Ep. 417 - Fighting The Coronavirus With Diversity And Tolerance
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.8912
Summary
Trump's lack of diversity is a serious issue, and we shouldn't be joking about it. It's time to stop laughing at it, because it's not funny at all, and it's getting worse and worse every day.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Welcome to the show, everybody. So you know how I always say, many conservatives always say that
00:00:04.800
the left is beyond parody at this point? Well, that's not a mere platitude or a slogan. There
00:00:10.540
is a deep and terrifying truth here, and the truth is that they actually are beyond parody,
00:00:14.420
as in it's becoming impossible to satirize them because satire requires that you take the idea
00:00:19.940
you're satirizing and you bring it to an absurd conclusion so as to highlight the flaws within
00:00:25.200
the logic that you're trying to make a satire of. But if the idea that is being proposed to begin
00:00:30.900
with has already been brought to its most absurd conclusion, then what can you do? All you can do
00:00:36.160
to satirize it is to point to it and say, look, and that's what satire is increasingly becoming.
00:00:42.400
Case in point, CNN. I suppose I could just stop right there, but let me give you a specific example.
00:00:49.420
Here's a headline of a real article on CNN.com right now. This is real, I assure you.
00:00:55.200
Written by a certified genius named Brandon Tensley. Headline,
00:00:58.800
Coronavirus Task Force, Another Example of Trump Administration's Lack of Diversity.
00:01:05.300
No, it gets better, I assure you. The expectations set by that headline are fulfilled within the text
00:01:13.120
of the article. Let me read it to you. It says, it's a statement that's as predictable as it is
00:01:17.900
infuriating. President Donald Trump's administration lacks diversity. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted photos of
00:01:23.620
a briefing he'd received on the new coronavirus spreading out of China. The president said in
00:01:30.200
his post, we will continue to monitor the ongoing developments. We have the best experts anywhere
00:01:34.280
in the world, and they are on top of this 24-7. Who are these experts? They're largely the same sort
00:01:40.480
of white men and a couple of women on the sidelines who've dominated the Trump administration from the
00:01:45.020
very beginning. By contrast, former President Barack Obama's circle of advisors in the face of 2014's
00:01:52.260
Ebola outbreak in West Africa was hardly so monochromatic. Neither was it so abysmal in terms of gender
00:01:59.380
diversity. Of course, to contextualize, Obama administration's, on the other hand, on the whole, was far more
00:02:04.480
diverse than Trump's. And yet, as unsurprising as the diversity issue in the Trump era has become, it's still worth
00:02:11.880
pointing out from time to time, especially as the country approaches the 2020 presidential election
00:02:16.060
in earnest. That's partly because the recent photos of the best experts telegraph the kinds of people
00:02:21.960
the administration deems worthy of holding power, and even being in close proximity to it.
00:02:30.060
They communicate a patronage network that everyone is operating under, as Eric Yellen, an associate
00:02:35.320
professor of blah, blah, blah, okay. But the visuals have come to define the Trump administration,
00:02:40.600
and they say something else too. They signal which people in a multiracial, half-bemale country Trump
00:02:47.300
values the opinions of. Mostly white men who are mirror images of the president himself. Now look,
00:02:54.700
the easy thing to do here would be to show you the page on CNN's own website with photos of their
00:03:02.680
anchors and their correspondents. And, you know, you would see, if you look at this page, that,
00:03:09.380
geez, I mean, that's a lot of whiteness right there. Wow. Look at this. Just white, white,
00:03:16.360
white, white, white. I need sunglasses looking at this. It's so much whiteness. I haven't seen so
00:03:22.680
many white people since I went to a clearance sale at HomeGoods. Or, you know, in fact, I haven't seen this
00:03:28.040
much whiteness since I watched the Democratic debates. This is just a lot of whiteness.
00:03:34.960
So we could do that and point out that CNN is not holding itself to its own standard, but that
00:03:41.440
wouldn't be fair. It's not fair because it's not fair to hold them to their own standards. Totally
00:03:47.540
unfair. They get a special standard, you see. We all have one standard, and they're special. They have a
00:03:53.200
different one. All right? That's just the way it is. It's the way it is, and it's the way it should be
00:03:57.600
for some reason. I can't explain why, but it is. What I really want to say is, all joking aside,
00:04:03.200
because this is a serious issue, and we shouldn't joke about it. So completely sincerely, my first
00:04:10.060
reaction, yeah, is to mock and laugh at this article. But I think you should resist that urge. We all
00:04:15.700
should. And we should try to listen to what this man is saying, because he's actually right.
00:04:19.620
You know, the whole point of a task force is, of this task force, is to help monitor and contain
00:04:26.900
this disease and to stop it from spreading here. But let me ask you this. Do you really want,
00:04:32.940
and you have to think about this, do you really want a bunch of cisgendered white men to protect
00:04:38.920
you from a deadly virus? Sure. If they're successful, the positive is that you don't die a horrible
00:04:44.840
death, leaving your children orphaned and your spouse destitute. That's the positive.
00:04:53.100
But does that even come close to compensating for the lack of diversity? Is it worth the cost,
00:04:59.340
is what I'm trying to ask you. You continuing to live and not get a deadly disease,
00:05:04.620
is that worth the cost of the lack of diversity? That's quite an ethical dilemma, you have to admit.
00:05:12.680
Personally, here's my thing. I'm in agreement with CNN on this. When you're dealing with a
00:05:17.760
potential pandemic, the key is to make sure that the people combating it, the people
00:05:23.000
that are tasked with containing it, are adequately representative of every demographic. So if it were
00:05:31.480
me, as someone who is not a bigot, I'm going to have a task force with, of course, black people,
00:05:37.800
Latinos, women, lesbians, pansexuals, transgenders, probably I'll throw a couple of Asians in there,
00:05:45.960
bisexual Asians, just to be safe. If a white person makes it on the team,
00:05:54.320
they damn well better be drag queens at a minimum. What about a gay white man? Sorry,
00:06:00.800
not progressive enough. You're going to need to do a lot better than that. Now you want to talk about
00:06:06.600
a disabled gay white man? Okay, maybe now you're talking. What if these people though don't have
00:06:13.980
expertise in containing deadly viruses? What if there are other people who would have more expertise
00:06:20.880
and perhaps would be better suited for the job? Doesn't matter because that's not the point.
00:06:25.320
The point always is to promote diversity in every situation, no matter what. And that way,
00:06:32.680
my diverse, progressive, tolerant task force, if it fails to contain the virus, because none of them
00:06:41.580
have any relevant expertise or any relevant experience in the field of epidemiology, well then
00:06:46.020
as you're lying there dying, you at least will have the peace of mind of knowing that there are no
00:06:53.100
straight white males on the coronavirus task force. And you know something? I think that will
00:06:59.180
bring you a lot of peace and comfort in your final moments. So thank you to CNN for that. Really,
00:07:08.580
really wonderful, wonderful stuff. Now, more to talk about, but I'm super excited to tell you about
00:07:13.600
our new sponsor, Tecova's. When I found out that Tecova's was sending me some of their cowboy
00:07:18.580
boots. I felt like the kid in, you know, Christmas story waiting for the BB gun.
00:07:24.340
Very excited. I told my wife, I want to start doing a whole cowboy aesthetic now. And in fact,
00:07:30.020
to be honest with you, my wife, if I'm being honest, was skeptical at first about the cowboy
00:07:36.320
boot thing. And I think it's because she had something in mind, sort of like this, something
00:07:39.940
tacky and garish in mind. I don't know. But then they came and even she admitted that these are some
00:07:46.060
damn fine boots. I'm paraphrasing. It's not exactly what she said, but that was the sentiment.
00:07:52.040
And I absolutely love them. I'm wearing them right now as we speak, in fact. And I just can't
00:07:56.920
recommend them enough. Tecova's cowboy boots are handmade with high quality, full grain leathers by
00:08:02.120
world-class boot makers. They're built to be comfortable right out of the box. And I can attest
00:08:06.960
that they are. And they're for every occasion, at home, in the office, out on the town, with tons of
00:08:11.260
timeless styles. Tecova's are designed to be as fashionable 50 years from now as they are today.
00:08:16.460
And Tecova's cuts out the middleman and sells directly to you at an honest price. That's truly
00:08:20.900
amazing, considering the level of quality. These are by far the nicest, this is the nicest footwear
00:08:30.020
I've ever had, but not the most expensive. So I should tell you everything you need to know.
00:08:34.780
In addition to cowboy boots, Tecova's makes leather duffels, men's jeans, belts, bill folds,
00:08:39.240
card cases, and more. Everything you get from Tecova's comes with the same calculated approach
00:08:43.660
and quality standards that hold true to everything they do. I love these boots. I really do. Can't
00:08:49.120
recommend them enough. I've got my eyes on the jeans and belt next, I think, because you want to make
00:08:54.440
sure to pair the cowboy boots with the right kind of jeans. So I'm going to be doing that as well.
00:08:58.640
Do what I did. Get yourself a pair of Tecova's cowboy boots today at tecovas.com slash Walsh.
00:09:04.480
That's T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com slash Walsh. Tecovas.com slash Walsh. All right. Here's some more
00:09:14.200
unintentional satire because these are fun. Article from Gizmodo. Billionaire Jack Ma has
00:09:21.680
donated $14 million to develop a coronavirus vaccine, roughly the equivalent of an average
00:09:26.640
U.S. family donating $33. Now the article from Matt Novak reads, in part, tech billionaire
00:09:32.640
Jack Ma has donated $14.5 million to help develop a vaccine. The coronavirus, Ma is China's wealthiest
00:09:40.020
person with an estimated $41 billion, which means that his donation is roughly equivalent
00:09:44.540
to the average American household donating 33 bucks. Ma founded Alibaba, the world's largest
00:09:50.100
online retailer, and is often compared to Amazon. Alibaba and Amazon both treat their employees
00:09:57.280
like S, like crap. Their owners both own major media outlets. Bezos, who's worth an estimated
00:10:04.660
$117 billion, recently donated $690,000 to help Australia battle its bushfires. That bastard.
00:10:12.080
The equivalent of an average American donating less than a dollar. How generous, coming from a guy who
00:10:17.200
says he doesn't know how to spend his money. Bezos and Ma would get along just swimmingly.
00:10:21.540
Um, it's good when extremely wealthy people give their money to worthy causes, but you know what's
00:10:27.600
great? Taking that obscene wealth through taxes and spending it to make the world a healthier place
00:10:32.300
for everyone. Yet again, yet again, we have an article here. This is a leftist expressing their
00:10:40.500
actual point of view. But if you were to take this article, headline everything, and put it on the Babylon
00:10:46.700
Bee, it wouldn't seem out of place at all. You could take this article verbatim and put it on a
00:10:51.900
satire site, and everybody would have a nice laugh. The only reason I'm acknowledging this particular
00:10:59.120
tripe is that this is a common attitude these days. This thing where a billionaire gives a million
00:11:04.100
dollars or gives millions of dollars to a cause, and then people go, well, that's like if I gave 15
00:11:09.760
cents. Except it's not. Okay? $14 million to fight a disease is the equivalent of $14 million to fight
00:11:18.200
a disease. The money isn't suddenly worth less because it comes from a rich guy. That's not how
00:11:24.200
it works. $14 million is $14 million is $14 million. This is like if I was starving, and a guy pulled up
00:11:31.980
with a truck full of sandwiches, with 600 sandwiches, and he gave me one sandwich so I didn't starve. And then
00:11:37.100
I say, hey, you giving me one sandwich is like a guy with two sandwiches giving me three crumbs.
00:11:43.500
And I throw it back in his face and starve to death in protest. No, see, the nutritional value
00:11:49.780
of the sandwich doesn't fluctuate depending on the relative sandwich wealth of the person who hands
00:11:54.800
it to you. The sandwich is the sandwich. By the way, did the author of this article,
00:12:01.580
he says it's like a normal person donating 33 bucks. Okay, well, did you, as the author of the
00:12:10.000
article, did you donate 33 bucks? Because if he didn't, then Jack Ma is still more generous even
00:12:18.600
by his bizarre math. I can tell you that, and I will admit, I don't know about you, I have donated
00:12:25.760
$0.0 to developing a coronavirus vaccine. I have given no money to that effort. I have not contributed
00:12:34.640
to that effort at all. I haven't done anything for it, personally. I'm ashamed to admit.
00:12:42.520
So anything that a billionaire does is going to be infinitely more than I have done, because I've done
00:12:49.080
nothing. And I think that's probably true of the guy who wrote this article. It's probably true of
00:12:57.240
almost all of us. Almost everybody watching right now, or listening, I bet you have done almost
00:13:03.740
nothing with respect to the coronavirus. That's the thing about these people who try to dismiss the
00:13:09.680
charitable endeavors of billionaires. They say, yeah, him giving $600 billion is like me giving
00:13:16.100
three quarters in a TG Maxx gift card, making up these arbitrary equivalencies. But these people
00:13:23.840
doing that, how many of them are actually giving any money to any charitable causes at all? I mean,
00:13:30.980
even $33 or $10 or $5. I bet many of them are giving zero. None. I'm betting you they sit there,
00:13:39.540
arms crossed, rolling their eyes at people who are helping while doing nothing. Not just sitting
00:13:46.780
there, but they're doing less than nothing. Because they're sitting there criticizing those
00:13:54.220
who are helping while they don't contribute at all. They're like somebody sitting down at a
00:13:58.180
construction site, eating a candy bar, watching men lug heavy things around and saying, that's easy
00:14:05.520
for them. Look how big they are. That's easy to pick up heavy stuff. While they lift nothing,
00:14:11.020
do nothing, contribute nothing of value whatsoever. I think that's probably what happens.
00:14:20.920
But what is this all in service to? It's all in service to insisting on, as they say at the end
00:14:27.680
of the article, take the money through taxes. They say their position is we need the government
00:14:34.940
to take control, take the money, because we can't trust these people to be charitable with their own
00:14:41.360
money. And then when they are charitable with their money, because that interferes with the narrative,
00:14:47.640
now we're going to say, well, yeah, they were charitable, but it doesn't really mean anything
00:14:52.980
because X, Y, Z. It's extremely pathetic. But I will anxiously await Matt Novak, the author of
00:15:03.700
that article. I'll be anxiously awaiting to hear how much you have donated personally to develop a
00:15:10.440
coronavirus vaccine. All right. What else do we have here? One other article or subject to tackle
00:15:21.240
before we get to emails. And I want to leave some time for emails because we were talking about
00:15:25.180
the issue of corporal punishment, spanking during the email portion of the show. And then I was
00:15:32.480
getting into it on social media, which is always a good use of time arguing about complex, important
00:15:37.900
issues on social media. Anyway, I got a lot of emails about that. And I want to, so I want to get
00:15:42.360
back into that subject. But first, this reading from an article in the New York Post by Andrea Pizer,
00:15:47.700
titled Far Left Adjut Prop for Pre-K Tots, What NYC Schools Have Come To. I'm not going to read
00:15:56.080
much of this, but just to give you the gist. In an email says, in an email to parents and caregivers
00:16:02.420
on January 16th, teacher Rosie Clark lays out lessons based on the Black Lives Matter week of
00:16:08.060
action for a pre-kindergarten class at PS58, located in the well-regarded District 15 in Carroll Gardens.
00:16:15.140
This from teacher Clark writes, this year, who is white, by the way, this week, this year,
00:16:24.040
the week, February 3rd through 7th, we're starting to talk about these ideas now as we approach Martin
00:16:29.380
Luther King Jr. Day, which was January 20th. And as we prepare to go into February, Black History Month.
00:16:39.100
I am lucky enough to work at this wonderful school where we strive to help our students understand the
00:16:43.240
complex world around them and think critically about how they can participate in improving it.
00:16:47.340
One of the ways I do that in my classroom is by exploring the 13 principles of the movement for
00:16:51.940
Black Lives. So this is a white preschool teacher who is teaching her preschool students. So preschool,
00:17:00.520
you're talking like four years old. Teaching a bunch of four-year-olds the 13 principles of
00:17:05.460
Black Lives Matter. Because this is what we want our preschool teachers to be doing, right?
00:17:10.260
The author of the article continues, some of the 13 points are unobjectionable, preaching diversity
00:17:16.720
plus acceptance and empathy to children who, the dad argues, naturally love their neighbors.
00:17:21.160
Oh, this, by the way, is coming from a dad who alerted the author of the article that this was
00:17:25.000
going on. Then there's principle six. Transgender affirming. Everybody has the right to choose their
00:17:33.880
own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they're a boy or a girl,
00:17:38.860
or both, or neither, or something else. And no one gets to choose for them. Then number seven, queer
00:17:45.080
affirming. The principle here is that everybody has the right to choose who they love and the kind of family
00:17:50.460
they want to, they want by listening to their own heart and mind. And then there's number 12, black
00:17:59.600
women. The teacher writes, there are some people who think that women are less important than men.
00:18:04.120
We know that all people are important and have the right to be safe and talk about their feelings.
00:18:08.420
Now, who are these people who think that women are less important than men? I don't know. But this
00:18:14.660
is what we're telling preschoolers. Okay. There's more to this article. You can go to nypost.com and
00:18:19.140
read it. It's worth the read. Of course, I'm mainly zeroing in on principle number six, transgender
00:18:24.860
affirming. Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind.
00:18:29.620
Everyone gets to choose if they're a boy or a girl, or both, or neither, or something else,
00:18:33.700
and no one gets to choose for them. Now, I talk a lot about how left-wing gender theory is inherently
00:18:39.100
nonsensical and impossible to explain or defend. And I've speculated that most people who believe
00:18:46.920
or who pretend to believe this, who espouse it, don't really believe it. And most of the people who
00:18:56.020
pretend to believe the ones that are espousing it don't themselves actually believe it.
00:19:01.140
And I base this on the fact that 10 years ago, almost nobody thought that a dude could really
00:19:09.040
be a woman magically if he feels like one. Almost nobody thought that 10 years ago. 10 years ago and
00:19:15.380
any time prior, almost nobody was advocating for men to be allowed in the women's locker room or to be
00:19:20.880
allowed on the women's track team and so on. And then almost overnight, there's this shift.
00:19:26.100
And it, it, it, it, I really doubt that all of these people who had lived their lives up to that
00:19:34.200
point, believing that biological sex exists, it seems unlikely to me that they overnight could have
00:19:40.840
really authentically, sincerely changed their minds. So I don't think that really happened. I think
00:19:45.840
that they're pretending. But here's, here's the other part of this. Because the left knows that they
00:19:53.040
can't defend their position. They know that most sane adults don't believe it, never will.
00:19:58.660
They know that if they asked almost any adult whether a dude should be able to play on a girl's
00:20:03.580
basketball team, and if that adult was able to be honest, felt safe and, and, and felt that they
00:20:09.540
could, they could answer honestly without, without facing some sort of repercussion, almost any adult
00:20:13.920
would say, no, they shouldn't be allowed to. And that's why they're focusing on children.
00:20:17.740
Leftists play the long game. They've always played the long game. They've never been overly
00:20:22.760
concerned with a short-term situation, to their credit. They're looking at this from a generational
00:20:28.160
perspective. That's why they win. That's why they've won the culture. Because they're looking
00:20:32.800
generations down the line. And they know that if they can get to the, if they can get to the kids,
00:20:37.520
if they can convince the kids, it's not going to matter what you think or what I think. It's irrelevant.
00:20:42.300
Who cares about us? Get to the kids, recruit the kids, brainwash them, and then you have the
00:20:48.380
culture. You have everything. And the good thing for them, for the left-wing brainwashers, is that
00:20:54.220
kids, especially preschool-aged kids, can be convinced of literally anything. So I say convince
00:21:00.660
the kids. That's really easy. You know, you know what's involved in convincing a four-year-old of
00:21:05.600
something? Tell them. Whatever you want to convince them of, tell them, and that's it. They're
00:21:11.860
convinced. That's all you have to do. Because four-year-olds lack the cognitive tools to discern
00:21:18.860
truth from fiction, plausibility from implausibility, reality from fantasy. They can't do that. All that
00:21:25.280
a child at that age can do is rely on the word of the adults in his life. That's the most rational
00:21:32.040
thing for him to do, because he doesn't know anything about the world. And so he's going to rely
00:21:38.380
on the adults around him. He has to do that. Because they're not going to understand the whys
00:21:47.900
of things. You know, the other day I caught my three-year-old trying to put his finger in a power
00:21:55.200
outlet. And of course I stopped him, and I was very stern with him. And I explained to him that he
00:22:00.400
can't touch it because he'll get very, very hurt. But of course he had no idea what I was talking
00:22:06.220
about. Electricity, shock, death, injury. What does any of that mean to a three-year-old? It doesn't.
00:22:14.320
It doesn't mean anything to him. He just, he has my word, and that has to be enough.
00:22:19.800
And to him, there's no difference between one incomprehensible claim that an adult might make
00:22:28.500
and any other. So if, you know, he'll take my word for it on the outlet thing. If I were to tell
00:22:35.040
him, don't walk on the grass because a dragon will come out of the ground and eat you, he'd believe
00:22:40.660
that too. He'd believe it just like he believed the outlet story. To him, they're exactly the same.
00:22:46.620
He doesn't see a difference. He can't measure plausibility versus implausibility. So if you
00:22:54.440
get to them, the left knows this, convince them, then it doesn't matter. Then you don't have to
00:23:02.780
define it. You don't have to defend it or define your terms. I'm always talking about, can you
00:23:07.340
define the word woman and how that is a pretty conclusive counter-argument to all of this gender
00:23:12.400
madness? And it is. But what the left is saying is, who cares? Yeah, we can't defend it. We don't
00:23:19.760
need to, because we're going to get your kids. And here's the other part of this. Many of us, I think,
00:23:28.480
still don't understand this about ourselves. The thing is, when you get to a kid and you tell a kid
00:23:35.800
something, they're going to believe it, but they're going to continue believing it in perpetuity
00:23:44.360
unless you tell them otherwise or unless they're convinced otherwise by other adults.
00:23:53.560
You see, telling a kid something at that age, it has such a lasting, long-term impact
00:24:01.400
that kids will, all the way into adulthood, could continue believing something that is completely
00:24:08.880
absurd and nonsensical just because they were told it as a kid. Unless somebody else comes back
00:24:16.600
around and can deprogram. But if that deprogramming never happens, they're going to live their whole
00:24:22.360
life believing that. And that's the truth for a lot of us, too. That what we're taught as a child,
00:24:32.540
whether true or not, whether defensible or not, whether reasonable or not, whatever you're taught
00:24:38.440
will maintain a very strong hold over you well into adulthood and possibly forever.
00:24:43.700
It is very, very, very hard for an adult to break away from the indoctrination that he experienced as a
00:24:50.180
youth. Because that stuff gets seared into the brain. The mind forms around it. And to extricate
00:24:57.380
it is extremely difficult. Point being, tell preschoolers that boys are girls and they'll
00:25:03.580
believe you because you said it. And they lack the capacity to know the difference. And then if you
00:25:08.720
keep telling them, most of them will continue believing it. Just as strongly, you know, at the age of 26 and
00:25:15.480
36 and 56, as they did when they were six. Most people go their whole lives basically believing
00:25:24.740
everything they were taught as kids. Most people with most things. Not all. But if you can convince
00:25:36.440
this young generation of kids, if they can convert them, then the game is over.
00:25:47.320
Because indoctrinated at that age, even as adults, it's going to be almost impossible
00:25:56.000
All right. I want to get to emails. Before we do, we've been talking for the last several weeks
00:26:02.940
about the pro-life issue and how important it obviously is and what the left has been doing
00:26:11.520
to shut down and censor those of us who stand for the pro-life cause. And we've gone through it
00:26:19.720
ourselves with people coming after our sponsors and so on. And we've been telling you about live
00:26:25.720
action, which is one of the biggest, most important voices in the pro-life movement.
00:26:30.260
And they've, in terms of attacks from the left, they get it worse than almost anybody.
00:26:35.140
And that's why until January 31st, which is today, a portion of any Daily Wire membership will be
00:26:40.580
donated to live action with promo code liveaction. And that's today is your last day to do this.
00:26:45.960
So if you go right now, you sign up, use the promo code liveaction to support awareness and
00:26:52.280
education around the world on this issue. Join Daily Wire. Do it right now. Make your pro-life
00:26:57.140
voice heard. And at the same time, you're also going to be a member of the Daily Wire. So it's a,
00:27:00.680
it's a win-win for everybody. Go do that right now. Well, not right now. Wait till the show's over
00:27:04.340
and then go do it. Okay. Bundles of mail talking about the spanking issue.
00:27:11.120
MattWallshow at gmail.com. MattWallshow at gmail.com.
00:27:13.940
I was going to read a bunch of the emails. I think I'll just read one that lays out the
00:27:19.180
objection to my arguments pretty well. And I'll respond to those. And, uh, and, and that will be
00:27:25.200
the conclusion of this topic for now. Okay. This is from Joel says, hi, Matt. I love your show,
00:27:30.620
but totally disagree with your spanking take. I think to say that those of us who spank our kids
00:27:34.860
are bad parents is very wrong and judgmental. You say that spanking is do as I say, not as I do,
00:27:40.360
but don't you do many things your kids can't do? You put them in timeout, but you don't,
00:27:44.420
you wouldn't let them do that. You take their toys, but you don't let them take from other people.
00:27:49.300
Also, you say that spanking is hitting. You call that the dictionary definition. It's not.
00:27:53.100
This is the dictionary definition of spanking to strike a person, usually a child with the open hand,
00:27:58.600
et cetera, especially on the buttocks as in punishment. What about shouting? It's easy to judge
00:28:04.020
parents who spank, but I say shouting is worse slash abusive. You can make all the arguments you want,
00:28:09.780
but those of us who spank our children have seen the results. We know that it's effective.
00:28:13.760
You're trying to tell us we're wrong about what we ourselves have observed. It comes off as haughty
00:28:18.420
and arrogant. I'll still listen to your show, but I'm disappointed in your position on this.
00:28:22.820
P.S. How do you reconcile your position with the Bible, which clearly gives parents the authority to
00:28:27.360
spank? Okay. So let me go through your points here, Joel, and then I'll circle back around and make
00:28:34.480
a few more general points. First of all, importantly, I never said that parents who spank are bad
00:28:42.040
parents. Never said it. Never implied it. Never said anything close to that. Judging by some of my
00:28:50.120
emails, you would think that I said it, but I didn't. I simply did not say that. And I don't think it.
00:28:56.520
Obviously, there are plenty of very good parents who spank, clearly. I have always, through my whole
00:29:03.860
career, I have urged grace and understanding for parents. I've been very consistent about this
00:29:07.900
because parenting is hard. I know. I have four kids. I get it. And just because a parent makes
00:29:14.820
a mistake, it doesn't make them bad. If it did, then I'd be an awful parent because I make mistakes
00:29:20.280
all the time. Am I saying that spanking is a mistake? Yes, that's my position. That's what I believe.
00:29:27.020
But to say that I think someone's making a mistake as a parent, it doesn't mean I'm saying that they're
00:29:31.800
bad. It's two different things, right? Or at least two things that don't necessarily go hand in hand.
00:29:40.160
Second, do as I say, not as I do. The point here is that we don't want to undermine our authority by
00:29:47.740
exhibiting the very behavior we're trying to curb in our children. So let's take a less contentious
00:29:54.840
example of this. I always tell my kids to clean their rooms and to clean up after themselves and
00:30:01.380
to be responsible and don't leave stuff laying all over the place. Like every other parent in the
00:30:07.400
world, I'm telling my kids that all the time. Well, I am not the neatest person. I'm pretty
00:30:13.320
disorganized. My office right now, you can't see it, but there's stuff strewn all over the place,
00:30:17.840
a little behind the scenes. And so my kids, they come into my office and they see what it
00:30:25.940
looks like. I'm undermining my own authority because they can see that I'm not following
00:30:31.420
my own instructions. They can see that I must not take what I'm saying very seriously because
00:30:36.900
I don't do it. So that's something I need to work on. It doesn't mean that they're excused
00:30:42.020
from cleaning their room. They still have to do it because that's their responsibility.
00:30:47.780
And just because one person is not fulfilling their own responsibility doesn't mean it doesn't
00:30:50.700
get you off the hook to fulfill yours. But I need to do better. I know that. And as parents,
00:30:56.700
I think we're all guilty of some do as I say, not as I do things.
00:31:00.020
is spanking one of those things. I think it is. And I'll explain why.
00:31:06.260
First of all, putting a child in timeout is not, doesn't qualify because for one thing,
00:31:12.380
I'm not having to constantly tell my kids not to put each other in timeout. I don't know about you,
00:31:16.480
but that's not the kind of thing that you're constantly having to correct in your children,
00:31:20.960
is it? Hitting is. Hitting is a big thing that you have to get your kids not to hit each other.
00:31:26.660
Putting each other in timeout, that doesn't happen very often. But
00:31:29.660
for me, on occasion, actually, it has happened. And my daughter, who's very, very maternalistic
00:31:34.900
and technically the oldest, even though she was a twin, but she was the first to come out.
00:31:40.260
And this is a fact that she's very aware of and makes other people aware of all the time.
00:31:45.540
So she tries to mother the other kids. And on occasion, she's actually tried to put them in
00:31:49.660
timeout. And her brothers have listened to her and actually gone in timeout. But,
00:31:54.420
and I tell her, you can't do that. My reason, though, the reason I give is that she doesn't
00:32:02.820
have the authority to do it. It's not that putting people in timeout is bad. It's just that
00:32:08.440
it's a matter of authority. And she doesn't have the authority. And actually, you could even argue
00:32:14.220
that timeout as a concept, I guess, as adults, we do put ourselves in timeout sometimes just in the,
00:32:22.840
in the, in the sense of, okay, I, I need some space. I need to step back. I need to calm down.
00:32:29.280
Right. That's what timeout is. Sit down, calm down. You need to settle down. That's what timeout is all
00:32:35.800
about. And as adults, we do kind of do that. We don't, we don't call, we don't say I'm putting
00:32:40.660
myself in timeout, but it's a similar sort of idea. You could argue taking toys. Yes. I don't
00:32:48.000
let my kids take other people's toys yet. I do take theirs as punishment sometimes. Is that a
00:32:53.320
contradiction? No, because their toys aren't really theirs. Their toys are mine. And I've told them
00:32:59.280
that this is, I think it's important for them to know all of their toys are mine and my, and my wife's
00:33:04.560
those toys belong to mommy and daddy. Those are not your toys. We graciously are allowing you to play
00:33:10.340
with them, but we bought them. You know, we, we, we are the ones who, if they're, if they're,
00:33:16.100
we buy them, if they're broken, we fix them. We pay for them. We pay for everything, the house,
00:33:20.260
everything. So this is all ours. And we are, because we are nice parents, we let you have toys.
00:33:28.300
It's your responsibility to take care of them. This is a privilege you've been given. We can
00:33:32.960
retract the privilege, the TV, you know, I, I, we let you watch TV sometimes, but that is our
00:33:40.320
TV and our couch. And so you have to be grateful. And the idea here is not to have a sense of
00:33:47.340
entitlement. So no, I don't take their toys. I take my own toys back from them, which yeah,
00:33:54.160
they're allowed to do. If somebody has one of their toys, they're allowed to take it back.
00:33:58.760
They shouldn't be rude about it, but yeah, so I don't see that. Now spanking is different.
00:34:02.960
And here's the issue. You spank young children, right? Assuming you're not spanking a 12 year old
00:34:07.520
kid, because that would, I hope we all agree would be really weird and inappropriate. Most people spank
00:34:13.260
kids like two to six or thereabouts. So you have to think about what they can understand. That's
00:34:21.900
what's important. Is, is there a distinction between a parent spanking a child and a child
00:34:27.420
hitting another child? Yes, obviously there's a distinction, but if the child can't see that
00:34:31.980
distinction, then in his mind, when you spank him, you, you are hitting and you are doing what you say
00:34:37.360
not to do. And this is going to undermine your authority, not to mention make him feel less safe,
00:34:42.120
less secure, because your rules and your words seem arbitrary to him. And that's a problem.
00:34:49.720
So, um, finding some, some fine sort of nuanced distinction between spanking and hitting isn't going
00:34:56.840
to do the job. The child doesn't see fine nuances. So here's the, here's the question. Here's what you
00:35:02.000
have to ask you. When you're explaining to your kid why they shouldn't hit, what do you say? Assuming
00:35:08.820
you don't just give the, because I said so deal. Assuming hopefully you've given them a reason why
00:35:14.580
they shouldn't do it. Not because you have to justify yourself to them, but because they should
00:35:19.120
understand why your rules are in place. You tell them don't run into the road. If they ask why,
00:35:23.080
of course you're going to tell them because a car might hit you. So if you tell them don't hit,
00:35:27.860
hopefully you give them a reason so they can understand the rules. And I don't know what
00:35:32.740
you say. Here's what I say. Um, here's the reason I give, I say that they should use their words first
00:35:38.360
and express how they feel with their words. If they're upset or mad or frustrated, use your words,
00:35:45.120
communicate. Oh, but he was mean to me. He did. It's okay. I understand he was mean to you.
00:35:50.720
I'm not saying that he was right, but hitting is not the correct way to communicate your frustration
00:35:57.980
with him. You use your words, you communicate. We don't hit, we use our words. That's, that's the
00:36:03.200
refrain I use with young. Remember you're talking about three and four year old kids. You can't get
00:36:08.720
into some academic dissertation about the differences of this and that. It has to be very simple. They have
00:36:13.400
to be able to understand it. Um, so that's the simple explanation. I also say that hitting is wrong
00:36:20.560
because it hurts people and we don't hurt people. Again, simple. A three-year-old can understand it,
00:36:25.400
which is important because I'm saying it to a three-year-old. So they should be able to understand
00:36:28.980
it. Now here's the issue. The reason that I've given, use your words, don't hurt people. This
00:36:35.100
reason would seem very much to apply to spanking. It would seem that as the spanking parent, I am not
00:36:40.780
using my words and I am hurting the child. Maybe not hurting him very much, but when a child hits
00:36:46.660
another child doesn't hurt very much either. When my, when my daughter slaps her brother or
00:36:51.440
something, it doesn't hurt hardly at all. But that's not the point. It's not about the degree
00:36:56.400
of injury. It's just, it does hurt a little bit and we don't do that to people. So, and spanking does
00:37:01.860
hurt at least a little bit. Otherwise, why are you doing it? Um, and even if you use your words
00:37:07.400
before and after spanking, it still seems like you are trying to communicate with violence,
00:37:12.660
with hitting rather than with your words. Um, and, and so from the, at least, at least from the
00:37:21.280
child's perspective, it is going to seem very much like a double standard. Um, and so that's
00:37:30.520
something you have to take into account. Is the spanking so important to you? Is it, is it, is it,
00:37:35.360
is it, is the, is the plus side so much of a plus that it can outweigh the appearance of a double
00:37:43.380
standard when it comes to violence? Now I argue that it doesn't just appear to be a double standard.
00:37:50.180
I think it actually is a double standard, but my point is the most you can do is say, oh, it only
00:37:55.160
appears to be one. Well, I would say even that though, even if it's only the appearance of,
00:38:02.640
it's still a problem. Okay. Then you say spanking isn't hitting. You provide a definition. You say
00:38:08.820
the definition to strike with the open hand, et cetera. Well, Joel, what's the definition of
00:38:14.020
strike? I'll tell you dictionary to deal a blow or stroke to a person or thing, semicolon hit. So
00:38:21.920
a strike is hit. So the definition of spanking is to hit with the open hand. Spanking is hitting.
00:38:30.740
Obviously it is impossible to spank a child without hitting them unless you're a Jedi using
00:38:34.840
the force. Here's the distinction. All spanking is hitting. Not all hitting is spanking. So there's
00:38:42.600
a lot of very violent and abusive forms of hitting. Spanking may not be one of those forms, but it is
00:38:48.020
a form of hitting. That's undeniable. Just as all bourbon is whiskey, not all whiskey is bourbon.
00:38:53.320
Jupiter is a planet. Not all planets are Jupiter, right? Spanking is a subset of a category,
00:38:58.060
which is hitting. The category is hitting. It is a subset of that. So it is hitting. And this means
00:39:02.160
it is perfectly accurate to say that when you spank your child, you hit them. That is perfectly
00:39:06.740
accurate. You are hitting your child. Yes. There is no denying that. You can't deny it. It's in the
00:39:13.140
definition you provided. My point is, if it makes you super uncomfortable to think of spanking as
00:39:19.060
hitting, if it makes you angry when someone says that you hit your child, then maybe that's a hint that
00:39:27.060
you shouldn't be doing it. If you need the euphemism, then maybe that should tell you
00:39:33.440
something. And it's not like I've found some absurd roundabout way of describing spanking to make it
00:39:40.420
sound bad. I had some people say that, oh, you can describe any punishment and make it sound bad.
00:39:45.560
Putting someone in timeout is imprisonment, right? Okay, but that's not what I'm doing with spanking.
00:39:54.680
I'm not finding some roundabout, elaborate, absurd way of describing it. I'm just defining it. There is
00:40:01.000
no way to define the word spank without the word hit or a synonym. So spank is just a euphemism. It's
00:40:09.540
just a word that means exactly the same thing. And so what I'm saying is, if the definition of it
00:40:20.640
makes you uncomfortable, maybe that should tell you something.
00:40:26.900
You say, what about shouting? Yes, I think shouting and screaming at a kid in anger is bad. We
00:40:30.520
shouldn't do it. I've done it. We shouldn't do it. I agree. We shouldn't do it. You know, of course,
00:40:36.640
there are extreme cases. You shout, hey, don't run in the road kind of thing. But for the most part,
00:40:41.140
shouting and screaming in anger, you are venting your frustrations at your child or about your child,
00:40:45.360
or at least in front of your child, and you shouldn't be doing any of those. I do it. I have
00:40:49.100
done it. I shouldn't. You know, my point here has never been that I'm the perfect parent. That is not
00:40:53.760
my point. And then you bring up the Bible. What does the Bible say? Well, what does the Bible say
00:40:58.920
about disciplining children? Well, here's what Proverbs says, okay? It says, withhold not correction
00:41:04.020
from the child. If thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod
00:41:10.000
and shalt deliver his soul from hell. Okay, Joel, let me ask you. Do you beat your kid with a rod?
00:41:17.840
Do you? If you don't, and I understand what the Bible says, but I hope you don't,
00:41:25.180
beat him with a rod. I mean, what if, do you beat your kid with a rod? And what would you say if,
00:41:31.440
you know, one of your kid's friends came over and they had welts on them and you asked them where
00:41:37.640
the welts came from and they told you that they were being beaten with a rod by their parents?
00:41:43.140
And don't tell me that beating with a rod doesn't make welts. It does. And there's no way to beat
00:41:47.040
with a rod that doesn't cause bruises. It just doesn't. You can't. What would you say? Would you
00:41:54.820
say, oh, that's biblical. That's nice. Or would you potentially call the police?
00:41:59.960
So here's my point. If you're not beating with a rod, and if you, in fact, would be horrified by a
00:42:10.100
parent who beat their three-year-old with a rod, then you are not taking Proverbs as a literal step-by-step
00:42:17.840
guide for parenting in the modern age. You are not doing that. Now, I admit that I'm not. If your
00:42:23.000
accusation to me is that I am not, you know, I am not literally following Proverbs in the Old Testament
00:42:29.400
as a guide for disciplining my children, you're right. I'm not. But neither are you. And if you
00:42:39.480
want to say that I'm, you know, cherry-picking, maybe I am, but you're cherry-picking within the
00:42:44.920
verse itself, which seems a lot more arbitrary. Now, it's one thing to look at the entire verse and say,
00:42:50.640
you know, I think this must be non-literal. There must be some metaphor here because I just,
00:42:55.540
you know, I can't square the idea of beating my child with a rod. I'm not going to do it.
00:42:59.340
No way. My conscience just will not allow that. And so it's one thing to say that, which is what
00:43:09.000
I'm saying. But what you're doing is you're looking at this, you're picking apart the sentence itself
00:43:14.060
and cherry-picking certain words. And, you know, you like this, you don't like that. I don't like
00:43:18.200
rod. So I'll make rod metaphorical. Beating. I don't want to call it beating. I like spanking.
00:43:23.320
So that to me seems a hell of a lot more arbitrary than what I'm doing. And I admit that even what
00:43:29.820
I'm doing is, it's a little arbitrary. I do admit that because the main reason why I'm going to look
00:43:37.620
at that verse as metaphor or non-literal, it's not because of the context of the verse or because
00:43:42.840
of my understanding of the original Hebrew or anything like that, it's just because it strikes
00:43:48.200
me as barbaric to beat a child with a rod. Okay? That's my reasoning. But again, my point is,
00:43:53.980
you have the same reasoning unless you are actually beating your child with a rod. And I hope you don't.
00:43:59.580
Because I think that's abuse. Yes. So what do I do with that verse? As I said, I take it as non-literal.
00:44:08.220
I think you do. I think almost everybody does. Okay. So those were your points. A few other points
00:44:17.600
in summary as we wrap up. I do think it's relevant that nearly all the research I've ever read on this
00:44:23.480
subject has come down against it. Research shows that spanking is highly predictive of violent
00:44:28.500
behavior, antisocial behavior, aggression, mental health problems, negative relationships with parents
00:44:33.300
down the line. It shows that it's predictive even of neurological changes in the brain. When I say
00:44:37.800
predictive, I don't mean causal. We cannot prove the causal relationship. That's true. But you can see
00:44:43.660
high degrees of correlation. And you could say all day that correlation doesn't equal causation. That's
00:44:48.660
true. But it can be indicative of causation. And so there's a lot of very good reason to think
00:44:54.640
that the correlation here is indicative of causation. That's why the Academy of Pediatrics,
00:45:01.000
for example, 67,000 doctors came out against spanking, said it's ineffective and harmful.
00:45:04.940
I'm not saying their word is gospel. I'm not saying that. But you talk about your experience
00:45:09.460
with your child. Okay. But however well-behaved your child is, and I'll take you at your word that
00:45:16.160
he's well-behaved, but how do you know he'd be worse if you didn't spank? Unless you've been
00:45:21.500
conducting parental experiments on your own child. That's the problem with basing this on personal
00:45:27.340
anecdotes. It's better to look at the broader picture, the large picture, not just personally
00:45:31.880
reported data of parents who are looking to justify their own decisions. And if you look
00:45:35.820
at the big picture and the research that's done, almost all of it, really almost all of it that
00:45:41.400
I've ever read, and you go look at it yourself, has concluded nearly definitively that spanking is
00:45:46.820
harmful. And the few outlier studies that I've read, for the most part, at best find that maybe it
00:45:53.980
won't be harmful. But there has been almost nothing finding a positive correlation.
00:46:00.560
Does that settle it? No. But it is a compelling piece of evidence, isn't it? I mean, if you're
00:46:05.460
told that a certain form of discipline you're using with your child, that there's volumes of
00:46:11.180
research done about it, and almost all of that research has found that it's harmful, shouldn't
00:46:15.940
that cause you to at least pause and think, you know, maybe there's a problem here? I don't understand
00:46:21.680
how you could just wave it off. That I don't understand, how anyone could do that. I couldn't.
00:46:26.780
That's why I don't spank, because I have read about it. And the more I've read about it, especially
00:46:31.620
recently, I have found it very persuasive. I have no reason to doubt it other than
00:46:38.940
I would prefer if it weren't true, but that's not good enough. And I think that throws the ball back
00:46:46.820
in your court, considering all the research on this, considering the possibility that you at least
00:46:51.440
might undermine your authority by seeming to contradict yourself, considering your own
00:46:55.300
discomfort with spanking when it is defined in literal terms, considering the risks involved
00:47:00.980
in using this kind of disciplinary method, considering the ethical difficulties that are always going
00:47:05.160
to be inherent any time an adult uses punitive physical force on a small child, considering
00:47:09.700
the possibility that even if it works, it might only work by instilling fear in your child rather
00:47:13.800
than respect and love, considering that many established links have been found between spanking
00:47:18.720
and future aggression. Considering all of this, why do it? What's the risk of not doing
00:47:27.840
it? What's the positive case for it? Can you launch a positive case that outweighs all of
00:47:35.440
the things I just mentioned? I don't think you can. So I'm trying to justify my position.
00:47:41.940
I would say positively justify yours. Tell me why you should do it. Why is it better? What
00:47:47.600
reason do you have to think that it's actually better than the alternative? Aside from your
00:47:54.800
kids are turning out okay. That's not good enough. My kids are turning out okay too, and I don't
00:48:01.140
spank. And I've got four of them. I don't know how many you have. But you know, we don't want
00:48:04.880
to get into this personal back and forth. That's not what it's about. So there it is. That's
00:48:12.400
my whole case. But I reiterate for the 10th time, because a lot of people seem to be confused
00:48:22.200
on this point about what my personal feelings are. I do not believe or feel that parents who
00:48:29.000
spank are bad parents or anything close to it. I simply disagree with the method. And
00:48:36.840
these are my reasons. All right. Have a great weekend, everyone. Godspeed.
00:48:46.320
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
00:48:49.840
word, please give us a five star review and tell your friends to subscribe as well. We're available
00:48:53.740
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other
00:48:58.880
Daily Wire podcast, including the Ben Shapiro show, Michael Knowles show, and the Andrew
00:49:02.880
Klavan show. Thanks for listening. The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer
00:49:08.620
Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover, supervising
00:49:13.920
producer Robert Sterling, technical producer Austin Stevens, editor Donovan Fowler, audio mixer
00:49:19.520
Robin Fenderson. The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:49:25.140
If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth,
00:49:28.580
and you can still laugh at the insanity filling our national news cycle. Well, tune in to the
00:49:32.540
Ben Shapiro show. We'll get a whole lot of that and much more. See you there.