The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 134 - Of Course We Should End Birthright Citizenship For Illegals

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, President Trump wants to get rid of birthright citizenship for

00:00:04.620 illegals. Is that a good idea? I say yes, absolutely. It's a no-brainer. I'll explain 1.00

00:00:09.720 why. Also, should we blame mass shootings on mental illness? I think not, and we'll talk

00:00:16.940 about why. All that is coming up on the Matt Wall Show. Okay, so what's our controversy of

00:00:25.680 the day? Spin the wheel of controversy to find out what subject we decided to fight about today,

00:00:32.900 and well, today it was birthright citizenship. President Trump said that he wants to abolish

00:00:38.360 birthright citizenship for illegals. That is the law that automatically makes the children of 0.99

00:00:44.140 illegal immigrants citizens if they're born here. He wants to abolish that via executive. What he's

00:00:50.700 saying is that you shouldn't be able to, an illegal immigrant shouldn't be able to just run across 1.00

00:01:00.880 the border and then give birth, and all of a sudden her child is a citizen, and then by extension she

00:01:09.520 is as well, because of course we're not supposed to be breaking up the families. So that's his point.

00:01:14.020 I think it's a rational one, a logical one, a lot to be said for it, but this set off the outrage

00:01:21.620 machine. Of course, the outrage machine did what it always does, did what it does best, which is be

00:01:26.740 outraged, and it also prompted more reasonable responses from people who pointed out that, well,

00:01:31.820 you can't amend the Constitution via executive order. That's not how it works. Here's what the

00:01:36.980 Constitution currently says on the topic, okay? 14th Amendment says, all persons born or naturalized in

00:01:41.880 the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of

00:01:47.320 the state wherein they reside. The jurisdiction thereof piece, that's the piece that, where it's

00:01:54.760 kind of ambiguous and an argument can be made that the children of illegals are not actually protected

00:02:00.340 by the 14th Amendment. Now, obviously this executive order is going to end up in the court, so we'll end up

00:02:06.140 probably in the Supreme Court, and then finally maybe we'll get a reading on what exactly the 14th

00:02:10.640 Amendment means and who it protects and all of that. I'll leave it to others to talk about the

00:02:17.540 constitutional issues of this and to dissect all of that. I just want to make a couple of points

00:02:22.320 in principle about birthright citizenship and the ideas behind it. Really, I just want to make one

00:02:29.060 point, I guess, and that is that it's funny to me that liberals constantly argue that the Constitution

00:02:37.080 is this outmoded, outdated, archaic document written by people who had no idea what sort of country we

00:02:44.620 would be centuries in the future, and therefore it's obsolete, and therefore there's no reason why

00:02:49.240 we should take it seriously or listen to it. They say that, but then on something like birthright

00:02:53.520 citizenship, something where 19th century Americans came up with this thing way before

00:03:00.060 we had an influx of millions upon millions of immigrants flooding into the country. So on that

00:03:07.600 issue, they say, no, it cannot be updated. It is sacrosanct. It is law. It's sacred scripture,

00:03:14.720 and it cannot be changed or amended. So it seems to me that we've really got this backwards because

00:03:22.540 with something like free speech, religious liberty, the right to self-defense, these are basic fundamental

00:03:34.560 human principles about your natural rights as human beings. And so that's timeless. That's always going

00:03:46.860 to be the case. So the fact that it was written down on paper hundreds of years ago, that doesn't

00:03:54.080 matter because it's just as relevant now as it was hundreds of years ago because these are timeless

00:03:59.340 ideas. But when it comes to what makes someone a citizen, is someone a citizen if they just so happen

00:04:06.940 to be born here, these are not timeless, eternal concepts. And I think the context and the situation

00:04:15.320 and all that, that all really matters, right? Now, I think there's plenty of ambiguity to justify

00:04:22.600 excluding illegal immigrants from the birthright law, but I would be in favor of abolishing birthright 1.00

00:04:28.260 citizenship for the children of illegals outright. I think the constitution should be amended

00:04:34.600 accordingly, something that I know will never happen because that would require a significant number

00:04:38.900 of Republicans and Democrats to vote in favor of it, which won't happen. But as a matter of principle,

00:04:43.680 I think that the part of the amendment which potentially allows this has overstayed its usefulness

00:04:53.620 and thus should be amended. The founders did not know and could not have known that we would have this

00:05:05.840 flood of illegals coming into a country which, by the way, would already be inhabited by 300 million 0.99

00:05:11.640 people. Do you think they had that in mind? No, they didn't. It is clearly madness, in my view,

00:05:16.980 to allow for a situation where a person need only make it across the border, have a baby, and their baby

00:05:23.420 is a citizen on technicality. It imbues this kind of like weird supernatural power on the physical land

00:05:30.960 itself. It seems like something from ancient times. It seems like some ancient law where if you are born on

00:05:36.860 this land, you are a part of the land, you belong to the land because you were born here. This is not,

00:05:42.440 this is strikingly old-fashioned and impractical for us now. And liberals are usually the ones

00:05:48.300 complaining about old-fashioned, impractical things. Well, here this really is. So it should be changed.

00:05:55.540 There's a test that I like to apply. I call it the cave test, especially when we're evaluating

00:06:06.120 laws and legal principles and those sorts of things. We should try to think of it, try to imagine

00:06:15.780 that we've just emerged from a cave and we've never heard of this idea before. Totally foreign to us.

00:06:23.880 And then someone suggests it or asks us about, like, hey, what do you think about this?

00:06:30.100 What would our reaction be? Now, I know that this test doesn't always work, but the point is that

00:06:35.900 there are a lot of things in the country, a lot of laws, a lot of policies that we kind of accept

00:06:42.720 because it's always been that way and it's just how it is. And we were born into that system and so we

00:06:49.840 don't really question it. So I think it helps sometimes to just imagine how we would react if we had

00:06:55.180 never heard of it before and someone brought it up. I always do this with Social Security.

00:07:01.220 Imagine you never heard of it. Imagine, forget about the cave. Imagine that, nope, Social Security

00:07:05.900 did not exist. The system didn't exist. There was no thought of the system. And then one day a politician

00:07:11.320 got up there and suggested it and said, hey, I've got an idea. Here's an idea. How about the government

00:07:19.500 takes money from your paycheck every single week, keeps it and holds onto it for decades

00:07:29.060 and will actually use it. And I say, hold on, holds onto it actually does not hold on, hold onto it at

00:07:34.740 all, but takes it and uses it for other things. And then once you get older, they'll start paying

00:07:40.860 it back to you in small chunks without interest. Now, if someone suggested that, that system to you

00:07:48.460 and we had never heard of, I think almost everyone in the country would say, no, that's crazy. What do

00:07:53.000 you, what? No, I don't want that. Why in the world would I, no, no, no, thank you. I'll just take my

00:07:58.000 money and put it in a savings account and keep interest. And then I'll take it out when I want.

00:08:01.180 Thank you very much. That's a crazy system that makes no sense. But we only tolerate it because

00:08:07.900 it's all, because from our perspective, it's always been that way. I think birthright citizenship is

00:08:13.480 kind of the same thing. We're, we're just, we're used to the idea of anchor babies, but, but imagine

00:08:18.800 that this concept didn't exist. And then someone suggested it. They said, I've got an idea.

00:08:24.540 How about this? Um, if you, if you are a citizen of any other country on the globe

00:08:30.820 and you're pregnant, all you have to do is get across the border. Somehow you can illegally 0.99

00:08:37.440 works. Okay. You can do it illegally, sneak across, have the baby and your whole family gets to stay.

00:08:44.500 I think if someone suggested that policy and it never existed before,

00:08:48.220 almost everyone would say, yeah, I don't, you know, no, I don't, I don't know about that.

00:08:55.380 That there's some problems there. Um, not to mention, let's think about this. What happens

00:09:03.560 when immigrants, um, from another, you know, when, when someone comes from another country

00:09:09.980 and they have a child here, what often happens? Um, are they, are they told by their parents,

00:09:17.180 you're an American, you're part of this culture, this people, this is your identity. Is that what

00:09:21.860 they're told? No, I think, I think, or, or it's not always, but often it's not so often. It seems

00:09:28.900 like immigrant families, they come here, they retain their own culture, their own, um, national 0.99

00:09:36.340 identity and loyalty. They speak their own languages at home. They even set up their own

00:09:41.820 communities, uh, where they kind of rebuild the home country in these little small microcosms.

00:09:49.580 And that's what they do. My point is that they want their children to be conferred the benefits

00:09:54.800 of citizenship, but they don't want their children to really actually identify as, or see themselves as

00:10:00.800 Americans. Now I know that's a generality, like I said, it's not the case every, in every case,

00:10:05.040 but it is often the case. So that's, that's why I don't like birthright citizenship. I think it's

00:10:11.200 impractical. It's arbitrary. Um, it's, it's not accompanied by assimilation, which I think is a 0.95

00:10:17.300 really important point here. And this is the problem with immigration in general these days,

00:10:21.780 legal and illegal. It has become, it seems like immigration has become a very one-sided

00:10:27.500 thing. It seems like the immigrant, the immigrant gets the benefits of citizenship, 0.99

00:10:33.380 but does not necessarily make any effort to assimilate any effort to be a part of the country.

00:10:37.900 And what's more, he's coming into a country that's already been established, already been built.

00:10:42.160 And that's the difference between the new immigrants and the immigrants of the 19th century and even the 0.81

00:10:47.320 early 20th century. And that's why these comparisons don't hold up. When people try to draw

00:10:52.040 these comparisons and say, well, you know, how dare you be, uh, have this feeling of immigration?

00:10:57.240 You're, you know, your, your family came here at some point as well. Your family was immigrants.

00:11:02.660 Well, that's, that's true, but it was a very different thing. Immigrants back in the old 1.00

00:11:08.860 days, they were coming here and they were taking part in the project of building and establishing

00:11:14.900 this country. They came to a work in progress is the point. The modern immigrant does not. He comes 1.00

00:11:21.360 into an already built structure hoping to benefit from the shelter that it provides him, which, which

00:11:27.980 if that's done legally, that's fine. It's understandable. I would want to do that too,

00:11:31.720 if I didn't live here, but it's also why I think we need to take a different approach to modern

00:11:36.020 immigration and think of it differently because it's just, it's an entirely different situation,

00:11:40.380 uh, in my opinion. All right. One other thing I wanted to talk about after the events of, um,

00:11:49.680 of last week with a mass shooting, two mass shootings actually, and, um, the pipe bomb

00:11:57.020 attempts as well. It has been all, all of the usual discussions that come up around these kinds

00:12:04.460 of events have, have come up again. And there have been people saying as usual that, uh, we need to

00:12:10.200 have a conversation about mental illness. You know, we need to talk about mental illness.

00:12:14.080 Mental illness is, is one of the things that we normally blame these acts of evil on, uh, along 0.99

00:12:21.460 with guns and policies and politics and so on. Now, I don't think that guns, policies, politics can at

00:12:27.480 all cause a person to go out and slaughter 11 people at a synagogue. I do think that mental illness

00:12:33.100 can at least be a factor. It plays a part. Uh, it would be absurd to deny the involvement of mental

00:12:40.260 illness and to say that it plays no part whatsoever. So it does make sense to talk about mental

00:12:43.900 illness, but I don't think that mental illness is the main thing. And I get nervous about these

00:12:50.400 discussions. I get nervous about pinning evil on mental illness. Um, and I, I get nervous when,

00:12:59.660 when, when that is the, the takeaway that people take from this, when they see this kind of stuff,

00:13:04.240 they, Oh, that's a crazy person. That's a mentally ill person. They should have been on medication. 1.00

00:13:09.160 Uh, so that's what we need to do. We need to, you know, we need to have better mental health

00:13:12.840 when that's the primary takeaway. I get nervous about that. And I tell you why two reasons.

00:13:17.200 First, when we say that a person did something like this because of mental illness, we are removing

00:13:28.560 agency, remove, removing free will from the perpetrator, which means for one thing, we're

00:13:34.740 going far too easy on him. And in the process, we're being, I think, unfair to his victims.

00:13:39.180 After all, who can the families really be, be angry at if the killer was simply ill, was sick,

00:13:46.160 and was, was driven to this by his sickness, which he had no control over. I don't think that's really

00:13:52.380 fair to the families to say that. Now it may not help the families to be told that, well, this was

00:13:56.300 a man who chose to do this. It wasn't because he was sick. It's because he chose to do it. May not

00:14:00.320 help them to know that or be told that, but I do think they should know that they deserve to know

00:14:03.920 that. They deserve to be angry at this individual person for choosing to do what he did, choosing it.

00:14:12.260 This is not just another victim who was a victim of some kind of illness. No, this was a person

00:14:18.640 who chose to be a predator and should be blamed for it 100%. The implication when we blame mental

00:14:25.760 illness for the synagogue shooting or for any other shooting or attack or whatever kind

00:14:29.760 of, of, of other atrocity, the implication obviously is that mental illness caused the event

00:14:36.220 to occur. And if the illness caused it, then we cannot say that the individual person himself,

00:14:42.020 the killer caused it by his choice. And I just think that that's simply false. I think it is a

00:14:46.720 choice. I do not think that any mass shooting has ever occurred, which was, which was carried out by

00:14:56.480 someone who had no choice. I do not think that there has ever been. In fact, I'll say, I don't

00:15:04.440 think that there's, this may be, maybe this is too extreme of a statement, but I don't think that

00:15:08.480 there has ever been a crime committed by someone who had no control over their actions. And so I don't

00:15:17.120 think there's ever been a crime that could be completely blamed on mental illness. And I know 0.86

00:15:22.860 that we have the insanity defense and it rarely works. Sometimes it does. I don't think it should

00:15:28.780 ever work because even in the case of a really crazy, someone who's clearly delusional and, uh, and,

00:15:36.280 um, you know, someone who would appear to us to be for lack of a better term, crazy. I don't think

00:15:42.860 you can prove. And I don't think there's any reason to believe that a person like that has no

00:15:49.460 consciousness, no awareness of what they're doing has no free will whatsoever. I don't think you can

00:15:56.840 prove that. And I think any person who's walking around talking, you know, uh, doing things,

00:16:07.160 anyone like that, they, they, at some level, they have consciousness at some level as a human being,

00:16:11.620 they're making choices. And so they should be held accountable for them.

00:16:16.240 Um, um, now if you want to, um, which is, which is, which is why, by the way, um,

00:16:32.880 which is why in these, in the cases of, I'm trying to think of a, let's think of a mass shooting that

00:16:41.740 was committed by someone who now this, this synagogue shooter, I don't think there's any reason at all to

00:16:45.880 assume that he was crazy. Um, this was someone overcome by bigotry and hate, but let's take the,

00:16:51.140 the theater shooting, um, in Colorado a few years ago. Now there was someone obviously, obviously

00:16:57.280 very troubled again, lack of a better term. Let's, let's, let's call him crazy. But this was not 0.86

00:17:04.000 someone who was walking around casually for days and weeks leading up to it, just telling people that

00:17:12.000 he's going to be going and shooting up a movie theater. Now he may have written it in notebooks

00:17:17.200 or confided with a therapist or something like that. But, but if this is someone who really doesn't

00:17:20.940 know right from wrong, has no idea right from wrong is no idea what they're doing, then they shouldn't

00:17:26.100 be making any effort whatsoever to conceal their plans and, or, or to get away with it. If there's

00:17:32.260 any effort taken to conceal, to get away with it, anything like that, then that's clearly an indication

00:17:37.240 that this person knows they should be doing it. Um, so a, the only time I think that you could

00:17:44.520 maybe blame a crime on mental illness is if this is someone who really had no idea that what they

00:17:50.920 were doing was even wrong. Um, but in these mass shootings, that's just, that's just never the case.

00:17:56.360 There's always some element of planning going into it, always some element of, of secrecy and,

00:18:00.700 and all that kind of stuff. Um, so if you want to tell me that mental illness is partly why a person 0.91

00:18:09.700 would want to do something like this in the first place, then I would agree with you because it

00:18:15.220 certainly is a disordered, abnormal, sick thing to want to do. Um, it is a, it is a, not only a

00:18:22.380 destructive choice, it's a self-destructive choice because the person carrying out the attack stands to

00:18:27.040 gain nothing, at least gain nothing that a sane person would want to gain. Um, they're going to be

00:18:31.800 killed or they're going to end up in jail for the rest of life. Maybe that's part of what they want,

00:18:35.260 part of why they're doing it, which again is a disordered, crazy thing to desire. But the act is still a

00:18:42.880 choice. The act is something they choose to do. Even a mentally ill person has that choice. So a mentally 0.98

00:18:50.120 ill person may discover within themselves this depraved, dark desire to go and hurt someone.

00:18:57.640 And maybe we can pin that on mental illness, but they still have to choose to go in and really do

00:19:02.120 it. And in that sense, if they, if they do make that choice and they go and they actually do it,

00:19:08.940 then mental illness was basically irrelevant. You can't say, well, I was mentally ill. I wanted to

00:19:15.100 do it. I don't care what you wanted to do. You still did it. It doesn't matter to me at all. What

00:19:21.500 kind of desires were in your head or why does that matter? Fact is this was a horrible, evil thing.

00:19:27.040 And you chose to do it. That's all. But I think there's another problem with, uh, with blaming

00:19:34.860 mental illness. And that is that it paints a rather disturbing picture of human beings. I think

00:19:42.520 this idea, uh, that a person can go crazy and then go kill a bunch of people. I think if that's true,

00:19:51.480 if we are, if we are nothing but material, if our consciousness is just a product of chemistry and

00:20:00.420 nothing more, and if these evil actions are then the result of bad chemistry or, or, or chemistry

00:20:05.920 going awry or things firing, how they're not supposed to fire and chemicals doing things,

00:20:10.980 chemicals aren't supposed to do. Well, if that's the case and there's no will, there's no choice in

00:20:16.760 it, then, then, then how can we ever trust anyone ever again? How can we trust ourselves? How can we

00:20:22.080 ever be around anyone ever again? How do you know that your spouse or your child or your best friend

00:20:27.420 won't contract this illness? And then one day through no fault of his own, go out and do

00:20:32.520 something terrible or kill you or whatever. Now, clearly people, spouses, friends, children do make 0.80

00:20:38.100 these decisions. And usually when they make these decisions, the family will claim that, oh, I didn't,

00:20:44.060 we didn't see this coming. We had no idea. But I think in most of those cases, when you find out

00:20:50.340 about this person and you find out the background, even though the family and the friends may be

00:20:54.180 claiming that this came out of the blue and they had no idea, if they really had no idea,

00:20:58.120 it's because obviously they weren't paying attention and they didn't know this person

00:21:01.180 as well as they thought they did. But my point is that it is possible to know a person.

00:21:07.160 It is possible to say of a person, well, they wouldn't make that choice.

00:21:11.560 I trust that that's something they wouldn't do because that's an evil choice and they simply

00:21:16.780 wouldn't do that because I know them. Now you could say that and be wrong. You could think

00:21:24.120 you know someone and you don't, but my, but, but the point is it is possible to be sure

00:21:28.620 at least reasonably sure that a person will not become a serial killer because you know that they

00:21:35.880 simply wouldn't make that choice because you understand them on some deeper level

00:21:39.800 that goes beyond just the chemicals in their brain.

00:21:46.660 But again, this is all chemicals. If it's all mental illness that causes these things,

00:21:50.800 then you can never really be short of anyone or be safe around anyone. In that case, I can't say

00:21:56.060 that I trust that my wife won't murder me in my sleep because to say that would be like saying,

00:22:01.980 well, I trust that she'll never get cancer, which is nonsense. I hope my wife doesn't get cancer.

00:22:07.000 I pray she doesn't, but statistically there is a whatever percent chance that my wife will get 0.99

00:22:12.560 cancer. You look at her demographics, you look at different, you know, family history, age, all that.

00:22:16.300 There is that. You can put a percentage on it and say, there's this percent chance of her getting

00:22:19.660 cancer. And as she gets older, that percentage goes up. Right? So there's no, whatever, whatever

00:22:25.900 I hope there is no trust involved here because she has no control over that. And that's the same for

00:22:31.180 everyone. If these evil actions are simply symptoms of disease, then we would have to say the same in

00:22:39.720 that case. I would have to say, well, I hope my wife doesn't kill me in my sleep. I hope she doesn't

00:22:45.000 become a serial killer, but there is a whatever percent chance that she will. And there's just

00:22:50.800 simply no way to, you know, so you, you could, you could look at the statistics and look at

00:22:55.460 probabilities and, and you know, that's the percentage. Um, but if I said, even if I said,

00:23:03.920 well, there's a 0.01% chance that my wife is, will become a serial killer. I, even that I wouldn't,

00:23:08.620 I wouldn't feel safe going to sleep around it, to be honest, even more so I wouldn't, I wouldn't be

00:23:12.820 able to trust myself around anyone because I have to say the same about myself. Because how do I know

00:23:18.140 I won't get this sickness? How do I know that chemicals and things won't start doing weird

00:23:21.380 things in my head and force me to do things outside of my, outside of my choice, outside of

00:23:26.240 my agency. Then in that case, I must look at myself and say, there is a certain percent chance

00:23:32.440 that I'm the next Charles Manson. And I, I don't think we could talk about people that way

00:23:38.160 because people do have free will and choice and they decide to do evil things.

00:23:43.620 And so that's the conversation that, that, that is the first primary, most important conversation

00:23:48.760 that we should be having around these, uh, around these kinds of events. Rather than talking about

00:23:54.200 mental illness, we talk about, and I, you know, I mentioned this yesterday, but we talk about evil.

00:23:58.420 This is a person who chose to do an evil thing. And then the, the other thing too is, uh, and I've

00:24:04.020 mentioned this before, but, and I'm, you know, I'm the last one to complain about stigmas and that 1.00

00:24:08.240 kind of thing. I think that, I think that the, the, the term stigma is way overused, but when you

00:24:13.300 blame stuff like this on mental illness all the time, it does create a stigma around mental illness

00:24:17.660 because what we're saying then about actually mentally ill people is, Hey, they could, I mean,

00:24:21.900 they could go off anytime and kill somebody, which is not the case because they'd still have to choose 0.80

00:24:27.560 it. So we can't lose, we can't lose sight of choice when, when talking about this.

00:24:31.540 All right. We'll leave it there. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening, everybody.

00:24:35.380 Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - October 30, 2018

Ep. 134 - Of Course We Should End Birthright Citizenship For Illegals

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