The Matt Walsh Show - Daily Wire Backstage： WE DO NOT COMPLY

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, this is Matt Walsh telling you, demanding that you stop whatever you're doing

00:00:04.380 and check out the latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage. Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro,

00:00:08.320 Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and yours truly discuss Biden's vaccine mandate, the Texas

00:00:12.460 heartbeat law, and the future of the GOP as the Dems continue to author disaster after disaster.

00:00:17.960 Trust me, you don't want to miss this one. Thanks for listening.

00:00:21.680 Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage We Do Not Comply edition. I'm Jeremy Boring,

00:00:26.160 known round here as the God King, lowercase g, lowercase k, and we're glad you've tuned in.

00:00:48.900 It got weird. Will President Biden's call for a vaccine mandate finally wake people up to the

00:00:54.220 tyrannical leanings of this radical leftist administration? Does the Texas heartbeat law

00:00:58.320 mean we may see an end to Roe v. Wade in the near future? Is it too soon to count on the GOP

00:01:02.780 winning big in 2022 as the Dems continue to author disaster after disaster? None of that was funny.

00:01:09.680 Joining me to discuss all of this and more is the Ben Shapiro, the Andrew Klavan, the Matt Walsh,

00:01:14.060 and the Michael Knowles. For tonight's show, Daily Wire members can ask questions in the chat box at

00:01:18.840 dailywire.com, and we will be answering them throughout the night, so please head over and

00:01:23.140 subscribe. Joe Biden announced last week that he's weaponizing the federal agency OSHA to force all

00:01:28.480 companies with over 100 employees to either mandate vaccines or test their employees for COVID at least

00:01:34.340 once per week. I think it goes without saying that this is one of the most tyrannical overreaches of

00:01:38.600 government power Americans have seen in my lifetime, and here at the Daily Wire, we plan to fight it.

00:01:43.420 As we prepare for a battle of epic proportions, we're calling on you to help us fight this obscene and

00:01:48.060 tyrannical mandate. If you will join us at dailywire.com right now by becoming a member,

00:01:53.180 you'll be giving us the resources that we need to take this all the way to the Supreme Court,

00:01:56.980 if necessary. I really feel like if I say take it to the Supreme Court, the light should flash.

00:02:02.000 Head over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use the promo code DO NOT COMPLY, because we won't be.

00:02:08.620 You'll get 25% off. Americans have been putting up with this crap, ceding freedom after freedom to this

00:02:13.580 authoritarian bureaucracy in the name of public health for long enough. So please stand with us

00:02:18.800 at the Daily Wire and perhaps most importantly, help us stand for the rights of all American

00:02:22.780 citizens. I mean, there's a good self-promotion there, but this is like the big story probably in

00:02:29.040 politics of maybe in my lifetime is this overreach by the president. It's been building. I mean,

00:02:34.280 even under Trump, the response of our government to the pandemic has been so overwrought and has

00:02:43.080 just at every turn. And the use of administrative agencies to do it, right?

00:02:45.700 The use of administrative agencies is so overwrought.

00:02:47.640 The CDC giving eviction moratoriums started under Trump.

00:02:49.580 That's right.

00:02:50.200 Right. But this is the third straight president who said, I don't have the constitutional ability

00:02:54.040 to do this. And then I'm just going to do it, right? We had that with DACA. We had this with

00:02:57.920 CDC. And now we've had it with Biden several times in the past couple of weeks.

00:03:01.540 That's right. He's just accelerating the pace. So he said, the Supreme Court said you're not

00:03:04.540 allowed to do that with the CDC. And then he's like, well, I agree. And then five seconds later,

00:03:07.860 he turned around and tried to do it again with the CDC and the eviction moratorium. Here he said

00:03:11.460 a bajillion times that you are not allowed to use the federal government to cram down a vaccine

00:03:16.180 mandate. But then his patients began to wear thin.

00:03:19.360 His patients began to wear thin.

00:03:20.080 Yes. That's the part that's so unbelievably tyrannical about all of this is, who the hell are you?

00:03:26.220 Your patients with me is wearing thin. I pay your salary. I mean,

00:03:30.640 like he is my employee. Like this notion that his patients with me is wearing thin. He's not my

00:03:36.080 father. He doesn't get to tell. He's not my wife. He doesn't get to tell me that his patients is

00:03:39.860 wearing thin with the American people. And the thing about this, again, is I've said this a thousand

00:03:44.480 times. This has nothing to do with whether you're pro or anti-vaccine. This has to do with whether you

00:03:48.760 are pro or anti-liberty, right? The question is not like I am as pro-vaccine as it is possible for a

00:03:54.120 human to be. I've made this clear over and over and over. I've been pro-vaccine since before. It's cool to be

00:03:58.360 pro-vaccines. And the fact that this president of the United States is using an OSHA rule, a vaguely

00:04:03.980 worded OSHA delegation of power, in order to cram down an emergency temporary decree on 100 million

00:04:11.480 Americans. Let's be real about this. It really is not even about the employers. It's about the

00:04:15.420 employees, because he's going after us as a proxy for going after our employees. If we refuse to,

00:04:20.500 if our employees won't take the test and don't want to get vaccinated, we have to fire them.

00:04:25.580 Well, he's found a loophole around the fact that he doesn't have the power as president

00:04:32.360 to force the citizenry to become vaccinated. As he admitted.

00:04:35.640 But he may have the power to force us to force the citizenry to be vaccinated. And it's not about

00:04:41.140 our freedom. Here's the president. This is not about freedom or personal choice. It's about protecting

00:04:47.680 yourself and those around you, the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you

00:04:54.520 love. My job as president is to protect all Americans. So tonight.

00:05:03.280 Unbelievable. His job as president is protect all Americans, protect this, protecting people

00:05:08.400 thing. I thought the vaccine is what's supposed to protect you. This is the contradiction that no

00:05:14.200 one has ever been able to satisfactorily answer. If the vaccine works, then you don't need to force

00:05:19.760 it on anybody else to protect yourself. And the message seems to be from the like the the COVID

00:05:26.000 cult that, well, you need to get the vaccine to protect me because I got the vaccine and I don't

00:05:33.040 trust it to protect me. And so there's there's a real disconnect there, which doesn't make a lot

00:05:37.320 of sense. He said in the same contradiction, those two, those two things. The thing that drives me crazy,

00:05:41.240 the thing is so frustrating to me about this is that it's all openly a joke. We've got thousands of

00:05:46.700 guys pouring across the border completely unvaccinated. We every time it was either

00:05:51.600 Knowles or AOC at that Met Gala the other night. One of us. I couldn't I couldn't tell the difference.

00:05:56.080 I mean, I think because her backside was kind of nice. I don't think it was you. But I was staring

00:06:01.040 at the back. I was staring at the back of her dress and then somebody told me there's something

00:06:03.500 written on it. I didn't I missed it. But the thing, only the help, only the help is masked.

00:06:11.600 Yeah. The rich people aren't. And we've seen Gavin Newsom do this at the French laundry,

00:06:14.800 go out to with his friends in this kind of small gathering. And the thing is that when you come

00:06:21.460 to Tennessee, when you go to Florida, you're in another world. I was I had to go to California for

00:06:27.180 two days. It was like being an alternate reality. The fact that people have bought into what is

00:06:32.380 clearly, clearly a joke is clearly this no longer serious is amazing to me. This is the the next part

00:06:39.040 of of what Matt's talking about, which is if the vaccines really work and they're super duper

00:06:43.560 effective, then you don't need to worry about the unvaccinated. Correct. And but furthermore,

00:06:48.120 if the virus is really the deadliest plague we've ever dealt with, people would probably be all

00:06:53.960 clamoring to get the vaccine. Right. You wouldn't have such high rates. So I actually see it a little

00:06:58.040 bit different. I don't think that it's contradictory. I don't think that the that there's inherent

00:07:02.200 contradiction in saying we have to as the president said, we have to protect the vaccinated

00:07:05.640 from the unvaccinated. You see that as contradictory because you're judging it on the merits of the

00:07:10.360 actual words, having actual meaning. But they don't really do. He's speaking politics and

00:07:16.360 politics in the 21st century is only a game of turning out the base. Yeah. The president's poll

00:07:22.200 numbers are collapsing because of the absolute travesty that is his withdrawal from Afghanistan.

00:07:27.040 And his own base is starting to question whether or not he's a successful president. And what he's

00:07:32.720 saying to them is you, hardcore left, are very worried about COVID. You're very concerned that

00:07:39.940 COVID is a threat. You mask your children outside in summer when they're alone. I want you to know

00:07:46.300 that I am going to protect you from these Republicans who are literally disease ridden,

00:07:52.660 walking pustules of death. And you have to vote like your life depends on it. And those people who

00:07:59.740 are all already vaccinated because they're, to Ben's point, very worried about the disease.

00:08:03.760 They hear that message and go, yes, please, please protect me from the unwashed Republicans.

00:08:08.120 And this is the Pelosi strategy. Pelosi strategy has been to win every other election, every other

00:08:13.420 election cycle. What she does is she runs these blue dog Democrats. They go into fairly conservative

00:08:18.760 areas and they win. Then she sacrifices them by forcing them to vote for her left-wing policies.

00:08:23.960 Then they're gone. She loses the majority. She waits because she knows the ratchet only goes one way.

00:08:28.300 Once a government acquires power, it never loses it. So she doesn't have to win every time.

00:08:32.020 So two things. One, we definitely need to start a garage band called disease-ridden

00:08:35.220 rock pustules of death. There's just no question. I thought that was a personal reference to me.

00:08:39.660 Yeah, but the second thing is that the intent here, I think, is not just to mobilize the base. It's to

00:08:47.800 shift blame away from his own failures because he keeps saying that the economy is not recovering

00:08:51.900 because of Delta. This is not true. The economy is not recovering in blue areas because blue area

00:08:56.860 Democrats have decided to legislate that the economy not recover. The way that I know this

00:09:00.620 is that the top 10 states in terms of the best unemployment rates in the nation are all red,

00:09:04.720 with the exception of Vermont, which has seven people and a cow. The bottom 10 states in terms

00:09:08.640 of unemployment rate, in terms of the worst unemployment rate, are all blue. And the reason

00:09:13.020 for that is not because of the vast death that is occurring in New York. New York is one of those

00:09:17.160 states. Or New Jersey. Those are states that are not experiencing a current massive COVID wave.

00:09:22.040 The reason that that's happening is because people in those states have decided that they want to

00:09:25.100 lock down forever. There's a pagan worship of government that has now taken place.

00:09:28.260 Joe Biden made a promise. The promise is that if you give up all of your liberty and if you give

00:09:31.800 up all of your freedoms and if you give up all control to him, he will protect you literally from

00:09:35.740 everything. He'll protect you from death. He'll protect you from impoverishment. And all you have

00:09:40.580 to do is just climb in that bathtub. I mean, I wrote a column this week called The Wally Strategy

00:09:44.840 because that's what this is. I mean, they're literally just going to push you into a lazy boy and then

00:09:49.840 they're going to put a screen in front of your face and they're going to keep you there for the rest of

00:09:53.380 your life. And this is the promise. That's not the threat. That's the promise. And for a lot of

00:09:56.860 people, that promise is actually good. You will protect me from death. He made that promise last

00:10:01.880 year, by the way. He said, I won't shut down the economy. I won't shut down the country. I will

00:10:06.000 shut down the virus. Hell. Hell. You won't. That is not a... No human being is capable of,

00:10:12.380 quote unquote, shutting down the virus. That's not a thing that can happen. And so when he inevitably

00:10:15.640 came up short, his next move was, it's not my fault that the virus wasn't shut down. It's all these

00:10:20.140 guys. So you need to turn on your neighbor. And then that jackass has the capacity to go

00:10:23.940 on national. He finished that speech with an appeal to unity after saying that everybody who

00:10:28.500 is unvaccinated, including, by the way, everybody with natural immunity. I know that we're all

00:10:31.780 supposed to pretend natural immunity doesn't exist, despite the fact that it is multiple times

00:10:35.020 more durable than vaccine immunity. But all those people, according to him, are bad and morally

00:10:40.360 benighted. And the only thing that we have to do is target them and yell at them and presumably

00:10:45.720 and target their employment. And that will force them to get vaccinated, which totally is not going to

00:10:49.980 happen. It's not about getting people vaccinated. It's not about making the world a better place.

00:10:53.420 It is purely and simply about he does not want the blame for the promises he can never fulfill.

00:10:57.300 And the only solution is give him more power. I don't want the blame when big tech uses your

00:11:01.580 data to target you. Whoa, whoa, dude. See, I'm just getting better and better. Big tech is more

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00:11:49.280 your connection. That's why it's rated the number one VPN service in the world by CNET

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00:12:32.680 So it's not just that the president is seizing all of this power over workers. And we're going

00:12:37.060 to talk a little bit more about our response here at the Daily Wire to that. But Matt, something

00:12:40.960 you've been great on is the impact that this is having on school kids. Listen to a story

00:12:45.280 today about schools in New York. They're open for the first time after more than a year

00:12:49.900 of being shut down. And not only do kids have to wear masks inside, kids who are at almost

00:12:55.420 virtually, not no, but virtually no risk of severe illness from COVID. But they have to

00:13:03.000 eat lunch outside. They have to not face each other when they eat. They have to not talk to

00:13:08.080 one another.

00:13:08.720 Unless it's raining. And if it's raining, then there's no lunch at all. You know, because you've

00:13:12.660 got to eat lunch outside. And during recess, they can have physical activity, but they

00:13:18.560 can't come within six feet of each other. So no kinds of activity that involved, you

00:13:22.760 know, participation with other kids. They actually have outlawed any activity that would

00:13:28.060 cause, there is exact phrasing in the handbook or in the guidelines. I want to say it's excessive

00:13:33.140 breathing. So they don't want excessive breathing. There was someone on CNN that was referring

00:13:38.560 to, uh, there's a doctor on CNN a couple of days ago talking about, uh, fans at a football

00:13:42.540 game and he accused them of, uh, breathing with gusto or something like that. Breathing

00:13:46.760 with vigor was what he said. So we've got to make sure that maybe, maybe for kids in school,

00:13:50.540 we could have a, um, you know,

00:13:51.720 Does vigor mean life?

00:13:53.200 Something like that.

00:13:54.060 Breathing with life.

00:13:55.080 Maybe, maybe kids in school will, will say, look, you can take 10,000 breaths and that's

00:13:59.460 your limit. You go over that and it's, you're suspended. I don't know. I think a lot

00:14:03.020 of it when we're talking about schools or what the government is doing, um, a lot of

00:14:09.140 it is they want power and everything that we've talked about. But I also think there's

00:14:11.680 something simpler and it's, it's a disease that we've seen in government for decades

00:14:16.260 now, which is this mentality that someone just has to do something. And, uh, it's this

00:14:21.840 someone do something mentality. It's kind of like anytime there's a tragedy or there's

00:14:25.520 a, uh, you know, a high profile murder, then we, we have, we pass a law with that person's

00:14:29.540 name on it and here's that, that person's law. And it's always a law that was unnecessary

00:14:33.940 because this stuff was already illegal.

00:14:35.800 Wouldn't have stopped the crime.

00:14:36.880 Wouldn't have stopped the crime, but it's just, let's do something. And so everywhere

00:14:40.100 you go now, I mean, I've been traveling last couple of weeks in a few different cities.

00:14:44.160 I was in New York most recently, which is just an absolute hellscape. But everywhere

00:14:48.240 you go there in New York now, it's just, they're, they're every, every place you walk

00:14:52.740 into, they're doing something in response to the virus. None of it makes any sense.

00:14:56.960 There's no reason to be doing almost any of it, but it's at least it's something. And

00:15:00.880 in, in one of the things I want to mention in the schools in New York, there's a video

00:15:04.960 of what they call the COVID buster team. And they're walking through the classrooms before

00:15:10.100 kids show up, spraying some kind of chemical into the air, um, which, which, what is that

00:15:15.980 supposed to do? But nothing, but it's some, it's something anyway, and it makes us feel

00:15:19.440 safer.

00:15:19.800 No, you're exactly right. And when you talk to folks who are in favor of these sorts of

00:15:23.380 measures and you say to them, there's no data to back this, right? I mean, we actually

00:15:26.440 cite data. They get angry at you for citing the data. So if you point out that there is

00:15:30.420 not a single study that shows that masking school children is an effective tactic, like

00:15:35.080 not one. And in fact, the single largest study was a study done in Georgia. It was a 90,000

00:15:38.480 student study. And it found that there were lower levels of transmission when teachers

00:15:42.260 wore masks because adults are still transmitting it. But then when school children up to the

00:15:46.020 age of 12 are in school, there was, they actually buried the result. They wouldn't, they

00:15:49.420 wouldn't print the result. They, they filed, wrote it is what it's called, is what it's

00:15:52.500 called. There is no difference between masking and unmasking for kids of that age

00:15:56.620 group. And when you say this to people and you say, well, then you really shouldn't mask

00:15:59.480 kids. They'll say, ah, yes, but what if one of the kids has, gets sick and they're not

00:16:02.960 masked? And you say, well, then the same exact thing as if they were masked because I just

00:16:06.600 gave you the data. And they'll say, yes, yes, yes. But, but then they don't have masks

00:16:10.000 on. They'd be like, right. But the data says that that makes no difference for children

00:16:13.540 because children don't know how to wear masks because cotton masks aren't doing damn bit

00:16:16.280 of difference for little kids and all the rest of it. And they just, they can't let go of

00:16:20.480 it. Because again, the idea is that if something bad should happen, I think this is really what

00:16:23.900 it comes down to for a lot of the decision makers. And this has been the incentive structure

00:16:27.180 all along. If something bad happens, you need to be able to say to somebody else that you

00:16:32.360 did the thing. Right. And it doesn't matter if the thing was useful. I sacrificed the chicken

00:16:36.340 right this morning. I sacrificed the chicken and yet the COVID got the kid, but I sacrificed

00:16:40.040 the chicken because I sacrificed the chicken. At least you can't tell me I didn't try to

00:16:43.640 propitiate the COVID gods. I did. I tried to do it. You're really speaking to something

00:16:47.540 important. It is a kind of paganism. A hundred percent. We live in a new paganistic age and

00:16:53.040 paganism is sort of like science, but without controls. Right. Which is exactly what we're

00:16:57.440 seeing. They say trust the science, but of course science has controls. Increasingly science is

00:17:02.160 also science without the controls. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But what they mean when they say science is

00:17:05.820 really just anecdotal data sets. Yeah. And we have, we have rituals that we engage in in the

00:17:11.820 pagan cult of science. We have the secular keffia that we put on our mouth now. And you know,

00:17:16.220 speaking of New York, this does remind me, I was just in New York about a week and a half ago.

00:17:20.820 We can do something too. You know, that we always have to do something. We've got to pass a law. We

00:17:25.220 can do something too. If you get on the subway now, it is so creepy. Signs everywhere, wear the mask,

00:17:30.000 pull it up over your nose. Not quite. They come on the loudspeaker. Don't breathe. Don't do this.

00:17:33.680 And so I decided, you know what I'm going to do? If I'm on a plane, they're going to make me wear the mask.

00:17:37.560 I won't be able to fly. Okay. That's a prudential judgment on the subway. They're not going to do

00:17:41.460 anything. A lot of weird stuff happens on the subway. Okay. I've spent a lot of years in New

00:17:45.100 York. So I just wouldn't wear it. And I wouldn't wear it on the, on the trains. And I wouldn't

00:17:48.240 wear it on the subway. And you know what people said to me? Not so much as boo. Me too. I've had

00:17:52.640 the same experience. You just, you, if you just in your own way resist this stuff, it's important

00:17:56.960 because to, to Ben's point earlier, we've got, we've got multiple liberty battles here. You've got

00:18:01.940 the individual liberty battle. That's obviously being taken away. And you've got even the higher

00:18:05.940 political liberty battle. We're not allowed to have a say over the future of our country because the

00:18:11.020 administrative agencies and the public health priests are telling us what we have to do.

00:18:14.960 And now this is all going to be enforced by OSHA. What's so crazy is even the priests of public

00:18:20.000 health, even the administrative agents just a year ago, we're saying that would be overreach.

00:18:25.300 That's right. By the way, did you see that video of Fauci from 2019 talking about what you should do

00:18:29.920 to prevent yourself from getting sick? Did you see this video? It's astonishing. It's a video from

00:18:33.140 2019 and he's Joe Rogan. He says, the guy literally asked him from Bloomberg. He says, so should we be

00:18:38.780 wearing masks to prevent ourselves from getting sick? He says, no, you shouldn't do all that sort

00:18:42.080 of paranoid stuff. Why would you go into that paranoid stuff? You need to eat healthy. You

00:18:45.460 need to exercise regularly. Right. I mean, like he sounds exactly. And by the way, if you want to

00:18:51.320 know the, the reality about the public health establishment, all you have to understand is

00:18:56.320 that one of the major complications from the very start of this thing was obesity. Obesity was a

00:19:01.260 major complicating factor when it came to COVID from the very beginning. And one of the things the

00:19:05.940 public health establishment should have said when there was no vaccine available was not just put

00:19:09.720 on a mask. It should have been get outside and exercise, right? Get healthier. Meanwhile,

00:19:13.820 they were putting, they wouldn't say a damn magazine magazine covers of fat women saying this is

00:19:18.000 healthy. I mean, you also get cancer at an amazing higher rate if you're, if you're obese. You know,

00:19:23.720 the other thing about this is there's no way to talk to anybody like a reasonable person. You know,

00:19:28.240 you and I both were on the vaccine train. We both like vaccines and a reasonable person can say,

00:19:33.620 well, vaccines are good, but mandates are bad. And you could have that debate and somebody might

00:19:37.700 say, well, mandates might be necessary, but there's no debate. There's no debate. If you say

00:19:41.260 that Dr. Fauci is suspect in terms of competence and honesty, which is just a fact, the guy is a

00:19:47.060 suspect. You want to prove that he's absolutely honest and absolutely competent, go ahead.

00:19:52.260 But you can't do any of that. You can't discuss it. You're knocked off social media.

00:19:55.460 Even in the nuance and in the conversation, you could go even further. If you say, okay,

00:19:59.640 I'm even willing to entertain some vaccine mandates, Washington mandated it for the sort

00:20:03.800 of inoculation for the troops. You have mandates in schools, but what Fauci is doing that's so

00:20:07.900 dishonest is he's comparing COVID to smallpox and polio. These are, these are different diseases.

00:20:12.800 And what, what I think is really important for conservatives to take away from all of this

00:20:17.400 is the government does not work the way we were told it does in schoolhouse rock. You know,

00:20:23.400 I'm a bill up on Capitol Hill. That's not how it actually works. What happens is some bureaucrat

00:20:28.200 whose name you've never heard of writes a bunch of jargon on a sheet of paper and you don't even

00:20:32.140 know the law was passed and they actually have power and they're actually forcing it on you now.

00:20:36.680 And the left knows this. That's why the left is so good at mastering the administrative state.

00:20:42.040 Conservatives just never have done it. It's like we bury our heads.

00:20:44.520 I will say that this is, this is a failure going all the way back to Reagan. Reagan came into office

00:20:48.540 saying he was going to get rid of the DOE, get rid of the department of education. He didn't do it.

00:20:52.380 Bush came in saying he was going to reign in the administrative state. Instead he added to it.

00:20:55.080 Trump came in saying that he was going to reign in the administrative state and they passed fewer

00:20:59.200 regulations, but he certainly didn't dismantle it. I'd like to pass a law. I'd like to pass a law

00:21:03.180 that no law can be above 3,000 words and no contract can be above 3,000. I mean, when you sign those

00:21:08.540 things. That law is 5,000 words, right? But here's the, here's the real problem is that the, the Congress,

00:21:14.800 the one thing that the founders never foresaw, it was, it was a form of, of, I think, human shortcoming

00:21:20.200 that they really didn't see because it was not them. And that was that human beings are not only

00:21:25.420 ambitious, but sometimes they're ambitiously lazy, right? That's what they didn't see. They didn't

00:21:30.280 see that they felt that there, that what the competition over power would be was a bunch of

00:21:34.180 people trying to grab power from one another. And so the way that you reign that in is that you

00:21:37.840 have those powers check one another, but they didn't understand is that there might come a point

00:21:41.500 where you would have a bunch of lazy ass hat legislators who decided to delegate all of their power

00:21:47.920 to executive branch agencies simply so that they weren't answerable and so they could continue

00:21:51.600 to pick up their checks. I will say though that in some ways, in some ways we helped create this

00:21:55.740 situation on the right because we came out against pork barrel spending. And this was, you know,

00:22:01.680 one of John McCain's big initiatives was to get rid of the earmarks because they're unseemly and they

00:22:06.620 are unseemly. They're disgusting. They are disgusting. They're immoral. They're, they are immoral.

00:22:10.960 This is where, uh, congressmen will get together behind closed doors and they'll promise each other

00:22:15.360 things. They'll be like, well, I'll support your crappy bill, but only if there's a bridge

00:22:19.040 built. Bridge to nowhere. Yeah. Bridge built in my district. And you go, well, what do you want

00:22:22.500 with that bridge in your district? It doesn't even go anywhere. And they're like, yeah, but my name

00:22:24.960 will be on it. And so I'll have taken, you know, $64 million with the taxpayer money and you'll have

00:22:29.920 the JW boring, uh, middle name doesn't even start with the W, but bridge to nowhere. And you're like,

00:22:37.260 well, I need your vote. So here's the money. And it's so ugly, right? They're, they're taking

00:22:41.020 the fruit of your labor and just spreading it around. And so we were, we were against it because

00:22:46.580 we didn't like it. But this is a version of conservatism that Michael talks about that I

00:22:50.240 actually usually disagree with, but it's a very practical kind of conservatism that you shouldn't

00:22:54.580 change anything that is, even if it's not great until you've really thought through the ramifications

00:22:58.340 of it. Right. That pork barrel spending goes all the way back to the founding era. And what pork

00:23:03.360 barrel spending did is incented legislators to legislate because it turns out that doing something,

00:23:10.360 voting affirmatively for something is a risk when you're having to run for office every two or every

00:23:15.640 six years. Every time you take an action, that action can be held against you. If you take no

00:23:19.940 action, nothing can be held against you. And so the only reason these people voted for 250 years was

00:23:25.760 to get bridges named after themselves. And as soon as we took away their ability to get something

00:23:30.820 personally out of the act of legislating, they went, oh, well then if I want job security, I should

00:23:37.060 never vote on it. Are you talking about bringing this back? Aren't they talking about-

00:23:39.700 They've been talking about it a little bit. And of course, there's a lot of blowback,

00:23:42.320 particularly from the talk radio, right, which wants to be purist about this sort of stuff,

00:23:45.140 which is why I always say, as part of that, right, I always say like, you should listen to

00:23:49.120 us when it comes to principle, but when it comes to implementation, you listen to us so you know

00:23:52.280 where the marker is planted, not where the marker is going to end up, right? And don't forget-

00:23:56.040 My job is very different from the job of a legislator who actually has to do the job.

00:23:59.180 That's kind of a different thing.

00:23:59.920 The reason this came up too was because we were defending John McCain, right? John McCain was the nominee

00:24:04.880 and John McCain was a big spender. That guy didn't want to reform any entitlements or any aspect of

00:24:10.060 the administrative state. Frankly, he was probably trying to grow it. And so we said, okay, well,

00:24:13.700 we can't make the argument there. Let's make it on pork barrel spending. And we all went along with

00:24:17.980 it. But here's the truth. OSHA was passed all the way back in the 70s, right? So the rise of the

00:24:22.060 administrative state- But the administrative state has been rising, of course, all throughout the 20th

00:24:25.860 century, but the power of it is- The radical rise is in the 60s. No, if you look statistically, the radical rise of the

00:24:31.120 administrative state didn't even happen during FDR as much as it did during the 60s.

00:24:34.260 I blame John McCain. Listen, people count on you. And the people who count on you need you to be

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00:26:00.420 Who's going to explain to Jeremy that the accent in insurance does not go on the first syllable?

00:26:06.120 You know, you take the boy out of Texas, but you can't take Texas out of the boy.

00:26:10.440 It's a deeply disquieting fact that we now live in essentially an elected dictatorship.

00:26:16.600 Yeah.

00:26:17.220 We have an elected monarch. We elect him every four years. And he comes in and he says some stuff.

00:26:21.320 And maybe the deep state helps him. Maybe the deep state doesn't. And that's pretty much it.

00:26:25.540 But do you think that he is really the ruler of the country? Or is he just sort of this figurehead

00:26:32.240 and it's the deep state or the agency?

00:26:34.200 When the deep state agrees with him, he's the ruler of the country. When the deep state disagrees with him,

00:26:37.240 no.

00:26:37.520 Then they're the ruler. Right.

00:26:38.760 The reason I say that is because very often you'd see Trump try to formulate a policy.

00:26:43.260 And as you see General Mark Milley apparently calls up the Chinese.

00:26:46.680 This is an unbelievable story, by the way.

00:26:47.980 Like, you had the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff calling our enemies the Chinese.

00:26:51.720 And being like, if we're going to strike you, I will call you first.

00:26:54.300 Yeah.

00:26:54.760 So I trust the Chinese military more than I trust, you know, the commander in chief.

00:26:58.060 You may have that personal belief.

00:27:00.280 Yeah.

00:27:00.580 But let me just say, it's an act of treason to call up our enemies.

00:27:03.660 It's an act of treason.

00:27:04.120 And say, I mean, aid and comfort to the enemy is literally you calling the enemy and being like,

00:27:08.660 by the way, guys, if we decide that we're going to take you on, my first phone call is going to be to you.

00:27:12.980 You know what you can do in the chain of command?

00:27:14.440 You can refuse.

00:27:15.520 Yeah.

00:27:15.760 Right?

00:27:15.920 You're allowed to say, no, I'm not going to carry out that order.

00:27:17.580 You can do like Mattis and step down.

00:27:19.440 Right.

00:27:19.640 You can do plenty of stuff, right?

00:27:20.920 The problem we have is that our failed state and our failed elected officials and the bureaucratic

00:27:28.080 state and our stateless businesses, these multi-country businesses, all have the same agenda.

00:27:37.760 And the Chinese have the same agenda, which is to control us and to spy on us.

00:27:41.500 And that's really, they're all doing the same thing.

00:27:43.640 And, you know, every single one of them.

00:27:44.940 And there's nobody left in power to say, you know what?

00:27:50.160 I mean, it's us.

00:27:51.100 It's all us.

00:27:51.780 This is it.

00:27:52.140 This is like the bunker, you know, the hidden bunker.

00:27:54.420 Well, you mean, you know what?

00:27:55.600 I think individuals should have their own choice.

00:27:57.340 Literally, that is true in the sense that the federal government was very involved in the development and growth of Google.

00:28:02.720 I mean, it basically bankrolled Google Maps just for one issue.

00:28:06.660 And they obviously work with one another.

00:28:09.180 Google has a relationship with China.

00:28:11.200 All of these people are not only surveilling us and compromising, predicting where we're going.

00:28:16.060 They're actually impelling behavior.

00:28:18.120 That's how sophisticated it is.

00:28:18.820 When they took the don't out of their slogan, don't be evil, I think we all should have been, there should have been an alarm for all of us.

00:28:22.940 I said, I don't like that rebranding.

00:28:24.280 I think that's another point about the vaccine mandate.

00:28:28.560 We talk about the alliance of big business with the government.

00:28:32.700 And with this vaccine mandate, I think probably big businesses have no problem with the mandate.

00:28:38.420 Correct.

00:28:38.600 Because they can deal with it.

00:28:40.580 It actually takes the problem out of their hands.

00:28:43.040 This is something that small businesses will have to carry the burden for.

00:28:47.920 And that's something else that you notice when you talk about going around the country.

00:28:51.220 And it's here in Nashville.

00:28:52.160 It's everywhere.

00:28:53.520 Everywhere you go, we've almost gotten used to it by now.

00:28:56.760 But there are just small businesses shut down everywhere.

00:28:59.260 And you talk to the locals in any town, whether it's a small town or a city, they'll tell you, oh, that place over there used to be a great place.

00:29:05.420 Shut down during COVID.

00:29:06.700 Never opened again.

00:29:07.400 Never will open again.

00:29:08.440 And meanwhile, Walmart, Amazon, Target.

00:29:11.480 It's fine because they can work with the government.

00:29:12.620 They're doing great.

00:29:13.800 So this is a, we have never seen.

00:29:15.980 It's why big business has always been in favor of higher minimum wage.

00:29:18.720 That's right.

00:29:19.080 Because they're like, okay, we can pay the mom and pops.

00:29:21.800 And regulations, too.

00:29:22.700 They can afford the regulations.

00:29:23.320 It's a conspiracy by, really is a conspiracy by the most powerful forces in our country to destroy small business.

00:29:30.240 And we've never seen anything like it.

00:29:31.420 Ron DeSantis did something along these lines.

00:29:34.540 Obviously a big fan of Governor DeSantis.

00:29:36.720 But you remember when the cruise line said, we're thinking about having cruises again, but everyone will have to wear masks.

00:29:42.260 And then Ron DeSantis said, no, if you're going to run a cruise out of the state of Florida, you by law cannot require people to wear masks.

00:29:49.220 And then the cruise lines for like exactly seven minutes were like, oh, no, that's awful.

00:29:53.800 Please.

00:29:56.040 The cruise lines were thrilled because they know no one wants to go on a beautiful, sunny Caribbean vacation wearing a diaper on their face.

00:30:03.560 But they were afraid of the liability of saying we're going to pack a ship with thousands of potential spreaders.

00:30:09.920 And what DeSantis did is he basically took the bullet for the cruise industry.

00:30:14.380 He said, well, the liability ultimately isn't on you because the state is actually forcing you to do what you want.

00:30:20.420 And in a way, that's what's happening here with big business.

00:30:22.440 A lot of these big companies, listen, at The Daily Wire, we took a few weeks and let our people work from home when this was first starting.

00:30:28.420 And we didn't know what COVID was going to be.

00:30:30.600 We very quickly came to realize that if we didn't ask our people to come back, we would lose the opportunity to ever ask them to come back.

00:30:38.420 And so even though it was in contravention of the executive orders from the mayor of the city of Los Angeles, we invited our people back.

00:30:45.420 And we didn't say you have to come back.

00:30:47.240 We said if you would like to come back, almost 90 percent of our workers were back in two days.

00:30:51.180 But these big businesses, they kept waiting and they kept waiting.

00:30:56.340 And, you know, 15 days to slow the spread turned into weeks, turned into 15 weeks, turned into 15 months.

00:31:01.440 I mean, here we are more than a year and a half into this.

00:31:03.620 People have moved.

00:31:04.240 People have changed, totally reordered their lives.

00:31:06.560 How do big businesses now get their employees to go back?

00:31:10.200 What can they point to that has changed?

00:31:12.360 How can they say, no, things are safer?

00:31:14.500 They missed every opportunity to say that you should incur some risk in life,

00:31:18.560 to say that something has happened that made the circumstances different.

00:31:21.980 And so now the only way that they can get people to come back to the office is to have the government say,

00:31:26.500 you can enforce these mandates.

00:31:28.140 And they can go, oh, these mandates are terrible.

00:31:30.420 We expect you at work on Tuesday and be vaccinated.

00:31:32.520 You know, it's really interesting.

00:31:33.760 When I was in Hollywood, the age of the star ended.

00:31:37.260 There's no Hollywood star who opens a movie anymore.

00:31:40.060 It used to be the last one was probably Will Smith.

00:31:41.900 But before that, there was Julia Roberts who could open a bad movie.

00:31:44.800 But people went to see it because it was a Julia Roberts movie.

00:31:46.900 That doesn't happen anymore.

00:31:47.880 But still, the star system is in place in Hollywood.

00:31:50.980 And the reason the star system is in place in Hollywood is if you're an executive and you hire George Clooney,

00:31:55.960 none of whose movies make any money unless he's starring with Matt Damon and every other movie star in Hollywood.

00:32:00.980 But none of his movies make money.

00:32:02.120 But if you hire him, you won't be fired if the picture dies.

00:32:05.820 Nobody's going to turn to you and say, you're the son of a gun who hired George Clooney,

00:32:09.620 and that's why our movie died.

00:32:12.780 An artist comes in and says, I'm taking this risk.

00:32:16.800 It's beautiful.

00:32:17.400 I've got this beautiful idea.

00:32:19.080 And the executives used to support this to some degree.

00:32:22.600 I've got this great idea.

00:32:23.740 No one's ever done this before.

00:32:24.840 You've never seen this before.

00:32:25.840 And you go out and think like, wow, you know, Jaws.

00:32:28.540 I mean, that's amazing.

00:32:29.800 And then they just copy it all over again.

00:32:31.880 We're living in this period of success.

00:32:33.720 We're living in the tail end of the American century where people stopped wanting to envision things

00:32:40.300 because they were playing with the house's money.

00:32:42.440 They didn't want to lose the money they made.

00:32:43.820 Nobody wants to take the risk anymore.

00:32:45.500 The risk is what it's all about.

00:32:46.960 First of all, it's the only thing that makes life worth living.

00:32:49.380 That's the first thing.

00:32:50.280 And secondly, it's like how you make a great country.

00:32:52.960 And instead, we've got all these people who do not want the blame.

00:32:56.460 They don't want to be the guy.

00:32:57.560 What DeSantis is doing, that they call him Death Santus and all this stuff, that takes guts.

00:33:02.780 You know what I mean?

00:33:03.180 This is right.

00:33:03.500 He can be right or wrong, but at least he's governing.

00:33:06.040 So the media, of course, set up the narrative that the act of bravery is to shut everything down.

00:33:10.420 Right.

00:33:10.720 When the real act of bravery is to say that human beings are allowed to be human beings.

00:33:13.920 Yeah.

00:33:14.080 That's a true act of bravery because you don't get blamed if you shut everything down and then a bunch of people die.

00:33:19.380 Yeah.

00:33:19.520 You don't get blamed for that.

00:33:20.500 Then you did everything that you could.

00:33:21.640 See Andrew Cuomo.

00:33:23.060 Exactly.

00:33:23.580 But if you say, listen, people are going to have to make their own decisions.

00:33:26.680 They're going to have to bear their own responsibility.

00:33:28.300 And I will take responsibility for allowing people to take responsibility for their own lives.

00:33:32.620 The media will kill you.

00:33:33.600 The media will spend the next several years talking about how he's Ron DeSantis because not because you'll have Joy Reid on TV every night saying that DeSantis wants people to die.

00:33:42.680 That's literally the language she uses when she's not being batted about by Nicki Minaj.

00:33:46.180 Right.

00:33:46.560 That how that death that Ron DeSantis wants COVID to win because he is allowing people to live their lives.

00:33:52.540 And the inevitable result of this is a dependent people who are waiting for some sort of kingly figure to come and save them from all risk and loss.

00:34:01.480 This is why it's so important to go back to Michael's point.

00:34:05.140 If our leaders aren't going to take risks and they're not going to take the lead, then it's important for us as individuals to decide, you know, where are we going to draw the line?

00:34:12.200 And even with things like masking, you know, I decided early on in this that I'm not going to wear the mask anywhere unless I'm asked by someone in the establishment in a position of authority to put it on.

00:34:24.820 And if they do, then I'll decide whether I want to put it on or just leave.

00:34:29.100 But the instinct for a lot of us is to just is to, you know, we'll just wear the mask because you don't want to you know, you don't want to cause any trouble.

00:34:36.320 You don't want to be in an awkward social situation or whatever it is.

00:34:38.600 I think as individuals, we have to decide, well, I'm just we're just not going to go along with this.

00:34:43.200 We're not going to do it. We're not going to play the game.

00:34:44.720 By the way, you will notice, you know, we're all in a lot of airports all around the country.

00:34:49.980 There is a federal mask requirement in all the airports.

00:34:53.220 And yet not everyone wears the masks in all the airports.

00:34:56.480 It doesn't matter what depending on what city you're in.

00:34:59.380 You cannot wear it. You cannot comply.

00:35:01.300 And and there are enough people that no one is going to force you to do it.

00:35:04.980 And you just think, well, what if all Americans did that?

00:35:07.520 What if we all if we all just stood up?

00:35:09.840 I admit, you know, this does go to and this is where we kind of veer into the AOC territory.

00:35:15.420 I think so much of this is cosplaying virtue.

00:35:19.200 Yeah, it's just cosplaying it.

00:35:20.740 Like the people who are who are wearing the mask at this point must know.

00:35:24.200 Yeah.

00:35:24.740 That everybody who they're around has had the ability to either get the vaccine or decided not to get the vaccine.

00:35:29.420 Yeah. Right.

00:35:29.860 This was to me, the masking issue was much more complex and nuanced when there was no vaccine.

00:35:35.700 Now that there's a vaccine and every adult has had the ability to get it, then the issue, all nuance is essentially removed.

00:35:40.780 Because if you get covid because I'm vaccinated and I breathe in your general area and then you get covid, you did not have a right to never be sick again in your life.

00:35:49.820 What you did have a right to do, at least to a certain extent, was to avoid deathly disease.

00:35:54.240 Right. At least the case can be made.

00:35:55.940 That's an externality.

00:35:57.040 In the same way that I can't pollute a river, I can't sneeze my covid on you when you're 65 years old or 80 and living in a nursing home.

00:36:03.200 Right. Which is why even when it comes to vaccine mandates, I've said before that when it comes to, say, nursing homes,

00:36:09.300 I don't see anything necessarily wrong with a vaccine mandate for employees of nursing homes because you're around vulnerable people literally all day long.

00:36:15.300 Right. Or mask mandates in hospitals where you're around people who are vulnerable all day long.

00:36:19.480 However, once you're in just the general public and everybody's had the opportunity to get vaccinated,

00:36:23.480 you don't have a right to require me to wear a mask on my face because you were too dumb or because you decided.

00:36:29.600 And here's the thing that's most amazing.

00:36:31.620 No one who is unvaccinated is asking anyone to mask.

00:36:35.260 It is vaccinated people who are asking people to mask.

00:36:37.520 Right. That's the part that's utterly insane about all of this.

00:36:39.560 I've drawn this Venn diagram on my show at this point, probably 10 times of the unworried and the worried.

00:36:44.800 Right. In a normal, logical world, what you would assume is the unworried are the vaccinated and the worried are the unvaccinated.

00:36:50.820 Right. It is precisely the reverse.

00:36:52.540 All of the worried are vaccinated and all of the unworried are the unvaccinated, which means that the pandemic is over for all public purposes.

00:36:59.540 Because once all of the unworried are unvaccinated, once then nothing you do is going to get.

00:37:04.900 They're not worried. They're not going to spend their days sitting up at night worrying about covid.

00:37:09.060 So how are you going to worry them into getting the vaccine?

00:37:10.700 And everybody who was worried got vaccinated. And now they're still worried because you guys keep telling them to worry.

00:37:15.380 You actually you saw the literally the AOC play acting of it all at the Met Gala.

00:37:20.320 Right. Because she it is cosplaying the revolution.

00:37:22.140 She's she's she's cosplaying the revolution.

00:37:24.120 She is showing up there as the revolutionary.

00:37:26.480 I'll show you it at this thirty five thousand dollar seat dinner.

00:37:30.120 I'll show you people.

00:37:31.620 And she's actually now got an ethics complaint because she may not have been able to accept the dress that she was given.

00:37:35.720 But but when she when she shows up there, I don't know if she knows it or if she's maybe she does know and she's just playing along.

00:37:44.320 But AOC is not in any way challenging the establishment.

00:37:49.120 She is the toast of high society.

00:37:50.660 Oh, that's why she was invited to the Met Gala.

00:37:52.620 She is a tool of the plutocratic establishment.

00:37:56.000 She is exactly the opposite of what she said.

00:37:59.300 The plutocratic establishment and the left are the same people.

00:38:02.260 Yes, they are. They're identical.

00:38:03.500 And it's a problem that the right hasn't caught on to yet.

00:38:06.600 The right has not caught on to the fact.

00:38:09.280 I mean, to me, this is just proves the fact that the whole problem with Ayn Rand is that John Galt is just the biggest son of a bitch as the as the people in government.

00:38:19.200 Anybody with power, anybody with too much power is a threat to liberty.

00:38:23.000 I mean, and that doesn't mean you take their power away.

00:38:24.760 It means you control the things that they can do.

00:38:26.740 You put limits on it.

00:38:27.820 You say you have certain rights.

00:38:29.000 The individual has certain rights that no powerful person can take.

00:38:32.180 Whether it's Google or whether it's government.

00:38:33.900 That's right.

00:38:34.160 Can we also just stipulate on the tax the rich thing?

00:38:38.480 I don't personally care what tax rate Jeff Bezos pays.

00:38:42.400 Like, you can raise taxes on him.

00:38:43.860 I don't really care that much, to be honest.

00:38:45.060 But the idea that the rich are not taxed is so absurd.

00:38:49.220 I mean, they they they are they pay the vast majority of taxes.

00:38:54.400 All taxes.

00:38:56.120 All when you remove the government benefits, they pay literally all taxes in America.

00:39:00.320 Just just today.

00:39:00.980 I was I saw a report on CBS, which was a couple months old.

00:39:04.780 Just because I'm curious on how did this idea get out there that the rich don't pay taxes when they pay all the taxes.

00:39:11.020 There was just a good example.

00:39:12.660 It's not like it's just from this report, but there was a report done by ProPublica, I think, a few months ago, claiming that the rich pay almost no taxes.

00:39:20.680 And then you look at the report and the way they come to that conclusion is they're using Jeff Bezos for an example.

00:39:26.060 And they said, Jeff Bezos, between 2008 and 2018, he paid like one point four billion in income taxes.

00:39:32.220 He's like, how's that?

00:39:33.060 Almost none.

00:39:33.640 That's one point four billion.

00:39:34.980 Well, they were saying, well, compared to the 200 billion that he's worth, it's only like, you know, it's it's just a fraction of a percent because they don't understand how wealth.

00:39:43.060 Right. You know, you don't you don't pay an income tax on your whole net worth.

00:39:45.940 That would be a disaster for everyone.

00:39:47.500 If you imagine, you know, April 15th, every right, exactly.

00:39:51.680 The Times is complaining about this in the in the paper today.

00:39:53.920 Right. And they're not taxing the wealth they already have.

00:39:56.860 And I think part of the problem is that, you know, you've got the elites, of course, who spread these ideas and they know better.

00:40:02.620 A lot of people in the peanut gallery who go around screaming that the rich aren't taxed, they have no assets, no net worth at all.

00:40:09.220 And they don't even understand the difference between income and net worth.

00:40:13.000 They don't understand that Jeff Bezos doesn't have two hundred billion dollars.

00:40:16.300 He doesn't have like a Scrooge McDuck money vault out back filled with two hundred billion dollars for the gold coin.

00:40:21.780 Not much in it.

00:40:22.280 Yeah. He has he has he has ownership in something with an imaginary value of two hundred billion dollars.

00:40:29.360 If he liquidates any of that, meaning if he converts any of that imaginary money into real money.

00:40:34.520 If he sells his stock, if he sells his stock, he now is taxed on it at the point that it becomes.

00:40:40.320 And not only that, by the way, tanks, by the way, too.

00:40:42.360 Well, that's the bigger point. Right. I mean, there's one point where where Zuckerberg, who is worth, you know, a trillion dollars, where Zuckerberg tried to liquidate.

00:40:51.460 I think it was one billion dollar of his stock. And and the Facebook stock tanked by like 10 percent because if you are the founder getting out.

00:40:59.500 Right. Correct. So so this idea that the wealth is worth what the wealth is worth is just absurd.

00:41:03.660 First of all, there are a thousand different valuations on every single company.

00:41:06.260 It's only worth what it's worth at the moment of liquidation. It changes based on the moment.

00:41:09.980 This is why my favorite Warren Buffett take was in 2008.

00:41:12.880 They asked Buffett, you know, you just lost a billion dollars in the market over the course of this crash.

00:41:17.220 You know, if you look at your stock holdings, you said, what are you talking about?

00:41:19.200 I didn't lose a dollar. I said, what do you mean you didn't lose it? I said I didn't sell anything.

00:41:22.060 Yeah. Correct. If you don't realize the loss, the loss is not realized. Right.

00:41:25.780 If you own a house and the house loses value, you did not lose anything unless you sell the house after it has lost value.

00:41:32.000 I had a driver, a chauffeur explain this to me because he was day trading.

00:41:36.620 And he said, you know, I said, how are you doing this week?

00:41:39.040 And he said, fine, I just haven't sold anything. So I haven't lost anything.

00:41:41.960 But he knows. He's driving a car.

00:41:45.940 The cosplaying of it is the entire point. I think our entire politics right now is not about doing virtue.

00:41:52.500 It is about cosplaying the revolution. It's about I am a revolutionary, not for like she wasn't standing outside the Met Gala holding a sign saying,

00:42:00.160 screw these rich people and their giant bags of cash.

00:42:02.800 She was going in there to hang out with them and take pictures with them with their arms draped about each other,

00:42:08.440 all unmasked, except for the help who are in the back, like the peons they are.

00:42:11.960 Wearing the mask. Keeping their filth away from all the good.

00:42:13.700 You saw Carolyn Maloney. Carolyn Maloney is, that was the best picture.

00:42:17.100 There's a picture of Carolyn Maloney, the congresswoman from New York, and she's wearing an outfit that says equal rights for women.

00:42:21.500 Yes, that's right.

00:42:21.960 And behind her, and she's unmasked, and behind her is a bunch, it's like 10 women all wearing masks.

00:42:27.860 And she's not, right, because she's a special person.

00:42:30.460 Now, we know, according to the CDC, you're supposed to mask even if you're vaccinated.

00:42:33.580 So clearly, they're violating the CDC's own standards because vaccinated people can pass the disease.

00:42:38.060 It doesn't matter to her because she's one of the specials.

00:42:40.120 It's all about the signal. The signal is the only thing that matters.

00:42:42.880 It's not even that it is a thing that matters. It is the only thing that matters.

00:42:46.160 You can do whatever the hell you want so long as you are signaling properly.

00:42:49.640 And AOC thinks that she was signaling properly because all of the glitterati are cheering her.

00:42:55.100 All the blue checks are cheering her.

00:42:56.500 I mean, I tweeted out, Robespierre was not famous for going over Versailles and saying to Marie Antoinette and company,

00:43:03.320 gang, screw the monarchy, and then eating the cake with them.

00:43:07.000 If you're going to eat the rich, you actually have to eat the rich.

00:43:09.080 You know what was so scary to me?

00:43:10.260 I was on the subway in New York, not wearing my mask, and I looked over and I saw what looked like a political advertisement.

00:43:15.720 It said, we're starting a revolution.

00:43:18.160 This is about equality.

00:43:19.900 This is about freeing people.

00:43:22.120 And I was looking, I said, what is the revolution?

00:43:24.440 I looked.

00:43:25.600 It was an ad for Old Navy.

00:43:27.420 It was an ad.

00:43:28.160 The revolution is what sells products.

00:43:29.980 And this is what AOC either doesn't understand or she does understand and she's pulling a fast one on all her constituents.

00:43:35.340 They called themselves the resistance all through the Trump administration.

00:43:38.080 They agreed with the corporations.

00:43:39.680 They agreed with Hollywood.

00:43:40.540 They agreed with the academy.

00:43:41.580 They agreed with media.

00:43:42.560 They agreed with everybody in power.

00:43:43.880 They're the tools of capitalist egemony.

00:43:46.180 They were resisting the people.

00:43:47.160 And it's an interesting question, too, though, about why AOC, she was around a bunch of rich people.

00:43:53.080 And why are rich?

00:43:54.220 Why would rich people embrace this message of tax the rich, tax me?

00:43:58.060 Because, you know, and that's the point people are making in AOC's defense.

00:44:01.360 Well, it's actually brave for her to go around rich people with that message.

00:44:04.080 But it's not exactly the same thing.

00:44:05.280 I mean, if I were to go to a Planned Parenthood fundraiser with a shirt that said, you know, imprison abortionists, I would probably get a very different reception.

00:44:12.160 So why were they embracing her?

00:44:14.120 And I think the reason is the reason, which which actually sounds like a great idea to do that.

00:44:18.040 But the reason is, number one, they know it's not serious.

00:44:22.280 It's virtue signaling, but also for these rich people, this is the ruling class.

00:44:26.780 They know that, OK, yeah, you raise the taxes on me a little bit.

00:44:29.080 I can afford it.

00:44:29.720 But also, I'm in vet.

00:44:31.260 You know, we're all part.

00:44:32.380 We're all comrades.

00:44:33.120 We're part of the same crew here.

00:44:34.260 So I'm investing in you and you're going to advance my ideological agenda.

00:44:38.160 So, sure, take a little bit more of my money.

00:44:39.760 It benefits me in the end.

00:44:41.140 Not so much.

00:44:41.960 Also, let's be frank about this.

00:44:43.400 Most of the people in that room have very good accountants and those accountants are tasked with avoiding the taxes.

00:44:47.360 Yeah.

00:44:47.500 Just like every other human being, which is why they're not giving charity and it's also why they're not actually bothering to sign checks that are above and beyond what they're supposed to pay to the federal government, to the federal government.

00:44:55.760 Every single person in that room, there is a provision on your tax forms that allows you to send extra money to the federal government.

00:45:01.080 Not one person in that room has ever signed a dollar to that provision because no human being has ever signed that provision of the IRS tax form unless they are completely and utterly delusional.

00:45:10.440 It is insane to me that we are supposed to pretend that this was some sort of act of true bravery when she's walking into a place where they are cheering.

00:45:18.640 They are cheering for her.

00:45:19.700 There's a quote by Thomas Chatterton Williams put out a fantastic quote from Stefan Zweig where he says anybody who is saying something supposedly revolutionary who is risking nothing is, of course, not saying anything revolutionary.

00:45:33.200 She's not only risking nothing, she's benefiting from all of the, look, slay queen kind of nonsense.

00:45:38.920 The reason these people do this is because it gets them off the hook for the same reason the corporations do it.

00:45:42.600 Now the left is fine with all of them being wealthy.

00:45:45.020 It's the reason why the left doesn't care why their athletes are wealthy.

00:45:47.340 They only care why the business people are wealthy because business people might actually live their principles, but athletes signal their principles and then live like the business people.

00:45:53.720 Did anybody go with AOC, though, on this?

00:45:56.000 Did anybody like this AOC?

00:45:58.660 Yeah, the left did.

00:45:59.400 Rolling Stone called it iconic.

00:46:01.000 Did they really?

00:46:01.760 Yeah, they did.

00:46:02.160 Absolutely.

00:46:02.520 Well, it is iconic.

00:46:05.020 Honestly, this goes all the way back to, I'm sure that some of us have read Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic.

00:46:10.460 This is all just Radical Chic.

00:46:11.820 The single greatest political essay ever written.

00:46:13.980 If you haven't read it, you should go read it.

00:46:15.240 It's an essay about Leonard Bernstein holding a dinner party.

00:46:18.120 That whole book is great.

00:46:19.340 Unbelievable.

00:46:20.340 And the whole, this chapter of the book, which was originally a cover piece in New York Magazine before New York Magazine was complete trash.

00:46:26.380 And the entire article is about Leonard Bernstein, the famous conductor, hosting the Black Panthers in his penthouse apartment with all of these white celebrities.

00:46:34.400 And all these white celebrities are fawning over these exotic revolutionaries.

00:46:38.400 And the exotic revolutionaries are saying directly to them, yeah, you know, when the time comes, we're going to kill you.

00:46:42.020 And all of these people are clapping for them and cheering for them.

00:46:46.200 And the thing is that in this particular analogy, AOC is not the Black Panthers.

00:46:50.480 She's Leonard Bernstein putting on the cap.

00:46:52.640 Right.

00:46:53.000 She's not even Black Panthers.

00:46:54.020 Right.

00:46:54.260 That's a great point.

00:46:54.920 The scene is in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, this exact scene where she hosts, there's a woman, a rich woman who hosts all the radicals in town who are actually blowing people up and killing children and all this stuff.

00:47:04.580 But she's hosting them and they keep saying to her, you know, you're next.

00:47:07.680 And she goes, yes, I know.

00:47:08.760 It's wonderful.

00:47:10.620 So this week, I'm a young man, 42.

00:47:17.020 And yet I had to subject myself to the humiliations of an older man of 45 and get a colonoscopy.

00:47:22.660 Oh, my God.

00:47:23.400 Welcome to the club, pal.

00:47:25.680 It was not great.

00:47:26.780 Yeah.

00:47:27.280 It was not great would be the official way to report it.

00:47:30.280 Oh, you don't know what fun is.

00:47:32.400 Literally the only time in Jeremy's life he has not been full of shit.

00:47:37.180 You're not.

00:47:37.840 They clean you up.

00:47:39.680 But all I did yesterday was sleep.

00:47:42.660 And as you spend an entire day sleeping, you think, man, I love my mattress.

00:47:48.220 I hate that.

00:47:49.140 That was the worst phrase.

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00:47:51.080 That was really bad.

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00:49:20.280 You know what they teach you in podcaster school?

00:49:21.860 They always say there is nothing advertisers like to be associated with more than colonoscopies.

00:49:27.100 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:27.740 Well, they always say like at the top of the ad.

00:49:29.320 So which advertiser gets the prostate exam?

00:49:32.960 I always say at the top of the ad, like, riff on your personal sleep experience.

00:49:36.840 But I did sleep all day yesterday.

00:49:39.700 You know what?

00:49:40.360 One of the things that was so amazing with MacGal is to see all of these people who truly are both brave and stunning and also victims.

00:49:47.600 Yeah.

00:49:47.740 Right?

00:49:47.860 They're all victims.

00:49:48.480 Like, every single one of them is wearing, like, AOC is a victim.

00:49:51.800 Right?

00:49:51.920 She said this in her own statement.

00:49:53.080 She said people are constantly policing intersectional bodies and like.

00:49:56.980 Oh, yeah.

00:49:57.360 Oh, yeah.

00:49:57.840 So much.

00:49:58.480 I mean, it was Jonathan Swift.

00:49:59.860 Oh, yeah.

00:50:00.260 Jonathan Swift couldn't write this stuff.

00:50:01.520 It's an incredible parody.

00:50:03.260 And then you have.

00:50:04.000 By the way, not a week goes by that she doesn't come up with some victim group.

00:50:07.040 To superimpose herself.

00:50:08.800 My favorite is when they come up with victim groups that make no sense.

00:50:10.800 My favorite recent one was when Cori Bush recently tweeted out that the Texas abortion law had a disproportionate effect on black women, brown women, and queer women.

00:50:18.560 And I thought to myself, well, I hadn't heard that one before.

00:50:22.560 You're going to have to explain the biology of how queer women are particularly affected by abortion law.

00:50:27.800 That doesn't make so much sense to me.

00:50:30.100 But beyond that, the victim complex was with all.

00:50:35.520 You have Megan Rapinoe, who is celebrated for playing a sport that people watch once every four years because it is mandatory under the Constitution of the United States for us to care about women's soccer once every four years.

00:50:45.500 I miss that, I guess.

00:50:46.520 Well, that's because you're a traitor.

00:50:48.600 Your execution order will come through tomorrow.

00:50:50.840 And then complain about a contract that she herself signed to be paid inordinate amounts of money to play a sport that no one cares about.

00:50:56.920 Yeah.

00:50:57.020 And she goes to this thing with a little clutch that says, in gay we trust.

00:51:02.640 Because she's a victim, right?

00:51:05.040 Because she's a lesbian, she is a victim.

00:51:07.600 But also a hero.

00:51:08.640 But also a hero and a hero.

00:51:11.800 And so victimized but heroic.

00:51:13.460 It's like Normandy.

00:51:14.520 But if the heroes were also victims, who were heroes?

00:51:17.420 That's what it's mostly like.

00:51:18.980 Let's not forget, speaking of sports heroes, Naomi Osaka.

00:51:22.980 Wow.

00:51:23.340 Yes.

00:51:24.300 Stunning bravery.

00:51:24.900 Yeah, who's too much anxiety to answer questions from the media showed up with a very outlandish outfit drawing attention to herself as well.

00:51:33.720 And my favorite thing, though, that AOC said was she was talking about her fashion designer and trying to put the fashion designer in a victim group.

00:51:41.780 And she said something like this is a black immigrant fashion designer.

00:51:45.420 It's like, yeah, but she's from Ontario.

00:51:47.400 So, you know, it's technically an immigrant.

00:51:50.520 So, like, that lady is in charge of a massive fashion line that sells, I read the prices on her website today.

00:51:56.240 She sells shoes that are like $1,000 shoes.

00:51:58.500 She ain't selling, like, payless for the people.

00:52:01.080 At every turn, you must be a victim.

00:52:03.640 You can't, right.

00:52:04.180 She couldn't say, my fashion designer, truly one of the greatest fashion designers in the world today.

00:52:11.160 Because that compliment bestows no virtue.

00:52:14.500 Correct.

00:52:14.880 Instead, you have to say, my fashion designer, an immigrant.

00:52:17.560 My fashion designer, a person of color.

00:52:19.720 My fashion designer, a survivor of childhood abuse.

00:52:23.140 Whatever it is, that's your way of saying a good person.

00:52:26.820 Right, exactly.

00:52:27.420 And it's every single person who was there.

00:52:29.060 So, it's Cara Delevingne wearing a bib that also looked like a straitjacket that said, peg the patriarchy.

00:52:33.720 Yeah.

00:52:33.920 And you're like, you seem to have benefited pretty wildly from the patriarchy.

00:52:38.400 And by the way, if you believe that America is a patriarchy, let me just say that if we airdropped you into a true patriarchy right now.

00:52:44.200 Really?

00:52:44.380 Let's say Afghanistan wearing that outfit.

00:52:45.740 Where one is around, yeah.

00:52:46.740 Then you would last approximately .2 seconds.

00:52:49.700 And if America were a patriarchy, you wouldn't get away with that slogan.

00:52:53.360 And if the rich weren't being taxed, you wouldn't get away with that slogan.

00:52:55.920 This is exactly right.

00:52:56.820 It's everything.

00:52:57.640 I mean, it's Lil Nas X showing up wearing variously ball gowns that he stole from Billy Porter.

00:53:03.000 Or a gold suit of armor that, I mean, honestly, like still less gay than C-3PO.

00:53:09.960 But it's inarguable.

00:53:11.400 I want to stand up for Lil Nas X, though.

00:53:13.740 He admits it.

00:53:15.160 He admits it.

00:53:15.840 He comes out and he says, I'm doing this just to make the right angry because I love it when they yell at me and it makes me.

00:53:20.260 You know, I thought like, okay.

00:53:22.800 It's a living, you know.

00:53:23.880 Speaking of him, I mean, we've already forgotten.

00:53:25.620 Because this was a big week for Hollywood Degenerates because just the day before that was the VMAs.

00:53:33.240 Yeah.

00:53:33.760 And there was something.

00:53:34.560 And like nobody cares about the VMAs.

00:53:35.660 Nobody even knows the VMAs happened.

00:53:37.320 I don't even know what the V stands for.

00:53:39.020 Yeah, I don't either.

00:53:40.620 But it's, you know, one of the saddest things I think I've ever seen, which I just saw on Twitter.

00:53:47.460 Because, of course, like everyone else, I didn't watch it.

00:53:49.980 But Madonna comes out in like a, you know, in an age appropriate coat at first.

00:53:56.900 And then.

00:53:57.540 Grand Madonna.

00:53:58.260 Right.

00:53:58.640 She's three years old.

00:53:59.700 And then she strips it off.

00:54:02.320 And she has this, this.

00:54:04.500 Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS.

00:54:06.060 Right.

00:54:06.480 Yeah.

00:54:06.600 Yeah.

00:54:07.220 This weird dominatrix outfit.

00:54:09.700 It's the kind of thing that when you see that, you know, that it's like time to put Nana in a home.

00:54:13.260 But it really was, it's just sad.

00:54:17.420 In a way, it's just sad to see.

00:54:19.520 And you see how kind of.

00:54:21.580 By the way, we're being told that is the height of liberty.

00:54:25.180 That if a 63-year-old woman can dress up like a prostitute and sort of jiggle around, that is the height of liberty.

00:54:31.880 Like a Nazi prostitute.

00:54:32.800 Like a Nazi prostitute.

00:54:34.180 And you just think maybe there were some other life choices that may have involved a little more patriarchy or may have involved a little more, you know, reining things in.

00:54:43.420 Where you would be happier.

00:54:44.500 I'll never forget.

00:54:45.160 Lucille Ball did an interview in the 1970s or something.

00:54:49.060 And they said, oh, Lucille, you're a prominent woman, a powerful woman.

00:54:52.920 Are you in favor of women's liberation?

00:54:55.780 She said, you know, I think I'm liberated enough already.

00:54:59.060 I think I've got a lot of money.

00:55:00.200 I'm very powerful.

00:55:01.060 I kind of, I want a more stable life.

00:55:03.960 She had a cigar in her hand at the time.

00:55:05.640 She certainly did, yeah.

00:55:07.180 Daily Wire members, the chat box is open and we're about to start taking questions from you.

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00:55:25.940 And here is our first question from one of our Daily Wire subscribers.

00:55:29.660 How dirty is the right allowed to play before we lose the morality stance?

00:55:34.180 How what?

00:55:34.540 How dirty can we play?

00:55:36.240 I think what they're saying is before we lose our moral position.

00:55:40.580 Look, I'm a big advocate of wielding government power in a just and moral way.

00:55:46.220 So I think probably more so than a lot of people on the right.

00:55:48.420 I think one of the big mistakes we've made is that we have not wielded the power, even

00:55:52.520 the power that the people have given us on the happy occasions that we win elections.

00:55:55.680 I don't think there's anything wrong with wielding government power.

00:55:58.980 I don't think you need to be immoral to do that.

00:56:01.340 I don't think we need to do the stuff that the left does.

00:56:03.040 But I think if the people vote for us, if we have the ability, if we control the Congress

00:56:07.880 or the Senate or the presidency, if we have people on the court, we ought to use that in

00:56:11.640 a way that is right and just and oriented toward virtue and also in keeping with the

00:56:16.800 American political tradition.

00:56:18.260 And I just think we've I think a lot of the reason Republican politicians have not done

00:56:22.100 that, they've talked a good game about how it's immoral to use government power.

00:56:25.560 I think largely it's because they're cowards.

00:56:27.300 And to the points we've all been making tonight, they don't want the accountability of

00:56:30.780 actually making decisions.

00:56:32.120 So I will say I think there is a pretty major distinction to be made here in terms of wielding

00:56:36.120 power and using tactics between defensive tactics and offensive tactics.

00:56:40.500 What I mean is that when you're talking about, for example, this is true in pretty much every

00:56:44.100 area of law.

00:56:44.700 So, for example, if I were to walk up to somebody and just kill them, I'm now a murderer.

00:56:48.120 If that person is trying to kill me and I kill them, that's now self-defense and nothing

00:56:51.000 happens to me.

00:56:52.000 Right.

00:56:52.180 I may be performing the exact same act, namely taking the life of another person, but the circumstance

00:56:55.920 determines the morality of the actual activity.

00:56:58.240 The same thing is true with regard to the use of government power from time to time.

00:57:01.980 If you're using government power, for example, to get rid of government power, right?

00:57:06.140 There's an edifice that's been built up and now you need to tear down the edifice.

00:57:09.540 That is a different thing than using the same level of government power in order to impose.

00:57:14.140 The same thing might be true with regard to, for example, boycotts, right?

00:57:16.620 We've had this discussion before.

00:57:18.000 On a pure, nobody's boycotting anybody level, I think it's probably immoral to boycott people

00:57:23.240 based on the political views of the people who own the company alone, right?

00:57:26.340 Not how the company acts, just based on the political views of the people who own the company.

00:57:29.060 I think it's bad, okay?

00:57:30.220 However, if we now live in a world in which the left is doing this to all companies and

00:57:34.580 therefore forcing all companies to the left, you have a moral obligation to defend yourself

00:57:39.080 by using a similar tactic and creating mutually assured destruction.

00:57:42.740 What's wrong with imposing?

00:57:44.260 I would go further, yeah.

00:57:45.280 I would impose.

00:57:46.240 I mean, I just think-

00:57:47.220 Is the assumption that it's wrong for the government to impose?

00:57:50.100 Because I'm not sure I would agree with the-

00:57:51.300 Well, it depends on the level of imposition that we're talking about specifically.

00:57:54.840 Here's an example.

00:57:55.280 Isn't every law an imposition?

00:57:56.680 I mean, even every prohibition is also a mandate, right?

00:58:00.520 I mean, if you're prohibited from driving over 65, you're mandated to drive 65 or under.

00:58:06.160 Let me give an example.

00:58:07.240 Let me give an example to maybe clarify it, which is this.

00:58:09.980 I don't think the Founding Fathers would have considered a drag queen story hour to be a

00:58:14.420 constitutional right for anybody.

00:58:16.040 I think it's perfectly right and just and preferable to ban a drag queen story hour.

00:58:20.800 Maybe you do it at the local level.

00:58:22.080 Maybe you enforce obscenity laws.

00:58:23.820 To ban drag queen story hour from what?

00:58:26.000 From the libraries, from the schools, from these sorts of places where it exists.

00:58:31.160 From places paid for with public dollars?

00:58:33.140 Or private dollars, for that matter.

00:58:34.500 I think we can have-

00:58:34.880 Would you ban drag queen story hour in my private home?

00:58:38.140 Yes.

00:58:38.540 Yes, probably I would, yeah.

00:58:39.980 Yeah.

00:58:40.240 I would not.

00:58:41.580 But I do believe that that is an-

00:58:44.860 Yes, the school-

00:58:46.400 Well, schools are different for two reasons.

00:58:48.060 One, because to the extent that you're targeting children at all, children don't have the same

00:58:53.260 rights as adults, and we have a responsibility as adults to-

00:58:57.960 But drag queen story hour always targets children.

00:58:59.940 To the extent that drag queen story hour is specifically referring to something involving

00:59:03.040 children, then yes, I agree that it could be-

00:59:05.240 There you go.

00:59:05.460 That it could be prohibited-

00:59:06.040 But take one that doesn't involve kids, because kids, you're now talking about a subgroup

00:59:09.720 of people who literally, you know, have to have-

00:59:12.060 Would you outlaw a drag show at my private home for adults?

00:59:16.020 Well, I attend your drag show, so I obviously-

00:59:18.640 No, but-

00:59:19.240 You're the star attraction.

00:59:20.880 Yeah, but let's take it even, I mean, the debate that this usually hinges on, and I think

00:59:24.360 it does clarify the point, is pornography.

00:59:26.680 Do we say that we can never impose our views of pornography on anybody, or do we, in what

00:59:32.300 I think is the American political tradition, say, you know, there's no right to obscene material,

00:59:36.380 and we should really reign this out.

00:59:37.780 But I think, we're on the same page of, I believe, outlaw all pornography.

00:59:42.900 But even, but with that, you can also hinge that argument.

00:59:46.780 You don't have to do this, but I think maybe the most effective argument is that can be

00:59:50.420 entirely hinged on children also.

00:59:52.080 I mean, you can make the argument for banning all pornography, all internet pornography, which

00:59:56.620 is the only kind of pornography we're talking about, because children exist, and because

01:00:01.080 they have access to the internet, and so by putting it on the internet, you are putting

01:00:06.040 it potentially-

01:00:06.940 I don't agree with the two of you about pornography.

01:00:09.240 I don't agree that you can say the fact that kids exist means that a thing that isn't right

01:00:14.940 for kids shouldn't exist.

01:00:16.560 An example would be cigars.

01:00:17.920 You could say the existence of cigars in the world, it does necessarily follow that some

01:00:25.700 kids will have access to tobacco.

01:00:27.300 That's why I say internet.

01:00:27.820 Are you just talking about because I started smoking cigars as a kid?

01:00:30.660 Is that what you-

01:00:31.080 It's because of the internet.

01:00:32.940 Like, the cigars can't exist on the internet.

01:00:34.320 I mean, you could buy them on the internet, but you can't smoke them on the internet.

01:00:36.640 So because of the unique medium, which the internet is, there's just no way, as long

01:00:43.420 as you put that stuff out there on the internet, any child can access it just by hitting a button

01:00:48.440 on a computer.

01:00:49.040 Yeah, I think we would all agree that something should be done to make porn far less accessible

01:00:53.840 to children, but that is different than saying I would outlaw all porn.

01:00:57.160 But then to broaden it out, though, to the point we are suggesting using the government

01:01:01.340 to impose-

01:01:02.680 But again, we're still using examples that are centered around children, and children

01:01:08.540 aren't imbued with the exact same rights that adults possess.

01:01:13.580 What about banning pot?

01:01:15.460 Banning marijuana?

01:01:16.260 I mean, it still is technically illegal.

01:01:18.540 Marijuana's been illegal my entire life for all the good it's done.

01:01:21.440 I think that that's a pretty-

01:01:22.760 No, I don't know.

01:01:23.480 I think-

01:01:23.880 Uneffective law.

01:01:24.720 I think more people use it when it's legal.

01:01:27.060 I don't think that the same number of people use it when it's illegal as use it would.

01:01:30.720 So I think that there's also questions of prudence that then arise in terms of at what

01:01:34.780 level you are going to do these, quote-unquote, moral things.

01:01:37.640 Yeah.

01:01:37.940 Right?

01:01:38.100 So I think that one of the big problems here is that we fail to get specific enough when

01:01:41.980 we talk about which body ought to do this.

01:01:43.740 So I have far less problem with, quote-unquote, legislating morality when you're talking about a local

01:01:47.680 level with a much more homogenous population than I do when you're talking about nationally,

01:01:51.140 for the specific reason that if you want to share a polity with people with whom you're

01:01:53.880 a heterogeneous, then you are going to have to acknowledge that there are differences in

01:01:57.360 perception on issues like, for example, marijuana or even pornography, which is consensual activity

01:02:02.220 between adults.

01:02:02.760 Most of the ones where I think that the federal government ought to get involved in general

01:02:05.260 bans do involve children, which is why I think abortion is a federal issue, right?

01:02:08.480 You're talking about literally the removal of life from other human beings, which is why

01:02:11.820 it's not a state issue.

01:02:12.920 But when you're talking about, do you want to, this is, I think, it isn't a question

01:02:18.760 as to whether, and maybe that we don't, whether we want to share a country with New York.

01:02:24.360 Yeah.

01:02:24.700 Really.

01:02:25.000 I mean, this is a serious question because New York obviously doesn't want to share a

01:02:27.600 country with us.

01:02:28.220 So if you have a federal government that, for example, is saying that there's now a federal

01:02:32.240 standard, this is what Joe Biden has now said, right?

01:02:33.880 There's a federal standard that you must allow abortion in your states.

01:02:37.100 Yeah.

01:02:37.520 What he's effectively saying is that New York should govern Texas.

01:02:39.380 But don't you, but, and if Texas says, okay, well, you know what, the same way you feel

01:02:43.260 about abortion, that is the way that we feel about pornography.

01:02:45.860 And so we're going to do this.

01:02:47.500 Eventually what you're going to get is just the country splitting.

01:02:49.640 What you're not going to get is everybody living by your standard because in the end.

01:02:54.300 This is, this is the right, I think this is the right answer.

01:02:57.440 The fact is that local government has a lot of power of states, has a lot of power that

01:03:04.720 the federal government should not have.

01:03:06.520 And there is no reason, there really is no reason why New York can't govern itself as

01:03:11.380 it wishes to govern itself.

01:03:12.460 The problem is continually, and this is true continually, is that California wants Texas

01:03:17.160 to be California.

01:03:18.060 Right.

01:03:18.380 But Texas doesn't want California to be Texas.

01:03:20.460 Correct.

01:03:20.820 And I think this is where we have to make our stand.

01:03:24.120 I mean, we have to make the stand that Texas has the right to be Texas.

01:03:27.800 Because, you know, I think on abortion, this is a different issue because as you say, it's

01:03:31.980 a question of killing people.

01:03:33.080 But states make their own murder laws.

01:03:34.100 I mean, what's that?

01:03:34.900 No, murder laws are statewide.

01:03:36.440 Yeah.

01:03:36.740 So then wouldn't it?

01:03:37.400 Well, but, but there is no, no state would have the right to decriminalize murder.

01:03:42.720 Well, yeah, we haven't tried it, I guess.

01:03:44.260 No one's.

01:03:44.940 No, no.

01:03:45.420 And murder is also the right.

01:03:47.080 But it makes, but it is.

01:03:48.060 You're violating your federal civil rights.

01:03:49.060 You'd have a, you'd have a federal case against the state government if they decriminalize

01:03:51.420 murder.

01:03:51.460 Because you have a right to.

01:03:51.960 I think pornography is just, we really have to grapple with what, with what pornography is.

01:03:55.900 I mean, first of all, when it comes to splitting the country apart, I actually think

01:03:58.180 that, that ultimately that, that is what's going to happen.

01:04:00.600 Maybe, maybe there's something to be said for it.

01:04:01.300 That may very well be, but the question is, do we want to have a, I don't, I don't favor

01:04:04.460 it.

01:04:04.480 But pornography is such an insidious and, and, and damaging thing, which is, which is helping

01:04:09.480 to destroy our country and the next generation of children in such a particular and, uh,

01:04:14.320 and devastating way that I think it does call, it will never happen.

01:04:17.860 There's never going to be a federal ban on pornography, but I think it could be justified.

01:04:20.780 Also because, because the idea that anybody has a right to have, to have sex recorded and

01:04:27.680 then upload it to the internet for everyone to see, uh, I just don't, I don't, I don't

01:04:31.860 believe that that right exists.

01:04:33.020 Why are we afraid to give states different cultures?

01:04:36.160 I mean, uh, you know, Arkansas is not the same place as California.

01:04:39.320 Why can't they be different?

01:04:40.220 I don't understand this.

01:04:41.320 I do not understand the compulsion and it, it does exist on the right, but it really is

01:04:45.740 prevalent on the left.

01:04:46.680 I don't understand the compulsion to make other, you know, this country is so huge.

01:04:51.280 I lived in Europe for seven years.

01:04:52.680 I lived in England for seven years.

01:04:53.640 I couldn't explain to people that England is the size of Oregon, you know, and you can

01:04:58.300 do different things in, or in a country, the size of Oregon than you can in a country that

01:05:02.320 includes both Oregon and Florida.

01:05:04.400 So I agree with your point.

01:05:05.520 And I do think that states have different cultures and they ought to have different cultures.

01:05:09.100 But one of the reasons here, why, why California wants Texas to be like California and why I

01:05:14.140 understand that is in order for there to be a nation, we need to have something that kind

01:05:19.620 of links us together.

01:05:20.580 We don't come from the same stock.

01:05:22.200 We don't have the same religion, which, and both, those things were not true at the founding

01:05:26.600 era, or they were much, you know, they were truer at the founding era, I suppose.

01:05:30.580 We increasingly don't speak the same language even.

01:05:33.140 I'm not talking about Spanish.

01:05:34.000 I'm talking about English.

01:05:34.780 We can't even speak the same English language.

01:05:36.480 And so in order to have, we don't even have borders.

01:05:39.120 So if you don't have anything in common, then you can't have a republic, right?

01:05:42.860 A republic refers to the things we hold in common.

01:05:44.560 I agree with that.

01:05:45.060 But one of the principles that we used to have in common was a sort of leave each other alone

01:05:48.700 principle, right?

01:05:49.480 So that's why I think that, you know, I go back to the defensive point, which is that

01:05:53.400 if California wishes to legislate California on everybody else, I can see where the drive

01:05:56.820 comes from to say, OK, well, let's legislate Texas on everybody else.

01:06:00.280 And this is why it's a little bit of sophistry, I think, to say all laws regulate morality.

01:06:06.400 Sure, that's true.

01:06:07.680 By definition, it's true.

01:06:08.560 That's true as far as it goes.

01:06:10.200 But there is a fun, but it's obscuring another truth, which is there is a fundamental difference

01:06:14.980 between laws that preserve liberty and laws that encroach on liberty.

01:06:18.800 But is that not a moral, those are, those, that itself is making a moral claim that it

01:06:22.680 is good to, right?

01:06:23.580 I mean, that's the sophistry though.

01:06:24.940 No, I think it's just a true statement.

01:06:26.400 It's not that you're, it's not that you're wrong, but you're still obscuring the fact.

01:06:29.520 It's like saying, well, if we have power, we should use the power to make whatever we want

01:06:33.040 happen.

01:06:33.600 And if they have power, they should use power to make whatever they want.

01:06:35.580 No, no, no, but that's what I'm saying.

01:06:36.200 And I'm saying we should use power to constrain the power.

01:06:39.240 But I am not saying that.

01:06:40.120 I am saying when we have power, we should use that power to pursue good and avoid evil.

01:06:44.680 And what you're saying is when we have power, we should use that power to pursue good and

01:06:47.800 avoid evil, which you're defining as maintaining individual liberty.

01:06:51.040 No, but if we never make this argument, this was one of my big problems with Trump.

01:06:54.340 It's essentially the way he behaved during the COVID thing.

01:06:58.440 Forget about the stuff that, the garbage that came out of his mouth.

01:07:01.500 But one of the things that he did was he let each state basically make their own rules.

01:07:06.900 Now, how can that not be right in a state with the population density of South Dakota versus

01:07:11.460 a state with a population density in Manhattan of New York City?

01:07:16.120 Of course, they should make different rules.

01:07:17.760 Of course, they should make different rules.

01:07:18.520 Is it part of the problem?

01:07:20.260 But he never said it.

01:07:21.420 Yeah, yeah.

01:07:21.800 He didn't make that fight.

01:07:23.060 Right.

01:07:23.400 Part of the problem, I mean, I don't mean to make this even more obscure and broad, but one

01:07:29.280 of the reasons why these conversations never go anywhere, we talk about, well, the government

01:07:32.000 is supposed to preserve liberty or preserve rights.

01:07:33.500 Everyone has to find our terms.

01:07:34.740 No one even knows.

01:07:35.640 What the hell is a right in the first place?

01:07:37.640 And what is liberty?

01:07:38.420 And how do you distinguish it?

01:07:39.300 Like, what liberty should you have?

01:07:40.200 That's a really good point.

01:07:41.100 Where does any of this stuff come from?

01:07:42.880 How do we know that we have any of it?

01:07:44.540 Who decided any of this?

01:07:45.440 I'm not saying that, you know, that they don't exist or that rights are purely a, you know,

01:07:49.560 a human fabrication or construct.

01:07:51.880 I think you actually, you can kind of make that argument.

01:07:53.480 And it's not a totally crazy argument, but that's part of the problem.

01:07:56.880 We talk about what we don't have in common.

01:07:59.160 We might have once said that we all had in common this belief in human rights.

01:08:03.240 Well, now you get 100 people in a room and you ask them, well, define a human right,

01:08:06.960 you're going to get 99 different answers.

01:08:08.100 Right.

01:08:08.220 But I think, so I think the discussion can be made a lot more specific by asking, do you

01:08:13.480 ever have a right to be sinful?

01:08:15.800 Right.

01:08:16.140 Is there ever a right to be sinful?

01:08:17.540 No.

01:08:17.700 Okay, so I think that the answer is that, the answer is yes, actually.

01:08:23.540 Yeah, yeah.

01:08:23.940 I think the answer is yes.

01:08:25.020 So how would you define it?

01:08:25.840 Lord, act it.

01:08:26.360 The reason, no, the reason I, and the reason that I say that is because the minute you say

01:08:30.560 you do not have the right to be sinful, I know, but the reason that I say that you do

01:08:33.620 have the right to be sinful is specifically because of the definition of the problem that

01:08:36.740 you now have with regard to sin.

01:08:38.960 What I mean by this is this was the Treaty of Westphalia, essentially.

01:08:42.220 Right?

01:08:42.380 Because if you, I mean, not to steal Clavin's thunder by citing the Treaty of Westphalia.

01:08:47.060 Eventually we always end up, it's like, it's like the internet argument, whoever invokes

01:08:51.340 Hillary first on this show.

01:08:54.360 I was there.

01:08:55.520 I think there is a reason why this conversation is breaking down along Catholic versus non-Catholic

01:09:00.340 lines, really, because the basic idea that human reason allows for the possibility of

01:09:06.980 you have to be able to find virtue, but that does require you to have to explore in order

01:09:11.720 to get to virtue.

01:09:12.240 And not only that, but you have to also accept the possibility that your definition of virtue

01:09:18.480 may differ pretty significantly from that of, say, the Protestants or the Jews who are

01:09:22.480 living under the auspices of a Catholic country.

01:09:24.700 The basic agreement of Westphalia was at a certain point you have to leave each other

01:09:27.840 alone.

01:09:28.400 And so the question is...

01:09:29.320 Definitionally, virtue has to be chosen.

01:09:30.340 But the other problem with virtue is that virtue is a habit.

01:09:32.600 And so while we say culture influences politics, but politics influences culture.

01:09:37.220 Statecraft is soulcraft, you might say.

01:09:39.100 So it is certainly...

01:09:40.940 I mean, this is like Plato would say the very same thing.

01:09:43.460 But Plato was a fashion.

01:09:44.780 He might take it a little far.

01:09:46.300 But I think statesmen throughout all of history, including the Founding Fathers, when they say

01:09:50.460 that, for instance, liberty is not the same thing as licentiousness.

01:09:53.280 What they are saying is a different version of it.

01:09:55.240 But the reason the Founders demanded that the people have religion is because they understood

01:10:01.360 that without religion, the government will be...

01:10:03.020 But they also had established churches in the state.

01:10:05.100 So can I ask, I'm interested in what your answer is.

01:10:08.380 What is a right, would you say?

01:10:09.560 How would you define it?

01:10:10.240 So what I would say is that a right...

01:10:13.240 I mean, going all the way back to the Aristotelian sort of definition of natural law, it derives

01:10:20.060 historically from natural law.

01:10:21.540 So the idea being that you can derive from the universe that there are certain laws that

01:10:24.740 apply to humanity and there is a set and fundamental human nature and interaction with the world

01:10:29.380 generates laws that you are best off living by.

01:10:31.660 Okay, the converse of that is that you have to have the right to use your mind to investigate

01:10:35.540 the natural law because nobody has yet been able to peg down exactly every specific of

01:10:39.080 what natural law constitutes, right?

01:10:40.440 This is a point made by Grotius, who's really the first person who starts talking about natural

01:10:43.780 right.

01:10:44.700 So the fundamental right to use your mind to investigate the world requires things like freedom

01:10:50.360 of speech.

01:10:50.800 The fundamental right that you have to property is predicated upon a natural law notion that

01:10:56.520 human nature is acquisitive.

01:10:57.940 And therefore, once I acquire something, you do not have the ability to encroach upon me

01:11:02.100 and steal it, right?

01:11:03.400 So life, liberty, and property are, to me, the basic natural rights.

01:11:07.500 Now, that does include the possibility that as we create polity, we now have to use pragmatic

01:11:14.620 means to determine what the polity is going to look like, which is why I think that you can encroach

01:11:18.680 more on, you know, on trying to restrict law to virtue on the local level than you can on a

01:11:25.300 broad level, right?

01:11:25.900 At a certain point, morality and ideal morality are going to have to conflict with how you

01:11:31.900 actually govern.

01:11:33.460 And so this is actually almost two separate conversations.

01:11:35.600 In the ideal state, should we have a monarch who is perfect and also instills virtue?

01:11:39.200 Or how do we actually set up a system of governance?

01:11:41.240 What the founders came up with, and I still think it's the best system, is a system whereby

01:11:44.780 these rights, life, liberty, and property, are left to two dual things.

01:11:49.580 We only think about government whenever we have these conversations.

01:11:51.700 But they are really left to two dual and necessary means.

01:11:55.660 One is a government that is large enough to stop the negative violation of your rights,

01:12:00.380 but not large enough in many of its essences in order to promote virtue.

01:12:04.900 And a social strategy, a social body that promotes virtue.

01:12:09.860 But this is what Tocqueville talks about.

01:12:11.300 Can I add one thing to this, though?

01:12:12.940 It's the right, rights involve doing what you want with what is yours.

01:12:18.400 And this is to Jeremy's point, that if he wants to have drag queen story hour, leaving

01:12:23.340 children out of it in his home, that's his right, because it's his home.

01:12:27.040 But the statesman in America of the town.

01:12:29.300 The kids going to.

01:12:30.600 No, no, no, no.

01:12:31.580 We're leaving the kids out.

01:12:32.600 This is for the, this is just for us.

01:12:33.940 Drag hour, not drag queen story.

01:12:35.860 Just for us.

01:12:36.520 All right.

01:12:37.820 Guys dressed up as women.

01:12:39.020 They're telling the stories just to him.

01:12:40.240 Okay.

01:12:40.700 The statesman of the founding era, it seems to me, I think we are misrepresenting here.

01:12:45.620 I don't think that they believed that you had a natural right to sin given to us by

01:12:49.300 the Treaty of Westphalia.

01:12:51.040 It seems to me they had laws.

01:12:53.080 No, I don't agree with this.

01:12:54.360 Hold on.

01:12:54.880 They were Protestant.

01:12:55.620 They were Protestant.

01:12:56.220 They were.

01:12:56.560 And a core component of Protestantism is a belief that Christ set us free from the law.

01:13:01.400 Then why did that?

01:13:02.140 That freedom, that freedom particularly means.

01:13:04.680 Sure.

01:13:05.340 Freedom to fail.

01:13:06.300 But then why did they outlaw obscenity?

01:13:08.440 Why did they outlaw adultery?

01:13:09.580 Because they lived in a different time.

01:13:11.320 But they outlawed all these things that were saying we all have a natural right.

01:13:13.900 Michael, Michael, Michael, hold on.

01:13:15.180 They didn't, but they didn't at the federal level.

01:13:16.820 Not at the federal level, but they did it everywhere else.

01:13:18.700 But this goes to my point.

01:13:20.120 Oh, sure.

01:13:20.680 If you're talking about homogenous communities where people generally agree, then you have

01:13:25.060 the right to make your own community.

01:13:26.000 One of the rights is to have, like, this goes to your point more.

01:13:29.320 Yes.

01:13:29.660 One of the rights of a community is to form a polity.

01:13:32.480 Yes.

01:13:32.780 Right?

01:13:32.920 You do have a right to form an HOA, for example.

01:13:34.680 Yes.

01:13:34.960 And essentially, a local government is an HOA.

01:13:36.900 Yeah.

01:13:37.180 And you have the right to decide that.

01:13:38.140 And as long as people also have the right to leave that HOA and go somewhere else, right,

01:13:41.820 you do not have the right to restrict that somebody has to stay in the area, right?

01:13:44.580 No Berlin Walls.

01:13:45.300 Yeah, yeah.

01:13:45.540 Right?

01:13:45.720 So you do have the right to set up a moral system.

01:13:48.860 And America is the history of people leaving town.

01:13:50.960 Rowdier and rowdier Protestants leaving town.

01:13:52.660 Yeah.

01:13:53.260 I mean, this is how we end up with 13 states, right?

01:13:56.060 Yeah, yeah.

01:13:56.460 I mean, you literally have people who say, we don't want you here because of your religion.

01:13:59.740 And then they just go and they found Delaware, right?

01:14:02.360 And so, and thank you for that, Joe Biden.

01:14:04.660 Anyway, so, but I think that the generalized point, which is that we should use as much power

01:14:11.620 as possible on the federal level, which is really what we're talking about.

01:14:13.920 When we talk about the common good conservative versus the libertarian conservative argument,

01:14:16.700 which is really what we're kind of boiling this down to.

01:14:18.560 Yeah.

01:14:19.020 We're never talking about this at the state level nearly as much as we are at the federal level.

01:14:22.020 I'm not sure.

01:14:22.560 I mean, because in my local community, if you ban porn in my local community, I really

01:14:26.720 don't have a problem with it.

01:14:27.660 Yeah.

01:14:27.820 I really don't.

01:14:28.420 The problem.

01:14:28.800 In fact, I argue specifically for it in my second book.

01:14:30.740 But then to Matt's point, the problem with the internet is some, some, because of technological

01:14:34.520 development, some of these things happen.

01:14:35.840 I agree.

01:14:36.240 By the way, I even think that when with regard to pornography, there's a fairly good argument

01:14:39.400 to be made that it's more like drugs than it is like anything else.

01:14:41.600 Yeah.

01:14:41.800 Because it does have the effect of drugs on the human psyche.

01:14:44.300 Well, this is, but it's worse because of, it's worse because of how accessible it is.

01:14:47.620 I tend to agree with you.

01:14:48.580 To everyone.

01:14:49.240 Well, I don't think any of us disagree that it should be less accessible.

01:14:51.320 And this is one of, you know, Blake Masters from the Teal Foundation wrote this terrific

01:14:55.220 piece in the Wall Street Journal this week, where he basically said, one of the things

01:14:58.220 we have to deal with is they are using our brains as drug dispensers.

01:15:04.020 Yeah.

01:15:04.140 And I think that that's a really interesting question, especially for all these people

01:15:07.540 who don't believe in God, who are materialists, then essentially they're drug dealers.

01:15:11.400 I guess when it comes to politics, I guess what I'm arguing for is when we think about

01:15:15.180 what does the moral polity look like?

01:15:16.800 We should stop thinking top down.

01:15:18.440 We should start thinking bottom up.

01:15:19.620 I agree.

01:15:19.900 Meaning what does the moral polity look like in your family and then in your local community?

01:15:24.160 And then are you willing to have a local community that is a common polity with a bunch of other

01:15:27.920 local communities that may disagree with you on some stuff and forces you to leave in a

01:15:31.040 local level and then on the federal level?

01:15:32.600 What happened is that America is a Protestant country and the Protestant church was overrun by

01:15:37.560 evangelicalism in particular in the second half of the 20th century.

01:15:40.880 And it gutted itself and is in collapse.

01:15:43.900 And what we're living through right now is as Protestantism is collapsing as the moral

01:15:49.680 center of American, let's call it American traditional conservatism for lack of a, we could argue about

01:15:55.500 all these terms, but American conservatism at a moral level has always been a Protestant movement.

01:16:00.540 The Protestant church in America is in collapse.

01:16:03.300 And what we're seeing right now is that there is a, there is an urge to now use the government

01:16:08.780 to enforce on us what it never had to enforce on what we used to basically, uh, do ourselves.

01:16:16.720 And one of the changes that's happening in the American conservative movement is that there's

01:16:21.560 an enormous amount of American conservative Catholics now that has not historically been true.

01:16:26.740 May I just make, that's not been historically true in American history.

01:16:28.600 I think historically it is true.

01:16:29.860 I think the entire conservative movement has had this bizarre, cause I agree it's a Protestant

01:16:33.920 country, but I think it's had this bizarre, it's not a Protestant idea, but it's had a

01:16:37.580 bizarre Catholic heart.

01:16:39.400 Bill Buckley, Russell Kirk, Phyllis Schlafly, Brent Bozell, all the, I mean, the list goes on

01:16:44.260 and on and on.

01:16:44.620 The American hardcore conservatives bizarrely have been Catholics.

01:16:49.660 Maybe that tells you something.

01:16:50.500 Not bizarrely.

01:16:50.940 No, it makes, it makes perfect sense because it's a Protestant idea and the Protestant idea,

01:16:55.600 like the Catholic idea has a borderline where it starts to become, it starts to fall apart.

01:17:00.840 These, these two forces are actually in a good relationship of struggle in this country.

01:17:05.920 I'll tell you what.

01:17:06.520 Historically, I think right now they're not.

01:17:07.880 No, because of what you said.

01:17:09.400 I think right now, right, right now Catholicism is in it.

01:17:12.300 And that, that is encouraging is that the sort of subsidiary that we're talking about is

01:17:16.000 happening naturally because what you're seeing is a massive sorting effect, right?

01:17:19.720 We all left California except for, except for Walsh, right?

01:17:22.100 We all, we all left California and now we're all living in Tennessee or Florida or Virginia

01:17:27.040 variously.

01:17:27.640 We're moving to, except for Drew, more, more red areas.

01:17:31.280 Virginia is still more red than California.

01:17:32.360 Yeah.

01:17:32.540 Drew was like, Drew was like, this place is so left.

01:17:34.580 I got to get out of here and loaded up the truck and moved to Washington.

01:17:37.620 It's like moving to Mississippi from California.

01:17:39.640 But the, but the basic idea is that subsidiarity is being chosen by people in how they live.

01:17:45.800 Yeah.

01:17:46.220 Right.

01:17:46.700 People are moving to communities where they are getting the communities that they want.

01:17:50.140 Which to your earlier point may actually exacerbate the, the balkanization.

01:17:54.040 Right.

01:17:54.200 It may, it may exacerbate the balkanization.

01:17:55.900 Well, we now, now we're going to have a choice.

01:17:57.180 This is where I really think the future of the country is.

01:17:59.060 The choice is going to be, do we want to share that polity, right?

01:18:01.440 I keep coming back to that question.

01:18:02.840 Do we want to share the polity?

01:18:03.740 If we want to share the polity, you have to have a set of weak rules that we can all agree on at

01:18:06.880 the top, right?

01:18:07.400 That are pretty universal, which is why the founders set up the system.

01:18:09.640 To require essentially super majority across nearly all the spectrum in order to get any

01:18:14.300 broad thing done.

01:18:15.200 Yeah.

01:18:15.320 Right.

01:18:15.500 It required like huge majorities of people, not bare majorities, not 51 votes in the Senate

01:18:19.360 or 50 plus one and 50 plus one in the house.

01:18:21.760 It required federal state balance.

01:18:23.820 It required the Supreme Court to sign off on things.

01:18:25.660 It required like all of these checks and, and if it was really big, it required a constitutional

01:18:29.420 amendment, right?

01:18:30.320 That's right.

01:18:30.780 All of this was designed to create the notion, and the founders were brilliant about this,

01:18:34.060 that at the top level, very few rules.

01:18:35.820 Because if you want to share a polity with people who are very diverse, then you are

01:18:38.380 going to need very few rules at the top.

01:18:40.280 And then increasingly, as you go down toward the bottom, you don't mind if there's like,

01:18:44.720 I don't mind in my local community.

01:18:46.000 My local community is very Orthodox, right?

01:18:48.160 It's a very Orthodox Jewish community.

01:18:49.840 If there was a regulation among members of my community that on Sabbath, you don't drive,

01:18:55.440 it would certainly alienate some people.

01:18:57.360 Do I think there's anything deeply immoral about that?

01:18:59.840 Yeah.

01:18:59.940 I mean, I'm not sure that I see something truly deeply and horrifically immoral about

01:19:03.580 that, so long as people are given the opportunity to leave.

01:19:05.620 But it would be, it would be if Joe Biden said.

01:19:07.540 Right, right, right.

01:19:08.340 This is exactly right.

01:19:08.780 Here's a question, kind of along these lines, as long as we're talking about the death of

01:19:12.520 evangelicalism and the sad, sad fact that nobody's yet killed Catholicism, is the very

01:19:18.220 argument that Biden is making about vax mandates that it's sinful to be unvaccinated?

01:19:23.700 Is he making fundamentally a religious argument?

01:19:25.940 Yeah, well, I think with another Catholic, Cardinal Manning, I think all human conflict

01:19:31.680 ultimately is theological, and it might be at a very removed level, but when we're having

01:19:35.580 arguments about how we ought to live together, ultimately we're making kind of religious

01:19:39.560 arguments.

01:19:40.100 And that's what we see from the left always, is that they always make the moral argument.

01:19:45.680 And they make the practical argument.

01:19:46.540 Exactly.

01:19:46.980 Every policy proposal, they make it on a moral grounds.

01:19:50.020 They say this is just the right thing to do.

01:19:51.960 And they don't bother a lot with the practical stuff.

01:19:54.000 And then, right, the conservatives will respond, well, this is too expensive, or this is going

01:19:57.500 to cause this practical effect.

01:19:59.060 And it's just, it's almost always the wrong response.

01:20:01.840 We have to get, the fact that we've ceded the moral argument.

01:20:04.580 I agree with this 100%.

01:20:05.020 I think this is so true about the way we talk.

01:20:06.740 That we've ceded the moral argument to insane perverts, basically.

01:20:12.200 And we're right.

01:20:13.140 And we're right.

01:20:13.580 We've ceded the moral argument, and we are right on moral.

01:20:15.900 The irony, though, we have to point out is Joe Biden is making this moral argument, and

01:20:19.880 he says he's a devout Catholic, and he's making a religious argument, but it's not a Catholic

01:20:24.700 argument.

01:20:25.080 He's making a progressive religious argument.

01:20:26.800 But that makes perfect sense.

01:20:27.820 He argues like a Catholic without Catholicism.

01:20:29.540 Yeah.

01:20:30.140 Right.

01:20:30.540 I mean, he took all the doctrine, he threw it out the window, and he kept all the attitudes.

01:20:33.180 Right.

01:20:33.600 It's like, I mean, like, really?

01:20:36.660 You see the secular Jews all the time.

01:20:38.740 Yeah.

01:20:38.960 Yeah.

01:20:39.000 A lot of them will keep this sort of very, midactic is the word, like very specific articulation of

01:20:46.900 particular issues, but they just got rid of the whole religion thing.

01:20:49.000 They just sort of kept the sensibility.

01:20:50.280 So true.

01:20:50.860 Takuna Lam.

01:20:51.560 So here's a question from the DailyWire.com subscribers.

01:20:54.620 You can get your question in at DailyWire.com slash subscribe.

01:20:57.460 The vaccine mandate seems like a stepping stone to some very authoritarian legislation.

01:21:02.020 My question, where do you see this leading?

01:21:04.940 Well, I think that if they can do a vaccine mandate simply through the power of the administrative

01:21:09.380 state, it's hard to see how they can't do it with regard to all other forms of

01:21:13.380 health problems.

01:21:13.920 And you've seen how they've done this with nearly everything, right?

01:21:15.600 They declared last year that racism was a public health problem, right?

01:21:18.900 They say this in Chicago.

01:21:20.120 It's a public health crisis.

01:21:21.200 Now, if you can declare that post-vaccination, COVID is such a public health crisis that the

01:21:26.600 federal government can cram down mandates on everybody else.

01:21:29.160 Why can't, if racism is a public health crisis, why can't OSHA cram down rules about CRT and

01:21:34.540 workplaces?

01:21:35.240 And you think all this is bizarre and crazy, except that all of it is bizarre and crazy.

01:21:38.540 Well, the head of the CDC, right after saying that the eviction moratorium was going to

01:21:42.680 continue, said that she wants to turn her attentions to guns as a public health crisis in America.

01:21:47.120 I think rock and roll is a public health crisis.

01:21:50.060 Rock and roll is over.

01:21:51.800 You're still talking about rock and roll as though Barack Obama didn't happen.

01:21:54.800 Honestly, it's for another day, but Barack Obama destroyed rock and roll.

01:21:57.560 You have convinced me of this.

01:21:58.600 There was rock and roll, then there was Barack Obama.

01:22:00.320 Now there's no rock and roll.

01:22:01.700 So he did something good.

01:22:02.860 But because rock and roll was about white male angst, white male teenage angst.

01:22:10.620 Yeah, yeah.

01:22:11.040 And then Barack Obama came along and said that-

01:22:12.820 And stealing a lot of his tropes from better black music.

01:22:13.840 Yeah, really.

01:22:14.660 Barack Obama came along and said young white men aren't allowed to have angst.

01:22:18.280 Yeah.

01:22:18.660 They're not allowed to basically express their dissatisfaction because they're so-

01:22:24.440 Toxic.

01:22:24.920 Toxic.

01:22:25.480 And so, truly, rock and roll just stopped.

01:22:27.540 Yeah, I think you're right.

01:22:28.820 I was hoping to see Norm Macdonald on the book club.

01:22:32.120 So now we've turned.

01:22:33.060 I should have read ahead because I actually do want to talk about Norm.

01:22:36.760 Did Michael ever hear any of Norm's thoughts on crime and punishment?

01:22:40.420 Michael?

01:22:40.760 Yeah, I will say, you know, I wish I could say that I was a close, dear friend of Norm Macdonald.

01:22:45.820 I've been a fan and admirer of his since I can remember, since I was a kid.

01:22:52.540 And I did get to talk to him.

01:22:55.440 I mean, Jeremy and I went to see one of his shows and we wore, we actually had custom

01:23:00.160 hats made from his book.

01:23:02.760 Like, it was a total, and he looked at us kind of in the crowd and like, we were these

01:23:05.480 crazy people.

01:23:06.520 And, but I noticed the strange thing, which is when Norm got on Twitter, he followed

01:23:10.760 me like really early on.

01:23:12.100 And I thought, this is so weird, you know, and, but I never abused it.

01:23:15.380 I didn't want to DM him.

01:23:16.260 I was so in awe of the man.

01:23:17.400 He was the funniest man that, that was alive in our age.

01:23:20.340 And one day he sent out a tweet about how he was in pain or something.

01:23:24.520 And I, I feared that he was depressed or something.

01:23:26.980 So I sent him a note and I said, Hey pal, I'm in awe of you.

01:23:29.780 I don't, I don't want, but if you want to talk.

01:23:31.980 And we had a very long exchange.

01:23:35.140 We had this long correspondence of like 10 paragraph DMs, you know, and it was, it was

01:23:40.480 about religion.

01:23:41.780 And I, I, I'm not going to, uh, you know, I'm not, I don't intend revealing this private,

01:23:47.160 private correspondence, but I, the, the man, he did this thing and he did it publicly too,

01:23:52.740 where he'd say, you know, Michael, man, you're really educated.

01:23:55.360 You know me, I'm just an old chunk of coal and I'm totally uneducated.

01:23:58.260 And then he would use a word that I didn't know that I, which means he had, his reading

01:24:02.920 was so deep.

01:24:03.980 And, uh, the, the one thing I will say about our correspondence is I am convinced the man

01:24:09.120 had not only incredible wisdom, but a deep, profound, abiding, lifelong faith.

01:24:15.560 I'm a hundred percent convinced of that.

01:24:17.560 And so the last part of our correspondence was he was going to come on the book show and

01:24:20.960 do, uh, crime and punishment or one of the Russian novels.

01:24:24.440 Actually, one of his most famous jokes is based on the death of Ivan Ilyich, which I ended

01:24:27.840 up doing on the book show with Matt.

01:24:29.340 And, uh, he, he wouldn't come on and he said he didn't want to, during the coronavirus, he

01:24:34.600 didn't want to go into a studio.

01:24:35.800 And I thought this was just him being eccentric.

01:24:37.660 Now, looking back, it's clear he was in, uh, cancer treatments.

01:24:41.420 Yeah.

01:24:41.880 Michael, we actually have that joke, uh, queued up.

01:24:44.480 Let's play it for, for everyone.

01:24:46.420 A moth goes into a podiatrist's office.

01:24:49.260 A moth goes into a podiatrist's office.

01:24:50.980 You are correct.

01:24:54.800 A moth goes into a podiatrist's office and, uh, the podiatrist's office says, what's the

01:25:00.100 problem?

01:25:00.800 And the moth says, what's the problem?

01:25:03.260 Where do I begin, man?

01:25:04.500 He goes, I go to work for, uh, Gregory Olinovich.

01:25:10.000 And, uh, all day long I work.

01:25:16.300 Honestly, doc, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.

01:25:18.800 I don't even know if Gregory Olinovich knows.

01:25:21.520 He only knows that he has power over me.

01:25:23.680 And that seems to bring him happiness.

01:25:25.440 But I don't know.

01:25:27.440 I wake up in a malaise and I, I walk here and there.

01:25:31.720 And the podiatrist says, oh, yeah?

01:25:34.440 And the moth goes, yes.

01:25:36.160 And he goes, uh, at night I, I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that's

01:25:45.000 on my arm.

01:25:45.740 A lady that I once loved, doc.

01:25:49.600 I don't know where to turn to.

01:25:51.380 My youngest, Alexandria.

01:25:55.460 She fell in the, in the, in the cold of last year.

01:26:00.900 The cold took her down as it did many of us.

01:26:03.620 And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc.

01:26:13.380 My other boy, Gregorio Ivinovich.

01:26:23.900 I no longer love him.

01:26:25.680 As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice

01:26:33.480 that I, that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror.

01:26:41.100 If only the cowardice was stronger, then perhaps, perhaps I could bring myself to reach over

01:26:48.700 to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me.

01:26:52.480 And then this hellish facade once a throw.

01:26:56.000 How long a drive was this?

01:27:01.560 Do you live in the valley?

01:27:02.860 Where do you live?

01:27:04.600 Please, sorry.

01:27:08.300 He says, doc.

01:27:12.200 Sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I'm a moth.

01:27:17.920 Just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me.

01:27:23.260 I'm not feeling good.

01:27:25.240 And so the moth, the doctor says, moth, man, you're troubled.

01:27:30.060 But you should be seeing a psychiatrist.

01:27:32.360 Why on earth did you come here?

01:27:34.500 And then the moth said, because the light was on.

01:27:37.080 I have to tell you, I have to tell you, this is in his, in his memoir, his wonderful memoir.

01:27:47.420 And I listened to it in the car.

01:27:49.520 I, and I'm not joking.

01:27:51.060 I had to pull off the road three times because I was going to die.

01:27:54.880 I was laughing so hard and driving in L.A. at the same time.

01:27:58.360 And he, it goes on and on.

01:27:59.880 And it reflected also, I mean, just on top of this, a deep knowledge of Russian literature, which he really had.

01:28:06.120 And, and, you know, Crime and Punishment is the book that essentially made me a Christian.

01:28:10.260 I mean, that's the book that changed my life.

01:28:11.760 That book changed my life.

01:28:13.180 I mean, I was 19 years old.

01:28:14.840 I read that book and all the relativism that was rising through the university system that I was in.

01:28:19.700 I thought, oh, it's all wrong.

01:28:21.040 I get it.

01:28:21.800 It's all wrong.

01:28:22.520 You know, and, and I, it, it genuinely changed my life and put me on a 30 year track toward Christianity.

01:28:28.940 And that joke, I just thought it was just, just, I don't know.

01:28:33.240 It's a profound joke, but it's hilarious.

01:28:35.280 He had an almost religious commitment to the joke.

01:28:38.880 Yeah.

01:28:39.120 And I actually think it held him back in his career.

01:28:41.180 I mean, he was fired from SNL because he wouldn't stop telling the funniest jokes, which at the time were about O.J. Simpson.

01:28:47.800 About O.J. Simpson.

01:28:48.980 They said, we will keep paying you, but you have to stop making that joke.

01:28:52.440 He would bomb deliberately in settings where he thought the funnier punchline was for him to fail.

01:28:58.440 It was to Bob Saget.

01:28:59.480 It was amazing.

01:29:00.100 Unbelievable.

01:29:01.160 He, he, and what's funny is that a guy that committed to the joke, a guy who would put the joke ahead of his own career,

01:29:08.360 ahead of his own happiness in many ways, I think, uh, here at the end carried around this cancer for nine years,

01:29:14.060 apparently didn't even tell his family, was willing to carry all of that on himself.

01:29:18.600 So that the joke, yeah, told cancer so that the joke wouldn't suffer.

01:29:22.120 And yet, I think that this is the most united, if you look at social media right now,

01:29:26.860 the most politically united, uh, of anything, there's the most political unity around the death of Norm Macdonald

01:29:33.220 that I've seen about the death of any public figure in the last 10 years.

01:29:36.960 Yeah.

01:29:37.500 Universally beloved, left and right.

01:29:39.740 And this is an excerpt from his book that I, uh, I think it's, his greatest work is, uh, based on a true story, a memoir.

01:29:48.240 And this is Norm Macdonald talking about meeting God outside of, uh, the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas.

01:29:55.020 He said, I find my way through the casino and in a moment I'm on the strip.

01:29:59.020 There's a dry chill that begins to freeze my naked face and the buildings of iron and glass

01:30:03.800 feel as immortal as the ancient streets they sit upon.

01:30:06.800 I look above the sun shining amid the blue sky and the white, white clouds

01:30:10.820 as they cast a pall of futility over the man-made monuments in their sickly neon light.

01:30:15.700 And I stand by the pyramid of Luxor and gaze upon the firmament above.

01:30:21.060 And in a sudden the sky becomes a face and I look away in fear and shame.

01:30:26.140 It's the face of God.

01:30:27.380 And he speaks and his voice is both your voice and mine at once.

01:30:31.640 And he speaks unto me.

01:30:33.420 Why do you not look at me neither yesterday nor today?

01:30:37.220 And so I remove my dirty work hat and I look upon his, him and I study his countenance.

01:30:42.900 Now people always wonder, is he's got a man or a woman?

01:30:47.120 Is he black or white or yellow or brown?

01:30:49.760 But I'm here to tell you that none of that silly stuff matters.

01:30:52.800 He's a white guy, by the way.

01:30:59.160 He's a true master craftsman and I doubt, uh, it sounds cliche to say we will not see his

01:31:06.560 Oh, we will not see his like for a long time.

01:31:08.180 Well, thank you for joining us.

01:31:12.360 As always, we're very happy to have had you.

01:31:14.320 And, uh, we're very pleased, uh, that our dailywire.com subscribers make it possible for us to do this show.

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01:31:54.060 Daily Wire Backstage is produced by Mathis Glover.

01:31:57.160 Executive producer is me, Jeremy Boring.

01:31:59.360 Our technical director is Austin Stevens.

01:32:01.160 Our production manager is Pavel Wodowski.

01:32:03.840 Studio and equipment management is by Patrick Kennedy.

01:32:06.800 And broadcast engineering is by Mark Herman.

01:32:09.240 Editing is by Jim Nickel.

01:32:10.820 Audio is mixed by Mike Oramina.

01:32:12.580 And our audio assistant is Israel McFarlane.

01:32:15.180 Playback is operated by McKenna Waters.

01:32:17.380 Hair and makeup by Nika Geneva.

01:32:19.520 Daily Wire Backstage is a Daily Wire production.

01:32:21.860 Copyright Daily Wire 2021.

The Matt Walsh Show - September 15, 2021

Daily Wire Backstage： WE DO NOT COMPLY

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