The search has resumed for British actor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/room-with-a-view-actor-julian-sands-reported-missing-on-icy-california-mountain" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Julian Sands</a> after &#8220;extreme alpine conditions&#8221; have hampered efforts over the last few months, following severe winter weather in California&#8217;s Mt. Baldy area where he went missing in January.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department shared an update that on Saturday, June 17, the department has &#8220;continued ongoing search efforts in the Mount Baldy wilderness&#8221; for the missing hiker,&#8221; the <a href="http://nixle.us/EJ24B">press release</a> read.
&#8220;Unfortunately, Mr. Sands was not located,&#8221; it added. &#8220;Saturday&#8217;s search included over 80 Search and Rescue volunteers, deputies, and staff. Their efforts were supported by two helicopters and drone crews. Aviation resources inserted search teams into remote areas across Mount Baldy and conducted aerial search and assessments efforts. Additionally, drone crews searched areas inaccessible to ground crews.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Julian Sands Search Continues Five Months After Being Reported Missing <a href="https://t.co/1LCVeTNt2t">https://t.co/1LCVeTNt2t</a>
&mdash; The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) <a href="https://twitter.com/THR/status/1670917116990504963?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 19, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Despite the recent warmer weather, portions of the mountain remain inaccessible due to extreme alpine conditions,&#8221; the release added. &#8220;Multiple areas include steep terrain and ravines, which still have 10 plus feet of ice and snow.&#8221;
The release concluded that since January, when the &#8220;Room With a View&#8221; star went missing after going for a hike in the area, the agency has &#8220;conducted eight searches (ground and air) specific to Mr. Sands, with volunteer searcher hours exceeding 500 hours&#8221; and with another eight unrelated search and rescue operations in the Mount Baldy area.
The sheriff&#8217;s office said the missing person case for Sands remains active and &#8220;search efforts will continue in a limited capacity.&#8221;
More than a week after the actor went missing, the Sheriff&#8217;s Department shared his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/british-actor-still-missing-after-more-than-a-week-on-snow-covered-mountain-his-family-speaks-out">family&#8217;s statement</a> along with their own update that read, &#8220;As we enter day 11 of the search for Julian Sands on Mt. Baldy, we are reminded of the sheer determination &amp; selflessness of all of the people who have aided in this search. We will continue to utilize the resources available to us.&#8221;
The family also thanked local officials and search-and-rescue teams for their continued efforts.
&#8220;Our heartfelt thanks to the compassionate members of the San Bernardino County Sheriff&#8217;s Department who are coordinating the search for our beloved Julian, not least the heroic search teams listed below who are braving difficult conditions on the ground and in the air to bring Julian home,&#8221; the statement read. &#8220;We are deeply touched by the outpouring of love and support.&#8221;

“The Painted Bird” Photocall – The 76th Venice Film Festival

Search Resumes For British Actor Julian Sands After ‘Extreme Alpine Conditions’ Hampered Efforts

actor

California

Celebrities

Hollywood

Severe Weather

The Search

U.K.

Daily Wire Editor Emeritus <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/author/ben-shapiro">Ben Shapiro</a> sat down with journalist <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/megyn-kelly">Megyn Kelly</a> as the two long-time friends discussed their careers, raising kids in the insanity of wokeism, transgenderism, the destruction of our culture, and signs that things might be turning around on a new episode of &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-search">The Search</a>.&#8221;
Shapiro asked the host of the Sirius XM &#8220;The Megyn Kelly Show&#8221; podcast how she finds a balance on her show between politics and cultural issues. Kelly, however, said she&#8217;s much more interested in the culture wars.
&#8220;I feel like that just naturally attracts me and I feel like that&#8217;s the fight I&#8217;m involved in right now,&#8221; said Kelly. &#8220;Like I feel like I am fighting to save our culture.&#8221;
&#8220;All the madness that&#8217;s around our children, that&#8217;s brought out sort of my mama bear instincts and those wars are the ones that we have to fight to protect them,&#8221; she said.
&#8220;So, I always laugh because I&#8217;ll say something on the air, &#8216;like back in my day, those songs had a melody,&#8217; you know, suddenly you feel like a Tipper Gore or your grandpa, and you&#8217;re like, I don&#8217;t care,&#8221; Kelly continued. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to fight the battle anyway. &#8230; I actually would much rather talk about culture wars than politics on most days, but I do like politics.&#8221;
When it comes to culture wars, Shapiro said he hopes we have reached the bottom of the &#8220;slippery slope.&#8221; Over a decade ago, people feared that the sexualization of the culture and the rise of pornography would destroy generations. They were right, said Shapiro.
&#8220;And now it seems like the pendulum is about to swing hard the other way,&#8221; he added. &#8220;And it should. And people are looking at some of the stuff that people were laughing at 20, 30 years ago. &#8216;How could these fuddy-duddies be worried about the lyrics in their songs?&#8217; And then they see Sam Smith, and Sam Smith is actually prancing around like gender non-binary Satan, and they&#8217;re like, &#8216;Oh, maybe this maybe, maybe these people are not so wrong in the first place.'&#8221;
When the conversation turned to the transgender debate, Kelly admitted her opinions have changed over time.
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&#8220;Go back to I think it was 2008, and we have a trans person in my family,&#8221; Kelly said, adding that there was a person identifying as transgender in her husband&#8217;s family, too. &#8220;So it was actually extremely tumultuous &#8230; and I had real sympathy for this person.&#8221;
&#8220;I could see how much turmoil it was bringing into their life,&#8221; she added. &#8220;And I was defensive of the trans community on the air. And I had a sort of infamous moment with Dr. Keith Ablow, who attacked Cher&#8217;s child, Chaz Bono, formerly Chastity.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/megyn-kelly-destroys-espn-for-including-lia-thomas-in-womens-history-month-takes-down-kamala-harris">Kelly</a> said Ablow warned it could become a &#8220;social contagion,&#8221; a warning that turned out to be prescient.
The former Fox News host said she&#8217;s now crossed the &#8220;rubicon,&#8221; and gone from telling Ablow to be tolerant, to an &#8220;activist&#8221; against those invading girls&#8217; spaces.
&#8220;Like, get out, get out of our swimming pools, get out of our locker rooms, get off of our track meets, get out of there,&#8221; Kelly said. &#8220;We&#8217;ll find an accommodation for you. Hopefully you&#8217;ll get the help you need. But we are not surrendering girlhood or womanhood to you and your mental issues.&#8221;
Shapiro observed that when society &#8220;declares something heroic, you will get more of it.&#8221;
&#8220;And so the breakdown of the intermediate institutions of society here, I talk about church or family, that&#8217;s going to devastate this entire generation,&#8221; he said, noting a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/young-americans-are-losing-their-minds-the-social-left-is-to-blame">recent study</a> about the shockingly high risk of suicide in young girls.
On the topic of the destruction of culture, Kelly pointed to people like <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/kim-kardashian">Kim Kardashian</a> and the rest of her family. She admitted she doesn&#8217;t think the &#8220;Kardashian is an evil person in her heart.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s not about whether she intends evil,&#8221; the former NBC host said. &#8220;But just the other day, Jocko Willink, you know, famed Navy SEAL like the baddest bada** ever put out a short little video on Instagram and it basically said, &#8216;I want to talk to 13, 15, 17 year old boys.'&#8221;
&#8220;And he said, &#8216;I don&#8217;t know if anybody&#8217;s telling you what to do like we&#8217;re supposed to do at 13?'&#8221; she added. &#8220;He said, &#8216;Work out, put on some muscle, you know, learn how to fight any kind of fight, you know, martial arts, be able to defend yourself if you need it. Don&#8217;t drink or do drugs. Those things are bad for you.'&#8221;
&#8220;So that&#8217;s Jocko,&#8221; Kelly continued. &#8220;And then you&#8217;ve got Kim Kardashian, who is like, &#8216;look at my a**, look at my boobs. Look at me and don&#8217;t bother listening to me. Just look at me.'&#8221;
&#8220;I can&#8217;t stand what she&#8217;s doing to our culture. It&#8217;s not just her,&#8221; Kelly continued. &#8220;It&#8217;s really her whole family, but just that general personality and the messaging to our daughters in particular. &#8230; All of it is so abhorrent to me.&#8221;
The entire conversation can be seen <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-with-megyn-kelly" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/woke-weak-white-woman-megyn-kelly-slams-drew-barrymore-for-praying-at-the-transgender-altar-after-kneeling-to-dylan-mulvaney">&#8216;Woke, Weak, White Woman&#8217;: Megyn Kelly Slams Drew Barrymore For &#8216;Praying At The Transgender Altar&#8217; After Kneeling To Dylan Mulvaney</a>

The Search Ben Shapiro And Megyn Kelly

‘We Have To Fight’: Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro Talk Wokeism, Transgenderism, And More On New Episode Of ‘The Search’

'We Have To Fight': Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro Talk Wokeism, Transgenderism, And More On New Episode Of 'The Search'

Ben Shapiro

Culture

Kim Kardashian

LGBTQ

Lia Thomas

Megyn Kelly

Transgender

Wokeness

The following is a transcript excerpt of Ben Shapiro’s recent conversation with Russell Brand in the latest episode of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-with-russell-brand" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Search,</a>” now available on DailyWire+.
Russell Brand: The C. S. Lewis aphorism or quote that you used reminded me of Sartre’s idea of “bad faith argument” that you’re not entering the conversation in a spirit of good faith, of open heartedness — that already, an agenda is being pursued. And I enjoy C. S. Lewis’s writing, in particular, because he was an intellectual and because he was an atheist and because he became a man of faith. And it was imaginative and redemptive and beautiful and sort of playful the way that he dealt with Christ and God and, you know, comedy actually in “The Screwtape Letters”. I saw some of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-screwtape-letters" target="_blank" rel="noopener">those videos</a>, and I enjoyed those that you made.
Ben Shapiro: Well, thank you.
Brand: Say, when it comes to something that’s super personal but also intersects with the culture, Ben — like I reckon that you and I would raise our kids different. You know?
Shapiro: I imagine. 
Laughter. 
Your kids aren’t going to Jewish day school, so yeah.
Brand: They’re not going there, and I don’t imagine that your children smoke cigars yet, for example. Mine are quite heavy smokers.
Shapiro: My son, I don’t know. He’s turning 7 soon.
Laughter. 
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Brand: With like, say &#8230; perhaps one of the most contentious issues — and of course I have to tread so carefully around this subject — when I think of like, I saw something on John Oliver the other day about DeSantis’s pose, obviously I’m aware it’s coming from John Oliver, he’s a comedian I know and deeply admire as a comic. The endpoint of his bit — it was, I guess one of the 20-minute monologue that John does — was about one of the books that’s been extracted from the libraries as a result of the new legislation was like a book about two male penguins raising a chick. And I felt like that’s probably precisely the type of book that would gently introduce the idea that same-sex relationships are acceptable and ordinary and not worthy of generating conflict, a gentle favor, that’s, for me, that’s like a perfectly inoffensive thing.
In my relationship with my daughters, I talk to [them about], you know, I have friends that are in same-sex relationships, and I point out to them there are different ways of being a human being: There’s this way of being a human being, there’s that way of being a human being. I try my best. I try to demonstrate my lack of certainty. Not belonging to a religious faith that gives me a clear, like that I’ve, you know, yielded to and sort of somewhat, like a lot of people probably in our time are building a spirituality as I go, in a W.B. Yeats each house must build their own religion type way, in desperation, in need, but not having sort of the heritage or the privilege or convenience — or however you want to regard having a faith that you can glue your soul to in the word of Lenard Cohen. You know, I approach it from a spiritual, humanistic, loving, revering way; that’s how I approach that subject. And I also have friends that have children who are identifying not as, you know, their born boys, identifying girls. And for me, I feel so sort of sympathetic, nonjudgmental, open about it. I see that as somehow distinct from, again, how these things play out in the culture on Twitter, where there seems to be a great deal of ferocity and judgment on both sides of that argument. I guess that is a question what I’m asking you, Ben. Is your ultimate position that if you’re allowed to raise your children how you want to, other people should be allowed to raise their children how they want to?
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Shapiro: So, I would say, within limits. We all, for example, disagree with child abuse. Nobody wants their kids to be beaten, presumably. How you define what you think is a healthy way to raise a child is obviously pretty important because kids can’t consent to being in that relationship with their parents. When it comes to, you know, some of these very dicey issues about fundamental truths, as we consider them — for example, males being male, female being female. The question is to what sort of treatment should be available to a child based on parental diagnosis or based on going to one particular type of therapist versus another type of therapist. These are matters of public concern because, again, you are dealing with children and things get very, very dicey around children, specifically because they can’t consent and make up their own minds on these sorts of things. I would say, autonomy, but within limits. So, the question is always, that’s where the sort of controversy always, lies: what exactly are the limits?
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Brand: Where’s the point of intervention? Where are you happy for the state or some other set of values to be asserted? Because for me, it’s almost &#8230; at no point do I want to be told. I raise my children how I’m going to raise my children, and I recognize that there will probably be things that people won’t agree with. And I feel quite almost angry, like, I’m raising them. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust your authority.
Shapiro: So, I think as a general rule — as a general overarching rule of the universe — sure, because I think parents are the ones who are closest to their kids. I think that the rubber meets the road when it comes to what we perceive as child health or child wellness, raising kids in what we would perceive as a healthy way or a way that is conducive to their future happiness. It gets very dicey obviously very quickly, and so I think the easiest position to take is the libertarian one, but I’m not a libertarian because, again, I think there’s a lot of situations where active harm can be done to children by a parent, and you do see that. For example, there are religious communities where they refuse to teach their kids math, science, or the “lingua franca,” the common parlance. I think that that’s wrong. I think that parents should have to teach their kids in a society the basic skills necessary for them to get by in life. Right? That’s a thing. Do I think that you should be able to raise your kid in the wilderness and never teach them ever to read, never teach them math, never teach them anything? I don’t think so. I think that that’s actually damaging to the child. So, there are limits, and I think that I would draw those limits probably more closely than you would. And that gets into some deeper issues about governance in general. And I think that all questions of governance have to start with: What do you think is the fundamental point of human existence? That’s where you always start. You have to go very broad to get there. What is the fundamental point of human existence? If the fundamental point of human existence is to — quote unquote — be left alone or to find yourself or to find your individual identity — so I totally disagree with that perspective because if I let my children become who they, they are who they are right now. And they’re very bad little people — because children are, in fact, terrible little people. One of the great lies of humanity is that babies are good or that children are good. Children are not good. Have you ever met a child? Children are miserable and they hit each other and they’re nasty. You have to civilize them. You have to teach them things. We all teach them things. If we let them eat what they wanted to eat, all they would eat is sugar. If we let them do what they wanted to do all day, all they would do is sit and watch TV. You actually have to civilize children.
Brand: I agree that civilizing, socializing, and conditioning are blurred in their boundaries. But with the examples you cited, it’s possible to never introduce them to sugar and never to introduce them to screens — by the way, I’ve failed terribly as a parent on both those fronts.
Shapiro: I agree with this, but what I’m saying is, on a moral level, I think that one of the things I do as a parent and as a person who believes that there are better and worse ways of living your life with regard to pretty much every human topic under the sun, including your sex life. I think that there are better and worse ways to do that. That means that I’m protecting my kids from certain material because I think that kids are incredibly malleable, and I think that environmental influences actually do matter to my kids. I’ve yet to find an area of human life in which environmental impact does not matter to my kids. And so this sort of idea that your kid is going to be who they’re going to be no matter what and they’re going to flourish into whatever they’re going to flourish into and your job is to stand back and let them go, I think that that’s irresponsible and virtually every parent would say the same. They would just draw the lines differently than I would. When it gets to the very hot button issues, that’s where it breaks out into the open, obviously. DeSantis’s point, to take Florida for example, is that they shouldn’t be in public school libraries not because parents should not be allowed to teach their kids but because teachers should not be allowed to teach my kids, which is a different thing. He’s saying out of the school libraries. They can still buy that book on Amazon. The notion that I can’t buy any book I want to on Amazon and it won’t be delivered in the state of Florida is a lie. I can buy whatever I want, and it’s my responsibility to teach my kid. It’s not the job of a teachers union employee to teach my kid what I think are fundamental human values.
* * *
To continue the conversation, check out <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-with-russell-brand" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;The Search,</a>” now available on DailyWire+.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>

6R1A8732

Unscripted: Ben Shapiro Sits Down With Russell Brand For Latest Episode Of ‘The Search’

Unscripted: Ben Shapiro Sits Down With Russell Brand For Latest Episode Of 'The Search'

DailyWire+

Readers Pass

Russell Brand

U.S.

When they sat down over coffee for the new Daily Wire series, “The Search,” podcaster Ben Shapiro and renowned historian Niall Ferguson couldn’t have known just how timely their interview would prove to be. During a roving discussion taped in late January in Palm Beach, the pair dissected the United States’ inability to properly weigh risk when it comes to foreign policy and what that fecklessness might mean to China and Russia. 
With a now-eerie prescience, the Hoover Institute fellow tells Shapiro that, based on his knowledge of world skirmishes over the last 100 years, the Biden administration’s weakness on the international stage will undoubtedly lead Russia to launch an attack on Ukraine. “The threat of sanctions is not going to stop Putin invading Ukraine,” he says with surety. “I still think it&#8217;s quite likely that he will increase his military aggression towards Ukraine because financial sanctions are not an effective deterrent, and I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re an effective deterrent against the Chinese, either.”
Weeks later, bombs began to fall in Kyiv. 
The West’s bizarre overreaction to the marginal danger posed by COVID-19 compared to its apathy toward the serious threats China and Russia present dominates much of the 90-minute dialogue, available to Daily Wire subscribers. “This is one of the odd things about safetyism — the cult of treating all risks as incredibly high,” Ferguson points out. “Oddly enough, it desensitizes you to the real risks. And I think the U.S. has become pathologically incapable of thinking realistically about risk.”
How this has manifested, he explains, is with federal authorities pushing to mask children and force vaccines on young people who face almost no danger from the coronavirus while blithely ignoring the fact that the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes have suddenly begun behaving as allies. 
“We’re closer to a really big war than most civilians want to face,” he concludes.
Legacies Over Risk
The looming reality of seismic geopolitical events leads the friends to reflect on just how endemic distorted perspectives have become in America. 
Ferguson says working on his last book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe,” made him realize that, while fear of a virus might have highlighted the problem, defective public choice has been around for at least 20 years. Generations ago, he explains, both the public and the federal government were better at assessing risk because they had no choice. 
“I mean, coming out of the 1930s and 40s, you confronted some very profound risks, nuclear war being the biggest,” he says. “But my sense is that the further away we got from World War II, the less good our elites have been at assessing risk and the more inclined they have been to say, ‘Why worry about probabilities? Let&#8217;s assume that everything is a huge risk. And then let&#8217;s design extraordinarily complex regulations to prevent risk.’” The unrealistic goal, he argues, appears to be to prevent death.
For Shapiro, this shallowness that views the mere preservation of life as the greatest objective also explains our current national obsession with identity, as well as the epidemic of mental health issues plaguing younger generations. He points out with a bit of gallows humor that such a value structure can’t help but breed a culture-wide sense of meaninglessness and unfulfillment. 
“Like if [assassins] get me in the Everglades, honestly, they deserve it,” he jokes about a recent vacation with his family, where it dawned on him that if his haters were to successfully gun him down (as online trolls have threatened to do over the years), he’d have to give them credit for their marksmanship. “Like if they get that shot and they nail me and I&#8217;m floating among the mangroves and alligators,” he laughs, “I’ll just have to give them credit. Like, really, that&#8217;s an excellent hit.” 
What’s clear a moment later is Shapiro’s dark amusement comes from his deep sense of mission, his conviction that his life has a greater purpose than merely preserving his heart-beat. Like the men who founded the nation, he says he cares more about building something of lasting value than in being physically safe.
“My dad used to be kind of paranoid about [me voicing my political opinions],” Shapiro reveals, “and he used to say, ‘Are you sure you want to say this about Islamists or are you sure you want to say this about the Chinese?’ Shapiro’s answer: “Yeah, I am. I mean, at a certain point, you’ve got to say what you&#8217;re going to say.” Because that’s what it takes, he argues, to build institutions that have the potential to transform a society from one in which happiness is found in the arbitrary notion of feeling personally “affirmed” to one in which meaning is derived from accomplishment.
“If the ages have taught us anything,” Shapiro says, “it’s that your happiness has very little to do with how you sit on a given day and has a lot more to do with whether you&#8217;re building things of consequence.”
Building Institutions
Though their critics often like to pretend otherwise, over the course of the discussion both Ferguson and Shapiro are clear that their hope for the future doesn’t lie solely in winning elections or “owning” libs, but in creating organizations that leave legacies for the future. 
When Ferguson reflects on the attitudes of Millennials and Gen Z today, histrionic as they are over thought-crimes and emotional offense, he admits the situation looks bleak. But he finds hope in what he calls “Generation T — kids who began to develop societal awareness during the presidency of Donald Trump. There, he already sees what he believes is a sense that “wokeness is boring and counterintuitive.” 
But he doesn’t believe their tendency to think in more levelheaded, fact-based terms than the generation just ahead of them will flourish without help. They need, he argues, new institutions dedicated to developing an active and well-organized citizenry. 
“There needs to be a strong sense of the citizens’ ability to organize outside the structures of the State,” Ferguson says. “Part of the answer is to build institutions. We have to be better organized. People who thought of themselves as conservatives or classical liberals were terribly badly organized and basically lost control of the universities. It wasn’t even that hard for the Left to take over the universities.”
It’s for this reason, that, though he’s personally an atheist, Ferguson believes so deeply in the power of religious community to breed civic responsibility. Part of the Left’s interest in destroying the influence of faith in something beyond government, he argues, is that it destroys the impulse to band together to protect individual freedoms. 
It’s also what inspired him to join Bari Weiss, Steven Pinker, Larry Summers, and other independent thinkers to found The University of Austin — a new academic institution dedicated to a “fearless pursuit of the truth.”
“I&#8217;m quite interested in this challenge of institution building,” Ferguson tells Shapiro, “You&#8217;ve done that [with The Daily Wire]. And that&#8217;s one of the things about you that I find most impressive.”
Near the end, Ferguson returns to Shapiro’s point that he’s not worried about dying so much as he’s worried about leaving such work unfinished.
“I&#8217;d like to be able to die knowing I&#8217;ve started a bunch of things,” he says. “Institutions that will keep going.”

The Search Ep. 2

‘We’re Closer To A Really Big War Than Most Civilians Want To Face’: Historian Niall Ferguson Delivers Timely Predictions On Ukraine In New Episode Of ‘The Search’

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‘We’re Closer To A Really Big War Than Most Civilians Want To Face’: Historian Niall Ferguson Delivers Timely Predictions On Ukraine In New Episode Of ‘The Search’