EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,016 words- 0:00 – 2:40
Intro
- JRJoe Rogan
(claps) Hello, Ben. We're here.
- BSBen Shapiro
Hey. How's it going, dude?
- JRJoe Rogan
We're here. We did it.
- BSBen Shapiro
We did. We're both alive.
- JRJoe Rogan
First of all, congratulations on your thinness.
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
You look slender and healthy. You look good.
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Turns out running away from my children for four months straight- (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
... will do that to you. I literally took up running just to get away from my three children.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just going outside just for some m- mind space?
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, it's LA, man. You can't get outside-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... unless you're actively exercising or they come and arrest you. Or I could allude at a footk- lot, Foot Locker. Right? Then, then they would've, that would have been okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you run with a mask on?
- BSBen Shapiro
No. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Does anybody yell at you?
- BSBen Shapiro
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No?
- BSBen Shapiro
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you run... Do you go to a track? Like, what do you do?
- BSBen Shapiro
No, I literally just run around on the streets-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah?
- BSBen Shapiro
... hoping that one day I will be hunted down by the rioters. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
So I don't have to go deal with my... Children screaming at me. But yeah, that's-
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- BSBen Shapiro
... that's the, that's the goal.
- 2:40 – 3:30
Slide
- BSBen Shapiro
kosher restaurants.
- JRJoe Rogan
... one thing that we're seeing with society and, and culture in general, and one thing that sort of does support the idea of maintaining these sort of rigid disciplines, is that when things start to slide just a little, you lose like a lit- these little incremental steps, they slide. And people go, "Oh God, what's the big deal? What do you care?" And you're like, "I see where this is going." Like I s- there's a, this is, it's going down that way. This is not gonna stop. It's sliding.
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, yeah. And it, it... You saw it in LA. I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... I've, I've lived in LA my whole life. And the, the move from LA being a pretty safe, fairly nice city, suburban in orientation, to just overrun with (laughs) with horror shows is really... It, it was a lot faster than I thought it would be. But it, it's sort of a gra... You're right. It's a gradual decline and then it's just off a cliff.
- 3:30 – 5:35
Skid Row
- BSBen Shapiro
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you started to see tents. And you didn't see 'em at all for decades. And then all of a sudden, I started seeing tents. I remember I was doing Fear Factor in Skid Row in the early 2000s. We would film down there and I would be like, "This is crazy." Like, "Has anybody seen this? Does anybody know this?" 'Cause there was these homeless streets.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you would go down these gigantic... And downtown LA back then, for people who don't live in LA, you would think, "Oh, downtown's like Downtown New York or Downtown Cleveland." No. Downtown LA was a no man's land.
- BSBen Shapiro
Nothing's going on in Downtown LA.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is now.
- BSBen Shapiro
A little bit.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, there's-
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... what was pre-
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... COVID.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was like, there was some bars and there was some really cool upscale apartment buildings and it was kind of picking up. But, uh, I took my family there before COVID, like f- a few, four months before COVID or so. We went to... We were, we were gonna go to... There's a famous donut place there. So we said... Just a, one of the most goofy Sunday things, like, "What do you guys wanna do today?" "Let's go get donuts." So we went to Downtown LA and we're like, "Holy shit."
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Literally shit.
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Human shit on the streets. Everything smelled like piss. Bums everywhere. And I'm like, "Okay, stay close to me. Stay over here. If anybody comes near you, move re- move closer to me." Like, Jesus Christ, like, this is crazy. Like, I don't want them to be freaked out, but I'm like, "This is nuts."
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, the thing is that that sort of disaster area stuff in LA was sort of localized. Right? It really-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
... like I, I worked in the LADA's office for a summer when I was, when I was in law school. This has been like 2007, so this is a while ago. And I remember they had a giant tent city and you had to walk from the car. They made you park a mile away and walk it. And so you're walking through Skid Row and it's like, "Okay, well, this, this is really terrible." And honestly, I feel bad for these people 'cause I don't think the best solution for people who are drug addicted or mentally ill is to live on the street. And a heavy percentage of people who are homeless are drug addicted or mentally ill. But, you know, is it... For, for people who are living in the suburbs, like, this is at least localized. It's not like reaching into your life.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
And then over the past 13 years, like I live in a pretty decent suburban area, and I'm seeing like open needles on the street.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Walk down to my house one day and there's just a guy lying face down in the gutter like Edgar Allan Poe.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs) And I thought, "Well, th- this is, this is falling apart re- rather quickly."
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you
- 5:35 – 8:20
Downtown LA
- JRJoe Rogan
think caused the slide or the expansion of the slide? Because I agree with you that it was very... It was very isolated. Skid Row was very isolated. Downtown LA was very... I m- I remember one time we were filming in Downtown LA and we were on a gurney or... I guess that's what you call... One of those things called where you (motor sound) where it lifts up.
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, uh-huh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Anyway.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
We were filming some Fear Factor stunt, and as we got up, we could see people smoking crack. And I go, "Oh, look. There's people smoking crack right there." And the, the guests...... on the show, like a lot of them, they fly from all over the country and they're like, "Is that real? They're really smoking crack?" I'm going, "That's crack. That's a homeless person smoking crack. Welcome to LA."
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"It's right there." But I didn't feel bad about it, I felt like, look, it's unfortunate but this is not like, indicative of all of LA. We're just in a shitty spot 'cause it's really cheap to film here.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So here you go. You know, you got a little gift. You get to see some weird shit while-
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... you're here. But I, I didn't, I didn't think it was ever going to get to the point where you're on like, Winnetka off the 101-
- BSBen Shapiro
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and there's 80 fucking tents and they put a port-a-potty there. They put a port-a-potty-
- BSBen Shapiro
Hey, we're doing-
- JRJoe Rogan
... there for the homeless people.
- BSBen Shapiro
We're doing real building and real development here-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
... in Los Angeles. Not apartment buildings. We got some port-a-potties, we put 'em... Every underpass shall have a port-a-potty thanks to Mayor Garcetti.
- JRJoe Rogan
You pay attention to politics far more than I do and, and law enforcement and all that. What happened? How did it get to this?
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, on this particular problem, this actually started with a bunch of lawsuits. So the LAPD used to have the authority to move people's shit if it was on the sidewalk. If people had a bunch of stuff that was on the sidewalk and they were just camping out there, the LAPD could come, they could take their stuff away and they could roust them or they could arrest them for trespass or for loitering. A- and then the ACLU actually sued and they said that this is a violation of people's personal property.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, ACLU-
- BSBen Shapiro
And the courts-
- JRJoe Rogan
... you do such good work sometimes. (laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
And, and the courts ruled that you actually are not allowed to move people's stuff, that that's actually personal property-
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- BSBen Shapiro
... even though it's in a public area. And then they got a ruling from a court that you're allowed to live in your car 'cause for a while you weren't allowed to live in your car and then it was, "You're allowed to live in your car." So now you're basically allowed to leave your stuff on the sidewalk and the police are not allowed to move it, and you're allowed to live in your car. And then there was this sort of equity movement that said, "Okay, well things done in business districts, but why, why can't they do it in like, more suburban areas? Why can't they just move into nicer areas? After all, if there's misery, it should be equally spread across the city." (laughs) And, and that's kind of what you're seeing. I mean, this is... There have been so many breaking points over the last year in the city and for me, for me and my wife, I mean, we looked at the rioting and they shut down the entire city at 6:00 PM. It's a county of 12 million people and they shut down the entire county so that douchebags could run around shattering windows pretending that they were standing up for social justice.
- JRJoe Rogan
They had nothing-
- BSBen Shapiro
They shut down Beverly Hills at 1:00 PM.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, right.
- BSBen Shapiro
They shut down Rodeo Drive at 1:00 PM so that people could run up and down Rodeo Drive talking about how capitalism sucks while tweeting from their iPhone.
- 8:20 – 12:48
Opportunity to come together
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, there was two moments where I was like, "This is a real opportunity for us to come together." And one of them was the moment the lockdown happened. It, it felt to me very similar to right after 9/11 where everybody was confronted with their own mortality. Like, holy shit. Like, we, we might be on the verge of a pandemic like in a movie where a lot of the people we know die. And here we, we have to be kind to each other, we have to be... This is what's important. Family's important. And I remember thinking, "I've never been closer to my family. Never been closer to my friends." We were calling each other all the time. We, we were... It was like, it was a, there was, there was real hope in that. I was like, "If we, we get through this, we're gonna be tighter. We're gonna know what means something, what counts. The fuck standup comedy, fuck everything else, man. What, what's important is love and friendship." Then it started to get angry.
- BSBen Shapiro
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I- it only took like, three or four weeks where people started getting, like, they were scared so people started getting shittier with each other online. And then I basically swore off Twitter.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I was like, "This is just too toxic and too hostile." The second moment where I thought we had the opportunity to come together was George Floyd. So George Floyd died and all of a sudden you have these Black Lives Pro- Matter protests and, and I'm like, "Maybe we could finally make a dent on racism. Maybe we can finally make a dent in police brutality. Maybe this is a moment where we can come together and realize what's important. It's community, solidarity, that, that we're, we're all in this together. Like, this is cra-" And then the cops need to be reformed. Like, they can't live like... And maybe we should take into co- into account PTSD. Maybe we should take into account the fact that these fucking guys are pulling up on people every day that might shoot them in the face. They might never be able to see their family and their kids. Let's rework this. Let's think this shit through. (imitates buzzer)
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nope. Then chaos. And then all of a sudden it became like what we saw yesterday where they're breaking into Amazon Go in Seattle. Like, that fucking guy owns The Washington Post!
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
He owns the most left-wing newspaper in America! And you're like, "Not good enough!"
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, you saw they set up a, like, a fake guillotine outside of Bezos' house in Washington DC.
- JRJoe Rogan
I... It's insane.
- BSBen Shapiro
And it, it's, it's just, it's madness. I, I-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's too rich.
- BSBen Shapiro
I totally agree with you, by the way. Like, when, when the, when COVID happened, I thought, "I can't really see how we're gonna split in partisan fashion over this thing."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
Like, everybody wants to live and everybody would also like to eventually get back to regular life. And the better we can live, the better we can get back to regular life. So it seems like, okay, we're on board. When it came to the lockdowns, the original lockdowns, I was like, "Okay, I'm on board." Y- you know, I'm, I'm taking this thing really seriously. I've got parents in their, in their 60s. I feel like, you know, I'm in good health. I'm, I'm fairly young. I'm 36. But for my parents, I don't, I don't want my parents getting this thing. And so we're still taking this thing real seriously. I mean, I'm still wearing a mask around in public places and I think people should.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
I think that's a responsible thing to do. But it, it immediately turned into, "Who can we blame for this? Who can we blame? Who's doing it wrong?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
And it seems like there are only like, a couple of things that you really can do that are obviously wrong. Like, nobody has a good solution on this thing. Okay? It ravaged Italy. It ravaged Spain. It, it ravaged New York. Like, there, there are a couple things you shouldn't do. Don't take the olds and send them back into the nursing homes with COVID.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
... that's like an obvious one. But beyond that, like, just staying away from each other and socially distancing and wearing a... Like, this is all kind of commonsensical stuff that people have known since the flu pandemic event in 1918.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
Like, nothing, nothing has really changed and yet it immediately turned into, "Who can we blame? Who's, who's to blame for all these dead people?" Maybe it's Ron DeSantis or maybe it's Cuomo. Like, who, who can we blame? So that was terrible. And then on the Floyd stuff, I had the same feelings. Like, I don't know a single human being who watched that tape and didn't think, "Okay, that guy deserves to go to jail."... Chauvin, right? The, the officer in that case, in the George Floyd case.
- JRJoe Rogan
Who didn't think that? Yeah. Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
Everyone I know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, everybody thought that, yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
Every single person was like, "Yeah, that's, that's real bad." Like, that's-
- 12:48 – 14:22
Defund the police
- JRJoe Rogan
That discussion, uh, when, when, when people are really saying, "Defund the police," I'm like, "Cooler heads will prevail. Th- they're gonna realize." And I think they're realizing it now in New York City. I mean, New York City has had record crime, record homicides.
- BSBen Shapiro
Who would have thought?
- JRJoe Rogan
Who would have thought?
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
de Blasio is ... I mean, I would've never ... I would have, would have never imagined I would look at Garcetti and go, "Well, he's better."
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs) That's exactly right. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) I look, I look at Garcetti and I look at de Blasio, I'm like, "Garcetti, I'll have him over to my house for dinner. He's way better-"
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, yeah. The weird giant-
- JRJoe Rogan
"... than de Bla- de Blasio is."
- BSBen Shapiro
... Groundhog murderer.
- JRJoe Rogan
So weird. He's so ... Hey, you can have protests, but only Black Lives Matter protests.
- BSBen Shapiro
That one w- that, that was a, that was a solid ... You know, that, that was ... That may have been the moment when I realized that we were all F'ed.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
There was the moment when ... Like, we're in the middle of a global pandemic-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
... with hundreds of thousands of people dead, and an entire swath of our media and health elites just decided randomly that if you're protesting against lockdown you were very bad, right? Then you were a racist and you were gonna get people killed and you should wear a mask. And I was like, well if you're pro- ... Uh, I sort of agree with the mask thing, like yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
Okay. And then you get millions of people in the streets yelling at each other and breathing on each other and spitting on each other, and you got health professionals on TV being like, "Well, racism is a public health threat. I guess that you can do that now."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
It's like, well what the ... I, I know people who died in the hospital of COVID and their family could not visit them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
Like, they literally died alone in the hospital of COVID and family could not visit them, and you're telling me that it's deeply important that we have, like, dance lines. This was stuff happening at rallies, like dance lines in the streets in New York to fight racism. That's deeply important, but a daughter being able to visit her dad before he dies, that's not important. Come on.
- JRJoe Rogan
I am-
- BSBen Shapiro
What bullshit.
- JRJoe Rogan
I am
- 14:22 – 16:06
Freedom to protest
- JRJoe Rogan
for your freedom to protest. I'm 100% for your freedom to protest. I'm also for your freedom to go to the gym. I'm also for your freedom to go to a comedy club if you so choose. I'm for your freedom to go to a restaurant. Look, they figured out how to do restaurants in a lot of places. The, the servers wear masks and many of them wear face shields. You distance the tables apart from each other, you do temperature checks, you take people's names and addresses down when they enter so that if anybody gets, uh, sick, if there's any sort of cont- ... And they, they've been able to do this.
- BSBen Shapiro
No, this is right. The, the vectors of transmission are typically closed areas, people in solid proximity with each other for long periods of time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? That, that's the stuff where people are getting this stuff and-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- BSBen Shapiro
... I, I ju- ... I, I trust most Americans not ... Like, some Americans are gonna be dumbasses. Some people are just dumbasses.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, there's a lot of videos.
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know if you watch YouTube-
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
... but there's plenty of Karens out there.
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
How sad is it if your name is Karen and you're a good person?
- BSBen Shapiro
Uh, you're-
- JRJoe Rogan
All the good Karens-
- BSBen Shapiro
You're done, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
... out there-
- BSBen Shapiro
You're toast.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I'm, I'm sorry ladies.
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm really sorry.
- BSBen Shapiro
But it's ... Like, this is ... I made this point online. I got shellacked for it, but I was pointing out that most Americans are wearing masks right now. By polling-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... data, 59% of Americans say that they always wear a mask when they leave the house and if you look at a map of mask wearing, across the board in the places where there are the most cases, people are wearing masks. That's not ... I wasn't saying masks don't work. I wear a mask. I think that the evidence shows that they do something. We don't know that ... They're not, like, full protective. They're ... The cloth masks are not as effective as surgical masks which are not as effective as N95s, but wear a mask, good. The point that I was making is people are acting in fairly rational fashion, meaning if you think COVID is, like, around you, you're wearing a mask and you're socially distancing. So this, this idea that Gavin Newsom knows best how you ought to live your life, like, I, I got some trouble with that, especially because California saw the same uptick as Texas and Florida, and California never opened. I mean, we've been here the whole time. California never really opened.
- 16:06 – 17:26
The impact of the protests
- BSBen Shapiro
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, we were doing pretty good up until the protests.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, that's true.
- JRJoe Rogan
Everything seemed like it was on the uptick. The Comedy Store was talking to them about becoming an essential business and, and opening up, because they had opened up bars and they had opened up restaurants. And they didn't really have a designation for comedy clubs. They, they sort of co- co- talked about it as a live performance venue, but then that puts comedy clubs at the same place as the Staples Center, which sounds crazy, right?
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they're like, "Listen, we can do this. We can just have half capacity, temperature checks, do it right." They're doing it right in a lot of places all over the country. L- we can do this. The audience has to wear masks. This is totally doable. And so they were right about to do that and then post ... The other thing is, we were trying to figure out, like, is it protests only? I think it's bars too.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The thing about bars is close talk. People are drunk-
- BSBen Shapiro
And loud talk, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. They're drunk and they're on top of each other. I think bars probably had a significant uptick.
- BSBen Shapiro
So churches.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? Lot, lots of singing, lots of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... lots of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... vocalizing. Right? Churches and synagogues were-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... a main vector for this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
You know what I mean? But again, these are all things that are fairly commonsensical and we can agree on, and yet we're beating the hell out of each other-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... over this stuff, and there's the suggestion we know what to do. "If only we just did it, this would stop." It's not gonna stop. Okay? It's not gonna stop. It's a, it's a very transmissible disease. We don't have a vaccine. As long as people are out there, it's going to continue to pass. Wear a mask if you're in close proximity with others, and that's pretty much it.
- JRJoe Rogan
And-
- BSBen Shapiro
The hospitals are getting better at this, thank God.
- JRJoe Rogan
They
- 17:26 – 19:03
Protests for increasing immunity
- JRJoe Rogan
... Yes, they are, and the crazy thing was that they were saying, like, the ... you can only protest if it's a Black Lives Matter protest.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, that was insane.
- JRJoe Rogan
What about a protest for increasing your immunity? What about a protest for educating people to the, the, the techniques and the strategies for increasing your immune system? It is ... There are ... They're out there and there's no discussion about this amongst health professionals. Excuse me, amongst, uh, politicians. If you listen to health professionals, people that really understand the human body, they'll tell you there's a lot of strategies, there's a lot of things you could do. First of all, eliminate alcohol, eliminate caffeine, eliminate sugar, eliminate all the bullshit in your diet. Start taking vitamin supplements, get outside, get some vitamin D, get, get your body healthy, exercise. Do, do all these things and you will increase your immune system, you increase your body's health. You don't hear a word of that. All of it is just stay inside, lock ... You know, we have to stay apart to keep everybody safe and ... Goddamn.
- BSBen Shapiro
The, the number one vector for transmission remains the home.... right? That, that's still the number one-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- BSBen Shapiro
... vector in every society, is the home. People going home and giving it to each other, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... when they ... I remember for, for me one of the breaking points in LA was, was when they decided they were gonna shut down all open areas. They're gonna shut down all the parks, they're gonna shut down all the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
... beaches and I was like, "What is this?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, not only that-
- BSBen Shapiro
"What is this?"
- JRJoe Rogan
... it goes against science because-
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... there's been papers that have been studied that show that th- this virus dies almost instantaneously when it's, it's exposed to sunlight.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Or even artificial sunlight.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, i- n- none of it makes any sense, but it does feel like, bottom line, there are a bunch of gaps in American society, and then a bad thing happened and a- everything just sort of fell apart.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
It was, it was sort of like a house of cards and then there's a little bit of weight put right on top-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... of the house of cards and everything just collapsed in on itself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, people
- 19:03 – 21:09
Protests and looting
- JRJoe Rogan
are panicking, you know? They're getting scared and then the economy's collapsing. And so the economy collapsing at the same time as the George Floyd protests led people to start looting, and then people that didn't give a fuck about George Floyd or Black Lives Matter were just stealing shit. And then this police was letting them steal shit. They were standing down in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, literally l- s- cops standing there-
- BSBen Shapiro
And, and the media, th-
- JRJoe Rogan
... while people were smashing doors.
- BSBen Shapiro
I gotta say, the media coverage of this stuff is just awful. The me- the media were cheering this stuff on. I mean, th- they were simultaneously making two arguments that conflict with each other. One was, these are mostly peaceful protests. First of all, mostly peaceful is the most ... it's, it's the loosest, most loosely defined arbitrarily applied term in history.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, if you get-
- BSBen Shapiro
OJ Simpson was-
- JRJoe Rogan
... 50,000 people-
- BSBen Shapiro
... mostly peaceful that night.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's true. (laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
OJ Simpson was mostly peaceful that night.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) That's true.
- BSBen Shapiro
For like an hour fifteen he was really not peaceful, but for the other hours between sunset and sunrise he was unbelievably peaceful. Like, I've never heard this term before where a protest turns into a vast riot, you know, wrecking all of Melrose and everybody's like, "Well, it was mostly peaceful." Well, what the ... what is that? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
What is that?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so true.
- BSBen Shapiro
So i- so e- h- how about this?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
How about you either say that the protestors and looters are two different groups of people and we treat them differently.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
If you're protesting, that's First Amendment activity. The minute you shatter a store window, you go to jail. Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
That's the way they should run.
- JRJoe Rogan
Agreed.
- BSBen Shapiro
Or, alternatively, if it's n- if you, if you're saying they're the same group, then they need to be treated as lawbreakers. So I, I believe the first. I believe if you're a-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... protester you should be protesting. If you're a looter and a rioter, then you should go to jail, but the media refuse to make that distinction and then they act like the cops are the bad guys when they come in to, to arrest people who are violating the laws. You're seeing this in Portland right now. They're trying to burn down the damn courthouse.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
And the, and the feds come in a- and start arresting people, and people are like, "This is the Gestapo." It's like, okay. Speaking as one of the tribe, let me say, this is not like the Gestapo. Okay? Like, the, the Gestapo was not famous for rolling up on people and then charging them, and then if they didn't have a charge, releasing them. That wasn't like, the Gestapo's thing. Like, I, I'm sorry but you decided that you wanted to throw a firebomb at the, at the federal courthouse and your local mayor said he wasn't gonna let the police do anything, and so DHS came in and arrested you. Tough shit. I mean, like ... (laughs) I'm sorry, that's ... At some point, somebody's gotta restore some semblance of
- 21:09 – 23:50
Racism
- BSBen Shapiro
law and order here.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's, it's a weird situation because I don't exactly understand why they're attacking the courthouse. I don't exactly understand why they're smashing-
- BSBen Shapiro
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... the windows at Amazon Go. It, there's-
- BSBen Shapiro
It's, it's Steve Martin, right? "Th- they, he, they must hate these paint cans."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? Like, f- from The Jerk, right? (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
But it's, uh, it's, it, it went from this to s- the literally tear down the structure of society.
- JRJoe Rogan
That-
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, th- this is where we get into sort of the deep philosophy point. And this i- this is actually really ... The, the, the biggest problem right now on the racism point is the shifting definition of racism. So I had the unfortunate experience of actually reading one of the best-selling books in the country, Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, and let me just tell you, a greater pile of horseshit has never been produced by a bevy of horses. It is an awful book and it is basically rooted in the same theory as Ibram Kendi's How To Be an Antiracist. The, the basic definition of racism changes in this theory. So racism, you and I were sitting here discussing racism, and the way I define racism is probably the same way you define racism. You believe in the inferiority or superiority of a group based on race, of an individual based on their membership in that group, too. Right? That would be racism.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's ra-
- BSBen Shapiro
I believe-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
... that you're inferior or you're superior based on your race. End of story, right? That's, that's racism.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's racism.
- BSBen Shapiro
So Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi redefined racism to mean any societal structure that results in a racial inequality is itself racist. So any structure that results in a not exact proportion between whites and Blacks in a part-
- JRJoe Rogan
Does that make the NBA racist?
- BSBen Shapiro
Exactly. Exactly. The answer is kind of yes, except that the NBA's not racist because obviously it benefits Black people, right? I mean, now the NBA's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Does that make-
- BSBen Shapiro
... not racist in, except th- the r- it's 'cause the meritocracy is the reason the NBA's not racist.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
But Robin DiAngelo and Kendi both suggested meritocracy is an aspect of whiteness. They say that meritocracy and individual are aspects of whiteness because these institutions, things like meritocracy and individualism and not seeing people's colors, these just reinforce hierarchies that end with disparate outcomes. And so what they say is in order to be antiracist, you have to want to tear down the entire system. They literally say this. I'm not, I'm not really ... I, I know that I'm not misidentifying the argument because I've, again, I've read their books. The, the basic notion that to be antiracist you have to tear down free markets or you have to tear down free speech or you have to ... A- and what that means is, of course, that any time there's rioting and looting, that's really just an expression of outrage at the broader American system and so it justifies that sort of stuff. This is why you saw Nikole Hannah-Jones, the de facto editor of The New York Times, 1619 Project lady, tweeting out that she appreciated that people were calling these the 1619 Riots because once you say America is rooted in slavery and rooted in evil and a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad place, then robbing a shop is just the latest iteration
- 23:50 – 26:37
The 1619 Project
- BSBen Shapiro
of you fighting the system.
- JRJoe Rogan
Explain the 1619 correlation to people, if you would.
- BSBen Shapiro
Sure. So the 1619 Project is, is something put forward by The New York Times. It's not good history. There are four Pulitzer Prize winning historians who have said this is not good history. The basic argument is the United States was not founded in 1776 with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The count- the country was actually founded in 1619 with the importation of African slaves to American shores because that's when the first African slave arrived in the United States, was 1619. So the idea is that the entire history of America is a history of a system that is endemically white supremacist and that all of the Declaration of Independence is basically a lie, that the principles of all men are created equal, that was a lie when it was written and it's a lie now, that the idea that we have rights that pre-exist government, that's a lie. All of these things are lies. The Constitution was built in order to enshrine white supremacy and no evolution has taken place. So they don't ... They, they, they essentially make the argument that from 1619 to 2020 is a continuum. Racism has gone underground a little bit, but it's still there and it's still, it's still implicit in all of our systems. So the 1619 Project has essays blaming literally everything on racism. So disparities in maternal mortality between Black women and white women, which by the way exist in Europe and in Canada.... that's due to American racism. Traffic patterns in the United States is due to systematic American racism. Every racial disparity is attributable to a system that was rooted in slavery. Now, the traditional motion of America is that America was founded in 1776, and that the story of America is that America did tolerate the great original sin of slavery up until the Civil War and then tolerated Jim Crow up until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And that is a great stain and a blot on America, but the story of America is trying to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence over time, make those promises available to everybody. And this isn't my argument, this is Martin Luther King Jr's argument. When he talks on, in the march in Washington about fulfilling the promissory note of the Declaration of Independence he says, "We're here to cash the check." Right? "You issued us the check and then you didn't let Black Americans be Americans. We're here to cash the check." This is the argument Frederick Douglass, the freed slave, makes in 1852. He makes a famous speech before slavery is ended and he says, "July 4th doesn't mean anything to Black Americans because we're not included in the bargain. Include us in the bargain." The story of America is the Declaration of Independence, those principles that we should all basically still agree on, because they're pretty good principles; free speech, uh, free assembly, all the things you see in the Constitution. That those things brought about greater freedom and prosperity than anything else and helped us overcome the sins that are present in all human societies and were present in the United States in extreme ways as well. But that's the, that's the counter-narrative, right? The 1619 Project says that all that was basically nonsense and that America's just a, a history of whites keeping Blacks down and that no progress has essentially been made. If there is progress, it's mostly a lie. And so every disparity now can be attributed to historic disparities between white and Black.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is there
- 26:37 – 27:44
Institutional Racism
- JRJoe Rogan
middle ground? D- so if we look at 1776 and we look at the Declaration of Independence and we look at America today in 2020, w- there clearly is some impact in the echoes of slavery, and then after that Jim Crow. There's clearly some impact in these deeply impoverished communities that don't seem to advance.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yes. So the, to, to, to make the argument about institutional racism, there, there's a couple ways you can read this. When people say systemic racism or institutional racism, I usually ask them to be a little more specific in what they mean, 'cause there are a few ways you can read that. One is, history has impact. Of course that's true, right? That's true for everybody. It's true in your family history, right? If you have a grandfather who went to, who went to prison on a particular charge, that leads to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
... poverty for your parents which led to more poverty for you. Right? People have histories, those histories are embedded in their life experiences, and that's true for societies as well. All of that is for sure true. Then there's the question as to whether the institutions today are racist. And that's not quite the same thing, right? Because history has consequences is not the same thing as saying the rules today are racist, because the rules today are not racist actually. The rules today are quite not-racist. So
- 27:44 – 29:15
The Middle Ground
- BSBen Shapiro
it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
But historically, it's fairly recent. If you go from the civil rights movement to 2020, we're really not talking about that much time. We're talking about-
- BSBen Shapiro
We're talking about three generations, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
... 50-plus years.
- BSBen Shapiro
60 years, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, it's a, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
50-plus.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right, but, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
And in the world of, you know, history-
- BSBen Shapiro
In the vast span of human history, it's not our-
- JRJoe Rogan
... it's a very small amount of time.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So clearly there's some impact of both racism-
- BSBen Shapiro
Absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then Jim Crow laws. So that, that's where I'm saying there's a middle ground.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah. And then, and it's indep- It, it is important for people on my side of the aisle, conservatives, to acknowledge and recognize the importance of, of history and people's living situations now. And it's important for people on the other side of the aisle to, at the same time, not attribute every single thing to history, because-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. But isn't there always something like that?
- BSBen Shapiro
... people who are born-
- JRJoe Rogan
There's always, like, extremes on each position and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah, but I don't think that it lies as far in, in the dead center of that as people, I think, want it to.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- BSBen Shapiro
What I mean by that is, the problems that have plagued communities in the United States, not just the Black community in the United States, but problems of racism or problems of sexism, the way those get alleviated is people making better choices over time. Right? That is the prob- that's the way that those issues get alleviated. When Jews arrived in the United States in the, in the early 20th century, to talk of my people, when they, when they came they were impoverished, they didn't speak the language, they were banned from country clubs, there was open discrimination against them, they were banned from Harvard. Right? Harvard Law School had quotas on Jews. The, the way to fight against that is to make good decisions. And so the, you fight against the system to make sure that the system has rules that apply equally to everyone.
- 29:15 – 31:19
Breaking the Chain
- BSBen Shapiro
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
But you clearly see that there's a big difference between people coming over here willingly and doing so in order to better their lives, versus someone whose ancestors were dragged over here to be sold as property.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
And then dealing with the repercussions of that being your family history, and red line laws and all the other things that were put in place to sort of keep them in very specific areas which, to this day, remain crime-ridden, gang-ridden, deeply impoverished communities.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, that's true, but the question is how much of that is historic red lining and how much of that is an 18-year-old kid today deciding to pick up a gun and shoot somebody?
- JRJoe Rogan
But how much of that 18-year-old kid today deciding to pick up a gun and shoot somebody is based on him growing up in this fucked up environment where that's what he models, where everything around him is crime and gangs and you imitate your atmosphere, which is what all humans do?
- BSBen Shapiro
Right, but the answer is there's only one way to break that chain.
- JRJoe Rogan
What, what way is that?
- BSBen Shapiro
That way is to not pick up a gun and shoot somebody.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that's-
- BSBen Shapiro
Meaning that-
- JRJoe Rogan
... a simplistic way of looking at it if you're on the outside of that community and you're not one of those 18-year-old kids that grows up with the incredible influence of all the people around him and that's all you see and that's all you know.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, but the problem is, the only way that's gonna be the thing that your kid doesn't know is for you not to do it. At some point, personal agency has to come in.
- JRJoe Rogan
Some... It does, but-
- BSBen Shapiro
Because the... Well, what's-
- JRJoe Rogan
... education, education and, and teaching them about personal agency and, and letting them understand that there's a way out of this, and that the path that they see being replicated over and over again by these people that wind up dying young, that wind up going to jail, that there are other options. There's a lot of kids that never get that other information. Or if they get it, they get little blips of it, but the vast majority of the information, the vast majority of the influence they get is terrible.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, th- I, I totally agree with this and this is why I think the worst thing that you can say to a kid is, "You're born behind the eight ball and no matter what you do you're not gonna succeed."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. I agree.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? That's literally the worst thing you can say to a kid. What you should be saying is, "Look at how your grandfather was born behind the eight ball and look how hard he had to work in order to get ahead, and look at all the efforts-"
- JRJoe Rogan
If, if that's true though.
- 31:19 – 34:01
War on Poverty
- JRJoe Rogan
But if your grandfather wasn't...... ahead, didn't get ahead, if your grandfather was in and out of jail, if your father was in and out of jail, everyone around you is like that, if there's literally no influence that's positive in your life, the idea of saying to a kid like that, "Hey, don't pick up a gun and shoot somebody," it's way, that's way too simplistic a version of, of their future, in my, in my opinion, in my opinion.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, I mean, I, the problem is I don't see an alternative solution. And when you're talking about solutions-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think an alternative solu- I think an alternative solution is, there has to be some sort of large-scale intervention in these communities to do something about what, what, what has already been set in motion and the momentum that keeps continuing decade after decade.
- BSBen Shapiro
The, the, the prob-
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know what could be done.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, but that, that's the problem, is that I think that a lot of the solutions that have been proposed have already been tried.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like what?
- BSBen Shapiro
Meaning that for i- Okay, so for example, LBJ thought that the way to alleviate a lot of these inequalities was the war on poverty and he, he openly s- talked about this. He talked about ... He gave a speech very famously in which he said, "We're trying to guarantee equality of outcome, not just equality of opportunity, equality of outcome." And you can't hold the race where somebody is starting 20 yards behind-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... and then fire the gun and say, "Okay, it's an equal race."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? E- so you have to get the person who's 20 yards behind to actually get up to the starting line so that they're equal. And so the idea was, we're going to fight this war on poverty and alleviate poverty largely through transfer payments and, and through the government taking a forcible step in favor of alleviating people's lives. We've now spent $22 trillion in the war on poverty, and we have about the same number of Black Americans living under the poverty line as were living under the poverty line by the late '70s. The, the, the real issues that, that are inter- that are, that are creating intergenerational poverty, everyone knows this but it remains true, the number one predictor of intergenerational poverty in the United States remains single motherhood. The single motherhood rate in the Black community was 20% in 1960. It is upward of 70% today. That's not unique to the Black community, by the way. It's true in the white community as well. The fi- 5% of white kids were born out of wedlock in 1960. Today, it's upward of 40%. That is not ... Something has happened, and it is not a matter of increased racism. That's not happening because of increased racism, right? Th- that, that is happening because there's been a cultural change that does not place tremendous emphasis, for Black or white or for anybody, on personal responsibility and personal agency. There needs to be a mindset change. We do this, by the way, in all other areas of American life, except for the most important decisions. In the area of sports, nobody does this routine. In the are- This is a point Shelby Steele makes. In the area of sports, if a kid is not, does not have a good jump shot, nobody says to him, "You know what? You don't have a good jump shot 'cause your father didn't have a good jump shot, his grandfather didn't have a good jump shot, and the game is biased against you." We say, "Okay, if you wanna be on the team, you're gonna have to learn to shoot a jump shot." Right? That, that sounds harsh, that sounds bad, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but don't, don't you ... But sports
- 34:01 – 34:39
Sports
- JRJoe Rogan
are different. And here's why sports are different, 'cause sports, you enter them independently of your culture. You, you, you, you base what you're trying to do on the parameters of the rules and the people that you're competing against. That's how you look at it. So you, whatever culture you're from, you, you walk into this new thing with this very rigid set of rules. Like, "This is the three-point line. This is-"
- BSBen Shapiro
But I don't, I don't think that white people or Jews or Asians have a monopoly on valuing education or a monopoly on hard work or punctuality or anything. I think that Black people have exactly the, the same capacity as any people of any other race to do all of these things. And those are the preconditions for success. You either meet them or you don't. I mean that-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
... that's true for everybody.
- JRJoe Rogan
But do-
- 34:39 – 37:35
Environment
- JRJoe Rogan
for success. But don't you think that a lot of that is predicated on the environment that you develop in, and the people that you're around, and the, the lives that you imitate, and the influences-
- BSBen Shapiro
For sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that you have around you? Someone has to do something to influence those kids in a different way. Look, I was very fortunate when I was young that I discovered martial arts, and it, it kept me from being what I could have potentially been, a, a bad kid. Li- it, it gave me something to focus on. There's ... And, and I didn't grow up in a bad environment, but it wasn't the best. There's a lot of people out there that grow up in horrific environments and they never have that thing. They never have something. They, they don't have a father around or they don't have a mother around, or whatever, wh- whatever bad influences they have are overwhelming. And they, they don't ... It's, it's very difficult for someone to just, air quotes, "get their shit together." It's very difficult.
- BSBen Shapiro
For sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's why, to this day, there's so many books about losing weight.
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Don't you think everybody wants to lose weight that's fat? They do. They ... Everybody who's fat wants to be thin. They do. But it's fucking hard.
- BSBen Shapiro
For sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's nothing-
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in comparison to changing your whole life.
- BSBen Shapiro
But th- but you would say about somebody losing weight, you know what's not useful here is lamenting how bad your family has had it with regard to losing weight. Like, at a certain point, if you wanna lose the weight, you gotta figure out a way to lose the weight.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's true.
- BSBen Shapiro
Now, we could-
- JRJoe Rogan
But this is based on the information that I have. I have this vast scope of information that I've been able to absorb. If you're in these isolated environments and everyone around you is involved in gangs and crime and drugs, it's very difficult to model yourself after something that you don't see in real life.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, uh, so totally true. Totally true. And that's why, again, more information needs to get into areas w- I agree with a lot of the opportunities that need to be provided by education, getting people to be educated outside their local public school would be a good change.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, being able to, like, move outside your crap local public school-
- JRJoe Rogan
And the best-
- BSBen Shapiro
... and go somewhere else would be good.
- JRJoe Rogan
The best influences for kids that grow up in these environments seem to be people that have gotten out and then come back and talked to them-
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and tell them how to do it.
- BSBen Shapiro
But none of this has to do-
- JRJoe Rogan
This, this can be done.
- BSBen Shapiro
But to go back to the original conversation-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh.
- BSBen Shapiro
... none of this has to do with telling kids that you live in an evil country that's seeking to keep you down.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, maybe not, but there, there has been a very small amount of emphasis placed on taking these impoverished communities and figuring out how to engineer them out of the situation.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, uh-
- 37:35 – 38:15
Black America
- JRJoe Rogan
right back where they started from.
- BSBen Shapiro
N-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, but I do think that there is an argument that there can be some way of engineering, whether it's community centers or education or doing something differently in these places, to chip away at this problem.
- BSBen Shapiro
I ... So on that stuff, we totally agree. The only point that I'm making about the 1619 Project-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... is when you teach people that they are the victims of a society, it makes it very difficult for them to succeed. The story of, of Black America should be a story of unbelievably brave people triumphing over systems that sucked, right? I mean, that, that is the story of Black America. Most Black Americans do not live under the poverty line in the United States. There's a huge Black middle class.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay. Let's-
- BSBen Shapiro
There's a Black upper class, too.
- 38:15 – 41:01
How to Fix Black America
- BSBen Shapiro
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes, there is.
- BSBen Shapiro
Let's ju-
- JRJoe Rogan
Let's, let's simplify this, if we can.
- BSBen Shapiro
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
If Ben Shapiro's the king of the world, how do you fix Baltimore? How do you fix Detroit? How do you fix the South Side of Chicago?
- BSBen Shapiro
Okay. So here's the unpopular view, but it happens to be empirically correct. (laughs) The first thing you have to do is you have to load the place with police. You gotta load the place with police because you have to stop crime. Once you stop crime, then businesses are happy to invest in those areas. You're not gonna get businesses to invest in those areas and provide jobs unless the crime is gone.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
You need a ... In fact, one of the reasons that you have such a vast differential in racial crime in the United States is because of white racism. And this is a point that Jane Levy, writer for the LA Times has made, and she wrote a book called Ghettocide, and she points out that the reason that Black crime was so high in the early 20th century and late 19th century is because basically white communities said to Black communities, "You're on your own." Right? "Enjoy." And so the crime rates ended up spiking because there were no police there. You have to make sure that law-abiding people are protected, that law-abiding businesses are protected, that people want to live there, that people want to invest there. You have to have a reestablishment of faith in churches, right? You need social institutions outside of government that are promoting things like family.
- JRJoe Rogan
Good values, yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
You need, you need more ... The, one of the reasons you need more companies in these areas is they can offer educational opportunities to kids, internships, deals to go to college and then come back and work for us for a couple of years, right? You need opportunity. The same way that opportunity is built anywhere else on earth, you need to provide a safe space for business to work and for free speech to flourish, and for education to be valued. You need to go in, you need to make clear to every kid, "If you graduate high school, then you will have a shot at college." Which, by the way, is 100% true today. Right? If you are a Black kid and you graduate high school with any level of achievement, you will have a very solid shot of at least going to a, a community college. And if you score p- even decently on the SATs, of going to a very high level college, right? Affirmative action programs are extraordinarily common across the United States. But the, the first message is, we are going to ensure that law and order prevail here, a safe space for life, liberty and property, and, and ownership of private property. And we are going to make sure that you as a law-abiding citizen have the opportunity to succeed, because the biggest obstacle to young Black kids growing up in the inner city, again, is not history. It is in the moment, the drugs, the crime, the fact that there are no fathers in a lot of these areas. Roland Fryer, a Black professor at Harvard, he's done excellent work showing that actually the number one factor in allowing kids to, to rise is not even having a father in the home, it's how many fathers there are generally in a community.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
So you can, you can have a single mom, but if there are a lot of other male father figures around, that helps fill in the gap, right? These, these are practical things. Giving kids the ability to pick the school they go to so they don't have to go to the local crappy public school if it's a local crappy public school would be a solution here. But this all starts with the notion that it is not racist in the slightest to suggest that law and order have to prevail, and that law-abiding people should be protected in their exercise of their rights.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think you're 100%
- 41:01 – 45:07
Reforming Law Enforcement
- JRJoe Rogan
right on that, and I think although that might be an unpopular opinion, I agree with you. I think that is very important. Now, what do you do in this environment when you look at the way people distrust the police now? In particular, I mean, I mean, I've been reading stories about cops going to Five Guys Burgers and they, they can't get served-
- BSBen Shapiro
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause people won't serve cops. And this idea that all cops are bad, and this is a, a very really disturbing perspective to me because you're seeing what's happening right now in Chicago, you're seeing what's happening right now in New York where you have this massive uptick in violent crime because it's perceived that the police presence has been dimi- diminished greatly. So, how do you reaffirm the trust in, in, in law enforcement, and what do you do to reform law enforcement? Because clearly there are some people that are cops that should not be cops.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah. So th- there are a few things that you can do right off the bat, and that people right, left and center have sort of talked about, and one of them is that you can abridge qualified immunity in certain areas. So qualified immunity is the idea that you're not liable to civil suit if you don't do something bad that has specifically had a precedent in law. So, you could do something bad, but as long as nobody else has done the same exact bad thing before, you're not subjected to civil liability. You could, you could curb that.
- JRJoe Rogan
How so? Explain that again.
- BSBen Shapiro
I- i- it's a little complicated. So qualified immunity generally means that if I do something bad, then as a police officer, if I act within the scope of my general reasonable authority-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh.
- BSBen Shapiro
... you can't sue me for it. The actual way that-
- JRJoe Rogan
What if you do something bad? What if you shoot somebody while you're operating, like-
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
But-
- BSBen Shapiro
So, so the w- the, the reason that qualified immunity as currently understood under Supreme Court doctrine is too broad, is because that, the, the standard used to be you would have to act as a reasonable police officer. If you acted as a reasonable police officer and you took a, a reasonable action, right, somebody went for their waistband, they had an object in there, you didn't know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... if it was a gun, you shot them, right, you wouldn't presumably be suable because that's still reasonable. You track a guy down, you shoot him in the back, you know, (laughs) and, and then you plant a gun on him, that presumably would be suable, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. I understand what you're saying.
- BSBen Shapiro
He'd be personally liable. So th- the, the, the way that Supreme Court has done this is they broaden qualified immunity to such an extent that you can still ... Bottom line is you can still get away with some bad stuff and not be sued for it. So that needs to be curbed. That's one thing. Second, police union contracts need to be utterly redone across the country.... police union contracts right now protect a lot of bad cops, right? Be- because the police unions are designed to protect the member sh- the members of the union, just like any other union.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
And so what that means is that police unions ... I, I'm, I'm not a fan of public sector unions generally, um, but police unions need to be abridged in their ability to protect cops who do something wrong. Third, you need to have a national registry of cops who are disciplined for violation of procedure, so that they can't just leave LAPD and then go work for a Ferguson PD-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
... or some, right? Tho- those are some easy things that you could do right off the bat. But the, the biggest thing right now, the biggest factor in terms of lack of faith between police and, and citizens really is the media because there's been a lot of talk about the racial constituency of, of police forces. The, the majority of the LAPD is minority. The majority of the Baltimore PD is minority. I believe that a huge percentage of the, of the Chicago PD is minority. So it really is not about, you know, lots of white cops in Black neighborhoods. In Baltimore, it's a lot of Black cops in Black neighborhoods and that has not solved the problem of people mistrusting the police on an endemic level.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's an inherently difficult job.
- BSBen Shapiro
It's a, it's a rotten job, man. I mean, I f- I have nothing but ... For, for good cops, those, they're, they're heroes and the vast majority of cops are good cops and they're heroes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I read a, a, a, a meme the other day that's very accurate. It said, "If you have 130 good cops and 12 cops," you have ... Or, "12 cops that are bad, you have 12 bad cops. If you have 130 good cops and 12 bad cops, but the 130 won't do anything about the 12 bad cops, you've got 142 bad cops."
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah. A- a- and I think that that's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that's right, too.
- BSBen Shapiro
I, I, I think that it is also true that our standard of what constitutes a bad cop has, in some ways, become much more stringent. So for example, there, there are cases that have become national stories in which a cop was labeled a bad cop and he wasn't a bad cop.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
But there are
- 45:07 – 47:35
The Threat of Law Enforcement
- JRJoe Rogan
bad cops. I mean-
- BSBen Shapiro
For sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look, look, here's a, a great example. The, the cops that pushed down that old man in, in ... Where was it? Buffalo, New York?
- BSBen Shapiro
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that where it was?
- BSBen Shapiro
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's-
- BSBen Shapiro
Grant Aiscola, yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's fucking crazy.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, and that's white on white crime, right? I mean, uh, is, uh, a white guy pushes this old man down and the most bonkers part about that was the way the president reacted. Like, "Oh, the way he felt s- seemed funny. Maybe he was Antifa."
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Maybe he was undercover." Like, that was literally the worst possible reaction-
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... to watching an elderly senior citizen get pushed down by a young strong man.
- BSBen Shapiro
You mean President Trump had the worst possible reaction to a thing?
- JRJoe Rogan
It was the worst-
- BSBen Shapiro
To a thing? I can't believe it.
- JRJoe Rogan
... possible reaction. Yeah, I mean-
- BSBen Shapiro
Unknown, President Trump having bad reactions to things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Look, I'm, I'm a big supporter of law enforcement. I have a lot of friends that are cops. I know a lot of fr- a l- a lot of people from martial arts that are cops, from the UFC. I know a lot of cops from jujitsu. I've n- I knew a lot of cops growing up from all the different martial arts disciplines that I engaged in. A lot of cops get involved in that. There's a lot of good cops. There's a lot of good people out there, but it is a fucking insane job and so many of them have PTSD.
- BSBen Shapiro
For sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
I-
- BSBen Shapiro
And, but I will say that one of the great myths is that the big threat to the Black community in the United States is law enforcement. It's just nonsense. It's not only nonsense, it's counterproductive nonsense, and you're seeing it play out.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it is a threat. It is a threat-
- BSBen Shapiro
It is-
- JRJoe Rogan
... oftentimes.
- BSBen Shapiro
It is, on a data level, an extraordinarily small threat.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Law enforcement ... Uh, law enforcement is a threat to Black life on a generalized level is extraordinarily small. The Washington Post database last year showed a grand total of 15 Black Americans shot unarmed across the United States in a country of 42 million Black people.
- 47:35 – 51:39
The Positive Side
- JRJoe Rogan
a terrible idea. But when you look at these videos, the positive side, if there is any positive side, is that it's ... they're accountable now.
- BSBen Shapiro
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
And this has been going on forever. If you talk to people that are Black that grew up in, in, uh, poverty-stricken areas, they will tell you horrific stories about being abused by cops. And, uh, I, I think the number's like 25% more likely a, a, a b- black person or brown person getting w- a- a- any sort of interaction with a cop is 25% more likely to become physical or for them to be abused. That's, that's real.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, when you look at the statistics of them being killed, yeah, white people get killed more by cops than Black people, but there's way more white people.
- BSBen Shapiro
No, no, even on a percentage basis when it ... You have to use the control group of crime. You can't use the control group of raw population.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
So you have to look at people who are in situations where a deadly inter- in- interaction is likely. There have been multiple studies that show that Black people are not in more danger of being shot by cops than, than white people. But, it is true that low-level uses of force between cops and Black people are worse than low-level uses of force-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
... between cops and white people. Right? That's the Roland Fryer study. There are a few confounds that have yet to be sort of worked out, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think probably white people are less likely to believe that the cop's gonna kill them. Whereas Black people are probably convinced the cop's gonna kill them.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
That might ha- that might play a factor in why there's more white people being killed by cops than Black people.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, that, that may very well be true. It may also be that low-level uses of forces may be, uh, force may be disparate. If you think that the cop's likely to be a racist, then you might be more likely to resist the cop (laughs) and then-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
... he might be more likely to rough you up. So it's, it's very difficult to, to rub out the confounds there. The one thing that we know for sure is that the greatest threat to Black life, just like the greatest threat to white life, is members of your own race killing you. Like, if you're talking about actual murders-... white people are killed by white people, black people-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's conflict-
- BSBen Shapiro
... are killed by black people.
- JRJoe Rogan
... by people you know, mostly.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right. It's, it's intraracial, right? There is-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... there, there's very little interracial crime, like black on white or white on black in the United States. There's a lot of intraracial crime, so a lot of white people victimizing white people and black people victimizing black people. And the question is, how do you stop that? This is why, I don't know if you saw this interview, it was kind of an amazing interview. Terry Crews, the actor.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
He was on with, uh, he was on with Don Lemon.
- JRJoe Rogan
Don Lemon, yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right. And Don Lemon, uh, d- is doing the Black Lives Matter sloganeering, and Terry Crews says, "Well, all lives matter." And Don Lemon ha- says, "N- but no, Black Lives Matter doesn't mean all black lives matter." Right? But Terry Crews said, "All black lives matter." And he said, "No, no, no, not all black lives matter. Only black lives matter. We're only talking about police brutality right now." And Terry Crews was like, "Well, why aren't we talking about all black lives matter?" Because if Black Lives Matter means you withdraw cops, and withdrawing cops means more dead black people, then why wouldn't those lives matter too? And this is where the sloganeering gets in the way-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- BSBen Shapiro
... of actual progress because-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, it's where ideology hits facts.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right, exactly.
- 51:39 – 53:52
Financial Protection
- JRJoe Rogan
less painful to you than the idea of losing that person. Because I, I, look, I think marriage, the good thing about it is that there's financial protection for the family, financial p- particularly when there's children involved. I think that's when it's the most important thing. You know, I think financial protection for the children, uh, look, I grew up without child support. My father was a deadbeat dad, so I know what it's like to be poor because your father doesn't support you. I think that's horrific. I've seen it in many situations. I've s- I know many people that have been the victim of this. It's disgusting. There are a lot of shitty men out there that don't take care of their kids. White, black, Asian, it's universal. That needs t- I think that is where the legal definition of marriage and protection of children and protection of the woman who has to take care of these children financially, I think that's significant. When it comes to bringing the state in to somehow or another solidify your love, like, you know, "I love you, you love me, but let's bring in a bunch of fucking people we don't know and write it down on paper."
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's nonsense.
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, I totally agree with that, obviously.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
But the point that I'm making is that when you wanna make a change in your life, you first have to commit that you want to make the change before you make the change.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, sometimes you meet someone and that's why you wanna make a change-
- BSBen Shapiro
No, but it's some-
- JRJoe Rogan
... because before then it's-
- BSBen Shapiro
Okay, so not to get into marital advice here, but like, the-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs) But I have some m- m- you know, I've been married for, for 12 years at this point. Thank God, very happy marriage, we have three kids. And the, the reason that I say you have to make up your mind that you wanna get married before you get married is because you look for a different set of factors then.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
If you are, if you are, if you make up your mind you wanna get married, what you're gonna look for is commonality of values. Who is the person you wanna build your life with? Do you share interests? Do you share, uh, a vision for the future? Whereas if you sort of fall into it, then you can fall in love with somebody you don't share any of these things with, and it makes it a lot more difficult later on to actually-
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think that's true.
- BSBen Shapiro
... build a life on that.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think you fall in love with someone that you don't share values with. I think you, you think they're hot and you wanna fuck them, but I think-
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, people mix this stuff up pretty regularly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, people are silly.
- BSBen Shapiro
People are indeed silly.
- JRJoe Rogan
People do, people tattoo their eyeballs, Ben.
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They do a lot of dumb shit. (laughs)
- BSBen Shapiro
You live in a world I don't, man. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Well, not, it's not my world.
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't have any
- 53:52 – 57:20
Marriage
- JRJoe Rogan
friends with eyeballs tattooed. But people make mistakes with, they get attracted to someone physically. And, you know, particularly men are, and I guess women too, I'm just not one of them, are, are attracted oftentimes by people they think are sexy, but are a bad choice in terms of a life partner.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
But I don't think you fall in love with those people. They just become someone who's mad at you-
- BSBen Shapiro
How many Jews have married a girl just because they thought they were hot?
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot.
- BSBen Shapiro
There are a lot, a lot, a lot.
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot.
- BSBen Shapiro
So.
- JRJoe Rogan
But men, period. It's not just Jews. Like, the drug of sexual attraction is the most sold drug in the United States. It, it sells cars.
- BSBen Shapiro
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It sells homes. It s- literally, it sells lifestyles.
- BSBen Shapiro
Pornography. Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. But, but that-
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But what is that? I mean, when you're seeing a woman with a short skirt on and long legs walking like, like l- lustfully around a car-
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... what are you, what is you, what are you saying? You're saying if you buy this car, maybe you can fuck this girl.
- BSBen Shapiro
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what you're saying. It's the-
- BSBen Shapiro
Well, of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the worst f- fucking false advertising-
- BSBen Shapiro
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
... we have in America.
- BSBen Shapiro
But th- this is why when it comes to marriage, I think that it's important to actually-... put your large head before, before your other one. Uh, you know, the, Jonathan Haidt, in his bo- he has a book called The Happiness Hypothesis.
- JRJoe Rogan
Great book.
- BSBen Shapiro
Terrific, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
And he, and he talks about this, right? He talks about the fact that people make a very large-scale mistake about marriage.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
Which is, they think that the passion you feel at the very beginning is what you're gonna feel 40 years in, and that's not the way this works. It starts off where your passionate love level for somebody, meaning, like, lust and how much you wanna get him in bed and how much you wanna be with them all the time, is at, like, 100. And your, and your level of kind of committed love, right, that, that, that level of love where you have shared values? That matters to you, like, this much.
- 57:20 – 1:01:30
Wife Swap
- JRJoe Rogan
you.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I've tried to be open-minded with basically every kind of way that people live their lives, incl- including, like, couples that "live" with other couples and they wife swap, which is ... Ugh.
- BSBen Shapiro
I feel like that's complicated. I mean-
- JRJoe Rogan
Fuck, yeah-
- BSBen Shapiro
... I'll be honest, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
... it's complicated.
- BSBen Shapiro
... like-
- JRJoe Rogan
I always think those people are trying to ... I, I know people that do that. And I almost universally believe that they are distracting themselves from their life. They distract themselves from either their career, their fulfilling of potential, whether it's as an artist or as a creative person or as a, a person who's pursuing a discipline. I really believe that a lot of times when people complicate their lives with multiple sex partners, and a l- a lot of times what they're doing is they're doing it to ... They're distracting themselves and they don't realize it at the time. They're just keep, keeps getting pulled into this direction, pulled into that direction. It's because you don't have a primary focus on something that's very important to you.
- BSBen Shapiro
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know? And it doesn't mean that you have to be with this person for the rest of your life. It doesn't mean when you ... You have to only be with one person. But when I see a guy that is, you know, involved in swinging or something like that-
- BSBen Shapiro
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and they're, they're bouncing a bunch of different gals, trust me, that ... You, that ... You're gonna waste time, man.
- BSBen Shapiro
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
You don't ... There's not enough time in this life for that.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, uh, it's weird to tie this whole conversation together, but it is true that if you wanna be good at a thing or be successful at a thing, you have to commit to the thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
And so that's true whether you're talking marriage. It's true whether you're talking-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
... educational success or whether you're talking career. And people, you know, making bad decisions because distractions are distractions. And, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Distractions is distractions with every discipline, and I think relationships are a discipline in a lot of ways.
- BSBen Shapiro
I totally agree.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- BSBen Shapiro
I mean, and, and it is true that, you know, you, you, you have to make the, the pre-investment and you have to, you have to make the commitment that you're gonna continue to invest in the relationship as-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- BSBen Shapiro
... as time goes on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. I mean, that's-
- BSBen Shapiro
And that's, that's where people fall off the wagon. It's why you see a lot of divorces around year three.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- BSBen Shapiro
Right? As that passionate love-
Episode duration: 1:43:30
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode hl0iNRXcUbE
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome