The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1353 - Insider Investigation Reveals The Absurd Details Behind Eventbrite's Decision To Ban Me From Its Platform

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a congressional investigation has revealed insider details

00:00:03.540 about big tech censorship of conservatives, and a major focus of the investigation was

00:00:07.380 Eventbrite's targeting of events related to me and my film, What Is Woman? We'll discuss.

00:00:11.620 Also, Ilhan Omar's daughter says she was rendered homeless and hungry after being arrested during

00:00:16.220 a pro-Hamas protest on campus. Even worse, she was attacked with chemical weapons, she claims.

00:00:21.460 And Time Magazine publishes an article about parents who regret having kids. It's all a part

00:00:25.240 of the ongoing attack on the family and marriage. We'll talk about all that and more today on the

00:00:28.940 Matt Walsh Show.

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00:01:47.300 Well, after my film, What is a Woman? became one of the most watched documentaries of all time.

00:01:51.680 There were a couple of different responses that leftists could have had to the film. And the easiest

00:01:56.600 response would have been to simply answer the question in the title. Trans activists, the media,

00:02:01.620 and politicians had the opportunity to provide a coherent, non-circular definition for the word

00:02:06.060 woman. And then if they had done that, they would have won the argument. That's all they had to do.

00:02:10.080 But of course, trans ideology can't provide a coherent definition of the word woman. So they 1.00

00:02:14.540 refused to do so when I interviewed them in the film. And then they haven't been able to do it in

00:02:19.640 nearly two years since the documentary came out. Instead, as I've discussed, of course, many times,

00:02:24.320 the left lied about the film. They accused me of transphobia for allowing trans activists to

00:02:29.520 explain, or rather fail to explain, but they were given the opportunity to explain what they believe.

00:02:35.240 But they didn't stop there. On top of all the lies, one of the most powerful technology platforms in

00:02:38.960 the country embarked on an effort to prevent me from speaking about the film. This platform called

00:02:43.980 Eventbrite also tried to shut down screenings of the documentary. They claim that any event or

00:02:49.560 screening of the film, any time that we discuss it, we have violated their hateful events policy.

00:02:56.840 Now, if you're not familiar with Eventbrite, it controls roughly 50% of the event management and

00:03:01.060 registration market. So it's a very big company. They're hard to avoid if you want to plan an event.

00:03:06.480 Even if you want to avoid them, it's difficult to do. There's not a lot of alternatives. And on at least

00:03:12.260 seven occasions, they canceled events involving what is a woman, often costing event organizers like

00:03:17.940 YAF thousands of dollars. Now, at the time, it seemed like just another example of a left-wing

00:03:23.340 company silencing political dissent. Stop me if you've heard that one before. But the Senate

00:03:29.080 Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation decided to look deeper into what's going on.

00:03:33.040 Under the leadership of ranking member Ted Cruz, the committee launched a congressional investigation

00:03:37.320 to several instances in which online service providers canceled services for conservative

00:03:41.600 organizations and speakers. The committee probed Eventbrite and many other companies like it

00:03:46.460 to understand what was going on internally at these companies when they made these decisions

00:03:50.480 to censor conservatives. And today, we can bring you the results of that investigation,

00:03:55.300 which has been going on for many months exclusively. So here's the top-line finding,

00:04:00.620 which outlines the left's strategy for attacking the freedom of speech and association in this

00:04:04.460 country. Quoting from the report, quote,

00:04:06.160 This investigation revealed that online service providers are following a new playbook

00:04:10.720 for silencing conservatives that leftist organizations, including the notoriously biased

00:04:14.800 Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League, concocted. Removing infrastructure services

00:04:20.140 that conservative organizations need to operate by weaponizing their terms of service. Now,

00:04:25.860 in other words, what Eventbrite did to What is Woman is part of a much larger effort to de-platform

00:04:31.580 anyone who disagrees with the left, particularly on the issue of transgenderism, or really on any other

00:04:35.760 issue. This is their answer to me, as well as to Libs of TikTok, Riley Gaines, nonprofits like

00:04:42.380 the Independent Women's Forum. They can't debate us, so they have to shut us down and prevent us from 1.00

00:04:47.520 speaking. The committee's investigation exposes this effort in great detail for the total fraud

00:04:52.840 that it is. Now, publicly, companies like Eventbrite will claim that, well, they're just combating hate

00:04:58.460 and they're combating disinformation when they shut down events featuring my film, for example.

00:05:03.260 But in reality, the committee found nobody at Eventbrite even watched What is a Woman before

00:05:10.840 they decided to ban all events themed around the film. Quoting from the report, quote,

00:05:16.780 Eventbrite admitted to the committee that no one involved in the decision watched What is a Woman

00:05:20.740 before canceling the events. Eventbrite could not even identify a single timestamp in the trailer

00:05:26.200 that it deemed to violate the Eventbrite community guidelines. According to Eventbrite,

00:05:30.420 the overall tone and message of the all-encompassing trailer, in combination with Matt Walsh's related

00:05:36.000 public statements, helped determine the removals, not any individual timestamp.

00:05:41.660 So to restate, because this really is pretty incredible, a big tech platform banned events

00:05:48.480 involving my film, saying that these events violated their hateful events policy without even

00:05:53.900 watching the film. They can't tell you specifically anything in the film that violates the policy

00:06:00.240 yet the film as a whole violates the policy. Try to make sense of that. According to the committee,

00:06:08.060 Eventbrite has a trust and safety team that consists of at least 12 full-time employees that

00:06:13.420 review every single case where something is being banned. Eventbrite describes these employees as

00:06:19.480 experts. Experts in what? I mean, what are their qualifications? That's never explained.

00:06:27.320 But we do know they certainly aren't experts in the film because none of these experts saw the film

00:06:33.180 that they wanted to ban. Instead, they looked at nonspecific parts of the trailer and then my

00:06:38.640 public statements that we'll talk about in a second. So let's go through this one by one.

00:06:44.640 Starting with the trailer, which again is what they used to ban every event that has anything to do

00:06:49.920 with my film. So here are the first 45 seconds or so of the trailer for What is Woman,

00:06:54.900 Woman, which is probably more than Eventbrite's experts even watched. But here it is. Watch.

00:07:04.180 What is a woman? Can you tell me that? 0.97

00:07:09.900 Well, you're at the Women's March. You must have some idea. Please, if one person could tell me what

00:07:13.540 a woman is. You are not here for women. We ask you to leave. What is that? 1.00

00:07:18.000 I'm a husband. I'm a father for, I host a talk show. I give speeches. I write books. I like to

00:07:25.620 make sense of things. A woman is not anything in particular. There is not one particular thing. 0.62

00:07:30.140 It could be many things to many people. Some women have penises, right? Some men have vaginas. 1.00

00:07:34.900 I like scented candles. I've watched Sex and the City. Yeah. How do I know if I'm a woman? 1.00

00:07:39.280 That's a great question. You're not a scientist. You're not a gender studies major. No. 0.98

00:07:42.980 How do you know that you're a man? I guess because I got a dick. 1.00

00:07:47.600 Okay. So you can watch the whole thing online if you want. If you haven't seen it yet, 0.99

00:07:50.300 many people have, but that's basically what it is. And that is the alleged hateful content that

00:07:57.140 apparently Eventbrite finds disqualifying. Nobody can use Eventbrite to show the film or even discuss

00:08:05.860 it. Again, it's not just screenings of the film, but discussions about the film are not allowed if

00:08:11.540 you're using Eventbrite to organize your event. And they're using that, the trailer, as their

00:08:16.940 evidence. Not exactly convincing. So maybe to cover their bases more thoroughly, Eventbrite told the

00:08:24.020 committee that they banned my events for a few other reasons as well. Specifically, they said that my

00:08:29.420 public statements were hateful. Now, what public statements exactly? Well, Eventbrite provided three

00:08:36.360 examples to the congressional committee. All of them are from before the film was released. So

00:08:41.800 these are statements that actually have nothing to do with the film because it's before the film

00:08:46.320 existed, or at least before it was released. The first example is my appearance on a Dr. Phil episode

00:08:51.200 titled The Gender Pronoun Debate from January 19th, 2022. The whole episode runs for the better part of an

00:08:58.420 hour. And again, there's basically no chance that Eventbrite's experts watched the whole appearance,

00:09:05.300 but here's a representative part. Watch. That's a question I would like to throw out to other

00:09:11.700 members of the panel. Actually, because just like the four-year-old can't answer what is a girl,

00:09:16.340 well, this is one of the problems with this left-wing gender ideology is that no one who espouses it 1.00

00:09:20.560 can even tell you what these words means. Like, what is a woman? Can you tell me what a woman is?

00:09:25.740 No, I can't. Because it's not for me to say. Womanhood looks different for everybody.

00:09:32.440 What do you define a woman as? 1.00

00:09:34.140 An adult human female.

00:09:35.720 And what does a female mean? 0.99

00:09:37.980 How do you define a female? 0.96

00:09:39.080 Someone with female reproductive organs. 1.00

00:09:41.660 Okay.

00:09:42.100 Someone who's, you know, here's the thing. When you're a female, it goes right down to your bones, 1.00

00:09:46.040 your DNA. So that's why if someone dies, we could dig up their bones a hundred years from now.

00:09:51.560 We have no idea what they believed in their head, but we can tell what sex they were because it's 0.92

00:09:55.800 in, it's down in, it's, it's ingrained in every fiber of their being.

00:10:00.780 So according to Eventbrite, the fact that I use the words mental illness charade and theatrical

00:10:06.720 production during the episode to describe men who pretend to be women and vice versa is evidence

00:10:12.360 that I'm a very hateful person. And so I shouldn't be allowed to host events or you shouldn't,

00:10:18.880 you also shouldn't be allowed to host events that have anything to do with me because these are

00:10:23.100 not just events that I was hosting. Uh, but these are events that in fact, I wasn't hosting any of

00:10:28.260 these events. Additionally, Eventbrite says that in May, 2021, um, uh, an episode of this show,

00:10:34.640 uh, was hateful because I discussed gender surgeries being performed on children, including

00:10:39.500 double mastectomies. And I said that they were morally akin to rape and child molestation.

00:10:44.140 And apparently that's hateful. If you have a problem with child butchery, then Eventbrite

00:10:48.360 won't allow you to have a platform. And they're right, by the way, uh, it is hateful. I do hate

00:10:53.440 this kind of abuse against children so that I, in, in a sense that's correct. There was one other

00:11:00.780 objection that Eventbrite made concerning the children's book that I wrote called Johnny the

00:11:05.160 Walrus. Um, now of course they didn't actually read this book any more than they watched the film.

00:11:10.840 Can't blame them though. The book is probably above their reading level, but it was featured

00:11:15.580 at the beginning of my appearance on the Dr. Phil show, which is probably how they heard about it.

00:11:19.220 Uh, let's watch that.

00:11:22.180 My name is Matt Walsh and I've written a book called Johnny the Walrus. This book is about

00:11:27.340 identity and imagination. He identifies as a walrus and his mom's a little silly. She takes it seriously 0.97

00:11:33.380 and thinks he really is a walrus. So she went on her phone and there are people telling her that

00:11:37.260 this isn't pretending he's really a walrus. And his mother takes him to the doctor to have him

00:11:40.940 surgically transitioned and gets him walrus hormone pills. And then eventually tries to drop him off at 0.59

00:11:46.120 a zoo to live with other walrus. Not only topping the Amazon charts, my book has taken the world by

00:11:51.140 storm. So the book, as you probably know, is about a little boy who pretends to be a walrus. People

00:11:56.660 encourage him to start changing his appearance and getting surgery to transform into a walrus.

00:12:01.120 And the book takes the position that this is a bad idea. It teaches that human children should 1.00

00:12:07.140 recognize that they are human children and not walruses. But to Eventbrite, this is a big problem.

00:12:13.900 They told the committee that it's, this is hate speech. So it's, it's bad and I'm not allowed on their

00:12:19.060 platform. And the funny thing is that as the committee's investigation makes clear, Eventbrite

00:12:23.940 doesn't really know what their hateful conduct policy even says. Either that or they lied to the

00:12:29.000 committee. I mean, or it could be a combination of the two. Quoting from the report, on February 27th,

00:12:34.020 days before the March 1st event, Eventbrite removed the events page from its website and

00:12:38.600 notified the organizer that it had done done so because the event violated the Eventbrite community

00:12:43.160 guidelines. Eventbrite told the committee that it sends a standard notification when removing an

00:12:47.560 event for violating its hateful events policy. As reflected in the figure below, however, in the

00:12:52.440 version Eventbrite sent to the organizers of the Stanford event, Eventbrite directly stated that

00:12:56.800 the problem with the Matt Walsh event was that it expressed views that violated the Eventbrite

00:13:01.820 terms of service. In other words, Eventbrite's standard hateful events policy doesn't say

00:13:08.520 anything about prohibiting certain views. They wrote up a custom notification just for one of my events

00:13:14.860 and then apparently forgot about it. This kind of ad hoc reasoning is extremely common on the left and

00:13:20.480 particularly among online service providers. It's yet another symptom of an ideology without any real

00:13:25.200 principles. And they're also, the reason that they're ambiguous about this is because they want to

00:13:29.640 allow themselves to apply the rules in a subjective, targeted, ideological way.

00:13:36.640 But as I alluded to earlier, of course, this isn't just affecting me. The committee outlines numerous

00:13:40.880 other instances of online platforms shutting down events for conservatives, including a November

00:13:46.100 2023 event featuring the swimmer Riley Gaines at UC Davis. The school's college Republicans worked

00:13:51.500 with Eventbrite to set up a registration page so that students could sign up and attend for free.

00:13:56.540 But in late November, Eventbrite canceled the whole thing. They notified the organizers that events

00:14:02.080 cannot espouse hatred or harass anyone based on a series of characteristics, including sexual

00:14:06.980 orientation, national origin, immigration status, gender identity, religion, ethnicity, or disability.

00:14:14.160 Now, notably, Eventbrite doesn't prohibit hatred based on sex discrimination.

00:14:17.840 So it's okay to deride women and pretend they don't exist, for example. Trans activists are free to do

00:14:25.040 that all they want. But Riley Gaines was shut down not because of anything on her event page,

00:14:30.600 but because she previously made social media posts affirming that biology is real.

00:14:36.380 One of the posts cited by Eventbrite is an October 10th, 2023 post from Gaines in which she says,

00:14:41.300 quote, women are not menstruators, bleeders, chest feeders, cervix havers, uterus owners, 1.00

00:14:47.500 egg producers, or people with birthing capacity. Women are just women, adult human females. 0.87

00:14:53.920 Now, according to Eventbrite, which makes up its standards as it goes, that is hateful conduct.

00:15:00.460 To say that women are women is hateful conduct. Along those lines, the committee investigated the

00:15:06.600 communications platform Slack for canceling the workspace of Libs of TikTok. Slack informed the

00:15:11.860 committee that, quote, what makes Libs of TikTok problematic is that Libs of TikTok has a specific

00:15:17.060 audience, and they are taking this information and posting it to that specific audience so that

00:15:22.460 everyone in that audience sees it at the same time. Now, I've read that explanation about five times.

00:15:30.320 It still doesn't, honestly, I can't make sense of it. I don't know what that means.

00:15:34.020 But so Libs of TikTok posts things that people see it the same. So she's posting on the internet is

00:15:42.620 what you're saying? That's what makes it hateful? But as best I can tell, they're admitting that

00:15:49.060 nothing Libs of TikTok has said was objectionable or hateful. And really, it couldn't be because she's

00:15:56.240 mostly reposting content from leftists. Most of what she's doing is just saying, oh,

00:16:03.140 listen to what this person said publicly. So instead of making any factual argument, Slack

00:16:09.360 apparently complains that a lot of people are seeing the factual information provided by Libs

00:16:13.880 of TikTok. And I guess those people are becoming hateful as a result of what Libs of TikTok is telling 0.97

00:16:21.980 them. So this alleged audience reaction makes Libs of TikTok's conduct a violation of Slack's policies

00:16:28.560 against inciting hatred. Now, she didn't direct anyone to engage in any hateful conduct.

00:16:35.780 She didn't openly incite anyone to do anything. She simply posted the truth about what's happening.

00:16:43.740 And that's not allowed anymore. Now, this is a standard that obviously, if the left were to

00:16:48.500 employ against itself, would result in the immediate deplatforming of the Washington Post.

00:16:52.760 Most pretty much every trans activist who's ever used social media, the entirety of CNN and MSNBC,

00:16:59.100 like all the corporate media and so forth. But it's not a real standard and it's not meant to be

00:17:03.920 administered fairly. Instead, as the committee notes, this standard was essentially invented by

00:17:09.720 the ADL, the SPLC and other well-funded left-wing activist groups. Quote, although Slack did not

00:17:14.900 specifically point to them with regard to its Libs of TikTok investigation, notably, the left-wing

00:17:19.820 SPLC has described Libs of TikTok as an extremist account and ADL labeled Libs of TikTok slash Shia

00:17:25.740 Reichich as an extremist in its glossary of extremism. The same designation applies to me,

00:17:31.580 by the way, quoting again from the report, Eventbrite did not say that it relied on ADL in deciding to

00:17:35.640 cancel the What Is Woman events, but notably, ADL, which Eventbrite's trust and safety team generally

00:17:40.460 relies on as a source, has labeled Matt Walsh as an extremist commentator. So this is the strategy that

00:17:47.600 has been unearthed by this congressional committee, motivated in part by guidance from left-wing

00:17:52.140 activist groups. Large online tech platforms are doing everything they can to make sure conservatives

00:17:56.000 can't communicate or stay in business. And there are several other examples. For instance, the report

00:18:00.760 says that the Independent Women's Forum, or IWF, was kicked off the fundraising platform Bonterra for

00:18:06.520 defending women's rights, which I guess they're not allowed to do. Bonterra categorized IWF as some 0.86

00:18:12.420 sort of anti-LGBT outfit, whatever that means, all because they believe that biology is real.

00:18:20.060 Therefore, they're not allowed to raise money, I guess. In this report, the committee suggests that

00:18:24.340 this situation could be resolved by legislation, or at least addressed in some way by legislation.

00:18:29.720 And it can be, and it should be. But the ideal and really final resolution, as the committee suggests

00:18:37.360 in its conclusion, is for new online service providers to flood the market and offer an

00:18:42.180 alternative. I mean, that's the only response to this insanity that's sustainable. And it's a very

00:18:47.180 workable solution. Because of this committee's investigation, we know that the company's

00:18:52.040 censoring conservatives are actually staffed with complete bumbling morons who have no idea what 1.00

00:18:58.400 they're doing. I mean, that means that they're powerful, yes, but they're also vulnerable. 1.00

00:19:05.420 And now it's time to replace them before they silence us. Now let's get to our five headlines.

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00:20:17.220 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

00:21:53.120 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

00:22:08.880 earlier, and somebody, you know, of course, people always like to be pedantic on Twitter. So someone said,

00:22:12.840 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

00:22:33.620 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

00:22:58.400 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 0.99

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, 1.00

00:30:12.000 and that even includes the daughter of a Congresswoman, like these people are much dumber. 0.98

00:30:17.020 And they really do think that they have some kind of right to just set up an encampment wherever they 0.99

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 0.97

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 0.96

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 1.00

00:34:55.380 have to be to make Alec Baldwin seem sympathetic? To create a video where I watch it and I feel 1.00

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 0.69

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, 0.98

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

00:48:45.300 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

00:48:59.780 not only provides a robust curriculum that is both biblical and academically sound, but also

00:49:04.760 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

00:51:09.720 this way, quote,

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.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 23, 2024

Ep. 1353 - Insider Investigation Reveals The Absurd Details Behind Eventbrite's Decision To Ban Me From Its Platform

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