PragerU Live with Ben Shapiro! (5/11/17)

then if I GNA leave I should probably right now would be a great time to get out of here no offs but I think you should leave Ben just editor and chief of daily wire New York Times host the Ben hey everyone this is Elicia Krauss and I'm here at the prer uhq and just down the road in an undisclosed secret location although it's not the bunker like the great one Mark Levin we're joined by daily wire co-founder and editor-in chief Ben Shapiro also host of the Ben Shapiro show and in case you hadn't seen on his like Twitter bio a New York Times bestselling author Ben thanks so much for being with us today Hey look it's my little sister how's it going Alicia good that's actually question number one do you miss having to share a radio studio with me for three hours every single day desperately yeah it's I just every morning I wake up at at 6 o'clock and I think boy what I wouldn't do if it were 5 o'clock and I had to sit in a studio with Elicia for three hours boy do I miss that that was just good old days hey at least I occasionally brought you coffee bean so you can't and that's true and you showered I'm like okay well we won't go here so congrats on being a new Prager you presenter it's been a long time in the making all of the staff here and all of our viewers are super excited about your latest video of course Apple named facts don't care about your feelings can you give everyone a quick overview of of the gist of your prer you video sure so the basic idea is that on campus facts are no longer invogue feelings are all that matters and there's been this this theory of intersectionality that has taken over on campuses that basically suggests that you deserve to be treated as though you're telling the truth or as though uh you are saying something virtuous simply by Dent of your identity so they have this hierarchy that goes something like this gay black Hispanic woman Asian Jew white guy and if you are at the very bottom of that hierarchy then you can't argue with somebody who's above you in the hierarchy because that would mean that you're victimizing them in some way and this sort of mentality has has been promulgated on campuses Across America it's shut down political debate and it means that people are now treated as though they're aggressors when they're just expressing an opposing point of view so it's really dangerous it's it's a big problem on campus this is why you're seeing riots on some of these campuses which I've experienced personally in some of these areas and that's what the video is about do you think what do you think is the greatest problem that colleges face today I think two things I think the administrators who are just cowardly and refuse to stand up to students who want to shut down free speech and then of course this kind of wild codery of students who want to shut down free speech on the basis that it offends them and and that really isn't most of the students I think most students on campus are sort of politically apathetic even a lot of the folks who are liberal are not interested in necessarily shutting down debate like a lot of college Democrats aren't necessarily interested in that but there are the these new hard-left groups including people like antifa who will violently attempt to shut down any sort of opposing Viewpoint if it appears on campus and that's very scary and an Administration that won't stand up and suspend or expel people who participate in violence in order to shut down free speech is an Administration that is complicit in the rise of fascism on campus so I know free speech is an issue that you obviously care about a lot Kim stel or Kimberly strel from The Wall Street Journal actually was our lunch keynote at our Prager you Summit over the weekend and if people want access to her speech they should definitely check out prageru.com because then they can sign up for and give a donation and receive it and her entire speech was on the importance of Free Speech but the only thing that I think Dennis didn't ask her about in the really good Q&A that they did that I want to ask you about today is how do we then make college students understand like is it possible to teach them what the first amendment is really all about and what free speech is really all about yeah I I do think that it's possible to teach a lot of these students because a lot of young people have a very basic Liberty tearing in streak which says leave me alone and if you say to them listen leave me alone applies to me saying stuff also you don't like it go away I think that a lot of people resonate to that there is a backlash that's building on campus and I don't want to pretend like it's every campus that's attempting to shut down speech or every student who's engaged in this I think it's a growing minority but I think that there is a backlash that is going to occur here because there still is a root level resistance to uh to this this sort of ideological fascism that says that we can't even speak to each other especially when the people who are being protested it's not only people like Milo yannopoulos and an Coulter when it's people like me or Christina Hoff Summers or Jason Riley or Charles Murray you conal Lisa Rice you know Betsy deos when it's coming to the point where people who are you know mainstream conservatives who are not spending their days just throwing firebombs or being banned from campus Because of threat of violence I think even people on the mainstream left are beginning to say this is too much but do you think it gets so much more attention because most of the schools that are in that Minority of you know having issues with free speech are really powerful schools like those in the UC system or IV leagues yeah I mean it it depends on on the schools I think that they they do get a little bit of outsid detention I speak on 25 to 30 campuses a year I'd say 20 if it's 30 then 23 24 of them are fine maybe six or seven a year are really bad that's not a great ratio but it's but you know still I think the vast majority of campuses are places where I can speak without real fear of of being hit in the face it it should make the headlines and I hope that it does make the headlines because again I think the reaction from both sides is pretty obvious I mean even Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were saying and couter should have been allowed to speak at Berkeley yeah and the ACLU I mean never thought I'd see them come to her her defense so um could you name a person that you don't think has seen the video yet that you would hope would watch this video maybe from the left side of the aisle well I mean I I think that the people who need to see the video are going to be people who don't watch it typically you know there is there you know The Young Turks Ros o' donnal Chelsea Clinton yeah I mean I I do think that there there are some Howard Dean you know I I think there there's some people on the left who are promulgating they're complicit in promulgating this idea that that ideas spoken freely are dangerous and they need to be taught that this is a really dangerous notion that that fascism doesn't start with Jack Boots it starts with smiley faces and we're going to protect your feelings from other people who are bad and all we have to do is shut them down so yeah I think that you know some some of those people Young Turks I think would be on that list but but yes I think that uh howardan is is top of mind just because he's actually come out and said that hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment which is idiotic because B basically what he's saying there is anything Howard deine doesn't like isn't protected under the First Amendment which is crazy so one of the things that struck me the most when you talk about leftists say you know that to them the first amendment protects their right to punch a Nazi but then they go around and they call people like you and I Nazis so then if they happen upon us on the street one day I guess that means that we're okay to punch and it was just a small snippet at the beginning of your video which people of course can go watch on pr.com right now and also find it on our Facebook page could you delve into that notion a little bit more though because I think it's something that seeing uh in society uh especially on social media that that conservatives instead of actually having a constructive debate or an argument maybe with somebody on the other side of the aisle even a friend or a family member you just automatically get labeled something and then it's end of discussion I mean the rhetoric is so polarized at this point it has been for several years the the book that I wrote that was the New York Times bestseller bullies was basically about this how the left is interested in shutting down debate by making basic character arguments you're racist sexist bigot homophobe who's in League with Hitler and therefore we should be able to hit you you know they've been building up that that idea that everyone's a racist on the right for quite a while there's another story this week in which they attempted to Proclaim that Trump voters really voted for Trump not because they were poor and white but because they were racist and white that of course is not supported by any real social science data but the the idea that we're all racist and therefore it's okay to punch us because it's okay to punch a racist that two-step is really really dangerous and it's the end of political discussion because the fact is you can't have a conversation with someone who's calling you a Nazi and you can have a conversation with someone who has an honest political disagreement you can't argue with somebody who you believe to be evil because the proper solution to evil is not to have uh a a reason disagreement it's to disengage or to or fight it and and I think the left by labeling everybody on the right evil has given itself the leeway to be able to justify violence against people on the right in your video for prer youu you also mentioned American privilege because obviously people on the left and social justice Warriors like to talk about how you of course are the most privileged of them all because you were born in America Amer white male uh can you delve into American privilege a little bit so there are certain privileges that people are born into being born in America is a massive privilege it's better to be born in America than be born in Zimbabwe and this is obvious to anyone on planet Earth which is why everybody wants to come here but that is because a lot of people in the United States have made very good decisions about how the United States ought to be based on freedom and liberty that is a privilege that you experience as an American citizen other privileges include being born into a two parent household if you're born into a a household with a mom and dad then the chance chances that you're going to succeed in life are are much better than if you're born into the the house of a single mother not because single mothers are terrible but because a kid needs a mom and a dad and you need somebody earning you need someone taking care of the kids and you need either both parents doing both or one parent doing one one parent doing the other so it's the these sort bottom line is I've I've said more broadly even than American privilege decision privilege that decisions people make in their lives have natural and obvious consequences and that's important to mention because when people say privilege what they usually mean is something you can't change about yourself that that makes you more likely to succeed um but all of these things you're able to overcome so if you not are not born in America and you immigrate to America then now you are privy to American privilege if you were born in a house where you had a single mom that's a you are starting behind the eightball no question but there's no question that you can also make decisions that allow you to Prevail anyway I mean there have been uh several presidents now who have been born uh who who are basically the the children of single mothers I mean Ronald Reagan's dad died when he was really young uh Barack Obama's father obviously was completely absent from the picture and his mom was largely absent as well being born in a bad situation Bill Clinton was the was essentially a single was the mother of the child of single mother the the idea that if you are born in a bad situation that's where you end up that is a mistake and American privilege fights that because it says you're free and your real privilege is that you get to make decisions that have consequences so that's scary because it means your decisions have consequences but it's also empowering in the sense that now you get to live with the consequences of your good decisions I think that's one of the reason like you said you talked about all the people that want to come here it's one of the things that makes America so great and likely for somebody to be able to you know pick themselves up by their bootstraps is that positive decisions have positive consequences where unfortunately in other states or other nations or in States like California the government is so restrictive and Regulatory that it really is hard to succeed because the government is is that boot on your neck holding you back um now government interventionism definitely uh destroys the relationship between cause and effect and that's terrible not only because it it prevents good cause from meeting good effect but also because if people don't learn that bad decisions result in bad things they are more likely to continue making bad decisions that result in bad things so how do we teach those consequences on a on a broader scale then well I mean I think that the life sort of teaches the consequences but we have to not Shield people from the consequences of their decisions meaning that you know it's always good to care about people we always want to take care of people who are in our community we want to help people through hard times and give them a hand up but that's not the same thing as creating a moral hazard where we are actually encouraging people to make bad decisions because we've structured government benefits in a particular way Thomas Souls talked very eloquently about welfare essentially destroying the black community because it used to be the 20% of kids in 1960 in the black community were born out of wedlock and now it's in excess of 70% and the single greatest indicator of intergenerational poverty is single motherhood that's because the federal government stepped in and said look at all these poor women who have these children let's try and pay for them and in the process they incentivized a lot of men to take off and a lot of women to to have babies out of wedlock and that's ended really poorly for a lot of kids who are being born into single mother households so what do you say to people like me that weren't born with your level of IQ privilege well I mean you've been able to do fine I mean this is you know the fact is that I I think that one of the beautiful things about America is we can look at people anywhere on the IQ Spectrum uh pretty much and we can see that there are people who are wildly successful you know all over the IQ Spectrum there are people I think are stupid and untalented who are vastly more wealthy than I am and there are people who are taller and more handsome and they can jump better and they can shoot a basketball better and you know we all have different sets of talents that's what a free market is good for it's for allocating talents to the areas where they're best positioned to thrive that's why comparative advantage is such a wonderful thing the idea is that even if I am better at even if I were to apply myself and become the world's greatest plumber that wouldn't be the best application of my particular skill set better for me to hire somebody who might have an IQ that's a standard deviation below mine uh and hire them and pay them and that person will probably end up being richer than I will if they're able to provide goods and services to People by the way that's not a rip on plumbers there's some plumbers who are way smarter than I am too well Mike BR loves that too because as you know fellow you presenter and a big fan of yours as well he talks about how America is actually lacking sending people in those jobs because college has now become this end all be which is another point of your video that I really liked because you focused on a study that said there are three things that people can do that will kind of guarantee like a line of success and then probably depending on how hard they hustle even more and number one was just finish High School it wasn't finished College it was high school colle college obviously can help decrease your your personal possibility of unemployment but finishing High School is really the key if you want to get out of poverty you have to finish high school because that's considered by most employers sort of the badge of you're employable because high school has been really watered down because college has been watered down uh there's this been this weird reverse effect where it used to be an actual accomplishment to finish high school and then you know college was for the top 20% and now it's everyone is supposed to go to college which means everybody is supposed to graduate high school so it's actually had sort of a negative impact on what high school education is and you know that has an impact on whether it matters whether you graduate high school so that's that is one of the three preconditions it's the Brookings Institute says if you if you don't want to live in permanent poverty in the United States do three things we already talked about two of them don't have babies out of wedlock and make sure you graduate high school and the third is get a job and the idea that it's impossible to get a job for people in the United States is just not true we're at as close to Full Employment as you can have according to the normal unemployment rate it's 4.4% most economic systems of thought suggest that's pretty close to Full Employment without you know government nationalization and redistribution of property so that's you know it's the jobs are out there it's just that there's a lot of people who are are not willing to change skill sets or believe that they deserve more pay than they actually deserve based on their skill set um but if you do those three things then you're not going to live in permanent poverty in the United States in fact the number of people in the United States who live in poverty by the global standard it's like 2% of people in the United States live in poverty by the global standard nine out of 10 Americans live middle class or upper class lives according to Global poverty standards another you know point of fiction that you point out that is just mind-boggling to me that people haven't learned this and they just don't let it go is the disparity between how women are paid and how men are paid you point out that a single woman with no kids and a college education typically earns more than her male counterparts so why do we just consistently hear this I mean I drive around the valley in Los downtown Los Angeles and I see Billboards on the side of the 101 saying demand equal equal pay for equal work yeah I mean I think the reason you see this is because it is always more convenient to blame somebody else for your problems than it is to recognize that you actually have the freedom to make your own decisions and that's true for every group it's true for every person everyone wants to believe that Society out at large is out to get them one of the things I say on campus a lot to to college kids is listen no one cares enough about you to stop you if you think there's some Grand conspiracy to prevent you from succeeding in life that's because you have too high opinion of yourself no one actually cares about you aside from your parents and maybe your your girlfriend or boyfriend and that's it so go out and succeed and stop whining about it and I think that that has become unfortunately uh something that that people don't like to hear they would prefer to hear the stories about how Society is victimizing them so example I spoke down at OT Ranch High School in uh in down near San Diego this is a couple of years ago now and I was saying exactly this to the student body is largely impoverished over there um and a lot of them are you offend one of the students in the crowd I remember this from the yeah so I mean this so what happened is that we were talking about poverty and I said that if if you're living in permanent poverty in the United States you don't have some sort of disability um then the chances are very good that you're not good with money and that if you learn good monetary skills then you will be more likely to get out of poverty and the principal actually walked down to the front of the room this is right and I also said by the that that women were not paid less than men that the wage Gap is myth and the principal walked down to the front of the room and excused the students he said if you don't want to be here because this is too offensive you can leave I was like whoa what did I just say that was so offensive I don't understand uh and it was just offensive what he told me is a lot of these kids have parents who made a lot of the mistakes that you're talking about and it offends them if you tell them about that and I I said to him well wouldn't it be good for them to like learn what mistakes that they don't make the mistakes again but no it's more important that we protect feelings than that we actually protect kids' Futures and that's dangerous for not just this generation but future Generations as well Ben uh one last thing we have some notes on Twitter you've lots of fans of course people are just saying that they need you to slow down the speech a smidge so they can quote unquote absorb the the Brilliance so yeah I get this a lot and unfortunately that is not going to happen I've been trying it for a while Valium seems to do the trick for a little while but it's also controlled substance so I would not to have to drug myself up before I do these things yeah that's a good idea don't do it before the podcast cuz even though don't do drugs kids come on just don't do it you know this could be your brain this is your brain on drugs Ben thanks so much for your time we won't take up any more of it everyone should definitely check out Ben's podcast the Ben chapiro podcast is over at dailywire and of course on iTunes follow him on Twitter if you're not already he loves to uh tweet tweet about and the president himself anyway he's our latest pray you presenter welcome to the prayer you family Ben and thanks so much for your time today thanks I appreciate it e e e e