Ep. 1211 - We Need To Solve Our Violent Crime Epidemic The El Salvador Way
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
183.6307
Summary
The media has started another round of hit pieces against the president of El Salvador because of his very harsh way of rounding up and imprisoning violent gang members. They say that instilling law and order is inhumane and not worth the cost, but they never acknowledge the cost of not instilling a law & order. Also, the first Republican primary debate is tonight, and CNN hails Biden for his empathetic performance when visiting Maui after the wildfires. And are we experiencing an epidemic of people behaving rudely in public? If so, what s causing it? We ll talk about all that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.
Transcript
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Today on The Matt Walsh Show, the media has started another round of hit pieces against
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the president of El Salvador because of his very harsh way of rounding up and imprisoning
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violent gang members. They say that instilling law and order is inhumane and not worth the cost,
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but they never acknowledge the cost of not instilling law and order. We'll talk about
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that today. Also, the first Republican primary debate is tonight, and CNN hails Biden for his
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empathetic performance when visiting Maui after the wildfires, even though, of course,
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he was the exact opposite of empathetic. And are we experiencing an epidemic of people
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behaving rudely in public? If so, what's causing it? We'll talk about all that and more today on
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844-ROUGH-700 today. There are so many news reports now on rampant crime in major cities that at this
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point, you can't be blamed if your eyes glaze over when you see them. There are only so many
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clips of thugs shoplifting, doing street takeovers, or shooting at cops that you can watch. And at some
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point, even though it's horrible, you get numb to it. But one recent report from CNN on property
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crime in San Francisco stands out. We played part of this clip a couple of weeks ago on the show,
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but here it is in full context. Watch. San Francisco businesses fed up with crime. One sandwich shop
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owner is calling for action after he says he was attacked outside his store. He says he yelled
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at a man to stop urinating on his trash can and then was sucker punched. His Instagram post about
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the incident has now gone viral. I'm fed up with this city. It's like, I can't just be outside and
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just running a business without getting punched in the face. It shouldn't be this way at all. Like,
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this isn't how our city should be. Now, it's not clear what was said before the altercation or
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whether there's even video of it, but San Francisco police have said they are investigating.
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It comes as some stores are locking up everything from coffee to frozen food to try to combat
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theft. Our Kyung Law visited one Walgreens that's hit by shoplifters more than a dozen times a day.
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Richie Greenberg walked into his San Francisco Walgreens when he saw in the frozen food section
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this. Chains, heavy chains that went from padlock to padlock on both sides of the doors.
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And this was bizarre, something I'd never seen before. This is just more icing on the cake
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telling us that rampant crime is, is, has become a regular part of life. So typical that in the 30
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minutes we were at this Walgreens, we watched three people, including this man, Steele.
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Did that guy pay? Did that guy pay? He didn't pay.
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So this Walgreens is supposedly hit by shoplifters more than any other Walgreens in the United States,
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which is really saying something. The bar is pretty high to achieve that record. People are walking in
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and out with, with, with merchandise at will without paying. Shoplifters robbed the store
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three times while CNN was inside reporting on shoplifting. As I said, you've seen portions of
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that clip when it went viral several weeks ago, we played it on the show, but we never played the end
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of that segment. And here it is. San Francisco City Supervisor Matt Dorsey,
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former police spokesman and recovering drug addict, sees the rampant shoplifting as a systemic problem
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from city leaders to an understaffed police force to the fentanyl crisis.
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When you're seeing that level of retail theft, that tends to be subsistence level retail theft.
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People are hungry. People are hungry. There is a level of addiction playing out in many parts of our
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city. It's happening at levels we really haven't seen in San Francisco. What I'm hearing from my
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residents and what I'm hearing from San Franciscans is it's time for tough love. We are not doing any
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addict in this city favors by enabling behavior that is potentially deadly in ways we have never
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seen. Now in a statement to CNN, Walgreens says it is focused on safety and preventative measures,
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but that retail theft remains one of its top challenges. Here's some important context though
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on the city, Aaron. Property crime and violent crime at the end of last year was actually lower
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than it was before the pandemic. So what's going on here? So first CNN trots out a city supervisor to
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inform you that the causes of all this shoplifting are systemic, you know, sort of like racism in that
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way. He's applying that there's no way to solve it. But of course, you should pay a lot of, you know,
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consultants and government agencies a ton of money to try to solve it, even though it can't be solved
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because it's systemic. That's what every bureaucrat means when they talk about systemic problems.
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Systemic problems is really, that's just a job pro jobs program for, for bureaucrats in other words.
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And then the CNN reporter comes back and she says that she's providing some important context. And
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what is that context? Well, she says that property crime in San Francisco is lower than it was before
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the pandemic. In other words, as bad as the footage you just saw might look overall, the city is doing
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fine. The ice cream sandwiches might be locked away with chains and people are so brazen about stealing
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they're doing it in front of news cameras. Still, the city is on the right trajectory. Everything is
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fine. Nothing to see here. That's the message. Now, in the world of statistics, they have a few
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terms for this, and one of them is non-response bias. Another is measurement bias. So if you're
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looking at a chart of reported property crimes and it goes up and then up and up, and then suddenly it
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goes down out of nowhere, a couple of things are possible. The first possibility, the one that CNN
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implies is happening here is that people are committing fewer property crimes. Somehow the
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criminals have decided on their own to stop doing crime. Even though they know they can easily get
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away with it, they decided to just stop doing it. They've decided to become law-abiding citizens
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out of the goodness of their hearts. Their hearts have all grown three sizes, like the Grinch
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when he visited Whoville. The other possibility, though, is that maybe people have simply stopped
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reporting property crimes because they know the police and the DA won't do anything about them?
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Could that be happening in San Francisco? Despite the city's property crime statistics,
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is it possible that property crime is actually increasing? Dick's Sporting Goods just provided
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another data point to help us answer that question. Dick's has locations all over the country,
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of course, and they just announced that property theft is costing them so much money that they're
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now laying off a mass number of employees. The company says that profits dropped 23 percent last
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quarter, which is a staggering amount, and they blame much of it on rampant shoplifting.
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So when you hear that property crime is going down and then you see stories like that, you have to
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wonder whether the statistics give you an accurate picture, especially when Dick's is far from the only
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chain that has had to shut down locations, lay off employees because they keep losing so much
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merchandise to theft. It's kind of like when influenza cases started to, went down basically to zero during
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COVID. Is that because, as the experts said, influenza simply just stopped spreading somehow during the
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pandemic? That's a comforting explanation, so it mainly went unchallenged. And most statistics from
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the government are like this. They're technically correct, but wildly misleading. However, one government
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statistic is very tough to fudge, no matter how hard politicians try, and it's the murder rate.
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The government can lie and say that shoplifting is down, but it's challenging for them to lie about
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murders because murders leave dead bodies. People talk about them. I mean, they usually get reported.
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Coroners have to be dispatched to the scene and so on. Between 2019 and 2020, the homicide rate in the
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United States increased by more than it did at any other point in modern history. Went up by 30%.
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Following year, it increased again. Some of the country's most prominent tourist destinations have
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become too dangerous for many people to visit. Last year, for example, New Orleans became the murder
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capital of the United States, recording 52 homicides per 100,000 residents. Now, browse news reports on the
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violent crime wave in this country, and invariably, you'll hear the same excuses. They'll tell you that COVID is
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responsible for the murder rate. They'll do what the San Francisco city supervisor did and blame
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systemic issues like policing. What they won't do is tell you that actually a real and immediate solution
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to this problem is available. In El Salvador, under the leadership of Nayib Bukele, they have figured out
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a solution. In 2018, the year before Bukele took office, El Salvador posted a murder rate of 51
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per 100,000 people, which is the New Orleans rate. By 2022, the murder rate in the country had fallen to
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7.8 per 100,000 people. That's 7.8, not 78. This chart that we have a chart here we can show you
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that shows the magnitude of the decline. You can see that the murder rate was decreasing before
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Bukele took over, but he took it to an unprecedented low level. I mean, this is a homicide rate now in El
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Salvador that's significantly lower than what you'll find in several major American cities.
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And these are not cooked numbers, okay? You know that because Nayib Bukele is overwhelmingly popular
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in El Salvador. People know that murders are down. They know that they are safer in their communities
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because they live in these communities. They don't need the government to tell them about it.
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El Salvador accomplished this massive reduction in homicides, if you can believe it,
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by doing something radical. They decided to start punishing criminals. Specifically,
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Bukele implemented something called the Territorial Control Plan. And phase one of that plan
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involved flooding high crime areas with heavily armed police officers. Many criminals with gang
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affiliations, often indicated by their tattoos, which are often on their face, easy to see,
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went to prison. Officials paraded them before cameras in a humiliation ritual.
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This has been an integral part of El Salvador's strategy for years. Just a few months ago,
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Bukele uploaded a video which shows gang members in one of the super prisons he's constructed
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to house them, kind of showing you how it works in these prisons. And we'll play a quick clip of that.
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So, seems like an unpleasant place to be. And El Salvador's government has not relented in the
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past few years. In fact, this summer, El Salvador's Congress approved new rules allowing the trial of
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up to 900 gang members simultaneously to expedite the otherwise slow-moving judicial process.
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Now, in some publications, including the National Review and various left-wing outlets,
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you'll find alternative explanations for how Bukele lowered the murder rate so quickly. And one
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popular theory is that all these harsh measures are not reducing crime. Instead, the theory goes,
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Bukele struck a secret deal with the gangs that convinced them to stop committing crimes.
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And there's some truth to that. Bukele did indeed try to negotiate a truce with
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the MS-13 and other gangs. But as CNN reported last year, citing an expert in Central American
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affairs, quote, there are some consensus among security watchers that Bukele's truce
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with the gangs fell apart in late March 2022, which prompted the MS-16 to do the killing spree
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to pressure the government to give concessions. So, Bukele's latest crackdown followed the breakdown
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in negotiations. And still, violent crime remains low. The crackdown has saved lives. There's no
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question about it. Other Central American leaders are now looking to model El Salvador's approach.
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There's no question about that either. The only remaining question is whether saving these lives
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and restoring order to society and making communities livable again is worth a few sacrifices.
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Most notably, is it worth sacrificing some of what we in modern Western society consider to be
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humane standards for imprisonment? Is it worth sacrificing some of those standards?
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In response to that question, the media has answered unanimously in the negative. The Sun,
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for example, just published a lengthy piece lamenting the conditions in El Salvador's prisons.
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Inmates are crammed together like sardines, the Sun says, quote,
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In each 100-square-meter cell, around 75 crammed inmates sleep on metal cabins and are forced to
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share just two toilets and two sinks. Several other outlets have run similar stories in recent days,
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talking about how terrible it is in these prisons in El Salvador, how it's all a human rights violation.
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Relatives of those detained have been desperately trying to find out what's happened to them.
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I saw the video on Facebook and I was going through it, pausing and rewinding.
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He was almost unrecognizable, so very thin. I only knew it was him by his tattoos.
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Angelica says her husband has no links with gangs. She's heard nothing further about him since he was
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arrested under emergency powers brought in in March 2022 by President Bukele.
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Through satellite imagery, data released by the Salvadoran government and documents seen by BBC
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Mundo, we've gathered information about the site.
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There are eight cell blocks monitored by 19 watchtowers.
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Inside the cells, the beds are metal plates and there are two toilets open to the room.
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So far, the authorities say they have transferred 4,000 prisoners to the jail and that there is
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capacity for up to 40,000. The BBC has found that at full capacity, each person would have
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0.58 square meters of space. The International Committee of the Red Cross recommends 3.4 square
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meters in a shared cell. Okay, so this prison does not live up to the standards of the Red Cross or the
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U.N. or any Western human rights watchdog group. It's very, very uncomfortable to be in prison in
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El Salvador right now. So uncomfortable, in fact, that it might even make you think twice about joining
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a gang in that country to begin with, which is obviously the point. Now, with that said, we hear
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from someone in the clip who claims that at least one of the inmates, her husband, has no connection
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to gangs. He's an innocent man caught up in the crackdown, caught up in the net. And we have no way of
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assessing whether that story is true, obviously. We don't know. Is this person innocent or guilty?
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How do we know? But if we're being honest, we probably can assume that some nonviolent people,
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even some innocent people, have been caught unwittingly in this net. Some of them may be
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innocent. True. Anytime the government assumes emergency powers and arrests more than 70,000
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people without ensuring their due process rights, it's bound to happen. And yes, it's almost certainly
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true that many of these inmates live in conditions that would make Amnesty International extremely
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squeamish. There's no reason to paper over that. But that's not where the discussion ends or where
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it should end. The question that follows is a simple one, though it's rarely discussed. And the
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question is this. Would you rather have a safe society where a few innocent people are imprisoned,
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or would you rather have a very dangerous society where only a few guilty people are imprisoned?
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Ben Franklin famously answered a version of the question. He said, it's better for 100 guilty
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persons to escape than one innocent person to suffer. And we hear people repeat this mantra
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unthinkingly all the time. But Ben Franklin didn't address what happens when all those guilty people
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get out of prison and make it impossible for innocent people to live their lives. What happens when
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allowing guilty persons to escape means that innocent people can't start businesses or use the subway or go
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to the store, walk down the street, or guarantee the safety of their children? What happens when
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letting the guilty go free means letting them randomly assault elderly people or carjack women at the
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stoplight or execute gas station cashiers for the few dollars in the cash register? That's unfolding
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now in major cities all across the country. It's happening so often that CNN is capturing it on camera
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unintentionally. This is not the high trust society that existed in the 19th century.
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When Barack Obama was in office, he made a habit of calling difficult decisions, quote, false choices.
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He said that we should, for example, reject the, quote, false choice between our security and our ideals.
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But the truth is that there are hard choices to be made when weighing our security against our ideals.
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This is not a false choice. There are actual trade-offs you have to make.
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There's no sense in lying about it. As Richard Hanania pointed out recently on his Substack,
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sometimes a slavish devotion to ideals gets a lot of people killed, and it ruins livelihoods.
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Nobody wants to talk about that, but it's true.
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And as more criminals act with total impunity, it's getting hard to ignore. Besides,
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the other point here is that nobody can claim that they really have a zero tolerance for,
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you know, for example, innocent people going to prison. We like to say that, well, we can't allow
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a single innocent person to go to prison. Because the only way to bring that number down to zero
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is to have no prisons at all. If you have any kind of prison system, there's going to be that kind
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of unintended consequence. Regardless, it's going to happen. And we all accept that tacitly. We have
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to, or we cannot have a civilization. But we're currently in the process of losing our civilization,
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and it's in part because modern Western people have a totally upside-down view of these kinds of
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trade-offs. Or they're so naive that they think that we can have no trade-offs. But that's not the
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case. You can't get around it. Either you emphasize justice, social order, and punishing
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criminals, and you deal with the collateral damage that comes with this harsher and more brutal
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approach. Or you emphasize tolerance and acceptance and rehabilitation and forgiveness,
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and you deal with the collateral damage that comes with that. You will get the collateral damage
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either way. There's no way around it. In the former case, it means that you'll have a safer and more
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orderly society where people can live their lives and your children can walk outside without fear.
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But criminals will be made very uncomfortable and will be treated in ways that are sometimes quite
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ugly. And in the latter case, criminals will be more comfortable, and prisons will not be such an
00:19:53.780
ugly place. But your communities will be unlivable cesspools. As I've said before, there will be
00:20:00.000
ugliness in society no matter what. You can choose to contain it in prison, or you can let it loose on
00:20:05.700
the streets. You will have it, the ugliness, whether you like it or not. The question is, where do you
00:20:10.100
want it? In prison or outside your front door? El Salvador's solution is not ideal. I mean, you'd
00:20:16.640
prefer if your country didn't need to have super prisons with tens of thousands of violent gangsters
00:20:21.020
in them. Nobody would call that an ideal situation. Certainly not naive and Kelly. At a certain point,
00:20:26.960
though, it becomes necessary because the alternative is even worse. If our leaders don't have the stomach
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to punish criminals now, then down the line, they'll be replaced by people who do. That's the lesson of
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El Salvador. We can either learn from it, or we can keep repeating the same mistakes. The choice is
00:20:43.940
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for full offer details. So the first GOP primary debate is tonight as we officially get into
00:22:03.440
my least favorite season as a conservative commentator. I'm something of an aberration
00:22:09.700
in my community, as you probably know if you listen to the show. Most of my peers, you know,
00:22:13.520
they live for election seasons, debates, presidential elections. They're very excited about it because
00:22:20.420
that's the sweet spot, you know, in this world normally. I'm exactly the opposite. I find this stuff
00:22:25.960
sort of boring, to be honest. Analyzing debate performances and reading polling data. It's all
00:22:32.800
tedious to me, but here we are anyway. And of course, the big controversy going into the debates
00:22:37.660
is that Trump won't be attending. We talked about this a few days ago, and I already made my point
00:22:43.420
that I, well, I basically agree with both sides. So I'm, not to take the cop-out approach, but I can
00:22:48.960
see where both sides are coming from. And on the one hand, you know, there are those who say that
00:22:54.300
Trump should debate, that it's, it's wimpish not to. You owe it to the voters to get up there and
00:23:00.680
answer questions and, and, and allow yourself to be scrutinized. That's just, you should do it. You
00:23:07.400
should, you should put yourself in that position. You owe it to the voters. The fact that Trump was
00:23:11.820
already in office, that, that doesn't mean that he doesn't need to debate. That means all the more
00:23:15.260
that he should debate because he has a record that needs to be defended and he needs to answer
00:23:19.900
questions about it, especially about what happened in the final year of his tenure when the country
00:23:24.380
was handed over to Fauci and BLM. And so he needs to be there and he needs to talk about it. So I get
00:23:29.040
that. And I understand that. And I, and I can see where that side's coming from. On the other hand,
00:23:34.680
though, from a political perspective, the people on the other side of this will say that, well, Trump
00:23:37.980
doesn't stand to gain much from, from debating. I mean, debating, it's, it's a political decision.
00:23:42.980
Debating is a political activity. It's, it's, it's, it's all about politics, obviously.
00:23:49.120
And, um, so you're not going to put yourself in a position and running a campaign is all about
00:23:53.340
politics, obviously, by definition. So you're not going to put yourself in a position if it's,
00:23:57.520
if it's going to be politically, uh, not useful to you and potentially dangerous and, and, and
00:24:02.100
harmful. And when you think about Trump being so far ahead in the polls already and being such a
00:24:09.500
known entity, you put them up there on the stage, he probably potentially stands to lose more than
00:24:15.160
he would gain. Um, now sure, he, he dominated the primary debates in 2015, but that was as a
00:24:23.420
newcomer and an outsider and kind of a novelty. It's nearly a decade later now, and it's just not
00:24:29.520
going to be the same. Um, so to stand up there and allow the other candidates to take shots at him
00:24:35.920
or to use him to prop themselves up or whatever else they do while he's already so far ahead in
00:24:41.280
the polls. I mean, that's like politically foolish. Why would you do it? And, uh, and I get that. I
00:24:45.880
think it's a solid argument. Of course, there's the downside. There's the political downside. Most
00:24:52.040
of the people that are insisting that Trump should be there at the debate, they're making kind of a
00:24:55.020
principle that argument that just in forget about the politics in principle, you should be there.
00:24:59.180
It's the right thing to do, but that's just, that's not the reality. Okay. It's, it's all about
00:25:03.880
politics. It's not about principle. And that's just the fact of the matter. Um, but there's also
00:25:08.520
the political downside, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, which is that potentially significant.
00:25:14.440
It's not nothing that Biden in the general election will certainly want to skip the debates.
00:25:22.520
And if you've already skipped all of, all of your primary debates, which is what Trump is
00:25:26.600
implying he's going to do, then you just, you're not going to be in a position to complain when your
00:25:32.400
opponent does the same thing on the same pretense. I mean, you can complain and the Trump camp
00:25:38.240
obviously will. I mean, you're not going to just let Biden get away with skipping the debates.
00:25:41.260
You're going to criticize him for it. And you're going to hope that most people don't remember
00:25:44.660
the fact that the recent history of you skipping all of your debates. So you're going to do it.
00:25:48.480
But I think your, your arguments, uh, your complaints will, will ring hollow, uh, in a lot of
00:25:53.460
ways. That's the political downside, but ultimately I think politically the right move is for him
00:25:58.600
not to debate. And that's, that's where I come down. I can see both sides, but, and, and here's,
00:26:02.200
here's the way you look at it. You know, and I'm, I'm a simple person. I look at these things very
00:26:06.020
simply. Uh, you always have to ask yourself, what do your opponents want you to do?
00:26:16.100
And then most of the time you should be doing the opposite of that. Okay. If you're doing something
00:26:20.220
that your opponents want you to do, if it's something that your opponents will look at and
00:26:24.380
they'll be very happy that you're doing it, it's probably not a good idea. And I'm not saying that
00:26:29.120
you make all of your political decisions in this, in this reactive kind of way, but, but this could
00:26:34.480
be, it could be illuminating to think of it in those terms. And I say the same thing. This is the
00:26:38.560
case in political campaigns. It's the same thing in, in, on a broader cultural level, right versus
00:26:45.260
left, you know, in our battle for the culture, we should always think about, you know, if we're
00:26:49.380
approaching something, if we're fighting an issue in a certain way, is this how the other side wants
00:26:54.740
us to fight it? Are they happy that we're doing it this way and not some other way? Uh, and in this
00:27:00.240
case, if, if the Trump camp is asking themselves this question, like, what do our opponents want
00:27:03.940
us to do? Do they want us to be there or do they, or, or, uh, or would they prefer for us to skip it?
00:27:10.160
I think there's no question that Trump's opponents want him on the stage. They want him to be there.
00:27:15.680
And if they all want you to be there, it's not because they, they are looking out for you and
00:27:21.200
your best interest is because it's in their best interest for you to be there, which means that if
00:27:25.200
you want to win, then the smart thing is to not be there because that's what they want. Um,
00:27:31.580
the only, the only question now is without Trump at the debate, um, given that he's the front runner
00:27:40.560
and a far, far away, the front runner, can any of the other debate participants, uh,
00:27:48.000
are they going to be able to do anything to separate themselves from the pack? Can they have
00:27:52.540
any, can this have any real effect on the polls when the front runner isn't even there? Um, and I'm,
00:27:57.560
I'm very skeptical of that. Uh, yesterday we talked about Biden visiting Maui and the fact that it was a,
00:28:05.200
it was a disaster. Uh, it's, it's a disaster zone already. And then it's a disaster on top of disaster
00:28:12.480
when would Biden visits there and just makes an absolute fool of himself. I mean, to start with
00:28:17.820
getting there two weeks late after saying almost nothing about this issue for two weeks, in fact,
00:28:22.660
saying no comment, he doesn't want to talk about, ask about the, the, the, the victims of the fire.
00:28:27.640
He says, no comment. He's on vacation. He doesn't care. Finally, he finally moseys over there
00:28:31.580
two weeks later. And we played some of the clips yesterday that, that, that will live in infamy or
00:28:36.080
at least should. And in particular, the one where Biden compares this fire where more than a thousand
00:28:45.160
people have likely died, many of them children to his small kitchen fire, you know, 20 years ago.
00:28:51.880
So the whole thing, any, any objective observer who, who saw this, look at Biden's performance and say,
00:28:58.580
this is just horrendous. Uh, but that's not how CNN saw it because these are not objective
00:29:05.560
observers. Obviously here's how they interpreted the events. Let's watch a little bit of this
00:29:08.560
president and Dr. Biden spent several hours, both over Lahaina on the ground here and meeting with
00:29:16.300
both first responders and victims of this tragedy at the big shelter, the war memorial shelter in central
00:29:21.780
Maui. And he said the right things in many cases. When he came to the microphone to give his
00:29:27.480
statements, he said the thing that a lot of folks I've been hearing from for two weeks have been
00:29:31.800
saying that he wants Maui, the people of Maui to help determine how this place is rebuilt.
00:29:37.960
There was a question as to who will have the most influence in that conversation going forward.
00:29:43.220
Locals here, working class native Hawaiians and multi-generational locals are worried of disaster
00:29:48.820
capitalism, people moving in to exploit this and buy up as much land as they can in this paradise and
00:29:54.640
rebuild it, uh, for their interests as well. The president says promises that that won't happen.
00:30:00.820
It remains to be seen. There's a lot of forces at play here right now. He did serve as empathizer
00:30:06.300
in chief after five days of being mostly silent on the issue publicly, but the governor said he was
00:30:11.400
working behind the scenes to assure first responders that the feds had their back on this. Uh, he shared
00:30:17.740
this. So I just wanted to get to that line at the, at the end there. He says, uh, Biden was the
00:30:23.340
empathizer in chief. This is, this is empathy. Uh, is Biden comparing the worst wildfire in a hundred
00:30:31.220
years and talking to the, the, the victims and the families and comparing it to his kitchen fire.
00:30:37.060
That is empathy. They say, uh, when of course it's obviously the exact opposite of empathy because
00:30:44.480
Joe Biden is the exact opposite of an empathetic guy. He's only thinking about yourself. Okay.
00:30:50.540
Uh, being able to understand someone's suffering and let them know that you understand it and caring
00:31:00.900
about it like that is empathy. Relating everything back to yourself is not empathy. At least if that's
00:31:08.780
where the, it ends like in empathy, you, you, you, you, you can relate, but then it goes back. It goes
00:31:14.780
back to the, the person you're relating to it's for their sake. It's right. It's to comfort them.
00:31:22.540
Uh, Biden has one part of that process. He relates it back to himself, but then it stops there. He just,
00:31:26.940
he just brings it always back to himself, not in a way that comforts those who are suffering,
00:31:32.700
uh, not in a way that, that, that helps them to understand that they, that he understands what
00:31:36.360
they're going through. Not at all. Again, it's the exact opposite. When you relate it back to
00:31:41.620
yourself and you say, you know, it's, I'm looking at the devastation here. It reminds me of the time,
00:31:44.940
uh, when there was a brief, uh, kitchen fire, I had a grease fire in my kitchen once,
00:31:48.980
you know, we were cooking up some, uh, some bacon and there was a little, little, uh, grease fire
00:31:55.220
through a wet rag on it, went out. It was a little scary for a second. That's what I think of when I,
00:32:00.060
when I see billions of dollars of damage and a thousand people lost.
00:32:06.360
When you say that, that what that conveys is that you don't understand their suffering at all
00:32:12.860
because you're making that kind of comparison and you bring it always back to yourself.
00:32:16.940
Speaking of not being empathetic, there's a video that's circulating
00:32:19.240
of Biden appearing to fall asleep during a, uh, a ceremony to honor the victims of the wildfire.
00:32:26.560
He's sitting there. And the funny thing is that that was the video that went viral. He seems to be
00:32:30.440
sitting there kind of falling asleep, nodding off. He's there's someone talking about losing.
00:32:34.000
You can hear in the audio, someone's talking about losing their home. Everything's burned
00:32:37.220
up and destroyed. Someone talking about the terrible misfortunes that they've suffered
00:32:40.720
through. And you see Biden just kind of staring down at his desk and breathing heavy. And it looks
00:32:46.300
very much like he's asleep. Now some media came along, NBC news, for example, had a clip that they
00:32:52.440
put out. They said, no, we can prove he's not actually falling asleep. And they had a high res,
00:32:56.940
high resolution video where you could see, look, you can see the whites of his eyes. His eyes are still
00:33:00.820
open. He's not actually sleeping. So we debunked that. But of course these people don't, uh, understand
00:33:09.500
that that doesn't make it any better. Okay. The fact that you can't tell if Biden is awake or asleep,
00:33:19.000
that's not a good thing. That doesn't make it look better. You need to bring out a high resolution
00:33:25.560
video to detect the whites in his eyes in order to know whether he's asleep or not.
00:33:30.680
The fact that you can't, him being awake looks identical to him being asleep, aside from eyes
00:33:37.680
being open or closed. That's not a good thing. Hey, he might not have been technically asleep,
00:33:43.700
but that's because he's just always asleep. His brain is in permanent sleep mode.
00:33:47.340
And, uh, I don't consider that a positive necessarily. All right, let's see. Uh, this
00:33:54.500
is from the Daily Wire. A federal district court sided with a Michigan farmer on Monday,
00:33:58.660
ruling that he is free to participate in a city run farmer's market after he was booted over his
00:34:02.720
Catholic views on marriage. Steve Tennis, who owns Country Mill Farms, was banned in 2017 from East
00:34:10.060
Lansing farmer's market by city officials after he posted on Facebook that he follows the Catholic
00:34:15.320
Church's teachings on marriage, which includes opposing same-sex weddings at his family's
00:34:19.340
orchard. East Lansing officials reacted by using a discretionary system of individual assessments
00:34:23.860
to ban Tennis and his farm from participating in the seasonal market, despite Tennis never receiving
00:34:29.100
any complaints from customers, his legal team said. Tennis and his farm sued the city of East Lansing
00:34:33.660
in, uh, 2017. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney ruled that the city's ban on tennis
00:34:40.100
constituted a burden on plaintiff's religious beliefs. Tennis and his farm were forced to choose
00:34:45.540
between following their religious beliefs and a government, uh, benefit for which they were
00:34:49.940
otherwise qualified. And it took all of these years, but they have finally got the correct ruling
00:34:57.100
on that, that this was a discrimination. I think this is a, in fact, this case is instructive and it
00:35:03.860
gives us a handy contrast. Um, because this is what actual discrimination looks like. We hear this
00:35:10.500
phrase discrimination all the time. Many people are always claiming to be discriminated against
00:35:15.040
and it makes you wonder, what does it actually look? Is everyone really just being discriminated
00:35:19.060
against all the time? Or, uh, do we have a, do we have a, do we need to adjust our view of what
00:35:24.620
discrimination is? Um, and what we find is that this actual illegal discrimination, like this is the
00:35:33.780
kind that Christians face in the real world, in this country all the time. Um, it's not the kind
00:35:40.180
that LGBT people face. That's almost always fake discrimination. And here's the contrast. So let's
00:35:47.540
take, you know, LGBT people claim one of the most famous cases, recent cases, modern cases of an
00:35:54.380
LGBT of gay man claiming to be discriminated against is of course the masterpiece cake shop case
00:35:58.580
where they wanted to the cake made for their wedding and they were turned down. And then you
00:36:04.520
have that and let's compare that to this case where the Christian is banned from the farmer's market.
00:36:09.380
On the one hand, you have, uh, a, a Catholic farmer banned by the local government from a farmer's
00:36:20.840
market as opposed to a gay couple who are told that they're not going to get a custom cake.
00:36:28.300
A couple of differences. First, government entity versus, versus a private entity. So this is the,
00:36:35.100
the local government in Michigan saying that you're not allowed to attend the farmer's market because
00:36:40.660
we don't agree with your views, uh, versus a private entity, a, a cake shop saying, we don't want
00:36:48.120
to serve you this particular cake. Second, you have someone who's banned from participating in
00:36:55.140
something based on their beliefs that banned completely say, you're not allowed here, go away.
00:37:01.420
Versus, uh, in the case of masterpiece cake shop and many other similar cases, uh, the gay couple,
00:37:09.160
they weren't banned from the store. They were never told, get out of the store. We don't serve your kind
00:37:13.060
here. You're not allowed to be in the store. We won't serve you anything. No, they were told,
00:37:16.880
well, well, you can be in the store. You can shop around. In fact, we will sell you anything in this
00:37:23.240
store right now. Look around the store. There's all the pre-made cakes and everything. You look
00:37:27.140
around, you can have any of it. You can buy all of it if you want, if you have the money.
00:37:31.600
We just can't custom make a cake for this particular purpose of a gay wedding.
00:37:39.660
There's a very obvious distinction there, which goes to the third difference, which is
00:37:44.180
on one hand, you have discrimination against a belief system. Again, it's the local government
00:37:50.680
saying you believe these things. We find those beliefs abhorrent and therefore you're not allowed
00:37:56.040
here. Pretty clear cut discrimination. Shouldn't have taken six years to get the correct ruling on
00:38:01.640
that case. Okay. That should be, that should be a case that lasts about 30 minutes because if that's
00:38:06.700
not illegal discrimination, then the concept means nothing. On the other hand, you have,
00:38:15.100
if there's any kind of discrimination, it is discrimination against inactivity.
00:38:19.920
So it's not the gay men themselves who were discriminated against because they were never
00:38:24.380
told you're gay, you're not allowed here. Instead, you had the owner of this private company saying,
00:38:31.260
we don't agree with that activity, with that particular event, and we don't want to be
00:38:36.340
involved in that event, in that activity, which is a gay wedding. Very clear differences there that I
00:38:43.520
think any reasonable person could see. All right, finally, before we get to the comment section,
00:38:49.780
Bud Light is still trying to salvage its brand, trying to move on. And they have their latest attempt
00:38:57.800
here. And every attempt is very funny because they put out a new ad, a new campaign,
00:39:02.120
and they always put it, I don't even know why they bother putting the stuff on social media anymore,
00:39:05.180
but they do. And I'm glad that they do because then it's always a lot of fun to read the comments
00:39:09.240
and they're just getting ripped apart for it. So they've teamed up with the Washington Redskins,
00:39:12.720
who are still the Washington Redskins, as far as I'm concerned. And they've made this very fun
00:39:16.800
commercial to try to, you know, try to reset the brand. And here it is. Let's watch.
00:39:27.800
All right. So there, there it is. All I'm going to say is that first of all, if you're trying to
00:39:46.860
be seen, if you're trying not to be seen as the gay beer, then that's not the way to do it. That's
00:39:52.500
the opposite of what you want to do. Uh, you, we, we want to see football players like,
00:39:58.480
uh, you know, we want to see hard hits tackling, giving each other concussions like that. That's
00:40:04.020
what, if you really want to reset the brand, if you want to have any hope of it, then that's what
00:40:07.600
it would be. Uh, instead you've got football players. Okay. That part's fine, but they're all
00:40:12.240
just dancing. It really doesn't matter. Cause it's hopeless for Bud Light. It just is. Their
00:40:17.640
brand is forever tarnished. Um, you know what it's like for the, you know what Bud Light is at this
00:40:22.220
point? I think the best analogy is Bud Light is basically like the kid in middle school
00:40:28.360
who pees his pants in class. And, and, and that's what they are because there's no coming back from
00:40:34.840
it. Right. The kid who pees his pants in class is always going to be that kid. There's just nothing
00:40:39.800
you can't, you will always be seen that way. There's nothing you can do. You can move schools
00:40:45.040
or something and change your name, but that's the only, that's the only way. And it's kind of like
00:40:50.200
that for Bud Light. They're just the kid who peed his pants in class. It's like forever. Anytime
00:40:53.940
anyone sees a Bud Light, they just can't help but laugh anymore. It's a, it's an automatic
00:40:58.340
instinctive reaction that people have because your brand has been that tarnished. So what's the
00:41:04.040
equivalent for Bud Light? I mean, at least if you're in that position, you can change schools.
00:41:07.180
How does Bud Light change schools as it were? Uh, I don't know. They really can't. I mean,
00:41:12.180
honestly, just complete rename. That's one thing they could do is rename the beer. It's the exact
00:41:18.740
same beer, exact same company. Give it a different name. Honest to God, that's their one hope. Their
00:41:24.400
one chance. That's not going to fool me. I'm not going to buy Bud Lights. I never would have bought
00:41:27.920
them anyway, but I'm still not going to. Uh, but I think, you know, fast forward another year or
00:41:33.020
something. I think that's what we'll be looking at. That's their only hope is just give it a different
00:41:36.220
name. And, uh, and then most people, then maybe it won't have that. At least give, give your
00:41:44.240
customers a chance. Like there are people out there that for whatever reason, enjoyed Bud Light
00:41:47.580
and, uh, and, but they're not going to buy it and walk around holding it because they know they're
00:41:56.500
going to, everyone's going to make fun of them. And so there's just, no, they're not going to do it.
00:42:01.760
If you want to have any chance and you have to allow whoever your potential customers would be
00:42:06.660
to like purchase it and not be mocked ruthlessly for it, which probably means you just need to change
00:42:11.660
your name. All right, let's get to the comment section. A majority of Gen Z supports left-wing
00:42:29.640
policies like open borders and socialism. If we don't reach them and change their minds,
00:42:33.900
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00:43:30.020
Giggly says, uh, how this decaying hollow shell of a human being is allowed to get in front of
00:43:37.400
cameras and speak publicly anymore is beyond me. Are you talking about me or Biden? I'm gonna assume
00:43:43.480
you're talking about Biden. Well, it was, that was a comment under the Biden video. So we'll go with
00:43:47.620
that. Uh, Julie says the lack of empathy disgusts me. No wonder residents are angry, shouting profanity
00:43:53.300
at elected officials. That was the one encouraging thing about that video play yesterday. The mayor,
00:43:58.680
um, uh, I believe it was the mayor in Maui County said, was refusing to answer questions about how
00:44:05.560
many people had been lost, how many children are lost. Uh, and that is all very terrible. The one
00:44:11.180
encouraging thing to me is just the utter disrespect that the people were, including the media,
00:44:17.860
heaping on this elected official, the total contempt for him, which I, which I think is
00:44:24.220
exactly the right attitude to have to politician towards politicians like that. And really probably
00:44:29.620
all politicians. I think it'd be a good thing if we felt that way about all politicians. If that was
00:44:33.700
our instinct, if we had an instinctive disgust for all politicians, uh, I think that we'd be in a much
00:44:41.400
better spot. Another comment says, dude, I live on big Island and, uh, I swear to God, this is one of
00:44:47.540
the worst things I've ever seen. I'm not a big Matt Walsh fan, but everything he said was wildly
00:44:50.940
accurate. Uh, the mismanagement, the deflection, the lack of care, the lack of attention paid to
00:44:56.160
survivors, the lack of attention and care paid to the people who lost their loved ones and children.
00:45:00.740
Everything about it is atrocious. My friend told me that she was trying to, uh, get out days later
00:45:05.640
and they wouldn't let her. The local government trapped her in a town with no water or food. And even
00:45:10.000
now it's difficult for residents to access, but there are subjective reports of homeless encampments and
00:45:14.400
looters taking advantage of the empty homes. The whole thing is egregious and terrifying and sincerely
00:45:18.980
makes me want to leave my home. It's one of these things that can't be forgiven or forgotten. I just
00:45:24.260
pray that people see the reconstruction of their town in a way that feels good for them. Don't donate
00:45:28.540
to the Red Cross or FEMA, although I'm sure people on here know that already. Yeah, I've heard many,
00:45:33.800
many stories like this from people who actually live, uh, and have seen the, the devastation
00:45:38.360
firsthand. And a lot of this is, is certainly not just the case in Hawaii, but so much of this is
00:45:47.620
that we are not electing serious and competent people. Putting aside all the political bias and
00:45:53.720
everything else, we're just not electing serious, competent people. And then the problem with that
00:46:00.400
is that when something serious inevitably happens, because we live in the, in the real world and
00:46:06.560
terrible things happen, well, now you have these unserious morons who are tasked with dealing with
00:46:12.800
it. Perfect example is that the water official, the guy in charge of the water talking about in an
00:46:18.940
interview before the fires happened, talking about, uh, you know, the importance of water and
00:46:24.820
ancestral traditions and dispensing water in an equitable way. The thing with that is, you know,
00:46:31.680
again, there's been this connection people have drawn. They've, they've, we know that, that water
00:46:36.160
was held up. People needed water to fight the fires and it was held up. And a lot of people online are
00:46:41.040
kind of making the connection that they held it up because of some sort of equity concern, because we
00:46:45.520
heard this from this water official before. And I think that's a fair theory. We don't know for sure.
00:46:52.340
We actually don't know exactly why the water was held up, but that's almost this, that's a secondary
00:46:59.840
point. Almost. The first point is whatever the reasons were, this was just an unserious person
00:47:06.180
put in a position to be in charge of, you know, dispensing this necessary, you know, this necessity,
00:47:16.100
which is water. Uh, and so a lot of this just felt inevitable. Let's see. J man says, Matt,
00:47:24.120
you don't get to tell me what I mean by my own words. Also, Matt, I've decided that my interpretation
00:47:29.040
of a small part of the lyrics means that the entire song is about a nanny sexually molesting Freddie
00:47:33.360
as an infant. I love you, Matt, but even you are dense at times. Well, I hate to say this J man,
00:47:39.540
but this is what you've said here is, uh, it's pretty much the definition of being dense, uh,
00:47:46.120
and intentionally. So like, let, let's just go. So I know maybe you're a queen fan. Maybe you like
00:47:51.560
the song fat bottom girls. Maybe you've already been, I don't know. Maybe you've already been on
00:47:54.780
social media posting about how, uh, they've been canceled and this is so terrible because you saw
00:47:59.120
the rage bait on Fox news. And so now you're a little bit embarrassed because as I pointed out in
00:48:03.340
the show yesterday, the whole story about queen getting canceled was fake. And so maybe you're
00:48:07.580
embarrassed by that. So you feel like you have to grasp for some sort of way out, but you don't
00:48:13.260
have to do that. You really don't. You can just admit like a lot of people, including people I
00:48:16.620
respect on the right, they got this story wrong. They heard from Fox news and some of these outlets
00:48:20.900
that queen's been canceled. It's political, it's political correctness overboard. And they didn't
00:48:24.420
look into it. They didn't look into what the story actually was. They didn't, they didn't realize
00:48:27.600
that no, they haven't been canceled at all. They just, they just didn't put this one particular
00:48:31.240
song on an audio platform for three-year-olds. And they also didn't look into to see what the song
00:48:36.620
actually is, what it's about. And so many people made that mistake. I think it's better just to
00:48:41.760
admit it. I told you what the lyrics are. I mean, again, the lyrics, I was just a skinny lad, never
00:48:48.120
knew no good from bad, but I knew life before I left my nursery, left alone with big fat Fanny.
00:48:54.400
She was such a naughty nanny. He big woman. You made a bad boy out of me. What, what is your
00:48:59.980
interpretation of that? How do you interpret it? To me, it seems very clear that it's about a
00:49:07.160
overweight nanny molesting a child in the nursery. It's like, that's what it is. That's what he's
00:49:11.600
talking about. Okay. I don't know what to tell you as I wish that wasn't the case. I wish that's
00:49:16.500
not what the song was about, but it's what it's about. It's right there. I didn't make those lyrics
00:49:19.720
up. I didn't make them up. Queen made them up. They're right there. So what is your, what,
00:49:25.340
just tell me, how do you interpret that? Okay. I don't need to read between the lines or turn
00:49:30.380
the thing upside down and read it backwards to get this interpretation. You have to do that to not
00:49:34.460
get this interpretation. So what are you going to do? Is this, you know, it's a metaphor. It's a
00:49:39.460
poetic license. It's a metaphor. You see, the nursery is not literally a nursery. It's a metaphor for,
00:49:45.540
I don't know, big fat Fanny. That's the nanny. Well, she's not really the nanny. It's,
00:49:51.100
you know, she's a metaphorical nanny. Come on. And once you understand something like
00:49:57.780
so much of the music that is considered, oh, the classics, these are the classics from the 60s
00:50:04.500
and 70s. There's a lot of this kind of stuff. As I said yesterday, so much of it is just degenerate
00:50:10.340
garbage. It just is. And it has the reputation of a classic now simply because it's been around a long
00:50:17.320
time. This is not a great song. It just happened to be made 50 years ago. It doesn't make it good
00:50:23.160
now. Finally, Emily says, cancel culture is something that you take part in, Matt Walsh.
00:50:29.160
Think Target, Bud Lay, slavery, rainbows, books, et cetera. Slavery. I mean, sure, I cancel slavery.
00:50:36.660
Yeah, but I don't know why you would. Anyway, you're saying it's not canceled because you would be
00:50:40.700
the one canceling it. No, I think you're mistaken, Emily, that, well, I mean, you're not mistaken.
00:50:48.360
You're right. I do cancel all those things. I want all those things to be canceled. And,
00:50:53.120
well, not books in general, but you forgot to mention, I'm not in favor of canceling books in
00:51:00.080
general, but in particular, gay pornography books in schools is what we've talked about canceling.
00:51:05.820
So you need to be more specific there. But I have never said that there's anything wrong with
00:51:12.000
canceling something. I have a whole segment called the Daily Cancellation. There's nothing wrong with
00:51:17.100
that. Okay. It's what you're canceling. It's what you're going after. Trying to shut something down,
00:51:25.360
impose some sort of social penalty on it, publicly shame something or someone. I'm not opposed to any of
00:51:32.840
that. I never said I was. What I'm opposed to is picking the wrong people and targets for that kind
00:51:41.400
of treatment. That's my issue. So should we cancel people? Should we cancel things? Yes. If they
00:51:48.360
actually deserve it. Sure. Why not? Of course we should. Seems pretty simple to me. Despite the
00:51:54.480
lackluster economy, the Daily Wire is thriving. And not only that, but we are hiring. We're currently
00:51:58.320
looking for a graphic designer to join our fast growing creative department. As a graphic designer,
00:52:02.740
you'll collaborate with copywriters, creative directors, and other designers under the guidance
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of the executive creator director to craft show assets and thumbnails for a variety of mediums.
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To excel in this role, you'll need proficiency in Adobe Creative Cloud, experience in creating
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engaging web graphics, keen attention to detail, and excellent communication and collaboration skills.
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The position is based in Nashville, Tennessee. If you're interested in joining our team,
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visit dailywire.com slash careers. That's dailywire.com slash careers today.
00:52:32.740
The website Vox has an urgent report this week. The headline from writer Alex Abad Santos tells us,
00:52:40.340
quote, people forgot how to act in public, which of course raises the question, when did people ever
00:52:45.060
know how to act in public? What do you mean they forgot? Did they ever know? But we'll get back to
00:52:49.320
that in a moment. Here's how the piece begins. Some people shouldn't be out in public right now.
00:52:53.920
Movie theaters have become a lawless land where some moviegoers have no reservations about using their
00:52:58.300
phones after films have started. Sometimes it's not just a glance at the time, but full-on social
00:53:02.760
media scrolls and posting. In New York City, Broadway audiences are drunk, rowdy, and apparently leaving
00:53:07.600
feces in the aisles of theaters. This summer at various concerts, Albanian pop star Bebe Rekse,
00:53:14.680
Bebe Rekse, is that what it is? Was, okay, close enough. Was bean in the face. A fellow pop princess,
00:53:21.620
Ava Max, was slapped by a stage rusher. An aerial enthusiast, Pink, was handed someone's mother's
00:53:27.140
ashes. Fans interrupted country singer Miranda Lambert's intimate show with an impromptu photo
00:53:31.600
shoot. And a fan threw water on rapper Cardi B. Cardi B responded by chucking her microphone at her
00:53:37.700
water flinger. Large-scale in-person events are down bad. Well, we should also note that journalism is
00:53:44.780
down bad when the phrase down bad is appearing in articles. As for the rest of it, I haven't been to a
00:53:50.340
concert in probably 13 or 14 years. I've never been to a Broadway show. And with six kids, I go to
00:53:55.040
movies maybe twice a year at this point, which actually has less to do with the six kids and
00:53:58.960
more to do with the fact that there are only two movies a year at most that are worth watching in
00:54:02.520
the theater. My point is that I can't attest to the epidemic of bad public behavior at these venues.
00:54:09.020
Personally, I haven't been around, I haven't been in these venues very often, but I don't doubt the
00:54:13.200
claim. And I'll also say that obviously, this should go without saying, anyone who scrolls social
00:54:19.600
media in a movie theater during a movie should be arrested on the spot and publicly flogged.
00:54:25.720
If I were theocratic fascist dictator of America, this is one of the very first policies I would
00:54:29.440
instate. There would be public flogging stations set up directly outside of movie theaters so that
00:54:34.820
those who misbehave can be dealt with quickly and efficiently. We would also have guillotines on
00:54:39.300
spot for repeat offenders. And just to clarify for our big tech overlords who are listening to this
00:54:43.880
episode, I am not advocating violence against those who talk, text, or use social media in the
00:54:48.200
movies. I'm not advocating it. I'm simply suggesting a legal policy that we might want
00:54:54.400
to explore. It would be at least one way to curb the behavior that Vox is reporting on. And it's
00:55:00.940
not just Vox. On the same day, the BBC published an article on what it calls, quote, the summer of
00:55:06.580
bad tourists. And it begins, quote, this summer every day seems to bring another headline of tourists
00:55:11.520
around the world behaving badly. Last week, it was two drunk Americans sneaking into a closed section of
00:55:16.320
the Eiffel Tower and sleeping off their bender high above Paris. The previous week, a French woman
00:55:22.300
was arrested for carving a heart and her initials into Italy's iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa.
00:55:27.520
A Canadian teen defaced a 1,200-year-old Japanese temple last month just after a Bristol-based man
00:55:33.120
etched two names into Rome's Coliseum and told authorities he was unaware of the arena's age.
00:55:39.480
And who could forget the German tourists who crashed a performance inside a sacred Bali temple and
00:55:44.060
stripped naked after having previously run out of the bill, run out on the bill at several local
00:55:48.420
hotels? Feels like the whole world has forgotten how to act in other people's homes. So people are
00:55:53.980
acting up in movies, at concerts, on vacation, at tourist destinations. Where else? Well, of course,
00:56:00.280
we can't forget airplanes, which I've seen over the past few years a stark rise in incidents involving
00:56:04.480
rowdy and unruly passengers. 2021 was a very bad year for that kind of thing. And it looks like 2022
00:56:10.260
was even worse. This past June, the International Air Transport Association released its official
00:56:15.580
report on the subject. Reading now, it says, quote, the International Air Transport Association
00:56:20.540
released a new analysis showing that reported unruly passenger incidents increased in 2022
00:56:25.740
compared to 2021. Latest figures show that there was one unruly incident reported for every 568 flights
00:56:32.040
in 2022, which was up from one per 835 in 2021. The most common categorizations of incidents in 2022
00:56:39.940
were noncompliance, verbal abuse, and intoxication. Physical abuse incidents remained very rare,
00:56:46.160
but these had an alarming increase of 61% over 2021. Now, one incident every 568 flights doesn't
00:56:54.660
sound too bad on the surface, but when you consider the increase and also just how many flights take
00:56:59.880
off around the world every day, thus just how many episodes of drunkenness and physical abuse
00:57:04.540
in the sky this translates to, you start to see the scope of the problem. And it's a problem that
00:57:10.840
extends beyond airplanes and beyond tourist destinations and theaters and concerts. In many
00:57:14.640
ways, this is part and parcel with the epidemic of violent crime we talked about in the opening,
00:57:18.700
looting, shoplifting. It's all part of the same picture. And we haven't even mentioned the most dire
00:57:24.720
and urgent indicator of social chaos, which is the fact that, as I talk about often,
00:57:31.300
nearly everyone these days seems to have no problem ditching their shopping carts and parking
00:57:35.080
lots. I actually looked for some hard data on the rate of shopping cart ditching to see how it's
00:57:39.820
increased over time. I spent like way too much time this morning looking for that. Somehow it seems like
00:57:44.900
this issue has never been formally studied, and I don't know how that could be the case.
00:57:47.760
All we can say then is that there are a lot of people doing it, and everyone who has ever done
00:57:54.160
it for any reason is a psychopath who should be in solitary confinement. But the real question is
00:58:00.960
why? Like, why is all this happening? Why are people acting this way? If outrageous, offensive,
00:58:06.260
antisocial behavior is becoming more common, then what explains the increase? Well, that Vox article has
00:58:12.740
an answer, and it's exactly the answer that you would expect. It's the answer they give for everything
00:58:16.220
they say it's all because of COVID. Reading, quote, according to experts I spoke to, this rash of bad
00:58:22.980
behavior can probably be traced to the pandemic shutdowns of 2020. During the lockdowns, we didn't
00:58:27.700
have large-scale social events, and no doubt, some people have sort of forgotten how to act now that
00:58:32.520
they're back. Since humans thrive on collective effervescence, it was a complete shock to our systems
00:58:37.600
in 2020 when the pandemic, seemingly overnight, obliterated those large social gatherings, finding
00:58:42.800
that in-person effervescence became impossible. The pendulum swing from gathering in real life to
00:58:48.060
being relegated to social media to now in 2023, coming back to real life events, may explain why
00:58:53.260
some people are being disruptive and not fully comprehending the impact they're having on their
00:58:57.300
fellow audience members. They're using the modes of social connection they got accustomed to, posting
00:59:01.620
a video from a movie theater, scrolling through social media during a Broadway play, or treating a
00:59:06.620
concert like a performance they're watching from home in a setting that's inappropriate.
00:59:10.200
Now, to be clear, I don't dismiss this explanation out of hand. There's no doubt
00:59:14.720
some truth to it. When you lock people in their homes and you shut down all social gatherings,
00:59:20.140
you force people to wear muzzles, depriving them of the ability to see each other's faces and fully
00:59:24.520
connect even on the rare occasions when they're out in public. When you do all that, there are going
00:59:29.260
to be social consequences, and none of those consequences will be good. But this doesn't come close to
00:59:35.900
explaining the a-hole epidemic or accounting for the entire scope of the problem. The lockdowns may
00:59:44.100
have exacerbated some of this stuff, but it was there all along. The real source of the problem,
00:59:50.000
the thing that you probably aren't going to hear anyone talk about on Vox, is that we live in a culture
00:59:55.480
that fundamentally encourages this kind of self-centered behavior. There has been a deliberate effort going
01:00:02.360
back decades to undermine and ultimately destroy all of the basic standards of etiquette that nearly
01:00:08.060
everyone once recognized. They used to teach etiquette as a subject in school, but those days
01:00:13.600
are long gone. Etiquette has become such a dirty word that Vox wrote an entire article about etiquette
01:00:20.460
and never used the word etiquette in the article. They never acknowledged that that's what they were
01:00:24.060
talking about. What they're discussing is not just people being, quote, down bad, whatever that means.
01:00:29.660
They're talking about a loss of etiquette in social situations. The problem for our culture and those
01:00:38.220
in charge of it is that etiquette, both as a term and a concept, first of all, has the vibe of
01:00:44.100
something old-fashioned, like our grandparents cared about etiquette, which makes it automatically
01:00:48.900
archaic and inherently bigoted in the modern mind. Etiquette, by definition, is a customary code of polite
01:00:54.900
behavior among members of a social group. But customary means old. It means traditional. It means
01:01:00.820
something that has existed prior to yesterday. We, and by we, I mean the universal we, not you or me
01:01:07.560
specifically, hopefully, we've decided that we have no use for tradition, which is why tradition has also
01:01:12.540
become a dirty word right alongside etiquette. And that's what a lot of this stuff links back to.
01:01:17.400
Second and most importantly, etiquette is a code of conduct that you as an individual are expected
01:01:25.640
to abide by whether you want to or not, whether it feels good or not, whether it infringes on your
01:01:32.460
personal expression or not. It is something that is often supposed to supersede the desires of the
01:01:39.260
individual. It comes before living your truth, whatever that means. But as a society, we've entirely
01:01:46.120
lost the ability to convey that kind of message. We don't even have the language for it anymore.
01:01:51.060
The feelings of the individual have long since taken center stage. And they now come before any
01:01:56.760
notion of the common good or the needs of society. In other words, people look at their phones in the
01:02:02.200
movie theater because they want to look at their phones in the movie theater. It's what they desire
01:02:06.720
to do in that moment. It's what will make them happiest right then and there, they think. And so why
01:02:13.940
shouldn't they simply do what makes them happy? Why should they care if it makes you less happy?
01:02:19.460
Why should they concern themselves with your truth when they're so busy living theirs?
01:02:25.740
The writers at Vox have no answer for that. They can't really deal with this dilemma because they
01:02:30.820
don't understand what the dilemma is. We can complain impotently about people being jerks, but
01:02:36.520
when it comes to explaining why exactly people should not be jerks, it all breaks down.
01:02:43.020
The only real solution here is to restore some sense of order, of traditional etiquette, of
01:02:48.600
social custom. It's to reestablish a hierarchy where the momentary impulses and desires of the individual
01:02:55.640
are not sitting at the very top in the place of utmost importance.
01:02:59.780
In other words, it means defeating leftism. That's the only actual solution.
01:03:07.560
And we can be pretty sure that Vox will not be up for that, which is why all the people acting
01:03:13.140
like jerks in public and also Vox are all today canceled. And that'll do it for this portion of
01:03:18.260
shows. Move over to the members block and become a member today by using code Walsh to check out for
01:03:21.380
two months free on all annual plans. Hope to see you there. If not, talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.