Epic Ben Shapiro Interview w/ Jeff Durbin

Apologia Studios

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00:02

All right, guys, welcome back to Season 2, Episode 1 of Next Week with Jeff Durbin. We are so very excited about this gift that we have for this first episode.

00:12

We're going to have one of our favorite people on. You know him. He really doesn't need much of an introduction for our audience.

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His name is Ben Shapiro. He is the editor -in -chief of The Daily Wire. He is known for saying one of my favorite things, and that is the facts don't care about your feelings.

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Check out this clip. Clip number one, Marcus. Give it a roll. You're not being polite to the pronouns. OK, forget about the disrespect.

00:34

Facts don't care about your feelings. You cut that out now, or you'll go home in an ambulance. That seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion.

00:43

All right, Ben, welcome to Next Week. Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely. So just by way of introduction, tell everybody about The Daily Wire and what you do with them.

00:52

Sure, well, Daily Wire is a site that we launched in September 2015, and we have about 100 million pages a month.

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We are a major media website that covers all the news of the day with a commentary aspect to it as well.

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I'm editor -in -chief, so that means that it tends to reflect my editorial preferences, obviously. And then I also do a widely listened -to podcast that is broadcast not only through Daily Wire, where you can subscribe, but also

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YouTube, Facebook, SoundCloud, iTunes, all the usual places that you can get podcasts. Excellent.

01:21

Now, I noticed, I was actually looking up your bio, and I noticed that when you were 17 years old, you started to write a book, and that book was something to do with colleges indoctrinating children, correct?

01:31

Yeah, so I had a syndicated column when I was 17, and then my first book came out when I was 20. That was about my experience at UCLA and leftist bias on college campuses across the country.

01:41

Obviously, not much has changed in the 14 years since that came out, so it's only gotten worse, unfortunately.

01:47

Well, you are the man that is feared by social justice warriors everywhere. Your clips run across social media and just some devastating, devastating things.

01:55

I want to just talk for a moment about that worldview problem, talking about the colleges, academia indoctrinating our youth.

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We see this just broad spectrum, really across the country, of really an antithetical worldview from what really this nation began with.

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And you address that, obviously, in your book. Can you talk just about that in terms of colleges, universities, the indoctrination of our youth, and just really the problem of what we see before us in terms of this large movement of Marxism, socialism, social justice warriors?

02:29

Just talk about that. Sure. Leftism on college campuses, obviously, is the predominant ideology. And that ideology suggests a couple of things.

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Number one, that the history of the United States was founded in racism, sexism, bigotry of every sort, and that that has poisoned

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America's cultural history throughout. And that it's almost impossible to get away from it unless you acknowledge that you are part and parcel of the problem and then hand over all power and all ability to speak to people who presumably are not white, straight, and male, for whom the system was supposedly designed.

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That's the idea that they put forward on college campuses. That combined with the idea, the Marxist notion, that equality of outcome is something to be sought.

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Not equality of rights, but equality of outcome. It's not about a right to free speech. It's about the idea that if I speak, and you speak, and I'm better at it than you, and our outcome is different, then something totally unfair has happened.

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The same thing in the economics sphere. If I'm rich and you're poor, or vice versa, it doesn't matter whether I made bad decisions and you made good decisions, or the opposite.

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All that really matters is that we finished in different places, and that's something that has to be rectified by the heavy hand of government. Right. And one of the things

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I think that was powerful about that particular clip that we aired right here at the beginning, you were talking to a man that goes by the name of Zoe.

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And in that clip, you were bold, courageous. I was very excited to see just, you were,

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I thought you were respectful and humble, but also just truthful in terms of, you said, and what is your,

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I think you said, what is your biology, what is your genetics, sir? And that set Zoe off. And your popular phrase, facts don't care about your feelings,

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I think is something that means a lot in our day and age when so much is built up and wrapped around the issue of emotion.

04:13

Well, I feel like I'm a man, I feel like I'm a woman, and you just don't go along that line.

04:19

So can you talk just about that, the need to embrace that ideology, that facts don't care about your feelings in this day that we live?

04:27

Well, I mean, I think it's important, obviously, to be cordial and be polite as often as humanly possible, but that you have to do that without sacrificing reality.

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And I think one of the things the left has done is turn the right's penchant for politeness and decency against itself by suggesting that now you have to, if you wanna be polite or decent, you have to view the world in exactly the way that I do.

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And that's what has happened with, for example, the transgender pronoun debate, the idea that even if you're not objectively a man or objectively a woman,

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I have to call you by the pronoun that you seek to be called because otherwise I'd be being impolite or being rude.

04:58

And that's not the question. The question is in public debate, when it comes particularly to how a society defines sex, are we going to do so on the arbitrary basis of subjectivity or are we going to have some sort of objective standard by which we decide whether a person is a man or a woman and what are we gonna teach to our children?

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Because it's not just about what I call you, it's also about what you force me to teach my children in, for example, public schools.

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Am I forced to teach my five -year -old that she can become a boy if she wants to, which obviously is untrue and is significantly damaging to the psyche if you're talking about kids who don't even know about puberty yet.

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And unfortunately, the left has decided that it's much more important to push an agenda where all lines are removed on behalf of equality and sameness than to reinforce reality.

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And I think that it's become a controversial proposition simply to say reality is reality and nothing we do can change that.

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But that controversy, I think, is necessary in a world where the left refuses to not only abide by reality, but suggest that reality and recognizing it is racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic.

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All right. I think that's just what so many people see as just a fresh of breath air with you and your work is just that commitment to objective reality, not the subjectivity that we see so often in front of us today with college campuses, universities, and what's just really just being pumped out.

06:13

And so it's a powerful thing. And it seems, again, compelling that we actually have to talk about that.

06:19

And Ben, one of the things that I think is compelling is that this particular worldview shift and this ideology of this subjectivity or emotions really playing the defining role.

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It's coming out of universities, the places that are supposed to be rooted in logic, reason, objectivity, facts, biology, science.

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And what we see really is just the antithesis of that coming out of the university system today. We see really this worldview that's really developed and built upon pure emotion, not facts, not history, not reason, not sound thinking.

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And so that's, I think, one of the things that's making you such a formidable opponent to those on the left.

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And so one of the things that so many of us get excited about, and Ben, if you don't know a lot about us, our particular organization,

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End Abortion Now, we have been able to, by God's grace, save, at this point, thousands of lives across the country, outside of abortion clinics, trying to minister to and to love the women and the fathers going in.

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And it's just been an incredible experience to be able to hold these children in our arms. And one of the great and tremendous blessings of what you are doing is just how you define, say, an issue like abortion.

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You hang on that facts don't care about your feelings. You hang on the objective reality and not the subjective feelingness of the issue.

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And so you define it properly and you do it boldly. And one of the things that we appreciate, Ben, is just that you do that. You call it murder, you call it killing, and it's something that many legislators aren't willing to do.

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And honestly, Ben, and this is, of course, discouraging, but many, even in a pro -life movement, aren't willing to take the kind of bold stand that you do.

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And I think that yours is the most effective. I want to play this clip here, and this is Ben, and one of my very favorite clips about Ben talking about abortion.

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This is clip number two. Go ahead, Marcus. She says that she's thinking about reproductive rights one minute from having a baby.

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This is about as perverse a notion as I could possibly imagine. That as you're about to have your child, you're thinking, boy, wouldn't it be great if I could still kill this thing?

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If you want to go to Planned Parenthood and get a contraceptive, go for it. I don't care. I do care when you start killing babies.

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This is a problem for me. Now here I am, look how pregnant I am. There's a baby in here. This is my beautiful child. And I was thinking, maybe

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I should just kill it. We make these moral judgments all the time when we see a violation of moral law, and it is a violation of moral law to kill another human being, which is why we have murder laws.

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And there you go, that's powerful. And I think what I want to hang on there, Ben, and just hear you just elaborate on, is you rightly bring the issue of abortion down to the moral issue, which all, as you know, all legislative moves really have some component, some moral component to them.

09:05

And you bring it right there to the moral issue. And I think that's vitally important to get. You talk about this actress who did a video, and I love your response to it,

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Ben. Just the passion you had there was so important to me. In terms of her saying, she's just a minute away from giving birth and she should still have the right to kill this baby.

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There's a baby in there and I ought to be able to kill it. And you talk about abortion as a moral issue, as an issue of murder and killing.

09:28

Can you just elaborate on that a bit? Sure, I mean, one of the things that I always try to do, I'm obviously an Orthodox Jew. I'm somebody who believes in the

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Bible, but I try not to cite the Bible. I try not to cite religion as the basis for arguments in the secular realm.

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And when you're talking about abortion, you don't have to go to the Bible. I mean, that can provide the fodder for your worldview, but it doesn't have to be the source for the arguments that you're making.

09:48

And the argument that I typically make is, this is either a life or it's not. And scientifically speaking, it is a life, which means that its value is greater than zero.

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And now the question is, is its value greater than a woman's quote -unquote right to choose? Well, if the idea is that a woman has a right to kill another human being because the human being exists inside the womb, or a potential human being exists inside the womb, depending on how you want to define it, then you have to be honest and clear -eyed about how this works.

10:12

And unfortunately, those on the left don't want to do that. They want to avoid the fact that this is a baby in the womb. They want to avoid the fact that a human life begins at conception, which is obviously scientifically true.

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They want to ignore the moral ramifications of all of that. And so they seek a bunch of different ways of avoiding the reality of that situation.

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They'll seek to suggest that it's about a woman's right to choose being infringed upon, although I don't care about her choice in virtually any other aspect of life, just as I don't about any other human being.

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They'll suggest that if the baby is not quote -unquote viable, then this is an excuse for killing the baby, which number one, doesn't apply to people who are outside the womb.

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If they're not viable, you don't just get to stab them. And second of all, viability is a moving scale at best because we're all viable in different ways.

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People who have pacemakers are people who would not be able to survive absent outside technology that is implanted in them, for example.

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So whenever you get away from the fundamental definition of life as an attempt to preserve abortion, what you're really doing is ignoring a lot of the facts on the ground.

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And what I seek to do is say, listen, you want to be pro -choice? At least you're going to have to reckon with the reality of what it is that you stand for and not obfuscate with a lot of euphemisms.

11:14

No, I agree. And I think it's powerful too. And I think one of the most effective things that you're doing,

11:20

Ben, in this issue is you have effectively reduced the pro -choicers position to absurdity.

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All of the excuses that are given for taking the life of a pre -born child, which you're exactly right. You and I both share a revelational epistemology, of course, but we, of course, you and I both believe that the biology speaks for itself.

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It shows that it is a human life from conception. It's irrefutable. You have demonstrated that all of the arguments that they use for their pro -choice ideology are reduced to absurdity.

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And one of those, Ben, I think is powerful. And your response, I think, shocks people. It doesn't shock me.

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I think you and I have that revelational epistemology, that view of the image of God, life as meaningful, valuable, worthy of dignity and respect.

12:06

So you and I share that, but you talk, and it shocks people, about the issue of rape.

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And it's often used by those on the left, even though it accounts for an infinitesimally small amount of the abortion numbers, less than 2 % is life of the mother, rape, and incest.

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But you talk about that issue of rape. You take it right away from them. You reduce it to absurdity.

12:32

But you talk about rapists, you believe, should get the death penalty or castration. Yes, I mean,

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I'm very obvious about my feelings about rape. And I think this is one of the things that the left wants to do, is they try to conflate people's feelings about abortion with their feelings about rape.

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And the suggestion is that you're somehow easy on rapists if you're against abortion in cases of rape, that somehow this means that you are okay with rapists or you're fine with rapists.

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And one of the things I make clear is that my feelings on rape are pretty obvious, that rapists should receive the worst penalty that is possible under the law.

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And that should go without saying. And then you get to the question of, okay, now there's a baby that's been conceived in rape.

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Obviously, something terrible has happened in the rape. Is that justification for the killing of the baby, of the termination of a life that is not your own?

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And the answer to me is no. They're almost two separate issues. The source of the impregnation is not linked with the value of the life that has now been created.

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And it's a horrible situation for the mother. I understand that. But it really is a question of the value of life versus an event that has already happened and was horrible and should be punished in accordance with the worst that we can do to somebody.

13:38

It's, I think, a trick that the left likes to use a lot to go to rape, incest, life of the mother. And the reason for that is because they want to use the exception in order to create a rule.

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They want to say, if you want to protect abortion in cases of rape, for example, or abortion in cases of incest, you have to protect abortion across the board.

13:53

But what I first say usually when I debate these issues is, okay, I'm happy to discuss rape, incest, and abortion. We can spend 15 minutes on that if you like.

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But can we first agree that all the other abortions should be banned, right? That we should actually have legal penalties for doctors who perform all the other abortions?

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And of course, the answer is no, which means that this is a misdirect, that when they're talking about rape, incest, abortion, they're not really talking about rape, incest, or abortion.

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They're just using the most emotionally painful case as an attempt to demonstrate that all abortions across the board should be legalized, which, of course, is not a good argument.

14:20

It's not logical. It makes no sense. No, exactly. And I think it's a powerful point that you make there in reducing that argument to absurdity, because at no other place in our judicial system do we actually penalize or punish or give capital punishment to children for the crimes of the father.

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The father's a criminal. We don't say, therefore, the child deserves to die. And so I think that's a powerful move forward with you.

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Let's go ahead and play this last clip here for Ben and just get some commentary. Roll that third clip,

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Marcus. My question is, since you believe abortion is the same as murder, do you believe women who get abortions, even when their lives or the child's life isn't in danger, should be put on trial for murder?

14:58

No. Yes or no? I think abortionists should be put on trial. But, I mean, even...

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I don't think that women should be put on trial for a couple of different reasons. So the first reason is because I don't think that it is effective in deterring abortion to put women on trial for the killing of the unborn.

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The second reason is because I think that we in our society have unfortunately gotten to such a point that an entire generation have been indoctrinated to believe, particularly an entire generation of women, since that's what we're talking about here, have been indoctrinated to believe that a baby is a polyp.

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And so when they remove it, I'm not sure there's the actual mens rea necessary, the actual criminal intent necessary for a prosecution.

15:34

So when we're talking about, you know, the typical pro -life position here has been that the woman is a victim in abortion nearly as much as the baby is, that there's an entire abortion industry that is geared toward teaching women that babies are not babies and that getting a baby aborted is in fact a betterment of their life.

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So no, I'm not in favor of prosecuting women for abortions. So one of the things that has impressed me so much and I'm so grateful for,

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Ben, in a lot of the work that you do is your desire to maintain consistency. And I think that's, again, what makes you such a formidable opponent against those on the left.

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And so I'd like to talk to you about this because we have a deep concern ourselves in terms of moving forward.

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We have, you know this, Ben, we have 60 million babies dead in our nation since Roe v. Wade. And so our concern is for consistent legislation.

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And I'd like to hear you speak to this particular issue because I agree with so much of what you say, but in terms of moving forward with legislation,

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Ben, if we had a situation where say a state defined life from conception, that's a human being, it's on the books, it's legislation that says that's a human life from conception and you're not allowed to kill it.

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Would you agree then at that point, say future ahead of us now, we have some consistent legislation that agrees with you and I both.

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Would you agree at that point that anybody who would attempt to have an abortion, whether it's the woman who knows what the law is or the abortionist, would you agree at that point there should be legislative penalties for participating in the act itself?

17:08

I think it'd be very difficult to actually do legislative penalties for women who are seeking abortions even in spite of the law simply because we have these sort of distinctions in law all the time with regard to drug users, for example.

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We don't really prosecute people who are marijuana users, we do prosecute marijuana dealers. And so you'd see the same thing,

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I think, with abortion. The people who are performing the vast majority of abortions are abortion doctors who are doing these things at clinic and they're doing them en masse.

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I also don't think that the process of education is as instantaneous as we change the law. It's also true that there are gonna be states across the country that vary with regard to their abortion laws.

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Even if Roe v. Wade were overturned, that doesn't necessarily mean there would be a constitutional amendment to ban abortion across the country.

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In places like California and Massachusetts, presumably, abortion on demand would remain legal, which means that there is still a significant segment of American society where women are being told, and particularly by the media, that babies are not babies.

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So the argument that I made there, I think, would still apply. Okay, I appreciate what you're saying. I think you're a strong voice in this area and I'd love to continue this conversation along the lines of consistent legislation because I agree with you, facts don't care about your feelings.

18:11

And even if a woman says, I don't feel like it's a baby. By the way, Ben, you would be heartbroken, I think, right alongside of us as we oftentimes stand outside of the local abortion mills to try to love some of these women and reach them and try to care for their needs and just really plead for the life of their child.

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Ben, I never believed it before I did this kind of mercy ministry ourselves that women today are walking in there, indoctrinated by our society, and they're saying back to us,

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I know it's my baby, I know it's my child, I should still be able to kill my child. We have so much content and footage of women saying that back.

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And Ben, I could not believe before I got into this kind of work that I'd actually hear that sort of a thing.

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And so our concern is in terms of even if the culture believes something about, say, black people or the

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Holocaust, Jewish people and the Holocaust, I think that we ought to work towards legislation that's more consistent in terms of facts don't care about your feelings, that's a human being, if you kill it, you're guilty.

19:07

But I do appreciate so much of what you say and how you're holding our culture's feet to the fire in terms of being more consistent, not caring about feelings and emotions, but just sticking to the objective reality.

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And I do appreciate, really, I'm gonna say this to you just to bless you as a Christian, so much of what you say,

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Ben, that is rooted in your commitment to the word of God. And so I'm grateful for you, and I'm thankful for all that you're doing.

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Well, thank you so much, I appreciate it. Absolutely. So we look forward to maybe having you on again sometime and let Jimmy Kimmel know that there is an intellectual late night talk show.

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It's called Next Week. I will, I appreciate it. All right, Ben, thank you, God bless you. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so very much for watching.

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That was Ben Shapiro with The Daily Wire, huge opportunity, and we're grateful for so much of what he says.

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Be in prayer for all that we have moving forward over the next year in terms of what we're doing with End Abortion Now.