Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Ben Shapiro On 'Lions & Scavengers' In America, Analyzing Societal Conflicts, Banning Abortion +More

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INTERVIEW: Ben Shapiro On 'Lions & Scavengers' In America, Analyzing Societal Conflicts, Banning Abortion +More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Every day up waiting, click your ass
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: up the breakfast club. You don't finish for y'all done morning.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy we
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: are to breakfast club. Lola Rosa is here as well.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: And we got a special guest in the building. Yes,
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: indeed we have Ben Shapiro.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Welcome.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate and doing okaying
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: all right? Yeah, thank god.
• 0:21
  Speaker 4: Ben's got a new book Outlines and Scavengers The True
• 0:24
  Speaker 4: Story of America.
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  Speaker 1: Very interesting read. You define the lion as.
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  Speaker 4: People who uphold biblical values, individual responsibility, and moral duty. Yes,
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  Speaker 4: and you contrast them with scavengers, who you say demand entitlement,
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  Speaker 4: blame systemic oppression, and lack purpose.
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  Speaker 1: Expound on that.
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  Speaker 3: Sure, So I think the basic division is not a
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: right left division.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 3: In the book, I actually tried really hard not to
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: turn it into a right left division because I don't
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  Speaker 3: think that it actually is. And I think it's also
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: an internal battle, insider on heart that we get up
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: in the morning and you have to decide, when you
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: face down the problems of the day, whether you're going
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: to be somebody who takes responsibility, does your duty, gets
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  Speaker 3: out of bed, and actually decides to do something meaningful world.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Or there can be somebody who looks at the problems
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: in your life, blames some sort of shadowy system and
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: then complains about that. Now, none of that is to
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  Speaker 3: claim that you know, there aren't systems that exist that
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  Speaker 3: are bad and that need to be fixed. But you
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  Speaker 3: need evidence and you need actual correctives to those systems
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  Speaker 3: in order to actually practically fix those systems. So the
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  Speaker 3: contrast that I'm making here is between people who decide
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  Speaker 3: that they want to build, you know, create social fabric,
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  Speaker 3: be innovative, be risk takers, and people who simply want
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  Speaker 3: to tear down and you see, you know, for example,
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  Speaker 3: it's some of these college protests, people who are marching
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  Speaker 3: together who have nothing in common except that they just
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  Speaker 3: don't like the system. And they don't even have a
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  Speaker 3: replacement for the system. It's just that the system itself
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  Speaker 3: must be to blame for all of their problems. So
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  Speaker 3: that that's sort of the basic contrast.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I know we just jumped out the window
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: for people that don't know who Ben Shapiro is. Let's
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: start from the beginning explain to people who Ben Shapiro
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: is and where you stought, where you came from, and
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: et cetera, so.
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  Speaker 3: They know, sure. I mean, my basic job is that
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  Speaker 3: I'm co founder of The Daily Wire, which is the
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  Speaker 3: second largest conservative media organization in the country after Fox News. Probably.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I have a podcast called The Ben Shapiro Show that's
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: about ten years old now and maybe the biggest conservative
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: podcast in the country. And you know my sort of
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: early beginnings where I grew up in Burbank, California. Thank God,
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: I had the highest form of privilege, which was fantastic parents,
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: and I grew up in a very small, like eleven
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: hundred square foot house with three sisters, one bedroom for us,
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: one for my parents, one bathroom for six people. And
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  Speaker 3: you know, I've been again privileged to live in the
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  Speaker 3: greatest country in the world. And so went to UCLA,
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: went to Harvard Law School. I've been doing commentary on
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: politics since I was about seventeen years old. I'm now
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  Speaker 3: forty one.
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  Speaker 2: So it got on the politics so early at seventeen.
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  Speaker 2: What did you see this as though, I want to
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: do this? So what didn't you like that made you
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: want to do Yeah?
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  Speaker 3: I mean I was always fascinated just by history, and
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: because I was a big reader, I skipped a couple
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: of grades. I went to college when I was sixteen,
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: and so because I loved reading, because I loved history
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: and politics, I just got very, very into it. And
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: you know, we live in interesting times now. I thought
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: they were interesting back when I was seventeen. It is
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: way more interesting insane now. I feel like an alternative
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  Speaker 3: timeline somehow spun off into into Elon's you know, fever dream,
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  Speaker 3: but it's a it's definitely a we're in a weird
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  Speaker 3: place now.
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  Speaker 2: Was it goal always to be a commentator or did
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: you want to jump into say I wanted to do
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: something at the White House or.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: No, it was always to be a commentator. I mean again,
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: from the time I was seventy. I had a syndicated
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: colum when I was seventeen years old, so at the
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: time I was the youngest syndicated commists in the country.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: I would say most of the dumb crap that I
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: said was between the ages of like seventeen and twenty five,
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: like most people. And I do have a running list
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  Speaker 3: on because so much of my you know, kind of
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: political career has been public from the time I was
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  Speaker 3: a teenager. I actually have a running list on our
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: website of all the dumb crap that I've said over
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: the course of my career, trying to either explain or
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: apologize for stupid things that I've said.
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  Speaker 4: You know, I think we should ever people listed it
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: just blame it on AI. Why would you ever do that?
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  Speaker 3: I think it's the honest way to go, right, I mean,
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  Speaker 3: better do that otherwise somebody uncovers it and uses it
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  Speaker 3: against you. Is you better? You may as well.
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  Speaker 1: I agree with that.
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  Speaker 4: But you know what, I always had a saying, live
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: your truth, so nobody uses your truth against you. And
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  Speaker 4: I call it the minem and eight mount there because
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: you know, at the end the MYM and M said
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: everything you know about himself that his opponent could say
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: about him, They're still gonna use it against your regardless.
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  Speaker 3: I mean that's definitely true, but there and so there
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: are certain statements where I'm like, yeah, no, I meant
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  Speaker 3: that when I when I wrote that in nineteen and
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  Speaker 3: then there are statements where I really think it was
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  Speaker 3: kind of dumb. And so I would like people to
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  Speaker 3: know that I think that it was dumb that I've
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  Speaker 3: changed my mind on things, you know, the biggest one,
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  Speaker 3: you think, Let's see, there was a there's a column
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  Speaker 3: that I wrote about civilian casualties when I was nineteen
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  Speaker 3: years old that was poorly articulated at best, talking about
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  Speaker 3: how the US Army should basically not take consideration of
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  Speaker 3: civilian casualties because I would rather, you know, protect American
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  Speaker 3: soldiers than worry too much about civilian casualties. It wasn't
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  Speaker 3: articulated in that way. I think the general principle of
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  Speaker 3: that is still you know true that that when you're
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  Speaker 3: when you're looking at American soldiers, obviously you have to value
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  Speaker 3: their lives and you have to make sure that they
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  Speaker 3: can actually engage in wars in ways that protect them
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  Speaker 3: because obviously we're American and our interest in America is
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: protecting America. But it was it was very poorly articulated.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: So that'd be a big one.
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  Speaker 1: Do you feel that way about the Israel Gazil war? Sure?
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  Speaker 3: Okay, I mean yes, I mean Israel. Again, I know
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  Speaker 3: a lot of people over in Israel, obviously, uh, And yeah,
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  Speaker 3: I know a lot of soldiers who have grave wounded
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  Speaker 3: going house to house and in the conflicts where clearly
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: I know Shaka right, well, what was the giveaway exactly?
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  Speaker 4: But but but you believe that so you understand why
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: people are upset about what Israel is doing.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I certainly understand that conflict is incredibly ugly,
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  Speaker 3: and when you look at pictures, particularly drone pictures of
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  Speaker 3: wrecked areas, then it's very I mean any conflict. I
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  Speaker 3: mean yes, although I will say obviously that that I
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  Speaker 3: believe that that Israel has been as meticulous as any
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  Speaker 3: army in history in terms of its its tactics in
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  Speaker 3: urban warfare, and the numbers bear this out. And again
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  Speaker 3: I know people who have had their legs blown off
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  Speaker 3: going specifically house to house when Israel had complete air superiority.
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  Speaker 3: If Israel just didn't care about civilian casualties, they were
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  Speaker 3: leveled the place October eighth, and they did not. They've
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  Speaker 3: been going house to house, they've been moving populations. Obviously,
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  Speaker 3: all this is ugly. There's no such thing as a
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  Speaker 3: pretty war, particularly in an urban environment. And could things
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  Speaker 3: be done differently or should they be done differently in
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  Speaker 3: case by case situations? I'm sure yes, I mean again,
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  Speaker 3: war is very ugly, but the sort of large scale
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  Speaker 3: accusations that have been made that Israel doesn't care about civilians,
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  Speaker 3: or that Israel has been attempting in a ginocide that's
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  Speaker 3: just factually untrue.
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  Speaker 2: I was gonna ask you, you've been in media.
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  Speaker 3: It seems like these days you.
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  Speaker 2: Don't know who to trust in media, right, because it
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: seems like media gets it wrong, and we see it
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  Speaker 2: all the time with reputable sources. So what do you
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  Speaker 2: say to those people, because we don't know what to
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  Speaker 2: believe anymore, especially if it's something that we don't necessarily
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  Speaker 2: know one thousand percent.
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  Speaker 3: So what I say on my show all the time is, actually,
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  Speaker 3: you should listen to I'm a conservative. You should listen
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: to my show, and then you should listen to a
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: show coming from the other side, and where we are
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: saying the same thing that's usually the core of fact
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  Speaker 3: and everything else's opinion, and then you can sort of
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: determine for yourself whether you think one opinion is more
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  Speaker 3: plausible than the other. I obviously agree with me, and
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  Speaker 3: so I tend to think that my opinions are well
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  Speaker 3: grounded in evidence, in fact. But obviously have a lot
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  Speaker 3: of friends who are on the other side of the
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  Speaker 3: aisle who believe exactly the same thing. And so I
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  Speaker 3: think that the best way to actually achieve your own
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  Speaker 3: sense of understanding of the facts is to listen to
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  Speaker 3: a wide variety of sources and then try to come
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  Speaker 3: to a conclusion that is mostly based in the evidence.
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  Speaker 1: And you can well, you know, that's interesting. I want
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  Speaker 1: to go back to your book in a second.
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  Speaker 4: But I'm glad you said that because you don't think
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  Speaker 4: what's happening in God is a genocide.
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  Speaker 1: Correct, Okay, but the world's.
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  Speaker 4: Leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is
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  Speaker 4: committing genocide and God that based off the pure definition of.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's not actually, if if you read their actual study,
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  Speaker 3: it's not based on the Quoe unquote pure definition of genocide.
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  Speaker 3: They don't actually even define genocide in the document. And
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  Speaker 3: they basically went out to their membership, but they didn't
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: go out to the entire membership. They went out to
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  Speaker 3: generic membership. It is very easy to join the International
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Association of Genocide Scholars. In fact, there were several people
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  Speaker 3: yesterday who just signed up and were immediately admitted, even
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  Speaker 3: though they have no actual background in genocide. The question
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  Speaker 3: is not whether some sort of coterie of people who
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  Speaker 3: call themselves experts in an issue are quote unquote experts
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  Speaker 3: on the issue. The question is whether the definition is met.
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  Speaker 3: The definition of genocide is not met in Gaza by
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  Speaker 3: any stretch of the imagination. And you can cite to me,
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  Speaker 3: you know a group that I hadn't heard of until
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  Speaker 3: two seconds ago, and nobody had heard of until two
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  Speaker 3: seconds ago, that voted in a particular way. That doesn't
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  Speaker 3: make a difference definitionally.
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  Speaker 1: So what does a genocide do.
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  Speaker 3: A genocide is the attempt to forcibly destroy an entire population,
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  Speaker 3: which is not what has happened.
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  Speaker 4: So it's not the attacks on like the personal facilities
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  Speaker 4: needed for like survival, like healthcare and educational institutions.
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  Speaker 3: Well, Israel has shipped in more humanitarian aid into the
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  Speaker 3: Gaza Strip than literally any army to in a population
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  Speaker 3: that supports the enemy in literally all of the human history.
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  Speaker 3: They've been shipping in about forty four hundred calories per
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  Speaker 3: day per person into the Gaza Strip in the middle
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: of a war in which the enemy is holding actual
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: Israeli hostages underground, who, as we've seen from some of
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  Speaker 3: the pictures, are actually starving. Again, none of this is
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: to claim that the war is pretty or meticulous for anodine,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: because it isn't. It's really, really, really ugly. But over
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: the course of the about three percent of the Gosmen
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: population has been killed or wounded. If you're going to
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: look at an actual genocide, obviously the prototypical case being
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: the Holocaust, you're looking at fifty percent of the entire
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: Jewish population in Europe destroyed. If you're looking that other
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: attempted genocides, say the genocides in rwand, you're hung about
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: extraordinarily high percentages of the population that are wiped out.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: You certainly are not seeing procedures that require four layers
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: of actual legal authority in order to do a drone strike.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: I've actually seen the tape of them doing this in Israel.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: They actually, if they spot from the air a terrorist
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: who is going into a particular civilian area, you hash
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: to take a full minute where the pilot on the
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: drone calls up the legal authority, who then calls up
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: the higher legal authority to get clearance for the actual
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: drone strike, and they will call off the drone strike
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: if they believe that the military target is too costly.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: In terms of civilian casualties, and Kamas knows this, which
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: is why they're hiding among civilians. In fact, the best
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: proof that this is not, in fact a purposeful genocide
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: is the fact that Kamas is hiding behind civilians. The
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: reason you hide hind civilians is because you know your
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: enemy doesn't want to kill civilians. If you believe your
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: enemy doesn't care about killing civilians, wouldn't hid among civilians.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: That wouldn't be a defense mechanism.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Do you think Israel needs a regime change?
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  Speaker 3: It's I mean, Israel's a democracy. They've had I think
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: five elections in the last four years. There probably will
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: be election again in March. I do not think that
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Israel would be conducting this war very differently if there
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: were somebody else in power. And I actually know every
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Israeli prime minister for the last ten years, including the
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: ones who are on the opposite side, people like, yeah,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: you're a Lapeede who's on the opposite side, or enough
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: Tolly Bennet, wh's on the opposite side.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: And you were just talking earlier, you said about people
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: that don't necessarily have the same beliefs of thoughts that
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: you have, and that was a big conversation. When Trump
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: came into office, people were saying, I can't speak with
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: you, you can't be my friend, you can't come to my
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: house because I don't believe what you believe.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: How do you feel about that?
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's insane. It's totally insane. I
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: have a lot of friends who are on the other
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: side of the aulehavoaded for Kamala Harris, who voted for
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: Joe Biden in twenty twenty. I think the real question
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: is whether you know we are going to I think
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: that there are people for whom you can't a conversation
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: because motivations for the conversation are so different that it's
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: not possible to actually have a productive conversation. And they
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: are just so many breaths in your life that you
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: have and wasting your breath When you're on your deathbed,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: do you really want to be thinking about those two
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: hours that you spend talking to the person who is
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: just arguing right past you or or you know? And
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: then there are conversations where you disagree on the proper solutions,
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: you may even disagree on the goals, but you can
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: have like a good conversation without doubting the good heart
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: of the person who's talking to you.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: You you talked about I like the lines of scavenges analogy, right,
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: But I want you to expound on it because you
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: say it's not a political thing, it's not a race thing.
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: Do you feel like that could be an overly simplistic
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: way of analyzing these societal conflicts though, because all of
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: those things play a role.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, so any bindaria is going to oversimplify. Anytime
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: you say there's two types of people X and Y, right,
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: then that's always going to be an oversimplification for in
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: the most in the most part, as far as you
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: know the complex factors that the factor into a conflict,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: of course, you have to analyze those to determine whether
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: it's being driven by envy or whether it's being driven
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: by a legitimate grievance. Right, And so I think that
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: some people can have a goal that is driven by
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: a legitimate grievance, and some people can have a goal
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: that's driven by envy. I think frankly, politicians in particular
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: are they have a very great understanding that envy is
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: an amazing way to get people out of the bolls.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Like really an amazing way, or if you're a dictator,
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: being envious of the neighboring country is an amazing way
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: to get people really, really motivated. And so you can
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: channel people's grievance into a belief that they should hand
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: you power so that you can go and do things.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: And I don't think that's unique to one side of
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: the political out at all. In fact, I think you
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: see politicians do this legitimately all the time. And again
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: that doesn't mean that the people at the sort of
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: the bottom level of politics, the normal voter, doesn't have
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: a grievance. The question that I think that we all
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: ought to ask ourselves, and this is true everywhere from
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: your personal life to politics, is whether that grievance is
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: justified by the evidence, and what is the change that
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: you would seek to make specifically that would actually rectify
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: that grievance, Because I think that one of the dangers
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: is that people have a grievance they say this thing
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: is unfair. Therefore the entire system is corrupt and we
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: need to abolish the entire system. And one of the
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: main differences between what what G. K. Chesterton would call
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: it conservative and somebody who's not conservative is that that
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: somebody who's not conservative, he famously uses this analogy, walks
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: across a field, sees an old fence in a field
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: and says, I don't know why this fence is here,
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: and immediately starts up brooting the fence. And a conservative
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: what I would say is somebody who's even common sensical,
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: forget the politics, looks at the fence says I probably
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: should research why somebody put the fence here in the
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: first place, and then maybe we remove the fence. And
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: I think that as a society, we've gone directly to
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: let's just remove every fence because I'm angry at what's
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: happening in my life, and you're going to throw a
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: lot of babies out with a very small amount of bathwater.
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: What about if that fence, though, has been blocking the
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: person that decides that wants to remove it from whatever's
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: on the other side for like years, in generations and generations,
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: and whatever's on the other side, they actually need it
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: to live, survive, thrive, so then they want to remove it,
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: regardless of why was originally put there.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, So, as I say, I think that there there
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: are definitely fences that need to be removed and what
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: I've said in my entire career is if you can
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: show me a fence that is actually blocking people from success,
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: then I'll join you in trying to uproot that fence.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: But I need like an exact and specific explanation for
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: why there is this cause and effect and how removing
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: the fence isn't going to do less damage than leaving
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: the fence in place, because there are unintended consequences to
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: changing public policy, and obviously it doesn't mean public policy should
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: remain unchanging. There are tons of public policies that I
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: think should be changed all over the place. This is
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: an argument against change. It's an argument in favor of
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: caution and also in favor of us all kind of
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: being reflective about why we are doing the things that
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: we're doing, Meaning are we doing this because I have
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: a problem in my life that I just don't want
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: to solve, and so it's easier to blame sort of
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: a shadowy system where I can't name the specific problem,
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: or do I have a problem that really I should
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: try solving first before I start kind of wrecking the systems.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: By the way, it's a good rule again for life.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: There's a great book called Good to Great About Business,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: in which the author his name is Jim Collins, talks
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: about the difference between successful business leaders and unsuccessful business leaders,
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: and he calls it the difference between mirror people and
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: window people. And what he says is that successful business
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: leaders they have a problem and they look in the
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: mirror and they say, what can I change? What can
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: I do to make this better? And unsuccessful people they
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: have a problem and they look at the window and
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: they say, what out there is making it so that
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: it's impossible for me to succeed. Again, that's not an
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: argument that sometimes there is something outside the window, but
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: for sure, But I think that as human beings, our
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: first move should be, particularly in the freest, most prosperous
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: country literally in the history of planet Earth, our first
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: move should be for most of our problems, not all,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: but most of our problems should be like, what can
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: I do differently to fix my life? Because many of
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: the I think the most energizing aspect of being an
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: American is the idea that you actually do have the
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: capacity to change your life. And I think that any
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: politics that is rooted in this feeling of enervation and
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: kind of like marinating and nothing I do can get
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: me ahead. Nothing I do is going to change where
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: I am. I think the vast majority of cases that
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: really is not true. I think in the vast majority
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: of cases, we can all make better decisions that change
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: our lives.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a and you talk about this
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: in the book a lot.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I think there's a difference between practicing victimhood and actually
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: being a victim. You know, you're a Jewish person, I'm
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: a black man. We've actually been victims of a system.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: Yes, I mean, and again, I think that those systems
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: can be changed, but I think that it is very
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: important that we Again, I think it's a great distinction
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: between actual victim because you can name times when you've
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: been a victim, and you can name the systems that
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: have made you a victim and how they've made you
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: a victim. And the more specific we are, the more
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: we can agree. I found that in politics, where the
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: big disagreements tend to happen are at the very abstract level,
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: when you get down to the material and you say, Okay,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: you know this guy is a bad guy and this
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: person just did X to me, Well, okay, that person
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: should be arrested, right, we all agree that person should
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: be arrested or what just happened is really bad and
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: we should change this specific thing. But again, I think
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: that the goal in a lot of politics is what's
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: called semantic overload. You use terms that can be differential
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: interpreted by both sides to sort of signal to one
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: side one thing and signal to one side the other thing.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: Black Lives Matter is a great example of this, where
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: black lives matter. Obviously that's true. Obviously it's true that
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: black lives matter, But what do you mean by black
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: lives matter? And so one side we'll read from that
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: we're just saying that black people should be treated exactly
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: the same as anybody else and should not be systemically
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: discriminated against, And the other side will read from it
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: what you're saying is that black people deserve some special privileges,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: or you're making the argument that America is deeply and
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: systemically racist and every discrepancy between black people and white
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: people in outcome is due to the system. Right, And
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: it means both of those things, but it depends on
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: who's using it and how, and so being very specific
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: in how we use our words and asking clarifying questions like,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: what do you mean by that? Can you be more specific?
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Is a better way to do politics. It's the conversation
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: we're just having about genocide. Let's define what genocide means,
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: and then we can actually determine whether we think that
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: is a thing that is happening, whether there's an intent
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: to do it. If we just say genocide and kind
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: of throw that out there and people were saying that
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: word for example October eighth, like before Israel had even responded,
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: then if you do that, then all you end up
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: doing is making the conversation dumber and everybody more angry.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's inthroessent about that.
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: I can usually tend to see both sides, meaning like
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: I can understand why people say it's a genocide, but
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: then you know, I can understand why people initial stitate
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: this is just us defending ourselves and an act of war.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: And as you said, you know there's a lot of casualties,
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: civilian casualties that happen in acts of war, but you
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: don't really know that if you don't talk to people
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: on both sides.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right, And
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: again I think that genocide in that particular context. There
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: are words that people use to express outrage that don't
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: necessarily the definition doesn't fit up with the word. I
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: think when people say genocide, generally what they mean is
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: I'm very angry at what's happening and I wish it
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: would stop. And so they throw out genocide because the
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: worst thing they can think of, because if you say that,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: then maybe Israel should stop. And you know, again, I
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: think that you can empathize with that, because I think
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: everybody wants to stop, including by the way, the Israelis
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: who would love for Hamas to surrender their weapons, stop,
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: walk away and the war ends. I mean, I promise
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: you that in Israel, where they're drafting every eighteen year
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: old kid, every eighteen year old kid in Israel goes
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: to the military, and they've been doing this for generations,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: that is not something that anyone wants to do. That's
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: not something where it's like you wake up in the
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: morning at eighteen year like you know what I'd love
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: to do. I'd go, I really really want to go
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: patrol Enganine, like nobody is doing that over there, Like
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: everybody would love for this thing to come to an end.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: But again, I think that that using words imprecisely is
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: the enemy of agreement and truth.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean yeah, I get yeah, I understand what
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: you're saying, because you know, like you could get caught
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: up in just arguing that as opposed to arguing, hey,
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: all of this is fucked up?
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Yes, oh, and how do what's the solution then? Right,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: what's the solution? How do we get to the end
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: of it? Because once you actually start clarifying that stuff,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: you realize what a difficult situation this is. I think
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: that very often because politics is difficult and complex. In
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: order to avoid the conversation of how should we solve this,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: which is a hard conversation and sometimes a boring conversation,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: it's much more fun to discuss is it genocide? Is
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: it not genocide? Do black lives matter?
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Do?
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: Is it all lives matter?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: It's more fun and interesting and I see conversation. Then,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: what are these specific things that the police department should
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: do in order to, for example, prevent police excesses? That's
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: like a very specific conversation, and it usually ends up
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: at a city council meeting, right, But in the business
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: that we're all in where we're talking about these issues.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: It is much easier to do diagnostics of the problem
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: in broad terms than to do actual prognosis, like what
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: do we do next, what's the thing we should all
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: pursue in order to fix the problem.
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: I saw you getting caught up in that a little
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: bit on Abby Phillis though, and y'all were debating about.
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: I think it was Chicago, DC.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it diss of.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: People saying, hey, we we approve of what was it?
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: The crime, the way that they're reducing the way that
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: they're using the way that they're reducing crime in DC.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, by having the troops on the ground.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So I mean I think that the question
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: as to whether the crime has been reduced by National
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Guard troops on the ground in DC.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: The crime has being reduced prior to that, though it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Was, and then it was reduced more, and so the
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: question is you know why, And the answer typically is
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: that when people see law enforcement in places they don't
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: do as many crimes. That the question is whether that
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: can be an indefinite solution in Washington, d C. And
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: that's also a very different question between Washington, d C.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: And Chicago. One of the things that they came up
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: very briefly in that Abbey Phillips panel was what should
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: be done in Chicago, And one of the things that
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: I said is I don't think that the President has
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: the authorities just send the National Guard into Chicago to
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: actually just police crime, right, that is illegal under the
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Possi Committatus Act. There are things he can do legally
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: that like, for example, protect ice facilities, which is what
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: they were allegedly doing in California. One of the things
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: that I think the President is doing that's actually quite
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: smart now is he's shifting to red states. So yesterday
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: he announced that he might not do Chicago after all.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: He might instead do New Orleans and Shreveport, which is
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: smart because he can do that with the permission of
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: the governor. Right the governor is a red state governor.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: But the only problem with Dad, though, is he's going
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: to go into these red states and probably go into
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: these cities that have black maris and large black populations
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: and overpolice them. And that's not what those cities are
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: towns need, Like, those cities and towns need actual resources
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: because as you just said, these are like temporary solutions
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: for a long systemic problem.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Well, so I think they need both, and I think
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: that when it comes to crime, and New York City
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: is a great example of this, you actually need to
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: lower the crime rates to draw investment.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: One of the big problems with investing in high crime
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: areas is that people don't want to do it. They're
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: afraid that if they take their money they put into
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: a grocery store and there's a lot of shoplifting in
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: that area, then the store goes out of business.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: It's another kind of investment I'm talking about.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: I'm talking about economic opportunity, job training programs, I'm talking
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: about small business investment, early intervention program I'm talking about
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: you know, proper mental health services.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Those are the type of investments I'm talking about. It.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: I'm not antipe any of those community right now, I
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: agree with that, But but if you're talking about like
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: how a community actually grows and thrives and becomes self sustaining,
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: it can't do it off public dollars indefinitely. And so
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: you do need an enormous amount of private investment to
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: make areas better.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: This is what actually Van Jones was talking about on
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: the show when he was talking about opportunity zones. Right.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Originally this was the idea that was put forth by
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: the Trump administration in Trump Administration Number one, that there
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: would be particular areas where basically there would be tax
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: incentives to invest in the in these areas. It's definitely
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: an interesting idea. I think the reality is that you
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: may not need that if the crime rates get low enough.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: And so the goal would be that you lower the
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: crime rates enough so that people feel comfortable investing their
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: own private dollars in building businesses in these areas, providing
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: jobs in these areas, because again, as somebody who invests,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: you know, a fair bet I would rather invest in
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: a low crime area than a high crime area. And
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: that's not a racial thing. That is just that is
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: just a basic investment procedure. Right, If you're gonna set
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: up a store, you're going to set up a store
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: in a place where it's less likely to be robbed.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: What if the government investing in mentorship and after school
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: programs and mental health and addiction.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Services like to me, like those are the type of
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: things you have.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: To change the people in a community as opposed to
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: just you know, putting a bunch of businesses there. Because
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: if you put a bunch of businesses there, and it's
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: still a bunch of you know, poor and disenfranchised people,
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: not just financially but emotionally and mentally spiritually.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: That's not gonna change it.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think that the government has spent
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: an awful lot of money and taking an awful lot
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: of time with things like mentorship and after school programs.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: I think the results are at best mixed from the
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: social science data. The best studies that I've seen on this,
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: there's a great sity by rolland Fryer over at Harvard
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: in which you talked about what you really Mentorship is
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: definitely a thing. You definitely need more men in communities,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: and they don't necessarily have to be the fathers of
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: the kids you need more. What the study showed is
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: that even kids of single moms who are growing up
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: in communities with high levels of male involvement did find
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: they did well. Where you really have a problem is
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: where there are not enough male models, particularly for young males,
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: because young males tend to be significantly more destructive to
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: the community when they don't have dads than young females.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: That there are real problems with not having a dad
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: in the home for girls as well, but it's a
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: different set of problems than it is for young men
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: who tend to externalize that in the form of crime,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: for example. And so you know, I think that one
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: of the things that I've also talked about is that government,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: and this is where you get into the love on
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: intended consequences. When government intervenes in a lot of these ways,
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: it tends to supplant some of the actual organic institutions
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: that used to do this sort of thing. So I'm
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: a big advocate.
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: Most places still exists. I just think that's sometimes they
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: lack funding. Like there's every problem that we're talking about.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: I promise you as an organization in every single community.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: That you know caters today, but they just lack funding
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: and a lot.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: Of well, I think that's true. I also think that
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: the number one institution that used to helps all these
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: problems with church, and as levels of church going go down,
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: that is a major problem because the nice thing about
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: a church is that when a church, anagogue, or any
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: other religious institution gives charity, then there's also skin in
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: the game for the person who's receiving the charity. You
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: actually have to buy into the system in order to
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: receive the charity to a certain extent, because you're a
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: member of the community, you also know the person who
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: you're receiving the money from. That person is a person
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: you sit next to in the pews, and so government
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: can't really be a substitute for that, just in terms
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: of like cutting a check. And so I do like
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: this is something that Bush and Obama and other presidents
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: have done, was trying to do a private public partnership with,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: for example, churches to ensure they have the funding to
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: do this sort of stuff. But there does need to
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: be a cultural reshift toward the social value of getting
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: together in places that are not online. I think the
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Internet sent an awful lot of damage. I think that
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: the atomization of our society, where everybody kind of sits
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: in their own room ever get together with other people,
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: is really, really, really bad. I'm in a very involved
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: in a good community, and one of the beautiful things
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: about a highly involved in agog or church community is
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: that a lot of the lines that we talk about
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: go away. And this is what Robert Putnam and Harvard
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: scholar and not on my side of the political aisle,
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: has said. He says that that if you actually want
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: to build social fabric in community. What you need is
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: a common goal, and you need people getting together, like
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: in person, socially, and that's what churches tend to do.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: And that's that's really really important. I don't think that
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: any sort of government, you know, artificial alternative, is going
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: to be able to do all of those things. And community, yes, community,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: And this is where I get back to, like, these
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: are all choices that we can make personally. Right, we
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: can make the choice like today, whether we want to
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: go to church on Sunday, Right, we can all make
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: that choice, right, And when it comes to our relationships,
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: we can all make the choice as to whether we
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: would like I mean, with rare exceptions, obviously there are,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: but most people can make the choice as to whether
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: to get pregnant out of wedlock. I mean, like, these
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: these are choices that we all can make. And we
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: need to teach our kids because if we do that
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: then their lives will be better, and if we don't
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: do that, then their lives will be worse.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Can you believe in bandon abortions? Right?
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: I'm pro life, yes, even in cases of incests and
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: rate yes. Why because this is a sort of a
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: fundamental definitional question. If you believe life begins at conception,
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: then regardless of the source of the life, it now
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: has an independent interest in life. So that is not
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: to minimize the tremendous evil of rape or incests. I
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: believe rape should be executed frankly or chemically castrated at best.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: But you know that that's sort of a different question
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: from the independent source of life and whether whether this again,
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: it gets back to definitions, and this conversation tends to
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: be either you're on one side of that or the other.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: If you don't believe life begins at conception, then obviously
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: you believe abortion is acceptable in a wide variety of circumstances.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: If you believe it's an independent life deserving of protection,
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: then you believe it's an independent life deserving of protection.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Or what do you think about that? I'm just one.
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: I think that a woman should be able to choose
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: to do what she wants to do wherever she decides
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: to do it. I personally, I believe that women should
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: be able to abort babies if they want to, if
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: they feel like that's what they need to do.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Do you have a time limit on that? Out of curiosity.
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think it should happen earlier on if
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: it were me making a decision for myself. But I
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: think it's up to the woman and what she's personally
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: experiencing and what she personally went through. I really think
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: it's a per person thing. That's why I think it's
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: crazy when you have like these structures and these like
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: people who are not in that situation making the decision
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: for the woman of what you can and can't do,
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: because it's very like, per person, my situation might be
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: different than another woman who's it next to me.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Right, So again, this is sort of the definitional issue
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: that we're talking about, because you're talking about what a
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: woman should be allowed to do, and what I'm talking
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: about is the definition of personhood of the separate person
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: inside the woman. I think that what I push on
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: is why do you personally believe that women should have
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: an abortion earlier?
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: I think, just from personal experience I've been in this situation.
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: I just think emotionally and mentally, it's less that you
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: think about, but it does depend on how you think
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: of when the life life is formed or you know,
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: should be looked at as like a life that you right.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: So that's that's that I think is the big question,
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: and that's where the disconnect is.
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: So so, but that what I'm saying is that that's
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: always going to be different for each person.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: But I don't think that the subjective definition of life
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: is how we define life. Meaning that you being uncomfortable
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: with a woman having an abortion in the ninth month,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: you're saying that just because you're uncomfortable with it, that
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that you should stop a woman from doing that.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: My point is that life has a definition.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: We all agree, for example, that a one month old
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: baby should not be drowned. We all agree on that,
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: and that's not up to the personal maybe and drowned
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: about them?
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: And the question is, well, why because we now understand
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: that the one month old baby. Everyone agrees with this,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: right except for Peter Singer at Princeton, that a one
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: month old baby has an independent interest in life, right,
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: That is a life that is that is separate from
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: the woman and requires protection. Okay, So if it is
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: a life, then we now have an objective definition. Doesn't
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: matter what the state of mind of the woman is,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter if she thought, you know what, I have
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: a really tough life. My life will be better off
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: if this baby is drowned, if I don't have to
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: deal with this baby, and so I'm gonna drown the baby.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: That the baby has an independent, actual interest in living.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: And so the question becomes is that true before birth?
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: And I think for the vast majority of Americans are
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: actually somewhere where you are, practically meaning that the vast
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: majority of Americans do see in sort of a soft way,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: a distinction between you know, the early stages of life,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: you know, month two and nine month. Right, Like, the
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: approval in America of abortion at the very late stages
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: is very, very low because most.
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: Americans stops around like four or five months for most people,
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: right Well.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: I mean most abortions are performed in the in the
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: first time. Yes, yes, But the point that I'm making
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: is that the logic that you're using allows for abortion,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: like literally right before the baby is born. So then
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: the question becomes why is that Okay? And it's not
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: a woman's choice at that point, whether that is a
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: life or not, because you don't get to artificially or
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: subjectively define the meaning.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Of the thing.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: See that's fact, it's not semantic. It's a life or
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: it's not a life.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Right, your daughter was written it's almost like you're saying,
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: she rape, but I'm gonna make her have this child.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: No, I mean, as you say, you don't believe in
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: abortion even if rape and incests. Right. What I'm saying
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: there is that I don't believe in abortion in case
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: of rape and incest. The practical effect is horrif horrible. Okay,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to pretend that it is not emotionally
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: horrifying that particular situation. The question is whether it has
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: an independent interest in life or not, and whether there's
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: a third party involved. If you don't believe there's a
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: third party deserving a protection, I totally get it. I
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: get it, but we should we should understand. That's the
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: actual conversation. The actual conversation is about whether you believe
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: that this is an interested third party being. Do you
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: get to kill that interested third party being, this human
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: life with potential or do you not? If you and so,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: the actual argument that I don't like is the idea
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: that you can that everybody it's up to every single
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: person to define when life begins and when life does
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: not begin. That that actually is not true, right, there's either
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: a standard or there's not a Now you can say
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: that that life begins when the baby is independent of
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: the mom. I think it's a very dicey biological argument,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: and I think most Americans agree with that, that that
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: life only begins when the baby.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Exits I think the heartbeat.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so I think that's where most Americans are.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: And that's extremely early, right. And so if that's extremely
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: if the life begins with the heartbeat, then you're now
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: talking about, depending on your definition of a heartbeat, somewhere
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: between six and ten weeks, right, very very very early.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: And so if that is now has an independent interest,
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: you're talking about abortion restrictions very early on. And so
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: that's why you know a lot of red states of
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: heartbeat laws for example. And so again I think that
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: the clarity is good, right, because now we can have
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: a conversation where do you think life begins? And that's
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: a better conversation than the sort of assumption by I
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: think people who are not pro life that it's just
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: about controlling the woman's body. No, it isn't, Okay, it
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: really is not. Like for pro lifers, it has literally
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: nothing to do with the woman's body. It has to
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: do with the independent interest of the life inside the
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: woman and how you define that.
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: We want you to find it once you define it,
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: dependent on your definition. It does control what a woman
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: can and can't do with their body.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Well, they're downstam affects definitions of course, right. I mean,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: if I define life as it begins at a heartbeat,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: then that is going to have public policy ramifications that
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: affect just as in anything else. If I define theft
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: in a particular way, that's going to have downstream effects
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: on people who commit that definition of the crime. And
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: if I broaden the definition, it's going to include more people.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: And that's true for literally any legal term. It's true
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: for any word that we use in life. As you
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: expand the definition, it affects more people in different ways.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: But that doesn't change the necessity to have the conversation
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: about what the definition is. And I think it's an
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: easy way out to basically say, well, you know, I
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: have a definition of life. But and it gets into
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: very icy territory because historically people have defined to define
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: a way entire populations as not human and so we
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: can't do that, right, Like, you really don't want people
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: looking at other people and saying, well, by you know,
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: I don't think that this person I mean to take
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: them the obvious and most controversial example for a huge
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: percentage of American history, there was a wide variety of
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: people in America who believe black people were not fully
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: human in their contenslations, right, correct? And so the and
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: so was that a subjective question? That was not a
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: subjective question. Black people are fully human and just as
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: human as white people equal the same, right Like, and
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: so if somebody were to say, listen, I personally am
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: anti slavery. I think that slavery is personally wrong. But
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: it's really up to every person to define for themselves
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: whether a black person is fully a human or not
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: fully a human?
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: Like what the why don't think you can do things?
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: Why just because I think you know, if if I'm
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: making so, if you're a slave master, right, and you
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: say I believe slavery is right because black people aren't human, Like,
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: that's a decision that you're making that is based on
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: things like you know what the slaves can do for
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: you and your property, like the benefit of what slavery
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: will do for that slave masters? So different than if
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: a woman has to have a baby because she was raped,
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: and how that will affect her life Like that, I
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: think you have a decision that you can make a
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: lot easier.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: So almost like you force a woman twice, right, because
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: do I become a slave master?
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Try Jewish analogy?
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Sure? So, I mean, I mean sure so if there
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: was an entire population in Europe that was considered sub
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: human by the Nazis and they were exterminated. If you said,
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: I am personally against the extermination of the Jews, but
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: I understand why Germans could think the Jews are subhuman,
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: and so you know, it really is up to each
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: every individual to determine whether a Jew is human or
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: not fully human and can be put in the back
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: of a van and gas. We'd be like, what are
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: what in the world.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: What you're saying? There's to be no pro choice.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: In God, Yes, the definitions are not a matter of choice.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Definitions are a matter of actual objective fact. Otherwise we
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: can't even have a conversation because if words have meanings,
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: then we all have to agree on that at least
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: that right, that much we have to agree on is
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: the meaning of the words. And when it comes to
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: you know, so the slave master analogy. The point that
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: I'm making here is not about the personal experience of
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: the slave master. In fact, I'm saying it's completely irrelevant.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: What I'm saying is that the reason that slavery was
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: wrong is because black people are fully independent human beings
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: who require the protection of the law in the same
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: way as everyone else. If you're a pro lifeer, you
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: believe that's also true of the unborn.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, I understand what you're saying.
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: I'm a pro choice person, but I do wonder how
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: come pro life people aren't anti war?
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, because anti I think everybody is anti war.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: I think the question is is the definition of when
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: war is appropriate? I don't think I like, who's running
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: around going like war is awesome? Yes, more war, let's
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: So fifty thousand kids have been killed in God because of.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: This current depends on on the definitions and the list
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: that you're getting. Well, I mean, it also depends on
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: how you're defining kid, because the way that Hamas defines
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: kid is very different than how they define kid when
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: it comes to recruiting for Kamas. Right there, they are
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: fifteen year olds with with aks on the battlefield. Unfortunately,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: it is not fifty thousand.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Of the one.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you're talking about I you're talking about
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: very very small children, is much much lower than that.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: My point is there are children that are being.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: Killed, yes, who have died as collateral damage in the war.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Yet so shouldn't pro life would be totally against it?
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I'm against the death of any innocent
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: human being. The question is, when you're doing foreign policy,
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: how you prevent more deaths in the future. And the
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: point that I think Israel is making is this war
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: was off legislation.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: That's actually not a matter of morals and values or no.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: Well, of course, of course the matter of morals and values,
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: but you can't be Let's put it this way. It's
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: incredibly reductive to simply say that if you are a
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: moral person, then you oppose a war, because what that
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: does it allows immoral people to then use that against
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: you to destroy your civilization. If your community is attacked
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: and bad people who don't have the same values as
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: you decide to kill you, kill your children, rape your wife,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: and kill her, are you supposed to say, well, I'm
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: anti war and so I'm going to sit here and
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: do nothing.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: So isn't that the same if somebody rapes a woman
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: and impregnates them, shouldn't in that case that person be
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: allowed to make a choice.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: Well, no, The point is that the prevention that this
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: is why you should minimize civilian casualties. To get back
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: to the beginning of the conversation, this is why it's
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: it's independently moral to try as much as possible to
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: minimize civilian casualties. And when it comes to abortion, the
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: idea is you can minimize that casualty by just preventing it.
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: How can you being raped?
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean that's a different question again.
• 37:58
  Speaker 6: I let's talk about that because what I don't like.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Listen, first of all, when we're talking about when we're
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: talking about rape and abortion, we should note that well
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: over ninety nine percent of abortions are not undertaken because
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: of rape. And so if you want to come with
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: me and ban all abortions except for rape, I'll probably
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: make that trade for you. Meaning if you want to
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: ban all abortions, elective abortions, and what I have to
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: do is give up abortion with regard to rape and incest.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: That is, that is a trade on a pragmatic level
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: politically that I would make.
• 38:27
  Speaker 6: Okay, so you're not down on ahu.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: Well, it's not that. I mean, I believe that again
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: rape and incest. I think is the reason people choose
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: that argument is because it's the hardest argument to make
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: emotionally from the pro life side. But I think that
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: we should note that the vast majority of abortions have
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: nothing to do with raper incests.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: They have to do with election and abortions was that
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: you never got the wrong person pregnant.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: Jesus, I know my wife four times, thank God.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Oh okay.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: I also believe homosexuality and transgender is a mental illness.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: Is that no, So what I've said is that gender
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: identity disorder is a mental illness. I've not said that
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: about homosexuality homosexuality. And the reason that you can tell
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: that is because gender identity disorder is making an actual
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: false claim about the world. You're making a claim that
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: you are a woman or that you feel like a woman,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: which is unverifiable, and so that is making a false
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: claim about the world. A homosexual person is making the
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: claim that they are attracted to a person of the
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: same sex, which is not a false claim about the world.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: They are I assume. So the claim that I've made
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: from a sort of religious perspective with regard to homosexuality
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: is the same as the claim that I make with
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: regard to virtually all human behavior, which is that drives
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: are not behavior, meaning that you know, so people ask
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: me from a religious perspective, I'm obviously an orthodox stew
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: It's why I wear the honey hat. Right that from
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: a religious perspective, what do you make of homosexual activity and.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Kids? Right?
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: So, I'm anti same sex marriage, but I'm anti same
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: sex marriage because I believe that the fundamental basis of
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: the family is father, mother, child, and when it comes
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: to the actual thing that society is supposed to incentivize,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: it is that family structure. Now, I'm not in favor
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: of legislation that would punish people for homosexual activity, for example. Right,
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: that's silly, and the government should be involved in that.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: But saying that you're going to give a government benefits
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: to people based on quote unquote who they love, it
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: really isn't about that. It's about your trying to if
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: the government's to be involved at all, it's about attempting
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: to incentivize family formative structures. The government has pushed too
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: far in the other direction. Actually right, I mean this
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: is one of the big problems of many of the
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: welfare programs of the sixties, which explicitly you were meant
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: to benefit people who did not have a father in
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: the home and led to perverse incentives where people were
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: not getting married, specifically because the government was offering more
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: money not to get married.
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: I want to go back to your book because I
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: do I think I agree with your argument that NBA
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: is the driving force behind what you call the scavenger mindset,
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: like you describe it as an irresistible force that fuels
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: resentment and entitlement.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Did you expound on it, sure, I mean I think
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: that again, to go back to all of us, I
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: think we all have this problem in our lives. We
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: see people and we envy those people, and then instead
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: of doing something to make ourselves better, we actually make
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: ourselves worse in the process, or we attack systems that
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: we think are responsible for that and tear down those systems.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: I use the biblical story of Canaan Abele as sort
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: of the key load bearing story for this particular element. Now,
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: the story of canon Able, which I think is the
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: most elemental human story, is fascinating in the Biblical text
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: in Genesis, basically, God, it's actually Kaine's idea to initiate
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: sacrifices before God. Right, it's not Able's idea, it's originally
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Kaine's idea. Kine says, let's go sacrifice. He and his
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: brother able to go sacrifice God for some unspecified reason
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: accept able sacrifice, but not Kaines. And now God then
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: gives what would be called in Yiddish musserch mooves. He gives,
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: He gives him a He gives Cain a sort of
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: pick me up speech, and he says, listen, your sacrifice
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: wasn't accepted. You have two choices here right, Sin crouches
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: at your door. You can either give into it, or
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: you can or you can overcome it. And Caine doesn't listen,
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: and he decides that out of envy because his brother
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: succeeded and he failed, He's going to kill his brother, right,
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: first murder in human history according to the Bible. And
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: so the question is what is driving Kine? And what's
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: driving Kine is the fact that instead of saying what
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: could I do better? He kills his brother. This is
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: why if you look at the ten commandments. For example,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: all of the ten commandments have to do with behavior.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: There's only one that really has to There's only one
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: that bars actual emotion. It's the tenth Commandment, and it
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: says you're not allowed to envy your neighbor's property. Right,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: you can't envy your neighbor's wife is property. There's a
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: difference between saying, by the way, you know, my neighbor
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: has a really great car, I wish I could get
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: a car like that. That's not true envy. True envy
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: is my neighbor has that car. I wish I had
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: that car. That car, I don't even know how he
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: got that car. Whatever system provided him that car, that's
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: a bad system because he has that car and I
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: don't have that car. Nothing is more destructive than this.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: It is truly horrifyingly destructive on a personal level and
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: on a societal level. Again, this is and you can
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: carry it over into politics. This is the difference between saying,
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: how do we construct systems or change systems so that
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: more poor people can get ahead, as opposed to there's
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: a billionaire. That billionaire is inherently bad and evil must
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: have stolen from the poor person in ord to become
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: a billionaire, which is fundamentally untrue. Just on an economic level,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: it is not true. I'm all for any attempts to
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: make poor people richer. But this is why when people
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: talk about wealth inequality or income inequality, there's a fundamental
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: level of dishonesty there. For people who who really understand
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: the economics, the question is not whether there is inequality.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: The question is how do we make poor people richer.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: It shouldn't be about how do we make rich people poor?
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: It should be about how do we make poor people richer?
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: I agree so, and I think this is a major
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: problem in our politics. And you see it again. It
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: used to be, I think, largely relegated to it to
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: certain parts of the Democratic Party. I think you're seeing
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: it swivel into the popular side of the Republican Party too,
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: the sort of grievance based politics.
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: But I think one of those ways to make poor
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: people richer is by making the rich people pay their
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: fast sharing taxes, because those tax dollars are supposed to
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: go to, you know, resources that will help those poor people.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: You know, get on their feet.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: Right. So I think that that is like the best
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: case argument, that that's like the Steelman argument. I don't
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: agree with that on an economic level because I don't
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: think that it's a fat active I think we've had
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: twenty two trillion dollars in redistributive programs in America and
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: it hasn't actually radically increased the wealth level of people
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: at the bottom level of American society.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's not going to the right program.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, we can keep trying that, or what
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: we could do theoretically is recognized that one of the
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: reasons that America is uniquely awesome is because of innovation,
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: risk taking, investment, and some of the some of the
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: things that that I think politicians say about, you know,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: the problems that we have economically are just not true.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: And what I mean by this is that this idea
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: that you're living worse than your parents, that's not true.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: You're not living worse than your parents. You're not you
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: have better technology, you're living in an air conditioned home, You're
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: you're sitting in an air conditioned office. Like there's this
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: and you see it on the right alice the right
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: they'll be like, you know, I wish it were nineteen
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: fifty five and I was working in a Ford factory.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: That hell, you do you want to stand there riveting
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: all day in a Ford factory. You sit by a computer,
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: and your worst physical risk is sciatica.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I could determine where my tax dollars go. Oh hell,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: that's what I vel independence.
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: I would love to say, Hey, my tagle, you would
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: have to, you know, send a certain amount of your
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: money to a certain thing every year.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I want to determine where my money.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, I totally agree with this, and I think
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: that this is one of the reasons why I think
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: that the federalization, the nationalization of so much of our
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: politics is really really bad. It is much easier to
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: spot your money in your local community than it is
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: to spot your money when you send it to the
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: faraway federal government, and then it just kind of gets
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: mixed up in a giant grab bag of cash, and
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: everybody just dives in like Scrooge McDuck and grabs as
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: much of the cash as they can and then run away.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: I'm very much in favor of devolution of authority to
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: the most local level. I think this is where people
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: are the happiest, By the way, and this is actually
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: what the founders believed on a governmental structural level is
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: that most power should be initiated at the local. It's
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: why I said before, I don't think that the Trump
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: administration should, without the permission of governors, start policing crime
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: using the federal government. Right, that's a local crime issue.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, I think that more authority should devolve
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: to the lowest level. And if you don't like where
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: you live, you can move. So I live in my
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: entire life in California, my entire life, right except for
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: a couple of years at Harvard, my whole life like
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: zero to thirty five. And then I didn't like how
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: was government, and so I moved and so now I
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: live in Florida, and I like it better. And you
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: know what cool. You know that that's what you can't
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: just get up in there. So actually, well the I
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: mean yes, first of all. First, first of all, yes,
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: I you know, I'm wealthy enough to move for sure. Also,
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: one of the things that has actually radically declined in
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: the United States, and this actually is a major problem,
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: is people moving generally. It is easier to move now
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: than it was fifty years ago, Right, it is easier.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: I mean you can first of all, you can get
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: things cheaper, you can move things across the country with
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: better modes of transportation. The population movement in the country
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: has radically slowed, and so people would rather pay an
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: enormous amount of money for a tiny apartment in New
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: York City than even think about moving outside in New
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: York City to go to a place where there might
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: be more jobs. And that that actually is a problem.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: And I think that that has been propped up by
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: government regulation, government spending, the belief that it's about, you know,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: the government can make your situation more livable, as opposed
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: to the actual history of America was an enormous amount
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: of population movement, and I don't I don't think that's
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: necessar by the way you are seeing that happen. In
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty, you saw a massive population movement, particularly to
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: the South, to areas that are easier to live, and
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: those are those are financial decisions. It's not just for me.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're members of my extended family who have
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: moved down to Florida who don't earn nearly the kind
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: of money that I do, because it is actually a lot cheaper,
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: for example, to live in Florida than it is to
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: live in New Jersey.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: Don't you I wanna go back to the envy thing,
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: and you touched on it a little bit, But don't
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: you think societal structures like economic inequality can lead to envy?
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Like if you can eat.
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: And I can't, Yes, I'm gonna be envious at that.
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: If you have a house and I don't. I'm homeless, Yes,
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna be envious at that. So can't you see
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: what that can cause? Envy and political discontent?
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: So, I mean, envy is a normal human thing, right,
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: we all feel it. The question is whether that is justified,
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: and not only whether it's justified, but whether the desire
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: to turn that into a destruction of the system is justified.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: So again, it's normal for every every person feels this.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: If you can be a very rich person, if you
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: live next to Bill Gates, you're gonna be envious to
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: Bill Gates. Right, Bill Gates has a bigger house than you.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: Does that mean that the systems are broken? Or does
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: it mean maybe you should, you know, change the way
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: you're doing things? And I think that that's why I say,
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: in the first instance, not always, but in the first instance,
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: you should say what can I do to change my life?
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: If that due next door has a really nice car,
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: maybe I should try to figure out how he got
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: that car, Like how did he succeed?
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: The way that you make your life better typically is
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: you find successful people, and then you try to emulate
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: the behavior of successful people. This is particularly true in
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: the financial sphere. Right, how do they make their investments?
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: Are they blowing their money? How did they get into business?
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: By the way, every successful billionaire that I know is
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: a person who had multiple failed businesses before they actually succeeded. Like,
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: risk taking is an actual skill you have to cultivate.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: And I see, I don't like that.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my biggest problem is this, Right, you said you
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: grew up one house, you had one bathroom.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: I'd say like lower to metal middle class. Yeah, correct.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: So I know a lot of people who grew up
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: and they struggled, right, and they tried and things didn't work,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: They didn't go party, They tried.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: And then it caught and they did well. Right, And I.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: Feel like sometimes we what's the word you penalize somebody
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: for doing well? I tax it are more than somebody
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: who has it. But they gave up a lot, they
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: gave up their life, they gave up their party life,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: they gave going out. And I don't like the fact
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: that you we don't sometimes make poor people try to
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: be richer opposed to making rich people being poorer. But
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: what I don't like is when you have a company,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: let's say whatever company it may be in New York,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: and you say, you know what, you don't have to
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: pay taxes because we don't want you to leave. That's
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: a smack in the face. When a company brings in
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: two three billion dollars and never have to pay a
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: tax at all.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: Well, again, I think the better thing for the for
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: the City of New York to do, it'd be a
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: lower taxes for everybody. I also do not like using
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: the winners and the losers and certain people get tax
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: benefits or subsidies. I think that's stupid. But I've been
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: talking about I'm talking about the idea.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: You're talking that affordability to Bill.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think the way that you actually achieve
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: affordability is to lower the regulations and lower the taxes
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: in New York City. It is very difficult to live
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: in New York City. I mean, I have relatives who
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: used to live in New Jersey. I have relatives whore
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: currently living in LA. So I'll use that as an
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: analogy because I know the policy in LA better I
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: live there. The policy in LA is brutal. I mean,
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: you can actually earn a really solid living in Los
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: Angeles and still find it very, very difficult to pay
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: your bills because of things like rent control preventing development,
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: or regulations that prevent you from building new buildings, or
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: at hack structures that make you pay a lot of money,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: or licensing structures that make you have to go get
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: a license to cut hair. Right like, all this kind
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: of stuff is is really really stupid. And again my
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: problem with Mom Donnie. I have many problems with Zormamdanni,
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: but my problem with Mamdanni is not the fundamental sort
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: of critique that it's unaffordable to live in New York.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, duh, great ment dah. I mean, but the
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: question is what is now your solution? And his solution
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: seems to be that the systems of capitalism are fundamentally broken,
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: and I don't think that's right. I don't think that
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: the systems of capitalism are fundamentally broken. I don't think
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: he believes that the systems of capitalism are fundamentally broken.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: He's lived a life that is one of the most
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: privileged lives I have ever heard of of any American ever.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, the guy has not held a job and
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: he's going to be the mayor of New York at
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: the age of thirty three after being a failed rapper.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: I'm a more successful rapper, for God's sake than Zormamdannie
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: was yeah record, I know, I know, and let me
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: tell you it's a banger. Nick, dude, I don't even know.
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean retweeted, yeah, yeah, Nike did
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: retweet that, and then I took her side in a
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: fight with Cardie B and.
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: President Trump had the same message about affordability. He literally
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: said he won the election based off one word groceries.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: What was his solution? The economy hasn't gotten better.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: So I totally agree with this. Actually so I again,
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: I think that the critique goes a long way in politics,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: And this goes back to my original point about politicians.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Anyone can make the critique. Are you look at the
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: problems in your life? It's super easy. The critique is
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: super easy. Things are too yeah, no shit, Like okay, now,
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: what are you going to do? About it, and I
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: think that this is why, for example, I've opposed President
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: Trum's tariff for shame. I don't think the tariffs are good.
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: I think they're bad public policy. I think that that
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: the you know, free trade has made things cheaper and
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: yes better and competition is good and so so you know, again,
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: I think that when it comes to diagnosing the problems, listen,
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: I think that President Trump, like any other president, is
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: a mixed bag. I think more good than bad, which
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: is why I campaign for him. But I'm not going
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: to pretend that every public policy that he does is
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: something that I agree with because it's just not true.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: And I've talked about this on my show. I try
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: to be honest with my audience when I think that
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: the president is doing things that I disagree with.
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: You know, you know, we've seen going back to the
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: envy think. I think that's one of the most fascinating
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: things about this book. We've seen conservatives weaponize that envy
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: and political discontent by saying things.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Like, you know, immigrants are the reason you don't have
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: a job.
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: Or DEI is causing unqualified people to get jobs.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: What do you say to that?
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: So I think that those are sort of two separate issues.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: So on the immigration front, I think that there is
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: a problem obviously of illegal immigration. I think it's less
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: economic than it is cultural, meaning that if you're bringing
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: people in and then they are drawing more out of
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: the system than they're putting into the system, that's a
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: major economic problem. And I do think that if you
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: come to the United States that you should obviously integrate
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: into the economic systems of the United States, into the
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: generalized love of declaration of Independence and constitution of the
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: United States. You should love the country. I think that
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: these are all basic things that you should do. That
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: the problem of immigration leaving a completely open border is
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: one of sovereignty. It does have economic downstream effect and
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: all the rest. But I think that the sort of
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: anti immigration general, I mean even legal immigration arguments that
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: are made that, oh my gosh, if we bring in
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: highly qualified immigrants that are putting people out of jobs,
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: I think that's just fundamentally untrue on an economic level. Typically, again,
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: innovation makes the pie bigger. It's why you live better
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: than your parents and grandparents do. And if you just
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: think of the people in America who have hired an
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: awful lot of people and created enormous numbers of jobs.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: Many of those people were not born in the United States. Right,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: the right's favorite you know, Elon, Right, Elon is an
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: immigrant to the United States. Right the people under peach
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: eye over at Google. Right, he is an immigrant to
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: the United States. So I'm not anti legal immigration. I
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: think some of the arguments that are made on this
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: side of the popular style are wrong. When it comes
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: to DEI. DEI is a bit of a different thing
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: because DEI is the is the argument essentially that there
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: should be a lower standard applied to certain people because
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: of historic Green says, and that is a net loser.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: And the reason that is a net loser is because
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: what you're essentially doing. Number one is there are plenty
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: I think of qualified black people who don't need the
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: hand up in order to succeed in their particular industries.
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: I don't think they need the extra two hundred points
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: on the SAT in order to get into into Harvard.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: So that's number one. Number two.
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: I don't want to say I've never been the biggest
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: fan of DEI, but I do feel like when things
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: have been done systemically to a people to keep them down,
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: some things have to be done systemically to actually lift
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: them up. So when you look at all of the
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: different you know, legislation that has been passed that is
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: actually oppressed black people.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: In that case, I don't have a problem with the I.
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: So I think in the immediate reparations just about black people, no, No,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: for sure is not the the sort of the problem
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: with DEI is that it is in fact a zero
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: some game. Only one person is going to get that job,
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: and so the question is is the person who gets
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: that job the best qualified for that job or is
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: that a person who's less qualified for the job and
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: is and is going to underperform in the job compared
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: to what what otherwise would have been. If you want
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: to maximize the pie for everybody, what you want is
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: a meritocracy where the best people at any job get ahead. Now,
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: if you're talking about reparations for immediate past wrongs, I
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: think it's a much easier conversation. So I think that
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: if you're in nineteen sixty eight, nineteen seventy and you're
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: talking about what can we do to rectify the problems
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: of Jim Crow and make it right for the people
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: who suffer under Jim Crow, I think that's a really
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: live and interesting conversation, and I think that it's totally
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: worth having. I think that on a sort of public
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: policy level, reparative policies don't tend to be nearly as
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: effective as people want them to be historically speaking, and
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: in what way do people reparations mean? Holocaust reparations, for example,
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: from Germany. So I think, first of all, there was
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: like a gigantic fight actually in Israel over whether Holocaust
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: survivors should accept reparations from Germany, because the idea was
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: that that it's allowing them to expiate their sins of
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: the past, and they shouldn't be allowed to expiate those sins,
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: and it's allowing them to buy off the history for
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: fifty grand or whatever it is. But that is not
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: the reason why Israel has become successful economically, Like just
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: on a success level, the reality is that cutting people
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: checks rarely makes them more successful from the government. What
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: usually makes people more successful is a is a determined
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: attempt to become the things that the meritocracy demands of you. Right,
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: so there were no long you know, long scale the US.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Foreign as Israel has helped financially well.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: I mean the use foreign assistants for Israel actually is
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: a bargain for the United States because Israel doesn't need
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: the money. I've said this before, Israel, I mean, we'll
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: take it. That's fine.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: The Black community gladly.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: That's that's it's like three billion dollars a year. We
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: should point out at this point that we spend having
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: six billion dollars a year on our military bases in Japan,
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: five billion dollars a year on our military basis in Germany.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: We spend an awful lot of money that that helps
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: an awful lot of other countries. Israel has to spend
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: all of that money, by the way, in the United
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: States on military products. So so all of the money
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: that we send to it, we actually don't send money
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: is where we send military product to Israel that is
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: made in the United States, and so it actually is
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: a subsidy to the American defense industry. And there is
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: a deal with Israel where Israel does intelligence sharing and
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: also develops its own tech and can't disseminate it to
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: the world. So, for example, the helmets that are F
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: thirty five pilots use, those are rarely developed helmets like that.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: We can see over the horizon for example. That's because
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: the Israel developed technological add ons. So the idea that
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: this is sort of like a zero sum the money
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: goes out get nothing back, that's actually not that's actually
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: not true. You make the argument that foreign aid entirely
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: should be zeroed out. I think that that is not
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: a particularly useful argument, just because sometimes it's good and
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: sometimes it's bad. Like I'm, by the way, in favor
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: of assistance to Ukraine to prevent Russia from taking over Ukraine.
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: This represents a vanishing portion of our national budget, right
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: if you're going to talk about like where the actual
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: massive spending is going. But I'd much rather do is
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: restructure social security so you can keep more of your
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: own money, and you can keep more of your money,
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: and I can keep more of my own money because
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: I'm young and I'm still earning. I'm not saying you
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: should zero it out for people who have already earned
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: or who are age fifty five plus in approaching retirement age.
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: But if you're thirty years old, the idea that I
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: have to pay into a system and I don't see
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: that money again, and when I do see that money,
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: it's actually borrowed from China. That seems to me to
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: be a really bad thing. And if we're talking about
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: the national budget, sixty percent of it is social security, Medicare,
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: and medicaid. If you're talking about like that three billion dollars,
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: if you took that three billion, it reports about twenty
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: percent of the American budget. And it is way more.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: It isn't we spend it's more the debt. Yeah, we
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: now spend more on servicing our debt than we do
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: on our military budget, which is which is quite a
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: scary thing.
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: No.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: I thought the military budget was part of the debt.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: It's not so Well, everything's part of the debt. Meaning
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: like when we we we pay taxes in our tax
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: revenue per year is somewhere between four and five trillion dollars.
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: We are spending sixty seven trillion dollars every single year.
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: So the rest of that is coming from from bond
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: sales essentially, which is borrowing, which is a form of
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: long term borrowing.
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: I do want to go back to my original question,
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: because when you started talking about the you know, geopolitical
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: politics of war, what do you say to conservatives who
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: weaponize that envy what you call a scavenger.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: I think it's wrong. I think that's wrong. And this
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: is why, this is again why in the book you
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: will not find right and left uses the binary got
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: right like I Actually, if you go through the whole book,
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: I think I use the term left one time in
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: the entire book. I think it's with regard to I
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: think it's start the French philosopher. But I really do
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: not think that this is a purely political binary. I
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: think that there are people who disagree with me on policy,
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: for our lions, who get up every day and they
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: just disagree with me on policy, but they actually want
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: to make the world better. They actually want to build
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: social fabric, make their lives better, make lives better, people better,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: believe primarily in personal responsibility and duty. And I think
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: there are people who sometimes agree with me even more
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: on public policy, who have fallen into a sort of
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: grievance politics that you can make bank off of. And
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: I think that's really ugly. I think it's bad for everybody.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: Before you go, I do want to talk to you
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: about one thing you said in your book. You said
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: the founding fathers in America's constitutional order, You said that
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: they are thelliance right who built systems of freedom and opportunity.
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: We talked about the Three Shields compromise then, So everybody
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: wasn't free when those things like the Constitution.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: Were percent And so to pretend that the systems were
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: not deeply flawed and that we didn't have to fight
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: a gigantic civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: Americans eighty years afterward would be obviously historically inaccurate. But
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: the point is that the systems that they were designing
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: provide the framework for that freedom. Or this is the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: argument that Frederick Douglas makes in his speech on July fourth, Right,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: is that July fourth isn't for Black Americans, but it
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: should be right, that should be it should be for
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: black Americans. That's why that speech is so wonderful is
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: because what he's saying is that the promises the Founding
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: Fathers made were not fulfilled, which again is the same
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: thing that MLK says. Right, is that he's not throwing
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: out the systems. He's saying the system is good, but
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: it's flawed. That's fixed the system. That is a lion thing. Right,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: So he can say the Founding Fathers were lanes and
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: also that people who are fighting. What the Founding Fathers
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: did with the three fifths compromise were also lions. I mean,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: to be fair to some of the Founding fathers. The
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: reason for the three fifths compromise that some of the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: Founding fathers were very much pro slavery, and many of
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: the Founding fathers, like for example, John Adams, were very
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: much anti slavery. And the reason for the three fifths
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: compromise is because if there were no three fifths compromise
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: in the Constitution, actually the southern slave holding states would
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: have been overrepresented. John Adams and others said, if the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: Southern states are going to treat black people as not citizens,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: they shouldn't be They shouldn't be citizens for purposes of
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: a portionment or you're going to get overrepresented in Congress.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: That's the historical reason for the three fifths compromise. But
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: again it is again good evidence that yes, slavery was
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: accepted at the time, not just in America obviously everywhere
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: was still legal in the British Empire. The United States
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: abolishes slavery in eighteen sixty three under the Emancipation Proclamation,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: but you know, there are many countries that continue to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: hold slaves today, and so I think the story of America,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: to pretend that it's not flawed is wrong. Also, I
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: think that again, as with any binary it's it's too simplistic.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: There are lions who do scavenger like things. They're scavengers
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: who do lion like things. I think we're all a
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: combination of both those things, which you try to be
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: as lion like as possible in our lives and in
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: our politics. And we'll stumble, and we'll fall, and we'll fail,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: and we'll fall into envy, and we'll do terrible things
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: to one another. But the more that we can act
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: like lions as opposed to scavengers, the better we and
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: the country will be.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Lorn.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: Had a questions, Yeah, I had completely I mean maybe
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: not completely different topic. But Candice Owens, she was here
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: when she said that you couldn't fire her from a
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: daily wire that was happening on the breakfast Club. So
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: and I saw everything that happened after and you guys
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: said that you guys were going separate way she says
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: she was finally free.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: Did she quit because you told her to quit?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: I really get into this. I mean it said like
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: for for legal reasons I will say that that it's
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: you know, talking openly about this is kind of a problem,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: you know. I will say that the Candace and I
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: have have obviously quite significant political disagreements, and as the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: as the founder of a company that you know is
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: dedicated to certain propositions, we have many people who I
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: would not hire, and I would not hire Candace Owens today.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: What about free speech?
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: And my boy Andrew Schultz, he said that you know you,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: He said, if if you're not about free speech when
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: you fired Candas, then you are just a propaganda machine
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: for Israel.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: Well, with all respect to Andrew Schultz, that's a dumb
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: ass thing to say. And the reason that's a dumb
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: ass thing to say is because I've noticed the Cannis
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: is doing quite well for herself right and so I've
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: not called for her to be deplatformed. I've not called
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: for her to be prosecuted. I am not under no
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: obligation to pay people from my pocketbook who are espousing
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: beliefs that I find antithetical to my own. You don't
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: have to hire you know, you don't have to hire
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: Nick Flent. Since her David Duke to come be a
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: host at the breakfast club. That is not a violation
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: of free speech.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: There's been the word anti semi has been thrown around
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 5: Canasulans a lot.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 6: Do you feel like she's anti Semitic?
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: I will say that that some of the things that
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: she says are would to me certainly fall in that category.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: I try not to use that terminology. And the reason
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I try not to use that terminology is I don't
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: think that it's useful. I think that the term has
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: been emptied of sort of all of its content in
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: the same way that that Americans are now used to
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: I think everyone being called racist, and so they stopped
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: actually paying attention to racism in many ways, which is
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: I think quite bad. I want to avoid doing the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: same thing here.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: So what's the salution be when you talk about inequality
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: and civic conclusion?
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: What's the solution? We've talked about a lot. Are we
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: just selling books that we just a podcast?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: So I think that the solution on a personal level
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: is go to church, get married before you have babies,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: get a job, find the ways in your life that
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: you can make your life personally better, engage with your community,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: find policies that you think are going to be best
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: for your community and push for those things on the
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: local level predominantly. I think the other thing is that,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't want it to say on self serving,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: but I'm you know, I'm grateful to you for having
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: the conversation with people on the other side of the aisle.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: You know, I think that that is really important. I
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: think it's going away, and I think the only way
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: for you know, there for what I call in the
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: book a pride of lines, is for people who believe
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: in personal responsibility and duty and basic American ideals to
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: get together and hash all this stuff out because we
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: do have more in common than you know, we do
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: with people who want to destroy the civilization, and I
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: think that that that really needs to be strengthened in
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: a pretty significant way.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: But you have to actually listen to what a person
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: is saying, and I get caught up in all the buzzwords.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: One of my favorite episodes of Bill Maher in recent
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: times was when you was on nail with my goub
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: with Carseller.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, I thought that.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: Was but Carry's awesome. Yeah. I mean again, I think
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: McCarry is great, and we totally disagree on an enormous
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: number of things, but it's a productive conversation.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, pick up the book right now.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: It's outlining The Scavengers, the true story of America and
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: her critics.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro, that's right. Thank you for joining us this morning.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: And thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: It's Ben Shapiro.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning. Oh no, every day
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: a week ago.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: Click your ass up, the Breakfast Club.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: You don't finish what y'all done.