A professor wrote an article in the New York Times asking whether humanity should commit mass suicide in order to protect the planet. Also, an 11-year-old boy danced in drag for men at a gay bar. This is the normalization of child sexual abuse. We'll talk about that today on the Matt Walsh Show.
00:00:00.000Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a professor wrote an article in the New York Times asking whether humanity should commit mass suicide in order to protect the planet.
00:00:09.220We'll talk about that. Also, an 11-year-old boy danced in drag for men at a gay bar.
00:00:14.540This is the normalization of child sexual abuse, and it is happening right now as we speak.
00:00:19.440We'll talk about that today on the Matt Walsh Show.
00:00:21.460Yesterday, you may have heard that President Trump tweeted about the need for good border security, except he spelled it B-O-A-R-D-E-R, like cupboard or snowboard.
00:00:39.060And that actually got me thinking. It got the creative juices flowing.
00:00:44.940And before you know it, I had this whole idea for a blockbuster film that was all based on this one typo.
00:00:52.020And it may seem kind of weird to base a movie on a typo, but they base movies on a lot of dumb things these days.
00:00:56.660So why not on a on a typo? So here's my idea just very quickly at the top.
00:01:01.600And if you know any Hollywood producers and you can pass this along, this is my idea.
00:01:04.860OK, just just just imagine this. The movie is called Border Security, spelled Trump's way, B-O-A-R-D-E-R.
00:01:13.200And it stars The Rock as an elite snowboarder recruited by the government to guard in mountain military institution against an army of genetically modified Yetis.
00:01:24.640OK, of course, Kevin Hart will will be his sidekick in the movie.
00:01:28.820I don't have all the scenes and dialogue worked out yet, but I need a lot of snow puns in the movie.
00:01:34.560And then I need a scene at the end of the movie where where The Rock is battling the head Yeti guy and he finally wins the altercation and he's about to throw the Yeti into an oncoming avalanche.
00:01:47.580And then he says something like there's something like I think you need to cool down and then he throws which I know that that kind of plagiarizes Arnold Schwarzenegger in Batman Forever.
00:01:56.760But but but that's fine. And if The Rock is not available for this film, then we can change it a little bit.
00:02:01.740And it could be Liam Neeson as a grizzled ex-snowboarder who has to come out of retirement to rescue his kidnapped daughter from a gang of Eskimo human traffickers.
00:02:14.600And I definitely need a scene in that movie like like the Ben-Hur chariot race scene, except with sled dogs.
00:02:21.280So anyway, that's I'm just that's that's my idea, Hollywood, and I'm throwing it out there for free.
00:02:27.820I will only need five million dollars. It's free except for the five million dollars that I would need if you decide to make that movie.
00:02:35.720All right. A lot I want to discuss today. Ben Shapiro has an interesting piece in The Daily Wire about a professor at Clemson, philosophy professor.
00:02:47.420Todd May is his name. And he wrote an article in The New York Times called Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?
00:02:56.460So, you know, this is going to be good and it shouldn't be good. It shouldn't be a good article.
00:03:01.120It shouldn't be interesting because it should be a really short article. Would human extinction be a tragedy?
00:03:06.620That's the title. And then the body of the article is yes.
00:03:11.040The end. That's what it should be. Right. Because it's a very obvious answer.
00:03:14.960And then but that that would be an odd article to put in a newspaper.
00:03:19.940So he has more to say than that. And as I'm sure you can imagine, he he is not so sure that it would actually be a tragedy.
00:03:29.600Basically, he concludes that human extinction would be a tragedy from a human perspective, but it would also potentially be a good thing.
00:03:38.740And he goes on to explain that humans are cruel and barbaric and so on.
00:03:43.980And we're destroying the planet. We're killing animals.
00:03:47.360And maybe the world would be better without us. Here's here's the segment.
00:03:50.480Here's one segment of his article that Ben quotes.
00:03:52.320It says to make that case, let me start with a claim that I think will be at once depressing and upon reflection, uncontroversial.
00:04:02.200Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it.
00:04:09.380This is happening through at least three means.
00:04:11.460First, human contribution to climate change. Second, increasing human populations encroaching on ecosystems that would otherwise be intact.
00:04:19.780Third, factory farming fosters the creation of millions upon millions of animals for whom it offers nothing but suffering and misery before slaughtering them in often barbaric ways.
00:04:29.160There is no reason to think that those practices are going to diminish anytime soon.
00:04:33.480Humanity then is the source of devastation of the lives of unconscious, of conscious animals, I should say, on a scale that is difficult to comprehend.
00:04:41.820If this were all, if this were all to the story, there would be no tragedy.
00:04:45.840The elimination of the human species would be a good thing.
00:05:39.760One might ask whether, given this view, it would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering.
00:05:49.220Although I do not have a final answer to this question, I have a final answer to it.
00:05:57.880I'm not going to commit suicide so that squirrels and cows don't suffer.
00:06:20.140But I'm actually going to go watch TV instead.
00:06:22.260Although I don't have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans.
00:06:31.200To demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying.
00:06:38.720In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice.
00:06:47.560The two situations then are not analogous.
00:06:49.520It may well be, then, that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off and yet would be a tragedy.
00:06:55.060I don't want to say this for sure since the issue is quite complex, but it certainly seems a live possibility.
00:07:00.560And that by itself disturbs me, says May.
00:07:07.460It disturbs me that you teach at a college, though this is exactly what I would expect from a college professor and from the New York Times.
00:07:18.240And there's a reason why this is from a college professor in the New York Times.
00:08:14.600But I'm just going to deal with the logical problems.
00:08:17.200The moral problems of mass suicide or killing babies.
00:08:23.720The moral problems there are so obvious that either you see them or you're way too deluded to be convinced by a guy on Facebook.
00:08:31.520So I'm just going to leave that to the side.
00:08:33.560In fact, let's talk about the logical problems with this rather nihilistic approach.
00:08:41.520Specifically with the approach that says the earth would be better off without humans, okay?
00:08:47.040Now, number one, if you believe in God, well, now we are getting into the moral aspect, I guess.
00:08:59.920But if you believe in God, then obviously it makes no sense to say that the planet is better off without humans.
00:09:06.780Because in that case, the planet was largely made, maybe not only, maybe not solely, but was largely made for humans.
00:09:18.200Now, so then, of course, it doesn't make any sense that we're better off not being on the planet that was made for us.
00:09:27.060If you don't believe in God, and I assume that this professor doesn't, if he's entertaining the possibility that we should all kill ourselves, then I assume he doesn't believe in God.
00:09:40.720But if you don't believe in God, then it makes even less sense to have this kind of attitude.
00:09:46.080Because there's no basis by which to call a human-less planet good or better.
00:09:54.120There's no, these are value judgments.
00:11:36.720They kill each other over territory, etc.
00:11:40.080So if we're equal to animals, then there's no reason at all to oppose us killing animals.
00:11:46.300Because we're just acting like we are just being one of them.
00:11:49.880And the fact that we're so much better at it, the fact that we're more efficient and better at killing animals, that doesn't mean anything.
00:12:01.540If lions could kill their prey in a more effective and efficient way, they would.
00:12:10.140They just are too stupid to have figured it out.