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June 8, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:49
The Suicide Epidemic | Ep. 556
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CNN's Anthony Bourdain tragically kills himself, President Trump goes to war with other members of the G7, and the North Korean talks approach.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So it's obviously a depressing day in a lot of the public news.
And we'll get to all of that in just a second.
First, I want to make a couple of announcements.
So first, I want to mention that on Father's Day, we'll actually be doing something fun.
So, June 12th, 7 p.m.
Eastern, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring is hosting a roundtable discussion with me and Andrew Klavan and Michael Knowles, and we'll all discuss what fatherhood means, and Knowles will speculate about it, and why fathers matter, and Knowles will speculate about that too.
and how fatherhood will stand up against an increasingly anti-male culture.
And Knowles doesn't know anything about that either, but he'll sit there in silence.
Subscribers will be able to write in live questions for us at dailywire.com.
Again, that is Tuesday, June 12th, 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.
And you can find our special live stream on Facebook and YouTube, so don't miss it.
Also, make sure that you check out Alexa and Google.
You can now apparently get the show when you use Amazon, Alexa, and all the rest.
So you can check out our permanent posts over at Facebook and Twitter to find out how exactly get the show through those mechanisms.
OK, before I jump into the news, and there is a lot of news to get to today.
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Okay, so the big news of the day is obviously that Anthony Bourdain, the CNN host, killed himself.
He hung himself, apparently, at the age of 61.
And this raises a number of serious questions about exactly how the American public ought to treat suicide, what we can do to minimize the risk of suicide.
First of all, let me begin by saying that if you are depressed or if you are suicidal, please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
That is 1-800-273-8255.
Your life is worth more than throwing it away.
There are so many different aspects to the suicide epidemic that's happening in the United States right now, and it really is an epidemic.
It's not only celebrities.
It's not just Robin Williams.
It's not just Kate Spade.
It's not just Anthony Bourdain.
Apparently, both Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade were apparently, at least I know this is true of Kate Spade, she was very obsessed with the Robin Williams suicide.
What happens With a lot of folks who commit suicide as they become fixated on other people's suicide.
There is a copycat effect that happens with regard to suicide.
I want to give you some of the statistics on American suicide because they're extraordinarily scary.
As of 2014, American suicide rates had skyrocketed to their highest rate in three decades, all the way to 13 people per 100,000, even as death rates from other causes have declined markedly.
Suicide is particularly common among middle-aged white people.
Obviously, that would include Robin Williams and Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain.
The overall suicide rate climbed 24% from 1999 to 2014.
In 2014, over 14,000 middle-aged white Americans committed suicide.
Between 2006 and 2016, the suicide rate for white kids jumped 70%.
The suicide rate among black kids, which is a lot lower generally than the suicide rate among white children, jumped 77%.
According to USA Today, a study of pediatric hospitals released last May, So, let's begin with this.
What is causing this uptick in suicide?
ages five to 17 for suicidal thoughts and actions more than doubled between 2008 and 2015.
The group at highest risk for suicide are white males between 14 and 21.
So let's begin with this.
What is causing this uptick in suicide?
Why is it that we are seeing suicide at record rates in the United States, at unprecedented rates over the last three decades In the United States.
So let's take some of the traditional theories and we'll talk about whether they are right or whether they are wrong.
So one of the traditional theories is that suicide is a factor of poverty.
That when the economy has a downturn, then you see increased suicide.
There's very little evidence to support this.
There's very little evidence to support the idea that there's mass suicide on the way when poverty breaks in.
Obviously, the economy was well underway by 2014.
That did not stop the increase in suicide from 2008 to 2014.
And the suicidality rate has continued to increase, as far as I'm aware, up to 2017 and 2018, when the economy has been extraordinarily good.
I mean, we hit now a 3.9% unemployment rate.
So, it's hard to blame the economy for all of this.
Also, it is simply not true that poverty is linked to suicide.
It's just not true.
Maybe changing in financial conditions is linked to suicide, like you were rich and then you became poor or something.
But, in reality, There's almost a reverse correlation between wealth groups in the United States and suicide rate, at least in some areas.
So, white people on average are richer than black people on average.
Black people on average in the United States commit suicide at a far lower rate than white people on average do in the United States as well.
So, I don't buy into the poverty as an explainer for suicide attempt that's been put out there by the media.
And then there's the most popular theory that's going around right now, which is that bullying is what is causing this uptick in suicide.
There's an increase in the amount of bullying that's happening in schools.
Number one, I don't see the evidence for that.
I don't see that there's any evidence that suggests that bullying is worse now than it was, say, 30 years ago.
So, if it really were about bullying, then I don't see that.
I also don't see why that would have any impact on middle-aged white people killing themselves.
Also, the statistics on bullying are really conflicting.
So, there have been studies that suggest that, really, it's depression and delinquency, and when people say they are bullied and then they commit suicide, that doesn't necessarily mean they were bullied.
People who don't commit suicide are more likely to say that they were picked on, as opposed to bullied.
So, in other words, if you acted the same way toward two people, and one of them said, I was bullied, and one of them said, I was picked on, the person who said, I was bullied, is more likely a person who's going to commit suicide just from the get-go, than the person who says, I was picked on.
I'm speaking from a position of experience when it comes to bullying.
I was viciously bullied in high school.
I was physically abused in high school.
And none of that made me suicidal because I was not a clinically depressed person.
And clinical depression and suicide obviously are highly linked together.
So saying that it's just bullying and if America stopped its bullying, that everything would be better.
Again, that doesn't explain why the black suicide rate is so low.
If bullying and racism are so prevalent in American society, why aren't black suicide rates higher?
Also, It's obviously not true that, to go back to the poverty point for a moment, it's obviously not true that poverty is linked to suicide because, actually, poorer societies have lower suicide rates than richer societies.
It's almost a Western phenomenon, the phenomenon of mass suicide and suicide in these numbers.
So that takes a few of the key explanations that have been put on the table off the table.
There is an argument to be made.
There are several arguments to be made about what exactly it is that causes suicide.
First of all, clinical depression obviously is linked to suicide, and clinical depression can be conditional or it can be just natural, right?
I mean, it can be genetic, that depression runs in your family, or it can be conditionally related.
And one of the things that gets people out of depression is very often something called cognitive behavioral therapy, where people are taught in psychoanalysis to essentially break the chain of bad thoughts that is leading them down a dark path.
So people who are depressed tend to think that something bad happened to them, and therefore something worse is going to happen to them, and therefore something worse than that is going to happen to them, and this chain is unbreakable, there's no way to escape it, and therefore maybe I commit suicide.
Well, cognitive behavioral therapy is designed to say to you, well, maybe the bad thing that's happening to you isn't all that bad.
Maybe you should take a second glance at your emotions.
Maybe you shouldn't actually humor your emotional state to the extent that we are humoring it right now.
Now, some people require drugs for depression, and I am not anti-drug when it comes to severe depression.
I think that medicating for serious mental disorders is a good thing.
I think if you can alleviate your depression by taking, what is this, Alexa?
If you can alleviate your depression By taking some of the drugs that are available on the market, then you should absolutely do so if you need to.
But the question is not what to do when you have depression, the question really is why the depression exists in the first place.
I would suggest that there is a societal lack of meaning that has said in a pretty serious way that young people have basically been told that their emotional state is key, that your emotional happiness is key.
In prior generations, people were basically taught that your emotional state was not key.
That what you felt about the world was less important than what you did in the world.
And that life was a lot of struggle.
You had a higher purpose.
You had a higher duty.
And that there were going to be people there to help you out through that higher purpose and higher duty.
I think we've become more fragmented as a society.
I think we've become more atomistic as a society.
I think we've treated each other as objects rather than as human beings.
More as a society, some of that has to do with radical uptake and use of social media.
And some of that has to do with decline of religion.
There are good studies that suggest that as religion declined, as religious communities declined, that rates of depression go up, rates of suicidality go up as well.
Decline of religiosity in wealthier societies, there are studies to support this, has led to an uptick in suicide.
Finding a common meaning again, I think is going to be something that we actually have to spend some time doing.
Just sort of brushing this under the rug or suggesting that if we're a little bit nicer to each other, it's going to fix everything.
I don't think that's correct.
I think that there are a lot of people out there who are feeling that they lead a meaningless life.
And if you feel that you lead a meaningless life and your only method of meaning, your only way of gaining meaning is to look at the superficial or to look at friendship on social media or to gauge Your life's worth by your amount of happiness.
It's a real problem.
You see this with regard to opioid addiction as well.
If you read Dreamland by Sam Canona, it's all about the opioid addiction massive wave that's been happening.
One of the things he talks about is the fact that pain is now considered an ultimate evil in American society, that you actually use pain as what they call the fifth vital sign when you go in for a doctor's appointment, right?
They check your vital signs, they check your pulse, they check your blood pressure, they check your temperature and all the rest, and then they ask you your pain level.
And this is considered a vital sign that has to be alleviated.
Well, people have been living with pain for thousands of years, but if your definition of happiness is avoidance of pain, then anytime you experience pain, you're going to take it a lot more seriously than you would if pain were not at the top of your list for something that matters deeply.
Finding purpose in life beyond personal alleviation of pain or personal material wealth and happiness is going to be something that's necessary for us as a society.
And again, none of this is a cure for clinical depression.
None of this is a cure for people who have genetic predisposition to depression.
None of this is a cure for people who are going to be depressed no matter what.
But it is an argument that there are people who are on the borderline of depression, who are tossed into depression by a lack of meaning in our society.
I don't think that was the case by Anthony Bourdain.
Anthony Bourdain seems to me like somebody who is suffering from some deep, some serious demons for a long time.
Here, for example, is Anthony Bourdain talking about some of the demons that he and his fellow cooks sometimes experience.
One of the painful, enduring lessons that you learn in the restaurant business, why chefs tend towards drinking too much.
Yeah.
Your long periods of self-loathing and depression.
Yeah.
Is because, you know, experience teaches them again and again that people don't want the good stuff, that they insist on the bad stuff.
Right.
And have broken a lot of chefs.
Okay.
So, you know, obviously this is somebody who's been suffering for a long time.
He talked very openly about the fact that he had a drug addiction issue and that he'd suffered with depression for a serious amount of time.
For folks like Anthony Bourdain, I'm not sure that there is necessarily a cure in the realm of meaning.
I mean, this is a guy who had, by all accounts, a pretty rich, happy life.
He was just suffering.
But that doesn't mean that you, right now, can't help yourself.
You should help yourself, okay?
There is no excuse for suicide.
Yeah, I know that as a society, we've decided that there's an excuse for suicide and that there's almost a moral side to suicide.
That committing suicide is something that should be treated purely as a tragedy and not as a moral decision.
Well, Anthony Bourdain leaves behind a 13-year-old son.
That's a moral decision, and that's something that we should be fighting against.
That's not to blame Anthony Bourdain for his own condition.
That's not to blame Anthony Bourdain for what He did to himself.
But it is to say that as a society, we have to we have to see suicide as a moral bad.
We have to see it as something that is inappropriate as a solution to anyills and to glorify it in any way is a serious problem.
Talk about the glorification of suicide in just a second.
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Okay, talking about the glorification of suicide, one of the serious issues that we in the media have to deal with, and I want to start this conversation today because I'm still trying to figure out for the media outlet that I run exactly how we ought to cover issues like Anthony Bourdain's suicide.
There is something called the Werther Effect.
The Werther Effect is a very well-studied phenomenon.
It's essentially copycat suicide.
When a person who is very prominent commits suicide, there are a lot of people who begin thinking a lot more about suicide, fixating a lot more on suicide, thinking of it as a glorious out... I remember after Robin Williams' death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put out a tweet of the genie, right, because Robin Williams played the genie, saying, you're free now, genie, okay?
That sort of glorification of suicide is awful and actually promotes suicide, obviously.
The Werther Effect is named after a book called The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe.
That book supposedly, I mean the studies are conflicting, caused suicides all over the continent.
There were young men who saw it as such a romantic ideal to commit suicide, they actually started walking around wearing the clothes that Werther is described as wearing in the book.
Whether it was true of the Goethebook or not, it has been confirmed over and over and over.
In the aftermath, for example, of Marilyn Monroe's suicide, in the months after her death there were 303 excess suicides, meaning higher than average, in the United States.
There have been multiple studies on this sort of stuff.
After that show, By Netflix, 13 Reasons Why, which essentially glorified suicide and said there were excuses for it, that a normal person who didn't suffer from depression or problems could be bullied into suicide.
Once that show came out, Google queries about suicide, as according to The Atlantic, rose by almost 20% in 19 days after the show came out, representing between 900,000 and 1.5 million more searches than usual regarding the subject.
17 out of the top 20 searches were significantly elevated.
The biggest increases came with terms related to suicidal thoughts and ideation, like how to kill yourself.
Many European countries actually have laws on the books that prevent the media from reporting about suicide specifically to avoid this.
In Venice, they had a spate of people throwing themselves on the train tracks and I believe that they actually changed the law so that people could not report on that and the rates of suicide by throwing yourself on a train track went down.
Now, I'm not calling for abridgement of the First Amendment or laws on this basis, but in the same way that I have suggested that my media outlet will no longer report the names or faces of mass shooters, I'm seriously considering changing the rules here at the Daily Wire when it comes to coverage of celebrity suicide or suicide in general.
There is something that I want to talk about in just one second called the Papageno effect.
This is the counter-argument.
The media should actually cover all of this stuff.
So the Papageno effect basically suggests that if the media covers this stuff in a positive way, if the media covers suicide in an attempt to dissuade you from committing it, that this lowers the rate of suicide.
That really only applies when you are telling a story about somebody who is considering suicide and then didn't do it.
So if you're covering somebody's actual suicide, it's very difficult to avoid people having dark thoughts about doing the same thing.
The Papageno effect is named after Mozart's Magic Flute character because Papageno is a character in the opera who's considering suicide and then he's talked out of it by essentially three young boys who are sprites or spirits and that Effect has not been all that well documented.
It's a pretty recent study.
I believe in Australia, they've done some studies on the Papageno effect.
But the idea there is that the way to help make suicide less palatable to people is to show them stories of people who would have committed suicide, but then did not go ahead and actually do it.
In covering celebrity suicide, we may in fact be doing a serious disservice.
And I'm admitting that that's what we're doing right now.
And that's why I'm reconsidering, you know, I'm considering right now actively what we should do as media outlets.
With regard to coverage of suicide.
So, there are a lot of issues to unpack here, but I think that we all tend to go surface level when it comes to the problem of suicide in America.
We tend to think, on the right, that you can just bully your way through depression, which I don't think is generally true.
We tend to think, on the left, that if we just cut out bullying, and if we're just nicer to each other, then suicide goes away.
I don't think that's true either.
I think that we have a crisis of meaning in our society that is happening right now, where young people don't know why they are living.
What is the point of their life?
Why exactly is it important for them to remain alive as opposed to killing themselves?
And if we don't fill that gap with something, then that gap will be filled with nothingness.
And that's a very scary thing.
We need to come to grips with that.
We need to come to grips with the fact.
That happiness in life cannot be linked to your material well-being.
It has to be linked with a purpose.
It has to be linked with something that matters.
People who believe that they are living for something that matters are far less likely to commit suicide, which is why you see that there's less of a suicide rate among people who are involved in communal activities.
Not just because there's a community there, but because they feel like they are pushing towards something greater.
If we don't recapture that, if we become this atomized society where we're all individuals and we sadly tweet R.I.P.
Anthony Bourdain when we see a suicide, I don't think that this crisis is going to get any better any quicker.
I think that we have become a solipsistic society that is very inwardly focused and that has some pretty negative ramifications, some pretty negative side effects.
We need to start being other-focused.
And that doesn't just mean for those of us who are not clinically depressed, reaching out to people who are clinically depressed, it means that people who are on the verge of depression... Depression is... I've lived with people with depression.
Depression is extraordinarily difficult to deal with.
Not just by the person who's dealing with it, but by everybody living with that person.
If you've ever been in a house with somebody with depression, then you can feel it.
It legitimately feels like there is a dark presence in the house with you.
I think one of the great lies that's told about depression is that depression is about lack of self-esteem.
Depression is about complete focus on self.
I've dealt with many depressed people, severely depressed people, people I'm close to who have been suicidal.
From the outside, what it looks like is somebody who is so self-obsessed because they're tearing themselves down that they can't get out of it.
And the cure to that is to get out of your own head.
The cure to that, whether that requires a boost from some sort of drug, that's quite possible.
The cure for that is to live beyond oneself.
And as a society, if we start living beyond ourselves, we're going to be a lot better off in terms of suicide than we will if we continue to go down this path of Instagram selfies and materialism and the idea that happiness can be bought with the price of a dollar or that happiness consists in In essentially libertinism, that happiness consists in doing whatever you want, whenever you want to do it, as opposed to living for a higher purpose.
Happiness consists in living for a higher purpose.
Without purpose, we are all here for no reason.
And that's, I think, what the West is falling into.
I think the West has fallen into a crisis of meaning that it's having a very difficult time pulling out of.
That does have some political ramifications.
And more importantly, it has some very serious spiritual ramifications as well.
So, you know, I feel terrible, mostly for Anthony Bourdain's family.
It's just a horrifying, horrifying story.
Same thing is true for Kate Spade.
And again, if today you are having problems with depression, please, please go check out the National Suicide Hotline Prevention line.
Please go check that out, like right now.
Don't wait, because You know, your life does matter.
Your life does matter.
The number, again, is 1-800-273-8255.
800-273-8255.
Okay, so, I want to move on to President Trump at the G7 in just a second.
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OK, so meanwhile, President Trump is going to the G7 and he is in a spat with everyone at the G7 because President Trump has this bizarre view that we will all be better off if he tariffs everyone.
So a few preliminary points.
There's been a lot of talk.
about how President Trump's tariffs are gonna be good for the American economy or how President Trump's tariffs are somehow going to help us in some serious way, it is not correct.
Okay, I've said, if you wanna use tariffs as a way to ratchet down Chinese intellectual property theft, for example, then maybe use it as a punishment.
But you have to acknowledge that it's a punishment that also hurts the American taxpayer because we are now paying more for products.
And for all the talk about the tariffs that are being placed on American products by Canada, the fact is the average U.S.
tariff rate is 2.79%.
When you average across all products that are imported, the tariff rate, it's 2.79%.
Canada's average tariff rate is 2.44%.
So Canada, in the same way as the United States, there are a bunch of lobbying groups that have lobbied to protect You know, sausage and dairy and various other products, but America has exactly the same sorts of tariffs because of lobbying groups here, right?
We have 132% tariff on peanuts.
You ever wonder why peanuts are so expensive?
That's why peanuts are so expensive.
35% on tuna, 20% on dairy, 25% on trucks, 16% on wool sweaters.
We have a prohibitive sugar quota, so that's why we use corn syrup here in the United States, is because we basically tariff sugar out of existence.
The United States does have a lot of tariffs on products.
So do many other countries.
We should work to remove all those tariffs.
But ratcheting up tariffs, unless your goal is to ratchet down tariffs on the other side, doesn't seem to make all hell of a lot of sense.
And it does damage the American taxpayer.
There's a story today about President Trump's Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
So according to AMM.com, which studies these markets, American metal markets aluminum foundry alloy premium, a price closely watched by automakers, climbed 15 to 17 cents per pound on May 11th, up 60% from the start of the year.
The assessment for hot dipped galvanized steel coil rose to $54.75 per 100 weight on May 31st, up 17% since the beginning of the year.
This means the price of your car is about to go up in a pretty significant way.
And there's a White House economic analysis.
The White House itself is acknowledging the tariffs are bad for the economy in a way that President Trump refuses to acknowledge the tariffs are bad for the economy.
According to the New York Times, the findings from the White House Council of Economic Advisors have been circulated only internally and not publicly released, as is often the case with the council's work.
But the determination comes as top White House officials continue to insist publicly that Mr. Trump's trade approach will be massively good for the US economy.
The analysis concludes that Mr. Trump's tariffs will hurt economic growth in the United States.
And that, of course, is no shock because tariffs always hurt the growth of the country that imposes the actual tariff There's been a lot of talk about whether Congress is going to overrule President Trump.
They probably will not, and that is an element of gutlessness on the part of the American Congress.
Republicans, I don't care if you're Republicans or Democrats, you should be standing up when the policy is bad, and this is in your purview.
And I understand that there are Republicans who are very afraid that President Trump is too thin-skinned on these issues, and that if they react by stripping him of authority on trade, that he's going to react by suddenly going and working with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer or something.
I don't think that you can govern by being afraid of the President of the United States, just as I don't think the President of the United States should govern by being afraid of Congress.
The system was built for checks and balances, and trade authority was not given to the President of the United States.
It was delegated there by Congress.
It can be removed at any point.
Nonetheless, President Trump is now in a flame war with Emmanuel Macron, who is the leader of France.
So Macron was tweeting out against the president.
The American president may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a six country agreement if need be, because these six countries represent values.
They represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force.
And then he continued along these lines.
He said the will to have a text signed by seven countries must not be stronger than the contents of that text.
On principle, we must not rule out a six plus one agreement.
So first of all, I will just say this about Emmanuel Macron and the Europeans.
They're perfectly happy to sign an agreement with Iran that was garbage, but they're not going to work that hard to sign an agreement with the United States.
It seems like they might want to work a little harder on all of that.
But if he's talking about tariffs and trade policy, you know, President Trump is very difficult on these issues.
And here's what President Trump was tweeting.
President Trump responded, Why isn't the European Union and Canada informing the public that for years they've used massive trade tariffs and non-monetary trade barriers against the U.S.?
Totally unfair to our farmers, workers, and companies.
Take down your tariffs and barriers, or we will more than match you.
Okay, well, except that when we ratchet up our own tariffs and barriers, they ratchet up their tariffs and barriers, and it was Trump who started this thing by ratcheting up tariffs and barriers.
The EU has announced that it's going to start imposing a sweeping round of tariffs on about $3 billion worth of U.S.
products in retaliation after the White House's decision to hit European steel and aluminum products with duties.
Trump continued along these lines.
He said, Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging U.S.
massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers.
The EU trade surplus with the U.S.
is $151 billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out.
Looking forward to seeing them tomorrow.
Well, that sentence doesn't seem to link very well with the previous sentences.
But if Trump's worry here is that there is a trade imbalance, that's just a dumb worry.
I'm sorry.
Economically speaking, that's ignorance.
The idea that a trade imbalance is bad for the United States is foolish.
You have a trade imbalance with your grocery store.
Every time you go to your grocery store, you pay the money and you get groceries.
Does this mean you got screwed by your grocery store?
No, it absolutely does not.
The national debt, the national deficit, these have nothing to do with trade surpluses or trade deficits.
There's nothing great about a trade surplus.
There's nothing terrible about a trade surplus.
There are countries that have trade surpluses right now.
Venezuela has a trade surplus.
That means nothing.
The question is whether consumers are able to access the products they want to access.
And by the way, if there is a trade deficit, right, if we have a trade deficit with the EU, that means they have a bunch of U.S.
dollars.
What do you think they do with those U.S.
dollars?
Well, they can't use them in Europe.
They have to expend them back here in the United States.
They have what's called a capital account surplus.
They have to take those dollars, they have to reinvest them in the United States.
That means they either buy real estate, or they buy U.S.
stocks, or they buy U.S.
bonds.
So, all the worry about the trade surplus, trade deficit stuff, it doesn't make a lot of economic sense.
President Trump continues along these lines.
He says, Okay, I also don't like those trade barriers, but us ratcheting up our own tariffs hurts our own taxpayers.
Again, it means that we have to pay more for the same products, which seems foolish.
things, but he doesn't bring up the fact that they charge us up to 300% on dairy, hurting our farmers and killing our agriculture.
Okay.
I also don't like those trade barriers, but us ratcheting up our own tariffs hurts our own taxpayers.
Again, it means that we have to pay more for the same products, which seems foolish.
And then president Trump tweeted, finally, this is a 12 looking forward to straightening out unfair trade deals with the G7 countries.
If it doesn't happen, we come out even better.
Well, that's not true.
Okay.
If we do not straightening out, This is the problem with President Trump's view on trade.
Again, if he were using this to actually ratchet down trade barriers, I'd be okay with that.
But it seems like he's more than happy to walk away from the table without ratcheting down trade barriers, and that's not only a waste, it's just bad policy overall.
President Trump, by the way, suggested something very foolish today.
He suggested today that Russia should be added back into the G8.
The reason that Russia was originally kicked out of the G8, the G7 plus one, is because Russia invaded Ukraine.
And now without them getting out of Crimea, he's suggesting openly that he should instead allow them back into the G8.
This doesn't make any sense at all.
Here's what Trump had to say about it.
I love our country.
I have been Russia's worst nightmare.
If Hillary got in, I think Putin is probably going, man, I wish Hillary won because you see what I do.
But with that being said, Russia should be in this meeting.
Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting?
And I would recommend, and it's up to them, but Russia should be in the meeting.
It should be a part of it.
Okay, no, this is just wrong.
Russia should not be a part of the meeting.
Russia is, in fact, one of the leading sponsors of violence on planet Earth right now.
They are responsible for acts of terrorism.
I mean, no, they should not be in the meeting.
And for Trump to say this is just an act of ignorance.
Now, one thing that I think Trump is right about is he is leaving mid-morning on Saturday.
So he's going to stick around the G7 for about five minutes, and then he's going to leave.
He's not going to stick around for sessions on climate change and the environment.
First of all, I generally think that these sorts of high-level meetings are photo ops and foolish.
I don't think that they actually have anything to do with getting anything done.
It's usually low-level negotiators who actually get these things together.
But if they are for anything, it's about showing solidarity, and President Trump continues to avoid doing that.
I think that it's good not to show solidarity on the Iran deal.
I do not think that it is good not to show solidarity when it comes to a more open world trade order.
And again, that's not a new world order.
OK, that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about you as a consumer have the right to pick which products you wish to buy or with whom you wish to do business.
OK, so in just a second, I'm going to get to the mailbag.
And also, I want to talk about a leak investigation that has been going on and that is somewhat troubling.
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All righty.
So I also want to talk about this big leak investigation.
So, according to NBC News, a long-time staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee has been arrested on charges of lying to investigators, probing the potential leaking of classified information the Justice Department announced on Thursday night.
A federal grand jury indicted the staffer, James Wolf, Who is 58 on three counts of making false statements in December about contacts with reporters, including providing sensitive information related to the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he served as director for security director for 29 years.
He was arrested on Thursday.
He's expected to appear in US District Court for the District of Maryland.
So, what the leak was, according to BuzzFeed, is the leak was that this guy had leaked information to a New York Times reporter, and a BuzzFeed reporter, that there had been Russian spies targeting Carter Page, basically, to meet with him.
regarding what was described only as an investigation arising out of allegations of the unauthorized disclosure of information.
So what the leak was, according to BuzzFeed, is the leak was that this guy had leaked information to a New York Times reporter and a BuzzFeed reporter that there had been Russian spies targeting Carter Page, basically, to meet with him.
And this was leaked out in the middle of the investigation.
And this is indeed an illegal leak.
And the Trump administration decided to pursue it.
Now, all of that is fine, right?
The guy illegally leaked.
And he should go to jail if he illegally leaked, because you don't like illegal leaks.
With that said, the person he was leaking to was apparently somebody who, this reporter he was leaking to, he was sleeping with.
So that's pretty awesome.
That's always great.
The person's name is Allie Watkins.
Allie Watkins was reporting on this.
She published an article on BuzzFeed News about this.
FBI agents initially approached Ms.
Watkins about the relationship she had with Mr. Wolf, saying they were investigating unauthorized leaks.
And then the Justice Department told her in a letter sent in February her records had been seized.
Now here's the part where I start to get a little dicey.
So Allie Watkins seems like a piece of work.
Right.
She was tweeting out recently that, you know, that she sort of liked the character from House of Cards who apparently was sleeping with an older staffer to get leaked information, which makes perfect sense since apparently that's what she was doing.
She was in her early 20s and this guy was in his late 50s.
So clearly this is a love match that was happening right here.
But.
Here is a serious problem.
And it was a serious problem when Obama did it.
It's a serious problem when Trump does it.
When Obama was in office, you remember, he targeted the Associated Press and he targeted James Rosen of Fox News by essentially tapping their phones and checking their emails without permission.
And they were tapping his mom's phone, James Rosen's mom's phone, to try and determine his whereabouts in an attempt to determine a leaker from the State Department.
That was bad stuff.
You shouldn't be phone tapping journalists.
You shouldn't be white ring journalists.
You shouldn't be In unwarranted fashion, going after journalists' private information simply to lock down a leak.
It is the job of journalists to gather information in every legally conceivable way.
And she didn't do anything illegal by reporting on something that somebody leaked to her.
It was the guy who did something illegal.
So, chunking into her records is a serious problem.
It was bad when Obama did it.
And you can't protest one and say that the other is okay.
No matter how much you dislike Allie Watkins, and I think that she seems, again, like a piece of work, no matter how much you dislike the leak, Tapping journalists is not a good thing.
Just as if you don't like President Trump, you still can't tap him, right, if that's what happened at Trump Tower.
And no evidence of that.
But if you're objecting to tapping President Trump at Trump Tower...
You know, and the left says, well, we think it's justified.
They're going to have to really show how it was justified.
I don't see necessarily how this particular phone tap was justified simply because they wanted to track down the leaker inside the government.
You want to track down the leaker inside the government, then go track down the leaker inside the government.
You don't get to go after private people's records simply because you want the information that they have at their Well, I don't think that it's all that tough.
It depends what grade you're trying to teach.
call.
Okay.
Time for some mailbag.
So let's jump right in.
Christopher says, Hey Ben, when I graduate high school next year, I plan to pursue a career in teaching elementary school students.
I understand that many teachers are left leaning and I am not.
How can I keep conservative values while also doing what's best for our schools and my students?
Thanks.
Well, I don't think that it's all that tough.
It depends what grade you're trying to teach.
But if you can decide the curriculum, I think one of the things that you can do is just assign alternative readings.
So whatever the assigned textbook is, you use that and then you say, and here's some alternative viewpoints on the same set of facts.
And that's what a well-rounded teacher does.
I think that that would behoove all of us.
I mean, I think that the best education that I got, largely, was not only through teachers who did that, but also because I spent an awful lot of time outside of class reading about the material that I was reading inside of class.
You can do more by exposing people to new types of ideas than you can by simply going along to get along, I think, as long as you're not going to get fired.
Joe says, Hey Ben, I'm a graduate student in counseling psychology.
In my multicultural class, it was suggested by classmates that when students feel they accidentally had a microaggression slip when speaking, they're supposed to say, oops.
And when you feel a microaggression has been placed upon you, you are supposed to say, ouch, in class discussions.
Ben, in this situation, I'm deciding whether to be over the top sarcastic with this being practiced in class, or if I should openly talk about how stupid and infantile this idea is.
What do you suggest?
This is 100% real, not a drill.
Well, what I would do is, I wouldn't use the word stupid and infantile, even though it is indeed stupid and infantile.
I would come in with a bevy of social science research showing that microaggression culture is bad.
Go read Jonathan Haidt's piece with Greg Lukianoff over at The Atlantic.
I think it was last year.
All about the foolishness of the microaggression culture, how it's damaging to people, how it destroys our common space, and how it makes people more sensitive and incentivizes people to be victims.
Go check that out and then bring in a lot of data and then just say, listen, here, I have some real objections to doing this in class and here's why I'm not going to be participating.
I'm not trying to be a jerk.
I'm not trying to be rude.
Here's all the information that you need on why I'm not doing this and why I think it's foolish for us to pursue this policy.
So the classic by John Stuart Mill, of course, is On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, and that's sort of his doctrine of utilitarianism in a nutshell.
You know, his most famous work, obviously.
He also wrote a book literally called Utilitarianism.
But you can get a really good compendium of his stuff.
They make these compendiums from Cambridge.
Cambridge has these texts.
I'm looking at one right now.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings, edited by Stephen Colini.
Go check that out.
His stuff is well worth reading.
I'm not a complete believer in his brand of utilitarianism, but I appreciate his viewpoint on utilitarianism in government.
That I appreciate.
The idea that as long as I'm not harming you, the government has no business telling me what to do.
That I agree with.
Well, I'm not allowed to take that title from Jeremy Boring.
I mean, I think that faith is a constant struggle.
I don't think it's that you feel struggles and then you stop struggling.
Life is all about you trying to Breach the cognitive dissonance between the fact that suffering happens in the world and you have difficult times and the fact that there's a plan for you and that there's a purpose to life.
And this is a constant struggle.
This is why in the Bible the name of Israel, right?
It's Yisrael in Hebrew.
That literally means struggled with God and overcame, right?
That's what it means.
It's from the situation where Jacob wrestles with the angel and he's renamed at that point from Jacob to Israel because he struggled with God and overcame.
Okay, but that doesn't mean you overcome God.
It means that you do struggle with the concept of God.
You struggle With is there a purpose to life?
Is there a reason in the universe?
I think absolutely there is.
I think Western civilization is built on that purpose and reason.
And I think the evidence is all around us, not just in nature.
I mean, that's the easy answer.
As you look to nature, you look how beautiful it is.
You look at the fact that you have a baby, you have a baby kid, you know, like when my kids were born, you look at that and you say, how can there not be a God?
I understand the emotional aspect of that.
look at the civilization that surrounds you understand that is unique in human history and that is the outgrowth of a 3 000 year process beginning at sinai and ending with you here today right and and if you don't see the hand of god in that then i would suggest that you have not delved into the history of thought deeply enough uh or that you are you are relying on a very reductionist view of materialism to define your life which i find utterly unfulfilling and very Don says, Ben, enjoy the show.
I understand your stance on trade.
I may be naive on using it as a tool.
I can only tell you from working in manufacturing, if I have two sources of steel, if both meet my design requirements and one is cheaper, I'm going to be using it.
I'm not really looking at Buy American, I'm looking at the bottom line.
If that steel comes in with the tariff, my other supplier becomes the primary due to cost.
Yes, some of that higher cost may be moved to the consumer.
My question to you is if the lower cost is due to folks like China dumping steel below cost to manufacture, is that fair to other producers?
How do you manage that inequity?
Well, the truth is that there are always going to be companies that are undercutting you.
Now, is it fair?
Look, do I think that China should be subsidizing its steel industry?
No.
But do I think that it is worthwhile for the United States to then tariff Chinese steel and somehow undercut American consumers in More efficient industries?
No, I don't think that's right either.
Because as you say, let's say that you now have to spend more money on the steel supplier.
Well, that means that you're going to be spending less money on your employees, presumably.
But your costs went up.
So either you pass that on to the consumer, or you're spending that money in other places.
Is it fair to you that you now have to buy more expensive steel?
Because we have to protect some industry here as opposed to not protecting that industry.
And the idea that, by the way, China can subsidize all of its industries is obviously untrue.
China cannot subsidize all of its industries.
It can pick a couple of key industries it wants to subsidize.
There are national security reasons, for example, that if we don't want America's steel production dropping below a certain point, we tariff.
But we're not anywhere near that point right now.
And if China wants to waste its own money subsidizing industries in order to undercut the price of steel in the United States, that's their problem and it's our gain.
Honestly, their subsidy is our gain to a certain extent in that industry, and it's our loss if we tariff our own people, because a tariff is a tax on our own consumers and our own producers.
Samuel says, hey, Ben, since Mike Pence would become president if President Trump were impeached, do you really think the policy would change much if in the off chance of the left ever actually succeeded in impeaching Trump?
No, I don't.
I think that, you know, President Pence would govern very much like President Trump has been governing.
He's been very conservative, President Trump, to my great surprise and satisfaction.
Jefferson says, Hi, Ben.
You've mentioned recently how the media has been shying away from new reports outlining the imminent demise of Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare.
Would you mind expanding on this?
And what options should be considered in addressing and resolving this threat?
Great show, greater Tumblr.
Well, I appreciate it, Jefferson.
So the media have been remiss in reporting on this beyond sort of the basics.
You haven't seen blanket coverage that Social Security is going to be bankrupt by 3034, Medicare will be bankrupt by 2026.
Okay, that is scary stuff.
We're not talking long ways down the road.
We are talking about within the foreseeable future, like in the next 10 to 15 years.
That means that we have to figure something out.
The way to figure something out is by totally restructuring this stuff, bring it down to local level, getting the federal government out of the business of Social Security and Medicare altogether, putting it back on charitable institutions and community institutions at the outside if we can.
We have to make the payments to the people who have already been guaranteed payments, but if you are younger, you should instead be given the opportunity to take your money out of Social Security, and you should be told instead to Put that money to invest that money in stocks, in bonds, in whatever it is that you choose to do.
Also, we should raise the retirement age.
That's something we should do right now.
People are living longer.
It is stupid not to raise the retirement age for people who are not already retired.
And we should look at whether benefits are cost-of-living adjusted.
I do not think they should be because money does not legitimately have sex with itself and then multiply into new money.
That's not how it works.
When you put something into the Social Security Trust Fund, isn't my grandma paid in 50 bucks a year in 1953?
And now she gets out 3,000 bucks a month.
That money didn't magically multiply.
Uh, Akraz says, what are the standards for counterintelligence investigations and privacy?
I don't understand what the rules are.
If there is no evidence of crime was committed.
Well, counterintelligence investigations, you don't need, for example, a warrant to spy on foreign sources.
You do need a warrant to spy on American sources.
If you're spying on foreign sources and Americans get caught in the loop, then that is a more dicey issue.
Usually you have to get a FISA warrant for something like that, or you may have to get a FISA warrant for something like that.
If you're spying on an American citizen like Carter Page, then you do need to actually go get a FISA warrant with court approval.
Counterintelligence investigations generally require less of a burden in order for you to go gather information than criminal investigations because American citizens are the only ones who can be prosecuted in criminal investigations in the United States.
And they have rights that foreigners simply don't in our system.
Shelby says, hey, Ben, my husband and I have been saving since we got married to travel to Israel.
I'll be going this year.
The group we're touring with has done a great job of scheduling us pretty much everything you'd want to see while there.
Is there anything that ranks at the top of your list to see or foods or restaurants that are must try while over there?
Thanks for keeping us informed and grounded through your show.
Shelby, so the one that people tend to miss on the tours is Svats.
So, Sfat is the home of Kabbalistic thinking.
It's sort of the spiritual center of Hasidic, the kind of spiritual side of Judaism, the more spiritual side of Judaism.
Obviously, everything in Jerusalem you should go visit.
All the main points you're going to hit.
Masada, obviously, is pretty amazing.
But I think that Sfat is one of my favorite places in Israel just because you can You can feel the holiness of the city emanating, and at least the dedication to spirituality of the people living there.
It's also an artist colony, which is really neat.
Like, they have these little hole-in-the-wall shops on this block-long area.
When I say hole-in-the-wall, I mean no bigger than the size, not much bigger than a phone booth.
I mean, maybe three phone booths put together, and they have all these different artists who put their stuff together there, and they will cook you, and they have just this great Middle Eastern food.
They have like za'atar on On a particular type of bread that's just delicious.
So, check out some of the indigenous cooking if you can, right?
Don't just stick to sort of the chain restaurants or the higher level kosher cooking, because you can do that anywhere.
Instead, I would check out some of the roadside stands.
They're really good.
They're really good.
Everyone has an opinion.
Each one is different.
I'd like to get your thoughts.
Okay.
This is not an opinion.
This is fact.
Vaccinations work.
Everyone has an opinion.
Each one is different.
I'd like to get your thoughts.
Okay, this is not an opinion.
This is fact.
Vaccinations work.
Do it.
Do it.
Okay, the myths about autism and vaccination are just that.
They're myths, they're based on bad science, they're a bunch of crap.
It is not true.
Okay, and people who do not vaccinate their kids because they're a yoga teacher told them not to vaccinate their kids, or because they were listening to Jenny McCarthy, or somebody who doesn't know a damn thing about science, it's idiotic.
Okay, we have essentially wiped smallpox out.
On planet Earth, because of vaccination.
Vaccination is one of the great inventions in human history, one of the great discoveries in human history.
And to not vaccinate your child is not only irresponsible for your child, it is irresponsible for other children, because there are kids who cannot actually get vaccinations and require herd immunization in order to prevent them from getting sick.
I talked about this a couple years ago.
Go back and listen to the episode.
I did nearly an entire episode on this with regard to my daughter who came down with whooping cough.
She'd been vaccinated, but the problem is that the vaccination is only about 85% effective, which means you require everybody to be vaccinated so that there is herd immunity, right?
The level of vaccination effectiveness Skyrockets when everybody has a vaccination.
There are externalities to not getting vaccinated.
So normally I would say do whatever you want.
It's your kid.
It's your life.
But I don't believe that number one, if you endanger the health of your kid, that's OK.
And number two, I don't think that if you endanger the health of somebody else's kid, a kid who has leukemia and can't get a vaccination because of a weak immune system, for example, that this is palatable under any circumstances.
Get your kid vaccinated.
OK, final question here.
Justin says, I'm in Pennsylvania.
I'm a Pennsylvania high school senior graduating just a few hours after you finish your podcast today.
Once I do, I'd eventually like to introduce myself to the public sphere as a fresh conservative voice and potentially campaign for office at some point.
Any advice on how I can get started?
Thanks, love the show.
So read, read, read, and read.
Just read, okay?
So I think there are too many figures in the conservative movement and in politics generally who don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Or who don't know what they don't know, and who don't spend a lot of time actually cultivating the expertise necessary to talk about particular issues.
I spend an awful lot of time researching this show, reading.
I've been doing it for years.
I mean, I have 6,000 volumes at home.
I've probably read 5,000 of them.
That is not meant as a brag.
It is meant as an example of if you want to get knowledgeable something, you have to dedicate enormous sums of time to it.
So read, write, get out there, report.
If you want to be prominent in politics, give people information they don't have.
Not just perspective.
Everybody has a perspective.
But information they may not have heard is a lot more valuable than a perspective that they probably already have heard in some form.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
So a thing that I like today...
So I just have to point this out.
This was just fantastic.
Local TV, San Diego.
There was a reporter who decided that it would be worthwhile to report on what they call the inflatable run, which is, I guess, where people dress up in giant, like, inflatable plastic thingies, and then they run around like idiots.
And it's called the adrenaline run.
Okay, sounds like fun for a group of people.
This was the most awkward segment of TV in modern media history, which is saying a lot.
Here's what it looked like.
This is the world of inflatables.
Give yourselves a nice round of applause, everybody.
These are just the volunteers coming out here today.
And Addie, what kind of fun do you think you're going to have today?
Lots of fun.
Lots of fun.
That's a good kind.
Helping everybody.
I didn't hear the question.
I'm sorry.
What kind of fun do you think you can find here today?
All kinds?
All kinds of fun?
Repeat after me.
Abracadabra, one, two, three.
Abracadabra, one, two, three.
Now it's time to see what we see.
Now it's time to see what we see.
Oh my goodness.
Holy crap.
So yeah, and then that waking nightmare just arrived from the back and he talks to this inflatable guy back there.
Wow, that is local television, man.
I hope it never goes away because it is spectacular.
So, amazing stuff.
Okay, quick thing I hate.
All righty, so yesterday we had Ben Rhodes, the former Obama administration liar, going around and talking about how we need the government to watchdog Facebook.
We need the government to watchdog social media to ensure that we are not told bad information.
This absolute liar.
Now we have James Clapper, who also is a liar, right, who essentially likely perjured himself before Congress.
James Clapper, we have, saying that what we actually need is an FCC for social media.
So he wants the government to regulate social media too.
You're getting the message that a lot of these people on the left are very interested in regulating social media, maybe because they're losing the conversation when they can't regulate it?
Here's James Clapper making a fool of himself.
I believe, and I've said this publicly, that what we need for the social media platforms is something akin to the Federal Communications Commission, which was set up in the 1920s to regulate radio and later television.
We have nothing comparable for the social media platforms.
And as we've seen, they'd like to just regulate themselves.
I believe they need oversight and regulation from the government.
Perfect.
That's just what we need.
We need a government that lies to us, regulating people so that they don't lie to us.
I think this will just be great.
So James Clapper, who lied in front of Congress, he's going to tell us.
Ben Rhodes, who lied to the American people, he's going to tell us.
You ever wonder why I'm a First Amendment absolutist?
This is the reason I'm a First Amendment absolutist.
Keep these idiots out of the business of regulating the information that you see.
Otherwise, you're not going to have the information that you need.
We'll be back here on Monday.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Take time with your family.
Enjoy life.
Find some spiritual purpose.
Just have a really solid, purposeful weekend.
And I'll see you here on Monday.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.
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