The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1084 - Porn Has Taken Over Society. We Need Laws To Fight Back.

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, a new bill would finally require porn sites to verify the ages

00:00:04.720 of their users. This is a very basic step that would help protect children, and yet many people

00:00:08.620 object to it. What possible objection could they have? We'll investigate. Also, a pro-life priest

00:00:14.020 is kicked out of the priesthood by the Vatican. Could Pope Francis possibly be any more of a

00:00:18.220 disgrace? Los Angeles comes up with a disastrously stupid plan for dealing with its homelessness 1.00

00:00:22.380 problem, and a science journalist structured her entire life for three years around avoiding COVID 1.00

00:00:27.460 and yet got it anyway. What lesson did she learn from this experience? All the wrong ones,

00:00:32.540 of course. We'll talk about all that and more today on the Matt Wall Show.

00:00:44.360 Roe v. Wade has been overturned, and this battle is now finally leaving D.C. and going to the

00:00:49.140 grassroots. No group in America is better positioned than 40 Days for Life. With about a million

00:00:53.240 volunteers in 1,000 cities, 40 Days for Life holds peaceful vigils outside abortion facilities.

00:00:57.960 They have a larger presence in blue states, with California being their largest state.

00:01:01.780 Some former abortion facility directors say that these vigils can cause the abortion no-show rate

00:01:06.120 to go as high as 75%, which is, of course, detrimental to their abortion business. These

00:01:11.060 law-abiding vigils have closed many abortion businesses in America, and nearly half of those

00:01:14.380 closed abortion facilities were in liberal cities where abortions will remain legal, including closures

00:01:19.160 in San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle. 40 Days for Life is effectively changing hearts and minds in

00:01:24.660 the grassroots to end abortion. You can check out their locations, podcasts, and free magazine at

00:01:29.280 40daysforlife.com. And it's so crucial that you do because the fight for life is not even close to

00:01:35.640 over. So if you want more information on 40 Days for Life, go to 40daysforlife.com.

00:01:39.560 It may surprise you to learn this, but there are at least a few people in Congress who are interested

00:01:45.640 in doing their jobs. Emphasis on a few, a very few indeed. One of the few, however, is Senator Mike

00:01:51.400 Lee of Utah, who just in the last couple of days has introduced two bills with the aim of combating

00:01:56.400 the proliferation of online pornography, especially as it affects kids. The Daily Wire reports on a great

00:02:03.000 bill whose only flaw is that it really reaches for the acronym in its title. So it says, quote,

00:02:10.740 the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net Act, or Screen Act, would direct

00:02:17.600 the FCC to mandate that all pornographic websites adopt age verification technology to keep children

00:02:22.440 from accessing porn online. The Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, or IOTA Act, would abolish a

00:02:29.560 nationwide definition of obscenity reforming the Supreme Court's Miller test and enabling prosecution

00:02:35.300 of obscene content transmitted across states or from foreign countries. The Screen Act would direct

00:02:41.000 the FCC to require commercial websites that regularly create or platform pornographic content to establish

00:02:46.880 age verification technology to ensure that users of those websites are not minors and that minors are

00:02:52.080 prevented from accessing the content of such websites. Notably, the bill explicitly states that any

00:02:57.500 proposed FCC regulation must make clear that simply asking a user to confirm that he or she is a legal

00:03:03.300 adult is not a sufficient screening measure. The IOTA would establish a federal definition of obscenity

00:03:08.680 that would apply to, quote, a picture, image, graphic image, file, film, videotape, or other visual

00:03:13.960 depiction. Now, this is not the first time that Lee has addressed this issue. Again, from the Daily Wire,

00:03:20.160 it says, Lee previously proposed a bill in September to prevent sexual exploitation on porn sites.

00:03:24.640 The Preventing Rampant Online Technological Exploitation and Criminal Trafficking

00:03:29.280 Protect Act—that one's not so bad. That actually wasn't a reach at all. That was well done—would

00:03:34.240 require age and consent verification of those depicted in sexually explicit or intimate materials

00:03:38.460 online. It would also allow victims of sexual exploitation to have their images removed and block

00:03:43.340 re-uploads, including any altered edited versions. Websites that fail to remove the reported content

00:03:48.480 could face penalties of up to $10,000 per day. Victims could also file civil actions against these sites.

00:03:54.360 Now, so those are the bills. Of course, the usual suspects are panicking over these proposed

00:04:00.860 measures. Articles and outlets like Vice and Gizmodo worry that it could spell doom for the

00:04:05.860 porn industry as a whole. It could take down the porn industry, which is music to my ears,

00:04:10.380 personally. I mean, if you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you know that

00:04:13.920 I'm in favor of banning porn outright. I would like to ban all of it, because pornography is not

00:04:23.200 speech. A person performing sex on film is engaging in something, all right, but it ain't speech.

00:04:31.300 Porn is prostitution, okay? Very clearly. It is monetized sex. It is transactional sex. It is sex 0.58

00:04:40.260 as a product to be consumed. If old-fashioned prostitutes cannot claim First Amendment protections, 1.00

00:04:47.340 then neither should the prostitutes who happen to use the internet to whore themselves out. 0.95

00:04:52.560 But that's a topic for another day, okay? That's a different topic because these bills would not 0.85

00:04:58.900 ban pornography. They would rather put some very basic safeguards and restrictions in place,

00:05:03.520 the sort of safeguards and restrictions that every other industry in existence has to contend with.

00:05:09.640 Porn has existed in its own special universe up until now, free of pretty much all restrictions and

00:05:15.240 regulations. It has been allowed to do whatever it wants. That doesn't make any sense, and it's never

00:05:21.620 made any sense. And now that we live in a culture that is drowning in porn, billions and billions of

00:05:27.180 hours of porn consumed every year, children first exposed on average at the age of 10 or younger,

00:05:33.660 it is way past time to start thinking more seriously about this. So let's focus just

00:05:38.140 on the first bill for right now, which ought to be the least controversial of all. This should be

00:05:46.620 something that every sane and decent person can immediately agree to. The Screen Act would again

00:05:55.020 simply require that porn sites make a serious attempt to verify the ages of its users. That's all it does.

00:06:02.320 Right now, they are not required to do anything. Many sites don't even so much as require users to click a

00:06:11.360 button confirming that they're 18 years old. You have to do that if you want to go, you know, to Miller

00:06:18.200 Light's website. If you want to go to the website of a brewery or distillery, you have to verify. You have to

00:06:25.840 at least click something saying that you're 21, you're drinking age. Now, that doesn't really

00:06:31.760 achieve anything because obviously anyone can click the button. But even that symbolic gesture

00:06:37.600 towards trying to protect children isn't done when it comes to porn. Nothing is done. Nothing.

00:06:46.820 Billions of hours of the most depraved and perverted sexual images imaginable and many more hours of stuff

00:06:53.340 that is not even imaginable for most of us is just one click away for any child on the internet all the

00:07:00.920 time. There are no barriers. There are no safeguards. There is nothing. Nothing. This is totally

00:07:09.360 indefensible. We are simply handing generations of children over to the porn industry knowing about the

00:07:16.740 devastating psychological effects, the documented, proven, long-term harm this exposure causes.

00:07:22.800 We know that. Yet, as a society, we are doing absolutely not one thing at all to stem this tide.

00:07:33.360 And still, now, even after all this, many people recoil in horror at the suggestion of something as

00:07:41.220 simple and common sense as age verification. Many of these people would call themselves conservatives

00:07:47.800 too. So I tweeted about this bill earlier this morning and some of the responses just are typical

00:07:54.160 and I think a good representation of how people respond to stuff like this. So reading just a few

00:07:59.220 of how people responded. Matt Walsh and Mike Lee want government to come to the rescue with regulations

00:08:04.540 on businesses. Someone else says, I absolutely oppose the government assuming parental responsibilities.

00:08:09.940 If you don't like porn, then don't watch it. Why do you guys always want to take away freedoms?

00:08:15.880 It's so bizarre. Someone else says, age verification technology? That sounds pretty frightening in and

00:08:21.360 of itself. Why not just keep kids off the internet unsupervised? Someone else, no thanks. I don't want

00:08:27.540 to use any identification to wank. Parents should be the ones keeping children from this content,

00:08:32.080 not the government. So this was a general consensus. There were also references to free speech

00:08:38.540 from these brave warriors for liberty who believe it is our sacred responsibility to honorably defend

00:08:45.240 the rights of smut peddlers to expose our children to hardcore pornography. They declare, I may not agree

00:08:53.080 with this orgy you filmed, but I will defend to the death your right to distribute it openly on the

00:08:57.820 internet without restrictions so that nine-year-olds can access it. What an inspiring mantra.

00:09:03.660 Now, let me make a few points here. First of all, age verification already exists on the internet.

00:09:17.500 If you want to use a gambling site, for example, you will need to verify your age with a credit card

00:09:24.140 or an ID or maybe both. Nobody complains about that. Nobody cries out that their free speech rights

00:09:32.820 are somehow being infringed because gambling sites have barriers in place to prevent 10-year-olds from

00:09:37.760 gambling. Nobody has any issue with it. It's only with porn that suddenly it becomes, as the one tweet

00:09:44.120 said, frightening. Age verification exists outside of the internet too. If you want to buy alcohol,

00:09:52.340 you are required to show ID and the store that sells it is required by law to ask for your ID. If they

00:09:59.320 don't ask and they're caught not asking, they could face severe penalties, could take their whole

00:10:04.500 business down. Again, you rarely hear anybody complain about that. Okay? Nobody argues that the

00:10:12.360 liquor store down the street has the First Amendment right to sell whiskey to 12-year-olds.

00:10:18.180 And although kids can get their hands on alcohol anyway, obviously, nobody says that the proliferation

00:10:23.380 of alcohol means that we might as well just allow the liquor store to sell the whiskey to the seventh

00:10:27.840 grader. As we see, with any other adult-oriented product, the people distributing, whether in real

00:10:36.040 life or on the internet, are required to take serious steps to attempt to verify ages. In every other

00:10:43.720 example you can think of, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, guns, the people distributing this stuff are

00:10:52.820 required, whether on the internet or in real life, are required to verify ages. The question is whether

00:10:59.160 hardcore porn sites should be the one exception to this. Should we continue to carve out an exception

00:11:05.980 wherein every other 18-plus business has to verify ages, but the sites distributing pornography to the

00:11:11.740 masses should not? They get to be special. There's just no coherent argument for that position. 0.99

00:11:19.060 It just doesn't exist. The only argument is the one we heard from one of the tweets there. And it's a terrible

00:11:27.980 argument, but it was honest at least. The real argument against age verification for porn sites is that porn users

00:11:34.840 don't want to be mildly inconvenienced in their pursuit of masturbation materials. That's the argument. They want to be

00:11:43.380 able to masturbate to pornography as quickly as possible, find as much as they can as quickly as 0.89

00:11:49.280 possible, and they don't want any hindrance, any inconvenience at all. And if that means exposing tens of

00:11:56.360 millions of children to this content that will have devastating and traumatic psychological effects,

00:12:03.300 they're fine with that. I gotta tell you, I don't find that argument compelling. I just don't.

00:12:09.500 Second point. It's the parent's job they cry out. Well, of course it is. Parents should be doing

00:12:19.080 everything they can to protect their children from this material, but there are bad parents out there.

00:12:25.060 Lots of them. Neglectful parents. What do we say to those kids? You're out of luck? Sorry,

00:12:29.820 kid. Nothing we can do for you. I mean, yes, it's a parent's job to feed their children also,

00:12:36.860 but if a parent decides not to feed the child, do we simply just leave the child in the care of the

00:12:42.100 parent and let them starve to death for fear of becoming a nanny state? No, the fact that parents

00:12:48.020 have responsibilities to protect their children doesn't mean that the government has no responsibility

00:12:54.340 to protect children. Is that the argument? The government has no responsibility to children at all?

00:13:00.040 Now, the government may abuse its power. It does that all the time, and yet it exists for a reason,

00:13:07.220 and protecting its citizens is the primary reason. Do kids not count? Do they not deserve protections as

00:13:17.460 well? I mean, no matter what you say about the government, you want to be protected. You expect

00:13:24.220 the government to fulfill its obligation to protect you. No matter how much of a libertarian you claim

00:13:29.680 to be, when push comes to shove, you expect there to be basic protections put in place to protect you

00:13:35.100 by the government, and you demand it, you insist on it. Do kids not deserve protections?

00:13:41.720 Because remember something, kids, they cannot consent to being exposed. Even if a kid,

00:13:52.200 if a 10-year-old goes on Google and types something in that causes pornography to pop up,

00:13:58.000 and they click on it, the 10-year-old is not consenting to being exposed to that because

00:14:03.180 10-year-olds cannot consent. Average age of first exposure to pornography is 10 years old.

00:14:09.340 These kids cannot consent to being exposed to this material. They cannot consent to being third-party

00:14:16.740 witnesses to a sexual act, which means that they need to be protected from it because they cannot

00:14:23.500 protect themselves. You could say that the parent has the primary role here, but are you really going

00:14:29.200 to tell me the government has zero role? None at all? And if you are telling me that again,

00:14:37.560 why don't we apply this logic to any other industry? It's a parent's job to make sure that

00:14:42.660 their kids aren't smoking or drinking, and yet we still have laws in place forbidding the alcohol

00:14:46.840 and tobacco industries from selling their products to kids. These laws may not be anywhere close to 100%

00:14:52.500 effective, but the other option is to simply let the industries do whatever the hell they want and

00:14:57.080 sell directly to kindergartners if they want. And obviously, nobody is in favor of that,

00:15:01.420 unless it's pornography.

00:15:06.220 One final point. Not every child who ends up exposed to porn has a bad or neglectful parent,

00:15:14.940 because thanks to the porn-obsessed losers who break down in tears at the suggestion 0.89

00:15:19.000 of any restrictions or regulations at all on the porn industry, we now live in a society where this stuff 0.97

00:15:24.780 is absolutely everywhere. It is extremely difficult for a parent to shield their kids from it

00:15:30.520 indefinitely. And we are not doing parents any favors. We're not helping parents at all.

00:15:37.520 So you could say to the parents, this is your job. Okay, but can we help them out a little bit?

00:15:43.260 You know, hey, parents, this is your job, and we're going to intentionally make it as impossible

00:15:47.580 as we can for you. This is society's message to parents on, like, everything now.

00:15:55.380 We say it's your job, and we are going to do nothing. In fact, we are going to rig the system

00:16:01.240 to make it more difficult every step of the way. What's wrong with telling parents to do their jobs

00:16:09.400 while also having policies in place that make those jobs at least halfway feasible?

00:16:14.620 Is it really so frightening, so terrifying, the thought of having a society with laws that are

00:16:21.720 meant to help and protect families? Does that scare you? Well, this is Orwellian. We're actually

00:16:27.880 valuing families and children. This is dystopian. The idea of living in a country where the laws are

00:16:36.900 more concerned with protecting families than protecting whores and pimps on the internet, 1.00

00:16:41.320 that scares you? Doesn't scare me. What scares me is the fact that we live in a country where this 0.99

00:16:51.420 even needs to be a conversation, because the answer is so damned obvious. Now let's get to our five

00:17:00.040 headlines. If you're somebody who's always wanted to read and understand the Bible, but you're not sure

00:17:09.960 where to start, then check out the Bible in a Year podcast from Ascension. The Bible in a Year podcast

00:17:15.100 is currently the most popular religion podcast in the U.S. Millions of people have listened to it,

00:17:19.140 and twice it's hit the number one spot on Apple Podcasts, which is really, truly amazing. In the Bible

00:17:24.700 in a Year, Father Mike Schmitz reads the entire Bible in 365 daily episodes, providing helpful

00:17:31.720 commentary, reflection, and prayer along the way. What better way to start the new year? Looking for

00:17:36.640 New Year's resolution. Here it is. You can find the Bible in a Year podcast with Father Mike Schmitz for

00:17:40.220 free in your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Plus, you can follow along with special reading

00:17:45.240 plans to help you better understand the story. Unlike any other Bible podcast, Bible in a Year

00:17:49.160 follows a special reading plan that organizes the books of the Bible in a way that helps listeners

00:17:53.180 understand the story. So get this reading plan at ascensionpress.com slash walsh. If you want to

00:17:58.220 start reading, more importantly, understanding the Bible this year, go to ascensionpress.com slash walsh

00:18:02.600 to download the reading plan for free. That's ascensionpress.com slash walsh to download the

00:18:08.120 reading plan for free. All right, we'll start with this from the AP. It says, the Vatican has defrocked

00:18:15.640 an anti-abortion U.S. priest, Frank Pavone, for what it said were blasphemous communications on social

00:18:22.120 media, as well as persistent disobedience of his bishop, who repeatedly told him to stop his partisan

00:18:27.380 activism for Donald Trump. A letter to U.S. bishops from the Vatican ambassador to the U.S.,

00:18:32.220 Archbishop Christopher Pierre, obtained Sunday, said the decision against Pavone, who heads the

00:18:36.060 anti-abortion group Priests for Life, had been taken November 9th and that there was no chance for

00:18:41.360 an appeal. Pavone has been in conflict with the bishop of Amarillo, Texas, for over a decade over his

00:18:48.520 pro-life and partisan political activities that came to a head in 2016 when he put an aborted fetus

00:18:53.000 on an altar and posted a video of it on two social media sites. The video was accompanied by a post

00:18:57.820 saying that Hillary Clinton and the Democrat platform would allow abortion to continue and that

00:19:01.620 Trump and the Republican platform wanted to protect unborn children. Now, so they defrocked the priest.

00:19:11.160 It's what they call laicizing the priest and kicking him out of the priesthood. This kind of thing does

00:19:19.260 not happen. I can tell you if you're not Catholic, this sort of thing does not happen very often. This

00:19:25.580 is a rare step. And in this case, it's a rare step being taken against one of the most prominent

00:19:32.000 pro-life activist in the priesthood. Not one of those. He's the most prominent pro-life priest

00:19:41.280 in the country. And they kicked him out of the priesthood. Now, first of all, to the extent that

00:19:51.080 this stems from the video, which this was back six years ago, with a video where he had the aborted

00:19:57.100 baby on the altar. From what I understand, first of all, obviously the baby was given a proper burial.

00:20:03.000 And it also was not a consecrated altar from what I understand, which is an important detail.

00:20:10.660 This was an intentionally shocking act meant to show the brutality and horror of abortion.

00:20:17.520 Now, people find this sort of thing unsettling. Of course they do. They should. I do. But when you're

00:20:23.840 fighting a historic genocidal horror, the sort of thing that most people in society prefer to turn

00:20:30.980 away from, then you need to shock them awake sometime. You need to force them to confront it

00:20:36.520 visually. And there's always this debate in the pro-life community. It's like, to what extent do we

00:20:43.860 show the victim images? To what extent do we put that front and center? And there could be a

00:20:50.860 conversation about the right context for that. But what is absolutely certain is that you cannot

00:20:55.600 allow the victims to be entirely erased. What it looks like, this needs to be seen. The visuals need

00:21:03.860 to be seen. And you take any other example in history of people fighting against a genocidal horror,

00:21:14.180 images were always crucially important. Because you can describe it all you want,

00:21:18.740 people need to see what it looks like. And also keep in mind, these children are usually

00:21:24.160 dismembered and thrown out literally as trash into a medical waste dumpster. That's usually what

00:21:29.480 happens. So Father Pavone rescued this child from that fate. It's very difficult to claim that what he

00:21:34.200 did was somehow more disrespecting to the victim than the fate that that child's body would have 0.57

00:21:38.400 otherwise suffered, which again would be to be thrown out as trash. The point here is the opposite.

00:21:46.160 It's to show the victim's humanity. And besides all that, how is this blasphemous?

00:21:53.520 You know, we could have an argument, you could say that it's inappropriate, it's shocking. There's

00:21:57.020 all kinds of descriptions that you could come up with and we could argue about whether they apply,

00:22:02.340 but blasphemous? What's blasphemous about that? And however you feel about that,

00:22:08.240 however you feel about it. The fact is that if anything, his sin here is being too zealous,

00:22:18.360 too militant in the fight for the unborn, something that I don't really think is possible,

00:22:22.260 to be honest with you. The idea that he would be defrocked for this, kicked out of the priesthood,

00:22:27.380 is just, it's grotesque, especially considering all of the priests who are not kicked out.

00:22:32.860 As I said, this is a very uncommon measure that is taken. It does not happen often.

00:22:44.300 I think maybe there was a time when it was more common, but these days, things like defrocking

00:22:49.240 priests, withholding communion, excommunicating people, these sorts of kind of ultimate punishments

00:22:58.100 and measures are really uncommon these days. And yet there are, if you're going to start doing that

00:23:05.800 sort of thing, there are all, there's a whole line of people that should be far in front of someone

00:23:14.400 like Father Frank Pavone. James Martin is maybe a name you've heard. He's a Jesuit heretic, but I repeat 0.99

00:23:22.360 myself, openly defies the church's teachings on a number of central moral issues, especially sexuality. 0.99

00:23:28.100 He's a gay pride flag-waving blasphemer, touting acceptance of sexual sin, promoting gay marriage 1.00

00:23:38.100 and all the rest of it, openly defying the church's moral authority and moral teachings. In fact, he has 0.99

00:23:44.420 also stated explicitly that the Bible is incorrect in its moral judgments on homosexuality. He acknowledges

00:23:52.240 that those judgments are in there, but says that it's incorrect.

00:23:57.080 Now, he tweeted this a couple of years ago, apparently quoting someone else, but clearly

00:24:00.320 in agreement he was quoting them. He said, interesting, where the Bible mentions same-sex

00:24:05.620 sexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether

00:24:10.120 the biblical judgment is correct. The Bible sanctions slavery as well, and nowhere attacked it as unjust. 0.97

00:24:15.860 Oh, nothing. You know, no big deal here. Just a priest, one of the most prominent ones in the

00:24:21.700 country, saying that the moral teachings in the Bible are not correct. Which, of course, raises all

00:24:29.440 kinds of questions, that if it's not correct about this, then what else is it incorrect about?

00:24:33.920 Is there any reason to think it's correct about anything else?

00:24:38.960 You have just

00:24:40.020 totally undermined

00:24:42.820 the moral authority

00:24:44.480 of the Bible.

00:24:48.920 And as a priest, you have undermined the moral authority of the church.

00:24:52.000 That's what James Martin is doing.

00:24:54.420 Is he getting defrocked? Is he getting laicized? Not anywhere close.

00:24:58.800 Instead, priests like him

00:25:00.060 are taken and given positions of prominence.

00:25:02.740 You know, they're welcomed into the Vatican.

00:25:05.140 They're put in positions of power 0.99

00:25:06.580 by this Pope, Pope Francis, who is an absolute disgrace. 1.00

00:25:12.020 He is a disgrace and a disaster. 0.99

00:25:15.520 All right, another church-related story. 0.99

00:25:18.160 This is from New York Times.

00:25:20.920 Stonebridge Christian Church in eastern Nebraska is known locally for hosting a big annual fireworks

00:25:26.040 event, which this fall included 15 food trucks and portable fire pits for making s'mores.

00:25:30.680 But it's the Christmas season that is our Super Bowl, so the church's executive pastor,

00:25:35.860 Mitch Chitwood.

00:25:37.160 This year, the church's four locations in the Omaha area will host four jingle jam family parties

00:25:42.800 in December and nine services on Christmas Eve, complete with classic carols, Christmas-themed

00:25:47.280 coffee drinks, and festive photo booth in the lobby.

00:25:51.040 What they will not have is church on Sunday, December 25th.

00:25:54.240 On Christmas Day, Stonebridge will offer a simple community breakfast, but no religious services

00:25:58.780 at all.

00:25:59.880 Chitwood said,

00:26:00.500 We still believe in the Sunday morning experience, but we have to meet people where they are.

00:26:04.460 And where they are on Christmas Day is usually at home in their pajamas.

00:26:07.240 This year, church leaders are grappling with what may seem like an odd dilemma.

00:26:10.920 Christmas Day falls on a Sunday for the first time since 2016, and that's a problem.

00:26:15.180 Christmas is considered by most Christians to be the second most significant religious holiday

00:26:18.160 of the year behind Easter, but most Protestant churches do not attend, most Protestants do not

00:26:22.160 attend church services on Christmas Day when it falls on a weekday.

00:26:25.420 If everyone from the pews to the pulpit would rather stay home, what is a practical house

00:26:29.780 of worship to do?

00:26:30.840 This year, some Protestant churches are deciding to skip Sunday services completely.

00:26:36.100 And it's a long article giving all these examples of these churches that are closing down for Christmas.

00:26:44.600 Not only closing on a Sunday, and also Christmas.

00:26:46.860 So, you would think that Sunday and Christmas coincide all the more reason to have the churches open,

00:26:55.960 although both of those reasons individually are reason enough.

00:27:00.040 Instead, it goes the other way.

00:27:00.900 It's like it cancels each other out.

00:27:02.380 It's this weird mathematics where Sunday and Christmas cancel each other out,

00:27:07.620 and so, therefore, church is canceled.

00:27:09.580 I gotta say, I don't get this, and as I've talked about this a little bit, and I think we talked

00:27:15.700 about it on the show maybe last year, and I didn't realize how widespread this is, it doesn't make

00:27:21.740 any sense to me.

00:27:23.260 Christmas is one of the holiest Christian holidays.

00:27:25.520 It's not our most sacred holiday, as the article surprisingly correctly points out, but it is very

00:27:32.160 important.

00:27:33.500 I mean, it's up there, celebrating the birth of Christ, and we have to keep Christ in Christmas.

00:27:38.380 That's what every Christian says, and yet many of these Christians go to churches that close down

00:27:44.440 on Christmas, because that's a good way to keep Christ in Christmas, close your church.

00:27:51.500 Of course, the justification that we often hear for this, and we also hear this in the article,

00:27:56.880 is that the pastors themselves have families, and they want to be with their families on Christmas.

00:28:02.460 All right, yes, and that may be the case.

00:28:08.380 Except that if you're a pastor, you are a pastor.

00:28:13.000 You got into this line of work.

00:28:14.300 This is like, I don't know, this is like deciding that you want to go into business selling fireworks,

00:28:20.300 but then closing up shop around the 4th of July.

00:28:24.520 Like, you know, if it's really important to you that you don't have to work on 4th of July weekend,

00:28:32.380 then maybe you should be doing literally anything else in your life besides running a firework stand.

00:28:39.860 This is what you're there for.

00:28:41.540 This is like, this is it, as it says there in the article.

00:28:43.760 This is your Super Bowl.

00:28:44.640 So if you want to run a church, and yet you want to be home on the Christian holidays, 0.93

00:28:50.660 well, maybe you shouldn't be running a church.

00:28:55.260 And look, I'm not saying you have to go to church on Christmas Day.

00:28:58.420 We usually go to church on Christmas Eve, and that's fine.

00:29:01.880 That counts.

00:29:02.600 You know, that's been our tradition in my family.

00:29:05.060 In fact, ever since I was a kid, it's been my favorite church service of the year,

00:29:08.900 my favorite Mass of the year, has always been Christmas Eve.

00:29:12.720 We really enjoy going on Christmas Eve.

00:29:15.820 That's not the issue.

00:29:16.920 The issue is with literally shutting your church down entirely on Christmas,

00:29:20.820 not even giving the faithful the option of going to church to celebrate Christ's birthday on the actual day.

00:29:26.680 And you have to think about the message that this sends.

00:29:29.860 People wonder why the churches are dying.

00:29:31.580 Well, I mean, if the church is sending the message that their services aren't needed on Christmas,

00:29:37.680 then why are they needed any other time?

00:29:42.320 If it's not important to go to church,

00:29:45.200 if it's not important enough to go to church on one of the most significant Christian holidays,

00:29:51.140 it's so unimportant that you can shut the church down,

00:29:53.220 then I think a lot of people in the public say,

00:29:56.120 well, what do I need you for at all?

00:29:58.800 Why is it ever important to go to church?

00:30:01.580 And what is the message?

00:30:04.880 I mean, the pastor is skipping one of the holiest holidays because he wants to stay in his pajamas on Christmas morning.

00:30:12.040 He wants to eat.

00:30:13.220 He wants to wear his Christmas PJs and eat a late breakfast.

00:30:15.780 And so church isn't all that important in that case on that particular day.

00:30:19.220 Why would anyone take the church seriously?

00:30:23.160 That's the question.

00:30:24.720 All right.

00:30:26.260 This is extremely revealing.

00:30:29.060 I know you don't like to hear the word revealing used in the same sentence as Rachel Levine,

00:30:34.260 but here it is.

00:30:36.380 Rachel Levine at, I don't know what event this is, doesn't matter.

00:30:40.140 He's at some kind of event talking about his own experiences with transitioning.

00:30:45.260 And I want you to listen to what he says.

00:30:46.620 Here it is.

00:30:47.840 You know, my transition was very different because for many reasons, professional and mostly personal reasons,

00:30:53.000 I transitioned over 10 years.

00:30:55.220 Right.

00:30:55.300 Most people don't take that long to transition.

00:30:58.240 First of all, young people are not willing to do that anymore.

00:31:01.440 And, you know, I mean, I don't know if I was 15 now.

00:31:05.120 I don't know if I would have taken so long.

00:31:06.680 But, again, when I was 15, what were you going to say and who would you tell and how would you possibly express that?

00:31:12.240 But so the language started about, you know, and that was now 20 years ago when I started,

00:31:18.700 when I kind of started this journey.

00:31:20.000 And it was starting to become more in culture and the Internet and support groups, et cetera.

00:31:25.440 So I took a long time.

00:31:28.800 I don't regret any of that.

00:31:31.160 But I have no regrets because if I transitioned when I was young and I wouldn't have my children.

00:31:35.480 I can't imagine a life without my children.

00:31:38.460 And so every experience led me to here.

00:31:42.480 And so how could I regret that?

00:31:45.380 Amazing.

00:31:51.260 Not really amazing.

00:31:52.200 This is the kind of incoherence that we expect from these kinds of people.

00:32:01.400 I mean, first of all, the fact that he has kids, it just, you know, it makes me feel so terrible for these kids.

00:32:12.440 So I imagine they're probably older now and adults.

00:32:15.740 But no matter what age they are, you know, this just goes to show how intensely self-selfish all of this is, the trans agenda. 0.98

00:32:29.040 Along with all the other problems with it that we talk about all the time.

00:32:33.080 It's incredibly selfish.

00:32:36.300 Think about what you're doing to your kids.

00:32:38.040 When you hear about these grown adult men who discover that they're really women and they want to live as women. 0.55

00:32:45.400 So you have no concern at all for what this is doing to your kids.

00:32:48.760 No concern.

00:32:49.660 Doesn't matter to you.

00:32:51.480 And then all we ever hear is, oh, I feel so much better.

00:32:54.820 I feel so much better.

00:32:57.480 I don't care how you feel.

00:32:59.980 That's not the point.

00:33:01.100 What about your kids?

00:33:01.900 How do they feel with their dad now dressing up and pretending to be a woman? 0.54

00:33:07.320 How does it make your kids feel?

00:33:11.180 And according to you, if you actually are now a woman, you have just taken, by your own logic, you have just taken the children's father away. 0.72

00:33:21.940 They no longer have a father.

00:33:23.540 They thought they did.

00:33:25.180 But it turns out, according to you, they don't.

00:33:26.760 If you have any capacity for caring about anyone else besides yourself, that should be reason enough to suppress whatever internal things going on that makes you have these feelings.

00:33:44.020 Suppress them.

00:33:45.120 Go to a counselor.

00:33:46.000 A real counselor.

00:33:47.140 A good one.

00:33:47.680 Not many of those, but find one.

00:33:52.340 The fact that you have kids should be reason enough.

00:33:54.060 That you're not going to take a child's father away from him.

00:34:00.080 But, also, he says that I can't imagine life without my kids.

00:34:06.220 You know, and if I transitioned earlier, I wouldn't have kids.

00:34:10.640 And yet, he still thinks it's perfectly fine to transition kids.

00:34:17.280 Yeah, that's right.

00:34:18.260 Because if you transition early as a child, what comes with that is sterility. 1.00

00:34:24.940 We are sterilizing kids, removing their ability to have children in the future. 0.99

00:34:34.320 And so, he can look back and say that, well, I'm really glad that it took as long as it did to transition and that I did it in adulthood so that I still had kids.

00:34:45.580 Meanwhile, in the next breath, he is advocating for doing this as young as possible to kids so that they never have that option.

00:34:54.940 I mean, what do we imagine?

00:34:55.680 Do we imagine that he doesn't notice the inconsistency here, the contradiction?

00:35:00.280 Of course he does.

00:35:01.840 He just doesn't care. 0.53

00:35:04.220 I mean, this guy doesn't give a damn about his own kids.

00:35:06.880 You think he's going to care about anybody else's kids?

00:35:08.640 Because all of this, everything, take Rachel Levine, everything he says, his whole life, everything, is just about affirming himself.

00:35:20.200 He's just constantly trying to affirm and rationalize and justify himself and his own preoccupations and his own self-perceptions.

00:35:30.640 That's what all of this is about.

00:35:34.620 And he will enlist generations of children to follow down this same path because it makes him feel better about himself.

00:35:41.060 It's the only thing he cares about.

00:35:44.820 All right, the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has given her plan for dealing with homelessness.

00:35:51.600 And here it is.

00:35:53.920 Are you still going to allow LAPD and sanitation officers to do these sweeps of encampments?

00:36:00.640 No, these are not sweeps at all.

00:36:03.500 This is getting people to move on their own.

00:36:06.400 But then after the person leaves, sanitation is absolutely going to have to be there.

00:36:10.660 No question about it.

00:36:11.860 But this is not coercing people.

00:36:13.960 This is not ticketing people or incarcerating people.

00:36:16.980 This is moving people from tents to hotels or motels.

00:36:22.700 Oh, yeah.

00:36:23.480 Okay, so you just take the homeless people, take them out of the tent, put them in a hotel or motel, 1.00

00:36:28.400 because that's how you solve the homelessness problem.

00:36:31.520 Which is like, it's like solving the drunk driving problem by, you know, putting more padding on the inside of the car

00:36:37.300 and telling drunk people to wear a helmet if they're going to drive.

00:36:42.240 You're not, you're not, you're just facilitating more drunk driving that way.

00:36:46.780 You are facilitating more of the behaviors that lead to the drunk driving deaths.

00:36:52.860 Because that's the thing.

00:36:54.920 If we have a problem with drunk driving deaths and injuries, the issue is with the behavior, obviously, that leads to those deaths.

00:37:03.720 And same with homelessness.

00:37:04.740 You know, I have to keep making this point.

00:37:09.820 Homeless people are not homeless simply because they lack homes.

00:37:15.880 They're homeless because they'd rather spend their money on drugs than on anything else.

00:37:25.460 Okay, they're homeless because they're addicts and or because they're mentally ill.

00:37:29.540 And obviously those things are certainly not mutually exclusive.

00:37:32.380 An able-bodied, mentally stable, sober person is not going to be out sleeping on a park bench.

00:37:39.880 It's not going to happen most of the time.

00:37:43.060 And in the very rare circumstance, when it might happen, it will only be for a very short amount of time.

00:37:51.240 So we take these people that are years and years living out on the street.

00:37:56.000 It's just, it takes the most minimal competence to be able to make enough money to afford some kind of living arrangement.

00:38:05.880 May not be a mansion, may not be a nice living arrangement.

00:38:08.140 But if you're sober and mentally competent, there is rarely going to be a reason why you wouldn't be making enough money to sleep somewhere that isn't a subway.

00:38:17.020 Great.

00:38:18.060 Now, this is not about being cruel to the homeless.

00:38:20.540 It's quite the opposite.

00:38:22.760 It's about acknowledging what drives the problem.

00:38:27.760 Which is more than what most people are willing to do.

00:38:30.260 So we talk about the homeless problem.

00:38:32.220 And the conversation never goes anywhere because we're not actually acknowledging what the problem is.

00:38:38.140 We're acting as though people just end up homeless, you know, like anyone could end up homeless.

00:38:45.760 You take someone who's sleeping in a box on the side of the road or whatever, living under a bridge.

00:38:52.720 We want to pretend that it's like, well, any one of us could be just in that spot tomorrow.

00:38:58.200 That's just, that's simply not the case. 0.99

00:38:59.780 And because we can't acknowledge what lies at the root of the problem, that's why we end up doing these monumentally stupid things like sending mentally ill drug addicts into hotels. 0.99

00:39:14.300 Where, as we've seen in the past, they promptly proceed to trash every room that you put them in. 1.00

00:39:21.180 They drive away all the business.

00:39:24.440 Who knows?

00:39:25.100 Maybe they send the hotel owner into homelessness himself because it destroys their business.

00:39:31.740 This is what happens when you refuse to acknowledge the actual source of the problem.

00:39:36.780 But let's get to the comment section.

00:39:49.580 Black Rifle Coffee Company is helping you to knock out your holiday shopping with a ton of awesome new products this year.

00:39:54.720 Designed for folks who love country and coffee.

00:39:57.140 You can shop brewing gear, thermoses, mugs, apparel for 10% off with promo code WALSH.

00:40:01.740 Black Rifle Coffee sources the most exotic roast from around the globe.

00:40:05.840 All coffee is roasted here in the U.S. by veteran-led teams of coffee experts.

00:40:09.540 Every purchase you make with Black Rifle helps support veteran and first responder causes.

00:40:13.820 Daily Wire Plus kitchens are stocked with Black Rifle Coffee, and yours can be too.

00:40:18.300 So go to BlackRifleCoffee.com.

00:40:19.940 Use promo code WALSH for 10% off on coffee, coffee gear, apparel, or when you sign up for a new Coffee Club subscription.

00:40:27.240 That's BlackRifleCoffee.com with promo code WALSH for 10% off.

00:40:30.960 Black Rifle Coffee, supporting veterans and America's Coffee.

00:40:34.800 All right, hopefully you've all finished your Christmas shopping, by the way.

00:40:39.560 I'm almost done the shopping, you know, my own Christmas shopping, mainly because I only have one person to buy for, which is my wife.

00:40:47.720 And this is why I say it every year, just like a PSA, that I cannot recommend marriage enough during the holidays.

00:40:54.900 I recommend it during every other time of year, too, but especially during the holidays, and especially if you're a man.

00:41:01.620 Because if you're a man, once you're married, almost all the gift shopping is farmed out to the wife. 0.90

00:41:07.540 She buys everything.

00:41:08.820 I mean, I buy it because, like, I'm making the money that buys it.

00:41:11.460 But she's the one who goes out and actually makes the purchases and picks the gifts and keeps track of everything.

00:41:15.300 And she has the flow chart and the spreadsheet going, and she knows who gets what and everything.

00:41:19.360 I couldn't even begin to do that.

00:41:21.280 And so she takes care of it.

00:41:24.380 And then we sit there on Christmas morning, and it's the classic dad thing where people are opening gifts and a kid runs up.

00:41:30.620 Thank you, Daddy.

00:41:31.560 For what?

00:41:32.300 What did I?

00:41:32.640 Oh, yeah, for that.

00:41:33.380 I remember getting you that.

00:41:34.920 It's fantastic.

00:41:36.360 And here's what gets me, though.

00:41:37.180 My wife, she's a pro at gift shopping. 1.00

00:41:40.480 She gets people the best gifts.

00:41:41.760 She finds great deals.

00:41:43.660 She's the kind of person who she'll buy someone a Christmas gift in July if she's out.

00:41:48.040 She sees something and says, oh, this would be great for this person on Christmas.

00:41:51.160 And she'll buy them a gift in July.

00:41:53.740 She does that, and yet somehow she complains that I'm hard to shop for.

00:41:57.840 And this is a complaint that you hear from wives all the time, that their husbands are hard to shop for. 0.97

00:42:03.160 But I don't understand that.

00:42:05.500 It's the exact opposite.

00:42:06.820 We are the easiest.

00:42:08.580 Are you kidding me?

00:42:09.780 I'm a simple man.

00:42:11.100 Whiskey, flannel, cigars, fishing rods, socks, or a gift card.

00:42:15.380 I would take that, too.

00:42:16.100 That's it.

00:42:16.860 Choose from those options.

00:42:17.760 That's all you need to do.

00:42:19.500 Every Christmas, like clockwork.

00:42:21.060 Just give me the same thing every single year.

00:42:24.280 I'm fine with it.

00:42:26.020 So I'm the easiest one to shop for.

00:42:27.580 I think what happens with women is they make it harder on themselves because they think that they have to be creative and they have to put thought into the gifts so they're too thoughtful. 1.00

00:42:38.420 It's the worst mistake you can make when you're buying a gift.

00:42:41.540 When you're buying a gift for a man, the worst thing you can do is be thoughtful.

00:42:45.340 Just don't put any thought into it.

00:42:46.740 Ask him what, like, you know the things that he likes.

00:42:49.080 Ask him what he wants.

00:42:49.680 Just get that.

00:42:50.400 And that's it.

00:42:52.220 No man has ever opened a gift and it was something that he wanted and then said, well, and was, like, disappointed because it seemed like, well, you just got me exactly what I said I wanted.

00:43:00.640 I was hoping you would surprise me.

00:43:03.000 No man has ever thought that.

00:43:05.740 I guarantee you.

00:43:06.440 Especially if he's a dad because this is something that happens when you become a dad even more so where it's just there are the dad gifts.

00:43:14.280 And it's the dad gets the same gifts every single year.

00:43:16.820 I remember when I was a kid.

00:43:17.920 My dad would get the same gifts year after year after year.

00:43:21.600 And as a kid, I would look at that and I would think, well, this isn't fun for him at all.

00:43:24.780 How could this be?

00:43:25.340 And so some years we would try to surprise him with something creative and he would try to hide it.

00:43:30.020 But we could always tell he was disappointed when he opened it because he just wants his gifts.

00:43:34.440 So you don't even need to wrap it.

00:43:36.020 Just take the dad gifts, put them in a plastic grocery bag, write with Sharpie dad gifts and just throw them at me on Christmas morning.

00:43:45.900 And I'll sift through them later.

00:43:47.280 And that's perfect Christmas.

00:43:49.480 Okay, that's all you need to do.

00:43:51.320 All right.

00:43:52.940 Jack says, disappointed to hear that you only defend free speech for those you agree with.

00:43:57.960 I thought you had better principles than that.

00:44:02.340 No, that's not what I said last week when the left was claiming that their free speech was infringed upon because some journalists were temporarily suspended on Twitter for doxing people.

00:44:12.760 First of all, it was not a free speech violation because they violated the terms of service.

00:44:16.720 First, they violated the rules and the rules were applied to them consistently for a change.

00:44:20.520 So not a violation of free speech at all.

00:44:22.700 But then, yeah, I do also say that even if it had been a violation of their free speech, I most likely would not have defended them.

00:44:31.220 And I'm not one of these people who's going to claim, as referenced earlier, you know, I hate what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it.

00:44:41.260 When it comes to left-wing journalists, no, I wouldn't.

00:44:44.460 I wouldn't fight to the death for their right to say whatever they're saying.

00:44:48.260 I wouldn't. 1.00

00:44:49.880 My life's too valuable to give it up for these scumbags. 0.99

00:44:54.940 No, in fact, it's quite the opposite. 0.99

00:44:56.480 It's good for them to get a dose of their own medicine.

00:44:58.900 You know, we can talk about, we can describe the medicine, talk about how horrible it is, but sometimes people need to learn by doing.

00:45:06.760 They need to learn by experiencing it.

00:45:08.500 And I am a fan also of holding people to their own standard.

00:45:12.860 That's all.

00:45:13.920 I think, and I think that's perfectly consistent.

00:45:16.760 You should be held to your own standard.

00:45:19.360 It's the only way.

00:45:20.380 If we want these standards to be abolished, the only way to do that.

00:45:23.460 If we want to get rid of the double standards that we're, you know, subject to from the left and we complain about all the time, the only way to get rid of it is to make them, is to apply it to them, is to force them.

00:45:37.160 Basically, you're getting rid of the double standard, and you're saying, okay, you want to apply these standards to us, and we don't like them, but we're going to apply them right back on you.

00:45:43.740 And it's the only way.

00:45:50.700 ManBot3000 says, I was put in special needs class in seventh grade.

00:45:53.980 That's what they called it in the late 80s, all the bad kids.

00:45:56.720 Some were intellectually deficient, for lack of a better description.

00:45:59.300 Most, like myself, were troublemakers.

00:46:01.360 I actually met three of those classmates in prison a few short years later.

00:46:04.860 Putting all the bad kids in a room at the end of the hallway isn't a viable solution.

00:46:08.500 Thank God he changed lives.

00:46:10.920 And today, I'm a father of three, happily married and gainfully employed.

00:46:15.180 Well, congratulations, first of all, on being able to get your life together.

00:46:18.500 And this is, the fact that you went through this in the 80s, and this is what they were doing with kids, and it was already having that effect.

00:46:27.460 I mean, think about how much worse it is now.

00:46:30.020 Because the discipline problems have not gotten any better in the last 30 years.

00:46:35.580 They've only gotten worse.

00:46:36.560 And they were already just sort of like taking the back, and like we talked about last week, I can remember this.

00:46:44.160 When I was in high school, if you were a troublemaker, they just took you and threw you into a room with other kids that are just like you.

00:46:55.160 And that's not going to help much.

00:46:57.100 But at least back when I was in school, like you could still punish kids a little bit.

00:47:02.240 Now you can't punish them at all.

00:47:08.580 The Natundi says, getting divorced because you don't feel the sparkles is like concluding you can't work your job because you're tired in the morning and don't want to go and then just quitting.

00:47:19.420 Well, yeah, that is very similar sort of mentality, but that's exactly the mentality that lots of people have about their jobs.

00:47:26.080 This is what they call, you know, quiet quitting.

00:47:28.900 There's people that say, really, yeah, it's a similar kind of thing.

00:47:32.720 So, yeah, the country star who said she had to divorce her husband, because I just didn't feel the glitter anymore.

00:47:38.120 There was no glitter.

00:47:39.320 And so she divorced, and a lot of people in their jobs would say, I don't feel the glitter anymore in this job.

00:47:43.340 But the difference is, they actually don't quit.

00:47:45.840 They're going to keep doing the job, but not trying and expecting to make the paycheck.

00:47:50.820 Lisa, done listening to Matt, lost all credibility on backstage when he said,

00:47:55.400 Wonderful Christmas Time is the worst Christmas song ever.

00:47:59.700 Everyone knows it's Feliz Navidad.

00:48:02.560 Sorry, that's not even close.

00:48:03.920 It's not in the ballpark.

00:48:04.740 Feliz Navidad is, I'll tell you right now, if you want a contrarian take, Feliz Navidad is a delightful song.

00:48:12.080 It's catchy.

00:48:13.340 You know, it's catchy.

00:48:14.860 It's catchy.

00:48:17.180 It's, I mean, you can at least call it catchy.

00:48:19.000 You have to agree with me on that.

00:48:20.120 I'm not saying it's my favorite.

00:48:21.360 I'm just saying it doesn't hold a candle to the putrid pile of audible mush that is called Wonderful Christmas Time.

00:48:28.720 The song that Paul McCartney wrote in 19 seconds with crayon on the back of a CVS receipt.

00:48:34.440 And that was then piped into every retail store in the country on repeat from November 1st to the end of December.

00:48:41.240 Even though nobody wants to hear it, nobody likes the song, nobody understands why we have to hear it, but it just, we just do.

00:48:50.120 It's a, the song is a god-awful nightmare.

00:48:54.220 And there is, there are some bad Christmas songs out there, but, you know, last, people always say last Christmas, Feliz Navidad.

00:49:03.980 Those are, I would listen to those, I would listen to last Christmas 10 times in a row before I listened to Wonderful Christmas Time once.

00:49:10.640 It's hard to believe it, but the holidays are already here.

00:49:14.520 Christmas is upon us.

00:49:16.000 Kwanzaa follows close behind.

00:49:17.540 Now, I know a lot of you are already Daily Wire Plus members and get to enjoy the great content that we have released this year,

00:49:22.620 like Terror on the Prairie, The Greatest Lie Ever Sold, and last but certainly not least, my very own documentary, What is a Woman?

00:49:27.760 For those of you who haven't been able to enjoy it because you're not a member, now is the time to take advantage of our 30% holiday sale.

00:49:33.880 This applies to gift memberships, so, as well as regular memberships, so don't miss this opportunity.

00:49:39.860 To get everyone on your list, an annual gift membership from Daily Wire Plus with code HOLIDAY at checkout.

00:49:45.600 Since joining Daily Wire Plus, Jordan Peterson has been on fire with a ton of content.

00:49:49.360 One in particular is a standout called Logos and Literacy, in which Jordan went to Washington, D.C.

00:49:53.760 and filmed a fantastic documentary on the Museum of the Bible.

00:49:57.280 In it, Jordan meets with historians, theologians, and philosophers to discuss the history of the Bible and its influence on the world.

00:50:03.600 It's beautiful. It's engaging. You've got to see it.

00:50:05.720 Jordan even sent us a note to say how happy he was with the way it turned out.

00:50:08.540 He actually watched it twice, so it tells you how good it is.

00:50:11.080 Remember, this content is only available for Daily Wire Plus members, so sign up today.

00:50:15.400 Use code HOLIDAY at checkout to get 30% off your new annual Daily Wire Plus membership at dailywire.com slash Walsh.

00:50:22.880 That's dailywire.com slash Walsh today.

00:50:26.060 Now, let's get to our daily cancellation.

00:50:27.340 We are now less than a week away from Christmas, a time of joy and celebration, of family, togetherness, unless you're a left-wing hypochondriac, in which case it's a horrifying festival of sickness and death.

00:50:42.480 Yes, as we get into the holidays, the media has ramped up its masking push, trying to reignite those germaphobe sparks, recapture the magic of holiday seasons past.

00:50:51.060 In many recent published pieces, most media outlets have agreed it's time to once again don our gay apparel, and by that I mean a mask.

00:51:00.740 As CNBC reports, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, in a call with reporters, said wearing a mask is one of the several everyday precautions that people can take to reduce their chances of catching or spreading a respiratory virus during the holiday season.

00:51:11.920 Quote, we also encourage you to wear a high-quality, well-fitting mask to prevent the spread of respiratory illness, she said, adding that people living in areas with high levels of COVID transmission should especially consider masking.

00:51:23.060 The CDC Director said the agency is considering expanding its system of COVID community levels to take into account other respiratory viruses, such as the flu.

00:51:29.320 The system is the basis for when CDC advises the public to wear masks, but Walensky encouraged people to take proactive action.

00:51:35.240 On Friday night, there was an MSNBC medical analyst who made the case in perhaps even more strident terms.

00:51:42.340 Here's what he said.

00:51:43.720 To your question, it is well past time, especially because pediatric hospitals across the country are overwhelmed, as you said, that we just need to accept what's unpopular.

00:51:56.500 And I'll just say it, that communities across the country, especially with pediatric hospitals that are overwhelmed, which is most, just need to mask up.

00:52:05.240 Schools need to take the leadership here.

00:52:07.500 Public health officials need to accept that we, and I know that they privately communicate this all the time.

00:52:14.800 It's just, we need to have the courage to say this publicly, even if it's unpopular, that communities, especially with hospitals, children's hospitals that have little slack in the system, need to protect those hospitals.

00:52:25.960 Schools need to lead by example and mask, and that school officials, I'm looking at you, public health officials at the local level.

00:52:34.000 It only makes sense.

00:52:35.120 It's our only buttress here, in addition to vaccination, and we need to do it.

00:52:38.880 Yes, public health officials must have the courage, the courage to advocate for muzzling children, a policy that all the credible evidence suggests was ineffective, pointless, and caused far more harm in terms of educational delays and psychological damage than it prevented. 0.99

00:52:53.240 There's a word we might use for the promotion of policies that were disastrously stupid the first time around and destined to be just as stupid the next time. 0.95

00:53:02.480 There are many words, in fact, and none of them have anything to do with courage. 0.99

00:53:05.220 That's for certain, but some of the media's renewed panicking over COVID is driven by the personal experiences of people in the media.

00:53:13.200 For example, a woman named Tanya Lewis, who's a science journalist for Scientific American, tweeted her own harrowing tale over the weekend.

00:53:20.240 She wrote this, well, it happened.

00:53:22.880 After nearly three years of covering COVID and thinking about it almost constantly, it finally got me, and rather than focus on how I got it, I'm going to tell you how I didn't get it for this long.

00:53:31.360 What follows from this point is a truly terrifying glance into the mind of a sick woman, and I don't mean sick with COVID.

00:53:39.780 Her sickness is not in the lungs, but in the mind. 0.94

00:53:42.700 She continues, from the moment we had evidence that COVID might be airborne, I wore a mask, but not just any mask, an N95 or a well-fitted can of N95.

00:53:49.720 At first, these were really hard to come by, but now it's quite easy to find them.

00:53:52.640 I don't just wear it some of the time.

00:53:55.380 I wore it any time I was indoors in public, or even outdoors if I was in a crowd.

00:53:59.280 I wore one in the hallways of my apartment building, even if there was no one else around, because aerosols can linger in the air for a while.

00:54:05.020 For the first year or two, I avoided spending time indoors in public as much as possible, with the exception of grocery stores or doctor's offices.

00:54:11.480 I avoided the subways for a while, although studies suggest trains weren't the biggest vectors for the spread.

00:54:16.580 She's not done.

00:54:17.380 She goes on,

00:54:17.880 I did get on planes a few times to visit a sick parent who needed my help, but from the moment I left my apartment to the moment I arrived, I didn't take off my mask.

00:54:26.280 I opened windows in taxis.

00:54:27.580 I didn't eat or drink on the flights except to sip water while holding my breath.

00:54:31.260 As soon as vaccines became available, I got mine.

00:54:33.560 I've gotten every booster I could since then, including the new bivalent booster that targets Omnicorn.

00:54:40.600 Because we know the coronavirus is airborne, I only ate at restaurants with outdoor seating.

00:54:44.680 I bought portable air purifiers and a CO2 monitor to measure ventilation levels at home.

00:54:49.780 I opened windows.

00:54:50.920 If I was going to visit an elderly slash immunocompromised family member, I took lots of tests, PCR tests before traveling, rapid tests for several days after arriving. 0.72

00:54:59.200 I avoided possible exposures for a week or more before traveling.

00:55:03.040 So, finally, we get to the story of how she still managed to contract the virus after all this, which she blames on the holiday party she worked, that she worked up the courage to attend this year.

00:55:14.400 She wore her N95 to the holiday party.

00:55:16.500 She bathed herself at hand sanitizer.

00:55:18.740 She brought 10 booster shots with her, injected one every 15 minutes.

00:55:22.560 She refused to shake hands with anyone or speak to them or stand within 50 yards of anyone.

00:55:26.680 I'm only making some of this up.

00:55:27.720 The point is that she emerged only ever so slightly from her hypochondriac cocoon after three years, and she still got the virus.

00:55:39.440 What lesson does she learn from this? 0.99

00:55:42.540 What lesson does this professional science writer want us to learn?

00:55:47.280 Well, of course, exactly the opposite of the actual lesson.

00:55:50.980 Indeed, she summarizes her experiences at the end with this mind-boggling statement.

00:55:56.100 She says this, quote,

00:55:58.400 Getting sick doesn't have to be inevitable.

00:56:02.180 What?

00:56:03.160 No, Tanya, no, you've missed your own point.

00:56:06.000 Your experience proves that getting sick is inevitable.

00:56:09.900 You structured your entire life around avoiding the virus for three years, and yet you still got it.

00:56:16.660 I, on the other hand, have done absolutely nothing to avoid getting it.

00:56:20.840 In fact, I've done the opposite.

00:56:21.880 I've spent my time working in a busy office, traveling the country, shaking hands with hundreds of people at a time.

00:56:28.960 You've done everything not to get sick.

00:56:31.040 I have seemingly done everything to get sick.

00:56:33.680 And we both have had COVID the same number of times since China invented it.

00:56:37.940 Once.

00:56:39.240 Okay?

00:56:39.580 You have sacrificed your normal human existence in favor of a self-imposed, paranoia-fueled self-exile.

00:56:45.640 And in the end, you're in exactly the same spot that all of us out here breathing fresh air and participating in society are in.

00:56:53.160 You get sick sometimes.

00:56:55.940 Most of the time you don't.

00:56:58.100 Until eventually you die.

00:57:00.180 That's the story for almost everyone on Earth, mask or no mask, socially distanced or not socially distanced.

00:57:07.940 We are all in the same boat.

00:57:09.640 We all must navigate the world in frail, mortal, you know, bodies, subject to all manner of risks and potential tragedies.

00:57:20.160 You either come to terms with this and live your life, or you hide in fear from it, trembling in terror,

00:57:27.440 and yet still find yourself subject to the same inevitabilities that all the rest of us are.

00:57:33.720 To quote Shawshank Redemption, either get busy living or get busy dying.

00:57:37.420 What you can't choose, much to your chagrin, I realize, is a state of suspended animation,

00:57:42.420 where you're neither living nor dying as you wait for humans to achieve immortality before reemerging into society.

00:57:48.320 That is not an option on the table.

00:57:52.420 In the end, what we really learned from COVID, or our response to it at any rate,

00:57:56.820 is that some people in our country had never, before the winter of 2020, actually confronted their own mortality.

00:58:04.320 They had never stopped to think about the fact that death is certain.

00:58:07.920 That they came into this world and will have to leave it sooner than they would like.

00:58:11.040 That their own lives are all, are but small blips on the radar screen in comparison to the lifespan of human civilization or of the earth itself.

00:58:19.760 That when considered on that time scale, their lives may as well be five seconds long.

00:58:26.000 Somehow, there were many people who had never really thought about any of this,

00:58:30.040 which came as a shock to those of us like myself who think about it all the time.

00:58:34.300 And in a way that may seem ironic to some people, it is those of us who think about death who are the least liable to panic over it.

00:58:45.260 Because we know that it's coming.

00:58:47.020 This isn't news to us.

00:58:49.020 We know that the world is filled to the brim with deadly things.

00:58:51.860 COVID being not even close to the top of that list.

00:58:54.240 Nowhere near it, in fact.

00:58:55.300 But those who successfully distracted themselves from reflecting on their own mortality,

00:59:00.280 who managed to sublimate those thoughts, numb themselves psychologically and spiritually,

00:59:05.740 were jolted quite suddenly by the existence of this relatively mild virus.

00:59:10.840 To them, it came out of nowhere like a bolt of lightning.

00:59:14.040 And the constant reminders of death, the one thing they tried to desperately avoid thinking about, broke them mentally.

00:59:21.800 They retreated into their cocoons like paranoid little caterpillars and pledged to never come out until all the scary stuff is gone.

00:59:30.800 And yet it hasn't gone away and never will.

00:59:34.900 And still, they cannot bring themselves to simply accept the terrible truth that life is short, no matter what,

00:59:41.340 and we will all die, and it will probably hurt, and we will not like it. 0.75

00:59:46.480 But there is no way to stop it.

00:59:48.980 Death lurks around the corner for all of us.

00:59:52.200 No matter which direction we choose to walk, any step might be our last.

00:59:59.340 So Merry Christmas.

01:00:02.060 And Tanya, you're canceled. 0.99

01:00:06.300 We'll leave it there for today.

01:00:08.620 Moving over to the members block.

01:00:10.080 Hope to see you there.

01:00:10.720 If not, talk to you tomorrow.

01:00:12.120 Godspeed.

01:00:12.460 Godspeed.

01:00:12.520 Godspeed.

01:00:13.460 Godspeed.

01:00:14.460 Godspeed.

01:00:15.460 Godspeed.

01:00:16.460 Godspeed.

01:00:17.460 Godspeed.

01:00:18.460 Godspeed.

01:00:19.460 Godspeed.

01:00:20.460 Godspeed.

01:00:21.460 Godspeed.

01:00:21.800 Godjudry. 0.87

01:00:22.360 Godspeed.

01:00:25.820 Godspeed.

01:00:26.100 Godspeed.

01:00:27.000 Godspeed.

01:00:27.320 Godspeed.

01:00:27.540 Godspeed.

01:00:27.980 Godspeed.

01:00:28.760 Godspeed.

01:00:29.340 Godspeed.

01:00:29.720 Godspeed.

01:00:30.280 Godspeed.

01:00:32.060 Godspeed.

01:00:32.340 Godspeed.

01:00:32.540 Godspeed.

01:00:33.580 Godspeed.

01:00:34.540 Godspeed.

01:00:34.760 Godspeed.

01:00:37.760 Godspeed.

01:00:38.400 Godspeed.

01:00:38.420 Godspeed.

01:00:39.440 Godspeed.

01:00:40.740 Godspeed.

01:00:41.100 Godspeed.

01:00:41.580 Godspeed.

01:00:43.640 Godspeed.

01:00:44.120 Godspeed.

01:00:45.440 Godspeed.

01:00:45.520 Godspeed.

01:00:47.640 Godspeed.

01:00:47.900 Godspeed.

01:00:48.400 Godspeed.

01:00:48.660 Godspeed.

01:00:49.960 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - December 19, 2022

Ep. 1084 - Porn Has Taken Over Society. We Need Laws To Fight Back.

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript