No Safe Spaces (2019)

1. - You need to get out.

2. Help me get this reporter out of here!

3. I need some muscle over here!

4. - Keep doing it!

5. - You know, this is all very personal to me

6. 'cause I experienced tyranny at a very young age.

7. Israel sent me into the Soviet Union

8. when I was 21 years old

9. 'cause I knew Russian and Hebrew,

10. and I was sent in to smuggle out the names of Jews

11. that I would find in the Soviet Union

12. and to smuggle in religious items and so on.

13. And I really experienced what most people in the West

14. have never, ever experienced:

15. life under a totalitarian regime.

16. In order to keep myself sane, I would make myself laugh.

17. So, in my Moscow hotel, which I knew was bugged—

18. And how did I know? It's very simple.

19. They didn't allow any Soviet citizen

20. to stay in the same hotel as a Westerner.

21. So I would sing from the Psalms.

22. It says, "They have false gods.

23. "They have ears that don't hear, eyes that don't see,

24. but people still bow down to them."

25. - I think somewhere a cantor just killed himself.

26. - A few cantors. I think one is understating it.

27. - Everyone says, "Why are you friends with Dennis Prager?

28. You have nothing in common."

29. As if, if our moms' first names

30. were both Connie,

31. we'd be simpatico on every topic.

32. He comes from the East. I come from the West.

33. He comes from religion. I come from atheist/pagan.

34. He comes from college and knowledge.

35. I come from tomfoolery and sports,

36. but yet we both share a little something

37. called common sense and values,

38. and the common sense and values—

39. I think this may be the chance for this country.

40. Common sense and values should trump everything.

41. It should trump LGBT. It should trump Chicano.

42. It should trump black. It should trump Trump.

43. That's all we should be focused on,

44. is common sense and values.

45. This is the place I'd always kind of dreamt of

46. when I was a kid.

47. The houses I grew up in did not have garages,

48. and I always wanted cars and go-karts and mini bikes and—

49. Well, I wanted a basketball hoop.

50. I wanted a dog. I wanted dinner. I wanted a whole bunch of stuff.

51. I found out very early what could happen to somebody

52. if you got a free house, a couple of food tickets,

53. and just a stipend from the government,

54. that it was debilitating.

55. My mom was never forced to go out and take care of business,

56. and I said to her once, sort of from the mouth of babes,

57. "Why don't you just get a job?

58. "You get a job, we'll have a car.

59. "We could have a nice car instead of a junker.

60. We could get some furniture."

61. And she said, "If I get a job, I'll lose my welfare,"

62. meaning, "Use your head, boy."

63. And I thought at that point— I realized, not for me.

64. - I'm a little embarrassed, because here's a guy

65. listening to my show for years,

66. and he's the most downloaded podcast in the world,

67. and I didn't know who he was?

68. - Adam Carolla and his partner, Julianne Hough.

69. - My name's Jimmy, and his name's Adam.

70. - The king is parched and grows weary.

71. Jester, bring forth a chalice of ale.

72. Scamper away.

73. I don't want to live in a world

74. where Dennis Prager knows who I am.

75. The Dennis I enjoy is, he's just home.

76. He's reading the Torah, and he's smoking a cigar.

77. I don't want a Dennis Prager who goes,

78. "Hey, Ace Man, 'Man Show,'

79. 'Crank Yankers,' love it."

80. - If somebody were able to pick

81. the two most opposite upbringings

82. in the United States of America,

83. they would take my upbringing and his upbringing.

84. I remember playing stickball in Brooklyn, where I grew up.

85. So some kid would say something, you know, unbelievably stupid,

86. and we'd all tell him, "Will you shut up?"

87. And he'd go, "Hey, it's a free country, man.

88. It's freedom of speech here."

89. And it basically shut us up. He's right.

90. What's happening now in the United States,

91. you are not to be heard on a college campus

92. or at your place of work.

93. This is brand-new.

94. This is one of the few things one could say

95. we have no precedent for in the United States.

96. - The real question is how long

97. before they come for your job and for my job—

98. I mean, for anyone who speaks for a living?

99. - They want to close us down.

100. No, in all seriousness, they do want to close us down.

101. - Don't you have a billion views on PragerU?

102. - We do; we had a billion views last year,

103. but the same thing's gonna happen to you.

104. Look, you're the most downloaded podcast,

105. to my knowledge, in the world, yeah.

106. - Yeah, I got a family. I got employees.

107. - We're not an enemy to goodness.

108. We're not an enemy to good things.

109. We're an enemy of the dogmatic.

110. - Dennis and I were gonna get together

111. and do an event at CSUN.

112. That's Cal State Northridge out here.

113. A little backstory— my mother graduated CSUN

114. with a degree in Chicano studies,

115. so that's all you need to know about my mom and possibly CSUN.

116. - Never has a thesis been so confirmed so rapidly.

117. We were going to do an event, you and I.

118. - And we've done events there before.

119. - And we've done before.

120. And the subject was, essentially,

121. what is happening at our universities

122. in terms of intellectual openness, et cetera, et cetera?

123. They had fully approved you and me being there.

124. They then canceled it because of the topic.

125. It doesn't bother me for me.

126. It bothers me for this beloved country of mine.

127. It bothers me for the young people who are being deprived

128. of anything that could open their minds.

129. - So I have a vision of us as people, as human beings

130. that is interested not in what is different among us

131. but what is the same, okay?

132. So I believe, even though I'm not like you,

133. in the sense of my superficial appearance,

134. that I can sit down and talk to you and understand—

135. understand your predicament, that I can listen to you.

136. If that's not true, if you deny that,

137. then what is the reason that you ask to be heard?

138. Yes, thank you.

139. That I disagree with.

140. That I disagree with. - No, no, no.

141. - I disagree. I disagree. - It's not a debate.

142. - I am sick looking at you.

143. I am disgusted watching Alex argue with you.

144. You are not listening! You are disgusting.

145. And now I want your job to be taken from you.

146. - People who have a great, sterling reputation at Yale,

147. "You know, you're old enough to decide

148. what Halloween costume you should use,"

149. and for that, it almost causes a riot at Yale,

150. and that's Yale.

151. - And I know last year on Halloween,

152. you went as Kevin Hart,

153. and that caused—

154. You don't know who Kevin Hart is.

155. - Well, I do vaguely,

156. but the point is, it's cultural appropriation no matter what.

157. - That is correct.

158. - We're on the way to the airport,

159. which is where I do much of my life, the airport.

160. You know, I go to all sorts of campuses,

161. from Berkeley to Columbia and everything in between.

162. So, you know, my hope is, it's Wyoming.

163. It's a pretty conservative state.

164. All will be peaceful and tranquil.

165. - It all began when students invited a special guest

166. to speak about socialism.

167. - Yeah, that's right, Aaron.

168. We were on campus tonight as hundreds lined up

169. to see Dennis Prager speak about his views,

170. but before he even arrived to campus,

171. other students who did not agree

172. tried to stop his appearance.

173. - We're essentially here because we don't agree

174. with Mr. Prager's views at all.

175. He has said many hurtful things

176. and hateful rhetoric towards underrepresented communities,

177. of which Wyoming has many beautiful, diverse communities.

178. - In the case of the University of Wyoming, it was precious.

179. "Dennis Prager, noted—" which was a compliment—

180. "Noted bigot,

181. racist, homophobe, sexist,

182. Islamophobe, and anti-Semite."

183. I swear to God.

184. So word got out to the person who clearly knew me well,

185. "It's probably worth dropping anti-Semite.

186. "The guy is a well-known Jew,

187. written books on Judaism, et cetera."

188. So they dropped that without a word of apology,

189. needless to say.

190. They just dropped it, but everything else remained.

191. - It's ironic that, you know, "The Los Angeles Times"

192. would call you bigoted, because what you do

193. is the opposite of bigoted, which is,

194. "I don't care who's listening.

195. I will simply speak the truth as I know it to you,"

196. versus a version that is meant for this color

197. and that group and the LGBT community.

198. Dennis is the most decent, moral person I've ever met,

199. and thus, he does not have this animus in his heart,

200. so he's able to be free to piss everyone off.

201. - The only reason for the attack

202. is that I'm known as a conservative.

203. This is a brainwash that they undergo.

204. If you are conservative, then you are not wrong.

205. You are evil.

206. They have to think we're evil.

207. Otherwise they have to debate us.

208. Racist go home! Racist go home!

209. - The chaos centered around controversial conservative

210. Ben Shapiro.

211. - Values matter significantly more than melanin level.

212. Racial diversity doesn't mean anything.

213. Decency means something.

214. Diversity is not a bad thing, but it isn't a good thing

215. unless the people who are racially diverse

216. are also decent.

217. - Concerns over safety and threats

218. prompted University President William Covino

219. to cancel the preapproved speech,

220. but Shapiro continued with his scheduled appearance,

221. drawing dozens of protesters

222. who were desperate to stop him.

223. - Look at me. I mean, like,

224. do I look like a physical threat to anybody?

225. Last time I was in a fight, I was 14 years old.

226. I was two years younger than everybody else

227. in my high-school class,

228. and I was getting my ass kicked.

229. - When I went to college,

230. suddenly there were some folks

231. who didn't think at all like me.

232. I've heard some college campuses

233. where they don't want to have a guest speaker

234. who is too conservative.

235. Charles Murray, go away!

236. Racist, sexist, anti-gay!

237. - That's the free speech of the left.

238. - This is not an argument. This is a religion.

239. - When Professor Stanger was escorting Murray out,

240. she was left with a concussion and whiplash.

241. - Shouldn't we be able to agree on protecting free speech

242. no matter who is speaking?

243. - There will be resistance, and it will not be peaceful.

244. Resistance to violent hate speech

245. is not another act of hate.

246. It is an act of love.

247. - Whoever told you you only had to hear what didn't upset you?

248. Shut it down! Shut it down!

249. Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!

250. Shut it down!

251. - A protest has turned violent

252. at the University of California, Berkeley.

253. - Campus locked down as more than 1,000 people rallied

254. against the appearance of a controversial editor

255. from Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos.

256. - All I care about is free speech and free expression.

257. I want people to be able to be, do, and say anything.

258. - It's disgusting.

259. It's one thing to protest someone's right

260. to come here and speak,

261. but it's another thing to create

262. this much amount of destruction and violence

263. and hurt and harm other people.

264. - We need our voices heard, and if this is the way

265. that we think it must be done,

266. then I suppose that's what we got to do.

267. - It sends the message that under no means

268. will we allow any of this to go on anywhere near Berkeley.

269. - Has the birthplace of free speech

270. now become its graveyard?

271. - If there's a fundamental American right,

272. it's to say what's on your mind.

273. The idea that if you offend me,

274. you should not speak...

275. - To create a unsafe space here for all—

276. - I did not— - Be quiet!

277. - Is so bizarre.

278. - What a lot of people don't get

279. and Americans get to take for granted

280. is that free speech is a very weird thing in human history.

281. Mostly, our instincts are, we don't like dissenters.

282. We prefer to behead them, set them on fire,

283. send them out of our village.

284. - Free speech is unique to the United States.

285. Lots of countries pretend to have it,

286. but they'll cut your head off for blasphemy in Saudi Arabia.

287. In Thailand they'll throw you in a prison

288. if you make fun of the king.

289. In Russia and China, you go to jail

290. if you say anything nice about gay people.

291. In Germany, you can't praise Nazis.

292. Sounds good, right? But maybe not.

293. Doesn't stop people from promoting Nazism in secret.

294. It just means you can't debate them in public.

295. France convicted Brigitte Bardot five times

296. for criticizing the practice

297. of animal sacrifice at a Muslim festival.

298. The U.K. convicted a comic

299. of a hate crime for teaching a pug

300. to do a Nazi salute.

301. Just over the border in Canada,

302. a Christian preacher was arrested for, wait for it,

303. preaching in public.

304. Pretty much everywhere else, cops can come to your house

305. and arrest you for a rant or a complaint

306. or even for making a joke.

307. The only reason they can't do it here

308. is because we have the First Amendment.

309. - The only reason why you have a First Amendment

310. is to protect the rights of minorities,

311. the rights of the oddball, the rights of the underdog.

312. Free speech battles on campus in the 1960s,

313. starting in Berkeley

314. and the Free Speech Movement in 1964,

315. were primarily about whether or not

316. you could have politics on campus,

317. and that was the start of the Free Speech Movement.

318. From 1964 on, it, you know, took over campuses

319. all over the country,

320. and I think it was so successful

321. that there was probably a perfect week in 1977

322. when free speech was protected on campus

323. at a level it never had been before and would be again,

324. probably right around the time "Star Wars" came out.

325. The phase that we're in right now

326. is the most distressing one.

327. Sometime around 2013, 2014,

328. the students themselves

329. started demanding new speech codes

330. or that people not be invited to speak,

331. or if they were invited, that they be disinvited.

332. - Both Condoleezza Rice and Christine Lagarde

333. had to withdraw themselves from giving speeches

334. at Rutgers and Smith Universities.

335. - That was when you first started hearing

336. about trigger warnings,

337. things like microaggression training.

338. - We're not sure if we even believe in freedom anymore.

339. Most universities today don't require classes in civics,

340. courses to know the fundamentals

341. of the Constitution.

342. Instead, we have classes on the things that divide us—

343. identity politics.

344. If we don't rediscover,

345. reclaim an understanding of the foundations

346. of our society, we're in jeopardy of losing it.

347. - Whew, you sure got to be careful what you say nowadays

348. so people don't get offended.

349. Wow, I wonder who that little scrap of paper is.

350. - Gee, First Amendment, you certainly sound important.

351. - Call me Firsty. I like to think I'm important,

352. but I'm not so sure anymore.

353. - How come people don't know more about you, Firsty?

354. - People tend to take me for granted,

355. but if it wasn't for me,

356. Americans wouldn't be able to say what they want to say.

357. - Oh, no. - Oh, yeah.

358. Sometimes when people speak their mind,

359. other people get offended.

360. I hope people remember why I'm important, or I may die.

361. - Die? - Yeah, die...

362. along with the rest of your freedoms.

363. Firsty!

364. - Why?

365. No!

366. - Liberty is a value, not a natural inclination.

367. - Yeah, I love when I listen to Dennis's show and somebody says,

368. "Well, everyone yearns to be free."

369. - No. - And he says, "No."

370. - They yearn to be taken care of.

371. The greater yearning of the human species

372. is to be taken care of, not to be free.

373. The French Revolution and the American Revolution

374. are at war with one another.

375. Their motto was "Liberty, equality, fraternity."

376. That was not in our motto.

377. We have "Liberty, in God we trust, e pluribus unum...

378. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

379. They're different values,

380. and we have raised a generation

381. to believe that being taken care of

382. is more important than liberty.

383. 49% of kids on campuses in America today,

384. according to Pew Research,

385. do not believe in free speech for hate speech.

386. You know how moronic that is?

387. The issue of free speech doesn't apply to love speech.

388. Nobody ever threatened love speech.

389. It's precisely the speech you hate or you find hateful

390. that needs to be protected, but this is unknown.

391. This is why we're fighting for the soul of America.

392. So how many of you think people should be free in America

393. or on a university campus to say whatever they want?

394. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

395. How many of you think there should be restrictions

396. on what you can say on a campus?

397. One, two, three, four, five, six, so it's pretty much tied.

398. So no country in the world has had free speech

399. as much as this country.

400. In Europe, you can be arrested if you say things

401. that the government thinks is hateful.

402. Give me an example—

403. those of you who said that you think

404. there should be restrictions,

405. give me an example of what

406. should not be allowed to be said.

407. - I would say, like, if you have Nazi beliefs or values

408. and you raise those

409. because that can make people uncomfortable.

410. - Okay, that's very important.

411. So I'm a Jew, and Nazis killed six million Jews.

412. That's one out of every three Jews on Earth

413. was annihilated in World War II by the Nazis.

414. So I have a real hatred to Nazis,

415. but I believe they should be allowed

416. to march freely in America,

417. because if we say to the Nazi today, "You can't speak,"

418. then we'll say to a non-Nazi tomorrow,

419. "You can't speak either."

420. And we hope that if everybody speaks,

421. the good ideas will win.

422. - Free speech is one of the greatest innovations

423. in human history.

424. It's how we figured out how to have peaceful,

425. pluralistic societies

426. that are endlessly creative and free.

427. Free speech done correctly

428. is one of the most exciting experiences

429. you can have in your life.

430. Throw anything out there. We'll question anything.

431. Let's figure stuff out. It's absolutely thrilling.

432. And I also think that it's incredibly fragile.

433. If I thought that free speech would just be something

434. that could defend itself,

435. I wouldn't be as worried about it,

436. but humans don't really like freedom of speech.

437. They like to say they like it.

438. They definitely like their own freedom of speech.

439. They don't necessarily like

440. your freedom of speech that much.

441. - So we had an attorney write CSUN a letter.

442. You folks, you have a charter which says

443. that there's free speech on your campus.

444. So they had no choice.

445. - So we're coming back, and we're saying whatever we want.

446. - Exactly.

447. So here is exhibit A

448. of a man who was raised with white privilege.

449. - Oh, yes.

450. I got into a semi-heated debate with a black fella

451. who was on public radio,

452. and he went on to explain to me,

453. I didn't know what I was talking about

454. because of my white privilege.

455. And I said, "Well, let's examine my white privilege,

456. may we?"

457. I did not go to college. I worked cleaning carpets.

458. Later on, I worked on construction sites,

459. not as an apprentice or a carpenter, but as a laborer—

460. digging ditches, mostly cleaning up garbage.

461. Whatever work donkeys were qualified to do,

462. that's what I did.

463. At a certain point, when I felt like my white privilege

464. wasn't kicking in at all...

465. Mom was on food stamps and welfare,

466. Dad was eking out a living

467. and had no extra money or time for anybody else,

468. I said, "You know what would be a good job for me?

469. Fireman. I'm strong. I'm eager for the fray.

470. I have no qualms about my personal safety,

471. and I think I would make a good fireman.

472. Plus, I love chili.

473. I love playing foosball, and as far as I could tell,

474. when they're not putting out fires,

475. they're eating chili and playing foosball,"

476. So I just walked over there, and I said,

477. "I'm gonna put in an application to be a fireman,"

478. and they said, "Fine." I filled it out.

479. I handed it to the guy, and the guy said,

480. "Don't hold your breath."

481. And I said, "What does that mean?"

482. And he said, "We're not gonna be getting to you

483. for some years."

484. And when you're 19 and you're destitute

485. and your stepmom's trying to extricate you

486. from the garage you're living in

487. and you have no job or no real income,

488. the notion of "We'll call you in six or seven years"

489. is not a buoy you cling to.

490. And sure enough, I moved out of the house.

491. I was about 25, 26, five, six years

492. into my carpentering career.

493. My dad showed up to my apartment one day,

494. and he had a letter, and he said,

495. "It's from the L.A. Fire Department."

496. And sure enough, there was a date to take the written test

497. the following weekend.

498. And I said, "I don't even want to be a fireman anymore,

499. but because I've waited six years to be a fireman,

500. I'm going down to Hollywood High

501. on 10:00 a.m. on Saturday."

502. And I stood in line.

503. There was a young lady, very diminutive lady,

504. a small, slightly built lady behind me,

505. could not tell her nationality.

506. Could have been black, Latino, or mixed

507. or something like that.

508. Everyone around me— I kept saying,

509. "When did you put in your application?

510. When did you put it in?"

511. I turned around to her, and I said,

512. "When did you put in your application?"

513. And she said, "Tuesday."

514. - A safe space is a place you can go to

515. where it's safe to do whatever you want.

516. You can just be yourself, and no one's gonna say

517. or do anything that makes you uncomfortable.

518. - There's this myth that when you're in a safe space,

519. all you do is sing "Kumbaya" or something.

520. The reality is, it's when you feel safe

521. that you have some of the most important

522. transformative discussions,

523. at least I do when I'm in my safe spaces.

524. - Once you go beyond college,

525. you're gonna have uncomfortable experiences,

526. but to kind of force yourself through pain

527. and difficult experiences is totally unnecessary.

528. - See, I never went to college.

529. I was a builder,

530. but I always thought college was this place for ideas.

531. And now it's turned into a place

532. for some ideas but not other ideas,

533. and that seems to fly in the face of ideas in general.

534. - For a generation that demands safe spaces,

535. that equates ideas they don't like to actual physical battery

536. and requires trigger warnings for class assignments

537. that might be upsetting, there's a name—snowflakes.

538. - We're creating this environment

539. where liberals and leftists and progressives on campuses

540. think that they need to get government authority

541. or university authority to protect their ears

542. from stuff that they don't like

543. or stuff that's actually offensive

544. or that is racist or that is sexist or that is horrible,

545. and I just think that that's a very dangerous view.

546. - I'm saying this not for conservatives.

547. I'm saying this for liberals.

548. They have been bubble-wrapped in academia for 40 years.

549. - When you try to create a safe space

550. in which it's difficult to be unsettled, unnerved,

551. you reinforce walls,

552. which makes it difficult for you to cultivate the capacity

553. to learn from other people,

554. especially people you disagree with.

555. - Can I just say, it feels really nice

556. to live in a bubble for a little while.

557. You feel safe. You feel protected.

558. You feel like everyone agrees with you and you're right.

559. - No university should ever create

560. a safe space for an idea.

561. If you want to feel good, get a massage.

562. - I want every student on campus to be physically safe.

563. I don't want anybody getting beat up.

564. I don't want anybody getting sexually assaulted or molested.

565. I don't want anybody singled out for, you know, threats,

566. but if you mean emotionally safe or intellectually safe,

567. I don't know why you're in college,

568. because the whole point is that you're going to leave soon,

569. and I want you to be offended every single day.

570. Bias Response Team, go!

571. - We've gotten to a point where,

572. if you say you're tolerant all the time,

573. if you talk about diversity all the time

574. and tolerance all the time,

575. people somehow think that means you are tolerant

576. and you care about diversity,

577. and in almost every case almost without fail,

578. today that's actually the reverse.

579. So right now it's very in for everyone on the left

580. to talk about tolerance and diversity and all these things,

581. and what is the type of diversity that they hate?

582. Well, the type of diversity that they hate

583. is diversity of thought.

584. - Dave Rubin has every credential

585. of a bona fide liberal.

586. I mean, Dave Rubin is gay. Dave Rubin is married to a man.

587. Dave Rubin is a lifelong Democrat.

588. - When I talk about liberalism, what is liberalism,

589. and how is it different than leftism?

590. Liberalism really is about the individual,

591. and it's about live and let live.

592. It's not just this amorphous idea of tolerance,

593. which is what leftism is.

594. That's a collectivist view of the world,

595. where we should be grouping all of these people

596. and we should be taking from some and giving to others,

597. and it is a snake that will eat its own tail.

598. - You are a liberal. - I am.

599. - We obviously have different politics,

600. but it doesn't matter.

601. On freedom of speech we are completely united.

602. Do you feel right now, ideologically,

603. your biggest enemy are conservatives or the left?

604. - Oh, there's no question.

605. A, my biggest enemy is the hard left.

606. B, the hard left poses a far greater danger

607. to the American future than the hard right.

608. I'm not worried about a few dozen people with swastikas...

609. - Thank you. - Who want to replace

610. the Jews 'cause they're our past.

611. They have no resonance on university campuses today.

612. - Right. - But the hard, hard left

613. anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity,

614. intolerance for speech, these are our leaders.

615. When I used to teach 150 students

616. in my first year of criminal law,

617. I'd look around, and I'd say, "Future president,

618. "future chief justice,

619. "future editorial director of 'The New York Times,'

620. future managing partner of Goldman Sachs."

621. They're our future.

622. - What's happened to this place?

623. Ah!

624. Ah!

625. This was the home of ruthless media disrupter

626. Samuel F. B. Morse.

627. Who's his successor, that fellow?

628. - Fellow? That word is cisgender normative, okay?

629. You're worse than Hitler!

630. - Too late for flattery.

631. I'm not giving this school a dime.

632. - I've seen, over the past 30 years,

633. how the university has changed and not for the better.

634. Now they don't tolerate the other side's viewpoint,

635. and there are no conservatives that are speaking out.

636. If you're conservative at this university, good luck.

637. First of all, I don't know how—

638. you're not gonna get hired.

639. I don't know what department's gonna hire you

640. at what college it's gonna hire you at.

641. You're not gonna get promoted.

642. There's no way that you're gonna be accepted

643. by your fellow faculty,

644. and I'm telling you right now,

645. they're gonna figure out a way to get rid of you.

646. I mean, they will figure out some means

647. by whatever hook and crook.

648. They'll never say it's because of your political orientation,

649. but they're gonna get rid of you.

650. This is also something of an irony, but it's also really—

651. I think it's kind of dangerous

652. that there's only one worldview now

653. that's allowable in the university,

654. and if you don't have that, you better be quiet.

655. - You must think like we think and do what we do,

656. and if you don't, you're verboten.

657. You're unwelcome. You can't even speak here.

658. You can't teach here. You can't attend here.

659. How in the world can we possibly argue

660. that this is academic freedom?

661. It is ideological fascism.

662. You must be one of us, or you're unwelcome.

663. - Is it hard to be a conservative at Berkeley?

664. Yeah, sometimes.

665. - My name's Isabella Chow.

666. I'm a third-year student at UC Berkeley

667. studying business and music.

668. In spring 2018, I was elected to student senate at Berkeley.

669. There's a bill proposed to our student senate

670. that I felt like I couldn't fully vote for

671. because of my Christian beliefs

672. and because I represented

673. the Christian community on campus.

674. And so I abstained from voting on that bill that night,

675. and I gave a short statement of why I abstained,

676. and the backlash was swifter and bigger

677. than what I would have ever imagined.

678. - Senator Chow! Resign now!

679. - Senator Chow! Resign now!

680. - There were hundreds of students that came in

681. and protested the fact that I was still a senator

682. and demanded my resignation.

683. - Tonight is not about dismissing Christianity

684. as universally toxic,

685. but about validating the experience of those

686. at the hands of bigots who have cowardly hid behind religion

687. to justify their actions.

688. - Sitting there was really hard.

689. It was just difficult to hear the accusations

690. of people calling me a bigot, calling me a hater.

691. I hoped that there would be dialogue.

692. I hoped that there would be

693. mutual respect and understanding.

694. - When trans people are under attack, what do we do?

695. Stand up, fight back!

696. - At this point, I've been disaffiliated

697. with every organization

698. that I had a working relationship with

699. and voted out of clubs that I've been in,

700. like, even since freshman year,

701. but I wasn't elected to not listen to my conscience,

702. and I wasn't elected to not represent

703. a religious voice on campus,

704. even if that voice is a minority here at Berkeley.

705. - I've been assaulted on my campus.

706. - You were assaulted?

707. - The night after the election, yes.

708. - You were physically assaulted? - Physically assaulted.

709. I was walking back from a meeting that I had,

710. and the assumption was that someone followed me

711. out of a building, knew where I was

712. 'cause I had that meeting every single week at that time,

713. and someone came up to me and said, you know,

714. "F you, racist B-word, you support a racist party,"

715. and just threw me down the hill.

716. - Was anyone prosecuted for it?

717. - No. - Mm-hmm.

718. - This is what they've tricked everybody into thinking.

719. You know, years ago it was you were a racist

720. and you were a bigot.

721. Then it became Nazis.

722. Now it's white supremacists, or sometimes it's Nazis,

723. and they'll always ramp this thing up.

724. - I've been called a white supremacist.

725. I've been called a Nazi.

726. You know, what's crazy about calling someone a Nazi—

727. that term is so malleable these days—

728. is you can reduce them to a, you know, inhuman form,

729. and you can justify punching them or attacking them, even.

730. - You're not videoing me.

731. - All right, well, we're in public.

732. So I'm just gonna video it for my own safety

733. 'cause you seem really erratic.

734. - You are encouraging violence.

735. - No, I'm not.

736. - Get your phone out of my face, mother.

737. Get your phone out of my face.

738. you. you.

739. - Oh,

740. - "The Dennis Prager Show" returns in five seconds.

741. - I want to ask you something 'cause you're so

742. on top of the situation on campuses.

743. Right now if you had to grade freedom of speech on campuses

744. versus two years ago,

745. would you say it's getting worse,

746. it's the same, awful, or what?

747. - So what's happening is that there's a student population

748. that has been silenced,

749. that has been ostracized for their beliefs and their views.

750. Make no mistake, it's not just the free speech laws

751. and the free speech zones, but it's the culture.

752. This is what's so important.

753. It's what is culturally allowed to be said

754. and not allowed to be said.

755. - I grew up during the McCarthy period

756. when it was the extreme right at Brooklyn College

757. which told me I had no right to express my views,

758. and it was the liberals that were demanding free speech

759. and the conservatives that were trying to deny it.

760. Today it's flipped.

761. - My name is Chevy Swanson.

762. I'm the president of the College Republicans

763. here at the University of Washington.

764. We wanted to invite Joey Gibson

765. from Patriot Prayer

766. to come do a freedom rally.

767. We expected about, maybe 100 people at most

768. in the middle of out central area on campus,

769. Red Square—ironically named.

770. Protesters started making posts on social media,

771. saying they were gonna come protest,

772. and the school ramped up security on us,

773. telling us that because we invited a speaker

774. that made the protesters mad

775. that we had to pay every cent of security

776. caused by the protesters.

777. At first, that was $17,000,

778. and that's a bill we got a week before the event-

779. an impossible bill to pay.

780. - We were forced to spend $10,000 in security.

781. - The day after I submitted my application,

782. they changed the rule

783. to now where if your security costs more than $1,000,

784. you must make up the difference.

785. - So they interrupt conservatives,

786. and then conservatives have to foot the bill?

787. - The College Republicans are actually

788. under investigation right now—

789. you know, causing all these riots

790. because of the speakers we bring in.

791. - You're causing the riots? - Yeah, so...

792. - Not the rioters?

793. - Ann Coulter's visit to UC Berkeley

794. isn't for another month,

795. but student organizers of the event

796. say they are nervous.

797. - Do I support what happened at the Milo Yiannopoulos event?

798. Yes, I do, and what we're saying this time is

799. we need to come out again,

800. and we need to come out in bigger numbers.

801. - Okay, let me ask you a question here.

802. Let's just say that Rachel Maddow

803. was scheduled to speak at Cal.

804. And let's say that people on the far right

805. were really angry about that.

806. They did not want her to speak, and they came out,

807. and they protested, and they were violent,

808. and they kept Rachel Maddow from speaking.

809. How would you feel then?

810. - I'm trying to picture that actually happening.

811. - Campus police Captain Alex Yow

812. says police simply could not guarantee

813. that Coulter's originally planned speech would be safe.

814. - We're hiding in the airport in a baseball cap.

815. That is exactly where we are.

816. They are fascists.

817. They don't want another point of view.

818. I mean, I've been doing these college speeches

819. for more than a decade.

820. - On the Berkeley campus,

821. College Republicans are fighting

822. to give Coulter a platform this week.

823. They filed a lawsuit Monday

824. trying to force the university to ease restrictions

825. they say are only placed on conservative speakers.

826. - I think it's important to call that what it is,

827. which is essentially just shredding the Constitution,

828. or in a way that we see happen a lot

829. at Young America's Foundation

830. when we're working with students on their campuses,

831. is this is the classic argument that leftists will use

832. in order to shut down conservative speech.

833. - Security is the new "Shut up,"

834. because by the time you factor in all the security costs,

835. you could stage "Hello Dolly Meets Godzilla on Ice"

836. for the same cost as bringing Charles Murray in

837. to give a 20-minute speech to a few students.

838. - I don't even— I'm perplexed, even,

839. that people could even say,

840. "Oh, it's not an issue."

841. It's, like, one of the biggest issues in America today,

842. that the place that is supposed to be

843. a place of ideas, the university,

844. is the most closed place in the United States.

845. It's very important for people to understand

846. that this is not just affecting conservatives.

847. Liberals are being shut down.

848. - I considered myself a leftist.

849. I was a teaching assistant for Communication Studies 101.

850. I wanted my students to comprehend

851. how grammar could actually be a big issue in our society.

852. To demonstrate this point, I brought in a clip

853. from TV Ontario.

854. So this is the province's public broadcaster.

855. And in the particular clip I showed,

856. it was Professor of Transgender Studies

857. Nicholas Matte,

858. and he was talking to Professor Jordan Peterson

859. from the University of Toronto.

860. - And your attempts to regulate my language use and—

861. - I don't care about your language use.

862. I care about the safety of the people who are being harmed.

863. - I know. People who make your kinds of arguments

864. are always concerned with other people's safety.

865. - I want to have really deep discussions

866. about all sorts of issues,

867. and I don't think anything should be off-limits.

868. And that is today what makes you an evil person.

869. When I showed the clip in my class, I did not take a stance.

870. I was neutral.

871. I treated Peterson's argument

872. just as valid as Matte's argument,

873. but that was the problem.

874. It was a problem that I was neutral.

875. I was just genuinely very confused,

876. because to me, the university is a place

877. where you can question anything.

878. - Dr. Jordan Peterson refuses to be pigeonholed.

879. His new self-help book, "12 Rules for Life,"

880. is already a best seller.

881. Hundreds of thousands subscribe

882. to his online lectures.

883. His speeches regularly attract protests.

884. - I'm not arguing about your rights.

885. - And his new speaking tour is selling out.

886. - I think he's dangerous because of the sorts of people

887. that he enables.

888. - It's quite the place you've got here.

889. So tell me about this one.

890. - It's a really nicely built car.

891. - Mm-hmm.

892. Hardly looks like it's ever been driven.

893. - It's been very well taken care of, unlike its owner.

894. - Oh, yeah? - Yeah, I've been put away wet.

895. So are they gonna pass a law in Canada outlawing pronouns?

896. - Oh, it's already passed.

897. If you're an advocate of free speech,

898. which you are if you're an advocate of freedom,

899. then you still might say, "Okay, well, there are limits.

900. Some of them are illegal. I can't incite violence.

901. I can't incite someone to a crime,"

902. you know, and that's already illegal,

903. so there are limits of that sort.

904. This is different.

905. This is the law insisting that you say something.

906. "You use my language," and my response was,

907. "There isn't a hope in hell

908. that I will ever use your language."

909. - Once you control the language, you control the outcome.

910. - Yeah, well, that's why I wouldn't say those words.

911. It's because that's exactly right.

912. As soon as I allow you to define the territory

913. in which we're going to engage, then you get to win.

914. - There's a reason that every time

915. one of these professors or TAs,

916. whether it's Lindsay Shepherd in Canada

917. or Bret Weinstein in Washington,

918. why are they all lefties

919. who then say one thing that upsets the left,

920. and then they're purged?

921. It will come for you.

922. I mean, if there is someone that's watching this right now

923. that is a hard-core progressive that's going,

924. "Man, I hate Prager and Rubin,

925. and this is all nonsense," guess what.

926. If you have any spark of individualism in you,

927. if you have anything about you that's interesting or different,

928. they will come to destroy that, too.

929. - You know, most people don't get to see

930. the thing that they love,

931. a system that has the potential to do great good in the world,

932. be destroyed from within.

933. - Dean's office. - It's Stacy Brown.

934. Is Steve around?

935. - Oh, he just walked in the door.

936. Hang on. - Thanks.

937. - Yeah.

938. - Stop telling people of color they're useless.

939. You're useless. Get the —

940. Hey, hey! Ho, ho!

941. Bret Weinstein has got to go!

942. Hey, hey! Ho, ho!

943. Bret Weinstein has got to go!

944. - I think we did not see, effectively,

945. a coup in the institution coming,

946. and we didn't feel vulnerable to it

947. because we were both very popular among students

948. and we had the equivalent of tenure.

949. - Weinstein, who identifies as politically left,

950. had announced he was boycotting a decades-old event

951. created by students of color at the school.

952. - Day of Absence was a tradition on Evergreen's campus

953. from very nearly the founding of the college.

954. Day of Absence is named after a play by Douglas Turner Ward,

955. a black playwright,

956. and the premise of the play

957. is that in a fictional Southern town

958. the black population decides not to show up one day

959. in order to make the point to the white population

960. about the important role that they are playing.

961. Last year the committee that organizes the Day of Absence

962. announced in a faculty meeting—

963. a faculty meeting in which there was no opportunity

964. to ask any questions—

965. they announced that white people were being asked

966. to leave the campus for the day.

967. And it was so strange to hear that announced,

968. that I assumed I had misunderstood

969. what had been said,

970. and then the administration of the college made it clear

971. that they were strongly encouraging white people

972. not to come to school on that day

973. in an effort to "Center people of color."

974. I found this offensive.

975. This was not, as it was being portrayed,

976. a simple flip of the script

977. where instead of people of color,

978. it was white people this time.

979. This was people organizing this protest

980. telling others not to show up to a public college

981. on a particular day

982. because of the color of their skin,

983. which is anathema to me as a liberal,

984. so I said so.

985. There was a backlash over email.

986. My email went to the staff and faculty email list.

987. There were students who worked on campus

988. who were on that list, which I was aware of,

989. and I just simply said,

990. "This is unacceptable, and you can expect me

991. to be on campus on that day."

992. Tuesday, May 23rd of 2017,

993. I went to work.

994. I biked in as I always did.

995. I began teaching my morning class,

996. and a student who I knew pretty well from a past program

997. called me over a bit concerned and said,

998. "Do you know that there are people outside the door

999. chanting for you to be fired?"

1000. And I said, "No, that's pretty odd."

1001. What shocked me was that

1002. they were not at all interested in that discussion.

1003. If somebody who was the object of a protest

1004. that we were participating in

1005. wanted to talk to us about the nature of that protest,

1006. I would have been right there.

1007. So how is it that I was being protested

1008. by people who weren't interested

1009. in even engaging me on the question

1010. and showing me that I might be wrong?

1011. It would be weeks before I would understand why that was.

1012. These racist teachers got to go!

1013. Hey, hey! Ho, ho!

1014. These racist teachers got to go!

1015. Hey, hey! Ho, ho!

1016. These racist teachers got to go!

1017. Hey, hey! Ho, ho!

1018. These racist teachers got to go!

1019. - Protesters then engaged the president of the college

1020. and got him to agree to a meeting.

1021. I decided that I should be at that meeting.

1022. If they were calling for my firing,

1023. I wanted to be there to answer the charges.

1024. I found a seat and sat down.

1025. Within a couple of minutes,

1026. there was an announcement by protesters,

1027. who were clearly in complete charge of this meeting,

1028. saying that the food and water that was available,

1029. publicly supplied, were for people of color,

1030. and that white people should not avail themselves

1031. of those things.

1032. That was the tenor of the meeting.

1033. - So I was here,

1034. and I get this text from Bret, two of them, actually.

1035. The first one says,

1036. "They say I may not be allowed to leave."

1037. The second one, "I'm not sure what to do."

1038. And then silence.

1039. I heard from one dean

1040. before I knew anything about what had happened,

1041. and that dean's concern

1042. was that Bret not talk to the press.

1043. That was the concern from the college,

1044. that if any of the press came calling,

1045. he should send them to college PR.

1046. - At the end of the meeting, I was allowed to leave,

1047. and I left the building with a number of my students,

1048. and I was flanked by a number of other people

1049. who wanted to talk to me for various reasons,

1050. including one young woman

1051. who I think in some ways

1052. had not gotten the message that talking to me was not allowed.

1053. The next day the protesters made a point

1054. of bringing her to a rally

1055. that they had organized on campus

1056. and having her read a statement

1057. that they had prepared publicly,

1058. and it's heart-wrenching for me.

1059. She read this statement, and she butchered it.

1060. Reading out loud maybe in front of a group

1061. was not in her skill set.

1062. - Based on false, racially charged alleged—

1063. allegations.

1064. - They effectively humiliated her

1065. in order to demonstrate that

1066. they had recaptured her in some way.

1067. - Whereas the college administration specific—

1068. Sorry.

1069. - There are a lot of moments that are

1070. particularly telling from the protest,

1071. but I must say, that is among the most chilling to me.

1072. - It's our students that are stopping people.

1073. - Oh, our students that are stopping people.

1074. Why aren't we stopping them from stopping people?

1075. - Because the president has told Stacy to stand down.

1076. - I biked this direction,

1077. which to this point is my normal commute.

1078. I saw people that I recognized

1079. from the protest the day before.

1080. They saw me,

1081. and they appeared to start

1082. doing something with their phones,

1083. and I kept biking,

1084. and then I realized, "That just doesn't feel right,"

1085. and I took the next entrance into campus,

1086. and I went to the police station, and I said,

1087. "Here's what I think I experienced,

1088. but I must be imagining it."

1089. And she said, "I don't think you're imagining it.

1090. "I think they're looking for you, and what's more...

1091. "I can't protect you.

1092. "You're not safe on campus,

1093. and you're not safe anywhere in town on your bicycle."

1094. I think it's pretty clear what happened at Evergreen

1095. is an extreme case,

1096. and I've heard people dismiss it on that basis,

1097. that it was just a very liberal campus

1098. that went farther off the deep end than any other,

1099. and I think that's really a mistake.

1100. In some ways, Evergreen is a preview of what's coming.

1101. The fact that this is happening

1102. across so many campuses

1103. means that it is going to spread

1104. into every quadrant of society,

1105. and things are going to get worse elsewhere.

1106. So Evergreen is describing a future

1107. that is rapidly approaching.

1108. - These ideas have sort of contaminated the campuses,

1109. but how are they getting off the campus

1110. and into the mainstream?

1111. - Well, they're partly doing that

1112. because the mainstream will be run

1113. by the people who are on campuses,

1114. but there's a more conspiratorial element

1115. to it than that.

1116. It's like, it's very important to remember

1117. that the most politically correct disciplines

1118. are producing activists.

1119. That's their goal,

1120. and so they have a stated goal of infiltrating organizations

1121. and altering them in the politically correct direction.

1122. - Once we've created an expectation,

1123. that it's a nice thing to do to censor people

1124. in an enlightened way, there's no reason to believe

1125. that they're not gonna construct a world

1126. that looks like that,

1127. and that is not a good world for dissent.

1128. That's not a good world for oddballs.

1129. It certainly isn't a good world for comedians.

1130. - Bill Belichick, the most confident coach

1131. of all time, right?

1132. Most coaches are like, "I want raw athletes,

1133. raw talent, sheer athleticism."

1134. And Belichick's like, "Yeah, that's cool. You got any Jews?"

1135. Yeah, Jews, like, five, six Jews.

1136. No, we got, like, 6'4" black dudes. No, no, too easy.

1137. A Mexican, you got a Mexican?"

1138. Give me a place with no free speech,

1139. and I'll tell you, unfunny people.

1140. Russian comedy is—there's a doll, and then you open it,

1141. and then there's a little doll,

1142. and then, wait for it, you open that little doll,

1143. and there's an even smaller doll.

1144. This is highbrow Russian comedy,

1145. is little doll, little doll,

1146. little doll, little doll, right?

1147. And it's funny to them every single time it opens.

1148. There's another little doll,

1149. and they can't get enough, oh, my God.

1150. That's no-free-speech comedy.

1151. - I know what microaggressions are.

1152. It's the latest liberal attack at free speech

1153. and a lot of fun if you do them right.

1154. - The university has a list of stuff

1155. they don't allow speakers to say,

1156. you know, to protect the students.

1157. - From what, ideas?

1158. - Allen is responding to the show's

1159. unexpected cancellation.

1160. Some say the show was axed

1161. because of its portrayal of conservative Christian values.

1162. - If it was a bomb, you could understand,

1163. but the sitcom was ABC's

1164. second-highest-rated comedy this season.

1165. - Isn't it spooky that we're having this discussion?

1166. - Yes. - Yes.

1167. - But we have to have it.

1168. - I understand, but it's just kind of spooky

1169. that it's even a thing that you're even thinking about,

1170. that we have to be modulated,

1171. and I'm a little worried about it,

1172. a little alarmed about things I cannot say.

1173. I do it anyway because the thing I've always loved

1174. about this is it's people, money, and me.

1175. There's no middleman in this.

1176. Essentially, I'm running the show at that moment.

1177. But it is weird that I'm thinking a little bit.

1178. - We as comedians, the whole point

1179. of what we're doing on stage with our words

1180. is to make a point about the absurdities of life.

1181. - Right. - Like, I have a joke about,

1182. you know, being comfortable with my size, you know,

1183. and I say, "It depends on where I'm geographically,

1184. "and if I'm in New York, I'm pleasantly plump.

1185. If I'm in L.A., I'm a beached whale."

1186. I say if I'm in the Midwest, I'm anorexic, and it's awesome.

1187. - Right. - And then I've had someone

1188. come up to me after a show and be like,

1189. "You know, I was bulimic in high school, and—"

1190. - Right. - I'm like, "Okay, calm down.

1191. "That wasn't about you, first of all.

1192. It was a joke, and that's what I'm up here to do."

1193. - How accountable can we be

1194. when you are, in real time, trying to create humor?

1195. And as I explain to people all the time...

1196. the sort of foundation of humor is negative.

1197. So, if you said,

1198. "What do you think of your mother-in-law, Adam?"

1199. And I was on stage and I went, "She's a delight.

1200. Megan's a delight."

1201. We're not hearing any laugh.

1202. We're hearing laughs now because we know how absurd.

1203. You are free-forming it,

1204. and you are responsible to the 300 people

1205. who put down 30 bucks to come see you

1206. and want to have a laugh.

1207. - It's way easier to be against something,

1208. but defining what you're for—

1209. - Defining what you're for. What do you want?

1210. What's the point of this?

1211. And I say that because I— back to comedy—

1212. - To feel good. - I can't do college campuses

1213. because the first couple sentences,

1214. they're going, "Ooh."

1215. Already I've got this image of me, that I said,

1216. "Listen, I've been doing comedy for 32 years,

1217. mostly about men and women."

1218. That's essentially what I've been doing,

1219. and I still have to explain,

1220. "This is a man's perspective."

1221. - I do this joke about...

1222. the way people need to justify their cell phone.

1223. I need to have it with me because people are so important.

1224. - Right. - You know, I said, "Well,

1225. they don't seem very important, the way you scroll through them

1226. like a gay French king, you know, just—"

1227. Well...

1228. - That's very offensive to the gay French kings.

1229. - Well, yeah.

1230. I did this line recently

1231. in front of an audience, and you could—

1232. comedy's where you can kind of feel, like, an opinion,

1233. and they thought,

1234. "What do you mean, gay? What are you talking about, gay?

1235. "What are you saying, gay? What are you doing?

1236. What do you mean?" You know?

1237. And I thought, "Are you kidding me?

1238. I mean, we can't even—"

1239. - I can imagine a time— and this is a serious thing.

1240. I can imagine a time where people say,

1241. "Well, that's offensive to suggest

1242. "that a gay person moves their hands in a flourishing motion,

1243. and you now need to apologi—"

1244. I mean, there's a creepy PC thing out there

1245. that really bothers me.

1246. - Kevin Hart has stepped down

1247. from hosting this year's Oscars.

1248. - I swear, man, our world is becoming beyond crazy.

1249. My team calls me, "Oh, my God, Kevin,

1250. the world is upset about tweets you did years ago."

1251. - You have the right to remain silent.

1252. Anything you say will be used against you.

1253. Your posts on Facebook, Twitter, and social media

1254. will be saved to shame you.

1255. You can't be funny. You cannot think differently.

1256. You can't challenge us.

1257. We reserve the right to be offended by everything.

1258. You have the right to remain silent.

1259. - It cannot help but be true that

1260. if this is allowed to continue,

1261. that it is going to work its way

1262. into the entire apparatus of government,

1263. journalism, maybe most seriously,

1264. into the tech sector,

1265. which has become the governance apparatus

1266. for the new public square.

1267. YouTube and Google, Facebook and Twitter

1268. dictate whose voices can be heard,

1269. and if those entities start trying

1270. to engineer the conversation

1271. to adhere to the rules laid out

1272. with these phony Trojan horse terms,

1273. disaster will be the result.

1274. - Facebook is a place

1275. where more than a billion people worldwide

1276. come to share their thoughts and feelings.

1277. Sometimes they post content

1278. that's upsetting or insensitive,

1279. and some of those things can make people feel unsafe,

1280. like bullying, hate speech, or violence.

1281. That's why we have global community standards

1282. to decide what and who should be removed.

1283. - Can you define hate speech?

1284. - Senator, I think that this is a really hard question,

1285. and I think it's one of the reasons

1286. why we struggle with it.

1287. - I'm worried about the psychological categories

1288. around speech.

1289. You used language of safety and protection earlier.

1290. We see this happening on college campuses

1291. all across the country.

1292. It's dangerous.

1293. 40% of Americans under age 35 tell pollsters

1294. they think the First Amendment is dangerous

1295. because you might use your freedom

1296. to say something that hurts somebody else's feelings.

1297. - We have a problem, in that our public dialogue

1298. is passing through private servers

1299. where no protections exist.

1300. In other words, if you are not able to access the Internet

1301. in the same way as someone else

1302. because the content of what you are saying

1303. has been deemed unacceptable,

1304. then that shapes the conversation

1305. that we are having with each other.

1306. - PragerU had a billion views last year.

1307. This impact has apparently disturbed

1308. some of the folks at YouTube,

1309. which is owned by Google.

1310. Believe it or not, over 100 Prager University videos

1311. are on the restricted list,

1312. meaning that, in effect,

1313. they are lumped with violence and pornography

1314. as unwatchable by children, libraries, and schools.

1315. So, for example, Churchill,

1316. the man who saved the free world—

1317. Oh, my God, everybody understands

1318. why that'll be on the restricted list.

1319. The Iran nuclear deal. Are you kidding?

1320. That's the modern "Debbie Does Dallas."

1321. It shows you how convoluted their moral compass is

1322. that this would disturb them.

1323. - Among those that are censored include a video

1324. on the Ten Commandments.

1325. The restrictions are purportedly

1326. for blocking things like pornography,

1327. but apparently, in YouTube's world,

1328. talking about the Ten Commandments

1329. is comparable and should be blocked.

1330. - I believe the Ten Commandments video,

1331. for instance, contains references to murder

1332. and, I believe, potentially, Nazism or World War II,

1333. something along those lines, but they're not censored.

1334. They're available to everybody who's using normal YouTube.

1335. They are not available to the small subset

1336. who have chosen to activate restricted mode.

1337. - So I was thinking I have a solution that will,

1338. I think, appeal to Google.

1339. I will re-release it as the nine commandments.

1340. That should solve the problem of including murder

1341. in my discussion of the Ten Commandments.

1342. - I always say when you see someone attacking a subject

1343. by attacking a personality rather than debating the idea,

1344. that's often a sign of a smear campaign.

1345. - I'm very much into classical music.

1346. I periodically conduct, and I've been—

1347. it's been a passion of mine since I was a teenager.

1348. If I sell out the Disney Concert Hall,

1349. it'll be the first time

1350. that a regional orchestra

1351. has ever sold out the Disney Concert Hall.

1352. Every penny is going to the orchestra.

1353. I am not getting a nickel for doing this.

1354. There are players in the orchestra who won't come,

1355. who urge their other players not to go.

1356. "We're not gonna play for a conservative."

1357. Welcome to "The Dennis Prager Show."

1358. My guest is Professor Andrew Apter,

1359. professor of history and anthropology at UCLA,

1360. also a violinist and a member

1361. of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra,

1362. which I am conducting next Wednesday night

1363. at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles.

1364. He and a couple of other members of the orchestra

1365. have asked people not to attend

1366. and fellow members not to play for me

1367. 'cause I'm a hateful bigot.

1368. When you write in your first open letter I have here,

1369. "Please urge your friends not to attend the concert,"

1370. and then you're telling my audience

1371. that you in no way have worked to stop the concert.

1372. Protesting outside doesn't stop the concert.

1373. Telling people not to go to the concert stops the concert.

1374. - No, you could still play

1375. with an empty hall if you want to.

1376. - Okay, well, all right.

1377. - And we know there's plenty of people who are gonna go,

1378. so that's really not the issue.

1379. - It is the issue.

1380. It's really mind-blowing.

1381. They're not going to attend the concert of their own orchestra

1382. to raise funds for their orchestra.

1383. It could be a beautiful story,

1384. music transcends political and social differences,

1385. but they call us haters.

1386. That's the irony. That's really the irony.

1387. - No, we're not. When I was growing up,

1388. and I lived in a tiny little room with my sisters

1389. and the exterminator would come and take care of the roaches,

1390. when I was growing up, I didn't get handed a packet that said,

1391. "Here's your excuse in life. You don't have to do anything.

1392. It's 'cause you're a victim," okay?

1393. I learned that I had to work hard.

1394. I had to stay in school, and I had to study.

1395. I don't need to learn about white privilege.

1396. White privilege is not serving anybody.

1397. This whole idea of the fact—

1398. teaching little kids that their skin color

1399. makes them less fortunate

1400. is not helping black kids get ahead.

1401. There seems to be an ideological war happening,

1402. and the left has built their brand

1403. off of the idea that I am a victim.

1404. - The same people who are covering everything

1405. with bubble wrap

1406. are also telling these people,

1407. "You have a target on your back because you're female.

1408. "You have a target on your back because you're black or Hispanic

1409. or whatever you are,"

1410. and thus, making all the people

1411. they're trying to protect miserable

1412. because of the target they falsely placed

1413. on everyone's back.

1414. - If you're a victim surrounded by predators,

1415. by evil predators, man, you're frozen.

1416. I mean, if you think of an animal

1417. in a situation like that,

1418. the animal's frozen in terror.

1419. One idea is that, well,

1420. you protect people by protecting them.

1421. The other is you embolden them by encouraging them,

1422. and that's a whole different thing,

1423. and it's the right thing, right?

1424. Because you can't protect people.

1425. Life's a fatal disease, right? That's the old joke.

1426. It's a sexually transmissible disease that's 100% fatal.

1427. You're not gonna protect people from that,

1428. and so the best you can do is to make them strong.

1429. - Evel Knievel is not hesitating.

1430. Here we go.

1431. - I rode a bike everywhere, never with a helmet.

1432. The thing I found interesting about not wearing a helmet

1433. and crashing all the time—

1434. Because I rode BMX bikes.

1435. I was jumping and doing wheelies.

1436. I never hit my head once,

1437. but because I didn't have protection,

1438. it was all elbows and knees and rolling,

1439. and I actually learned how to fall.

1440. - The goal is not to put yourself in danger,

1441. but the goal is to get more of a sense both of who you are

1442. and of what the world can look like.

1443. - I say never deny the pain.

1444. Just don't let the pain have the last word.

1445. - I would rather my kids have spina bifida

1446. than think of themselves as victims.

1447. I can't think of anything more debilitating

1448. than thinking yourself a victim.

1449. - I do an hour on happiness every week on my radio show,

1450. and I learned something from listeners that startled me,

1451. and that is I am convinced

1452. that a certain percentage of unhappy people

1453. are addicted to being unhappy.

1454. - Absolutely. - I never knew that.

1455. I thought everyone wants to be happy.

1456. - Well, think about how empowering it is

1457. to say your problems

1458. are not because of you, you know what I mean?

1459. You can't get a date, but it has nothing to do with you.

1460. The system's against you.

1461. - The system is stacked against you,

1462. and there isn't a bloody thing you can do about it,

1463. so why bother trying?

1464. Of all the things to tell anyone ever about anything,

1465. that's got to be bottom of the list

1466. unless you really don't like them.

1467. - Here's what our job is as parents, as educators,

1468. as politicians, as cops and lifeguards.

1469. Our job is to convince younger people

1470. they're not victims.

1471. Our job is to say to a kid who is confined to a wheelchair,

1472. "Don't worry.

1473. You're just gonna outwork everybody else.

1474. You're gonna out-hustle everybody else,

1475. and you will see that this thing is not gonna hold you back

1476. because you have the heart of a tiger."

1477. What we're doing now is we're taking able-bodied kids

1478. and convincing them they need to use the handicap ramp.

1479. - I went to Clark Atlanta University,

1480. which is a black college in Atlanta,

1481. and I really wanted to have just open and free dialogue

1482. with as many of the students as possible.

1483. I got a great motto on my radio show—

1484. "I prefer clarity to agreement."

1485. We may not agree, but at least it's important

1486. that we be clear where we differ.

1487. The general belief in American history

1488. has been free speech includes all speech,

1489. including hate speech.

1490. Do you think that should be changed?

1491. - That's hard. That's hard to say because you're really

1492. telling a person that they can't say what they think.

1493. - Right. - Right.

1494. - It's hard to say, but words are powerful,

1495. so people know what they're saying

1496. will invoke some type of emotion.

1497. some type of feeling.

1498. - Right. Should they be allowed to say it?

1499. That's all I'm asking.

1500. I'm talking a legal question, not a moral question.

1501. - I can't legally say that a person

1502. shouldn't be allowed to speak their mind.

1503. - According to polls, 50% of Americans your age

1504. thinks that there shouldn't be free speech for hate speech.

1505. You don't agree with that? - I do not agree with that.

1506. I think if you take away hate speech, you're hiding it.

1507. - Right. That's worse. - So it become worse.

1508. - Mm-hmm. That's an interesting point.

1509. Let me ask you this, 'cause it's generally said...

1510. that a lot of African-Americans think

1511. that this country is essentially racist.

1512. Do you agree with— do you think this country's

1513. essentially racist?

1514. - I wouldn't say the average white is naturally a racist.

1515. I say it's been embedded with on—

1516. which this nation has been built on.

1517. So, if you think of generation to generation,

1518. think of your ancestors and my ancestors,

1519. the different, you know, grounds which we come from,

1520. you know, ever since my ancestors

1521. were brought here to America, they were slaves.

1522. Your ancestors were slave owners.

1523. So fast-forward generations,

1524. then that privilege, the white privilege

1525. and that oppression that has been,

1526. you know, given within my families, it's still there.

1527. So I wouldn't say it's intentional racism,

1528. but it's more so systematic racism,

1529. a racism that has been developed through generations.

1530. - Okay, just to correct the record,

1531. a vast number of whites in America,

1532. their ancestors were not slave owners.

1533. A, they were either Northerners or they came here later.

1534. I mean, you know, my ancestors in 1863 were in Poland,

1535. and they were not doing very well.

1536. They were Jewish, so... - Got ya, got ya.

1537. - But anyway, just for the record.

1538. Your interactions with non-blacks,

1539. are they largely positive or negative on a day-to-day basis?

1540. - The interactions you will have day-to-day,

1541. they won't be racist, but, you know,

1542. when there's opportunities, you know,

1543. you may not be the first thought.

1544. You may not be the first one to be called.

1545. There's a lot of things that go into why...

1546. things, you know, are the way they are.

1547. - At some point down the road— I don't know when—

1548. but at some point, we as blacks are going to realize

1549. the degree to which we identify

1550. our aspiration in victimization...

1551. the degree to which we rely on it...

1552. not just as an excuse but as a self-definition.

1553. "Well, I don't know what I want to do with my life,

1554. but I think there's some racism out there."

1555. Well, there very likely is some racism out there.

1556. So what?

1557. Until black America gets to the "so what" place,

1558. we're gonna fall farther and farther behind.

1559. You don't sit still in life, I've discovered.

1560. You go up, or you go down.

1561. - But the thing is, it's another thing

1562. to actually be in the shoes

1563. of those who are being oppressed.

1564. - I don't think anyone in America's oppressed.

1565. You do, obviously, and that's a very big divide.

1566. - After hundreds of years of slavery—

1567. - After hundreds of years of slavery.

1568. - You don't think we've been oppressed?

1569. - No, no, no, you didn't say "have been."

1570. You said "are."

1571. - You think blacks were once oppressed?

1572. - Oh, of course. It's a given.

1573. - So how do you not think that it's generational?

1574. How do you not think that we're still trying to consciously,

1575. socially still recover from that?

1576. - It takes a long time.

1577. - After telling us that we're not humans—

1578. - Okay, so the oppression is not happening from outside.

1579. It's a residue of the inside.

1580. - Of course, of course, because of what's happened

1581. on the outside.

1582. But the thing is, it's still being placed outside.

1583. - So no matter how whites act,

1584. no matter how kind they might be, it's irrelevant

1585. because you're still oppressed

1586. because of slavery from the 19th century.

1587. - You just answered your own question.

1588. - You may not be physically getting beat, but mentally—

1589. - You answered your own question.

1590. - All right. So, right, well—

1591. - You answered your own question.

1592. - How many generations would it take

1593. for that to end?

1594. - That's a trick question.

1595. - No, no, it's not a trick. Maybe there's no answer.

1596. Maybe we don't know the answer. - Exactly. Exactly.

1597. - Okay, fine. It certainly wasn't meant

1598. as a trick question.

1599. I can't argue with what any given individual feels inside.

1600. - Naturally, 'cause you don't walk in our shoes.

1601. - Right, but you're not walking in white shoes,

1602. but you're ascribing to whites—

1603. - Exactly, 'cause we're the oppressed.

1604. So I don't have to walk in your shoes to tell myself

1605. that I've been oppressed by you.

1606. - In America, you were brutalized.

1607. From birth on, you were whipped, lashed.

1608. Your children was taken from you and sold away.

1609. Your wives were used at the will of the overseer.

1610. I mean, it just was dehumanizing

1611. in every conceivable way,

1612. and for centuries.

1613. So you got a beef.

1614. How long are you gonna ride that beef?

1615. How long do you think it's gonna take?

1616. 'Cause the only person who can break that bond is you.

1617. Inside yourself, say, "Well, just because white people

1618. were once racist does not mean I'm gonna sell out my life...

1619. I'm gonna ask less of myself

1620. and claim that I'm being held back by victimization."

1621. And that's what is so startling to me—

1622. the way that you see now of inventing,

1623. reinventing, as I say, the oppression in your mind,

1624. the same oppression that is fading out of the world.

1625. As it fades, you cling and reinvent it, rebuild it,

1626. and so you now become the racist overseer of yourself.

1627. - Whether it's victimization,

1628. cultural appropriation, social justice,

1629. or even trigger warnings and safe spaces,

1630. it's all about identity politics,

1631. which is the exact opposite of common sense.

1632. - This country was founded on

1633. we don't give a hoot where you're from.

1634. I know that there were racists in the past.

1635. I'm not talking about Americans as flawed individuals.

1636. I'm talking about the values of the society

1637. were e pluribus unum, from many, one,

1638. and now the other identities are all that matter.

1639. It's astonishing how dividing of people this is,

1640. and that's called wonderful.

1641. That's called progressive.

1642. - Not belonging to a group, to me, is my privilege.

1643. Not having to walk in lockstep with this group

1644. or that group or conform to whatever

1645. whoever the leaders of that group are espousing,

1646. that is my real privilege, to just be an individual.

1647. - The idea of the divine individual, that is the West.

1648. If we subsume that under group identity,

1649. then we will perish painfully,

1650. and God only knows what'll go along with us,

1651. maybe everything.

1652. I mean, look what happened in the 20th century

1653. when people put group identity first.

1654. I mean, how much bloody evidence do you need?

1655. The Communists did it for good reasons,

1656. and the Nazis did it for bad reasons.

1657. Tens of millions of people died horribly as a consequence.

1658. - Is the individual sacrosanct, or is the group?

1659. Do we have freedom to speak what we want to say?

1660. - 58% of Americans hold opinions

1661. that they don't feel comfortable sharing publicly.

1662. - Oh. - Wow.

1663. - Man, oh, man. So I don't believe that this new tyranny,

1664. this new politically correct tyranny

1665. is changing anybody's behavior.

1666. - No. - And it sure as hell isn't

1667. bringing anybody together,

1668. but it's creating an atmosphere of fear and repression,

1669. and you know what happens when that happens.

1670. It's gonna bust.

1671. - The University of California at Berkeley

1672. is said to be bracing— that's the quote—

1673. bracing for conservative speaker

1674. Ben Shapiro's upcoming appearance

1675. at their campus.

1676. - Many are comparing to hurricane preparations.

1677. - The barriers are up. Officers are out in force.

1678. - Taking extraordinary security measures

1679. costing around $600,000.

1680. A large swathe of the campus will be closed off,

1681. including the plaza where the Free Speech Movement began

1682. in the 1960s.

1683. - If Ben Shapiro is not allowed to speak,

1684. the First Amendment will have lost a tremendous battle today,

1685. a very important event in the history of our rights.

1686. - The Constitution is absolutely clear that,

1687. particularly as a public institution,

1688. we cannot and will not discriminate against speakers

1689. because of their perspectives

1690. or because of the beliefs of those who wish to host it.

1691. - There's no free speech for fascists.

1692. Their words are violent,

1693. and for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

1694. - Administration rolls out the red carpet for fascists

1695. to come and spout their white supremacy and xenophobia.

1696. - And to the dismay of the People's Republic of Berkeley,

1697. you get to see him live.

1698. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ben Shapiro!

1699. - He came. He gave his talk, very conservative.

1700. I thought it was a great talk.

1701. I didn't agree with a single thing he said, but who cares?

1702. It was a great, interesting talk.

1703. - The reason that I am here is because fascism

1704. does not own this university

1705. because there are students who do want to hear differing views,

1706. who don't want to be told that they can only hear one view,

1707. who don't believe that the First Amendment should die

1708. under the jackboots and Birkenstocks

1709. of a bunch of anarchist, communist pieces of garbage.

1710. - He gives his talk, and he says afterwards when he's done,

1711. "Everybody who has questions,

1712. line up at the microphones on either side of the auditorium."

1713. - Well, we're gonna do a Q&A after this,

1714. and I love taking questions, my favorite thing,

1715. and I have a rule, which is if you disagree with me,

1716. you raise your hand, and you go to the front of the line

1717. because discussion makes the country better.

1718. - Half the hands go. "Good, come to the front of the line."

1719. I'm like, "Ah, my man."

1720. Guy gets it.

1721. That's what university's supposed to be all about.

1722. - And finally, America is the greatest country

1723. in human history.

1724. You are not a victim.

1725. If you are a victim of something,

1726. you need to show me what you are a victim of,

1727. and I will stand beside you,

1728. but do not blame the freest, most civil society

1729. in the history of Planet Earth

1730. for your failures...

1731. because that's on you.

1732. Now, was that so rough?

1733. I mean, did we need $600,000 of security to hear all of that?

1734. - I think we underestimate the heroism

1735. of our own cause as Americans.

1736. We are trying to do something

1737. that nobody told us is almost impossible.

1738. If you look at human history,

1739. we've got every kind of human being

1740. ever born in one country,

1741. and we mostly get along.

1742. Nobody points that out.

1743. Where it gets hard...

1744. takes real work.

1745. - I still don't understand what's going on.

1746. Hopefully you can explain it.

1747. Are you testifying in front of Congress?

1748. - I am. - Why are you testifying?

1749. What have you done?

1750. - Thank you. It's an honor to be asked

1751. to speak in front of you all.

1752. First, just a quick piece of business.

1753. Do we get to keep these pads?

1754. We're talking a lot about the kids,

1755. and I think they're just that, kids.

1756. They grew up dipped in Purell,

1757. playing soccer games where they never kept score,

1758. and watching "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!"

1759. Studies have shown that if you take people

1760. and you put them in a zero-gravity environment,

1761. like astronauts, they lose muscle mass.

1762. They lose bone density.

1763. We're taking these kids—

1764. in the name of protection, we're putting them

1765. in a zero-gravity environment,

1766. and they're losing muscle mass and bone density.

1767. They need to live in a world that has gravity.

1768. - From helicopter parenting

1769. through safe spaces in colleges,

1770. if that's what you've been exposed to

1771. and therefore you haven't experienced any physical risk,

1772. any emotional risk, any intellectual risk,

1773. of course you are fragile.

1774. How could you be anything but?

1775. - Children are the future,

1776. but we are the present,

1777. and we're the adults.

1778. Could we just bring back order,

1779. and could the faculty and administration

1780. on these campuses

1781. act like adults who are in charge of these kids

1782. who need some gravity in their life?

1783. Thank you.

1784. - Thank you all for your eloquent testimony.

1785. We appreciate that, and, frankly,

1786. I think Congress broke some new ground today,

1787. first reference ever to "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!"

1788. in a congressional hearing.

1789. So there was talk earlier about a speech code.

1790. Seems to me the speech code's

1791. the one that's right behind me, right?

1792. Isn't that the speech code in America,

1793. the First Amendment itself?

1794. Speech code and common sense, as Mr. Carolla's talked about.

1795. - This is about individualism

1796. and fighting for your own capacity

1797. to think and create a society that you want to live in,

1798. not one that's just thrust upon you.

1799. The best thing you can do is sometimes realize

1800. that you have to pick a moment to fight.

1801. - According to the settlement, the $123,000 will go to pay

1802. the legal fees for the U-Dub College Republicans.

1803. - We have reached a settlement deal with them.

1804. We've gotten everything we wanted,

1805. plus our lawyer's fees paid for,

1806. and the school can't charge us security fees anymore.

1807. This is a massive victory for free speech on campus,

1808. and I think it's going to prove to be that way

1809. for not just this campus but other campuses.

1810. - The University of California Berkeley

1811. paid conservative groups $70,000

1812. to settle a free-speech lawsuit.

1813. - This is important not just for conservative students

1814. but for all students,

1815. and one of the things that our clients try to do

1816. is bring important speakers to campus

1817. that they don't usually get to hear from on campus,

1818. and even liberal students benefit from that.

1819. - I prefer clarity to agreement.

1820. These are fellow students of yours,

1821. if you're a student here at Berkeley,

1822. and they are a left of center.

1823. I am right of center, obviously,

1824. and my hope is that we can clarify where we differ.

1825. So, Dave and John, please come out.

1826. - This journey that we've been on—

1827. What has struck home with me

1828. is the fact that there's so many people that are on our side,

1829. that you should be able to share ideas with other human beings

1830. without fear of being fired from your job

1831. or kicked off a campus or shouted down.

1832. - Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with,

1833. you should have an argument with them,

1834. but you shouldn't silence them by saying,

1835. "You can't come because, you know,

1836. I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say."

1837. - I'm wondering, how do you propose

1838. that we as the future of America

1839. can begin to actually fight against these challenges?

1840. - How do we turn the tide, Dennis?

1841. - So the way out...

1842. is start saying what you believe.

1843. I know that sounds so simple.

1844. - There are many, many people out there

1845. who are similarly feeling silenced.

1846. Find courage and speak.

1847. - I really don't regret anything that I said

1848. or anything that I did,

1849. because I know that the names that I've been called

1850. around campus really aren't true

1851. and that they really don't define me

1852. and that I can be and I should be who I am.

1853. And I know that I did the right thing

1854. in love and respect and in truth.

1855. - If you truly are not racist, if you're not a bigot,

1856. if you're not a homophobe

1857. or any of these other nonsensical buzzwords,

1858. if you're none of those things,

1859. you'll realize the water isn't so cold

1860. when you jump into the pool.

1861. - All the good intentions in the world

1862. amount to nothing without one thing.

1863. It is the single most important thing

1864. in doing good on Planet Earth— courage.

1865. You cannot do good if you are afraid of being attacked,

1866. but the first thing is to decide, "I will be courageous."

1867. - Tonight's concert featuring Dennis Prager

1868. kicked off a couple of hours ago,

1869. but it looks like a planned boycott

1870. of the event has backfired.

1871. I'm told that inside the concert hall

1872. there's not one empty seat.

1873. It's a total sellout.

1874. - It's hard to deal with all that love.

1875. It is, actually. I'm overwhelmed.

1876. Thank you all for coming.

1877. I've seen the world; I've been abroad

1878. every single year since I was 20.

1879. This uniqueness of America, the "so what"...

1880. So you're a Turk and you're a Jew,

1881. and you're a this and you're a that, it doesn't matter.

1882. Why?

1883. Because we celebrate the human, not the group.

1884. - America was built on ideas,

1885. and I built a living for myself talking about ideas.

1886. The only way we separate the good ideas from the bad ideas

1887. is to be free to say whatever we want about them.

1888. We're not all going to agree,

1889. but that's what makes us individuals,

1890. and we can't lose that,

1891. because this car is too much fun to drive.

1892. - America's not perfect.

1893. Liberty's not easy.

1894. It's not always comfortable,

1895. but liberty is the flame

1896. that lights the path of human progress,

1897. and we find our way by raising our voices

1898. in debate and dissent.

1899. For ideas, for disagreement,

1900. for being who you want to be,

1901. America is the true safe space.

1902. - I feel the same way about this as I feel about...

1903. terrorism, which is...

1904. Huh, something just—

1905. Oh, there's a bee up there,

1906. just pooped on me, or whatever that thing—

1907. - You have bee poop on you? - I swear to God, I just did.

1908. - I've never been pooped on by a bee.

1909. - Yeah, well, maybe it pollinated me.

1910. - Oh, my goodness.

1911. - You're good. - You got the bee?

1912. - That was great. - That's nice.

1913. - But you realize you cannot say,

1914. "No animal was killed in the making of this film."