All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 29, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
57:58
Trump Wins Big On The NFL | Ep. 392
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey there!
We're back from University of Utah and President Trump is actually nominating some good judges.
Plus, did he just defeat the NFL?
And is that good for America or just good for President Trump?
We'll talk about it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Well, we do have a big mailbag coming up today, and I've looked at the questions, and some of them are just doozies.
Some of them are pretty amazing.
So we'll get to all of your questions today in the mailbag.
If you were a subscriber, you too could have been part of the mailbag, and your life would have been that much richer.
But if you're not, I guess you'll just have to listen to everybody else's problems be solved while you wallow through your own.
We'll get to all of that in just a little while.
Plus, President Trump is actually winning the battle against the NFL.
We're going to talk about what it means for him to win.
Whether that is the country winning or just Trump winning, what are the costs and the benefits of that happening?
Because a lot of people on the right are very excited that it seems like the right is finally winning the culture war.
I'm not sure that the right was losing this particular aspect of the culture war already.
I just think that it hadn't been brought to sort of the fore.
So we'll talk about that.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
So there's a lot of uncertainty in the foreign policy sphere.
Every couple of days, Rocket Man seems to be threatening us with nuclear war.
There are natural disasters that seem to be striking the United States at an outsized rate.
You don't have to be that worried about these things to know that it's probably a good idea to have some food in your house in case things go bad, in case you can't get to the grocery store because there's some sort of emergency, or in case the shelves are cleaned out and the government can't get to you.
And that's why you should go over to Birch Gold and you should make sure that you are also prepped in terms of economics, okay?
We talk all the time on this show.
About how you should be prepared for emergency?
Well, when it comes to things like natural disasters, or foreign policy problems, or business problems in security in the stock market, it is necessary for you to have at least part of your money in a solid asset like gold, like precious metals.
Not all your money, but you should diversify, and some of your money should be in precious metals.
Right now, if you contact Birch Gold Group, they will give you a free information kit, a comprehensive 16-page kit, Showing how gold and silver can protect your savings, how you can legally move your IRA or 401k out of risky stocks and bonds and into a precious metals IRA.
Again, I do have some of my money in precious metals and birch gold.
Those are the people that I trust.
Get your no-cost, no-obligation kit at birchgold.com slash ben.
That's birchgold.com slash ben.
Ask all the questions you're going to and then get all your answers from the birch gold people.
Again, they can help you move your money from an IRA or eligible 401k into an IRA backed by physical gold.
Okay, so, President Trump looks like he's beginning to win big on the NFL.
What I mean is that a lot of teams are now backing down.
from their clients.
They're the people that know how to do this the best.
So ask all your questions, get all your answers, and then when you feel secure, invest in precious metals with birch gold.
Okay, so President Trump looks like he's beginning to win big on the NFL.
What I mean is that a lot of teams are now backing down.
And this is why I really think it had less to do with President Trump purposefully picking a smart fight and much more to do with the left's knee-jerk reaction to everything Trump says and them going over the top no matter what Trump says.
So, to recapitulate what exactly happened here, for those who have been in sleep in a cave for the last couple of weeks, President Trump said that Colin Kaepernick was an SOB, and that owners should fire players who kneel on the sidelines for the national anthem.
Now, if you or I said that, we're private citizens.
The President of the United States is the President of the United States.
Governmental actors should not be telling private actors how to do their business.
It's just bad policy.
It is not good for the country.
If the shoe were on the other foot and Barack Obama were telling people on the right that they should be fired by their left-leaning employers, we would be justifiably angry.
Okay, but what Trump wasn't wrong about is that it's nasty to kneel for the national anthem.
It is nasty to kneel for the national anthem in 2017.
Okay, we're not talking about in 1961 in the middle of Jim Crow.
Even then, the smartest civil rights leaders, people like Martin Luther King, knew that the smart thing to do would be to – and the right thing to do – would be to claim the mantle of the national anthem and the Star Spangled Banner rather than ripping on it and trying to divide the country along those lines.
Today, in 2017, there really is no excuse for kneeling for the National Anthem.
If you have problems with a specific police department, then protest that police department.
If you have a problem with a specific police officer, protest that police officer.
But to suggest that America is through and through a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe country?
that is guilty as a whole for the sins of a few is really quite nasty, and it imputes nasty intent to everybody who's standing for the national anthem, because if they cared enough, they'd kneel too.
Okay, so that's where Trump was right.
Where Trump was right is when he says that it's nasty to kneel for the national anthem, disrespectful to the flag, disrespectful to people who have fought and died to protect that flag and stand for that national anthem.
There he is right.
But he did what he does and he went too far.
And I think, is that a strategy?
Is that by accident?
I would say it's more by accident because Trump has never seen a moderate comment.
Trump and Tact parted ways long ago if ever they have met.
So he says what he says.
And the left, because they're really dumb, they decide that instead of reacting by saying, listen, We may agree about the National Anthem, but everybody has a right to express themselves the way they want to, and we don't think people should be fired for doing that in the NFL.
And then standing up for the National Anthem while some people kneel, that would have been the smart thing to do.
Instead, what they did is they started to kneel.
And they allowed Trump to polarize this debate.
So now, instead of this being sort of a messy debate where some people were against kneeling, but against Trump, and some people were for Trump, but for Trump and against kneeling, instead of that, what you had was instead this weird situation where everyone who was against kneeling was against Trump.
Sorry, everyone who was for kneeling was against Trump, and everyone who was against kneeling was for Trump.
Trump placed himself squarely on the side of the flag and the anthem, and his opposition was politically stupid enough to allow him to create that dichotomy by kneeling with the people who were kneeling.
So now it looked like all the people who were on Trump's side liked the flag and liked the anthem, and all the people who weren't on Trump's side hate the flag and hate the anthem, when half the protest was actually about Trump, not about the anthem at all.
Really, really dumb of the left.
And now it's beginning to pay dividends for Trump.
Because Trump stayed on this issue.
He realized this was a popular issue.
He realized that most Americans don't like people kneeling.
He realized that if he could grab the mantle of the flag and the national anthem, then he would end up winning that debate.
Because people like the flag and the national anthem more than they like the people who are kneeling.
And if the last election proved nothing, it should have proved that we are all binary thinkers, or at least a huge number of Americans are binary thinkers.
We can't think in three dimensions, and so that means that instead of thinking about two issues at once, Censorship of people who kneel, and the actual kneeling, we just boil it down to the actual kneeling.
And the left was, again, dumb enough to fall for this.
So, Bryant Gumbel over on HBO, the left thought that they had won this debate, which is an amazing thing.
There are a bunch of people on the left saying, oh, Trump made a big boo-boo here.
I've been saying since the beginning of this, Trump did not make a big boo-boo.
What I think Trump did was not great for the country, because I think there was a broad consensus.
85% of Americans don't like kneeling, and a similar number of people are fine with people not being fired for kneeling.
Right, so there was a pretty broad consensus.
Trump split that consensus.
I don't think it's good to split that consensus, because I agree with both halves of that whole.
But the left immediately jumped into bed with the Colin Kaepernick crowd, and here's Brian Gumbel saying that he thinks that, great, the athletes are all energized now.
Now, for sure, they're going to win this battle.
Really dumb stuff from Brian Gumbel over on HBO.
Finally tonight, a quick thanks to the current occupant of the White House for energizing the social conscience of the modern American athlete.
That occupant's weekend series of racist, churlish, and childish comments drew a variety of stunning rebukes and actions, which suggest jocks may finally be realizing that apathy won't cut it anymore, that in conjunction with their fame, they have important civic roles to play, especially now.
Many suddenly seem not just willing but also eager to follow in the giant footsteps of Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Billie Jean King, Roberto Clemente, Arthur Ashe and many others who courageously use their athletic platforms to challenge authority in the pursuit of justice.
Okay, we can stop it there for a second.
So first of all, I think that it's important to note that a lot of the people who we now hail as heroes in this area, I'm thinking specifically here of Muhammad Ali, were at the time not seen that way.
And there's a bit of a heavy golden gloss that's being put on Muhammad Ali's history.
I mean, at the time he was deeply associated with the radical racist nation of Islam, under pre-Louis Farrakhan Elijah Muhammad.
And the idea that he was doing some sort of great service to the country, Muhammad Ali, at the time, I really disagree with that pretty strongly.
In fact, many Americans disagreed with it, which is why when he had his first fight with Joe Frazier, a lot of Americans were on the side of Joe Frazier.
Muhammad Ali helped exacerbate racial divides.
Joe Frazier was a guy who grew up poor in Philadelphia.
Muhammad Ali grew up middle class in Louisiana as Cassius Clay, and Joe Frazier was somebody who didn't agree with the idea that you were supposed to stand against the American flag or that you were supposed to protest the American government or that America was a deeply terrible place.
He was a much more unifying figure than Ali.
Ali proceeded to call Frazier a gorilla and use really racist terminology with regard to Joe Frazier in order to push basically the Nation of Islam's message.
So now he's hailed some sort of civil rights hero, but at the time he certainly was not.
And a lot of the stuff he did was really, really negative.
There's actually a great HBO documentary on this called Ghosts of Manila that you should go check out if you haven't seen it.
It's also a book.
It's really worth reading on this.
But beyond that, if Brian Gumbel thinks that the sports world is going to win by continuing to politicize itself in ways that are really not well thought out or well calibrated, That athletes doing simplistic things like kneeling for the national anthem is somehow great for the country.
This is a battle that Brian Gumbel and those athletes are not going to win.
And I'm frankly confused as to why they think they would.
Most Americans don't believe that this is a racist country or should be castigated as such.
Most Americans also believe that if you can name a specific racist incident, then we'll fight it with you.
But he's not the only one.
So there's a Titans, a Tennessee Titans tight end named Delaney Walker.
who, according to the Tennessean, said, first off, I'm going to say this.
We're not disrespecting the military, the men and women that serve in the army.
That's not what this is about.
If you look at most of the guys in here, I've been in the USO.
I support the troops.
This is not about that.
It's about equal rights, and that's all everyone is trying to show, is that we all care about each other.
And the fans that don't want to come to the game, I mean, okay, bye.
Could you possibly be dumber?
I mean, why in the world would you want to alienate your fan base?
They are paying your salary.
What we've seen over the past couple of years is people not watching ESPN, I think in large measure because it has become politicized.
People not watching the NFL as much for a couple of reasons.
First of all, the worries about concussions.
Second of all, the domestic violence stuff.
And then also, yes, the politicization of the NFL.
I used to watch a lot more NFL.
I don't like watching the NFL as much anymore because I don't need Bob Costas lecturing me on gun control.
And I don't need a bunch of St.
Louis Rams players perpetuating the lie that hands up, don't shoot was a real thing in Ferguson, which they did a couple of years ago and were not punished by the NFL.
You see this from people in the NBA, too.
The 76ers, their first round draft pick is a guy named Ben Simmons.
He's supposed to be a very good player.
And he comes out and he starts ripping Trump by name and play that in just a second and suggest that this is not smart strategy.
And you will see that Trump is going to win this particular battle, which is a big win for Trump.
We'll talk about whether it's a win for the right and a win for the culture, because I think It's not quite as easy as some people want to make it out to be.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the U.S.
Concealed Carry Association.
So, someone breaks into your house.
Somebody is at the front door and they shatter the window on your front door.
They reach in.
They pull the latch.
You rush out with your gun.
The person is trying to get into your house.
In the middle of the night, you shoot them.
You think that's the end of the story.
You did a great job, right?
You did something good.
Self-defense, defensive home, and others.
The police will come and they may arrest you.
And that's why you need to talk to my friends over at the U.S.
Concealed Carry Association.
Right now, they're happy to give you for free, when you go to defendmyfamilynow.com, the 2017 Concealed Carry and Family Defense Guide.
It is from the U.S.
Concealed Carry Association.
Again, it's 100% free.
You will learn how to detect attackers before they see you, how to survive a mass shooting, The safest and most dangerous places to sit in a restaurant, how to responsibly own and store a gun, particularly if you have kids, and a whole lot more.
It's 164 pages and comes with a bonus audio version, so after you're done with our podcast today, you can go and listen to that.
This life-changing guide is 100% free.
For a limited time, you'll also get a bonus home defense checklist, so go to defendmyfamilynow.com.
That's defendmyfamilynow.com, and get the resources that you need in order to ensure that you are protected in case you, God forbid, have to use your gun.
I mean, the reason to own a gun is that you don't have to use it.
If God forbid you have to use it, you need help from my friends at the USCCA, defendmyfamilynow.com.
Okay, so again, polarizing along Trumpian lines usually wouldn't be a problem for athletes.
Polarizing along Trumpian lines when Trump is standing with the flag and with the army is really not a good idea for these athletes.
So here is Ben Simmons, who is a 76ers forward, I believe, talking about how much he hates Trump.
If we were in Australia right now, a lot of people would call him a dickhead.
That's how I personally feel.
Okay, well that's convenient.
I mean, again, is this elevating the discourse?
No.
And listen, I don't think anyone has an obligation to elevate the discourse.
But again, if you're going to polarize the audience, this is probably the best way to do it.
So here's the problem.
Now the left has staked out a position.
The position they staked out last Sunday was, it's good to kneel.
Or it's good to boycott the anthem.
Or, as a slap against Trump, we're going to do all of these things.
And then the fans say, wait, whatever you think about Trump, what are you doing with the anthem?
What are you doing with the flag?
These are the only unifying symbols we have left.
We disagree about everything.
We disagree about politics.
We disagree about culture.
We disagree about the usefulness of the pause pod.
We disagree about all of these things, but what we don't disagree about is that the flag is a good thing and the national anthem is a good thing, so what are you doing?
And so now the NFL has basically been forced to back down.
The way that they're backing down is that they are standing and linking arms for the national anthem.
This is their sort of subtle way of backing down.
I said that on Sunday what they should have done if they wanted to show solidarity is the people who are going to kneel should have been the exact same people kneeling six months ago, and everybody else on the field should have stood next to the people who are kneeling.
You're showing solidarity by being next to the person, right?
What's the big deal?
Why elevate the issue?
What's the point of elevating the issue?
In any case, these players last night, it was the Bears-Packers game, they were standing and linking arms for the National Anthem, and this is a... it basically is a back down.
It's a back down.
People aren't kneeling anymore.
Ladies and gentlemen, to honor America, please stand, remove your hats, and join country recording artist Tyler Farr as he sings our national anthem.
So last week, the entire Packers team basically melt.
The dawn's early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.
Right?
And no problem.
Everybody's standing.
Not a problem.
But it looks like a back down.
Because once you stake out a position in politics, if you back off the position, it looks like the other guy won.
And it's not just the Packers and the Bears.
This is basically the new policy.
There's a guy named Marquis Pouncey.
He is a... Is he a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers?
He's a center.
He's the center for the Pittsburgh Steelers and one of the longest tenured players on their roster.
He came out yesterday and he said, I promise you, this week we are all going to stand for the anthem.
I promise you one thing, this week we'll all be standing out there for the National Anthem, trust me.
We respect our flag and we respect the military and everything that goes a part of it, man.
I think the bigger message is that people were just trying to stay out of it, you know, and that we should have, you know, just united inside.
And everyone was in there, you know, standing up and it was all about the flag and, you know, it was a big misunderstanding.
Trust me, I'm very sorry to anyone that probably feels the way that they do and, you know, rightfully so, but, you know, there's a lot of arguments in them points.
I care about the flag dearly and trust me, this team would be out there standing.
Right, basically they're saying it was a big mistake.
So that looks like a win for Trump.
The Denver Broncos put out this message on their social media yesterday.
They put out this long message.
It says, Last week, members of our team joined their brothers around the NFL in a powerful display of unity.
It was an emotional time for everyone, including the fans who support us each and every week.
As controversial as it appeared, we needed to show our collective strength and resolve.
Our voices needed to be heard loud and clear.
Make no mistakes.
Our actions were in no way a protest of the military, the flag, or those who keep us safe.
Which is why, if you thought that, then you shouldn't have picked that example.
Like, guys, image matters.
You're in an image-driven business, for goodness sake.
Okay?
It's not like you sell shoes for a living.
Right?
You're actually in a business where you are on TV all the time.
Anyone in the TV industry knows that what's on the TV is the image that people are consuming.
They say, we have nothing but the deepest love and respect for those who protect our way of life and the freedoms we enjoy as Americans.
While there's no greater country, it's not perfect.
Inequality still exists.
And we all have work to do in all forms of social justice, which is their sort of sop to Black Lives Matter.
And then they say, we can all do better.
It starts with us.
And then they say, we are a team and we stand together no matter how divisive some comments and issues can be.
Nothing should ever get in the way of that.
OK, well, as a country, we're supposed to stand together.
Not just a team.
As a country, we're supposed to stand together.
Which is why people care about this issue in the first place.
But again, it now looks like all these players who knelt last week will not be kneeling this week.
What prompted the change?
People are going to say Trump did.
Right?
So big win for Trump.
Big win for Trump.
The NBA's Adam Silver, he came out, he said he now expects the players to stand.
As Coach Popovich said the other day, people need to engage and have these discussions.
And they're not always easy discussions to have.
Sometimes they are painful discussions, but they need to be had.
And I'm hoping, once again, that this league can play a constructive role there on, you know, the anthem and specifically We have a rule that requires our players to stand for the anthem.
It's been our rule as long as I've been involved with the league and my expectation is that our players will continue to stand for the anthem.
Okay, so nothing actually changed in the NBA, and this is the important thing to note.
It looks like the NBA is backing down because some of the players were really loud about this stuff, but nothing actually changed.
I mean, in 1996, there was a guy named Mahmoud Abduraouf.
He was a guard for, I believe it was at the time, was he on the Golden State Warriors?
Or the Denver Nuggets?
He was on the Denver Nuggets at the time.
And he refused to stand for the National Anthem.
Instead, he decided that he viewed the American flag as a symbol of oppression and racism, and he said that standing for the anthem would conflict with his Muslim faith.
He said, you can't be forgotten for oppression.
It's clear in the Quran, Islam is the only way.
I don't criticize those who stand, so don't criticize me for sitting.
So the NBA suspended him for a game, and they cited a rule that the players had to line up in a dignified posture.
It cost him about $32,000.
The players' union supported him, and he reached a compromise with the league that allowed him to stand and pray with his head down during the anthem.
And that was the end of it.
That was the end of it.
You know, his career basically tanked after that because he lost his entire fan base, but that was basically the end of that.
So the idea that this battle started just last week is not really true, or the idea that the NBA switched its position on this is not really true, but the impression left in the minds of the public is that all these people were going to kneel.
Trump stepped in.
They're no longer kneeling.
Good for Trump.
So big political victory for Trump.
Now, is it a big political victory for the right?
Well, on the one hand, a victory for Trump against people who are kneeling is sort of a victory for the right, except that more Americans thought that Colin Kaepernick was doing a dumb thing before Trump intervened than after he intervened.
If you look at the polls, again, there was like 85% of Americans thought that Colin Kaepernick was doing the wrong thing.
Now it's about 60% of Americans, 65% of Americans.
That's not actually a victory for the right.
It's actually a loss for the right.
If I would have told you that... Let's say that Trump weren't president.
Let's say that Hillary had, God forbid, been elected president.
And let's say that Hillary had made comments talking about how wonderful it was to kneel for the anthem.
And the number of Americans who thought it was bad to kneel for the anthem dropped from 85% to 60% when she said, that's a terrible thing.
25% more Americans now are okay with kneeling for the anthem.
That's a really bad thing.
Well, 25% of Americans are now OK with kneeling for the anthem.
That's not a great thing, even though Trump wins a political victory by looking like a strong guy.
And it's not really great for the country.
And this was my objection in the first place.
Again, a lot of people on the right say, oh, we're winning the culture war.
We're winning the culture war.
So in the one sense, I think the right is winning the culture war by demonstrating that the left is willing to be this radical.
That is a win for the right.
OK, that's a win for the right.
If the left is willing to side with Colin Kaepernick just to oppose Trump, it demonstrates how radical they are.
If the left is willing to kneel for the anthem to Buck against Trump.
That demonstrates the radicalism of the left.
But, for America's unity, for the cause of standing for the anthem, it actually was not a huge win.
So it's a little bit more complex than just saying, Trump wins, everybody else loses, we're done here.
I don't think it's quite that simple.
Now I want to talk about what else this means in terms of the Republican agenda stalling, because while Trump is fighting these culture war battles that really get the base jazzed up and get people excited, because the truth is, as I've said before, people are much more interested in talking about cultural issues than in tax cuts.
Are the Republicans even going to be able to do anything?
And what is the divide inside the Republican Party?
What does it even mean?
It's confusing, because you hear the term establishment, and then you see people who are clearly not establishment being called establishment, and people who are working with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer being called anti-establishment.
What do these terms even mean anymore?
Rush Limbaugh was on with Sean Hannity last night.
Two guys who I've been very friendly with and people I grew up listening to.
And they were talking about Trump versus sort of the Republican Congress.
We'll get to that in just a second.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at DaVinci.
So yesterday I was in Utah and we didn't have a place to broadcast.
So, we used DaVinci to book a boardroom in this really nice building, beautiful boardroom, and we filmed from the boardroom there for a very, very low cost.
That is what DaVinci does.
In today's digital business world, you may not have offices.
You may not want to pay rent, you know, like we do at this building, for offices.
You may have an online business, and you have a meeting now, or you have to Skype call somebody, and you don't want to look like you're doing it from your closet.
So instead, what you do is you go over to DaVinci, and you book a DaVinci meeting room.
They provide you instant access to over 5,000 incredibly affordable meeting rooms in well-known office locations in every city, and they make it really easy.
You search, you book, you meet.
And what's amazing is that not only that, the DaVinci meeting room comes fully staffed, So we got there and there was actually an assistant who was willing to usher, ready to usher us into the room, bring us coffee.
It's like you have your own office.
It's really amazing.
And equipped with all the latest tech plus high-speed internet.
Whether you need a day office or a conference room, a boardroom or a training space, DaVinci has what you need to make your next business meeting a success.
And those DaVinci Meeting Rooms start at just ten bucks an hour.
So everyone, listen, we have offices but when we're on the road we use DaVinci.
I'm gonna go to Sacramento next week.
I'm gonna use DaVinci, right?
This is the way that we operate here at the business, and that's how you should operate whether you have offices or not.
If you don't have offices, it's even better, because then no matter where you are, you're in your home city, and you need an office for the day.
Just use DaVinci.
So right now, go to davincimeeting.com slash ben, and the first hour is on them, so the first hour is free.
Davincimeeting.com slash ben.
Your first hour, again, is free.
Terms and conditions do apply.
For details, go to davincimeeting.com slash ben.
And you will see, the place you hold your next meeting is going to be a lot better than where you're holding it right now.
DavinciMeeting.com.
It's a great service, and yesterday's service was really tremendous.
It was like being at home when we were on the road.
Really amazing.
Well, Trump is engaged in these culture wars, which is the stuff that animates elections.
Let's be frank about this.
What Republicans do on tax cuts is going to be much less significant for the 2020 election than this NFL stuff.
Sorry, that's just the way it works.
That's why Donald Trump can go from a guy who was commenting on Twitter about birtherism four years ago to the President of the United States.
Culture wars matter a lot more than the political battles.
But what does that mean for the political battle?
In some ways it means that it's harder to get people on the same page because All you have to do is virtue signal in the culture wars, and then we don't actually have to pass anything.
So there are some pretty significant and fundamental differences inside the Republican Party, and it's always interesting to watch people like Sean and Rush, both of whom have been strongly supportive of President Trump, talk about what the Republican Congress is doing to buck Trump.
Instead of suggesting that everyone has a duty to get on the same page, the idea is that if the Republicans would just follow Trump, he would lead them to the promised land.
I don't think that this is exactly correct.
I don't see them embracing strong ideas and going and selling them, which I think they'd win on the... I don't think they're conservative.
I don't think they ever have been.
They don't want Trump to succeed with his agenda.
They can't afford that.
I'm not, I'm not exaggerating here.
They don't want, they can't afford for him to succeed with his agenda.
They can't afford it.
The lid's blown.
The gig is over.
The joke is revealed.
If an outsider With no prior political experience.
Can come in and fix messes that people have been promised would be fixed for 30 years.
How does that make them look?
They can't allow that to happen.
Okay, so Russia's actually making a slightly different point.
He's not making the point about conservatism.
He's making a point that there are all these career politicians who haven't been doing anything.
If Trump comes in and fixes things, he makes them look bad.
I don't think that that's actually what's going on here.
I don't think there are a lot of career politicians who are sitting around going, you know what, if I thwart Trump, I look better today.
How many Republicans feel like if they thwart Trump on things they want passed, that that is actually going to make them look better in the eyes of their own constituents?
Their constituents voted for Trump.
Their constituents voted for Trump.
If they look like they're actively thwarting Trump, they get ousted.
I mean, hell, if they look like they even signaled in not liking Trump, they get ousted, right?
Mo Brooks, people forget about Mo Brooks in Alabama.
Mo Brooks was much more conservative than either Luther Strange or Roy Moore on policy.
And Mo Brooks, who's a real Tea Party guy, came in third in the Republican primary because he wasn't supportive enough of Trump.
So this idea that all these guys are trying to buck Trump to demonstrate that politics is a hard business, I don't think that's right.
The problem with the argument that's being made here is that Trump's agenda is actually not the conservative agenda.
This has always been the problem.
This is the problem before the election.
Let's say the Republicans went along with all of Trump's agenda and they just started voting for it.
They'd be voting for higher taxes on people who are actually paying the taxes.
They'd be voting for bigger spending.
They'd be voting for presumably a giant infrastructure bill.
They'd be voting for immigration policy that their own constituents in many cases don't support.
They'd be voting for President Trump's program with regard to foreign policy has been all over the place.
Trump doesn't have a well-defined program where you can even say follow the leader.
Rush admits that Trump's tax policy is pure populism, and then he says that Republicans won't pass it because it's pure populism.
Maybe that's not a terrible thing.
I mean, if the tax policy is populism, I wasn't aware that these guys were elected on a populist message.
They were elected on a different message.
What it really is, is how to get votes from the middle class.
This is a pure populist approach.
This is not a conservative approach to tax reform whatsoever.
On this one, President Trump is who he is.
He is a full-fledged nationalist populist in this tax policy.
Indicates that.
That's fine.
That's who he is.
What Rush says here sort of, I think, disagrees with what he was saying in the first clip.
In the first clip, he's saying, these guys in Congress, they aren't conservative.
If they're conservative, they just go along with Trump.
But then he's admitting that Trump's tax policy is pure populism.
You can't really have it both ways.
Trump's tax policy here, when he's saying he wants to raise the taxes on the people who are paying the majority of the taxes in the country, you know, that is not a conservative thing to do.
So what, and you know, all of the hubbub around Trump and Trumpism, this idea of nationalist populism.
Trump isn't a nationalist populist.
Trump is just a guy with a bunch of views.
This idea of putting like a philosophical patina.
on Trump's collection of viewpoints is wrong.
Like, sometimes he does stuff that's super conservative.
I have to stop here and praise Trump.
Yesterday, he nominated Justice Don Willett of the Texas Supreme Court to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Great!
That's terrific.
He also nominated a judge whose last name, he's an Asian judge named, I think his last name is Ho, and he was nominated also.
He's also quite conservative.
Trump's judicial nominees have been across the board, very conservative.
That's been fantastic.
But Trump isn't a conservative.
Right, so the point that I'm making here is not that he doesn't get credit for that.
He absolutely does.
That's a wonderful thing.
He should continue nominating terrific justices to fill these slots.
But the suggestion that Trump is across the board a consistent guy or he has any sort of through line to what he believes is just not true.
Ann Coulter, I think, is sort of making the same mistake here.
Again, I've known Ann since I was 16 years old.
Here's Ann talking about Roy Moore, the guy who just won the Alabama Senate primary.
It's very controversial because not only did he bring in a Ten Commandments monument and put it on the lawn at the Alabama judicial... at the state courthouse, I guess.
He refused to remove it when he was ordered to remove it and he was ousted from his job there.
Then he got his job back.
Then he refused to enforce same-sex rules promulgated by the Supreme Court of the United States.
And then he was ousted again.
He's made some pretty ridiculous comments about people like Keith Ellison not being able to be seated in Congress because Keith Ellison is a Muslim.
That's absurd.
I really dislike Keith Ellison.
I think Keith Ellison's an awful person, but I don't think that Muslims should not be allowed to sit in Congress.
I think that's silly.
But in any case, here's Ann Coulter on Roy Moore talking about what happened in Alabama.
Because remember, Roy Moore was the guy who was not endorsed by Trump.
Luther Strange was the guy endorsed by Trump, but Roy Moore beat Luther Strange pretty handily.
Here's Coulter.
How you doing?
Fantastic!
How are you, Marc Simone?
Oh, you sound happy today.
Yes, because your candidate lost and Trumpism prevailed.
My candidate?
I didn't have a candidate.
Yes, Trump, your president.
I don't know anything about Alabama Senate candidates.
They look like two Andy Griffiths.
Yeah, you know about Trump, and Trump has not been following Trumpism.
We now see there are two different things.
Trumpism one, Trump zero.
Okay, so this is the message that people are trying to do now.
So now that it's clear that Trump does not actually have an ideology, people are trying to actually construct one and then separate it from Trump.
But we'll call it Trumpism, which is incoherent.
What really unifies the party?
You want to know why the Republican Party is having difficulty governing?
The reason they're having difficulty governing is because the only unifying thread between Trump and the Trumpists The people who like Trumpism or whatever they're calling that these days, the nationalist populists, and the people who are traditional conservatives and libertarians, the only thing that unites them is opposition to the left.
That's not a great thing, okay?
Listen, we don't, we're not big on the left here, right?
I mean, we give you a mug, right, that says, leftist years, hot or cold.
Like, this is, well, we're not huge on the left, but you actually have to push a certain ideology if you hope to unify and actually be able to govern.
The fact that Republicans are not really speaks to the idea that opposition is a lot easier than governing, and this is where Trump's, I keep saying this over and over, Mr. President, You campaigned as a leader.
You campaigned as the guy who was going to lead Republicans to the promised land, the guy who was going to get things done.
Forget about the first part.
Let's just talk about getting things done.
If you want to get things done, you need to buckle down, and you need to force through your agenda by taking it directly to the public, and by wheeling and dealing what you say you're great at, you need to do all of these things.
Because otherwise, it's just going to be the Republicans unable to push an agenda, and you sitting on the sidelines sniping at them.
That's not a recipe for legislative success in any way, shape, or form.
Well, we're going to get to things I like, things I hate in the mailbag.
But first, you're going to have to subscribe if you want to see that live.
So, you can always listen later on audio, but if you want to subscribe and see the rest of the show live and be part of the mailbag, get your questions in.
Then go over to dailywire.com, $9.99 a month.
We'll get you a subscription to The Daily Wire.
You get my show, you get Andrew Klavan's show, you get Michael Knowles' show, you get all of those shows fully live.
You can download them later, ad-free, when you are a subscriber.
You can also get our website without banner ads.
You get all those things when you subscribe.
If you become an annual subscriber, you get this, the aforementioned greatest vessel for holding tears in the known universe, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumblr.
And you can use that to your heart's content for $99 a year.
If you just want to listen to the show for free later, go over to iTunes or SoundCloud or YouTube, subscribe, leave us a review, we always appreciate it.
We are the largest, fastest-growing podcast in the nation.
I should say we're the largest and fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation.
In any case, let's talk about some things I like and some things that I hate.
So one of the things that is really, it's pretty fascinating actually, about the way that we approach racial issues in this country today, is we sort of put a different spin on history in the 1960s and 70s than what was actually being lived at the time.
So at the time, the people who were actually making a dent were not people like Malcolm X, it was people like Martin Luther King.
Those were the people who were convincing good-hearted white folks to join on the bandwagon.
Not a lot of white folks were joining Malcolm X's bandwagon.
A lot of white folks were joining Martin Luther King's bandwagon, as well they should have.
That was the right choice.
In the 1960s and 70s, the move toward racial reconciliation by the media was an attempt toward reconciliation.
Not toward the idea that we have to continue dividing ourselves so we can be more self-aware and this will lead to reconciliation, but the idea that white people and black people treating each other as individuals was the way forward.
Which is a traditionally American idea.
Now, I want to contrast the way that the football This universe is acting today with, you know, black players have to kneel because they see a different flag than white players.
And white players have to stand by black players who kneel because they have to respect that black people see a different flag than white people.
You know, that sort of ideology promoted by Dan Patrick a couple of days ago.
Contrast that with what the media were trying to do back in the 1970s.
So this is one of the most famous TV movies of all time.
It's a TV movie called Brian's Song, with a great cast.
So it's James Caan and Billy Dee Williams.
This comes out in 1971.
It is at the time, I believe, the biggest and highest rated TV movie of all time.
And it is about Gale Sayers, who's the famous running back for the Chicago Bears, and Brian Piccolo, a backup running back for the Chicago Bears.
This is a story about two men.
The whole movie is about racial reconciliation.
And again, this is when the media was actually trying to promote racial reconciliation rather than racial division in the name of racial reconciliation.
So here's Brian's song, which is a very moving, good movie.
This is a story about two men.
They competed for the same job.
One was white, the other black. - - One liked to talk a lot.
You said, uh-huh?
The other was shy as a three-year-old.
Mm-hmm.
Hey, rookies gotta stick together.
Our story is about how they came to know each other, fight each other... I'm gonna whip you, Sayers, but you gotta be at your best.
...and help each other.
I think I... I owe you a beer.
I owe you... a lot more than that.
Yeah.
What actually happened in real life is a true story.
Brian Piccolo ended up with cancer and he died.
I think he was like 31 or something.
And they actually interviewed Gail Sayers about Brian Piccolo.
They said the movie was pretty accurate as far as our relationship and what Brian Piccolo was like.
Sports can be something that unifies us.
Sports.
Culture.
These should be unifying factors, not dividing factors.
It's one of the pet peeves for the right.
We look at culture and we say, listen, that should be bringing us together.
You know, we can have uplifting stories like this.
Yes, of course we can tell stories about terrible things that have happened to black people in the past and happened to black people in the present, but we also need a message of reconciliation or we're never going to be able to move beyond this.
This is what Obama promised in 2008 and then didn't deliver over the next eight years, instead opting for the intersectional politics of the left that suggests that America is innately divided and can never be reconciled.
That's a disaster area.
And this is a really good movie.
It's a very moving film.
So Brian Song, you can go check that out.
Okay, other things that I like.
Speaking of things that should be unifying, Steve Scalise, the Louisiana congressperson who was shot by the Bernie Sanders supporter.
Again, not Bernie's fault, as I've said a thousand times, but he was shot by a guy who's a far leftist in the congressional baseball shooting.
He finally came back to the House yesterday after a long recovery, and here he was arriving there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
You have no idea how great this feels to be back here at work in the People's House.
You know, and that stuff is good.
I mean, it's moments like this that we have to remember that, again, I keep going back to the Lincoln line.
We must be brothers.
Otherwise, we're going to be enemies.
And this is a good example of that.
OK, time for some quick things I hate, and then we'll go to the mailbag.
Alrighty, so let's begin Things I Hate with this bit of amazing journalism by Steven Crowder and his producer, NotGayJared.
Actually, NotGayJared has been urging me to follow him for well over a year on Twitter.
I finally followed him last night, so his life is complete.
So, here's why.
The reason I did it is because he actually infiltrated Antifa over at University of Utah.
And you can see, he was there, he put on a wig, he put on contact, and they went and they got encrypted apps from the, like Antifa wouldn't allow them in unless they got encryption on their phone, and they were messaging each other.
Here is actual video of an Antifa member offering Steven Crowder's producer a knife, and then you'll see, you'll see, I'm not sure if this is a man or woman, it's a transgender person, offer the knife and then an ice pick.
The person's carrying a taser.
and also suggests that if things go wrong, then they should retreat to a car where there are AK-47s in the back.
We're going to take the knife.
We've got two AKs coming.
Matt McDonald here with Fox 13 News.
We've been tracking Antifa for a long time.
He was just down there at President's Circle and they were handing out sharp objects to stab people with.
Said they had someone coming with an AK.
Why did it take two late-night hosts, comedians, to find this out?
You know what?
I wish you guys luck.
Okay, so what's amazing is that you go watch the full footage over at Louder with Crowder.
We also posted it last night at Daily Wire.
And you'll see that the girl goes out and the girl or guy, again, I'm not sure about this person.
But this person offers that and then says, not only do you have two AKs coming, one of the other people says, we have a sawed-off shotgun.
Okay, sawed-off shotguns are illegal.
Under all law, okay?
There's not a state in the Union that allows sawed-off shotguns.
And they were offering this.
I guess that Crowder's producer, Sonaki Jared, went to the cops after this.
He basically said, guys, I gotta go to the bathroom.
And then he immediately went to the police, and the police came and arrested these people.
But it is amazing.
And it is amazing that, again, I think more journalistic outlets should be doing work like this.
One of the things that I talk about when I talk about journalism is that there's an attempt by the media to separate acts of journalism from being a journalist.
So I'll say, well, my career is I'm a journalist.
Okay, fine, fair.
But, then there's a suggestion that if you're not a journalist, and you go and do an act of journalism like Crowder is doing, Crowder, again, is a comedian, and not Gage Harris' producer, that that is not journalism because they're not quote-unquote journalists, right?
They don't have the magic journalist fairy dust, and therefore...
They don't get that credit.
Okay, you get credit for breaking a story when you break a story.
This is a story, okay?
When Antifa's offering you a knife, that's a story.
These people are not nonviolent.
They are quite violent, and they're quite willing to engage in violence.
Okay, one more thing I hate, and then we'll get to the... Should we do one more thing I hate and get to the... Okay, one more thing I hate.
Okay, so that is Jimmy Kimmel last night.
I hate to rip on Jimmy Kimmel so much lately, because I think Jimmy Kimmel's a talented guy, but Jimmy Kimmel...
He did a whole tribute to Hugh Hefner.
And yesterday, if you want to take my take on Hugh Hefner, I did 20 minutes on Hugh Hefner yesterday.
Go listen to yesterday's podcast.
The short take is everybody is treating a seedy old pornographer like he was some sort of great force in American life for good.
And here's Jimmy Kimmel saying about a guy who legitimately was worse to women than Donald Trump by about a thousand times.
I mean, his grotto was described as a sex prison by people who used to work there.
Here's Jimmy Kimmel talking about how wonderful Hugh Hefner was and he'll be disappointed after he dies and goes to heaven.
I was thinking about it last night, Hugh Hefner is probably the only person ever to be disappointed by heaven.
It's with all these harps, let's get some naked girls in here!
Okay, first of all, a couple of suggestions.
I think it's highly doubtful that the place, if there is an afterlife, that Hugh Hefner will end up is initially heaven.
But in any case, this idea that Hugh Hefner is just somebody we joke about, Hugh Hefner, he may have helped individual women who are trying to make their way in the world.
He was not good for women as a whole, and he was not good for men as a whole.
Pornification of American culture has not been a good thing for men who have become desensitized to sex and treat women as sex objects more often because they see more naked women all the time.
Airbrushed naked women in most of these cases.
And it's not been great for women who are seen as the objects by these guys.
I mean, it has not been good for the culture.
So the celebration of Hugh Hefner is quite odd.
These are the same people who when Clay Travis said First Amendment and boobs on CNN.
Oh, how dare Clay Travis!
Sexism!
Sexism!
Hugh Hefner was one bajillion times as sexist as Clay Travis.
I mean, legitimately.
Pretty incredible.
And by the way, there's an awful article over at Politico today saying that Clay Travis is somehow an alt-righter, and then they provide no evidence that he's actually an alt-writer.
I guess that he's an alt-writer because he says that kneeling for the flag is bad and that Trump is right.
I may disagree with him, but that doesn't make you alt-right.
Okay, in any case, let's get to the mailbag.
Again, if you're a subscriber, write your Messages now and we will do some live.
Okay.
Isaac says I'm 21 I have no idea what I want to do with my life.
I have no real interest either How do I find out what I should do for my career?
Well, you're asking me if you're like a lump if you're like an amoeba, what should you do with your life?
um, so you have no real interest and You have no idea what you want to do with your life, and I'm supposed to fix that for you So normally I fix your problems.
Let me start with this one if you are bored with things It's because you're boring If you're bored with life, it's because you haven't searched enough.
If you decide to be bored with life, you're not going to make a career or a happy life out of being bored.
So you do have to find something that you are enthusiastic about, something that you're interested in.
Listen, you're interested enough to become a subscriber to this show, which means that you're obviously interested in pop culture and politics.
So there are certain things you're interested in.
You may not be interested in becoming an electrical engineer, but there are certain aspects of life that you are interested in enough and fascinated enough to engage with.
You need to find out what those are and what aspect of that you can be good with.
And there's so much crossover in the economy.
You can be interested in politics and you don't have to sit behind a mic like me.
We have people who cut audio for us.
We have people who do animation for us.
We have people who produce the show.
We have people who...
Travel with me on the road.
There are lots of different jobs in this milieu.
So if you're interested in this kind of stuff, there are lots of different jobs that fulfill different skill sets.
What I say to everybody, find your passion, and then find the skill set that matches your passion.
And that's the best way to have a happy life.
Julia says, Dear Ben, my parents are Balei Tshuva.
This is Jews who become religious.
Balei Tshuva means owners of repentance, literally.
Most of my siblings have left religion.
I'm the only one still as religious as my parents.
I'm also 14, so I don't have much of a choice.
Why do children of ultra-religious parents abandon religion?
So I think one of the reasons is that ultra-religious parents very often don't feel that there's a real balance in the religious community.
Between cloistering your child and exposing them to ideas so that you can inoculate them against bad ideas.
Right?
You understand why people feel that there's a seduction to secular culture.
There is.
I mean, you get to do whatever you want.
Right?
All the time.
You get to do whatever you want.
Sounds great.
Except that you may not find fulfillment in that.
Sometimes acting with virtue is the place you actually find fulfillment.
But let's say that you're an 18-year-old kid.
And you've only lived in an ultra-Orthodox community.
You lived in a Haredi community, for example.
And you decide you're gonna go to college.
And suddenly, people are saying to you things like, well, have you ever considered that Sinai may not have happened?
Or have you ever considered that...
That the Bible is a book of myth?
Or have you ever considered that religion may be false altogether, and God doesn't exist, so you can do whatever you want, and hey look, there are a bunch of hot girls, let's go to a party?
Right?
These things actually affect people who are religious, and this is why I think it's very important to have open and honest conversations about the nature of faith, about the nature of your faith, about why it is that going to the party with the hot girls, it may be worth foregoing that, In order so that you have a better life in the future.
Like, I have a very fulfilled life, thank God.
I have a very fulfilled life.
I was a virgin until I was 24, right?
I was married at 24 to my wife.
She was 20.
And I am very pleased with that decision.
She was a virgin as well.
I do not have a single shred of regret that I didn't go to college parties and drink myself senseless and have sex with random people.
I have no regret about that.
I don't have regret about that because I think that I've chosen a better way of life.
And I think that you have to feel that you are defending a higher truth in order for you to feel As though you're doing something valuable and not be seduced by outside forces.
So, people tend to react to the outside forces by cloistering themselves.
That only makes them more vulnerable.
It's sort of like the polio virus in the 1930s.
Well, one of the funny things about the polio virus is that it tended to affect, uh, it tended to inflict more damage on people who are very wealthy than people who are very poor.
And people are wondering, why is that?
Well, the answer is that a lot of poor people were playing outside in the mud and exposing themselves to germs.
They had stronger immune systems.
And a lot of the rich kids weren't.
If you keep a kid, a baby, in a bubble, and they never have to deal with antigens, then there's never going to be a situation in which their immune system has developed enough for them to actually fight those things off.
You have to expose your kids to enough ideas that are foreign to your culture, and then defend your culture against those that your kids have heard of before, and it's nothing new and seductive.
By the way, I feel this way about when you talk to your kids about sex.
I think that half of the things that go wrong with regard to kids and sex is that we say to kids, you can't talk about that.
It's secret.
It's mysterious.
When you take the mystery out of sex, then you're actually injecting the love back into sex.
Meaning that sex is not anything mysterious.
It's a biological function.
It's certain parts going in certain places.
When you remove the mystery from sex, what you end up doing is suggesting that in order for it to be more than that, there needs to be some sort of feeling attached to the sex.
I think the mistake a lot of religious parents make is they say, ooh, we can't talk about that.
We can't talk about that right there.
Yeah, that's dirty.
That's dirty talk.
We can't talk about it.
And then kids go, ooh, it's dirty.
Sounds great.
Right?
So I think it's a big mistake not to be open and honest with your kids about this kind of stuff.
Mitch says, what is your favorite musical period, classical, romantic, et cetera, and why?
Well, I think probably the border between classical and romantic.
So for people who don't know classical music that well, classical music was Basically, there's the Baroque period, which is sort of Bach, and then there's the Classical period, which is considered Mozart and Beethoven.
Beethoven really sort of spans the divide between Classical and Romantic, and by the time it gets to Tchaikovsky and Brahms, you're in the Romantic period.
So, Beethoven is the best composer who ever lived, although there is a strong argument for Bach.
The most listenable music, in terms of just, you turn on the radio and it's easy listening, is Baroque slash classical music, like Bach.
If I had to pick one composer to take to a desert island, it would be Bach.
Benjamin says, Hey Ben, I've been reading up on Israel and I'm becoming frustrated with the fact that Israel's public perception has shifted so negatively when it's blatantly obvious that they are not the hostile actors in the region.
When did this shift in public opinion occur?
Who are the main proponents of it?
So the major shift in public opinion did not occur in the last 10 years.
It occurred in 1967.
Before that, Israel was considered a small nation fighting for its survival in a community of nations seeking to destroy it.
And after 1967, when Israel was dominant in the Six-Day War, then a lot of the left suggested that Israel was now the oppressor because Israel was powerful.
And also Israel was bad because it wasn't socialist enough because that was about the time the Soviet Union realized that they were going to try and make inroads in the Arab community by making nice with people like Nasser, who was the head of Egypt at the time.
And in doing so, they sort of posed Israel as a mini-America.
And people hate America and Israel for basically the same reason if they hate Israel.
Chris says, hey, Ben, if you were trying to get into politics on a local level, what would be a good position to begin a political career?
Well, it depends on your neighborhood.
I would say the easiest place to get in is usually something like the school board, some place where there are 5,000 voters, because there you can actually do direct outreach to all the people who are voting.
It's enough people who can actually shake all the hands of every voter that you want to vote for you.
And then once you're on the school board, you can actually do some good, hopefully, for the students.
And that usually seems like a good way to promote your career.
Kathy says, I have a family member who's in a lesbian relationship raising a baby, and I have two children under four.
I don't want my children to be confused by seeing this.
How do I handle holidays? - Right.
Well, I mean, I think that you should honestly have an open conversation with your lesbian relative.
I think that that's perfectly fair.
I think it's perfectly fair.
Confusing small children about heterosexuality versus homosexuality seems to me a really bad move.
Because if you're trying to inculcate a set of values, and you say that it is better for For your child to be straight than gay, which is a perfectly respectable non-homophobic position.
Just talking about what will lead to your perception of human happiness, that's not irrational in any way.
If you say to this lesbian family member, listen, you're welcome to come over, you're welcome to say that this is your partner, this is a person who you live with, but we don't like using the word wife because I don't want to explain to my child Because I don't believe in same-sex marriage.
The state may, but I don't.
And I don't want my child to believe in that either, and that's my right as a parent.
You can either respect my rights as a parent, or we can meet privately off away from the kids.
This is a matter of parental rights.
You don't have a right to teach my kid anything.
I have a right to teach my kid what I want.
It's my kid.
It's kind of weird for me.
It says, happy Friday, Ben.
Yesterday you said if you haven't wrestled with your doubts, you're not religious.
Is there a particular time you wrestled more heavily with your faith, and what brought you assurance?
Thanks for always being the voice of reason during the nonstop carousel of leftist crazy.
So it's kind of weird for me.
When I wrestle with doubts, the doubts that I tend to wrestle with are doubts about how much of faith can be based on rationality and how much of faith has to be based on faith.
So there's never been a time where I've really thought...
Where I've really thought that God didn't exist.
I've wondered whether there's a rational basis for God's existence, and that's where I'm really doubtful.
I also have never responded to tragedy that has occurred in my family by doubting God's existence.
That's just, it's, a lot of people do.
A lot of people see terrible, terrible things and they doubt God's existence.
I've never really had a problem with the theodicy part of the issue, the issue that why, if God exists, why does evil exist?
It seems to me that God created a system where free will has to exist, which means that he has to shield himself because If everything God did were immediately visible in terms of acts and consequences, free will would go by the wayside.
That said, you know, I think that that's why I'm constantly reading about religion.
A little bit later today, actually, I'm going to do a Facebook Live with a professor named Edward Fazer, and I welcome you to go over to our Facebook page and watch.
He wrote a book called Five Proofs of God's Existence.
And I want to talk to him about those proofs and what they mean and how much of faith can actually be based on reason and how much you have to actually take a leap of faith.
I would also say that one of the things that brings me a little bit of comfort here, maybe it's foolish, but I think that it's true anyway, is that every system of thought has leaps of faith attached to it.
Sam Harris has as many leaps of faith in his system of thought as I do.
And what'll be fun is I'm doing an event with Sam Harris in December in San Francisco.
We're going to sell it.
2,500 seats, and we're gonna talk about all these things.
Free will, religion, it should be a blast.
I look forward to it.
Sam's a good guy.
Madison says, Hi Ben.
Thanks for citing my canvas when I met you in June.
What's your position on physician-assisted suicide?
Should it be legal?
Is it moral?
What is the best argument against it?
So it seems to me that the best argument against physician-assisted suicide is that it's physician-assisted.
So I think there's an interesting moral argument with regard to assisted suicide in general.
Like, the truth is that when we have palliative care, it's not assisted suicide formally because we're not injecting enough morphine to kill you, but we're basically making you comfortable until you die.
Putting physician-assisted suicide on the table means that you have to start drawing lines now.
Even people who are in favor of physician-assisted suicide usually want to require That the person who is receiving the physician-assisted suicide should have to go through some sort of background check.
That if you're an 11-year-old who's having thoughts of suicide, but you're perfectly healthy in every way, that we shouldn't allow you to do that.
Well, now you're putting your standards on the person who wants to commit the suicide, which denies the fundamental argument you're making about autonomy.
So, that's sort of interesting.
I don't think doctors should be in the business of death.
I don't think doctors should be competing to see who can deliver death at the cheapest price in a free market.
And doctors should be there to heal.
Your suicide, also, you should be taking culpability for your own suicide.
It shouldn't be on a doctor to have to take culpability for killing you.
Um, all right.
Joseph says, hi Ben.
Lots of non-religious people that I meet attempt to discredit the Bible by bringing up violent verses that call for things like stoning disobedient children and people who sin in general.
How do you combat points like these, especially if you're unfamiliar with those verses?
So first of all, you have to be familiar with the verses in order to fight back against misreadings of the verses.
If you don't know that much about it, you say, listen, I want to go do the research on the verse.
Forgive me if I don't take your opinion as gospel truth on this particular verse, since you obviously have an ax to grind.
Let me do the research.
Maybe I'll have a response.
On those particular verses, by the way, the Talmud says that no child has ever been, has never been held accountable for what they call Ben-Sorah or Morah, which is the rebellious child who is stoned.
Also, all of the death penalty offenses in the Bible require, according to Jewish law anyway, two eyewitnesses who not only witness the event, but warn the person beforehand.
Right?
They actually warn the person.
They say, do not kill that man.
And the guy says, screw you, I'm gonna kill him!
And then they both see the guy and then they go and testify.
So this is why it also says in the Talmud that a beit din, a Sanhedrin, that issued a death penalty once every 70 years was considered a murderous beit din.
So all of the talk about, you know, all the death penalty stuff in the Bible was really not applied.
It was an attempt to express That rebellion against God in participation in sin is worthy of death.
That's really what it's about.
I think at some point he's just going to turn to infrastructure.
legislation to pass during this term.
It seems healthcare is behind us for now, and tax reform is on shaky ground as well.
I think at some point he's just going to turn to infrastructure.
He's going to grab about 20 Republicans and 40 Democrats and try to ram through a giant infrastructure package.
It's quite possible, though, that the political landscape is so polarized at this point that the Democrats just say, we're not going to help you with anything.
And then nothing passes.
I mean, that's an amazing statement to make about a president, that nothing passes.
But we're now through year one, and that's where the president's political capital is highest, and nothing's passing.
Antonia says, Ben, do you think the number of sexual partner one has before marriage is important?
Does having more partners lower the chances of you having a successful marriage?
Well, the data tend to show that the more promiscuous you are before marriage, the less likely it is that you're going to be happy inside of marriage.
The data also tend to show that if you live with somebody for a long time before marriage, your divorce rate is higher.
This idea that you have to try out a partner before you get married, I think is just idiocy.
The reason being that that's what dating is for, but the idea that you have to try somebody out to be sexually compatible, I have real serious problems with this.
I don't want to get too graphic here, but let me just suggest that I think that there is a solid correlation, unless you have like a serious sexual dysfunction, which is something that you probably would know beforehand, or if you don't know beforehand, there are treatments for, then the idea that you are sexually incompatible generally means that you're personally incompatible as well.
These are all issues that should be discussed up front, but This making sex super complicated, like you have to try it out because you're comparing cars, it seems like idiocy to me.
First of all, if you and the person that you're having sex with have had no basis for comparison, then it's the best sex you've both ever had.
So there is that convenient little fact.
If the only beer you've ever had is Bud Light, it's the greatest beer you've ever had.
So you don't really have to worry about it.
But also I think sexual compatibility is really more just about being willing to give, just being a giving person.
And if you're a giving person, then sexual compatibility is actually pretty easy.
Seth says...
What is the appropriate legal route to take for an individual that believes there is racism taking place within a work environment?
Would this process be costly?
Well, usually there's state or federal laws, anti-discrimination laws.
You can file a lawsuit if they violate those discrimination laws.
One of the questions that I have is whether those laws should be on the books in the first place.
Not because I'm pro-discrimination, I hate discrimination, but because in a free market, I think that discrimination should be punished by other businesses destroying the discriminatory business in open competition.
But the appropriate legal route to take, just as a lawyer, is you'd have to actually go look at the applicable state or federal law and see if it's technically been violated.
Vincent says, for a guy in the workplace, how many buttons can be undone on a collared button-up shirt?
At a social scene, a bar barbecue family event, how many buttons can be undone?
Thank you.
So my answer is exactly the same in either case.
You see the number of buttons that I currently have undone.
The answer is one.
Do not be Michael Knowles.
Don't do it.
Okay, this is nonsense, where you unbutton your shirt down to your navel, and you're like, look at me!
Okay, no one wants to see that.
No one wants to see that.
If they wanted to see that, they'd be married to you.
Okay, the idea that you should be walking around with your shirt undone and that it's a comfortable social scene?
Dress like a mensch.
And if you don't want to wear a buttoned-down shirt, then put on a t-shirt!
Okay, like, I don't understand why modesty has gone by the wayside for everybody.
Like, no one wants to see that.
Like, if they want to see it, then they should be willing to put a ring on it, as the great prophetess Beyonce once said.
Okay, so...
So we'll be back here next week on Monday.
So next week, I'm warning you now so that you have fair warning, we are doing shows Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Then I'm gone for a week and a half, a week and a half, because I'm finally taking my long-awaited vacation.
It's a Jewish holiday, so I'd be missing some of those days anyway, so I'm taking the vacation during the Jewish holiday.
I'm really technically missing only like a couple of days that I'd be able to broadcast anyway.
But that means that next week, you're going to have to listen up and listen good.
Because if you're going to fix things while I'm gone, then you're going to need to listen to my words of advice very clearly.
And you need to put your ear very close to your phone.
And you're going to need to assume that everything that I say is correct.
Because for a week and a half, I will not be here to guide you.
When I come back down from the top of the mountain, I will bring you a set of commandments.
Okay, now I'm getting a little bit over my skis.
Alright, well we'll be back here on Monday.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
▲
Export Selection