Ep. 1353 - Insider Investigation Reveals The Absurd Details Behind Eventbrite's Decision To Ban Me From Its Platform
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Words per minute
175.32527
Harmful content
Misogyny
20
sentences flagged
Hate speech
37
sentences flagged
Summary
A congressional investigation has revealed insider details about big tech censorship of conservatives. And a major focus of the investigation was Eventbrite s targeting of events related to my film, What Is Woman? . We ll discuss. Also, Ilhan Omar s daughter says she was rendered homeless and hungry after being arrested during a pro-Hamas protest on campus. Even worse, she claims she was attacked with chemical weapons. And Time Magazine publishes an article about parents who regret having kids. It s all a part of the ongoing attack on the family and marriage. 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, a congressional investigation has revealed insider details
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about big tech censorship of conservatives, and a major focus of the investigation was
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Eventbrite's targeting of events related to me and my film, What Is Woman? We'll discuss.
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Also, Ilhan Omar's daughter says she was rendered homeless and hungry after being arrested during
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a pro-Hamas protest on campus. Even worse, she was attacked with chemical weapons, she claims.
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And Time Magazine publishes an article about parents who regret having kids. It's all a part
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of the ongoing attack on the family and marriage. We'll talk about all that and more today on the
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Well, after my film, What is a Woman? became one of the most watched documentaries of all time.
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There were a couple of different responses that leftists could have had to the film. And the easiest
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response would have been to simply answer the question in the title. Trans activists, the media,
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and politicians had the opportunity to provide a coherent, non-circular definition for the word
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woman. And then if they had done that, they would have won the argument. That's all they had to do.
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But of course, trans ideology can't provide a coherent definition of the word woman. So they
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refused to do so when I interviewed them in the film. And then they haven't been able to do it in
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nearly two years since the documentary came out. Instead, as I've discussed, of course, many times,
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the left lied about the film. They accused me of transphobia for allowing trans activists to
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explain, or rather fail to explain, but they were given the opportunity to explain what they believe.
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But they didn't stop there. On top of all the lies, one of the most powerful technology platforms in
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the country embarked on an effort to prevent me from speaking about the film. This platform called
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Eventbrite also tried to shut down screenings of the documentary. They claim that any event or
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screening of the film, any time that we discuss it, we have violated their hateful events policy.
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Now, if you're not familiar with Eventbrite, it controls roughly 50% of the event management and
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registration market. So it's a very big company. They're hard to avoid if you want to plan an event.
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Even if you want to avoid them, it's difficult to do. There's not a lot of alternatives. And on at least
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seven occasions, they canceled events involving what is a woman, often costing event organizers like
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YAF thousands of dollars. Now, at the time, it seemed like just another example of a left-wing
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company silencing political dissent. Stop me if you've heard that one before. But the Senate
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Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation decided to look deeper into what's going on.
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Under the leadership of ranking member Ted Cruz, the committee launched a congressional investigation
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to several instances in which online service providers canceled services for conservative
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organizations and speakers. The committee probed Eventbrite and many other companies like it
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to understand what was going on internally at these companies when they made these decisions
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to censor conservatives. And today, we can bring you the results of that investigation,
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which has been going on for many months exclusively. So here's the top-line finding,
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which outlines the left's strategy for attacking the freedom of speech and association in this
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This investigation revealed that online service providers are following a new playbook
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for silencing conservatives that leftist organizations, including the notoriously biased
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Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League, concocted. Removing infrastructure services
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that conservative organizations need to operate by weaponizing their terms of service. Now,
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in other words, what Eventbrite did to What is Woman is part of a much larger effort to de-platform
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anyone who disagrees with the left, particularly on the issue of transgenderism, or really on any other
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issue. This is their answer to me, as well as to Libs of TikTok, Riley Gaines, nonprofits like
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the Independent Women's Forum. They can't debate us, so they have to shut us down and prevent us from
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speaking. The committee's investigation exposes this effort in great detail for the total fraud
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that it is. Now, publicly, companies like Eventbrite will claim that, well, they're just combating hate
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and they're combating disinformation when they shut down events featuring my film, for example.
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But in reality, the committee found nobody at Eventbrite even watched What is a Woman before
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they decided to ban all events themed around the film. Quoting from the report, quote,
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Eventbrite admitted to the committee that no one involved in the decision watched What is a Woman
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before canceling the events. Eventbrite could not even identify a single timestamp in the trailer
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that it deemed to violate the Eventbrite community guidelines. According to Eventbrite,
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the overall tone and message of the all-encompassing trailer, in combination with Matt Walsh's related
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public statements, helped determine the removals, not any individual timestamp.
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So to restate, because this really is pretty incredible, a big tech platform banned events
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involving my film, saying that these events violated their hateful events policy without even
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watching the film. They can't tell you specifically anything in the film that violates the policy
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yet the film as a whole violates the policy. Try to make sense of that. According to the committee,
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Eventbrite has a trust and safety team that consists of at least 12 full-time employees that
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review every single case where something is being banned. Eventbrite describes these employees as
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experts. Experts in what? I mean, what are their qualifications? That's never explained.
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But we do know they certainly aren't experts in the film because none of these experts saw the film
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that they wanted to ban. Instead, they looked at nonspecific parts of the trailer and then my
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public statements that we'll talk about in a second. So let's go through this one by one.
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Starting with the trailer, which again is what they used to ban every event that has anything to do
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with my film. So here are the first 45 seconds or so of the trailer for What is Woman,
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Woman, which is probably more than Eventbrite's experts even watched. But here it is. Watch.
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Well, you're at the Women's March. You must have some idea. Please, if one person could tell me what
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a woman is. You are not here for women. We ask you to leave. What is that?
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I'm a husband. I'm a father for, I host a talk show. I give speeches. I write books. I like to
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make sense of things. A woman is not anything in particular. There is not one particular thing.
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It could be many things to many people. Some women have penises, right? Some men have vaginas.
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I like scented candles. I've watched Sex and the City. Yeah. How do I know if I'm a woman?
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That's a great question. You're not a scientist. You're not a gender studies major. No.
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How do you know that you're a man? I guess because I got a dick.
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Okay. So you can watch the whole thing online if you want. If you haven't seen it yet,
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many people have, but that's basically what it is. And that is the alleged hateful content that
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apparently Eventbrite finds disqualifying. Nobody can use Eventbrite to show the film or even discuss
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it. Again, it's not just screenings of the film, but discussions about the film are not allowed if
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you're using Eventbrite to organize your event. And they're using that, the trailer, as their
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evidence. Not exactly convincing. So maybe to cover their bases more thoroughly, Eventbrite told the
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committee that they banned my events for a few other reasons as well. Specifically, they said that my
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public statements were hateful. Now, what public statements exactly? Well, Eventbrite provided three
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examples to the congressional committee. All of them are from before the film was released. So
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these are statements that actually have nothing to do with the film because it's before the film
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existed, or at least before it was released. The first example is my appearance on a Dr. Phil episode
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titled The Gender Pronoun Debate from January 19th, 2022. The whole episode runs for the better part of an
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hour. And again, there's basically no chance that Eventbrite's experts watched the whole appearance,
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but here's a representative part. Watch. That's a question I would like to throw out to other
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members of the panel. Actually, because just like the four-year-old can't answer what is a girl,
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well, this is one of the problems with this left-wing gender ideology is that no one who espouses it
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can even tell you what these words means. Like, what is a woman? Can you tell me what a woman is?
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No, I can't. Because it's not for me to say. Womanhood looks different for everybody.
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Someone who's, you know, here's the thing. When you're a female, it goes right down to your bones,
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your DNA. So that's why if someone dies, we could dig up their bones a hundred years from now.
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We have no idea what they believed in their head, but we can tell what sex they were because it's
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in, it's down in, it's, it's ingrained in every fiber of their being.
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So according to Eventbrite, the fact that I use the words mental illness charade and theatrical
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production during the episode to describe men who pretend to be women and vice versa is evidence
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that I'm a very hateful person. And so I shouldn't be allowed to host events or you shouldn't,
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you also shouldn't be allowed to host events that have anything to do with me because these are
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not just events that I was hosting. Uh, but these are events that in fact, I wasn't hosting any of
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these events. Additionally, Eventbrite says that in May, 2021, um, uh, an episode of this show,
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uh, was hateful because I discussed gender surgeries being performed on children, including
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double mastectomies. And I said that they were morally akin to rape and child molestation.
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And apparently that's hateful. If you have a problem with child butchery, then Eventbrite
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won't allow you to have a platform. And they're right, by the way, uh, it is hateful. I do hate
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this kind of abuse against children so that I, in, in a sense that's correct. There was one other
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objection that Eventbrite made concerning the children's book that I wrote called Johnny the
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Walrus. Um, now of course they didn't actually read this book any more than they watched the film.
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Can't blame them though. The book is probably above their reading level, but it was featured
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at the beginning of my appearance on the Dr. Phil show, which is probably how they heard about it.
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My name is Matt Walsh and I've written a book called Johnny the Walrus. This book is about
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identity and imagination. He identifies as a walrus and his mom's a little silly. She takes it seriously
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and thinks he really is a walrus. So she went on her phone and there are people telling her that
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this isn't pretending he's really a walrus. And his mother takes him to the doctor to have him
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surgically transitioned and gets him walrus hormone pills. And then eventually tries to drop him off at
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a zoo to live with other walrus. Not only topping the Amazon charts, my book has taken the world by
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storm. So the book, as you probably know, is about a little boy who pretends to be a walrus. People
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encourage him to start changing his appearance and getting surgery to transform into a walrus.
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And the book takes the position that this is a bad idea. It teaches that human children should
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recognize that they are human children and not walruses. But to Eventbrite, this is a big problem.
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They told the committee that it's, this is hate speech. So it's, it's bad and I'm not allowed on their
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platform. And the funny thing is that as the committee's investigation makes clear, Eventbrite
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doesn't really know what their hateful conduct policy even says. Either that or they lied to the
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committee. I mean, or it could be a combination of the two. Quoting from the report, on February 27th,
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days before the March 1st event, Eventbrite removed the events page from its website and
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notified the organizer that it had done done so because the event violated the Eventbrite community
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guidelines. Eventbrite told the committee that it sends a standard notification when removing an
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event for violating its hateful events policy. As reflected in the figure below, however, in the
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version Eventbrite sent to the organizers of the Stanford event, Eventbrite directly stated that
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the problem with the Matt Walsh event was that it expressed views that violated the Eventbrite
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terms of service. In other words, Eventbrite's standard hateful events policy doesn't say
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anything about prohibiting certain views. They wrote up a custom notification just for one of my events
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and then apparently forgot about it. This kind of ad hoc reasoning is extremely common on the left and
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particularly among online service providers. It's yet another symptom of an ideology without any real
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principles. And they're also, the reason that they're ambiguous about this is because they want to
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allow themselves to apply the rules in a subjective, targeted, ideological way.
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But as I alluded to earlier, of course, this isn't just affecting me. The committee outlines numerous
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other instances of online platforms shutting down events for conservatives, including a November
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2023 event featuring the swimmer Riley Gaines at UC Davis. The school's college Republicans worked
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with Eventbrite to set up a registration page so that students could sign up and attend for free.
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But in late November, Eventbrite canceled the whole thing. They notified the organizers that events
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cannot espouse hatred or harass anyone based on a series of characteristics, including sexual
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orientation, national origin, immigration status, gender identity, religion, ethnicity, or disability.
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Now, notably, Eventbrite doesn't prohibit hatred based on sex discrimination.
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So it's okay to deride women and pretend they don't exist, for example. Trans activists are free to do
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that all they want. But Riley Gaines was shut down not because of anything on her event page,
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but because she previously made social media posts affirming that biology is real.
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One of the posts cited by Eventbrite is an October 10th, 2023 post from Gaines in which she says,
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quote, women are not menstruators, bleeders, chest feeders, cervix havers, uterus owners,
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egg producers, or people with birthing capacity. Women are just women, adult human females.
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Now, according to Eventbrite, which makes up its standards as it goes, that is hateful conduct.
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To say that women are women is hateful conduct. Along those lines, the committee investigated the
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communications platform Slack for canceling the workspace of Libs of TikTok. Slack informed the
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committee that, quote, what makes Libs of TikTok problematic is that Libs of TikTok has a specific
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audience, and they are taking this information and posting it to that specific audience so that
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everyone in that audience sees it at the same time. Now, I've read that explanation about five times.
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It still doesn't, honestly, I can't make sense of it. I don't know what that means.
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But so Libs of TikTok posts things that people see it the same. So she's posting on the internet is
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what you're saying? That's what makes it hateful? But as best I can tell, they're admitting that
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nothing Libs of TikTok has said was objectionable or hateful. And really, it couldn't be because she's
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mostly reposting content from leftists. Most of what she's doing is just saying, oh,
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listen to what this person said publicly. So instead of making any factual argument, Slack
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apparently complains that a lot of people are seeing the factual information provided by Libs
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of TikTok. And I guess those people are becoming hateful as a result of what Libs of TikTok is telling
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them. So this alleged audience reaction makes Libs of TikTok's conduct a violation of Slack's policies
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against inciting hatred. Now, she didn't direct anyone to engage in any hateful conduct.
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She didn't openly incite anyone to do anything. She simply posted the truth about what's happening.
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And that's not allowed anymore. Now, this is a standard that obviously, if the left were to
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employ against itself, would result in the immediate deplatforming of the Washington Post.
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Most pretty much every trans activist who's ever used social media, the entirety of CNN and MSNBC,
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like all the corporate media and so forth. But it's not a real standard and it's not meant to be
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administered fairly. Instead, as the committee notes, this standard was essentially invented by
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the ADL, the SPLC and other well-funded left-wing activist groups. Quote, although Slack did not
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specifically point to them with regard to its Libs of TikTok investigation, notably, the left-wing
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SPLC has described Libs of TikTok as an extremist account and ADL labeled Libs of TikTok slash Shia
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Reichich as an extremist in its glossary of extremism. The same designation applies to me,
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by the way, quoting again from the report, Eventbrite did not say that it relied on ADL in deciding to
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cancel the What Is Woman events, but notably, ADL, which Eventbrite's trust and safety team generally
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relies on as a source, has labeled Matt Walsh as an extremist commentator. So this is the strategy that
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has been unearthed by this congressional committee, motivated in part by guidance from left-wing
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activist groups. Large online tech platforms are doing everything they can to make sure conservatives
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can't communicate or stay in business. And there are several other examples. For instance, the report
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says that the Independent Women's Forum, or IWF, was kicked off the fundraising platform Bonterra for
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defending women's rights, which I guess they're not allowed to do. Bonterra categorized IWF as some
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sort of anti-LGBT outfit, whatever that means, all because they believe that biology is real.
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Therefore, they're not allowed to raise money, I guess. In this report, the committee suggests that
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this situation could be resolved by legislation, or at least addressed in some way by legislation.
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And it can be, and it should be. But the ideal and really final resolution, as the committee suggests
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in its conclusion, is for new online service providers to flood the market and offer an
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alternative. I mean, that's the only response to this insanity that's sustainable. And it's a very
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workable solution. Because of this committee's investigation, we know that the company's
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censoring conservatives are actually staffed with complete bumbling morons who have no idea what
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they're doing. I mean, that means that they're powerful, yes, but they're also vulnerable.
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And now it's time to replace them before they silence us. Now let's get to our five headlines.
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Postmillennial reports. Students at Columbia University will have to switch to hybrid learning until the end of
00:20:22.920
the term due to the massive Gaza camp protest against Israel raging on at the main campus.
00:20:29.780
Students were told that hybrid learning will be in place, save for classes where it's not possible
00:20:34.340
due to equipment required, until the last day of classes on April 29th. The move comes after
00:20:40.980
President Munish Shafiq canceled all in-person classes on Monday to de-escalate the rancor and give
00:20:46.220
us all a chance to consider next steps. Many have been calling for her resignation. According to a
00:20:52.120
statement from Provost Angela Olinto and Chief Operating Officer Cass Holloway, all courses at the
00:20:57.760
Morningside main campus, save for those in arts practice-based programs, will be made hybrid so long as
00:21:03.140
classroom technology permits. In recent days, protests on campus have escalated with hundreds of students
00:21:08.840
and faculty refusing to back down despite numerous calls to do so from university leadership and law
00:21:12.940
enforcement. In a statement released on Monday, Shafiq noted that, quote, there have been too many
00:21:17.640
examples of intimidating and harassing behavior on our campus, adding, quote, we cannot have one
00:21:21.960
group dictate terms in an attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance
00:21:26.360
their point of view. Okay, so that's just the latest on these quote-unquote protests that have
00:21:32.380
been happening at supposedly elite universities across the country for days now. And I'll probably
00:21:37.380
go into more detail about this protest movement from the left tomorrow. I'll just give a quick overview
00:21:44.620
of some points right now. And to start with, protest movements on the left are never organic or
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grassroots. Never. Never, ever. They're always very well-funded, very well-organized, facilitated
00:22:01.360
by institutional wealth and power. And that's what we're talking about. I made this point on Twitter
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earlier, and somebody, you know, of course, people always like to be pedantic on Twitter. So someone said,
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well, you know, every protest is organized. Well, yeah, obviously. Obviously, there's some element
00:22:17.980
of organization that goes into any protest. You have to at least communicate in some way to tell
00:22:22.840
people, hey, we're protesting here. The difference, though, is on the left, they have powerful institutions
00:22:28.160
behind them that are funding all of this. And on the right, you don't really have that. So if there's
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a protest movement on the right, it's almost always actually a grassroots, in that sense,
00:22:41.060
organic effort. And not only is there no real institutional power behind the protests on the
00:22:47.300
right, but as we've seen, we just talked about in the opening monologue, the institutional powers
00:22:51.460
are trying to shut down conservative events and conservative, you know, demonstrations of any
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kind. So on the left, they have that kind of institutional power. So that's where all this
00:23:05.200
stuff comes from. And there's a reason why when you look at photos from this encampment at Columbia,
00:23:11.120
all of the tents are the same. It's like identical tents set up in a line. Now, I've never seen a
00:23:20.780
campsite where everyone happens to have the exact same tent. I've never seen a bunch of matching
00:23:28.200
tents at a campsite, but that's what they have at Columbia because this is all organized from above.
00:23:33.440
Like, obviously, someone is going out and buying all the tents, providing all the tents so that they
00:23:37.240
can have their illegal encampment. And it's being organized, of course, by the same people who organized
00:23:42.780
the BLM riots of 2020. And it's the same cast of characters that are participating in this.
00:23:49.640
This is our version of BLM for 2024. And we knew, you know, the interesting thing is that we knew
00:23:58.220
that we were bound to have some kind of race riot, some kind of race-related protest this summer
00:24:05.040
because it's an election year. So the spring or summer before an election is when there's some kind
00:24:11.860
race-related protest. And if you're aware of that pattern, then for the last couple of years,
00:24:20.680
you've been expecting, you knew something was going to happen. There would be something right
00:24:24.900
around this time. And now you look and, well, what do you know? It's happening. It's just that
00:24:30.360
it's taking the form of free Palestine instead of BLM. It's the exact same people. It's the exact same
00:24:37.900
forces at work. Everything is the same. They've just changed up the signs and the slogans. Haven't
00:24:44.860
changed them up that much. I mean, the signs and slogans even are very similar, but mostly the same.
00:24:52.940
Same tactics, same methods. You know, it's all the same. Because this is, at bottom, as always,
00:25:01.760
an anti-white, anti-West movement. Now, they pretend to be angry about Israel or whatever,
00:25:12.520
but this, for them, is really about colonialism, quote-unquote. It's about the evils of Western
00:25:19.840
civilization. It's about white power and so on. And, you know, this is not my interpretation of
00:25:25.900
their movement. If you were to go and ask them, if you go to Colombia and ask them about this,
00:25:30.440
they'll tell you. Ask them, like, what is this really about to you? What are you actually upset
00:25:35.740
about? Now, you're talking about Israel, but what's underlying all of this? Like, what do you
00:25:42.320
think you're fighting against? If you ask them that, they're not going to say Israel and just
00:25:48.360
leave it at that. They're going to tell you they're fighting against colonialism. They're fighting against
00:25:52.640
white systemic power. That's what they're going to say. And I said this from the very beginning
0.88
00:25:58.880
when all this first started. And some people were a little bit confused about, like, well,
00:26:05.920
why would the left instinctively take the side of Hamas? As people on the right love to point out,
00:26:13.600
I mean, you go to Colombia, you see these protesters. If you were to round them up and drop them off in
00:26:18.960
the Middle East, the vast majority of them would not survive the day. Okay. Most of these people
1.00
00:26:26.020
would be killed on the spot in many places in the Middle East. So why would they, it doesn't make
0.83
00:26:31.740
any sense. Why would they side with people who hate them? Well, it's actually pretty simple.
00:26:38.980
The calculation is very simple. They side with the, whatever side is less white, that's the side that
0.87
00:26:47.220
they prefer. That's it. That's the only calculation. And in any dispute, in any conflict between
00:26:54.980
individuals or groups of people on the left, all they do is they look at it. They say, okay, who's,
00:27:00.780
who's, who is the lighter skin color here? Okay. Well, they're the bad guys. And then over there,
1.00
00:27:04.820
they're darker. So they're, they're the good guys. It really is. That's, it's the only calculation
0.86
00:27:09.700
that matters to them. But, uh, the good news is that this all has created some, uh, comedic relief
00:27:16.840
if unintentionally along the way. So I want you to listen to this from the Daily Beast. It's an
00:27:20.660
article recounting how Ilhan Omar's daughter was rendered homeless. That's been the headline anyway.
00:27:29.180
I've seen this headline all over social media that Ilhan Omar's daughter is homeless now, um, and has
00:27:34.820
nearly starved to death because she was arrested for her illegal activity during one of these protests.
00:27:40.120
Reading now from the Daily Beast, it says, when Isra Hersey joined several of the, of her
00:27:45.020
Bernard College and Columbia University peers in the pro-Palestinian campus protest known as the
00:27:49.260
Gaza Encampment, she had no idea she would end up suspended and barred from her on-campus dorm and
0.55
00:27:55.260
dining hall within a matter of days. An interview with Teen Vogue's Lexa McMenamin, the Bernard Jr.,
00:28:01.940
who's the daughter of Ilhan Omar, recounted the violence with which the college reacted to student
00:28:07.260
activism detailing the arrest and subsequent sanctions she faced. Hersey and two of her
00:28:11.760
Bernard College classmates were the first of over a hundred students to be suspended
00:28:15.020
following the protest. Um, early Thursday morning, just over 24 hours into the encampment,
00:28:21.640
Hersey and the hundred plus other protesters were crammed into a corrections bus and sent downtown
00:28:26.720
to one police plaza, a process that took up the entire day. Uh, she says she was zip tied, uh,
00:28:33.160
and, uh, you know, handcuffed in other words, and she was shipped off to be arrested. Um,
0.99
00:28:38.480
and that took, uh, about 13 hours until she got out, but which is outrageous by the way, because she
0.54
00:28:48.780
should have been detained for much longer than that. But when she returned to campus, she found
00:28:52.920
only more barriers. Hersey knew that when she was suspended, it meant she no longer had access to her
00:28:57.220
housing in the on-campus dorms. That meant she had also lost access to all of her possessions.
00:29:02.080
It didn't know where she would find housing that night. She said, quote, I was a little bit frantic,
00:29:07.460
like, where am I going to sleep? Where am I going to go? And also all of my s*** is thrown in a
00:29:12.100
random lot. It's pretty horrible. To make matters worse, Hersey also lost access to the dining hall
00:29:18.180
as a result of her suspension, where she had been getting the majority of her meals. Um, now it does,
00:29:23.880
it goes on later to say that actually they, they provided her, uh, she lost access to the dining hall,
00:29:32.180
but they were providing bags of food anyway. Uh, but it took a little bit longer for her to get her
00:29:37.360
prepackaged bag of food. And so she nearly starved in the process. So Ilhan Omar's daughter's, uh,
00:29:42.980
homeless, I guess, and starving. And she had no idea this would happen. She had no idea that by
00:29:48.320
being involved in an illegal encampment, by doing something illegal, she would be arrested.
00:29:55.680
No idea. And by the way, I'm sure that's true that she, she really didn't see it coming. I,
00:30:01.640
I believe her that she didn't see it coming because, you know, these protests are organized
00:30:06.380
by smart, rich people who know exactly what they're doing, but the average grunt on the street,
00:30:12.000
and that even includes the daughter of a Congresswoman, like these people are much dumber.
00:30:17.020
And they really do think that they have some kind of right to just set up an encampment wherever they
00:30:23.280
want without any repercussions whatsoever. But it's even worse than that because not only is she
00:30:29.640
homeless and starving to death, she also, well, I'll let you tell her, listen to this part of the
00:30:36.620
interview. This was pretty shocking. I had no idea that it was this bad, but listen.
00:30:40.460
There is definitely some hypocrisy here, especially you can kind of see it with the
00:30:45.140
students that were, um, that were, uh, sprayed us with the chemical weapons and the fact that
00:30:49.580
there is no public information as to what happened to them, but rather the university is actively
00:30:54.000
discussing what is happening to the students here and making it a whole public spectacle rather
00:30:59.000
than when we haven't done anything to physically harm students. Whereas those that sprayed those
00:31:04.780
chemical weapons, physically harmed students, chemical weapons, chemical weapons are being
00:31:10.800
used against these protesters. Um, I, this is, this is major news. Like why isn't this in every
00:31:18.420
headline? This is a chemical, they're using chemical weapons against the, uh, the protesters.
00:31:23.480
Now, listen, I, I think that everybody involved in the encampment, they should all have their
00:31:29.660
tents thrown, uh, torn down and they should all be rounded up and arrested. And actually
00:31:34.500
it's very, as always with these kinds of situations, um, it's just like we talk about with the protesters
00:31:41.680
that stand in the, in the middle of the highway and shut down traffic. It's very easy to deal
00:31:48.100
with. We're, we're constantly told by the media and by political leaders that it's, it's complex.
00:31:54.660
It's difficult. It's, there's so many different factors to weigh. Actually, it's, it's very easy.
00:31:59.460
And the only factor you need to weigh is how do we get rid of these people as quickly as possible
00:32:05.280
so that everything could get back to normal for all the people who are not involved in this.
00:32:09.680
Um, and getting rid of them is incredibly easy. Just show up with as many buses as you need,
00:32:19.940
as many cops as you need and throw them in handcuffs and drag them away. That's it. Real simple.
00:32:28.340
But what if there's 500 people there? Are you going to arrest them all? Yes. Arrest 500 people,
00:32:32.860
arrest a thousand people if you need to. Absolutely. If that's how many people are breaking the law,
00:32:36.820
arrest them all. No problem. Uh, I've said before, if we need to build, like, you know, I don't like,
00:32:45.720
uh, I'm not a big fan of taxes. I don't like when tax money is spent most of the time. So I think
00:32:49.760
it's often wasted. I would happily pay taxes for that though. If you tell me we need to build more
00:32:53.940
prisons to house all of these, uh, miscreants, then, then I'm all for it. I'll, I'll start a GoFundMe
00:33:01.420
right now to raise money myself to build more prisons for all these people. But anyway, um,
00:33:06.820
as, as much as I believe that we should, uh, uh, come down hard on these, uh, people, I, I, I'll be
00:33:14.960
the first to say chemical weapons should not be used. The good news of course, is that there were
0.92
00:33:19.940
no chemical weapons. She's just making that up. I don't even know what she's referring to. Maybe
00:33:23.960
she's talking about pepper spray or something, but, uh, chemical weapons, I think overstates it by
00:33:30.440
a pretty wide margin. Okay. Alec Baldwin was confronted at a coffee shop by one of these
00:33:36.400
types of people, one of these pro Hamas protesters. And, uh, this is actually, and I'll explain why in
00:33:43.680
a moment, but this is an amazing video. It's actually shocking, but let's watch it first.
00:33:50.820
Alec, can you please stay free Palestine one time? Why did you kill that lady? You killed
0.98
00:33:58.220
that lady and got no jail time? No jail time, Alec. No jail time, Alec. You're putting innocent
00:34:05.760
people in jail, Alec Baldwin. Free Palestine, Alec, just one time. And I'll leave you alone.
00:34:12.400
I'll leave you alone. I swear. Just stay free Palestine one time. One time. One time.
1.00
00:34:19.200
One time, Alec. You know he's a criminal. You know he's a criminal. Come on, Alec, just say
00:34:26.700
free Palestine one time. One time, just one time, please. And I'll leave you alone. Free
1.00
00:34:33.580
Palestine. Israel, Zionism. Please say it. One time.
0.98
00:34:44.900
So it's amazing. And I'll tell you what's amazing about it is it's an incredible
00:34:49.020
achievement because do you realize what kind of obnoxious, dumb, blathering, idiot scumbag you
0.94
00:34:55.380
have to be to make Alec Baldwin seem sympathetic? To create a video where I watch it and I feel
00:35:04.400
sorry for Alec Baldwin? That's an emotion. I don't know what to do with that emotion. I don't know how
00:35:10.340
to handle it. I've never, it's a strange emotion I've never felt before. I've never felt sympathy for
00:35:16.140
Alec Baldwin. I've never watched an Alec, because when I watch an Alec Baldwin video, the emotion I'm
00:35:20.860
accustomed to experiencing is irritation, revulsion, indifference, you know, all these
00:35:27.360
different, that's kind of the spectrum. That's where I'm living when it comes to Alec Baldwin
00:35:32.820
related content. But sympathy? I don't, what? I don't know what to do with that. I didn't think it was
00:35:39.960
possible. I didn't think it was possible to, for anyone to do or say anything that would make me
00:35:44.720
side with Alec Baldwin. But here we are. Here we are. Because here's the thing, in any interaction
00:35:51.080
with Alec Baldwin, you, if you're having an interaction with Alec Baldwin, you automatically
00:35:56.420
get the benefit of the doubt because you are not Alec Baldwin, and he is. In order to squander that
00:36:04.220
advantage, so you're going, you're way ahead before the interaction even begins. And to squander that
00:36:11.080
and to make the public side with Baldwin, you have to, I mean, you got to go out of your way to be as
00:36:17.740
unpleasant as humanly possible. And that's what this person accomplished quickly too. By the way,
00:36:24.060
this was not like 10 minutes and it kind of wears you down. That's less than a minute. That's like 50
00:36:30.920
seconds. And she was able to make us all sympathize with Alec Baldwin. And of course, Alec Baldwin was
00:36:40.120
completely justified in his response. I, which, you know, if you're, if you're listening to the
00:36:45.080
audio podcast at the end, he appears to smack the phone out of her hand or he, whatever, I don't
00:36:50.940
know if he smacks or not, but he's, he forcibly makes her stop filming. I think it's great. I wish
00:36:57.780
that more people would react that way when they have cameras shoved in their face, whether it's Alec
00:37:01.680
Baldwin or not, it doesn't matter. The idea that you have the right, putting aside for a second,
00:37:05.980
everything that she said to him, the idea that you have the right to just walk around and film
00:37:11.000
anyone you want, whether they consent to it or not. I mean, that's something we just have to get
00:37:16.400
this under control. It's, it's, it's, it's gotten way out of hand. I think we all understand that.
00:37:22.640
Now, of course, when you're a public figure, you have to deal with, with more of this kind of thing.
00:37:28.260
It comes with the territory more, but even a public figure can't be expected to tolerate being harassed
00:37:33.700
and accosted in public. Like he's just trying to get a coffee. And that, so you have to, you have
00:37:39.300
to put up with that. Any a-hole that walks in the door and wants to harass you and put you on camera,
1.00
00:37:46.180
you just have to deal with it. No. And worse than that is, is that, you know, people do this
00:37:53.480
all the time to strangers who are not public figures. Every day on Twitter, you see a post from
00:38:00.180
somebody who filmed or photographed some other random person to shame them. In fact, we'll play
00:38:06.680
another example of that in just a second, the next headline. But every day, it's another, it's
00:38:11.380
another video like this. Someone, someone's being filmed or photographed, you know, because they did
00:38:17.000
something supposedly rude or, or at least they did something that the person who's filming or taking
00:38:22.500
the picture didn't like. And now their image, the video is all over social media. It's been viewed
00:38:30.080
millions of times. Uh, everybody is a public figure now all the time. It's essentially how it's worked
00:38:35.760
out and it's completely out of control. And then on top of that, there's this demand that Baldwin
00:38:43.100
repeat a phrase. She wanted him to say free Palestine. I think it was, um, even, even if he
0.85
00:38:52.180
doesn't believe it, just, just say it. And if you're a normal person, you watch that and you think like,
00:38:58.920
what, what value is there in making him say it? Let's say you succeed and he says the phrase.
00:39:05.380
Well, he's, he's only saying it because you have hectored him and harassed him into saying it. He's
00:39:13.260
only saying it to make you shut up. He's not saying it because he believes it. You haven't changed his
00:39:17.280
mind about anything. You're just making him repeat a phrase that you have assigned to him. What do you
00:39:22.500
get out of that? What does that accomplish? What's the point? Well, you think that as a normal person,
00:39:29.420
but this is what the left does. This is what leftist activists in particular do. Um, this is one of
00:39:35.020
their, this is one of their primary, uh, weapons that they use in their arsenal. Um, they demand
00:39:41.240
that you say the words that they assigned to you, whether you mean it or not. They take this approach
00:39:49.400
as you've probably noticed on every issue in every situation, you know, it's no different than the
00:39:55.920
pronoun stuff. They want you to say the pronoun. It doesn't matter if you believe it. It doesn't
00:40:03.260
matter. Even if you're just saying it because you're afraid, like they just want you to say
00:40:06.900
it. And in fact, it goes a step further than that because, um, I think in many cases they prefer
00:40:17.660
if you don't believe it. Okay. They, they, this is not a, this is a, a feature, not a bug for them.
00:40:25.240
They prefer that you don't believe it because that's the power play. This is all about, uh,
00:40:32.180
power. It's all a power game. And yeah, if they can, like, if they can actually persuade you
00:40:38.840
and convince you, and then you start saying the same stuff that they say because you've been
00:40:43.620
convinced, well, that's great because they've got, uh, now they have a comrade on their side,
00:40:48.840
but there's no power in that really. Like persuasion is not about power in that sense.
00:40:56.540
It's not about forcing yourself on someone. Um, you know, persuasion might require, require
00:41:02.360
powerful rhetoric in the sense of being compelling, right? But it's not force. It's not power in that
00:41:10.160
kind of forceful sense. And they would prefer, they would prefer they get, they get more of a kick
00:41:16.080
out of imposing themselves. So yeah, they, they love it. If you don't believe it, they want you
00:41:23.320
to not believe it, but say it anyway. They're happy if you're not convinced as long as you do what they
00:41:29.960
say. That's the game. As I said, before we get to the next segment, another example of this, um,
00:41:38.940
and here's someone who is not a public figure, but this is a video that's gone viral. This is a
00:41:44.380
trans identified male harassing a manager at Dollar General. Uh, and he just posted this to his
00:41:50.340
TikTok. The trans guy did, um, harassing him for, uh, quote unquote, misgendering him. Watch.
00:41:57.760
Well, this is Quentin at the Dollar General in Pflugerville. What did you say, Quentin? You
00:42:01.780
called me a she, her? I don't know what. And you said to get the out because your system.
00:42:07.620
I don't know what you said, man. Oh no. What'd you call me? Please, Quentin,
00:42:10.900
please feel free to tell me what you called me. We can play this game all day. Oh, what game?
00:42:16.320
Where you're being transphobic and offensive because your system's not working? And I asked
00:42:19.740
if we could use another register and you said, get the out of here. It's giving me a hard time
00:42:23.140
here at Dollar General. All right. It doesn't want to leave because their card has declined because
00:42:27.040
my card did not, it did not say insufficient funds. What did it say, ma'am? Did my card say
00:42:31.460
insufficient funds or did it say that your system's not working? No, I'm serious. Cause this isn't
00:42:37.360
cool. Is it okay if I check out here? Anyway, this is not, it did not say insufficient funds,
00:42:41.720
sir. What did it say? It said no checking account. What does that mean?
00:42:47.520
It did not say insufficient funds. We're going back to your transphobia. What did you say to me,
00:42:51.240
sir? You giving me a hard time here before at this place. What did you say to me? Keep filming
00:42:56.920
because it's going to be on here. You cussed at me. You said you, you're going to lose your job,
00:43:02.780
sir. Have a good one. I guarantee that. Uh, and this is what, um, trans activists do. Of course,
0.95
00:43:12.780
they, uh, you know, we just talked about the left getting there, getting, getting a kick out of
00:43:17.860
wielding their power and forcing you to comply, whether you believe it or not. That's, that's
00:43:24.140
what trans activists do. Um, the difference between them and sort of leftists in general,
00:43:30.660
or sort of the difference between this person who I believe is a man, we don't see him, but I think
00:43:36.600
it's a man who wants to be a woman. It could be a woman trying to be a man. I don't, that's not
0.97
00:43:41.340
exactly clear, but I think it's a man wants to be a woman. So let's call him him. Um, anyway,
0.66
00:43:47.040
the difference between this guy and the woman in the video right before this one is that for this guy,
00:43:53.120
it, it, it, it rises to the level of a fetish. Like he, he actually gets a sexual thrill out of
00:44:00.700
forcing people to participate in this charade. Um, and he becomes, and so for a lot of these trans
0.99
00:44:09.020
people, when you don't participate, it's like what, and the way that they react to it, how angry they get,
00:44:16.600
it's, it's, it's sexual frustration. They, they feel sexually frustrated when you don't, um, give
00:44:23.840
them the sort of fetishistic thrill that they want by taking part in this perverse role play game that
00:44:31.720
they want to play. Um, that's what that's all about. And it's why he feels no compunction, feels no
00:44:40.180
remorse about trying to get this guy fired. I mean, this is a manager at Dollar General, right? This is a
00:44:46.040
middle class guy goes into work every day at Dollar General. It can't be an easy job. You know, it,
00:44:52.340
it, it, it's, um, you're dealing with not always the most pleasant customers, just like in any other
00:45:00.320
service, uh, job. That's the case. He's just going, he's trying to do his job and he just doesn't want
00:45:07.060
to deal with this. And not only are you harassing him and trying to cause problems for him, want to
00:45:14.720
make him, you want to, you want to take his job, his livelihood away from him. He could have a
00:45:19.240
family. He could have kids. He's supporter supporting. Well, this guy doesn't care
00:45:22.980
because to this guy, the worst offense that you can ever commit is by, uh, refusing to take a part
00:45:34.380
in their fetish role play game. But, um, the encouraging thing is that if you, you know,
00:45:43.440
that, that video has been posted several different places and it's maybe not a representative sample
00:45:50.760
when you consider the, the kinds of accounts like lives of TikTok, for example, that are reposting
00:45:55.340
that video. But even so, I mean, you go anywhere that's that, where this video has been posted and
00:46:01.800
the comments are like 99%, uh, on the side of the dollar general manager, of course,
00:46:09.440
because the trans guy is so clearly being an obnoxious bully. And, um, and I think people are
0.99
00:46:18.520
fed up with it. I think people are fed up with the whole routine. They're just, they're just sick to
00:46:23.040
death of it. Um, but for, for trans activists, because you might say, well, people are obviously
0.98
00:46:31.900
tired of this. You guys have pushed too far. You're all, we're already seeing the pendulum swing
00:46:37.840
back in a major way. It's going to keep swinging and you're not going to like how far it swings.
00:46:43.180
So you might want to say to the trans activists, well, why don't you just, just back off?
00:46:46.180
Okay. If you want to go cross-dress and dollar general, no one's going to stop you. No one,
00:46:51.960
no one's going to stop you from walking in a dollar general cross-dressing. Uh, no one could stop you,
0.94
00:46:55.480
you know, but so, so just, just go do that and buy your stuff and leave.
00:47:03.340
Uh, why impose yourself on people in this way? If you want to live out this fantasy on your own time,
00:47:10.640
I think it's unhealthy. I think it's wrong. I think you shouldn't. I think you absolutely should
00:47:15.940
be prevented from doing so in a women's locker room or on a sports team or whatever. But you know,
00:47:22.720
for, for, for much of your private life, if you wanted to play out this fantasy, no one's going
00:47:27.400
to stop you. No one will even know that you're doing it. Uh, and, and nobody is knocking on your
00:47:34.160
door. Okay. No one's, no one's coming and knocking on your door and saying, Hey, is there any cross-dressing
00:47:38.140
happening in here? Just, just checking. No one's doing that. No one's proposing that that'd be done.
00:47:43.960
So why not just go back to that and leave people alone? Well, the answer is that they can't.
00:47:50.220
Trans activists by definition have rejected reality completely, and there is no moderating this. You
1.00
00:47:57.660
can't, they've taken the most extreme, just their very existence or, or, or what they claim to be,
00:48:03.600
you know, living this way. They have taken the most extreme possible position for a person to take,
00:48:10.480
which is the rejection of biological reality. There is no way to moderate that. Um, and so as long as
00:48:18.540
trans activists are trans activists, uh, they're not going to be able to pull back and the pendulum
1.00
00:48:23.240
is going to keep swinging against them, which is the good news here. I think, you know, I want my kids
00:48:28.360
to be prepared for the future and for them to have the skills and knowledge to seize the opportunities
00:48:32.460
before them. Education is a key component of that preparation, which is why my family homeschools
00:48:37.440
and why many other families are choosing to homeschool as well. If you're currently homeschooling
00:48:40.780
or thinking about homeschooling your kids, I encourage you to check out BJU Press. BJU Press
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is dedicated to providing families with educational resources and tools that train students to analyze
00:48:50.100
and think critically about real world problems. That's not all. Their textbooks and resources are
00:48:54.500
rooted in a biblical foundation, bringing all subjects under the ultimate authority of God's word. BJU Press
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not only provides a robust curriculum that is both biblical and academically sound, but also
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fosters a sense of community as well. BJU Press offers a complete line of K through 12 textbooks and
00:49:10.300
teacher supported materials, many of which are available electronically. Visit homeschoolhelp.com
00:49:15.060
slash Walsh to learn how BJU Press can help you prepare your kids for a future full of possibilities.
00:49:20.620
homeschoolhelp.com slash Walsh. That's homeschoolhelp.com slash Walsh. Tonight at eight,
00:49:26.800
seven central episodes, four of my new series judged by Matt Walsh premieres on daily wire plus
00:49:31.780
where real litigants spring real petty cases to really test my patients. If you're not a daily
00:49:36.540
wire plus member yet, join now and use code judged at checkout for 35% off your membership at daily
00:49:42.760
wire plus.com. And remember, if you don't enjoy the show, well, it's because there's something wrong
00:49:47.780
with you. Now let's get to our daily cancellation. So there's a certain cadence you've probably noticed
00:49:58.960
about once every month and a half or so, some media outlet publishes an article about the joys of being
00:50:04.660
childless. And usually it's an article written by some childless woman who's living, she claims,
00:50:10.080
a life of unending joy and relaxation and luxury, all made possible by her decision to be childless.
00:50:15.520
Sometimes this content takes the form of interviews with various different childless people who all
00:50:20.880
agree that their barren, impotent lifestyle has been a source of great happiness. This is usually the
0.98
00:50:26.320
way that the child-free propaganda is packaged. But on occasion, things take a more negative kind of
00:50:32.240
dour turn. Once every few months, we get an article highlighting instead those people who did have kids
00:50:39.420
and regret it. Every once in a while, the media takes a break from the look how happy child-free
00:50:44.820
people are genre to present something from the look how unhappy parents are genre. And it looks like
00:50:52.080
it's that time of year again, as Time Magazine has just published an article written by a writer named
00:50:56.560
R.O. Kwan called The Parents Who Regret Having Children. Now Kwan is a childless woman herself, but she
00:51:03.700
is generously giving voice to parents who wish that they could live just like she does. The article begins
00:51:10.660
No one regrets having a child, or so it's said. I've heard this logic often, usually after I'm asked if
00:51:16.580
I have children. Then, when I say I don't, if I plan to. I tend to evade the question, as I find that
00:51:21.960
the truth, I have no plans to be a parent, is likely to invite swift dissent. I'll be told I'll change my
00:51:27.700
mind, that I'm wrong, that while I regret not having a child, people don't regret the adverse. Close family
00:51:33.840
acquaintances and total strangers have said this for years. I let it slide, knowing that, at the very
00:51:39.460
least, the last part is a fiction. Now I have to pause here already. That's the very first paragraph
00:51:44.740
of the article, and it's wrong. Whoever said that no one regrets having children? Look, we all know,
00:51:52.120
people regret anything. Any choice a person can make in life, there's someone out there who regrets it.
00:51:57.700
It doesn't matter what it is. There are plenty of people who regret winning the lottery, okay?
00:52:03.960
So we all know that these kinds of parents exist in the world. I've never heard anyone deny their
00:52:09.740
existence. So we're kicking off this nearly 3,000-word article with a straw man. So not the
00:52:16.740
most auspicious of beginnings, but let's keep reading. Quote, It is unsurprisingly a challenge to get solid
00:52:22.100
data on the number of parents who regret having children. In 1975, the popular advice columnist Ann
00:52:26.760
Landers asked her readers if, given the chance to do it all over again, they'd have children. 70% said
00:52:32.740
they wouldn't. This result, though, came from a group of self-selecting respondents. Quote,
00:52:37.600
the hurt, angry, and disenchanted are more inclined to write back than contented people,
00:52:41.740
as Landers observed in a follow-up column. But in 2013, a Gallup poll asked Americans 45 and older
00:52:46.880
how many kids they'd have if they could go back in time. 7% of the respondents with children said zero.
00:52:52.660
And in 2023, a study estimated that up to 5% to up to 14% of parents in so-called developed
00:52:59.740
countries, including the United States, regret their decision to have children. These studies
00:53:03.140
align with what I've found in my personal life. While most parents don't regret having kids,
00:53:06.800
some do. Perhaps in part because I've written publicly about choosing not to have children,
00:53:10.840
I've had people, especially mothers, confide in me about parental regret, and frequently enough,
00:53:15.640
I've lost count. So this woman apparently has people going up to her all the time,
0.99
00:53:20.100
claiming that nobody regrets having children, while she has a whole other set of people
00:53:25.220
approaching her constantly to tell her about their own parental regret. And maybe that's true.
0.83
00:53:30.820
Maybe that's true. I can't say what conversations this woman has had. I do find it odd because
0.95
00:53:36.400
I will say that I have never once heard anyone claim that no parent in the world regrets having kids.
00:53:44.680
And I've also never once had any parent tell me that they personally regret having their own kids.
00:53:50.660
Which doesn't mean those parents don't exist. It's just, in my experience, it's not the kind of
00:53:54.400
thing that people go around advertising. But Ms. Kwan hears both of those things all the time.
00:54:01.040
Maybe she's just a friendlier, more inviting person who people are more comfortable confiding in.
00:54:05.720
That is certainly entirely possible. Still, I find the framing here somewhat dubious. That's the
00:54:10.420
point. Next, she tells us about the shame and guilt that these regretful parents feel,
00:54:14.340
which stops them from sharing their stories publicly. And the very clear implication here is
00:54:19.300
that these parents should be able to speak more openly about the regret. But our society is
00:54:24.900
tragically unwelcoming to those conversations. She writes, quote,
00:54:28.040
Some of these parents talk about feeling utterly alone, like villains past all imagining.
00:54:33.240
Several have noted that, afraid of being judged, they decline to be candid with their own therapist.
00:54:38.520
I've thought about the isolating effect of the silence and what it can cost to live in hiding.
00:54:43.000
One problem is that our culture wants just one kind of story about parenting,
00:54:46.420
and it's a story of pure joy, says Yal Goldstein-Love, a writer and psychotherapist in California whose
00:54:52.360
clinical practice focuses on people who are adapting to parenthood. But Goldstein-Love says
00:54:56.380
people often experience grief in the transition to being a parent, grief for the life they might have
00:55:00.760
inhabited otherwise. But I also wonder who's being served well by a monolithic idea that no one regrets
00:55:06.420
being a parent. Not these parents, not as some of the people I've spoken with have pointed out.
00:55:11.660
Any kid who picked up on parental regret and thinks it can't happen except to them.
00:55:15.300
If more people had the support to make reproductive choices based on their own desires and life
00:55:19.340
situations, and if the monolith were spalled in favor of plural narratives that better reflect
00:55:24.240
the complexities of human experience, what then? Well, we'll talk about the what then in a moment.
00:55:29.700
But first, let's look briefly at the specific examples that Quan provides of parents who regret
00:55:34.660
their children, and also the kind of rationalization that these parents offer.
00:55:40.080
Quote, I don't think that everyone is made for children, says Helen, a high school teacher in
00:55:46.120
her 40s. And telling people that their purpose is to reproduce is destructive, she adds. And if she
00:55:51.740
could inhabit the person she was before she became a parent, quote, I would have stopped that pregnancy
0.96
00:55:56.720
before it happened. But that's the part Helen's never said to her daughters, who, after all,
00:56:01.120
didn't ask to be born. She's hell-bent on raising them well, not taking out any regrets on the
0.99
00:56:06.100
girls. Quote, I love them, I just don't love the choice I made. Each parent I talk to points out
00:56:11.460
this dividing line. It's possible to have strong, lasting regrets about a life choice while ferociously
00:56:17.380
loving and caring for the fruit of that decision. Well, she goes on next to tell us about a guy
00:56:23.100
named Paul, a very similar story, a father who confesses to resenting parenthood because of how
00:56:27.960
challenging and time-consuming it is. We're told that he's stressed out and fatigued and regretful
00:56:33.420
about ever having become a parent in the first place. And what he lacks, most of all, he says,
00:56:38.260
is anyone in his life that he can talk to about his feelings of parental regret. He needs more spaces
00:56:43.320
where he can talk about how much he regrets having kids. That's what he insists. Although he also says
00:56:48.680
that he loves his kids. They are, quote, the loves of his life, according to Quan. Now, we've probably heard
00:56:55.520
enough of this article to get the basic idea, especially considering that, as I said at the top,
00:56:59.720
we've seen a thousand versions of this exact article. So let's go through and make a few
00:57:05.040
points in response. First, it must be said, and I hate to say it, I really do, but you don't love
00:57:14.400
your kids if you regret having them. You cannot regret a person's very existence and yet also love them
00:57:22.180
at the same time. You just can't. Wishing that a person doesn't exist is the exact opposite of
00:57:29.780
loving them. Think about putting this into a sentence and you'll see how absurd it is.
00:57:35.460
I love you, son. I just wish you were never born. Like, not exactly the kind of sentiment you'd want
00:57:40.000
to write in someone's birthday card. Happy birthday, although I'd be happier if you never had a birthday.
00:57:44.740
Like, that's not love. That's a lot of things. We can say a lot of things about that. We cannot call
00:57:51.740
that love. Now, that is not to say that you can't love your kids while also being frustrated by them
00:57:58.460
sometimes. You can love someone while also experiencing a range of emotions and not all
00:58:03.880
of them pleasant. You can love someone and be angry at them. You can love someone and be irritated at
00:58:09.260
them. You can love someone and wish they'd stop talking and asking questions for five seconds.
00:58:13.500
None of these emotions are at all contradictory to loving someone.
00:58:18.240
You shouldn't dwell in the negative emotions. You shouldn't harp on them.
00:58:23.200
You shouldn't, like, delight in them and want to live in those emotions all the time,
00:58:28.060
the way that some people do with their negative emotions. And you shouldn't be venting those
00:58:32.460
emotions all the time. But you can experience those emotions while still loving your child,
00:58:37.600
obviously. And that's because loving your child or anyone else, what it really means is
00:58:43.440
wishing for and working for and working towards and helping them towards what is good in life.
00:58:51.420
Willing the good of the other is what love is. It means subordinating your own desires to some extent
00:58:57.800
for their sake. Love is sacrifice. But if you wish that someone never had come into existence in the
00:59:06.940
first place so that you can focus more on your own desires, then you don't love them.
00:59:12.340
This is, again, the literal direct opposite of love. And yes, you might have parents who
00:59:19.020
regret having kids and therefore don't love them, but still take care of the kids,
00:59:24.860
still do the bare minimum that they need to do to get by. That's not love. And you also don't get any
00:59:31.140
credit for that. Like you owe that to your child, the bare minimum you owe to your child
00:59:36.360
because you brought them into existence. But it's still not love. Now, the irony here is that these
00:59:43.540
sorts of articles pretend to call for a kind of, you know, radical honesty, insisting that people
00:59:49.100
should be able to speak openly and frankly about even their most unspeakable and shameful thoughts
00:59:53.460
and emotions. And yet these articles themselves are not honest. Because the honest truth is that
00:59:59.340
these aren't parents who simply regret having children. These are parents who don't love their
01:00:05.160
children. The title of the article should be The Parents Who Don't Love Their Children.
01:00:10.920
That should be the article. But you never see that article, do you? You never see a lack of parental
01:00:15.820
love being defended, at least not explicitly. Instead, we're given these sob stories about parents who
01:00:21.720
regret their children's very existence, always couched in the disclaimer that they certainly
01:00:26.220
still love their kids and would do anything for them, etc. So they're calling for honesty,
01:00:31.760
but it's a rather dishonest kind of honesty. An honesty that takes something disgraceful and
01:00:36.900
dresses it up in what is supposed to be slightly less disgraceful packaging. But why? What's the point?
01:00:45.200
I mean, why not go all the way? These parents don't love their children. Why not come out and say it?
01:00:51.720
I think the answer is that it's easier to elicit sympathy if you tell someone about your regret.
01:00:58.060
You know, a woman plagued by regret is a pitiable figure. She's a victim of her circumstances.
1.00
01:01:07.360
That's how we're meant to see it anyway. And maybe that kind of branding works for some people.
01:01:13.100
But on the other hand, a woman who doesn't love her children is seen rightly as the villain of her
1.00
01:01:20.380
own story. We immediately recognize that if parents lack love for their own children, it's because of
01:01:26.760
a flaw in them, the parent. The problem is them. Not loving your child or regretting that they were
01:01:34.780
born, which is the same thing, is entirely a product of selfishness. Selfishness is the enemy
01:01:41.880
of love. And that's the issue that all these parents are struggling with. Their own selfishness.
01:01:47.760
It's that simple. Now, let's say it's simple. It doesn't mean it's easy. It's not necessarily easy to become
01:01:52.720
less selfish. And the sad truth is that most people who are, you know, obsessively selfish
01:02:02.300
will remain that way their entire lives. If anything, and we've all seen this, it will get worse as they get
01:02:11.020
older. But it doesn't have to be that way. And either way, this is the only solution. Be less selfish and you
01:02:23.200
will love your kids more. Or at all, in this case. And then you'll discover more joy in parenthood, but also a
01:02:30.080
different kind of sadness. You know, there's a more sort of beautiful sadness that comes with parenting
01:02:34.500
when you actually love your kids. It's the sadness that comes with the knowledge that your kids are
01:02:39.700
growing and changing every day. And that eventually they'll be old and jaded and cynical about the world
01:02:45.380
just like you are. That's the kind of parenting regret that loving parents feel. And feel quite intensely
01:02:52.200
every day. This is the solution for the wrong kind of parent regret. You have to identify the
01:03:01.460
problem within yourself and work on that. The solution is certainly not to express these emotions
01:03:07.700
out loud. Now, if you want to express it to someone who's an actual trusted counselor or advisor,
01:03:15.680
spiritual advisor, maybe a therapist, if you happen to have one of the five good ones in the whole
01:03:20.540
country, then, you know, that's okay. But this desire to go around verbalizing it to anybody you
01:03:28.960
want and building communities around this feeling, you know, going to like a Reddit forum where everyone
01:03:34.440
talks about how they regret having kids. This is, that's an unhealthy desire because not every feeling
01:03:41.100
should be verbalized. And if you feel something shameful and disgraceful and vile, which that's what it
01:03:48.500
is, if you wish your kids were not born, you should keep that to yourself. The guilt and isolation that
01:03:55.180
these feelings breed are good because they're like the pain you experience when you put your hand on
01:04:00.140
the hot stove. It's a warning to you. It's an incentive to fix what is broken in your soul. It's your own soul
01:04:06.280
crying out to you and saying something's wrong here. There's a problem. Now, if you go around confessing
01:04:12.380
these feelings openly, it's only because you want someone to convince you that the feelings are okay.
01:04:18.920
But you know they aren't, which is why you want to be convinced otherwise. You wouldn't have this
01:04:23.620
desire to be convinced if you were comfortable with those feelings. So listen to your own moral
01:04:28.980
instincts, not these anti-family propaganda pieces from media outlets like Time.
01:04:35.260
Now, as for the media outlets, they will defend these kinds of articles by claiming that they want to
01:04:39.720
give voice to all different kinds of perspectives. As Kwan puts it, we should have, quote, plural
01:04:44.700
narratives that better reflect the complexities of human experience. Well, okay, but if that's the
01:04:50.740
case, then why do we see a thousand articles about childless people who love being childless and parents
01:04:56.840
who hate being parents? But rarely do we see any articles about childless people who hate being childless
01:05:02.840
or, best of all, parents who love being parents? That'd be a great article, wouldn't it? The parents
01:05:11.220
who love their kids. Let's see. Let's hear some of those stories. Maybe we could help these regretful
01:05:18.480
parents by giving them positive, enriching, wholesome examples of happy families. Maybe they could benefit
01:05:25.100
from insights offered by parents who have managed to be happy in spite of the challenges that parenting
01:05:30.660
presents. There's, there's, there's a whole aspect of the complexity of human experience that we rarely
01:05:38.160
see represented by the media in any form, but I think it could do a lot of good and it could help
01:05:44.640
a lot of people, which is of course, exactly why we don't see it because they don't want to help
01:05:50.700
anyone. And that's the whole point. And that is why Time Magazine and all of the other anti-child,
01:05:57.300
anti-family propagandists are today canceled. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for
01:06:02.480
watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.