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Feb. 24, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:01:51

It’s War | Ep. 1440

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	Vladimir Putin begins a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Americans prepare for higher gas prices, and the Chinese watch with interest as the world reacts.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Well, you may have noticed a lot of chaos on the world stage.
	We're going to get to all of the extraordinary news in just one moment.
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	All right, so late last night, the Russian military began attacking targets all over Ukraine.
	We have a map of the attacks.
	It was not just in the eastern regions, the separatist regions of Ukraine, which is pilot in that sort of shaded yellow on the right-hand side of the map.
	It is all over Ukraine, including near Kiev.
	The Russian military has crossed the border in a wide variety of places.
	This is, in fact, a full-scale assault on Ukraine.
	Vladimir Putin announced that this would happen last night.
	He is suggesting, of course, that this is denazification of Ukraine.
	He called the invasion a special operation, did the president of the Russian state.
	He suggested that this was temporary.
	He said it's not going to be an occupation.
	We're just going to denazify.
	What he means by denazify, Zelensky, by the way, the president of Ukraine, is Jewish.
	He says he's going to denazify.
	What he means by this is that he is going to set up another Russian puppet state in Ukraine by deposing the current leadership of Ukraine.
	If that means tens of thousands of casualties and millions of refugees, then so be it.
	Here was Vladimir Putin last night.
	He says I decided to conduct a special military operation.
	It aims to protect people who have been bullied and subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.
	For that, we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.
	The reason that he is invoking the Nazis, of course, is because in the sort of Soviet mind, The idea that justified the Soviet regime was the resistance to the Nazis in World War II.
	Forget about the fact that they originally allied with the Nazis in World War II.
	It was the resistance to the Nazis in World War II.
	And so Putin is calling on that storied history in order to invoke some rationale for why, in fact, he is invading Ukraine at this point.
	The New York Times has live updates, and the live updates are stunning because you are seeing attack after attack on high-profile target after high-profile target.
	The videos are amazing.
	Here are some of the explosions in Kiev, for example.
	You can see the ordnance hitting.
	You can see the sky lighting up.
	A lot of these sorts of clips are going around.
	targets being blown up by the Russian military.
	This is not a quiet cleanup mission, as Putin likes to suggest.
	Everybody knows what this is.
	He's attempting to fully decapitate the Ukrainian administration, which had made the grave mistake for years of not being openly allied with the Russians.
	According to the New York Times, Ukrainian forces are in all-out defense mode to repel a multi-pronged Russian assault by land, sea, and air.
	The Ukrainian military claims to have shot down several Russian military aircraft.
	Civilians lined up at recruitment offices to take up arms against Vladimir Putin's forces.
	More than 40 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed already.
	Dozens were wounded in fighting on Thursday morning, according to Alexei Aristovich, an advisor to President Vladimir Putin.
	The country's foreign minister, Dmitry Kuleba, said Ukraine was facing a full-scale attack from multiple directions, but that it continues to defend itself from Russian advance.
	Initial reports of the fighting suggested that Russian forces had crossed into Ukraine at multiple points, with helicopter-borne troops flying in under cover of machine gun fire, naval units coming ashore in the southern port city of Odessa, military vehicles crossing in from Crimea, that's the peninsula that Russia seized, to the west.
	Nothing in 2014.
	Remember the West did nothing in 2014 when they seized Crimea.
	So all of the areas that Russia had essentially seized have been used as staging points for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
	Ukrainian forces said they had shot down several Russian fighters and a helicopter in an increasingly intense battle to maintain control over key cities.
	According to a senior Ukrainian military official, Ukrainian troops had also repelled Russian advances on two major cities, Chernihiv in the north near the Belarus border, which Belarus is allied with the Russians, and Kharkiv in the northeast, close to Russia.
	The Ukrainian army is badly outgunned and outmanned by Russian forces, but in one indication it was mounting resistance.
	Two Russian armored personnel carriers were seen damaged.
	One crashed into a tree in an eastern Ukrainian town.
	Apparently the refugees have already started to flow into Poland by the thousands, and it's likely to get worse.
	Well, as you can see from the news, it is a very risky world out there.
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	What's going on right here is in fact, a challenge to the West.
	That doesn't mean the West is in a place where it can put troops into Ukraine without fear of an all out war with Russia.
	It also doesn't mean that sanctions are gonna be sufficient to deter Russia.
	This is the natural outgrowth of decades of the West basically deciding after the Cold War that it was going to focus inward, that it was going to spend inordinate amounts of money, that it was going to cripple its own natural energy independence, that it was going to kowtow to aggressive foreign powers like China and Russia in order to avoid conflict.
	And it is no wonder that Russia has decided it's going to make a move like this.
	Now, we in the West don't understand this kind of move.
	We don't.
	We don't understand why China would try to take Hong Kong.
	We don't understand why the Taliban would try to take Afghanistan.
	We don't understand why Iran would be threatening Israel.
	We don't understand any of these things.
	And the reason we don't understand any of these things is because we in the West used to be animated by something like a higher purpose.
	The idea that we were a fundamental force in favor of freedom and liberty.
	And what we used to call Western civilization.
	And we've lost that.
	And this has been an ongoing battle in the West for a very, very long time.
	The substitution of materialist hedonism in favor of some sort of higher purpose has been a serious battle.
	I was reading last night one of the best political essays ever written by George Orwell about Hitler.
	And this is not me saying that Vladimir Putin is Hitler, because Vladimir Putin is not Hitler.
	He's a thug dictator of a second-rate backwater economy.
	with imperial aspirations.
	But he is not genocidal in the way that Hitler was, although he is in fact a murderer.
	But the essay is making a broader point, this Orwell essay.
	And I think it's important for us to understand this because we have a weird parochialism in the West.
	We like nice houses.
	We like nice cars.
	We like nice things.
	We like being able to speak freely.
	We like the lives that we've created.
	And we don't know why everybody doesn't see this as the end goal.
	You know, this is why we think that sanctions will work against Russia.
	Because, I mean, if we impoverish Russia, don't the Russians want to be more wealthy?
	Don't they want to have slightly nicer Dachas?
	Don't they want to have better clothes?
	Don't they want to have Levi's?
	So George Orwell wrote about this in 1940.
	He said, Hitler has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life.
	Nearly all Western thought since the last war, certainly all progressive thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain.
	In such a view of life, there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues.
	The socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers.
	Tin pacifists somehow won't do.
	Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth control, and in general, common sense.
	They also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags, and loyalty parades.
	However they may be, as economic theories, fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life.
	The same is probably true of Stalin's militarized version of socialism.
	All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples.
	Whereas socialism and even capitalism, in a more grudging way, has said to people, I offer you a good time, Hitler has said to them, I offer you struggle, danger, and death.
	And as a result, a whole nation flings itself at his feet.
	Perhaps later on they'll get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war, after a few years of slaughter and starvation, greatest happiness of the greatest number is a good slogan.
	But at the moment, better an end with honor than a horror without end is a winner.
	Now that we're fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate his emotional appeal.
	George Orwell wrote that in March of 1940.
	Right before the all-out assault on the continent had already begun by that point.
	Well, you see the same sort of feeling crop up for Vladimir Putin.
	People wonder why Putin is doing what he's doing.
	They keep calling him a madman.
	He's not a madman.
	Vladimir Putin has been very clear about his intentions.
	He wishes to reconstitute the Soviet Empire.
	It's why he's made aggressive moves in Georgia.
	It's why he's made aggressive moves in Ukraine before.
	It's why he's made aggressive moves in Kazakhstan.
	He wants to... He's been very clear about this.
	He has said it over and over and over again.
	And in believing this, he is revivifying a belief in the Russian people.
	Because the fact is that since the end of the Cold War, there has been a tremendous amount of nostalgia in the former Soviet Union for the era of the Soviet Union.
	However much we may not understand it, the reality is that Stalin remains extraordinarily popular in polls in Russia.
	As of 2019, a record 70% of Russians approved of Joseph Stalin's role in Russian history.
	In the early 2000s, that was not the case.
	People saw Stalin as a hallmark of a bloody, terrible past.
	But Putin had revived the Soviet anthem, Soviet-style military parades, and Soviet-era medal for labor during his presidency.
	And by 2019, Respondents said that 70% that Stalin played a positive role in Russian history, only 19% viewed Stalin's role negatively.
	Why?
	Because it turns out that there are a lot of people who are interested in the notion of Russian greatness.
	After all, what else do they have to substitute for it?
	A backwater economy?
	Understand the entire GDP of Russia, the entire GDP of Russia is about equivalent to the state of Florida.
	It's about $1.3 trillion per year.
	The state of Florida is at $1.2 trillion per year.
	This is not a major world power as an economy.
	It is a dump.
	Economically, so what exactly do you have to give your people?
	Except for dreams of glory and reconstitution of a Soviet empire.
	There's a great book called Secondhand Time, won the Nobel Prize a few years back by a woman named Svetlana Alexeyevich.
	In this book, Secondhand Time, it's an oral history, so she went and she interviewed a bunch of people about the Soviet era.
	And one of the people she interviewed was a former communist factory worker who'd been imprisoned and beaten half to death by the regime.
	So you'd imagine that he didn't like the regime very much, right?
	Well, a year later, he was released, and then World War II broke out.
	And in the middle of World War II, he met the guy who had interrogated him, meaning who had tortured him.
	And that person said, we share motherland.
	Well, now...
	You know, in modern times, Alekseevich interviewed this person.
	And what he said is, quote, when I go into my grandchildren's room, everything in there is foreign. The shirts, the jeans, the books, the music, savages.
	I want to die a communist.
	That's my final wish. Well, there's a lot of truth to this perspective that you need a higher purpose in order to explain why you're here, in order to justify why you matter.
	And that higher purpose isn't just going to be, well, you know, we have a slightly better economic relationship with the West than we would have if Vladimir Putin didn't invent invade Ukraine.
	If you don't understand the motivation of the bad guys.
	You're not going to understand how to stop them.
	The West seems to be under the grave misimpression since the end of the Cold War that everybody wants the same thing that the West does.
	And so we make deals with Iran.
	We make deals with the Taliban.
	We make deals with the Chinese.
	We make deals with the Russians.
	And then we're surprised when none of those deals are actually adhered to.
	We spend all of our time blowing out the welfare state, destroying our own national energy independence on behalf of Swedish teens who lecture us about how terrible we are.
	For wanting, you know, a functioning world order and economy.
	And then all of this is slow and it doesn't have a real impact and then it all materializes at once.
	And what we are watching is the quickening of history right now.
	The last 20 years have been a slow roll toward what we have seen in the last three years alone.
	In 2020, China invaded Hong Kong.
	In 1997, the British turned over control of Hong Kong to the Chinese.
	For the promise by the Chinese that they would allow autonomy in Hong Kong.
	And then in 2020, the Chinese just rolled right into Hong Kong and nobody did a damn thing.
	There weren't sanctions of any serious consequence.
	There wasn't any world reaction.
	There was nothing.
	In 2020 when China did that.
	And then in 2021, The Biden administration decided to turn over Afghanistan to the Taliban for no reason at all.
	We're just going to turn over a country that we had guaranteed security to.
	Remember, we had worked with those people.
	They had worked with us.
	They'd sacrificed tens of thousands of lives in a battle with the Taliban.
	And we just completely undercut them.
	And then we left them to starvation.
	That was 2021.
	And just a few months later, not even a year later, Vladimir Putin has full-scale invaded Ukraine.
	Already coming up, we'll talk about what Ukraine gave up for a promise of protection from the West.
	Because once again, if you're a non-aligned country or you're a country that's an American ally but not in a formal treaty agreement with the United States, Man, you best watch your back at this point.
	We'll get to more on that in just one second.
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	We should note that when it comes to Ukraine, the Ukrainians, again, were effectively guaranteed security by the West in exchange for turning over their nuclear weapons.
	That had been a deal that the Ukrainians made all the way back in 1994.
	Right after the end of the Cold War, there was really wide debate over whether or not Ukrainians should turn over their nuclear arsenal.
	They had about 5,000 nuclear weapons left over after the end of the Cold War.
	And there were questions, what do you do with this nuclear arsenal?
	And there were some who suggested they should keep the nuclear arsenal and they should point it at Russia and say, if you cross that border, you're going to regret it.
	Instead, the United States and Russia encouraged Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons.
	And Ukraine did.
	John Mearsheimer.
	I'm not a fan of Mearsheimer, but he's right on this particular issue.
	In the summer of 1993, according to the New York Times, Mearsheimer, a prominent international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, lent his voice to the issue of atomic retention.
	He argued in Foreign Affairs, a nuclear arsenal was imperative if Ukraine was to maintain peace.
	The deterrence, he added, would ensure that the Russians, who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it.
	In Kiev, the government went so far as to consider seizing operational control of its nuclear missiles and bombers.
	That never came to pass.
	Instead, Ukraine punted and demanded, in exchange for nuclear disarmament, it would need ironclad security guarantees.
	There was an agreement in late 1994 called the Budapest Memorandum signed by Russia, Ukraine, Britain, and the United States promising that none of the nations would use force or threats against Ukraine and all would respect its sovereignty and existing borders.
	That agreement also vowed that if aggression took place, the signatories would immediately seek action from the UN Security Council to aid Ukraine.
	Of course, that was a ridiculous agreement on its face because the UN Security Council is a joke and always has been a joke.
	I mean, Russia sits on the UN Security Council.
	Russia did not get a legally binding guarantee of security, but it received assurances.
	And by 1996, all of its nuclear weapons were gone.
	And now, Ukraine is being invaded by Russia, and the West is basically doing nothing.
	The West has issued a series of rather toothless sanctions, as we'll discuss in just one moment.
	But Russia, you know, again, Russia made a promise.
	Russia broke the promise.
	Russia does not care.
	Countries that oppose the United States in this way are forming alliances with one another.
	They're not interested in the same things that we are interested in.
	So the idea that we're going to levy sanctions against them and they're going to somehow stop their aggressive military action is foolishness.
	You have to understand why they're doing what they're doing if you want to stop them.
	If the United States had actually wanted to stop Russia from invading Ukraine, then it should have signed an actual security guarantee with Ukraine back in 1994.
	Or it should have allowed Ukraine to maintain its nuclear weapons.
	And by the way, if you're an American ally right now, why would you not seek to develop your own nuclear weapons?
	I mean, you've seen what the U.S.
	and the West do.
	They make promises and then they just retreat on those promises.
	They don't fulfill them in any serious way.
	Why do you think that Finland, which is not part of NATO, is now seeking NATO membership?
	They want a full-scale security guarantee against the Russians.
	And if countries don't get that, they're not going to sit by.
	They're not going to wait for the next Russian invasion or Chinese invasion or Iranian invasion.
	They're not going to do that.
	They're going to develop their own military capacity, their own nuclear resources.
	People are going to arm up.
	And if they're smart, they should arm up.
	As we'll discuss in a second, all of this is a prelude to what's coming next, which is going to be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
	That is the most likely next shoe to drop here.
	Whether it happens this year, whether it happens next year, this is not 10 years down the road.
	We are talking probably months or short years down the road when China invades Taiwan.
	Because all the predicates have been set.
	2020, China takes Hong Kong.
	2021, we hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban.
	2022, Ukraine falls to the Russians, presumably.
	Because the West is not going to intervene.
	The West has made clear it's not going to intervene.
	The best the West here is going to do is provide weapons.
	Well, if you were never going to intervene, then at the very least, you should have provided a lot more weapons.
	Remember, we had intelligence back in November.
	The Biden administration was claiming that Russia was about to invade.
	So for three months, the West did nothing.
	The West didn't even levy sanctions on energy, which is the chief Russian way of running its economy.
	But we were afraid of higher oil prices, and so we didn't do it.
	In fact, we still haven't done it.
	It's an amazing thing.
	We're going to have to have like secondary meetings to talk about whether we do that or not.
	Because we were too busy, again, caving to the demands of the environmentalists to decommission nuclear plants and ensure that we were going to build more windmills or some such.
	And while the situation on the ground, it's Ukraine that's now paying the price, according to CNN.
	Ukrainian casualties already in the hundreds and we are just hours into this conflict.
	Here's one of their reporters yesterday.
	Ukraine is putting the number of casualties so far in this nationwide assault, missile assault at this stage, for the most part, in the hundreds, which is, you know, I mean, incredibly alarming.
	OK, according to the Financial Times, Western security services, which have actually accurately predicted the course of events up until now.
	And by the way, we should remember that for all the people who said that it was all fake, it was all phony, it was the West ramping up all of this.
	That's what Putin was saying, but he was lying.
	Don't fall for it.
	Western security services have so far been correct about this.
	They believe that Putin intends to overthrow the Ukrainian government and install a puppet regime in its place.
	The decapitation strategy will take in not only the central government but also regional and local governments.
	Lists have been drawn up of Ukrainian officials who will be arrested or murdered.
	The military tactics Russia uses are likely to be extremely brutal, the kind of thing we saw in Syria and Chechnya, according to one U.S.
	official.
	Remember, this is also in the heart of Europe.
	This is not a far-off place in the Middle East.
	The deployment of Russian artillery and its air force would mean heavy military and civilian casualties on the Ukrainian side.
	Some Western sources have spoken of 50,000 deaths within a week.
	The Ukrainian military is determined to fight back.
	It's likely to find itself heavily outgunned.
	The Russians don't want to get involved in urban warfare if they can avoid it.
	They're also determined to keep the West out of this conflict.
	In his speech announcing the invasion, Putin warned outsiders tempted to interfere there would be consequences you have never encountered in your history, which is a thinly veiled reference to nuclear war.
	That's very unlikely.
	You're going to see foreign troops shipping into Ukraine specifically because nobody wants a direct conflict with the Russians.
	Once deterrence has failed, it's over.
	Right, because he called the bluff.
	And the bluff, it turns out, was a bluff.
	There really wasn't anything behind the bluff.
	Alrighty, coming up, Joe Biden made a statement, and everybody shrugged.
	And Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is pleading for peace.
	It's unlikely to go heated.
	We'll go to that in just one second.
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	So Joe Biden, for his part, he says the world is going to react.
	.
	The President of the United States put out a written statement, a tweet, because he couldn't be bothered.
	He was asleep.
	Saying the prayers of the world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces.
	President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.
	Well, I mean, I guess then he's going to stop now that you've tweeted that.
	Hashtag united for Ukraine.
	Well done, everybody.
	Meanwhile, the president of Ukraine is pleading for help.
	So last night, Zelensky made a speech.
	It's kind of heartbreaking.
	Pleading for help.
	Pleading for peace.
	Many of you have been to Ukraine.
	Many of you have relatives in Ukraine.
	Someone studied at Ukrainian universities.
	You're friends with Ukrainians.
	You know our character.
	You know our people.
	You know our prince.
	You know what we are.
	We value you to listen to yourself.
	Listen to the voice of reason.
	Common sense.
	Hear us.
	The people of Ukraine want peace.
	The government of Ukraine wants peace and does everything it can.
	We are not alone.
	I mean, it's, um, that's not true.
	I mean, effectively speaking, they are alone at this point.
	He also suggested that Putin had ordered the invasion, which of course is true.
	And then he put out a statement that everybody would be given weapons.
	Things are so dire in Ukraine, they're basically just handing out weapons to anybody who's willing to defend the country at this point.
	He actually tweeted it out.
	Meanwhile, the Ukrainian diplomats are doing their best to raise the alarm.
	The Ukrainian ambassador, he said, there's no purgatory for war criminals, you go straight to hell.
	But this sort of language at the UN is likely to avail them not.
	Well, as I said, relinquish your duties as a chair.
	Call Putin, call Lavrov to stop aggression.
	And I welcome the decision of some members of this council To meet as soon as possible to consider the necessary decision that would condemn the aggression that you launch on my people.
	There is no purgatory for war criminals.
	They go straight to hell, Ambassador.
	Well, I mean, all of that is well and good, but words are not going to stop Vladimir Putin or China or Iran.
	None of that is going to have any impact.
	You can see that the fecklessness of the West here.
	UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, he literally started quoting peacenik hippie songs from the 1960s in an attempt to stop Vladimir Putin yesterday.
	If indeed an operation is being prepared, I have only one thing to say.
	From the bottom of my heart.
	President Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine.
	Give peace a chance.
	Too many people have already died.
	Thank you, Mr. President.
	Okay, well, give peace a chance ain't gonna stop it.
	Okay, so what is going to stop it?
	Nothing that the West is attempting at this point.
	And in fact, the West only has a few options to even put pressure on Putin.
	Option number one is oil and natural gas.
	There's only one problem.
	The U.S.
	has no interest in actually doing that.
	The State Department literally said yesterday that they are not going to hit global energy markets.
	They're afraid of the increase in gas prices, so they're actually not going to cut off at this point.
	The natural gas and the oil.
	And by the way, even if they do, Putin knows that's only temporary.
	Because in its own idiotic, self-obsessed narcissism, the West decided the most important thing on planet Earth was to pretend that we were going to lower carbon emissions by not developing our own energy resources and instead shipping in cheap oil and gas from the Russians into Europe while building useless windmills.
	That was their actual plan.
	It was an idiotic plan?
	I mean, listen, when Biden first came into office, his first couple moves were green light Nord Stream 2, which is the Russian gas pipeline from Russia into Europe, and to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline.
	Dan Crenshaw was pointing out today, and he is correct, of course, that we import almost 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Russia.
	The Keystone XL pipeline would have produced 830,000 barrels per day.
	But Joe Biden had his orders and his orders were that cheap oil is bad as long as we produce it.
	And if we sort of bring it under the table from other countries, I guess that we should probably do that.
	So we've made ourselves more dependent on some of the worst people on Earth.
	So Joe Biden sanctioned Nord Stream 2 yesterday.
	He put out a statement saying, since Russia began deploying troops to the Ukrainian border, the United States has worked closely with our allies and partners to deliver a strong unified response.
	As I said, when I met with Chancellor Scholz earlier this month, Germany has been a leader in that effort.
	We have closely coordinated our efforts to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia further invaded Ukraine.
	Yesterday, after further close consultations between our two governments, Germany announced it would halt certification of the pipeline.
	Okay, so this prompted Matt Lee of the Associated Press, one of the few good reporters left in the industry, to ask, so why did you greenlight Nord Stream 2 in the first place?
	Since obviously your decommissioning of Nord Stream 2 didn't stop Putin in any serious way.
	Thank you.
	You guys have been saying for months, indeed for over a year, since the waivers were first granted, that in fact this gave you additional leverage withholding the sanctions and would serve as a deterrent.
	Clearly, that didn't They didn't provide you with any leverage at all that we can tell because of what you just said in your opening statement about the invasion beginning.
	So, you know, how do you explain to people why you didn't impose these sanctions earlier?
	Okay, and of course, they have no good answer for that.
	In fact, Jen Psaki suggested yesterday from the podium of the White House that Biden's sanction strategy was working.
	What would not working look like then?
	Exactly.
	Why is this a better way, a more effective way than issuing sanctions unilaterally and then possibly pressuring the Germans to take action themselves?
	Well, it hasn't been operational, which is an important component, right?
	It's not like oil has been flowing through Nord Stream 2, which is a very important component here.
	And we made the assessment, others can have different assessments, that this would be the way to achieve the outcome that we've now achieved.
	Others can have different assessments.
	There's no proof or evidence that their approach would have worked.
	Ours has worked.
	In what sense has yours worked, lady?
	Do you have a different definition of the word worked?
	Because, are we talking like worked with an E or what?
	How are you defining worked?
	Because it seems to me, with the Russians in Kiev, that it has most definitely not worked.
	In fact, Jen Psaki was asked, this is right before the invasion, this is yesterday afternoon, the invasion happened late last night in American time, Eastern time.
	And Jen Psaki was asked about whether, if it was working, Putin would invade further, and she had no answer for this.
	Do you think these sanctions will actually be a deterrent?
	Well, I think that is a decision for President Putin to make.
	I mean, there are statements he has conveyed in terms of what he wants to achieve here, right?
	The division of NATO, the opposite is happening, right?
	He wanted to see Nord Stream 2 move forward, a key prize for him.
	That is obviously not happening.
	He wants to have a flourishing economy for the Russian people.
	Uh, just even without the bite of our sanctions, that is clearly not happening.
	So, this is an assessment he's gonna have to make, and we expect he'll hear, uh, from people around him who are being impacted, and other people in Russia about the impact of these sanctions.
	Nope.
	Nope.
	I love when she says he'll have a- he wants a flourishing Russian economy.
	No, you, if you were in his place, might want a flourishing Russian economy, but- but he does not.
	It really is amazing.
	The complete mental break between the West and its enemies.
	And our inability to get outside our own heads long enough to even understand what they are attempting to do.
	Honestly, it is not all that complex.
	It's not all that complex.
	The left has its own higher purposes in the West as well.
	And it's not just pure making money.
	It has its own higher purposes.
	I don't like those higher purposes at all, by the way.
	But why can't it just transfer that same utopianism over to what Putin is trying to do?
	Because that's much more indicative of what he's trying to do than any talk about how if we sanction oil or natural gas pipelines, that's going to magically change his mind on any of this.
	But again, we don't even have the stomach for that.
	We don't have the stomach for that because Putin could upend the world oil markets.
	David Frum has a piece in the Atlantic talking about this.
	He's wrong on a lot of things.
	He's not wrong about this.
	He says some commentators are comparing the current Russian aggression against Ukraine to Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939.
	Here's another analogy that could be more accurate.
	In 1979, a people in the Middle East sensed energy prices soaring and Western economies tumbling.
	Russia is the world's number three exporter of oil.
	It's number two exporter of natural gas.
	If Western countries respond to Russia's invasion by imposing sanctions, Russia's obvious counter move is to retaliate by cutting back fuel sales.
	Such a move would hurt Russia too, but Putin has prepared for the shock.
	The real explanation for Putin's timing is the slackness of the world energy market in the late 2010s and its new tightness in the 2020s.
	From mid-2014 until the onset of the global pandemic in 2020, Russian gas sold for less than $10 per million metric British thermal units, often for under $5.
	But the gas market is cyclical, and right now Russia has leverage.
	The higher prices enabled Russia to build massive holdings of dollars, euros, and gold.
	Those holdings now exceed $630 billion, an impressive stash for a country with a GDP of only $1.5 trillion.
	In 2017, 18, and 19, Russia's dominance over its gas customers in Western Europe was weaker.
	Its financial resources to endure market disruption were fewer.
	In 2022, Russia's power over its gas customers is at a zenith, and its financial resources are enormous.
	Putin has been building to this crisis for a long time.
	Now we have arrived at an impasse where Russia could inflict real havoc on world energy markets if it so chooses.
	And the West knows this.
	But we are unwilling to take the measures necessary.
	I mean, Europe right now is in the midst of dithering.
	We're going to have another meeting.
	Now, again, they've known this was coming for months, and they still had not set up.
	You know, Biden had said just two days ago, he suggested that we were going to hit him with one sanction.
	And then if you move forward, more sanctions.
	Well, shouldn't you have like a step-by-step process where it triggers immediately?
	They didn't.
	They have to get back together to try and figure out what to do right now.
	Now, again, the West could compete its way out of this.
	Kenneth Griffin and Neil Ferguson have a piece of The Wall Street Journal talking about this.
	They say the foundation of Russian power today is the energy industry, which funds Russia's foreign policy, including its formidable armed forces.
	Russia is an energy superpower in no small part because European consumers buy Russian gas.
	Europeans wagered that energy interdependence would temper Russian militarism, but instead, Europe has funded the Kremlin's rearmament.
	Europe would be safer if it had relied on allies for its gas.
	The problem isn't just Europe's energy dependence, but Russia's use of energy to co-opt European politicians.
	In early February, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schrader was nominated to join the board of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas monopoly.
	He already sits on the board of Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil giant.
	These appointments highlight Germany's dependence on Russian gas.
	Is it any surprise that Chancellor Olaf Scholz initially sought to exclude energy explicitly from sanctions on Russia if it invaded Ukraine?
	The U.S.
	should encourage its European allies to reduce their reliance on Russian gas exports.
	The additional sanctions against Russia envisaged by the Biden administration would come at a tremendous cost to Americans without addressing any long-term source of Putin's power.
	Tougher financial sanctions would only further reduce the attractiveness of the dollar as a reserve currency.
	Withholding U.S.
	technology from Russia would inflict both direct and indirect damage on American companies, which have many international competitors, not least in China.
	Reducing reliance on Russian gas will require substantial investment and political will.
	Europe needs to replace as much Russian gas as possible with liquefied natural gas, ideally with long-term contracts to buy gas from allied countries such as the United States.
	But then they would have to give up all of their ridiculous environmental nonsense for five seconds and come to grip with the fact that they haven't actually been... They've been powered by the carbon-based energy that they supposedly decry.
	Once again, Giving in to a screamy Nordic teen about your energy policy, it turns out, enables a mass-murdering Russian dictator to cross borders.
	And you can see the reluctance in the West to do anything.
	This is kind of an amazing thing.
	Yesterday, the U.S.
	Deputy National Security Advisor, a person named Dalip Singh, was asked about more sanctions.
	And he decried what he called the bloodlust for more sanctions.
	You know, sometimes I wonder if there's almost a bloodlust out there for sanctions as an end to themselves.
	Let me just be really clear.
	We did hit hard yesterday.
	And it was only a demonstration effect.
	We shut down an $11 billion natural gas pipeline.
	We took out two of the major banks in the Russian banking system that controlled $80 billion in assets.
	We cut off Russia from Western financing in terms of government debt.
	And we put on notice the oligarchy in Russia that no one is safe.
	And there's a chilling effect now for any oligarch or any crony or their family members that have gained from Russian kleptocracy.
	They're not going to share in the pain.
	OK, well, I mean, he keeps talking about bloodlust for sanctions.
	I mean, you have Russia crossing borders.
	So this, I mean, look, we're just weak.
	We're weak.
	And Putin knows that we're weak.
	Doesn't mean we're weaker than Russia is.
	But here's the point.
	It's not about the innate weakness of Russia versus the strength of the United States or the innate weakness of China.
	Russia and China are both failed states.
	I know everyone wants to treat China as a rising power.
	China is not a rising power.
	China is a declining power.
	China has serious internal problems.
	They have a massive debt-to-GDP ratio.
	China has serious demographic problems.
	They're demographically upside down.
	Russia doesn't even have an economy.
	It is demographically upside down.
	But that's not what matters when it comes to geopolitics.
	When it comes to geopolitics, what matters is power and the will to expend it.
	Russia and China have it.
	Iran has it.
	The West does not.
	The West is willing to appease and appease and appease simply to avoid conflict because we like our lifestyles.
	So we're not going to do anything about oil and natural gas, not in any serious way.
	At least that's the bet that Russia is making.
	So they don't feel that bad about going into Ukraine.
	So what other possibilities are on the table?
	There's another possibility that's on the table that could theoretically accelerate China's drive toward war with Taiwan.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, the gas prices are going to go up.
	They're just going to go up.
	They're going to spike pretty rapidly now.
	Everybody knows this.
	They're already bad.
	Wait for the price inflation that is going to hit.
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	Okay, we're gonna get to more on the crisis in Ukraine in just one moment.
	If you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall for conversations that normally don't take place on screen, now would be your chance.
	I have a brand new show.
	It's called The Search.
	You will join me and my closest friends as we head to my favorite local coffee spots and dive into deep conversations you normally don't hear because the camera normally isn't rolling.
	My first guest was the great Jordan Peterson.
	The second episode of The Search features another of my very good friends, highly lauded historian Neil Ferguson.
	Neil is just...
	He's a hoot.
	He's brilliant.
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	You'll really enjoy the conversation, and if you enjoy it half as much as I did, then you'll dig it.
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	The episode releases tonight.
	Thursday the 24th will be exclusive to DailyWire members, so if you're not currently a member, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join today.
	There's a lot of talk about China and Taiwan there, so it's going to be highly relevant.
	Go check it out today at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
	If you have not heard of my book club, well, now is your chance to sign up.
	Last week, I took members through my analysis of Huck Finn.
	Next up is Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.
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	Sign up for the Third Thursday Book Club at thirdthursdaybookclub.com because I'll be sending out my notes for A Tale of Two Cities later today.
	Set a reminder to join the conversation on Thursday, March 17th at 8 p.m.
	Eastern.
	Also, if you haven't noticed, The Daily Wire, we are constantly expanding our catalog.
	One of our newest projects is exciting and vital, especially right now.
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	Smith uncovers a political coup orchestrated by America's ruling class to generate their own wealth and power at the expense of the American people's safety and freedom.
	In the third episode, Lee uncovers the infiltration of America's universities by Chinese spies, students affiliated with the CCP, and American professors who have sold their allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party for bribes.
	Check out some of the trailer.
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	So what other options are on the table with regard to Heming in Russia?
	Well, now the White House is considering curbs on Russia's access to American technology, which, you know, might have been good before.
	Again, all the measures that are currently being discussed are too little too late.
	And not only that, they're going to have unintended consequences, which I'll get to in just one moment.
	According to the New York Times, the Biden administration warned on Wednesday it had prepared additional measures aimed at cutting off Russia from advanced technology critical to its economy and military in the event of further aggression by Putin toward Ukraine.
	The U.S.
	on Tuesday announced sanctions on two Russian banks and curbs on Russia's sovereign debt Biden also announced sanctions on Nord Stream 2.
	Export controls could ratchet up pressure on Russia by preventing the country from obtaining semiconductors and other advanced technology used to power Russia's aerospace, military, and tech industries.
	Wally Adeyemo, the Deputy Treasury Secretary, said, if he chooses to invade, what we're telling him very directly is that we're going to cut that off.
	We're going to cut him off from Western technology that's critical to advancing his military, cut him off from Western financial resources that will be critical to feeding his economy and also to enriching himself.
	The actions and statements of administration officials suggest they could repurpose a novel measure the Trump administration turned to to cripple the business of Huawei, a Chinese telecom company, in 2020.
	The tool, called Foreign Direct Product Rule, allows U.S.
	officials to block more than just exports from the U.S.
	to Russia, which totaled just $4.9 billion in 2020.
	It also allows American officials to restrict exports to Russia from any country in the world if they use American technology, including software or machinery.
	Companies could seek licenses to sidestep the restrictions, but they would be likely to be denied.
	According to Dalip Singh, who we heard from a moment ago, we produce the most sophisticated technological inputs across a range of foundational technologies, AI, quantum, biotech, hypersonic flight, robotics.
	As we and our partners move in lockstep to deny these critical technology inputs to Russia's economy, Putin's desire to diversify outside of oil and gas, which is two-thirds of his export revenue, half of his budget revenues, that will be denied.
	So we're going to deny them this technology.
	Okay, so let's say that we do that.
	Let's say we deny them these technologies.
	Which will be ineffective, by the way, at driving them out of Ukraine.
	It's not going to happen.
	What exactly will Russia do?
	Well, Russia will then turn to China, of course.
	And let's say that we then start restricting the flow of technology to China in order to stop it from flowing into Russia.
	What do you think China's going to do?
	What do you think China's going to do?
	So China, so far throughout this conflict, has been going very, very easy on Russia.
	There seems to be this bizarre going theory among the smart sets that China would either stay out of this completely or that they would tacitly tell Russia to cut it, cut it back, just stop it a little bit.
	Instead, China seems to be quietly cheering us on and then watching from the sidelines to see what the West will do.
	According to Russia Today, which of course is a Russian official news outlet, as the Ukraine crisis deepens, it has been widely reported the Biden administration is considering technology sanctions on Russia, specifically with regard to semiconductors.
	By weaponizing its position in the semiconductor value chain, the U.S.
	would essentially be repeating the action it took against the Chinese telecommunications from Huawei, this time targeting an entire country.
	As China has recently learned, this amounts to an act of extraterritorial jurisdiction by the U.S.
	America has politicized the global semiconductor market and supply chain and sparked Beijing to urgently attempt to develop its own industry and capabilities.
	Whilst Huawei is the only firm that has been subject to these tough rules to their full extent, around 400 companies have been added to America's dreaded entity list, a tool used by the U.S.
	to restrict trade.
	These span everything from telecoms to computing, aviation, biotech, nuclear energy, and more.
	Semiconductor sanctions have become a favored tool in Washington as a result, irrespective of what happens in Ukraine.
	Again, this is Russia Today, which is an outlet associated with the Russian government.
	Russia should anticipate it will eventually be subject to these sanctions in some form or another.
	This places Moscow in the same position as Beijing in needing urgently to lose its dependence on U.S.
	origin tech, which can then be weaponized against it without warning.
	While Russia has plenty of strength of its own in engineering, aerospace, and military, America's patent monopoly over semiconductor tech and the branch industries it has created and exerts control over in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the Netherlands creates a strategic problem.
	As a result, according to Russia Today, it is pivotal that China and Russia work together in this domain.
	Semiconductors need to be in the picture.
	So, um, where are the semiconductors?
	Where are the semiconductors, guys?
	Oh, that's right, they're in Taiwan.
	That's right, they're in Taiwan.
	So, what are the chances that if the United States cracks down on the global semiconductor flow, that this merely exacerbates China's drive toward taking Taiwan, especially seeing as Russia has taken Ukraine with no serious repercussions other than some bitching and moaning from the United Nations and some sanctions that are unlikely to last the test of time because Europe does not have the actual will to stand up on its own without the support of Russia, gas, and oil?
	Meanwhile, by the way, in the United States, the Department of Justice has now announced that it's shifting its approach to Chinese national security threats.
	So while China is drawing closer to Russia, and it is, right before the invasion, China accused the United States of creating panic over the Ukraine crisis and dismissed the sanctions against Russia as ineffective.
	And then the Chinese government basically said nothing after the invasion.
	They said they didn't like the word invasion.
	Which is basically a way of avoiding any sort of blowback at all.
	They refused to describe the attack by Russia as an invasion.
	They called it preconceived wording and then went on to echo Beijing's earlier line calling for dialogue and negotiation for de-escalation, which is a tacit way of basically saying they're not going to get involved.
	Let Russia do what it wants to do.
	Meanwhile, China is making pretty strong comments about Taiwan.
	According to Reuters, Taiwan is, quote, not Ukraine and has always been in an alienable part of China.
	So they're saying, first of all, we don't really care what happens to Ukraine and you guys might want to calm down over there.
	And then two, Taiwan is not Ukraine because we already own Taiwan.
	So it's not like.
	Now, Putin makes the same claim about Ukraine, of course, but they're saying ours is even stronger about Taiwan, which should not make anyone sleep easy at night.
	So while the DOJ is changing its rules for prosecution of Chinese nationals who are allegedly involved in, for example, technology theft in the United States.
	And China is allying more closely with the Russians.
	We're talking about cutting off the semiconductors to Russia, which will then ally with China, which will then invade Taiwan.
	It seems to be the way this is going to work out.
	Because semiconductors are the main resource on Earth right now.
	We can develop our own energy independence.
	The semiconductors and all the innovation they're in is on Taiwan.
	Well over 90% of semiconductor advanced tech is in Taiwan.
	And the remainder is in South Korea.
	All areas that China is threatening.
	So, the United States really has no response to any of this that is throwing a scare into pretty much anyone at this point.
	And again, this goes back to a fundamental problem with the West.
	We are so self-obsessed.
	We are so pathetic in terms of what we believe our role on Earth is.
	We can't even unify around what our chief philosophy is.
	We can't even unify around the idea that the United States has a history that is worth revering.
	We can't unify around the basic idea that our principles are better than the principles of other countries around the world.
	Which, by the way, they are.
	That's not chauvinism.
	That is just reality.
	But we can't unify around that.
	Instead, what we're mostly focused on is, can the government cut us more checks?
	Because we have not prepared ourselves in any way for a global conflict of any size or scale.
	We have not prepared ourselves for an unfriendly world.
	We have been the stupid, fat, happy kid walking around the playground with pockets full of candy, chomping and hoping that the bully is not going to knock us down and take our candy.
	That's what we have been.
	Because after all, we were the bully not all that long ago.
	We were the most powerful kid on the playground.
	But here's the thing.
	You can be the most powerful kid on the playground, but if you don't work out, if you don't have the mindset, if you're not willing to defend yourself, somebody's going to knock you off your feet.
	And that's what Russia and China are preparing to do right now.
	We've not taken any of the measures to ensure our, like, if you actually saw the world as a rough and tumble place, you know what you wouldn't do?
	You wouldn't blow out the national debt to the tune of $30 trillion for no apparent reason.
	You wouldn't focus on reorienting the military around woke values.
	You wouldn't worry About masking toddlers, right?
	These are all things that do not bespeak a country worthy of its greatness.
	They don't.
	We are so navel-gazing.
	We're so narcissistic.
	We're trapped in our own reflection.
	We're not even around to realize when everybody else is challenging us on the world stage.
	And I know that a lot of people are saying, well, why should I care about Ukraine?
	Why should I care about Taiwan?
	Why should I care about these places?
	Because your safety and your security and your prosperity are reliant on a global system.
	And that global system is maintained by American hegemony.
	And when that hegemony goes away, the system is not going to maintain.
	Things will get worse in your life.
	You will have more expensive products at the very least.
	You will have more threats on our foreign borders.
	You will have More problems, globally, in the supply chain.
	You like the inflation right now?
	Wait until the supply chains are being throttled by our enemies.
	Wait until it's China, not just taking over Taiwan, but then threatening Australia.
	Wait until it's Russia, not just taking over Ukraine, but threatening all the rest of the Baltic states.
	And the Europeans kowtowing to it.
	A global system matters because we live in a global system, and pretending otherwise is thinking before airplanes existed.
	Certainly before the internet existed.
	Again, we're all complaining about the inflation right now.
	That's a supply chain problem created by the pandemic, and then exacerbated by overspending in the United States and loose Federal Reserve monetary policy.
	What if it's purposeful?
	Wait until that happens.
	It's all fun and games until things get real, and things are beginning to get real right now.
	But we are not treating the world with any sense of seriousness.
	When you lose your higher sense of purpose, it turns out that that cannot be regained by a simple appeal to hedonistic check cutting.
	Right now, according to the Wall Street Journal, the national debt this month reached $30 trillion, says Jeb Hensarling, writing for the Wall Street Journal.
	Not only is this the largest debt in U.S.
	history in dollar terms, the ratio of debt to gross domestic product is now 119%, the largest it has ever been.
	And things are only getting worse.
	The CBO predicts that the mammoth debt-to-GDP ratio will double over the next three decades.
	The Highway Trust Fund will likely become insolvent in 2027.
	Medicare Part A will run out of money in 2026.
	Social Security will go completely bust in fiscal 2033.
	Now Americans are beginning to experience inflation, one of the primary costs of rapidly growing levels of national debt.
	Every day we hear supply chain challenges and the pandemic are to blame, but those aren't the only culprit.
	To help finance $5.9 trillion of COVID relief, the Federal Reserve purchased treasury debt from third parties, typically large banks known as primary dealers.
	And then with a few keystrokes, the Fed simply created a new set of credits on its books for the sellers.
	Because of the additions of these credits, in two years, the Fed's balance has doubled to almost $9 trillion, creating a risk of significant and sustained inflation.
	Some policymakers and economists maintain that sustained, harmful inflation can never happen here.
	They argue the dollar is the world's reserve currency.
	Investors will continue to purchase Treasury debt as long as they believe they'll get their money back.
	But what happens if the national debt makes bondholders begin to question that proposition?
	What happens if the American economy stops growing?
	If we have a weak economy, if we overspend, if we treat our economy as a grab bag of cash filled with free money, guess what?
	We are not making ourselves strong enough on the world stage to withstand any sort of real conflict.
	If we distract ourselves with all this stuff, Then we give up our claim to be a global hegemon.
	And when we do that, by the way, there are costs.
	There are real, real world costs, not just in human lives around the world and U.S.
	military lives that will be lost, but also in terms of the quality of life in the United States.
	We are blessed.
	We were born on third base, most of us, and think we hit a triple.
	And we think, OK, what if we steal second?
	And what if we what if we just go back and undermine the very foundations of the world order that has created our prosperity?
	What if we just give up on those?
	And this is what Putin is basically saying.
	He's challenging us right now.
	That doesn't mean that we have to go to outright war.
	Because, let's face it, Ukraine is already pretty much gone.
	Sanctions are not going to stop Putin from doing what he wants to do.
	The question is going to be, what do we do with the next thing?
	Do we allow China to take Taiwan the way that we've allowed Putin to take Ukraine?
	Or do we ship in more weaponry than God has ever seen in Taiwan and damn the consequences with regard to China?
	Do we start cutting China off at the knees economically?
	Do we stop their intellectual property theft?
	Do we treat our enemies like our enemies?
	Or do we keep signing ridiculous deals with Iran with the help of China and Russia?
	Do we keep focusing in on how to reimagine capitalism?
	Which is something that the left has been very focused on.
	Instead of unleashing the power of the American economy, American innovation and ingenuity, we've been focused on what kind of checks can we cut to people to stay home?
	How can we reimagine capitalism on a global scale to cut down on innovation and redistribute?
	The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece today about the Hewlett Foundation.
	Since the 20th century economist Joseph Schumpeter famously wrote that capitalism sows its own destruction by creating a knowledge class who despise its success.
	Behold the Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network's $40 million gift to the paupers at Harvard and MIT to reimagine capitalism.
	The press release says, for more than 40 years, neoliberalism has dominated economic and political debates, both in the U.S.
	and globally, with its free-market fundamentalism and growth-at-all-costs approach to economic and social policy.
	It offers no solutions for the biggest challenges of our time, such as the climate crisis, systemic racism, and rampant wealth inequality, and in many ways, it has made those problems even worse.
	If you think these are the worst problems on Earth, climate crisis, systemic racism, and rampant wealth inequality, you are a first-world person who does not understand how the actual real world works.
	It's our stupid focus on the so-called climate crisis that has led Europe to be completely dependent on Russian natural gas.
	These things are not disconnected.
	We're so busy focusing on the alleged systemic racism of America's police forces that we've forgotten about the fact that, you know, our enemies are committing actual genocides in places like Zhangjiang.
	But again, we have too many navel-gazing rich people over here who are perfectly happy to undermine the foundations of their own society.
	As the Wall Street Journal says, Joseph Schumpeter predicted that people in the comfortable West, including tech entrepreneurs, would take prosperity for granted.
	And that's exactly what is happening.
	I reimagine capitalism as the press release advertises.
	What these foundations really mean is putting politicians and the administrative state in charge of redistributing more of its proceeds.
	But if they've been paying attention in recent years, they might have noticed free market fundamentalism could have spared the United States from some terrible mistakes.
	But they don't care about sparing the United States from terrible mistakes.
	They think that the mistake is the system.
	People on the left make fun of people on the right for pointing out things like, why are you so focused in on social policy in the United States when there are threats abroad?
	Why do you think it matters?
	Why do you focus in on silly stories about transgenderism and transgender swimmers and gender ideology and the indoctrination of our children?
	Because when you're a society that is so engrossed in your own navel, you destroy the institutions that made your freedom possible and you undermine freedom around the world.
	That's why.
	If you're a weak, pusillanimous society, you will collapse.
	Going all the way back to the Bible, when God suggests Yeshua got fat and kicked, what he means is that when you get fat, and when you get happy, and when you ignore what you had to do to get there, when you ignore your fundamental principles and your higher purpose, the predictable result is that you lose, and bad things happen.
	And that's precisely what the United States has been doing for decades.
	Until the end of the Cold War, at the very least, we had the ability to look at the Soviet Union and say, we're standing up to those guys.
	That's our existential purpose.
	But then the Cold War ended and the question became, what comes next?
	What are we going to do?
	What are we going to become?
	Now, what we could have done is we could have stayed lean and mean.
	We could have maintained our muscular military.
	We could have maintained a robust economy focused on innovation.
	To a certain extent, we did some of that in the 1990s.
	But instead, we decided not to do that.
	We decided that it was much more important for us to become basically post-World War II Britain.
	We were going to look inward.
	It was time to look home.
	And it was time to redistribute the gains.
	And it was time to think about what the next stage of capitalism would look like.
	A nicer, kinder, gentler world.
	Here's the thing.
	The world does not get kinder.
	It does not get gentler.
	It does not get nicer.
	You just get weaker.
	And when you get weaker, the bully takes your lunch money.
	All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon as the Matt Wall Show airing at 1.30 p.m.
	Eastern.
	Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
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