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

Today on The Breakfast Club, Ben Shapiro On 'Lions & Scavengers' In America, Analyzing Societal Conflicts, Banning Abortion. Listen For More!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I don't know. Every day up waiting, click your ass
up the breakfast club. You don't finish for y'all done morning.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy we
are to breakfast club. Lola Rosa is here as well.
And we got a special guest in the building. Yes,
indeed we have Ben Shapiro.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate and doing okaying
all right? Yeah, thank god.

Speaker 4 (00:21):
Ben's got a new book Outlines and Scavengers The True
Story of America.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Very interesting read. You define the lion as.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
People who uphold biblical values, individual responsibility, and moral duty. Yes,
and you contrast them with scavengers, who you say demand entitlement,
blame systemic oppression, and lack purpose.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Expound on that.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Sure, So I think the basic division is not a
right left division.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
You know.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
In the book, I actually tried really hard not to
turn it into a right left division because I don't
think that it actually is. And I think it's also
an internal battle, insider on heart that we get up
in the morning and you have to decide, when you
face down the problems of the day, whether you're going
to be somebody who takes responsibility, does your duty, gets
out of bed, and actually decides to do something meaningful world.
Or there can be somebody who looks at the problems
in your life, blames some sort of shadowy system and

(01:05):
then complains about that. Now, none of that is to
claim that you know, there aren't systems that exist that
are bad and that need to be fixed. But you
need evidence and you need actual correctives to those systems
in order to actually practically fix those systems. So the
contrast that I'm making here is between people who decide
that they want to build, you know, create social fabric,
be innovative, be risk takers, and people who simply want

(01:27):
to tear down and you see, you know, for example,
it's some of these college protests, people who are marching
together who have nothing in common except that they just
don't like the system. And they don't even have a
replacement for the system. It's just that the system itself
must be to blame for all of their problems. So
that that's sort of the basic contrast.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I'm sorry, I know we just jumped out the window
for people that don't know who Ben Shapiro is. Let's
start from the beginning explain to people who Ben Shapiro
is and where you stought, where you came from, and
et cetera, so.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
They know, sure. I mean, my basic job is that
I'm co founder of The Daily Wire, which is the
second largest conservative media organization in the country after Fox News. Probably.
I have a podcast called The Ben Shapiro Show that's
about ten years old now and maybe the biggest conservative
podcast in the country. And you know my sort of
early beginnings where I grew up in Burbank, California. Thank God,

(02:13):
I had the highest form of privilege, which was fantastic parents,
and I grew up in a very small, like eleven
hundred square foot house with three sisters, one bedroom for us,
one for my parents, one bathroom for six people. And
you know, I've been again privileged to live in the
greatest country in the world. And so went to UCLA,
went to Harvard Law School. I've been doing commentary on
politics since I was about seventeen years old. I'm now

(02:35):
forty one.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
So it got on the politics so early at seventeen.
What did you see this as though, I want to
do this? So what didn't you like that made you
want to do Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:41):
I mean I was always fascinated just by history, and
because I was a big reader, I skipped a couple
of grades. I went to college when I was sixteen,
and so because I loved reading, because I loved history
and politics, I just got very, very into it. And
you know, we live in interesting times now. I thought
they were interesting back when I was seventeen. It is
way more interesting insane now. I feel like an alternative
timeline somehow spun off into into Elon's you know, fever dream,

(03:04):
but it's a it's definitely a we're in a weird
place now.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Was it goal always to be a commentator or did
you want to jump into say I wanted to do
something at the White House or.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
No, it was always to be a commentator. I mean again,
from the time I was seventy. I had a syndicated
colum when I was seventeen years old, so at the
time I was the youngest syndicated commists in the country.
I would say most of the dumb crap that I
said was between the ages of like seventeen and twenty five,
like most people. And I do have a running list
on because so much of my you know, kind of
political career has been public from the time I was
a teenager. I actually have a running list on our

(03:33):
website of all the dumb crap that I've said over
the course of my career, trying to either explain or
apologize for stupid things that I've said.

Speaker 4 (03:40):
You know, I think we should ever people listed it
just blame it on AI. Why would you ever do that?

Speaker 3 (03:46):
I think it's the honest way to go, right, I mean,
better do that otherwise somebody uncovers it and uses it
against you. Is you better? You may as well.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
I agree with that.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
But you know what, I always had a saying, live
your truth, so nobody uses your truth against you. And
I call it the minem and eight mount there because
you know, at the end the MYM and M said
everything you know about himself that his opponent could say
about him, They're still gonna use it against your regardless.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
I mean that's definitely true, but there and so there
are certain statements where I'm like, yeah, no, I meant
that when I when I wrote that in nineteen and
then there are statements where I really think it was
kind of dumb. And so I would like people to
know that I think that it was dumb that I've
changed my mind on things, you know, the biggest one,
you think, Let's see, there was a there's a column
that I wrote about civilian casualties when I was nineteen
years old that was poorly articulated at best, talking about

(04:31):
how the US Army should basically not take consideration of
civilian casualties because I would rather, you know, protect American
soldiers than worry too much about civilian casualties. It wasn't
articulated in that way. I think the general principle of
that is still you know true that that when you're
when you're looking at American soldiers, obviously you have to value

(04:52):
their lives and you have to make sure that they
can actually engage in wars in ways that protect them
because obviously we're American and our interest in America is
protecting America. But it was it was very poorly articulated.
So that'd be a big one.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Do you feel that way about the Israel Gazil war? Sure?

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Okay, I mean yes, I mean Israel. Again, I know
a lot of people over in Israel, obviously, uh, And yeah,
I know a lot of soldiers who have grave wounded
going house to house and in the conflicts where clearly
I know Shaka right, well, what was the giveaway exactly?

Speaker 4 (05:24):
But but but you believe that so you understand why
people are upset about what Israel is doing.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
I mean, I certainly understand that conflict is incredibly ugly,
and when you look at pictures, particularly drone pictures of
wrecked areas, then it's very I mean any conflict. I
mean yes, although I will say obviously that that I
believe that that Israel has been as meticulous as any
army in history in terms of its its tactics in

(05:50):
urban warfare, and the numbers bear this out. And again
I know people who have had their legs blown off
going specifically house to house when Israel had complete air superiority.
If Israel just didn't care about civilian casualties, they were
leveled the place October eighth, and they did not. They've
been going house to house, they've been moving populations. Obviously,
all this is ugly. There's no such thing as a
pretty war, particularly in an urban environment. And could things

(06:12):
be done differently or should they be done differently in
case by case situations? I'm sure yes, I mean again,
war is very ugly, but the sort of large scale
accusations that have been made that Israel doesn't care about civilians,
or that Israel has been attempting in a ginocide that's
just factually untrue.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
I was gonna ask you, you've been in media.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
It seems like these days you.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Don't know who to trust in media, right, because it
seems like media gets it wrong, and we see it
all the time with reputable sources. So what do you
say to those people, because we don't know what to
believe anymore, especially if it's something that we don't necessarily
know one thousand percent.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
So what I say on my show all the time is, actually,
you should listen to I'm a conservative. You should listen
to my show, and then you should listen to a
show coming from the other side, and where we are
saying the same thing that's usually the core of fact
and everything else's opinion, and then you can sort of
determine for yourself whether you think one opinion is more
plausible than the other. I obviously agree with me, and
so I tend to think that my opinions are well
grounded in evidence, in fact. But obviously have a lot

(07:03):
of friends who are on the other side of the
aisle who believe exactly the same thing. And so I
think that the best way to actually achieve your own
sense of understanding of the facts is to listen to
a wide variety of sources and then try to come
to a conclusion that is mostly based in the evidence.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
And you can well, you know, that's interesting. I want
to go back to your book in a second.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
But I'm glad you said that because you don't think
what's happening in God is a genocide.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
Correct, Okay, but the world's.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
Leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is
committing genocide and God that based off the pure definition of.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
Well, it's not actually, if if you read their actual study,
it's not based on the Quoe unquote pure definition of genocide.
They don't actually even define genocide in the document. And
they basically went out to their membership, but they didn't
go out to the entire membership. They went out to
generic membership. It is very easy to join the International
Association of Genocide Scholars. In fact, there were several people
yesterday who just signed up and were immediately admitted, even
though they have no actual background in genocide. The question

(07:55):
is not whether some sort of coterie of people who
call themselves experts in an issue are quote unquote experts
on the issue. The question is whether the definition is met.
The definition of genocide is not met in Gaza by
any stretch of the imagination. And you can cite to me,
you know a group that I hadn't heard of until
two seconds ago, and nobody had heard of until two
seconds ago, that voted in a particular way. That doesn't

(08:15):
make a difference definitionally.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
So what does a genocide do.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
A genocide is the attempt to forcibly destroy an entire population,
which is not what has happened.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
So it's not the attacks on like the personal facilities
needed for like survival, like healthcare and educational institutions.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Well, Israel has shipped in more humanitarian aid into the
Gaza Strip than literally any army to in a population
that supports the enemy in literally all of the human history.
They've been shipping in about forty four hundred calories per
day per person into the Gaza Strip in the middle
of a war in which the enemy is holding actual
Israeli hostages underground, who, as we've seen from some of
the pictures, are actually starving. Again, none of this is

(08:54):
to claim that the war is pretty or meticulous for anodine,
because it isn't. It's really, really, really ugly. But over
the course of the about three percent of the Gosmen
population has been killed or wounded. If you're going to
look at an actual genocide, obviously the prototypical case being
the Holocaust, you're looking at fifty percent of the entire
Jewish population in Europe destroyed. If you're looking that other
attempted genocides, say the genocides in rwand, you're hung about

(09:17):
extraordinarily high percentages of the population that are wiped out.
You certainly are not seeing procedures that require four layers
of actual legal authority in order to do a drone strike.
I've actually seen the tape of them doing this in Israel.
They actually, if they spot from the air a terrorist
who is going into a particular civilian area, you hash
to take a full minute where the pilot on the

(09:40):
drone calls up the legal authority, who then calls up
the higher legal authority to get clearance for the actual
drone strike, and they will call off the drone strike
if they believe that the military target is too costly.
In terms of civilian casualties, and Kamas knows this, which
is why they're hiding among civilians. In fact, the best
proof that this is not, in fact a purposeful genocide
is the fact that Kamas is hiding behind civilians. The
reason you hide hind civilians is because you know your

(10:01):
enemy doesn't want to kill civilians. If you believe your
enemy doesn't care about killing civilians, wouldn't hid among civilians.
That wouldn't be a defense mechanism.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Do you think Israel needs a regime change?

Speaker 3 (10:11):
It's I mean, Israel's a democracy. They've had I think
five elections in the last four years. There probably will
be election again in March. I do not think that
Israel would be conducting this war very differently if there
were somebody else in power. And I actually know every
Israeli prime minister for the last ten years, including the
ones who are on the opposite side, people like, yeah,
you're a Lapeede who's on the opposite side, or enough

(10:32):
Tolly Bennet, wh's on the opposite side.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
And you were just talking earlier, you said about people
that don't necessarily have the same beliefs of thoughts that
you have, and that was a big conversation. When Trump
came into office, people were saying, I can't speak with
you, you can't be my friend, you can't come to my
house because I don't believe what you believe.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
How do you feel about that?

Speaker 3 (10:45):
I mean, I think it's insane. It's totally insane. I
have a lot of friends who are on the other
side of the aulehavoaded for Kamala Harris, who voted for
Joe Biden in twenty twenty. I think the real question
is whether you know we are going to I think
that there are people for whom you can't a conversation
because motivations for the conversation are so different that it's
not possible to actually have a productive conversation. And they

(11:06):
are just so many breaths in your life that you
have and wasting your breath When you're on your deathbed,
do you really want to be thinking about those two
hours that you spend talking to the person who is
just arguing right past you or or you know? And
then there are conversations where you disagree on the proper solutions,
you may even disagree on the goals, but you can
have like a good conversation without doubting the good heart
of the person who's talking to you.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
You you talked about I like the lines of scavenges analogy, right,
But I want you to expound on it because you
say it's not a political thing, it's not a race thing.
Do you feel like that could be an overly simplistic
way of analyzing these societal conflicts though, because all of
those things play a role.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
I mean, so any bindaria is going to oversimplify. Anytime
you say there's two types of people X and Y, right,
then that's always going to be an oversimplification for in
the most in the most part, as far as you
know the complex factors that the factor into a conflict,
of course, you have to analyze those to determine whether
it's being driven by envy or whether it's being driven
by a legitimate grievance. Right, And so I think that

(12:08):
some people can have a goal that is driven by
a legitimate grievance, and some people can have a goal
that's driven by envy. I think frankly, politicians in particular
are they have a very great understanding that envy is
an amazing way to get people out of the bolls.
Like really an amazing way, or if you're a dictator,
being envious of the neighboring country is an amazing way
to get people really, really motivated. And so you can

(12:30):
channel people's grievance into a belief that they should hand
you power so that you can go and do things.
And I don't think that's unique to one side of
the political out at all. In fact, I think you
see politicians do this legitimately all the time. And again
that doesn't mean that the people at the sort of
the bottom level of politics, the normal voter, doesn't have
a grievance. The question that I think that we all
ought to ask ourselves, and this is true everywhere from

(12:50):
your personal life to politics, is whether that grievance is
justified by the evidence, and what is the change that
you would seek to make specifically that would actually rectify
that grievance, Because I think that one of the dangers
is that people have a grievance they say this thing
is unfair. Therefore the entire system is corrupt and we
need to abolish the entire system. And one of the
main differences between what what G. K. Chesterton would call

(13:11):
it conservative and somebody who's not conservative is that that
somebody who's not conservative, he famously uses this analogy, walks
across a field, sees an old fence in a field
and says, I don't know why this fence is here,
and immediately starts up brooting the fence. And a conservative
what I would say is somebody who's even common sensical,
forget the politics, looks at the fence says I probably
should research why somebody put the fence here in the
first place, and then maybe we remove the fence. And

(13:32):
I think that as a society, we've gone directly to
let's just remove every fence because I'm angry at what's
happening in my life, and you're going to throw a
lot of babies out with a very small amount of bathwater.

Speaker 5 (13:43):
What about if that fence, though, has been blocking the
person that decides that wants to remove it from whatever's
on the other side for like years, in generations and generations,
and whatever's on the other side, they actually need it
to live, survive, thrive, so then they want to remove it,
regardless of why was originally put there.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yes, So, as I say, I think that there there
are definitely fences that need to be removed and what
I've said in my entire career is if you can
show me a fence that is actually blocking people from success,
then I'll join you in trying to uproot that fence.
But I need like an exact and specific explanation for
why there is this cause and effect and how removing
the fence isn't going to do less damage than leaving
the fence in place, because there are unintended consequences to

(14:21):
changing public policy, and obviously it doesn't mean public policy should
remain unchanging. There are tons of public policies that I
think should be changed all over the place. This is
an argument against change. It's an argument in favor of
caution and also in favor of us all kind of
being reflective about why we are doing the things that
we're doing, Meaning are we doing this because I have
a problem in my life that I just don't want

(14:41):
to solve, and so it's easier to blame sort of
a shadowy system where I can't name the specific problem,
or do I have a problem that really I should
try solving first before I start kind of wrecking the systems.
By the way, it's a good rule again for life.
There's a great book called Good to Great About Business,
in which the author his name is Jim Collins, talks
about the difference between successful business leaders and unsuccessful business leaders,

(15:04):
and he calls it the difference between mirror people and
window people. And what he says is that successful business
leaders they have a problem and they look in the
mirror and they say, what can I change? What can
I do to make this better? And unsuccessful people they
have a problem and they look at the window and
they say, what out there is making it so that
it's impossible for me to succeed. Again, that's not an
argument that sometimes there is something outside the window, but

(15:24):
for sure, But I think that as human beings, our
first move should be, particularly in the freest, most prosperous
country literally in the history of planet Earth, our first
move should be for most of our problems, not all,
but most of our problems should be like, what can
I do differently to fix my life? Because many of
the I think the most energizing aspect of being an
American is the idea that you actually do have the

(15:45):
capacity to change your life. And I think that any
politics that is rooted in this feeling of enervation and
kind of like marinating and nothing I do can get
me ahead. Nothing I do is going to change where
I am. I think the vast majority of cases that
really is not true. I think in the vast majority
of cases, we can all make better decisions that change
our lives.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, I think there's a and you talk about this
in the book a lot.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
I think there's a difference between practicing victimhood and actually
being a victim. You know, you're a Jewish person, I'm
a black man. We've actually been victims of a system.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yes, I mean, and again, I think that those systems
can be changed, but I think that it is very
important that we Again, I think it's a great distinction
between actual victim because you can name times when you've
been a victim, and you can name the systems that
have made you a victim and how they've made you
a victim. And the more specific we are, the more
we can agree. I found that in politics, where the

(16:38):
big disagreements tend to happen are at the very abstract level,
when you get down to the material and you say, Okay,
you know this guy is a bad guy and this
person just did X to me, Well, okay, that person
should be arrested, right, we all agree that person should
be arrested or what just happened is really bad and
we should change this specific thing. But again, I think
that the goal in a lot of politics is what's
called semantic overload. You use terms that can be differential

(17:00):
interpreted by both sides to sort of signal to one
side one thing and signal to one side the other thing.
Black Lives Matter is a great example of this, where
black lives matter. Obviously that's true. Obviously it's true that
black lives matter, But what do you mean by black
lives matter? And so one side we'll read from that
we're just saying that black people should be treated exactly
the same as anybody else and should not be systemically
discriminated against, And the other side will read from it

(17:21):
what you're saying is that black people deserve some special privileges,
or you're making the argument that America is deeply and
systemically racist and every discrepancy between black people and white
people in outcome is due to the system. Right, And
it means both of those things, but it depends on
who's using it and how, and so being very specific
in how we use our words and asking clarifying questions like,
what do you mean by that? Can you be more specific?
Is a better way to do politics. It's the conversation

(17:44):
we're just having about genocide. Let's define what genocide means,
and then we can actually determine whether we think that
is a thing that is happening, whether there's an intent
to do it. If we just say genocide and kind
of throw that out there and people were saying that
word for example October eighth, like before Israel had even responded,
then if you do that, then all you end up
doing is making the conversation dumber and everybody more angry.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
And you know, it's inthroessent about that.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
I can usually tend to see both sides, meaning like
I can understand why people say it's a genocide, but
then you know, I can understand why people initial stitate
this is just us defending ourselves and an act of war.
And as you said, you know there's a lot of casualties,
civilian casualties that happen in acts of war, but you
don't really know that if you don't talk to people
on both sides.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right, And
again I think that genocide in that particular context. There
are words that people use to express outrage that don't
necessarily the definition doesn't fit up with the word. I
think when people say genocide, generally what they mean is
I'm very angry at what's happening and I wish it
would stop. And so they throw out genocide because the
worst thing they can think of, because if you say that,
then maybe Israel should stop. And you know, again, I

(18:47):
think that you can empathize with that, because I think
everybody wants to stop, including by the way, the Israelis
who would love for Hamas to surrender their weapons, stop,
walk away and the war ends. I mean, I promise
you that in Israel, where they're drafting every eighteen year
old kid, every eighteen year old kid in Israel goes
to the military, and they've been doing this for generations,
that is not something that anyone wants to do. That's
not something where it's like you wake up in the

(19:07):
morning at eighteen year like you know what I'd love
to do. I'd go, I really really want to go
patrol Enganine, like nobody is doing that over there, Like
everybody would love for this thing to come to an end.
But again, I think that that using words imprecisely is
the enemy of agreement and truth.

Speaker 4 (19:24):
Yeah, I mean yeah, I get yeah, I understand what
you're saying, because you know, like you could get caught
up in just arguing that as opposed to arguing, hey,
all of this is fucked up?

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yes, oh, and how do what's the solution then? Right,
what's the solution? How do we get to the end
of it? Because once you actually start clarifying that stuff,
you realize what a difficult situation this is. I think
that very often because politics is difficult and complex. In
order to avoid the conversation of how should we solve this,
which is a hard conversation and sometimes a boring conversation,
it's much more fun to discuss is it genocide? Is

(19:54):
it not genocide? Do black lives matter?

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Do?

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Is it all lives matter?

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Right?

Speaker 3 (19:58):
It's more fun and interesting and I see conversation. Then,
what are these specific things that the police department should
do in order to, for example, prevent police excesses? That's
like a very specific conversation, and it usually ends up
at a city council meeting, right, But in the business
that we're all in where we're talking about these issues.
It is much easier to do diagnostics of the problem
in broad terms than to do actual prognosis, like what

(20:21):
do we do next, what's the thing we should all
pursue in order to fix the problem.

Speaker 4 (20:24):
I saw you getting caught up in that a little
bit on Abby Phillis though, and y'all were debating about.

Speaker 6 (20:28):
I think it was Chicago, DC.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, it diss of.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
People saying, hey, we we approve of what was it?
The crime, the way that they're reducing the way that
they're using the way that they're reducing crime in DC.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yes, by having the troops on the ground.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yes, yes, So I mean I think that the question
as to whether the crime has been reduced by National
Guard troops on the ground in DC.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
The crime has being reduced prior to that, though it.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Was, and then it was reduced more, and so the
question is you know why, And the answer typically is
that when people see law enforcement in places they don't
do as many crimes. That the question is whether that
can be an indefinite solution in Washington, d C. And
that's also a very different question between Washington, d C.
And Chicago. One of the things that they came up
very briefly in that Abbey Phillips panel was what should
be done in Chicago, And one of the things that

(21:11):
I said is I don't think that the President has
the authorities just send the National Guard into Chicago to
actually just police crime, right, that is illegal under the
Possi Committatus Act. There are things he can do legally
that like, for example, protect ice facilities, which is what
they were allegedly doing in California. One of the things
that I think the President is doing that's actually quite
smart now is he's shifting to red states. So yesterday
he announced that he might not do Chicago after all.

(21:33):
He might instead do New Orleans and Shreveport, which is
smart because he can do that with the permission of
the governor. Right the governor is a red state governor.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
But the only problem with Dad, though, is he's going
to go into these red states and probably go into
these cities that have black maris and large black populations
and overpolice them. And that's not what those cities are
towns need, Like, those cities and towns need actual resources
because as you just said, these are like temporary solutions
for a long systemic problem.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Well, so I think they need both, and I think
that when it comes to crime, and New York City
is a great example of this, you actually need to
lower the crime rates to draw investment.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Right.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
One of the big problems with investing in high crime
areas is that people don't want to do it. They're
afraid that if they take their money they put into
a grocery store and there's a lot of shoplifting in
that area, then the store goes out of business.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's another kind of investment I'm talking about.

Speaker 4 (22:20):
I'm talking about economic opportunity, job training programs, I'm talking
about small business investment, early intervention program I'm talking about
you know, proper mental health services.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Those are the type of investments I'm talking about. It.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
I'm not antipe any of those community right now, I
agree with that, But but if you're talking about like
how a community actually grows and thrives and becomes self sustaining,
it can't do it off public dollars indefinitely. And so
you do need an enormous amount of private investment to
make areas better.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Right.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
This is what actually Van Jones was talking about on
the show when he was talking about opportunity zones. Right.
Originally this was the idea that was put forth by
the Trump administration in Trump Administration Number one, that there
would be particular areas where basically there would be tax
incentives to invest in the in these areas. It's definitely
an interesting idea. I think the reality is that you
may not need that if the crime rates get low enough.
And so the goal would be that you lower the

(23:04):
crime rates enough so that people feel comfortable investing their
own private dollars in building businesses in these areas, providing
jobs in these areas, because again, as somebody who invests,
you know, a fair bet I would rather invest in
a low crime area than a high crime area. And
that's not a racial thing. That is just that is
just a basic investment procedure. Right, If you're gonna set
up a store, you're going to set up a store

(23:24):
in a place where it's less likely to be robbed.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
What if the government investing in mentorship and after school
programs and mental health and addiction.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Services like to me, like those are the type of
things you have.

Speaker 4 (23:33):
To change the people in a community as opposed to
just you know, putting a bunch of businesses there. Because
if you put a bunch of businesses there, and it's
still a bunch of you know, poor and disenfranchised people,
not just financially but emotionally and mentally spiritually.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
That's not gonna change it.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Well, I mean, I think that the government has spent
an awful lot of money and taking an awful lot
of time with things like mentorship and after school programs.
I think the results are at best mixed from the
social science data. The best studies that I've seen on this,
there's a great sity by rolland Fryer over at Harvard
in which you talked about what you really Mentorship is
definitely a thing. You definitely need more men in communities,
and they don't necessarily have to be the fathers of

(24:06):
the kids you need more. What the study showed is
that even kids of single moms who are growing up
in communities with high levels of male involvement did find
they did well. Where you really have a problem is
where there are not enough male models, particularly for young males,
because young males tend to be significantly more destructive to
the community when they don't have dads than young females.
That there are real problems with not having a dad

(24:28):
in the home for girls as well, but it's a
different set of problems than it is for young men
who tend to externalize that in the form of crime,
for example. And so you know, I think that one
of the things that I've also talked about is that government,
and this is where you get into the love on
intended consequences. When government intervenes in a lot of these ways,
it tends to supplant some of the actual organic institutions

(24:48):
that used to do this sort of thing. So I'm
a big advocate.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
Most places still exists. I just think that's sometimes they
lack funding. Like there's every problem that we're talking about.
I promise you as an organization in every single community.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
That you know caters today, but they just lack funding
and a lot.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Of well, I think that's true. I also think that
the number one institution that used to helps all these
problems with church, and as levels of church going go down,
that is a major problem because the nice thing about
a church is that when a church, anagogue, or any
other religious institution gives charity, then there's also skin in
the game for the person who's receiving the charity. You

(25:23):
actually have to buy into the system in order to
receive the charity to a certain extent, because you're a
member of the community, you also know the person who
you're receiving the money from. That person is a person
you sit next to in the pews, and so government
can't really be a substitute for that, just in terms
of like cutting a check. And so I do like
this is something that Bush and Obama and other presidents
have done, was trying to do a private public partnership with,
for example, churches to ensure they have the funding to

(25:46):
do this sort of stuff. But there does need to
be a cultural reshift toward the social value of getting
together in places that are not online. I think the
Internet sent an awful lot of damage. I think that
the atomization of our society, where everybody kind of sits
in their own room ever get together with other people,
is really, really, really bad. I'm in a very involved
in a good community, and one of the beautiful things

(26:06):
about a highly involved in agog or church community is
that a lot of the lines that we talk about
go away. And this is what Robert Putnam and Harvard
scholar and not on my side of the political aisle,
has said. He says that that if you actually want
to build social fabric in community. What you need is
a common goal, and you need people getting together, like
in person, socially, and that's what churches tend to do.

(26:27):
And that's that's really really important. I don't think that
any sort of government, you know, artificial alternative, is going
to be able to do all of those things. And community, yes, community,
And this is where I get back to, like, these
are all choices that we can make personally. Right, we
can make the choice like today, whether we want to
go to church on Sunday, Right, we can all make
that choice, right, And when it comes to our relationships,

(26:48):
we can all make the choice as to whether we
would like I mean, with rare exceptions, obviously there are,
but most people can make the choice as to whether
to get pregnant out of wedlock. I mean, like, these
these are choices that we all can make. And we
need to teach our kids because if we do that
then their lives will be better, and if we don't
do that, then their lives will be worse.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Can you believe in bandon abortions? Right?

Speaker 3 (27:08):
I'm pro life, yes, even in cases of incests and
rate yes. Why because this is a sort of a
fundamental definitional question. If you believe life begins at conception,
then regardless of the source of the life, it now
has an independent interest in life. So that is not
to minimize the tremendous evil of rape or incests. I
believe rape should be executed frankly or chemically castrated at best.

(27:32):
But you know that that's sort of a different question
from the independent source of life and whether whether this again,
it gets back to definitions, and this conversation tends to
be either you're on one side of that or the other.
If you don't believe life begins at conception, then obviously
you believe abortion is acceptable in a wide variety of circumstances.
If you believe it's an independent life deserving of protection,
then you believe it's an independent life deserving of protection.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Or what do you think about that? I'm just one.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
I think that a woman should be able to choose
to do what she wants to do wherever she decides
to do it. I personally, I believe that women should
be able to abort babies if they want to, if
they feel like that's what they need to do.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Do you have a time limit on that? Out of curiosity.

Speaker 5 (28:09):
I mean, I think it should happen earlier on if
it were me making a decision for myself. But I
think it's up to the woman and what she's personally
experiencing and what she personally went through. I really think
it's a per person thing. That's why I think it's
crazy when you have like these structures and these like
people who are not in that situation making the decision
for the woman of what you can and can't do,
because it's very like, per person, my situation might be

(28:32):
different than another woman who's it next to me.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Right, So again, this is sort of the definitional issue
that we're talking about, because you're talking about what a
woman should be allowed to do, and what I'm talking
about is the definition of personhood of the separate person
inside the woman. I think that what I push on
is why do you personally believe that women should have
an abortion earlier?

Speaker 5 (28:51):
I think, just from personal experience I've been in this situation.
I just think emotionally and mentally, it's less that you
think about, but it does depend on how you think
of when the life life is formed or you know,
should be looked at as like a life that you right.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
So that's that's that I think is the big question,
and that's where the disconnect is.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
So so, but that what I'm saying is that that's
always going to be different for each person.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
But I don't think that the subjective definition of life
is how we define life. Meaning that you being uncomfortable
with a woman having an abortion in the ninth month,
you're saying that just because you're uncomfortable with it, that
doesn't mean that you should stop a woman from doing that.
My point is that life has a definition.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
We all agree, for example, that a one month old
baby should not be drowned. We all agree on that,
and that's not up to the personal maybe and drowned
about them?

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Right?

Speaker 3 (29:34):
And the question is, well, why because we now understand
that the one month old baby. Everyone agrees with this,
right except for Peter Singer at Princeton, that a one
month old baby has an independent interest in life, right,
That is a life that is that is separate from
the woman and requires protection. Okay, So if it is
a life, then we now have an objective definition. Doesn't
matter what the state of mind of the woman is,

(29:55):
doesn't matter if she thought, you know what, I have
a really tough life. My life will be better off
if this baby is drowned, if I don't have to
deal with this baby, and so I'm gonna drown the baby.
That the baby has an independent, actual interest in living.
And so the question becomes is that true before birth?
And I think for the vast majority of Americans are
actually somewhere where you are, practically meaning that the vast

(30:15):
majority of Americans do see in sort of a soft way,
a distinction between you know, the early stages of life,
you know, month two and nine month. Right, Like, the
approval in America of abortion at the very late stages
is very, very low because most.

Speaker 5 (30:28):
Americans stops around like four or five months for most people,
right Well.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
I mean most abortions are performed in the in the
first time. Yes, yes, But the point that I'm making
is that the logic that you're using allows for abortion,
like literally right before the baby is born. So then
the question becomes why is that Okay? And it's not
a woman's choice at that point, whether that is a
life or not, because you don't get to artificially or
subjectively define the meaning.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Of the thing.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
See that's fact, it's not semantic. It's a life or
it's not a life.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Right, your daughter was written it's almost like you're saying,
she rape, but I'm gonna make her have this child.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
No, I mean, as you say, you don't believe in
abortion even if rape and incests. Right. What I'm saying
there is that I don't believe in abortion in case
of rape and incest. The practical effect is horrif horrible. Okay,
I'm not going to pretend that it is not emotionally
horrifying that particular situation. The question is whether it has
an independent interest in life or not, and whether there's
a third party involved. If you don't believe there's a

(31:22):
third party deserving a protection, I totally get it. I
get it, but we should we should understand. That's the
actual conversation. The actual conversation is about whether you believe
that this is an interested third party being. Do you
get to kill that interested third party being, this human
life with potential or do you not? If you and so,
the actual argument that I don't like is the idea
that you can that everybody it's up to every single

(31:45):
person to define when life begins and when life does
not begin. That that actually is not true, right, there's either
a standard or there's not a Now you can say
that that life begins when the baby is independent of
the mom. I think it's a very dicey biological argument,
and I think most Americans agree with that, that that
life only begins when the baby.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Exits I think the heartbeat.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah, okay, so I think that's where most Americans are.
And that's extremely early, right. And so if that's extremely
if the life begins with the heartbeat, then you're now
talking about, depending on your definition of a heartbeat, somewhere
between six and ten weeks, right, very very very early.
And so if that is now has an independent interest,
you're talking about abortion restrictions very early on. And so
that's why you know a lot of red states of
heartbeat laws for example. And so again I think that

(32:26):
the clarity is good, right, because now we can have
a conversation where do you think life begins? And that's
a better conversation than the sort of assumption by I
think people who are not pro life that it's just
about controlling the woman's body. No, it isn't, Okay, it
really is not. Like for pro lifers, it has literally
nothing to do with the woman's body. It has to
do with the independent interest of the life inside the

(32:46):
woman and how you define that.

Speaker 5 (32:48):
We want you to find it once you define it,
dependent on your definition. It does control what a woman
can and can't do with their body.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Well, they're downstam affects definitions of course, right. I mean,
if I define life as it begins at a heartbeat,
then that is going to have public policy ramifications that
affect just as in anything else. If I define theft
in a particular way, that's going to have downstream effects
on people who commit that definition of the crime. And
if I broaden the definition, it's going to include more people.
And that's true for literally any legal term. It's true

(33:16):
for any word that we use in life. As you
expand the definition, it affects more people in different ways.
But that doesn't change the necessity to have the conversation
about what the definition is. And I think it's an
easy way out to basically say, well, you know, I
have a definition of life. But and it gets into
very icy territory because historically people have defined to define
a way entire populations as not human and so we

(33:37):
can't do that, right, Like, you really don't want people
looking at other people and saying, well, by you know,
I don't think that this person I mean to take
them the obvious and most controversial example for a huge
percentage of American history, there was a wide variety of
people in America who believe black people were not fully
human in their contenslations, right, correct? And so the and

(33:59):
so was that a subjective question? That was not a
subjective question. Black people are fully human and just as
human as white people equal the same, right Like, and
so if somebody were to say, listen, I personally am
anti slavery. I think that slavery is personally wrong. But
it's really up to every person to define for themselves
whether a black person is fully a human or not

(34:19):
fully a human?

Speaker 6 (34:20):
Like what the why don't think you can do things?

Speaker 5 (34:23):
Why just because I think you know, if if I'm
making so, if you're a slave master, right, and you
say I believe slavery is right because black people aren't human, Like,
that's a decision that you're making that is based on
things like you know what the slaves can do for
you and your property, like the benefit of what slavery
will do for that slave masters? So different than if

(34:45):
a woman has to have a baby because she was raped,
and how that will affect her life Like that, I
think you have a decision that you can make a
lot easier.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
So almost like you force a woman twice, right, because
do I become a slave master?

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Try Jewish analogy?

Speaker 3 (35:01):
Sure? So, I mean, I mean sure so if there
was an entire population in Europe that was considered sub
human by the Nazis and they were exterminated. If you said,
I am personally against the extermination of the Jews, but
I understand why Germans could think the Jews are subhuman,
and so you know, it really is up to each
every individual to determine whether a Jew is human or
not fully human and can be put in the back

(35:22):
of a van and gas. We'd be like, what are
what in the world.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
What you're saying? There's to be no pro choice.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
In God, Yes, the definitions are not a matter of choice.
Definitions are a matter of actual objective fact. Otherwise we
can't even have a conversation because if words have meanings,
then we all have to agree on that at least
that right, that much we have to agree on is
the meaning of the words. And when it comes to
you know, so the slave master analogy. The point that
I'm making here is not about the personal experience of
the slave master. In fact, I'm saying it's completely irrelevant.

(35:50):
What I'm saying is that the reason that slavery was
wrong is because black people are fully independent human beings
who require the protection of the law in the same
way as everyone else. If you're a pro lifeer, you
believe that's also true of the unborn.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Okay, I understand what you're saying.

Speaker 4 (36:03):
I'm a pro choice person, but I do wonder how
come pro life people aren't anti war?

Speaker 3 (36:10):
Well, I mean, because anti I think everybody is anti war.
I think the question is is the definition of when
war is appropriate? I don't think I like, who's running
around going like war is awesome? Yes, more war, let's
do it.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
So fifty thousand kids have been killed in God because of.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
This current depends on on the definitions and the list
that you're getting. Well, I mean, it also depends on
how you're defining kid, because the way that Hamas defines
kid is very different than how they define kid when
it comes to recruiting for Kamas. Right there, they are
fifteen year olds with with aks on the battlefield. Unfortunately,
it is not fifty thousand.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Of the one.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
I mean, if you're talking about I you're talking about
very very small children, is much much lower than that.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
My point is there are children that are being.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
Killed, yes, who have died as collateral damage in the war.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yet so shouldn't pro life would be totally against it?

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Well, I mean, I'm against the death of any innocent
human being. The question is, when you're doing foreign policy,
how you prevent more deaths in the future. And the
point that I think Israel is making is this war
was off legislation.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
That's actually not a matter of morals and values or no.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Well, of course, of course the matter of morals and values,
but you can't be Let's put it this way. It's
incredibly reductive to simply say that if you are a
moral person, then you oppose a war, because what that
does it allows immoral people to then use that against
you to destroy your civilization. If your community is attacked
and bad people who don't have the same values as
you decide to kill you, kill your children, rape your wife,

(37:27):
and kill her, are you supposed to say, well, I'm
anti war and so I'm going to sit here and
do nothing.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
So isn't that the same if somebody rapes a woman
and impregnates them, shouldn't in that case that person be
allowed to make a choice.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Well, no, The point is that the prevention that this
is why you should minimize civilian casualties. To get back
to the beginning of the conversation, this is why it's
it's independently moral to try as much as possible to
minimize civilian casualties. And when it comes to abortion, the
idea is you can minimize that casualty by just preventing it.

Speaker 6 (37:54):
How can you being raped?

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Well, I mean that's a different question again.

Speaker 6 (37:58):
I let's talk about that because what I don't like.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Listen, first of all, when we're talking about when we're
talking about rape and abortion, we should note that well
over ninety nine percent of abortions are not undertaken because
of rape. And so if you want to come with
me and ban all abortions except for rape, I'll probably
make that trade for you. Meaning if you want to
ban all abortions, elective abortions, and what I have to
do is give up abortion with regard to rape and incest.

(38:24):
That is, that is a trade on a pragmatic level
politically that I would make.

Speaker 6 (38:27):
Okay, so you're not down on ahu.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, it's not that. I mean, I believe that again
rape and incest. I think is the reason people choose
that argument is because it's the hardest argument to make
emotionally from the pro life side. But I think that
we should note that the vast majority of abortions have
nothing to do with raper incests.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
They have to do with election and abortions was that
you never got the wrong person pregnant.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
Jesus, I know my wife four times, thank God.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Oh okay.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
I also believe homosexuality and transgender is a mental illness.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Is that no, So what I've said is that gender
identity disorder is a mental illness. I've not said that
about homosexuality homosexuality. And the reason that you can tell
that is because gender identity disorder is making an actual
false claim about the world. You're making a claim that
you are a woman or that you feel like a woman,

(39:13):
which is unverifiable, and so that is making a false
claim about the world. A homosexual person is making the
claim that they are attracted to a person of the
same sex, which is not a false claim about the world.
They are I assume. So the claim that I've made
from a sort of religious perspective with regard to homosexuality
is the same as the claim that I make with
regard to virtually all human behavior, which is that drives

(39:35):
are not behavior, meaning that you know, so people ask
me from a religious perspective, I'm obviously an orthodox stew
It's why I wear the honey hat. Right that from
a religious perspective, what do you make of homosexual activity and.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Kids? Right?

Speaker 3 (39:47):
So, I'm anti same sex marriage, but I'm anti same
sex marriage because I believe that the fundamental basis of
the family is father, mother, child, and when it comes
to the actual thing that society is supposed to incentivize,
it is that family structure. Now, I'm not in favor
of legislation that would punish people for homosexual activity, for example. Right,
that's silly, and the government should be involved in that.
But saying that you're going to give a government benefits

(40:08):
to people based on quote unquote who they love, it
really isn't about that. It's about your trying to if
the government's to be involved at all, it's about attempting
to incentivize family formative structures. The government has pushed too
far in the other direction. Actually right, I mean this
is one of the big problems of many of the
welfare programs of the sixties, which explicitly you were meant
to benefit people who did not have a father in

(40:29):
the home and led to perverse incentives where people were
not getting married, specifically because the government was offering more
money not to get married.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
I want to go back to your book because I
do I think I agree with your argument that NBA
is the driving force behind what you call the scavenger mindset,
like you describe it as an irresistible force that fuels
resentment and entitlement.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Did you expound on it, sure, I mean I think
that again, to go back to all of us, I
think we all have this problem in our lives. We
see people and we envy those people, and then instead
of doing something to make ourselves better, we actually make
ourselves worse in the process, or we attack systems that
we think are responsible for that and tear down those systems.
I use the biblical story of Canaan Abele as sort
of the key load bearing story for this particular element. Now,

(41:14):
the story of canon Able, which I think is the
most elemental human story, is fascinating in the Biblical text
in Genesis, basically, God, it's actually Kaine's idea to initiate
sacrifices before God. Right, it's not Able's idea, it's originally
Kaine's idea. Kine says, let's go sacrifice. He and his
brother able to go sacrifice God for some unspecified reason
accept able sacrifice, but not Kaines. And now God then

(41:35):
gives what would be called in Yiddish musserch mooves. He gives,
He gives him a He gives Cain a sort of
pick me up speech, and he says, listen, your sacrifice
wasn't accepted. You have two choices here right, Sin crouches
at your door. You can either give into it, or
you can or you can overcome it. And Caine doesn't listen,
and he decides that out of envy because his brother

(41:56):
succeeded and he failed, He's going to kill his brother, right,
first murder in human history according to the Bible. And
so the question is what is driving Kine? And what's
driving Kine is the fact that instead of saying what
could I do better? He kills his brother. This is
why if you look at the ten commandments. For example,
all of the ten commandments have to do with behavior.
There's only one that really has to There's only one
that bars actual emotion. It's the tenth Commandment, and it

(42:19):
says you're not allowed to envy your neighbor's property. Right,
you can't envy your neighbor's wife is property. There's a
difference between saying, by the way, you know, my neighbor
has a really great car, I wish I could get
a car like that. That's not true envy. True envy
is my neighbor has that car. I wish I had
that car. That car, I don't even know how he
got that car. Whatever system provided him that car, that's
a bad system because he has that car and I
don't have that car. Nothing is more destructive than this.

(42:41):
It is truly horrifyingly destructive on a personal level and
on a societal level. Again, this is and you can
carry it over into politics. This is the difference between saying,
how do we construct systems or change systems so that
more poor people can get ahead, as opposed to there's
a billionaire. That billionaire is inherently bad and evil must
have stolen from the poor person in ord to become

(43:01):
a billionaire, which is fundamentally untrue. Just on an economic level,
it is not true. I'm all for any attempts to
make poor people richer. But this is why when people
talk about wealth inequality or income inequality, there's a fundamental
level of dishonesty there. For people who who really understand
the economics, the question is not whether there is inequality.
The question is how do we make poor people richer.

(43:24):
It shouldn't be about how do we make rich people poor?
It should be about how do we make poor people richer?
I agree so, and I think this is a major
problem in our politics. And you see it again. It
used to be, I think, largely relegated to it to
certain parts of the Democratic Party. I think you're seeing
it swivel into the popular side of the Republican Party too,
the sort of grievance based politics.

Speaker 4 (43:41):
But I think one of those ways to make poor
people richer is by making the rich people pay their
fast sharing taxes, because those tax dollars are supposed to
go to, you know, resources that will help those poor people.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
You know, get on their feet.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
Right. So I think that that is like the best
case argument, that that's like the Steelman argument. I don't
agree with that on an economic level because I don't
think that it's a fat active I think we've had
twenty two trillion dollars in redistributive programs in America and
it hasn't actually radically increased the wealth level of people
at the bottom level of American society.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Maybe it's not going to the right program.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Well, I mean, we can keep trying that, or what
we could do theoretically is recognized that one of the
reasons that America is uniquely awesome is because of innovation,
risk taking, investment, and some of the some of the
things that that I think politicians say about, you know,
the problems that we have economically are just not true.
And what I mean by this is that this idea
that you're living worse than your parents, that's not true.

(44:33):
You're not living worse than your parents. You're not you
have better technology, you're living in an air conditioned home, You're
you're sitting in an air conditioned office. Like there's this
and you see it on the right alice the right
they'll be like, you know, I wish it were nineteen
fifty five and I was working in a Ford factory.
That hell, you do you want to stand there riveting
all day in a Ford factory. You sit by a computer,
and your worst physical risk is sciatica.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
I could determine where my tax dollars go. Oh hell,
that's what I vel independence.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
I would love to say, Hey, my tagle, you would
have to, you know, send a certain amount of your
money to a certain thing every year.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
I want to determine where my money.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
I mean, I totally agree with this, and I think
that this is one of the reasons why I think
that the federalization, the nationalization of so much of our
politics is really really bad. It is much easier to
spot your money in your local community than it is
to spot your money when you send it to the
faraway federal government, and then it just kind of gets
mixed up in a giant grab bag of cash, and
everybody just dives in like Scrooge McDuck and grabs as
much of the cash as they can and then run away.

(45:27):
I'm very much in favor of devolution of authority to
the most local level. I think this is where people
are the happiest, By the way, and this is actually
what the founders believed on a governmental structural level is
that most power should be initiated at the local. It's
why I said before, I don't think that the Trump
administration should, without the permission of governors, start policing crime
using the federal government. Right, that's a local crime issue.

(45:47):
And so yeah, I think that more authority should devolve
to the lowest level. And if you don't like where
you live, you can move. So I live in my
entire life in California, my entire life, right except for
a couple of years at Harvard, my whole life like
zero to thirty five. And then I didn't like how
was government, and so I moved and so now I
live in Florida, and I like it better. And you
know what cool. You know that that's what you can't

(46:08):
just get up in there. So actually, well the I
mean yes, first of all. First, first of all, yes,
I you know, I'm wealthy enough to move for sure. Also,
one of the things that has actually radically declined in
the United States, and this actually is a major problem,
is people moving generally. It is easier to move now
than it was fifty years ago, Right, it is easier.
I mean you can first of all, you can get

(46:29):
things cheaper, you can move things across the country with
better modes of transportation. The population movement in the country
has radically slowed, and so people would rather pay an
enormous amount of money for a tiny apartment in New
York City than even think about moving outside in New
York City to go to a place where there might
be more jobs. And that that actually is a problem.
And I think that that has been propped up by

(46:49):
government regulation, government spending, the belief that it's about, you know,
the government can make your situation more livable, as opposed
to the actual history of America was an enormous amount
of population movement, and I don't I don't think that's
necessar by the way you are seeing that happen. In
twenty twenty, you saw a massive population movement, particularly to
the South, to areas that are easier to live, and
those are those are financial decisions. It's not just for me.

(47:10):
I mean, they're members of my extended family who have
moved down to Florida who don't earn nearly the kind
of money that I do, because it is actually a lot cheaper,
for example, to live in Florida than it is to
live in New Jersey.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
Don't you I wanna go back to the envy thing,
and you touched on it a little bit, But don't
you think societal structures like economic inequality can lead to envy?

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Like if you can eat.

Speaker 4 (47:30):
And I can't, Yes, I'm gonna be envious at that.
If you have a house and I don't. I'm homeless, Yes,
I'm gonna be envious at that. So can't you see
what that can cause? Envy and political discontent?

Speaker 3 (47:40):
So, I mean, envy is a normal human thing, right,
we all feel it. The question is whether that is justified,
and not only whether it's justified, but whether the desire
to turn that into a destruction of the system is justified.
So again, it's normal for every every person feels this.
If you can be a very rich person, if you
live next to Bill Gates, you're gonna be envious to
Bill Gates. Right, Bill Gates has a bigger house than you.
Does that mean that the systems are broken? Or does

(48:03):
it mean maybe you should, you know, change the way
you're doing things? And I think that that's why I say,
in the first instance, not always, but in the first instance,
you should say what can I do to change my life?
If that due next door has a really nice car,
maybe I should try to figure out how he got
that car, Like how did he succeed?

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Right?

Speaker 3 (48:17):
The way that you make your life better typically is
you find successful people, and then you try to emulate
the behavior of successful people. This is particularly true in
the financial sphere. Right, how do they make their investments?
Are they blowing their money? How did they get into business?
By the way, every successful billionaire that I know is
a person who had multiple failed businesses before they actually succeeded. Like,
risk taking is an actual skill you have to cultivate.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
And I see, I don't like that.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Yeah, my biggest problem is this, Right, you said you
grew up one house, you had one bathroom.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
I'd say like lower to metal middle class. Yeah, correct.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
So I know a lot of people who grew up
and they struggled, right, and they tried and things didn't work,
They didn't go party, They tried.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
And then it caught and they did well. Right, And I.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Feel like sometimes we what's the word you penalize somebody
for doing well? I tax it are more than somebody
who has it. But they gave up a lot, they
gave up their life, they gave up their party life,
they gave going out. And I don't like the fact
that you we don't sometimes make poor people try to
be richer opposed to making rich people being poorer. But
what I don't like is when you have a company,

(49:16):
let's say whatever company it may be in New York,
and you say, you know what, you don't have to
pay taxes because we don't want you to leave. That's
a smack in the face. When a company brings in
two three billion dollars and never have to pay a
tax at all.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Well, again, I think the better thing for the for
the City of New York to do, it'd be a
lower taxes for everybody. I also do not like using
the winners and the losers and certain people get tax
benefits or subsidies. I think that's stupid. But I've been
talking about I'm talking about the idea.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
You're talking that affordability to Bill.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
I mean, I think the way that you actually achieve
affordability is to lower the regulations and lower the taxes
in New York City. It is very difficult to live
in New York City. I mean, I have relatives who
used to live in New Jersey. I have relatives whore
currently living in LA. So I'll use that as an
analogy because I know the policy in LA better I
live there. The policy in LA is brutal. I mean,
you can actually earn a really solid living in Los
Angeles and still find it very, very difficult to pay

(50:04):
your bills because of things like rent control preventing development,
or regulations that prevent you from building new buildings, or
at hack structures that make you pay a lot of money,
or licensing structures that make you have to go get
a license to cut hair. Right like, all this kind
of stuff is is really really stupid. And again my
problem with Mom Donnie. I have many problems with Zormamdanni,
but my problem with Mamdanni is not the fundamental sort

(50:25):
of critique that it's unaffordable to live in New York.
I mean, duh, great ment dah. I mean, but the
question is what is now your solution? And his solution
seems to be that the systems of capitalism are fundamentally broken,
and I don't think that's right. I don't think that
the systems of capitalism are fundamentally broken. I don't think
he believes that the systems of capitalism are fundamentally broken.
He's lived a life that is one of the most
privileged lives I have ever heard of of any American ever.

(50:48):
I mean, the guy has not held a job and
he's going to be the mayor of New York at
the age of thirty three after being a failed rapper.
I'm a more successful rapper, for God's sake than Zormamdannie
was yeah record, I know, I know, and let me
tell you it's a banger. Nick, dude, I don't even know.
I don't know, I mean retweeted, yeah, yeah, Nike did
retweet that, and then I took her side in a

(51:09):
fight with Cardie B and.

Speaker 4 (51:11):
President Trump had the same message about affordability. He literally
said he won the election based off one word groceries.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
What was his solution? The economy hasn't gotten better.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
So I totally agree with this. Actually so I again,
I think that the critique goes a long way in politics,
And this goes back to my original point about politicians.
Anyone can make the critique. Are you look at the
problems in your life? It's super easy. The critique is
super easy. Things are too yeah, no shit, Like okay, now,
what are you going to do? About it, and I
think that this is why, for example, I've opposed President
Trum's tariff for shame. I don't think the tariffs are good.

(51:43):
I think they're bad public policy. I think that that
the you know, free trade has made things cheaper and
yes better and competition is good and so so you know, again,
I think that when it comes to diagnosing the problems, listen,
I think that President Trump, like any other president, is
a mixed bag. I think more good than bad, which
is why I campaign for him. But I'm not going
to pretend that every public policy that he does is

(52:04):
something that I agree with because it's just not true.
And I've talked about this on my show. I try
to be honest with my audience when I think that
the president is doing things that I disagree with.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
You know, you know, we've seen going back to the
envy think. I think that's one of the most fascinating
things about this book. We've seen conservatives weaponize that envy
and political discontent by saying things.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Like, you know, immigrants are the reason you don't have
a job.

Speaker 4 (52:25):
Or DEI is causing unqualified people to get jobs.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
What do you say to that?

Speaker 3 (52:29):
So I think that those are sort of two separate issues.
So on the immigration front, I think that there is
a problem obviously of illegal immigration. I think it's less
economic than it is cultural, meaning that if you're bringing
people in and then they are drawing more out of
the system than they're putting into the system, that's a
major economic problem. And I do think that if you
come to the United States that you should obviously integrate

(52:52):
into the economic systems of the United States, into the
generalized love of declaration of Independence and constitution of the
United States. You should love the country. I think that
these are all basic things that you should do. That
the problem of immigration leaving a completely open border is
one of sovereignty. It does have economic downstream effect and
all the rest. But I think that the sort of
anti immigration general, I mean even legal immigration arguments that

(53:13):
are made that, oh my gosh, if we bring in
highly qualified immigrants that are putting people out of jobs,
I think that's just fundamentally untrue on an economic level. Typically, again,
innovation makes the pie bigger. It's why you live better
than your parents and grandparents do. And if you just
think of the people in America who have hired an
awful lot of people and created enormous numbers of jobs.
Many of those people were not born in the United States. Right,

(53:34):
the right's favorite you know, Elon, Right, Elon is an
immigrant to the United States. Right the people under peach
eye over at Google. Right, he is an immigrant to
the United States. So I'm not anti legal immigration. I
think some of the arguments that are made on this
side of the popular style are wrong. When it comes
to DEI. DEI is a bit of a different thing
because DEI is the is the argument essentially that there

(53:56):
should be a lower standard applied to certain people because
of historic Green says, and that is a net loser.
And the reason that is a net loser is because
what you're essentially doing. Number one is there are plenty
I think of qualified black people who don't need the
hand up in order to succeed in their particular industries.
I don't think they need the extra two hundred points

(54:17):
on the SAT in order to get into into Harvard.
So that's number one. Number two.

Speaker 4 (54:21):
I don't want to say I've never been the biggest
fan of DEI, but I do feel like when things
have been done systemically to a people to keep them down,
some things have to be done systemically to actually lift
them up. So when you look at all of the
different you know, legislation that has been passed that is
actually oppressed black people.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
In that case, I don't have a problem with the I.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
So I think in the immediate reparations just about black people, no, No,
for sure is not the the sort of the problem
with DEI is that it is in fact a zero
some game. Only one person is going to get that job,
and so the question is is the person who gets
that job the best qualified for that job or is
that a person who's less qualified for the job and
is and is going to underperform in the job compared
to what what otherwise would have been. If you want

(55:00):
to maximize the pie for everybody, what you want is
a meritocracy where the best people at any job get ahead. Now,
if you're talking about reparations for immediate past wrongs, I
think it's a much easier conversation. So I think that
if you're in nineteen sixty eight, nineteen seventy and you're
talking about what can we do to rectify the problems
of Jim Crow and make it right for the people
who suffer under Jim Crow, I think that's a really

(55:21):
live and interesting conversation, and I think that it's totally
worth having. I think that on a sort of public
policy level, reparative policies don't tend to be nearly as
effective as people want them to be historically speaking, and
in what way do people reparations mean? Holocaust reparations, for example,
from Germany. So I think, first of all, there was

(55:42):
like a gigantic fight actually in Israel over whether Holocaust
survivors should accept reparations from Germany, because the idea was
that that it's allowing them to expiate their sins of
the past, and they shouldn't be allowed to expiate those sins,
and it's allowing them to buy off the history for
fifty grand or whatever it is. But that is not
the reason why Israel has become successful economically, Like just

(56:02):
on a success level, the reality is that cutting people
checks rarely makes them more successful from the government. What
usually makes people more successful is a is a determined
attempt to become the things that the meritocracy demands of you. Right,
so there were no long you know, long scale the US.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Foreign as Israel has helped financially well.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
I mean the use foreign assistants for Israel actually is
a bargain for the United States because Israel doesn't need
the money. I've said this before, Israel, I mean, we'll
take it. That's fine.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
The Black community gladly.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
That's that's it's like three billion dollars a year. We
should point out at this point that we spend having
six billion dollars a year on our military bases in Japan,
five billion dollars a year on our military basis in Germany.
We spend an awful lot of money that that helps
an awful lot of other countries. Israel has to spend
all of that money, by the way, in the United
States on military products. So so all of the money
that we send to it, we actually don't send money
is where we send military product to Israel that is

(56:55):
made in the United States, and so it actually is
a subsidy to the American defense industry. And there is
a deal with Israel where Israel does intelligence sharing and
also develops its own tech and can't disseminate it to
the world. So, for example, the helmets that are F
thirty five pilots use, those are rarely developed helmets like that.
We can see over the horizon for example. That's because
the Israel developed technological add ons. So the idea that

(57:16):
this is sort of like a zero sum the money
goes out get nothing back, that's actually not that's actually
not true. You make the argument that foreign aid entirely
should be zeroed out. I think that that is not
a particularly useful argument, just because sometimes it's good and
sometimes it's bad. Like I'm, by the way, in favor
of assistance to Ukraine to prevent Russia from taking over Ukraine.
This represents a vanishing portion of our national budget, right

(57:38):
if you're going to talk about like where the actual
massive spending is going. But I'd much rather do is
restructure social security so you can keep more of your
own money, and you can keep more of your money,
and I can keep more of my own money because
I'm young and I'm still earning. I'm not saying you
should zero it out for people who have already earned
or who are age fifty five plus in approaching retirement age.
But if you're thirty years old, the idea that I
have to pay into a system and I don't see
that money again, and when I do see that money,

(57:59):
it's actually borrowed from China. That seems to me to
be a really bad thing. And if we're talking about
the national budget, sixty percent of it is social security, Medicare,
and medicaid. If you're talking about like that three billion dollars,
if you took that three billion, it reports about twenty
percent of the American budget. And it is way more.
It isn't we spend it's more the debt. Yeah, we

(58:21):
now spend more on servicing our debt than we do
on our military budget, which is which is quite a
scary thing.

Speaker 5 (58:25):
No.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
I thought the military budget was part of the debt.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
It's not so Well, everything's part of the debt. Meaning
like when we we we pay taxes in our tax
revenue per year is somewhere between four and five trillion dollars.
We are spending sixty seven trillion dollars every single year.
So the rest of that is coming from from bond
sales essentially, which is borrowing, which is a form of
long term borrowing.

Speaker 4 (58:44):
I do want to go back to my original question,
because when you started talking about the you know, geopolitical
politics of war, what do you say to conservatives who
weaponize that envy what you call a scavenger.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
I think it's wrong. I think that's wrong. And this
is why, this is again why in the book you
will not find right and left uses the binary got
right like I Actually, if you go through the whole book,
I think I use the term left one time in
the entire book. I think it's with regard to I
think it's start the French philosopher. But I really do
not think that this is a purely political binary. I
think that there are people who disagree with me on policy,

(59:18):
for our lions, who get up every day and they
just disagree with me on policy, but they actually want
to make the world better. They actually want to build
social fabric, make their lives better, make lives better, people better,
believe primarily in personal responsibility and duty. And I think
there are people who sometimes agree with me even more
on public policy, who have fallen into a sort of
grievance politics that you can make bank off of. And
I think that's really ugly. I think it's bad for everybody.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
Before you go, I do want to talk to you
about one thing you said in your book. You said
the founding fathers in America's constitutional order, You said that
they are thelliance right who built systems of freedom and opportunity.
We talked about the Three Shields compromise then, So everybody
wasn't free when those things like the Constitution.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Were percent And so to pretend that the systems were
not deeply flawed and that we didn't have to fight
a gigantic civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of
Americans eighty years afterward would be obviously historically inaccurate. But
the point is that the systems that they were designing
provide the framework for that freedom. Or this is the
argument that Frederick Douglas makes in his speech on July fourth, Right,
is that July fourth isn't for Black Americans, but it

(01:00:20):
should be right, that should be it should be for
black Americans. That's why that speech is so wonderful is
because what he's saying is that the promises the Founding
Fathers made were not fulfilled, which again is the same
thing that MLK says. Right, is that he's not throwing
out the systems. He's saying the system is good, but
it's flawed. That's fixed the system. That is a lion thing. Right,
So he can say the Founding Fathers were lanes and
also that people who are fighting. What the Founding Fathers

(01:00:41):
did with the three fifths compromise were also lions. I mean,
to be fair to some of the Founding fathers. The
reason for the three fifths compromise that some of the
Founding fathers were very much pro slavery, and many of
the Founding fathers, like for example, John Adams, were very
much anti slavery. And the reason for the three fifths
compromise is because if there were no three fifths compromise
in the Constitution, actually the southern slave holding states would

(01:01:02):
have been overrepresented. John Adams and others said, if the
Southern states are going to treat black people as not citizens,
they shouldn't be They shouldn't be citizens for purposes of
a portionment or you're going to get overrepresented in Congress.
That's the historical reason for the three fifths compromise. But
again it is again good evidence that yes, slavery was
accepted at the time, not just in America obviously everywhere
was still legal in the British Empire. The United States

(01:01:24):
abolishes slavery in eighteen sixty three under the Emancipation Proclamation,
but you know, there are many countries that continue to
hold slaves today, and so I think the story of America,
to pretend that it's not flawed is wrong. Also, I
think that again, as with any binary it's it's too simplistic.
There are lions who do scavenger like things. They're scavengers
who do lion like things. I think we're all a

(01:01:44):
combination of both those things, which you try to be
as lion like as possible in our lives and in
our politics. And we'll stumble, and we'll fall, and we'll fail,
and we'll fall into envy, and we'll do terrible things
to one another. But the more that we can act
like lions as opposed to scavengers, the better we and
the country will be.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
Lorn.

Speaker 5 (01:01:59):
Had a questions, Yeah, I had completely I mean maybe
not completely different topic. But Candice Owens, she was here
when she said that you couldn't fire her from a
daily wire that was happening on the breakfast Club. So
and I saw everything that happened after and you guys
said that you guys were going separate way she says
she was finally free.

Speaker 6 (01:02:15):
Did she quit because you told her to quit?

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
I really get into this. I mean it said like
for for legal reasons I will say that that it's
you know, talking openly about this is kind of a problem,
you know. I will say that the Candace and I
have have obviously quite significant political disagreements, and as the
as the founder of a company that you know is

(01:02:37):
dedicated to certain propositions, we have many people who I
would not hire, and I would not hire Candace Owens today.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
What about free speech?

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
And my boy Andrew Schultz, he said that you know you,
He said, if if you're not about free speech when
you fired Candas, then you are just a propaganda machine
for Israel.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Well, with all respect to Andrew Schultz, that's a dumb
ass thing to say. And the reason that's a dumb
ass thing to say is because I've noticed the Cannis
is doing quite well for herself right and so I've
not called for her to be deplatformed. I've not called
for her to be prosecuted. I am not under no
obligation to pay people from my pocketbook who are espousing
beliefs that I find antithetical to my own. You don't

(01:03:18):
have to hire you know, you don't have to hire
Nick Flent. Since her David Duke to come be a
host at the breakfast club. That is not a violation
of free speech.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
That's true.

Speaker 5 (01:03:25):
There's been the word anti semi has been thrown around
Canasulans a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:03:29):
Do you feel like she's anti Semitic?

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
I will say that that some of the things that
she says are would to me certainly fall in that category.
I try not to use that terminology. And the reason
I try not to use that terminology is I don't
think that it's useful. I think that the term has
been emptied of sort of all of its content in
the same way that that Americans are now used to
I think everyone being called racist, and so they stopped

(01:03:52):
actually paying attention to racism in many ways, which is
I think quite bad. I want to avoid doing the
same thing here.

Speaker 4 (01:03:59):
So what's the salution be when you talk about inequality
and civic conclusion?

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
What's the solution? We've talked about a lot. Are we
just selling books that we just a podcast?

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
So I think that the solution on a personal level
is go to church, get married before you have babies,
get a job, find the ways in your life that
you can make your life personally better, engage with your community,
find policies that you think are going to be best
for your community and push for those things on the
local level predominantly. I think the other thing is that,
you know, I don't want it to say on self serving,
but I'm you know, I'm grateful to you for having
the conversation with people on the other side of the aisle.

(01:04:28):
You know, I think that that is really important. I
think it's going away, and I think the only way
for you know, there for what I call in the
book a pride of lines, is for people who believe
in personal responsibility and duty and basic American ideals to
get together and hash all this stuff out because we
do have more in common than you know, we do
with people who want to destroy the civilization, and I
think that that that really needs to be strengthened in

(01:04:49):
a pretty significant way.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
But you have to actually listen to what a person
is saying, and I get caught up in all the buzzwords.
One of my favorite episodes of Bill Maher in recent
times was when you was on nail with my goub
with Carseller.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Yes, I thought that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Was but Carry's awesome. Yeah. I mean again, I think
McCarry is great, and we totally disagree on an enormous
number of things, but it's a productive conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
All right, Well, pick up the book right now.

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):
It's outlining The Scavengers, the true story of America and
her critics.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Ben Shapiro, that's right. Thank you for joining us this morning.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
And thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
It's Ben Shapiro.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning. Oh no, every day
a week ago.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
Click your ass up, the Breakfast Club.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
You don't finish what y'all done.