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June 23, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:03
You Don’t Have To Solve Problems If Everything Is Racist | Ep. 1282
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The Washington Post concludes that higher numbers of black traffic deaths are the result of infrastructure racism, before the People Act dies an ignominious death to the whales and teeth gnashing of the media, and Don Lemon declares himself bias-free.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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Alrighty, we're gonna get to the Washington Post's bizarrest racial take of the day, and there is one pretty much every day.
First, I gotta give you the update on what just happened in the New York City mayoral primary.
There is a Republican side of the aisle where Curtis Slowa just won the Republican nomination.
But let's be real about this.
Whoever wins the Democratic nomination in the city of New York is going to end up as mayor of New York.
Because New York has now engaged in what it calls ranked choice of voting, that means that you can win the most votes in the first round, but you may not end up as the overall winner.
Because let's say that somebody who had 10% loses and the second choice on that person's ballot was the person who came in second.
Well, then the vote shifts to the person who is second.
Now, Realistically, this race is pretty much over because the number of ranked-choice voting situations in America where somebody has a 10-point lead after the first round, where that person ends up losing, is pretty much zero, according to Harry Enten over at CNN New York Times.
Eric Adams appears to be the winner at this point.
Eric Adams, who of course is the former police officer and a rather moderate candidate, at least so far as New York City goes.
He is leading right now in the clubhouse about 30%, coming in second.
Somewhat shockingly is Maya Wiley, who until recently was considered sort of an also-ran.
She was the only member of de Blasio's administration to actually run.
She was occupying the left lane, so I guess it's not really that big a surprise that about 20% of voters showed up for Maya Wiley, since everybody else was trying to crowd each other out of the technocratic moderate lane.
So Adams ended up at about 30%, Wiley ended up at about 21%, Catherine Garcia ended up at about 20, and Andrew Yang ended up at about 11.
Now, you assume Andrew Yang's votes are going to shift over?
Now he's out and he's acknowledged he's out.
You assume that Andrew Yang's votes are now going to shift over to Catherine Garcia, which would jump her up into the low 30s.
But you would also assume that in the second round, Maya Wiley's votes are probably going to be split between the rest of the candidates.
And what that means is that Eric Adams is not gonna stick around at 30%.
Presumably many of the people who voted for somebody else first on their ballot voted for Eric Adams second on their ballot.
So I think it is a fair presumption that Eric Adams is likely to emerge as the mayor of New York, which once again demonstrates the complete rejection of the defund the police strategy.
Adams was very open about wanting to refund the police.
Adams was pretty strenuous in his position that crime had to be stopped inside New York City.
It was only Maya Wiley who took the far left position that the police were really the problem.
According to the New York Times, 82% of the results in Adams, the Brooklyn Borough President, was the first choice of 31.6% of those who voted in person on Tuesday or during the early voting period, as New Yorkers chose a leader to steer the city's reopening and economic recovery.
Maya Wiley was in second with 22.3%.
Catherine Garcia was in third with 19.7%.
Adams led in every borough except Manhattan, where Ms.
Garcia held a commanding edge.
Because Adams seemed unlikely to earn more than 50% of the vote, the contest will now be decided under that ranked-choice voting system.
And New Yorkers were allowed to rank up to five candidates in order of preference.
Absentee ballots also must be counted, so it could take until mid-July before a Democratic primary victor is actually declared.
And then there's the actual general election, where the Democrat, of course, is favored.
New Yorkers also render judgment on other vital positions in primary races that will test the power of the left in the nation's largest cities.
The city comptroller race, Manhattan district attorney's race, a slew of city council primaries, among other contests, offer imperfect but important windows into democratic attitudes and engagement levels.
But, of course, the mayor's race is at sort of the top of the slate, and the reality is that this is a pretty ringing rejection of the de Blasio rule in New York City.
Because it turns out that the sort of radicalism that the Democratic Party has fallen for does not offer solutions.
It just does not.
And this goes to the deeper point.
The deeper point here is that when you attribute everything in the world to miasmatic forces of racism, it makes it very, very difficult to solve problems.
Which, of course, is the whole point.
When you make problems difficult to solve, and then you implicate the entire system, The notion is that you're going to have to tear down the entire system in order to solve the problems.
Everything has to be nuked.
You have to just tear down everything.
And then finally, once we have salted the earth and burned the remains of the old system, then we can build the new.
Except that that doesn't actually solve problems.
That makes things a lot worse in the near term.
So perfect example today in the Washington Post.
There's an article in the Washington Post, it's at the top of their website today, titled, Traffic Deaths Increased During the Pandemic.
The Toll Fell More Heavily on Black Residents, Report Shows.
A new analysis found that even before 2020's increase, black people were killed on roads at a rate almost 25% higher than white people.
Now, let's just say that you read that stat, right?
That for a very long time, black deaths on roads outpaced white deaths on roads.
Your first thought might be, who's speeding?
Right?
I mean, that might be your first thought.
That would be a natural thought in the same way that if you read a statistic that said that black people are being murdered at a rate far higher than white people.
And we know that the vast majority of murder is intraracial.
It is black on black or white on white.
But black people are being murdered at a way higher rate.
You might think to yourself, well, that's probably the reason is that a lot of black people are murdering a lot of black people.
So if you see a stat in which it says that a lot of black people are dying in traffic accidents, you might think to yourself, What is the behavior of the drivers?
Right, because you would think that that's literally your first question.
Forget about groups with regard to individuals.
Right, if you hear that anybody has died of anything, your first question is what were the circumstances surrounding their death?
Right, this is true for anybody's death.
If somebody you know dies in a car accident, your first question is how?
Right, you don't ask questions typically about the roads.
You don't ask questions typically about the lights.
Typically, you ask, OK, were they speeding?
And if somebody says, oh, they were speeding, you go, oh, OK, well, you know, that's terrible.
But you're speeding, right?
Like you should probably pay attention to the traffic signs.
This entire Washington Post piece is designed specifically to ignore the question of who is doing the speeding.
Because if it turns out that black drivers are speeding more often than white drivers, that at least partially explains the discrepancy between black and white death statistics with regard to traffic accidents.
Instead, the entire Washington Post article is dedicated to the proposition that it's institutional racism that causes higher levels of black deaths.
So here's what the Washington Post wrote.
And again, what this means is that solutions become a lot more difficult.
Because let's say, for example, that the problem really is disproportionate speeding inside the black community.
And the reason I say that is because we have fairly good evidence from the past that there is, in fact, disproportionate speeding inside the black community.
So to take an example, in the early 1990s, there was a big hubbub during the Clinton administration about supposed racial profiling on the New Jersey Turnpike.
There's a lot of focus on this.
Look at these terrible cops.
They're pulling over black drivers.
Even though it was at night, it's kind of hard to see the color of the person who's driving, but they're pulling over black drivers at a rate higher than white drivers.
That must be the latent racism of the New Jersey state.
They're just pulling black people over.
Then, finally, there was a study.
And the study was put out only about almost a decade later.
And what the study found is that a very high percentage of the speeders were black.
It turns out that black drivers were just driving faster as a general rule than white drivers were, according to this particular study.
It was an actual Justice Department study in conjunction with the state offices of New Jersey.
And what they found, it was leaked to the New York Times, what they found is that while black drivers were making up about 16% of the drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike, 25% of the speeders in the 65 mile per hour zone, where profiling complaints were the most common, were black.
Black drivers sped about twice as much as white drivers and sped at reckless levels even more.
In fact, according to that particular Justice Department study, blacks were actually stopped less than their speeding behavior would predict.
They're about 23% of those stopped.
Okay, so all of this is to not make any linkage between genetic skin color and how fast you drive.
But if the question is, which groups of people are driving the fastest in American life and how does that link to traffic stops?
You might think that that might be like a consideration in the Washington Post piece.
No, they weren't even going to consider it.
In fact, and especially they weren't going to consider it because if that were in fact a problem, if the problem were a disproportionate number of people are speeding in a particular area, therefore a higher number of people are dying in that particular area.
More people are driving recklessly in this particular area, therefore more people are dying.
The answer to that, right, the very easy policy answer to that is, okay, so you set up a speed trap, right?
You get a bunch of cops, you put them in the area, and you have them sign a lot of traffic tickets because you create an incentive structure where it makes no sense to speed.
That is the perfect, obvious policy solution.
The Washington Post does not want that policy solution.
So they go out of their way to find alternative explanations that are far less explained.
They literally do not even posit the possibility that people are speeding at higher rates on a correlative level with regard to race.
Even though they're saying that you can measure traffic deaths on the basis of race, but you can't measure traffic behavior on the basis of race.
Which seems like you're ignoring kind of a rather large factor, are you not?
It's sort of like the move that people in the media are constantly making where they look at big tech and they're like, well, there's just not enough engineers who are in big tech who are black.
You're like, right, but how many qualified applicants are coming from the black community who are qualified engineers to be in big tech?
And they just ignore that.
They won't even put that in the story, even though that is the vast majority of the explanation.
It's not the big tech is going around like, well, I have an equally qualified black person and white person, I'm picking the white person.
No one in big tech is doing that.
They're doing precisely the opposite.
So here's how the Washington Post tries to explain this discrepancy.
A new analysis of deaths on U.S.
roads found that Black people were killed in traffic crashes at a rate almost 25% than white people in recent years, a disparity that appears to have worsened during the coronavirus pandemic.
Last year was especially grim on the roads.
The number of miles driven decreased as many people stayed home, yet traffic deaths rose 7%, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in large part because of people driving faster on empty highways.
Okay, so right off the bat, they're acknowledging that when people drive faster, you end up with more people dead, right?
So this is true across the broad population, but we cannot even measure the traffic behavior differential between groups when trying to explain the traffic death differential between groups, because to do so would imply a solution they don't want, and would also imply that racism isn't the problem, and so you don't have to tear down the entire system.
The number of black people killed according to the Washington Post climbed 23%.
The reason for the spike in black deaths is not noted in the federal report, but experts say, ah, the experts.
Mm-hmm.
Experts say, just as the virus itself spread more readily through communities of color, the increase was probably a result of existing inequities being compounded.
Or possibly it was a result of the differential in behavior being compounded.
Because if you have more people who are speeding on the roads during this time generally, you're going to end up with more people who speed as a percentage of that being killed.
Researchers have previously concluded that black communities tend to be crisscrossed by more dangerous roads.
During the pandemic, people of color were more likely to be employed in essential jobs without the option to stay home.
People were driving faster amid lower traffic levels meant crashes were more likely to be deadly.
Okay, so.
The basic premise here is that the roads are racist, right?
The roads, because they're in poor communities, and because these are bigger roads with fewer trees and people tend to speed more on those roads, that this is the real rationale.
So presumably we should have traffic bottlenecks in these areas, which I'm not sure how that would solve many other problems having to do with the economy, having to do with transport.
If you're living in a poorer area with fewer businesses, you need to get to work.
You actually don't want fewer lanes on the roads.
But, put all that aside, the basic notion that this has to do with race as opposed to with class is another confound.
It turns out that poorer areas very often are crisscrossed with more dangerous roads.
I mean, those poorer areas generally exist around, for example, highways, because people who are richer don't want to live next to highways.
People who are richer don't want to live next to big roads with lots of traffic, which is why people who are richer tend to move out to the suburbs, for example.
The NHTSA estimated that 38,680 people were killed in crashes nationwide last year, said 7,494 of them were black.
A new study released Tuesday by the Governor's Highway Safety Association highlights the disparities.
It analyzed data from 2015 to 2019, right, so not including the pandemic.
And found that in different types of traffic crashes, black people were killed at rates higher than white people.
Black pedestrians were killed at a rate twice as high.
So who is driving the cars?
And what levels of speed were they attaining while they were driving the cars?
And by the way, what was the behavior of the pedestrians?
These are all relevant factors to whether people are being killed in traffic accidents or not.
And none of these factors are taken into account in the Washington Post.
None.
Charles Brown, professor at Rutgers University School of Planning and Public Policy, said the figures leave at transportation officials facing a simple question, quote, we've all been socialized in a way to believe that black death is due to black behavior, when instead we know infrastructure influences behavior. If that is true, we need investments in quality infrastructure in black communities. How many more black people do we have to lose before that is the number one priority? Okay, so it can't be that we focus on lowering rates rates of reckless driving, lowering rates of speed,
following traffic laws.
No.
We have to restructure all the roads to what?
Reduce the number of lanes?
To lower the speed limit?
That people are apparently ignoring?
The GHSA represents state agencies that administer federal money to tackle problems such as drunken and distracted driving.
Again, we don't know the rates of that.
This story does not include any of that data.
How many of these accidents included drunk driving?
We don't know.
How many included reckless driving?
We don't know.
How many included pedestrians walking out into traffic?
We don't know.
We don't know any of those things.
The only thing that we know is more black people than white people on a percentage level are being killed.
Therefore, racism.
Therefore, roads.
Hey, now, what's kind of amazing about all of this is that then you look at some of the statistics that are sort of buried down in here, right?
First, you get the typical equity speak from the Biden administration of Pete Buttigieg, issuing a statement that the administration is now proposing a $20 billion, yeah, we're gonna spend 20 billion bucks on this, traffic safety proposal to reduce crashes and road deaths as part of its infrastructure plan.
Buttigieg said, last year's traffic fatality rates and the racial disparities reflected in them are unacceptable.
This reflects broader patterns of inequity in our country, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay, so then you get to the actual differences among racial and ethnic groups.
Now what's fascinating about this is who is getting killed in these traffic accidents because it turns out that it is not solely income-based.
Right?
Hispanics as well as Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were killed at rates slightly lower than whites.
Weird, because on a household income level, Hispanics do pretty significantly worse right now than white Americans do.
Not only that, they tend to live in lower income areas because of that.
Presumably, many of the same lower income areas that are crisscrossed with the same kind of roads that are being blamed for higher black fatalities.
American Indians and Alaska Natives were killed at much higher rates, more than twice the rate of black residents.
Guillermo Narvaez, a lecturer at the University of Minnesota who has studied traffic safety in tribal areas, said American Indian communities are often remote and suffer from unsafe road designs.
So it must be the unsafe road designs.
Now, nowhere in here is contemplated the possibility that there are higher levels of reckless driving in American Indian reservations, for example.
Or higher levels of DUI in American Indian reservations, for example.
Like that's not like these possibilities are never taken into account.
Human behavior is of no consequence because equal outcome is the supposed norm, except that it's not the supposed norm.
Again, in any human endeavor, you can take groups of people, you can take this office and the office next door, and there will be complete disparities and differentials between the two offices, not based on race.
Because equal outcome among groups is not human norm.
It doesn't exist anywhere on Earth at any time, in any place.
Okay, but what does this all cover for?
I'll tell you that in one second, because it really is, they kind of give away the game late in this article from the Washington Post.
And the reason that this is so important is because when you insist that equal outcome must be the goal, regardless of behavior, and then you militantly refuse to look at individual behavior or how behavior agglomerates in groups, You are dictating unfairness, injustice, and violation of individual rights, and making life worse for the people who actually aren't engaging in the behavior.
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Alrighty, so.
Here's where the Washington Post goes with this.
They first try to say that it's about the roads, that because minority communities are bisected very often by many lanes, long distances between stoplights, few trees, this signals that drivers can go fast.
It signals that drivers can go fast.
We're not going to talk about, again, racial differentials and speeding.
We're going to talk about what the roads signal.
Okay, this is where, okay, buried all the way down to the bottom of the article is the actual solution to this, okay?
Traffic stops, okay, the GHSA study says, enforcement of traffic laws is an effective way to improve safety.
Now, remember, Very early on in this article, the Washington Post said the GHSA offers no opinion as to the cause of these traffic accidents.
None.
But they do offer a possible solution.
Enforce the traffic laws.
The GHSA study says enforcement of traffic laws is an effective way to improve safety, but acknowledges that police stops of black people are under renewed scrutiny, saying they should be conducted only in a way that has the support of local communities.
Traffic stops sometimes involve police confronting black drivers to pursue criminal investigations not related to road safety.
The GHSA analysis also found that black people were killed in crashes involving a police pursuit at a rate four times higher than white people.
Wait, um, excuse me?
So now the big problem is that the police are enforcing the traffic laws because, again, note again, it's amazing, it's a consistent rule.
Never look at the rationale for the disparity.
Only blame some sort of miasmatic discrimination.
Again, black people were killed in crashes involving a police pursuit at a rate four times higher than white people.
Do we know who is running away from the police at the highest rates of speed?
Have we seen each of those individual circumstances?
What are the base numbers there?
Because really, like how many people are killed in crashes involving a police pursuit total?
You may be looking at a differential of like eight versus two, right?
It's not like thousands of people are killed every year in crashes involving a police pursuit.
Again, refusal to look at individual behavior is the basic media frame here.
It is what they insist upon.
And what does this result in?
It results in more dead black people, just like with crime.
Okay, when you don't police crime, you end up with more dead black people.
You don't police traffic, you end up with more dead black people.
Because if it turns out that the underlying rationale for the disparity is individual behavior and you won't police the individual behavior, you get more of the individual behavior.
So here's the natural outcome.
AP, Portland, Oregon.
Today, police in Oregon's largest city are being advised to no longer pursue low-level traffic infractions, including expired plates and broken headlights, unless related to an immediate safety threat.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler announced Tuesday.
In addition, if police do stop a driver, they must receive recorded consent before searching the vehicle and clearly inform the person they have the right to refuse.
Wheeler said both changes are an attempt to refocus on immediate threats and are also occurring in response to data showing a disproportionate impact on Black drivers for traffic stops and vehicle searchers.
Searches.
While 6% of Portlanders are Black, he said they account for 18% of traffic stops in the city.
Is this going to make the city safer?
Is it?
The answer, of course, is no.
But when you buy into the lie that equal outcome is the natural state of things and that equal behavior is happening across every group, you are going to pursue bad policy that results in really, really bad results.
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Okay, so.
When you pursue the lie that equal outcome is the natural state of things, regardless of behavior, and when you do as Ibrahim Kendi says, and you say, well, if there is a differential in behavior, then you're implying racial inferiority.
I'm not implying anything.
I'm saying that there are differences in human behavior across a wide variety of human interactions and activities.
That's just a fact.
Hey, forget about rationale for a second.
That is a simple fact.
And refusal to acknowledge simple facts on the ground means you're going to end up not only in la-la land, but in dangerous la-la land.
Like, for example, undermining the police and suggesting that the police are responsible for these disparities.
Because if it's not individual behavior that agglomerates in communities at different rates, well then it must be the police who are really the problem.
It also leads you to lie.
So here's Mayor Lori Lightfoot in Chicago, for example, boasting of decline in crime in her city while the murder rate is up 30% this year.
The reality is, June over June, so from last year to this one, what we've seen is a downward trend in both homicides and shootings.
And if you look at where we were in January to where we are now, we're also seeing a downward trajectory in both homicides and shootings.
We're different than other cities across the country.
Every major city in the United States last year and this year has seen an unprecedented rise in violence.
We're down on every other major category, but particularly in shootings and homicides related to gun violence.
Okay, so I mean, it's amazing.
She's like, well, we're down from last year.
Oh, you mean when there was no cop anywhere to be seen?
So your baseline is last year.
Hmm.
Interesting.
I've also noted that dozens of people are being shot every weekend in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
And you've declared racism a public health problem.
So murder, not a public health problem in Chicago.
Racism, a public health problem in Chicago.
And again, you can fill in any gap with racism.
If you say, OK, well, the murder rate is higher in the black community in Chicago, so maybe we should focus in on, you know, what we can do to stop that.
Like, for example, putting more police in the community.
Then you'll get from Lori Lightfoot that racism is responsible for the higher murder rate in the black community.
OK, but if you're using racism as an excuse not to solve the problem, you are just making life worse for everyone.
You see the same thing from the Biden administration all the damn time.
So police are now complaining of lagging morale.
Well, no bleep.
I mean, you've basically said across the United States that the police are the bad guys in every major metropolitan area and that every racial discrepancy is not the result, again, of basic stats.
It is instead the result of evil cops.
So there's a report on MSNBC, of all places, in which police departments are talking about how they have lagging morale, which of course they do.
Morale, I think, is at an all-time low now.
We're being held responsible for the actions of an officer that's across the country, and I don't think that's fair.
We're dealing with rioting at a level and a sustained violence that we've never seen before.
Nonviolence in a city like we've never seen before.
We're looking at the most catastrophic staffing levels we've ever seen before.
It all boils down to these three main concepts of being underfunded, understaffed, and undersupported.
Okay, and that is in Portland.
Again, the same city that just declared we're not going to do minor traffic stops anymore.
So, Jen Psaki, the White House spokesperson, was asked about this.
You know, we've got falling police morale.
Of course, it's Peter Doocy, the only reporter in the room, asking him this question.
Or asking her this question, rather.
And here is Jen Psaki's unbelievable answer about falling police morale.
Remember, the White House says that it has the capacity to control everything in your life, from toilet flow and electricity use, all the way to Whether your child should learn about transgenderism in third grade.
Like all of this should be federal policy.
All of this should be controlled by the government.
But they have nothing to say about falling police morale.
Why does the president think that there's low morale with police officers on the beach?
I don't think we're the right entity to give an assessment of that.
I'd certainly look to the police departments to give that assessment.
But what I would say to you is that the president has never supported defunding the police.
Oh, well, they have no opinion on that.
Nothing.
None.
Nothing to say about that.
And look to the police when that's the problem.
Weird, because they wouldn't do this about any other issue in American public life.
If you said that there's underperformance in black communities with regard to high school graduation, and somebody said, what does the president say about that?
I would suggest you look to those communities and ask what they think about that.
He would never do that.
Instead, he would give a high-flown answer about systemic American racism, of course.
We all know this.
We all know this.
Because One of the great avoidance strategies for members of government is to blame problems bigger than themselves, so they don't actually have to take the easy measures that are available for them on the ground.
Meanwhile, it's also politically palatable to say that everything is racist, because when you call things racist, it means you get to condemn your political opponents.
Which brings us, of course, to the death of Senate Bill 1.
This was the For the People Act.
Senate Bill 1 died an ignominious death yesterday.
When Republicans did not vote for the advancement of the bill in a procedural vote, they didn't kill the filibuster just to move along with this thing.
It was a 50-50 split, by the way.
It was a 50-50 split in the Senate, and you require 60 votes in order to advance the bill.
According to Axios, Senate Republicans filibuster Democrats' signature voting rights bill on Tuesday, denying it the 60 votes needed to advance the bill and start debate.
First of all, let me just point this out with the media.
The media always call this a quote-unquote voting rights bill.
It is not a voting rights bill.
It is a federalized voting procedures bill.
They just use propaganda terms straight from the Democratic playbook.
And Democrats will say, well, this is a voting rights bill.
And immediately, the media will start parroting that this is a voting rights bill.
And if there is a bill that suggests that boys be allowed to compete with girls in girls sports, they will call it a transgender rights bill.
They won't call it a reclassification of sex in sport bill, which is far more informational.
They always just take whatever is the Democratic euphemism for the thing, and then they just call it the thing.
So if you were just a normal reader who doesn't follow this stuff very closely, you'd be like, oh my God, the Democrats were pushing a voting rights bill, and Republicans opposed that.
They must hate voting rights.
This is why the media are just garbage at their jobs.
According to Axios, it's an expected but significant blow to Democrats' hopes of passing a sweeping federal elections overhaul to combat a wave of new voting restrictions in Republican-led states.
Again, wave of new voting restrictions includes things like, we're not going to extend our early voting period for a month because it's voting day, not voting month.
You should have voter ID, which is a widely popular measure across the United States.
We're not going to allow ballot harvesting, which basically puts it in the hands of party activists to go door to door and pick up ballots from people, which creates not only the incentive for voter fraud, but also for packing the ballot box.
The far-reaching bill was co-sponsored by every Democratic senator except for Senator Joe Manchin, who called it too partisan and introduced his own compromise bill, which was promptly rejected by Republicans.
Manchin ultimately voted yes to move forward and allowed debate on the bill, even though he opposes the original legislation, by the way.
So this was H.R.1.
S.1 is likely to go down to the same defeat, rather.
H.R.1 is far more far-reaching than S.1.
So S.1 is the Manchin compromise bill.
This is the sort of predicate to That bill, H.R.
1, is wild.
H.R.
1 federalizes ballot harvesting.
It requires public funding for a campaign, so your taxpayer money would now go to candidates that you don't support.
It's a crappy piece of legislation.
And Mitch McConnell explained why exactly he was opposing it.
Later today, the Senate will vote on whether to advance Democrats' transparently partisan plan to tilt every election in America permanently in their favor.
By now, the rotten inner workings of this power grab have been thoroughly exposed to the light.
We know that it would shatter a decades-old understanding that campaign finance law should have a bipartisan referee and turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan majority cudgel for Democrats to wield.
I mean, the number of bad provisions in this bill, it's insane, right?
What he's talking about is the FEC.
The FEC normally has a three-Republican, three-Democrat bipartisan board, okay?
The Democrats wanted to remove one of the seats.
They could have a majority on the FEC and then presumably beat the crap out of Republicans with it.
It's just a bad piece of legislation.
Naturally, Democrats are portraying the failure to advance this bill as some sort of defeat for democracy and also a giant victory for, you guessed it, Racism!
We'll get to more of that in just one second.
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OK, in just a second, we'll get to the media's overwrought reaction to the defeat.
of the For The People Act.
First, I have some excellent news for everyone today.
Michael Moulse's new book with words!
It's called Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
It's finally available everywhere you buy books.
If you haven't already picked it up, you should.
Speechless masterfully covers the topic of political correctness and thoroughly examines it through the lens of history.
It really is a good book.
So, if you don't understand the dangers and relevance of PC, it's about time you do.
Go pick up Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, now available everywhere.
Also, if you haven't been to the bookstore lately, now would be the time because, again, Speechless is available everywhere now, Wednesday, June 23rd.
If you don't feel like making a trip, it's available on Amazon in hardcover and Kindle edition.
Also, another month has passed.
I'm sure you are well aware that the further left the left goes, the quicker it begins to collapse in on itself like a dying star, but it's not just going to do that naturally.
We have to push it.
That is why conservatives must get together, join together.
So tomorrow night, join me, Jeremy Boring-Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klaben for another cigar-packed session of Backstage.
I'm sure they will all be smoking cigars and I will be suffering in their presence.
It streams tomorrow, Thursday, June 24th at 7 o'clock p.m.
Eastern, 6 p.m.
Central on dailywire.com.
And on our YouTube channel, Daily Wire, you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
All righty, so the media response to the defeat of the For the People Act is, of course, predictably overwrought and insane.
So Joe Biden put out a statement.
Notice he didn't actually come out and say anything, but he will.
He just calls everything Jim Crow.
No, that's a lie.
Okay, just let's put it where it belongs in the lie category.
Now, very often people say things and it's out of ignorance.
Joe Biden is not ignorant that defeating the Florida People Act is not Jim Crow.
Everyone knows it's not Jim Crow because you know what Jim Crow was?
An actual specific regimen of law by which black people were discriminated against in law in the South by the state.
Is there anything remotely like that in defeating the For the People Act?
All of that crap has been illegal since the mid-60s.
It is now, and I checked my calendar today just to make sure, 2021.
We are three generations removed from a time when it was legal in the United States to discriminate in law.
A fully 60 years since this has happened, or almost 60 years, 57 years since the Civil Rights Act.
And the notion here is that this is a restoration of what was going on in 1962 in Alabama to defeat the fourth of the people.
This isn't even we are repealing a bunch of laws that protect black people.
This is we are failing to pass a law that completely transforms the nature of how voting is done in the United States and sucks it up to the federal level.
So Joe Biden put out this statement.
He said, in supporting the For the People Act and defending the rights of voters, Democrats stood united for democracy.
They stood against the ongoing assault of voter suppression that represents a Jim Crow era in the 21st century.
OK, let me put it this way for you in the media.
When you say that Donald Trump lied when he said that the election was stolen, fine.
When you say that voter suppression is an ongoing threat in the United States, you are lying.
It is untrue.
There is no evidence of widespread voter suppression in the United States, period.
End of story.
You cannot demonstrate any evidence of systematic voter suppression in the United States at all.
The notion that showing a voter ID is voter suppression is nonsense.
The notion that if you get rid of drop boxes that have never existed in American elections before, up until an actual active pandemic, And then you get rid of those drop boxes because you don't have a way of supervising them properly.
That this is Jim Crow, voter suppression.
You're a damned liar.
OK, but they just keep trotting this crap out.
It's not true.
There is, if you are, the pervasive myth that voter suppression is an ongoing threat in the United States is significantly more held by Americans because of the media than the notion that Donald Trump legitimately won the election.
But I see that you only care about one untruth about the election.
The other untruth, you just keep promulgating over and over because it pushes your political regime.
Says Joe Biden, unfortunately, a democratic stance protect our democracy met a solid Republican wall of opposition.
Senate Republicans even opposed a debate, even considering legislation to protect the right to vote and our democracy.
Well, no, they said that they were going to filibuster the bill, which is something that you guys do regularly.
I'm old enough to remember last year when you filibustered Tim Scott's police reform bill.
It was the suppression of a bill to end voter suppression, another attack on voting rights that is sadly not unprecedented.
The creed we shall overcome is a longtime mainstay of the civil rights movement, says Joe Biden.
I'm sorry, Joe Biden singing from the hymnal of We Shall Overcome is like a little nauseating.
And I love that Kamala Harris goes right along with it.
Five seconds ago, she was calling him a vicious racist who was trying to keep her out of school.
Little girls like her out of desegregated schools.
By coming together, says Joe Biden, Democrats took the next step forward in this continuous struggle and a step forward to honor all those who came before us.
People of all races and ages who sacrificed and died to protect the sacred way.
Right.
OK, so just to be straight about this, No one sacrificed and died so that the election procedures of the United States would be federalized, ballot harvesting legalized, and public funding of elections made law.
No one in America has sacrificed and died for that particular procedure.
No one.
Amazing how the conventional wisdom shifted so fast on the left from America's democracy will survive and thrive under Barack Obama to, if we don't pass this bill right now, American democracy is dead and we're finished.
Amazing.
But says Joe Biden, the fight is far from over.
Nope, it's over.
Here is VP Harris declaring that the fight is not over.
Spoiler alert.
It's over.
This is about the American people's right to vote unfettered.
It is about their access to the right to vote in a meaningful way, because nobody is debating, I don't believe, whether all Americans have the right to vote.
The issue here is, is there actual access?
The fight is over.
And are you serious?
impeded.
And the bottom line is that the president and I are very clear.
We support S1.
We support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
And the fight is not over.
The fight is over.
And are you serious?
The ticket that she is on won 80 million votes in the last election cycle.
80 million votes.
And she's talking about voter suppression?
You want to talk about election lies that undermine election credibility and confidence?
This would be it!
Because guess what?
Next time Democrats lose a presidential election, you know what they're going to claim?
Voter suppression!
They were planning to do it if Trump had won last time!
Make no mistake, Democrats were openly preparing the narrative that if Trump won last time, it was because of voter suppression.
Remember the whole crap about how Louis DeJoy over at the post office was secretly removing and burning post boxes?
Remember this?
They were pushing this crap months in advance of the election.
Then it turned out, as the polls shifted, heavily in Biden's favor, it went to, well, you know, probably the big threat is that Joe Biden, that Donald Trump won't accept the outcome of the election.
This is going to be the cleanest election ever run.
It's amazing how fast they shifted from this election is probably going to be dirty to this election is the cleanest election ever run, completely dependent on the polls.
So, the whole goal here, of course, is to not push forward good legislation.
The point is to polarize the American electorate along the lines of race.
And MSNBC helped out.
Here is Mara Gay on MSNBC.
She, of course, writes for the Washington Post.
And she said, this is the darkest hours of American history coming to life.
The darkest hours of all the hours.
Sorry, she works for the New York Times.
The darkest hours Now, I don't know.
I feel like there have been some pretty dark hours in American history.
I mean, in fact, I seem to recall that we were honoring one a couple of weeks ago with like, you know, there was Juneteenth because slavery was kind of a bad hour in American history.
Also, there was like the Tulsa race massacre where the president went to Tulsa and talked about it.
And that was a pretty dark hour in American history.
Seems like You know, the darkest days of World War One, World War Two, pretty bad hours.
Seems like we just went through a kind of rough one with the pandemic.
That was pretty bad.
We had the Great Depression.
We had a vast spate of terrorist attacks in the 1960s and 70s.
We had, you know, 9-11 was a pretty dark, like in the pantheon of dark hours in American history.
Failure to pass.
I think this is historic for actually a much darker reason today.
state does not compute.
OK, this is not on the list.
Here's Mara Gay again in New York Times editorial board member.
They just work for the Democratic Party. Here's Mara Gay just being an idiot.
I think this is historic for actually a much darker reason today, and that's that we have not seen access to the ballot debated in this way and turned into this partisan issue since, in fact, the 1960s and 1970s.
So if you're an American who grew up with parents who lived through Jim Crow, as I did, this is your history books, some of the darkest hours of your history books coming to life.
What in the- And reminding us that progress is not inevitable.
Mara Gay is on the editorial board of the New York Times and she is a black woman speaking on MSNBC about how this is a return to the dark ages?
And she's comparing the plight of black Americans today to black Americans in 1960?
These people are delusional!
They're out of their damn minds!
That wasn't all on MSNBC.
I love Ari Melbridge sitting there nodding as though this makes any sort of sense.
I guess when your head is so far up your ass that it's coming out your head again, it makes it very difficult to do anything other than nod.
Here is another MSNBC guest explaining, the same show, that this is actually a form of apartheid.
This is not a democracy.
This is a minority that is controlling this.
And, you know, at the risk of making a controversial metaphor, I mean, we know what minority rule is.
And there's a term for minority rule, and that's called apartheid.
We fought against that as well.
This is history made tonight, Ari, on your show.
A minority of Americans representing a minority of Americans Can I just point something out real fast?
If we're going to go along pure majoritarian lines and we're going to break Americans up by race, that is a very, very dangerous thing.
That is a very dangerous thing.
And you know who should know that?
A lot of black Americans.
Seriously.
Because the history of America is replete with majoritarianism in states directed by white people against black people.
The amazing switch in time to majoritarianism.
Pure majoritarianism is a great idea.
It was never a great idea.
Protection of individual rights is a good idea.
Pure majoritarianism is a garbage idea.
It has always been a garbage idea.
That is why we have checks and balances in the Constitution of the United States.
It's why we're a republic, not a pure democracy.
It's so frustrating.
But again, don't expect members of the media to know things.
That's silly.
Here's PBS's Yamiche Alcindor explaining that the Voting Rights Bill, which is not a voting rights bill.
It is a voting It is a voting fraud bill, effectively.
The voting rights bill is about the founders and what the founders wanted America to be.
You know, here's the amazing thing, Yamiche.
If I want to know what the founders think about a thing, I could do this thing like I could actually read the documents they wrote.
They wrote many of them.
I could read, like, the Federalist Papers.
I could read the actual Constitution.
The Constitution of the United States, by the way, is actually real short.
It's like 5,000 words.
Okay?
It would take you not even an hour to read the Constitution of the United States.
And then you actually know what the founders thought about things like voting procedures, because it's in the Constitution.
But here's Yamiche Alcindor explaining that unless the federal government completely takes over voting procedure, provides public funding to candidates, taxpayer funding to candidates, Promotes ballot harvesting, gets rid of voter ID.
The founders would have been so upset about it.
By the way, I do love the switch also from the left.
From, the founders were a bunch of rich, white, slave-holding racists who must be ignored about everything to, I can't believe that they're not upholding the legacy of the founders who definitely wanted pure majoritarianism.
What in the world?
I'm sorry, the stupidity here and the outrageous race baiting here on display is truly astonishing.
In talking to activists and talking to White House officials, this is going to be a debate about what whether or not we want America to be the place that the founders flaunt as they may have been.
The founders wanted it to be, which is a place where people could vote and people could have access to who were the elected officials.
Oh, is that that's what the founders wanted?
And we know that because it's not true.
I'm sorry, it's so ridiculous.
But here's the thing.
So much of what we've covered in today's particular episode is about the effect of the media on how we think.
How the Washington Post covers race, how the New York Times covers race, how MSNBC covers all these issues.
Okay, and we all know what they are.
They're just propagandists.
But here's the thing.
They don't view themselves as propagandists.
They don't even know they're propagandists.
Perhaps my favorite clip of the last 24 hours comes courtesy of Don Lemon.
So Don Lemon was asked by Margaret Hoover of the Hoover Institute.
He was asked by her about the fact that he's a biased person, right?
And here was his answer to allegations of bias.
When I say that the President of the United States is a fraud and a con, that was looking at his taxes.
And how he and his history of litigation and not paying people.
These are all facts.
I don't do opinion.
And I know that the difference for me is I do point of view.
So I'm giving my point of view as an American, as a black man who happens to be gay.
But I'm through that lens, but I'm also I'm also I also represent CNN.
And so I must tell the truth.
OK, so understand this is the way leftists view the world.
Their view, their opinion is not opinion.
It's fact.
So they get to shut you down.
They can lie as much as they want and call it fact, because after all, it's coming from a point of view.
That sort of bubble mentality leads to the spread of untruth.
They know it.
You should know it, too, every time you see what they are saying about bills.
Make sure you actually read the underlying material, because at least 50% of the time, they are lying to you.
All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Moll's show today.
He discusses more on the trans olympic athlete, a biological man now competing against women.
By the way, the oldest I'm Ben Shapiro.
athlete in female weightlifting history, 43.
Incredible achievement for a woman who is a man.
You can hear more details about that story over on Michael's show that is available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Elliot Feld, executive producer Jeremy Boren, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our assistant director is Pavel Lydowsky.
Editing is by Adam Sajewicz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and Makeup is by Fabiola Christina.
Production Assistant is Jessica Kranz.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
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