Ep. #602: Eric Holder, Michael Shellenberger, Douglas Murray

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Thank you, people.

Appreciate it.

How are you?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, my people.

Thank you very much.

I know.

Look at us.

We're at a show.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I know.

I know why you're happy tonight.

Amber Heard has been brought to justice.

Our long national nightmare is over.

Oh.

well, it's about time, ladies and gentlemen.

I mean, you say what you want about the mafia.

They just left a horse's head in your bed.

But it's going to be a little empty now, isn't it?

We kind of got hooked on that.

Americans are going to have to find a new way to feel better about their own relationship.

But yes, Amber Heard, according to the court, now owes Johnny Depp $15 million in damages.

She says she's going to pay up in her new cryptocurrency.

Shitcoin.

Shitcoin.

Boy, new report says investors have lost a billion dollars recently in buying fake crypto coins.

They said it could have been worse.

It could have been real crypto coins.

But

so we were off last week and I turn around and it's summer.

Are you excited that it's summer now?

Really?

Okay, I'm excited, but I have to point out it is

the drought, of course, worse in summer.

Not funny, we have no water, we never have, I don't know what the fuck is going on.

I turn on the tap, I'm like, where is this shit coming from?

It never

rains out here.

I mean, it's so severe now.

Shoplifters in San Francisco are stealing water.

It's

way out of control.

In Mendocino County, they told the residents they only use water for the essentials, bathing, drinking, and filling up your bong.

Those are the only...

But no, summer is very exciting.

It's graduation season.

Any grads?

Oh, very exciting.

Very exciting time,

that rite of passage where the kids go on their wondrous journey, you know, after their time at the halls of academia.

Back to the bedroom they grew up in with the X-Men bed sheets.

No, we hope not.

We hope there's good jobs out there.

You know where there are good jobs for teenagers.

They say this summer they are desperate to get teenagers to help.

Of course, teenagers, their entitled asses are too good for these jobs.

There are jobs available,

they don't want fast food jobs.

Here's how you get them to take it.

Tell them, look, you're not a fast food worker, you're a diabetes influencer.

It's

interesting economy we have here.

We have 21 cases of monkeypox and three cases of baby formula.

But here's

something I found out this week.

I didn't realize this.

The Lincoln Memorial turned 100, 1922.

I thought it was...

Oh, there you go.

Okay, there we go.

We can all agree on the Lincoln Memorial.

We love the Lincoln Memorial.

And it is sort of a perfect metaphor for America right now.

A Republican who experienced gun violence and did nothing.

Just sat there.

Well, people are a little angry about what happened there, the police in the horrible shooting in Texas a couple of weeks ago when they just remained outside.

But you know, the police in Texas are very conservative.

They said, we don't go in unless it's an active groomer situation.

You know, the

Texas police, they are very pro-life, mostly their own.

So Biden, did you see that?

President Biden made a big speech last night about gun control.

Oh, good.

We all saw.

Yeah,

I meant to watch, but the other 300 channels were showing a movie where some guy looked cool shooting people.

But once again, Biden said we got to get rid of the semi-automatic rifles.

I say we should.

Yes, I think that would help a little.

And he said, if you get.

He said, from now on, if you get caught with the wrong kind of gun killing people, you are in big trouble.

In a somewhat related story, did you see a nut in Italy

or Paris attacked the Mona Lisa with cake?

Cake.

And the NRA put out a statement.

They said,

if only the other paintings had cake of their own.

All right, we've got a great show.

We have Michael Schellenberger and Douglas Murray.

But first up, he is the former U.S.

Attorney General who recently co-authored the book, Our Unfinished March, The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote, a History of Crisis, a plan.

Eric Holder.

There he is.

Hey man.

Sir.

How are you?

How you doing?

Okay.

Good to see you.

All right.

Glad to see you again.

You look hail.

You look well.

You look rested.

Yeah.

I'm pretty good.

Pretty good.

Yeah, okay.

Nation's not doing too well, but I'm not sure.

No, okay, no.

Well,

no, it's not.

We got a lot of problems.

I want to talk about your book.

It's about democracy and voting, which I understand are connected.

Yeah, yeah.

Well we try to connect.

There's an issue there.

So let's, for some of the maybe younger people who don't remember, let's go over the Voting Rights Act for those who are fuzzy on the facts.

Voting Rights Acts passed in 1965.

1965.

What was in the voter?

What did it do?

It gave the Justice Department the ability to stop local jurisdictions who were so-called covered from doing a variety of things that had been done in the past, moving polling places, closing polling places, changing election dates, all the kinds of things that were designed to keep African Americans away from the polls.

Mostly in the South, right?

Mostly in the South.

Okay.

Although parts of New York were also covered by the voting rights.

Oh, I'm sure it went on everywhere, but mostly the South.

Okay, so then in 2013,

the Supreme Court gutted that law.

And until then, it had passed, it would have been up for re-upped.

right every year.

The Senate voted, I think, only two years before that, 98 to nothing, that we wanted it again.

It was reauthorized three times and every time by a Republican president.

Okay.

So what happened

in 2013 when it got gutted?

The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the decision, said America has changed and said there was no longer a need for the provisions that they gutted in the Voting Rights Act, in spite of the fact that Congress had conducted hearings, hundreds of pages of testimony, hundreds of documents, and almost immediately after the act was gutted, states put into place a whole variety of things, 1,700 polling places closed since 2013.

Closure of polling places, the requirement for photo IDs to prevent in-person voter fraud.

When the Brennan Center says you're more likely to be hit by lightning than to actually cast an in-person fraudulent ballot.

A whole bunch of unnecessary things to keep African Americans, young people, Hispanics, people who perceived as Democrats away from the polls have been put in place since the Shelby Kennedy decision.

Photo IDs are popular, even among African Americans.

Something like three-quarters of whites and I think 69% of black folks say, yeah, we should have photo IDs.

So

why is that an issue?

Well, you see, I'm for voter ID as opposed to photo ID.

You should prove.

No, we're talking about photo ID.

You should prove that you should vote.

Yeah, but here's the deal.

What they've done, like in Texas, they said you have to have photo ID.

If you have a photo ID issued by the state of Texas that says that you can carry a concealed weapon, that's cool.

If you have a state-issued photo ID that says you're a student at the University of Texas, not cool.

And so you can see how they're trying to fool around with it.

So

Georgia passed a law that you would say probably wouldn't have happened before the law was, the Voting Rights Act was gutted right.

Clearly not.

Okay, Joe Biden called it Jim Crow 2.0.

But Georgia just had an election and the vote went up, including among African Americans.

How do you square that?

That's a testament to the fact that black folks have said, no matter what impediments you put in front of us, we're going to the polls.

And that's what they did.

And now it doesn't, you know, and we see that in the book.

Throughout history, black Americans have risked life, limb, done everything they possibly can to get access to the ballot.

And the fact that you had a turnout that was higher than perhaps that you've seen before is not an indication that those provisions that they put into law were necessarily good ones.

The question you have to ask the Georgia legislature is, why did you put them in place in the first place, having done an election that everybody said was fair?

Why did you then have to put these other provisions in place?

Among them, you can't give people who are waiting in line water or food, and you figure, what's that all about?

Well, it turns out, in Atlanta, 2020 election, same night, if you're African American, you wait 51 minutes to vote.

If you're white, same place.

Atlanta, same election, you wait six minutes to vote.

So you get to see what's behind some of the stuff they've done.

Just the idea that it takes so long to vote, that you might need food.

Well, but

it seems a little ridiculous.

It seems a little ridiculous, and yet you have in places around the country, and in particular, disproportionately, in communities of color, people are waiting two and three hours.

But ask yourself, why would the legislature make it a criminal offense to offer water to somebody who's waiting in line to vote?

I get it.

So

you've been working on gerrymandering.

That's been pretty much your passion, right, since you left the Attorney General's office.

And we just finished the redistricting process.

Every 10 years,

because populations change, they call it the redistricting process.

It should be called the gerrymandering process because that's what's going on.

What I read is that the Democrats got their ass kicked, that, well, that some, I think 17 Trump states were redistricted in the favor of the Republicans and only seven in Biden states.

Is that not true?

If you break it down and look at the House of Representatives and say, all right, let's look at pro-Biden districts based on the vote in 2020, pro-Biden districts and pro-Trump districts, the Democrats actually have more districts that now favor us than Republicans.

We're certainly better off than we were in 2011, the last time that we did this.

And there are more fair state legislatures, which people don't give enough attention to, more fair state legislatures.

So, no, Democrats did not get their asses kicked in the redistricting process.

In fact, we came out ahead.

But I also read that the number of states that have independent, which like California has an independent commission.

I mean, every state should have that.

Absolutely.

Okay, so that's something that we fought for.

Right, so an independent commission draws the state.

And then I read that we lost 13 to 4 there, the Democrats.

13 states have independent commissions,

only four on the other side.

Yeah, but you know, here's the deal.

If things are fair, Democrats and progressives will do just fine.

We don't have to put our thumb on the scale to win.

So where you saw fairness in those places, in those 13 states, Democrats did absolutely, absolutely just fine.

That's what we were fighting for.

We simply wanted to make the system fair, confident that we had better candidates.

We certainly have policies that are closer to the people than Republicans do.

They're the ones,

you know,

they are,

as I say in the book, This iteration of the Republican Party just ain't that into democracy.

You know, that's the reality.

Let's talk about that.

I mean, Merrick Garland has your old job, and he's got a big decision coming up about what to do.

The January 6th hearings, I believe, start in a couple of weeks.

They're going to be on television.

Some Democrats say it's going to be just like Watergate Days.

I don't think Americans are that interested.

I think we're too tribal right now, but we'll see.

What would you do?

if you were still the Attorney General about Trump and January 6th?

Well, I'll tell you, if you had asked me that question about a year or so ago, I would have said I would have been awfully concerned about the divisive nature of bringing a case against a former president.

But now, because of what we know, what great journalists have done, the leaks that have come from the January 6th Committee, if you show me that Donald Trump was involved in the efforts to, in essence, foment a coup, and you can show the requisite intent, he has to be indicted.

And what would that entail after you indict him?

After you indict him, well, he he would then, you know, take him to trial just like anybody else.

I think, you know, you can look at what Merrick Garland is going to do.

I think my primary, my first analysis would be what's going to happen to him in Georgia.

Well, you've got him on tape saying, you know, find me $11,780.

That one is close to a layup, it seems to me.

I've always said the same thing about that one.

Why don't they just go after that one moment?

It's on tape.

You have the smoking gun.

He's saying,

I mean, I remember when Rod Blagojevich was on tape.

It didn't work out too well for him.

No, I know, but

it was pretty blatant, but it wasn't as bad as, find me 11,000 votes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I think, as I said, I think that's close to a layup.

The DA down there is going to be calling witnesses, I understand, before a special grand jury.

But the interesting thing there is that that can also be a specification in a federal charge that could be brought in Washington, D.C., when you're charging him with conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to obstruct.

What happened in Georgia can actually be part of a federal case as well.

So I think, you know, I was a federal prosecutor doing political corruption cases when I first came to the Justice Department for 12 years, and you get a feel for these things after a while.

I get the feeling that I can see where this one is going.

And a lot of high-level people in the Trump administration, I suspect the president himself, people at the Justice Department, are all going to find themselves on a little document that says the United States versus fill-in-the-blank.

All right, thank you for coming here.

Okay, I appreciate everything you do.

Eric Halder, ladies and gentlemen, let's meet our panel.

Hey.

Hey, you guys.

All right.

Here they are.

He is currently running for governor of California.

Wow, and he's on our show and is the author of San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruin Cities, Michael Schellenberger.

And here's a columnist for the New York Post and author of the best-selling book, The War on the West, How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason.

Douglas Murray, how you doing?

Okay, guys, let me start with an impossible question to ask you.

We were off last week when...

What?

You're afraid already?

Yeah.

Well, it's impossible, so you can't fuck it up.

I already said it's impossible.

No pressure.

Well, the question is this.

I mean, after that horror unfolded, there was first the outrage about availability of weaponry in America, and then there was a second outrage about the fact that the cops stood outside and didn't do anything and this is becoming a pattern in America.

Parkland, there was a cop there or a security guard, didn't do his job.

The Mandalay Bay,

the guy went up to the wrong floor and stayed there.

What do you do?

about people who are paid to act and just don't.

How do you solve that problem?

Because, I mean, they could take away a lot lot of different kinds of guns.

I mean this kid was in the room for 40 minutes before anybody came in.

It wouldn't have mattered what kind of gun he had.

Any kind of gun could do any amount of damage in that time.

What do you do about law enforcement who don't do their job?

Here's the impossible question.

I mean, I think there was this initial reaction that these police officers were cowardly.

I don't think we know that.

I have to expect that many of those police officers are having a hard time sleeping at night after what's occurred.

Oh, I feel bad for them.

Well, I mean, I think...

They should have a hard time sleeping.

Yeah, although...

What the fuck?

My concern is that...

My concern is that I think when our institutions fail us, we are so quick to want to shut down the institutions, want to demonize the people in those institutions.

Yes, they got training.

The training didn't work.

The answer to it is going to be more training.

It's going to be to get better at it.

We focus on when things go wrong, but

things mostly don't go wrong.

We need to learn from these mistakes.

It's not institutions.

It's not trained, it's people.

This is not institutions who didn't run into the building.

It's people.

People didn't do it.

Yeah, that's not an institution.

And by the way, this is part of the problem with police training.

Their training is all about how to preserve their life.

Now, of course, we we want them to be as safe as they can, but it is a job that entails danger.

Somewhere they got it into their head, the cops, that it's better that I just save, preserve my health, but you're there to protect and serve us.

That's the deal.

You get to, you know, walk tall all the time.

Everybody kisses your ass.

Everybody has to comply with you.

And then once in a while, you just have to...

ball up and do the job.

That's dangerous.

I was always told when I came to America from Britain that British people who speak like me should never talk about two things, abortion and guns,

because we can never understand it.

And there is something in that.

I actually have tried very hard to understand, and I do understand why the gun issue exists in America, the people who are very committed to it, who see the Second Amendment as an absolutely crucial part of America's freedoms, and I understand their fear always that the guns are going to be taken away.

Nevertheless, saying as an outsider, it is still inexplicable to me that a guy at the age of 18 can go into a shop and buy a battlefield-style weapon and he'd have to wait another three years to buy a beer in a bar.

There is something

just that the first step, wait, like the first step, like let's at least switch those two things around.

Let's get used to beer before we try to get used to battlefield weapons.

Yes, and the 18 to 21 thing I think is crucial.

I mean,

guys, we're all guys.

We know how stupid we were at 18.

Especially men.

They mature slower than women.

And not that you're a genius at 21.

Yeah.

But taking those three years away, the least we could do.

And at the moment, there's this weird row going on again.

People saying in Congress, well, people are allowed to join the military at 18.

Well, there is every difference in the world.

between going into the military, getting the most rigorous training, getting your force directed in specific ways, and just handing an 18-year-old a gun that he can use on the American streets.

There is every difference.

But the problem is, you're just always at this stalemate in this country about this, because I say every time some atrocity like this happens, there's somebody who can say they're going to take away all of our guns, and then

nothing gets done again.

But as for the police stuff, I mean, this is just, as you say, Bill, I mean, this has happened again and again.

It's hard to judge what you do in a particular situation.

But as you say, you know, it's their job to sit in the corridor for 40 minutes whilst kids are calling and not run in.

Like, I'd have liked to have seen how, if there'd have been a bunch of American mothers with guns in the corridor, they'd have been in there in no second splash.

And they were.

Yeah, there were mums.

There were mugs.

They did go in.

There were mums.

Yes.

They were getting arrested by the police and tasered by the police and handcuffed by the police for wanting to go into the school.

Because job one is always compliance

with the police.

And what I say above all.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's the issue, right?

I mean, I think you have to look for a systematic solution to this.

My concern is that we saw police bad behavior in 2020.

We saw bad behavior in 2015 with Ferguson.

And our response was, for many people, was to defund the police, demonize the police.

And we saw what occurred.

Police pull back.

Criminals felt emboldened.

We saw a big increase in crime, 30% increase in homicides.

The communities most impacted were black communities.

Those are the communities that are now demanding an increase in policing.

So we can lament these individual incidents, the bad behavior of some individuals, but the broader solution is we've got to stop tearing down the institutions that we need to protect our civilization.

That includes policing.

I've seen it with psychiatric hospitals.

There were bad abuses in the psychiatric hospitals, but did we need to shut them all down?

before creating the alternative.

I see it power plants, psychiatric hospitals, police stations.

Now we're going to release, you know, get rid of our prisons.

We should be seeking to rehabilitate people.

We should be seeking improvements and reforms.

But I get concerned about these efforts to just tear down institutions without, instead, we should be reforming.

Well, I mean, you.

You're almost running for governor on a one-issue platform about homelessness.

I would consider a pro-civilization platform.

No, I agree.

I agree with you.

I mean, this is is all, we're talking about civilization tonight.

Really, that is the thread that runs through your book and your book, and something like people in a country thinking that they can't safely send their children to school.

That's right.

It's all about civilization.

But you think, and I understand where you're coming from with homelessness, it's something that people, especially in this city, in this state, in our two biggest cities, San Francisco and L.A., look at and go, why can't you do something?

Why can't you do something

for,

okay, not just for the homeless people, but for us, for both of us?

You're failing both of us.

And you think you have the solution.

What is it?

Well, I mean, as background, I was a progressive Democrat until last year.

I changed my party affiliation.

I'm now an Independent.

And people say, well, what are you?

What is your identity?

And I would say, I'm a liberal in my compassion for the vulnerable.

I'm a libertarian in my passion for freedom.

And I'm a conservative in that I believe you need civilization to protect both of them.

And so what we need to do is...

I think that's great.

I think it's too complicated for the electorate, but I think it's great.

I don't think.

Okay.

I mean, I'm inspired.

I want to see that on the hat, Michael.

That is just

huge hat.

A little bit longer than MAGA, I think.

A little bit longer.

I mean, look,

I'm inspired by what they've done in Europe.

You go to Amsterdam, you go to other parts of Europe, they don't have open-air drug scenes, they don't have homeless encampments.

There's been an experiment between 2020 and 2021, three times more more homeless people died in Los Angeles than in New York City, even though there's 14,000 fewer homeless people.

Why?

Because in New York, they shelter 96% of the homeless.

Less than a third of the homeless are sheltered in LA.

It's not safe for them.

Nearly 100% of the women I interview in homeless encampments have been sexually assaulted multiple times.

They're being killed.

They're being sexually assaulted.

They're being hit by cars.

This is absolutely, we just have to, you have to shut down the homeless encampments.

We've got to give people the rehab, the psychiatric care that they need.

It's not fair to them.

It's not fair to us.

Okay, but

just speaking as the guy

with a hat that has three or four words on it,

why

don't we?

What is the problem?

That's what people want to know.

Why are we not doing something that would help both parties?

And it's so strange because it's happening in city after city.

It's like when I first visited San Francisco about a quarter of a century ago, I remember thinking, this is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and it should be.

It's got the best position, it's got an amazing climate and much else.

And then over the years it became clear that it was becoming a real slum city.

And instead of people saying, hey, that doesn't work very well at all, it was rolled out on city after city in America.

You go to Austin, it's the same scene.

I was in DC the other week.

And like the capital of this nation, every single green area is covered in tents.

And so everybody in this country is getting used to the idea this is normal.

It's not normal.

Other first world countries are not like that.

They don't have homeless encampments everywhere.

God knows everyone's got their own trouble.

But no other first world country I know has the normalization of homelessness, of people shooting up on the streets, of really mentally ill people just wandering around, screaming at the moon, and everyone says, well, that's just kind of part of life.

Yes.

It's not normal.

That's right.

Well, yes.

yes.

And

I think part of the problem with us not having a solution to this is that there are people out there who heard you say first world country and went, how dare you?

Because part of the problem with losing civilization is when you fail to make judgments about how some things are better than others.

We have seen this over and over again.

Nothing is better than anything else.

Keeping women in burgers is just a different way to go.

And it's just not a different way to go.

And having shit in the park,

human feces, when you're trying to have a little baseball game with your kids or something, is just worse.

Yeah, I mean, it's really this,

progressives have a very big blind spot, which is that they think if you're helping, that no harm can come from that.

And that's just not the case when you're dealing with people suffering from late-stage drug addiction, people that are psychotic from mental illness or from long use, long-term methamphetamine use.

folks need to be required to go inside.

It's not safe for them.

Shelters should be safe, they should be basic, they should be clean, but

you can't equivocate on this situation.

And you're saying we basically have to say to homeless people what they say in bars.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

Exactly.

Exactly.

You don't have to go into the shelters, but you can't sleep outside.

It's not safe.

There is this idea always that

we could solve these problems if we had more empathy.

Sometimes empathy isn't enough.

Sometimes too many rules doesn't work either.

But too much empathy doesn't work either.

I live in New York and I was on the subway the other day and there's a new advert that the New York Health Authority has put up for heroin users saying

don't feel shame about being

here.

It's

well that's the fentanyl one.

There's one in San Francisco.

Can you?

Okay, we'll do that one first.

Don't be ashamed you are using.

Okay, that's the first thing it says.

Yeah, this is part of the problem of losing civilization.

Shame is part of life.

We do this everything.

Toxic positivity.

Everything is positive.

Everything is not positive.

You should be ashamed that you're using.

The New York authority.

That might get you to stop.

The New York.

Exactly.

The New York health authorities have been shaming people in New York if they haven't had their third booster shot or didn't didn't wear their cloth mask or haven't put a cloth mask over their five-year-old.

But it's great if you're a smack user.

You should feel real pride.

Gee, I got it all wrong.

Look, I mean,

you need love.

We need love, but the Beatles were wrong.

Love is not all you need.

You also need discipline.

And there is a role for what the scholars call pro-social stigma.

Compare that ad promoting heroin use to the ads we run against cigarette smoking.

I mean, we were, California was a leader in stamping out cigarette smoking by shaming cigarette smoking, disallowing cigarette smoking.

And it worked.

And it worked very well.

But also, I mean, remember defining deviancy downward?

That phrase from Patrick Moynihan?

That ad says,

start with a small dose and go slowly.

I mean, it's a how-to to be a drug addict.

Test your drugs using fentanyl test strips.

Do that with friends.

That's the heroin one of those.

Do it with your friends.

This is the heroin one in San Francisco.

Do it with friends.

Use with people and take turns.

Try not to use alone.

I love this one.

Change it up.

Change it up.

Injecting drugs carries the highest risk.

Try smoking or snorting instead.

This is.

Can you imagine explaining that to your kids?

No.

This is what I'm always saying to the left side of the country.

When what you're doing sounds like an onion headline, stop it.

All right.

One final point.

Yes, sir.

Briefly,

millions of people, millions of people around the world every year recover from their addiction.

This addiction pessimism, this idea that we have to maintain addiction rather than help people to overcome it, it's dehumanizing.

It's deeply pessimistic.

It's anathema to the spirit of California, which is around human potential, human freedom.

This is about

addiction maintenance and chemical slavery.

Okay, I have to interrupt to do this.

Nancy Brophy was in the news this week.

I don't know if you know who she is.

She wrote the book, How to Murder Your Husband.

And then

she was

convicted of murdering her husband.

And we had done this bit before.

I think it was when Andrew Cuomo had a book about how he was the great governor who solved all the problems, and then he got caught being a perv.

And so it's a little department we call Books That Didn't Age Well lately.

Books that didn't age well.

Would you like to hear some of them?

Okay.

Here are some other books that didn't age well.

Nick Cannon's Birth Control for Dummies Did Not Age Well.

Hunter Biden's firewall, your complete guide to laptop security.

Will Smith's counting disaster

to remaining calm under pressure.

Did not age well.

Matt Damon, the future is Dogecoin.

Terrible.

Mark Zuckerberg, how Facebook is bringing America together.

Did not age well.

Jennifer Lopez's Never Date Your Ex.

Terrible.

Aging issue there.

Tom Brady's family before football.

No.

Johnny Depp had taking the plunge when you know, you know.

And Madonna had a guide to aging gracefully.

That did not really go well.

So

let's continue.

I love this discussion we're having about civilization because your book talks about the West.

I mean, you talk about a war on the West.

Again, let's pause for a second for some of the younger viewers who want to watch a show like this who are like, what do they mean by the West?

You're not born knowing that.

Let's just be basic here.

What is it?

What are we talking about when we say the West?

Well, in some ways it's a geographical fact, in others it's a civilizational one.

It's both.

Broadly speaking, the West is a product of a very specific set of values and ideas.

I'd say that the religious

mostly through Europe.

Starting in Greece and Rome, antiquities, and then a mood.

It's basically the fusion of the biblical tradition and Athens and Jerusalem, and then the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome,

and that gave us much of the ideas.

It got refined through the fires of the Enlightenment.

They came to England, they came to America.

That's the way you did your thing.

Right.

And what it's not is Africa, Asia,

Russia, that's the East.

You know what it is when you're not in it.

You know, if you're in Beijing, you're not in the West.

It's an amazing place.

Tokyo, it's an amazing place, but you're not in the West.

People who want to know what third world, if they heard that, that comes from the Cold War.

The first world was us good guys in the West who had democracy and richer economies.

The second world was the communists.

And the third world was poor countries who were too poor to care about either one of those systems.

That was the third world.

We don't use that term anymore.

Okay.

Okay.

So let's leave that.

Why is there a war on it?

Well,

what is the war?

Why?

One of the things that's come to concern me recently is,

I mean, this country, America, is, as you know very well, is about as divided as you can be without having a war.

Correct.

You agree on almost nothing.

I mean, having different opinions is so last century.

Now you've got different facts.

Right.

Yes.

Right.

You can't.

And this goes always.

You know, you have an election in 2016 and part of the country doesn't accept it.

You have an election in 2020, part of the country doesn't accept it.

That's not not normal in a democracy.

Mostly, if you win, you know you've won, and when you've lost, you know you've lost, and that's really good for you.

Really good for you.

So one of the things I've started to consider.

Really good for the civilization.

Yes, yes.

Because you've got to work out what you did wrong.

You mucked it up.

The people didn't like you.

Maybe you're not very likable.

Right.

And let's also.

And let's also point out that

in most countries in the world, throughout history, that didn't happen.

Right.

Where one guy just went, you know what?

I lost yeah most of history is people good fight now you take over this place where we run most of history is people like hitting each other off the head and taking their stuff and lots of still are doing that and still doing that yes so so what one of the things that has just increasingly worried me uh and as a as a immigrant in this country is the the past really matters in these circumstances the past really matters and I've just seen in recent years a remorseless war on everything in the Western past and particularly on the American past.

A war on, I mean, to the extent that you can't even agree anymore when America was founded, the New York Times, used to be the public, the paper of record, has deliberately tried to shift the founding date of America.

That sort of stuff matters.

Talking about the 1699.

If you don't agree when your nation was founded, that's quite a big difference.

If you don't agree whether the founding fathers were any good or not, whether they were just slave owners or they were something else maybe,

That's not good.

When you can't agree that Abraham Lincoln was a hero, that's not good.

If you can't agree on any of the past, you know, I live in New York, and last November, the New York Council chamber, the city council chamber, voted to remove the statue of Thomas Jefferson.

This happens all the time, but when a mob doesn't get to a statue, the authorities will take it down preemptively.

And

the council chamber in New York pulled down, crated up, and took out the back door the statue of Thomas Jefferson that had been there since the 1830s.

And you know, one of the members of the council said, well, that's because Thomas Jefferson doesn't represent our values.

Now,

if Thomas Jefferson doesn't represent your values, who does?

Okay.

Who does?

Well, you know what that does.

Who even nominate yourself, maybe?

Okay.

You know what?

And again,

so really what you're saying is

the war on the West is from people who only see the bad in what the West has done.

And of course, the West did things like colonialism and had slavery.

I think what they're missing is that those are human things.

Everyone did those bad things.

The things that the West did good,

I'm not going to say they're unique to the West, but there's some pretty good things that all the people who hate the West wouldn't really want to live without, like rule of law and air conditioning.

What a weird thing it would be to go to Africa, to countries

where people sold slaves to the Arabs, to the Europeans and others.

What a weird thing it would be to go to, say, any country like Nigeria and say, you know, everyone in Nigeria, you're all guilty because of this now.

And they say, well, it wasn't my time.

No, but you're guilty now.

People do that with the West.

It's a very strange thing.

It's unique to the West.

We should be self-critical, but we shouldn't become self-destructive.

We need to have things we revere from the past.

We need to have things that we treasure.

We need to have common heroes.

And if I just go back to what you were saying about Africa, I think to clarify, you're saying that the people who captured the slaves in the interior of Africa were other Africans.

Oh, for sure, of course.

Right.

Okay.

And then they brought them to the coast.

Because there was a trade all around the world.

But again, it's a human thing to be a schmuck.

That's that's hu.

It is.

It's just.

Humans are not good people.

I've said it many times.

They just

slave comes from Slav, which are white people.

And you know, you know.

in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries still, they use the word abid, abid, plural, for black people there.

It means slave.

They use the term now.

There are 40 million slaves in the world today.

That's more than there were in the 19th century.

If people in America could get off this thing of endlessly beating up on

their own past and look at the world today, you could do something about actual problems.

Where do you stay on that?

I mean, I think

you're also saying something else, which is that we're responsible for our own behaviors.

We're not responsible for the behaviors of white people 200 years ago.

It's individual responsibility.

So Amber Heard is responsible for her behaviors.

Johnny Depp is responsible for his behaviors.

It's quite a segue, Mike.

Well, you kind of, I was thinking about it beforehand, because the producer said I needed to have something to say about this.

I thought,

you know, equal justice under the law is a better principle than believe all women.

We actually have a system set up to evaluate the claims made, and we don't discriminate or make judgments based on your group identity.

We hold individual responsibility above all else.

By the way.

Can I just say that

just

one of the things I say in the War on the West is this, is that

we know that there must be something good about us now.

Why do we know that?

Because migrants around the world want to come to the West.

The top country in the world that migrants want to come to is the United States of America by a very long way.

And

the next countries are Britain, Canada, and a couple of other Western countries.

So the footfall tells us something.

When the boats cross the Mediterranean from North Africa to the south of Europe, they don't meet boats going the other way.

When migrants cross the southern border, they don't meet Texans fleeing to Guatemala or Venezuela.

So

the point is that the footfall tells us something.

The footfall tells us something.

And my suggestion is: if we've done something right that means the world wants to come here now, it must mean we did something right in the past.

This country was designed well.

Well, I mean

the things that the West has done well.

Yes.

Again, I'm sure democracy and science, you know,

freedom of speech, freedom of belief.

Jury system.

I mean, when I was

minority rights, not immediately, but first we had individual rights, then yes, we got, it is an evolution.

And we care when we're accused of racism.

Separation.

We care.

Most countries in the world don't.

Tell the Chinese Communist Party, you found a racist infraction.

Gosh, they'd mind.

Separating church and state is kind of a big one, I would think, you know.

Separating religion,

secularism.

I think the idea that people, there's an idea that people had, I had it when I was a teenage, you know, young radical leftist, which is that other countries are poor because we're mean to them, that we exploit them.

There's no appreciation that we do have this.

Sometimes true.

and sometimes it's true, but that there's this internal culture, there's a rule of law, we have a constitution, we have equal justice under the law, that these are the institutions that made our civilization, our freedoms, our wealth possible, and that that's the key, and that's why people want to come here.

It's not because we're meaner than other people that other people are worse off.

All right, thanks, guys.

Appreciate it.

Interesting discussion.

Let's go to New Rules now, everybody.

Okay, new rules.

New rules, when you post this video of the bride and groom who perform the stunt of lighting themselves on fire

after exchanging vows, you don't have to add, don't try this at home.

Believe me, I won't.

It looks like the absolute last thing I would ever try.

And the fire part looks scary, too.

New roll, before you're outraged by this story of a New York City woman

who threw this opossum out of a bar, just know you had to be there to understand, okay?

But really, this opossum was already wasted when he came in.

He asked where all the o-pussy was at.

And he left screaming, I thought this was America.

It's an asshole out of Popsa.

New Roll sex toys shouldn't look like they're going to hurt me.

New York Magazine calls this one of the best sex toys you can buy.

For humans?

Because it looks like something for jerking off E.T.

I don't even know where it goes.

I mean, I have an idea, but oh fuck, let's just change the subject.

New role families who hang up a sign in their home that says family have to explain why.

Do they need reminding that they're related and shouldn't have sex with each other?

Susie, you're looking hot today.

Dad, the sign?

Right, never mind.

Merule, if Joe Biden wants to do something to unite America, he should fire every cop in Uvalde, Texas, and replace them with Josh Duggar.

He's a worthless waste of space, too, but at least he's interested in children.

And finally, New Rule, before we tackle any of our daunting specific problems here in America, we have to figure out how a country can solve any problem if so many of its people are so intractably, astoundingly, mind-numbingly stupid.

And I'm not saying that as hyperbole or just out of frustration.

I mean this country just might be empirically, verifiably too fucking dumb to continue as an ongoing enterprise.

Jay Leno used to do a classic bit called Jaywalking where he asked ordinary citizens the kind of question we used to consider common knowledge.

And in the internet age age, that bit has been, shall we say, updated.

And is still a useful indicator of where exactly we are on the bird brain chart.

Take a look at some of the answers given on a TikTok site called Project Better.

Who is the first person to land on the sun?

Lance something, Lance.

Lance.

Lance Armstrong.

What is the biggest city in the world?

I think it's like...

Asia?

What is the biggest city in the world?

Europe.

If you were born in 2021, how old would you be?

21.

What country is Venice, Italy located in for $100?

Do you have any clue?

Gosh, I'm going to be a teacher, so I should know this.

You should.

Paris?

Where is Queen Elizabeth from?

Egypt.

Egypt?

Egypt.

Where is it?

Brazil.

So you tell me, if a country is only as strong as its people, what can the future possibly hold for a population this moronic?

Being a full-grown adult and thinking a human could walk on the sun?

Or that the biggest city in the world was Asia?

When plainly it's Europe.

This country simply has no education standards anymore.

They will let you out of a public high school and give you a diploma and you don't have to actually know anything, which used to be the mission of schools knowing things.

I know it's super important to stop the grooming of our kids or, I don't know, to start it.

And certainly critical race theory must be stricken from the curriculum or who knows maybe included in all of it.

But, you know, while we're having those fights, could someone please notice that the kids don't actually know anything?

As I travel this country on weekends doing stand-up now, I see the political ads that are running on the local TV markets, and I think, how can this possibly work on people?

And then I remember: oh, yes, they think Queen Elizabeth is from Egypt.

When again, plainly, it's Brazil.

Political campaigns used to turn out two kinds of ads, the positive, or what I like to call the village people ad,

where you're seen with a cop, a construction worker, a military guy, and a minority.

And then the negative ads, the ones that look like they were shot by Navy SEALs wearing night vision goggles, where you'd make your opponent look like someone who killed their spouse on an episode of Date Buff.

But now it seems they figured out that the people are dumb enough that you can put the positive and the negative in the same ad.

Here's one we see in L.A.

100 times a day for Congressperson Young Kim.

Eight times in a row, politician Greg Raths increased our tax rates and fees, just like Biden and the liberals, Raths makes California unaffordable.

Greg Raths even proposed raising his taxpayer salary over 60%.

We pay more, he makes more.

That's politician Greg Raths.

But young Kim is fighting Raths and the Liberals.

That's right, I'm young Kim, and unlike my opponent, I'm in color

Come on,

don't you want your representative to be in color?

As opposed to an x-ray?

And I don't chew on cigars or stuff cash in my pockets or get

drunk with Washington insiders and jail cell doors never shut behind me.

When candidates in political ads say, I approve this message, they should have to add at the end, you dumb fucks.

I'm Brad Turnbull, and I approve this message.

You dumb fucks.

Candidates always say they're just highlighting the differences between them and their opponents.

Here's Congressman Mark Moore's ad highlighting the difference between him and opponent Melanie Stansbury.

Murderers, rapists, and child molesters walking free.

We need to pass the Breathe Act in Congress.

Stop the madness.

Stop Melanie Stansbury.

What the hell, Melanie Stansbury?

Why are you so pro-rapist and child molester?

Don't you know that voters see child molesters unfavorably?

Voters want someone who will let them know I'm the good guy because I'm meeting with firemen.

I'm meeting with teachers.

I'm meeting with cops.

I'm talking to kids.

I'm talking to black kids.

I'm wearing a hard hat and looking concerned.

I'm pointing to the border wall with my thumb.

Come on, that's my thumb.

You must know I got this.

After all, didn't you hear me say I'm strong on values and good for jobs, that I'm fighting for you and on your side, and I'm going to get things done and shake things up, and that I have a plan, details to follow,

to clean things up.

My God, my sleeves are rolled up.

What more evidence do you need?

I'm a good guy.

Unlike my opponent, who's always cackling maniacally and who

lives in Washington,

good guys live in America, which is great and pure.

Bad guys live in Washington, gross.

They're always career politicians.

Career politician.

Career politician.

Career politician.

Career politician.

Career politician.

Career politician.

Career politician.

Yeah, career politician.

Good guys don't even go to Washington, but they will if they have to, like Mike Garcia.

It won't be easy on my family, but it's something we'll go through together.

I just hope they don't get killed by Melanie Stansberry.

And you know, I'm not...

I'm not picking on Mike or Young King or any of them in particular because they're all alike.

Well, wait, not all.

There are actually some ads that are even more submantal.

And in 2022, I'm going to blow away the Democrat socialist agenda.

Yeah,

here's three words no one ever has to say to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Dumb it down.

There is an entire species of political ads on the right where the candidate just shoots something they don't like.

A lot of these ads make no mention of policy at all.

It's just truck, gun.

Me like these things you like.

Vote me.

But here's something I notice that's different about the ads that conservatives make versus the ones from liberals.

The conservatives wear that description like it's their first name.

They cannot say it enough.

I'm a conservative outsider.

America's most conservative.

Top-rated conservative.

A real conservative.

Proven conservative.

Christian conservative.

America first conservative.

Conservative warrior.

I'm so conservative.

But you never hear anyone bragging about being a liberal.

There's no liberal Bob Schmohawk as a liberal who wants to enact more liberal policies.

Democrats might want to think about what that means, because the implication is you're embarrassed by what liberalism has become that the term is now irredeemably coupled with woke nonsense which is a shame because despite their nonsense it's still generally generally a better product but what does it say about your brand if you don't want to say what you are so much of liberal politics nowadays is identity politics and yet it seems we found the one thing liberals won't identify as liberals.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the State Theater in Minneapolis tomorrow night at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, July 8th, at the Mirage in Vegas, July 22nd and 23rd.

I want to thank Michael Schellenberger, Douglas Murray, and Eric Holder.

Now go to YouTube and join us in overtime.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.