Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Dec. 19, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

48:40

Go To Church

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	On Monday, Politico ran a long interview with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
	Murthy is apparently, quote, worried about our sad social lives.
	According to Politico, Americans are burned out, disconnected, isolated, and starved for time.
	Maybe it's post-pandemic blues.
	Maybe it's our smartphone addiction.
	Whatever the cause, it's serious enough that Murthy has issued a formal advisory to the nation calling for action to address this epidemic.
	So what are Murthy's solutions?
	Well, he's hosting events around the country trying to put people in proximity to one another and speaking about the power of friendship.
	At these events, according to Politico, quote, people dressed as dancing unicorns handed out prescriptions for five minutes of social connection.
	Quantity endless.
	Refills daily.
	That's a thing that you are paying for.
	Murphy then encouraged people to spend 45 seconds writing a text to a loved one.
	Murphy asks people to engage in what he calls the connection exercise.
	He says that such exercises can be supplemented by investments in social infrastructure, which is where policymakers come in.
	Or, alternatively, it's precisely where policy makers and government should butt out.
	See, there is a reason for our loneliness epidemic.
	And that's a real thing, the loneliness epidemic.
	People are lonely, they are disconnected, they are atomized.
	And sure, all of that has to do with smartphones and the internet and the increasing atomization of our lives as we hunker down with our screens and wreck our necks.
	But screens are just a tool to be used for good or ill.
	The real problem is that our social institutions have been summarily destroyed over the course of decades, largely by government.
	Those social institutions used to begin with and center around church.
	Historically, churches performed three interwoven functions.
	First, they provided common orientation around a higher goal, complete with rules and regulations that required skin in the game in order to be accepted into the group.
	So everybody goes to my synagogue, believes in God, and also believes in a series of commandments that we have been given.
	The skin in the game ranges from, for example, wearing a yarmulke, showing that you are committed to the group, and to the idea to keeping kosher.
	And obviously, every church has something similar, a higher orientation, and a set of rules that require skin in the game.
	Second, churches provided economic benefits and social reinforcement, ranging from charity to the helping hands of neighbors.
	In our community, that means when someone falls on hard times, that we all try to find that person a job, that we will bridge the financial gap for people, that we'll make sure that somebody is able to drive our neighbor's kids home if their parents are stuck at work.
	Finally, churches, emerging from the first two functions, create a feeling of community.
	That feeling of community, as sociologist Emil Durkheim wrote in the late 19th century, could only be attained with reference to the sacred, a series of beliefs so worthwhile they were not to be questioned.
	That's what the sacred is, something that is higher, something that is not really open to dissent or question.
	As Robert Nisbet, the sociologist, writes, quote, it is community that gives to the sacred its most vital expressions everywhere, birth, marriage, death, and other moments in the human drama.
	Those are things that are higher.
	The sacred undergirds the community.
	And the community provided the support structure necessary for the flourishing of the family.
	And then government tried to replace the church and destroyed community in the process.
	The first step was the substitution of government benefits for the earned membership of a church.
	See, in order for you to earn benefits of being a member of my synagogue, for example, you have to be a member of the synagogue.
	Not a paid member, but you have to at least be in the community.
	You have to perform the functions.
	But once government stepped in, people no longer had to have skin in the game of a community in order to be given charity.
	Now they had entitlements by dint of breathing.
	You're here, therefore somebody owes you money.
	According to one study, New Deal policies from the 1930s crowded out 30% of all charitable spending by churches.
	Because instead of people going to church and getting charity from their neighbor, which might come with the awkward requirement that you actually be part of the community and good to your neighbor, instead you just go to the relief office.
	Government benefits are now exponentially greater than they were in the 1930s.
	Family structure itself was dramatically undermined by government spending.
	You were no longer responsible for your kids.
	In fact, if you were a dad, you could just ditch your kids and the single mom would get bigger benefits from the government.
	You were no longer responsible for paying for your elderly parents.
	Government would do that through social security and they would borrow the money to make up the gap.
	Your call on your neighbor no longer required you to sacrifice for the community.
	Instead of you having to go to your neighbor and say, listen, we're members of the same community.
	I take care of your kids.
	You take care of my kids.
	We're all in this together.
	Instead, you just go to the government.
	The government points its gun at your neighbor and steals his wallet.
	Able to reap the rewards without the cost, many people stopped going to church.
	After all, if you can get the money without having to engage in any of the actual cost structure, why do it?
	And over the course of decades, churches began to adjust to the pews that were emptying out, not by reinforcing the common orientation around a higher goal, sanctity, the thing that really brings people to church, but instead by trying to get rid of judgment so as to include more people.
	Because if the pews are emptying out, there are really only two ways to refill the pews.
	One is a rededication to core principle, and the other is demolishing core principle and basically turning a church into a pizza party.
	Churches began to try to mirror government.
	No skin in the game, plenty of benefits.
	As Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote two decades ago, quote, this process of religious accommodation has since gone out of pace, so that today many mainline churches offer little or no resistance to the prevailing culture.
	On the contrary, some are very much part of it, priding themselves on being cosmopolitan and sophisticated, undogmatic and uncensorious.
	This is how you end up with pride flags hanging off 200-year-old churches.
	And thus the sacred has been wiped away, leaving us all alone with our subjective sense of self, catered to by a broad welfare state.
	So, are we happier?
	Will that problem be cured by government?
	Of course not!
	It can only be cured by a return to community.
	And historically, that community means religious community.
	And that's why it's so sad to see religious leaders playing around the edges of conciliation with value systems that undermine the sacred at every single turn.
	We'll get to that in just one moment.
	First, are you traveling for the holidays?
	If so, Pure Talk has you covered because they just added international roaming to over 30 countries.
	That's right.
	Whether you're making calls on a beach in the Bahamas, on the steps of Buckingham Palace, or at your villa in Santorini, you can dial away.
	Cool benefits.
	Over at Pure Talk, here's the best part.
	There is no rate increase.
	Pure Talk still saves the average family almost $1,000 a year with plans, starting at just 20 bucks a month.
	Pure Talk is the gift that keeps on giving.
	They put you on America's most dependable 5G network.
	The coverage is second to none.
	So stop dragging your feet.
	Switch on over to Pure Talk, a veteran-owned wireless company with simply the best U.S.
	customer service team.
	Now with international roaming to over 30 countries, go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro and make the switch.
	You'll save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage.
	I've been using Pure Talk for years.
	I do all of my calls on Pure Talk.
	They have a great tower network, same as one of the big guys.
	It's excellent.
	And again, you're getting a great deal right now.
	Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro and start saving on your wireless Today, you'll save an additional 50% off your first month when you go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro.
	Pure Talk is simply smarter wireless.
	Go check them out right now.
	Okay, speaking of religion opening its doors to value systems that really undermine the religion, on Monday, According to the vast majority of the legacy media, Pope Francis apparently decided that it was fine for priests to bless same-sex couples.
	That at least was the headline from the legacy media.
	According to the New York Times, this move was quote, his most definitive step yet to make the Roman Catholic Church more welcoming to LGBTQ Catholics and more reflective of his vision of a more pastoral and less rigid church.
	If all of that were true, of course, that would mark a massive shift for the Catholic Church, which has held fast to the traditional teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman, and that sexual union within marriage is the only morally permissible form of sexual union.
	By the way, that is an opinion agreed to by virtually every mainline religion for the past several thousand years.
	The church has held fast for thousands of years, not only to the sanctity of marriage, but to the natural law philosophy inherent in that sanctity, a philosophy that says that the world of God's creation carries within it certain obvious rights and wrongs, teleological ends.
	In this viewpoint, things in nature were designed to perform certain functions.
	The sexual function was designed to create children.
	Man and women were designed to become one flesh, according to this philosophy, and that creation is designed to end in the creation of new human life.
	As philosopher Robert George, who's a Catholic, says, quote, what is unique about marriage is that it is truly a
	comprehensive sharing of life, a sharing founded on the bodily union made uniquely
	possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, a complementarity that makes it possible
	for two human beings to become, in the language of the Bible, one flesh, and for this one
	flesh union to be the foundation of a relationship in which it is intelligible for two
	persons to bind themselves to each other in pledges of permanent monogamy and fidelity. So it would
	certainly be a massive surrender for the Catholic Church to reject that teaching on behalf
	of a broader teaching that morality now encompasses sexual relationships of all sorts,
	particularly sexual relationships without any potential whatsoever for the creation of human life, as per
	the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign agenda.
	So, is the media really accurately reporting what the Pope said?
	What did he actually say?
	Well, his defenders say that he really changed nothing.
	According to the Catholic publication, The Pillar, quote, Fiducia supplicans, which is the name of this publication, says clearly the Vatican does not intend to permit same-sex marriage or anything that resembles it, and says that the church does not actually have the power or authority to do that.
	While the text does create a framework for blessing gay couples, it says that those blessings should not be confused with marriage or even with approval of same-sex unions or homosexual activity.
	Fiducia Supplicans says that blessings are a pastoral resource to be valued, rather than a risk or a problem, and that they may be bestowed upon those persons who, although in a union that cannot be compared in any way to a marriage, desire to entrust themselves to the Lord and His mercy, to invoke His help, and to be guided to a greater understanding of His plan of love and truth.
	Such blessings ought not to be given in any circumstance resembling a sanctification of same-sex unions, says the Vatican, and there is no intention to legitimize anything.
	Furthermore, says the document, the blessing ought to descend on those who quote, do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
	So, is there any reason for the controversy if nothing changed?
	I mean, there is.
	The document itself suggests that blessings should not be, quote, subjected to too many moral prerequisites, and that priests ought not to lose pastoral charity, which should permeate all our decisions and attitudes, and to avoid being, quote, judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.
	Furthermore, the document does not make clear whether the church will, in fact, crack down on liturgical blessings.
	It does not approve in the document.
	The Pope, in other words, is being vague.
	And others are supposed to clean up after him, which tends to be the way, unfortunately, Pope Francis works a lot.
	My friend Larry O'Connor, Catholic, has a good rundown of his interpretation of the latest missive.
	Here's what he writes, quote, I'm not in full communion with the church.
	As such, I'm required to abstain from partaking in the Eucharist at Mass.
	I walk up to the altar with my arms crossed on my chest and the presiding priest offers me a blessing.
	He is not blessing the situation I am in that keeps me from being in communion with the church.
	He is offering me a priestly blessing so I can continue my faith journey and move forward closer to Christ despite my situation.
	This is exactly what the Vatican has confirmed the pastors may do for individuals who have same-sex attraction and are also not in full communion with the church because of their situation.
	But is that all the Pope is doing?
	Because Larry is not approaching the altar as a member of a same-sex couple.
	He's not walking up there to Larry's divorce.
	He's not walking up with his second wife together with her to receive a blessing as a couple.
	According to Larry, he's approaching individually.
	Of course, religions should offer blessings to sinners while hating their sin.
	Of course.
	Everyone is a sinner.
	This is true in Judaism, just as it is true in Catholicism or Protestantism.
	Everyone is a sinner.
	And if sin were what barred you from receiving a blessing, no one could receive a blessing.
	But when a same-sex couple approaches a priest for a blessing as a same-sex couple, the distinction starts to fall away.
	Because again, they are not approaching individually and asking for a blessing individually while being a sinner.
	The idea is that the church knows they are a same-sex couple and they are approaching for a blessing as a same-sex couple and then they're receiving a blessing as a same-sex couple.
	The Pope here is not allowing blessing for individuals who participate in same-sex unions.
	That was already the case.
	Every traditional religion allows sinners to receive blessings individually, so far as I'm aware.
	Instead, the Vatican is apparently now greenlighting blessings same-sex couples as couples, then pretending it doesn't mean anything, so long as the blessing isn't an outright sanctification of the same-sex relationship.
	Now, that's clearly how the left is reading it.
	The Reverend James Martin, a radical left-wing Catholic, says, quote,
	This new declaration opens the door to non-liturgical blessings for same-sex couples,
	something that had previously been off-limits for bishops, priests, and deacons.
	Along with many priests, I will now be delighted to bless my friends in same-sex unions.
	So, why aren't we to care?
	Now, I'm not a Catholic, but here is the thing.
	We ought to care because when historical pillars of Western tradition, including natural law, begin to carve away at those pillars in the name of tolerance and diversity, when they throw open to doors of the church by getting rid of core principles or by crumbling those core principles, the entire edifice starts to wear away.
	And this is a problem for religious believers of all traditional stripes.
	This is not restricted to the Catholic Church.
	This should not be read as just a critique Of the Pope.
	It's not unique to Catholicism.
	It's happening in Judaism.
	It's happening in Protestantism.
	On the same day the Pope issued his statement, celebrated by the New York Times, the New York Times issued another piece about the collapse of the United Methodist Church, riven by controversy over LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign issues.
	As the Time describes, quote, At issue for Methodists is the question of ordaining and marrying LGBTQ people, a topic that has splintered many other Protestant denominations and which Methodists have been debating for years.
	There were 8 million Methodists in the United States in 2020, according to the U.S.
	Religion Census.
	Between large-scale departures and the broader trend of decline, according to one source, that number could drop by half in a decade.
	The exodus marks a calamitous decline for the broader tradition of mainline Protestantism, which once dominated the American religious, social, and cultural landscape.
	And herein lies the biggest problem of all.
	There is no substitute for traditional religion in the American landscape, or indeed in the Western landscape more broadly.
	And traditional religion requires skin in the game.
	It requires rules.
	It requires behavioral restrictions.
	It requires people to actually believe in a moral system above their own subjective morality.
	The minute religion becomes merely a non-judgmental blessing dumped on top of subjective self-glorification, religion is no longer valuable.
	And when religion loses its value, church crumbles.
	And when church crumbles, social society crumbles.
	And then we are relegated to the Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, lecturing us as dancing unicorns hand out prescriptions for social connection.
	Herein lies the problem.
	When church dies, so does the United States.
	It's why everyone feels so chaotic these days.
	You want to know, by the way, why there's a rising conspiracy theories on every side of the aisle these days?
	It's because when you don't trust in God, you start believing there has to be some other conspiracy responsible for why the world works the way that the world works.
	When you believe in God, it makes it very easy to say, okay, I don't understand what the hell's going on here, but there is someone who does.
	But when you don't believe in God, or when you fear that God may not be in charge, then you start believing that a small cadre of human beings are capable of manipulating events to the nth degree.
	And then you find those human beings, then you blame those human beings.
	And this allows you to believe in any form of conspiracy theory.
	And that's a real problem.
	Because once you start believing in those sorts of theories, you can't have a functional democracy or a functional republic along those lines.
	It doesn't mean there aren't conspiracies that are true.
	But when people start believing evidence-free conspiracies, when everything that happens is a sign of a broader conspiracy of which you have no evidence, that's really a problem because it means you can't trust any outcome.
	Every outcome is now inherently untrustworthy.
	And that is a real danger for the country.
	Okay, meanwhile...
	Joe Biden has hit record approval ratings in the 2024 election.
	According to a brand new poll from Monmouth University, he is now down to 34%.
	61% of those polled disapprove of the job that Biden is doing as president with the 2024 presidential election now less than a year away, according to Mediaite.
	And these are really horrifyingly bad numbers for Joe Biden.
	He has a 24% approval rating among independents.
	This puts him behind the eight ball in pretty much every swing state.
	Donald Trump is currently leading.
	And it's not just me saying it.
	Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, he's saying, they're losing ground every single month.
	This campaign is just getting weaker.
	Inflation is like 30 points higher than the next problem.
	And you can't, you know, what the president currently doing is his tweets always start with, we're making progress.
	And then he mentioned the prices.
	If you look at ads aimed at black voters, it's mainly trying to convince them they're doing a good job.
	But that's not where we're there.
	They are losing ground every month and angry about it.
	But then you have to stop.
	You have to say, what's the main problem?
	How do you deal with the first problem, which is inflation and the cost of living?
	Well, he's right about all that, and you can see it reflected in the polls.
	Meanwhile, the news media are trying to make the case to Joe Biden that the reason that he's losing popularity is because he's not left-wing enough, which is an amazing case to make on behalf of a president who spent more money than any president in American history.
	Here is NBC interviewing young voters who are turning away from Biden.
	And naturally, if you interview all the crazy young people, I mean, and look at these people.
	I mean, my goodness, if this is the next generation, we are so screwed.
	And here they are trying to explain, these are from Dayton County, Wisconsin, why they are unenthused about voting for Joe Biden.
	Give me the emotion that you have looking at your choice this election.
	Not, not enthused.
	I'd say overall, I feel very pragmatic and strategic about it.
	All of these issues that, that are popular with Democrats.
	He has not only not addressed, but often gone the entire opposite way.
	I mean, I can look at like almost every issue in my head that's important to me, and I see a failure on Biden's part.
	Okay, well, it's not going to be because of these voters that Joe Biden loses.
	The reason Joe Biden is going to lose if he loses is because he's going to lose those independent voters in the middle.
	Again, he was perceived as the moderate alternative to Trump in 2020.
	He is no longer perceived as a moderate alternative to Trump.
	And that's going to be particularly true if the economy continues to basically stagger along.
	Now, the entire media are invested in the idea that we have now avoided a recession, that the economy is booming, everything is going amazingly well.
	The Washington Post has an entire piece at the top of their website today titled, Everyone Expected a Recession.
	The Fed and White House found a way out.
	Wow!
	Amazing!
	Sure, we've had complete wage stagnation in the country for the last three years.
	Sure, everything cost a bajillion dollars more than it did just a couple of years ago, but they avoided a recession technically.
	Now, Actually, they didn't.
	If you recall, last year we actually did have a couple of consecutive quarters of negative growth, which technically qualifies as a recession.
	But, if the idea here is that we're avoiding a gigantic recession in favor of Obama-esque stagnation for a long period of time, that's probably true, and that stagnation is going to get worse.
	Because there are a few economic factors that cut in favor of the idea that the stock market, for example, is actually ahead of where the Federal Reserve is.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	We need to ramp up our efforts to save the lives of innocent babies.
	I can't stress this enough.
	Because of our partnership with Preborn, an organization dedicated to saving the lives of the unborn, we can do just that.
	Every day, Preborn's network of clinics rescues 200 babies as they compete head-to-head with the abortion giants.
	Preborn offers free ultrasounds to moms who are considering abortion.
	Once those moms see their babies and hear the heartbeats, they are twice as likely to choose life.
	And now, through a match, your tax-deductible gift is doubled, too.
	Because Preborn supports both moms and babies with diapers, car seats, counseling, and more, you are offering double blessings.
	Now is the time to put your year-end write-offs to work.
	Please double down today.
	So you're not gonna do anything more important today?
	So dial pound 250 on your phone, say keyword baby, that is pound 250 baby, or donate securely at preborn.com slash Ben again, that's preborn.com slash Ben.
	You can save a life and change lives by giving to preborn and making sure that mom gets an ultrasound because when mom sees the baby growing inside her, so often she changes her mind about giving that kid a shot at life.
	dial pound 250 and say keyword baby today to get started with our friends over at Preborn.
	Also as a Daily Wire listener, you're not just informed, you're also engaged.
	You value freedom and personal responsibility, which is why you need to check out Metashare.
	Metashare is a community-based approach to healthcare that lines up with the principles you believe in.
	Your values matter and with Metashare, your healthcare dollars will not be used
	for medical procedures that don't line up with your beliefs.
	Metashare is the highest rated healthcare sharing ministry with a 30 year proven track record.
	It's not health insurance.
	It's a community of over 400,000 believers committed to caring and sharing with one another.
	Members save up to 50% or more on their monthly health care costs.
	Member satisfaction surveys show they like MediShare much, much more than health insurance.
	Why?
	Well, because it works.
	For a limited time, DailyWire listeners will receive a $150 gift card when they join MediShare.
	To find out more, Go to MediShare.com slash Ben.
	And that's MediShare.com slash Ben.
	Terms and conditions do apply.
	And why rely on the government when instead you could rely on MediShare, the highest rated healthcare sharing ministry, 30-year proven track record, community of 400,000 believers.
	Go get started with them right now at MediShare.com slash Ben.
	Alrighty.
	Meanwhile, the Biden administration, they are, again, I still think, economically speaking, they're whistling past the graveyard.
	So, the inflation stats have come down.
	They've come down because a lot of supply chains have now been restored.
	The supply chain problem was, in fact, a massive contributing factor to inflation.
	Biden wasn't lying about that.
	Now, he added on top of that, with record spending into an economy that had too few goods flowing through it.
	And as those supply chains have opened back up, the number of goods has risen, and it is moving toward meeting the amount of money that is flowing through the system.
	However, they, because of their cowardly foreign policy, they are now experiencing the possibility of serious problems on the supply chain again.
	That is happening in the Suez Canal.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.
	unveiled a multinational naval force to protect merchant vessels in the Red Sea after Houthi rebel attacks threatened the Suez Canal's central role in global trade.
	On Monday, the Pentagon said it was establishing a security operation to protect seaborne traffic from ballistic missiles and drone attacks launched by the Houthi groups in Yemen.
	That effort, called Operation Prosperity Guardian, will include the UK, Bahrain, France, Norway, and other countries.
	Many of the world's biggest shipping lines, oil producers, and other cargo owners in recent days started diverting vessels from the entire region, prompting a massive spike in oil prices and general insurance rates.
	In fact, European natural gas prices had surged by as much as 13% in the middle of the disruption of the energy flow caused by these ragtag group of hoothie pirates.
	U.S.
	officials tried to secure the support of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
	The two countries have opted to stay out for now because they're not sure what exactly to do with the Houthis and they're deeply afraid that Iran is going to attack UAE or Saudi Arabia in retaliation for them getting involved in stopping the Houthis.
	The oil giant BP on Monday was the latest company to halt its tankers from sailing through the Red Sea.
	Now, for all the people who tend to believe that foreign policy has no impact on how you live your life, that obviously is untrue.
	Things get way more expensive when the seas are not free for trade.
	Let's be real about this.
	The economic development of the past couple centuries and a half has been due, in large part, to two main factors.
	First, the British Empire in control of the seas.
	And second, the American Navy in control of the seas.
	That would be in order.
	If those two things do not happen, you can forget about your cheap goods at the store.
	You can forget about being able to afford all the nice things you can afford.
	I know there is this weird take out there that somehow foreign policy doesn't affect you in any way or that your life would be significantly better if you did not have cheaper goods available to you.
	I'm just wondering how that is.
	This strange idea that our lives on a material level, forget about a spiritual level, on a material level are somehow not better than they were in 1980 is so ridiculous on every possible level.
	You have a bigger house than you did in 1980.
	You have more devices than you did in 1980.
	You probably have central air.
	You didn't have that in 1980.
	You probably have a much better car than you did in 1980.
	All of that is because of supply chains.
	Economics is not a simple case of It's separate from foreign policy.
	It requires free movement of goods and services across bottlenecked trade lanes.
	The Red Sea is one such trade lane.
	The Bab-el-Mandeb Strait is one such trade lane.
	The Suez Canal is a trade lane.
	The Taiwan Straits are a trade lane.
	All these places are trade lanes.
	These are hot points that can absolutely crush you at the supermarket if they're not guaranteed by a Western Navy.
	And the reality that the United States is only now starting to say, okay, maybe we'll escort some ships through the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait or whatever it is.
	Again, that is going to have some pretty significant knock-on effects.
	If the Red Sea becomes a no-go zone for most tankers, according to the Wall Street Journal, it would redraw the global oil market for the second time in two years.
	After the war on Ukraine and related sanctions forced Russia to find new markets for its petroleum.
	That could send oil prices and tanker rates vaulting higher, according to Richard Matthews, research director at EA Gibson Shipbrokers.
	He says, all you know is it's going to cause chaos.
	Everything is going to get a lot more expensive.
	As of Monday morning, Matthews said most tanker companies were still willing to send their vessels through the shipping choke point, preventing a jump in prices.
	But if the Houthis continue their attacks in these particular areas, then things are going to get worse.
	Now, there are two ways to prevent those attacks in these areas.
	There's really only one way.
	The only way to prevent the attacks in the area is by blowing the pirates out of the water.
	That's really the only way to do that.
	Because you can pretend that if you just run away from the area that magically terrorist groups are not going to then attempt to do the same thing and grab money and ransom these ships, for example.
	But that's not true.
	So I'm glad that the Biden administration, as always late, is attempting to do something about this, but Again, cowardly foreign policy ends with much, much worse economic circumstances for American taxpayers.
	And you add on to that the fact that we are about to enter into the era of big taxes, and the weak foreign policy, high tax economy of the United States, which is very reminiscent of the 1970s, it's not going to be great.
	The 1970s were a time where we had overspent and we decided to recede on foreign policy.
	And the combination of those two factors led to much higher prices at home.
	It led to a stagnating economy.
	It led to people in gas lines.
	That could come back fairly easily.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, rich countries are raising more money from taxpayers than they have in decades to finance a burst of state spending as surging interest rates make borrowing less attractive.
	Tax revenues have risen to record levels as a share of economic output in a number of major economies, including France, Japan, and South Korea.
	The increases are worth hundreds of billions of dollars in additional revenue for governments that are navigating an array of new spending needs, from military priorities to industrial policy.
	So governments continue to spend, and in order to keep up with that spending, they're going to have to increase the tax revenue.
	In order to do that, they're going to have to jack up the taxes.
	It's something that Joe Biden has wanted to do for quite a while.
	Now, the United States has been able to rely on the fact that we are still the best bet on the block when it comes to our debt because we're still the strongest economy.
	There will come a point when that is no longer true.
	In fact, we are fast approaching that point when no one's going to want to actually buy U.S.
	debt because of the possibility that down the road we're not going to actually repay that debt or we're going to inflate our way out of it.
	And that means increases in taxes.
	In the 20-nation Eurozone, according to the Wall Street Journal, government spending will reach half of the region's economic output this year, according to the IMF.
	In the United States, state spending stands at 38% of GDP.
	In the entire GDP of the country, the country is now spending 38% of that on social services and such.
	New costs are coming down the track too, because the country and the West are getting older, We have baked into the cake extraordinary mandatory spending programs, and the only way to pay for that is to increase the taxes.
	You can try to grow your way out of it, but you're not going to grow your way out of it given the policies, the regulatory and business policies pursued by this administration.
	If you don't grow your way out of it, then you're not gonna be able to pay for any of this stuff without radically raising taxes or radically inflating the currency or both.
	And the Federal Reserve knows this, by the way.
	So right now, the stock market is a little bit disconnected from the Federal Reserve.
	So, the Federal Reserve announced the other day that they were not going to be raising the interest rates.
	And this was taken as a sign that inflation has been defeated in the United States, and the Federal Reserve knows it.
	And so pretty soon, they're going to start lowering those interest rates, which will make it easier to get a mortgage, it'll make your credit card rates go down, and all the rest.
	And people are getting very enthusiastic.
	Okay, well, I'm going to take that money, I'm going to put it right back in the stock market.
	That's kind of the basic idea.
	But the problem is, people are doing that now, in anticipation of the Fed lowering the interest rates.
	They're actually a little bit ahead of the market at this point, as Mohamed El-Erian is saying.
	Mohamed El-Erian is an excellent financial analyst.
	He is saying that if right now people are expecting the Fed to lower the interest rates and they don't lower the interest rates in the next year as much as expected, the stock market will drop.
	So again, Joe Biden's economy is on tensorhooks because of many systemic problems created over the course of decades and then exacerbated by Joe Biden.
	Now again, as we mentioned a moment ago, some of that exacerbation is being driven by events in the Middle East.
	Now the best way to guarantee the freedom of the seas in the Middle East is to, you know, not let pirates push you around.
	Is to not let the Iranians push you around in the region.
	And one of the best ways to not let the Iranians push you around in the region is that when one of the Iranian proxy groups commits the worst terror attack since 9-11, you let an ally of the United States completely destroy that terror group.
	That'd be an excellent way to throw Iran off of this, to push them back, to contain them, so to speak, without going directly to war with them, cutting off the arms of the octopus if you're not willing to go directly at the head.
	Israel, for its part, wants to do exactly that.
	Right now, Israel is attempting to push another Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, off their northern border.
	They want to prevent another conflict like the one that is currently happening.
	According to Axios, Israel told the Biden administration it wants Hezbollah's forces to be pushed roughly six miles from the border as part of a diplomatic deal to end tensions with Lebanon.
	The Biden administration is deeply concerned that escalating border skirmishes could lead to an all-out war that would be even worse than the Gaza conflict.
	And that, of course, is true.
	But if Israel is forced into a war with Hezbollah, Israel is not going to hold back.
	Israel is holding back in Gaza.
	They are.
	That's why they've got 131 dead soldiers over the course of the last couple of months in the Gaza Strip.
	That is not going to apply in an arena where Hezbollah is far better armed and has rockets capable of reaching the entirety of Israel.
	The Israeli government says publicly that in order to allow Israeli citizens to go back to their homes, the situation needs to change, either through diplomacy or military action.
	The tensions on the border with Lebanon were one of the main issues under discussion between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Galant in Tel Aviv.
	They want Hezbollah not to be allowed to go back to their positions along the border, which Israel destroyed in the last couple of months.
	Again, Israel, they have 30,000 citizens who are currently not living in their homes.
	They're not going to allow this to continue the way that it is.
	But one of the preconditions to a solid foreign policy is not wish-casting foreign policy.
	Unfortunately, the United States seems to be in the weird position of being half realist and half wish-casting.
	So on the realist side, Lloyd Austin, yesterday he was in Israel and he said he's not here to dictate timelines to the Israeli government.
	Regarding the timeline, this is Israel's operation, and I'm not here to dictate timelines or terms.
	Our support to Israel's right to defend itself is ironclad, as you've heard me say a number of times, and that's not going to change.
	It's critical, as I said earlier, that Hamas not be able to threaten Israel from Gaza Or even threaten Gaza anymore.
	Okay, but then Lloyd Austin starts his wish-casting.
	He says, Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people.
	Now, why does this matter?
	It matters because there's this weird idea that is prevalent in American foreign policy circles that the Palestinian Authority, run by Abu Mazen Mahmoud Abbas, who is an actual Holocaust-denying terror supporter, his actual government has law that pays people who kills Jews.
	Right now, there's this weird idea that the Palestinian Authority, which enjoys an extraordinarily low approval rating in the West Bank, where it has governed tyrannically for the last 20 years, Abu Mazen is now in the 17th year of a four-year term.
	They haven't held an election in 17 years.
	And if an election were held today, Hamas would win in the West Bank.
	This idea requires Israel to then make concessions to Iranian proxies that will then maximize their power again.
	Don't wish to cast foreign policy, folks.
	It's a bad mistake.
	Here is Lloyd Austin doing just that.
	Hamas is still holding hostages, including American citizens.
	Hamas embeds itself and hides itself behind innocent Palestinian civilians.
	Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people.
	And Hamas is determined to doom both Israelis and Palestinians to an unending cycle of suffering and strife.
	So all of that is true, except for Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.
	What evidence does he have that that's not the case?
	And if not Hamas, then who?
	And this weird idea that you can just hand over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority and this will somehow guarantee Israeli security and Palestinian security is totally insane.
	In just one second, we'll get to the other side of the aisle because Joe Biden obviously has very low approval ratings, but some Republican is going to have to beat him in order to take him out of the White House.
	First, holiday prepping, giant pain in the butt.
	It feels like there's not enough time in the day.
	Some people are just very, very difficult to shop for.
	Well, Black Rifle Coffee has a solution for you.
	Their December coffee of the month is a Costa Rican aribica coffee that delivers tasting notes of chocolate, citrus, and maple.
	Delicious.
	Black Rifle Coffee is a veteran-founded coffee company operated by principled men and women who honor those who protect, defend, and support our country.
	With every purchase you make, they give back.
	Stop running out of coffee.
	Sign up for a Coffee Club subscription to have Black Rifle Coffee delivered straight to your door on a schedule.
	Coffee Club subscribers receive their high-quality coffee at lower prices with free shipping.
	Plus, they get early access to exclusive deals and prices.
	Save money.
	Drink America's coffee.
	Go to BlackRifleCoffee.com.
	Use promo code Shapiro.
	Check out for 10% off your one-time purchase or first coffee club order.
	That's BlackRifleCoffee.com.
	Promo code Shapiro.
	Get 10% off.
	You can also find Black Rifle Coffee in grocery and convenience stores near you.
	Black Rifle Coffee is America's coffee.
	Go check them out right now.
	It's basically the only thing keeping our offices running.
	We got back very, very late last night from a holiday party.
	In Nashville, a lot of Black Rifle Coffee went into the veins of all of our employees over here.
	Black Rifle Coffee, go check them out right now.
	Also, our DailyWire Christmas sale is happening right this very moment.
	Get 30% off when you give the gift of DailyWire Plus for the DailyWire fans on your list this year.
	And yes, that includes access to our new kids app, BentKey, with over 20 titles and hundreds of episodes streaming right now that require no pre-screening because of all the content made for kids.
	It's a great gift for your kids with new episodes every single Saturday.
	It's the return of Saturday morning cartoons for your kids.
	We love all the attention Benkey has been getting with hundreds of five-star reviews from our users.
	Even the New York Times has an opinion on Benkey.
	Of course, a crazy opinion about how Chip Chilla is really bad and celebrates quote-unquote dead white people in American history like, you know, George Washington and Walter Cronkite.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Fathers in the home.
	That's bad, says the New York Times.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Fathers in the home.
	That's bad, says the New York Times.
	Well, download the Benkei app, access kids content anytime, anywhere on multiple devices.
	Whether you're home for the holidays or traveling to see friends and family,
	you can enjoy ad-free uninterrupted streaming to help keep the kids entertained.
	Speaking of the holidays, Benkei has some truly magical Christmas-themed episodes
	streaming right now, including a fan favorite, Gus Plus Us.
	If you haven't heard the Christmas song, The Greatest Gift from Gus Plus Us yet,
	take a quick listen.
	♪ Cause we've got joy when we've got each other ♪ ♪ And the reason for the season ♪
	♪ Is the time we'll spend with one another ♪ ♪ And all the lights this year will shine brighter ♪
	♪ Cause love came down and the spirit's here ♪ ♪ And we'll spend Christmas together this year ♪
	Again, that's from Gus Plus Us Christmas Special.
	It's streaming right now exclusively on BentKey.
	It's the best gift for your kids this year.
	My kids love BentKey.
	They watch BentKey every day.
	If you're a DailyWirePlus member, you already have full access to BentKey.
	If you're not, there's never been a better time to join the fight and help us reshape culture.
	Right now, give the gift of a DailyWirePlus membership for 30% off at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
	Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Donald Trump running a campaign against Chip Roy.
	We're going to have to bring back good Trump, bad Trump, because that's just the reality of Trump.
	Sometimes he says good things and sometimes he says bad things.
	Well, yesterday, he decided to once again attack Chip Roy, one of the most conservative members of the House Republican Caucus.
	He said, Has any smart and energetic Republican in the great state of Texas decided to run in the primary against Rhino Congressman Chip Roy?
	For the right person, he is very beatable.
	If interested, let me know.
	Let's just be very clear.
	Chip Roy is one of the best congresspeople in America.
	He's an excellent congressperson, deeply conservative.
	He's one of the people who pried concessions away from Kevin McCarthy.
	So if you liked those concessions, thank Chip Roy.
	Chip is, again, an excellent thinker, super conservative.
	Donald Trump doesn't like him because he did not go along with the idea that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
	And he's still pissed about it.
	And by the way, This is really stupid.
	When I say it's stupid, I mean it is technically stupid.
	The primary ballot is not open.
	It is too late to get on the primary ballot against Chip Roy.
	That's seven days after the Texas primary filing deadline passed.
	And which is, again, tweeting things or putting things out on Truth Social does not manifest them in the world.
	Now, this should be a point of annoyance for a lot of conservatives.
	It really should.
	But the biggest problem is that, again, conservatives, they basically trust Trump.
	They've watched him be president for four years.
	The policies that he promoted were pretty conservative.
	And so they've learned to basically discount anything that he says on truth social.
	Which means that there are not a lot of amazing lines of attack by his opponents in the Republican primaries against him.
	Ron DeSantis' line of attack was going to be, I am more trustworthy as a conservative.
	I'm the best conservative governor of your lifetime.
	And all of that is true.
	But if the baseline level of trust from the conservative public is very high for Trump, very hard to outflank him that way.
	This seems to be DeSantis' continued message.
	And again, in a primary held today, I vote for DeSantis over Trump and Haley.
	But DeSantis, this line of attack is not going to be fruitful against Donald Trump.
	He says Trump could have pardoned non-violent January 6th protesters, he chose not to.
	Out-peering Donald Trump is not going to work.
	Well, it's interesting on the January 6th protests.
	I mean, he called that rally knowing that that was going to be in D.C.
	where things could get potentially out of hand.
	And he's now saying he would do clemency for, I guess, the nonviolent.
	But he could have done that when he was president.
	He could have said, look, This was, he could have taken responsibility.
	He could have said that the people that went, not the violent people, obviously that's a different, different, it's a bird of a different feather.
	But on the people that were there just as protesters and kind of got caught up in it, he could have granted clemency to them and he chose not to because I think he was told that if he did that, he could potentially risk being convicted at a Senate impeachment trial.
	So the idea that now he's going to help people that were railroaded, he could have done that before he left office.
	Okay, so DeSantis is totally correct about all of this, of course, but that's assuming that the conservative public is deeply interested in Trump's policy positions, which they are not.
	Meanwhile, DeSantis is turning his guns on Nikki Haley, and he's saying that she exemplifies everything that Trump supporters oppose, which, again, is weird because she was the UN ambassador under Trump.
	Very pro-Trump throughout his administration.
	She's flip-flopped on Trump a little bit post his administration.
	He's not wrong about this.
	Again, if you look at the polls, Trump supporters are likely to shift.
	If DeSantis exits the race, they're not likely to shift to Haley.
	DeSantis' voters would move over to Trump in all likelihood.
	Which is, again, why both of these candidates are very unlikely to defeat Trump in the nomination fight, just speaking technically and looking at the polls right now.
	But here was DeSantis going after Nikki Haley yesterday.
	So she's not going to win a Republican primary.
	So what she's there to do is to take some votes from people who don't want Trump and really, I think, ensure that Trump has a better path to be able to go.
	Interestingly, Donald Trump, so Trump's core supporters do not like Haley because everything they claim they're against, establishment, globalism, liberal Wall Street donors, on and on, that's Haley, right?
	And yet when Trump is asked, Can you categorically rule out her as vice president?
	He will not rule her out as vice president.
	Now again, he is right about all of this, but is that line of attack going to bear fruit?
	Probably not in New Hampshire, where again, Nikki Haley is now in second place by a pretty significant margin.
	It'll be interesting to see what happens in Iowa.
	Meanwhile, Haley's angle on Trump continues to be that he's too old.
	And, you know, maybe that line works a little bit better.
	But the reality is that he's going up against Joe Biden, who's dead.
	So I'm not sure that line works either.
	This is the biggest problem.
	The most plausible line against Trump from December 2022 was he loses elections a lot.
	And because he loses elections a lot, you don't want to lose the upcoming election.
	But nobody was able to jump in in time to capture that message before Biden started sinking enough in the polls that now Trump is beating him in virtually every poll.
	Here's Nikki Haley going after Donald Trump yesterday.
	Now a clear second place, Nikki Haley, is behind Trump in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
	And on the heels of those new numbers, she's also launching a new ad, not hitting at her Republican rivals, but right at President Biden.
	I'll just say it.
	Biden's too old.
	And Congress is the most exclusive nursing home in America.
	Washington keeps failing because politicians from yesterday can't lead us into tomorrow.
	We need term limits, mental competency tests, and a real plan to defeat China and restore our economy.
	Okay, so obviously this is an ad against Biden.
	It's not really an ad against Biden.
	It's really much more about Trump, right?
	I mean, she's running against Trump in a primary.
	So when she says, too old, what she really means is Trump.
	Is that likely to end with Trump not winning the nomination?
	Again, I'm not seeing a lot of fruitful line of attacks against Trump at this point in the race, just technically speaking.
	But Trump is also not held to any of the same rules as normal politicians.
	He's literally out there attacking one of the best Congress people in America right now, and conservatives are like, meh.
	So I'm not...
	I wish I knew what to do about that.
	I honestly don't know the answer.
	Meanwhile, Democrats don't know what to do about Trump either, so they're just going with the Trump is Hitler routine again.
	So Douglas Brinkley, he's out there doing this routine.
	This is going to be them all the way up to the election, as I say.
	And let me just say something.
	No one in America thinks Trump is Hitler.
	No one thinks this.
	And there may be some crazed leftists who believe this.
	In reality, there's a column at the Washington Post yesterday that pointed this out.
	People actually look at Trump's policies and what he says on policy, and they're like, he seems like kind of a confused moderate.
	Like really, conservatives know that he did a lot of conservative things, but most people are pretty disconnected from politics.
	And here's what Donald Trump has said on major issues, major controversial issues.
	He has said on abortion, don't know what to do about it, we'll come to a universal consensus, which is a quote-unquote moderate position.
	It is not a pro-life position.
	He has said when it comes to things like giant entitlement programs, not gonna touch them.
	Terrible Paul Ryan, corrupt Paul Ryan, he wanted to touch, I'm not touching the entitlements.
	So that is a quote-unquote moderate position.
	When it comes to LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign issues, he's like, Caitlyn Jenner can use the girls' bathroom, totally fine with it, don't care.
	Every hot button issue, Trump has taken a quasi-moderate position.
	He is not, in fact, a hardcore conservative.
	And also, when people say he's an authoritarian, that's assuming a level of competence that he has not demonstrated in being an authoritarian.
	So, this kind of crap from Douglas Brinkley is not going to work.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, if you know the audio engineer field, it is typically not filled with joy and laughter.
	Our audio engineer, Mike Coromina, no exception.
	I've asked him to cheer up for, I don't know, it's been almost a decade at this point.
	He's not going to listen.
	He's just going to remain as dour as ever.
	But we love Mike for all of that because he's an excellent, excellent audio engineer, despite the fact that he is not exactly going to pep in your step with his personality.
	I see you, Mike.
	I see you.
	Well, this is why we need more.
	Listen, I love our Dower employees.
	They're some of my favorites.
	That's why we need more of you.
	And we're going to go to ZipRecruiter to get them.
	If you're a business owner and you need to grow your team, your perfect gift is simple.
	You want a smart hiring solution.
	Look no further than ZipRecruiter.
	Right now, ZipRecruiter is giving it to you for free at ZipRecruiter.com.
	Now, you might be asking how ZipRecruiter is a gift to people who are hiring.
	Good thing you asked!
	ZipRecruiter uses smart matching technology to identify the most qualified people for a wide variety of roles.
	ZipRecruiter lets top candidates know when they're a great match for your job to encourage them to apply.
	The bow on top?
	If you see a candidate who's a great match for your job, ZipRecruiter makes it easy to send them a personal invite so they are much more likely to apply.
	Get your hiring wrapped up quickly with ZipRecruiter.
	Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter will get a quality candidate within day one.
	Just go to this exclusive web address right now and try it for free.
	ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire.
	That's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
	ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire.
	Well, as I say, the Democratic proposal is that Donald Trump must lose because he's an authoritarian.
	And we don't like authoritarians, except for when Joe Biden is using his pen and his phone to try to mandate that 80 million people take a vaccination or lose their jobs.
	Then they like authoritarians.
	Or like when they try to just by dint of executive order, Get rid of hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt, and then the Supreme Court says no, and then they do it anyway, which is a thing that's literally happening right now.
	They've still been dispersing funds, I'm not kidding, in violation of Supreme Court ruling.
	Does that matter?
	The real authoritarians are people like Donald Trump.
	Again, look at that truth social and tell me that what you're seeing here is a burgeoning Mussolini or Hitler.
	Look at his truth social.
	Dude doesn't know how to capitalize right, guys.
	He misspells basic words.
	When he was President of the United States, his authoritarianism amounted to him saying things on Twitter that he then didn't do.
	But this is going to be there, like, no one thinks Donald Trump is this scary.
	Seriously.
	I'm sorry, like, even people who are suggesting that January 6th was a massive crisis level event for the problem, not just an ugly, horrible thing that happened, which I agree, ugly, horrible, bad images of people storming the Capitol building, hurting police officers and all the rest.
	That was not an existential crisis for the United States, not remotely.
	It was a bunch of dolts and some people who are, like, in good faith there and wandering the halls, who held up the procedure for, like, two hours.
	And then, that was it.
	But they're still going with the Trump-Hitler thing here.
	Poison, which has invaded the national body, especially the strong influx of foreign blood.
	That is from Mein Kampf.
	As a historian, Doug, what did you hear in the former president's remarks?
	I heard a former president who is jiving on fascism.
	There's no question about that being a line from Mein Kampf.
	He knows it.
	He's been dabbling in Adolf Hitler his whole life, keeps Hitler's speeches at a bedside.
	Mein Kampf seems to be the book that's inspired.
	Trump the most, so it's heinous because it's the kind of language meant to belittle people, dehumanize them, and when we're not making an anti-Trump comment when we're saying he is a fascist, guys, that really we're dealing with a fight in our country between democracy and fascism, and Trump's telling you that.
	He doesn't really mind the Hitler comparison because at heart he admires Hitler.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Like, really, who buys this?
	Seriously, does anyone buy this?
	Meanwhile, Eddie Glaude doing the same routine on MSNBC.
	MSNBC, the Trump is Hitler channel, as they say that Trump is tapping into long-standing illiberal tradition.
	Again, hearing people on the left talk about illiberal traditions as they simultaneously shut down free speech on campuses, tell people that they are not allowed to use biological pronouns, use the power of the pen and the phone to do whatever they damn well please.
	I'm having some trouble squaring the circle here.
	Remember, Nazi lawyers in the 1930s are actually looking to American law, anti-miscegenation law, immigration law, as examples.
	Manconf actually quotes the American project as an exemplary project.
	Remember in 1939, in Madison Square Garden, there's an extraordinary Nazi rally.
	So part of what Trump has done, he's tapped into a long-standing illiberal tradition Hmm.
	Hmm.
	By the way, some of the biggest supporters of Mussolini and Hitler in the early 1930s?

▲