All Episodes
July 6, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:54
Yes, They Hate The Country | Ep. 1290
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Prominent leftists in politics, media, and culture protest America on Independence Day, the National Education Association pushes critical race theory, and everyone wants to be a member of the intersectional coalition.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
Don't let big tech track what you do.
Anonymize your web browsing at expressvpn.com slash event.
I hope you had a wonderful weekend.
We're gonna get to all the news in just one moment.
First, a reminder, you're probably spending way too much on your cell phone bill.
That is unless you've switched over to Pure Talk USA.
I know many of my listeners have.
Another thousand of you, my extremely wise listeners, have already made the switch from your overpriced wireless carriers to PureTalk over the past couple of months.
What exactly are the rest of you waiting for?
If you're with AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, your family could save over $800 a year just by switching to PureTalk.
You get the same great coverage because they use the exact same towers as one of the big carriers.
You can even keep your phone and your number, but you will save a fortune.
By the way, PureTalk is the top rated wireless company by Consumer Affairs with the absolute best customer service team based right here in America.
And if that sounds good, it gets even better.
Right now, get unlimited talk, text, and 6 gigs of data for just $30 a month.
And here's the thing, you're thinking, well, is 6 gigs of data enough?
The answer is, if you go over on the data, they're not going to charge you for it, so you have nothing to lose.
Grab your mobile phone, dial pound 250, say, Ben Shapiro.
When you do, you save 50% off your very first month.
Dial pound 250, say keyword, Ben Shapiro.
Pure Talk is simply smarter wireless.
Again, save 50% off your very first month by dialing pound 250, say keyword, Ben Shapiro, and get involved with my friends over at Pure Talk.
USA.
Alrighty, so I hope you had a wonderful Independence Day weekend.
Obviously, it is worthwhile to celebrate the greatest country that has ever existed in the history of the world.
Unfortunately, Over the course of generations, we have now instructed more and more Americans that they should not be proud of living in the United States.
And in fact, that America is the font of all evil, the root of all evil.
In terms of foreign policy, we're an imperialist, colonialist power.
In terms of domestic policy, we're an evil, racist, discriminatory, sexist, heteronormative, cisgender place.
And this is reflected in the polling data.
According to the Daily Caller, a poll published Monday from Issues and Insights and Tip Insights found only 36% of young adults are proud of being American.
36%.
So that means that 64% are not proud of being American.
No country can survive when 64% of its public believes that the country is not good or worthwhile.
They're not proud of being a member of that country.
And we're not talking about proud of being a German in 1946.
We're talking about proud of being an American in 2021 in the most racially tolerant, prosperous, and free society in the history of the world.
This is young people, of course, it's not all people in the United States, but this problem is getting progressively worse over time and is getting progressively worse because our educational institutions and our entertainment institutions and every other institution in American society have been taken over by a radical left that is hell-bent on the notion that America must be remade on a fundamental level.
Changed, ground up.
All of the institutions ripped out and replaced.
I talk about this in my new book at the end of this month, The Authoritarian Moment.
You can pick it up on Amazon pre-order right now.
It's really important.
The institutions of our society have been weaponized by a radical left that has entered these institutions, a small percentage of people renormalizing the institutions to their principles, and an apathetic center basically throwing up their hands and doing nothing.
Young adults, according to this poll, aged 18 to 24, were the group least likely to say they are proud to be American.
Of those polled, 59% of Americans aged 25 to 44 said they were proud, along with 75% of adults aged 45 to 64 and 86% of adults over the age of 65.
So in other words, you can very clearly see the impact of a crappy educational system on Americans.
Adults who are over the age of 65, 86% of them say they're proud.
Even adults between 45 and 64, right?
Middle-aged adults.
75% say they're proud.
And even a solid majority of Americans aged 25 to 44 say they are proud.
But people who are in college or of the college generation overwhelmingly say they are not proud of being American.
Also, this is pretty amazing.
Conservatives say they're much more proud to be American than moderates or liberals.
81% of conservatives said they were proud compared to 66% of moderates and 55% of liberals.
The divided cross-party affiliation?
Somewhat similar.
85% of Republicans say they are proud to be an American.
64% of Democrats.
59% of Independents said the same.
Now, what's kind of amazing about that is that you would think that conservatives would be less proud to be American today than they were when, for example, Trump was president.
You see this with Democrats all the time.
When Barack Obama is president, a solid majority of Democrats will say they are proud to be American.
And then when Trump is president, a solid minority of Americans will say they are proud to be American.
Conservatives are very consistent.
They're always proud to be American, regardless of who is the President of the United States, which, by the way, is how it should be.
Because I'm still proud to be American, even though Joe Biden, a man I disagree with nearly all the time, is President of the United States.
And even though Congress is controlled by a party I disagree with, I'm still proud to be American because American principles are still the best principles.
Men are 18% more likely than women to say they're proud of being American.
The poll found 77% of men, 59% of women were proud.
73% of white Americans, 56% of black and Hispanic Americans said they were proud of being American as well.
Only 44% of respondents said they were extremely proud to be American.
Another 23% very proud.
15% moderately proud.
Only 6% say not proud at all.
But here is the bottom line.
The bottom line is that when you look at young adults, the quote-unquote future of the country, these are people who are much more likely to be antipathetic toward the United States, to believe that the United States is a bad place, that America is a terrible, terrible place.
And this is ingrained every day by our institutions.
America is systemically racist.
Post a black square on your page on Facebook if you agree.
America is heteronormative.
Fly a progress pride flag if you agree.
There's a feeling that America has to be overthrown, that its constitutions are bad.
And you saw this come out really in enormous measure on the 4th of July, of course.
Cori Bush.
who is a member of the squad, Cori Bush.
She is sort of an adjunct member.
She's Black Lives Matter.
She recently joined Congress.
She tweeted out, when they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this, the freedom that they're referring to is for white people.
This land is stolen land and black people still aren't free.
Okay, no, that's not what people say the 4th of July is about.
The 4th of July is about separation from Great Britain and then the fulfillment of the promises of the Declaration of Independence over time.
They are not referring to freedom only for white people.
Which is, by the way, exactly what thinkers ranging from Martin Luther King to Frederick Douglass have said.
That the promises of the Declaration of Independence were a promissory note that had to be fulfilled.
By the way, the last sentence there is so insane coming from a sitting member of Congress.
This land is stolen?
And black people are still not free?
It seems to me Cori Bush is pretty damned free in the United States of America.
I've noticed some rather large distinctions between how black Americans were treated circa 1830 or even 1776 and, you know, 2021.
I've noticed some fairly large distinctions right there.
And as far as the argument that the quote-unquote land was stolen, if you mean that every single country that has ever been founded involved population transfers and violence, that is true.
And if Cori Bush wants to give up her house in St.
Louis to whatever native tribe originally occupied that area, She is more than she is more than capable of doing so.
I don't see her making many moves along those lines.
Do you?
Meanwhile, Representative Maxine Waters, another beneficiary of living in the United States, has been able to grift off the American public in Los Angeles for the last 30 years.
And meanwhile, decrying every area of law and order indecency in American life.
Maxine Waters, truly one of the most corrupt and horrible members of the American Congress.
She tweeted July 4th.
And so the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal.
Equal to what?
What men?
Only white men?
Isn't it something that they wrote this in 1776 when African Americans were enslaved?
They weren't thinking about us then, but we're thinking about us now.
Okay, this is so historically inaccurate because Maxine Waters, she does not have two brain cells to rub together.
There are not any synapses firing up there.
Equal to what?
Okay, what?
All men are created equal means created equal before God in rights.
Equal to each other in rights.
They weren't thinking about black Americans when they wrote the Declaration.
There was a specific provision of the Declaration of Independence in the original draft that discussed slavery.
It was removed at the behest of southern states.
You know, recognizing the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson does not mean that the principles he espoused were not universal.
In fact, he's only a hypocrite because the principles were universal.
If the principles were not universal, he wouldn't be a hypocrite.
If Thomas Jefferson had written in the Declaration of Independence, all white men are created equal, it would be very difficult to call him a hypocrite.
He didn't.
He said all men are created equal.
This is the great irony.
An entire country that has decided that Thomas Jefferson is a through-and-through villain, a terrible person, and that the Declaration of Independence was a lie, has to, on a fundamental level, acknowledge that the Declaration of Independence is the truth in order to condemn Thomas Jefferson.
Because if the Declaration was a lie, then he didn't do anything wrong.
But the Declaration is the truth, and we all know it.
And we know it because we were handed those principles by people like Thomas Jefferson.
Yes, people who sinned like all human beings.
Yes, people who lived in a context of a different history.
Like all human beings have lived over the course of history.
But to throw away the Declaration of Independence because it was written by people who don't live in 2021 in a context in which slavery was legal the world over is pretty insane.
And to pretend that what made Jefferson a unique human being was his slaveholding as opposed to the Declaration is to ignore all of human history and every culture on earth at the time in 1776.
Maxine Waters didn't stop there.
She then continued further.
The Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths to be self-evident.
Yet, 17 states have enacted voter suppression laws.
This is a lie!
There are no voter suppression laws in the United States.
That's illegal!
You can't actively suppress the vote in the United States.
And the lie that Black Americans are being prevented from voting, again, is a ginned-up lie designed to apparently boost voter turnout for Democrats, but also to divide the country.
Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
No, they didn't.
George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice.
Need I say more?
Hashtag July 4th.
It's just disgusting.
Okay, first of all, to even lump together Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown is an absurdity.
Each one of these cases, as I've pointed out before, has its own particular gradations.
But whenever Michael Brown gets listed in the sort of lexicon of black American victimology, Michael Brown attacked a police officer.
The Obama DOJ didn't prosecute the officer in that case.
The evidence showed that Michael Brown was the aggressor in that particular scenario.
Again, it's not a matter of truth.
It's a matter of a fundamental outlook about the United States that the United States is a bad place.
It's a bad place.
Okay, and we have taxpayer-funded entities like NPR who are pushing this same nonsense.
So NPR is funded through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting does receive money from the taxpayers.
They tweeted out on July 4th, quote, 245 years ago today, leaders representing 13 British colonies signed a document to declare independence.
It says that all men are created equal, but women, enslaved people, indigenous people, and many others were not held as equal at the time.
I just have a question.
Is that what made the Declaration of Independence important?
Really?
Like, there are lots of people who openly said that all of these groups were not equal.
None of those things are enshrined in America's monuments.
None of the writings of John C. Calhoun enshrined in America's monuments or even the writings of Thomas Jefferson with regard to superiority or inferiority of particular races.
None of that's at the Jefferson Monument or Jefferson Memorial.
What American history chooses to focus in on is the fundamental principle that allowed for the growth of the United States and the adaptation of the United States to more and more human beings.
NPR says the document also includes a racist slur against indigenous Americans.
Author David Troyer, who is Ojibwe, says there's a lot of diversity of opinion and thought among Native Americans, a community of more than 5 million people, about the document's words.
I'm sorry, this is what you choose to focus in on July 4th?
With taxpayer dollars, no less?
In this thread of the Declaration of Independence as NPR, you can see a document with flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies.
It also laid the foundation for the country's collective aspirations, the hopes for what America could be.
Okay, what?
And you didn't lead with that?
You know, because here's the point.
The notion is always and forever that the founding principles were insanely corrupt at the beginning and remain corrupt today.
So you can't have it both ways.
The left wants it both ways.
On the one hand, they want us to inherit the values that the founders espoused, and at the same time, condemn those values as inherently corrupt, written by brutal and dictatorial men.
This is what they would like.
Those two things cannot hold.
And you're seeing them fall apart in the guise of the Biden administration, where Biden talks like an old-school Democrat in terms of patriotism and the unique American idea and the American creed.
He speaks in sort of old-style patriotic terms, and then talks about how America is systemically racist and equity i.e.
racial discrimination needs to be enshrined in American law at every level of his administration.
We'll get into more of this in just one second because the anti- the sort of post-American moment is really dangerous for the country.
It's truly dangerous.
We're gonna get to more of this in just one second.
First, Let's talk about making your home look better.
So, you know, look around your house right now.
How would you upgrade the look and feel of your home?
I know you want to move a wall here and I know that you want to redo the floor.
Oh, it's really expensive.
You know what you could do that makes your home look a lot better that you probably haven't thought about?
Your window coverings.
Blinds.com can make it simple to shop top quality custom blind shades and interior shutters from home with easy online ordering and free shipping.
The experts at Blinds.com understand that window treatments are one of the household items you don't just think about, but they can make a huge difference.
On the look and feel of your home.
You don't need to do a full renovation.
By simply changing what's on the windows, you can change the way light comes into your home, and that creates a totally different feel.
Go to blinds.com right now, take a look at all the options.
They've got the faux wood blinds, the cellular and roller shades, they've got the outdoor shades, all customizable to your specific dimensions.
If you're nervous about trying them, their Sure-Fit Guarantee has you covered.
Blinds.com has helped millions of homeowners through the process.
Plus, they guarantee the perfect fit, whether you do it yourself or have them measure and install everything for you.
Go right now, see how much you can save at Blinds.com right now.
When you check out online, don't forget to tell them you heard about Blinds.com from The Ben Shapiro Show.
By the way, Blinds.com, beautiful product.
At a price that is not going to break the bank.
Rules and restrictions may apply.
Go check them out right now.
Blinds.com.
And see how much you can save.
Let them know that you got there by listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
That helps us and it helps them as well.
Okay, meanwhile, you have actress Alyssa Milano ripping on Independence Day as well.
And this is becoming a more and more mainstream phenomenon.
It used to be that there were certain things in American life that we all sort of agreed upon.
Like the American flag, apple pie, and motherhood.
All are now bad.
The American flag is representative of American repression.
Motherhood is, of course, sexist because not all women are mothers, and not all mothers are women.
And apple pie is bad because I'm sure it's not fair trade sourced or something.
In any case, Alyssa Milano put out a little video of herself saying, reminder, the United States was founded on the unjust treatment of Native Americans, Africans, and, and other people of color.
Not just and, two ands.
And then it's just her kind of staring into camera.
Patriotism is wanting the country you love to live up to its potential.
See, this is the idea.
The idea is that America does not live up to its potential, does not try to live up to its potential.
Now, again, it's a conflicting message.
If America is rooted in racism, bigotry, and evil, then what is its potential and how do you define it?
Left doesn't have an answer for this.
They're running on the fumes of the Declaration while attempting to burn the Declaration.
Those two messages are in direct conflict with one another.
But this has been pushed directly into American education.
It's been crammed down in nearly every area of American life.
We're supposed to believe that America is a truly bad place.
And then we lie, by the way, about what people have said about America in the past.
So, for example, there's a piece by Gillian Brockell in the Washington Post, very, very long piece about Frederick Douglass, staff writer for the Washington Post history blog, Retropolis.
Okay.
She writes, Frederick Douglass had nothing but scorn for July 4th.
The black abolitionists spoke for the enslaved.
Okay, that's not true.
What he said is that the 4th of July to the enslaved was hypocrisy because it talked about freedom and independence.
But people were still being held in bondage.
But he called the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution glorious liberty documents.
The entire point of his oration on July 4th is not that America is irredeemably horrific.
It is that the founding principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are eternally good.
That's the actual point.
And that slavery was giving the lie to those principles.
And so slavery had to be overthrown in order to ensure that July 4th meant something to Black Americans.
But that's the thing.
Slavery was overthrown.
Jim Crow was ended.
We have laws in place that racially discriminate on behalf of Black Americans today.
The notion that Black Americans today, like Cori Bush, should be saying they are not free, or that America is a wildly discriminatory country, It's historically ignorant, and it is a slap in the face, not only to the founding fathers who actually enshrined these principles in our founding documents, but to all of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have fought and died, both civilian and military, in order to preserve the dream of the Declaration of Independence.
The idea that Frederick Douglass stood for something as anti-American as people stand for today is wrong.
He was attempting to hold true to the founding principles, not to undermine those founding principles, or to say that those founding principles are a lie.
The idea instead is that they need to be expanded.
And they were expanded.
But we're going to pretend that they weren't expanded.
It's all maddening and it's being taught in our nation's largest school district.
It is being taught at the behest of leftists who run teachers unions.
This is what the debate over critical race theory is really about.
Critical race theory is a theory that says that all of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are a lie.
America was really founded in like 1619.
America's institutions are thoroughly racist and not only thoroughly racist, they are just a guise for power dynamics.
That the reason that neutral laws are not good enough is because those neutral laws were really designed in order to keep people of minority persuasion down.
And the only way to create a fairer world is to have a coalition of the dispossessed that runs up against those institutions and then overwhelms them.
And the NEA is pushing this stuff openly at this point.
In fact, as Chris Ruffo has been doing yeoman's work on this stuff over at Manhattan Institute, as he reports, the nation's largest teachers union has approved a plan to promote critical race theory in all 50 states and 14,000 local school districts.
Their new business item, adopted as modified, quote, the NEA will, with guidance on implementation from the NEA president and chairs of the Ethnic Minority Affairs Caucuses, share and publicize through existing channels information already available on Critical Race Theory.
What is and what it is not.
Have a team of staffers for members who want to learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric and share information with other NEA members as well as their community members.
Provide an already created in-depth study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-blackness, anti-indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cis-heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression as the intersections of our identity.
And that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and or the 1619 Project.
Publicly, again, this is the biggest teachers union in America.
K-12.
Attempting to cram this garbage down on your kids.
And by the way, they're succeeding.
Only 36% of Americans aged 18-24 are proud of being American.
Publicly, they say, says the NEA, they want to, through existing media, convey its support for the accurate and honest teaching of social studies topics, particularly truthful and age-appropriate accountings of unpleasant aspects of American history, such as slavery, and the oppression and discrimination of indigenous black, brown, and other peoples of color, as well as the continued impact this history has on our current society.
It's this last part where they start to edge over into the radical leftism to which they're so accustomed.
Of course, no one is saying that American history shouldn't be taught with all of its warts.
I have an entire chapter in my book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, about American history and how it should be taught.
And there are plenty of warts to talk about.
But the notion that every injustice of today is attributable to an injustice of the past is a lie.
And then they say they want to join with Black Lives Matter at school and the Zin Education Project called for a rally this year on October 14th, George Floyd's birthday, as a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.
The NEA shall publicize these National Days of Action to all of its members, including in NEA Today, and conduct a virtual listening tour that will educate members on the tools and resources needed to defend honesty in education, including but not limited to tools like CRT.
The rationale and background?
USA's economy and social order is built on interactions between different races and cultures.
To deny opportunities to teach truth about black, brown, and other marginalized races minimizes the necessity for students to build efficacy.
The ancient African proverb says, know thyself.
I'm sorry, this is unbelievable crap that they are now pushing.
The Zinn Education Project, Howard Zinn, is a pathological liar.
His book, A People's History of the United States, is an egregiously horrific book.
It is a complete misread of American history.
I mean, Howard Zinn makes the case that the United States became fascist after World War II, after defeating the Nazis, and that the U.S.
took the wrong side in the Cold War, essentially.
But they want to leverage in the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn into all their education.
This is to your kids.
And by the way, not a particular shock, but the NEA also passed a resolution that was aimed at recognizing Palestine as a state and shooting down, barely shooting down a resolution aimed at publicly boycotting Israel.
So the radical leftism of our teachers' unions are out of control.
And again, designed to indoctrinate your kids.
And what we are watching is a transformation.
From an America that shares certain fundamental respect for principles and history, to an America that is post-American in nature.
I'll explain what I mean by post-American in nature in just one second.
First, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you probably heard me talk about my Helix mattress.
Helix has now launched a brand new company.
It's called Allform.
They're making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped directly to your door.
So, what makes an Allform sofa really cool?
A bunch of stuff.
For starters, it's the easiest way you can customize a sofa using premium materials at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores.
You can pick your fabric.
It is spill-stain, scratch-resistant, the sofa color, the color of the legs, sofa size, and shape.
Make sure it is perfect for you and your home.
They've got armchairs and loveseats.
All the way up to an eight-seat sectional, so there's something for everyone.
And you can always start small, buy more seats later on if you want your all-form sofa to grow and change with you when you move.
All-form sofas are also delivered directly to your door.
In the past, if you wanted to order a sofa, you'd need to hire someone to come and assemble it in your home or break your back trying to put it together yourself.
Allform has a simple, quick assembly.
No tools needed.
I've got an Allform sofa.
I picked out the three-seat sofa with chaise in the sand color with espresso legs.
It is fantastic.
It is super durable, which is great because my kids wreck everything.
If getting a sofa without trying it in the store sounds risky, don't worry.
You get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it, which is more than three months.
And they've got a forever warranty.
Like, literally forever.
To find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com.
Slash, man, I got one for my parents as well.
It's just that good.
Allform.
is offering 20% off all orders for our listeners right now at allform.com.
Again, that's allform.com.
Go check them out right now.
Okay, so we've got America's biggest teachers unions pushing anti-American nonsense.
In Israel, during the 1990s, particularly in the aftermath of Oslo, there was this move inside Israel.
It was called the post-Zionist movement.
And the idea was that Israel had been founded on terrible auspices.
It was the radical left pushing this.
And therefore, Israel had to surrender to all of its enemies.
Israel had to completely remake itself.
And frankly, there was no reason for Israel's existence.
America is now entering the post-American moment.
Is ushered in by Barack Obama, who suggested, of course, that American exceptionalism was just like Greek exceptionalism or any other exceptionalism.
But really, truly, America was founded on oppression and is still as oppressive as it was originally.
The post-American movement is extremely dangerous.
It means that we focus on tearing down the institutions of a society that has created more prosperity and racial tolerance than any society in human history.
And that we also deem our entire past awful and terrible and egregious and bad.
And that has consequences for how we teach our kids today.
Because, of course, CRT essentially suggests that whiteness is the problem.
Whiteness studies is an offshoot of CRT.
Critical race theory suggests that because all of the structures of our society are laden with racism and built via racism, That all of our societies are imbued with whiteness, and because everyone who is white benefits from this whiteness, they bear a certain stain of racial guilt.
This is likely to result in some of the worst crap we've seen in American politics in decades.
It turns out that racial polarization is a horrible thing in American politics.
Right before Barack Obama was president, there was a reason that America's optimism about race was at an all-time high.
There's a reason why it's now been sliced in half.
And that is because of an attempt to racially polarize for political gain, particularly by the Democratic Party.
So the question arises, what is the best way to fight back against this sort of stuff?
So there is a piece today in the New York Times by Kamel Foster, David French, Jason Stanley, and Thomas Chatterton Williams.
I'm friends with many of these people.
I respect them as thinkers.
I think the piece is dead wrong.
It says the anti-critical race theory laws are un-American.
No, they're not.
They're not.
Okay, every state passes its educational standards.
Every locality has its own educational standards.
Public schools are not a place where every single arena of thought is taught to students.
It's just not.
KKK curricula, not taught to students in public schools, nor should it be.
Nazi curricula, not taught in America's public schools, nor should it be.
CRT should not be taught in America's public schools.
We have an obligation, as parents and as community members, to ensure that what's being taught to our kids is number one, factual, and number two, does not undermine the fundamental bases of the United States.
Now, I don't think that any of these authors, Kamala Foster, David French, Jason Stanley, or Thomas Chatterton Williams, are advocates of CRT.
They are not.
What they are suggesting is that the best way to fight against CRT As with lawsuits under the Civil Rights Act, they're suggesting that we need to have a competition of ideas in the public schools.
But here's the reality.
There is no competition of ideas in the public schools.
The NEA makes the bed, and you just lie in it.
The school boards that we've been neglecting for far too long on the conservative side, while focusing in on national politics, those school boards have been taken over by radicals who then use their power to leverage garbage into your kid's head.
Here's what these authors, however, write at the New York Times.
And again, it's worthy of examining their case because it is my firm belief that there is nothing wrong with passing laws on a state level.
In fact, not only nothing wrong, it is quite useful for states to pass laws banning the teaching of racism in our public schools under the guise of critical race theory.
Let's say these authors, what is the purpose of a liberal education?
That is the question at the heart of a bitter debate that has been roiling the nation for months.
Schools, particularly at the kindergarten through 12th grade level, are responsible for helping turn students into well-informed and discerning citizens.
At their best, our nation's schools equip young minds to grapple with complexity and navigate our differences.
At their worst, they resemble indoctrination factories.
In recent weeks, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho, and Texas have all passed legislation that places significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms, and in some cases, public universities, too.
Okay, so, couple of quick notes here.
The purpose of an education changes over time.
When you are seven, as my daughter is, the purpose of an education is to teach fundamental principles.
And then later, complexity comes in.
Because when you're seven, complexity ain't a thing.
You're going to teach reading and writing.
When you teach American history, you can only teach in very broad strokes because kids are seven.
And then when they're 10th or 12th grade, then you can start teaching more realistically about all of the warts.
But the question is, what is the fundamental principle that you lay down?
What is the bedrock that you lay down when a kid is seven?
And is that going to be an anti-American principle or a pro-American principle is very much live.
Treating 8-year-olds like 18-year-olds is very silly when it comes to education, and no one does it.
And suggesting that we ought to be teaching critical race theory principles as part of a way of just examining the universe to 7-year-olds is, of course, extraordinarily stupid.
But that is, of course, what the NEA is trying to do.
There is a reason that they're coming after the kids, guys.
There's a reason Ibram Kendi has a children's book.
By the way, it's garbage.
I had an entire video on YouTube about it.
It's kind of hilarious.
There's a reason that Robin DiAngelo would love for kids to learn this stuff from the youngest available ages.
When we talk about indoctrination, this is indoctrination.
The question is, what are the fundamental principles you want your kids to know when they're seven?
That's really what we're talking about here.
Because then there's play within those principles.
There's flexibility.
There's the scratches on the veneer that is America, for sure.
But what exactly are you gonna teach them as the root of American education?
So these authors say, Tennessee House Bill SB0623, for example, bans any teaching that could lead an individual to quote, feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual's race or sex.
Okay, first of all, that isn't true.
That's actually not true.
If you go read House Bill SB0623, it does not say that anything that could lead someone to feel discomfort is banned.
It says, any education that tells students they should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other psychological distress because of their sex or race is banned.
Right, that's a very different thing.
Saying that you're going to ban teaching that could make somebody feel bad is not the same thing as saying you're going to ban teaching that says a kid should feel bad because they are white, black, or green.
In addition to this vague prescription, it restricts teaching that leads to division between or resentment of a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people.
Texas House Bill 3979 goes further, forbidding teaching that quote, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, and failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States.
Okay, why is that bad?
Really, why is that bad?
Last I checked, that's exactly what Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass were saying.
That these are betrayals of founding principles.
Are we attempting to teach students anything else in our schools?
Because that'd be fundamentally un-American.
That America is, in fact, about racism and slavery, and those are embedded in our founding principles.
It also bars any classroom from requiring, quote, an understanding of the 1619 Project, and prohibits assigning any part of it as required.
Well, that's because it's crap.
Like, seriously.
The notion that we are supposed to simply leave it up to... Like, I send my kids to a parochial school.
The reason I send my kids to a private Jewish day school is because I want my kids to learn certain values as a parent.
And as an American citizen, if I were sending my kid to public school, I'd want my kid to learn certain values about America.
And to pretend that we are supposed to be completely neutral between the values that we teach our children is insane.
It's crazy.
Now again, I'm not accusing these authors of saying that, because I don't think that's quite what they're saying.
They say we, the authors of this essay, have wide ideological divergences on the explicit targets of this legislation.
Some of us are deeply influenced by the academic discipline of critical race theory and its critique of racist structures and admire the 1619 Project.
Some of us are skeptical of structural racist explanations and racial identity itself and disagree with the mission and methodology of the 1619 Project.
We span the ideological spectrum of progressive, moderate, libertarian, and conservative.
It's because of these differences we here join together as we are united in one overarching concern, the danger posed by these laws to liberal education.
The danger to liberal education is the indoctrination of your kids in anti-American bullcrap.
That is the danger to liberal education.
It is.
To pretend anything else is not to see what is real on the ground.
The laws differ in some respects, say these authors, but generally agree on blocking any teaching that would lead students to feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish because of one's race or ancestry.
They create various carve-outs for the impartial teaching of the history of oppression of groups, but it's hard to see how these attempts are at all consistent with demands to avoid discomfort.
Again, this is a deliberate misreading of these laws.
That is not what the laws say.
Critical race theory teaches you should feel bad because of your race.
It is implicit in the premises laid out by Richard Delgado and Gene Stefanchik.
They said these laws are dangerously imprecise.
They say that other laws appear to potentially ban even expression as benign as support for affirmative action, but it's far from clear.
In fact, shortly after Texas passed its purported ban on critical race theory, the Techless Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a list of words and concepts that help identify critical race theory in the classroom.
The list included terms such as social justice, colonialism, and identity.
Okay, well, that doesn't mean that you can ban those terms, obviously.
They're saying that if you're trying to find elements that are being taught, it's like this.
They say, these are speech codes.
They seek to change public education by banning the expression of ideas.
Again, there's a difference between doing this at a lower education level and doing this in public universities, which are sort of a different story.
But, this entire article is why these critical race theory, anti-critical race theory laws are bad.
What exactly is their solution?
Their solution is propose better curricula and enforce existing civil rights law.
Okay, so what would a better curriculum look like?
Seriously.
Because it turns out that the Trump administration tried to come up with something called the 1776 Project, which was designed to counter the 1619 Project.
The Biden administration came in, overthrew it.
The NEA wants kids to learn the 1619 Project, but not the 1776 Project.
Also, they say Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act both prohibit discrimination on the basis of race.
In fact, there's already an Education Department Office of Civil Rights complaint and federal lawsuit aimed at programs that allegedly attempt to place students or teachers into racial affinity groups.
Okay, but this is purely responsive, meaning that you see something that violates Title VI or Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and now you have to come up with a lawyer and you have to sue the school district into submission.
Or you could just stop them from indoctrinating your kids at the start.
Hey, there seems to be this assumption that we are coming to this issue fresh.
We are not.
We are coming after generations of indoctrination of our children into anti-American nonsense and it is now coming to its culmination.
And if you don't fight back with the tools at your disposal, you're doing it wrong.
coming up speaking of the attempts to sort of pit Americans against Americans.
It is amazing to see how radical the coalition of the dispossessed has become.
And also how many people just want to join it because it is the cool thing to do.
It is the trendy thing to do.
The real reason only 36% of young Americans say they're proud of America is they think it's trendy to think that it's not, that America's a bad place.
They think it's trendy to be anti-American.
We'll get to that in just one second.
Sophisticated.
First, let's talk about a simple statement, okay?
I don't get enough sleep.
I don't get enough sleep because my kids wake me up at all times of the night and morning.
My son decided 5.45 would be an excellent time to get me up this morning.
Well, let me just tell you, when I am in my bed, I need the best bedding products.
And I'm talking about my pillow.
As you know, MyPillow has a passion to help everyone.
Get the best sleep of your life?
MyPillow didn't stop by simply creating the best pillow.
MyPillow created the new Giza Dream Bedsheets.
They look and feel great, which means an even better night's sleep for me, which is crucial for a busy schedule.
MyPillow found the world's best cotton and it's called Giza.
It is ultra soft and breathable, but extremely durable.
MyPillow sheets come with a 60-day money-back guarantee and a 10-year warranty.
The first night you sleep on the Giza sheets, you're not going to want to sleep on anything else.
Giza Dream Sheets come in a variety of sizes and colors.
MyPillow is making a special offer for my listeners today.
You'll receive two for the low price, plus free shipping.
Go to mypillow.com, click on the Radio Listener Square, use promo code DAILYWIRE, You're not only going to find this amazing offer, but also deep discounts on all the MyPillow products, including the MyPillow Mattress Topper, MyPillow Towel Sets, and much more.
Call 1-800-951-7163.
That is 1-800-951-7163.
Use promo code DAILYWIRE.
Go to mypillow.com.
Make sure you use that promo code DAILYWIRE to get started.
MyPillow products, they are the best.
Alrighty, we'll get some more on this in just one second.
First, If you're an American, you most likely just celebrated our great nation's Independence Day.
So, to follow that amazing holiday, I want to celebrate one of the men who fought for our independence.
His name is John Paul Jones.
He's featured on The Daily Wire's new podcast, America's Forgotten Heroes.
Saturday's episode was all about John Paul Jones, the father of the U.S.
Navy and an incredibly brave human being.
During the Revolutionary War, he and his crew were en route to attack a British warship.
They ran into a far more powerful one.
A classic underdog story, the commander of the enemy ship told his men to surrender, to which Jones responded, I have not yet begun to fight, before engaging in a three-hour relentless gunfire battle and forcing his opponent to surrender instead.
John Paul Jones was an original hero.
It's time we celebrate the bravery that led to America's freedom today.
Subscribe now to America's Forgotten Heroes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen.
The sixth episode is out today, Tuesday, July 6th.
The last action-packed episode drops tomorrow, July 7th, for a total of seven episodes.
Too many heroes never receive the recognition they deserve.
Sharing their stories with you on this Independence Day holiday is our small tribute to their heroism.
If you like what you hear, we have a five-star review.
It helps us in the rankings, helps share those incredible stories.
Thanks for listening.
Thank you to the heroes who made an excellent podcast possible.
You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
Meanwhile in breaking news, this is the beautiful thing about the the crew that believes that America is such a terrible place, that is replete with racism and bigotry, is nothing is ever enough.
Like, literally nothing is ever enough.
Perfect story on this today.
And I do say, I have to love it.
So, University of North Carolina, you'll recall, offered the professional liar and prevaricator, Nicole Hannah-Jones, who has suggested that America is endemically and institutionally racist on every level, promoted riots during 2020, has suggested that the destruction of property does not amount to violence, Has lied about America's police.
They offered her tenure.
Remember, they offered her a tenured position at University of North Carolina based on her vast academic qualifications, which include, and also... Okay, so they offered her that.
Then, the board of trustees is like, well, maybe we should think about that for a second.
What if we just offered her a non-tenure track position?
And everyone went nuts.
How dare they?
No, it's cancellation!
Cancel!
Okay, and then, they came back and they voted 9-4 to give her tenure.
Well, now, After having forced the entire University of North Carolina into submission, Nicole Hannon-Jones has now humiliated them by saying she's not going to take the tenured position.
Instead, she's going to head on over to historically black college Howard University, which is also hiring Ta-Nehisi Coates.
According to the Huffington Post, Hannah Jones will become a tenured member of the faculty at the historically black university's Kathy Hughes School of Communications, made the announcement Tuesday during an interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning.
The UNC alumna will take on the role as inaugural Knight Chair in Race and Journalism, and will begin her faculty role this summer.
Hannah-Jones will also lead the university's newly created Center for Journalism and Democracy, which will train the next generation of black journalists in investigative and foundational journalism skills.
Because nothing says investigative and foundational journalism skills like lying about American history, ignoring historians who are actually qualified, and disparaging them as white.
The Center will seek to work with other journalism programs at historically black colleges and universities across the country.
Hannah Jones said, quote, We are at a critical juncture in our democracy, and yet our press does not reflect the nation it serves, and too often struggles to grasp the danger for our country as we see growing attacks on free speech and the fundamental right to vote.
Okay, Hannah Jones saying that there's a fundamental attack on free speech while she runs around the country being handed awards, money, tenured positions.
It's hysterically funny.
Ta-Nehisi Coates will also join the faculty at HBCU.
The roles are funded thanks to more than $20 million in financial contributions from the Knight Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and an anonymous owner.
Because, again, the institutions of the United States are geared toward radicalism.
They are geared toward radicalism.
And the institutions of the United States have been mobilized on behalf of the radical left.
It's why my book, The Authoritarian Moment, is really important.
Go pre-order a copy right now.
Members of the faculty at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media said in a statement they were, quote, disappointed but not surprised at Hannah-Jones's decision to turn down the school's offer.
They said, we support Ms.
Hannah-Jones's choice.
The appalling treatment of one of our nation's most decorated journalists by her own alma mater was humiliating, inappropriate, and unjust.
We will be frank.
It was racist.
You see, it was racist not to immediately offer her a tenured position, but to consider it and then offer her the tenured position.
It was so racist that now she's slam dunking and she's just dunking on them.
Love it.
You know what?
Love it.
Hats off.
Respect.
Respect, man.
Spectacular.
But this goes to a broader issue.
And the broader issue in American life right now is that it is great to be a member of the intersectional coalition.
If you're a member of the intersectional coalition, you have endless power in American life.
You're able to skew any narrative in your own favor.
You're able to take advantage of every opportunity and slam dunk on people who even offer you opportunities.
You get to pretend to be the height of virtue while ruining all your enemies.
Being a member of the intersectional coalition has all privilege and no fallout.
You can be Gwen Berry, an obscure hammer thrower for the Olympics.
And as soon as you make a face into a camera during the national anthem, you're going to get a contract with Nike, I'm sure.
If you are Nicole Hannah-Jones, you can be absolute garbage at your job.
And it doesn't matter.
They will hand you the editorship of the New York Times and fire anybody who crosses you.
And then you'll be offered a tenured university position at a major publicly funded university and turn it down.
I mean, man, for a country that is so all fired racist and sexist, it is unbelievable to be a member of the intersectional coalition taking advantage of this on an intellectual level.
It really is.
All the way down to men walking into ladies' spas with their junk hanging out.
Over the weekend, this story blew up nationally.
We talked about it last week.
There was an L.A.
spa where a naked man walked into the women's section of the spa, junk hanging out in front of a six-year-old girl.
The woman said a person with a beard and a penis got into a hot tub naked with her six-year-old daughter at Wee Spa on Wilshire Boulevard in January 2020.
She claims she and her six-year-old daughter had gone to the outing to the spa together when a transgender woman sat on the edge of the hot tub where they were soaking.
Okay, and then there were protests outside WeSpa with people saying, you know what?
If I'm going to be... If I'm a biological woman, I don't need to see junk.
Okay, Antifa showed up and beat the living hell out of people on the street for this.
Okay, here is some video of that.
It's insane.
Antifa shows up wearing gay pride flags and transgender flags.
They start stealing people's signs, ripping up people's signs.
They're communicating on people for no f***ing reason.
No reason.
Are you being a violent citizen?
No, he's a lady of five years.
They are trying to intimidate these women.
They're trying to push her with a skateboard.
And they're stealing her hat.
They're physically assaulting this woman.
So much tolerance.
So much diversity.
So much diversity.
And by the way, this was treated as though this is, like, somewhat legitimate.
It's insane.
According to the Daily Mail, the violence had broken out on Saturday outside WeSpy after a viral video showed a customer complaining about a transgender woman who allegedly exposed their penis.
Okay, let me just read that sentence again because that's not in English.
A transgender woman who allegedly exposed their penis.
Many words don't make sense in that particular sentence.
That is a bunch of words strung together in what seems to be a somewhat grammatically correct phrase, but is in fact nonsensical.
Hordes of people showed up outside of WeSpot to support the woman.
They were met by Antifa counter-protesters supporting transgender rights.
Protesters were seen assaulting an independent journalist who was hit in the head with what appears to be a pipe.
Video of protests posted to Twitter shows.
How delightful.
It's really, really solid stuff.
And people showing up with signs that say, Stop Trans Hate, and with gay pride flags, and just delight.
What a wonderful world we live in.
What a wonderful world we have.
It's so wonderful to be a member of the Intersectional Coalition that everybody wants in.
And so we're now just going to make up things so that you too can be a member of the Intersectional Coalition.
Which brings me to my favorite story of the day.
Michaela Kennedy Cuomo, 23, is Governor Andrew Cuomo's daughter.
She came out in an Instagram post last month as queer.
Now, we used to believe that queer, you know, now having been hijacked from a term of derogation, as a derogatory, is now used by members of the gay community as sort of a championing term, right?
It used to mean gay, bisexual, lesbian, right?
It used to mean something along those lines.
Now, Michaela Kennedy Cuomo came out as demisexual.
According to WebMD, demisexual people only feel sexually attracted to someone when they have an emotional bond.
She says, when I was in elementary school, I feared that I was a lesbian.
When I was in middle school, I came out to my family and close friends as bisexual.
When I was in high school, I discovered pansexuality and thought that's the flag for me.
I recently learned more about demisexuality and have believed that that identity resonates with me the most.
And then she said, she has always dreamed of a world in which nobody will have to come out because everybody's sexuality will be assumed fluid.
But in a world that force-feeds cisgender heterosexuality, coming out of the closet is a lifelong process of unpacking internalized social constructions and stigmas.
And she is, she is demisexual.
She added that when she first came out as queer, she feared she would be perceived as attention-seeking since it's, quote, hip or cool to not be hetero in my liberal bubble.
And therein lies the issue.
Okay, so what the hell is a demisexual, you ask yourself?
So, again, WebMD now lists demisexual as, quote, only feel sexually attracted to someone when they have an emotional bond.
Okay, now, demisexual started off as a fanfiction roleplay forum in 2004 on a made-up identity in a middle schooler's character.
Okay, and now it's on WebMD.
Okay, so demisexual is described as a person who only feels sexual attraction when there's an emotional bond.
AKA a woman.
A woman, what studies demonstrate, repeated social science and hard science studies suggest that women tend to have higher sexual satisfaction by leaps and bounds when they have an emotional connection to the person with whom they are having sex.
But now this is considered some sort of minority sexuality demisexuality?
Everybody is so interested in jumping on the intersectional bandwagon because, again, if you're part of the coalition, then you're not part of the evil maw of the United States, the evil blob that is the United States.
The left is banking on this.
They've weaponized our institutions in favor of this sort of nonsense.
And it has a pretty predictable effect.
The demonization of people across the other side of the aisle and the attempt to subjugate the institutions of the country and destroy them as somehow not benefiting you.
The country does not have a future with this kind of stuff.
It just does not.
And the more young people who feel that it is popular to join the quote-unquote coalition of the oppressed because you're either the oppressor or the oppressed in the binary Ibram X. Kendi nonsense construct, The more people who buy into that construct and then decide they're going to be a member of the oppressed group because there's only victims and victimizers in American society, the more the United States is going to be in serious, serious trouble.
And we can see that each and every day.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out The Michael Knowles Show.
That is available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Elliott Feld.
Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.
Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.
Production Manager Paweł Łydowski.
Associate Producer Bradford Carrington.
Host Producer Justin Barber.
The show is edited by Adam Sajewicz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and Makeup is by Fabiola Christina.
Production Assistant Jessica Kranz.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2021.
Prominent leftists dis-America on Independence Day.
The nation's largest teachers union promises to push critical race theory in all 50 states.
And NPR, National Public Radio, adds a trigger warning to the Declaration of Independence.
Export Selection