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March 19, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

49:44

Why We’re All So Angry | Ep. 740

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	Today is the day my brand new book, The Right Side of History, is out.
	Plus, Beto embraces third trimester abortion and Vladimir Putin cracks down on the news.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	OK, so I really want to talk to you about my new book, which I think is, you know, I'm biased.
	I think it's important.
	I think it's good.
	And I think that you should read it.
	But again, I'm very biased on this subject.
	I'll get to my new book.
	Plus, I want to talk about Beto and I want to talk about Andrew Yang, who is now making headlines for some good reasons and some not so great reasons.
	We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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	Okay, so today is the day of my new book release, which I am very excited about.
	We've been talking about it for a while here on the program, but I wanted to tell you what I think, in general, the book is about.
	It's called The Right Side of History.
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	Okay, so today is the day my new book release, which I am very excited about.
	We've been talking about it for a while here on the program, but I wanted to tell you what I think in general the book is about.
	It's called The Right Side of History.
	Don't worry, we're gonna get to the news as well.
	But this is tied into the news because the reality is that there is a great question right now in the West, in Western civilization, and it's tearing us apart.
	And that is, what is Western civilization?
	What is it?
	On the one side, you have a bunch of people who say Western civilization is terrible, no good, very bad.
	On the other side, you have a bunch of people who say that Western civilization is wonderful, but completely misdefine it.
	So I think that here's the truth.
	All of the good things that are around you, democracy, Liberalism, free speech, prosperity, science, all of these things are the outgrowth of a civilization in which you live and whose values you have embedded in your system, whether you like it or not.
	But it's fascinating to see how people really don't know much about the roots of the civilization that has led them to these critiques of the civilization or to a defense of something that is not Western civilization.
	I'll tell you what I mean.
	So, the manifesto of the New Zealand shooter is, of course, a deeply evil document.
	And that is not a shock, because this is a deeply evil white supremacist.
	But the guy references the West many times throughout this document.
	What exactly did he mean by the West?
	Well, he meant racial superiority of white people.
	In the document, which you should not read, I've not encouraged people to read it, the only reason that I even mention the document now is because I think it is important to rebut what is a widespread perception about what exactly this evil white supremacist thought and with whom he sympathized.
	He talks about the West a lot in this document.
	And people on the left say, ah, see, he's just defending Western civilization.
	Western civilization is bad.
	No, that's not the way this works.
	When this shooter talks about the West, he meant racial superiority of white people.
	He explicitly derides, quote, the myth of the individual and the sovereignty of private property.
	So this is not someone who is standing for life, liberty and property in the Lockean formation.
	He spits at democracy.
	He says that Christianity is weak.
	He scoffs at capitalism.
	He tears into conservatism.
	He says that conservatism had surrendered to the myth of the individual and the sovereignty of private property.
	Unfortunately, that view of the West, that the West is basically a hierarchy of racial power, and that we have created all of these concepts in order to excuse that racial hierarchy, that is not restricted to the views of white supremacists.
	Unfortunately, there's an intersectional theory club, and these people believe, a lot of folks on the political left believe, that when we say Western civilization, We mean the same thing as this white supremacist.
	Western civilization is really just a way for white people to cram down their power on other folks.
	This is why you had folks like Jesse Jackson in the 1980s leading chants at UC Berkeley, The idea being that Western civilization was truly Just a hierarchy of power established by white supremacists.
	And on the other hand, you have white supremacists saying that the West is basically a hierarchy of power established by white supremacists.
	That is not true.
	That is not true.
	Western civilization is a set of ideas.
	It was always a set of ideas.
	Now, were those ideas always perfectly realized?
	Of course not.
	In the same way that the ideas of the Declaration of Independence were not properly realized and took hundreds of years to come to full fruition.
	The notion that all men are created equal, encompassing people of all different races, for example.
	That took a century.
	To actually come to fruition two centuries if you count Jim Crow, obviously.
	The fact is that an eternal good principle does not mean that it is properly acted upon over the great span of time.
	But the principles that undergird the West are the principles that undergird all of the things that you like.
	The iPhone in your hand, from the iPhone in your hand to the concept of democracy.
	So what exactly is the West?
	Well, I think that what the West really is, what the West really is, is a combination of Judeo-Christian values and Greek reason and these two things are in tension.
	They're always in tension.
	Reason and revelation.
	The idea that there is a God and that God runs the universe and that there's an objective morality.
	That, of course, is in tension with the part of us that's reasonable that says, OK, well, you know, I don't see this God.
	Where does his morality come from?
	And these two things are constantly vying with each other for power.
	The problem is when you get rid of one of them, when you get rid of Judeo-Christian values, for example, you end up with secular tyranny.
	And when you get rid of secular reason, you end up with religious tyranny.
	The building of these values is a long 3,000 year story.
	And because we have lost the values that we share, because we have decided to see each other as either representatives of the hierarchy or people fighting against Western civilization, we're angrier at each other than ever.
	We've lost a sense of common meaning and common purpose.
	We've lost a sense of individual meaning and individual purpose.
	Polls show that we are angrier at each other than we have been in a very long time.
	The average trust in key institutions in the United States is down to 32%.
	That's not trust in the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
	That's trust in your local school.
	That's trust in your police forces.
	Only 31% of Americans today think that most people that they live with can be trusted.
	That's a shocking statement.
	52% of Americans only say they trust most or all of their neighbors, which means that half of Americans don't trust most or all of their neighbors.
	They don't even know their neighbors.
	80% of Americans, by polling data, say America is more divided today than ever, which, of course, is untrue.
	We fought a civil war in this country, and we also had the 1960s, the most divisive time in modern American history.
	Suicide rates are up.
	The opioid epidemic is taking additional lives.
	We've had the first downturn in life expectancy in the United States in decades.
	And that is due to a crisis of meaning.
	So where does that crisis of meaning come from?
	So some people on sort of the populist right and the populist left suggest that the crisis of meaning is coming from economics.
	That we've had a bifurcated economy since the 1980s and since the 1970s and the rise of globalization has created a two-tier system in the United States.
	But the truth is that poverty spans politics.
	There are a bunch of people who live in the sticks in Ohio who are not voting the same way as people living in the inner cities in Los Angeles.
	This is not about the 1% versus the 99%.
	And just to be accurate about this, the fact is that since the 1970s, the upper middle class has been the fastest growing sector of the American population.
	And overall, we are all living better economically than we were in the 1970s because prices have gone down and we get more stuff for our dollar.
	And does that mean that everybody has the same kind of job that they had in 1950s when you were working on a construction, when you were working on some sort of assembly line for 30 years and then getting a gold watch at the end?
	No, it doesn't.
	But the truth is, you wouldn't want to work those jobs.
	The fact is that those jobs are better done by machines.
	We have the most booming economy in American history at this point.
	More people employed than any time in American history.
	And yet, we are still at each other's throats.
	Now, there are a lot of folks who think that it's racial divides, but why exactly should racial divides have cropped up again now?
	The fact is that we are more racially equal than any society in human history.
	In 1958, only 4% of Americans said that they were fine with black-white intermarriage.
	That stat was 87% by 2013.
	As of 2013, 72% of white Americans and 66% of black Americans thought race relations in the United States were good.
	As of July 2016, before Trump's election, that number was down to 53% of Americans overall.
	Why is this happening?
	Why are we reversing course when it comes to racial politics?
	How about technology?
	Some people say it's social media that's making things worse.
	I agree that social media is making things worse.
	It does feed an outrage cycle.
	You look for stories that fulfill your confirmation bias.
	But that is a means, not a reason.
	Meaning it amplifies, but it's not the rationale for the amplification in the first place.
	Social media is a great way of spreading misinformation and division, but there has to be a desire to do that in the first place.
	We're not happy as a society, or at least our level of happiness has radically decreased in the freest, most civilized society in human history.
	So what exactly can restore happiness?
	First, we have to go back to the original definition of happiness.
	What is it that makes us happy in the first place?
	We've mixed up temporary joy for happiness.
	We've mixed up sensory experience for happiness.
	We've mixed up the idea of material prosperity for happiness.
	These are not happiness.
	All of the ancients, whether you're talking about Judeo-Christian values or Greek philosophers, all of them believed that happiness had to do with a sense of moral purpose.
	In the Bible, the word for happiness is simcha, in the Hebrew Bible.
	And simcha essentially means right action in accordance with God's will, because God actually commands people to be b'simcha, to actually be happy.
	Well, how can I command you to be happy?
	How can I command you to an emotion?
	The idea in Judaism is that you cultivate the emotion by action, by right action in accordance with virtue.
	By doing that, you cultivate a lifestyle where you live b'simcha, in happiness, in accordance with what God wants of you.
	And this is true in Christianity as well.
	True happiness lies in doing what God wants of you.
	In Greek theory, there's something very similar going on.
	Aristotle's eudaimonia, being active in accord with complete virtue.
	He defines being happy as acting in accordance with right reason over the course of your life.
	So acting with purpose, acting with meaning, acting with reason.
	So what do we need to achieve that kind of purpose and happiness?
	What do we need to make society and ourselves happier?
	I think we need four things.
	I think we need four things.
	And one second, I'll tell you what are the four things I think you need.
	A lot of this is in my book, The Right Side of History, out today.
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	Okay, so what do we need to achieve happiness?
	I think there are four elements.
	Individual purpose.
	Individual capacity.
	Communal purpose.
	Communal capacity.
	See, we as human beings exist on two planes.
	On the one side, we are individuals.
	We want to be alone with our families.
	We want to be left alone to make our own decisions.
	And on the other hand, human beings are naturally political and social creatures.
	We want to be with other people.
	We want to build a social fabric.
	We want to build something together.
	Now, if you move too far in one direction, in the individual direction, then the social fabric crumbles, and you end up with a sort of dog-eat-dog individualism where we're not helping each other out, where we don't care about each other, and then usually people ask for some sort of overarching government in order to force people to care for each other.
	Then that's bad.
	On the other hand, if you stretch too far in the communal direction and you forget about the individual, then the individual gets crushed because the idea is that the interests of the community outweigh the interests of the individual.
	This is sort of the French revolutionary idea that rights spring from government and therefore government can activate as a body moving in the communal interest to crush the individual.
	So we need both to recognize that human beings exist simultaneously as individuals and also as members of a society, as members of a polis, as members of a city.
	So, we have to have things that fulfill us, both as individuals and as members of a community.
	We need, first of all, individual moral purpose.
	We need to believe that we have meaning as individuals, that we, here, have an identity as individuals that is meaningful, and that our action in the world is meaningful.
	This comes from the basic biblical idea that we are all made in God's image, meaning that we all have a godly mission, and God cares about this, and that we are endowed with both rights and duties.
	Our individual moral purpose lies in using our reason to individually live up to what God expects of us, or what reason would have us do.
	Which, in the religious vision, is the same thing.
	We have to have meaning as individuals apart from society's demands.
	You're alone on a desert island, what do you do with your life?
	The religious answer is you live in accordance with God's will, and the Aristotelian answer is you live in accordance with reason, and this is what makes you a virtuous person who is capable of happiness.
	We also have to have individual capacity.
	In a second, I'm going to get to what individual capacity means.
	So, individual capacity means that we have the capacity for reason.
	That we have the ability to pursue our goals with some degree of success.
	This means we have to have free will.
	That we have the ability to choose otherwise.
	And it means that we also have to be able to exercise something magical and mystical called our reasonable instinct to overcome our own natural inclinations.
	The founders were all self-help specialists, and they believed in our capacity to better ourselves.
	Religion is all about this idea that we have to better ourselves.
	Viktor Frankl, who's a Holocaust survivor, wrote in the book Man's Search for Meaning about living through the Holocaust, quote, every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom, which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity, to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
	In other words, it was the capacity to choose that gave us the meaning.
	You have to believe that you're here for a reason and also that you have the ability to fulfill that reason.
	That's as an individual.
	Then, we have to have a communal moral purpose.
	We need a social fabric.
	The single best predictor of lifelong happiness, according to longitudinal studies from places like Harvard, is the existence of close relationships.
	Social capital.
	Shared priorities.
	This is what binds us together.
	Now, there's been a lot of talk about diversity.
	Diversity is great, so long as we are all looking in the same direction.
	Diversity is not great, so long as we are all pulling each other apart.
	This is what Robert Putnam discovered.
	In writing his book Bowling Alone, Harvard Sociologist, he said that the only two things that go up along with the diversity of a census tract is TV watching and protest marches.
	So the idea that diversity is our strength, he said, is not true except when there's a shared semblance of purpose so inside a church for example where everybody shares a purpose to worship god and commune with god then diversity can be a great boon because people have different experiences but they're all aimed the right direction the same thing is true in the army where you see i mean you speak to people who have been in the military they have a shared sense of purpose and all of their individual differences are secondary to their communal sense of shared purpose We as a country have to have that, too.
	We as a nation have to have that.
	And finally, we have to have communal capacity.
	We have to have strong social institutions because that allows us to be free as individuals without empowering the government to run roughshod over us.
	Alexis de Tocqueville talks about this at length in Democracy in America.
	He says what makes America different is that America has these strong social institutions.
	He meant mostly churches.
	And all the founders believed this.
	Even the ones who were deistic or even atheistic believed that you required a strong social fabric rooted in Judeo-Christian values in order to build a communal capacity.
	The ability for all of us to come together and do the things we need to do while still protecting each other as individuals.
	So what built our civilization such that we could fulfill individual purpose, individual capacity, communal purpose and communal capacity?
	The balance between Judeo-Christian ethics and Greek reason.
	Jerusalem and Athens in the typical formation.
	Jerusalem, the idea of Judeo-Christian values, brought us the idea that a master plan stands behind everything.
	And that we are capable, as human beings, of trying to understand that master plan.
	The idea that God is moral and demands of us a morality.
	That we are not supposed to simply make up our own morality.
	That gives us a shared sense of meaning and purpose.
	That history progresses and that we have a share in building that history.
	The story of the Bible is God taking a nation from slavery to freedom.
	And God caring about the progression of history.
	The Bible provides us, the Judeo-Christian ethic provides us with the idea of free choice.
	That you can choose otherwise.
	Okay, that's all important stuff for building a civilization, but it's not enough.
	You also have to have Athens.
	You have to have reason.
	You have to believe that there is a purpose in nature.
	That we can determine the meaning of things by looking at them.
	That we can figure out what is true by studying the universe.
	This does require the idea of a designer, which is why Thomistic thought is really a merger between Aristotelian thought and Christianity.
	It's why Maimonidean, Moses Maimonides, his thought is very much in the same vein.
	The sort of merger between Greek reason and Judeo-Christian ethics.
	Because here's the thing, if you think that you got all your values from God, why use reason at all?
	Reason becomes something superfluous.
	But what Aquinas did, what Maimonides did, is they said, no, reason brings you to the same place that Judeo-Christian ethics do and provides you the impetus for action.
	Not only that, reason allows you to build science because you have to study the universe in order to understand what is true and what is good.
	It brings you the birth of democracy.
	The state is in existence in order to forward this quest for reason.
	And in order to forward the quest for reason, you actually have to respect the rights of the individual.
	That's why Cicero was writing about true law is right reason in agreement with nature.
	You can't act against natural law.
	This is what Thomas Jefferson writes in the Declaration of Independence when he's talking about natural law.
	When he says nature and nature's God, what he is talking about is the natural law.
	The idea that you can look at the universe around you and discover telos, purpose, in nature.
	Natural law theory is the foundation of the notion that you have rights that are independent of government and that government didn't create those rights out of nothing.
	The tension between Jerusalem and Athens, the interplay, that is what built the West.
	That is what built the greatest civilization in the history of mankind.
	You abandon Judeo-Christian values.
	You abandon free will.
	You abandon purpose.
	What you end up with is a reversion to tribalism.
	A reversion to, let's all get together in tribes and beat the crap out of each other.
	A reversion to romantic nationalism.
	Okay, we as a broader society will run roughshod over other societies.
	You end up at communism.
	We will construct A theory of morals, completely independent of our Judeo-Christian roots.
	And then we will suggest that that system of morals can run roughshod over the individual.
	Forget about the idea that all individuals are made in the image of God.
	All individuals are cogs in a machine.
	You end up with fascism.
	The idea that if you want to forward the social compact, that means destruction of the weak.
	And finally, you end up where we are right now.
	You end up with subjectivism.
	The idea that happiness can't be achieved through any of these other means that we've been talking about.
	Instead, true happiness is simply self-esteem.
	And if you threaten my self-esteem, you're threatening my identity.
	And therefore, I have no reason to use... Reason doesn't play a part here.
	Anything you say that I disagree with is not about a reason discussion.
	It's about you attacking me.
	That's what happens when you abandon religion.
	When you abandon reason, you end up with theocracy.
	You end up with what we've seen historically in Christian countries a thousand years ago.
	You end up with what we see in Pakistan right now or Afghanistan.
	Theocratic systems where human rights go by the wayside.
	We have to revisit these roots if we want to rebuild our civilization.
	That's what my new book is all about, The Right Side of History.
	It's on sale today, so go check it out right now.
	I'm speaking about all of this at the Reagan Library tonight, is why I believe it's sold out, but I'm going to be speaking a lot more about these themes, and these have real relevance to today's debate.
	If you're not going to defend Western civilization for what it is, Then we are in real trouble.
	We need to revisit those routes.
	Okay, in just a second, I'm going to get to the latest news from the 2020 race.
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	Okay, so meanwhile, the 2020 Democrats continue to move more and more radical.
	They are moving in more and more radical directions.
	Beto O'Rourke, of course, leading the way.
	Gotta love yourself some Beto.
	So Beto, yesterday, came out and he basically embraced late term abortion.
	A position that is only held by some 13% of the American public.
	Only 13% of Americans are in favor of keeping abortion legal past the 20th week.
	Beto is one of them because the Democratic Party has decided to whole-scale embrace abortion at every turn and turn it into an identity politics issue.
	That if you don't support abortion up till point of birth, somehow you're anti-woman.
	Beto did this routine.
	He's got this real weird habit, Beto does, of going into various institutions, public establishments, and then standing on the counters as though it's dead poet society.
	And maybe he thinks that it makes him seem romantic.
	Maybe there are people who find this sort of thing romantic.
	Are you for or against third trimester abortions?
	So the question is about abortion and reproductive rights.
	of Sat's authenticity of Beto O'Rourke.
	Here's Beto O'Rourke explaining why it's okay to kill babies late in the term.
	- Are you for or against third trimester abortions? - So the question is about abortion and reproductive rights.
	And my answer to you is that that should be a decision that the woman makes. - He knows his lines and he knows what he is supposed to say.
	This is a radical position.
	And Democrats continue to maintain this radical position, even in opposition to their own base.
	Because when every issue boils down to an identity politics issue, when it's not about reasonable conversation about the nature of human life and what is happening inside the womb, when it turns into an attack on a political principle, I wish were true is an attack on me, it's very easy to get people to clap for you like seals.
	This is what Beto is doing.
	I mean, it's just warmed over Obama-ism with a side dose of Hopi-changiness.
	There's a piece in the Washington Post about Beto O'Rourke today.
	Today, there's so many pieces like this.
	Beto O'Rourke's early campaign, upbeat sentiments absent many specifics.
	So are they just now noticing the guy has no specifics?
	It was funny, they ignored that when he was running against Ted Cruz.
	But now, they're suddenly noticing, oh look, Beto, he doesn't know things.
	The former congressman from El Paso quickly listed a few issues when he was speaking to a group of women Sunday afternoon and was asked to share his vision for America.
	And then he detailed his vision for the campaign.
	You ready?
	This is his vision for the campaign.
	Beto O'Rourke.
	Oh God.
	Going everywhere, writing nobody off, taking no one for granted, could care less what party you belong to, to whom you pray or whether you pray at all, who you love, how many generations you've been here, whether you just got here yesterday.
	We're going to define ourselves by our aspirations, our ambitions, and the ability to bring this country together.
	The hell does that mean?
	How are you going to bring the country together around a set of shared nothing?
	Around us I'd have shared nothing.
	I mean, you literally just said you don't care about anybody's identity, which is fine, but then they have to be united by something.
	If they are not united by something, then they will be divided by everything.
	That is the way diversity works.
	If you are not united by something, you are divided by everything else.
	Even the Washington Post says he never got to articulating a clear vision for America.
	And he continues to maintain this position that he doesn't actually have to define what exactly he is talking about.
	And people fall for this garbage.
	Olga Sanchez, 70, who drove more than two hours on Saturday from the Des Moines suburb to Waterloo to see O'Rourke speak, said, he's just so positive.
	That's what I like.
	He's not saying straight Democrat.
	He's not saying independent.
	He's not saying just progressive.
	He's not saying no to Republican.
	That's just it.
	He includes everyone.
	I'm all for inclusivity.
	Well, this sounds very much like the Obama campaign circa 2008.
	We're not red states.
	We're not blue states.
	We're the United States.
	Also, I wish we were all blue states.
	O'Rourke continues to act like he is Gumby.
	He seriously talks about how he wants the public to shape him.
	Okay, so he actually says that he wants the public to help him shape himself.
	Help me help you.
	Beto O'Rourke.
	The fact that he's taken seriously demonstrates the lack of good ideas in the left base.
	The idea leader in the left base right now, the person who keeps throwing out ideas to no avail, is Elizabeth Warren.
	She did a big town hall event on CNN last night.
	And in that town hall event, she just kept throwing out more and more radical proposals.
	She suggested, for example, that it was time to abolish the Electoral College, which obviously is a great idea.
	The colors of the wind, man.
	One of the things that you love about Elizabeth Warren is that she says that she is for America's institutions being durable enough to contain President Trump, and yet she wants to abolish the Electoral College.
	Here she was yesterday talking about abolishing the Electoral College.
	Presidential candidates don't come to places like Mississippi.
	Yeah.
	They also come to places like California and Massachusetts.
	Right?
	Because we're not the battleground states.
	Well, my view is that every vote matters.
	And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting.
	And that means get rid of the Electoral College.
	There's something mildly opportunistic about this.
	There are arguments for getting rid of the Electoral College.
	I actually hear those arguments.
	I think there are reasonable arguments for it.
	But the argument can't be Trump won.
	And that, unfortunately, is the Democratic argument.
	On this score, the Electoral College has served America pretty well.
	And the fact is that if we were to have a straight popular vote, there is no question that people who live in the rural areas would certainly feel a greater divide from people who live in the cities, because the fact is that the cities would then dominate our electoral politics.
	Nobody would get campaigned to it.
	It'd be everybody campaigning in L.A.
	and New York and Washington, D.C.
	and Chicago and Dallas.
	All of which, listen, all great cities.
	I mean, I live in LA.
	I've been a city boy all my life.
	But the fact is, if you want to help rural divides be overcome, that's probably not the way to do it.
	That wasn't the only radical Elizabeth Warren proposal.
	She also said that she would think about eliminating private insurance.
	I like how Democrats are just like, yeah, I'll think about this proposal to eliminate 165 million health care plans.
	It's worth considering.
	Well, maybe you should have considered it before you entered a presidential race, lady.
	You are a co-sponsor of Senator Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill, and I understand there are a lot of different paths to universal coverage, but his bill that you've co-sponsored would essentially eliminate private insurance.
	Is that something you could support?
	He's got a runway for that.
	I think we get everybody together, and that's what it is.
	We'll decide.
	We start with our values, we'll get to the right place.
	So, theoretically though...
	There could be a role for private insurance companies under President Warren.
	There could be a temporary role.
	It's a big and complex system and we've got to make sure that we land this in a way that doesn't do any harm.
	Everybody has got to stay covered.
	It's critical.
	Okay, so she has no solutions, but she is saying all the words that people want to hear.
	This is Elizabeth Warren's shtick.
	She's trying to steal Bernie Sanders' base.
	I don't think that it is going to go where she wants it to go.
	There is one area where she believes that she can make some hay, and that is on the intersectional theory area.
	She believes that she can move into Kamala Harris' base if she panders hard enough, and so she's been pushing slavery reparations.
	The impact of discrimination handed down from one to the next means that today in America, because of housing discrimination, because of employment discrimination, we live in a world where the average white family has $100, the average black family has about $5.
	So, I believe it's time to start the national, full-blown conversation about reparations in this country.
	I mean, come on, come on.
	It's time to start the national—but she will not explain what exactly those reparations should be.
	Should America collectively be sorry for slavery?
	Of course!
	It was a historic sin.
	Should I be sorry for slavery?
	Should you be sorry for slavery?
	Well, I didn't enslave anybody, and nobody I know enslaved anybody, and none of my ancestors enslaved anybody, and I have not benefited from slavery, so I'm having a hard time with the I'm supposed to Pay out of my own pocket to somebody who may not even be the descendants of slaves if this is simply race-based as opposed to history-based.
	And, again, slavery ended in the United States in 1865.
	If there's a case for reparations, the best case for reparations is that people were systemically harmed by Jim Crow and that the people who specifically damaged them should pay them reparations, but The case for slavery reparations is obvious political pandering by Elizabeth Warren and all the other Democrats who are pushing this sort of stuff.
	Again, focusing on what divides us as opposed to what unites us because nobody actually wants to talk about what unites us because unfortunately for a lot of people on the left and on the populist right, what divides us is more important than what unites us.
	Okay, so we're going to talk a little bit more about the Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom are proposing vast institutional changes to the nature of American government.
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	So it's not just Elizabeth Warren trying to push harder to the left in order to shore up the intersectional base as well as the Bernie Sanders base or cut into it.
	It's also Cory Booker, who's the odd man out in this presidential cycle.
	He is just not polling.
	And that's because you look at Cory Booker and you think, this guy is overproduced.
	He's just overproduced.
	It's like an early Michael Bay film.
	Everything is overdone.
	It's a Transformers flick.
	And you can see all the gears moving, just like in a Transformers flick.
	But here was Cory Booker yesterday, claiming that he wants term limits for Supreme Court justices.
	Weird, he didn't want that five minutes ago, but now that President Trump has appointed two Supreme Court justices, now he wants term limits so that he can term out people like Clarence Thomas, obviously.
	I think we need to fix the Supreme Court.
	I think they stole the Supreme Court seat.
	Can we keep it at nine?
	Should we keep it at nine?
	I think I would like to start exploring a lot of options and we should have a national conversation.
	Term limits for Supreme Court justices might be one thing.
	To give every president the ability to choose three.
	We have people holding on to those seats in ways that I don't think is necessarily healthy.
	Age limit?
	Look, I think term limits might be a better way of saying that.
	OK, so he's saying term limits, obviously, and that, of course, is politically driven.
	He wasn't talking about term limits until five seconds ago.
	I've said that Supreme Court justices, maybe term limits are a good idea.
	I've said that for a very long time, actually.
	I used to say that back all the way in law school.
	But all this newfound institutional change that Democrats are in favor of, It's weird that it coincides with President Trump ruling.
	That's weird.
	That President Trump, being the President of the United States, suddenly has changed their view of our key institutions.
	Well, there are a couple of other candidates who are coming out of the woodwork.
	Bill de Blasio still continues to run around suggesting that he is a presidential candidate, and it really is kind of sad.
	We actually have some theme songs.
	We have a theme song for Bill de Blasio.
	We haven't premiered yet.
	Yeah, nobody likes Bill de Blasio.
	So he was in Concord, New Hampshire.
	According to the New York Post, Mayor Bill de Blasio's ongoing tease of a presidential run didn't exactly pull in the crowds during a campaign-esque event in the Granite State.
	Only 20 people showed up Sunday to hear the leader of America's largest city hold a roundtable on mental health, including the 14 people on the panel.
	So six people showed up, a full half dozen.
	I mean, maybe they knew that meeting with the Groundhog Killer was actually a dangerous proposition.
	There were also six reporters on hand.
	I do love how the media operate.
	There is a reporter for every member of the crowd, for Bill de Blasio.
	De Blasio pulled a well-worn page from his mayoral campaign, and he put First Lady Chirlane McRae center stage on what was his second day touring the crucial primary battleground state.
	The day began with de Blasio and McRae touting her under-scrutiny $1 billion mental health initiative, Thrive at New York City.
	De Blasio said she's my partner in everything I do, and that is a phrase we say every opening and have said for years.
	They feel her humanity and they feel her compassion.
	I've never truly understood why it is that first ladies are considered political figures.
	This makes no sense to me.
	They are not elected.
	If you want to elect Shirlene McRae, then you know what you can do is elect Shirlene McRae.
	But why you should get a package deal with the wife's political priorities when you elect the husband or the other way around is really bizarre to me.
	It's really bizarre.
	But in any case, Bill de Blasio has no actual support for his run.
	That's not stopping him anyway, because everybody is interested in running at this point.
	In one second, we'll get to another one of the myriad Democratic candidates.
	This one, a no-name who's beginning to pick up a little bit of steam.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	So there are a couple of no-names in this presidential race who have picked up a little bit of steam.
	Obviously, Pete Buttigieg.
	From South Bend, Indiana, has picked up at least a little bit of media coverage.
	I don't think he's picked up any popular steam.
	The other guy who's picked up some steam is Andrew Yang, who seems to have a lot of millennial appeal.
	He also has positions on every possible issue.
	If you go to his website, Andrew Yang, it is just filled with positions.
	More positions than the Kama Sutra.
	Just positions on every possible issue.
	We do have a theme song for Andrew Yang, actually.
	So the only reason That we are using this song is because he does have an unfortunate habit of sounding off on weird issues.
	Today's weird issue from Andrew Yang, he is taking a strong public stance against circumcision.
	Because this is what we need our presidential candidates sounding off about, is circumcision.
	Now, listen, as an Orthodox Jew, I have a vested interest in the continuation of the availability of circumcision.
	I will say that I find it very odd that Democrats, many Democrats, okay with chopping a baby's head off in the womb, not okay with chopping a little bit off the tip of the penis.
	Not okay with getting rid of the foreskin, which, by the way, does not inhibit sexual function in any way.
	As an Orthodox Jew, I'm circumcised.
	I have been ever since I was eight days old.
	And you know what?
	Everything's working just fine.
	Got two kids and ten on making more.
	It's pretty fine.
	Everything's good.
	This is true, by the way, for the vast majority of American men.
	The majority of American men are circumcised.
	Andrew Yang wants to stop all that.
	He said in a little-noticed tweet last week that he was against the ritualized practice of cutting a newborn's foreskin.
	He said that in an interview with the Daily Beast, he would incorporate that view into public policy, mainly by pushing initiatives meant to inform parents they don't need to have their infant circumcised for health reasons.
	Well, that, of course, is controversial.
	It does lower rates of, for example, penile cancer, and I believe it also lowers rates of certain STD transmissions.
	But it's really funny.
	Andrew Yang says he wants a top-down take on the medical availability of circumcision.
	I thought that, why can't that be a decision between the parents and their doctors?
	So it's a decision between a woman and her doctor when she wants to kill a baby in the womb.
	It is not a decision between a woman and her doctor when she decides whether to circumcise a baby, which has no significant after effects on children in any way.
	So, well done, Andrew Yang.
	It's fascinating, though.
	He has picked up a fair bit of support.
	I have gotten a lot of emails about having Andrew Yang on the program.
	I'd be happy to have Andrew Yang on the Sunday special.
	And we have these Sunday specials.
	I've invited, I believe, every major Democratic presidential candidate.
	I invited Pete Buttigieg on the actual, on Twitter, on the Sunday special.
	He said he'd be interested, never got back to us.
	Honestly, if people ever watch the Sunday special, you will see that I treat everybody on all sides of the aisle with I think a fair bit of generosity.
	The same would be true of Andrew Yang.
	I'd love to have Andrew on the Sunday special.
	We can discuss all of this stuff.
	Nonetheless, he is developing a cult following.
	He's proposing a $1,000 a month freedom dividend to every adult in America.
	That freedom dividend presumably is not going to be paid out as opposed to welfare.
	It will be continuation of welfare policies plus the $1,000 a month freedom dividend.
	If you were to propose a universal basic income that was a replacement for the welfare system, I think there's a strong argument for it.
	That looks a lot like the negative income tax proposed by Milton Friedman.
	Three decades ago, four decades ago.
	But if you are proposing it in addition to the current welfare system we have in the United States, then all you're doing is just adding more money on top of an already failing system.
	So he is drawing major crowds.
	He outlined his idea to a crowd of mostly millennials at an outdoor soccer field lined with food trucks.
	Apparently some 3,000 people showed up to one of his recent rallies.
	More than 66,000 donors have contributed over $350,000 to the campaign this month.
	Only 1% of Democratic voters have expressed support for him, but he is available for the debates.
	So it'll be interesting to see what he has to say when he gets on that debate stage.
	Again, I will say that at least Andrew Yang has ideas.
	As opposed to Beta Aurora, who apparently has no ideas at all.
	He wants to eliminate robocalling.
	He wants to increase public funding for the arts and local newspapers.
	He would like to protect children from smartphones, presumably with legislation.
	He wants to pay college athletes, which I agree with.
	He argues that the best way to ensure wealthy people pay their fair share of taxes is to impose a value-added tax.
	Well, that obviously is a national sales tax as opposed to an income tax I'm in favor of.
	He understands it is possible to have a robust federal government that is not overly wasteful or staffed by bureaucratic layabouts.
	This is according to The Week.
	Now, all of that sounds better than what the other Democrats are talking about, so we may make fun a little bit.
	Love tap, Andrew Yang.
	But the fact is that at least Yang has some ideas as opposed to some of these other Democrats who are trotting out a bunch of nonsense.
	As I've said before, of these Democrats, Buttigieg and Yang are the most interesting to me.
	They're also the people who have 1% of support, so maybe there's a correlation there.
	Meanwhile, there's a lot of hubbub today over President Trump going after Kellyanne Conway's husband.
	This has been a long, simmering debate and feud between George Conway, who's the lawyer husband to Kellyanne Conway, and President Trump finally fired back at George Conway because George Conway was tweeting out that President Trump is nutso, bazunkers, and so President Trump tweeted back, a total loser.
	Today.
	So rough day for Kellyanne Conway.
	He recently warned, George Conway did, in a series of tweets and retweets that Trump's erratic and voluminous social media activity was a sign that his mental condition was getting worse.
	Kellyanne had said that she doesn't share those concerns with her husband.
	I've said before, guys, that I think that you do have to share some political priorities, not only with your neighbors, but presumably with your spouse.
	It's gotta be kind of uncomfortable, right?
	To be Kellyanne Conway at this point and have your boss going after your husband openly on social media.
	Oof.
	Not a good, by the way, not a good look for the President of the United States.
	Don't punch down at George Conway, dude.
	Just unnecessary.
	Unnecessary.
	People who think you're nuts already think you're nuts.
	And you going after George Conway is not doing you any favors on this score.
	So, again, Mr. President, please just stop.
	I'm happy to cover the Democrats day in and day out, but you're gonna have to stop with this silly crap.
	Honestly, it makes you less popular, not more popular.
	I know you think that people bought the ticket to ride the train.
	Well, the train is gonna have a short stop in 2020 if you don't cut this sort of nonsense out.
	First of all, You know, at least you can say that he's firing back at George Conway.
	Him going after John McCain over the weekend was just immoral.
	So, there's that.
	Alright, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So...
	Things that I like today.
	There's a new movie on Netflix, and this movie is just chock full of stars.
	It's Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, who's a shockingly good actor, actually, and Pedro Pascoe, who you'll recall from Game of Thrones and also from Narcos, who's a terrific actor.
	The movie is about a bunch of soldiers who decide that they're going to essentially rob a drug cartel leader in South America.
	It's really good.
	It's a tight movie.
	It's got a lot of moral ambiguity to it, which is really interesting.
	You can go check it out right now.
	It's called Triple Frontier on Netflix.
	Here is a little bit of the preview.
	I have never had a feeling as pure or proud as completing a mission with all of you.
	Everything we've done for the last 17 years, trying to make a difference.
	And we never took a dime.
	You've been shot five times for your country, and you can't even afford to send your kids to college.
	I got a job for you.
	I'm retired.
	Fish, I need a pilot.
	I got the new baby now.
	This can change you and that baby's life forever.
	We finally get to use our skills for our own benefit.
	It's dark, and it's pretty intense, and it's very stress-filled.
	It's definitely worth the watch.
	There's some really good stuff about it.
	It's really well shot.
	Go check it out, Triple Frontier, over at Netflix.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
	So thing that I hate, number one, they always do these polls.
	People always do these polls where they ask people if they want higher taxes on the rich people and better welfare.
	And people, shockingly, are like, yeah, you know, that'd be great.
	More free stuff for me and tax you.
	Yeah, you know why they say that?
	Because it's fun to tax other people and then take their crap.
	That's actually really easy.
	This is one of the reasons why I think that we had better get back into the mode of you don't get to take other people's money.
	The mode of every individual is made in the image of God and that means you do not have a right to other people's property.
	But it's always amusing to me when people who are on the left then cite these polls as evidence that people are in favor of a more socialized system.
	Yeah, they're in favor of it until they realize the cost of it.
	It's very easy to believe that all of the rich people have giant Scrooge McDuck money bins in the backyard, and that if you just take those money bins, they'll continue to work just as hard, and that they will continue to employ just as many people.
	It's obvious nonsense.
	It's just not true.
	If you want to know how Singapore, which is legitimately a rock, like there's no actual natural resources on Singapore, has become a powerful economy, it's because they don't actually believe in taxing the living hell out of everybody who is wealthy.
	The same thing was true in Hong Kong when it was run by the British.
	Basically, any safe haven for wealth ends up being a wealthy country.
	This is true in Switzerland as well.
	Nonetheless, they cite these polls as evidence that this is what the people want.
	Yeah, you know what the people then don't expect?
	That you're going to have to hike the middle class taxes.
	It turns out the rich people don't have enough money to pay everyone else their salary and also pay for everybody else's welfare programs.
	People said in this poll of 21 OECD countries, the industrialized countries, that they were not getting their fair share given what they paid into the system.
	People were, on average, particularly concerned about access to good quality, affordable, long-term care for the elderly, housing, and health services.
	Weird, because all of these countries are the ones that we are emulating.
	So, you're telling me all of the OECD countries that we emulate want even more welfare?
	They're not even satisfied with what they have now?
	And in places like Denmark, they're paying 60% taxes if you're middle class?
	If you're barely middle class?
	The great lie about redistribution is that the redistribution stops when you get to the upper income levels.
	It is just not true.
	It is just not real.
	Somebody's gonna have to pay for all this crap, and it's going to be you.
	Okay, meanwhile, other things that I hate.
	So, Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican of California, has now sued Twitter, two anonymous Twitter accounts, and political consultant Liz Mayer for more than $250 million.
	He's alleging that the defendants engaged in negligence, defamation per se, insulting words, and civil conspiracy.
	I'm not sure that insulting words is a cause of action.
	In the suit, Nunes accuses Twitter of having a political agenda by allowing two anonymous accounts, Devin Nunes' mom and Devin Nunes' cow, and Liz Mayer, to attack, defame, and demean him.
	The suit alleges that the two Twitter accounts engaged in a vicious defamation campaign against Nunes that lasted for over a year, and claims that Mayer relentlessly smeared and defamed him by filming stunts at his DC office, accusing him of multiple crimes and filing fraudulent ethics complaints against him.
	The lawsuit also claims that Twitter shadow banned Nunes, which restricted his free speech and amplified the abusive and hateful content.
	Now, I think that this lawsuit is probably improperly filed.
	I think it is difficult to win a defamation lawsuit as a public figure, generally, and you just have to take an enormous amount of crap.
	I mean, as a public figure, presumably more public than Devin Nunes, I take an enormous amount of abuse and garbage on social media.
	That just goes along with the territory.
	I've never once thought about suing my detractors on Twitter, for example.
	With that said, the loud outcry and amusement of people at Nunes, from people on the left, people saying, well, you know, why is he so offended by Twitter?
	These are the exact same people who say that Russian bots got Trump elected using Twitter.
	Which of course, either Twitter is just something we're all gonna have to live with, and you're just gonna have to deal with it, or Twitter is innately, insanely powerful, in which case, Devin Nunes should be able to sue people.
	You gotta pick one, guys.
	You don't get to pick both.
	All right, so we're gonna be back here a little bit later today with much more.
	We have a couple of guests on later today.
	I know David French from National Review is stopping by to discuss a gun manufacturer lawsuit that must be taken up by the Supreme Court.
	Basically, a lower court just ruled that gun manufacturers can be held liable for the misuse of guns, which is an insane, insane ruling.
	We'll discuss that with David French a little bit later today on the show.
	Plus, we'll have all the updates for you later today.
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