The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 184 - When Are We Going To #ExposePublicSchools？

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a New York Times reporter goes fishing for negative stories

00:00:04.820 about Christian schools. But with all this scrutiny on Christian schools, what about

00:00:09.640 public schools? What about a hashtag exposed public school campaign? Also, a woman sexually 1.00

00:00:15.500 assaulted a man at the woman's march. Nobody cares, but I think we should. We'll talk about 1.00

00:00:20.820 that today, plus your emails on the Matt Walsh Show.

00:00:23.500 Welcome to the Matt Walsh Show. Hello, thanks for being here. And I remind you to subscribe

00:00:33.260 if you want to get the whole show, subscribe on iTunes or become a premium member of the Daily

00:00:37.560 Wire. It's interesting, I think, to get a look at the makings of an anti-Christian media hit

00:00:44.760 piece, to be able to see it, you know, to be able to see the sausage being made. And that's

00:00:50.160 the opportunity that was given to us by a reporter from the New York Times. Helpfully enough,

00:00:54.860 Dan Levin of the New York Times sent out a tweet yesterday, and the tweet said this,

00:01:02.500 I'm a New York Times reporter writing about hashtag exposed Christian schools. Are you in your 20s or

00:01:08.400 younger who went to a Christian school? I'd like to hear about your experience and its impact on

00:01:13.760 your life. Please DM me. And of course, the exposed Christian school hashtag is just an anti-Christian

00:01:20.140 hashtag where people are complaining about their Christian school experiences.

00:01:23.880 So Dan has set out to write a negative story about Christian schools. And what he's basically

00:01:30.760 saying here is, hey folks, looking to paint Christian schools in a negative light. Do you

00:01:36.240 have any ammo? Come on, give me some ammo. This is what I need. Which, of course, I'm not surprised

00:01:40.920 to see a New York Times reporter operating that way, but I am kind of surprised to see him do it so

00:01:46.540 openly and publicly. Now, that hashtag, exposed Christian schools, it basically consists of two

00:01:56.460 things. Mainly, it's a bunch of people, as I said, just generally mocking Christian schools,

00:02:02.500 accusing them of providing a subpar education, especially in the realm of science.

00:02:08.280 Also, there are people on a more serious note talking about their, the bullying they say that

00:02:13.800 they endured or, in some cases, even alleged sexual abuse that they say they experienced in

00:02:20.600 Christian private schools. Now, I don't doubt that some of these stories are true, and maybe most of

00:02:27.480 them. I don't know. But the problem is the broad picture that people are painting of Christian schools

00:02:36.320 as a place that's hostile to learning, a place that is emotionally, intellectually, even physically

00:02:43.060 unsafe to be. I mean, if you go and you read those tweets, you get this impression of Christian school

00:02:51.160 as just this horrific, hellish, nightmare place that, why would anyone ever spend money to send their

00:03:01.620 kids there? The kind of place that you would pay money to avoid going to. You would pay money for

00:03:10.080 the privilege of not having to send your kids. That's the way that it's painted. Now, in order to

00:03:17.440 illustrate why this broad brush approach is unfair and misleading and disingenuous, I thought, you know,

00:03:26.220 maybe we should just examine how incredibly easy it would be to do the exact same thing with public

00:03:33.440 schools. And I could argue that a hashtag expose public school campaign would be a far more important

00:03:41.280 and worthy and critical endeavor considering the vast majority of kids go to public school and the vast

00:03:47.620 majority of people in our society went to public school so that we live in a culture, a society largely

00:03:53.080 shaped by public schools so that if there are big problems in public schools, that becomes a problem

00:03:58.120 for everybody, not just people who went to those schools. So if we were to do a hashtag expose public

00:04:04.780 schools, what might we say? Well, in terms of sexual abuse, it is absolutely rampant in public schools.

00:04:14.920 There was a study commissioned by the Department of Education several years ago, which found that one in

00:04:22.280 10 public school students are targets of sexual misconduct by teachers. Now that works out to

00:04:27.960 over 4 million victims. And out of that number, 3 million have experienced, allegedly, actual sexual

00:04:36.660 assault. This means that the epidemic of sexual abuse in our public school system is 100 times worse

00:04:45.100 than the sex scandal in the Catholic Church, though it has probably gotten 100 times less attention.

00:04:52.280 When are we going to get the news article expose public schools talking about this? And nobody cares

00:05:02.180 about this. In fact, I wrote an article about this issue. I've talked about this many times, the sex

00:05:08.580 abuse epidemic in the public school system, because you would think it'd be something we care about,

00:05:12.960 considering, again, the vast majority of us, I don't, but the vast majority of people send their kids

00:05:17.660 to public school. You would think that when you hear 4 million victims of sexual misconduct by teachers

00:05:23.620 in public school, you would think that we would all say, oh, well, that's a problem we should be

00:05:27.180 talking about, right? But nobody wants to talk about it. And the reason they don't want to talk about it

00:05:31.620 is because they send their kids to public school. And so they don't want to have to confront this or deal

00:05:38.640 with it. Because it's just, it's easier not to, which I would say is, of course, the height of

00:05:45.100 cowardice. I wrote an article several months ago, and the title was something like, the public school

00:05:54.400 system is crawling with sex predators, but nobody cares. That was the title of my article. And it's true

00:06:01.240 that nobody cared. That article, I think, got like, I don't know, 10,000 reads or something like that in the

00:06:07.240 first couple of days, which is very, very low. Which, okay, it's not about the hits to the article.

00:06:14.160 It's just about, this should be something we care about. But it's clear, even at the, and there I've

00:06:19.740 written about it other times too, every time I've written about this issue, it's just, nobody wants

00:06:25.700 to read about it. Nobody wants to hear about it. And this is only abuse by teachers, by the way,

00:06:34.740 abuse by students on other students is also a crisis in the public school system.

00:06:40.340 Recently, the AP put out a report, and they found 17,000 cases of student-on-student abuse in a

00:06:48.420 four-year period. And these are just the cases that are reported. So if you've got 17,000 reported cases

00:06:55.360 of student-on-student sexual abuse in a four-year period, think about all the, how many are not

00:07:00.320 reported? You have to multiply that by what, three, four, five? When you factor in all the unreported

00:07:06.060 instances? What about bullying? Okay, there was a lot of talk in the Exposed Christian School hashtag

00:07:12.140 about bullying in Christian schools. Well, we're told all the time that there's a bullying crisis

00:07:18.560 in the schools generally. Is that all from the Christian schools? No, of course not. Many kids in

00:07:25.040 public school face daily torment. I went to public school myself for 12 years. I'm not going to say

00:07:30.080 that I faced daily bullying and torment, but I saw it myself. I was in that environment with everyone

00:07:35.520 else. And like anyone else who went to public school for all that time, I saw these things myself

00:07:41.320 happening. This outright viciousness, this sort of emotional chaos, this lord of the flies-like

00:07:50.900 social environment in the public school system, the way that kids are alienated, mocked, excluded.

00:07:59.400 Suicide is an increasingly common phenomenon among children, even very young children. And many of

00:08:06.660 those cases are connected to bullying. It seems like every case, almost every case that I've read has

00:08:14.420 been in some way connected to bullying. Now, you might say, well, it's not fair to pin all of that

00:08:25.240 on public schools. Yes, exactly. That's my point. So why are we pinning it on Christian schools? 0.97

00:08:32.000 What's the point of a campaign of, look at all these terrible things happening in Christian schools, 1.00

00:08:36.920 when I could do the exact same thing with public schools, and that's where almost everyone goes to

00:08:42.560 school. And then there's the quality of the education itself. Well, again,

00:08:48.980 this is not really a conversation that works out well for public schools. And let's start with the

00:08:55.780 fact that for the fifth time, most people in this country have been public schooled. So all you have

00:09:01.700 to do is look around you, okay? I don't even need to pull out studies and surveys and this and that,

00:09:06.620 test results. Okay. Just look around you at society. Does it appear to you that most people

00:09:14.060 in our society are well-educated, intelligent, well-read, critical thinkers? Is that the sort of

00:09:22.820 society that you imagine we live in? No, I don't think so. We all know that stupidity and intellectual

00:09:30.860 laziness is endemic in our culture. You know, nobody reads anymore. No one thinks for themselves.

00:09:39.360 We frankly live in a culture filled with idiots, for lack of a better or nicer way of putting it.

00:09:47.660 And where did most of those idiots go to school? Private or public? What do we think?

00:09:53.020 It's just, this is just a matter of percentages here. What about anti-science indoctrination?

00:09:59.720 At public school these days, you will learn that girls can have penises. Okay. So you want to talk 1.00

00:10:06.280 about anti-science? That's as anti-science as it gets. You'll learn that gender is not biological. 1.00

00:10:14.120 Again, as anti-science as you can possibly get. And if we're offering antidotes,

00:10:22.320 that's the word I'm looking for. Although I'd like to have an antidote too, but if we're offering

00:10:25.820 anecdotes, look at me, I went to public school. I don't even know the difference between an

00:10:30.000 antidote and an anecdote. So, you know, I'm exhibit A here. But if we are talking about personal

00:10:37.320 stories, I can tell you about some of the utter nonsense that my science teachers taught me in

00:10:42.540 public school. Like I was taught that deforestation was going to deplete the world's oxygen supply within

00:10:48.740 a few years. I was taught, or at least given the strong impression that if you're in the same room

00:10:55.040 as somebody smoking for even like 10 minutes, you could get lung cancer. Um, I was taught about,

00:11:00.540 I was taught the myth of overpopulation only that I was, I wasn't told that it was a myth.

00:11:04.680 By the way, this was all in elementary school where I was, where all of these, uh, paranoid

00:11:10.120 delusions were being foist upon me and terrifying me and all my classmates. Well, we were given this

00:11:16.880 impression of the world that was on the brink of collapse. And, you know, if you even go near

00:11:21.520 someone who's smoking, you'll be, you'll, you'll die of cancer within days. This is the, the impression

00:11:27.100 that we were being given. Um, and then there's also just random, uh, dumb stuff. Like I remember my

00:11:35.420 middle school science teacher taught us that blood is blue when it's inside your body, which,

00:11:40.760 which, which is not by the way. Um, uh, just because it looks blue in your veins doesn't mean that

00:11:46.080 actually is blue, but, and I know that that's a common misconception that people have. Well,

00:11:51.180 number one, it's fine. It's a common misconception, but it should be a common misconception that a

00:11:54.620 person who teaches science for a living has. And why is that a common misconception? Some of these

00:12:01.220 common scientific misconceptions, why are they so common? Have you thought about that? It's because

00:12:05.860 this is what people are being taught in schools. I saw plenty of educational incompetence. I had a

00:12:12.060 geography teacher who didn't know that Georgia is a country, which fine. Uh, you know, if I just run

00:12:18.240 into someone on the street who doesn't know, um, about, about Georgia as a country, you know, I,

00:12:26.220 maybe I won't pass too harsh judgments on them, but if you teach geography at school, you should know

00:12:34.240 about the existence. Uh, I mean, you, you should know about the existence of pretty much every country.

00:12:38.580 This is what you teach. I mean, am I crazy? Or like, shouldn't you have every country memorized?

00:12:44.600 And if this is what you teach, this is what you do. Shouldn't you at the very least know every

00:12:49.160 country that exists? I had several teachers who taught, uh, I had several Spanish teachers who did

00:12:55.840 not appear to actually know Spanish. I had one who would put, who put on Selena, the movie Selena with

00:13:00.860 Jennifer Lopez. We watched that all the way through like four times because I don't think she actually 1.00

00:13:05.100 knew the language. And so we just sat there and watched Jennifer Lopez films. And that's a very,

00:13:10.340 that's a time honored tradition in public schools is just watching movies that are, you know, at best

00:13:17.100 loosely connected to the subject, but have no educational value whatsoever. Uh, but the teacher

00:13:22.340 and, and, and, and keep in mind, we're talking about 45 minute periods. So if the teacher says,

00:13:27.400 you know, we're going to watch a two and a half hour movie, that means it's almost an entire week

00:13:30.560 of class is going to be spent watching this movie. Um, so I had plenty of teachers like that. I had

00:13:35.760 teachers who taught class by just handing out a worksheet and then sitting silently at their desk

00:13:39.080 and doing whatever they were doing. I had teachers who taught, I had teachers who never taught. I had

00:13:44.040 teachers sat in their class for a year. They never taught a class ever, never taught. What they would

00:13:49.820 do is they would read from the textbook. They would hand out dittos. That's it. That's all they would

00:13:52.960 do. And they would assign tests. There was never any teaching, no lecturing, no explaining,

00:13:57.340 none. I had plenty of teachers like that. What about ideological indoctrination? Well,

00:14:03.280 I experienced that at every level of public school, just as, as most public school students do. Um,

00:14:08.520 in every grade, in many classes, open hostility to conservative and Christian beliefs

00:14:13.100 was utterly commonplace, totally expected and accepted. Um, so why aren't we exposing public school?

00:14:25.060 Oh, because it's somehow suddenly unfair to paint with this broad brush when it comes to public,

00:14:31.140 when it comes to government education, suddenly it's no, no, no, we can't do that.

00:14:36.780 Funny how that works. All right. Owen Schroyer is a reporter with InfoWars. Um,

00:14:44.920 and he was sexually assaulted by a demonstrator at the women's March over the weekend. The, uh,

00:14:53.040 the, uh, crime occurred on camera and the woman who did it openly admitted to it. In fact,

00:14:59.600 here's the, uh, just, just watch this. Here, here's the video.

00:15:03.020 So if our president can grab a woman by the 1.00

00:15:05.560 she just grabbed my is that sexual assault? Is that sexual assault? Yes. So you just sexually 0.99

00:15:12.840 assaulted me? So you'd be arrested? Arrest me. I'm not going to arrest you. There are police

00:15:17.020 officers right here, but so look at this. Women have so much privilege. She can sexually assault 1.00

00:15:21.340 me and get away with it. If I did that to her, I'd get arrested now. Okay. Put aside. However,

00:15:30.260 you may feel about InfoWars, uh, because that doesn't make a difference here. That shouldn't

00:15:36.940 make any difference. The fact remains the same. A woman walked over to Schroyer, groped his genitals, 0.96

00:15:47.040 announced that she had, uh, quote, grabbed him. Uh, and, and then, and then proudly said,

00:15:54.500 yes, when she was asked, is that sexual assault? She said, yes. And then she doubled then. And then

00:16:01.400 she, just to make it even more clear, she says, I assaulted you. It was assault. So she does it on 0.99

00:16:07.800 camera, admits to it, brags about it. People surrounding her just applaud. There are police

00:16:15.600 officers standing right there. There are police officers just standing there like, okay.

00:16:24.080 And, uh, and this video makes it online and there's no outrage. There is no reaction. Nobody cares.

00:16:30.420 Now, I don't need to point out the obvious, but I'm going to anyway, that if the roles were reversed

00:16:39.840 here, let's, let's just imagine that, um, it was, let's imagine that it was the March for Life. Now

00:16:46.460 this would never happen at the March for Life, but let's imagine it was the March for Life. And, uh,

00:16:51.580 and there was a liberal reporter from, or, you know, whoever from Salon or I don't know,

00:16:57.260 Jezebel or something. I don't even know if Jezebel has reporters, but there was some liberal reporter

00:17:03.620 there, you know, um, reporting on the March for Life. And then a male pro-lifer walked over on camera

00:17:13.720 and to make a point or to express his political frustration with the woman, he grabbed her by the, 1.00

00:17:21.200 by the genitals and then laughed about it and then said, yes, I assaulted you. 0.92

00:17:29.660 Can you even imagine the reaction to that video? Now think about the reaction that a 15 year old

00:17:38.680 kid got when he was caught on camera smiling, um, in the direction of a native American. Now think about

00:17:46.200 the reaction to that. That was a, that was a week long outrage cycle. It was death threats,

00:17:51.840 bomb scares. They had to shut the school down because a kid smiled. There were think pieces

00:17:57.360 raining from the sky and people talking about, oh, the smile and people writing whole, you know,

00:18:02.840 tweet threads and tweet storms about, uh, about the, the problem with white people smiling.

00:18:07.780 And that was just for a smile. Can you imagine if a, if a guy did that?

00:18:15.040 I mean, his life would be over number one, which I mean, it would be, he'd be a total scumbag for

00:18:21.780 doing it. So he would of course deserve, um, consequences and it wouldn't just be social

00:18:29.300 consequences. He would also be arrested. That's the other thing. There's just no chance that a guy

00:18:33.800 could do that to a woman with a cop standing right there, um, without the cop intervening. 0.63

00:18:40.360 So yet the reverse happens and it's just, everyone goes, okay. In fact, worse than that,

00:18:51.540 the people surrounding her seem to get a kick out of it.

00:18:56.740 So not only is this woman not facing consequences, but if anything, there are probably positive

00:19:02.600 consequences for her. Um, she probably has just upped her, her, uh, her feminist street cred. 1.00

00:19:10.480 Now you just can't, you just can't claim that you care about sexual assault. You care about things

00:19:18.620 like consent. If you're going to see a video like that and shrug it off, that is sexual assault.

00:19:25.880 According to every definition that I have heard, that is 100% sexual assault.

00:19:31.040 And if we're, if, if everything is equal and if everything is fair and everything's the same,

00:19:37.120 then we have to agree that that is just as bad as if a man had done it. It is exactly the same

00:19:46.420 thing. Um, so the outrage should be exactly the same, but it's not because as I've said many times,

00:19:56.200 including recently, the Me Too movement was completely fraudulent. Um, it was ideological

00:20:02.720 from the start. And, you know, most of these, the feminists and everything shouting about the Me Too 0.97

00:20:11.100 movement, this, it was all, it was all really politics. It was convenient to use this issue

00:20:18.300 for political ends, but it was never really about stopping sexual assault because if it was,

00:20:25.880 then things like this would be plastered everywhere and everyone would be talking about it.

00:20:30.900 And by the way, also, if the Me Too movement was really about sexual assault, then as part of the

00:20:36.380 Me Too, um, crusade, we would have also been having a conversation about all these female public 1.00

00:20:42.560 school teachers who are sleeping with their, uh, who are, excuse me, sexually assaulting their male 0.52

00:20:48.620 students all the time. We would be having a conversation about that. In fact, what I just did

00:20:56.120 there, you can see how even I could be programmed by the media sometimes. And I have to, I have to kind

00:21:01.640 of, uh, catch myself midway because the way that the media reports, um, when a, when a, oftentimes when a

00:21:09.660 female public school teacher sexually assaults a male student, the way that they reported, they'll 0.64

00:21:15.640 say something like, I've seen headlines like, um, uh, female teacher caught in sex romp with high

00:21:21.660 school boy or, you know, things like, or sleeping with like the phrase that I use. Um, when really,

00:21:27.020 no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not a sex romp. It's not sleeping with, it's not caught in a relationship

00:21:30.880 with, it is sexually assaulting. But we are so programmed to just see that as something

00:21:39.000 completely different and even maybe okay when it's not. All right. Um, the family of 16 year

00:21:48.600 old Covington Catholic student, Nicholas Salmon, speaking of, uh, of him has hired a high powered

00:21:54.020 lawyer who special specializes in, in going after media organizations for libel and slander.

00:21:59.980 And, um, I think this is great. This is, this is the, the kind of fighting back that needs

00:22:06.720 to happen. Uh, and it's usually difficult to win libel or defamation suits for, for many reasons.

00:22:14.860 Um, and I'm no lawyer, so I'm not going to try to get into the specifics specifics of it, but as I

00:22:19.180 understand it, difficult to win for a few reasons. Number one, you have to prove that, um, the person

00:22:25.420 engaging in this defamation or the libel knew that what they're saying was untrue about you and that

00:22:31.160 they were saying it for, they were trying to hurt you by saying it. Um, and then you also have to

00:22:37.500 prove that you have been hurt by whatever thing was said about you that has caused, that has damaged

00:22:45.180 you in some way. And those two things can, can be difficult to prove. But in this case, I think it

00:22:51.980 would be enormous. Both things would be enormously easy to prove. You know, these various so-called

00:22:58.880 journalists and media outlets and famous people who were spreading videos that they knew were out

00:23:05.400 of context and that were continuing to push the narrative even after the full context came into

00:23:10.820 view. And that obviously had malicious intent in doing so. And some of them were openly saying,

00:23:18.340 let's dox this kid or let's, let's go after this. Let's find out about this kid. And some,

00:23:22.560 there were people openly encouraging others to harass or worse these kids, these children.

00:23:27.820 So I think they have a very good case to make. And, um, although I normally would not wish

00:23:33.900 unemployment or financial rumination on people in this case, um, the people who, who slandered and

00:23:43.020 defamed these kids, uh, I do hope that they are sued into bankruptcy and that they lose their jobs,

00:23:49.060 uh, and that they suffer, um, severe, um, consequences because of it professional and

00:23:58.020 financial consequences because that's justice. Number one. And number two, um, this is the only

00:24:04.300 way that we're going to stop these things for happening in the future. All right. One other

00:24:09.860 quick thing to mention before I get to some of your emails, credit where it's due. I was complaining

00:24:15.560 yesterday about the, um, lack of leadership among Catholic bishops, especially in general in this

00:24:21.880 country, but especially after that New York law, abortion law was passed. And the, what I thought 0.57

00:24:26.920 was pretty weak statement from the Catholic bishops in New York who express sadness about it and said

00:24:32.900 that it was terrible and they were heartbroken, which fine. I, I, it's, I agree. It's sad and I'm

00:24:37.600 also heartbroken, but there's gotta be, there has to be more than that. You have to be angry.

00:24:42.200 There has to be fire in brimstone, um, calling down God's judgment on these people. That that's

00:24:48.760 the kind of reaction that you should have. And then there should also be excommunication. So it's

00:24:53.440 not just verbally reacting or issuing condemnations, but actually doing something about it. A few

00:24:59.260 bishops though have stepped up. Bishop Rick, uh, Steica from, uh, in, uh, Tennessee, I believe said,

00:25:06.360 tweeted this today. He said, someone asked me today if I would issue an excommunication of a

00:25:10.160 Catholic governor under my jurisdiction. If the governor did the same as in New York,

00:25:14.040 I think I might do it for any Catholic legislator under my jurisdiction who voted for the bill as

00:25:19.280 well as the governor. Enough is enough. He continues. Excommunication is to be a punishment

00:25:22.780 is to be not a punishment, but to bring the person back into the church. It's like medicine for them.

00:25:28.180 But this vote is so hideous and vile that it warrants the act. But thankfully I am not in that

00:25:33.020 position. Very sad. Then Bishop Strickland of Tyler, Texas says the video of the celebration of New

00:25:39.660 York legislators as they condemned even full-term unborn children to death by choice is a scene

00:25:45.220 from hell. Woe to those who ignore the sanctity of life. They reap the whirlwind of hell. Stand

00:25:52.220 against this Holocaust in every way you can. Okay. Amen. Exactly. That's the reaction. That's what, 0.92

00:25:59.660 that's what we need to see from, from leaders of the church, uh, from Christians generally is not just,

00:26:07.780 oh, that's tragic. That's unfortunate, but, but actual anger, we need to see that you're mad about

00:26:14.080 it, that you're righteously anger, angry about what's happening to these, to these children.

00:26:20.940 Finally, let's get to some of your emails. Um, if you want to email the show and have any comment you

00:26:25.960 want to make, question, concern, um, email mattwalshshow at gmail.com, mattwalshshow at gmail.com.

00:26:34.340 This is from Joe. It says, I've really appreciated your shows for a good while. And I particularly

00:26:39.660 appreciate your articles that I read at Daily Wire. Fewer, more clear and straightforward than you

00:26:43.220 are. I'm really interested in how you describe the parallels between people today who support

00:26:48.180 abortion and people in the antebellum South who supported slavery. You've got away with words that

00:26:52.300 really sums things up. Maybe you could touch on this point on your show. Thank you. Funny you should

00:26:57.180 ask that, Joe. Uh, there is a writer who frankly, I think is not terribly talented and I personally find

00:27:03.160 to be rather unimpressive in many respects, but he wrote a book, um, called the unholy Trinity by Matt

00:27:10.080 Walsh. And, um, this book available on, on Amazon, by the way, in this book, he, and I mean, I of course

00:27:18.160 deal with this question exactly. So let me, it seems kind of self-indulgent too, but I did, I did,

00:27:23.160 I kind of laid it out here in the book. Um, so the, the parallels between the arguments for slavery and

00:27:31.960 the arguments for abortion are, I think that they are pretty much exact parallels. So, um, there is 0.81

00:27:38.000 an appeal to privacy where we say, who are you to tell someone what to do with their own property

00:27:44.280 slash body. There's an appeal to the superseding right. My property slash body rights come before 0.65

00:27:50.600 the rights of a slave slash fetus. There's appeal, an appeal to inevitability. Slavery slash abortion 0.97

00:27:56.260 has been going on for, uh, going on for thousands of years and it's never going to go away. We might

00:28:00.760 as well have a safe and legal system in place for it. There's an appeal to pseudoscience. Slaves

00:28:05.340 slash fetuses aren't really people. They aren't like us. Look at them. They're physically different. 1.00

00:28:09.380 Therefore we are human and they are not. There's the appeal to socioeconomic concerns. If slavery

00:28:15.020 slash abortion ends, most of these slaves slash babies will end up on the street without a job. 0.98

00:28:20.200 Appeal to the courts. Slavery slash abortion was vindicated by the Supreme court. It's already 0.94

00:28:23.900 been decided. There's no point arguing about it. The appeal to faux compassion. Slavery slash abortion

00:28:28.700 is in the best interests of Africans slash babies. The world can be a cruel place. It's best to protect 1.00

00:28:33.420 them from it by keeping them enslaved slash killing them. Appeal to the Bible. Slavery slash abortion isn't

00:28:39.120 specifically condemned in the Bible. If it's, if it's wrong, Jesus would have specifically said so.

00:28:43.640 Um, so those are a number of, uh, parallel arguments that there are others too, that you could probably

00:28:49.000 think of. But, um, when, when you look at it and you look at the ways that slavery was actually

00:28:55.880 justified at the time, you're going to find that, yes, it is, it really is like a mad lib. Uh, you could just

00:29:03.240 take out everywhere it says slavery and plug in abortion and, uh, and it would very often still,

00:29:08.760 the sentence would still work and make sense. And that's, that's an interesting thing by the way,

00:29:13.800 because it's easy for us now, uh, when we look at something like slavery and we say, well, that's just

00:29:20.940 an evil, terrible thing. And, you know, so we just see it. We look back on slavery as this sort of

00:29:26.880 historical phenomenon, even though it's still happening in other parts of the world. But in our country,

00:29:31.740 we look back on a historical phenomenon and we say, well, that was that terrible thing that happened

00:29:35.900 in the past and that's all. And of course it was a terrible and evil thing, but we forget that

00:29:42.320 plenty of actual people who would have seemed like normal people at the time and would have probably

00:29:51.140 considered themselves to be decent people supported slavery or had slaves. And so they would have had

00:29:58.600 arguments to defend like actual arguments. There was a time, of course, it's not this way anymore,

00:30:04.200 but there was a time when this was a live argument where there were two sides of it and you, people

00:30:10.260 would shout at each other and argue and debate it just like they do now. Um, so it's important to

00:30:15.620 remember that and then go back and look at the arguments, not because the arguments are good.

00:30:19.260 No, but because of course not, but because what you'll find if you, if you, if you, if you go back and

00:30:24.420 you look at history within its context, you'll find that evil, dehumanizing, despicable, murderous

00:30:32.660 things are always justified and argued for in the same way. So there's these, these same arguments

00:30:42.360 and justifications that just come up again and again throughout human history to justify the latest

00:30:48.960 evil institution that everyone happens to find convenient. And so it wants to find a way to

00:30:54.000 justify. It's just the same arguments that keep coming up. And we don't notice it because we don't

00:30:59.020 have this, this, we don't have a contextual view of history. We don't actually go back and look at it

00:31:05.900 and put ourselves into that environment again and look at it from that perspective. Because if we did

00:31:11.560 that, we would see that, Oh, look, history really does repeat itself. And all the cliches about if you

00:31:17.400 don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. I mean, all these cliches, they actually are

00:31:21.360 completely true. Um, Jenna says, hi, Matt, I appreciate your logical approach to breaking down

00:31:28.000 the arguments for abortion. Recently, you talked about four arguments for abortion. And I was

00:31:31.720 wondering if you could address a fifth one. I was talking about the four arguments that people

00:31:35.460 always use for abortion, which of course are bad arguments. Um, what would you say to someone who

00:31:40.720 makes the argument for abortion in cases where the baby's health is very poor and his life,

00:31:44.680 which may be very short would be filled with complicated medical procedures, limited cognitive

00:31:48.940 functioning, pain, et cetera. This is something I've heard from heartbroken women who say keeping 0.99

00:31:52.720 the baby would be selfish. What's your logical rebuttal? And how would you talk about it with

00:31:56.620 women and families who've had an abortion for this reason? Um, thanks for the question, Jenna. You 1.00

00:32:04.120 know, I think looking at this objectively, um, there's not much difficulty for me looking at it. And

00:32:15.620 look, I understand if you're in the situation, you're in the position, you've got all the emotions

00:32:20.740 tugging you and so that's different, but, but looking at it objectively, um, it's clear

00:32:27.720 that it makes no sense to kill a baby because you're afraid that the baby's going to die anyway.

00:32:37.200 Makes no sense to do that. Uh, just because a baby is going to die doesn't mean that you ought to just

00:32:46.340 kill it. Just because a life is going to be short doesn't mean that it's worthless.

00:32:52.540 And so I think we see in this attitude of very utilitarian

00:32:57.680 kind of superficial view of life where we say, well, if you don't have X amount of days, if you're

00:33:06.080 not going to get how many days, I don't know, but if you're not going to get a certain amount of days

00:33:09.740 or certain amount of time, well, then there's no point of life. But if we see life as eternally

00:33:14.760 precious and valuable, then we see that one minute of life

00:33:18.500 is, is something that ought to be protected at all costs. Two minutes, an hour, two days,

00:33:25.860 because it's life. And you only get, you're only going to get one. I mean,

00:33:30.300 a child, every human, we only get the one mortal existence.

00:33:36.080 And so it is the most valuable thing in the world, no matter how short it's going to be.

00:33:42.300 So if a child is going to have a very short life, that's incredibly sad, but

00:33:45.780 then why not give them that life at least? And also the chance, maybe at a longer life,

00:33:52.520 maybe there's a miracle, maybe there's a medical breakthrough. I mean, it's extremely unlikely in

00:33:56.960 many cases, but there's always a chance. You hear about these cases. And even if there's no chance,

00:34:01.280 again, well, then that's, then that's all the life the child's going to get. So let them have that life.

00:34:08.160 And if we say, well, it'll be a miserable existence, pain filled, that's not,

00:34:11.820 that's not up to us to decide. We don't get to make that determination for other people that,

00:34:17.620 well, that life might not be, must not be worthwhile because there's pain and there's

00:34:21.580 suffering. Because obviously it's easy to see the slippery slope there. If we are standing here and

00:34:28.040 making those determinations for other people and saying that, well, if you're severely disabled,

00:34:33.140 or if you're impaired in some way, there's no point of life. And so we're going to kill babies for 0.51

00:34:39.080 that. Well, then it's obvious to see it's going to start happening on the other end of life too.

00:34:43.980 And it does happen in some countries that way. And it's a terrible thing.

00:34:49.580 So life is enormous. Every moment of life is enormously, eternally precious. And so we should

00:34:55.260 be allowed to live every moment of life that God has given us. And, and also we cannot decide for

00:35:01.760 other people, even for our children, that their life is not worth living.

00:35:04.780 And just to kind of flesh this out a little bit, think about, um, you know, let's think of a

00:35:12.300 kind of sci-fi hypothetical. Uh, let's say it's, it's in the future and it's sort of a minority report

00:35:19.280 situation where, um, or it's like, uh, the movie Gattaca or one of the, one of these dystopian

00:35:25.480 futuristic movies where you can actually do some kind of genetic test and find out exactly when your

00:35:33.640 child is going to die. And of what, let's just say, let's just say that that was possible.

00:35:38.500 Um, well, what if you find out that your child is going to live a healthy life for three years,

00:35:44.000 but then get leukemia in the fourth year and die when he's five? What if you find out that your

00:35:48.900 child's going to get hit by a car when he's eight years old? Uh, what if you find out that your child's

00:35:53.180 going to, you know, uh, die of some other illness when he's 12 or 13? I mean, would, would you just get

00:35:59.580 an abortion then? I mean, would we just say, well, there's no point if you're only going to live for 0.98

00:36:04.180 four years, you're only going to live for eight, you're only going to live for 12. There's no point

00:36:07.220 of living. So we see it. We see what happens here. We see the problem at what point, how many years do

00:36:14.980 you need to get under your belt before we would say, well, that's that right there is the worthwhile

00:36:19.320 life. It just becomes absurd when you think of it that way. And we see how that is just not a

00:36:25.920 determination that we can make or should try to make. Uh, Joe, I think, well, I just read from a

00:36:32.440 Joe. This is a different Joe. I think says, hi, Matt, besides your own father, could you speak a

00:36:35.680 little bit about your, about other father figures who have inspired you along your journey? Joe,

00:36:40.400 well, for leaving out my earthly father, and I assume you also mean aside from my heavenly father,

00:36:44.980 then, uh, I'm left with just the great men that I've read about and read from who've been hugely

00:36:50.740 influential for me. So, uh, I don't know if they count as father figures, but huge influences,

00:36:55.060 CS Lewis, Soljan Easton, uh, John Henry Newman, and of course, Batman as well from Alex. He says,

00:37:02.940 Matt, why do you feel the need to give your opinion on every single subject? That's what

00:37:06.080 I've noticed about you, especially as I follow you on Twitter, you chime in on every kind of

00:37:09.380 subject as if you're an expert. It gets old after a while. I'm just wondering, why do you feel the

00:37:14.160 need? It's a medical condition, Alex. It's called loud mouth itis. And I would appreciate it. And all

00:37:20.480 of the members of the loud mouth community would, who, who deal with enough bullying and discrimination

00:37:25.520 and harassment as it is, we would appreciate it. If you would stop your bigotry from Mike,

00:37:32.360 Matt, what is your least, what is your least favorite amendment in the bill of rights? Okay.

00:37:38.240 What is your least favorite amendment in the bill of rights? You know what, when I first saw this email,

00:37:41.800 I, in my mind, I read that as what is your favorite amendment in the bill of rights? And so I bookmarked

00:37:46.340 it to answer on the show. And I'm only now noticing that it's actually your least favorite amendment

00:37:50.260 in the bill of rights, which is a much more interesting question. And I would say that,

00:37:54.420 you know what, Mike, I am tempted to say, I am tempted to side with the Federalist and say that,

00:37:59.600 that all of them are my least favorite. Maybe, maybe they should all be repealed. Not because I

00:38:04.880 disagree with the rights themselves, obviously, but I have, you know, increasingly, I have felt that

00:38:11.440 maybe it was, it really was a mistake to write the bill of rights because the whole idea originally

00:38:16.700 with the constitution is, okay, we're going to enumerate the powers of the government and then

00:38:23.060 that's all they can do. And if it's not in there, they can't do it. So there's no reason to get

00:38:27.780 specific and say, um, you know, you have a right to free speech, you have a right to guns. Well, that's

00:38:33.160 already implied because the government was not given the power in the constitution to restrict free

00:38:39.860 speech or to restrict your gun rights. So you don't need to start laying all that out. The approach

00:38:44.840 to the constitution should be, or should have been arguably that here's what the government can do.

00:38:49.760 If it's not in there, they can't do it. And so everything else, those are your rights. There's,

00:38:55.320 there aren't only 10 of them. There are hundreds, thousands, really, maybe millions of things that

00:39:00.140 you can do, um, that the government can't stop you from doing or has no role in because it's not in

00:39:05.380 there. So what happened though, with the bill of rights is that things have been kind of flipped

00:39:10.360 around and the bill of rights has arguably been used ironically to limit rights rather than to

00:39:18.680 protect them because the attitude now is, well, if it's not in there, then you don't have that right.

00:39:24.160 I mean, these are your rights as a human. And if you, if it's not there, then that means the

00:39:27.780 government can do it. So you see how it's been exactly reversed. It was supposed to be,

00:39:31.660 if it's not in there, the government can't do it. Now it's, if it's not in there, the bill of

00:39:36.560 rights, then you can't do it. So it has become limiting. And also when you start trying to enumerate

00:39:44.020 human rights, it becomes very problematic, uh, because there are way too many to list.

00:39:50.640 And, um, and they are such sort of, uh, broad kind of concepts that you can start smuggling in

00:39:58.440 other things that don't belong there, which we've seen the Supreme court do, especially in the

00:40:03.780 20th century. So the, uh, the Supreme court could look at the amendments and say, Oh, well, look at

00:40:09.240 that. There's a right to abortion in there. You know, Hey, what do you know? Actually, there's a

00:40:12.900 right to abortion, which is based on the right to privacy, a right to abortion, which is not in the

00:40:17.560 constitution based on a right to privacy, which is also not in the constitution. So these are the

00:40:22.260 games that the Supreme court was able to play because of the bill of rights. So maybe it never should

00:40:27.380 have been written in the first place, but it was, uh, finally, Jesse, hi, Mr. Walsh. I was interested

00:40:31.860 to find out that you're a football fan. I had, well, I was, but I've retired from being a football

00:40:36.640 fan. I just watched bass fishing now because as a Ravens fan, I cannot deal with the heartbreak any

00:40:41.380 longer. So I've given up at least until the next season starts. Uh, I have a question for you that

00:40:46.040 you might not want to bother answering on your show, but I'd be interested to hear if you did.

00:40:49.640 The NFL seems to make changes to its rules every year in the off season. What rule changes would you

00:40:53.780 recommend if it were up to you? Well, I would recommend, first of all, that they stop making rule

00:40:57.220 changes every off season. I would also recommend that they just take their rule book, which is

00:41:01.180 longer than the Bible at that, at this point. And just how about just randomly tear out half of the

00:41:05.740 pages and just get rid of some of them because there are way too many rules. But here's one rule

00:41:09.840 just to actually answer your question. Here's one rule change. I believe that, um, it should finally

00:41:14.060 be allowed that, uh, coaches can challenge penalties because as you know, right now in the NFL,

00:41:20.620 you cannot challenge a penalty. I think coaches should get three challenges in a game and they can

00:41:25.520 challenge anything they want. They could challenge a call on the field. They could challenge a play.

00:41:30.100 They can also challenge a penalty because penalty calls, erroneous penalty calls have such a profound

00:41:36.380 impact on the game and can change the outcome of a game. Something like a pass interference call,

00:41:41.940 um, an erroneous pass interference call can completely change the outcome of game,

00:41:45.820 can give the game to, to a team that shouldn't have won. This kind of stuff happens all the time.

00:41:50.100 And so obviously we should have the ability to stop and go back and, and take that back.

00:41:55.780 You know, if a ref calls pass interference, then you look at the replay and the guy didn't even touch

00:42:00.080 him. Well, as it goes now, we have to say, well, okay, we just got to go with it. Um, I guess that

00:42:04.820 team's going to win now because they got to, that ends up being a 30 yard penalty, uh, two minutes left

00:42:08.820 in the game and they, they score a touchdown when otherwise it would have been fourth and 20. Uh, and now

00:42:13.320 they win the game. Now we have to say, well, it's just how it is. When it would be really easy to just go

00:42:17.620 back and look at it and say, Oh, nevermind. That really wasn't a pass interference. There's no

00:42:21.280 reason why we have to stick with that just because you threw the flag. So that's a rule change that I

00:42:25.700 would, that I would make. All right. Uh, we'll leave it there. Have a great weekend, everybody.

00:42:30.720 Godspeed.

00:42:37.860 Today on the Ben Shapiro show, Trump associate Roger Stone is arrested. The FAA halts flights into La

00:42:43.360 Guardia and the government shutdown reaches an end. This is the Ben Shapiro show.

The Matt Walsh Show - January 25, 2019

Ep. 184 - When Are We Going To #ExposePublicSchools？

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