingent of its followers participate in violence.
The same is not true for American brand political leftism, as vile as it is.
For the right to equate verbiage with violence, no matter how inflammatory the verbiage, is to fall prey to the same snowflake syndrome the right condemns on college campuses.
There is no logical gap between attempting to blame right-wing speakers for supposed violent speech in opposing Black Lives Matter and attempting to blame Sanders for the sins of a random follower.
This leaves two questions on the table.
First, Are we living through a more toxic political climate than ever before in American history, promoting individual acts of violence among the mentally unstable?
And second, are we in danger of blurring the lines between passionate rhetoric and actual advocacy toward violence?
Well, as far as the first question goes, the answer is obviously no.
It would take really a lot of ignorance of American history to believe that our current political climate is worse than Civil War era America or even late 1960s America, if only because our underlying problems are significantly less horrifying.
Yes, our political climate is toxic.
Just yesterday, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who attempted to blame gun control for the shooting, suggested that the Trump campaign or someone associated with it had acted treasonably with regard to Russia.
The entire resistance is built on the rhetoric of a wartime underground.
By the same token, the right has taken to using war language far more regularly even than it did in the Obama era.
We're told we're in a civil war.
But here's the truth.
Nobody took this stuff particularly seriously.
We can all tell the differences between rhetorical flourishes and violent advocacy.
Except when we can't.
Which brings us to the second question.
Are we moving beyond purple language and into the realm of actual violent advocacy?
On both left and right, the answer seems to be yes.
On the left, thanks to politicians attempting to capitalize on public anger, groups like Antifa run free in major American cities, acts of violence against Trump supporters are brushed off or treated by the media as he said, she said situations.
On the right, too many Republicans ignore or downplay incidents like the Greg Gianforte incident in Montana or then-candidate Trump's talk about people paying their bills if they assaulted protesters.
There are two ways to deal with the problem.
First, we have to establish a bright line rule.
No defending or advocating violence.
Period.
End of story.
Second, we should all probably take a deep breath before we hit send.
It's not our fault if fringe characters take advantage of our language to do violence we never suggested and don't support, but let's all do our best, and yes, I'm including myself here, To use language we can defend morally.
That doesn't mean tamping down our passion with regard to politics.
It does mean thinking twice before hitting send on a tweet or Facebook post comparing Republicans to ISIS, thanks to their healthcare policy.
Or suggesting that Democrats are eager to watch Americans die in a fiery incident, in a terrorist incident, because they oppose President Trump's travel ban.
Perhaps the language of civil war is perfectly appropriate and we're willing to stand by it.
So be it, but let's think it through.
This seems like a decent thing to do if we wish to preserve some semblance of a social fabric.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So in the aftermath of yesterday's horrific congressional shooting and all prayers for Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, who apparently is still in critical condition, was undergoing surgery all throughout the night, and everybody should take a moment today and just say a prayer for and everybody should take a moment today and just say a prayer But in the aftermath of that, there have been a bunch of reactions that are quite fascinating.
It seems like we are now on the verge of going too far in the other direction.
What I mean by that is that if we were on the verge of going too far in the everyone is angry, let's shout at each other and hit each other with sticks direction, now it seems like we're in danger of going too far along the everybody just needs to never say anything that could offend anyone.
And I want to be careful.
About what we say are the kinds of speech that are appropriate.
I'm talking about people on the right and the left.
I want to be careful and go through what kinds of speech I think are really damaging and dangerous, and which kinds of speech are just typical political rhetoric.
Because this is the sort of situation where people could say, okay, Nutcase went crazy and shot a bunch of people, Let's all get rid of all offensive rhetoric.
Let's get back to this kind of faux civility.
We'll never say anything inflammatory.
We'll never say anything interesting.
We'll never use language that is evocative.
We all have to check ourselves all the time at the door.
I want to go through, I think there are three different types of language, and I want to go through those in a second and discuss which ones are acceptable, which ones are not.
Obviously, none of this should be regulated, but which ones are acceptable and which ones are not in sort of everyday use because I'm a little bit frightened that the snowflake syndrome that now attends to college campuses is being picked up by the right in response to the left.
So the left always says, people like me speaking on college campuses, well that creates a climate of violence and people are going to get hurt.
So we have to shut down Shapiro.
I don't want to see the same thing happen on the right with regard to people on the left.
Us saying, well, you know, when they say that Trump is un-American or when they say Trump is a tyrant, that's just bad and it gets people killed.
I don't want to do that because, again, I like having the same moral standard for everyone.
So I'm going to talk about that in just a second.
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Okay.
So in the aftermath of the attack yesterday, there was this brief moment where everybody came together.
And everybody does this every so often.
Right after Gabby Giffords, there was a 48-hour period where people were nice to each other.
After 9-11, there was a probably four-month period where everybody was really nice to each other.
Yesterday, it was about...
A six hour period.
So, the amount of time we're nice to each other after a horrific incident that really goes to the heart of America has now been reduced to less than the amount of time that it takes for a yogurt to spoil if you leave it out of the refrigerator.
But, yesterday, people said the right things in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
Here was Bernie Sanders.
It was, we'll remember, one of his volunteers who went out and shot somebody, the shooter.
was a Sanders-supporting, Trump-hating, leftist maniac, and he specifically targeted congressional Republicans.
If there hadn't been heroes on the ground there, two in particular, to put this guy down, probably 15 to 20 congressmen are dead today.
Here's Bernie Sanders talking about how horrified he was to learn that it was one of his volunteers.
I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice this morning is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.
I am sickened by this despicable act, and let me be as clear as I can be.
Thank you.
Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society, and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.
Real change can only come about Through nonviolent action and anything else runs counter to our most deeply held American values.
I know I speak for the entire country in saying that my hopes and prayers are that Representative Scalise, Congressional staff, and the Capitol Police officers who were wounded make a quick and full recovery.
I also want to thank the Capitol Police for their heroic actions to prevent further harm.
Okay, so there's Bernie Sanders saying exactly the right thing.
Obviously, violent activity needs to be put aside.
We're going to talk in a minute about whether the left is indeed putting aside violent rhetoric and violent activity, because I think the answer is, in large measure, no.
But Sanders has actually been pretty consistent on this point, right?
He was one of the guys who said that the riots at Berkeley, when Ianopolis went to Berkeley, He said that those riots were wrong.
He said that Ann Coulter should speak at Berkeley and shouldn't be shut down.
So I can't blame Bernie Sanders, per se, for this.
I know a lot of people are trying to because Bernie Sanders... They're trying to hold Bernie to his own standard.
You know, back in 2011, Sanders fundraised off of the idea that Gabby Giffords was shot because Sarah Palin Paul Ryan, I thought, had a great response yesterday.
map on her Facebook page.
There was no link whatsoever between Palin and the shooter.
Sanders raised money off of it anyway.
So if you're going to hold the left to their own standards, if we're going to say that toxic rhetoric causes incidents like this, then you have to hold Bernie responsible.
But I'm not Bernie.
I thought it was wrong when Bernie did it.
And so I'm not going to be Bernie now and say that it's Bernie's fault.
Paul Ryan, I thought, had a great response yesterday.
Also, here's what he had to say on the floor of Congress.
There are very strong emotions throughout this house today.
Thank you.
We are all horrified by this dreadful attack on our friends and on our colleagues and those who serve and protect this capital.
We are all praying for those who are attacked and for their families.
Steve Scalise, Zachary Barth, Matt Mica, Special Agent David Bailey.
Special Agent Crystal Griner.
We are all giving our thoughts to those currently being treated for their injuries at this moment.
And, we are united.
We are united in our shock.
We are united in our anguish.
An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
Okay, so Paul Ryan, of course, saying the right things as well.
Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, she said much the same thing.
She said she was praying for Scalise and Trump.
And then she, of course, came out immediately today and said that the climate of toxic political rhetoric in the country is the fault of Republicans.
So that lasted for five entire seconds.
Now, I want to go through, I think, some of the types of speech that are out there and whether we should hold them responsible for violence.
John Nolte, I thought, had a really great piece over at Daily Wire today.
Uh, Nolte is, uh, is a firebrand for sure.
And Nolte got a piece today talking about the case, basically, that CNN is responsible for this by CNN's own standard.
And that's basically correct.
CNN has said over and over and over that it was, it was the Confederate flag that caused the shooting down at that historically black church in Charleston.
They said that it was the Pizzagate conspiracy that caused Pizzagate guy to go and shoot up a restaurant.
They said that it was Sarah Palin responsible for Gabby Giffords, all of it.
And then they go out there and they say that the Shakespeare in the Park assassination of Trump thing is awesome.
They hire Kathy Griffin and then reluctantly fire Kathy Griffin.
CNN makes comments all the time about how, I mean, they tried to connect Steve Scalise, this congressman, to the KKK.
All of this is, it goes to the hypocrisy of the left.
And I think that it demonstrates, the left is rightly getting batted around for this today, it demonstrates that the right should not make the same mistake.
We should not make the same mistake where we say, okay, political rhetoric is connected to individual actions because the next time some kook happens to have listened to Rush Limbaugh at any point and then goes and shoots somebody, the entire left is going to say, well, it's Rush Limbaugh's fault.
You know, this guy who shot up the Congress people, he was a big Rachel Maddow fan.
Is that Rachel Maddow's fault?
No, I don't think that it's Rachel Maddow's fault.
There are three sorts of speech that I think are worthwhile considering.
And I think that we need to be exact in how we do this, because I sort of argued it vaguely yesterday, but I didn't think I was exact enough.
So, there are three types of speech that are worth considering as to whether they cross a line or not, whether we ought to think twice before using them.
And two of them, I think that they do cross a line, and they are becoming more and more prevalent.
So, number one, speech that actively advocates violence.
So, It's actually illegal to tell people, go hit that guy, right?
You're not actually allowed to say that in the United States, but there's something that sort of borders on it, which is, violence is kind of great, you should go do it.
Not like a specific direction that you should do violence to any one person, but a generalized notion that you should go do violence to people generally.
Jesse Benn is a columnist for the Huffington Post, and he wrote that a violent response to Trump would be, quote, as logical as any.
He wrote that last week, in the Huffington Post.
He has a cartoon pinned to the top of his Twitter feed, There is this this element of the left that actually is good with violence and advocates for violence and makes room for violence.
You see it more broadly on the left when it comes to people like Maxine Waters who said that the LA riots were an LA uprising.
Or Marilyn Mosby, or rather not Marilyn Mosby, the mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings Blake, who had said that she made room for rioters in Baltimore when things went bad, or even President Obama sort of incentivizing rioters in Ferguson.
You know, that sort of stuff is really dangerous, and there is a link between that sort of rhetoric and violence.
When Antifa pushes actual violence at Berkeley, we're in that category.
And yes, when President Trump says, or when he was then-candidate Trump, when he says that he's going to pay the legal bills of people who punch other people, we're in that category.
That sort of stuff is dangerous.
That sort of stuff is linked to violence.
People who actively advocate violence are part of the problem.
Okay, category number two.
People who defend violence.
So this is slightly bigger.
This is a bigger group of people, a very small group of people who actively advocate violence.
Then there are people who defend violence.
And that is, on the left, everybody at the Middlebury University administration who said it was okay for people to assault a professor at the Charles Murray event.
These are the mayor of Berkeley who allows Antifa to run roughshod through the city and hit people and assault people and then says we can't do anything about it.
It's the administrators over Cal State LA who told the police to basically stand down so students could hurt other students who are trying to hear a lecture that I was giving.
It's also true of people who are defending outright Greg Gianforte, the Montana congressional candidate, are making light of him body slamming a reporter.
Okay, when you defend violence, you're part of the problem.
You are contributing to a greater violent climate in the country.
There's a third type of rhetoric, however, that I want to be very careful about, because I think that we are now in danger of falling into the snowflake trap, which I'll describe in just a second.
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Okay, so I've discussed the first two types of rhetoric that I think are off limits or should be off limits.
That doesn't mean illegal.
But it does mean that people of good conscience should not use them.
Then there is the third group.
And this is where I see the right starting to make a mistake.
There's this third part of speech where people on the right are beginning to veer off into snowflake land.
And I'll give you an example.
So Representative Jack Bergman, Republican, he comes out and he blames the media.
He was at this shooting.
He blamed the media for complicity in the attack.
Here's what he had to say.
Do you agree with that?
Do you think that the hateful rhetoric has gotten just too hot?
I agree with Rodney wholeheartedly in that the hateful rhetoric serves no positive purpose.
In fact, today it obviously served a negative purpose.
But unfortunately, and I'm looking at all the media in the eye when I say this, Friendships and cordial relationships don't make good news.
So I can tell you, especially as the president of the freshman class of Republicans, we are united along with our Democratic freshman counterparts to bring civility back to the 115th Congress.
Okay, that's all wonderful and that's all good, but the idea that the media is to blame here I think is over the top, and I'll explain why in a second.
Eric Bolling on Fox News, who's used some colorful language in his time, he said sort of the same thing.
He said, how many innocents have to die before we realize that words matter?
Spill blood, die.
Really, ma'am?
Snoop Dogg's gun, Kathy Griffin's head, Shakespeare's bloody rampage, it goes on and on.
How many innocent people have to die before we realize that words do matter?
Crazy people act on the crazy things they hear from politicians and celebrities.
Think before you utter those blind, hateful words next time, liberals, because there are crazy people out there taking your metaphors literally.
Okay, maybe, maybe not.
Mark Stein says sort of the same thing.
I will tell you, I will guarantee you this, I would be writing the same monologue and delivering the same monologue if it were a Democrat softball practice targeted and terrorized.
That, I promise you.
- Okay, maybe, maybe not.
Mark Stein says sort of the same thing.
He says the big problem here is the left wants to dehumanize their political opponents.
- The left wants to denormalize and dehumanize, to use your words, its political opposition.
And they do that in a variety of ways.
So, for example, when Charles Murray wants to give a speech at Middlebury College, they have to have a riot.
They don't have a debate in which they demolish his argument.
They don't want to win the debate.
They want to prevent the debate taking place.
Okay, and I think that that's a good example, but where I see this going off the rails, I don't think Bolling or Stein say anything deeply wrong there, and the examples they use are from the first two categories of speech, but what I do see is a lot of people today saying things like, Well, you know, the resistance, Ann Coulter is a columnist, the resistance finally goes live fire.
Okay, we called ourselves the Tea Party.
The Tea Party, if you recall, was actually a resistance movement to the government.
Okay, that didn't, was not averse to using, it was not averse to using violence back in the day.
I mean, the Tea Party ended up becoming the American Revolution.
The idea that if you use rhetoric that is charged, that this is the same thing as using rhetoric that defends violence or advocates violence, I think it is a dangerous precedent that we are setting.
And I can see it being flipped very, very easily.
I don't see an innate problem with saying that a president is acting tyrannical.
I don't think that's calling for the president to be assassinated.
I don't think the vast majority of Americans think that's calling for the president to be assassinated.
When people call themselves the Tea Party or the Resistance, I don't think just because you say you're a member of the Resistance that means that you're like a member of the French Resistance and you're gonna go out there and start shooting Republicans.
You know, when people who are pro-life talk about the killing of babies in the womb, I don't think that that's an implicit call to murder abortionists.
I don't.
And the vast majority of pro-life people, I mean virtually all of them, know that.
Right?
And the same thing is true on the left when they say that, on the left, that Republicans want to kill Granny, that they're murderers, they're like ISIS because of Trump's healthcare plan.
Do I think that's stupid?
Yeah, I think it's ridiculous and stupid.
Do I also think that it's causing violence?
Not really.
I mean, you know, when I wrote the book Bullies, which is a New York Times bestseller, and Bullies is all about the left's attempt to demonize us, to attack us on a character level for our political views.
And I said, this is morally wrong.
It is morally wrong, but it is not necessarily connected with violence.
So the left is constantly attempting to say everybody's a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
That doesn't necessarily mean that they want everybody to be killed and Well, I object to the language on the grounds that you should have evidence for the assertions that you put forth.
I think there's a bigger risk right now than in a climate like this.
People are going to immediately start saying, well, you're not allowed to say charged things.
Because if you say charged things, that means some crazy is going to go off.
If we judge the value of political rhetoric by the crazy who goes off, there's not going to be a lot of political rhetoric left.
If we're going to play this game where some nutcase shoots up congressional staffers and shoots up a congressman, And he watches Rachel Maddow, so we blame Rachel Maddow.
Then we can't be surprised when the left turns around.
They already do this because they're awful.
We can't be surprised when the left turns around and says, well, it's Sean Hannity's fault if somebody goes nuts and shoots up a Democratic Congress office.
The left does it anyway.
So I understand the temptation.
This turnabout is fair play temptation.
That doesn't mean that it's right.
So I think that we have to be careful about this routine.
Now, on that last point, as far as demonization and demonizing your political opposition, last point here.
I think it's a gray area.
So I think some demonization is okay, some demonization is not okay, some demonization is sort of acceptable.
What is not acceptable is demonization combined with defense of violence or advocacy of violence.
So if you demonize your political opponent, then you say, oh yeah, and by the way, if you punch somebody in the face, that's okay.
Right?
If you say, my opponent's a Nazi.
I think that that's basically, you may be wrong, you may be stupid, what you're saying may be dumb, but I don't think that it's linked to violence.
If you say my opponent is a Nazi and it's okay to punch Nazis, I think that you start to get into really morally dicey territory.
So I wanted to make those distinctions because I don't want a standard set whereby anything political anybody says, we're going to now judge the value of that politics based on the outlier who is vulnerable to suggestion and then goes out and shoots people.
I just think that's a dangerous thing.
Well, as we continue here on The Ben Shapiro Show, we're going to be talking about President Trump and what he says is a witch hunt against him, this obstruction of justice news Washington Post breaks last night that Robert Mueller, who is the special counsel, is now investigating Trump for obstruction of justice.
We'll talk about that, what it means, why it's happening, and why Trump is actually kind of right on this one.
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