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Dec. 8, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show

49:15

Is America’s Future Dying? | Ep. 1391

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Time	Text
	Joe Biden's poll numbers swirl the drain, the U.S.
	Surgeon General warns of a mental health crisis among young Americans, and we talk about the true causes of our civilizational malaise.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
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	Okay, so Joe Biden's approval ratings are just absolutely in the toilet.
	There's a new poll out from INI and TIPP, and it shows that Joe Biden is swirling the drain.
	The poll asked, who do you want to see run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2024?
	Joe Biden was named by 22% of those asked.
	Uh-oh.
	Meanwhile, 6% of all those who answered preferred someone other than those on the list.
	rest of the Democrats rose above single digits. The much beloved Pete Buttigieg garnered 4%.
	AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Representative Joe Kennedy for some reason, and Stacey Abrams each attracted 3% support. Meanwhile, 6% of all those who answered preferred someone other than those on the list. 31% said they were unsure.
	And the numbers suck.
	Only 37% of Democrats say they are enthused about Joe Biden holding the top spot, and only 16% say they want Kamala Harris, and no one even gets more than low single-digit support after that.
	The numbers for Joe Biden continue to decline.
	There's another poll out today, and it shows voters pessimistic about the economy.
	Biden's leadership is according to a new Wall Street Journal poll.
	The survey, according to the Wall Street Journal, reveals a set of danger signs for the Democratic Party as it prepares to defend narrow majorities in the House and Senate.
	Voters by a large margin see economic and fiscal issues, including inflation, as top priorities for Washington, and they view the GOP as better able to handle them.
	Joe Biden's overall approval rating right now is at 41%.
	His disapproval is at 57%.
	What's much worse for Joe Biden, his strongly approve of Joe Biden number is 19%.
	His strongly disapprove of Joe Biden number is 46%.
	You got 22% of the American public saying they somewhat approve of Joe Biden, and 10% saying they somewhat disapprove.
	But people hate him much more than they love him, for sure.
	More voters apparently say they would back a Republican than a Democrat for Congress, 44% to 41% if the election were held today.
	That is within the poll's margin of error.
	But again, most of these polls tend to underestimate Republican support and Republican turnout.
	So these numbers are really, really bad for the Democrats right now.
	And as far as whether the country is on the right track or on the wrong track, according to that Wall Street Journal poll, 63% of Americans say the country is on the wrong track.
	Only 27% say the country is on the right track.
	Some 61% of Americans say the economy is headed in the wrong direction.
	Some 46% of Americans expect the economy to get worse next year, compared with 30% who expect it to get better.
	29% margin in favor of the proposition that inflation is going to get worse rather than better.
	People have really bad expectations with regard to crime.
	By a 33-point margin, people think that crime is going to get worse, not better.
	26% more Americans think that the border is going to get worse, not better.
	The nation's political divide.
	50-point margin between people who say it's going to get worse and people who say it's going to get better.
	On the issues, the GOP has an advantage on the economy, inflation, and securing the border.
	Democrats have an advantage on getting the pandemic under control.
	But again, those numbers are not particularly stellar.
	On improving education, it's fairly evenly split.
	On making healthcare affordable, Democrats have an advantage.
	But the issues Americans care most about, rebuilding the economy and getting inflation under control, Republicans have massive advantages.
	So Democrats have a real problem on their hands.
	But the bigger issue here is that Americans just seem consumed with the idea that the future is going to suck.
	And I think one of the reasons that they feel consumed with the idea the future is going to suck Because we as a country seem to have lost purpose.
	The Surgeon General of the United States came out yesterday and he announced that we have a mental health crisis among young Americans.
	Which, again, if you watch TikTok for any length of time at all, you know is true.
	You can view my review videos over at YouTube where I go through some of what goes on on TikTok and it is basically just a mental asylum in full public view for the walls.
	It's a bunch of people who are signifying their real mental disorders and doing so for people to cheer them.
	The Surgeon General had to put out this 53-page report today, talking about how children are in real trouble.
	According to the Surgeon General, he says, recent national surveys of young people have shown alarming increases in the prevalence of certain mental health challenges.
	In 2019, one in three high school students and half of all female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, an overall increase of 40% from 2009.
	Since 2009.
	Okay, we're not talking from 30 years ago.
	We're talking about just over the course of the last 12 years.
	An increase of 40%.
	According to the government, of course, this is shaped by social media.
	It is shaped by drug use.
	But that doesn't go to any of the real underlying issues that are innervating the society.
	According to the government, quote, we know that mental health is shaped by many factors from our genes and brain chemistry to our relationships with family and friends, neighborhood conditions and larger social forces and policies.
	We also know that too often young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erodes their sense of self-worth, telling them they are not good looking enough, popular enough, smart enough or rich enough.
	That comes as progress on legitimate and distressing issues like climate change, income inequality, racial injustice, the opioid epidemic and gun violence feels too slow.
	Of course, the U.S.
	Surgeon General is saying the reason that kids are now suicidal is because we haven't done enough on climate change or income inequality or racial justice.
	Or alternatively, there's a giant gaping hole in the soul of America's young people.
	And some of it's older people.
	That is not going to be filled by your bullcrap excuses for motivation on a daily basis.
	The government is also blaming technology platforms.
	They say when not deployed responsibly and safely, these tools can pit us against each other, reinforce negative behaviors like bullying and exclusion, and undermine the safe and supportive environments young people need and deserve.
	All of that was true before COVID-19 dramatically altered young people's experiences at home, at school, and in the community.
	The pandemic era's unfathomable number of deaths, pervasive sense of fear, economic instability, and forced physical distancing from loved ones, friends, and communities have exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already face.
	Our obligation to act is not just medical, it's moral, says Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States.
	We're going to go through more of this advisory from the Surgeon General on the mental health of young people because I think it goes to a far deeper cultural and civilizational malaise that is now set in and really is cancerous.
	We're going to get to that in just one second.
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	OK, so according to the Surgeon General, the reason that we're having a mental health crisis is because we're not doing all the things that the left wants you to do via the government.
	And that, of course, is really silly.
	So first, they try to claim that mental health conditions that have gotten much more grave among America's young people, that that is due to biological factors.
	Nah.
	In order to assume that it's due to biological factors, you would have to assume that over the last 12 years there has been a major change in the biology of human minds.
	Which, not a lot of evidence to suggest that.
	Environmental factors?
	Yes.
	According to Vivek Murthy, some mental health disorders seem to cluster in families.
	They are often shaped by multiple genes.
	Whether an individual develops symptoms can be further modified by experiences and surrounding environment.
	Environmental factors can range from exposure to alcohol or drugs during pregnancy, to birth complications, to discrimination and racism.
	Okay, some of these are well substantiated.
	The notion that if you suffer from discrimination, that this leads to massive mental health crises.
	The suicidal ideation stats don't really back that up.
	In fact, it tends to be middle-upper class white people who have higher levels of suicidal ideation than, for example, impoverished black people.
	So if it's really about class issues or race issues, that really doesn't explain it.
	They say that adverse childhood experiences can undermine a child's sense of safety, stability, bonding, and well-being.
	Moreover, ACEs, again, those are adverse childhood experiences, may lead to the development of toxic stress, which can cause long-lasting change.
	And of course, the answer to all of this is the government getting involved in everything.
	So they put together a graphic, adopted from the WHO, talking about factors that can shape the mental health of young people.
	And here is what your government says.
	Social and economic inequalities, discrimination, racism, migration, media and technology, popular culture and government policies, all can exacerbate mental health problems.
	Neighborhood safety, access to green spaces like parks, healthy food, housing, healthcare pollution, natural disasters, and climate change.
	This is going to affect your mental health.
	Climate change is going to affect your mental health.
	Relationship with peers, teachers, and mentors.
	Faith communities, school climate, academic pressure, community support.
	Relationship with parents.
	Basically, everything in life can affect your mental health, but what has changed, right?
	This is the big question.
	What has changed since 2009 to 2019?
	According to the Surgeon General Report, from 2009 to 2019, the proportion of high school students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40%.
	The share seriously considering attempting suicide increased by 36%.
	That's a huge number.
	The share creating a suicide plan increased by 44% between 2011 and 2015.
	Youth psychiatric visits to emergency departments for depression, anxiety, and behavioral challenges increased by 28%.
	Between 2007 and 2018, suicide rates among youth aged 10 to 24 in the United States increased by 57%.
	Early estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics suggest there were more than 6,600 deaths by suicide among the 10 to 24 age group in 2020 alone.
	Scientists proposed various hypotheses to explain all of this.
	They say that it might be more people discussing mental health concerns, but they also are blaming digital media, increasing academic pressure.
	I'm going to have to hear why increasing academic pressure is causing this, considering that our schools are underperforming and there is less academic pressure to perform in modern America than at any time in recent American history.
	They talk about income inequality exacerbating this sort of stuff, which is weird because we didn't have this sort of spiking depression and suicide rate during the, you know, Great Depression.
	They talk about racism and gun violence and climate change as factors.
	Again, it all comes back to there's a problem in society and it must be our favored solutions that are the actual solutions.
	Now, if you are going to examine what is wrong with the youth, what exactly is happening with the youth, you would have to go a little bit deeper than this.
	They talk about some of the things that have been exacerbated during the pandemic.
	They say that if you've lived in an urban area or an area with more severe COVID-19 outbreaks, this has exacerbated mental health problems.
	If you are worried about COVID-19, if you experience disruptions in routine, which, by the way, would suggest that the lockdowns did much more damage to kids than actual COVID-19, because the number, again, of people under the age of 18 in the United States who are healthy, who've died of COVID-19 across the entirety of the pandemic is somewhere between 10 and 20, according to Marty McCary of Johns Hopkins University.
	So, when you're talking about why young people are depressed because of COVID, it isn't because they're scared of COVID.
	Or if they are scared of COVID, it's because the adults are idiots.
	And the reason is because they've been locked in their homes and told that they cannot see other human beings.
	But the bigger problem here is that, again, the government's suggestions as to why we are seeing mental health problems across young people in the United States are always geared toward what can the government do to fix it.
	And the problem is that this is not predominantly a governmental issue.
	This is predominantly a philosophical issue that has now boiled down to how we raise our children, or if we even have children at all.
	Some of the most durable statistics in mental well-being show that, for example, religious people tend to be less suicidal.
	They tend to have less suicidal ideation than people who are less religious.
	There's good evidence to suggest.
	That class has very little to do with it.
	There's good evidence to suggest that race has very little to do with it.
	And certainly climate change has very little to do with it.
	So in a second, I want to get to why I think that young people are more depressed, more suicidal, what our culture has taught young people, why we have prepared them for a life of misery, why we have set up expectations that simply cannot be fulfilled, and yes, that are exacerbated by the culture that surrounds them from social media, but why they are not robust enough to withstand that.
	I mean, you have to remember that young people, their grandparents, when they were 18, they were jumping off boats at Normandy, headed into the face of certain death.
	And today, young people are suicidal because of Instagram.
	So we're going to have to decide why we think that is happening to this extent.
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	Okay, so what exactly is missing for young people?
	slash Ben that's C U T S clothing dot com slash Ben to get 15% off plus can't miss daily deals go check them out right now Okay, so what exactly is missing for young people? I Think in a nutshell what is missing for young people is a sense of mission. What are they supposed to do?
	What are they aiming at?
	What is their life aimed at?
	And it can't be that your life is just aimed at quote-unquote achievement because achievement is instrumental.
	Achievement toward what?
	What exactly is the achievement meant to fulfill?
	If it's just about making money, that ain't gonna do it because you can make a lot of money and you can be very successful, but if you actually have not fulfilled your role in life, That doesn't mean you're not going to be miserable.
	As I've said before, again, people who are middle to upper income tend to have higher suicidal ideation as teenagers than many people who are impoverished.
	So the question becomes, what exactly are you aiming at?
	What is the achievement geared toward?
	Well, when you remove the idea, particularly from successful young men and women, that there is any purpose to their lives, when you tell them that the purpose of your life is authenticity, you are always going to fall short.
	So we have sold our kids a bill of goods.
	The bill of goods that we have sold our kids is that they are completely autonomous spirits resting in biologically constraining bodies.
	We have told them that authenticity is the only thing that matters.
	And this is a radical shift in how we bring up our children.
	Because instead of suggesting to them that there are expectations that you must fulfill, that there are roles that if you successfully fill them will make you happy in life, we have told them that the only thing that you should be concerned about is pleasing yourself.
	The only thing you should be concerned about is finding your true self and then having the rest of the world adapt to you.
	And guess what?
	That's not reality.
	You're setting up your own kids for failure.
	And when you set up a fake reality in which everybody online is bragging about how they've achieved a level of happiness through a method that really makes it impossible to achieve happiness, and when people inevitably fall short, they aren't happy.
	So the reason I'm connecting this to government is because I think that one of the reasons that Americans have such a cynical view of the future of the country is because they have been told for more than a century at this point that American government can solve all of their problems.
	As I have said over and over and over, American government cannot solve 90% of your problems.
	American government can solve the problem of whether your neighbor is going to try to kill you.
	American government might be able to solve the problem of how to mobilize in the face of foreign invasion.
	American government cannot solve your problem of happiness.
	All the American government can do is protect you from the predations of your neighbors.
	That's all government really was designed to do.
	But if you've been promised that the government can solve all your problems and then the government falls short, you're going to be disappointed with whoever is the head of the government, no matter who it is.
	And the same thing holds true when it comes to bringing up kids.
	If you teach your kids that the path to enlightenment and happiness is the search within, you're searching in the wrong place, Indy.
	They're digging in the wrong place.
	That is not where happiness lies.
	Now, traditional religious viewpoints as to how to bring up children suggest that there are certain things that are expected of kids.
	And what is expected of kids is that we are going to civilize you into a role in a community, in a society, in which you are expected to not only better yourself as a character and cultivate virtue, but to better the community around you and to become a full-fledged part of that community.
	You know, whenever there is a baby born in the Jewish community, there are blessings that are given to the kid.
	And some of those blessings are that they should reach bar mitzvah and they should become, when you are bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, then you become an adult and now that comes with obligation.
	It's not about the party.
	It comes with actual obligations, right?
	The idea in most traditional religions is that as you age, more responsibility is put on you.
	And that responsibility gives you a sense of fulfillment and meaning and purpose.
	And then the idea is that you're going to get married.
	Right?
	It's l'chuppah v'lamasim tovim.
	You're gonna get married.
	You're gonna have kids.
	And you're gonna commit good deeds.
	Right?
	This is your role in life.
	And you are designed to fill these particular roles.
	I've talked about this a little bit for the past couple of weeks.
	Because I think that, as a society, we have decided that roles themselves are bad.
	Right?
	If authenticity is about throwing off the shackles of a society that demands things of you, and if the only thing that can make you happy is fulfillment of traditional roles, And I'm not talking traditional roles like women subservient to men or something.
	I'm talking about traditional roles like wife or mother for a woman or father and protector for a man.
	If you throw away those traditional roles, There is nothing that can supplant that.
	The search for authenticity is going to be ongoing because there's no point at which you quote unquote reach authenticity.
	It turns out that when you reach authenticity, people may disapprove of your behavior or your authentic choices may redound not to your benefit, but to your detriment.
	You might be making choices that are inherently damaging to you.
	It turns out that sometimes you're not the best judge of your own interest.
	In fact, a huge percentage of the time.
	You're not the best judge of what it is that is going to make you happy in the absence of any sort of societal guidance.
	This is particularly true if children are completely incapable of making good decisions.
	And yet we have told kids from the time they are very, very young, quote unquote, you can be whatever you want to be.
	Now, if what you mean by that is if you try really hard in any particular field, then you can have the possibility of success.
	That's true.
	But if you mean that you can be a girl, if you're a boy, or you can act in any way that you want and have it all, none of that is true.
	And then when we reinforce that perception with a social media milieu that has people taking selfies and bragging about their own levels of happiness and having achieved this chimera of a vision, people are going to be unhappy.
	You've also destroyed the sense of roles that are necessary in order to promulgate community.
	Communities require roles.
	If you interact with other people, you are playing a role.
	They're playing a role.
	There's nothing wrong with roles.
	In just a second, we're going to get to the issue of roles and why the left fights so strongly against them and why it's completely emptying out young people.
	It really, really is.
	It's leaving them aimless.
	It's leaving them spirits without flesh.
	And that is not something that can be rectified quickly or easily.
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	OK, so.
	Let's get into a little bit of of the roles that you are meant to play over the course of your life.
	So we are embodied being.
	This is the place to start.
	When we talk about human nature, you have to understand that we're not free floating spirits in the machine.
	We can't just make up our own reality.
	And biology is not an obstacle.
	Biology is part of who you are.
	You are not just a spirit and you are not just biology.
	You are both and they are combined.
	And what that means is that your biology is not your enemy.
	Sometimes it's something you have to curb, but it is not, in fact, opposed to you.
	It's not an obstacle.
	You don't get to be, quote unquote, whatever you want to be.
	Regardless of your biology.
	I'm 5'9", I'm an Orthodox Jew, I ain't playing in the NBA.
	I can't be whatever I want to be.
	I can be what I'm capable of being.
	But we have decided that that's not true.
	We have decided, because we are so fixated on this idea that all autonomy is sort of in your head, that children ought to be granted autonomy they are not capable of having.
	Children ought to be making decisions about, for example, their own gender when they're five years old, which is totally insane.
	My son is not even capable of deciding what to eat in the evenings.
	He's not capable of deciding whether he should go to school.
	If he had his way, he would never go to school.
	But we have told kids that they are to be treated like little adults, which they are not.
	Instead, there are roles that we play over the course of our life.
	Some of those roles have to do with aging.
	When you are young, you're a learner.
	That means you need people who are shaping and guiding you.
	People who are giving you a sense of mission.
	As a citizen in your community, you have to believe in the collective purpose of that community.
	If you're an American, you have a role as an American.
	And that role is to uphold the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States.
	That is your role.
	That role exists in every nationality in world history.
	It is only in the modern era that we have created nationless people who believe that they are citizens of the world.
	There's no such thing as a citizen of the world.
	Honestly, try paying taxes to the world.
	You're a citizen of whatever country you reside in.
	And so, either you should become a full-fledged citizen and act like a citizen, or you should move.
	And what that means is a certain level of loyalty to the core philosophy of the nation to which you belong.
	You have a role as a parent.
	That role is not to abdicate the responsibility for bringing up your kids.
	It's the role of cultivating yourself virtuously so you can bring up your kids properly and inculcate in them certain values.
	You have a role as a husband or as a wife.
	And that role as a husband or a wife is to cultivate yourself, become a better, more caring human being.
	And yes, to be the other half of the person of the opposite sex to whom you're going to commit your life and then produce children within that marriage.
	These are historically approved roles.
	And when people look at the wisdom of the past and they scoff at it, so why can't we just remake the world today?
	The answer is you're being an idiot.
	Because wisdom of the past is there for a reason.
	It has been tried.
	It is true.
	Now, that doesn't mean there can't be incremental changes.
	It doesn't mean that certain conflicts of the past don't crop up and force us to rectify them.
	This is not a Hegelian notion that everything that was, was meant to be.
	But it is true that if something has lasted the test of time, thousands and thousands of years, there probably is something to it beyond what your pea brain thinks there is.
	The way that most people are inculcated in a culture is not even that you are sat down and taught that marriage is an inherent good.
	It's that you watch your parents being married and you realize that it's an inherent good.
	It's not that you look around and you think, okay, well, freedom is a good thing and I've rationalized it out of my brain.
	As Michael Oakeshott, the philosopher, has suggested, most politics is not rationalism.
	Most politics is inculcated in the water and in the air we breathe.
	I was once sitting with Sam Harris, who of course is a famous atheist, and we were talking about values, and I was pointing out that he gets his values from the same place that I do, namely a Judeo-Christian culture in which he was raised.
	Because he was saying, well, I came up with these values myself, and I've thought them through.
	And I'm sure he has thought them through.
	But the reality is that Sam Harris and I share 80% of values, 90% of values.
	That's because we grew up like 10 miles from each other in California, in a society that was built on several thousand years of common history.
	Being a part of that stream, being a person who fulfills roles, that is a fulfilling thing.
	It is a good thing.
	It's a thing you're supposed to be teaching your kids.
	Because you cultivate virtue within each of these roles, right?
	Each of these roles requires you to follow certain rules and also to exercise certain liberties.
	In order to be a good parent, you have to stick and move.
	In order to be a child who's properly learning, you have to have the freedom to learn.
	In order to be somebody who acts as a good American citizen, you have to exercise your freedom to produce.
	You have to exercise your freedom to be creative.
	All these things are inherent goods, but they don't exist in the absence of roles for which they are designed.
	They're instrumental goods, in other words.
	Most of the things we think of in life as inherent goods are not inherent goods, they're instrumental goods.
	They're directed toward a higher good, toward a larger purpose.
	And when we sort of make the morally relativistic point that no, these are inherent goods, freedom is inherent good, not freedom directed, sort of higher purpose, freedom just itself.
	Well, then you've created no limits for people.
	And that's not fulfilling.
	The reason that people ask people, you know, if you ever want to see truly what people's lives are about, go read obituaries.
	Go read obituaries.
	Because I'll tell you what obituaries never say.
	This person identified as a person of gender X.
	This person interacted with their colleagues on Twitter.
	These are things that don't make the obits.
	And if you really want the boiled-down version, the really boiled-down version, go check out gravestones at the cemetery.
	The gravestones at the cemetery usually say things like, beloved father and husband.
	Beloved mother.
	These are the things that people want to be remembered as.
	It's role fulfillment.
	Now, as a society, we've decided that these roles are not only no longer necessary, they're repressive and bad, and they ought to be fought.
	And we are teaching our kids this.
	And then we are shocked that our kids are depressed.
	We are shocked that our kids are looking for authenticity in all the wrong ways.
	We are shocked that when they go searching for what is me, and they come up short, they start dosing themselves into oblivion.
	When we remove them from a communal context in which you are naturally forced to play a role, right?
	If you've ever been in high school, you know this, right?
	You play a role in high school.
	But you play roles throughout your lives.
	And here's the thing.
	Even when we pretend that there are not roles to play, you end up playing a role.
	But the role you play might be a toxic role.
	The role you play might be as the court jester.
	The role you play might be as the example to others of how not to live your life.
	There are a lot of roles out there.
	Pick ones that matter.
	And the ones that matter typically are the ones that have to do with historically tried and true rules that have provided fulfillment to people across cultures for all of human history.
	But here in the United States, in our pursuit of this bizarro world, complete autonomy and complete libertinism is the solution to all your ills.
	Authenticity is what we ought to be searching for and we will raise our kids to search for authenticity.
	They've lost what makes people authentically human, which is human roles.
	Human roles make you human.
	Otherwise, you're just an animal.
	Otherwise, you're just a really smart animal.
	So, the reason that I bring all of this up, of course, is because we see indicators of how we've undermined the raising of our children all over our culture.
	There's an article in the Washington Post today, for example, entitled, A White Teacher Taught White Students About White Privilege.
	It Cost Him His Job.
	And the idea is that we should be very much pro our teachers teaching kids about racial essentialism, teaching kids about the evils of their country, teaching them essentially to be bad Americans.
	And that it is good for teachers to teach kids.
	If you, by the way, if you're teaching your kids about racial essentialism, you're teaching your kid to be a bad American.
	You're teaching them to fundamentally reject basic notions of Western civilization, about the inherent rights of human beings.
	And about the fact that human beings ought not be boiled down to immutable skin color characteristics.
	But the Washington Post says that they want kids to be freed of the role of good American citizen.
	To even say, by the way, that you should play the role of good American citizen is now considered intolerant.
	These sorts of words are considered coded dog whistles to say something like good American citizen.
	According to the Washington Post, Matthew Hahn checked his phone to see if the wait was finally over.
	It had been five months since he was fired for teaching about white privilege at a high school in rural Tennessee.
	Two months since he had fought to regain his job at an emotional three-day hearing, becoming a symbol of the acrimonious debate over the way race, racism, and history should be taught in America's schools.
	Now, nothing.
	No announcements from the school district about his appeal effort, no messages from his lawyer, no texts from friends and former colleagues, but sustained him through a lonely half-year of jobless limbo.
	Could he return to teaching in his hometown?
	Apparently, no one knew.
	Han, 43, white and balding, sighed.
	Marlow, his German shepherd, started to whine.
	Han grabbed the leash because no matter what, he still had to walk the dog.
	Shrugging on a gray hoodie against the fall chill, he walked out his front door and down the long, sloped driveway of the house he had grown up in, Marlow tugging at every step.
	A lifelong resident of Kingsport, Tennessee, Han was well aware his liberal views made him an outlier in his overwhelmingly white, mostly conservative community.
	But that had never mattered before.
	He had taught in the Sullivan County school system for 16 years without any trouble.
	He had taught the class that got him fired contemporary issues for nearly a decade without a single parent complaint.
	Then, at the start of last year, he made a pronouncement during a discussion about police shootings that would derail his career.
	White privilege, he told his nearly all-white class, is a fact.
	Then he assigned Ta-Nehisi Coates S.A., the first white president, spurring parent complaints.
	In April, a student mentioned white privilege during a class discussion about Derek Chauvin, and Han could not help himself.
	He navigated to YouTube and pulled up White Privilege, a scathing, profane, four-minute poetry performance by Kyla Janae Lacy.
	Oh, am I making you uncomfortable, the black writer demands at one point?
	Try a cramped slave ship.
	I will probably get fired for showing this, Han joked before hitting play.
	Less than a month later, he was.
	And of course, it's very bad, very bad, that Han lost his job.
	Because after all, we have to have teachers indoctrinating kids into the idea That America is inherently bad, all of its institutions shot through with racism and bigotry.
	Now again, teaching kids these sorts of ideas when they are 19, 20, is a different thing as one view among many in college.
	Even there, I think that there's a serious question as to whether we ought to be sponsoring anti-citizenship sentiments like the idea that racial essentialism is at the root of all of America's institutions.
	But certainly when you're teaching kids, high school kids, Are you raising kids to have a purpose as Americans when you do this sort of stuff?
	Serious question.
	And we're doing this with regard to math, too.
	Article today, in USA Today, is math education racist?
	Debate rages over changes to how U.S.
	teaches the subject.
	Instead of teaching kids to pursue success, we are now teaching kids that if they fail, it must be the system that has failed because true authenticity is to be found within, not in fulfilling standards, not in attempting to achieve as part of a broader goal of becoming a more productive person who is capable of doing better things for family, friends, community, and country.
	According to USA Today, There are recommendations to make math more inclusive.
	Schools are collapsing math tracks to put kids of all abilities in the same classes, adding data science courses that carry the same prestige as calculus, long seen as a gateway to a career in STEM fields in elite colleges.
	Another heated issue, the extent to which math education should include real-world problems involving racial and social inequities.
	Fairly or not, that debate has landed in the murky soup of critical race theory digressions.
	The changes have pitted mathematicians and math educators against each other and sparked criticism.
	The attempts to dumb down math education are of course about teaching people that America sucks.
	Because of inequalities of outcome.
	over proposed changes to the state's K-12 math framework.
	The attempts to dumb down math education are of course about teaching people that America sucks because of inequalities of outcome and about teaching people that they don't actually need to fulfill standards in order to feel better But they're not going to feel better about themselves.
	Because here's the thing.
	There is justified self-esteem and there is unjustified self-esteem.
	And we've been teaching kids about unjustified self-esteem for generations at this point.
	And it turns out unjustified self-esteem runs directly into the shoals of reality.
	Even if the entire society decides to engage in delusions.
	The same thing holds true when it comes to basic biology.
	And you want to depress kids?
	Here's a great message.
	Boys can be girls.
	That's a pretty great message for depressing kids.
	First of all, people who suffer from gender dysphoria, which is a real diagnosable mental disorder under the DSM-5, have extraordinarily high suicidal ideation rates.
	So the broader teaching of the lie that men can become women and girls can become boys, obviously is not tied to mental health concerns on a broad societal level.
	We're not talking about the treatment of people with gender dysphoria.
	We're talking about indoctrinating kids into confusing and stupid and anti-biological ideas.
	That we are now trying to mainstream in the real world to disastrously comic effect.
	Article from the UK Daily Mail today, furious transgender UPenSwimmer22, who used to compete as a man, smashes two US women's records in weekend competition and finishes one race 38 seconds ahead of her nearest rival.
	Leah Thomas, 22, smashed two U.S.
	swimming records at an Akron, Ohio contest.
	Thomas won the 16.50 freestyle in a record time of 15 minutes, 59 seconds, beating her closest rival, Anna-Sophia Kalandazzi, by 38 seconds.
	38 seconds.
	She left rivals floundering in a 500 freestyle, beating them by 14 seconds.
	Thomas previously competed for the school men's team for three years before joining the women's team.
	NCAA rules dictate any trans female athlete can take part in women's events if they've completed a year of testosterone suppression treatment.
	So, um, either men are unbelievably good at becoming women, like, amazing.
	In other words, women can have to be women all their lives, but men, within five minutes of becoming women, are better at women than, like, nearly every athletic endeavor, or they're still men.
	And we as a society are lying in order to preserve the sense of authenticity of particular people.
	But question, is that sense of authenticity fulfilling?
	For most people?
	Or, is reality more fulfilling?
	Is living in accordance with reality actually a rather fulfilling thing?
	Biblically speaking, when God places man in the Garden of Eden, and the reason I'm using the Bible here is not really for the religious commentary, although obviously I believe in the religious aspect of this, but because the Bible is the most popular book in world history and has some pretty wise things to say.
	It has stood the test of time.
	The basic metaphor of God placing man in the Garden of Eden and telling him to cultivate the ground Is that the ground exists, reality exists.
	You don't get to remake reality in your own image because you in fact are not God.
	You are not a spirit floating above the waters.
	You are something else entirely.
	You're an embodied human being and playing your role in life, recognizing reality in life is fulfilling.
	Take away obligation, take away responsibility to fulfill those roles and people lose purpose.
	They just end up in a perfect sense of malaise.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
	First, Let's talk about gifts for the holiday season.
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	We're going to get to more on the Depression and suicide spike that we have seen in the United States.
	First, last week, Joe Biden announced his winter COVID plan.
	It doesn't sound like a lot of winter wonderland.
	He's extending the federal mask mandate for public transport.
	They're also considering requiring Americans to be fully vaxxed even in order to fly, like get on a plane.
	So if you want to visit your family for the holidays, you might need to drive across the country or vax in order to fly.
	The Biden administration is working overtime to force you to do more.
	This is why we have filed a lawsuit against Joe Biden's VAX mandate for private employers.
	The government does not get to make these decisions for you, but we need your help.
	If you haven't signed our petition against Joe Biden's VAX mandate, I need you to head on over right now to dailywire.com slash do not comply to add your name.
	We need to send an overwhelming message to this administration that the American people will not comply.
	We have a goal of reaching one million signatures, which would provide a major boost to our legal challenge.
	We have over 700,000 signatures so far.
	We need your help to cross the finish line.
	So please, sign the petition at dailywire.com slash do not comply, and then share that petition with all your friends and family.
	Let's send a message so loud that Brandon cannot ignore us.
	Also, if you have not picked up a copy of Matt Walsh's book, Johnny the Walrus, you should.
	In fact, you are obligated to.
	By the Diktats of Wokeness.
	Why?
	Well, not only because his book sold out within the first 24 hours, but because it is now the number one LGBTQIAAYZ backslash colon exclamation point question mark star ampersand Best seller on Amazon.
	And yes, the book is sold out, don't worry.
	You can reserve your copy at Amazon to get your hands on the next batch it's shipping out soon.
	Johnny the Walrus is an exhilarating tale of a young boy pretending he's a walrus, which is fun and games until Johnny's mom decides, based on internet searches and yoga classes, that Johnny probably is actually a walrus and that she has to uphold his trans walrus identity.
	If you know Matt's brain, you will laugh your butt off.
	It's a really funny book.
	So head on over to Amazon, reserve your copy of Matt's timely masterpiece, Johnny the Walrus, today.
	You are listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So the case that I am making, which is that we need to re-institute social rules, not by law, obviously, but culturally, that we need to.
	Re-inculcate in our kids a feeling that they have obligations and responsibilities and that this is what makes us human.
	There's some pretty good scientific evidence to this.
	So in the 1960s, there was a scientist named John Calhoun, and he performed a bunch of mouse experiments.
	There was one particular experiment that became very, very famous.
	He set up an experiment that was designed to essentially create utopia.
	Okay, and this experiment for mice essentially amounted to, we are going to put a bunch of mice in a place where all of their needs are catered to, and they're basically like rich people today.
	All their needs are catered to, they don't have any obligations.
	According to iflscience.com, in this study, Which was called Universe 25.
	They set up all these different experiments with these mice.
	In this study, Calhoun took four breeding pairs of mice and placed them inside a utopia.
	The environment was designed to eliminate problems that would lead to mortality in the wild.
	They could access limitless food via food hoppers, access via tunnels, which would feed up to 25 mice at a time, as well as water bottles just above.
	Nesting material was provided.
	The weather was kept at like perfect mouse temperature, which is about 68 degrees Fahrenheit apparently.
	The mice were chosen for their health.
	They were obtained from the NIH breeding colony.
	Extreme precautions were taken to prevent disease.
	There were no predators available anywhere in there, obviously.
	So, the mice, normally they spent a lot of time foraging for food, for shelter.
	Instead, they basically spent all of their time screwing, which is exactly what you'd expect.
	About every 55 days, the population doubled, as the mice filled the most desirable space within the pen, where access to the food tunnels was at ease.
	When the population hit 620, that slowed to doubling around every 145 days because male society began to hit problems, they were overcrowded, they might split off into groups, and those that could not find a role in the groups found themselves with no place to go.
	The excess could not go anywhere else because there was nowhere else to go.
	So, they became isolated.
	According to the paper, quote, males who failed withdrew physically and psychologically.
	They became very inactive, aggregated in large pools near the center of the floor of the universe.
	From this point on, they no longer initiated interaction with their established associates, nor did their behavior elicit attack by territorial males.
	Even so, they became characterized by many wounds and much scar tissue as a result of attacks by other withdrawn males.
	So basically, the mouse society striated as soon as all obligation was gone.
	There were these successful alphas, and then there was everybody else.
	The withdrawn males would not respond during attacks.
	They would lie there immobile.
	Later, they would attack others in the same pattern.
	The female counterparts of the isolated males withdrew as well.
	Some mice spent their days preening themselves, shunning mating, never engaging in fighting, and basically the Instagram stars of the mouse world.
	Due to this, they had excellent fur coats and were dubbed, somewhat disconcertingly, the beautiful ones.
	The breakdown of usual mouse behavior was not limited to the outsiders.
	The alpha male mice became extremely aggressive, attacking others with no motivation or gain for themselves.
	They regularly raped both male and female mice.
	Violence encounters sometimes ended in mouse-on-mouse cannibalism.
	Because their every need was being catered for, mothers would abandon their young, or merely just forget about them entirely, leaving them to fend for themselves.
	The mother mice became aggressive toward trespassers to their nest, with males that would normally fill this role banished to other parts of the Utopia.
	The aggression spilled over.
	Mothers would, indeed, regularly kill their young.
	Infant mortality in some territories of the Utopia reached 90%.
	This was all during the first phase of the downfall of the Utopia.
	Then there's the second phase.
	This is called second death.
	Whatever young mice survived the attacks grew up around these unnatural mouse behaviors.
	They never learned usual mice behaviors.
	Many showed little or no interest in mating, preferring to eat and preen themselves alone.
	Does any of this sound disconcertingly familiar for our civilization?
	Like, at all?
	The population peaked at 2,200, short of the actual 3,000 mouse capacity of the universe, and then came the decline.
	Many of the mice weren't interested in breeding.
	They retired to the upper decks of the enclosure.
	The others formed into violent gangs below, which regularly attack and cannibalize other groups as well as their own.
	The low birth rate and high infant mortality combined with the violence, soon the entire colony was extinct.
	Calhoun called this a behavioral sink, and here's what he concluded, quote, For an animal so simple as a mouse, the most complex behaviors involve the interrelated set of courtship, maternal care, territorial defense, and hierarchical intergroup and intragroup social organization.
	When behaviors related to these functions fail to mature, there is no development of social organization, no reproduction.
	As in the case of my study reported above, all members of the population will age and eventually die.
	The species will die out.
	And then he tried to apply this lesson to man.
	He said, For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events should not also lead to species extinction.
	If opportunities for role fulfillment fall far short of demand by those capable of filling roles and having expectancies to do so, only violence and disruption of social organization can follow.
	Kill the roles.
	Kill the animal.
	And we're doing that as a society, civilization-wide.
	Restore the rules, or the civilization is in serious trouble.
	I think we all know this down deep.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
	In the meantime, go check out our newest podcast, Morning Wire.
	On today's episode, they discuss more on the U.S.' 's diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
	That episode is available right now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
	Make sure to tune in.
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	On today's episode, Biden and Putin meet amid escalating tensions, the U.S.
	imposes a diplomatic boycott at the Beijing Olympics, and the Supreme Court abortion case prompts fierce debate.

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