Ben Weingarten

Reader. Writer. Thinker. Commentator. Truth Seeker.

Month: February 2016

My Interview with Prof. Barry Latzer on ‘The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America’

Check out my interview on behalf of Encounter Books with Professor Barry Latzer in connection with his newly released The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America.

During the interview, which you can listen to below, Prof. Latzer and I discuss a range of topics including Latzer’s difficulty in publishing a book that talks about the correlation between violent crime and race, the link between war and crime, the interesting theory of the inverse relationship between homicide and suicide rates, the surprising lack of correlation between economics and crime, what caused the spike of crime from the late 1960s through the early 1990s and the drastic plummet of rates from the late 1990s to today, the deep question of whether crime is attributable to economics or culture, and what the future of violent crime looks like in America:

Featured Image Source: Karl Merton Ferron, Baltimore Sun.

My Dennis Michael Lynch Appearance on Immigration: ‘America Isn’t Just an Economic Entity’

On Monday 2/8, I sat in as a guest on Newsmax TV’s DML Unfiltered.”

During the episode, we had the chance to discuss several points including a supposed stand-down order given to border patrol agents and America’s immigration policies more broadly, the useful idiots being produced by America’s education system and what Donald Trump (or other Republicans) have to do to defeat Hillary Clinton.

You can watch the relevant clips below.

Immigration

America’s Useful Idiots and Our Education System

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My Interview With Cruz National Security Advisor Dr. Victoria Coates on ‘David’s Sling’

I recently had the opportunity to speak at length with Republican Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz’s national security and foreign policy brain trust, Dr. Victoria Coates, on behalf of Encounter Books in connection with the release of her intellectually stimulating and compelling new David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art.

During our extensive interview — which you can listen to in full or in parts per the below — we discuss the indelible link between democracy and creativity, the significance of great works of art and architecture in the history of freedom from Michelangelo’s David to the Parthenon and Picasso’s Guernica, why the entrepreneurial art community endorses political stances anathema to the freedom that sustains it, and everything you would ever want to know about Sen. Ted Cruz’s foreign policy vision. On this latter point, among other subjects, Dr. Coates and I discuss the principles that form the Cruz Doctrine, who in the foreign policy sphere truly carries the mantle of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, what “winning” in the Middle East would look like for America under a President Cruz, Saudi Arabia vs. Iran, whether America has a responsibility under NATO to defend an Islamic supremacist Turkish regime against Russia, how a President Cruz would handle an ascendant Russia, the long-term threat posed by China and how to counter her, the greatest threat to America’s national interest we are most underestimating or ignoring, and much more.

You can also read the transcripts to both parts of our interview here (Part I on David’s Sling) and here (Part II on Foreign Policy/National Security.

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