Ben Shapiro - Liberty University

our speaker today is the editor-in-chief and the daily why're we all love him obviously from the ben shapiro show the top conservative podcasts in the nation he was 17 when he became a syndicated you know show host the youngest in America's history he's the author of seven books several of them have ended up on the New York Times bestseller list honestly he earned his BA in political science at UCLA graduated from Harvard Law alright and what I appreciate about him is that we might not share the same faith I mean he is a devout Jewish friend and we are Christians but this morning we talked so much about what we have in common and so much about our desire to see the sanctity of life be protected in the life of a baby in a womb we talked a lot about our beliefs in wanting to see wanting to see this place return and and and he really is I think a partner with us not just the guest who's gonna find a lot in common with us but a partner with us and in ways that we're excited about unrolling in the next few years to you but I know you're excited I'm gonna get out of the way come on let's put our hands together for the one the only everybody well thank you so much [Applause] it really is a pleasure and an honor to be here today at Liberty University I'd like to give a special thanks to Fred Allen and young America's Foundation for making this event possible obviously sponsoring these sorts of events makes it possible for me to bring good news and good words to I think a lot of folks around the country here I think they need it less than maybe some of the other places that I speak before I begin I wanted to take just a moment so it can silently pray together for Alfie Evans if you don't know the story of Alfie Evans Alfie Evans is a two-year-old child in Britain who has a degenerative brain condition and the government of Britain is now declaring that his parents cannot leave the country with Alfie Evans to seek experimental treatments he has to stay in a hospital and die at the hand of the state so before we go any further I'd like to just take about five seconds here ten seconds and just pray silently fora for Alfie and his family who are I think doing God's work and standing up for the value of life thank you I appreciate it well I've long believed that the future of our nation is inextricably intertwined with the future of judeo-christian value system and I know of very few places in the United States that are more valuable to that future than right here at Liberty University I'm just blown away by you guys America was built on a fundamental idea an idea that was the product of nearly 3,000 years a philosophical evolution that idea planted at Sinai watered in the Galilee pruned through the thought of Athens and strengthened by the push and pull of reason and revelation for centuries was embedded by our founders in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States that principle was simple that human beings are made in the image of God and we are therefore beneficiaries of the inalienable god-given rights that government was created in order to protect those rights not invade them and that we must use our freedom to pursue reach the to pursue virtue God said to Pharaoh let my people go so that they may worship me hey the United States echoed that message from it's very inception George Washington stated in his first inaugural address quote since there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness between duty and advantage the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal Rules of Order and right which heaven itself has ordained the very basis of our politics then lies in the recognition that rights without virtues lead to chaos and that virtues without Rights lead to tyranny only by balancing public rights with private virtues can we truly uphold freedom and pursue happiness one half of the equation though seems to have gone awry in modern America we've been taught that our rights are paramount which is fine but we have also been taught that we have no duty to be virtuous in fact anyone who says that we have a duty to be virtuous is harming you micro aggressing you ethnocentrically mansplaining to you in cisgender fashion how can anyone expect us to be virtue the argument goes when the system itself is so deeply flawed how can we blame people for being immoral when the system is biased in favor of a few white rich men at the top first we have to fix the system then human beings themselves will change virtue will become natural all just magically become wonderful great people all we have to do to make this magical thing happen is hand over all our freedoms to a centralized government and that government will then provide us new rights you know better than the old god-given ones instead of the rights of free speech the government will provide us a right not to be a offended our feelings will be protected instead of a right to life the government will provide us the right to kill unborn babies instead of a right to create and keep the wages of our labor the government will provide us a nice comfortable social safety net without us actually having to do the work then after all that's done human beings will magically become better will become good if all this happens this is the philosophy of collectivism the philosophy that says that human beings suffer because the judeo-christian system expects too much of us individually judeo-christian philosophy expects us to struggle to strive judeo-christian philosophy demands that we do our best and that we act virtuously on the individual level so we can feel secure without invading each other's rights the judeo-christian tradition says that with freedom comes responsibility collectivist philosophy however thinks differently they expect us to give our individual striving up no more striving no more struggle all we have to do is trade our individual responsibility for the comfort of collective power collectivist philosophy points out that individual virtue isn't natural it is a struggle and we can avoid that struggle by handing over all power to a nanny-state judeo-christianity says you're free and therefore you must give collectivist philosophy says your unfree and thus the state must take on your behalf it's this philosophy of collectivism against which Moses and Jesus and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison fought it is this philosophy that Americans have fought and bled and died to extend to more and more people over time Abraham Lincoln saw black slaves as human beings and hundreds of thousands of Americans died to extend the American covenant to them American soldiers left their corpses on the beaches of Normandy to extend that promise to subject people's Martin Luther King jr. was assassinated fighting to extend the American promise to black Americans Ronald Reagan spent his years fighting to spread the light of Americanism beyond the Berlin Wall and today Americans liberate Muslims in the Middle East from the heavy hand of collectivist Islamism Americans protect South Koreans and Taiwanese free people from the burden of North Korean and Chinese communism Americans stand ready to thwart the threat of collectivist journey across the globe but there is a threat to founding philosophy growing right here at home it's growing because too many Americans believe that virtue is less important Virtue's signaling hey too many Americans believe that freedom is actually a burden too many Americans believe that they know what's best for other Americans even when they personally abandon virtue so the question becomes how exactly do we go about restoring the judeo-christian tradition upon which the nation was built how exactly do we bring back the philosophy of the founders and restore their promise well to do that we have to go back to basics we actually have to talk about morality and politics not just efficiency not just why our ideas were but morality what is good and what is bad what is right what is wrong what is true and what is evil now advocates for personal philosophy if our founding philosophy you know these personal freedoms individual responsibility we make a pretty big mistake when we talk about that philosophy because we do spend a lot of time talking about how effective it is we point out that free markets have led to the greatest reduction in poverty in world history in 1981 40 4.3 percent of the global population lived on less than a buck 90 a day in 2015 the global extreme poverty rate dipped below 10% we on the right like to point out that a philosophy of individualism has led to massive increases in living standards within the United States and also around the world and we point out the collectivist countries tend to stagnate but we don't point to often two underlying values see here's the thing we have to acknowledge there is a draw to collectivism there is a draw to leftism the draw is pretty simple collectivism promises solutions to cosmic and Justices when collectivist stands up here and invoke the least specific I mean like here on this stage and invoke the least specific verses of the Bible to justify government redistribution ISM and crackdowns on religious practice because of fairness they are making a moral appeal when Bernie Sanders stands up here and tells you that the top 1% of the 1% Oh 90 percent of all the wealth when he says that America is not a just society in line with a context-free verse from a book he's never read by Amos and then suggest that if you give him more power he will rectify that unfairness that is immoral appeal it is not is not an argument about efficiency it's a bad moral appeal of course inequality doesn't necessarily mean unfairness but it is a moral appeal and that moral appeal unfortunately for too many people is effective it's effective because it goes to our hearts not to our heads it reminds us of fundamental values even if it's skewing those fundamental values conservatives tend to talk about what works people on the Left tend to talk about what's fair but values are not a left-wing monopoly in fact the fundamental values of Western civilization run a hell of a lot deeper than the shallow values of the collectivists the values that resonate most with human beings are eternal not changeable and not relativistic they are universal they are not group specific and most of all they apply to individual human beings not group labels and those values were first embedded clearly and concisely in the ten commandments if we return to those values we will be a virtuous citizenry deserving of our Liberty and if we turn away from those values well then we'll return to the horror of collectivism in tyranny so I want to go through the ten commandments and I want to explain what they say to today's modern politics what they say to us in the room and why the Ten Commandments are so important and why they are still the basis for our outreach program on behalf of not only our God but on behalf of a philosophy that is the only remaining hope for Western civilization so the first commandment is the most controversial and it's also the simplest I'm the Lord that God who brought you out of Egypt out of the land of bondage now to start off is a bizarre commandment because it doesn't actually command you to do anything on its face but it does implicitly command you to do something remove yourself from the arbitrary bondage of the state and place yourself under a higher set of Commandments the Bible tells us in Genesis that we are each made in God's image and that means we have the capacity to choose and the obligation to choose right over wrong and life over death responsibilities evolves on us personally because we're servants of God not servants of the state across three millennia Jews and Christians alike have fought for the common notion then allegiance to God outranks our allegiance to the state and that if you use government to restrict my communion with godly values I will resist you in every way possible today collectivists folks on the left they tell us that the state can order you to disobey God in your daily dealings right they can order the Christian Baker to cater the same-sex wedding they can order the Jewish doctor like my wife to perform abortions right the first commandment says no you can't and so does the first amendment which guarantees freedom of religion for precisely this reason and it's because the founders understood the danger of tyranny and the value of individual freedom before God they instituted the second amendment to they recognized that we have a god-given right to defend ourselves from tyranny and from terror [Music] the second commandment is also particularly important in today's society it says thou shalt have no other gods before me this is particularly relevant when it comes to the cults of personality that seems to dominate our politics we're told on all sides and we ought to trust the people at the top to solve our problems a little bit of trust goes a long way every time something goes wrong in the United States we are informed that if we just gave the government more power our problems would be solved like ancient pagans if we sacrifice a bowl on top of a mountain the Health and Human Services Department will ensure nobody dies in cancer this is stupid nonsense Bernie and Elizabeth Warren worship at the altar of fairness they proclaim the universe is cosmically unjust if you just hand over power to them all of that will be cured God says nah God says we are not allowed to trust in Princes and that means that it is also our job to call out our leaders when they stray to do otherwise is to deify human beings it is not our job to ignore the sins of our leaders by determining that they are in fact King David selected by God to fulfill his will it is our job to be Nathan the Prophet declaring wrong is when we see them in service to God [Music] if our leaders sinned we are bound to say why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes and our leaders must repent to merit God's love just as we must constantly repent before him power doesn't exempt sin and if it did our leaders would be gods and we would be their subjects the third commandment says that we must not take God's name in vain this doesn't merely mean that we shouldn't shout God bleep it God can handle a little potty mouth it does mean that we can't twist God's words to justify our own political agendas [Music] Christian's cannot justify abortion by misquoting Matthew 7:12 and talking about the golden rule if they do they are putting their own words in God's mouth we can't use we cannot use Deuteronomy 16 20 to justify a government cracking down on religious people to promote same-sex marriage while deliberately ignoring the words of Leviticus okay and we cannot justify forcible redistribution of wealth by citing matthew on the least of these while ignoring the words of leviticus 19 15 in which god enjoins us not to pervert justice on behalf of the poor or the wealthy selectively citing the bible while ignoring all the inconvenient parts that makes you a Bible abuser and it makes you dishonest as well the fourth commandment says then we must remember the Sabbath and keep it holy one of the weirdest elements of collectivism is that it says we all owe something to the collective and yet weirdly collectivist seem to give a lot less to charity New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio routinely rips into the greedy rich the guy gave a grand total of 350 bucks to charity last year on an adjusted gross income of two hundred twenty three thousand four hundred forty nine dollars by the way he paid the guy who for various taxes five hundred bucks when you see income as the state's responsibility rather than a gift from God it alleviates the responsibility of actually having to pass that gift on to those who are less fortunate instead you can demand that the government play God and grab other people's cash the commandment to honor the Sabbath also reminds us that our time doesn't actually belong to the state it belongs to us every seven days we say no more tyrannies say that our labor is not our own we owe it to the collective our time is in her own our income isn't our own our labor isn't our own work harder because the state is your Creator remember that our time is a gift from God that's the first step toward fighting tyranny the fifth commandment says that we have to honor our parents obviously this calls a lot of folks on the left really galls them see collectivists see the state as the source of our morals and our families obstacles standing between individuals and their master that's exactly what's happening with Alfie Evans where bureaucrats are standing between parents and their child saying that they know best that a child has to die because they know better than the parents do collectivists they there's a reason that karl marx abhorred the traditional family to say that he saw it as a capitalist institution based on capital and on private gain he openly called for abolition of the family there's a reason Stalin trained Soviet youth to become pioneers that's what he called them emissaries of the state who are told that the highest good involves ratting out your own family members at 1 1932 Soviet trial a father actually cried out to his son it's me your father and the son replied yes he used to be my father but I no longer consider him my father I'm not acting as a son but as a pioneer Stalin used to go around Soviet Russia talking about this story and using it as an example of good behavior he breaking down the family is a precondition to building up the state and furthermore respecting your parents means you actually have to respect their belief systems you know the ones that have been passed down generation after generation the ones that your grandparents spill blood for GK Chesterton wrote in 1929 the more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to a fence and says I don't see the use of this let us clear it away the more religious type of reformer would do well to answer quote if you don't see the use of it I certainly won't let you clear it away go away and think then when you can tell me come back and tell me that you do see the use of it then I may allow you to destroy it the founders understood the value of the past the authors of the French Revolution didn't this is why Edmund Burke condemned the French Revolution he saw the revolutionaries as stripping away fences that were built over thousands of years of human thought he said their liberty is not liberal their scientists presumptuous ignorance their humanity is savage and brutal and Edmund Burke was right our parents may be wrong from time to time but you presume as so many on the left do that we can ignore the lessons of the past to discard our parents build the worlds in new each generation that consigned thousands if not millions to flames the sixth commandment is pretty simple we should all be able to agree on that secular religious alike thou shalt not murder unfortunately as we are currently seeing in Britain this is not the case collectivists routinely dismissed the value of human life this by the way is the difference between social justice and individual justice individual justice demands that you have to be held responsible for the stuff you do for your own crimes social justice says that your life on its own is of little consequence if a few eggs must be broken to make an omelet then that's the way it works to ask for raw evidence of wrongdoing becomes of secondary concern the only thing that matters is the end goal when we use people as means rather than ends murder becomes possible and by the way it's actually kind of easy to use human beings as means rather than ends there's a famous study that was done at Yale University by Stanley Milgram in 1961 and here's how it works he chose pairs of participants one would randomly be chosen to become a learner and the other randomly chosen become a teacher accepted selection was not random the drawing was rigged so the volunteers would become teachers and the learners were actually working for the experiments are there working for Milgram so the learners were taken into a separate room and they were hooked up to electrodes that were supposedly buzzing with electricity teachers the volunteers in this program were brought into a separate room containing a switch they could shift the electric level from 15 volts all the way up to 450 volts teachers these volunteers were then informed by the researchers that it was their job to shock learners for making errors in a war game the researchers would remain in the world in the room and they would push the teachers to shock the learners telling them to continue according to Milgram experiments 2 in 3 teachers shocked the learners all the way up to 450 volts even as the actors begged for mercy every one of the teachers shocked the learners up to 300 volts Milgram concluded called stark Authority was pitted against the subjects strongest moral imperatives against hurting others and with the subjects peers ringing with the screams of the victims authority one more often than not hey people are not averse to murder unless they are taught that they are personally responsible for the actions they take nowhere is this truer than in the case of abortion no we're a society we have taught individual human beings around the United States and around the world they are not responsible for their actions that's how you get a piece in The Washington Post by Ruth Marcus championing the killing of unborn children with Down syndrome Shep she wrote this quote I'm gonna be blunt here this was not the child I wanted you can call me selfish or worse but I am in good company it takes generations of inculcation in vice in order to believe such idiocy she is wrong Ruth Marcus is wrong she is not in good company she is in quite evil company but human beings have always provided each other company when pursuing evil without being taught an individualís system of virtue where you are responsible for the actions that you take the seventh the seventh commandment is not to commit adultery again you would think that this one would be obvious right it isn't unfortunately this commandment assumes the value of individual human beings it assumes that you have the individual capacity to control your own nature collectivists reject both of these assumptions wholesale there's a reason that Marx believes in what he called the community of women he met widespread promiscuity the idea that one man and one woman must sublimate their desires in order to promise each other their trust and love it stands in stark contrast to the ownership of the collective family formation is the single greatest threat to the substitution of leftist values for judeo-christian ones because it assumes that you personally are capable of overcoming your own nature and because the creation of children changes your life it means that you are now responsible for someone else your highest priority is protection of your family rather than serving the collective I have two kids now they made me a better human being kids make you a better human being if you allow them to and being married to one person for the rest of your life makes you a better human being as well [Music] furthermore the commandment not to commit adultery actually places pleasure below commitment on the scale of priorities and this annoys a lot of people this runs counter to the comforting promises of the collectivists they say that you should trade away your rights you notice that you have this softest aquino cocoon of security the promise of zero consequences for your action give control to the collective you won't have to control yourself if you just give control to the collective over your entire life they will give you free condoms they will pay for your abortion all the rest but the judeo-christian ethic says to control yourself and that in doing so you become better and freer and a better servant of the Lord who made you the eighth commandment is similarly simple and should be similarly non-controversial unfortunately it's not thou shalt not steal individualism relies on our respect for one another's rights the Bible explicitly forbids the notion of social justice as a rationale for theft the New Testament says in 2nd Thessalonians quote the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat charity is mandated by judeo-christian religion theft is forbidden and legalized theft is still theft if two of us are in a room with Bill Gates and we vote to take Bill Gates's money we are still thieves is a violation of the eighth commandment just because that's a democracy doesn't mean it's not theft corporate welfare is theft as well when big companies Commons your our politics to subsidies from other citizens that is theft to theft isn't just you picking somebody else's pocket it's you getting together with your friends and deciding to create laws that allow you to pick somebody else's pocket the ninth commandment is not to bear false witness against your neighbor perhaps this one is the most commonly violated commandment of our time the willingness to suggest that our neighbors are nasty people bad characters for the sake of elevating particular collective ideologies take for example the issue of gun control now you can be for more gun control you can be against more gun control but folks on the left constantly make the case that if you oppose their agenda it's because you don't care enough about dead kids that you're simply willing to watch them die for a buck oh five from the National Rifle Association okay that's not only a lie it is bearing false witness because there is no evidence for this proposition but for a lot of folks on the Left everyone is either a tool or an obstacle to utopia and so lying about your political enemies is simply a great way to achieve your objective these character attacks have become commonplace in our politics the idea that if you disagree with somebody it's because they're a bad person not because you disagree about the underlying values the underlying principles or agree about those values and principles but disagree about the politics themselves instead everything has become about ripping people down on a personal level disagreement becomes a character assault as long as that lasts we can't have a free republic finally finally the tenth commandment you shall not cover your neighbor's ass sorry Bill Clinton individualism individualism is based on the possibilities in herre within human beings you're capable of a lot and you must be encouraged to take advantage of those possibilities you're not a victim you're not a victim hey you can achieve what your neighbor has achieved jealousy is forbidden by the Bible and if you can't that gives you no right to believe that your neighbor's property belongs to you in Judaism this commandment not to not to covet your neighbor's property has been interpreted for thousands of years to mean that you can covet a Tesla like your neighbors Tesla but you can't covet your neighbors Tesla which actually makes perfect sense a free system offers you the opportunity to make something of yourself it offers you the opportunity to do better it doesn't offer you the ability to glom off of somebody else's achievements collectivism rejects this and hopes to end jealousy by narrowing the scope of human potential for you to redistribute all the property no one gets the Tesla then maybe jealousy will go away that's not how human beings operate it's a rejection of God and it's a rejection of the creative power of man God implanted into all of us so here's why all of this matters heroes who I went through all 10 commandments hey America is struggling right now in a lot of ways but the biggest struggle we are having the most difficult struggle we are having is the struggle for our national soul we're so angry at each other right now right the anger is palpable when you going to talk to members your own family about politics there's no way to have a good discussion without it's involving into people yelling at each other well why are people so angry right now we're so angry because our common vision has been destroyed we used to believe in the founding vision supported by the framework of personal virtue called from judeo-christian morality the government was there to protect us from hurting each other and judeo-christian morality was there to inculcate virtue in us so that government didn't have to step in hey we used to see each other as brothers and sisters as friends and family not the 1% versus the 99% or the privilege versus the victims we were not enemies we were a community forged in fire tethered together by a set of values stretching all the way back to the Garden of Eden but no longer somewhere along the way we came to believe that we stood above the tradition that bore us that we were better than the philosophical system of the founders we began to think we were better than God we began to score in our past we began to think we could remake the world tearing down fences without considering why those fences were there in the first place we were wrong hey war it is our job to repair those fences not to tear them down to repair them to learn about them to realize why we were there only then can we change the placement of those fences it it is our job to learn as you're doing here at Liberty about what made our civilization great and what can make our civilization great still it is our job to reconnect with both the Word of God and with the philosophy of individual liberty that sprang from that same Word of God if we do all of that if we do all of that then we will truly be deserving of God's blessing and fit to proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof thank you so much [Applause] fantastic you

Channel: Liberty University

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Keywords: Liberty University, LibertyU, Liberty, Jerry Falwell, ben shapiro

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Length: 28min 25sec (1705 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 25 2018