pro-israel position, ranging from that issue to issues of social morality where the orthodox community is more conservative than the conservative reform reconstructionist community are more socially liberal and believe judaism is inherently about social justice rather than the standard. .. >> guest: was clearly as a warning to the iranians. if you go in and lob a few cruise missiles and break a few

things and assad stays in power and you do nothing else, then you'll end up with the iranians being further emboldened. so that's sort of the worst of both positions. i'm on the no side, by the way. on the yes side, you know, is the argument against iran. and my feeling on that is, okay, if you really want to make an argument against iran, depose the iranian regime. you don't fight a proxy war with a country that you could take in a heartbeat. the united states would defeat them militarily very, very easily. it would not be a huge bloodbath, it would not be vietnam, and there actually is a viable opposition in iran that is much stronger than whatever opposition there was to saddam hussein in iraq. so i don't believe that we should be fighting a proxy war in syria with a thug like assad. on the other side, you know, it's -- i don't understand what exactly the exit strategy is even if we get in and take out assad. if al-qaeda is linked with the rebels, which all evidence shows they are despite the fact we've

been sending them guns, if al-qaeda takes over there and we're worried about terrorists with chemical weapons and al-qaeda takes over, then al-qaeda would be in charge of the chemical weapons in syria. so unless we have an ability to take out all of the depots in syria or having the willingness to do that, then this is a fool's errand. >> host: ben shapiro is our quest, pish shah is -- patricia is in pennsylvania. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. thank you for taking my call. i'm a mother of five, two of who are are in college. and i am a republican because of the social policies of life and respect for marriage, so conservative. i'm curious what has been the response of ben's peers to the books that he's put out there, which i think are, you know,

really naming a spade a spade, you know? that hollywood is manipulating the opinion of the united states through the programming. and that, yes, i agree that the democrats really have been able to work the media because they know social, you know, physical appeal that people really look for which kind of makes me concerned. we sound like we're very shallow. >> host: all right. patricia, thank you. mr. shapiro? >> guest: i mean, the response of young people has been pretty mixed. you have religious young people who fully agree with everything that i say, then you have other young people who are more libertarian and liberal in sort of their construction of these issues. i think that what you're seeing overall is that the american public and young people as well are getting more pro-life at the same time they're getting more pro-gay marriage. i've recommended to folks who are social hi conservative that the issue of marriage be totally taken out of the realm of government entirely. the entire thing.

i don't know a single person who's gotten married because of the tax benefit. i certainly didn't get married because i thought it would look good on my property records. the whole point of getting married is not only the relationship between you and your wife, but the production and raising of children. and i think, unfortunately, the right lost the gay marriage issue 40 years ago, and now they're trying to hold on with their fingernails on the marriage issue. the marriage issue was lost a long time ago, and the statistics prove it. the only way you're going to win back the issue is in the culture. folks on the right are warming up to them. i think the young people are young. i'm not of the opinion that every young person knows what they're doing, especially until they pay taxes. i've never been a fan of the kind of leftist notion that young people have all the answers. when president obama trots out 7-year-olds to talk about gun control, my usual answer is i don't understand why 7-year-olds should be making policy, or we would have a federal ban on homework. so when young people disagree with certain social policies, i'm not sure that's evidence

social policies are bad so much as it is that young people are impressionable, don't have tremendous life experience and, unfortunately, that adolescence is lasting longer and longer. peep who are now 26 -- people who are now 26 are being called kids. the idea that you were a 26-year-old living at home in your parents' basement smoking dope and being under obamacare has been pushed by the left for a long time, increased for instance si. the less you actually have to worry about the consequences of your action. in judaism, when you hit 13, you are now responsible for your own sins. in america until you hit 30, you're not respondent for your -- responsible for your own taxes. >> host: less is in bayside, new york. you're on with ben shapiro. >> caller: yeah, i'd like to ask mr. shapiro does he think that bill o'reilly and rush limbaugh are bullies, if they are bullies? >> host: stay on the line, les. >> guest: that's an interesting

question. i think that depends on the circumstance. rush, for all the talk about he's a bully, he's responding. cycle of violence, who started it? i would say that rush was certainly not the first person to start the attacks on the other side. i think russia's really clever, i think that rush is very brill yam, and he's also an entertainer. i think that bill o'reilly is much the same. but i do think that, you know, both rush and bill o'reilly are very obvious about the fact that they are opinion journalists, that they are folks on the right side of the aisle, and i see them as sort of, you know, the right's equivalent -- they're better at it, but the equivalent to the chris matthews and the al sharptons on msnbc, and that's what they should be. that can all be there. in terms of the type of bullying i'm talking about, the name calling, and not only the name calling, the casting aspersions for holding a certain political belief, in the main i don't think rush and bill o'reilly are

bullies. if you have specific incidences, i'd be happy to talk about those. >> host: les, follow up? >> caller: is ann coulter a bully? i find your position, i find you're simply an unfair person. you're blind to one side. i agree with you that some people on the left are bullies -- >> host: les, can you -- >> caller: right-wiggers are bullies. >> host: can you give an example of where you see ben shapiro being a bully? >> caller: i don't know enough ant him. aye heard about him -- i've heard about him before, but the three people i cited are bully toss the republican party as well as to liberals. they're just simply bullies. >> host: thank you, sir. we'll leave it -- >> caller: for him to not note that is i don't know. >> guest: les, as i've said, i truly believe character attacks, there has to be a mutually assured destruction. the right is losing for specifically that reason. the left started this war on character. if the right refuses to engage

in any sort of war on character, and that is folks like rush, people like me, i do it too, people like ann coulter, then the right is going to lose. the right has to understand that character arguments matter, and if they're unwilling to make it, we all end up as a bunch of assistant principal candidates for local districts in various states around the country as opposed to a cohesive program. >> host: ben shapiro's wise beyond his years without losing the refreshing fearlessness of youth, is ann coulter a friend of yours? >> guest: she is. and a sweetheart. i've known ann since i was like 18. and she, she's very funny. when i was first year at harvard law school, i remember she was on hannity, what was then "hannity & colmes", and this was right after sandra day o'connor had stepped down from the supreme court supreme court, and there was a vacancy, and they asked her who she liked for the supreme court, and she said me. i hadn't graduated from law

school yet. >> host: on project president, simultaneously fascinating and hilarious, tim gunn, project runway. is he a friend of yours? >> guest: yeah. i wouldn't call him a friend, but he's certainly a nice guy. i reached out to him because, one, all of my sisters love project runway, but project president really is in a markedly apolitical book. it's a book that was designed to reach out to americans and kind of illuminate some truths about how politics actually works in our minds as opposed to how we wish they worked. >> host: who was the worst presidential candidate ever in your view? >> guest: oh, well, horace greeley is definitely up there with the neck beard and the huge whiskers. he's from new york, and he was known as a copperhead before hand. he was a terrible presidential candidate. in the modern era, you know, somebody people would know, michael dukakis was a terrible presidential candidate, bob dole, john mccain. i had my doubts about mitt romney to begin -- i wouldn't put him up in the top ten of horrible presidential candidates, but this century is,

you know, a lot of -- adlai stevenson was a terrible presidential candidate. we've seen a lot of very, very bad candidates n. the tv era they're more visible. >> host: how did jimmy carter go from boots in '76 to suits. >> guest: well, once you become the establishment, things change a bit. once you go from the charming peanut farmer from to the guy who is wearing sweaters in the oval office and lecturing americans on what they should do with their air conditioner, you go to being a faceless bureaucrat very quickly. he was perceived as kind of the honest joe who was going to come in. he won the '76 election basically on the strength of one statement, i will never lie to you, and by the time it hit 1980 it was pretty clear even if he never lied to the american people, he just wasn't real good at his job. and ronald reagan provided a marked contrast. they act as though reagan was a, was just sunshine all the time. and if you watched anything from that 1980 campaign, you saw that

reagan was far from sunshine a lot of the time. reagan was pretty viciously attacking jimmy carter as an incompetent, as somebody who didn't know what he was doing, and as somebody who was opening danger to american lives because of what he was doing with the soviet union. he budget afraid to make attacks -- he wasn't afraid to make attacks on jimmy carter, and that contrast allowed him to win. there's something else that people forget about reagan winning in 1980, and this, i think, is something that conservatives really need to take into account. bad economies do not help republicans. bad economies help liberals. this is why fdr was able to win four separate elections while having the worst economy in mesh history -- american history. that's why that election was close in the latter days, that gap was closing. it only ended up being a blowout because of afghanistan and the iranian hostage crisis. early polling, carter was well ahead. carter was leading reagan by a pretty wide margin. so in the last elections cycle, screaming from the rooftops at the time, people were saying, oh, all mitt romney has to do

with look at barack obama and point to him and say, there, that guy's terrible on economics. well, no, because more people out of work means more people who need up employment benefits, and everybody who's still working thinks the economy isn't that bad because they still have a job. so for the most part, bad economies help democrats. when i say lack of an enemy, i mean before the soviet union's fall, they were the kind of coherent glue in the republican party. it's what stuck together social conservativism, fiscal keyism and hawkishness was the soviet union. all of a sudden three kind of legs of the stool started to bicker with each other. for the left, by contrast, the sow crete union was never the overour -- overarching threat. and so now you see that theme was promulgated throughout the bush years, promulgated throughout the reagan years as well, and that's why the left

has adapted so easily to the fall of the soviet union. now the right doesn't have its enemy that it can say to the american people we'll protect you from these folks, but the left does have its enemy, the conservatives, and today will protect you from the evil, dastardly republicans. these evil right-wingers, they're going to take everything from you. hillary clinton is out there pushing voter id, the idea that it's racist. she's picking up on all the same talking points being used by eric holder and barack obama and members of a certain sector of the black leadership like sharpton and jackson. she's picking up on these and portraying herself as the crusader on behalf of black rights as though conservatives don't believe in black rights. the more polarized america is as a country along racial line, the easier it is for democrats to win. government is not in the business of trying to insure

equal outcomes. it's in the business of trying to insure equal opportunities and be equal rights, then the left cannot win in that situation. they have to have the ever-present threat of the evil american people who if they were not restripped by this vast behemoth that is government, would run amok. >> host: jay is in asheville, north carolina. ben shapiro's our guest on booktv, jay. >> caller: yes, mr. shapiro, i would like your views on why you think black leadership, especially in the media, never comments on the appalling statistic you quoted about 72% illegitimacy and unmarried mothers? it seems to me when a 16-year-old who reads at the fourth grade level has a child, what chance does a child like that have in a society like ours? i would say very little. i'd like your views.

thank you. >> guest: i fully agree with that, and i think that it's a huge -- one of the great tragedies of modern american politics is the refusal to look the real problems of every community in the face. and the incestuous sapt attempts to -- incestuous about the attempts to paint some sort of outsider as responsible for that problem. the way it manifests is by believing there's this kind of perennial white racism that is keeping black folks down. it's not white people's fault that the ill illegitimacy rate has moved over the course of 50 years. the it's not white folks' fault that the educational gap has not been bridged. that's the fault of a lot of folks in politics, white, black, hispanic and every other race who have tried to push the notion that you have to stick black kids in failing schools and keep them there. it's the fault of a system that incentivizes bad behavior by giving you extra money if you have a kid out of wedlock as

opposed to having a husband in the home. if we want to fix the problems in the country, we have to relink the idea that there are actions, and there are consequences. and what the left has done is they've separated the notion of consequences from the actions that preceded those consequences. i fully agree. the best thing that could happen for so many folks in the black community would be not only more freedom of choice in terms of the schools they attempted, but more emphasis on family values. by the way, not unique to the black community. charles murray wrote a very good book called "coming apart." including the, you know, values of unwed motherhood which is now about 40 president in the white community, and it's a tragedy not only for the american people and our economic future and for childbearing and rearing, but it's a tragedy for those children who are growing up in a home without a mother or a father. >> host: a post on our facebook page, shapiro keeps talking about the left ask and lack of facts, but all i hear is anecdotes. [laughter] >> guest: well, that's a pretty broad criticism, but i would say

that statistics about the unemployment rate, statistics about the unwed motherhood rate, statistics which i'm happy to cite about gun control. i try to, i really, truly try -- i read incessantly. i try to make sure i can argue a position as well as i can from the left and from the right. i also try to stay out of it if i don't know about an issue because i truly believe that the problem, one of the big problems in american politics is the continuing focus on having to have an answer for everything even when there is no ready answer to the problem. >> host: and if you can't get through on the phone lines, you can try to make a comment on twitter, facebook or by e-mail. we'll put those addresses up as we take this call from cameron in portland, oregon. hi. >> caller: hi, mr. shapiro, i'm a huge fan. thanks for taking my call. i actually am wondering how i can get involved. i was a liberal for a long time. i went to europe, and i returned

to my conservative values and being in portland, oregon, which is probably a lot like being in california, it's all liberal democrats here. and i've tried to get involved at psu with the young republicans, they don't even have a chapter. i've tried to meet republican, i've tried going through the county republican party to meet people, and i can't find anyone my age to help, to get involved in the conservative cause. >> host: cameron, before we have many shapiro answer, you said you returned to your roots, you were a liberal. why were you a liberal? >> guest: well, i went to university of oregon, and it's all very much into what mr. shapiro has talked about with kind of of the indoctrination. i fell a little bit into that. i lost sight of my republican or

conservative values that i was raised with and started becoming her involved in the art scene and met a lot of communists and socialists and didn't have a strong, i guess, sense of -- a strong enough sense of self. but with i really -- and didn't feel like i had ever learned about any of those things. so when i started to learning about communism and socialism because i was never taught that in school, it was very new to me. and i guess i needed to really learn about it and experience for myself what these liberal values kind of -- i felt like it led me down the wrong path. >> host: all right, cameron, we'll leave it there, and we'll get an answer from ben shapiro. >> guest: i mean, i do think a lot of young folks, if you're not conservative by age 18, there's a good shot you'll be liberal by age 21, and that's because when you go to a campus, there are two things that most

people on campus are interested in, getting good grades and partying, and it's easier if you buy into a particular mindset. you also don't want to talk politics. conservative tends to offend people mainly because liberalism is the art of being easily offended. i think a lot of folks who go to college don't want to to offend anyone. for cameron and folks like her, if you want to get involved, certainly e-mail us over at breitbart. we try to get young people involved all the time, i'm also leading up an effort called truth revolt launch anything a couple weeks, an all-out assault on media bias, and we'd be happy to have your help, and, you know, we love it when young people get involved, obviously. i still consider myself a young person, i'm still on the sunshine side of 30. so hopefully, you know, we can get more young people involved because i do think it's a mistake for the republican party to continue targeting solely folks who are over 65. by the way, i also think it's a mistake for the republican party to assume that everybody age 18

will immediately vote republican because they realize they're never going to get their social security checks. that is not a winning argument. >> host: here's an e-mail from an 80-year-old woman, i believe. mr. shapiro, please talk more slowly. [laughter] i'm 80, come from the totally opposite viewpoint but love the way you think. we are more alike than our modern society would acknowledge. have you been accused of talking fast? >> guest: oh, god, yeah. i mean, that's never stopped. everyone in my family talks quickly. i've tried to slow it down, i've tried valium -- [laughter] but unless there's alcohol in this cup, not much i can do about it. i apologize. i'll try to slow down. i've had that criticism before. >> host: elaine's in sun city, california. hi, elaine. >> caller: hello. thank you, ben, you're a breath of fresh air. i wholeheartedly agree about barack obama being the first fully media-trained president,

and in that light i think he golfs and plays cards and such so that people dissociate him from his policies. and in that regard, you were speaking on syria. i'm wondering whether this relates to hillary clinton and benghazi. they are -- he is creating a story in the public that these issues are more complicated than people realize, that coming up with decisions is difficult and, therefore, they couldn't have made any other choices. and that way he can paint people on the right who want a look at the facts and a factual accounting portrayed as racists who just want to bring down the first black president. >> guest: i mean, i do think there's truth to that. i think the idea that president obama has avoided culpability for his own foreign policy, i think that is eminently true. when it comes to benghazi, there's still a lot we don't

know. but there is -- and we also don't know what exactly was going on at that cia annex in benghazi, that's information that we still have to find out. i think that information is pretty clear though that president obama's middle eastern foreign policy is a tremendous failure. not only is it a failure, it's a failure that has enabled the muslim brotherhood to make tremendous inroads as well as al-qaeda in syria. if there is one unifying factor in the middle east, unfortunately, it seems to be everybody who opposes america's interests is now in power. the muslim brotherhood ended up taking over in egypt, in syria both sides are bad, but al-qaeda is associated with the rebels. in turkey, the islamist party which took over during the bush administration has only become more radical since president obama took power, and the iranian mullahs seem to be better entrenched than ever. we've been in the process of surrendering afghanistan back to the taliban. so he's pretty consistent in terms of not serving america's interests. as far as president obama being so um imagine conscious that he can continue to campaign as an

outsider, even as he's president of the united states, it's a brilliant move. it's brilliant politically. to be the president t and never to be held accountable for your own actions but to be able to blame congress and the media and the tea party and everybody else in the world except for you, to be able to blame all of the people who surround you and for the media to sort of sit there and take this, i think we're beginning to see the first glimmers of the media being unhappy with that. of course, it took the obama directly assaulting the media by tapping the phones of james rosen and the ap in order for the media to start caring because the media is, again, it's an institution, and folks in the media care most when folks in the media are being attacked. but i think that the american people are starting to wake up to this. what i do fear is the cult of personality that's been built up around president obama. that was a purposeful attempt to build up that cult of personality. the 2012 democratic national convention was one of the sickest political events. when i say sick, i mean in the sense of it was almost like a political illness.

people can support president obama, that's fair. people can sport his platform be, that's fair. but the person worship was, frankly, quite brightening. the replacement -- the democratic donkey was nowhere to be seen, it was the obama symbol. it was obama's face that was gracing all the t-shirts. there was a great sand statue of president obama. the personal following means that 40% of the population, 35% of the population will back him no matter what he does. when jimmy kimmel does these routines where he goes out and asks the average obama voter on street whether they support all of mitt romney's positions and they say yes when they're obama's positions, that demonstrates just how little folks think about this stuff, and that is a serious problem for the continuation of american democracy. when we back people instead of policies, i've written about the attraction of people, but it is our obligation as voters to get more and more informed about this, especially given the dangers we face in the world. >> host: ben shapiro, are there closeted conservatives working behind the scenes in hollywood? >> guest: yeah, absolutely. i know hundreds of them. there absolutely are.

and they are discriminated against when today come out. it is much harder to be a conservative in hollywood than to be a gay person in hollywood. it's not even close. there's still some latent racism in hollywood, but there's not a lot of homophobia in hollywood, and there is tremendous anti-conservative sentiment, anti-religious sentiment also twiet prevalent in hollywood. when i wrote prime time propaganda, one of the people i talked to is patricia heaton, and i said to her have you ever been discriminated against in hollywood? she's the star of everybody loves raymond, now she's on the middle on abc, talented actress. i said to her have you ever been discriminated against? now, she's been working consistently for 15 years. >> host: is she a conservative? >> guest: she's a conservative, yeah. especially on social issues. she's very, very pro-life. and, in fact, people have attacked her for -- mark harris of entertainment weekly attacked

her specifically for being pro-life and suggesting that her conservativism had infused the middle and was somehow perverting the show. so it was quite interesting. but patty said to me she didn't feel that she'd been discriminated against. she then called me back a little while later and said i called around town to ask if anybody had heard anything and turned out i've lost several specific jobs because i'm pro-life and openly conservative in certain areas. then she called me back and said would you, please, cite me as an unnamed source because i would like not to feel the sting of that discrimination again. she ended up coming out later and talking about it, but i cited her as an unnamed actor in the book. so, yes, even the big name actors in hollywood are discriminated against, although it is easier to be -- once you're, once you're out, once you're big enough -- if you're clint eastwood, you're not going to lose work. low-level grips are easier to come by than clint eastwood. >> host: does your political

advocacy hurt your parents in the entertainment world? >> guest: not so far, but my mom is very, very apolitical at work, and my dad is, he -- i can't say that it's hurt him too much. thank god, i have largely tried to keep my family separated from my own career. i mean, i get death threats on fairly regular basis that necessitate, you know, getting security systems and such, so i try to protect my family's privacy as much as i possibly can. politics is a rough business, and i sort of accept the risk that comes with that, but that's why i don't talk about what my sisters do or who they are. >> host: why do you get death threats? >> guest: identify gotten them in the past simply because of my political positions. after the piers morgan interview, for example, which went viral where i suggested he stood on the graves of sandy hook to push his political agenda, there was a couple folks who tweeted out my home address, and seem don't like it when you're particularly outspoken. i mean, there's nothing more

vile to me than threats of violence based on somebody's politics. it's just disgusting. but it goes with the territory, and you just sent the risk and put a -- accept the risk and put a shotgun under your bed. >> host: the left doesn't appear to be bullies. in my opinion, they are looked at as the helpful party. so, question: how can the right change their perception and likability when many of the policies they seem to want to regulate or change are deemed to be helpful to the masses? food stamps, section 8. >> guest: uh-huh. i think that -- the language there is really telling because the democratic party is the helpful party means that by default what does the republican party become? the anti-helpful party. they're the party that hurts people. and that's a very dangerous position for any party to be in. the republican party needs to start making the case on a regular basis that not only are democratic policies not helpful, their incredibly harmful and in cases not even well intentioned.

the republican party has said, well, you're just wrong. the democratic party just makes the case that you're evil, and you hate poor people and black people and gay people, and that's why you believe all of these crazy things. if you didn't hate those people, you'd believe what we believe. it's time for the republican party and conservatives in general to start recognizing that folks on the left don't necessarily have good intentions. if you're one of these folks who's in the los angeles right now and you are upholding the inability to have black kids, if you're upholding the inability of black kids to move schools to get a voucher to get out of that situation, if you're eric holder's department of justice and you are suing the state of louisiana and the city of new orleans because you think 500 black kids getting vouchers somehow destroys the racial composition of a 40,000-student school district in new orleans, not only are you not helpful, there's a nasty and malicious element to that. ..

warmongering thugs who want to kill people and harm children. the normal american voters more concerned about my read -- miley cyrus and a video music awards than about the latest provision of obamacare regulation will go with the general feel and the general feel is how most people look, how do i feel about this guy, what do i think about this guy, a spur of the moment

decision and sometimes there's a post facto justification. >> host: should miley cyrus the allowed to do that and be broadcast on television? >> guest: i think that it is time for conservatives to use their market strength against the cma and i have never been a huge fan of government involvement in regulation or censorship and in "porn generation: how social liberalism is corrupting our future" at talked-about local communities which is more than federal censorship when it looks to tv. and they went to rush limbaugh this way, in going after their advertising base and one of the things doing a truth revolt which is an organization with david horowitz we are going to be looking at instances like the dna or the companies that target viewers and we are going to be

seeing you don't understand. person actual countereffect to you putting up the cash so miley cyrus can shake her ability on national television. there is actually effect of that and an effect on you in terms of your stores and this happened in hollywood pre 1930-1960. and it wasn't mccarthy but voluntarily imposed by hollywood because the catholic legion of decency with boycotting hollywood in numbers and hollywood decided they understood where their bread was but it. time for conservatives to use their market power as opposed to ignoring the power of culture to drive feelings and opinions. >> host: prime-time -- in "primetime propoganda: the true hollywood story of how the left took over your tv" you write the motion picture association of america, you also save the people who rent the programs, who those people are. who was on that board.

>> guest: we don't know who is making that call. and the age that is appropriate, made by an arbitrary group. and more than awareness. and the rating system is as good as the rating bodies that provide that system. movies better than the local dog catcher down the street with stocks and bonds. and it is not the best way to go about doing things. left has created a market structure. and important groups in hollywood again and lesbian alliance against defamation and prescreened shows in hollywood. and initiating a voice that's the-boycott against the sponsors, which the right needs to pick up on, the use of market power is an impressive tool. it is a market dissolution.

it seems to be completely counterproductive. >> host: jim in maryland, you are on booktv on c-span2 with ben shapiro. >> appreciate it. the thing i wish you would address is the hypocrisy icy with types like obama, for instance, admitted drug use and so on and they maintain policies that are locking people up. i see this from all the higher ups, clinton was involved in a lot of this stuff. in the book no one left alive, can't think of the scene, that he was basically a rapist and so on. what it seems to me is these higher ups get away with crimes that if normal person did would be locked right up and yet they are not held accountable. it goes all the way back to vietnam and everything else.

johnson was never held accountable to the gulf of tonkin incident. the other thing, if you ever heard of a book called reading obama, harvard professor, this is a very positive spin. i have read it but the reviews claimed that. >> host: thanks for calling in. >> guest: i don't know that book. as far as the other question about various politicians getting away with crimes that they themselves condemned i am never a big fan of the hypocrisy i mentioned. when people say someone says hypocrite the question to me is not -- hypocrisy is not what people think it is. it is okay for me to do it but not for you to do it. if president obama were taking cocaine right now and locking people up then he would be a hypocrite but the fact he was doing coat when he was in high school is of no relevance to his policy on cocaine use the same way if somebody who was screwing around during woodstock in 1969,

no relevance to their perspective on teenage sex now. you can even maintain the believe that what you're doing is wrong and sinful at the time you are doing it. that is not -- i don't like the hypocrisy argument. there are a lot of politicians, that is absolutely true. if the obama administration existed in the corporate world would be prosecuted local times after the scandals they have been involved in and the obama administration has gotten out from under that. is not unique to the obama administration. obama has taken that to a new level. as far as the criminality of the obama administration certainly benghazi, fast and furious, all these things because to the level of executive power pushed by the obama administration and they head it off on low-level employees who never naturally exist as soon as anybody finds out about it. the obama administration runs

very much like a mafia organization. bosses have to know what low-level forces are doing, ask people to rid of this meddlesome priest and a meddlesome priest is gone. >> host: dan is in new jersey. >> caller: raised under communism and came here and invariably joined americans for freedom, became -- in the 60s, berkeley during the student uprising. i am very familiar with the left because of my political activities and very familiar with the right and i have to point out to you that your problem is the same as the left, use the same way by inventing the other person, by attributing motives and ideas and everything to the other person to suit yourself. for example the president of the anti-defamation league was

saying christians are anti-semitic because they are jealous of the jews being god's chosen people. he could just say that, it could be his opinion but in the name of an organization he calls the anti-defamation league. in the same way much as you guys are pushing these images of the other side, the with the communists used to do. under stalin, exactly the same. that is why there is no more meaningful dialogue at berkeley. we had a meaningful dialogue between the left and the right, in the 1960s, and it only deteriorated because students became attracted to other things but you are knotted chancing a culture in america of understanding complexity, understanding in depth matters. if you where a physician right now you would be a criminal. if you really understood the need for dialogue between all sides you wouldn't be speaking like a leftist. >> i think we got the point.

let's get an answer from ben shapiro 11. >> that it was the wellspring of debate, the idea that there's a tremendous debate between left and right in brooklyn in the 1960s it was taken over by lifting its entire to the deck of the governor reagan had to send tanks in. takeover student buildings, what was essentials, quote, terrorist methods to take over government buildings and were expelled by force. the idea this was a democratic uprising and the left likes to play this as a wellspring of democracy, it was a wellspring of criminal is a man completely perverted the american political system and a lot of negative ways. the idea people have been calling each other names and going after each other in since time immemorial is the case. the fresen and adams were going at each other tooth and nail in the election of 1800. nothing new to suggest character attacks are going on in america. they were relegated to one side and i am not one of these folks who believes if someone starts a fist fight and someone else

punches that those punches are equivalent. i will say responding to the fire with fire is not the same starting a fire in the first place. someone's about rush limbaugh and the -- never start a fight but finished. >> host: ben shapiro is our universities indoctrinate america's youth," generation: how social liberalism is corrupting our future" in president: bad hair and botox on the road to the white house" 2008, "primetime propoganda: the true hollywood story of how the left took over your tv" the true hollywood story. and "bullies: how the left's culture of fear and intimidation silences americans" here's a quick look at the books ben

shapiro is currently reading. ♪ ♪ ♪

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♪ >> host: webmac live with dr. ben shapiro. who is debbie jeanetti? >> guest: my inspiring teacher. us kept third grade. she was my fourth grade teacher whose class i skipped into. she really gave me maybe the best single piece of advice i have ever received which is she turned to me one day and said

don't let potential be written on your tombstone. we know you are smart and talented and can do a lot of things but it is hard work, drive, determination, turning that potential into something relevant that matters. don't be a prodigy, the someone who does something beyond being smart at 9 or 10 or 15 or 18 and that was something that mattered deeply because youngest syndicated columnist never tried to make a big deal of that because i always knew, the nice and not nice thing is you will not be 17 for very long. at a certain point i would grow out of being the young prodigy and at a certain tech, work would stand on its own merits aside of the curiosity level of george bernard shaw. a 17-year-old's right is shot as opposed to the idea. >> host: public or private schools? >> guest: i'm in public school

case-4. our laws that as an elementary, and the jewish private school 5 and 6. at walter reed jr. high. >> host: skipped ninth grade, the university of los angeles. >> how old were you when you started at ucla? >> guest: 16. >> host: what was that like? >> guest: most of my friends are now 50. i get along well with folks of all ages. is only now i am about to hit 30 that i have friends and my own age group. i spent most of my life with people significantly older. >> guest: harvard law school lot of ucla? >> guest: graduated from harvard

law. it was in 2007. >> host: is writing books your name money-making occupation? >> guest: have several. i get up at 5:30 every morning and do the morning radio show in los angeles on 870 called the morning answer. i am one of three. there is a liberal guy on the lie and close friends with and a conservative gal and the guy holds down the intellectual fort is a conservative station. it is the morning after and i do that 6 to 9:00 in the morning and finish my shift and drive home and i am editor at large for breitbart.com at breitbart news. i do that the rest of the day and i am starting truth revolt which i mentioned a couple times, that will come on line in the next two or three weeks and when that happens i will be splitting time between breitbart and truth revolt and both companies working together in friendship and at night i write

books and take my wife out to dinner. >> host: some news about your wife. >> guest: she is pregnant. that is very exciting. she is due january 24th. i am struggling to get through my sixth book which should come out early january. the sign date was august 1st and the due date is october, that is moving fast. i will try to get it out before the baby is born because then all bets are off, i will be home, i know my life will be changed dramatically. now is the time to work 17 hours a day. when the baby is born i predict i will be dealing with the baby 70 hours a day. >> host: what is your next book about? >> host: tentative title is abuse of power. >> guest: about the obama administration. the obama administration is in many ways a criminal enterprise

and responsible for criminal violations ranging from incitement to riot to probably be termed involuntary manslaughter if you are looking at fast and furious or certainly espionage if you believe as i do that that was a gun running routine as rand paul has suggested, the united states was running guns through the benghazi consulate, the cia and next in benghazi to syria. on september 11th the conflict was attacked on september 14th, december, largest shipment of arms bound for syria and landed from libya in turkey which was the go-between. there are many theories why it was attacked but pretty solid evidence the guns that were there were being sought by the terrorists who attacked the benghazi consulate. as far as the cover up afterward was to the glove the obama administration not letting the cat out of the bag in the middle of the election cycle, we don't want to look as though al qaeda

is still a functioning force and we don't want anybody to look at our general middle eastern policy which has emboldened islamist groups all over the area. >> host: who is the publisher of your newest book? you worked with several. >> guest: simon and schuster. they are wonderful and i am glad to be working with them again. in the past worked with thomas nelson, harpercollins, simon and schuster. >> host: do you do all your writing at home by computer? >> guest: in some cases i do research which requires me to go out of the house. for prime time -- for "primetime propoganda: the true hollywood story of how the left took over your tv" i did lot of on site interviews with folks but i am happy to work from the home. this is the wave of the future built by commercial real-estate. everyone will be working from home and will be fabulous. you'll spend time with your family and not have to sit in an office and we put the next irrelevant meeting. >> host: they you get pushed

back on "primetime propoganda: the true hollywood story of how the left took over your tv" to >> guest: not much. they were kind of past that i didn't tell my was conservative but french. and regardless who was asking it. your answer should be the same. i try not to very my answers. they are typically articulated the way i want them to be whether it is strident or not as strident, who is asking the question. and i am meticulous about keeping the interviews i do and getting permission for that. i understand two party consents. the one i interviewed alliances the interviews are taped because i don't want to be misquoted and taped is the best friend of anyone who wants to be quoted correctly. >> host: what was harvard law school like for you? >> guest: wonderful.

i love harvard law. and i felt that there was for the most part tremendous openness to diverse points of view even though the faculty was to be left. one of the people who wrote me a recommendation for my first big peer before i quit because i hated it was the secretary of labor attempted to nominate by bill clinton so far to the left she was tossed out by democratic senate. we got along really well. she was open to other reckoned -- opinions and was a nice gal and i was close to the professor, richard parker who is a leftist populist. i love talking with folks on the left. couldn't live in l.a. or cambridge otherwise. it is fun, it is enjoyable and usually you can have a good conversation with folks. i can't speak highly enough for my time in harvard law and had run to future justice elena kagan. first time i talked to elena kagan, she was a good dean, built an ice skating rink.

first time i talked with elena kagan we receding at an introductory dinner in one of these typical rooms at harvard law school, everything looks mahogany and balustrades and it is ridiculous looking and i remember she sat down at the table and i said isn't it a beautiful room? it looks like a haunted mansion but before it was haunted. she gave me a look like i killed the kitten and we moved on. we had minor run ins with beans, when she tried to to fight against the solomon amendment she tried to to throw them off campus basically so i made that public and we got in a spat bear but good dean, that justice. >> host: michael posts on our facebook page please ask mr. shapiro about the status of surely share of's lawsuit against his so called news site breitbart.com. >> guest: i don't want to comment on that for legal

reasons. the lawsuit is still on going but i am not personally involved. i wasn't involved with the company at the time. i am happy to talk about that in terms of my own opinion but in terms of the legal status and what is going on i will leave that to the president and ceo of the company and the folks at hexafluoride are involved. >> host: what is your opinion? >> guest: defect relatively clear, andrew posted what was a bit of applause for video. his original column talked about how she redeemed herself in that story and the point of andrew's original story was he was going after the naacp, folks who were cheering in the crowd when she talked about being discriminated against white farmers when andrew did this, he was focused almost completely on the slurs of racism against the tea party and that was -- one of the ways of coming back on that was the naacp which was cleaning tea party racism has a lot of members who are racist. that is what the piece was

about. that is my opinion on what happened with surely. >> host: back to your calls, carl in richfield, new jersey, you are on with ben shapiro. >> caller: you mentioned limbaugh and o'reilly. you also have sean handy -- sean handy --hannity the interrupt people who have even good remarks and you can't even get the point of the calls. u.n. but people on let them talk. rush limbaugh is very polite. o'reilly, a month ago somebody wrote in an e-mail which he published on his site and he had no answer and he does not like to be bested so he has this crude remark you need help.

that was the ultimate -- i shut him off. my last name is shapiro. it is your show, not mine. that is my complaint. riley is too much. doesn't like to be bested. that is about it. >> host: any response? >> guest: no particular response other than the entertainment business is the entertainment business. as far as that of all i didn't hear that and how a particular host deals with callers differs by host. i don't want to comment on any one specific coast especially when i don't know theed circumstances. when i talk with folks especially we take calls on our show in los angeles when i have the ability to. i enjoy engaging in the conversation as much as possible. is no fun if nobody gets to say anything. beginning in kisses a week from john armstrong.

what kind of stories can a conservative film producer tells a response to the hollywood juggernaut without being preachy? >> guest: good stories. what the left does and are smart about is they left their world view come out in the stories they tell as opposed to trying to force it. the worst of the left does is when they're making anything involving matt damon, when they get very preachy and a angry and in turns into a diatribe about politics in america, that is the worst stuff. what is most effective is when they are trying to tell a story that happens to involve leftist values, avatar. for the right the stuff that is most effective is telling a great story that happens to be conservative. of you are not watching for it you won't notice it but it is there. no dark night rises is an example of this. probably not meant to be a conservative movie but it is a diatribe about marxism and the french revolution including a full trial scene, a mock trial

scene. is fantastic. there are folks who said the dark knight was a conservative movie. one of my favorites is the lives of others which is not meant to be a particularly conservative movie the talks about the dangers of an overarching government monitoring your every activity, a german movie based on the east german, wonderful film. the key is to tell a good story and make the politics secondary as opposed to start off with i will get this point across ears the story i will build around this point. the left does it and it is not good at it. when you watch all in the family which is a show that was written like that as an issue show, we are going to do abortions this weekend race relations, doesn't hold the. watch it now is not funny. watch the dick van dyke show ended is still funny because it wasn't trying to be political. even family ties is better at this than all in the family is. there are a lot of shows that do well but telling good story

first, entertain people first and allow politics to flow into it in a natural fashion as opposed to trying to ram it through. the problem with conservatives is there like dolphins when it comes to entertainment. there is that two hadbranca have it is political and have that is entertainment and daley's which one half of the brain on, like that. when the entertainment side the brain is on the will go home and watch the same stuff everybody else, big bang theory and all these other shows. when you go to a lecture and you are talking to conservatives and say what shows you watch and the entertainment side is often the political side is on they don't watch anything but bible stories and ronald reagan biopics and is not realistic and it leads to a bizarre situation the we are not producing content anybody outside the community of conservatives wants to watch. as much as we love ronald reagan biopic that is not how you reach a 21-year-old. dark night rises hit more people at a new level than any other movie ever produced about ronald

reagan. >> host: an e-mail from david, liberals have taken over the vast majority of the university's. how did that happen? how did american conservatives allow themselves to be overwhelmed, rendering sell much ground? ..