The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 248 - Another Horrific Attack On Parental Rights

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, we will discuss a story of an innocent family being ripped apart

00:00:05.800 by Child Protective Services. Apparently, you have no rights and no presumption of innocence

00:00:11.080 when the bureaucrats at CPS come knocking. So we're going to talk about that. Also,

00:00:17.160 President Trump got himself into hot water when he called Robert E. Lee a great general.

00:00:22.520 Well, Robert E. Lee was a great general, and it's ridiculous that we aren't allowed to say

00:00:27.060 that anymore. So we'll talk about that and other topics today on the Matt Wall Show.

00:00:37.740 Well, I hope you all had a great weekend. We had a pretty good weekend. Well, I'll tell you one

00:00:42.820 thing that we did over the weekend. My kids had two more Easter egg hunts to attend. Actually,

00:00:48.740 the second one was rained out, so they postponed it for next weekend. So we're going to stretch

00:00:53.940 this into a third week. They had two or three Easter egg hunts leading up to Easter. And it's

00:00:58.460 this whole, this is what I was complaining to my wife about. It's that it seems like our kids somehow

00:01:03.960 celebrate every holiday numerous times. Like for Halloween, they go trick-or-treating probably 12

00:01:12.180 or 13 different times. They have 12 or 13 different trick-or-treating events. Christmas, they have about

00:01:17.540 five or six different Christmas get-togethers where they get presents. Somehow they celebrate their

00:01:22.220 birthdays multiple times between all the different family members and friends and everything.

00:01:27.380 Is it just my kids who do this? Or is this the thing now that all kids do where every holiday

00:01:33.980 becomes a two or three month long ordeal? When I was a kid, we had one celebration for each holiday

00:01:41.920 if we were lucky. And we definitely only went Easter egg hunting once. And we didn't get candy in

00:01:48.380 the Easter eggs either. There were little slips of paper with chores we had to do. That's what was

00:01:52.620 in our Easter eggs. And we did our Easter egg hunt in the snow in January, in our bare feet. And we liked

00:01:59.560 it, damn it. Kids these days, I'll tell you what, very spoiled. All right, there's a lot to talk about

00:02:07.120 today. And before we get to that, speaking of kids, I want to mention one quick thing about

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00:02:20.560 education. Yet a new report finds that just two in five American students will actually be ready for

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00:03:21.280 advantages too, by the way, to being online. Like you don't, you don't have to worry about eating in

00:03:24.820 the cafeteria if you're a kid. So you avoid the politics of who do you sit with, who don't you sit

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00:03:56.660 Freedomforschool.com. All right. Another horrific shooting over the weekend, not just, not just

00:04:04.340 another shooting, but, um, another synagogue shooting specifically, there were multiple injuries,

00:04:09.100 one fatality. Um, that victim, Lori Kay, the, the victim who died, uh, sadly is a hero who jumped in

00:04:19.260 front of the bullet to save her rabbi. Apparently truly a courageous woman. As I, you know, we were

00:04:25.060 talking about something last week. I don't remember what it was, but I made the point that words like

00:04:30.480 hero and courageous are way overused these days. And tragically so because they blunt the impact

00:04:39.560 of those words when it comes time to actually use them appropriately. Um, like in, in this case,

00:04:46.820 and she wasn't the only hero, by the way, another man chased, uh, the gunman out of the synagogue.

00:04:54.540 After his gun jammed. And then another man came in, uh, uh, off duty border patrol agent came in and

00:05:02.420 fired on the vehicle to try to, um, you know, take out its tires before he drove away and got away. So,

00:05:09.220 I mean, this is, um, this is apparently a synagogue that was attended by some incredibly courageous

00:05:17.320 people. Um, and it's because of their courage that the deranged coward who carried out this attack

00:05:25.160 did not succeed in inflicting the kind of damage that he wanted. Obviously one lost life is a terrible

00:05:31.260 tragedy, but I think the heroes in this case prevented the tragedy from multiplying. Um,

00:05:37.000 and those are the people that I would prefer to talk about, you know, as for the anti-Semitic

00:05:42.620 scumbag coward who did this, well, what can you really say about him other than what I just said,

00:05:48.880 anti-Semitic scumbag coward. Um, he doesn't deserve to have anything else said about him really.

00:05:55.560 And anti-Semitism is a scourge that infects both the right and the left. It is a plague and it needs

00:06:03.680 to be eradicated. And the plague, as we have seen goes beyond anti-Semitism. I mean, just in the,

00:06:09.900 just in the last couple of months, we've, we've seen attacks on synagogues. We've seen attacks on

00:06:13.620 mosques. We've seen attacks on churches, um, many people dead. And for what, you know, these were all

00:06:19.920 people who are simply going to worship, going to practice their religion in peace,

00:06:25.560 um, but it seems that increasingly there are those who don't want you to practice your religion in

00:06:31.380 peace, no matter what your religion is. And the people in that camp are numerous and their numbers

00:06:38.400 are growing. And so pray for our world folks. Um, it is, we are heading into dark places. We are

00:06:47.220 already in dark places. I'm afraid. All right. The website, uh, I wrote about this on Friday and I

00:06:54.180 wanted to, I wanted to mention it here because it is a horrifying and harrowing and harrowing story

00:07:00.520 that I think, um, needs, needs to be discussed. The website reason reason.com had a report about the

00:07:09.980 months long saga of corruption and abuse that a family suffered at the hands of, uh, law enforcement

00:07:16.940 and child protective services in New Mexico. And it's, if you go over to reason.com, you could read the

00:07:22.620 whole article. I would really recommend it. I'll, I'll, I will briefly summarize it, but it's worth

00:07:28.180 reading the whole thing and getting all the details, which I don't have time to provide all of them

00:07:32.920 right now. Uh, so the, the Lowther family, uh, the Lowther family of New Mexico, they found themselves

00:07:40.500 in the, in the crosshairs of child protective services after a teacher at the four-year-old daughter's

00:07:47.160 school claimed that the girl reported that she'd been sexually abused by her father and also her

00:07:53.040 seven-year-old brother. Um, now fast forwarding to the, to the end of the story here for a minute,

00:08:00.240 the district attorney would eventually decline to move forward with the case because, uh, there was

00:08:06.980 no evidence whatsoever. And the child's story kept changing wildly and included a number of obviously

00:08:14.320 fantastical details. Um, and the father passed multiple, uh, polygraph tests. And it's likely

00:08:21.760 that the girl was really just describing her father, helping her on the toilet, helping her wipe or

00:08:26.900 something on the toilet, which is something that every parent has done for their three and four-year-old

00:08:31.380 kids many times. Um, so that's, that's what would happen at the end. Um, but in between the initial

00:08:39.440 report, uh, from the girl, if we can call it that, if we can call it a report, you know, um, and not

00:08:45.480 just a story, but in between that and the DA's decision to drop the whole matter, the allow their

00:08:53.200 family was, was ripped apart. Uh, the children were put in foster care. The five, the father was fired

00:09:00.100 from his job. He was labeled a child rapist by the media. His picture name were plastered on the

00:09:06.060 front pages of the local newspapers. Um, the young girl was subjected to, uh, lengthy and incredibly

00:09:15.740 invasive exams. Uh, the, the, the son, seven-year-old son was, was also, uh, interrogated. Uh, the family

00:09:26.440 was forced to shell out $300,000 in legal expenses and the accused father and his wife were summarily

00:09:34.000 stripped of all parental rights, not to mention their fourth amendment rights and their sixth

00:09:37.980 amendment and eighth amendment. Basically all of their rights went out the window for many months.

00:09:44.720 Um, based on something that the DA would eventually say is completely baseless.

00:09:51.940 Now, the most frightening aspect of the story is the malicious and underhanded yet unfortunately

00:10:00.360 familiar manner with which the child protective services and law enforcement approach this case.

00:10:07.320 Um, they basically decided from the outset that Adam Lowther, the father must be guilty

00:10:14.720 because who's ever heard of a four-year-old child making up a story, right? I mean like that,

00:10:19.840 I guess that never happens. Um, and so they treated him like a child raping felon

00:10:25.300 from the very beginning. Uh, these agencies were clearly interested in establishing guilt

00:10:32.660 by whatever means necessary, not ascertaining the objective truth, but just finding guilt.

00:10:40.340 That's what they wanted to do. And they had the advantage of a system that automatically turns

00:10:46.420 entire families into wards of the state. As soon as someone in government decides that someone in that

00:10:52.040 family may have done something bad. Um, so after initially being contacted by the school,

00:10:59.080 the police forced their way into the family's home without a warrant. They forbade the mother,

00:11:05.740 Jessica, from even speaking to her children to explain what was going on. Eventually the kids

00:11:10.920 would end up in foster care. They were briefly returned to Jessica's custody. Now the father was,

00:11:15.840 was not allowed to see his kids at all for several months. He was sent off somewhere across town.

00:11:21.180 Um, but she, uh, she, the, the mother also had custody removed. Um, briefly, she had custody

00:11:28.940 restored, but she had to have her parents move in with her to be safety monitors, uh, to make sure

00:11:34.940 that she wasn't abusing her children. But then the children were removed from her mother's custody

00:11:38.900 again. Once child protective services got wind of the fact that the safety monitors, which would be

00:11:45.160 the mother's parents were apparently sympathetic to Adam and didn't believe that he was guilty. And so

00:11:50.960 for some reason that meant that they were no longer fit, uh, safety monitors, you know, as I said,

00:11:57.480 go, go read the whole report. I, I, as I was reading it. And often when I read these stories about these

00:12:03.420 horror stories about child protective services, I think about, um, the book, uh, the Gulag Archipelago,

00:12:09.280 which I've mentioned before, so Soljan Easton's magnum opus about the Soviet labor camp system.

00:12:15.080 Um, and, uh, as I was reading this report, I, I, I kept thinking about the Gulag Archipelago because

00:12:21.480 there are some real uncomfortable resemblances there where, you know, innocent and their story

00:12:29.360 is not unique. This, this happens a lot where you've got innocent people, innocent mothers and

00:12:34.040 fathers, uh, who discover that they basically have no rights and no presumption of innocence.

00:12:40.520 Once the folks that, you know, in this government agency decide to come knocking, um, it was the

00:12:50.540 same thing in the, in, in, in, in the Soviet union, where if the government decided that you were guilty

00:12:56.180 of something, you had no rights and they were going to prove that you were guilty one way or another,

00:13:01.920 they were going to find evidence. They, they weren't looking for any indication of innocence.

00:13:07.140 They'd already decided you were guilty. And now it's just a matter of building a case. Um,

00:13:12.780 and anything that doesn't, uh, fit with the case they're building, they just throw it, throw it,

00:13:19.220 throw it out, you know, chuck it to the side. Um, this is the kind of nightmare scenario that every

00:13:25.680 parent dreads and it could happen to any one of us. If you're a parent, it could happen to you. I mean,

00:13:32.520 with the way the system is set up, if your child goes to school, uh, with a story that she made up

00:13:40.820 in her head or repeat something that she heard from her friend, or for whatever, whatever other

00:13:46.040 reason said something that accidentally implicates you as an abuser or worse, then you could lose your

00:13:52.620 kids just based on that. There doesn't have to be any other evidence in the case of this family and

00:13:59.200 these parents. There was no other evidence, none. They found nothing, but they, their kids still

00:14:05.900 ended up in foster care. I mean, think about that. You know, I think about with my own kids, my, um,

00:14:12.400 my five-year-old daughter, she, she likes to, you know, as, as five-year-old kids will often do,

00:14:18.060 she likes to make up stories, uh, especially about her brother to try to get him in trouble. So she will,

00:14:23.000 she will erroneously claim that her brother, her twin brother punched her in the head. Um,

00:14:29.200 and they do smack each other and stuff like as, as siblings do, especially twins. But, um,

00:14:34.720 I've never seen my son punch anyone like closed fist, just wallop. I've never seen him do that,

00:14:39.720 uh, least of all to his sister. And, but she'll, you know, she just says that sometimes. And so I

00:14:46.480 have to try to work with her and that you don't, if it's not true, you don't say it. But what if my

00:14:50.980 daughter, uh, went into, you know, went out in public one day and, uh, decided to tell a slightly

00:14:56.780 different version of that story. And instead of saying, my brother punched me in the head,

00:15:00.960 she said, daddy punched me in the head. Um, that would be enough. It seems to land my kids in

00:15:08.540 foster care. Just, just that sentence. If my daughter just got into her, into her head to say

00:15:13.100 that, uh, that could be it, right? That's all. That's it. And every parent is in this boat.

00:15:18.700 The only thing keeping our parental, our parental rights intact is that our kids haven't made up the

00:15:25.920 wrong kind of story and told it to the wrong sort of person, which is another way of saying we don't

00:15:32.760 have parental rights. If you can lose them in an instant with no evidence, uh, then what does it

00:15:41.960 even mean to say that we have parental rights in the first place? If they can be revoked by bureaucrats

00:15:48.420 at the child protective services, people who are unelected, who are apparently constrained by

00:15:54.060 nothing, if they can come in and just take your kids, then what does it even mean to say that you

00:16:02.340 have parental rights? Um, now I believe of course, that actual allegations of abuse have to be

00:16:10.000 investigated. And, and certainly we can't ignore a child who claims that they've been abused. Um,

00:16:15.760 and some parents really are guilty of these kinds of horrible crimes and those parents need to be

00:16:21.580 locked in prison. Um, but due process can't go out the window. Unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats

00:16:29.980 from social services cannot be empowered to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury. You know,

00:16:35.900 the rights of the parents have to be preserved and respected at all times until it has been proven,

00:16:45.320 proven that they can no longer be trusted with those rights. And then the rights will be revoked.

00:16:52.620 Um, but that's not how these cases play out. Here's the thing. If agents of the government

00:17:00.420 are looking into accusations against you, any kind of accusation, and they're assuming your guilt from

00:17:07.360 the beginning and therefore looking only for proof, um, that you did whatever they already assumed you

00:17:14.380 did rather than looking for facts on both sides, then you're screwed. That's tyranny. You're, there's

00:17:20.980 going to be tyranny in a, in a, in a situation like that. Tyranny always happens when the people

00:17:26.320 investigating an accusation assume the guilt of the accused beforehand. And that's why presumption

00:17:34.880 of innocence is the, the absolute bedrock of our justice system is the presumption of innocence.

00:17:41.820 Our philosophy in this country has always been in principle, at least in theory has always been

00:17:47.160 that it's better to let a guilty person go free because they were afforded the presumption of

00:17:52.820 innocence than to punish an innocent person to punish an innocent person is the greatest miscarriage

00:17:59.520 of justice. It is the greatest travesty, um, imaginable. And so that has to be avoided at all

00:18:07.000 costs, but child protective services, they don't operate that way with them. The assumption at the

00:18:13.220 beginning is guilt. And then you have to dig yourself out of that hole. You have to prove your own

00:18:20.860 innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt. And if you can't do that, then you're, you're through, you're

00:18:28.340 finished. Um, and the thing is, you know, the problem is if you have a child who's, who's telling

00:18:35.100 stories, who's making things up, um, and if you interview them with the intent of actually figuring

00:18:42.880 out what really happened, then oftentimes you'll be able to tell that something is amiss here. And

00:18:49.500 clearly this, it didn't happen how they say it happened. Um, I can do that with my own kids,

00:18:55.140 right? If they're tattletaling on each other, most of the time, I just, I don't, I'm not going to get

00:18:59.520 in between it and play, uh, and, you know, play the, uh, the lawyer, uh, trying to sort it out,

00:19:05.660 especially when it's just frivolous stuff. But if one of my kids tells on another, on their sibling

00:19:12.500 and makes a more serious accusation, uh, that they're, they did something really unsafe or

00:19:18.680 dangerous, harmful or whatever, then most of the time, if I, if I sit them both down and talk to

00:19:24.600 them, I can tell within like 30 seconds, if this thing actually happened or something like it actually

00:19:30.640 happened because they're, they're, they're little kids, you know, they're not masterminds and usually

00:19:38.180 you can tell, uh, but if you interview them just to get more information to prove guilt, because you've

00:19:47.260 already assumed the guilt, then you're going to ask leading questions and you're basically going to

00:19:52.260 coax the child into making up more stuff. And I think that happens in a lot of these situations.

00:19:58.160 Um, and with kids, as I, as I've said before, in other contexts, little kids who are, you know,

00:20:09.220 four or five years old, um, they don't really have any concept of truth versus fiction of honesty

00:20:18.660 versus deception. They don't understand the distinction. Um, they, they really don't understand

00:20:24.660 the difference between fake and real, uh, just conceptually. They can't get their head around it,

00:20:31.380 which is why a four-year-old can never be accused of lying. Now they, four-year-olds will say things

00:20:36.420 that aren't true all the time, but they're not lying now because a lie, a lie is an intentional

00:20:41.240 deception, but four-year-olds aren't trying to do that. They just, they don't, they get something

00:20:45.480 into their head and to them it's real because they're thinking it. That's just how four-year-olds

00:20:49.600 think. That's the psychology of it. Um, I noticed this with my kids recently when, um, they were,

00:20:55.680 they were telling me about a movie that they had watched and, uh, I asked them, I said, uh, oh, is it,

00:21:02.880 I was trying to figure out what movie they're talking about. And I said, was it a cartoon or was it,

00:21:07.060 were they real people? And my kids, they didn't understand what I meant. Like they, they,

00:21:13.040 to distinguish between cartoons and real, they don't really do that to them. It's all real,

00:21:18.860 right? Because they're watching it. It must be real. Um, that's how kids think. And that's why it's

00:21:26.320 so, uh, a situation like this is, is so dangerous. I mean, this family, although they, thank God were,

00:21:36.900 you know, ultimately vindicated, um, if the DA in that case had not exercised any prudence,

00:21:43.800 then, you know, Adam Lowther could be in prison right now based on whatever the kid, whatever the

00:21:50.480 daughter said. And, and it sounds like she may have just said something relatively innocuous,

00:21:55.980 which then was, was the teacher latched onto. And then they started interviewing her and they,

00:22:02.740 they coaxed her into saying things that didn't happen. They just, they led her into creating

00:22:08.220 this whole fanciful fake scenario. Um, you know, when I wrote about this on Friday, I was reading

00:22:15.440 some of the comments under the, uh, under the, I do read my comments sometimes. And there were a lot

00:22:20.080 of interesting comments, people, people that had, you know, experience with, um, child protective

00:22:24.600 services and were talking about their own experiences, which were horrifying. Um, but then I,

00:22:31.480 I also saw a few people that said, well, who I assume are not parents. And I said, ah, no,

00:22:38.060 kids would never make something like that up. I mean, if you're worried about a kid making

00:22:41.040 something up, that clearly means that you're a, you're an abuser. Well, these are, these are

00:22:45.440 obviously not parents. I mean, if you, if you, uh, actually have young kids and have dealt with young

00:22:51.100 kids, you, you understand how they operate. Um, and, uh, that kids will, you know, they just get

00:22:57.580 something into their head and it could be because they, they heard something from a friend or they

00:23:02.340 saw it on TV. I mean, whatever. And they, they, they just, they get it into their head and they

00:23:05.420 say something and then it just snowballs from there. But we're, and we're only discussing

00:23:10.020 situations right now where a child innocently tells a story, um, uh, or misinterprets something

00:23:16.400 or, or, or, or tries to talk about something that really happened, but phrases it in a way that

00:23:20.820 sounds, you know, um, that sounds, it makes it sound like something it isn't.

00:23:27.580 But there are also situations where a vindictive person, another adult can make an accusation

00:23:33.880 that is knowingly false. Um, I got an email from someone talking about their own experience.

00:23:39.060 They didn't want me to read the email, uh, you know, verbatim on the air, but basically their

00:23:43.580 situation, and I've heard situations like this many times where a neighbor who didn't like them

00:23:49.020 called child protective services and said that they witnessed the person next door abusing their

00:23:55.340 child. And it was totally made up. It was, it was, uh, a completely, a complete lie. Um,

00:24:02.580 and that's going to be even harder to get yourself out of because in that case, you have an adult

00:24:07.900 who is knowingly lying and manipulating the system against you, which is really easy to do.

00:24:14.620 It's, um, it's just, uh, terrible. All right. One other thing I wanted to, oh yeah, I wanted to

00:24:26.640 also talk about this. Um, because this is, this is interesting to me. President Trump

00:24:31.860 touched off a controversy, shocking to hear. I know that president Trump started a controversy,

00:24:38.440 but he did when he described on Friday, um, Robert E Lee as a great general, which I feel like we've

00:24:45.520 done this controversy already. Didn't we? I feel like we did this like a year ago, but we're doing

00:24:49.420 it again. Um, he said this while defending his previous comments about the protests in Charlottesville

00:24:56.940 a couple of years ago, sort of as an aside, while he was addressing that issue, he called Robert E Lee

00:25:02.880 a great general. And, um, this sent the left into hysterics as per usual with them accusing Trump of

00:25:09.300 being a racist and a neo-confederate and so on, slavery apologist and so on and so forth.

00:25:14.700 Now I caught a little piece of the ricochet from this controversy myself because, well, first of all,

00:25:20.600 you have to understand that I was, I was, when this was going on on Friday, I was flying back from,

00:25:25.300 from a speech in Texas. And when I fly, I get bored. And so when I, so when I'm that's,

00:25:32.660 that's when I just start tweeting to pass the time. And it, it just so happened that this whole

00:25:37.660 hullabaloo was happening while I was flying. And I, you know, I'm interested in civil war history.

00:25:42.560 So, um, and I'm actually reading Shelby Foote's three volume, uh, work on the, on the civil war

00:25:50.720 right now, which is great by the way. So I decided to jump into the fray to pass the time. And, uh,

00:25:55.860 and I said that I, I agree with president Trump that Robert E Lee was a great general.

00:25:59.900 And then I provided my own personal ranking of the best civil war generals, which my list would go

00:26:05.940 Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, uh, Grant Sherman, and, and then Forrest. Probably you could put

00:26:12.760 long street at number five, you know, a Sheridan you could make an argument for. Anyway, the point is

00:26:17.300 I also started getting backlash from the blue check mark brigade on Twitter because I ranked three

00:26:23.740 Confederate generals among the top five, uh, civil war generals. And this is, this is offensive

00:26:30.200 now, apparently. So let's, let's, let's get into this a bit. First of all, it is absolutely

00:26:37.840 undeniable that Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Longstreet and Forrest and a number of other

00:26:46.100 confederates were great generals. I mean, that is, that is, that is anyone who has studied the subject

00:26:54.640 will arrive at that conclusion. That is an uncontroversial, or at least it should be an

00:26:58.900 uncontroversial thing to say. It's not a statement about their ethics or their morals or anything else.

00:27:04.080 We'll get to that part of it in a minute, but calling someone a great general means that you're

00:27:08.920 making a statement about their abilities as a general. That's all. Uh, it doesn't mean you agree

00:27:16.080 with the cause they were fighting for. It doesn't mean you, if you think they were swell guys, it's

00:27:20.640 not a, it's not an endorsement of their ethics or their more or their morality or anything like that.

00:27:26.480 Rommel was a great general in World War II and he was also a Nazi. Okay. The fact that he was a Nazi

00:27:34.200 obviously bears heavily on any assessment of his moral quality, but it doesn't really bear at all

00:27:41.760 on an assessment of his military prowess, which is when you're talking about great generals,

00:27:46.920 that's what you're assessing. And in fact, it was, there were people that were, um,

00:27:52.980 trying to challenge me and were saying, oh, so you include confederates in a ranking of best.

00:27:57.360 Well, if you were ranking best World War II generals, would you include Nazis in that list?

00:28:01.340 And the answer is yes, of course I would. There were some great generals who were Nazis. Uh,

00:28:08.740 they weren't great morally or ethically. They weren't great in any sense, except for the fact

00:28:14.460 that just in terms of their military abilities and their strategic brilliance. Yes. That again,

00:28:22.380 anyone who has studied World War II will say the same thing. It is not a controversial thing to say,

00:28:26.900 except among idiots. Uh, OJ Simpson was a great football player, truly great. No question about

00:28:34.780 it. He was also a murdering sociopath is I should say. Um, but if we were ranking, you know, uh, the,

00:28:43.920 the best football players of the last 40 years, OJ Simpson is going to make the list. It's, it's not a

00:28:50.120 statement of agreement with anything that he did in his life. It's just an assessment of his abilities

00:28:56.960 as a football player. You know, I happen to think that Michael Jackson is a, is a, uh, child molesting

00:29:04.660 freak. But if we were talking about greatest pop stars of all time, it would be ridiculous to leave

00:29:11.480 Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson would be number one on that list as a pop star. If we were talking

00:29:16.940 about, uh, the most, the most morally upstanding people in history, Michael Jackson would definitely

00:29:23.500 not be anywhere on the list, but, um, but that has nothing to do with his abilities as a, as a pop

00:29:29.440 star. Yeah. The South lost the war. Okay. Everybody knows that, uh, Robert E. Lee eventually surrendered.

00:29:37.040 And this is often used as proof that, well, they couldn't be great generals if they lost,

00:29:42.640 which of course is stupid. I mean, again, going back to the football analogy, it's like saying,

00:29:46.880 that, um, you couldn't possibly be a great quarterback if you ever lost a game, you know,

00:29:52.160 or if you lost the Superbowl. I mean, you know, there are other factors, even if you have the

00:29:57.220 greatest quarterback in the world on your team, uh, if you don't have a defense, if you don't have an

00:30:01.700 offensive line, if you don't have receivers, you're not going to win very many games. There are other

00:30:05.760 factors that go into winning besides just the quarterback. And it's the same thing with a war.

00:30:10.280 You know, there are other factors that fact that, that go into it aside from your generals.

00:30:15.500 Um, the, the South, they were in these generals, they were fighting an opponent who had them outmanned,

00:30:24.060 outgunned, outnumbered, uh, who could outlast them in a war of attrition. These Southern generals

00:30:31.680 were commanding basically shoeless farm boys who were wielding hunting rifles. Um, and that's one of the

00:30:39.940 reasons why we have no choice, but to recognize their skills in generalship, because they were

00:30:46.500 able to drag this thing on for four years and win many stunning battles against very long odds.

00:30:54.340 Think about what just Stonewall Jackson for a minute. Um, think about what he did in the,

00:30:59.940 in the Valley campaign alone. He marched his men 600 miles, uh, through the Shenandoah Valley Valley

00:31:07.120 over a month and a half, won five battles against the combined force that had him outnumbered two to

00:31:13.120 one. Okay. Does that make him a great general? Uh, yeah, it does. The fact that he died after being

00:31:20.160 shot by one of his own men at Chancellorsville, that doesn't, that doesn't mean that he's not a

00:31:24.360 great general. The fact that the South eventually lost again, that doesn't mean that he's not a great

00:31:27.560 general. Um, what struck me about the reaction to what I said and to Trump's comments

00:31:34.020 is that apparently we've reached a point where we aren't even allowed to acknowledge that flawed

00:31:41.140 men were good at anything. Like we can't acknowledge them in any context. Uh, if they were

00:31:47.860 flawed, we have to pretend that they were bad at everything. And that is, you can't do history that

00:31:53.620 way. You can't study history that way. You can't learn from history that way. Uh, you just, you can't.

00:31:59.400 We have to somehow pretend that there's nothing impressive at all about the Confederate victories

00:32:05.600 at Bull Run and second Manassas and Chancellorsville. And I mean, we have to pretend that Robert E. Lee

00:32:11.020 was just some hack, right? Some hack who almost brought the North to its knees, uh, with his army

00:32:17.960 of 17 year old field hands. Uh, well, if that's the case, then this goes beyond the civil war. We, we,

00:32:25.920 we cannot then acknowledge the greatness of pretty much any great general that's ever existed,

00:32:31.500 seeing as how none of them would pass muster by the standards of these, uh, preening blowhards on

00:32:37.880 the left, even Grant. Okay. General Grant was an anti-Semite who tried to evict all the Jews from

00:32:44.840 his military district. He also, he also married into a slaveholding family. Um, so I guess he can't

00:32:51.900 be great. Uh, and forget about Napoleon, Alexander the great, Julius Caesar, uh, Patton. I mean,

00:32:58.760 any of these guys, I don't think any of them would, would hold up to the, to modern standards

00:33:03.640 for various different reasons. And so apparently none of them can be great now.

00:33:09.540 It's absurd, but you know, I'm actually understating. I think I'm underselling the

00:33:14.080 point a little bit because, um, yes, any literate person, any person with a middle school education

00:33:21.020 or better knows that Robert E. Lee was a great general. Uh, that is only a controversial statement

00:33:28.180 among morons, but, uh, I would go further than that. I would say that Robert E. Lee was a great man

00:33:38.160 as well as a great general. And I know that, you know, if people freak out when you call him a great

00:33:44.340 general, only imagine what they would say when you call him a great man. Well, I I'm going to call him a

00:33:48.660 great man. I think he was a great man. Uh, and I really don't care how politically incorrect that

00:33:52.680 might be. Was he flawed morally? Yes. Um, but he was a flawed great man and he was far greater than

00:34:03.520 the whiny do nothing critics who trash his name today, but have accomplished absolutely nothing

00:34:09.820 in their own lives. Um, generally was opposed to slavery. He called it a moral evil. He never

00:34:18.380 purchased a single slave and the slaves that he inherited from his father-in-law, he eventually

00:34:23.140 freed, which is more than we can be, they can be said for numerous union generals who actually own

00:34:28.100 slaves themselves and purchase them themselves. Um, generally was, was opposed to secession.

00:34:34.640 He was offered the job of commanding the Northern army, but he declined it because as a Virginian,

00:34:41.140 he could not bring himself to march an army against his home and his sons. Um, now that is,

00:34:51.420 it's not like that's a simple choice. People act like it's, well, clearly is, you know, he should,

00:34:56.120 he should have fought for the North. Well, would you take up arms against your own family?

00:35:02.300 Would you take up arms against your own sons against your home? I mean, maybe you would,

00:35:09.620 but is that really a simple choice? Is that really an easy, like, Oh yeah, sure. Definitely.

00:35:16.720 Uh, can, can we not appreciate the, the moral complexity of the situation that Robert E. Lee faced

00:35:23.060 that a lot of these men faced? Um, can we not appreciate how, how, how difficult that act that would be?

00:35:32.300 Robert E. Lee was widely respected on both sides. You can read the accounts of his surrender at

00:35:36.820 Appomattox. Um, the siege is how highly regarded he was by the men who actually did the fighting.

00:35:42.680 He was one of the greatest generals this country ever produced. Uh, he was a man of honor and dignity

00:35:47.720 and, you know, uh, general Grant recognized that his soldiers recognize that Lincoln recognized that

00:35:54.040 yet we today in modern times, we cast him aside as a racist and a traitor. You know, it took 150 years

00:36:00.120 for us to decide that, Oh, you know what? Actually he was a total scumbag. Um, we can talk about the

00:36:05.720 political causes of the civil war, but it cannot be disputed that the men who actually fought did the

00:36:12.800 fighting. They did so in their minds to protect their countries. Uh, you know, Southerners considered

00:36:18.700 their States to be their countries. Now we may, we may not understand that attitude nowadays. Um,

00:36:25.180 but that's the way they saw it back then. It's true that, you know, and, and you can, you can,

00:36:33.980 you should be able to understand that because, you know, these days we identify ourselves as a

00:36:40.420 country. We, we, we identify ourselves with the federal government and I'm not sure that that's

00:36:44.480 really a healthy thing to do anyway. But, um, back in those days, you know, before the information age,

00:36:50.360 before there were, you know, phones and internet and highways connecting everybody, um, especially

00:36:56.000 in the South and agrarian society, you lived off the land, you were tied to the land, you lived in

00:37:03.140 your own town. You didn't, you didn't travel far from it. Um, uh, most of the time. And that was your

00:37:10.440 life, you know, that was your country and that's how they saw it. Um, now it's true that one of the

00:37:19.440 primary political causes of secession and thus the civil war was slavery. That is undeniable.

00:37:25.980 Um, but it's not true that the war was a war over slavery. You know, I think to phrase it that way

00:37:35.760 would be an oversimplification, even though it is true that the South seceded politically, um,

00:37:42.840 in large part because of slavery, although not only because of slavery, slavery. Uh, but if you look at

00:37:48.760 why the, the Northern soldiers were fighting, you, you look at the things that, that Lincoln said,

00:37:53.620 um, they were fighting to preserve the union, not, not to end slavery. And they were very clear

00:38:02.680 about that. Lincoln said himself that if he could preserve the union and keep slavery, he would,

00:38:06.620 if he could preserve the union by getting rid of slavery, he would do that too. Um, there's a reason

00:38:11.520 why it took, you know, two years for the emancipation proclamation to be issued because in the early

00:38:17.580 going, uh, this was not a war to, to free the slaves, this was not a war over slavery. And Lincoln

00:38:22.740 didn't want the soldiers on the ground to think that that's what they were doing because he knew

00:38:28.300 that he wasn't going to be able to recruit hundreds of thousands of, of soldiers if they thought they

00:38:35.140 were going off to die to, to free the slaves. Um, now that's a worthy cause. That's it's a, it's a,

00:38:41.820 it is a good reason to go off and, and put yourself in harm's way. But the fact is many

00:38:48.340 Northerners were just as racist as the people in the South and they weren't going to fight for that

00:38:52.180 reason. So for the people on the ground, this was about preserving the union. Um, for the people in

00:39:01.000 the South, you know, the political leaders of the South, they wanted to, to secede in large part

00:39:06.520 because of slavery. But for the men that were doing the fighting, they, they were not slave owners

00:39:12.020 themselves, the vast majority. They had no interest in slavery. They considered themselves to be fighting

00:39:16.420 to protect their homes from what they considered to be hostile invaders. Uh, ultimately slavery stains

00:39:23.600 everybody who fought for the South. There's no way around that. Uh, even if they weren't themselves

00:39:27.760 fighting for slavery, even if they didn't own slaves, you know, still, um, it does, but the issue is far

00:39:35.120 more complex than we, than we typically make it out to be. And when we look at it in context with proper

00:39:41.420 perspective, I think we can see why a man like Lee, a decent man might choose to fight for the South

00:39:49.720 because to him, it was a decision between fighting against his home or for it. That's the way that he

00:39:58.200 saw it. And that's the way a lot of these people saw it. Um, and it shouldn't be difficult for us to

00:40:07.460 make that concession. It does, again, it doesn't mean that we have to be neo-Confederates. It doesn't

00:40:13.840 mean that we have to support slavery. It doesn't mean that we have to take the side of the South or

00:40:19.000 whatever. It's just, it's just about understanding the complexity of a, of a, of a, of a war that

00:40:27.060 resulted in 600,000 people, people being killed. If you're looking for simple answers and simple,

00:40:32.180 you know, sort of filters to look, to see it through, then you're doing the wrong thing.

00:40:39.300 Um, all right. So yes, great. Certainly a great general. And, um, I would say great man as well,

00:40:47.700 Robert E. Lee. All right. Uh, how much time we have? Okay. I'll get to,

00:40:52.620 you know what? I'm going to, I guess we'll, uh, we'll skip emails today and I'll, I'll do extra

00:40:58.580 emails tomorrow because there's one other thing that I had to, I can't, I can't let the show end

00:41:06.820 before I show you this. Um, I have to show you two deeply troubling video clips. Okay. Uh, and they're

00:41:14.320 related in a way that will soon become apparent. So first this is from the NFL draft. It's a,

00:41:20.520 it's a shot of a QB, um, fighting out that he was drafted and he's sitting with his family and his

00:41:25.900 friends. And, uh, then this happens. Watch this. Ouch. Uh, that, that, that hurts. All right. Now

00:41:41.960 here's another video. This is from a girl on Twitter who I guess was surprising her friend

00:41:47.400 at college or something. And I don't know, it doesn't matter. But, um, all that matters is,

00:41:51.940 is this part. Watch this.

00:41:53.080 Some great y'all.

00:41:54.920 Dear Lord. Uh, and, and here's the thing I could, I can really relate to the, to the rejected people

00:42:23.580 in both of those videos. I mean, when you, when you get stood up like that on it, when you get

00:42:28.200 left hanging, it's hard to recover. I remember in sixth grade. Okay. I still remember this. I have

00:42:33.240 not recovered from it. Uh, in sixth grade, I was, I was walking down the hallway of my school

00:42:38.900 and somebody who I thought was a friend of mine noticed me coming down the hallway or so I thought.

00:42:45.440 And, uh, and he went, Hey, what's up? And he, and he, and he, and he went for the high five.

00:42:49.660 And as I was walking towards him and I went for the high five only to realize at the last second

00:42:56.940 that he was talking to someone behind me, not to me. And so I went for the high five, but I got stood

00:43:02.460 up and he went and it left me hanging. So then, so that's embarrassing enough. But now in that split

00:43:08.420 second where I was, where, you know, I realized that the error that I had made, I started thinking,

00:43:13.440 okay, how am I gonna, how am I going to play this off? So I thought, okay, if I can play this off as

00:43:18.620 if I was trying to high five someone behind him, then I can save face. But as I, you know, I was,

00:43:24.840 I'm kind of, this is all happening in like a split second. So I missed the high five and now I'm

00:43:29.300 desperately looking for someone behind him to high five, like someone that I know who I goes,

00:43:33.140 Hey, what's up? But I didn't really know anyone behind him. I, so I, I just targeted this one

00:43:37.240 random kid who I didn't really know that well, but Hey, what's up? And he also left me hanging.

00:43:41.740 So I got, I got stood up on two high fives in a row. Um, it was an absolute catastrophe and I still

00:43:51.560 have not recovered from it. And it may well have been the defining moment of my life. I think what,

00:43:57.720 how might things have gone differently if I had landed that first high five or even the second one?

00:44:02.840 because when you miss two in a row, it's you, you, you just can't that that's, that's, uh,

00:44:10.180 your life is over basically at that point. Um, I've been a walking husk of a man ever since that

00:44:18.160 day. So I feel, I feel, I feel deeply, uh, sorry for, and I, and I sympathize with the people in those

00:44:26.260 videos. All right. We will leave it there. Um, thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

00:44:47.480 Today on the Ben Shapiro show, a new white supremacist terror attack targets Jews in San Diego.

00:44:52.100 The New York times reveals its antisemitic bias and the media rush to defend Ilhan Omar.

00:44:56.260 That's today on the Ben Shapiro show.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 29, 2019

Ep. 248 - Another Horrific Attack On Parental Rights

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