Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

June 17, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:00:39

The Harvard Auto-Da-Fe | Ep. 802

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Harvard withdraws admission from Parkland survivor Kyle Kashuv.
	The media help America's enemies against the Trump administration.
	And we check the latest polls.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show.
	But if you didn't, good news, we're back.
	It's a Monday and we're going to take you through the whole week.
	Lots of news breaking.
	We'll get to all of it in just one second.
	First, we are halfway through the year.
	It is never too late to get started on the things that you want to accomplish.
	The fact is that you have a lot of things that you need to get done.
	One of those things might be making your business more efficient.
	And the way to make your business more efficient is not to spend an enormous sum of money on your legal costs.
	Okay?
	Legal costs are enormous.
	It takes a lot of time.
	It takes a lot of money.
	Unless you use LegalZoom, which is why I have been using LegalZoom personally for years.
	It makes it easy when you have someone to help you along the way.
	That's why LegalZoom is extending their friends and family discount to everybody.
	Right now, for a limited time, you can get 10% off the things you've had on your to-do list.
	If you're a small business owner, you can make your accountant happy by saving on that LLC, DBA, S Corp, and more.
	You can also save time and secure some peace of mind by wrapping up that last will or living trust you've been putting off, because once you are done with that, you don't have to think about dying anytime soon.
	LegalZoom is not a law firm, but don't worry.
	If legal questions are holding you up, they have a network of independent attorneys that can provide advice to get you over all the legal hurdles that pop up in your life.
	Don't wait any longer to get started on your goals this year.
	Visit LegalZoom.com right now.
	Save 10%!
	Awesome deal!
	With LegalZoom's friends and family discount, just be sure to enter code BEN in the referral box at checkout.
	That offer is only available for a limited time, so hurry over to LegalZoom.com.
	Right now, use promo code Ben for 10% off.
	That's LegalZoom.com, LegalZoom, where life meets legal.
	Okay, so breaking news this morning.
	A kid who I have found to be strong, resilient, and classy, Kyle Kashuv, who is a Parkland survivor, is now being smacked by Harvard.
	He was admitted to Harvard, and now he has been rejected from Harvard.
	Now, I knew about this, honestly speaking, a couple of weeks ago.
	Kyle told me about this a couple of weeks ago when it first happened.
	He sort of asked my advice on how to navigate it.
	I'll tell you the whole story and what exactly happened to Kyle starting from the beginning.
	So, today, he announced on Twitter that Harvard University had withdrawn his admission from the school over the revelation of racist, offensive, idiotic posts written on a private Google document with friends when he was 16 years old.
	So back when Kyle was 16, before the Parkland shooting ever occurred, he was on a Google Doc with a bunch of his supposed friends, a private Google Doc, and he dropped the N-word and a bunch of other disgusting, nasty references.
	Now, this is something, not to make excuses for bad things, but this is something that 16-year-olds sometimes do because 16-year-olds are stupid.
	Everyone knows 16-year-olds are dumb.
	16-year-olds do not have fully developed prefrontal cortices, they are not geniuses, or at least if they are geniuses, they're geniuses for 16-year-olds.
	But, if you are a kind of person who would like everything that you did when you were 16 said in public or private, re-earthed, re-unearthed every time something good happened to you, well then you'll love this story.
	So, Kyle put all this stuff on a private Google document with supposed friends.
	Then the Parkland shooting happens, and Kyle becomes a very outspoken advocate for the Second Amendment, a very heavily publicized figure, particularly on the right.
	On the left, there are a bunch of heavily publicized figures from Parkland, ranging from, I think her name was Emily Gonzalez, to David Hogg, obviously.
	Cameron Kasky, who we had on the Sunday special to talk about Parkland.
	And so there are a bunch of these survivors, and many of them handle fame well.
	Some of them don't handle fame as well, but they're all kids, right?
	These are all people who are 17, 18 years old at the most.
	Well, Kyle Kashuv is one of these people.
	And he spends a couple of years basically going around with various other members of the Parkland class and trying to develop school safety initiatives.
	So he meets with a bunch of senators on both left and right.
	He meets the President of the United States.
	He becomes this very prominent figure.
	Now Kyle also has impeccable academic credentials.
	So Kyle graduated second in his class.
	His class is several hundred people.
	He had a weighted GPA of something like 5.4, and he scored 50 and 50 on his SATs.
	His academic credentials were thoroughly in order, so he applies to Harvard, and he gets in.
	And after he gets in, some of the kids who he was on that Google private doc thread with back when he was 16, when he said all these terrible things, decide to now drop all of that.
	And our journalistic institutions decide to go all in on this.
	Will Sommer, who I think is one of the worst gotcha artists in the media.
	I mean, he does this for a living.
	He sort of trolls Twitter for moments to attack folks.
	Over at the Daily Beast, he prints an article a couple of weeks ago, it was like May 23rd, so about a month ago now, called, Pro-Gun Parkland Team Kyle Kashuv Apologizes for Inflammatory Racial Comments.
	And Kyle had gone ahead and done that.
	He had called me after he said this stuff is resurfacing, and I said, you should come forward.
	You should explain to everybody that you apologize and that you never meant any of this stuff.
	If you didn't mean any of this stuff, you should explain where you were coming from.
	And what Kyle said is that, like many 16-year-olds, he fell in with a group of people who were trying to shock each other.
	If you remember being a 16-year-old boy, very often 16-year-old boys say shocking and terrible things to each other specifically for the shock effect.
	So, Kyle came out and he made a statement at the time, and Will Sommer and other members of the media covered this as though this was actual news.
	They covered it as actual news that a 16-year-old said stupid things in a private Google document, and then a lot of his political adversaries decided to go after him on that basis.
	There are also some members of the so-called alt-right who decided to go after Kashuv.
	Some members of sort of the fringy right who decided to go after Kashuv.
	The reason being that Kashuv had derided the alt-right for their racism.
	He had said racism is bad, particularly after Parkland.
	He had said that he was not going to participate in events with people who he perceived as racist.
	They said, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha.
	Back when you were 16, you said X. These were adults attacking a kid who was 17, 18 years old at the time.
	And then they all sent these notes to Harvard's admissions committee.
	So, Cashew says all this stuff, the Daily Beast reports all of this, and then Harvard gets a hold of it, and then Harvard rescinds his admission.
	So here is what Kyle explained on Twitter this morning.
	It's a thread.
	Harvard rescinded my acceptance.
	Three months after being admitted to Harvard Class of 2023, Harvard has decided to rescind my admission over texts and comments made nearly two years ago, months prior to the shooting.
	I have some thoughts.
	Here's what happened.
	A few weeks ago, I was made aware of egregious and callous comments classmates and I made privately years ago, when I was 16 years old, months before the shooting, in an attempt to be as extreme and shocking as possible.
	I immediately apologized, and he did, in fact, issue an apology.
	By the way, side note here.
	This is a smear job on Kashuv in the sense that there are a bunch of other 16 year olds in the chat.
	Have you seen any of their names appearing in public media?
	Have you seen any of the other 16 year olds who said similarly disgusting and outrageous things?
	Have you seen any of them been shamed out of their college acceptance?
	Didn't think so.
	So here's the apology that Kashuv didn't make.
	I have recently been made aware of screenshots circulating that include offensive comments former classmates and I made a few years ago long before the shooting.
	I want to address this with honesty and transparency.
	We are 16 year olds making idiotic comments using callous and inflammatory language in an effort to be as extreme and shocking as possible.
	I'm embarrassed by it, but I want to be clear that the comments I made are not indicative of who I am or who I've become in the years since.
	This past year has forced me to mature and grow in an incredibly drastic way.
	My world, like everyone else's in Parkland, was turned upside down on February 14th.
	When your classmates, your teachers, and your neighbors are killed, it transforms you as a human being.
	I see the world through different eyes, and I'm embarrassed by the petty, flippant kid represented in those screenshots.
	I believe those I've gotten to know since know I'm a better person than that.
	I can and will do better moving forward." That was his original statement.
	OK.
	And then he issued the apology.
	Speculative articles were written.
	His peers used the opportunity to attack him.
	This is what he writes.
	And my life was once again reduced to a headline.
	It sent me into one of the darkest spirals of my life.
	After the story broke, former peers and political opponents began contacting Harvard, urging them to rescind me.
	Sorry, this is disgusting stuff.
	You're going after a 16-year-old who's now 18 for commenting two years before in a private Google chat and sending it to Harvard administrators in an attempt to ruin his life?
	This is not an adult.
	It is a person who was 18 years old and was 16 when these comments were made.
	And we're now going to go to Harvard and try to have his admission rescinded.
	On the basis of what?
	That he can never move beyond that?
	He can never grow as a person?
	He can never repent?
	We have to now participate in an auto-defay in which we burn Kashuv and people like him at the stake?
	There's no forgiveness whatsoever.
	None.
	I mean, Harvard could have done a thousand things here.
	Harvard could have said, listen, those comments were terrible.
	We look forward to working with you to help you educate yourself about issues that have troubled you in the past.
	I mean, there are a thousand things they could have done.
	Harvard has people at Harvard who are ex-convicts.
	People.
	who went to prison for actual crimes against other, not saying bad things, not saying mean things, not using racial slurs, who committed actual crimes.
	Those are people at Harvard.
	And you know what?
	That is perfectly appropriate because if you committed a crime and you did the time and you paid your price, then why shouldn't you go to Harvard University?
	Why not?
	What exactly is the problem with that?
	There are lots of people who I'm sure believed a lot of terrible, crazy things when they were 16 years old or said terrible, crazy things when they were 16 years old.
	And who will say and do crazy and terrible things while they are at Harvard who are not going to be tossed out of Harvard?
	So Harvard then sent a letter stating that they reserved the right to withdraw an offer of admission and requested a written explanation within 72 hours.
	They said, Mr. Kashuv, we've become aware of media reports discussing offensive statements allegedly authored by you.
	As you know, Harvard reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions, including if you engage or have engaged in behavior that brings into question your honesty, maturity, or moral character.
	OK, now that right there, that statement is insane.
	If that's the excuse they're using to kick him out, that he engaged or that he engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question honesty, maturity, or moral character, Has engaged in?
	So let's say when he was 11, he said the n-word.
	Okay, so now are we gonna make it that, like, where's the age cutoff here?
	Really?
	Especially given the fact that Cashew's been in the public eye for two full-on years after the Parkland shooting, and yet nobody can point to an incident that he's had post that, that evidences this kind of racism or racist behavior.
	Says on behalf of the Admissions Committee, this is William Fitzsimmons, the Dean of Admissions.
	A gutless hack.
	On behalf of the Admissions Committee, we write now to ask you to send us a full accounting of any such statements you have authored, including not only those discussed in the media, but any others as well.
	Please also provide a written explanation of your actions for the Committee's consideration.
	Please email these materials to us by no later than 10 a.m., Tuesday, May 28th.
	And they sent this to him on May 24th.
	So they wanted him to come up with a full list and they wanted a full mea culpa by May 28th.
	So Kashuv complied and he wrote a letter.
	And here is what the letter said.
	It said, let me first state, it says, let me first state that I apologize unequivocally for my comments, which were made two years ago in private among equally immature high school students.
	In the attached document, I've attached all the comments I've been able to record.
	I do not have access to the electronic record of that conversation, and do not recall other things that may have been said.
	I have only seen what has appeared in the media.
	I take full responsibility for the idiotic and hurtful things I wrote two years ago.
	I make absolutely no excuse for those comments.
	I said them, I regret them, and by explaining the context and my subsequent experiences, I am not trying to excuse them.
	Instead, I am seeking to demonstrate the hurtful things I said do not represent the man I am today.
	I understand Harvard's concern over these offensive statements from my past, and I further understand that Harvard has been contacted about them by people expressing concern about them.
	I am very sorry to have put the College in this position.
	I am determined to take whatever steps are necessary to rectify this past wrong and to reassure Harvard of my commitment to values of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, which I hope to advance as a member of the Class of 2024.
	This is the context in which I made these comments.
	While this does not excuse my comments, I made poor choices with a group in which those words bore little weight and were used only in a means for their shock value.
	I bore no racial animus.
	The context was a group of adolescents trying to use the worst words and say the most insane things imaginable.
	Until these writings were disclosed, I had long forgotten about them.
	While I will forever bear incredible shame for typing them, I especially feel remorse now that they've been made public, knowing they have caused terrible pain to people I care about.
	I gave no consideration to the meaning and weight of the words I wrote in an effort to impress then-friends and classmates, and looking back, I know clearly now I wrote terrible things I can never unwrite.
	My intent was never to hurt anyone.
	To do so would have magnified the harm immensely.
	I also feel I am no longer the same person, especially in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting and all that has transpired since.
	In a second, I'll read you the end of Kyle's response to Harvard's request for a mea culpa.
	First, let's talk about that suit you're wearing.
	So, I know, you go to work and you're wearing a suit, you just got it off the rack, and you're like, oh, this probably fits me great.
	It doesn't.
	Okay, it's really ugly.
	Instead, what you need is a suit that is made just for you.
	This is where Indochino comes in.
	Indochino is the world's most exciting made-to-measure menswear company.
	They make suits and shirts to your exact measurements for an unparalleled fit and comfort.
	If you're in the middle of planning a wedding, they have tons of options for those looking to outfit their wedding party.
	So here's how it works.
	You can visit a stylist at one of their showrooms.
	Indochino has over 40 showrooms in North America.
	They will take your measurements personally.
	Or you can measure at home and shop online at Indochino.com.
	Choose your fabric, your design customizations.
	Simply submit your measurements with your choices online.
	Relax while your suit gets professionally tailored and mailed to you in a couple of weeks.
	This week, My listeners can get any premium Indochino suit for just $369 at Indochino.com when you enter promo code SHAPIRO at checkout.
	That is 50% off the regular price for a made-to-measure premium suit, plus shipping is free.
	I have an Indochino suit.
	It is perhaps my favorite suit.
	It is fantastic.
	It fits perfectly because it was tailored just for me.
	That's Indochino.com, promo code SHAPIRO, for any premium suit, just $369, and free shipping.
	It's an incredible deal for a premium made-to-measure suit.
	Once you go custom, You're not going to want to go back.
	You're going to look fantastic.
	Go check them out at Indochino.com and use promo code Shapiro for any premium suit, just $369 and free shipping.
	OK, so Kyle continues in this letter back to Harvard.
	He says my intent was never to hurt anyone.
	To do so would have magnified the harm immensely.
	I also feel I am no longer the same person, especially in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting and all that has transpired since.
	I had to mature, not only to address that horrible situation, but to fulfill my new role as a school safety activist.
	I have tried hard to be a better man in honor of the friends I lost, and I believe I have grown and matured significantly through this experience.
	I am proud of some of the things I have accomplished in the wake of that tragedy, and I do not recognize the person who wrote those things.
	When I was reminded of the writings, I was mortified and embarrassed.
	My parents raised me to be better than what is represented in these screenshots from about two years ago.
	In an effort to be as honest and transparent as possible, I immediately apologized publicly when reminded of these messages, while knowing the media uproar that would ensue.
	It did ensue, and I have continued to accept responsibility and the resulting legitimate criticism.
	As you know, I intend to take a gap year before beginning my studies to continue my work promoting school safety.
	I will continue to mature, and will enter Harvard with three years and many life experiences between the foolish child who said those things and the man I am today.
	As an aspiring member of the Harvard community, I aspire to the values that the community strives to uphold.
	Therefore, I have already written to the Harvard College of Diversity, Education, and Support, both to express my deepest apologies and remorse, and to reach out to begin a dialogue that I hope will be the foundation of future growth.
	While I am no longer the same person who wrote those comments, there is always more to learn, especially about the legacy of racism in our society.
	Thank you again for this opportunity to address these issues.
	I hope this fully addresses your concerns, but if not, I would be happy to provide any further information or discussion you require.
	Okay, so that's the letter that Kashuv wrote back to them.
	And then, he also sent a letter to the Office of Diversity.
	I'll read that to you in a second.
	Cashew doesn't just respond to Harvard admissions asking for some sort of justification with what I think is a very classy letter taking full blame for what he did, but also recognizing that he has grown as a human being since he was 16 years old and saw his friends shot.
	And then he issued another letter, this one to the Office of Diversity.
	Quote, to Harvard College Office of Diversity and Support.
	Around two years ago, when I was 16 years old, before the mass shooting that occurred at my high school, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, I was part of a group in which we used abhorrent racial slurs.
	We did so out of misplaced sense of humor.
	We treated the words themselves as though they bore little weight and used them only for their shock value.
	Looking back two years later, I cannot recognize that person.
	I make absolutely no excuse for those comments.
	I said them.
	I regret them deeply.
	I bore no racial animus whatsoever.
	The context was a group of adolescents trying to use the worst words and say the most insane things imaginable.
	My intent was never to hurt anyone." And then he continues along the same lines as his original letter to the admissions committee.
	On June 3rd, they write back to him.
	They say, Dear Mr. Cashew, thank you for your response to our letter of May 24th.
	The admissions committee has discussed at length your accounts of the communications about which we asked, and we appreciated your candor and your expressions of regret for sending them.
	As you know, the committee takes seriously the qualities of maturity and moral character.
	After careful consideration, the committee voted to rescind your admission to Harvard College.
	We are sorry about the circumstances that have led us to withdraw your admission, and we wish you success in your future academic endeavors and beyond.
	So in other words, you're an irredeemable racist, and now we are going to ensure that you don't get into Harvard College and that you're smeared as such for the rest of your life because your political opponents unearthed stuff from when you were 16 years old that you said when you were young and stupid.
	Congratulations.
	Your academic life has basically been ruined.
	By the way, I've spoken with Kyle.
	What Kyle told me is that he turned down a full ride from NYU.
	So he turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars in foregone student debt so that he could attend Harvard College.
	So they waited until after that to reject his admission.
	By the way, he got a letter the same day from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion saying, quote, Hello, Kyle.
	I hope this message finds you well.
	Thank you for your email.
	We appreciate your thoughtful reflections and look forward to connecting with you upon your matriculation in the fall of 2020.
	In the interim, I encourage you to search online for different ways to connect to local organizations and resources within your community.
	Have a wonderful day!
	Best, Grace, Harvard College Dean of Students Office, Office of Diversity, Education, and Support.
	So, excellent job, Harvard.
	Your own diversity office is like, OK, they did the mature thing.
	We look forward to seeing you here.
	We hope that you've learned and grown, and we look forward to teaching you.
	Harvard Admissions Committee rejected him, expelled him, effectively speaking.
	Hey, after receiving Harvard's letter, Cashew then responded by asking for an opportunity to make his case face-to-face and work toward any possible path toward reconciliation, and they said no.
	They said, "Thank you for your correspondence.
	We understand this outcome is disappointing.
	Please be aware the admissions committee carefully and thoroughly considered your application reaching its determination.
	Decisions of the admissions committee are final.
	We wish you the best." So I have a couple of notes about Harvard University.
	One, Harvard University is currently embroiled in a scandal where they have been rejecting Asian applicants on the basis of their race.
	Okay, that is a decision of the admissions committee.
	So the admissions committee is racist enough that they are rejecting Asian applicants on the basis of their race alone.
	They're in the middle of a lawsuit about this right now.
	But if a kid said something when he was 16 years old and is demonstrated, full scale, that not only is he remorseful, but that's not who he is as a person, then Harvard deigns to expel him based on unearthed private correspondence from when he was 16 years old.
	That's number one.
	Number two, is this a new standard?
	Like, this is the new standard now, that anybody who has their crap from when they were 16 unearthed and then cast into public view, no matter what they've done since, no matter what they've gone through or what they've become as a person, that person's academic life gets ruined and that person is then smeared across academia.
	That a person can earn admission to Harvard not on the basis of activism as some of Kyle's classmates did.
	Let's be real about this.
	There are certain of Kyle's classmates who did not score appropriately to get into places like Harvard or Columbia, and they are attending places like Harvard and Columbia solely on the basis of their activism.
	Kyle is not one of those.
	He finished number two in his class with a 5.4 weighted GPA and a 1550 on his SATs.
	He gets into Harvard regardless if anything happens at Parkland.
	And let's be real about this too.
	If he had not been involved in being a public activist after Parkland, none of this ever comes out.
	Because none of his political opponents are looking to dig up dirt on him.
	So he would have gotten into Harvard regardless.
	And none of this ever would have come out.
	And he never would have had to apologize.
	And he never would have been rejected from admission in the first place.
	He would have gotten into an Ivy League anyway.
	He was going to a massive public school, graduated number two out of something like 800 kids in his class.
	He was going to an Ivy.
	And now he's been rejected for the crime of having put his face in public.
	That's really what this is about.
	If he were not in public, none of this ever comes out.
	And if you say, well, this is really about who makes these kinds of comments when they are 16 years old.
	Yeah, I urge you to go back and look at the crap you said and did when you were 16 years old and think about whether you would want the private, not even the public stuff, which is bad enough, I'm sure.
	The private stuff that you said unearthed and then cast before the world view, the world's view, and you being given no grace at all.
	That's the new standard.
	By the way, this is not about Kyle being conservative for me.
	I've worked with many of the Parkland survivors, several of them.
	Cameron Caskey was on my show.
	As I say, Cameron disagrees with me on gun rights.
	I would absolutely defend Cameron the same way.
	I have defended people on the left in the exact same way.
	Sarah Zhang, who's a columnist for the New York Times, with whom I heartily disagree on politics, said vile things on Twitter.
	People unearthed it when she was hired by the New York Times.
	I said she shouldn't even lose her job, and she was an adult when she said those things, and she said them publicly on Twitter, not privately when she was 16 years old.
	When James Gunn, the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, was targeted by online activists with old tweets, where people were looking through his old tweets and they found bad old jokes that he had told publicly about molesting children.
	I said he should not be fired.
	This was bad old stuff.
	He had apologized for it in the past.
	Also, it was comedy.
	And I defended him too.
	This is not about Kyle being conservative.
	I will tell you what is about Kyle being conservative.
	The left targeting Kyle is about him being conservative.
	Because I promise you, if Kyle were on the left, none of this ever sees the light of day.
	Nobody on the left unearths it.
	Nobody covers it in the media.
	If this had happened to David Hogg, the entire media infrastructure activates in order to defend him.
	When Laura Ingraham committed the grave sin of suggesting that David Hogg was spoiled, boycotts were started against her program based on media coverage of Ingraham.
	With Kashuv, his political opponents from high school, his high school quote-unquote friends, target him.
	And the Daily Beast runs full piece.
	It wasn't just the Daily Beast, by the way.
	Huffington Post ran a piece, I believe.
	A bunch of outlets did.
	And then everybody descends on Harvard to try and get this kid's admission revoked.
	That's disgusting enough.
	What Harvard did is even worse.
	Harvard is a place, supposedly, of education.
	My alma mater, Harvard Law School.
	I'm ashamed of that school today.
	I'm ashamed of my alma mater.
	I'm ashamed, and I'm not the only one.
	I know a bunch of folks who went to Harvard, Harvard Law School, who are deeply ashamed of that institution, and they damn well should be.
	I'll explain more in just a second.
	First, my kitchen is under construction right now.
	That means that I don't really have the ability to cook, which means I am deeply reliant on people providing food to me from restaurants.
	And that means I need DoorDash.
	If you've had a long day at work, a tough day at school, if you're still stuck at the office...
	Treat yourself to the meal you deserve on demand from your favorite restaurant.
	Restaurants come to you with DoorDash.
	DoorDash connects you to your favorite restaurants in the city.
	Ordering is super easy.
	Just use the DoorDash app.
	Choose what you want to eat.
	A dasher will bring it to you anywhere you are.
	Not only is that burger place you love on DoorDash already, over 310,000 other amazing restaurants are too.
	DoorDash connects you with door-to-door delivery in over 3,300 cities, all 50 states and Canada.
	Order from your local go-to's or choose from your favorite chains like Chipotle or Wendy's or Chick-fil-A and the Cheesecake Factory.
	Don't worry about dinner.
	Let dinner come to you with DoorDash.
	Right now, our listeners can get $5 off their first order of $15 or more when you download the DoorDash app and enter promo code BEN.
	That's $5 off your first order when you download the DoorDash app from the App Store and enter promo code BEN.
	Again, that is promo code Ben for five bucks off your first order from DoorDash.
	It's a hell of a deal.
	And let me tell you something, DoorDash makes life so easy.
	I mean, I'm like DoorDash basically is what is keeping my family fed at this point.
	Use promo code Ben for five bucks off your first order from DoorDash.
	OK, so back to Harvard's standards here.
	So again, the new Harvard standard is if your political opponents dig up something that you said privately when you were 16 years old and then dump it in front of the Harvard Admissions Committee and you happen to be conservative and it happens to be something terrible, And it doesn't matter what you've done since, then Harvard will get rid of you.
	They have ex-cons there, right?
	Ex-convicts, which is perfectly appropriate.
	By the way, I am sure that if we start going through the social media posts of everybody who's been at Harvard for the past several years, I promise you there's some real ugly crap there.
	And that's just social media, not what they've been saying privately.
	Again, this wasn't even public, this was private.
	This is an insane standard no one can uphold, but it shows the absolute gutlessness of the Harvard administration.
	Let us all recall that Elizabeth Warren, now a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president, spent years claiming she was a Native American and being listed as such in the faculty handbook at Harvard Law School, and she has felt no blowback whatsoever from the Harvard administration.
	None.
	None.
	If you ask them about it today, they will still defend her and pretend that nothing bad happened ever.
	She lied to them about her own status for years.
	Lied to them.
	No problem.
	Harvard, again, is engaged in an admissions scandal right now in which they have been using racism in order to reject Asian candidates.
	Maybe they found out Kyle was Asian.
	That was the problem.
	Harvard has a long history of racism and anti-Semitism.
	Harvard has a long history of discrimination.
	But you know what, as Kyle points out, he says, I believe institutions and people can grow.
	I've said that repeatedly.
	Throughout its history, Harvard's faculty has included slave owners, segregationists, bigots, and anti-Semites.
	If Harvard is suggesting that growth is impossible and that our past defines our future, then Harvard is an inherently racist institution.
	But I don't believe that.
	In the end, this isn't about me.
	It's about whether we live in a society in which forgiveness is possible or mistakes brand new is irredeemable, as Harvard has decided for me.
	So what now, says Kyle?
	I'm figuring it out.
	I'd given up huge scholarships in order to go to Harvard, and the deadline for accepting other college offers has ended.
	I'm exploring all options at the moment.
	I mean, what a disaster for Harvard.
	And unfortunately, this is what Harvard has become.
	Harvard is now a member of the woke, scold brigade.
	They are run by SJW idiots.
	They have been, by the way, even when I was there.
	And they were trying to get rid of Larry Summers as dean because Larry Summers had the temerity to suggest that there are natural differences between men and women.
	That was enough to get him rejected.
	And of course, over the past few weeks, we've seen the case of Ronald Sullivan.
	A black leftist member of Harvard Law School's faculty, who has acted as a defense lawyer in a bevy of cases, acted as a defense lawyer for Harvey Weinstein, and ended up getting his deanship of a residential hall canceled on him.
	Harvard is no longer an educational institution.
	It is an institution of tyrannical overlordship based on politics.
	It's ridiculous.
	Because what you would assume is that this is a place where you would come to be educated again.
	Let's say that you just had a student, you know, a random student, and the student had racist views at Harvard.
	Wouldn't it be Harvard's job as a school to try and train that student out of the racist views?
	Wouldn't it be Harvard's job as a school to try and work with, especially if the student expressed interest, to try and work with the student to educate the student beyond the stupidity?
	Wouldn't that be the idea?
	I mean, where better to go than to an educational institution that is capable of educating people out of bad ideas?
	It's funny, I was reading a book over the weekend.
	By a guy who we'll have on our program.
	His name escapes me at the moment.
	It's Jamil Javalni, I believe.
	Jamil Javalni.
	He has a great new book called Why Young Men, about why young men become violent, become terrorists, why they become criminals very often.
	And Jamil Javalni grew up in Toronto.
	He was the son of effectively a single mother, mixed race background.
	His father was black, his mother was white.
	And he talked about how as he grew up, He inculcated all of these ridiculous and insane views.
	I mean, he actually fell in with the Nation of Islam at one point.
	He fell in with the Five Percenters, who are a bunch of racist folks.
	And then he ended up, because he was a gifted guy, he ended up scoring well on his LSATs and going to Yale Law School.
	And in the process of that education, he learned that a lot of these ideas were wrong.
	Because this is one of the things that happens when you go to an educational institution.
	It is designed to educate you, to give you new information and perspectives you hadn't thought about.
	Now imagine if Yale Law School had said to Jamil Javani, you know what?
	No.
	You know, we see that you were once a member of the Nation of Islam.
	You can't get in.
	We're done here.
	Sorry.
	You said that you were a member of the Nation of Islam, and that means that you are irredeemable and you can never change in any way, even though you are 18 years old.
	20 years old.
	Well, that's what Harvard has done here.
	Mainly because they were afraid of the blowback from the social justice warriors.
	They were afraid, I am sure, that the Black Student Association was going to descend on the doors of the Dean of Admissions office and protest and make them look bad.
	And then it would be, Harvard admits racist.
	Harvard admits racist.
	That was going to be how the media covered it.
	So Harvard was scared of the same media that is despicable enough to say that a 16-year-old in private conversation saying a bad thing for which he apologizes and then spends years trying to live down.
	That media was interested in bullying Harvard, that's why those articles came out in the first place, and Harvard caved because they have no spine.
	That's the story of our social justice day and age.
	A media that is not a media, that is not a journalistic institution.
	There are pseudo-journalists who are actually activists, who are determined to use institutional power to club everyone else into submission, and a bunch of administrators at these various institutions who are willing to cave in because they don't want the pressure.
	Harvard made a very simple decision here.
	This is not about principle.
	Because the principle is unlivable.
	This is a very simple decision by Harvard University.
	The decision is, we would rather cave in to the woke-skulled media and their allies, these pseudo-journalist activists, and their activist friends.
	We'd rather cave in to them than stand up for a principle of academic freedom and repentance.
	This is dangerous stuff for the country.
	So here's what I'm suggesting.
	If you are a Harvard alum today, you should seriously consider withdrawing your donations to Harvard.
	I've never been a donor to Harvard Law.
	I might have considered it at one point.
	They are not getting any donation from me, that's for damn sure.
	And if you are an alum from Harvard, you should think seriously about whether your money ought to go to an institution that decides that 16-year-olds are irredeemable based on private posts that are unearthed by political opponents two years after the fact in order to hurt them.
	And the admissions committee goes along with that.
	I would also suggest that media members, if you want to do some digging, if you're not just activists, if you're just concerned about people in positions of power who are maybe holding bad views, maybe your job should be not to go after 16-year-olds.
	Maybe your job should be to look at Harvard's admissions committee and find out what exactly they have been saying on their social media for years.
	Weird.
	I noticed that everyone in the Harvard admissions committee that I could find, I noticed that all of them had their social media accounts locked.
	I wonder why that is.
	I wonder why they've locked those.
	I mean, don't they want to be transparent and open about their viewpoints?
	Hmm?
	Very weird.
	Very weird.
	A little bit more on this in a second, and then we'll get to the media engaging in another kind of insanity.
	First, let's talk about the fact that you might need a new job.
	So you're working a job, and it's all right, but why wouldn't you want to upgrade?
	Well, finding a new job is a lot of work.
	I mean, that's the chief barrier.
	But what if you had your own personal recruiter to help you find a better job?
	Well, now, ZipRecruiter's technology can do that for you.
	Just download the ZipRecruiter job search app, let it know what kind of jobs you're interested in, and its technology starts doing the work.
	The ZipRecruiter app finds jobs you'll like, No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated job search app.
	My listeners should download the free ZipRecruiter job search app today and let the power of technology work for you.
	Don't wait.
	The sooner you download the free ZipRecruiter job search app, the sooner it can help you find a better job.
	Go check them out right now.
	Go download that free ZipRecruiter job search app and get yourself a better job.
	I mean, unless you're working here.
	If you're working here, then please don't download the free ZipRecruiter job search app.
	This is the best job you can have.
	But if you're working somewhere else and you want to work at Daily Wire, for example, then one of the ways that you would do so is to download that free ZipRecruiter job search app.
	And that's how you find the job that works best for you.
	It works great for employers and employees.
	ZipRecruiter is fantastic.
	Go check them out now at ZipRecruiter.com and download that free ZipRecruiter job search app on your phone as well.
	Okay, so we're going to get to a little bit more on this Harvard insanity.
	Because I really do think it's indicative of something deeper in American public life that cannot be lived down in something I've talked about a lot.
	And that is the choice that is now being forced on people.
	Basically, do not enter public life unless you are shameless, or unless you are willing to let people destroy you.
	That's basically the choice that is now being placed before the American public, and it's disgusting.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, head on over to dailywire.com.
	For $9.99 a month, you can get the rest of this show live.
	You can also get two additional hours of this show every afternoon.
	I believe Kyle's gonna be a guest on the show this afternoon, along with Dennis Miller, a bunch of folks who come on every day.
	It's really fantastic.
	If you're missing out, you are missing out, so go check it out at dailywire.com.
	The sort of woke scolding that I'm talking about with Kyle applies to the entire right.
	The entire left is intent on depriving you of your ability to listen to shows like this one.
	They're attempting to go after our advertisers.
	It's something they do every single day.
	It's why we appreciate our advertisers, but it's also why we really appreciate you, the subscribers.
	So please go subscribe for $99 a year to get this.
	The leftist here is hot or cold Tumblr.
	Go check it out right now.
	It is indeed fantastic.
	And you get all these goodies, but more importantly, you know that you're helping us bring the show to you every day so that we can't be run off the air by leftists who are intent on shutting down political debate by targeting folks.
	Go check us out over at dailywire.com.
	We have all sorts of goodies.
	Our last Sunday special was great with Larry Wilmore, who's on the left, which is always, I think, a lot of fun to talk with people who disagree.
	You can go check that out.
	You would have gotten that a day earlier if you were a subscriber as well.
	So all sorts of goodies for you when you subscribe.
	We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So one of the things that I think is worth pointing out here is the broader standard that has now been established.
	So we've seen it already with folks like Ralph Northam, that if you do something earlier in your life, at least Northam was like 25 when he was in med school, and took a picture in blackface or a KKK hood.
	You got to pick one.
	At least he was 25.
	So saying that he was doing something racist when he was 25, that's a lot worse than doing something racist when you are 16 years old.
	But even with that said, I said, even in the middle of the Ralph Northam saga, that if you spend the next 30 years of your life not being a racist, this should weigh into the consideration as to whether you are actually a racist.
	But what Northam ended up doing is basically saying he wasn't in the photo and now he's able to live this down.
	So here is what has happened.
	If Kyle had never, Kyle Kashuv, had never entered the public square, he would have been at Harvard.
	He did enter the public square, and then he got into Harvard, and then his political opponents targeted him.
	So what does this say about getting into politics?
	What does this say about sounding off on matters of public discourse and public opinion?
	It means that if you have the right opinions, you will be guarded no matter what you do.
	If you are on the left, you will be guarded by the media no matter what you do.
	Because, amazing, but people stopped talking about Ralph Northam.
	Isn't that weird?
	People just stopped talking about him.
	It's really crazy.
	Now, if you're a Republican, they would never stop talking about him, but Ralph Nordham, they all just kind of shook their head and went on with their life.
	After all, he holds the correct political positions.
	That's the way this works.
	If you're Sarah Jean, and you have old racist tweets, everybody just goes, oh, well, you know, that's Sarah.
	That's it.
	Whatever.
	Whatever.
	If you're James Gunn, everybody eventually moves on, even for James Gunn.
	If you're on the right, you're forever tarred and feathered.
	And this double standard only applies to one side, obviously, which is why it is a double standard.
	But even more importantly than that, if you enter the public square, you know that you will be exposed to scrutiny on everything that you have ever done.
	And there will be no forgiveness if you have the wrong political perspective, which means that you're going to end up with people who are either shameless, You know, people who don't really care.
	Like, you expose them and they just go ahead and they say, fine, expose me, and I'm just gonna double down on that.
	You end up with Joy Reid over at MSNBC claiming she was hacked.
	Or people, so shameless, or people who attempt to hide everything.
	Right?
	Those are the only two alternatives.
	People who are either absolute blank slates who have said nothing in the past so you have no actual read on them, or people you have a read on and the read is they're shameless.
	Those are the only two types of people who will rationally enter public life ever again.
	Because everyone who is honorable, I am sure, would apologize for bad things in their life.
	But the apology does not matter.
	That's the point.
	Kyle apologized.
	Kyle has attempted to be a better person.
	Kyle moved on and it wasn't enough.
	Which means that the normal, good human being, who makes mistakes across the course of their life, and speaks publicly and openly and tries to add their opinions to the public discourse, that person gets ruined.
	The only people who are welcome are people who are absolute anodyne enigmas.
	You have no idea who they are.
	They're just blank slates like Barack Obama who don't really have a public record or you end up with people who are utterly shameless or both.
	That's what you end up with in public life.
	This wrecks our public discourse.
	Our educational institutions, obviously, have already been wrecked.
	This is probably, it's gotta be one of the worst moves I've ever seen in academia.
	I mean, to reject a student on the basis of old private posts that, again, you can show no evidence that Kyle has ever acted in a racist way other than these posts.
	And the posts are bad.
	He apologized for them.
	He was 16.
	They were private, and they were unearthed by political opponents in the media.
	Amazing, amazing stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, Our media, you know, our honorable, dutiful, beautiful folks in the press, the guardians of our freedoms, you know, the people who are really on the front lines of ensuring that you get the information you need, like what a 16-year-old said in a private Google Doc back when he was a junior or sophomore in high school.
	We need those people on the front lines.
	We especially need them on the front lines when they are basically doing the work of the Iranian government.
	So, over the past week, we have seen the Iranian government really escalate its attacks in the Middle East.
	They attacked, allegedly, and by all available evidence, they attacked a couple of tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
	This is the second time they've done this in the past four months.
	And this has really raised a lot of tensions in the Middle East.
	And by the way, there's a bipartisan consensus among people who have seen the intelligence that this is what happened.
	Now, it's amazing.
	When there was a bipartisan consensus in the intelligence community that Russia impacted the election or tried to impact the election, Then everybody ripped on Trump, right?
	Because Trump denied it.
	And they're right to rip on Trump because when the intel community says something and there's a pretty good consensus on it, the chances are pretty good that it's right.
	Even when it came to WMD in Iraq, the reason that the intelligence community worldwide got it wrong was not because of the Bush administration seeking to go to war.
	It was because the international intelligence community universally was lied to by Saddam Hussein.
	There's a reason that the Brits and the French And the Germans, everybody's intelligence services were coming up with the same answer on that one.
	So for all the talk about how this was all manipulated and our intelligence community, this and that, it's the intel, you gotta pick one.
	Either you trust them or you don't.
	Weird how everybody trusts the intelligence community on Russian interference in the election, but suddenly it comes to Iran and they don't anymore.
	And by the way, there is a bipartisan understanding that Iran is behind these things.
	So Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, said over the weekend that there is no doubt that Iran is behind these attacks.
	How certain are you that Iran was responsible for these attacks, and do you have more evidence that you can share with us?
	Well, Chris, it's unmistakable what happened here.
	These were attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran on commercial shipping, on the freedom of navigation, with the clear intent to deny transit through the strait.
	This was on the Gulf of Oman side of the Strait of Hormuz.
	There's no doubt.
	The Intelligence Committee has lots of data, lots of evidence.
	The world will come to see much of it, but the American people should rest assured we have Okay, so the media seek to paint this as propaganda.
	And the media seek to say, no, this is propaganda, and this is exactly what Russia's pushing, right?
	This is the line Russia's pushing.
	So, Moscow, the Kremlin on Sunday, warned against the baseless accusations of her last week's attack in the Gulf of Oman on two oil tankers blamed by Washington and Riyadh on Iran.
	Such incidents can undermine the foundations of the world economy.
	That's why it's hardly possible To accept baseless accusations in this situation, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
	Peskov said we always urge a sober appraisal of the situation and to wait for more or less convincing evidence to appear.
	Worth noting, the Russians basically denied for years that Bashar Assad had ever used chemical weapons against his own people.
	The Russians, needless to say, are not folks to trust when it comes to this because they've been on Iran's side.
	They were important in building the nuclear reactor in Iran.
	They've been instrumental in Iran's gaining regional power.
	They've stood with Iran in all of that.
	And then Iran, of course, is pushing this, too.
	So Iran's parliament speaker hinted on Sunday that Washington was behind the suspicious tanker attacks.
	Ah, it was a false flag attack.
	So basically, everybody's going Alex Jones now.
	So you got Moscow and Iran.
	They'll say, no, no, no, no.
	It wasn't the obvious Iranian attack.
	I mean, sure, there's tape of us, you know, like removing an unexploded mine from a ship.
	On our rinky-dink navy?
	But, you know, it was probably the Americans.
	It was probably Saudis or something.
	It was somebody else.
	So this is, when propaganda is being repeated by Moscow and Iran, the media might want to, you know, take a little break and think, hmm, maybe this doesn't have a lot of credibility.
	So here's the headline from the Washington Post.
	"Standoff with Iran exposes Trump's credibility issue "as some allies seek more proof of tanker attack.
	"Japan and Germany have requested stronger evidence "than the grainy video released by the Pentagon.
	Now, you might be saying to yourself, as Paul Krugman at the New York Times is saying, oh, it's a wag the dog attack, first of all.
	If this is a wag the dog sort of scenario, then what exactly is Trump wagging the dog away from?
	You think he wants to go to war in the Middle East?
	What do you think that would do for his approval ratings?
	Think it'd be good?
	Think raising the price of oil in the midst of a shaky economy is a good idea?
	Probably not.
	But here's the other thing.
	Democrats are repeating what Trump said.
	So when you have Mike Pompeo and Adam Schiff saying the same thing, pretty good indicator that perhaps that thing is true.
	So here's Adam Schiff, a man that bears no love for President Trump.
	Apparently he's now involved in the evil wag the dog scenario.
	So Adam Schiff, who Trump has termed pencil neck and who hates Trump with a passion bordering on the insane.
	Adam Schiff was saying over the weekend there was no question that Iran was behind the attacks.
	So apparently it's a bipartisan wag the dog scheme.
	There's no question that Iran is behind.
	I think the evidence is very strong and compelling.
	In fact, I think this was a class A screw-up by Iran to insert a mine on the ship.
	It didn't detonate.
	They had to go back and retrieve it.
	I can imagine there are some Iranian heads rolling for that botched operation.
	But nonetheless, the problem is that we are struggling, even in the midst of this solid evidence, to persuade our allies to join us in any kind of a response.
	And it shows just how isolated the United States has become.
	Okay, well, you know what would help, Adam Schiff, is if you went out there and forcibly made the case that the Trump administration is correct on what is going on with regard to Iran.
	But, here's the bottom line.
	There's a bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C., from Adam Schiff to Mike Pompeo, that Iran is behind these attacks.
	Naturally, that means that the media are siding with Japan, Germany, the Iranians, and the Russians.
	Well done, media.
	You know, you guys are just doing yeoman's work.
	Not only that, not only are they doing amazing work.
	So there's an article at the New York Times, this is just insane.
	So the New York Times prints an article.
	The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia's electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cyber tools more aggressively, current and former government officials said.
	So nothing says You know, standing up to the Russians, quite like giving over a bunch of confidential information to the Russians via the New York Times.
	Well done, New York Times.
	The same New York Times who accuses Trump of being a Russian's catpaw in the pay of Vladimir Putin.
	That same New York Times is printing articles on their front page about how the United States is attacking the electric grid based on confidential and classified information.
	The New York Times says in interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia's grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow's disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections.
	Buried in this article is this hilarious aside.
	There's an aside in which the New York Times reports that a bunch of people in the U.S.
	government were hesitant to tell President Trump about this because they were worried what President Trump might do.
	Quote, Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.
	So let me get this straight.
	Let me get this straight.
	Pentagon and intelligence officials were worried that Trump might spill this information to the Russians or stop it.
	So they went and spilled it to the New York Times and put it on their front page.
	Now that's patriotism right there.
	I mean, look, that is some patriotic deep state stuff right there.
	You're worried that the president might do something you don't want him to do, so instead what you do is you dump it in full public view so the Russians know exactly what we're doing.
	And the New York Times runs with it, because they're patriotically standing up for America's interests.
	Oh, our press.
	Democracy dies in darkness.
	These folks.
	I definitely trust them.
	I think they are not activists.
	I think they are definitely, definitely journalists.
	You wonder why the credibility of the press is at an all-time low?
	I would suggest that it might have something to do with the fact that they're taking the word of Moscow and Iran over that of America's intelligence community.
	Except when it benefits them to stand with the intelligence community against the Trump administration.
	Simultaneously attacking 17-year-old, 18-year-old college admittees.
	And ensuring that the Russians know about secret American interference with their electric grid.
	Great job, press.
	You guys are really outdoing yourselves.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	So, George Will.
	has come under a lot of fire from a lot of folks on the right side of the aisle because he is militantly anti-Trump.
	The reason that he is militantly anti-Trump, as he has said, is because he believes that Trump does not have the character to be president.
	Now, as I have said, you know, I said at the time that Trump's character is not my thing.
	I said this in 2016.
	I'm still very critical of President Trump's character, as anyone who listens to the show on a regular basis notes.
	So I don't disagree with George Will's characterization of President Trump I also think that things are not going to get better if you turn this thing over at this point to a Democrat who not only has similar character flaws, but also is dedicated to rooting out fundamental notions of the Constitution.
	But put the Trump stuff aside, George Will has a new book out.
	It's called The Conservative Sensibility, and it basically is a comparison between Madisonian democracy, the ideas that are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Versus Woodrow Wilson's Progressive Revolution.
	It's about 500 pages.
	It is a real tour de force by George Will.
	It is sort of a life's work.
	You can see it.
	It's embedded in every page.
	I have some substantive disagreements with Will on the nature of that Madisonian democracy, on the nature of what stands behind our rules of natural right.
	But his contrast between the founding and the progressive era is exactly correct.
	And his explication of this stuff is quite beautiful.
	His writing is quite beautiful.
	The book is called The Conservative Sensibility.
	I would suggest that our disagreements lie more in sort of the understanding of the roots of the American Revolution and founding era philosophy.
	You know, Will's very secular take on this, mine is a little bit more of, I think, a historically based religious take on it.
	But with that said, the book itself is really good and all the criticism he's receiving right now because he's anti-Trump, people saying he's not conservative.
	Guys, George Will has spent his entire career being conservative.
	You know, if the conservative movement can't handle people who don't like a particular president, I would suggest the conservative movement is doomed to failure.
	So I would recommend the book.
	It's called The Conservative Sensibility.
	It's really good.
	I'm enjoying it right now.
	I'm in the middle of it.
	So go check that out.
	OK, other things that I like today.
	So there's this ironic, this sort of ironic.
	So there's an article by Katlin Beattie called How Should Christians Have Sex?
	It says, "Purity culture was harmful and dangerous, "but its collapse has left a void "for those of us looking for guidance "in our intimate lives." The entire article is basically about how you, if you suggest that sex should be reserved for marriage, you're bad, but also getting rid of that standard has basically destroyed sex in our culture.
	So the entire article is, I don't like this original standard, but I also realize all of the standards that supplanted it are basically garbage, at least for human beings who wanna be happy.
	And so now I'm stuck.
	Well, maybe you should rethink, like, your first statement.
	Maybe that's what you should do.
	This author writes, when I was 14, a circuit speaker came to my church's youth group to talk about sexual purity.
	I don't remember many details from the talk, but vividly recall signing a true love waits pledge, a small note card promising I would remain a virgin until marriage.
	20 years later, that ritual strikes me as almost innocuous.
	How much power do we give to a scribbled signature of a teenager who had only the faintest idea what sex was?
	Yet it also carried a psychological burden that many of my peers and I are still unloading.
	This is where we get the whole, it was such a burden to be have to, People expecting us to have a moral standard, to wait until ma- Oh my god, I'm still living that down.
	Get over it.
	Like seriously, get over it.
	You're an adult now.
	Get over it.
	A majority of adults who came of age in evangelical churches in the 90s and 2000s were exposed to purity culture, a term for teachings that stressed sexual abstinence before marriage.
	I urge this, by the way.
	We had our own rituals such as purity balls and our own merchandise such as purity rings.
	I had a Wait For Me journal that I kept as a college freshman.
	Created by a prominent Christian pop singer, the journal was designed to hold letters to my future husband.
	It held out the promise that if I remained pure, then God would reward good behavior with a husband, surely before I turned 30 so that we could have lots of children.
	Well, no, actually.
	Nothing in purity culture suggests that God is a gumball machine.
	I'm so sick of people who think that God is a gumball machine.
	That's not the way God works.
	It's not like you do what God wants and then God gives you everything that you could possibly want.
	That would make you a bad person, by the way.
	If the only reason to do things is because you think God is then going to give you what you want because you bribe God, You have a mistaken idea of God and also a mistaken idea of morality.
	The idea instead is that if you wait until marriage to have sex, you are saving yourself for your spouse.
	And if your spouse saves himself for you, then you get to enjoy one of the most wonderful things God ever created with the person that you trust and love the most without having to think about all of the prior experiences with people or without demeaning or debasing yourself.
	Now, again, this is not to suggest that if people have premarital sex, they've done something irredeemable or terrible or anything like that.
	But, from a religious perspective, and from, I think, a basic natural law perspective, the idea of sex within marriage makes a lot of sense.
	It makes a lot of sense, and it is spiritually fulfilling.
	And I speak as someone who is a virgin until marriage, as was my wife.
	And I'm proud of that.
	I think that's a good thing.
	I don't think it's a bad thing to teach to our children.
	In fact, I am going to teach it to our children.
	I think it's a very, very good thing to teach to children that sex is important enough, that you ought to wait for somebody that you love enough to actually spend a lifelong commitment with.
	And if you can't reach that, if you decide differently or you make a mistake or whatever that is, you're an adult.
	Those are decisions that you can make.
	But to have a standard and not to live up to a standard is one thing.
	To say the standard itself is wrong or bad or damaging, I think that's very silly.
	So this lady writes, somehow God and I got our wires crossed because the husband hasn't arrived.
	Again, it ain't on God for you to find a husband.
	It really is not.
	When people blame Everything bad that happens to them on God or the society around them, I start to think that you have a mistaken impression of how cause and effect work.
	20 years later, I no longer subscribe to purity culture, largely because it never had anything to say to Christians past the age of 23.
	Oh really, I was 24 when I got married.
	Weird.
	Yeah, lately.
	I also find myself mourning the loss of the coherent sexual ethic that purity culture tried to offer.
	Is the consent culture the best that we have in its place?
	This is the best part, right?
	So now she realizes, okay, so I didn't like that, now I'm in my 30s and I've had sex and all that, but I'm really not liking the new secular standard.
	Yeah, that's right.
	You're not.
	Because the new secular standard sucks.
	The standard that basically says that consent alone makes for good sex, or makes for good relationships, or is spiritually fulfilling.
	Consent is a great standard for law.
	It is not necessarily a great standard for morality.
	There are lots of things to which people consent that are demeaning and bad for them.
	That doesn't mean they should be illegal.
	I'm a libertarian.
	But it does mean that maybe those things are damaging to you, which is why you don't teach them to your children.
	Prostitution is a consensual act.
	As a general rule, it is a consensual act.
	Putting aside pressures or how people got into prostitution, the act of prostitution itself is an act of consent, which is why I'm very torn on its legalization.
	Does that mean that it is good for either the prostitute or the john?
	I don't think so.
	So this person says, I don't think that's true at all.
	You literally just said, one second ago, that you kept a journal of letters to your prospective husband about the gift of sex within marriage.
	evangelical online communities.
	Rather than emphasize the gift of sex within marriage, purity culture typically led with the shame of having sex outside of it.
	I don't think that's true at all.
	You literally just said one second ago that you kept a journal of letters to your prospective husband about the gift of sex within marriage.
	It is hilarious to me that there are so many people on the secular left who have decided, and this woman, she still considers herself Christian, by the way, so I'm not labeling her secular left, but her perspective on sex is much more secular than Christian. - Yeah.
	They got rid of the traditional standard, and then their solution to the traditional standard was a completely unworkable standard, and now they're sad that the standard is gone.
	Here's how this lady, the author of A Woman's Place, completes her article.
	Occasionally, I think about my purity pledge and letters to my mystical future husband, and find those practices naive and manipulative.
	But part of me wishes that the fairy tale of purity culture had come true.
	While I hate the effects that purity culture had on young women like me, again, no, you made choices, you're an adult, I still find the traditional Christian vision for married sex radical, daunting, and extremely compelling, and one I still want to uphold, even if I fumble along the way.
	So in the end, you end up coming back around to the standard.
	Well, maybe the problem was with you not upholding the standard if you're so upset about not upholding the standard.
	If you don't want to uphold the standard, don't.
	It's free country.
	But to pretend that the standard is bad simply because you had a bad emotional response to the standard is to get rid of rules in favor of subjective feeling, which is not something I like.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	We have now reached the point of utter absurdity.
	There is a transgender track star, which is to say, a genetic male named C.C.
	Telfer.
	C.C.
	Telfer was apparently a middling sprinter as a male.
	Now, C.C.
	Telfer considers himself a transgender woman and he competes on the Franklin Pierce University track team.
	Not surprisingly, he is now world class because he is running against women.
	So here's what C.C.
	Telfer says.
	No, no, no, you understand.
	I'm disadvantaged running against women, which comes as a shock to all of the women who are getting beat by a guy who has six inches and a significant amount of musculature to his advantage.
	If anything, me competing against cisgender females is a disadvantage because my body is going through so many medical implications, like it's going through biochemistry changes.
	So being on hormone placement therapy, it gives you So, your muscle depletion, your muscle is deteriorating.
	You lose a lot of strength because testosterone is where you get your strength, your agility, all of that athletic stuff.
	So, I have to work twice as hard to keep that strength.
	Okay, can we go back to some of the pictures here?
	Okay, this is a picture of C.C.
	Telfer next to people who are competing with C.C.
	Telfer.
	C.C.
	Telfer is a very large human being.
	C.C.
	Telfer, how tall do you think this person is?
	Closing in on six feet, probably?
	This person, this is a very large human, standing next to a bunch of very small women.
	And they're now competing, those very small women.
	C.C.
	Telfer won the Women's 400 Meter Hurdles at the NCAA Division II Championship.
	I wonder why.
	How could this have happened?
	Maybe it's because Cece Telfer is a genetic male, and there are differences between male and female, and this is all idiotic.
	I-D-I-O-D-I-C.
	I understand.
	Hormone treatments.
	Not great for your body.
	Also, when you start off as a man who is six inches taller than every woman on the field with the musculature of a man, the depletion?
	Still not gonna compare to having grown up as a woman with estrogen.
	But I guess we just have to be as stupid as humanly possible.
	Put all objective fact out of your mind.
	Instead, favor the feelings of people who are engaged in the delusion that they are physically the same as women.
	I mean, this is just... Because that's what this person is saying, basically.
	They're at a disadvantage as compared to the women?
	Mm-hmm.
	That's why you're defeating them handily when you couldn't compete with the males.
	Yes, I'm sure.
	Other things that I hate.
	So Pete Buttigieg needs a course in stats, apparently.
	The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Did an interview on Axios on HBO in which he explained that he was not the first gay president.
	Here he is making this bizarre contention.
	If you were to win the nomination, they'll say you're too young, too liberal, too gay to be commander-in-chief.
	You are young, you are liberal, you are gay.
	How will you respond?
	I'll respond by explaining where I want to lead this country.
	People will elect the person who will make the best president.
	And we have had excellent presidents who have been young.
	We have had excellent presidents who have been liberal.
	I would imagine we've probably had excellent presidents who were gay, we just didn't know which ones.
	You believe that we've had a gay commander-in-chief?
	I mean, statistically, it's almost certain.
	And have you, like, in your reading of history, like, do you believe you know who they were?
	My gaydar doesn't even work that well in the present, let alone retroactively.
	But one can only assume that's the case.
	Why can one only assume that's the case?
	Like, there have been 44 presidents.
	About 2% of the population is gay.
	So statistically speaking, we pretty, I mean, first of all, presidents are not elected on the basis of statistics.
	Statistically speaking, 10% of our presidents should have been black.
	Nope.
	Statistically speaking, half of our presidents should have been women, if we are just doing representation of the population.
	So, nope on that one as well.
	So, just statistically speaking, nope.
	Also, when he says some of our great presidents would have been gay, statistically speaking, we've had like three good presidents.
	So, probably not.
	The only one who probably was gay, according to at least, or at least possibly was gay, according to Most historians with James Buchanan who, you know, I don't know that gay folks actually want to claim James Buchanan.
	Pretty widely considered the worst president in American history.
	Not because he was gay, but because he was a crap president.
	So this is all very weird and I'm just weirded out by the idea that Pete Buttigieg has to make the claim.
	That other presidents were gay in order for him to be legitimate as a gay president.
	That's silly to me.
	Again, I don't think most Americans really care whether Pete Buttigieg is gay.
	Mike Pence, who he has been deriding, doesn't care that Pete Buttigieg is gay.
	I don't really think a lot of Americans give a crap about this, but I guess making up history and stats is one strategy, I suppose.
	Alrighty.
	Well, we will be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
	Directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.
	And our Technical Producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Adam Sievitz.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
	Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
	Production Assistant, Nick Sheehan.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
	Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	The poet William Wordsworth wrote that his heart leapt up when he beheld a rainbow in the sky.
	Well, unfortunately, the rainbow has come down to earth, and here it's a sign of woke oppression, a weapon bent on the abolition of man.
	I'll explain on The Andrew Klavan Show.

▲