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Aug. 25, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

55:30

The War On Children | Ep. 370

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	The left launches its war on children.
	The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declares that a high school football coach can't kneel at the 50-yard line and pray.
	Plus, we do the mailbag.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	So you've made it, gang.
	We're here.
	It's a Friday, and I want to talk to you about something that's been disturbing me for a long time.
	And no, I'm not talking about my loss of hair.
	I'm talking about the fact that the left is moving in significant fashion to impact how we raise our kids.
	And it really is upsetting and a problem and I want to talk about all of that plus we'll talk about is President Trump actually sinking the possibility of the Republicans retaining the house in 2018 and the Senate in 2018 which is nearly impossible.
	We'll get to all that plus the mailbag so if you're gonna buy a subscription today's the day to do it because that means you get to be part of the mailbag.
	We'll do live questions later but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Skillshare.
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	Okay, so there was a tweet yesterday that really got under my skin.
	It's from my senator here in the state of California.
	She was the attorney general here.
	She's a garbage senator.
	She was a garbage attorney general.
	And she's probably going to be a garbage presidential candidate.
	She's obviously looking toward running in 2020.
	And there's always been this very weird relationship between the left and kids when it comes to politics.
	Hillary Clinton made her bones on this book, It Takes a Village, all about how it really took all of us to define how we were going to raise particular children.
	They weren't your children, they were the village's children.
	And then you see people on the left who don't care about unborn children suggesting that they're the only ones who care about children.
	So Kamala Harris tweets this out yesterday.
	She tweeted out, So again, weird that she doesn't care about them up to the point where they're born.
	Up to that point, you can kill them at will.
	And in fact, if you stand in the way of somebody killing them at will, that means you're a bad person.
	But also, this notion that children are the nation's future, and so we have to listen to them about what they care about and give them a voice in our government.
	Um, no.
	So, one of the big problems in Western civilization has been this weird notion that's really cropped up since Rousseau in the early 19th century.
	That children are worth listening to.
	Children are worth taking seriously.
	Their questions are worth answering.
	I treat my three-year-old with great seriousness.
	When she asks me a question, I try to give her the most factual answer that I can provide.
	But, if she were to give me world advice, I would say, you're three, sit down and eat your crackers.
	Okay?
	It's ridiculous for anyone to suggest that children are what should be defining voice in government.
	See, the first sentence is that children are our nation's future.
	That's true.
	They are not our present, okay?
	They are not our nation's present.
	It is your job as an adult to help civilize children.
	Have you ever met a child?
	I wonder if people on the left have ever met a child.
	Like, really met a child.
	Children are the worst people on Earth.
	Okay, they're wonderful, and they are also the worst people on earth.
	They have no prefrontal cortex development.
	They don't have the capacity for inhibition.
	That means that your child does stuff where if an adult did it, you would immediately have them carted off to jail.
	Like, on a routine basis.
	Children smack each other.
	Okay, if you're an adult and you just walked up to people and smacked them for no reason, they would go to jail for that.
	Right?
	Children routinely take other people's property and break it.
	Children scream at you.
	Okay, children are little mutt jobs.
	They're awesome.
	They're wonderful.
	But that's also because you know they're going to develop beyond that.
	If they're 20 and still acting like they're 3, that means they're a garbage human being.
	The whole point of civilization is to civilize children.
	Your job as a parent is to civilize children and to make them better people.
	Because children are not instinctively good.
	Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote this book called Émile, which was a novel about a child who is basically left free in the state of nature.
	Rousseau's whole theory is that in a state of nature, man is inherently good, and then the state puts us all in chains, right?
	Man is free, and everywhere he is in chains.
	This is Rousseau's theory, and so what he says in Émile is basically, if you just let a child wander around in nature, then that child would become a noble savage.
	That child would be a beautiful, wonderful person, capable of navigating the vicissitudes of life.
	Absolute nonsense.
	Number one, if you leave a three-year-old alone in nature, the kid will be dead in two days.
	Number two, if you leave a ten-year-old alone in nature, the kid will turn into something from Lord of the Flies, killing animals and other children.
	The idea that people are born civilized is just stupid.
	That's the whole point of civilization.
	It's what religion is based on.
	Religion is based on the notion that you, as an adult, have to civilize and raise your children, and you have to acclimate them to acting morally.
	It's not something that is inborn.
	It's not something that is inbred, okay?
	The fact is that there's a concept in Jewish law.
	It's called tinoch shanishba, okay?
	It means literally a baby that was found.
	So there are certain basic rules in Judaism that you're not supposed to violate, and even if you're not Jewish, you're not supposed to violate these rules.
	And these are simple ones, like don't murder people, don't commit idolatry, right?
	These are certain basic rules for everyone.
	If you want to get into heaven, according to Judaism, you don't have to be Jewish, but you do have to fulfill what they call the seven mitzvos of Noah.
	You have to fulfill the seven commandments of Noah.
	Right, because Noah existed before the Torah had been given.
	These are commandments that you're supposed to be able to suss out from the surrounding universe, but if you don't actually do a lot of the... Let's say there's a kid who's born Jewish, right?
	Born to a Jewish family and left in the middle of nowhere, and doesn't fulfill any of the 613 mitzvot, any of the 613 commandments.
	That's where this concept of tinoch shenishba comes in.
	We don't blame that person because that kid was basically like a kid who was found in the woods, right?
	He's Mowgli.
	So you don't expect Mowgli to be civilized.
	And in fact, remember a few years ago, there was this story about a little girl who was basically left alone for years and years and years.
	They found her when she was like 12 years old, and she acted like an animal.
	What else would you expect her to do?
	She was growing up in a place that was basically surrounded by animals.
	How you raise your children matters.
	This idea that children are going to, that they have some sort of God-given innocence and wisdom that is something that we should listen to.
	No, they have a God-given wonder about the world that is amazing to behold and lovely and it reminds you how beautiful life is because when you view the world through a child's eyes, it reminds you that things around you are really cool and really interesting, but Kids' moral notions are usually really, really stupid because kids are little immoral cretins.
	They only get smart later.
	Again, their brains are not developed to the point where they can actually have smart moral thoughts.
	This is why even teenagers are not really developed to the point where they have smart moral thoughts.
	The reason that teenagers act like idiots all the time is because their amygdala, which is their emotion center in their brain, is overdeveloped, and their prefrontal cortex, which is the inhibition center, is underdeveloped.
	So that's why teenagers do stupid stuff.
	So when she says, we have to give children a voice in our government, what, you want three-year-olds to vote?
	But what really underlies this perception?
	What really underlies this perception?
	The left doesn't really believe that children ought to be making their own decisions.
	The left believes that they ought to be making decisions for your children.
	The left doesn't believe that children ought to be making decisions for society.
	They believe that they ought to be making decisions for your children, and the only reason that your children are growing up in the way they are is because of you.
	You are the problem.
	If they were allowed to raise your children, then everything would be fine.
	Now, they can't just say that.
	If you're on the hard left, you can't just say this.
	You can't just say, listen, I think I'm going to do a better job raising your kid than you will.
	You can't say that because, number one, it's not true, and number two, it makes you a jackass.
	If you come to me and you say I'm gonna raise your kid better than you will, then I would say to you, you can go take a hike, son.
	And if you tried to take my kid from me, I'd meet you at the front door with a shotgun.
	So what does the left do instead?
	What instead they do is they say, children are beautiful, innocent little creatures, but fully capable of making their own decisions.
	And if you inhibit the decision-making process of a three-year-old, then you are the villain.
	We must step in to protect the independence of the three-year-old.
	Right, we're basically the American government fighting the British.
	We're stepping in to protect the citizen.
	The citizen is the three-year-old.
	We have to protect that three-year-old from you, the oppressive, evil parent who's putting your notions about God and heaven and hell on kids.
	How dare you do all of these things?
	It's because of you that your kid is growing up with all of these problems.
	If your kid were just allowed to make their own decisions, just like Emile, then everything would be fine, and it's our job to step in and make sure that kids can make their own decisions.
	That's how you end up with idiocies Like this story from Rockland Academy Schools, which is a Sacramento area charter school.
	This is Paul Bois of Daily Wire reporting.
	A kindergarten teacher at Rockland Academy Schools, a Sacramento area charter school, recently held a transition ceremony to celebrate what she believed was the transgenderism of a five-year-old boy in her class who fancies himself a girl, and she did it without obtaining consent from or even notifying parents.
	Facing legal trouble from parents rightly outraged over having their children exposed to transgenderism without their knowledge, Rockland Academy Schools maintains they had no obligation to inform the parents since California laws require consent only in matters of sex education.
	So, let me get this straight.
	It's not sex education when you decide to tell a five-year-old boy that it can be a five-year-old girl?
	The lesson, they say, had to do with gender identity, which the school claims falls under tolerance and diversity curricula.
	The students who took part in the ceremony were reportedly left shaken and disturbed.
	Yes.
	If somebody did this to my kid, seriously, if somebody did this to my kid, they would be in physical danger from me.
	If you did this to my kid, if you decided to take my parenting power away from me, and pretend that you are going to raise my child as the opposite sex, and thereby stamp their psyche with gender confusion, and put the premature of societal approval on that gender confusion, you're doing something truly evil.
	Jonathan Keller is a representative for California Family Group, who's a group involved in counseling some of the kids.
	He said parents only learned of the ceremony from their kids, which began with a lesson on transgenderism that involved two books, I Am Jazz and The Red Crayon, that were both about the subject.
	I Am Jazz, of course, is about that kid who's on reality TV who, quote, from the time she was two years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl's brain in a boy's body.
	Again, this is biologically incorrect and it's asinine, okay?
	There is no such thing as a girl's brain in a boy's body.
	Again, and that's true because you don't actually have evidence of what a girl's brain looks like.
	It's so funny, the feminists who say there is no difference between a girl's brain and a boy's brain, suddenly they go completely silent when you say it's a girl's brain and a boy's body.
	You have to show me the actual parts of the brain that operate more like a girl's than a boy's and then we can decide whether or not this is true.
	It is possible that there are people who have brain development that is more similar to a girl than a boy.
	Those would presumably be genetically intersex people.
	But the idea that any boy is capable of having a girl's brain in his body if he thinks it so, Not real.
	But again, this is the left saying that parents can't have a say in their own child's future because we're defending the children.
	Don't you understand?
	We're defending their innocence.
	Do you understand that by suggesting that a child makes their own decision, you are ripping away their innocence?
	The hallmark of adulthood is the capacity to make your own decision.
	The hallmark of childhood is to be free not to make your own decisions on matters of weighty import.
	That's what parents are for.
	It's your job to have fun, it's your parent's job to take care of you, and it's your job to learn.
	That's what being a child is all about.
	But the left has reversed this polarity now.
	Adults never have to take responsibility for their decisions, but children are to be left alone to make their own decisions.
	And if you intervene as a parent, you're the bad guy.
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	The ceremony, getting back to the ceremony in this kindergarten class, LifeSite News described it this way.
	After the teacher introduced the five-year-old student to the class as a boy, he then went into the bathroom and emerged dressed as a girl.
	The teacher then reintroduced her to the children, explaining that she was now a girl who now had a girl's name and was to be called that from now on.
	According to Keller, who's this guy from the family group, he said kids were left really deeply emotionally bothered and traumatized.
	There were several of the little girls that went to their parents and were crying, saying, Mommy or Daddy, am I going to turn into a boy?
	This is evil.
	It's evil.
	Okay, teachers who are teaching entire classrooms of small children that they can magically transform into members of the opposite sex.
	Okay, it's so funny.
	These people will say that if you teach people about religion, that that's teaching them myth.
	That if you teach them about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, that that's myth.
	Okay, this is significantly more mythical because it runs absolutely counter to biology.
	And the idea that kids are not malleable when it comes to sexual orientation.
	They're not malleable when it comes to gender identity.
	There's no science that demonstrates that at all.
	None.
	There may be genetic predispositions for transgenderism.
	There may be.
	There may be genetic predispositions on sexual orientation.
	But to suggest that environment plays no part is to ignore every single piece of available data ever.
	Like all of it.
	Not some of it.
	All of it.
	And yet this is what they say, because there's an agenda, right?
	The agenda is to make it clear to children that gender identity is fluid.
	This is one of the things the left wants to do, is tear down the basic building blocks of Western civilization in order to build something anew.
	If we're all widgets, if we're all just claymation figures in their little parable of life, Then they get to morph us however we want.
	They get to mold us and morph us however they want.
	And that means taking over our children and using them against us and using them against our standards of right and wrong.
	So the left, which will say that they have the power to go in...
	And tell your five-year-old child that he may be a girl.
	This is the same left that says that if a teacher preys on the 50-yard line, that that teacher ought to be fired.
	There's a case out in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today.
	It's an amazing case.
	Bremerton School District is a school district in Washington state.
	And the assistant football coach at one of their high schools, a guy named Joseph Kennedy, prayed at the 50-yard line after football games and before them as well.
	Students frequently joined him.
	He would also give them religiously-oriented motivational speeches.
	The school district tried to punish him for doing this.
	He settled for praying alone after games, but then he began praying at the 50-yard line before everyone had gone home.
	So instead of waiting until everyone left and then praying at the 50-yard line, he would go over right after the game, the game is over, he goes over, he prays at the 50-yard line, and surprise, surprise, a lot of the kids started joining him.
	And people started coming down out of the stands to join him, praying on the 50-yard line.
	End of the world.
	How dare he?
	Public school teacher, praying by himself on the 50-yard line?
	People joining him voluntarily?
	Must be fired.
	So the school district fired him.
	They suspended him, and then they allowed his contract to expire.
	So Kennedy sued.
	He suggested religious discrimination under the First Amendment.
	The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found the school district had every right to dismiss Kennedy.
	So there were two legal questions here.
	First legal question was, was he a public employee?
	Second was, as a public employee, did he violate his job description as a public employee by doing this?
	So there are two separate legal questions.
	The court said, when Kennedy kneeled and prayed on the 50-yard line immediately after games, while in view of students and parents, he spoke as a public employee, not as a private citizen, and his speech, therefore, was constitutionally unprotected.
	The case they make in favor of this idea is, one, he's still wearing all of his high school gear.
	Second, if you were just a citizen, you couldn't walk out to the middle of the 50-yard line, right?
	You have to be a member of the high school staff in order to do this.
	So I think that this is actually legally arguable.
	Is he doing this as a private citizen, or is he doing this on school grounds, on school time, and therefore he's doing it as a public employee?
	It's a little bit more confusing than that, because the fact is that if you're at school, like if I'm a public school teacher, and I decided to dovah mincha, which is the second Jewish prayer of the day, and I went in a broom closet somewhere and prayed mincha, That doesn't mean that I would necessarily be acting as a public school employee.
	Clearly, I'm attempting to separate myself.
	The court found he was acting, however, in his auspices as a public school employee.
	But that isn't really the worst part.
	The worst part is that the court then said what he did violated his job description.
	Okay, praying at the 50-yard line, doing a voluntary prayer that people decide to join, violates his job description.
	Now, let me explain what his job description was.
	Okay, Kennedy's job included becoming, quote, a coach, mentor, and role model for the student-athletes.
	It included an explicit job requirement to attempt to create both good athletes and good human beings.
	It is directly in his job description.
	Kennedy's postgame prayers originally lasted a grand total of 30 seconds.
	They were a brief, quiet prayer of thanksgiving for player safety, sportsmanship, and spirited competition.
	Over time, they morphed into motivational speeches given to students of both teams.
	Even people on the other team would come over because they enjoyed what he was saying about sportsmanship and the games.
	Students voluntarily wanted to hear him.
	The district suggested these activities violated school board policy that said that, quote, staff shall neither encourage nor discourage a student from engaging in non-disruptive oral or silent prayer or any other form of devotional activity.
	Okay, this didn't violate that.
	The guy literally went out to the 50-yard line, knelt down, and prayed.
	That's it.
	He didn't say people have to show up.
	He didn't force anybody.
	He didn't tell people that if they showed up, if they didn't show up, then they would be kicked off the team or suspended.
	The school board openly acknowledged that Kennedy didn't force anyone to pray with him.
	But the school board insisted that Kennedy not allow students to pray with him at all.
	That he should forcibly turn them away.
	That if he goes to the 50-yard line and kneels down, and he starts to pray, and a bunch of students crowd around him, that this is some sort of evil.
	That he's violated his public school duties.
	And he should tell them forcibly, get out of here, you're not allowed to be here.
	They said that any activity had to be, quote, physically separate from any student activity, and students may not be allowed to join such an activity.
	So what actually started all of this?
	What actually started all of this is, of course, he did this 50-yard prayer thing.
	And the Satanists, being good Satanists, devotees of Satan, suggest that they wanted their own right to pray on the field.
	Because, obviously, there's no difference between Satanists praying on the field and people of Judeo-Christian values praying on the field.
	Not all religions are created equal in quality.
	If you're gonna bring up a child in the Church of Satan, I don't think that child ends up exactly the same as if you bring, the average child, as if you bring up a child in the Judeo-Christian value system.
	If it were, then Satanism would have created the greatest civilization in the history of mankind.
	It didn't.
	So the district responded by telling Kennedy he had to pray only when the stadium was empty.
	He disobeyed and he started praying right after the games because he said, listen, it doesn't make any sense for me to pray an hour after the game on the 50-yard line.
	The game just ended.
	I want to thank God for a good game and for everyone staying safe.
	Now's a good time to do it.
	So the court found in favor of the district.
	So as I say, first they found that he was a public employee.
	They said the speech at issue is directly, at least in part, to the students and the surrounding spectators.
	It is not solely speech directed to God.
	So this is really dicey territory the court is getting into right now.
	They're saying that his prayer was directed as a public school employee at others.
	Okay, I wear a yarmulke.
	I wear it around.
	It's a public sign of my faith.
	Millions and millions and millions of Americans, including many people on the left, wear crosses around their neck.
	That is a public proclamation of faith.
	Is that them privately saying, I believe in Jesus, if you wear the cross, or I believe in the Jewish God, if you wear a yarmulke?
	Or is that me preaching to you?
	Do you feel preached to every time I wear my yarmulke?
	Because if you do, I would suggest that maybe you need to get a life.
	If you feel preached to because you don't like what I wear on my head, then this is because you're a loser.
	Okay, and if you feel preached to because a high school coach by himself goes to the 50-yard line and prays, then you are a doofus, and a loser, and you need to get a life.
	But obviously that's not the priority here.
	The court said, by kneeling and praying on the 50-yard line immediately after games, Kennedy was fulfilling his professional responsibility to communicate demonstratively to students and spectators, yet he took advantage of his position to press his particular views upon the impressionable and captive minds before him.
	So they're saying, okay, so his viewpoint means something because he was acting as an employee.
	That brings us to the second question.
	And the second question is, did that violate his job, which is to create better human beings and better students?
	We'll get to that in one second.
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	Okay, so, back to this story.
	So this coach, Kennedy, kneels on the 50-yard line, and the court has decided that he's a public employee.
	Which, as I say, that may be arguable, that he's a public employee.
	Was he a public employee who was acting under private auspices, or was he a public employee who was doing, basically, preaching?
	And so here's what the court said, and even if he was doing preaching, was it violating his job description?
	Like if I go into a classroom and I say, listen, the Judeo-Christian value system is the best value system and it generates better human beings.
	Is that preaching or is that teaching?
	Now, I would suggest that living in a Western civilization that is based on Judeo-Christian tradition, that would actually be teaching, not preaching.
	I'm not saying you have to believe in the Bible.
	I'm not saying you have to believe that God gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.
	I am saying that those beliefs were the foundation stone of Western civilization, which is true.
	Okay, so, Judge Milan D. Smith wrote this in concurrence, and this is the crux of the matter.
	He writes, The context would bolster the perception that the district was endorsing religion, Here it is.
	Here's the key point.
	Irrespective of the district's views on that matter, a reasonable observer would conclude in light of the history and context surrounding Kennedy's conduct that the district in actuality favors religion and prefers Christianity in particular.
	Hey, listen, teachers don't have the absolute right to do and say what they want as employees of school districts.
	Did they have the right to fire this guy?
	Maybe, but to suggest they have an obligation to fire him, that's what the court's now saying.
	Not just that they have the right, but they have the obligation.
	Because no public school teacher can pray on the 50-yard line without imposing his religious views on others.
	Let's make something absolutely clear.
	That is an imposition of a religious view on others.
	That ruling is an imposition of a secular religious view on others.
	It is the imposition of the idea that religion must be disfavored.
	That the First Amendment must be applied in reverse.
	That freedom of religion is not to be protected.
	That instead we have to disestablish, forcibly disestablish anybody's religious belief no matter whether they're forcing it on anybody or not.
	Again, this isn't even the equivalent of the guy going into the classroom and preaching.
	This is the equivalent of him doing something.
	People are free to show up or not show up.
	It's voluntary.
	For the left, the presence of religion itself is insulting.
	So how does this tie in with the broader argument about children?
	Here's what the left is seeking to do.
	They're seeking to say that a five-year-old can be taught by their teacher, without parental permission, that he is a she.
	But a 15-year-old cannot have the option of praying at the 50-yard line with a coach.
	That's an agenda, folks.
	That's not about protecting the innocence of children.
	It's about depriving them of certain types of choice that they don't like, and giving them types of choice that they do like.
	And when I say types of choice, I mean screwing them up permanently, in many cases, because it is important to promulgate a leftist view of social politics.
	That's scary stuff.
	And that's gotta be fought at every turn by good-willed people who are parents.
	I'm a parent.
	You try to do this to my kid, you try to do this to my kid, You wonder why people are taking their kid out of public school and sending them to private school?
	You wonder why people are retreating from the public square?
	You wonder why the fever pitch of politics is so high right now?
	It's because of garbage like this.
	People feel that their children are being threatened by outsiders who think that they know how to raise their children better than I do.
	You don't even know my kids' names.
	You don't know their birthdays.
	You don't know a damn thing about them.
	You don't care about them.
	There's a point that Phil Graham made at one point.
	There was some lefty that he was interviewing on a Senate committee, and the senator was questioning the leftists, and the leftist said, I care about your children as much as you do.
	And Phil Graham said, what are their names?
	That's exactly right.
	Parents have the ability to raise their children, and not only the ability, the duty.
	You have the duty to raise your child, and you have the duty to raise your child under a rubric of values that makes them a better human being.
	That is your charge in this life.
	For our society to ignore that and fight actively against it is a true evil, and what we're looking at right now is a serious battle against truth and decency.
	Just horrifying.
	Okay, so, in other news, on the more political front, There's a new poll out.
	President Trump has been spending the last few days ripping on Senate Republicans.
	He went on Twitter this morning again, ripped on Senator McConnell, ripped on Bob Corker, the senator from Tennessee.
	And I understand him ripping on McConnell.
	He doesn't feel like McConnell's doing a good job.
	Ripping on Bob Corker, it's kind of weird since he actually interviewed Bob Corker for his Secretary of State.
	It seems more like Trump is angry at these people than like he is actually interested in changing their behavior, except as regards to him.
	This is a distinction.
	You know, if you're going to attack senators, the purpose of attacking a senator, presumably, is to move him on the issues.
	You can leverage senators.
	But I think that right now, Trump is sort of lashing out at senators because he doesn't like them personally.
	So, you know, in that rally on Tuesday that President Trump did in Phoenix, he attacked both of the senators from Arizona, McCain and Flake.
	He attacked McCain because McCain didn't vote for the Obamacare repeal.
	That seems fair to me.
	He attacked Flake because Flake was mean to him.
	You know, that seems to me less productive.
	Right now, there's a serious possibility that Republicans lose Flake's seat if Flake were to lose the primaries.
	If Flake loses the primaries, right now, a better shot that Flake wins the general than Kelly Ward, who's his primary opponent.
	Kelly Ward may be great, I don't know that much about her, but the fact is that when you're talking about primarying people, not because you want a change in their vote, but because they're mean to you, This is not positive stuff.
	The polls show that people disapprove of Trump's behavior largely.
	For all the talk about Trump propping up Republicans in 2016, it was really the other way around.
	Trump underperformed every single Republican Senate candidate throughout the country, except perhaps from, I think there was a Senate race.
	In Ohio, where he overperformed.
	But that was a rarity.
	The vast majority of cases Trump underperformed the Republican Senate candidate.
	So it was really Republicans who dragged Trump across the finish line, not the other way around.
	And right now there's the possibility that if Trump doesn't get his act together, he could drag down a few Senate candidates.
	It's almost impossible for Republicans to lose the Senate this time around.
	That's just the way that it works.
	Remember, Senators are elected once every six years, and we rotate.
	So only a third of the Senate is up every two years.
	This two-year cycle is very, very bad for Democrats.
	But Trump's activities could hurt Republicans.
	There's a new George Washington University battleground poll trying to get a sense of how Americans feel about Trump's behavior, and it ain't good.
	Okay, basically asked if they agree or disagree with the statement that Trump's behavior is not what I expect from a president.
	71% agreed, only 27% disagreed.
	68% of people said they worried that Trump's words and actions could get us accidentally involved in an international conflict.
	Just 29% disagreed.
	Do these polls really matter very much?
	They only matter if something goes wrong.
	If people are already predisposed to blame Trump if something goes wrong, what happens when something goes wrong?
	I think that's what we're being set up for this weekend, by the way.
	I think that we are being set up for this weekend.
	There's a big hurricane scheduled to hit Texas, and the media are all over this thing.
	The media are very much focused.
	on what's happening in this hurricane in Texas.
	We'll see how bad the hurricane is, but if there is some sort of disaster and Trump is not immediately on it, I promise you they're looking for another Hurricane Katrina situation.
	And they know that the public is predisposed to think that Trump is chaotic and doesn't know how to govern, so Trump better do a great job with it.
	Trump is at 34-35% approval rating right now.
	He has not experienced any serious crisis.
	Like zero serious crises.
	So if there is a crisis and he botches it, then you could see him tank and that really could hurt Republicans.
	Meanwhile, there's chaos inside his own administration.
	I don't like this very much.
	Gary Cohn, who is President Trump's top economic advisor, he said, quote, the administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning groups like white supremacist groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities.
	He said he felt compelled to, quote, voice my distress over the events of the past Two weeks.
	He said he was disgusted and appalled with Trump's response to white nationalists' role in the violence in Charlottesville.
	I agree with a lot of this, by the way.
	But, Gary, you work for the guy.
	You work for the guy.
	Like, shouldn't you say that to him?
	I understand you're in a difficult situation when you work for Trump because if you feel like you're doing a good job, you don't want to give up the power to help the American people, but you still are working for Trump.
	You know, if somebody at the company had a severe disagreement with me publicly, it would be a problem.
	And it is a problem for Trump when people inside his own administration are ripping him publicly and openly, like Gary Cohn is.
	We'll talk more about that.
	Plus, I do want to talk about the Democrats' new attempt to cast Trump as a crazy man.
	And we'll get to the mailbag.
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	that we are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.
	So I agree with a lot of what Gary Cohn is saying about Trump's response to Charlottesville, but I don't work for Trump.
	I understand Trump making a move against Gary Cohn now, if he were going to do so, and I do wonder if Gary Cohn is setting himself up for that.
	I wonder if Gary Cohn, as Trump's economic advisor, is setting himself up so that when Trump fires him, he can say that Trump fired him for insubordination, On an issue where Trump was wrong rather than firing him for being a globalist, right?
	Which is sort of what Breitbart wants him to be fired for.
	But there is this burgeoning attempt by people on the left and some people on the right to cast Trump as a crazy person.
	A Democratic Congresswoman yesterday suggested that there are signs that worry us about Trump's mental health.
	This is Zoe Lofgren of California comparing Trump to a person who has Alzheimer's.
	Actually, the legislation urges the Vice President, along with the Cabinet, to secure the assistance of medical professionals.
	As has been noted by your prelim into this, a lot of people are concerned about the president's behavior.
	He seems to lack impulse control.
	He swings from topic to topic.
	Any of us who's had an older person that we know suffering from a mental decline can see certain signs that worry us.
	Okay, so this kind of nonsense, you're not supposed to say this stuff publicly generally because, I mean, this is what they call the Goldwater Rule.
	That you're not supposed to psychologically assess people that you don't know very well.
	I mean, we used to do it all the time with Obama, say that he had narcissistic personality disorder, but that's not quite the same thing as saying the president is legit crazy.
	Like, Obama was clearly a narcissist, but that doesn't mean he can't do his job.
	Trump, I think, also is a narcissist.
	I think that he fits the textbook definition of a narcissist, but That does not mean that he's not capable of doing his job.
	This is all building up so that if Trump does something wrong, everybody's ready to pounce.
	This is all the setup.
	The punchline is coming.
	Okay, this is all the setup.
	The punchline is coming.
	Plus, I'm sorry, Democrats can't talk about crazy old people if they're not going to mention Nancy Pelosi.
	Here is the minority leader in the House talking about free speech.
	See if you can see what she's saying that is wrong and stupid.
	How could the Park Service justify denying that organization their free speech rights?
	Because the Constitution does not say that a person can shout, yell, waltz in a crowded theater.
	If you are endangering people, then you don't have a constitutional right to do that.
	Okay, so she's wrong on the law, and also, why would you shout wolf in a crowded theater?
	It's a weird thing to shout.
	She's shouting elephant in a crowded theater, and she means fire in a crowded theater, but she's a dummy.
	So she says wolf in a crowded theater.
	Yeah, if we're gonna talk crazy towns, then crazy Nancy Pelosi should be at the top of that list.
	Democrats really don't get to go down this path.
	Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then we'll do a fulsome mailbag.
	So, things I like.
	This week we have been doing things associated with blindness because of the eclipse.
	This is actually a very serious movie about blindness.
	It's a terrific film.
	The Miracle Worker, the Academy Award winners Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.
	Anne Bancroft plays Helen Keller's teacher.
	Patty Duke plays Helen Keller.
	And this is one of the, this is sort of the W-A-T-E-R, water.
	It has a name.
	the scene in which Helen Keller realizes that words are associated with objects because she's basically grown up, unable to speak, unable to communicate properly, and she's frustrated about it.
	And here is Anne Bancroft as her teacher teaching her what water is.
	W-A-T-E-R, water.
	It has a name.
	W-A-T.
	W-A-T.
	Whaaaat?
	Whaaaat?
	I mean it is an amazing story.
	The story of Helen Keller is truly incredible.
	I mean, the woman was blind and deaf and couldn't speak.
	And somehow they figured, she actually would give speeches.
	I mean, by the end of her life, she was giving, for many years, she gave speeches on college campuses.
	Okay, literally, imagine trying to learn how to speak if you can't see somebody's mouth move and you can't hear what they're saying.
	I mean, it's an unbelievable thing.
	And the movie, The Miracle Worker, is a classic.
	This is young Anne Bancroft.
	People remember Anne Bancroft from The Graduate, which is a garbage movie, but this is an actual good movie.
	The Miracle Worker with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.
	Mathis, don't give me that look.
	The Graduate's garbage.
	We'll talk about that another time.
	Maybe we'll do a Deconstructing the Culture on why Mathis is wrong about that particular movie.
	Okay, so...
	Other things I like.
	Anytime there's a baseball brawl, I have to show it.
	That's just the way it works.
	So there was a baseball brawl yesterday between the Tigers and the Yankees.
	The funny thing about baseball brawls is basically the way they work is one person gets in a punch, and then everybody just tackles each other.
	And then they just dance around.
	So that's what this baseball brawl looked like.
	So Cabrera now will... Oh, look out!
	There's a fight at home plate!
	Miguel Cabrera going toe-to-toe with Robine, and they're swinging with Haymick!
	Yes, they were!
	Wow!
	When is the last time you saw that?
	They're still there!
	Oh my goodness.
	And he says that, uh, in one of these brawls, he and a guy from the opposite team were friends, and so they would actually just, like, fake punch each other.
	- They're still there. - When she talks about how he was punished by his team because during one of these brawls, like everybody clears, you see the bullpen coming in, people running in.
	And he says that in one of these brawls, he and a guy from the opposite team were friends.
	And so they would actually just like fake punch each other.
	They like dance around and they fake punch each other.
	Looked like they were really clocking each other.
	But that's what baseball brawls always remind me of.
	The number of great baseball brawls is really low.
	There was one last year where there was, I think it was between Texas and the Blue Jays, where the second baseman threw a punch that was like a first-class cross.
	But mostly these baseball fights are not very good.
	Okay, time for a quick thing I hate and then I want to get to the mailbag.
	Okay, so the thing that I hate today, one of the things that really annoys me is how there's a double standard with regard to the sorts of racist jokes that people make.
	So, there's this Game of Thrones parody that is not very good, that was pushed by Huffington Post.
	A woman named Carolina Moreno wrote about this Game of Thrones parody called Gente of Thrones.
	It says, this Juan Snow knows something.
	So what is it?
	It's a bunch of, the idea is that all of the kingdoms have to get together to stop the White Walkers.
	Okay, this is supposed to be in Manhattan.
	So, what are the White Walkers?
	This is the very end of the parody.
	What are the White Walkers, of course, who they have to get together to stop?
	You'll see.
	Here come the White Walkers!
	This is the perfect place to fix up.
	I can't wait to try one of those chopped cheese everybody's been talking about.
	It shows a bunch of Hispanic people, Dominican Republic and Puerto Ricans saying we have to get together.
	And then they go up to the north of New York.
	And who's coming in is a bunch of hipsters carrying coffee, gentrifying the place.
	Oh God, they have to be stopped.
	It's so terrible.
	The White Walkers.
	Okay, now...
	We can all kind of laugh at that, I guess, but can you imagine if the situation were reversed?
	Imagine if, for example, there were a bunch of people who made a parody video of Game of Thrones about building a wall to keep out the White Walkers, and it turned out it was a bunch of illegal immigrants from Mexico.
	Can you imagine the number of racist accusations that would appear, and that would likely be partially right?
	Okay, this is racist.
	When you say that a bunch of urban hipsters are white walkers who must be prevented from entering Manhattan because they're ruining the city, listen, New York's garbage anyway, okay?
	Let's be real about this.
	There are parts of New York that are okay, but New York City, like, I'm sorry for people who live there.
	Like, it's a fun place to visit.
	My sister has lived there for a while, but Like, if you're coming in and gentrifying crappy areas of the city, like half the city used to look like Escape from New York.
	So if you're coming in and gentrifying and building a coffee house, I really don't think you've done anything deeply wrong.
	Okay, I'm gonna get to the mailbag, so let's just do that.
	Matt says, do you think a black kid from the inner city has a greater than average chance of getting accepted to college because of affirmative action or a less than average chance because they graduated from a crappy school?
	So the answer is that they have a greater than average chance of being accepted to college, but they have a less than average chance of graduating from high school with the proper grades.
	Okay, that's just the statistical fact.
	If you graduate from high school with the same grades as a kid, who is, like, I don't want to compare apples and oranges, it is a complex social phenomenon.
	Schools in the inner city are not very good.
	Parenting in the inner city is largely not as good as parenting in the suburbs.
	And that's not just because of the quality.
	That's not because of the quality of people, per se.
	It's because of the qualities of the decisions made by parents.
	If you're a single mom, it's going to be very hard for you to provide the same sort of environment, learning environment, in a crime-ridden area that it is for a two-parent household in the suburbs to provide that environment for a kid.
	That's not a racial thing.
	It has nothing to do with black and white.
	A black two-parent family in the suburbs is going to be better off than a single mom in the inner city.
	But it means that kids tend to underperform in the inner city academically, which is why when you see a lot of those kids move to charter schools outside those neighborhoods, they suddenly perform really well.
	This is why we shouldn't lock kids down to the public school in their neighborhood.
	We should allow them freedom of choice to go to schools outside their neighborhood.
	Then there's the question of affirmative action.
	Affirmative action is constructed in order to make it easier for black kids from the inner city to get into school.
	I mean, that's what it's constructed to do.
	So, of course it's easier by that standard.
	So, two weird questions.
	Will I grow a beard?
	I've grown some pretty heavy stubble.
	It starts to itch.
	It gets to a certain point it's really itchy.
	So I'm not really huge on the growing of the beard.
	Also, I mean, look at this punim.
	You wanna hide that behind a beard?
	Unless you're gonna grow, like, a Tormund Giantsbane-style, like, heavy beard, and just look like I was gonna crack someone's skull all the time, then maybe.
	That seems like a lot of work, and a lot of grooming, and food gets caught in it, so I'm not so big on it.
	Is taxation theft?
	So, my view on taxation is, as I say, as I've said before, read Richard Epstein's book Takings.
	Basically, taxation is theft unless you're getting back the amount of services that justify the taxation.
	And it has to be you getting back the amount of services, not society at large, you.
	So if you are taxed for the Defense Department, it is the purpose of tax, not the amount of tax that's really at issue.
	So the purpose of taxation, if I'm going to tax you because there's an imminent nuclear assault on the United States and we need to build up our defense capabilities, you're getting back the benefit, right?
	You are being taxed for a collective benefit of which you receive.
	If you tax me for welfare, I'm not receiving the welfare, so you're just taking my money and giving it to someone else.
	Then taxation is theft.
	It's redistribution.
	Hayley says, do you think one should go to college for a degree they don't currently need?
	Is it worthwhile to have a degree just in case?
	Thanks.
	Well, it depends on the degree.
	I mean, I think that your degree should always be focused toward job prospects.
	I think that, you know, if you want to go get a degree in Western Civ, go for it.
	But that doesn't necessarily come along with a job offer.
	I think that it is very important that people be educated and be ready to work even if they are not currently doing so.
	Even before I was married, I always wanted to marry someone who had the capacity to get a good-paying job specifically because I think that it's important, if God forbid something should happen to me, that my wife be able to take care of our kids.
	I think that's a decent measure of getting an education.
	But you shouldn't get a degree if you're better off not getting a degree.
	If you're better off moving to Nebraska and working on a pipeline, then do that.
	It's all about jobs.
	So it used to be a social conservative view of what government ought to do.
	It is not anymore.
	Now the biggest obstacle is the basic Republican idea that government should be involved in a ton of crap.
	Okay, the government should be involved in fixing the world.
	I don't think government should be involved in fixing the world.
	Libertarians are right about that.
	On the other hand, as I say, I think libertarians look at Republicans and conservatives and they say, you people with your crazy churches and your crazy God, why can't you just read Ayn Rand?
	And the reality is that without that church-based social fabric, without that Judeo-Christian value-based social fabric, you can't have a libertarian society.
	It quickly devolves into nihilism.
	And quickly devolves into libertarianism will devolve into libertinism without us being able to restrain ourselves, right?
	This is John Adams' entire point.
	He can't have a free country without a moral and religious people.
	Chalen says, hello, I would like to answer my question you read last week.
	I remember I read a very bizarre question last week about puppies, kitties, piglets, and baby sea turtles.
	What do they have in common?
	I said they're all animals.
	Well, apparently the correct answer was they make people, somebody said they make people happy.
	No, that's a stupid answer.
	That is a better answer, but not even... It's really not a true answer.
	I mean, the fact is that once a baby is born, it's protected by law.
	I don't know that unborn baby sea turtles are protected by law.
	Although they may be.
	They may very well be.
	Travis says, "Some will say that God has established morality in our hearts.
	Then why do some of us have different or bad morals?
	And if it is based on belief, then why do we not have an epidemic of crime among atheists?
	I believe that morals come from parents and other adults during young age, not from the existence or belief in God or religion.
	Well, okay, so two things.
	One, that is begging a question.
	When you say that morals come from your parents, and that your parents and society teach you about morals, I agree.
	Where do they get them?
	Where did they come from?
	You just said they don't come from the human heart.
	So, don't your parents have a human heart?
	Where did their standards come from?
	I mean, at some point, there weren't humans on planet Earth.
	Where did they get their morals?
	So, you can't have it both ways.
	You can't say that nature doesn't generate morality, but your parents generate morality without revelation.
	It doesn't work that way.
	If you want to make the natural law case that morality springs up in human hearts, you can do that.
	And you can then say revelation is less important.
	But if you're going to deny nature and natural morality, then it's very difficult to deny revelation as the source of morality.
	So that's my answer on that.
	As far as why do we not have an epidemic of crime among atheists?
	Because atheists were raised in a Judeo-Christian value system and still believe in the fundamentals of that value system, even if they don't believe in the God that provided them.
	As far as natural law, The idea that the human mind reflects God's mind on morality, I think obviously there are certain basic things that most human societies have in common, like don't murder, right?
	I think that the Judaic take on what are the things that, I actually mentioned this earlier in the show without even reading this letter, basic takes on things like don't kill people, that I think is pretty well embedded in the human code, but Don't kill people versus war is an interesting distinction because a lot of societies have discovered don't kill people, but there are also very few societies that have discovered that don't kill people applies to everyone.
	Right?
	Everyone who's not actively attacking you.
	Isaac says, Hi Ben, I'm uncertain of my stance on law enforcement.
	What are your thoughts on balancing the power of law enforcement and the protection of civil rights?
	Could all problems be solved simply by getting rid of bad laws?
	For example, the war on drugs.
	Could privatization play a role?
	So I think that you should not put a law in the books unless you want it enforced.
	I think that law enforcement is there to protect your rights.
	If they're not protecting their rights, then they've obviously exceeded their mandate.
	Drew says, Ben, why is it the largest cities in history are typically the most evil, blatantly sinful?
	Nineveh, Sodom, Gomorrah, Rome, Las Vegas, New York.
	Thanks for what you do, Drew.
	Well, I wouldn't exactly compare Sodom and Gomorrah to New York.
	Las Vegas is a better argument.
	But I think the answer is that when you stack a lot of people in a very small amount of space, then there's a lot of conflict that inherently rises up.
	And there's two ways of dealing with the conflict.
	One is with tyranny, and the other is with libertinism.
	When you have people who are separated and they're in family units and there's not a lot of people right around them, you have to focus in on how do you make your family good, right?
	And there's less friction from the people right around you.
	But think of living in an apartment, like I live in a house now, but we lived in a condo for a while.
	There's obviously more conflict.
	With the person on the other side of the wall in the condo than there is with the person on the other side of my wall in my house.
	There's more separation.
	That conflict means we have to come up with a basic agreement.
	That agreement's either going to be that we abide by a certain set of rules together, or, and that can very quickly devolve into tyranny because we all want to control each other's behavior, or it can devolve into, you do whatever you want on your side of the wall, I'll do whatever I want on my side of the wall, never the twain shall meet, but then when you piss me off I'll kill you.
	And very often that's how it ends in big cities.
	People, as much as we like to talk about people, need other people.
	We do, but too much of other people will make you crazy.
	crazy uh michael says what does ben shapiro have to stop himself from buying if he finds himself with some extra cash or do you just stockpile it like scrooge mcduck and swim in it with the leftist tears mug in hand so i do in fact have a scrooge mcduck money bin i do enjoy swimming around in it and just bathing in my cash my oodles of cash um But what do I have to stop myself from buying?
	So, I don't—I mean, books, typically, but I don't stop myself from buying books because it's part of my ongoing quest to learn things.
	I buy lots and lots of books.
	I have piles of books around my house.
	I have a pile right next to my bed.
	Drives my wife insane.
	I've got a pile of books next to my bed that's gotta be 40 books.
	Hi.
	Um, and, uh, I'm gradually going through it.
	And then, uh, you know, there's that meme.
	Have you seen that meme of the guy who's walking with the girl and then, uh, he turns around and looks at the other girl?
	Right?
	This is the, the, this is this meme that's going around online now.
	Very famous.
	So I thought that the best version of that was guy walking next to the girl and the girl's his girlfriend.
	And the girlfriend was book on my bedside stand.
	And then the one who he's checking out is new book that just came out.
	And that's sort of my problem, is that I have a bunch of books that I have to read and have been sitting there for months, and then I see a new book that came out and I want to read it.
	So, books is the big one.
	The other thing is, at some point I want to buy myself a really nice violin.
	My violin is not very good.
	My violin is like, I got it from my grandfather.
	It's probably worth maybe six or seven grand, but a really nice violin costs a minimum of 25 grand, probably.
	And so I am definitely stocking up for that.
	Emanuel says, do you think Republicans will ever win statewide elected office in California again, or are we doomed to sink further and further into the abyss of the left?
	The answer is yes, I do think that Republicans will win again through one of two things.
	One, things get so bad that Republicans are just the default position and people react, people wise up.
	Second, all of the leftists eventually leave California after ruining the state.
	Republicans reoccupy the state in 100 years and it becomes red again.
	This is my theory of population movement, is that Republicans come, conservatives come, make a place awesome.
	Leftists follow, make the place crap.
	Conservatives leave, the place devolves further into crap.
	Leftists leave, conservatives reoccupy and make it good.
	Do you think there's a chance Republicans completely abandon Trump so he can go on to create his own political party and they can get some things done in Washington?
	Thanks for doing what you do.
	I don't think that Republicans will abandon Trump.
	I think Trump may abandon Republicans.
	I think Trump may get so frustrated that he decides screw you I'm forming my own little coalition and he goes some people on the left and some people in the Republican Party and tries to get things done.
	The problem is the people who love him from the Republican Party are not even close to the people who are sort of okay with him on the left.
	The people okay with him on the left like big government.
	The people who are okay with him on the right are typically very much in favor of his regulatory cuts, for example, so there's not a lot of common ground there.
	Okay, so here are a couple of live questions.
	What is your favorite Monty Python skit or movie?
	So, my favorite Monty Python movie is Holy Grail, obviously.
	And my favorite skit in that movie is still the duck skit.
	The witch and the duck skit.
	Neil says, would you consider being gay a byproduct of free will from God?
	In other terms, would we have gay people if religion never existed and science was our only foundation?
	Would it be considered counterproductive to the species?
	Well, I mean, I don't know.
	That's a weird way to put it.
	I would suggest that all sexual activity has a voluntary component.
	I don't know that all sexual drive has a voluntary component.
	Your temptation is your temptation.
	I think there are environmental impacts on your temptation.
	I mean, every study ever done has suggested this.
	But I think that the notion that it is pure science, that if it weren't for our capacity to choose, would there be homosexuality?
	Sure.
	I mean, bonobos have homosexuality.
	So the idea that only heterosexuality can be found in nature is not true.
	Would evolution select against it?
	Yes, evolution would clearly select against it.
	It would remain a very, very small contingent of the population.
	Okay, Mitchell says, Ben, I've noticed our generation just wants to fight to make everything fair.
	Why do most young people think life is going to be fair?
	How do we convince them it's never going to be fair?
	All we ever hear is how we deserve and it's not fair, but both of these statements are stupid.
	No one deserves anything.
	Life will never be fair.
	Mitch, I agree with you.
	One of my pet peeves is the idea that life is fair.
	It's because in America, we want people to have a fair shot.
	But having a fair shot does not mean fairness of outcome, and it's very easy to mix up the two.
	We tend to look at two people who have an unequal outcome, and then we say, society must have screwed them.
	That's not right.
	It's quite possible that they made decisions in their life that were bad, or that they started from different places and society didn't do anything to them.
	Okay, Zachary says, Hey Ben, as a Christian who is exploring my faith, I am interested in learning more about Judaism.
	How welcoming is the synagogue to Christians?
	Well, you can show up.
	I mean, like, no one's gonna throw you out.
	We don't do conversions, so it's difficult to convert to Judaism.
	We actually discourage conversions, mainly because you're taking on an enormous number of commandments that you actually don't need to do to get into heaven.
	But if you're interested in learning about Judaism, there are a lot of books on it.
	The synagogue probably wouldn't be the best place to start, is the truth, because We mumble a lot to ourselves for two hours, basically.
	That's what an Orthodox service looks like.
	There's some singing, but there's a lot of mumbling.
	And so if you're not ensconced in that, then it probably does not... It's not like... It's not where you go for a great time in the synagogue.
	But if you're looking to learn about Judaism, I would start with the Old Testament.
	Read the Old Testament.
	It's amazing how many people who believe in the Old Testament haven't actually read the thing.
	Let's see, someone says, do you watch Rick and Morty?
	I don't even know what Rick and Morty is, so I will have to check it out.
	Mathis is giving me a skeptical look.
	Mathis, as my adopted son, dictates that I must actually check it out, so I will now check out Rick and Morty.
	That has now become an obligation upon me.
	We'll find out how that goes.
	Okay, so...
	Finally, we've reached the bottom of the mailbag.
	There are no more questions to be asked this week.
	But, if you wish to subscribe, then next week you too can be part of the mailbag and have all of your life questions answered.
	We'll be back here on Monday.
	Try not to screw things up.
	Okay, you did okay last weekend.
	It wasn't so bad last weekend.
	Please try not to screw things up so much this weekend.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.

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