Ep. 2502 - Why The West's Birth Rate Collapsed... and Why Government Ain't The Fix

0:00We'll get to more on this in just one second. First, you know, 20 years ago, now a lot has happened in my life. I was 22 years old. I was not yet married. And now, just think back over the past 20 years. Wife, five kids, big business, all of it. Well, 20 years of long time, simply safe is now celebrating 20 years. Again, most companies don't make it that long unless they're actually solving a real problem. When you're picking a security system for your home, while you're looking for a piece of mine, the goal is not to obsess over your security, the goal is to never have to think about it again. And that's what I like about simply safe. Home security systems are designed for after something goes wrong. After the window breaks, after someone gets inside, after your phone buzzes, simply safe approach is different. It's designed to help stop a break in before it happens. They're AI powered outdoor cameras detect suspicious activity around your home. Alert live, US-based agents. Those agents can actually speak through the camera to scare off trespassers and if necessary, request 911 dispatch. Prevention beats reaction. Simply safe has been protecting your world for 20 years. Celebrate their anniversary with us and save 60% on your new SimplySafe system at simplysafe.com slash Shapiro. At 60% off at simplysafe.com slash Shapiro Plus when you order right in our show name

1:02and the how did you hear about a survey? So let them know we say there is no safe like simply safe. America's birth rate is too low, just like that of the rest of the West. Now we're being told the solution to all of this is you won't believe it. More government involvement. I'll explain why this is a foolish idea in just a moment. Plus Germany's AFD breaks through Milo Yanopolis goes native and we bring you these single stupidest flip in the entire history of the internet. This is the Ben Shapiro show. So America's birth rate is too low, that is obvious. We are well below replacement rates in the United States. We're doing better than most of Europe by the way and it's still too low. The birth rate of pretty much all industrialized countries is below replacement rate. There is one exception. We'll get to that exception in just a little while. All of this because we are not producing enough humans has led to a migration crisis because you need people to fill all the jobs and pay your future taxes. And of course it is led to national bankruptcy. We spent all of the money borrowing on a future that doesn't exist.

2:04And then we re-migrated into higher swaths of humans from other parts of the world where they don't have fertility rate problems. So how do we reverse that precise problem? Well, according to many people on both the right and the left, the answer is you'll never believe it. You won't believe it. You'll believe it. It's the government. Never mind that government policies have exacerbated the problems of family non-formation and the lack of childbearing at pretty much every step imaginable. The federal government has promoted birth control, abortion, disincentivized marriage, a pretty much every turn, removed all economic benefits of being involved in social fabric building activities like church, promoted broken kinship networks, and pretty much all government policies have done is to break apart the systems that cause people to actually have children. The answer to people not having babies, apparently according to these folks is that government needs to pay you to have more babies. Now, some of the people who are pushing this are on the right. And they are trying to walk in the in the path trot by hungry, which we'll get to in a little bit.

3:06So over the weekend, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is moving to allow married couples with the stay at home spouse to collect child care subsidies, a policy champion by vice president JD Vance using funds from a federal program intended to assist working parents, according to people familiar with the discussions. The change would create the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home and raise their kids. So where's the money coming from? Apparently they're going to use an HHS fund created in the 1990s to blow income and working class parents for child care so they could go to work or go to school under the new draft rule parents who stay home with their kids could benefit from the program, typically providing about nine grand per child each year. So again, the idea would be that you're paying to stay at home on to stay at home. Now, this is very much part and parcel of stuff that JD Vance had been preaching for a long time. He said back in April 2021 on Twitter, it turns out that normal Americans care more about their families than their jobs and want a family policy that doesn't shunt their kids into craft daycare so they can enjoy more freedom in the paid labor force.

4:06Again, this is a plausible argument and it turns out that according to the statistics, the plurality of mothers of young children don't actually want to work full time. According to the Institute of Family Studies, poll from March 2025, 42% of mothers of young children want to work full time, 39% want to work part time and 19% would prefer to work not at all. Now, those numbers change pretty rapidly, by the way, when you get to unmarried moms, it turns out that unmarried moms actually do want to work full time, which is kind of interesting. They don't want to be at home presumably with the kids. Only 35% say they want to work part time, but when you get to married moms, then actually the vast majority would prefer to work part time, which is my personal experience, my wife, that doctor, she prefers working part time because she wants to spend a lot of time at home with the kids. We can afford to do that, which is great. Okay, so let's agree that we need more married couples having more babies in America because we very clearly do. We should then ask a couple of questions. Is the role of the government to promote this?

5:08And second, are these policies actually going to work? So let's start with the basics, not all forms of government are the same. The job of the federal government and your local government are not the same. Everyone likes to ignore this. The Constitution is written the way that it is for a reason. Every amendment to the Constitution is a restriction on the power of the federal government. It doesn't have to do with state government, just to take an example. The first amendment to the Constitution, says Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. It says nothing about what state or local governments can do. It says here's what Congress should not be able to do because the founders very well understood their Montesquieu and the understood that there's a lot of stuff that you can do at the local community level. They shouldn't be doing it at the federal level. This is why, by the way, criminal law is typically local in nature. And if you commit a murder, you will be prosecuted by the state, not by the federal government because it's not the job of the federal government to be involved in things. Now again, that doesn't mean that we want murder to be okay. What we're saying is that different levels of government do different things, which is important when it comes to policies like this one. So if you in your neighborhood want to facilitate the common good by voting for subsidies to new moms,

6:12I don't see any problem with that at all. In fact, I know a lot of communities that do this sort of stuff, even on a private level. For example, in my own Jewish community, there are cities where, for example, there will be a quasi-tax as part of your synagogue membership that goes to subsidize childhood education for kids. And that's all consensual. It makes perfect sense. People are buying into it. But again, local government, local community is not the same as the federal government. The federal government was designed in order to protect particular rights and prevent particular abuses. It is a government of enumerated powers and limited jurisdiction. It was never instituted for the purpose of generally promoting, quote unquote, the common good, because here is the problem. The bigger the polity gets, the bigger the area and population you're governing, the less agreement there is on what the common good actually constitutes, which is why the federal government, traditionally speaking, handled things like border policy, a federal federal defense policy,

7:12national debt issues. Those are things the federal government was designed to do. But when it came to local stuff, you could actually have a lot more government. That was a lot more intrusive on the local level. You just didn't need it as much. This is the paradox of government. Where social fabric is high, government is more appropriate because there's broader agreement, but also government is significantly less necessary because everybody sort of agrees on the standard without the government being involved. The more you abstract up the chain, the higher the level of government, the less agreement there is, the heavier the hand of government would be necessary to promote a particular vision of the common good. The less legitimate it is because the fewer people even agree on this. Now, again, this actually comes from Catholic ideology. I mean, you got probably go back to the original Bible or you go to the Old Testament and the tribes actually have their own sort of government systems, but the Catholic idea for this is subsidiarity. Right? This is like a basic idea in Catholicism. Now, many of the people in government ranging from Marco Rubio to JD Vans seem to think the federal government has the generalized capacity to promote the common good. Now, the problem there is that there is no actual limiting principle here in a democracy with regard to this.

8:17Once you say that the federal government is sure to promote the common good without defining the common good. Now, the left-moting, it's version of the common good with the gigantic government gun. This is why using Rirum Navarro, the Pope's take on economics as a guide to national politics is a very, very, very poor idea. Furthermore, many of the people pushing this policy are, as we will discuss making a category error, they think that people are not having babies. That can be fixed by material circumstance. That if they point the government gun at you or the money hose of the government at you, this will make things better. But the problem as religious people should know is in fact not lack of government subsidies. It is a lack of social fabric, patriotism and spiritual preparedness for having kids. That is the reason fewer people are having kids in religious communities. People still having kids, religious Catholics still having tons of kids, Mormons having tons of kids or Orthodox Jews, having tons of kids, evangelical Protestants having a lot of kids. That is the big problem. It will not be solved by shooting money at people from a T-shirt cannon.

9:17Now, again, the best argument that's being made right now for a policy that promotes childbearing and rearing from the federal government is the argument made by Kevin Roberts over at the Heritage Foundation. Basically, the argument is that this is the best we can do. That we're not going to be able to dismantle the welfare state, so we should use the power of the ring for our own good. It is a gift. We should wield it. As a Kevin Roberts tweeted out, by his president, Vance's proposal to redirect existing subsidies toward married families is the kind of strategic policy conservatives should embrace. The welfare state already exists. The subsidies already exist. Conservatives do not have the votes to dismantle either until that changes. Tax-payer dollars should reward family information, not subsidize its decline. That is the conservative option. Again, that is the best argument. It is because it's basically saying, we're not getting rid of the slush funds. You may as well use the slush fund to direct it toward particular, better ideas. Now, again, what's funny about this is many of the same people who are promoting a pragmatism in government here are utterly un-pragmatic about how government actually works and where the votes are right now. They're also utterly un-pragmatic about the fact

10:20that when you maximize the size and scope of government, eventually you will lose and all the people you hate will control that government. But again, they're really doing because they think it's a good idea. And it isn't actually a good idea because when you expand the size and scope of the federal government, again, if you think that you can wield the ring of power, usually the next thing to wield it is golem. Coming up, we'll get to whether this policy really even will work or not. The answer is spoiler alert, kind of no, but I'll explain why. First, I don't think you need to predict the future to understand the appeal of gold. You just have to look at what's happening right this moment. The national debt, it keeps going up. Central banks are buying gold. Major Wall Street institutions themselves are putting increasingly bullish targets on precious metals. When all these institutions start doing the exact same thing, you should probably think why they are doing that. Here's what we know about physical gold and silver. Washington cannot actually print those things. The Fed can't create more of them at a meeting. You actually own the asset. This is why I recommend diversification through golden crest metals. Their boutique precious metals firm with transparent pricing widely recognized highly liquid coins and zero buy back fees. No overpriced private label products,

11:20no giant call center, just straight forward service right now. Get a free 2026 infocate or a free portfolio review plus up to 25 grand and free silver on qualifying purchases call 888-429-3999. Text bend to metals at 638-257. Text bend to metals or go to golden crest metals dot com slash men. Give them a clone gets started 888-429-3999. Now again, government has done historically a terrible job of incentivizing child bearing and child bearing. Like truly awful. So for example, government policies have radically undermined the kinship network. One of the things that allows you to have lots of kids, my own personal life. One of the things that allows us to have lots of kids is the fact that we have a lot of friends, family, grandparents and nearby. And this is true in most societies that have lots of kids is that kids kind of are raised by obviously the parents, but then also the extended kinship network, right? If my niece is enough, you step out of line, I'll tell them to cut it out. And the same thing is true with my kids for their uncles and aunts and certainly for my parents and my wife's parents,

12:22right, both of whom live near live by or built our own kinship network that provides a social safety net on the private level. All of the government's policies have been designed to eviscerate that kinship network in favor of the government doing the job. And the government can't do the job. So for example, it used to be that grandparents typically as they age moved in with the kids. And the purpose of that was not just to take care of grandpa and grandma. It was also because grandpa and grandma helped take care of the grandkids. Well, social security basically got rid of that. So now grandma and grandma grandpa and grandma, they have money coming from the government. And mom and dad, because they don't feel the necessity to take care of grandma and grandpa, they shuttle grandma and grandpa off to retirement community or off to a retirement home. And so the entire kinship network breaks down, right, welfare undermine merit. Right, the entire welfare state was designed to alleviate the consequences of making poor life decisions. So you'd get pregnant out of wide lock. I'm not talking obviously about cases, vignualism of rape or something, but large scale welfare was designed to alleviate the consequences of single motherhood.

13:25So single motherhood shut up. People were having babies because the consequences of having a baby were not as dire economically speaking. Subsidies for things like college and birth control delayed both marriage and child bearing. Government subsidies for things like child care drove the cost of child care up because you are artificially expanding that a man without driving up the supply. But the real issue of why people are not having babies, okay, this is the real thing in every country that is currently not having babies. There is a magic formula for not having babies. One, high use of birth control, right. Birth control is the one medical intervention that has achieved many left wing goals because again, the birth control pillow is designed to separate off sex from child bearing. Now again, this is not a case that no one should ever use the birth control pillow or that people should never be on birth control or anything like that. Right, that is in my opinion your business. We live in a free country. I'm not somebody who is anti birth control, even on a total religious level, right.

14:26There's some controversy in orthodox Judaism about various types of birth control and all that. As a societal matter, and this is true for lots of things in society that are useful on an individual level. But when applied at scale, have some pretty interesting downstream effects, the birth control pillow which separated off sex from child bearing, which means sex and marriage were no longer connected separated all this stuff. So now people could have their fun and there would be no consequences to the fun. Again, you can say that's a good thing, but one of the consequences of that is fewer marriages, fewer kids. Just a reality. As you go back to the 1940s, for example, when people were having lots of seven month babies, people would have sex, they would get pregnant, and there were a lot of premiums happening. They would get married while a lot of shotgun weddings happening. And that wasn't like the worst thing in the world. I understand everybody now pretends that was like a horrible, terrible thing. That's the way that pretty much all human society worked for several hundred years there for several thousand years actually, and it was not the end of the world. Okay. High levels of economic development. Okay, so as societies get richer, kids move from becoming an asset class to becoming an economic detriment.

15:32So if you go to very poor countries, and again, this is good, right. You don't want kids to have to work at the factory, but if you are living in a poor society, or let's say America 150 years ago, you're living on a farm, your kids come home and they work. They are part of the labor unit. They come home and they are expected to earn. There are a lot of stories for a large chunk of American history about 17 year olds entering the workforce to help support the family. And so the idea was have lots of kids because number one, some of them will die when they're young. Number two, the ones who are left over are going to help work the farm. Well, as countries develop economically, you don't want your kids having to do all of that. So now they are not actually contributing to your household economically speaking. They're now a net cost, which of course is very true of kids today. Kids are very expensive because hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise your kids. And so now they go from being a net economic benefit to a net economic cost. That changes the economic structure. And then finally, most importantly, decline in religion and or civic nationalism. So when people believe that there is a religious duty to have kids, they have kids.

16:34When people believe that part of your patriotic duty is to provide a next generation to be patriots, people have kids. Now notice something common to all these factors and why people are having used to have kids and now no longer have kids. They are necessities. They are reasons you must have kids, right? You used to have kids because you couldn't stop it. It's again, sex equals babies. You used to have kids because again, you needed labor and you used to have kids because God said so and because your country needed it. These were all necessities. And then, and then it turns out that we got rid of the necessities and people decided not to have kids. Right? People don't have kids because they don't have to have kids. In fact, they're not even getting married today. Now, statistically, what we actually have here in the United States and across the West is not even a child bearing crisis. It is a marriage crisis. One of the fascinating things that's happening here is that married couples are getting married later. But as we will explore in just a second, married couples are still having kids.

17:36It's just that fewer people are getting married generally speaking. And we have great stats on this. The National Bureau of Economic Research did a study a few years back, a couple of years ago. And they found that across high income countries and increasingly elsewhere, birth rates have fallen to historically low levels. Total fertility rates are now below replacement rate in nearly all OECD countries, with many experiencing sustained fertility rates below 1.5, including Japan, Canada, Greece, and Italy. Some countries in East Asia, including South Korea, Singapore, and China, now have a total fertility rate at below one. Which means the population is going to have. Now, look at this chart. Right? You can see this chart. Not a single OECD country, not one is above replacement rate. Replacement rate is two. Except for Israel, which is near three. Israel is the one exception. I said I'd mentioned the exception. Israel is the exception. There are a lot of reasons for that, which we'll get into in just a second. Now, again, they say the National Bureau of Economic Research, he broad-based decline in fertility across the industrialized world, reflected in both higher childlessness and lower completed fertility,

18:39is less a response to periods specific costs or policies, and a widespread deprioritization of parenthood in people's adult lives. This deprioritization reflects a complex interplay of changing norms around work, parenting, gender roles, and leisure, shaped by evolving social and economic influences and an expanded set of non-child activities and consumption. In other words, people aren't having fewer kids because they can't afford it, they're having fewer kids because they don't want as many kids. In some way, we refer to the set of dynamics as shifting priorities. It does not reflect a simple change in preferences or direct response to prices or constraints, but rather a deeper transformation in how successive cohorts are choosing to orient their lives. And again, look at the radical decline from the 60s to now in terms of total fertility rate. Again, the United States is not an outlier here. We're actually slightly higher than a lot of these other countries, like Canada, Norway, Portugal, Japan. And now again, the West has trashed all of the factors that have led historically to high fertility rates. So as you can see, when you look at US fertility rates starting in 1800 to 2025,

19:44what you can see here is that total fertility rate is in sort of steady decline up until you hit, you know, about 1925, it boosts again into 1950, and then it totally dumps after the birth control pill. Again, not a gigantic shock. One of the kind of, as societies become richer, then you have fewer kids. This is just a normal thing that happens. Hey, the reversal that happens because the birth control pill is pretty obvious on this chart, right? You hit 1960, birth control pill hits, and you start to see a radical decline, and then it basically sticks around at just below two for a while. The bigger issue right now in the United States, and across the West, is that the percentage of women never getting married is rising rapidly, rapidly, rapidly. And in fact, married women, they used to, there was a decline in the number of pregnancies completed for married women, but it's been basically stagnant in the United States since the 1980s.

20:45So married women are still having babies. It's just that fewer women are getting married, according to the Institute for Family Studies, both marital and non-marital first birth rates have declined on the whole. Marital first birth rates remain very similar to where they were at any point between the 70s and today. A whopping 75% of the total fertility decline since 2007 is attributable to the shifting likelihood that people are married. When Americans today get married, they have babies just like married people that their ages did in the past. Explanations for falling fertility that place the blame on couples choosing not to have kids probably can't explain much about declining fertility since changes within within couple behavior and not the main story. So in other words, much of the policy that is currently being developed, right, the policy that says, you're married couple, you want to be able to stay home with your kids, now you'll have more kids. You're going to have those kids anyway. The biggest problem in Western societies is that women are not getting married, men are not getting married, fewer babies. As you say, the second argument is that children stopped being an economic asset that a human cost as we've discussed.

21:45And people don't have to, so they're not. And third, religious observance across the US and across the West has declined precipitously. So again, all the reasons why people had to have kids or felt the necessity to have kids, all of those are basically gone. And you can see every cultural indicator of this already coming up, we'll get to just another indicator, the religion is falling apart here in the West. First, you have to be prepared for the future and you know the thing that is definitely going to happen in the future. I know it's going to get dark real fast. You can die. We're all going to die. Now, how's that for a Tuesday? But here is the thing. You can prepare so that at least your family is taking care of in case God forbid something happens to you, you'll feel better about your life if you have life insurance policy. Genius makes that easier. It's a free online marketplace where you can compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side. Their license team helps clarify coverage amounts of prices in terms, answers your questions, handles the paperwork with policy. Genius, you can find 20 year life insurance policy starting at just $276 a year from million dollars in coverage. Head over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro to compare life insurance quotes from top companies, see how much you could save as policy genius.com slash Shapiro again.

22:51I have been thinking ahead about my family for years, but you should do the same because there's only one inevitability in life. And that is that again, family is going to need help if something happens to you. Go check them out right now policygenius.com slash Shapiro. It's the best easiest way to get the life insurance you need policy genius.com slash Shapiro. So over the weekend, a big story is that over in Britain, St. Paul's Cathedral signed a four year deal with the London nightclub fabric to stage music events inside St. Paul's Cathedral. Under the partnership, fabric will be the cathedral's exclusive partner for such events until 2030. Silent Disco's held a Canterbury Cathedral in 2024, or dubbed a rave in the name by critics. This organizer said at the time such events would not bring young people closer to Christ and would instead suggest entertainment deserves our attention more than God fabric in fairing did had its license revoked in 2016 after is linked in council found what it describes a culture of drug use at the venue to 18 year old to died of drug overdoses and now their playing gigs at St. Paul's Cathedral.

23:56Naturally, Citi Khan, the Muslim mayor of London is super happy about this quote fabric St Paul's Cathedral name a more iconic duo. Bringing together these two institutions will create a one of a kind experience, pairing world class music with one of our most special landmarks is it just a special landmark is that what the cathedral is for. Is it is it just a landmark is it. Bishop Robert Baron, frequent guest on our program. He says word has just come down at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The second most important church in the Anglican world has imitated cancer. And so the Central American Cathedral in permitting raves nightclub like entertainments take place in its confines usual reasons for acquiescing to this have been trotted out reaching out to the young trying to get with the times etc. But this development simply shows that the leadership of the church of England has lost any sense of the crucial distinction between the sacred and secular across the centuries and across the cultures are ancestors seem to have intuitively grasped the importance of this demarcation. Whereas the secular is the arena of ordinary experience and activity the sacred is another realm a different dimension accordingly in the properly sacred space one is lifted out of the conventional introduced into the new menace is why Christian cathedrals are filled with images of the saints and angels and why their interiors are meant to first disorient us and then to reorient us toward the divine.

25:04It is also why in the initiation rituals of primal peoples a young person is purposely ripped out of the ordinary and introduced into the mythic and mystic dimension and is why throughout the Bible sacred spaces are carefully set apart from common spaces this of course is totally true. He says the contemporary West is quite literally the first culture in human history that is in danger of collapsing the sacred into the secular or better losing any sense of the difference between the two. Now again I think that's actually being kind of flattering to the secular think what you actually have is a merger of the pagan and the religious which has happened over human history and doesn't end well. He said this is doing enormous damage especially to young people whose lives have been flattened into a preoccupation with money worldly success and material things. I mean honestly I actually don't think that's why people are going to raves I think they're going there for the sex and the drugs. The church indeed should go out into the secular space to find those who have wandered away from God but it should then lead those wanderers back to the holy having raves in the name of one of the most sacred spaces in the Christian world is I'm sad to say another sign of our pitiful surrender to ideological secularism. I mean that last part is certainly true Douglas Murray made a point and he said one in central mosque is also an iconic venue when's the rave.

26:09In other words Muslims aren't doing that so why exactly are Christians and this is an excellent question now again once your society has fewer kids for all the reasons mentioned about ranging from religious decline to economic reasons to birth control delayed marriage once your society has fewer kids you get a social death spiral having lots of kids almost no kids is a social thing. So I mentioned earlier Israel is was the only developed country on plan with higher than replacement fertility rates like significantly higher than replacement fertility rates and those rates are going up not down. There are a bunch of reasons for that. One the country is basically built around kids extended kinship networks family friends the social fabric favors large families the isolation you see in the rest of the west does not so if you ever walk around in Jerusalem you will see kids just getting on buses at the age of five just riding around. Because the bus driver will take care of them it's like a real thing. The entire public space is built around children nobody gets offended if you bring your kids to a restaurant and people make noise.

27:11It's just not the way like there's certain fancy restaurants were obviously it's not a thing but the spaces in Israel are filled with kids and everybody gets it and nobody's upset about it. And again a large part of that is sort of religious principle one one religious principle in Judaism is that for example even if your religious observance particularly you have to hear something right so so quick. Quick word on the last Bible portion so last Bible portion that we just read from the book of Deuteronomy talks about the idea that once every seven years the leader of the Jewish people has to get up and do something called hey call which is you read out the entire Torah. And they still do this by the way in Israel once every seven years the president of the country who she hers out as a curzog will get up and do this. And one of the commandments in the Torah is that everyone has to attend women children men. And so the question is well if the kids come aren't people going to be distracted the answer is that you want the kids to be present because the kids have to learn the ways even if people are slightly distracted from the from the actual thing that's happening.

28:15And so again a culture built around kids is a real thing and that's not unique to Judaism right there culture is built around kids in the United States if you go to deeply Catholic communities lots of kids running around deeply Protestant communities lots of kids running around OK Israel is in fact built on religious principles it is not a state that is ruled by Jewish law it certainly is not. But even the secular very secular until the where the politics are similar San Francisco has a relative who's religious secular people in Israel still very often light candles on Friday night even if they then go on to do things that violate the laws of Sabbath. When when young people were happens television shuts down is a secular city it shuts down people ride bicycles around rather than taking cars. People still celebrate Passover secular people in Israel are very often more religious than the reform Jews in the United States by a fair margin. Not only that there's a civic nationalism that applies in Israel because Israel is under continuous fire obviously and that means that every single Israeli has a national commitment to the future of the state and to the Jewish people which is why align the old very often here in Israel and in the Jewish community more broadly but mostly in Israel is the best revenge against Hitler is to have lots of kids.

29:25The thing you will hear people say. So again all the elements of having lots of kids are there and could be there for Americans right because civic nationalism is a thing we are more religious country than Europe. And we have those social spaces it's possible to have kinship networks again but all of those things are non government in origin. Vanishingly few Americans believe the survival of America is dependent on them having kids pretty much all the Israelis do even the ones who aren't religious. So we could do those things but again what you will notice in that entire litany what you'll notice is that there is no talk of the government is not government policy in Israel that is causing people to have children. It is social fabric that is causing people to have kids. And I'm not the only one saying this Tim Carney a Catholic writer who's literally written the book on declining birth rates in the West points this out. Hey so how about these policies back to the policy that's being proposed when we say that we're going to pay people to stay at home with kids and now maybe they'll have more kids.

30:25We are trying to solve a problem with a tool it is not designed to do we're trying to fix a broken light bulb with a fly swatter. And we have good evidence of this so hungry beloved of sort of the nat con right. And a lot of people in the nationalist conservative movement very fond of hungry because they love government promoted quote unquote common good. A hungry tried this in a totally didn't work as the American enterprise Institute reported back in November of 2025. Hungry spends around 5% of GDP on family subsidies the OECD ranks hungry among the top five OECD countries overall and public spending on family benefits. Victor Orban said in 2017 the country's objective was to raise the total fertility rate to replacement level which is 2.1 by 2030. Fertility instead has been trending down hungry is further for meeting is 2030 fertility objective they go way further than anything being promoted by JD Vance and the rest of the federal government under president Trump right now. So here we're talking about like $9,000 subsidies to stay home which frankly is not that much money. Orban's government in hungry introduced lifetime personal income tax exemptions for women with four more kids have yet four more kids no taxes none.

31:34And then later they expanded that to include moms of three and eventually even two kids if you had two kids no income taxes. Now you would think that would lead to a birth explosion right not actually not really what happened is that people who are already planning on having lots of kids just had those kids faster accelerated the baby making. They ended up with the same number of kids total but they accelerated the baby the baby making. That strategy by the way from the government also included zero interest baby expecting loans for given after the birth of three kids. Huge housing subsidies and a car purchase grant for big families so what happened. So the fertility rate saw a rise from 1.25 in 2010 to a peak of about 1.6 in 2020 2021 which is large right. But then it turns out that everybody who's going to have the babies they hit the two and they didn't want to have three or they hit the three and they didn't want to have four and momentum fizzled out. By 2025 the fertility rate was back down to 1.31 which is back where it was when we started. Hey so again this just shows you that governmental subsidies are not the thing that's happening right now you actually have to change the entire mindset of society and this is something conservatives have historically understood.

32:43Now we're hearing a lot from the common good concern government is a teacher government is a teacher usually the government only has two tools to teach. It has money hose and it has a gun those are the two tools that it has to teach the money hose is not going to teach you good values. The gun is going to teach you not to commit a crime unless you are going to force people to have more kids a point of gun that I'm going to work either. What you actually need to do is rebuild a social fabric and that starts at the local level this is where conservatives should be putting their efforts at the local level in rebuilding all of this not the federal government is not the solution in other words. If you were that easy I'd be in favor of it it ain't an age. Well to take the other side of this debate because we do disagree a fair bit here at daily we're actually this is the second time in like three shows that we've taken opposite sides of the same question is Michael moles host of the Michael moles show so Michael we've been discussing the proposed family policy put forward by the Trump administration with regards to subsidies for you know moms to stay at home with their kids the best argument that I heard was Kevin Roberts's argument at heritage the basically we're not.

33:46Getting rid of all these welfare programs so you may as well use the money for a better cause that seems to be the best argument the overall argument I sort of have two problems with and want to get your take on it one is that if you're going to pursue family policies like this they should not be done by the federal government on an ideological level it should be done by state and local governments if you're going to do it at all because the city already suggest you're going to get a better policy and better agreement on what the policy ought to be at the local level and then question number two is more of an efficacy one hungry tried this and it just didn't work because what you're trying to do is use material circumstance as a substitute for the real problem which is spiritual and social fabric lack and that can't be filled in by government what do you make of those arguments yeah okay the hungry one is a really good point because hungry did have this concerted effort on family policy broadly and we should make it distinction between family policy broadly and what the Trump administration is proposing here because I think it's being misrepresented it's much narrower than the broader debate but I'm interested in the broader debate when it comes to hungry yes the hungry policy failed to increase birth rates to replacement levels and it failed spectacularly at that however we should remember there were some wins to the Hungarian family policy it did increase in the short run it increased the fertility rate by about 30% marriages doubled divorce plummeted there were

35:04big wins now there were lots of other problems in Hungary and the remain big problems in Hungary obviously or bond was asked at that office strong head wins for Brussels I agree though that yes trying to get people to have kids just by giving the money is ultimately not going to work the greatest predictor of increasing the fertility rate is religiosity it's not just money but money plays a little bit of a role to so then okay then we get to this specific aspect of family policy and I think in many ways conservatives are talking past each other here because I agree with many of the arguments that are being made against the policy that Trump is not doing in other words I agree with many of the arguments against creating a new welfare program or expanding the spending on this welfare program or this that or the yeah I agree with a lot of those arguments that isn't what's happening here according to reporting from the New York time so take with a grain of salt there is a welfare program which is the child care and development fund which is existed for 30 years it's a Clinton era program and the fund says that if you're a single mother single parent but vast majority of the money is going to single mothers if you're a single mother below a certain income threshold you can get the money and you can pay it to a day care and then you can go work in the widget factory okay all well and good the Trump

36:16administration comes in and says you know what we should actually open up the pool of eligibility here and say that if you are a stay at home mother if you want to care for your own kid rather than just sending this government cheese to the day care center so you can work for doctor McGillic Eddie if you want to care for your own kid you can be eligible for that money as well so in other words it takes the pre-existing program already as mandatory spending doesn't add a penny and just says rather than only incentivizing single parenthood we're also going to incentivize people to be able to stay at home and give the care to their kids they deserve this to me seems exactly the same as the argument for school choice which was a little bit controversial on the right even some of my fellow Tennessee Republicans there were kind of opposed to it because they supported the public schools but generally this is a very popular policy says we're going to get direct payments from the government to help you raise your kids in the way that you see fit yes it's unsatisfying because we're not abolishing the welfare state yes it's unsatisfying because we're not we don't have a perfect a subsidiary here where the decisions are being made at the most competent local levels but all in all I really don't get much of the opposition

37:23to this policy I get I get an opposition to a broader ideology but I don't get an opposition to this policy. Now I mean I tend to I mean we're supposed to disagree but I'm tending to agree with you that the policy itself as I say is not wildly objectionable as it currently stands I'm afraid that it does open the door to a bunch of waste and fraud abuse because it's a government program and people will find ways to stay home take the money go work on the side anyway and then just you know take the difference because that's what people do when government grab bags of cash are made available to them but yeah it's the broader debate that I find kind of interesting in the one you have to have a continuously for years and years which is sort of what is the what is the goal of government in promoting quote unquote the common good because some of the language used to defend this policy to me never had any limiting principle and it is very difficult for me to see how that doesn't end up kind of coming back around and biting conservatives in very sensitive spots and also again when you examine the evidence you and I I think agree on the main things that actually drive people to have kids what hungry actually showed is that if you subsidize certain things you get a speed up so if people wanted to have three kids and they were thinking they were going to do it in four years instead they basically were like you know I'm just

38:31sneaking under the wire and get free of income tax so in and up generally increasing fertility rate then it up accelerating fertility rate temporarily and then it went back down the real crisis in the west actually is not how many kids people are having within marriage has been basically stable since the 70s is that no one in the west is even getting married yeah that is a function of the birth control pill that is a function of a society that teaches people the marriage is not worthwhile it's a function of lack of the legiosity and society and it is also function of lack of civic nationalism and the reason that I cite all of these things is because there is only one country and I wish it weren't this country is always get awkward and I say this but there's only one country that is developed that has fertility rates that are above replacement and it's Israel by leaps and bounds yeah Israel has a fertility rate that that is like three and that's true not just in the you know very religious areas where if you're in the so-called settlements those settlements the people there having I believe on average six kids if you go to the ultra orthodox areas people are having on average eight kids but if you go to Tel Aviv and Tel Aviv has the politics of San Francisco people on average have three kids in Tel Aviv and the reason for that is because there is an

39:36extraordinary level of civic nationalism in Israel where people are saying listen our country justice not survive if we don't have kids and one of the phrases that's frequently used in Israel is the best revenge against Hitler is have kids and he wants to wipe out the Jews we're going to just make more Jews and so that's that that is that is taken for granted there's also because of that a very child centric society if you ever go to Israel and what you see is that their kids kind of running around everywhere and kids are given enormous levels of responsibility you never see in America there's no there's no kind of drone parenting in Israel if you if you have a seven year old kid your kid is taking the bus by himself from the time he's like six seven years old because the bus driver will protect the kid like it's a real it's a real thing that that stuff could happen in America but it requires a renewed sense of religiosity and civic nationalism both of which are in absent and I think it's deeper even than civic nationalism I mean obviously in the United States civic nationalism is kind of our go to because we're a historically strange country that is now extremely multi ethnic and multi religious and all the rest but but with Israel you know many uh... twentyth century liberals will say America is just an idea israel is not just an idea israel is an historic nation some would say it's the historic nation and in fact the type of all of the other

40:44nations and so yeah I think there are a lot of lessons to learn from israel I mean you have a largely homogenous population with a deep sense of you know intergroup uh... loyalty and and history you have a religion even though to your point televiv is about a secular city is exists but nevertheless there is the sense that the religion is in the air there is a common religion to the state of israel and it's even if you personally don't practice it it's just there you kind of get it in by osmosis which is very very helpful for these issues there is a strong obviously biblical moral foundation of how people are supposed to act and it happens to be pretty conducive to virtue there is a sense of common enemies uh... you know so we could use a lot more of that in the United States I think that's actually a very good model and so it gets down to okay what's the government supposed to do uh... you know the government for most of American history uh... we don't have a church establishment we don't have a confessional state certainly but the government did promote religion all the time you know we had blue laws stores closed on Sunday barons schools

41:47uh... your homo is only a great israeli philosopher points out you can't have education without uh... put by the schools much less to have a you know robust virtuous population so you could put all of those things back in that would help increase the fertility rate in terms of marriage yet we've we because of liberalism we've just totally weakened marriage we've liberalized divorce don't forget the state of new york didn't fully liberalized divorce until like fifteen years ago you know admit this was a relatively new event coming out of the sixties and seventies along with the supposed constitutional right to abortion and contraception and all the rest of it whatever you think about the individual issues all of this leads into this problem so so then my response getting back to the original question on this policy debate but even tying it into the bigger issue i think you got some people come out and they say i don't want this policy reform even if it doesn't expand welfare state even if it doesn't make a new program even if it doesn't have any of spending because it would be better to abolish the welfare system it would be better to just cut taxes and send them out and i'd say yeah sure there are a lot of things

42:51it would be better but my question is are we going to take these incremental winds even in modest ways where we can find them to just nudge people in the right direction nudge the incentives in the right direction i want incentives to tell people to go to church and and to their broadly to their religious services once a week at least i want policies that broadly say read the bible in schools and i want the rs v c e or the duet reams someone else wants the k j v whatever but i just i want these winds that are nudging people in the right direction the discouraged divorce the one really big success of the hongarian family policy is it did encourage marriage which is something you know it's not everything they want it but it's something and so that i guess the question for the gop is are we going to take these incremental winds and deal in the political reality that we find ourselves in right now or are we going to say no i want the perfect solution i want to go back to you know pre welfare state nineteen thirty four and in that case i think we're just seating political power to the left that is only going to make the problems worse yeah and this may turn out to be a sort of politically pragmatic argument because again the question is going to be whether

43:56you are now entering into a sweepstakes in which will always be out there because no matter how many benefits you give the other side will always give more benefits into people with with fewer restrictions or whether as you say you basically have to see some ground in order to achieve victory and that that really is sort of one of the big questions well michael really appreciate the time we didn't argue as much as i thought we were going to unfortunately but there'll be plenty of time for that so long as you remain employed yes appreciate it let's like a fifty fifty offer at least you know good to see us or well that was michael no the power we have here at dw is that we as conservatives can very often disagree and still win together this is why daily wire is taking over the rnc this week september ninth and tenth we're taking over a bar to be fair it's the bar and see the premier hangout inside of the perimeter at the convention the road to the midterms begins in Dallas and now again all of this frankly seems to me to be a distraction there the republican party is in pretty bad shape heading into the midterm elections the calcium markets basically have it today their sponsor of ours as a toss up between the republicans and the democrats 53 percent think republican 47 percent think

45:00democrats are basically a toss up at this point again maybe there's an idea that talking about subsidies is going to gain a few votes i have i have some doubts okay now again this is not just an american problem when societies do not have enough children as mentioned they tend to import a gigantic labor base this leads us to the backlash which leads us to what happened over the weekend in germany so germany's alternative for doichland a fd had a huge breakthrough in a key state election according to npr they declared victory in the state of saksini and halt after more than doubling their share of the vote in the first of several regional elections this fall according to the preliminary final results a fd one 43.8 percent of the vote that is the strongest performance in any german state election the cdu which is the center right governing party originally the party of angla merkel in more than it have to their share of the vote they fell to a historical of 17.2 percent the central left social democrats got 9.3 the greens 8.9 the left 8.6 no one will sit with a fd this of course is just promoting more people to vote for a fd

46:03because again if you want sit with a fd and take their concern seriously people will just turn to them because they don't like the alternative in saksini and halt the leader of the party is a guy named ullrich sigman who is 35 and again he was doing a lot of tiktok campaign appearances he's upbeat and again one of the things that's weird about a fd is that the widespread perception in the media is that a fd is some sort of nazi party again the shes the evidence for that is scant that doesn't mean that there haven't been people who are nazi or nazi adjacent to have tried to join a fd but a fd is led by a lesbian woman with a partner who's shrewonkin so here is alas fidel who's leader of a fd laying out her first 100 day plan and as you'll notice it is entirely and 100 percent about migration the entire a fd platform is migration she's again it's very much like the lepenn party it's like national front in france here's alas fidel

47:07this is a historic experience we have here 45% of the vote which clearly gives us a mandate to govern we will also go to the federal level and the germany people are simply fed up with the politics that run counter to germany's interests we run a clear platform representing the interests of our country whether those we train or any other country i can tell you what happens when you receive the mandate to govern at the federal level as soon government responsibility we'll cut all nazis spending we'll control our borders we'll deport all those who are currently the country and all come now we'll be upschieben we're in the grants and schliezen we're in vernacular politics we'll close the borders because our land was in the last few months we'll pursue sensible policies for our country these are countries and we've been really ruined in recent and the cd angle a miracle and Alfredo merr is a disaster people can't stand to see this anymore they can't

48:11tolerate anymore again it's all border policy it's all border policy now people on the other side we're protesting afts win here's what that looked like over the weekend seems to protest presumably in Berlin now again one of the things that sort of fastening about afd is that there's broad-based agreement in germany that they need to close their borders into port illegal migrants and then this broad-scale angle a miracle has been completely reputed including by her on part of the cd now afd comes along with baggage the baggage that it comes along with is a pretty pro-russian stance with regards to crane germany has historically been very anti-russian for very solid reason if you can read a history book and so afd has basically said that they want to go hands off with Ukraine afd also has a pretty strong relationship with china so again it's it's not all roses

49:16but it is the migration policy that is driving the success of afd it's the reason why you have the success of national front in france and it is why their form party has been surging in the UK over the weekend there are a bunch of uk protesters small boat migrants have been getting off in port smith most of these people are from north africa and the uk protesters were very very unhappy again a lot of this is downstream from countries that have declining populations and so there's a hunger for labor force but the solution in turns out is not importing gigantic numbers of people from foreign cultures to help destroy your social fabric according to the bbc 625 people were brought to shore at over and unusual port smith yesterday they made a journey in eight boats more than 17,000 people have reached uk on small boats so far this year that is down significantly

50:20from past periods but again the government is not concerned about all of this stuff there they are meanwhile concerned about sanctioning israel over settlements in jude and samaray or some such nonsense can you see why the despesia in the uk why the despesia in germany or in france all the good news i suppose is that some of the migrants in in britain are assimilating to the local culture my little unapolis immediately upon being deported from the united states went to mosque where he started quoting mahamid he put on the whole the whole outfit and quoted the profit said the best of you in the time of ignorance jahlia are the best of you in islam if they gain understanding to into mosque he's running out of religions or alternatively he or alternatively he learned about the practice of bachabazi in afghanistan and perhaps wants in in any case things are going well for the brits obviously and lest we leave america behind things are going

51:20well for america to it turns out that importing vast numbers of people to american shores who hate the country was a terrible idea so nine eleven is coming up this week twenty-fifth anniversary of nine eleven those were old enough to remember remember it was the worst day in modern american history by a long shot no close second and the mayor of new york is now projihadi which is just awesome great job new yorkers you did an amazing job with wall raised generation of people who ate our country and uh... they're electing people more migrants to america who hate our country so mondonney who hates america is out there proclaiming actually he loves america but i have some proof that that's not the case i'm proud to be the mayor of the city i love this city i love this country and what i want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them twenty-five years ago in the horrific act of terror of september eleventh and a focus also on the first responders we get everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow new yorkers and so in the days to come my focus will be on attending events

52:21memorialize is that incredible courage and i will be there on friday at the memorial just as i was last here well i mean the families are going to want to there so i mean just as proof of who he is this is insane i mean it's truly insane new yorkers what have you done what the f did you do seriously what did you do the hell is wrong with the people voted for this guy he's signing a nine eleven remembrance and you'll see he hands a pen to a person right as a bunch of ceremonial pens and one of the people he hands a pen to is a person named ramsi passam okay here goes to ramsi kassam ramsi kassam accepts the pen and there he is signing a nine eleven memorial um okay so according to the new york post the symbolic pen was given to ramsi kassam ramsi kassam is a controversial aid who once represented in al-Qaeda terrorist named ahmed al-darbi al-darbi was sent to getmo after he was convicted of terrorism in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker in the middle east pardon al-Qaeda plot to hijacked global oil

53:21trade after nine eleven his sister married Khalid al-Mindhar one of the nine eleven hijackers of the plane that crashed into the pentagon so he signs the nine eleven memorial bill or reverendant and then he hands the pen to the lawyer for al-Qaeda yeah guys you did a great job great job new york awesome job you've done great importing all these people to the country it was such a boon it's been so awesome other people we have imported our justice awesome including of course hason piker beloved of the democratic party these days so over the weekend there is a socialism conference in chicago socialism conference in chicago which sounds like a terrible place to be well there has on piker acknowledge that the dsa the democratic socialist of america is heavily white but he said don't worry we're gonna change that the demographic makeup of the organization is still heavily white this is true but i think it's important for us to continue making inroads

54:22to address the the material inequities that black communities face and and i know for a fact from my experience uh going all around the country at this point and and speaking to to voters that ended up voting for dsa candidates like donovan mckinney uh and and also chris rab of course in philadelphia shout out to chris rab yeah donovan all of you even know that there is a real appetite for this change and that appetite especially exists in the black community as well so yeah the black community is definitely into the dsa despite the fact that by every poll they are definitely not into the dsa but don't worry they're a wide variety of diverse peoples with enormous numbers of bumper stickers on their on their laptop and here's my rule about bumper stickers we've got a bunch of them on your car on your laptop you're you're doing life wrong uh here is one of these socialist named raven shwam kirtz who says you know what it's not enough to say

55:23things are settler colonialist we have to say white settler colonialism well that's what we have to say white settler colonialism because if we actually started talking about settler colonialism we might have to talk about you know the spread of islam which is uncomfortable it's starting arabia and then it kind of settled a lot of different places by the sword but okay and so i think that that querying right what do we mean when we say settler colonialism do we mean settler colonialism or do we mean white settler colonialism i guess is really the core question i'm inviting us into so i think that precision is also how we we enact care towards one another right because it can't be precise in our analysis how can we be precise and diagnosing what the problems are and remedying them hey you have to be precise because it turns out that settler colonialism is only bad when white people do it when non white people do it it's apparently good or okay okay that's that's the standard meanwhile one pan a panelist at this socialism conference and again these are these are your future leaders folks so get used to seeing them and hearing from them oh good lord here is a

56:27panellist Beatrice Adler Bolton saying the left must become more disgenic fitness is a measure of relative disposability under capitalism our task is not to become less disposable to become more useful to the ruling order what we all need to be doing is rejecting disposability in all of its forms the point is not to beat the fascists at their own game it is not to lay a better claim on their own territory by being fitter more eugenic in fact the more disgenic the better i think so this crazy person wearing a mask in the year 2026 is literally saying that in order to defeat capitalism you should be fat and ugly we'll see how this works out for them she wasn't the only one first of all she she went on to make the claim believe it or not that um

57:31that we need people who are disgenic and disabled because those are our revolutionaries and then she proceeds to cite a series of revolutionaries who she calls disabled uh uh Ahmed Yasin who was an An important revolutionary Palestinian leader and one of the founders and early leaders of Hamas was paralyzed at 16. He was quadriplegic. Show me a leader in the Palestinian resistance who does not encounter debility at one point in their life. Che Guevara had debilitating asthma. He carried really heavy duty inhalers with him into battle and to combat in the jungle because the humidity made his asthma worse. Cabral too. Same thing. Rosa Luxembourg had hip dysplasia, Mao had ALS, Phanon had terminal myloid leukemia and he wrote some of his best work under the knowledge that diagnosis was hanging over

58:33his head. asthma really? I mean listen, I hope they all take their advice. I hope they all become dysgenic as humanly possible to defeat the man. I mean, I feel like that's not going to work out well for them either personally or politically but I suppose she wasn't the only one saying this. A person named Ashon Harrison also masked said that borders are body fascism. Guy. Diet culture has always linked food to morality, framing restraint as virtue and pleasure as danger through language like guilty pleasure. Explaining from pleasure becomes a way to train obedience, to train self-denial and to train discipline and service of a broader political order. Body fascism is not some relic of the past. It's an active feature of modern imperial regimes. Every time a government decides whose body must be protected and whose bodies must be erased for the sake of national imagery, this is body fascism. Every time there is a call for sovereignty by state powers with the intent to maintain

59:35borders. This is body fascism. So all I'm hearing is somebody paid $200,000 for a degree to make excuses for the fat. He really, really, really wants to eat that last doughnut. That's all this is. These are your future leaders, these are your future leaders folks. These are the people. Now what is this really about in the end? What is the DSA? What is all of this really about? It's about the same. It's all comes back to the same thing. It comes back to why we are not having kids in our society or getting married and in our society. Why people are following complete dollars and crazies? And the answer is because people are trying to fill a spiritual hole with literally anything and failing. Here is one of the panelists basically admitting as much. I believe there are aspects of the divine that are experienced in every part of life, right? Like in being in water, in cooking food, in salt. And so it must be so that there is expressions of the divine emerging from movement work

1:00:36that is not experienceable anywhere else. Like we get a taste of ultimate meaning and mystery and a face of the divine through organizing. And if we don't give language to it, it will go unexpressed. You know, at least a point of honesty, lack of spirituality being filled with this kind of crap. And the leadership class, of course, is people who hate America are fond of terrorism, but their children belong to you. Because Abdu Las Sayed saying he's not a socialist, but every child is our child. No, my child is not your child. In fact, I have a feeling that if somebody, if some of your friends, to retruck into my kids preschool, you'd be making excuses for them. So no on that one. I'm going to go no on this. You know, the number of times people debate whether I'm a socialist or a capitalist. I'm not a socialist. I'm a scientist. I'm a doctor. But if I have one political philosophy, right, it's that I want us to build what we would

1:01:37build if we took seriously the idea that all of our kids were all of our kids. If we started with that idea, every child is our child. We would build incredible public schools. We would guarantee everybody health care. We would guarantee child care. We would stop putting money in bombs and tanks that kill kids and we would start investing them in infrastructure and opportunity for kids. I don't want this America hating person defining my kids life. I don't think that's his job and I don't want him anywhere near my children. Well folks, speaking of terrible, terrible ideas and people, I promised you, I promised you the dumbest clip I may have ever seen on the internet. And Tucker Carlson, man, that man is a font of just wonder when it comes to internet clips. He really is. So he had on a human on his show. I will admit that the identity of this human was not known to me. It's a person named Jess Ellipson, who is a welder, which is great.

1:02:39Wailers are awesome. And as part of this discussion, because he is apparently an artist, as Tucker says, artists are the source of truth because truth is beauty. They got into a conversation about the math, the math. And things got every day, every day. New levels of retardation are reached. Behold. I'm yet to encounter a single person in my life that uses algebra. Actually, have you? So like you, but you would not, yeah, but I mean, I live in a fake world. That's why you use fake math with letters. Congratulations. Everybody else in the matrix. Good job. You're good little boys slaves. That's amazing. So you didn't get an answer because I've never considered this. By the way, never even entered my mind. I was too dyslexic to take any math.

1:03:39So I got a pass on math. But or whatever they said, I didn't have to take math. So I never took math. But I didn't get to the point I wasn't reflective or open-minded enough to ask the obvious question. Why are there letters? I mean, I'm not saying there shouldn't be letters. May there shouldn't be letters. Why are there letters at all? Why are there letters in math? I mean, like, they say it's invariable. What is variable? What is math? Why does math exist? Why do you use letters? I said, whatever the thought. Well, will they like, they won't even let me ask. You ask and they say you're stupid. You're stupid. But what, what, what even, I mean, who, who? Who is behind this crusade? And it is a crusade to put letters in our math problems, in our precious math problems. Who is doing this? Why are there letters in words? Even why do we even write? Why do we write? I mean, words are made of sounds. I know that.

1:04:40You know that. We all know that. I mean, I can't prove it. But words are made of sounds. Why do we even write them down? Isn't that, isn't that just a perversion? Isn't that getting us away from truth? Who would do that? And you're right. When we say that's goi-slop, it is letters in math. It's just, it's goi-slop. I mean, I'm not saying it's the Jews. I'm just saying that why would there be letters in our precious numbers and those, those numbers, you know, they come from Arabia? What's that? Which is why I love numbers. I love numbers because they come from letters. I mean, I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that letters are bad. Things are going great. Things are going great. Tucker also suggested, I don't know, he's got to be in his bonnet about the idea that I got into Harvard Law through nefarious means. Now I will admit that I am not bright enough to have ever asked the question because it's a question for retarded people.

1:05:41Why are there letters in our precious algebra problems? It has never occurred to me because the letter is just a substitution for a quantity we don't know. That's what the variable is. I mean, I guess I'm just not smart enough for that, but according to Tucker who hasn't washed his hair in a good long while. Apparently, I didn't get into Harvard Law on my IQ points and he would know since he never took math. He would know that, I mean, first of all, why is IQ? Why are we using letters like I and Q? Why are we talking about IQ? Shouldn't we be talking about the JQ? Here we go. One of my many theories, but the one I believe in most fervently is that the meritocracy as practiced in the United States is not meritocracy. The promise is, the system is going to locate the smartest people in the 50 states, funnel them through a certain number of approved schools and then into a certain number of approved

1:06:45businesses or government and we're going to get good governance and a good country as a result. In fact, the opposite is happened. The system is designed to exclude, rather than include, exclude Christians, people with an independent cast of mind, creativity, awakened spirit, all of them, genius, all of them are excluded in favor of hyperaggressive, selfish, small-minded, cruel, compliant people. That's how you wind up with a system where Ben Shapiro gets into Harvard. How could Ben Shapiro, I'm just like on IQ points, it's not possible? Okay, now, me not be good at the math, but me think that it might have had something to do with the fact that I skipped two grades, have an IQ over 150, graduated from Harvard Law School, come loud, UCLA summa come loud, the 3.85 GPA and a 176 LSAT score and a published

1:07:48book by the time I was 20 and a syndicated national column. Maybe it was those things. I mean, come on, I know, okay, fine, I'm being a jerk, I get it, but it is a mystery, it is a mystery wrapped in a nigma and will only be uncovered by a man who dips his head in lard every morning and then goes and does a show where he explains that Harvard Law isn't letting in our great artist ingenious is who don't know why there are the letters in the numbers. Why are there the letters in the numbers? And maybe I'm underestimating Tucker, maybe the goal here is a revolution of the idiots. Maybe that's the actual goal. If you unite all the idiots about you and then you charge the castle, then perhaps there are more idiots than there are smart people. All right, coming up, we'll get to other stupid people doing stupid things. You haven't heard Macklemore in years, right? He's that guy who's saying thrift shop back when you were a kid.

1:08:51Well now he's back and like Tucker Carlson, he's not fond of the Uddon. He had some things to do at an Ed Sheeran concert. First of all, he should be ashamed of hearing Ed Sheeran concert, but apparently he showed up to, okay, we'll get to all of that. Plus, if you're a daily wire member, you get even more analysis, more news coverage and access to my mailbag right this very second. If you're not a member, become a member, use coach Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.