The Matt Walsh Show - October 08, 2018


Ep. 119 - After Kavanaugh： Now Is Not The Time For Squishy Centrism

Topics
Kavanaugh compromise
Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Godspeed Leif Erikson Day Aztecs Kavanaugh Samuel Morse Ruth Bader Ginsburg Maxine Waters Amy Coney Barrett Jonas Salk Scalia Arawak Venus
Ep. 118 - Christine Ford Needs to be Investigated by the FBI Ep. 120 - Don't Apologize To The Mob

Episode Stats


Length

30 minutes

Words per minute

165.72

Word count

5,017

Sentence count

362

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

33

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about how clueless I am when it comes to finding things in my own house, and why it's a good thing I have a daughter to help take care of the kids when my wife is out of town. I also talk about the left-wing mob reaction to Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation of the Supreme Court nominee.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.220 Well, my wife's sister, my sister-in-law, in case you didn't know, that's the way that relationship works, just had a baby. 0.99
00:00:07.000 So my wife went away for a few days. She was away over the weekend to help with the baby.
00:00:14.640 She took our youngest kid with her, but she left me with the twins.
00:00:18.700 And it's not the first time I've had the kids by myself for an extended period of time.
00:00:23.540 And I'm not one of those dads that can't figure out how to take care of his own kids. I don't have that problem.
00:00:28.060 I think those dads mostly exist in sitcoms.
00:00:32.240 But the one problem I do run into, and this is the one area where I guess I am like the clueless, stereotypical dad from the sitcom.
00:00:41.200 But the thing is, I don't know why it is, but I can't figure out how to find anything in my own house.
00:00:47.660 I don't know where anything is in my own house.
00:00:49.600 And I've had this problem for as long as I've been alive.
00:00:52.100 But when I was a kid and I lived in my parents' house all those years, I never knew where anything was.
00:00:56.740 And now in my own house, I don't know where anything is.
00:01:01.060 And usually it's not a problem because my wife is here. 0.99
00:01:03.900 So if I'm looking for something, I'm looking for a pair of scissors, I can just ask her where are the scissors. 0.86
00:01:08.100 And she'll say, oh, well, they're in the same place they were the last 18 times you asked.
00:01:12.920 And then I'll say, well, okay, but where were they then?
00:01:17.000 And then she'll explain.
00:01:17.820 So, and we have that conversation, you know, a conversation like that approximately 30 to 40 times a day.
00:01:24.620 But when she's not around and I'm looking for something, what am I supposed to do?
00:01:29.300 You know, I can text her, which I do, but she doesn't always respond promptly.
00:01:32.900 So now I have been reduced or I can Google, like, in the average house, where does this item exist?
00:01:40.640 I can do that.
00:01:41.680 But what I've been reduced to is now I ask my five-year-old daughter where things are in the house.
00:01:48.360 And sadly enough, she actually knows and will tell me.
00:01:52.000 So I have my five-year-old daughter now pointing me in the right direction in the house.
00:01:56.840 So yesterday, at various different points, she was able to bail me out and correctly locate a pair of scissors.
00:02:05.000 I don't know why I always need scissors, but for some reason I'm constantly needing them and I'm never knowing where they are.
00:02:11.520 But she found a pair of scissors, her brother's sneakers, her brother's socks, an extra blanket, a box of crayons, all those things she could find.
00:02:19.520 Not that I needed those for related reasons, but at various different points.
00:02:23.780 So that's been good.
00:02:24.920 And she likes to be the mommy of the house, even when the real mommy is here. 0.91
00:02:30.260 And when the real mommy is not here, then she really wants to step in and do that. 1.00
00:02:36.940 So I don't really mind.
00:02:39.340 Like, yesterday, I had her brother go upstairs to clean his room.
00:02:43.880 And when he called down and said, Daddy, I finished the room, my daughter shouted up, 0.96
00:02:49.660 Did you just stuff everything under the blanket?
00:02:52.240 I'm going to go up there and check.
00:02:53.480 And I said, yeah, could you go up there and check, actually?
00:02:56.740 It'd be easier for me if you were just going.
00:03:00.560 So it's good.
00:03:01.220 It's nice having a helper.
00:03:02.460 It's why it's good to have a daughter around this.
00:03:05.400 I don't know.
00:03:05.920 If I just had a bunch of sons and we were left alone in the house, I don't know.
00:03:09.040 We wouldn't be able to find anything.
00:03:11.860 All right.
00:03:12.080 Anyway, so two things I want to touch on today.
00:03:16.020 First of all, unrelated, but two things I want to talk about.
00:03:19.700 First of all, perhaps you witnessed some of the theatrics surrounding Kavanaugh's confirmation this weekend.
00:03:27.240 If you happen to turn on the news, you would have seen it.
00:03:31.120 Leftists were losing their mind as usual.
00:03:33.300 Nothing new about that.
00:03:35.160 As we have seen, any time there's a mob of people throwing a hissy fit, it is almost always a leftist mob.
00:03:42.640 I don't know if you've noticed that, but it is almost always, if there's a riot, if there are people screaming in the street, if there are people burning down buildings, turning over cop cars, whatever it is, destruction of property, making a fool of themselves, it's almost always leftist.
00:03:58.840 The one exception, the one exception I can think of in recent history would be the one or two white nationalist rallies that we've seen.
00:04:06.100 And really, really only just the one in there was there was really the one that was big and chaotic.
00:04:14.100 So that's one one exception.
00:04:16.580 Aside from those.
00:04:19.020 It's always leftist.
00:04:21.120 But the one thing, the one image that kind of stands out from this past weekend in terms of the protests, especially is the image of the people.
00:04:31.180 I don't know if you saw this, but there are people literally after the after Kavanaugh was officially confirmed, there are people literally clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court.
00:04:43.400 It was like something out of The Walking Dead.
00:04:46.060 You had these people screaming, just these guttural kind of unhuman sounding, demonically possessed screams while they were clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court.
00:04:59.160 I mean, some of them were trying to knock that they were running into the door, trying to knock it over doors, which, by the way, look to be made of stone and probably weigh a couple tons apiece.
00:05:10.260 But in their impotent rage, they thought they could break down the doors or claw them open.
00:05:17.200 And to what end?
00:05:18.400 I'm not sure.
00:05:19.180 Do they think that the Supreme Court justices actually live inside the Supreme Court building?
00:05:24.100 Is that what they think?
00:05:24.760 Do they think that we keep them all there, like cryogenically frozen, and then we thaw them out for every session?
00:05:31.580 I think that might actually be the case with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
00:05:34.240 But generally, these people live in homes.
00:05:36.280 I don't know what, even if you could manage to claw open a stone door, I don't know what you think that would accomplish.
00:05:45.540 I'm not sure.
00:05:46.360 But it really is, we can laugh about it, we have to laugh about it, right, because, number one, it's hilarious, but number two, what else are you going to do?
00:05:56.320 But as we're laughing, we have to recognize that this is real.
00:05:59.900 I mean, these are real people who are behaving this way.
00:06:02.460 And this is not uncommon anymore.
00:06:04.420 We've gotten to the point where we can no longer say, oh, it's an aberration, it's just a few of them.
00:06:07.700 This is very common.
00:06:09.420 Anytime things don't go the way leftists want, whether it's an election, Supreme Court confirmation, a grand jury, you know, a trial of a cop accused of shooting somebody, whatever it is, whatever item in the news they don't like, this is how they respond every time.
00:06:31.900 It's not an exaggeration.
00:06:33.100 And as we've watched this spectacle unfold, and we have heard leftists, more than one leftist, promise to continue with these kinds of scenes, promise to confront their opponents everywhere, including where they eat and sleep.
00:06:52.060 I've seen this, this is not just Maxine Waters who said something like this.
00:06:56.140 This is a very common thing now on the left where they say, well, we're going to, we have to confront Republicans anywhere, everywhere.
00:07:02.520 We, you know, we have to be ruthless.
00:07:04.540 I saw someone on Twitter today, so we've got to be ruthless towards them.
00:07:08.060 They shouldn't be allowed any moment of peace out in public.
00:07:11.500 So again, this is, these are not, this is not a fringe thing.
00:07:14.500 This is now, this is now the approach and the attitude of leftists in the mainstream.
00:07:19.000 But as we see all of this, I think that we as conservatives have to decide how we're going to respond.
00:07:28.000 And in my view, I know there are some people who worry that conservatives, that it will have a radicalizing effect on conservatives.
00:07:36.120 And as we see this, we're going to be radicalized in response to their radical behavior.
00:07:41.760 And I know there are some people who worry that that will happen.
00:07:44.420 I, on the other hand, hope that it will happen.
00:07:46.620 It should have a radicalizing effect.
00:07:49.100 And when I say radicalizing, I mean, we should be radically opposed to the leftist agenda and radically committed to making sure that they do not come into power.
00:07:58.740 We should be radical about that.
00:08:00.260 That's what I mean by radical.
00:08:01.620 I think now is a time for radicalism.
00:08:04.200 Not the kind of radicalism we see on the left where they're clawing at doors and burning down buildings and that kind of thing.
00:08:09.620 I'm not talking about that.
00:08:10.580 Where you're embarrassing yourself in public or you're destroying property of people who really have nothing to do with it anyway.
00:08:16.680 Not that kind of radical.
00:08:18.040 I'm talking about being firm in our convictions and absolutely unwilling to compromise with these people who want nothing more than the utter and total and complete destruction of those they disagree with.
00:08:31.020 We have no choice.
00:08:32.960 They hate us and they hate everything we stand for.
00:08:35.500 I think that much is clear by now.
00:08:36.900 There is no centrism anymore.
00:08:38.880 There is no middle ground.
00:08:39.960 There is no moderate.
00:08:41.040 None of that exists.
00:08:42.740 The gulf is too wide.
00:08:43.900 I've been talking about this for months now.
00:08:45.680 The gulf is far too wide.
00:08:48.340 And I think it's important to establish this because there are still some people, some on the right, who envision a return to compromise and a return to civility and decency.
00:08:57.640 But that's not going to happen.
00:08:58.880 When you have two sides who disagree fundamentally about the most basic questions of life, the only way to achieve unity is for one side or the other or both sides to abandon their fundamental convictions.
00:09:12.600 The left, as we have seen, will not do that.
00:09:15.380 And we should not do that either.
00:09:19.600 I mean, look at Kavanaugh.
00:09:22.540 This is what we lose sight of.
00:09:23.920 But I don't think we should lose sight of this.
00:09:25.620 With Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh actually is a compromise.
00:09:29.200 He represents compromise.
00:09:31.140 He is not nearly as far right as some of the other options would have been.
00:09:36.220 There were other people.
00:09:36.740 There were people on the list, like Amy Barrett, for instance, who would have been far more to the right than Kavanaugh.
00:09:46.220 He's actually he's pretty moderate.
00:09:47.960 He's so moderate that it's not even guaranteed that he would vote to overturn Roe.
00:09:51.780 I think I think I mean, it's at least 50 50 whether or not he would even cast that vote if given the chance.
00:09:59.340 I think we can be sure that he won't vote to strengthen abortion protections and we can be pretty sure that he won't vote to restrict religious liberty any more than it is and and so forth.
00:10:09.300 But would he be in favor of something as severe as overturning Roe?
00:10:15.060 That is by no means a given.
00:10:16.760 So, again, with Kavanaugh, Republicans compromised.
00:10:22.300 They said to the left, OK, we're in power.
00:10:25.420 We can put in there whoever we want to put in there, but we're going to be fair.
00:10:28.940 And so we'll put in somebody who is who is closer to the center than he is to Scalia.
00:10:35.840 Right.
00:10:37.100 That's what they did.
00:10:37.980 And what how did the left respond? 0.99
00:10:40.880 They took this moderate justice and they ripped him apart and they feasted on his innards like zombies. 0.98
00:10:47.540 That's what they did. 0.98
00:10:48.960 Nothing but complete and total capitulation will satisfy them.
00:10:53.320 That is the only thing they want.
00:10:55.540 They nothing but that will satisfy.
00:10:58.360 So we have to decide, are we going to completely and totally capitulate to appease them?
00:11:05.180 Because that's the only way to appease them if we're interested in appeasing them.
00:11:09.160 Or will we dig in and stand our ground and refuse to give even an inch?
00:11:14.480 Those are only two choices there.
00:11:16.320 What I'm saying is the left has if there was ever any choice of an in between, a middle, a compromise, the left has made that now impossible.
00:11:25.180 They are not leaving that option open.
00:11:27.180 So you have to choose one or the other.
00:11:29.180 It really is black or white.
00:11:32.000 And and I think that the latter should be our choice.
00:11:35.020 We should dig in and stand our ground and refuse to give an inch and thus be radical, radicalized.
00:11:42.860 It's our only choice.
00:11:43.960 This is the only choice they've left open to us.
00:11:46.060 It's either that or join them in their insanity and their moral depravity and their nihilism and their self-centeredness and everything else.
00:11:55.180 So, OK, that's the first thing.
00:11:58.420 Switching gears, I would be I would be remiss if if I were not to say happy Columbus Day today because it is Columbus Day.
00:12:08.520 And this is it's not really a totally unrelated topic, actually, because talking about leftist insanity.
00:12:17.140 Part of the leftist insanity we have today is where we're told that we cannot celebrate our our our heroes.
00:12:23.260 We cannot honor those who built the civilization that we all now live in.
00:12:30.040 And enjoy living in and prefer living in.
00:12:32.620 But we all prefer this civilization to any other civilization on the globe currently or or or or really to any other civilization civilization that has ever existed on the globe.
00:12:41.340 We all prefer this one.
00:12:42.560 If we were given a time machine and told that we can live anywhere at any point in history.
00:12:51.540 I think we would all probably choose right now.
00:12:54.980 Which is not to say that right now is is perfectly wonderful and we don't have serious problems.
00:12:59.340 We do.
00:12:59.820 But when it comes down to it, when given a choice, I, you know, I don't think we're going to choose to go anywhere else.
00:13:08.980 And we have our ancestors to thank for that.
00:13:12.620 Pioneers, explorers, discoverers, settlers.
00:13:17.040 Founders, we have we have them to thank for.
00:13:18.640 But the left says we cannot thank them. 0.99
00:13:20.300 We have to hate them and despise them. 0.96
00:13:21.600 And so they're going to spend today screaming about a fictional version of history where Europeans introduced rape, pillage and slavery to the peaceful and noble inhabitants of the new world. 0.99
00:13:32.900 But, of course, it would it would have been impossible for the Europeans to introduce rape, pillage and slavery to an Indian culture where rape, pillage and slavery were totally commonplace and had been for centuries. 0.98
00:13:44.140 So, you notice something about these self-hating, white guilt-ridden people.
00:13:52.100 You notice that they would never suggest that the brutality of many Indian tribes should somehow outweigh whatever they accomplished. 1.00
00:14:03.720 Even their propensity for cannibalism, we're told, must be understood within the kind within the historical and cultural context.
00:14:11.400 Yet, somehow, the sins of the Europeans, or the alleged sins in some cases, automatically negate what the European explorers achieved and discovered.
00:14:20.780 Have you noticed that?
00:14:21.660 So, with everybody else in history, with all other cultures, with all other people, we have to have, there's got to be a historical context, cultural context.
00:14:30.200 We have to put it all into perspective.
00:14:31.480 But, when it comes to Europeans, they're the only ones who we have to take, we have to take from, from, from their point in history and bring them into the modern world and judge them by modern standards. 0.86
00:14:44.260 They're the only ones we do that to.
00:14:45.860 And, not only that, we don't even, it's not just that we judge, we're talking about Columbus here, specifically for a minute.
00:14:55.260 It's not just that we judge him by the moral standards of modern society.
00:15:01.000 But, even more absurd, we judge him by the technological standards of modern society. 0.97
00:15:09.760 So, that's where you get some of the dumbest objections to Columbus. 0.89
00:15:15.800 Someone will say, for instance, but Columbus didn't even mean to discover America. 0.97
00:15:21.160 Well, of course he didn't mean to discover America.
00:15:23.980 He didn't know it existed.
00:15:25.060 Nobody did.
00:15:26.220 How could they know?
00:15:28.200 And, why does it matter that he didn't mean to discover?
00:15:30.660 What does that mean?
00:15:31.520 Think about it.
00:15:32.160 In the future, if a team of intrepid astronauts were to set out on a manned mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and when they get there, they were to discover a different moon, one that we didn't know about, and one that has primitive microbial life on it, it would be one of the great discoveries, maybe the greatest scientific discovery in the history of humankind. 0.99
00:15:58.120 But, would we laugh at them and say, pfft, those idiots didn't even mean to discover that moon. 1.00
00:16:03.940 You hear, look at these morons. 1.00
00:16:05.320 They meant to go to Europa and said they found this other moon that happens to have life on it, and it changes the course of human society. 1.00
00:16:10.240 But, these idiots, they didn't even mean to discover that. 1.00
00:16:12.980 How did you, you guys didn't even know that moon was there, morons. 1.00
00:16:16.940 Is that what we would do? 0.99
00:16:17.880 Or, would we celebrate their enormous achievement, an achievement that was only possible because they had the guts and the wit and the tenacity to get into the ship in the first place and traverse that great expanse of nothingness at great risk to themselves, and only upon making that voyage were they able to make this discovery in the first place.
00:16:41.200 Oh, but Columbus never set foot on North America.
00:16:47.180 Did you know that?
00:16:49.580 Now, I think the people that raise these objections, I think their first point in raising the objection is just to say, hey, I know this piece of historical information.
00:16:56.820 Did you know this?
00:16:57.740 Look at this historical information that I know.
00:16:59.840 Hey, did you know that Columbus didn't set foot on North America?
00:17:02.540 Meanwhile, they just learned that through a Facebook meme yesterday.
00:17:06.580 And now they're saying, hey, did you guys know? 1.00
00:17:08.140 Well, that's a stupid objection, too. 0.99
00:17:12.900 Okay, he never set foot on North America. 1.00
00:17:14.460 So what?
00:17:15.960 He still discovered the Caribbean islands plus Central and South America.
00:17:19.640 Is that not enough?
00:17:21.300 Is that really not enough?
00:17:22.580 Do you fault him for not discovering the entire Western Hemisphere? 1.00
00:17:26.760 This idiot didn't even discover the entire Western Hemisphere. 1.00
00:17:29.360 He only discovered most of it. 1.00
00:17:33.940 Again, going to the astronaut analogy.
00:17:36.100 That's like if we finally landed on Mars and then you go, that's lame.
00:17:40.700 We didn't even land on Venus.
00:17:42.480 Landed on Mars.
00:17:43.500 What about Venus?
00:17:44.360 They didn't even set foot on Venus.
00:17:47.720 And then my other favorite objection is when somebody says, well, the Vikings got here first.
00:17:52.880 Did you know that?
00:17:53.560 And again, this is just them showing off that they have about one sentence worth of knowledge of this period of history.
00:18:02.960 And in fact, it's not even that period of history.
00:18:07.860 Because in fact, the Vikings were exploring a completely different and much smaller expanse of ocean way up in the North Atlantic.
00:18:18.360 They were exploring 500 years before a completely different area and a much, much smaller area.
00:18:28.260 It is not nearly as impressive that they were able to traverse that small sliver of ocean.
00:18:35.740 Not nearly as impressive as Columbus making this many thousands of miles journey across the Atlantic.
00:18:51.880 And besides, how do the achievements of the Vikings undermine the achievements of Columbus?
00:18:58.800 That's what I don't understand.
00:19:00.420 How do the explorations of the Vikings 500 years earlier in any way detract from what Columbus did?
00:19:07.740 Why are we, who, who cares?
00:19:10.040 So, I mean, if you want to celebrate Leif Erikson, I think Leif Erikson Day is coming up.
00:19:14.460 Isn't it like tomorrow, I think?
00:19:16.420 Maybe I'm wrong about that.
00:19:17.580 But if you want to celebrate Leif Erikson, celebrate Leif Erikson.
00:19:20.500 Great.
00:19:20.780 I'll celebrate him with you.
00:19:22.060 Why do we have to, they're not mutually exclusive. 1.00
00:19:26.700 It's not like you have to choose one ancient explorer to celebrate and then all the others, we have to say, are idiots in comparison. 0.98
00:19:34.580 But that's not the way this works. 0.99
00:19:38.460 Someone, today on Twitter, someone said, someone said, well, you know, big deal.
00:19:43.180 The Chinese and the Polynesians, they were explorers too, you know.
00:19:47.580 Okay, so what?
00:19:48.460 They explored the Pacific.
00:19:50.340 Columbus explored the Atlantic.
00:19:52.060 How do any of these groups detract from the others?
00:19:55.920 It's like if somebody were to cure cancer and then you go, yeah, well, Jonas Salk developed a polio vaccine in 1955.
00:20:04.300 Okay, great.
00:20:07.520 That's one great achievement.
00:20:09.320 Here's another one.
00:20:10.540 They're both great.
00:20:11.420 But, of course, the biggest objection, the most common objection to Columbus is this idea that Columbus was a genocidal maniac who came to the New World hoping to pillage and enslave a peaceful people. 0.80
00:20:26.540 And it's true, of course, that some of the Indians he encountered were peaceful, but we have obviously taken this image of the peaceful Indian and we have stretched it and turned it into this really ridiculous caricature.
00:20:41.740 Because they were not peaceful, and in fact, peace did not reign across the New World. 0.55
00:20:49.100 It was a violent, violent place.
00:20:51.440 Also bear in mind that there was a tribe called the Caribs, and they reigned terror on the region where Columbus landed. 0.99
00:21:01.260 These were violent people who feasted on human flesh.
00:21:04.240 And Columbus, you know, he would have heard stories about them on his first voyage, and then he actually encountered them on a second.
00:21:11.980 And, in fact, let me briefly read, just for historical edification here.
00:21:19.140 Here's a brief passage about the discovery or a run-in with these Caribs.
00:21:25.660 This is from Admiral of the Ocean Sea by Samuel L. A. Morrison, which is a great book, by the way.
00:21:34.240 This is someone who not only wrote a book about Columbus's voyages, but he actually retraced those steps and made the same voyages in an effort to better understand what Columbus achieved.
00:21:50.400 So it's a really wonderful book.
00:21:51.640 But anyway, this is what it says.
00:21:54.020 The searching party found plentiful evidence of these unpleasant Carib habits, which were responsible for a new word, cannibal, in European languages. 0.99
00:22:01.440 In the huts deserted by the warriors, who ungallantly fled, they found large cuts and joints of human flesh, shin bones set aside to make arrows of caponized Arawak boy captives, who were being fattened for the griddle, and girl captives who were mainly used to produce babies, which the Caribs regarded as a particularly toothsome morsel. 0.86
00:22:21.940 The search party brought in about 20 of these captives, and others made their way down to the shore and gave themselves up voluntarily.
00:22:28.220 Also, a few Caribs were captured by force. 0.97
00:22:30.640 Okay, so you have the Caribs eating, not only eating children, but raping other children to produce babies who they would then eat. 1.00
00:22:40.380 All right. 0.99
00:22:41.040 This is the kind of thing that would go on among some tribes in the New World.
00:22:45.260 Now, you may hear from apologists that, well, there's no archaeological evidence that the Caribs were cannibals.
00:22:55.920 You may hear that.
00:22:57.360 But first of all, it would be difficult, it would be somewhat difficult to find archaeological evidence of this kind of activity 500 years later.
00:23:07.140 But we do have evidence.
00:23:10.120 We have eyewitness testimony.
00:23:11.580 We have eyewitness accounts of these sorts of things.
00:23:14.680 Not just from the Spanish, but from other Indian tribes who were victimized by the Caribs.
00:23:20.180 So that is evidence.
00:23:21.680 It's very good evidence.
00:23:23.400 I think it's evidence that is conclusive.
00:23:26.580 Also, keep something else in mind.
00:23:27.900 But up until very recently, archaeologists and historians, at least modern archaeologists and historians, they said, they speculated, that the Spanish also fabricated or greatly exaggerated the extent of human sacrifice among the Aztecs.
00:23:49.700 And the Aztecs, as we know, based on what we were told from the witnesses, the Aztecs sacrificed tens of thousands of human beings in these macabre rituals where they would tear out the beating heart, cut off the limbs, roll the limbless bodies down the steps, and then the limbs would be feasted on by some of the Aztec high priests.
00:24:16.260 Anyway, for a long time, we were told that, no, the Spanish, they invented that, they fabricated, they exaggerated.
00:24:22.180 Well, very recently, like in the last couple of years, archaeologists finally turned up evidence of wide-scale human sacrifices among the Aztecs.
00:24:33.460 They uncovered these racks of hundreds of human skulls that clearly is evidence of exactly what the Spanish said.
00:24:43.420 So just bear that, when you're told, oh, well, archaeological evidence doesn't support, yeah, up until like a couple of years ago, they said the same thing about the Aztecs.
00:24:53.120 Turns out that the Spanish were not just making this stuff up.
00:24:55.540 This is actually what happened, and they were telling us about it.
00:24:57.720 But the fact that we have to deal with when talking about this clash of civilizations is that rape, slavery, mass murder, etc., all of these things were already a normal part of life in the Americas before the Europeans came.
00:25:15.620 Now, this was a brutal time.
00:25:18.500 It was brutal across the globe for everyone.
00:25:21.940 Everyone played basically by the same brutal rules.
00:25:26.840 You went in search of new lands, and when you found the new land, you fought for it.
00:25:31.160 That's the way it worked across the globe for everybody.
00:25:35.000 That's how Europeans operated. 0.89
00:25:36.540 That's how the Indians operated.
00:25:38.380 That's how everyone operated.
00:25:40.160 The world was settled and civilized this way.
00:25:42.640 We may not like it.
00:25:43.940 It may make our tummy hurt to think about it.
00:25:47.020 We may look back on that now and say, oh, they were barbaric.
00:25:51.320 And maybe they were in comparison to us in some ways.
00:25:56.600 But that's the way it worked.
00:25:58.380 Now, that doesn't excuse any one particular atrocity, but it does put everything into perspective.
00:26:05.320 And I think when we talk about Columbus, very often it seems like we divorce him from his context,
00:26:11.940 and we hold him to a standard that nobody else from his time period has held to.
00:26:16.860 And that just doesn't seem fair to me.
00:26:19.060 It doesn't seem fair that Columbus is the one single person, or the Europeans in general are the people who we hold to this ridiculous standard. 0.58
00:26:28.800 Now, we know it's true that Columbus was a very flawed man,
00:26:31.960 but his flaws were mostly the flaws shared by all men of all cultures during that time.
00:26:37.980 And he was also a great and gifted man, and his greatness and his gifts were not shared by all men.
00:26:43.660 That's what his flaws.
00:26:45.140 There was nothing unique or especially different about his flaws.
00:26:49.920 But in terms of his gifts and what he achieved, that was unique and that was different.
00:26:53.700 It took this one particular man to do what he did, which is to sail across these unknown waters to this unknown place
00:27:00.040 and begin the process that would eventually result in the establishment of the greatest civilization the world has ever known.
00:27:05.600 And again, I remind you, it is a civilization that we all live in, and we would prefer this civilization over any other.
00:27:12.560 And I think he deserves to be celebrated for that.
00:27:14.740 If you ask me, he deserves to be celebrated for that.
00:27:16.780 And if we're going to say, no, we can't celebrate him for that, we have to hate him, we have to tear down the statues,
00:27:22.780 we have to spit on his memory because of the bad things that he did,
00:27:26.180 then just bear in mind that we have to do the same thing to pretty much anyone else who lived
00:27:30.240 for almost the entirety of human civilization up until very recently.
00:27:35.720 Including, certainly including, the heroes of Native American tribes.
00:27:41.580 Because these were also largely brutal people who played by brutal rules.
00:27:51.080 And when the Europeans came, and they did practice slavery, for instance, which, again, doesn't justify it.
00:27:57.920 But the Indians, they weren't surprised by that, because that's what they did to each other. 1.00
00:28:02.740 This is just how the world works.
00:28:04.380 If you get into a fight with another neighboring tribe or civilization and you lose, they're going to take you as slaves.
00:28:13.060 This was not, it was not anything, it wasn't new to them.
00:28:15.560 They weren't shocked by this.
00:28:19.080 In fact, there are, you know, when you read about Cortez and his clash with the Aztecs,
00:28:25.380 you'll read that in some cases, the only thing that really shocked the Indians is,
00:28:32.380 it's not that Cortez would take prisoners or slaves, it's how humanely those prisoners were treated.
00:28:39.600 Keep in mind, these were people who were used to how the Aztecs operated,
00:28:42.320 which is when they took you as a prisoner, they would fatten you up and rip your heart out and then eat you.
00:28:49.560 So that's what they were used to for how slaves and prisoners were treated.
00:28:54.180 So, admittedly, it wasn't a very high bar for the Spanish to get over, but they did get over that bar, at least. 0.99
00:29:05.700 So we have to look at them in their historical context and then judge them based on that.
00:29:10.540 Like, where was the bar set back in that period of time?
00:29:14.360 And did they get over the bar or did they fall under it or did they basically meet the bar?
00:29:18.500 That, I think, is the question we should ask ourselves.
00:29:21.020 And I think we're going to find, for the most part, they, at the very least, were par.
00:29:26.680 You know, at the very least, they were at the bar.
00:29:29.760 And I think, in many cases, they got over it.
00:29:35.580 So, happy Columbus Day, everyone.
00:29:37.320 Let's celebrate this great man and his great achievement that we all, whether we like to admit it or not,
00:29:42.500 are very thankful for today.
00:29:46.060 Godspeed.
00:29:51.020 Godspeed.
00:29:52.020 Godspeed.
00:30:00.260 Godspeed.
00:30:08.400 Godspeed.
00:30:13.080 Godspeed.
00:30:13.600 Godspeed.