The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 15 - The True Horror of Socialized Medicine

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the show, everybody. Thank you for listening. Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

00:00:03.600 I have to start off the week, unfortunately, talking about a pretty tragic story. It's the

00:00:09.380 story of Alfie Evans, and it's important. It's an important story, primarily for, well, for two

00:00:15.280 reasons. Number one, because a little boy's life is at stake. Number two, secondarily, it also gives

00:00:22.200 us a glimpse into our future. We in the United States, we can always look over to Europe to kind

00:00:31.060 of see where we're headed, to see what it's like looking into a crystal ball, basically. And I've

00:00:36.520 always said that Western culture is on a train headed into the abyss, and it is specifically a

00:00:44.120 train, not a car or anything, because Europe is essentially a few train cars ahead of us. But

00:00:51.180 we're all attached and we're going in the same direction. So just look where they are. And

00:00:55.020 that's where we're going to be. The only way to avoid it is for us to detach our train car from

00:00:59.600 theirs and then go off in a different direction, which obviously is not how it would actually work

00:01:04.860 with a real train. So the analogy breaks down there. But you get what I'm saying. The point is,

00:01:08.420 we have not detached ourselves. And so we are going in the same direction. So if you want to know what

00:01:12.800 our dystopian future looks like, just look at Europe. And you can look there, especially with the

00:01:17.980 case of Alfie Evans, who is another sick child who's been sentenced to death by a UK death panel.

00:01:25.960 First, you had the prominent case of Charlie Gard last year. And now we have Alfie Evans

00:01:30.180 in what is becoming a annual or biannual tradition. Alfie Evans is a baby and he's in a coma

00:01:40.880 due to a mysterious brain disease that still has not been diagnosed. And nobody knows exactly what's

00:01:49.640 wrong with him. Doctors at Alder Hay Hospital in London have decided that Alfie is not going to get

00:01:58.200 better. He's in an irreversible coma. He's not going to wake up. He's effectively dead already.

00:02:05.380 His life is no longer worth living. He's not even really living a life. And so the only path now is

00:02:11.840 to just detach him from all the machines and let him die. His parents don't agree. Now, here is the

00:02:18.020 really crucial thing that we all need to understand. Alfie's parents are not trying to force the doctors

00:02:25.960 at Alder Hay Hospital to perform a medical procedure that they don't want to perform. They're not trying

00:02:33.020 to force the hospital to do anything. And that to me is important because I think a hospital should

00:02:37.920 have a fair amount of discretion when it comes to these things. And if they really think that a

00:02:42.980 certain procedure is not the right path, or if they really believe, according to their own medical

00:02:47.940 opinion, that a person is now brain dead and they're not going to recover and that's it,

00:02:54.220 and it would be wrong to keep them alive physically, well, then they have to, you know,

00:02:58.280 they need to have the ability to act on, um, on their own conscience and their own medical

00:03:04.000 opinions or to not act whatever the case may be. Uh, the, the, the families of a patient cannot

00:03:12.320 always be the final authority in every individual hospital, because if that was the case, then all

00:03:19.060 across the world, you would have tons of people who are just being kept alive for no other reason

00:03:25.540 than the family can't let them go. Understandably, the family is not able to let them go. So the

00:03:30.700 patient is kept alive, not for the patient's sake, but for the sake of a family member who is, um,

00:03:36.420 who just doesn't want to see their, you know, child or their parent or whoever die. So you can't have

00:03:43.900 that. So the hospitals need to be able to draw a line at some point and say, no, we're not going to do

00:03:48.860 that. But Alfie's parents, they're not trying to push the hospital over that line. All they're saying

00:03:57.740 is, okay, you don't want to do it. You don't want to keep them on the machines. Fine. Give him back to

00:04:02.960 us. Let us reclaim custody of our own child. He's out of your hands. So you don't have to worry about

00:04:10.480 it. Give him back to us and we'll transfer him to a hospital that thinks it can treat him. And as it

00:04:16.100 happens, there's a hospital in, hospital in Rome that has already said, you know, they've already

00:04:20.640 welcomed the child and they believe that perhaps they can treat him. Um, it was the same thing with

00:04:26.220 Charlie guard where Charlie guards parents, they had everything set up. They had the money that

00:04:31.160 they had it all set up. They could put Charlie guard on a plane and send them over to the U S

00:04:36.620 where there was a doctor willing to perform some experimental treatment on him. But the hospital in

00:04:41.960 that case said, no, you can't have your own child back. And the same thing is happening again

00:04:46.080 with Alfie Evans. Now it may well be true that Alfie Evans is never going to recover. It may be

00:04:55.600 true that he's now effectively dead and nothing's going to bring him back. But, but first of all, I, I

00:05:04.500 don't see how the hospital can argue that on one hand he's brain dead. And on the other hand, he's

00:05:10.180 suffering. And it seems like they're arguing both things that he's suffering and it's not fair. We've got

00:05:15.140 to essentially put them out of his misery, but also he's brain dead. Well, if he's brain dead,

00:05:19.220 then he's probably not suffering. So it seems like you got to choose one or the other, but whatever

00:05:23.560 the case, there's nothing to lose by transferring the child to a hospital that's willing to treat him.

00:05:33.880 I mean, I don't know. I, you've got the hospital in London saying one thing. You've got the parents

00:05:39.200 saying another, you've got this hospital in Rome saying, yeah, maybe we can treat them. So there are a

00:05:43.940 different medical opinions. I have no idea who's correct and who isn't. All I know is that it's

00:05:51.340 very common for a patient to seek a second opinion. And if you were told by a doctor, oh, you're going

00:05:58.200 to die. There's nothing we could do for you. Well, then you certainly would want to go to it. You'd

00:06:02.560 want to go to at least one other hospital and talk to one other doctor, let them see you be in their

00:06:07.780 care before resigning yourself to that. And if it was your child in this position in a hospital and

00:06:14.740 the hospital is saying, we got to pull the plug. There's nothing we can do. Obviously you'd want

00:06:19.220 to bring him to at least one other hospital before giving up. And as a parent, you should have that

00:06:23.960 right. Should you not have the right to take back your own child and seek alternative care for him?

00:06:31.580 Should you not have the right to exhaust every possible avenue before giving up? Should you not

00:06:40.720 have the right to take back your own child from this hospital? Well, not in the UK. Over there,

00:06:50.880 children are the property of the state and of the medical establishment, apparently.

00:06:54.560 And the state has final say over life and death. It's interesting because the death penalty has long

00:07:03.240 since been abolished all across Europe, but the government can still impose essentially a death

00:07:08.720 penalty on the young and the sick. It's only convicted murderers who are free from those kinds of

00:07:16.880 inhumanities, but sick babies are not so fortunate. In fact, the logical conflict is even worse because you

00:07:23.520 have to consider that abortion is also legal all across Europe and in most of the countries,

00:07:28.760 although there are different restrictions and laws that apply in depending on which country you're in.

00:07:34.780 But the fact remains a child out of the womb in Europe is treated as though he is not under the

00:07:42.840 jurisdiction of his parents and his rights. That is the right to die exists independent of the

00:07:49.540 parents' wishes. But a child in the womb is entirely the property of the mother and is not

00:07:56.720 even recognized as another human and has no rights whatsoever apart from her. Although I guess he still

00:08:04.620 has the right to die. That's the only right that he has, which as you notice, the right to die is very

00:08:09.660 big in Europe. They are always encouraging everyone to explore this rights and they're always fighting

00:08:15.160 to protect it. And this is why Europe is dying because they're such big fans of death. But all that

00:08:23.100 aside, I just think we need to be exceedingly clear about what actually is at issue when it comes to Alfie

00:08:30.360 Evans or any similar case. No matter how anyone tries to frame this, the dispute is not over any medical

00:08:38.680 controversy. It's not really about medicine at all. Because as I said, it doesn't really matter

00:08:45.420 whether you think Alfie can recover or not. That's not the point. The dispute is really over two simple

00:08:52.540 questions. Number one, is life sacred? And number two, to whom does a child belong?

00:09:00.280 Now, if a society believes that life is sacred, then there would be a general understanding that

00:09:09.560 everything within reason should be done to preserve it. But if life is treated in this kind of

00:09:19.160 utilitarian materialist way where it's only useful or desirable up to a point, then it makes sense to

00:09:26.220 just do away with Alfie Evans and those like him. But really, this is about number two. This is about

00:09:32.580 who has authority over a child. The correct way of thinking about it is this. God is the first supreme

00:09:41.360 authority. And God delegates responsibility and authority to us. He delegates responsibility for a

00:09:51.060 child first and primarily to the parent. And that is a, that's an essential point, not just with this

00:10:00.980 issue, but also with abortion. Because this is one of the major reasons why abortion is such a horrendous

00:10:07.840 evil. The first reason is that you're taking an innocent life. But the second reason is, the second

00:10:14.140 reason is not that while you're infringing on the child's right to life. I think the second reason,

00:10:18.840 that's also a reason. But I think the second reason is that it's the parent, that abortion is what

00:10:25.520 happens when the parent rejects this responsibility that has been handed to them by God. And the parent

00:10:36.960 has no right to do that. Now, they may have the legal right, but they have no moral right whatsoever.

00:10:44.640 And that's why I've long said that, that when we talk, you know, maybe we talk about rights a

00:10:50.780 little bit too much, especially because the concept of human rights has become so convoluted and confused

00:10:56.100 and nobody even knows what a human right is anymore. Certainly most people don't. And you can't look to

00:11:01.340 the courts either in Europe or in, or in the United States to find out. If you look to them, you'll be

00:11:05.800 more confused than you were to begin with. Most people, you know, they'll go around all day saying,

00:11:12.040 oh, I have a right to this. I have a right to that. They'll talk about their rights all day long.

00:11:15.680 But if you were to ask them, what is a right and where does it come from? And what does it mean

00:11:22.160 exactly? They wouldn't be able to even begin to tell you. But the reality is that rights come to us

00:11:28.780 from God. But every right that God gives us is number one. It is not a final. It's not, it's not,

00:11:39.460 it's not some sort of like supreme cosmic right because we have no rights whatsoever over God.

00:11:48.780 He really is the one who has all the rights in the universe. And so in a certain sense, we have none.

00:11:53.780 At least we have none against him, but he does in a sense, give us rights, but attached to those rights

00:12:01.340 are responsibilities. Every right that we are given comes attached to responsibility. And so

00:12:09.520 they're dimensions of the same thing. So it's true that a child has the right to life. It's also true.

00:12:17.520 And it's not said often enough that because of that right, the parent has a responsibility to that

00:12:25.340 child. And it's a responsibility that you cannot decline. Legally you can, physically you can,

00:12:33.820 but you're going to answer for it. So anyway, God delegates authority. Delegates authority for a child

00:12:41.980 to the parents primarily, and then to the family more broadly, and then to the state. So if the

00:12:50.740 parents just completely fail to hold up their end of the bargain and they abandon their duty and they're

00:12:57.040 abusive to the child or they're a threat to the child's wellbeing in some way, then the state has to

00:13:04.400 step in and temporarily the state becomes the primary authority over the child. The state takes the

00:13:11.060 child into its own custody. But that isn't the case here, or at least it shouldn't be. The parents

00:13:16.460 obviously love their child and are simply trying to preserve his life. They have not shirked their

00:13:21.840 responsibility. They are trying to carry it out. They're being prevented from carrying out their duty

00:13:27.940 to the child by the state, which has put itself as the supreme authority over all children and over

00:13:35.400 everyone else, above the parents, above God. And this, I think, reveals not only the problem with

00:13:41.940 socialized medicine, although it does reveal that as well, but it also reveals the problem in general

00:13:47.540 with secular godless government. Because if the government does not recognize any divine authority,

00:13:56.040 then it becomes the divine authority. If it does not recognize, if it doesn't bow before any authority

00:14:04.760 above itself, then it becomes the supreme authority in the universe. And so we worry so much about,

00:14:12.940 you know, theocracy. We worry that if a government recognizes God in any way whatsoever, then we're

00:14:19.740 going to have a theocracy. And of course, if that's true, then the United States from the beginning has had

00:14:24.440 a theocracy because references to God and the creator and divinely endowed rights and all of that,

00:14:30.420 that's just dripping all over our founding documents. But what we see is that the real

00:14:37.540 theocracy and the most dangerous kind of theocracy is the one that results from a government that does

00:14:45.640 not recognize God. Because then it puts itself in God's place and it becomes the God.

00:14:54.440 And it invents its own religion and then enforces those rules.

00:15:00.420 And we see, I mean, the entire 20th century, we've got tens and tens and tens of millions,

00:15:07.120 hundreds of millions of dead people who can testify, or if they were still alive, at least could

00:15:13.540 testify to the great harm that is done, the great danger of these godless governments

00:15:20.700 governments who essentially become theocratic governments because they are God. And so they

00:15:29.380 get to decree. And they've decreed in this case that Alfie Evans' life isn't worth living and that

00:15:35.340 the parents, you know, no longer have any authority over their child. And they have decreed that. That is

00:15:39.680 their sort of religious decree, not based in anything other than their own authority, which they have

00:15:48.880 granted themselves. So we should pray for Alfie Evans. And we should also pray for our own country that

00:15:56.140 we somehow can avoid walking down this same path, although we are already walking it. All right,

00:16:02.680 I'll leave it there. Thanks for watching, everybody. Talk to you tomorrow.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 23, 2018

Ep. 15 - The True Horror of Socialized Medicine

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