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Sept. 30, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
57:02
Cameron Kasky | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 21
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When you're in a room and you hear about those schools, everything gets silent, everything gets awkward, everything gets melancholy.
I can't have that.
When people hear Stoneman Douglas, I don't want them to think about people crying, I want them to think about people taking action.
no matter what that action might be.
I can't wait for today's Sunday special with Cameron Caskey from Middle Ground.
We'll get to talk with Cameron in just one second.
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Cameron, thank you so much for stopping by.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
So, for folks who don't know, Cameron was one of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, when the awful shooting took place, and he was subsequently a member of March for Our Lives.
Now, he is one of the leaders of a group called Middle Ground.
Are you a founder of Middle Ground?
Yes, I am.
Okay, so tell us a little bit about Middle Ground, then we'll kind of backtrack and talk about how we got here.
So, one of the lessons I've learned since starting March for Our Lives, and this was a truly difficult one to grasp, was that, surprisingly enough, I don't know everything.
Now, as a 17-year-old boy who was dead set on the fact that I knew everything, that threw me for a loop.
And halfway through my tour with March for Our Lives this summer, where we were advocating for more accessible voting and encouraging people to register, I realized...
I was in Texas and I spoke to some people.
Maybe the people who disagree with me don't want the country to be a bad place.
Maybe they just have different views.
And I was born in a bubble where my heavily liberal mindset that I still maintain convinced me that anybody who didn't agree with me had malintent.
And they didn't.
I thought that people who didn't agree with me on gun laws didn't care when kids died.
That's not the case.
I learned a lot of things.
So, I thought, how can I prevent people from making the mistakes that I made?
We've got a really engaged young generation, there's no lack of passion, but there's a lack of information, and there's a lack of civility, very frequently.
And very often, there is incivility in the guise of passion, and that's fine.
But I want to move into the future with a more humanized look at politics.
I think that everybody in the country, well, I would call 96% of the country wants the country to be a better place.
How do we fix this?
I mean, we're in a more polarized place than ever.
What can we do to make this better?
So I thought to create a program called Middle Ground.
And at Middle Ground, we would really explore everybody's perspectives.
Personally, my opinion hasn't changed, but my opinions on opinions have changed.
I respect people who disagree with me.
I want to learn from them because I'm a child.
I can't rent a car.
I can't buy a house.
I'm not the expert on everything.
And very frequently, I'm treated like the expert on things.
And, you know, I believe that my insight is valuable.
I think that a fact, whether spoken by a 3-year-old or a 70-year-old is still a fact, and insight is subjective, but I want to create a more educated youth.
That's really obviously mature, and I have a lot of sympathy for you because you were sort of thrust into the public eye in a fashion you obviously never expected or wanted.
I've been in the public eye at your age, and it's definitely a difficult thing.
And the lesson that you learned, you learned faster than I learned it, for sure.
And so that's definitely a path you've had to take.
So let's go back to the beginning.
So let's start with you as a person.
Where were you born?
What's your family like?
So I was born in Hollywood, but Hollywood, Florida.
I grew up in South Florida.
My parents got divorced when I was 10.
I was lucky enough to get two amazing step-parents.
Not everybody gets those.
I was happily raised by four people who really had a great dialogue with each other, very respectful and very understanding of me.
I wasn't always the easiest kid to raise.
I have an older brother who is actually pretty easy to raise and a younger brother who has autism.
Surprisingly enough, my younger brother, who does have special needs, requires the least attention of the three of us.
I have a stepsister who's lovely as well.
I mean, I'm definitely the worst person in my family.
And I think I'm a good person, so that's saying something.
And, you know, I grew up with a very liberal mindset.
I was knocking doors for Obama when I was seven years old.
There was lack of information for me.
I thought that John McCain was running with Tina Fey because I had seen on the news that Tina Fey was portraying Sarah Palin and I wasn't able to put two and two together.
But I always cared because I always thought that... I always wanted more from the country.
I was a Bobby Kennedy fanatic for a while because I like people who look at the future.
And that's really what gave me the progressive mindset is I'm not opposed to conservative views, but I think that a lot of conservatism will have people thinking more of using the past as a model as opposed to a springboard.
I think there's always somewhere we can go.
I think everything can be better.
And that was always my mindset.
So I was always very vocal, very loud, very obnoxious, very flippantly rude.
And I found theater, which was really a way for me to take my voice and hone it and find something I cared about.
So I started doing plays and musicals.
I sounded like crap, but I sang a lot.
And it helped me a lot.
It helped me become expressive.
It helped me empathize with people.
I mean, did you ever do plays in high school or anything?
I didn't.
No, it was in our boys' school, so it wasn't that much we could do.
Well, acting helps you understand other people a lot, because you have to put yourself in other people's shoes.
Sometimes it's easy and people can just read a script and become someone else, but it took a lot more for me.
I very often played a bad guy, which didn't really help me.
Are you familiar with Little Shop of Horrors?
I was the dentist.
There's not a lot of humanity you can search for.
It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who is a psychopath.
But, you know, I... Well, obviously, that would've been hard for me, but... But I, um... You know, I developed a deep empathy for my fellow human being that drove me to a very passionate and emotional stance.
Then my school gets shot up, and I say, OK, I've heard of Sandy Hook, I've heard of Columbine, I've heard all these things, and when you're in a room and you hear about those schools, everything gets silent, everything gets awkward, everything gets melancholy.
I can't have that.
When people hear Stoneman Douglas, I don't want them to think about people crying.
I want them to think about people taking action, no matter what that action might be.
So take me through that day.
What exactly was that day like for you?
So before the shooting, I was in my drama class.
We were halfway through a song that I was doing.
Again, I sounded like hot garbage, but I remembered the special needs kids at my school are let out a half hour before everybody else because they're picked up at the bus loop and they have to be picked up before the buses come.
So on days where I had school and my mother was at work, I picked up my brother and I brought him to drama.
He loved it.
He got attention from the girls.
He felt like, you know, he felt like a cool guy, which he is.
And it was about 2.20, and I was supposed to pick him up at 2.10, so I said, oh crap, I gotta go.
I rush out of the drama room, run over to pick up my brother, because I have to be back for my song, and suddenly there's a fire alarm.
And I say, uh-oh, the buses are about to come, and I'm with the special needs students, and we have to go in the bus loop to avoid the fire.
You know, there are a lot of very high-functioning students in the ESE program at Stoneman Douglas, there are a lot of lower-functioning students, but it's a hassle to get in the parking lot, and I was just like, okay, this is annoying.
Especially being outside of the class you're supposed to be in during a fire drill, because then you have to tell the teacher, they have to walkie the staff to make sure everybody's accounted for.
And while we're out there waiting, this kid near me says, shooter.
I look at him and I say, that's not cool.
That's not cool at all.
I said something very inappropriate.
If this reaches a younger audience, I'm going to avoid it.
But suddenly everybody starts running back into the school.
And there are teachers beckoning us inside, and my initial thought is, okay, we're with the ESE class, and several other classes, but we're with the ESE class, in the middle of the bus loop, and there was a, it must have been a fake fire drill, and the buses were about to come, so they were like, everybody get inside so you don't get hit by the buses.
Then we're sent into a classroom, the lights turn off, and I say, something's going on here.
Took me a couple minutes to realize that there was gunfire.
I heard conflicting rumors.
It was hysteria in the room, but it was the type of hysteria where you are hysterical but still have to be quiet because you don't know where the gunman is.
He could have been right next door to us.
I had no idea.
I didn't hear any gunfire.
I thought I did, but when you know there's a shooter and you hear something, you think it's gunfire.
It's natural.
And everybody was telling me conflicting stories, and this was just the people next to us.
They were whispering.
They said 50 people were killed.
Two people were killed.
This teacher was killed that wasn't.
This person was the shooter.
This person was the shooter.
And I spent the whole time thinking, I really, really, really hope my brother doesn't understand what's going on.
And that's a moral qualm.
Do I tell him what's going on because he deserves the truth, or do I allow him the bliss of ignorance for the time being?
But there were also a lot of other special needs students there and some of them were non-verbal.
But non-verbal doesn't mean you can't make noise.
And some of them were yelling, some of them were making loud shrieks and hollers and fortunately the special needs specialists at Soman Douglas were able to keep everybody together and it was a problem that was solved quickly.
We were able to be released.
The SWAT team came in.
The first thing we saw was a rifle in the glass crack, so we thought we were toast.
But the SWAT team came in.
We run outside.
I get picked up by my parents at a hotel a couple hours later.
And then came a week of chaos, but also peace.
All of the laws of physics kind of didn't exist in Parkland.
It was as if the world had stopped.
There was this eerie calm, but also this fiery madness.
It was...
It was a time where I said, in this lack of... While nobody around us knows what's going on, I have to step up and say, here's what I think.
The cameras came, and I couldn't have them come and film people crying.
I had to have them come and I had to have people stand in front of them and say, we cannot have this anymore.
We demand a change.
Parkland is not the city of people who are going to encourage you to join our melancholy.
Parkland is the city of people who are going to encourage you to take action.
If you could have had your druthers about how the media treats these sorts of situations, obviously you don't.
I mean, the media does what the media do, which is they cover the news when it happens.
But if you could have had your druthers emotionally, just politically in every way, what would you have the media do?
How would you have the media cover these sorts of situations?
Well, it's a double-edged sword.
Because on the one hand, I was on national news while there were bodies that were still warm and people hadn't been buried yet.
And at the time, I didn't really think about it.
But in retrospect, it makes me question, was that appropriate?
On the one hand, the cameras are going to leave.
And I want to make sure the message that I believe is right gets across while the cameras are still there.
On the other hand, people are dead.
And I don't regret anything I did because I know that what I was doing I did because I believed it was right.
And that's the best I can do.
But in regards to how the media covers it, I think that the names of shooters should never be released.
Daily Wire covers that very well.
I know that there are multiple pundits as well that do not name the shooters.
I think that making the shooters celebrities is flippantly inappropriate.
I think that...
I think that I was very often treated like an expert, when I'm not.
I'm not the expert on anything.
So in the days immediately following, obviously there are a lot of cameras there, people are looking to you for comment.
When did you and the other members of March for Our Lives really start to consolidate into a group?
Sure, so February 15th, we were all a bit separated.
And it was February 16th, two days after the shooting, that I was able to kind of see who was ready to speak out and get them together.
We all came to my house.
I thought of doing a march in DC in my Ghostbusters pajamas in my bathroom.
And I said, okay, the whole nation in one way or another is galvanized right now.
What can we do?
How can we materialize this?
And I said, Let's get everyone to D.C.
and let's demand a change.
So quickly the team started to grow.
More and more people became part.
All my friends from Douglas that I knew were well-spoken and eloquent joined.
Some people just showed up at my house and some of them ended up becoming very passionate and well-spoken advocates for what we were advocating for.
But by what I would call February 19th, our team was together.
So the tactics that March for Our Lives used came under a lot of criticism, including from people like me, because obviously at the very beginning, particularly, there was a lot of focus on some of the stuff you talked about earlier.
There was an implication that was put out by particular members of the team in public settings that if there was a disagreement about politics, that this was a reflection of lack of care about what had happened.
What do you think could have been done to mitigate against that?
To be honest with you, a lot of that was me.
A lot of that was me telling my friends, you know, these people don't agree with us.
They don't care.
They care more about their guns than they care about kids getting killed.
Anything I'll criticize about March for Our Lives really comes from me.
I started it.
I was whispering in my friends' ears the whole time.
I know the people in March for Our Lives.
I know them pretty much like the back of my hand.
And I know that these are people who really just want the world to be a better place.
And a lot of our errors in messaging, particularly if you don't like us, you don't care, came from me.
And I believed it.
And I believed it until relatively recently.
I'm embarrassed, certainly, but I'm also, I'm not losing sleep over it, because I believed it.
What do you think changed that for you?
I mean, you talked about being in Texas, but obviously, for those of us who are watching from afar, the first time that I saw you on TV, I think, was probably during the CNN town hall event, which was obviously, got huge ratings, was a big television event.
I criticized Jake Tapper for it, because I suggested that the media really should have, if they want to have a discussion of the issues, they should do a discussion of the issues, as opposed to sort of an emotionally driven event.
What changed from there to where you are now, which is somebody who wants to have discussions based on the issues?
I think I reached out for a bit.
I can tell you the exact catalyst.
There wasn't really a moment where it clicked on me that I need to start opening these conversations.
But I realized, look, the left's never going to get rid of the right.
The right's never going to get rid of the left.
They certainly evolve.
The parties change over time.
But as long as we have a binary system, it's a binary system.
And half the country doesn't want the world to be a bad place.
I thought that.
I thought that half the country, the Republicans, were evil.
I think that there are some great people on the right and left are both lovely and people on the right and left are both awful.
I don't want to say there's very fine people on both sides because that has been used in ways I can never accept.
But I learned that there's such a – we're all people.
I mean I said this yesterday.
A lot of people were politicizing 9-11.
And I said, look, we're Americans today.
And I learned that overall we're Americans.
And we have – there's a creed.
There's a national understanding that we need to be a better place.
And right now – Looking back, it didn't used to be like this.
I think this has been a long time coming.
I think that right now our socio-political fabric is not only bad because of Trump.
I think Trump doesn't do anything good for it.
I think Trump is too focused on owning the libs and not uniting the country.
But we've earned this.
America as a whole is responsible for this division and we need to come together.
Okay, so I'm going to ask you a bunch more questions about sort of your political perspective, how it's changed, and where you are now in just one second.
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OK, so obviously you said you were the driving force when it came to some of the emotional response to what had happened.
Now that you've kind of moved toward trying to pursue a conversation, it was something I noticed early with you, by the way, on Twitter.
I remember you and I had an exchange on Twitter, and it was actually relatively cordial.
You said something, I responded.
It was about Chicago, I believe.
Yeah, I think that's right, exactly.
It was about Chicago gun violence being tied to Indiana.
Exactly.
And so we just kind of went back and forth on that and then you made some comments and I liked them and I said, this is good, what you're doing here.
And I thought, this is somebody who's actually considering, you know, how to go about making the country a better place.
Why do you think that you had to break from March for Our Lives?
Why not stick around and try and change the thing from the inside, for example?
Well, at the end of the day, March for Our Lives is advocating for things that I'm currently not advocating for.
Now, on a policy stance, I agree with March for Our Lives almost entirely.
And they are currently involved with advocating for policy change.
They're involved with raising awareness about gun violence in parts of the country that are very often forgotten, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that, and I'm proud of my friends.
Truly, I believe that my friends are great people who really want the country to be a better place, and I'm proud to cheer them on to the future, proud to help, but right now I'm focused more on social things.
I'm focused more on the fact that we all have that family member that's why we can't talk about Trump at Thanksgiving.
And I think that we need to de-stigmatize these conversations.
March for Our Lives is advocating for policy.
I'm advocating for conversation.
So I couldn't be connected to March for Our Lives when I was so focused on other things.
It was bad for March for Our Lives.
It was bad for me.
I'm proud of my friends.
I always will be.
And I'm doing something else.
So what are the conversations that you're trying to pursue?
Obviously, you're here, so this is part of the conversation.
We'll talk policy in a little bit.
But what are the other kind of conversations you're trying to pursue, and how are you going about doing that?
I think that, strangely enough, the conversation that needs to be pursued is the conversation about conversations.
Is the fact that, you know, if I'm speaking to somebody who does not share my views on abortion, that does not mean that they want to kill babies or they want to oppress women.
I think that if I'm talking to somebody about the Israel-Palestine issue and one side of the issue doesn't hate Jews and one side of the issue doesn't hate Palestinians, I think that we need to stop it.
You said this to me before.
The left and the right need to stop attacking each other's worst arguments.
I think that's a big problem.
So I'm here to say, not even where can we agree, but how can we approach this respectfully?
So you say you were progressive on politics before.
You're progressive on politics now.
So what is your stance on gun control?
I think that no citizen of this country needs to have a semi-automatic rifle.
I also think that when I'm an adult, I will get a concealed carry permit.
And if you try to hurt my family, I'm going to hurt you.
Okay, so what do you think is the difference between, I don't mean to grill you on politics, but what do you think is the difference between a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle in this context?
I think that if you look at the situations we've had in this country where people have used semi-automatic rifles for mass shootings, we see that a lot of it, that having a semi-automatic rifle will make people feel empowered.
And I know that As you would say, facts don't care about your feelings, and the facts will suggest other things.
But I think that if somebody is attacking me while a semi-automatic rifle has longer range, I think that the risk of being attacked by somebody farther range as opposed to having a semi-automatic handgun is not as great as the reward of not allowing people to buy these rifles. I think that the risk of being attacked by somebody I think that from a logical standpoint, there's evidence that shows that people with these kinds of weapons feel more powerful.
If you look at the psychological analyses of many mass shooters, there's a lot of entitlement.
There's a lot of an attempt to be known, an attempt to feel large and powerful, and I feel like a large and powerful gun can frequently make people feel that.
I also think that the shooting in Las Vegas could not have been done with anything but an AR-15.
I know the shooter used a bump stock, but if that person only had semi-automatic handguns and was firing from that distance, then it wouldn't be as effective.
Now, I understand that that is very often treated as an anomaly.
It's very often treated as an outlier when we discuss the issues with these shootings.
But I think that as long as another one of these can happen, which right now it can, we need to address the issue as it is.
How much of the problem do you think is the instrument and how much is it the people?
Considering there are, you know, 100, 200 million rifles in circulation in the United States, probably 100 million handguns in circulation in the United States, which is basically a gun per person in the United States.
And barring a full-scale confiscation of rifles, how would you propose to achieve this?
I think that the way I look at it is a lot of attacks, whether it be suicide or shooting, and this is why I very often advocate for red flag laws, even though some people argue they're unconstitutional, I think a lot of these things are reactionary.
I think that a lot of mass shooters will be able to find a weapon on the black market or illegally, and a lot of them, if they are, it takes more time, and if they have to go through a harder process, will not be as quick to do it.
I watched the videos, I don't know why I did, but I watched the videos that my shooter put out, and he said, "You will know who I am." And that reflects to me somebody who wants to feel powerful.
And I watched really everything, hours of videos on him, which I don't know why I did.
I like to think of it as people can't look away from a car accident.
And I saw a reflection of a desire to be powerful.
I've said this several times, but I think that it's something we need to address.
I think that between facts and feelings, there's logic.
And we have to look at the facts and also apply our insight.
Well, why not start with sort of the most localized solutions?
So a lot of these solutions that you're talking about in terms of gun control are blanket solutions that affect literally hundreds of millions of people.
Whereas, for example, in the Parkland case, it's pretty obvious that the Broward County Sheriff's Office was engaged in massive malfeasance at the very least.
At the very least, yes.
And the school board wasn't very good either.
Right.
To say the very least.
I believe that there are many changes that can be made on a local level.
And I then began to advocate for them.
I think that school safety is important to focus on.
I also think some aspects of school safety are dangerous.
For example, I think metal detectors are not safe.
I think that you've been to an airport, there are long lines around metal detectors, and getting everybody in one place makes them just as susceptible to shootings.
That's similarly my issue with single entry points.
I know for a fact that the Broward School Board had hundreds of millions of dollars that were allotted for school safety that are completely missing.
And my friend Kenneth Preston actually covers this in a lot of his investigative journalism.
He's fantastic.
And there was foul play.
I'm consistently openly critical of Superintendent Runcie.
I will sleep so much more comfortably at night the second he's gone.
Sheriff Israel has... I was initially on his side.
Not because I knew him.
That was really why.
I had met him a couple times.
He seemed like a nice guy.
But as time went on, I realized this is horrible.
Now, what Broward Sheriff and Broward School Board should have done was say, we messed up.
We messed up.
We're owning up to it.
Here's how we messed up.
Here's what we're going to do better.
I would give them a bit of credit for that because I think that owning up to your mistakes is very important.
That being said, I think that I think that instead of doing that, well I know for a fact instead of doing that, they then went out and were touting how great of a school year it was.
Donna Korn, who ran against Mr. Petty, the father of one of the victims at our school, said it was an amazing school year.
You don't say that when a school gets shot up.
You don't.
And it was an amazing school year.
I know for a fact.
Stoneman Douglas ran out of printer paper for a while and we had to use legal.
Now is that a crime against humanity?
No.
But the Broward School Board has a slew of issues that they simply refuse to own up to.
I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, and it's been a pretty short one.
I think I've made a bit too many for how long I've been around.
We all have been.
But I'll own up to them.
I've said some dumb stuff, and I'll tell you that it was dumb, but right now the school board and the sheriff, like you have said, they are not holding themselves accountable.
They are not auditing themselves.
There are so many things that they could do to bring some sort of justice here.
I wouldn't even say justice.
Do something.
And they're not.
So you have to create a proportional relationship between what you believe in.
If you believe in more gun rights, then that's your own cup of tea and we can talk about that.
If you believe in gun control, remember that at the end of the day, I'm a gun control advocate, but I know guns don't kill people, people kill people.
The thing is, people very frequently kill each other with guns.
No question.
But let's talk a little bit about, you talk about the tenor of the conversation and the content of the conversation.
It seems to me one of the areas where there could be crossover is that the tenor of the conversation is generated by the content.
Meaning that when we immediately in the aftermath of a shooting like this jump to are set beginning points.
And this happens on Twitter very quickly, right?
As soon as there's a mass shooting, one half of the people on Twitter jump to, let's take all the guns, let's ban rifles, let's take heavy gun control action.
And the other side jump to, it was a safety zone, it was a gun-free zone, we can't do anything.
There are certain areas where there are agreement, And what's weird is that it seems like it's almost impossible to even have conversations about those areas of agreement because both sides are making hay off of the areas where we disagree.
So, for example, we agree on the actions that the school board should have taken.
We do agree on how the media should be treating the names of shooters because it's absurd to glorify shooters and repeat their names publicly.
That's why we don't do it at Daily Wire.
But instead, There was a jump immediately by the media, which I think, frankly, used you guys as props, to push an agenda that they agree with.
I think that CNN agrees with the agenda that March for Our Lives is pushing, and so they started to push that in a way that they wouldn't have after, for example, the mass shooting at a church in Texas, where a bunch of the people who were there were members of the NRA.
The guy who shot the shooter was a member of the NRA.
Do you feel that the media's bias on these issues contributes to a lack of understanding?
I feel like the media's bias on every issue contributes to a lack of understanding.
I don't think, I think there are very few publications out there that are straightforward about their bias.
I think that, for example, I'm very respectful towards MSNBC.
Because MSNBC is a liberal news network that tells you it's a liberal news network.
Fox News got rid of Fair and Balanced.
You can give them credit for that.
Daily Wire is a conservative publication that does not pretend it's not a conservative publication.
And I think that as long as people are straightforward with what they're saying and don't try to, you know, throw in hasty generalizations, don't try to throw in any bias that's not admitted, we can do some good things here.
I think if people report on the news... I'm trying to think of the best way to say it.
If people report on the events and not their interpretation, they leave the interpretation up to you, we would have a much better, more understanding society.
So what's amazing to watch with folks like you, and I'm friendly with Kyle Cash, another student at the school, is that it seems like there are a lot of people who are honestly seeking more information, people who are going through an intellectual journey.
Obviously, you're going through that intellectual and emotional journey.
And I have a ton of respect for that because the minute that journey stops, you stop being a human being.
Well, I think that Kyle, for example, he's somebody that I have a deep understanding for.
Kyle represents, not in his own way, but what was done with him, a bit of hypocrisy, if you ask me.
I think that a lot of people went out and said, here's the left parading these kids around.
And then the NRA found a student from Stoneman Douglas who was pro-gun and said, look at this kid who's pro-gun from Stoneman Douglas.
Well, there's no question.
I mean, I was one of the people pushing Kyle.
Sure.
And I will be open about the fact that what I was doing was essentially saying, look, to say that there is a monolithic opinion at Stoneman Douglas is inaccurate.
Here's a student who feels a different way and who actually, in my opinion, was going out and trying to work with people on both sides of the aisle, at least legislatively, and try and meet with as many people on both sides of the aisle as possible.
That's why I'm appreciative of what you're doing.
But yeah, I mean, this does raise a larger question of how do you think that we in the media should be treating people who are 17 years old?
Again, I was there, so I was a syndicated columnist when I was 17, but my own perspective when I was 17 was that I better learn things fast because you're not 17 forever and nobody's going to pay attention to you just for your age.
Sure, I have a question for you.
Sure.
I saw an article of yours that was, here's a list of all the dumb things I've said.
Yeah.
What's someone you said at 17 that you are not a fan of?
Let's see, I wrote a piece when I was 18 talking about enemy civilian casualties, saying essentially that I had very little care about them because I was more interested in protecting the American soldiers.
The piece was really badly phrased.
It's a bad piece.
There's a piece that I wrote on Israel and Palestinians when I was 19, I believe.
That was bad.
I would say that most of the stuff that I've said that was bad, that the ratio of me saying stupid stuff to not stupid stuff was much higher when I was younger.
And then gradually over time, you hope to get better at it, obviously.
But yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of columns that I wrote when I was 18, 19, 20 years old that I just think are not very good.
And I've openly stated I don't think that they're very good.
There was one from 2006 when I was 22 about the use of espionage law to prosecute people or sedition law to prosecute people that I think is an idiotic column.
You know, I've been writing a million words a year since I was 17 years old, so there's a lot there.
There's a lot of stupid crap I've written, and that's why I have a lot of sympathy for what you're going through, and it's hard to do it in public.
I mean, it's hard to do it in public knowing that everything's going to get picked apart, too.
I mean, I'm sure I'll say things right now that I'm incredibly proud of that I, when I'm 34, will say I'm full of crap for.
I'm interested in seeing that day.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's the journey that we all go through and it's interesting and fun to watch people who are actually trying to go through that journey as opposed to sort of battening down the hatches and being in that box.
I'm going to ask you some more about that and what your sources of information are in just a second.
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Okay, so Cameron, let's talk about where you get your information.
Since you say that you were a progressive from a very young age, I was a conservative from as long as I can remember, so again, I sympathize from the opposite point of view.
What sources of information do you look at and how do you gather that information and then sift through it?
I read everything from CNN to Fox News to Daily Wire to Young Turks.
I try to read everything because I think that there are common themes in everything that's presented.
I think that I can get the story from everything that's presented and I will pick out the bias in everything that's presented and assess my principles and see what I think about it.
I really don't like identifying with a party.
I think that, like George Washington said, the parties are a bunch of garbage.
I vote for people.
Now, the people I haven't voted, but I will vote for people.
As a matter of fact, I turned 18 six days after the election this year.
But the point is, I vote for people.
Now, the people I vote for are normally Democrats.
But I also see flaws on both ends.
So I'm really, genuinely willing to vote for somebody on either side of the aisle.
OK, so what are your central principles, just politically speaking?
Politically speaking, I think that the way I see it is very often the Republican platform is based off of modeling our decisions off the past and the rights of the individual, whereas I think that the Democratic platform is basically Modeling our decisions on what we want the future to be and the rights of the people as a whole.
And I think there are strengths in both and flaws in both.
I think that Republican views of the rights of the individual can lead to a lack of understanding for certain groups of people, whereas I think that the Democratic views of the rights of the people will very often be difficult for individuals.
It's a double-edged sword.
It really is.
Both sides have I said this before, both sides have some amazing public servants and both sides have some really crappy ones.
For sure.
I mean, the way that I tend to think about politics is that the role of government is not necessarily the way I want society to run.
Meaning that as somebody who's a religious Jew, for example, I believe a lot of things about how people should act.
I don't think the government should get involved in nearly any of it because I don't think it's my place to basically tell people what to do as a whole.
What that means is that I do require a strong social fabric.
And it seems to me like one of the things you're trying to do is build up a strong social fabric.
So I'm going to try and convert you to be a conservative right here by basically saying that government is a secondary priority when it comes to creating better communities.
That when it comes to ensuring communities are safer and smarter and better, most of the things that are going to be a conservative right here, Most of that can be done through conversations between individuals who don't feel like the government is trying to force a particular perspective or trying to get into anybody's pocket or force anything from above.
The minute one side uses force Things get really ugly.
I think one of the reasons that we've seen such polarization in our politics is because people on both sides of the aisle expect government to solve all of their problems.
So if there's a hurricane, the Washington Post says it's Trump's fault.
And if the economy does great, the right says that's Trump's benefit.
And it feels to me like none of this is real.
The reality is most of the relationships we have with other folks are relationships we do have one-on-one or in the context of a community that we share together.
And that doesn't require necessarily legislative input or guys with guns coming to your front door and trying to force you to do things.
Sure, well I'm going to offer you my two cents.
Sure, please.
I know by the end of this you're going to be a staunch liberal.
Okay, let's make it happen.
You're going to change this to a rightist Tears vlog.
By the way, I'm very thirsty right now.
My lips are very dry, but I can't drink out of that.
If you get me one that says Alex Jones Tears and it's pictures of Alex Jones crying.
We might be able to agree on that one.
You know, it's an intellectual property issue.
We'll talk about that.
So I was in Chicago for a bit.
And Chicago, I think, is a strong example of the ways that liberal idealism has failed and the ways that liberal idealism needs to be there.
And I'll explain.
So when I say I was in Chicago, I was not visiting the Bean.
I was in Englewood.
I was in one of the most violent neighborhoods in the country, and I was there with a lot of young people who live in Chicago and who have lost family members.
Almost every friend I have in Chicago has directly lost at least one family member to gun violence.
Or as somebody who disagrees with my... Violence utilizing a gun, yeah.
Yes.
And I saw some interesting things.
I saw the negative results of genderfication, which I believe can sometimes be positive and sometimes be very negative.
And I also saw the need for opportunity.
Now, my general view is the reason I identify as liberal is in this country to be successful you need to pull up your bootstraps, but not everybody has access to the boots.
And I think that things need to be done in neighborhoods like Chicago, where there are a lot of cultural issues, but there are also a lot of issues that can't really be solved by fixing the culture.
There are people in neighborhoods there that have been pushed out of other neighborhoods.
The South and West Side have very little access to healthy food.
I know a friend who has to walk almost six miles every day to get food that is very often either expired or very unhealthy, and that leads to a lot of obesity, which limits certain job opportunities.
I've seen a lot of people who are on welfare and abused, and a lot of people who are on welfare and can't get a job.
I think that there are certain things that can be done to have the government aid these people, and I think there are certain ways that government aid has failed these people.
So it's really something that I need to take an econ class or a finance class or any of those to really fully understand But through my eyes, the government, as long as we are such a strong country, as long as we are a country that should really be serving as a beacon for the rest of the world, not just morally but really in every sense, I think that there are things we can do to help people out.
So this is one area where when I was 17 years old, I can say safely I've gotten more libertarians since I was 17 years old.
I wrote a book when I was 20 about the social liberalism inherent in kind of the movement of American politics.
And I talked specifically about the power of government to help control what I thought was the epidemic of pornography that I thought was swamping young men, which it basically has.
And one of the things that I suggested is that government could be involved in helping to stop this.
And over time, I've become less sanguine about the possibility of government, specifically because when you see people who you disagree with run the government, what you realize, and this is something, again, that you may realize as you get older, because I realized it as I got older.
When you're 17, you look at the adults and you think they must know what they're doing.
And then once you hit about 25 and you look around, you realize they're the same people you went to school with.
You realize everybody's kind of dumb.
And young people are dumb, and old people are dumb, and everybody's kind of dumb.
And that means that dumb people in charge of a bunch of power do dumb things.
And no matter how much they think they're helping, they generally are not.
So leave me alone.
I can spin that on you a bit in what I believe is a fair way.
Sure.
In libertarian views, those dumb people can also press the nuke buttons.
Well, I mean, you mean as far as there has to be a collective defense?
Yes.
Right.
I mean, in the rarest of circumstances, you do have to have the ability to collectively mobilize to protect your life, for example.
And so having an army that's available to fight off terrorists is one thing.
And I think that there's generally wide agreement, at least in the constitutional structure, on when you can go to war, which is why I'm very much in favor of the idea that Congress should be declaring war, not the president unilaterally declaring war.
I don't think the president should Really be able to just push a button and hit somebody in Syria with a missile.
I think that Congress should have to declare war for that to happen.
The way the Constitution was structured was to create all sorts of gridlock so that only an overwhelming majority of people could get anything done.
And that was supposed to help sift out a lot of the problems.
Well, ours is really the only Constitution that serves to protect the people from the government as opposed to the government from the people.
Exactly.
And to protect entrenched minorities against the tyranny of the majority, as they talk about in Federalist 51.
And with that said, defense is one area where the Congress was supposed to declare war.
That was an area where it required a fair bit of pushing in order to make that happen.
And there are certain rules of government that cannot be done anywhere else.
Basically, defense is a public good.
But some of the stuff that you're talking about, I'm not sure is a public good.
And not only that, I'm not sure the government is very good at it.
Basically, government is good at breaking things, I think.
And so if we have to break something abroad, then government is quite good at that.
If we have to break something at home, all you have to do is put government in charge of it.
Sure.
I think there are benefits and a lot of drawbacks to both small and big government.
I think the government's too big.
I think that a lot of people who want smaller government want the government to be too small.
But I also think that in defense of a big government, I'm not a big government guy necessarily, but in defense of the concept, the more people are involved with government, the more you can use the system against itself if you need to.
Explain that.
So basically, the government overstep is a problem.
We've seen it fail other countries.
I think that discussing other countries is occasionally used in a double standard, because if I'm talking about gun control in another country, they'll say, well, we can't talk about other countries.
But if I talk about, you know, but then they'll say, look at Mao Zedong.
You know, I think that we need to create a more respectful dialogue around basing our own ideas off of other countries' values.
You see how close the comparison works, yes.
Yes.
So, I think that having a big government allows more people to get involved with the government.
It allows more people to be part of it.
And I think that the more people that are part of the government, the more representation there is, the fairer a lot of people are treated.
I mean, it's how I feel about a lot of police officers.
In areas like Chicago and areas like Milwaukee that deal with a lot of gun violence and there's also some turmoil between the people in the area and the police, I believe that most neighborhoods should be policed by people who live there.
And I'd like to kind of apply that to the government.
The idea of having a neighborhood police by people who live there are, they understand the community, they understand how the community works.
You can create a dialogue and a respect between the people and the police.
My father's a reserve police officer.
I respect the idea of the police a lot.
Far too many respect too much and far too many people don't respect enough.
But I treat that the way I treat the government.
I think the more people who are involved, the more representation we can have and the more ideas can have a voice.
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your perspective on Second Amendment issues in terms of, you know, you talk about kind of making better arguments.
Let's steel man it.
So you get to play me for a second.
So you get to be the guy who makes the case for the Second Amendment.
What do you think is the strongest case for the Second Amendment?
For the Second Amendment?
I think that if the government becomes evil, you've got to overthrow them.
I think that's the general.
I also think that the individual has the right to protect themselves.
Where we differ on the Second Amendment is how far that right should extend.
Like, for example, I have a question for you.
How do you feel about the National Firearms Act of 1930-something?
I don't have a problem with long machine guns.
1934.
Okay.
I don't think people in the country should be able to carry RPGs around.
And the question is, do semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15, should they fall into the category of things like RPGs, or should they fall into the categories of things like handguns?
I mean, the real question is whether they should fall into the category of things like muskets, which is what the Second Amendment was originally meant to protect.
Exactly.
Back when the Second Amendment was written, you could shoot a bullet and I could take you down before you can reload.
And that's fine because, you know, a lot of people say that the reason the Second Amendment was written is because they want the citizens to be armed the way the military is.
That's a problem for me because I can get droned pretty hard.
Right, well at least to the extent that you have the capacity to defend yourself against government tyranny and you can't do it with handguns alone.
Yes, you said it about fascism.
You said that the government will come to your door and at the end of the day they're pointing a gun at you and telling you to do something.
Well that's right.
And so there's too many examples of the government doing that with regard to basic rights that we would all consider basic rights in various countries around the world.
That one of the things that deters the possibility of the government overstepping its bounds is the knowledge that if they do, then things go wrong.
At the very least, it'll be a bloody battle.
I mean, this is why Texans aren't particularly afraid of mass gun confiscation, because the government would never attempt a mass gun confiscation in Texas.
Things would go wildly wrong.
Even when they tried gun confiscation or gun turn-ins in Australia, they only got one-third of the weapons, so weapons are still available in Australia.
One of the big problems that I have, I guess, with the arguments in favor of gun control, is that very often they're predicated on a version of what I wish the government could do, as opposed to what the government has actually proven itself capable of doing, and balancing that with whatever right is at stake.
And this, I think, holds true for my general perspective on politics, which is, what has the government proved itself competent at?
Well, sure, and I think that one of the things I can use to defend my stance on it is Trump's running the government right now, and I think that certain guns should be regulated by the government.
I don't think Trump can regulate his own mouth, so the question is, should the government be regulating weapons when people like that can be elected?
The way to fix these issues is to put people in office who we know are going to be morally just.
Now, that is a very subjective term, and that can very often be interpreted different ways, but I think the way we We figure out just how far the government can go here is say, look what else is regulated.
I mean, I need to take a driver's test to drive a car.
No, I don't like the car argument because cars exist to take you from point A to point B as opposed to put a bullet in somebody.
But it is the government regulating something that is in some way an infringement upon certain people's rights.
But constitutionally, as far as I'm concerned, and I've only read the Constitution I think once, And I only read John Jay's Federalist Papers and he didn't contribute anything to that.
There's like five of them, yeah.
Well, let's take guns as a new example.
I think that it's far too easy to buy a gun.
I think that if the shooter at my school spent five minutes with a specialist, they would have said, you need a doctor, not a gun.
And they basically did, right?
I mean, that's one of the problems.
The police were called on him 48 times.
Exactly.
And the shooter in Jacksonville, the tragic shooting that occurred very recently that got almost no media attention, the shooter in Jacksonville, I believe the police were called on him 26 times, but certainly more than 20, which is why a policy that I've recently started to consider, I don't really know the legal terminology I should use, is creating something where if you get the police called on you 15 times, you're put under review to buy a weapon.
Now, that's unconstitutional, but if the police are called on you 15 times, I think something's going on with you.
Well, it's not necessarily unconstitutional in the sense that David French has proposed this in National Review, and I support this proposal.
The idea of a friend or family member being able to preemptively go to a court and petition to have your Second Amendment right taken away on the basis that you're a danger to yourself or others.
That's not unconstitutional and would probably Be upheld under judicial review.
I think that's a way to talk about it.
I'm going to talk more about this because this is fun and it's interesting to get your perspective as a young person.
And we'll talk about where you hope politics is going to be in 20 years and also what you think you could tell other 17-year-olds about getting involved in politics.
Should they do it?
Should they not?
We'll get to all that in a second.
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Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the politicians that you do like.
You're looking up at 2020, and you're actually going to get to vote in 2020, which is very exciting.
So which politicians—I assume you're not going to vote for President Trump—so which politician on the left side of the aisle is most appealing to you as a 17-year-old guy, soon-to-be 18-year-old guy?
Sure.
I love Beto O'Rourke.
I understand that a lot of people are critical of him because of his DUI and his history as a punk rock person, but I look at what he proposes in Texas, I look at his ability to communicate with people, and at the end of the day, I think that this guy wants to serve his country.
And I'm seeing less and less of those every day.
So, I'm not 100% with him on policy.
I can't say exactly what yet because I'm still really working on figuring out his platform and what I believe it truly is.
But I believe that Beto wants the best for this country, and I believe that at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, Beto will make the decision he believes is most effective for everyone in this country, as opposed to just those who will praise him.
I'm a big fan of people who are willing to piss off the people who like him if they think it's right.
I mean, I know a lot of people that I'm dear friends with who, after coming on the show, will be upset with me for coming on the show.
But I believe that conversation's more important than in the short term, making people happy.
I think that Beto is not about making people happy in the short term.
And that's an example.
I don't think he's going to run.
I think even if he does beat Ted Cruz, he might not run.
I'm not sure he'll beat Ted Cruz.
He's a Democrat running for health care in Texas, but you could certainly say this campaign of his is incredibly impressive.
Well, one of the things that's kind of fun about doing this particular episode of the show is that normally I'm the young guy on set, and now I get to play the old guy on set, which is really fun.
And I'm getting the thrill that I only get normally when I speak to my own children, because you're literally young enough to be my son, which is insane.
It's literally insane.
I'd have to be really productive at like 17 years old, but that's crazy, man.
But one of the things that has occurred to me is that Over time, I've spent enough time, you spend a lot of time with politicians now because you've been talking with a lot of them.
I've spent a lot of time with politicians.
And I feel like I spend my life bursting people's bubbles about how politics works and what politics are.
Politicians are idiots, man.
I mean, like, I'm just telling you now.
Like, as much as, I'm sure Beto O'Rourke is a nice guy.
Maybe you'll meet him and you'll be super impressed.
Maybe you already have met him and you're super impressed.
I can name on maybe two fingers people who have not disappointed me in politics over the last 20 years.
Go.
People who have not disappointed me?
Yes, in politics.
Last 20 years.
Boy, now I'm trying to get to two fingers.
Senator Lee from Utah, Mike Lee from Utah, is a genuine guy.
And Nikki Haley, the ambassador to the UN.
Those would be the two that come to mind.
Everyone else, pretty much everyone else, has disappointed me in one way or another, simply because politics is a dirty, rough game.
And most of politics ends up, in the end, being about avoiding the solving of issues in order to pander for votes.
It's in many ways my biggest problem with Senator Rubio.
Now, at the town hall, you're familiar with my conversation with Rubio.
I incredibly inappropriately likened him to a school shooter.
I'm embarrassed by that.
I'm incredibly apologetic for it.
I don't think it was right.
I don't agree with pretty much anything Rubio says in a policy standpoint, but if I make a mistake, I own up to it, and that was inappropriate.
That being said, I think that he was getting out of that too easy.
I think he was able to politician sidestep out of a lot of questions.
A lot of people are.
But he was doing it, and I was pissed, and I said, this guy's not getting out of here without being exposed for the career politician he is, because Senator Rubio is a career politician.
You've seen it.
He ran for president.
I believe that I know where this guy's goals are.
That being said, I treated him unfairly.
I think that his policies have been negative for the state of Florida.
I believe that if he was president, he would be incredibly negative for the country.
But this guy is not someone who murdered 17 people.
And that was a big whiff on my part.
And I get why I did it.
So where are your chief political priorities?
Because the fact is that Senator Rubio is a Tea Party Republican.
That's where my priorities are, are people who are more interested in doing what they think is best for the country and putting party aside.
I think that someone who is clearly playing for their party, as I've seen Senator Rubio do, as I've seen pretty much everybody else do, needs to get out.
And I think that my generation, we were going to discuss the future here, and I'll tell you, I think my generation is going to do that.
I think if my generation learns how to discuss things with each other, we're going to learn that we've been failed.
We have.
In many ways, we've been failed by politics before because politics became exactly what Washington said it would.
Washington said, and I'm not a Washington fan, I think that anybody who owns slaves, I'm not going to be a fan of, I'll like the things they did that were good, I will not like them as people because I think that slavery is immoral and I'm a big fan of Hamilton for his criticism of it.
But Washington said political parties, I don't want to try and quote him directly, But they were the means by which people who were manipulative and evil would come into power.
I think that there will always be parties.
I don't like groupthink, but as long as there's groupthink, let's try to make a positive groupthink.
But Rubio and many others are examples of folks who are doing what they do so they can keep their friends happy, so they can maintain power.
If I believe that what I'm doing that pisses off my friends will make the world a better place, I'll piss off my friends.
Politicians should be public servants.
They should not be politicians.
I mean, so I guess the question that I have, I mean, we can go for a while on Washington and why I think that it's okay to call people heroes who were abiding by a moral standard that at the time was considered, widely considered, not as bad as it is now, even though it was evil at the time, obviously, and is evil now.
And we uphold people who do good things and we can criticize.
I actually believe that the definition of people as heroes and villains in history is a very difficult one.
I think typically you have to judge people for who they are, and usually they do some good things and usually they do some bad things.
But the stuff we like Washington for, he was a hero about, and one of those things was the role of government.
When we talk about Senator Rubio, I don't want to get harsh with you, but you're casting aspersions.
What about Senator Rubio makes you cast aspersions at him as opposed to say, you know, Beto O'Rourke, who obviously is running inside a political party.
He doesn't seem like somebody who's focused dramatically on reaching across the aisle.
He's a down the line person on the left.
Where do you think that Senator Rubio, to take just that example since you took him, More of a career politician than anybody else who's in the Senate or in the Congress.
Sure.
I believe the best I can do is assess their behaviors in the past.
And I believe that you'll see from his record, and I'm not fully done really vetting it.
Not that I'm vetting it implies that I have some authority.
I'm not really done looking through it.
Beto O'Rourke is somebody who applied what he was doing to the current situation.
I think that his views... I think that when people call politicians shills and evil for changing their perspectives over time, I think that's incredibly unfair.
Because I'm less impressed with somebody who has so statically believed the same thing for 30 years.
You know, people criticize a lot of people for that, for their votes in the past.
I think if they explain why it's fair to to give him credit for that.
But I look at Senator Rubio, I look at his history, and I see this guy running for president.
This guy has consistently been bringing himself up and up, and I don't see a connection to the people that folks like Beto have.
Beto's just an example.
It's one of the things I respect about Bobby Kennedy.
Bobby Kennedy is loved by many, hated by many.
I think he's a little bit more loved than a lot of people.
No, he is, yeah.
But, you know, Bobby Kennedy was a big conservative for a while.
A lot of people forget that.
He was ordering the FBI to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr.
He was a big war hound before he instantly, you know, not instantly, but quickly changed against the war.
And it makes you think, is this guy an opportunist, which some might call him, or is he somebody who changed his perspective?
And that's what I look at.
I look at somebody who I think is willing to do what they think is best for the people.
I don't think Beto O'Rourke is... First of all, I think Beto O'Rourke is a lot more classic of a liberal, and I'm more of a classical liberal than what a lot of people on the... I don't like saying the left or the right too much, but a lot of people on the left are becoming.
And I believe that Beto is a moderate guy who's willing to work with people, as opposed to just try and completely rewrite the book.
I don't want to rewrite the book.
I want to erase the stuff that's bad.
And I think that Rubio is out there just doing what he thinks will make the Republicans the happiest.
Okay, so I have one more question for you, and the question is going to be about what you think you can learn from the older generation, because you've criticized people who are older a lot in the past and here as well.
What do you think we ought to keep from the older generation?
What do you think we ought to ditch?
But if you want to hear Cameron Kasky's answer, you actually have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
To subscribe over at Daily Wire, go to dailywire.com, click subscribe, and you can hear the end of our conversation there.
Okay, well, Cameron, thank you so much for stopping by.
I think you're one of the good guys, and even though we disagree on politics, I hope that we keep the conversation going.
It's one of the things I really appreciate about you at least trying to do that.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
I really appreciate it.
Good luck with everything.
But right now, let's talk about...
I'm just kidding.
Sorry.
I had to.
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