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Oct. 19, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:16
The Consequences Of Covid Authoritarianism | Ep. 1357
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As vaccine mandates hit home, police departments begin firing cops en masse, the New York City Council removes a statue of Thomas Jefferson, and Joe Biden admits that the teachers' unions run the show.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Bench Bureau Show.
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Alrighty, so we have been told by Joe Biden that these vaccine mandates are going to get us out of the pandemic.
Now, what's amazing about that is that the pandemic, for all intents and purposes, has basically been over in terms of public policy since the vaccines were rolled out.
Despite all of the outsized panic that you see in the news every day, and the media can't decide whether the vaccines are super effective or super ineffective.
They can't decide whether to scare you about why you need to take a booster or whether to tell you how effective the vaccines are, which is why people are confused.
People have questions.
The media have done a terrible job and the public health experts have done a terrible job.
And then Joe Biden says, and then on the basis of your chaotic understanding of what's going on, I'm going to cram down one size fits all, no natural immunity exemptions for vaccine mandates.
I'm going to encourage businesses to do the same thing.
No religious exemptions, no personal exemptions, like nothing.
And why are you getting so divisive about all this?
Why are you getting so divisive?
Well, when you do all of that, the predictable result is that people harden their resistance, especially because they figure, quite correctly, that as time goes on, and as the effects of the pandemic wane, and as more and more people have either natural immunity or COVID immunity via the vaccine, That all of this is just going to fall apart.
There's not going to be a regime where a year from now or two years from now, people are still using vaccine passports.
It's not going to be a thing.
It's just going to become a background part of daily life.
People will have accepted the risk for the most part into their daily lives.
How do I know this?
Because it's already happened in large swaths of the country.
And in Florida, where I live, people for a year have already accepted that COVID was just a part of the background risk of daily life.
And you mitigated that risk as you saw fit.
If you were really worried, you wore a can 95.
If you weren't all that worried, you wore a cloth mask or no mask at all.
And then once the vaccines were available, pretty much everybody was like, okay, if I want to take the vaccine, I will.
And then I'll get back to my regular life.
Or I never wanted to take the vaccine and I'll get back to my regular life.
And everybody went back to their regular life.
Again, I keep citing the stat.
Because nobody on the left seems to want to deal with the simple fact that if this is a quote-unquote pandemic of the unvaxxed and the unvaxxed are the real problem, they're going to have to explain why this is an economic downturn of the blue states and why this is a psychological worry point for the vaxxed.
If you're talking about illogic, I understand the illogic of the take that it is illogical for people who are 70 years old not to take the vaccine.
I get that.
I agree with that.
But it is just as illogical for people who are fully vaxxed to go around worried day in and day out they're going to die of COVID unless they have a serious pre-existing health condition.
And it is just as illogical to say that once you are vaxxed, You need to worry about the unvaxxed infecting you.
And it is just as illogical as all of that to say that you need hard lockdown economic measures and vaccine passports that suppress the economy while the vaccines are already available.
So the stat the left refuses to deal with is the simple fact that the pandemic may be a pandemic of the unvaxxed, but the economic Meltdown is an economic meltdown of the blue states.
Again, the worst states in the United States in terms of unemployment, and this has been true for a while, are all blue states.
The best states in terms of unemployment are all red states.
Of the top 23 states in terms of employment rate, 17 are red, 4 are purple, 2 are blue.
And in terms of the bottom 10 states, if you include Washington D.C.
in that count, we are talking about all 10 being blue.
The reason for that is pretty obvious and that is this is no longer about anything other than failure to calculate risk and failure to assess risk and failure to live with risk.
And so you have this bizarre situation in which governmental actors, particularly in blue areas, are attempting to cram down on some of the healthiest populations.
Their version of what reality ought to look like and they are willing to undergo.
They're actually willing to increase the risk for their citizens in order to mitigate a risk that really is not their business and also is not really an issue.
In police departments all over the United States, you now have vaccine mandates being put on police officers all over the United States.
This is a bizarre take.
So the idea is that you would rather have people not available to answer 911 calls than to have the person who shows up at the 911 call not even be infected with COVID, just not be vaccinated for COVID.
That is the logic that is currently being used.
So in order to mitigate against a virus that is going to kill in the age group of cops, which is probably between 20 and 40 for the most part, in an age group where maybe three out of a thousand people who get COVID are going to die, to mitigate against that, you are going to make sure that if somebody calls 911, nobody who even has the possibility of carrying that is going to show up for the 911 call.
And so what you're seeing is literally hundreds of police officers across the nation who are dumping out.
This is most obvious in Chicago, where literally hundreds and hundreds of officers are pushing back and saying they're not going to take the vaccine despite Lori Lightfoot's insistence that they do.
Again, a lot of that has to do with the public health failures here.
Of Lori Lightfoot, who throughout the pandemic has been a hypocrite.
Remember that she went and she got her hair done when nobody else was allowed to get their hair done?
You remember that she's showing up to large parties unmasked when supposedly that's really, really bad?
Well, now, apparently, the back and forth between the mayor and the Chicago Police Union continues, according to CBS Local, with the city sending out a flurry of emails and memos as its vaccine mandate enters its first full week in effect.
CBS2's Mugo Odigwe obtained the latest threatening memo sent out to officers.
At least two memos have gone out since Friday's deadline for all city workers to report their vaccination status to the city.
But the Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzaro said thousands of officers are still refusing to do so.
He said the unofficial number we have is about 3,200, one-third of the entire department.
Catanzaro says that the mandate's illegal because the city didn't negotiate terms with the union.
He said officers who are still refusing to report vaccination status will be called in by supervisors on Monday, and once again will be asked to comply with the mandate.
If they refuse, it sounds like they're going to go into no-pay status, effective immediately, so they'll essentially be suspended.
Catanzaro says, all those things are a change in your employment policies.
You have to negotiate with us, what that looks like.
The city has refused to do that.
The latest memo involves consequences officers could face if they don't follow the City of Chicago's vaccination policy.
Any such officers will become subject to a disciplinary investigation that could result in a penalty up to and including separation from Chicago PD.
So you have people who are being shot en masse every weekend in Chicago and Lori Lightfoot is threatening to fire literally 3,200 members of the Chicago PD if they don't turn in their vaccination status.
Here is Lori Lightfoot then attacking the union for all of this, not her own stupid policy.
We believe that the FOP leadership is trying to foment an illegal work stopper to strike, pure and simple.
We've laid that out in the materials and we're not having that.
The contract is clear and it's been known for a long time.
The police unions are not authorized to strike.
It's in their collective bargaining agreement and it's a matter of state law.
What we've seen from the Fraternal Order of Police and particularly the leadership is a lot of misinformation, a lot of half-truths and frankly flat-out lies in order to induce an insurrection.
It's an insurrection.
We're just gonna use this word now, insurrection, to mean things that are not an insurrection.
Now listen, I'm very much against public sector unions as a general matter because you're bargaining against the taxpayer.
I think that the notion that you can have public servants who are being paid by the taxpayer is striking.
Not against the general public.
That is what a strike against the taxpayers is when you do this sort of stuff.
However, Lori Lightfoot had no ideological problems with any of that until five minutes ago.
When you had teachers walking off the job in Chicago, she was perfectly sanguine about all of that.
She's just mad because they're showing her up.
She's just angry because her rule is stupid and nobody wants to follow it.
And it's not just Lori Lightfoot in Chicago who is a COVID hypocrite all on her own.
It's also San Francisco.
According to CBS Local in San Francisco, the deadline for San Francisco's first responders to show proof of vaccination has come and gone.
On Thursday, it appeared the mandate has drastically improved the latest vaccination numbers among city employees and police officers.
This is what they were saying as of late last week.
However, the number of San Francisco Police Department officers is still 75, 76, those officers are being placed on administrative leave while waiting for hearings on their individual cases.
And this has some pretty significant consequences.
Nearly 200 officers have applied for medical or religious exemptions.
It's unclear how many have been approved by the city.
How bad are things?
According to CBS San Francisco, some calls are just going to get left unanswered.
This October is a busy month, and the Giants and Dodgers will play here at Game 5 at Oracle Park tomorrow.
And there'll be officers patrolling inside and outside of this area.
Now, with fewer officers on the job, the Police Officers Association says there may be some calls that will be left unanswered.
Um, that's not good.
Okay, so you live in a city.
You're a citizen of that city, right?
You're a taxpayer of that city.
Your taxes go to pay for the police officers.
And the police officers, they're there.
They're saying, we're happy to do our jobs.
I just don't want to get vaccinated.
And if you want to get vaccinated, you can because you're a responsible adult.
Enjoy.
Okay, and as a taxpayer, I just have a question.
Here's your choice.
Would you rather have no cops or would you rather have cops?
We tried to defund the police last year.
It didn't go well.
So now they're trying to vaccinate the police, I guess, as an alternative.
It's an alternative radical policy in all of these blue cities.
And it's going to go similarly.
It turns out no matter the reason for the cop shortages, cop shortages result in higher rates of crime.
In Seattle, things are coming to a head.
Many Seattle police officers have been quitting.
A huge number of Seattle police officers are leaving the force.
There's already a massive Seattle Police Department shortage at this point.
I mean, that's been going on for literally a year and a half.
There are probably hundreds of officers short in Seattle.
There's some video of a Washington State Patrol officer who went, this went viral the other day because he started ripping on Jay Inslee, the governor, who has been pushing a state vaccine mandate.
And he ranted as he quit, basically.
This is my final sign off.
After 22 years of serving the citizens of the state of Washington, I'm being asked to leave because I am dirty.
Numerous fatalities, injuries.
I've worked sick.
I've played sick.
We've buried lots of friends over these years.
I'd like to thank you guys.
I'd like to thank the Citizens of Yakima County as well as my fellow officers within the valley, which I could say more but This is it.
So state 1034.
This is the last time you'll hear me in a state patrol car and Jay Inslee can kiss my ass A lot of police officers feeling this way.
So you have public officials who've been undermining the ability of police to do their jobs for years and years and years.
And now telling them they must vaccinate it, must vaccinate.
And a lot of Seattle PD are like, we're just not going to do it.
And so there's been a spate of Seattle police officers who have been flying don't tread on me flags on their cars.
A bunch of pictures of this emerging from Seattle.
By the way, this is just a perfect encapsulation of Seattle.
The Seattle police are under attack.
And have been attacked by public officials for years, right?
I mean, you literally had the mayor of Seattle last year declare that a full takeover of four city blocks called Chaz Chop was totally fine because the police were so bad.
So now you have the police driving around with don't tread on me flags stuck to their cars.
And in the background of half of these pictures, you can see homeless tents, right?
Just giant tents.
Because this is what has happened in our major cities.
Lawlessness abounds and the cops are under assault.
National Police Association President Betsy Brantner-Smith, retired police sergeant, told Fox News on Monday she anticipates some costly litigation as far as more police officers pushing back than what the city administration understands.
Before Monday's deadline, the Seattle Police Officers Guild President Mike Solon said the Seattle Police Department had already lost some 300 officers over the past 18 months.
He said he anticipated another mass exodus in the coming week.
This decision has the potential to decimate LPD.
Our town could lose a lot of amazing police officers.
named Josh Carter testified in front of the city council about the vaccine mandates and he was saying you guys are going to decimate the PD. This decision has the potential to decimate LPD.
Our town could lose a lot of amazing police officers. If you decide to move forward with mandating this vaccine, the loss of officers is on you and I'm going to come back and ask what your plan is to keep my family and my neighbors safe.
And this is right.
And by the way, it's extending not only to local PD, it's extending to things like the Navy SEALs.
You've got the Chinese firing hypersonic missiles designed to strike the United States.
And we here in the United States are fully concerned with tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson and making sure that we decimate the Navy SEAL ranks so that the healthy, literally the healthiest people alive on planet Earth don't die from COVID, which they, by virtually all available data, were not going to die from anyway.
Or had a very minimal chance of dying from.
Anyway, all right, we're gonna get to more of this in just one second.
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So this is now even extending to the Navy SEALs.
The Department of Defense has now put out a full-on Memo about all of this, suggesting quote, In order to maximize readiness, it is the policy goal of the U.S.
Navy to achieve a fully vaccinated force against the persistent and lethal threat of COVID-19.
In support of the above stated policy and as directed by the Secretary of the Navy's lawful order, the Navy has commenced a mandatory vaccination campaign.
Navy service members refusing the COVID-19 vaccination absent a pending or approved exemption shall be processed for administrative separation.
Per this, Administrative order and supporting references.
To ensure a fair and consistent process, separation determinations will be centralized under the CCDA as outlined in the paragraphs below.
And talk about the fact the vast majority of people have decided to go ahead and vaccinate, which is not really a shock because the truth is that when you enter the armed services, you are required to have a lot of different vaccinations.
So for a lot of people, they don't think it's that big a deal. And as I've said before, if you're an adult and you're above the age of 20, your chances of getting an adverse effect from the vaccine are much lower than your chances of getting an adverse effect from COVID itself.
So, it makes some sense to vaccinate if you're over the age of 20.
It may even make some sense to vaccinate with one dose between the ages of 12 and 19.
It makes increasingly less sense as you get younger and younger because the fact is that the vaccines on young kids have really not, there's no longitudinal data and the threat of COVID to very small children is very minimal according to the best available statistics, certainly in terms of mortality.
But specifically targeting the most fit people in the Navy and saying that those people could have to pay for their own training or have to refund the training funds that were dedicated to them is kind of crazy.
Michael Berry, First Liberty Institute's General Counsel and Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S.
Marine Corps Reserve.
He says, purging our military of its elite service members is detrimental to national security.
Doing so because the commander in chief refuses to accommodate the religious convictions is abhorrent to the constitution. Their years of experience and leadership and service to our nation is immeasurable and irreplaceable. Remove a SEAL from special warfare, reduce his salary, force him to repay his training. That's purely vindictive and punitive and it's illegal.
This has nothing to do with a virus. Again, what does this have to do with military readiness?
When you hire cops, the general idea is they're going to lower crime.
Not that you can force them to vaccinate for a disease that is very unlikely to kill them, and for which the general public has a great form of protection in the form of the vaccines.
And to add insult to injury, the fact is that our elites don't even hold by these rules themselves.
They just don't.
There was video that emerged the other night of Joe Biden and Jill Biden at a restaurant violating mask mandates.
And Jen Psaki at the White House tried to present a solid front on this, but failed dramatically.
I think what we're referring to is a photo of them walking out of a restaurant after they had eaten, masks in hand, where they had not yet put them back on yet.
So I would say, of course, there are moments when we all don't put masks back on as quickly as we should.
But I don't think we should lose a force through the trees here, and that our objective here is to get more people vaccinated, make sure that schools and companies around the country can put in place requirements to save more lives and keep people safer.
And, you know, not overly focus on moments in time that don't reflect overarching policy.
How about reflecting on the fact that if you're an elite in our society and you're a member of the coterie of the specials, you can violate the rules as often as you want.
Either Lori Lightfoot or Gavin Newsom or Joe Biden.
Or as it turns out, Terry McAuliffe, who was riding Amtrak the other day in violation of federal mandates, not wearing a mask.
You're allowed to do all of those things if you're a special.
But if you're a cop just trying to do his job, then we will force you to get vaccinated or we will fire you.
If you're a Navy SEAL, we may deploy to the most dangerous areas on Earth to take a bullet for the country.
And you don't want to get the COVID vaccine, we'll make you repay all of your training funding.
None of this makes any level of sense.
It is all just authoritarian nonsense.
It really is at this point.
You're talking about, in these cases, some of the healthiest populations in America.
You're talking about a disease that does not kill people.
Like the smallpox, or like... COVID remains, for the vast majority of people, a somewhat statistically minimal risk unless you are above a certain age or have a significant pre-existing condition.
That is just the reality.
I don't know how you designate minimal risk, but if you were told that a particular action that you had to do every day, driving for example, had a 1 in 335 chance of killing you, Would you not get in a car?
Like, ever again?
How would you treat that risk?
How we calculate those risks actually matters.
So what the media have to do is they have to scare the hell out of you.
To force compliance, they have to scare the living hell out of you.
So they can't scare you with the idea that you're going to die anymore, because if you're vaccinated, you're not.
Statistically speaking, you're just not.
And they also can't scare you with the idea that you're going to kill your neighbor, because again, your neighbor is probably going to vaccinate.
And if they don't want to vaccinate, that would be their problem.
And if they have a peculiar health risk and they're an adult, then they're going to be taking measures anyway to protect their own health.
If they're immunocompromised, immunocompromised people live in our society, they've been living in our society for all of time, and they have to take special measures in order to protect their own health, right?
This has just been a thing for a very long time.
But the media have to come up with some strategy to scare you into believing the authoritarians who are in charge of our COVID policy.
So the latest point they're using is the death of Colin Powell.
So, yesterday there were a lot of headlines that Colin Powell had died after being fully vaccinated.
He had two shots of the vaccine, he had not gotten his booster yet, and then he had a breakthrough case of COVID and he died.
And the initial headlines were all about how Colin Powell had died of a COVID breakthrough, and what a disaster this was.
Okay, so the initial headlines were like, the vaccines don't work.
Okay, that's nonsense.
He had multiple myeloma.
He was severely immunocompromised.
He had Parkinson's and multiple myeloma.
Okay, so if you have a severe immunodeficiency, and if you are elderly, as he was, he was 84 years old, then if you get a breakthrough case, I mean, if you get a cold, you could die from that.
Right?
People who are elderly and are immunocompromised and are already sick tend to die when they get sick.
It doesn't matter whether it's a breakthrough case of COVID or whether it's regular COVID.
They just die at higher rates.
But the media have to scare you.
And it's not just about scaring you if you're elderly.
They have to scare you.
You personally.
We'll talk about how they're doing this in just one second.
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Okay, so as I say, somehow the media and your authoritarians of COVID, they need to come up with a rationale for why you need to remain extremely worried.
And now, what they're going to do is, they'll say that states that are red and have not been as worried are bad states, right?
Florida's a bad state.
And then they'll just forget about it when everything is fine in Florida.
So for example, right now in Florida, extremely low transmission rates.
In fact, the transmission rates of COVID in Florida right now, which of course is the worst state in America, right?
It's Ron Death Santas and all that crap.
The transmission rates in Florida right now are half the transmission rates in New York.
You know who predicted this?
Anyone with a brain.
Because as we move into winter, which is really nice in Florida and people are outdoors in Florida, and as we move into winter in the Northeast, where it's really gross outside and people spend their time indoors, the virus will move around indoors.
And that's not about COVID policy.
That is just about reality.
When you are indoors in close contact with other people, people get sick more often.
It's why for a very long time, people always thought that the way you got- My dad still thinks this, okay?
That the way you get a cold is because you're cold outside?
Okay, it's not because you're cold outside.
It's because you go from the cold outside to a place where you're in close contact with other people.
And then you breathe on them, right?
That is why people get sick during the winter.
It's not because it is cold outside and so it's cold and you went outside without your mittens and then you got a cold.
That's not how you got sick, okay?
So most viruses are transmitted through close contact with others.
Close contact with others is maximized when the weather is ugly outside.
But we have to pretend that Florida is super bad, right?
Okay, so now they've moved on from that because Florida is no longer a story because Florida, the transmission rates are very low.
So we're never going to hear about that again.
And you never hear about it when when Death Santas is doing fine.
You only hear about it when Death Santas vaccinates most of the population and then bad stuff happens anyway.
That's when you have to blame Death Santas.
Okay, so.
The new narrative is, you need to vaccinate so Colin Powell doesn't die.
This is the actual piece over at the Washington Post today from Philip Bump.
Quote, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell died Monday morning from complications related to COVID-19.
Powell's disease resulted from a breakthrough infection.
He was fully vaccinated against COVID.
But instead of demonstrating that the vaccine isn't 100% effective in preventing death, which was known, his death better serves to show the need to tamp down on coronavirus cases more broadly to help protect those most at risk.
That group included Powell.
He was 84 years old when he died, well into the elderly age group that has most been ravaged by the virus.
He'd also been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which can reduce the body's ability to fight infections.
Last week, the CDC released data showing the effectiveness of vaccines in curtailing new infections and deaths from coronavirus.
In August, it found those who were vaccinated were six times less likely to become infected and 11 times less likely to die of COVID-19.
But the data also showed a disparity in the death toll.
The incidence of COVID deaths among those 80 and over was nearly as high as the incidence among the unvaccinated aged 50 to 64.
Which again is not shocked.
I don't know, we're supposed to be surprised by that.
When, again, people above the age of 80 die for lots of reasons.
Because when you're old, you tend to die much more easily than when you are younger.
Just the simple math.
Says Philip Bump.
Older Americans have always been at more risk from COVID.
The effects of the virus are clearly more pronounced with members of that age group, even when they are vaccinated.
This should not be an impetus of denialism.
It is not the case that this demonstrates that vaccines are futile or not useful.
Instead, it's a reminder the virus still poses a risk to the elderly, even when vaccinated, and therefore that the goal should be to tamp down on the spread of the virus broadly.
If Pell had been at little risk of contracting the virus because transmission rates were low, He would have been at almost zero risk of dying from it.
But instead, his death comes at a time when more than 80,000 people a day are still contracting the virus, and more than 1,500 people a day are dying from it, about as many people as were dying in early April of 2020.
Okay, now, here's the thing.
If you're talking about reaching herd immunity, we have yet to see the country that has hit quote-unquote herd immunity to the point where there is no transmission of virus.
The asymptomatic are transmitting the virus.
So barring full-time masking of everyone and 100% vaccination rates, none of which is achievable, There will be cases where people who are immunocompromised come into contact with the virus and then get sick and then die.
Because, unfortunately, that is just the way the world works.
When Philip Bump says, we need to force-vaccinate cops so Colin Powell doesn't die, I'm sorry, but this is not the way we treat literally any- Anthony Fauci himself, the great god of COVID, Anthony Fauci has said, we have eradicated to date one disease on planet Earth.
The notion that you are going to be able to eradicate a disease that is currently circulating in literally millions of people around the globe and ensure that everybody who's immunocompromised is fully safe without any protections.
That's kind of wild.
By the way, should you be that worried about a COVID breakthrough killing you?
The answer is no.
The statistical proof on this is pretty obvious.
There have been 187 million people in the country who've been fully vaccinated.
Of those 187 million people, about 7,200 have died.
And about 85% of those deaths were people over 65.
And most of those people had conditions that compromised their immune systems, apparently.
This is according to Politico.
And so I'm not sure what you think the purpose of yelling at people is, but apparently the purpose of yelling at people is to just intimidate you into silence.
That's the goal.
Now, is any of this really effective?
Like, everybody who wants to get vaccinated has now been vaccinated.
And the vaccines provide incredible protection.
Can we move on at any point here?
Or is the authoritarianism the point?
Again, I think this is a psychological problem in half the country right now.
I think that a huge number of people on a financial level, on a personal level, on a health level, have decided that all risk is worthy of avoidance.
And that in order to mitigate the risk, we have to have somebody who knows better, an expert, who crams down on your neighbors what you can't cram down on your neighbors yourself.
The best way to mitigate risk is to make sure that your neighbors are controlled.
And so you got a media invested in that ideology.
You have a government invested in that ideology.
There's only one problem.
None of it works.
And in fact, you have unforeseen risks.
Like, for example, the risk of crime that goes up when you fire a bunch of cops.
Or the risks that the economy dies when you tell everybody that they are unsafe when they go back to work.
There are a bunch of actual risks that materialize the moment you say that you have quashed all risk.
The Titanic is the safest ship afloat up until the moment it rams directly into an iceberg.
The thing here is that the iceberg is completely foreseeable.
Alrighty, in just one second we'll get to New York City demonstrating once again that they apparently don't want to be part of the United States.
We'll get to that in a second.
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Meanwhile, New York City demonstrating full scale that Trump was right.
So you remember that time when there was a big argument over the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville.
It was the subject of that alt-right Unite the Right rally.
And that ended, of course, in violence.
And then there was this very controversial press conference where Trump seemed to quasi downplay the evils of the white supremacist, but kind of, but then walk it back, but then walk it back.
And it was all a mess, right?
But there's one thing Trump said during that press conference that was 100% right.
And the left said this would never happen.
He said, if you tear down the statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson's next.
Washington's next.
And a lot of the left, David Graham and the Atlantic, for example, were like, no, no, no, no.
We're not going after the founders.
That would be very silly.
After all, there's a major distinction between people who actively fought to Make the country not exist anymore as a country and people who established the country and who also participated in the sins of their time.
OK, now I agree there is a major distinction between Robert E. Lee and George Washington or between Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson.
But you know who doesn't agree?
A large swath of the left, which believes that all of these people are inherently bad.
They're evil, white slaveholders.
And therefore, they must be torn down.
And it doesn't matter if they established generalized principles which led to the foundation of the greatest republic in the history of mankind.
Nope.
All that matters is that they lived as people in their times and were involved in sins that were fairly common at the time.
Doesn't mean that they weren't evil.
Sin is sin.
But it does mean That to pretend that we are building statues to Thomas Jefferson because of his treatment of Sally Hemings is idiotic.
No one is building statues to Thomas Jefferson because of that.
We're building statues to Thomas Jefferson because Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence, because Thomas Jefferson helped negotiate the peace, because Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States involved in the Louisiana Purchase.
I mean, there are lots of reasons to build statues to Thomas Jefferson.
Generally, when you build statues to a human, you're not doing so because you are greenlighting every element of what they believed, right?
This is why we have Martin Luther King Day.
Every Martin Luther King Day, There's an attempt by the left to sort of suggest that if you buy into Martin Luther King as a figure, as a seminal figure in American history, this must be because you also endorse his socialistic view of economic redistribution.
That's very silly.
The reason we celebrate Martin Luther King Day is because Martin Luther King was calling for a United States beyond race, for people to be judged as individuals, not as groups.
On the basis of skin color, right?
That is the main takeaway.
When you build a statue, you're looking for the main takeaway, not an endorsement of every aspect of anybody's life.
Because on that basis, nobody should have a statue.
There's a famous section of the Talmud where there's a discussion over whether it'd be better for people to have been born or not been born.
It's a big debate, right?
It's a big philosophical debate.
And one side says, better for people to be born because they can perform commandments and they can fulfill God's will.
And the other side's like, better for man not to be born because human beings inherently sin and they sin an awful lot and they are bound to do more bad than good.
And the Talmud comes down on the side that it would have been better for man not to be born, but since you are born, you better do some mitzvot, right?
You better do some commandments.
Okay, that is the view that you should have toward human nature and toward building statues of people.
Okay, when it comes to building a statue of somebody, you're not building a statue to their sin.
You're building a statue to the stuff that they did that was correct.
But nobody seems to be able to make this particular distinction when it comes to the left.
If you were a sinner, a grave sinner, from 1790, this means the statue has to come down.
Even if you were the author of the words that created the creed that were foundational to not only the creation of the United States, but also to the ending of slavery, to the Civil Rights Movement.
There's a reason that the words of Thomas Jefferson Echo, not through the slave-holding South, but echo through the free North.
There's a reason that the words of the Declaration of Independence are invoked by people like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King.
There's a reason for that, but apparently not to the New York City Council.
Which has not only no historical perspective, but no philosophical understanding.
According to the New York Times, for more than 100 years, a 7-foot tall statue of Thomas Jefferson has towered over members of the New York City Council in their chamber at City Hall, a testament to his role as one of the nation's founding fathers and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
But, for the last two decades, some Black and Latino council members, citing Jefferson's history as a slaveholder, called for the statue to be banished.
A push that gained significant momentum in the last year, as the nation has broadly reconsidered public monuments that can be viewed as symbols of systemic racism.
Now again, Thomas Jefferson statues are not about systemic racism.
They're about the words of the Declaration of Independence that apply to all human beings.
That's the whole point.
The reason that Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite in his own life is because he knew that he wasn't upholding his own standards.
That doesn't mean that the standards were wrong or that his articulation of the standards was bad.
The articulation of the standards is what he was being held up to.
On Monday, city officials voted unanimously to remove the statue of Thomas Jefferson from council chambers, but delayed a decision on where to put it.
Presumably, we need to put up a statue of George Floyd.
Because that is more symbolic of the United States.
A career criminal who was killed by a cop.
That is much more symbolic of the United States.
Now, you gotta notice the logic here.
There's George Floyd statues that are now being erected in major cities around the United States.
What are you building the statue of George Floyd to?
George Floyd led a mess of a life.
Hey, put aside how he died.
His life was in absolute shambles.
He was a mess.
He was a career criminal.
He spent an awful lot of time in jail.
He was high as a kite when he encountered the cops on the day of his fateful death.
And you're building a statue to him.
Why?
Is the statue to all of the bad things he did in his life?
Or is the statue supposed to be a commemoration of what happened to him?
Right, so the philosophy of how you build a statue obviously applies to George Floyd, but it no longer applies to Thomas Jefferson.
And if you're gonna talk about somebody who did more good for the world, Thomas Jefferson or George Floyd, that is not a comparison.
It is just not.
One person was involved in the founding of a country, the other was a career criminal, who unfortunately died at the hands of a cop.
That is not, there is no comparison there.
But we're a country that says, yes on the statues of George Floyd, ixnay on the statues of Thomas Jefferson.
Good luck to that country.
Signe Nielsen, president of the Public Design Commission, which oversees art at city-owned properties said, quote, there are 700 pieces of art under our jurisdiction. We cannot make a rash decision that will set a precedent for the other 699 pieces of artwork that may also have challenges from people or other groups of people. The relocation of the statue, requested by the council's Black, Latino, and Asian caucus, was expected to be a fait accompli. I just, I, why the Was Thomas Jefferson like super anti-Asian and I didn't know about it?
Okay, anyway.
An agreement was already in place to relocate the statue to the New York Historical Society.
A crate had been ordered to house the statue during the move.
The unexpected delay angered some black and Latino lawmakers.
They're not super worried about the rising rates of murder in the city or the poverty and homelessness in the city of New York, but they are deeply worried that this statue is in a room with them because the statue is going to do something to them.
It's like the end of Don Giovanni.
It's going to emerge from hell to drag them down or something.
There have been various attempts to remove the statue.
Two decades ago, a call to banish the statue gained attention, but it went nowhere because we weren't complete idiots 20 years ago.
Adrienne Adams, Councilwoman from Queens, said Jefferson embodies some of the most shameful parts of our country's history.
Yeah, so does, like, all of history.
I'm sorry to break it to Adrienne Adams, but all of human history is replete with suffering and evil.
I mean, I'm sure her text messages are replete with some bad stuff.
Like, are we really gonna play this game?
This is not a game that is worth playing.
Opposition to removing the statue began to surface in recent days.
A group of 17 historians sent a letter on Monday to the panel suggesting the statue stay at City Hall and simply be relocated to the Governor's Room, where it was originally housed for most of the 19th century.
A Daily News editorial on Monday also questioned the move.
Removal is a very simple solution that will erase the debate, said Raymond Lavertue, a historian at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.
Although Jefferson was massively flawed, he added, his ideas on equality should be grappled with daily.
Well, yes.
But again, Trump was right.
Trump was correct.
And the left seems bound and determined, like bound and determined to justify all of the worst expectations of the right.
So the right's like, if you guys take down that Robert E. Lee statue, you'll probably go after Washington.
And liberals like, nope, nah, nah, nah.
And then the left's like, no, absolutely we will.
Absolutely 100% we will.
We already have the Public Design Commission voting to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History, despite Theodore Roosevelt's contributions to that field.
And they also have been talking about removing other statues as well.
It's pretty incredible stuff.
Really great.
But you know what?
This philosophy is alive and well inside the Biden administration.
So Jennifer Granholm, who is the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, she was on national TV and she was talking about communist China.
And she literally said we don't have the moral authority to call a communist China.
You have to understand, tearing down Jefferson is part and parcel of an idea about tearing down America and suggesting that America on the world stage has no place.
This is part and parcel of what we talked about yesterday.
The getting rid of the truth, justice, and the American way slogan from Superman.
The left is intent on the notion that America is actually morally decrepit.
There's something deeply wrong morally with the United States.
America does not deserve to have a place on the world stage.
We have to make America into utopia in order for us to be proud of ourselves.
And the way you make America into utopia is by sinking into a socialist morass and being incredibly surrender-oriented in foreign policy.
Here's Jennifer Granholm.
You know, we've got a global problem, and China is a big contributor to that.
We are too.
But we don't have much moral authority to say, you should be doing this if we're not taking action.
Oh no, we do.
We have moral authority to call out China on literally everything.
And when it comes to emissions, I mean, she here is talking about carbon emissions.
We don't have the moral authority to call out China.
But if you look at carbon emissions by country, China is far and away, far and away, the biggest emitter.
I mean, it's not close.
But we apparently do not have the ability to call them out.
I'm confused as to why that would be.
China, right now, is emitting something like more than twice as much carbon as the United States is.
They're emitting almost 30% of all carbon emitted on planet Earth is being emitted by China.
I mean, we could call them out on that if we wanted to.
We could.
We're not going to.
Okay, and that is part of a broader philosophy.
The broader philosophy, of course, being that the United States is kind of bad and we have to shut up.
And by the way, China is taking full advantage of this in the same way the Soviet Union did.
The Soviet Union, while it existed, spent an awful lot of time talking about the racial problems of the United States in an attempt to paint America as terrible and sort of exorcise their own demons at the expense of the United States.
Our enemies see the same thing.
And fortunately, this philosophy has also penetrated into education, which is why you've seen so much debate in recent months over critical race theory being taught by teachers in public schools.
And then the left saying it's not happening, right?
No, no, no, it's not.
In the same way that they said they would never tear down statues of Thomas Jefferson, now they say we're not teaching critical race theory in schools.
Yeah, you're lying.
You are teaching critical race theory in schools.
The NEA has passed specific resolutions attempting to protect critical race theory in schools.
And this administration happens to be run by the NEA.
So, for example, The Bidens yesterday spent the day bragging that they had literally appointed the Secretary of Education at the behest of the National Education Association.
So here is Joe Biden catering to Randy Weingarten, who is one of the most malignant figures in American public life.
And Randy, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We kept our commitment, didn't we?
All right.
Okay, and then you have Joe Biden bragging that Biden literally appointed the education secretary at the behest of Randi Weingarten.
Now, Randi Weingarten, it's because of her that basically kids missed a year of school last year.
We knew full well that kids could be in school last year.
And Randi Weingarten and the N.A.A.
were pushing hard against it.
The A.F.T.
too.
These teachers unions, who are run by extraordinarily far-left people, who do not care about the kids they teach.
These people run this administration.
It's amazing.
Here is Joe Biden just admitting it.
Secretary Cardona, as you know, my husband made a promise to educators across America that his Secretary of Education would be a leader who taught in a public school classroom.
And he found that in you.
Right, Randy?
Right, Becky?
It was our promise.
Now, it was our promise.
We promised the NEA that we would pick somebody who pleased the NEA.
Yeah, we know.
We know.
There's a reason, by the way, that the teachers' unions are so supportive of Democrats, and it's because they continue to... Democrats continue to prop up this most corrupt of bargains.
It is an incredibly corrupt bargain.
Basically, you have states that buff up the NEA and the AFT.
The NEA and the AFT then weigh in on elections and try to get those people re-elected.
You want to talk about corruption and campaign finance reform?
Why is it that nobody ever mentions the unions, which contribute literally billions of dollars worth of political infrastructure to Democrats every election cycle?
Here was a teacher's union ad supporting Terry McAuliffe in Virginia in this hotly-fraud election.
When it comes to education, Glenn Youngkin's not being straight with us.
His plan diverts money away from public schools and gives it to private schools instead.
That's why we support Terry McAuliffe.
As governor, he listened to parents and teachers and scaled back standardized testing, giving teachers more time to teach and kids more room to learn.
It's Terry McAuliffe.
Terry McAuliffe.
It's Terry McAuliffe we trust to stand up for our kids.
I'm sure you do.
That's paid for by the AFT, right?
The AFT is one of the terrible teachers unions that runs education in the country I love, that the AFT is like, also we are super happy that Terry McAuliffe is cutting standardized testing for kids.
I'm sure you are.
It means that we can no longer tell whether you're a good teacher or a bad teacher and whether you're doing your job or not.
I've noticed.
But you can continue to cram down whatever you want on the kids.
I mean, Terry McAuliffe has openly said that you, the teachers, should be the ultimate experts on what is taught to the kids, not the parents.
This is all part and parcel of a broader attempt to teach your kids garbage that is in line with far-left thinking.
In the indoctrination centers that exist in our public school system, run by the teachers unions, all the way up to the federal level, Alright, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon.
The Matt Walsh Show airs at 1.30pm Eastern.
Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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