Ep. 420 - The Rip Heard Round The World
Episode Stats
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Summary
Trump's State of the Union address was a wonderful one, but there was one part of the speech that was a little off key and a little confusing. He said something that no other Republican has ever said in a SOTU.
Transcript
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Welcome. Welcome to the show, fellow citizens. Trump's State of the Union address was last night.
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I'm not sure if you heard about it. It was sort of a little minor understated event. I think maybe
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they aired it on C-SPAN or something. And here's what I'll say about the State of the Union. I'm
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not going to spend a lot of time on it because, in fact, I assume that you have heard plenty of
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coverage about it. But it was, as everybody on the right agrees, and even some on the left seem
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to be saying, a wonderful speech. Donald Trump, as I've argued from the beginning,
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Donald Trump is much better scripted. His unscripted campaign speech ramblings seem to play
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very well to the audience that's physically in the room with him. And I think his base still likes it,
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but I think most people outside of that are pretty bored with it at this point. But his scripted
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speeches are often brilliant. And it's true that he doesn't write his scripted speeches. So this
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could be seen as another way of saying Donald Trump is brilliant when he's not acting like
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Donald Trump. It seems like a backhanded compliment in some ways to say, oh, you know what I love about
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him is when he's scripted. That's the best part. But that wouldn't be the correct interpretation
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because even if he doesn't write the speech, these are still Trump speeches through and through
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in that he is willing to say things and present things in a certain way that most other politicians
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are not, especially Republican politicians, which is why, and this is why I wish you to give more
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scripted speeches because as opposed to the unscripted where he's kind of rambling and going
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in a million different directions, you don't really take anything from it. There's no message.
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There's no coherent message in it. With the scripted speeches, if he stays on the script
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and he's willing to let someone help him formulate it, he's willing to say things. He can get a
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message across and he's willing to put things in a certain way that can be very valuable and that
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other politicians, other Republicans won't do. So during the State of the Union address, not just
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this one, but his other State of the Union addresses, we hear things about abortion, protecting life,
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the family, protecting religious liberty, that we wouldn't hear from other Republicans, except in a
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very roundabout way. They would allude to it. But Trump just goes right into it and talks about it
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in a style we wouldn't hear from anybody else. And sometimes though, it's kind of subtle,
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which is surprising because you don't expect to hear the word subtle and Trump used in the same
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sentence. But I'll play a clip for you from last night. I'm only going to play a couple of clips,
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but this is him talking about late-term abortion. And there was something subtle in this, maybe you'll
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pick up on, that I thought was really good. Listen to this. That is why I'm also calling upon
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members of Congress here tonight to pass legislation finally banning the late-term abortion of babies.
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Whether we are Republican, Democrat, or independent, surely we must all agree that every human life
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is a sacred gift from God. As we support America's moms and dads, I was recently proud to sign
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the law providing new parents in the federal workforce paid family leave, serving as a model
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for the rest of the country. Okay, so he's talking about late-term abortion, which is something that
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no other Republican would do in a State of the Union address. That's not the subtle part. But notice how
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he throws in the word, the phrase, of babies. He says, late-term abortion of babies. That's, as I said,
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subtle, but it's a very important thing to add. Because what are we talking about when we say
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abortion? Because the word abortion sounds impersonal, sounds abstract, detached. Abortion
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just sounds like this thing that's hanging out there. It doesn't really affect anybody. But in fact,
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it is an act that happens to someone, right? And to whom? Babies. So to say that, to make sure you say
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that, the late-term abortion of babies, not late-term abortion in general, not late-term abortion of
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fetuses or of pregnancies, but of babies. So I thought that was good. And then there was his addressing
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of religious liberty. And this is not so subtle, which is good. I'm glad it wasn't. In fact,
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he's going right at the issue using phrases like, in America, we celebrate faith and cherish religion.
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And this, again, is handled in a way that I think only Trump would handle it. Listen to this.
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In America, we don't punish prayer. We don't tear down crosses. We don't ban symbols of faith. We don't
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muzzle preachers and pastors. In America, we celebrate faith. We cherish religion. We lift our voices in
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prayer. And we raise our sights to the glory of God. Just as we believe in the First Amendment, we also
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believe in another constitutional right that is under siege all across our country. So long as I am
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president, I will always protect your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
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So for me, these are the highlights. These are the take-homes, right? These are the things that
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we should remember. Although I think most people, of course, will remember, as far as what happened in
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the speech, most people are going to remember this the most. For the past seven months, she has done
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it all while her husband, Sergeant First Class Townsend Williams, is in Afghanistan on his fourth
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deployment in the Middle East. But Amy, there is one more thing. Tonight, we have a very special
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surprise. I am thrilled to inform you that your husband is back from deployment. He is here with
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us tonight. And we couldn't keep him waiting any longer.
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Obviously, a beautiful moment there. And this is what's worth talking about.
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Now, the routine thing that we do after a State of the Union address is we complain about the Democrats
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not applauding this or that. Every year we do this. The opposition party doesn't applaud the
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president's accomplishments. And the supporters of that president, whoever it is, act outraged.
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How could you not applaud that? And that's a topic of conversation, maybe for half a day or so at most,
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and then everybody forgets about it. And all of that, the applauding and everything and deciding
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when to applaud and when not to, it's pageantry, doesn't really mean anything. Speaking of which,
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speaking of pageantry, I'm going to be very much in the minority on this, I understand. So I'm taking
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a minority position, which is something you're probably not surprised by. I do it somewhat often,
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much to the chagrin of some people who watch this show. The thing people are really talking about
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So there's Nancy Pelosi, after the speech, on camera, tearing up her copy of Trump's speech.
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Now, my personal feelings on this are that I don't really care. I actually find it kind of funny. I
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laughed when I saw that. Pelosi and Trump hate each other's guts. They're constantly cutting each
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other down, ripping each other apart, taking petty digs at each other. I mean, Trump calls her crazy
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Nancy. That's his name for her that he refers to her by, which I know we take this for granted,
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but that has not been normal decorum for presidents in the past, where they have a nickname like crazy
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so-and-so for their political, not just their political enemies, but the people they're supposed
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to be working with, calls her crazy Nancy. Now, okay, it doesn't really bother me that much that
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he says that, and he's not wrong either. But I see this as another volley in that feud,
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and it doesn't bother me. And the outrage for people on the right, well, how dare she do that?
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How dare she? It's like, come on. First of all, you don't really care. You're not that offended by
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it. And you can't, I mean, considering he's, it's in line with the stuff they do and say to each other
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all the time. It's not that much worse than anything he's done or said in regards to her. So
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who cares? And before that, you know, she put her hand out, tried to shake his hand.
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He left her hanging, didn't shake her hand. You could make an argument. Maybe she didn't,
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he didn't see that she was trying to do that. I don't know. I'm sure I really buy that. I think
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he, I think he did. He did leave her hanging on purpose, but, but who cares? Yet there's been,
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as I said, quite a bit of the sort of performative outrage on the right about this, this moment.
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Um, a lot of, we have to respect the office. She has no respect for the office, which for the
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record, the respect the office shtick is something that people only ever say when it's their guy in
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office. Nobody says that. So the right is now saying respect the office. Nobody on the right
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was talking about respecting the office when Obama was in there. That was something the left said,
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respect the office. Now they don't respect the office. So it's just back and forth. And I just,
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can we just put that aside? Can we all admit, can we all please admit that we, none of us really
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respect the office. And in fact, none of us even know what that means exactly. What do you mean
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respect the, how do you respect an office? It's, it's, and if you are going to respect an office,
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why would you have a blanket respect for a politician's office? This, this, this is not a monarchy.
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This is not a King or an emperor that we're talking about here. This is a, it's a politician
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and they're supposed to work for us. There are employees. That's the way it's supposed to go.
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Doesn't really work that way, but ideally that's how it's supposed to be. And when you say respect
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the office, you're talking about ideals. Well, I say the ideal is no, they are our employees. They
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respect us. That's a lot more important than us respecting them. Um, I think with politicians,
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it's the same with anybody else, you respect them if they earn it and you don't, if they don't,
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that's it. Whether or not you think Trump has earned respect is up to you. That's how each
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person decides that whether or not you think Obama earned respect, it's up to you. Uh, but the idea,
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the fact that the, the, the notion that they're owed respect somehow, just because they desperately
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wanted to run the country and enough people voted for them. I, I don't, I don't see it. Um,
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personally. So it didn't bother me. That's not my point though. I think, and this is the part where
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I'm really in the minority. I think this was a rather brilliant political move by Nancy Pelosi.
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It was a very Trumpian move in a way. What she's done is she's made the whole conversation after the
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speech, the whole news cycle about her ripping up the speech. The news cycle is about her ripping
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the speech rather than Trump giving the speech. She's got people on the right. Most, most, most
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media people on the right talking about her ripping the speech rather than amplifying and highlighting
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the content of the rather spectacular speech that Trump gave. So she stole the news cycle.
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This is a news cycle that rightfully belongs to Donald Trump. And, but she took it, which is
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something Trump does. She, she stole it with something negative. Yes, but so what her base
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will love it. Uh, she's not at any political risk because of this. The only people really pissed
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are Trump fans who hate Democrats anyway. So no loss. The point is just to make the conversation
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something else, anything else instead of the positive points of Trump speech. So think about
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it. Um, this is, you know, the, I, I, I would go on Twitter this morning, the top three trending
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topics on Twitter were about Nancy Pelosi. One of them was hashtag Nancy the Ripper, which just makes
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her sound like a bad-ass. Another was Nancy rocks with the leftist, uh, uh, defending her. And then
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there was another one Nancy Pelosi tantrum or something like that. And that was the negative
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one, but who cares after the speech, big speech, everyone's in a lot of, a lot of big viral moments
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in that speech, all the trending topics on social media about Nancy Pelosi. Now, of course, 10 months
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from now, um, when it's time to vote, nobody's going to care either way about any of this.
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And the people saying that swing voters will be swayed against the Democrats because of this,
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uh, I think are living in a fantasy land. Nobody's going to 10 months from now, no one's going to the
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polls and voting based on the fact that Nancy Pelosi ripped a piece of paper. That's, that's not
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going to motivate anybody at the polls to 10 months from now. And that's, that's, that's part of the
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harsh reality of the world we live in now is that nobody remembers anything or cares about anything
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for more than 48 hours. And most 10 months from now, you're not going to be thinking about any of
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this. You're hardly going to remember it. Okay. Now, you know, Trump has given now three brilliant
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state of the union addresses. Can you remember anything about the one he gave last year? And can
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you remember any of the outrages afterwards about what Democrats did? Can you remember any of the great
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lines he had in that speech? Anything he talked about? Can you remember anything about it? No,
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you can't. Uh, because we have very short attention spans and memories now because there's so much
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information coming at us constantly from all directions. And we're absorbing so much information
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all the time that we don't have room. It's a, it's a logistic problem. We don't have room to store all
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of these distant memories by distant. I mean last week. So those get discarded leaving only dim remnants,
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maybe to, to make room for the new stuff. Uh, so, which means that 10 months from now, I say that
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this was a brilliant political move on Pelosi's part. I think it was, but 10 months from now,
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I don't think it's going to hurt her. I don't think it's going to help her. It's only about
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winning this particular news cycle. And that's always been Trump's strategy. Trump strategy has
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always been that you win a news cycle. If you make it about you, even if it's bad, as long as it's about
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you, you're sucking up the oxygen and you win. It doesn't matter what it is. That's how Trump got
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elected in 2016 is that he made almost every news cycle about him for nine months leading up to the
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election. It was, he just took all the, there was no room for anybody else. Now Pelosi isn't going to
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be making every news cycle about her for the next 10 months, but she did win this one.
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I know we don't look, I know for on the right, we don't want to admit it. Um, but, uh, I think
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that's the fact. I think, I think people played right into her hand and you know, if, if, if she was
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on the other foot and Trump had done something like that, I know he couldn't have done that exact
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thing because Nancy Pelosi isn't giving the state of the union address, but if Trump, if Trump had
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done something like that and stolen the attention, I think everybody on the right would be hailing his,
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his political brilliance. Um, so I would say the same thing here. Okay, let's move on. Here's something
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that I talk about this already. I don't think I did. It's been in a queue for a while now.
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There is a, uh, slate.com has an advice column for people. Now, how far do you have to fall in life
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that you would be going to slate for advice? That's a different question, but they have an
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advice column. People write in with questions. There was a question somebody wrote to slate a few
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days ago that got some attention and, um, I'll read it to you. This is from someone who signs the
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letter radical. It says, I'm a cis woman in kind of a classic millennial sex pickle. I'm really repelled
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by heterosexuality politically and personally, but I'm also really into the expletive, but she means men.
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She's really into men. I've been thinking maybe I should look for by dudes slash by curious gay
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dudes, but I'm not sure how best to do that. Rich, that's the name of the guy who gives the advice.
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Rich, what do you think of a woman being on grinder or scruff? I do want to be respectful of gay men's
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spaces and not horn in where I'm not welcome, but I really would love to find a verse guy with queer
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politics. Verse. I have no idea what that means. A verse guy with queer politics who would be up for
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casually dating a woman. What do you think? If you were me, where would you look? Okay. Now
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getting the obvious out of the way, um, millennial sex pickle would be a great name for a band. Maybe
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just the sex pickles would be a wonderful name for, um, for some sort of indie punk band possibly.
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So there's that. Now what's the advice that she gets from Rich here on, uh, on slate? Well,
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his advice is kind of lengthy. I won't read the entire thing, but it does boil down to this.
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He actually recommends that she go to gay sex parties. And that's the advice that she's given.
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That's, that's what it's, it's not often. This may be the first time in the history of advice columns
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that the advice has been go to a gay sex party, but that's what he, that's, that's the advice he gives.
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Okay. The only thing I take from this, and I know this is obviously an extreme example. That's why it
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went viral. But I think what you see here is identity politics as a religion. This is someone for whom
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identity politics has become a religion, a cult. It has taken over her life to such an extent
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that she can't even have normal romantic relationships.
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And she's going to embrace a weird kind of abstinence of sexual abstinence, at least abstaining
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from straight men who she's attracted to, uh, because of her, because of her, her political
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feelings as she's, she's politically opposed to heterosexuality. What does that even mean?
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How can you be politically opposed to a sexual orientation? I have no idea.
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And at any rate, whatever it means, aren't we not supposed to be that? Isn't that been, hasn't,
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hasn't that been the whole point of the last 15, 20 years? You're not supposed to be opposed to
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sexual orientations. Well, yes, there's a lot of contradiction there, but the real point I take
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from this, as I said, is this is what identity politics does to a brain. This is identity politics
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taken to its, its logical yet extreme extent. And this is what it does to your brain. So stay off
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identity politics, kids. Speaking of brain damage, I wanted to get to emails in a second, but first I
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wanted to, uh, just tell you maybe as a disclaimer, if I've seen maybe a little bit off these past few
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days, there's a reason for that. I think it may be because I have suffered brain damage. Well,
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additional brain damage on top of the brain damage I'd already suffered probably as a, as a baby. Um,
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at least that's what most people assume when they hear me share my opinions on things. Anyway,
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you see over the weekend, um, I was downstairs in the living room and I heard, and the kids, the twins
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were upstairs and I heard from upstairs, this, this thumping sound. It's like kind of dull thud thump
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banging sort of sound. And, and then I, as I was listening closer, I heard every, after every thump,
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it was followed by cackles of laughter. That's never a good sign. Okay. Because that means my kids are
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banging something and finding it funny. And so that, that's a, that's a combination of noises as
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a parent of young children, especially that you simply never want to hear.
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As most parents know, the, the worst noise to hear when your kids are in the other room is no noise.
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The absence of noise is, is the most terrifying, but laughter and banging is, is a, is a pretty bad
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one. So I go upstairs. I find my son literally banging his head on the ground, on the hard wood
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floor ground and laughing hysterically. And I come to find out that they're playing a game that
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they've invented. And I don't know how many times they've played it in the past. Hopefully not too
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many, but, um, uh, they're playing a game they invented called hard or soft. That's the name of
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the game. And the way it works is like this. One of them flips a coin. And if it lands on tails,
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then the other has to bang his head on the soft carpet. If it lands on heads, you have to bang
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your head on the hard ground. That's hard or soft. Now, of course, this was a, this, the way that this,
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this was being played is that his twin sister, my daughter, she was the one doing all the coin
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flipping and he was doing all the head banging unsurprisingly. And so of course I did play the game
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with them for a few rounds. Um, I ended up getting hard like two or three times in a row.
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I think they, I'm pretty sure they rigged it. So they found a way to trick daddy into banging his
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head on the ground. They did do that. And, uh, I should stipulate that my wife did not find this
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game funny at all. I told them to go downstairs and show it to my wife and, um, show it to mommy.
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And, uh, she, she was not, not amused something about concussions or something or other. I don't know.
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Honestly, I was impressed by the ingenuity. It was sort of like a, it's like a child's version
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of Russian roulette. And I, and maybe I should be disturbed that they came up with that, but I was,
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it was, I was somewhat proud. All right. Let's, uh, these, these are the kinds of games that kids
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come up with. And I guess, you know, we have a whole thing where we don't let them watch a lot
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of TV. So we're one of those parents. We're very, we tend to be strict with the TV. Maybe this is the
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lesson we learned. You don't let them, you don't let them watch TV. They're going to just literally
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beat their heads against the floor. Maybe the TV is better. Let's go to emails. MattWalshow at
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gmail.com. MattWalshow at gmail.com. This is from Adam says, you say ketchup is for kids, but what
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if ketchup is put on meatloaf before baking it? Or do you prefer ketchup free meatloaf? Why in God's
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name would you put, I've heard of this custom, but why would you put ketchup on meatloaf? Now, you know,
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you're not putting ketchup on meatloaf because you're supposed to be topping the meatloaf with bacon.
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Obviously, do you make meatloaf without bacon? Is that a thing that people do? Why would you ever
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do that? What would be the point of that? So no, ketchup does not belong anywhere near meatloaf
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or anywhere near any other kind of food. Ketchup is a sugary, sweet, faux tomato mucus. It does not,
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if it enhances the food, it's only, that only tells you that the food is bad.
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If you're, if you know how to properly make a hamburger, properly seasoned french fries or anything
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else, you might put ketchup on it. If you know how to really make those dishes, it shouldn't need
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ketchup. This is from Aaron says, dear Matt, I think you are completely wrong about the girl who talked
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her boyfriend into killing himself. What she engaged in while morally atrocious was pure speech.
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She did not assist him in any way or other than by encouraging him. When it comes to legal situations,
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we have to put our own feelings aside and look at the constitutional issue. The first amendment says
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that Congress can make no law abridging freedom of speech. Go back and read it. There are no
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exceptions whatsoever mentioned. The 14th amendment says that the rights in the constitution apply to the
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states. It does not leave an exception for free speech. So this girl was exercising her first
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amendment rights. When she said what she said, I fully acknowledge that you personally disapprove of
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the way in which she exercised them, but that's irrelevant. She was exercising them. That's all that
00:25:35.140
matters. As for the slippery slope, because you don't seem to understand, here's what it is. If the
00:25:40.460
government is allowed to punish people for saying things, even deeply offensive things, and things that
00:25:44.800
result in people doing horrible actions, what's to say that some judge in the future doesn't come
00:25:49.200
along and decide that your opinions and your beliefs are too offensive to be allowed to be said?
00:25:53.140
What if you're the one being carted off to prison for incitement 20 years from now, or hate speech,
00:25:57.260
or harassment, or any other such nonsense? I can't wait to hear the, well, that's different.
00:26:02.120
Everyone is conveniently, everyone conveniently believes that their own beliefs and opinions
00:26:05.640
are deserving of protection. If and when they come for you using the same rationalizations to
00:26:09.780
destroy your constitutional rights as they did to her, maybe then you'll understand the slippery slope.
00:26:14.300
You don't have to agree with what the girl said. I certainly don't. And I agree with you that
00:26:17.800
she's an atrocious human being, but the issue being explored here is whether or not she had a
00:26:21.160
constitutional right to do what she did. And in that case, she certainly did. The punishment for
00:26:25.100
these sorts of things should be done at the social level, not at the legal level. The law should stick
00:26:29.320
to punishing actions, not speech, that really, really, really, really hurt our feelings. I know you're
00:26:34.060
going to say that speech is an action, but I am talking about the expression of an opinion.
00:26:38.340
And the sentence, you should kill yourself, is not an action, it's an opinion. And even if it's said
00:26:42.460
a thousand times to the same person, it remains just that in opinion. Aaron. Okay, Aaron.
00:26:50.540
So you're presenting a concept of free speech wherein literally anything that is said out loud,
00:26:58.040
anything is legal, is, as you say, pure speech, as long as it's not accompanied by physical action.
00:27:07.200
And even if it is, I would assume you would say it's the physical action that's the problem,
00:27:10.840
not the speech. I'm not strawmanning you, right? That's what you just said. That is what you said.
00:27:16.960
Okay. That's the vision of free speech that you are presenting here. Correct? But I noticed you
00:27:24.660
didn't actually engage with my strongest argument, which had to be a calculation on your part because
00:27:31.260
there's no way you missed it, which is that what Michelle Carter did was very similar, almost identical
00:27:39.080
in kind, to what Charles Manson did. The death toll for Manson was larger, but that's irrelevant for
00:27:46.980
our purposes. The fact is, he, using words, brainwashed a group of followers, of groupies of
00:27:56.020
his, and convinced them to go out and kill people. And they did. So you're saying that Charles Manson
00:28:02.160
never should have gone to jail. You're saying that in fact, a dangerous, charismatic psychopath
00:28:06.720
willing to, and capable of, and guilty of already brainwashing others to commit violent acts
00:28:13.340
should be allowed to remain on the street free, even after he sends his millions to go, his minions
00:28:19.320
to go kill people. That's what you're saying. You, you made no attempt to draw a distinction
00:28:26.660
between this, this version of free speech you're articulating and Charles Manson's. I can only
00:28:33.100
assume that you think he's covered. He has to be according to what you said. And then what about
00:28:39.280
calling it a bomb threat? If there's no bomb, it's just speech, right? What about slander? No physical
00:28:45.900
damage is done. If somebody goes out in public and calls you a child molester, for example,
00:28:51.100
well, they aren't, they aren't physically doing anything. It's all verbal. And maybe it's their
00:28:57.740
opinion that you are. Now you're not, but it's their opinion that you are. That's their opinion,
00:29:05.040
right? I mean, are you going to say that it's okay to express your opinions as long as the opinions are
00:29:12.200
true? Well, that's a slippery slope, isn't it? I assume that's not a stipulation you would put on this.
00:29:18.680
Well, you didn't, you said pure speech. If you're saying it, it's fine. That's what you said. So
00:29:22.900
if somebody goes out and accuses you of child molestation, rape, any man, the most horrible
00:29:28.360
things in the world, damages your reputation because of it, uh, you get fired from your job,
00:29:34.920
whatever. Well, they didn't do that. They're not the ones who fired you. They're not the whatever
00:29:38.660
happened. Even if, even if, uh, you know, you're, they, they whip up your neighbors against you.
00:29:43.900
And then one of your neighbors kills you on the belief that you're an abuser of children. Well,
00:29:48.680
they didn't do it. All they did was they said it. They expressed an opinion. According to you,
00:29:54.440
perfectly, uh, perfectly legal, or at least it should be. What about somebody who shares secrets
00:30:00.140
with a foreign enemy? What about someone in the government share secrets? Well, as long as those,
00:30:05.320
as long as they are sharing it by saying it, all verbal, pure speech, lending no material support
00:30:13.580
to them, it's all verbal, just expressing themselves. Should that be legal? According to
00:30:18.860
you? Yes. I could go on and on here. Okay. The point is that obviously you can't literally say
00:30:25.600
whatever you want in all situations. There are limits. And obviously our founders never intended
00:30:32.420
free speech to be an absolute unyielding dictum that legalizes literally anything and everything
00:30:38.760
that a person might verbally say or, or write. Okay. Just like the right to bear arms. It says
00:30:47.040
right to bear arms. Yes. But I assume, like we talked about a few days ago, I assume you would
00:30:50.940
agree that there are some limits on that. For example, I assume you would agree that your neighbor,
00:30:58.700
Jim should not be allowed to own a nuclear missile. Uh, uh, I, I, I, I would assume that that's a,
00:31:08.980
maybe I'm, I could be assuming wrong. Maybe you think that right to bear arms means that you can
00:31:13.520
even walk around with nuclear missiles, or maybe you couldn't really walk around with them and be a
00:31:16.480
little heavy, but you can have them in your garage. But that is not what our founders intended.
00:31:23.040
And you know what, even if they did intend it that way, which they didn't, but even if they did,
00:31:30.580
that would be crazy. And there's no reason why we should have to live by their craziness in
00:31:35.960
perpetuity for all eternity, just because it was their opinion. They're not gods. I mean,
00:31:41.300
they wrote what they wrote, but, uh, whatever their personal opinions were, that doesn't, doesn't
00:31:45.360
necessarily mean we're beholden to that forever and it could never be changed. But anyway, that's
00:31:51.140
irrelevant. I don't want to get hung up on that because, uh, it's, it's, it's clear that that's
00:31:55.460
not what they intended to do. They didn't intend to legalize slander or death threats or, um,
00:32:01.600
things of that nature. So we have in this country restricted many kinds of speech,
00:32:06.360
all the kinds I listed, and we have to be able to restrict them. Otherwise, imagine living in a
00:32:13.120
country where slander is legal, where verbal treason is legal, death threats are legal, on and on,
00:32:20.860
all the things I would imagine, imagine living in a country where you can do all of that without any
00:32:24.420
kind of penalty. Um, but that's not the kind of country we live in or have ever lived in ever.
00:32:33.900
And yet, and, and yes, I know you get, I know you might say, well, then it's not free speech.
00:32:40.280
And yeah, I agree with you. This is what maybe, I don't know if you watched the show a few days ago,
00:32:44.220
but we were talking about this and concepts like equality rights, free speech, free, you know,
00:32:50.460
that we attach the word free to think these are not, um, these are, these are imprecise words and
00:33:00.060
they're not literally true. And I think we need, we should probably be using different words.
00:33:06.480
Um, we're, we're grasping at a concept. We're trying to describe something, but I think we're
00:33:14.720
describing it in a way that is confusing. Because yes, I would, I would openly say that we talk about
00:33:21.540
free speech. We don't really mean it literally. Now there is a truth there. There is a certain kind
00:33:28.460
of speech that should be free, but not all speech is free. Um, and what, so what kind of speech? Well,
00:33:40.220
we happen to live in a country where you can go out and express pretty much any point of view you want
00:33:46.980
without reprisal by the government, pretty much any point of view, any sort of idea about culture or
00:33:55.140
politics, um, critical opinions of the government, so on and so forth. We still live in a country where
00:34:01.360
you can go and do that. Now you may be in for it when it comes to the big tech companies. You may
00:34:05.760
get kicked off of Twitter or Facebook or whatever, and I'm not a fan of that, but that's a different
00:34:09.640
thing. So your slippery slope hasn't really panned out. This thing with Michelle Carter, it's not going
00:34:17.380
to make the slope any slipperier. Hers was an extreme case of her not just saying kill yourself one time,
00:34:25.140
but of a, of a prolonged campaign to manipulate a mentally ill person to kill themselves.
00:34:31.760
This is so obviously illegal, so clearly a crime that the only way to think otherwise is to have
00:34:38.360
a laughably simplistic idea of free speech and one that completely ignores how free speech is
00:34:42.920
actually interpreted legally and has always been interpreted legally. I mean, what if I, I mean,
00:34:50.160
I could spend all day talking about the absurd, um, extremes that you would now justify with your,
00:34:57.820
with your vision of free speech, but what if I were to go up to somebody, um, let's say a mentally
00:35:06.160
insane meth addict who's currently high on meth, and I were to go up to him and I would start whispering
00:35:12.660
in his ears, in his ear, telling him that, you know, all these bad things that you've done to him.
00:35:19.240
You can say, yeah, that guy over there, you know, that guy, he insulted your mother. Yeah.
00:35:24.640
That guy, he, uh, oh yeah, he was, he was over there. He was talking a lot of, a lot of stuff about
00:35:29.140
you. Yeah. You should go, you should go over there and tell him and show that guy. Yeah. You should,
00:35:33.700
you should go over there and teach that guy a lesson. Yeah. He was saying a lot of horrible stuff.
00:35:37.100
You should, you should really, yeah, you should go. And then he goes over and beats you within an inch of your life.
00:35:43.420
You're saying I have no response. I am totally legally in the clear. I have purposefully incited
00:35:50.260
this mentally unstable drug addict to come and beat you half to death. And it worked. And he did
00:35:56.200
exactly what I wanted him to do. You're saying I'm good to go. I'm clear. I should face no reprise,
00:36:02.900
no legal penalties whatsoever. That's, that's, that's just crazy. I'm sorry. That's absolutely crazy.
00:36:09.880
Uh, but if that is really how you feel, then I think you, you know, you could write another email
00:36:14.740
and just it and acknowledge it because I, I, you know, acknowledge that you think Charles Manson
00:36:20.880
never should have gone to jail, that the same scenario I just described of sending a crack
00:36:25.680
addict or meth addict to come and beat you up should be perfectly legal. Slandering you should
00:36:30.660
be perfectly legal, calling it a bomb threat to your work, perfectly legal. If you're going to
00:36:37.260
say that any of those things should be illegal, then you are admitting that there are some
00:36:42.380
restrictions on speech. And if you're admitting that there are some restrictions on speech,
00:36:46.460
now we just have to talk about whether or not this thing with Michelle Carter should be one of
00:36:50.600
those restrictions. But you can't take this absolute principled, uh, stance anymore of saying,
00:36:55.620
well, no, it's, it's based on free speech. We get that, that is, that argument is gone. Now you
00:37:02.180
have to look at the specifics of this case and think, well, should that kind of thing should be
00:37:06.140
legal, be legal in this country? The kind of thing of purposefully, really actively trying to encourage
00:37:12.860
someone to kill themselves. Should that be a legal thing to do? And I'm saying, no, why should it?
00:37:17.700
Here's the only, by the way, here's the only, if this, uh, if we're on a slippery slope with this,
00:37:26.400
if this is going to lead to anything, because I don't think it leads to it being illegal for someone
00:37:32.020
to just say, kill yourself online. And there'd be no way to enforce that anyway. And, uh, and
00:37:37.020
there's obviously a clear distinction to be drawn between what Michelle Carter did and someone just
00:37:42.720
anonymously, uh, kind of by instinct as a, as a, as a reflex reflexively saying, kill yourself.
00:37:50.220
Like people do online. There's a difference between those two things that I think any sane
00:37:53.680
person can recognize, but think about the cases. And there, this, there have been plenty of cases of
00:38:01.340
this, of a disturbed person killing themselves and live streaming it on the internet. And in those
00:38:08.640
cases, what you often find is that people are watching and encouraging the person to do it saying,
00:38:15.520
yeah, I do it. Yeah. Kill yourself. Right. And in this case, it's, it, this is not a reflexive
00:38:20.320
thing saying to somebody on Twitter, because you don't like their opinion. This is someone who's
00:38:24.100
really wants to kill themselves and you are really trying to encourage them to do it.
00:38:30.500
Maybe we're leading to a place where the people who do that are prosecuted. And I say, fine,
00:38:36.300
great. I don't, I don't see that as any dystopian nightmare. I don't see that as oppression or
00:38:43.320
persecution. Oh my gosh. I can't, you mean, I, I can't actively encourage a mentally unstable
00:38:47.860
person to kill themselves. I'm, I'm oppressed. I'm persecuted. Come on. Uh, let's see.
00:38:57.760
This is from Matthew says, dear Mr. Walsh. My name is Matthew. I've been a supporter of the daily wire
00:39:01.780
for some time. I love that you discuss topics outside the mainstream and political realm. I wanted to
00:39:05.640
tell you that I've been inspired by the new book you've written about the church of Christ and more
00:39:08.940
importantly, the body of Christ and how we can't wash the gospel for the good of the world. I'll
00:39:13.860
be looking forward to reading it soon. I want to leave you with this thought of mine about the
00:39:17.220
state of the union last night. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. What's upsetting. What's
00:39:21.940
upsetting, um, is it's, it isn't going to be about the best speech of president Trump's term so far,
00:39:27.220
but about the nonsense speaker Pelosi did. Thanks. Uh, yeah, well, I agree with you. Your last
00:39:32.540
statement there. I absolutely agree. And that's what I was saying at the beginning of the show.
00:39:36.320
And, uh, I appreciate your thoughts about the book, which I will take this opportunity to,
00:39:40.420
uh, remind everyone that my new book, which comes out February 25th, went on pre-sale yesterday.
00:39:45.320
It's called church of cowards go on Amazon and, uh, and order it on pre-sale right now.
00:39:51.720
And finally, this is from Austin says, Hey Matt, I saw you talking about sentencing differences
00:39:57.020
between men and women. And I wanted to get your opinion on other sentencing issues
00:40:00.240
on another sentencing issue. I saw the study from the university of Michigan
00:40:03.900
that, uh, you cited, and she also had a paper on sentencing differences between whites and blacks.
00:40:10.100
It showed that blacks receive 10% longer sentences than whites while holding all variables like the
00:40:15.360
crime committed and criminal history constant. I found a similar study from the U S sentencing
00:40:19.580
commission that showed blacks received 19% longer sentences than whites with the same variables held
00:40:25.460
constant. I'm a conservative and don't believe in the mystical racism hanging over everything in our
00:40:30.060
lives, but I'm looking at the data from what seem to be credible sources. And it appears there could
00:40:34.580
be some racial bias and sentencing. I hope conservatives can look at issues with an objective
00:40:38.520
eye and not be so loyal to our ideology. Like the left so often is, what are your thoughts on this
00:40:42.940
subject? Well, I haven't seen Austin, the studies that you mentioned, I'll look at them, but if it holds
00:40:49.440
that black people, when controlling for all variables received sentences up to 20% longer than white
00:40:55.300
people for the same crimes, then I think it'd be impossible to deny a racial bias. I did after all,
00:41:03.900
just allege a gender bias based on the same sort of statistic. So if that's the case, then I'm not
00:41:11.240
all of a sudden going to deny it here. There'd be no reason to look. It's never been my position that
00:41:16.340
racism doesn't exist. And I don't consider it a conservative position to deny all cases of racism.
00:41:22.120
At least that better not be a conservative position. It'd be a very stupid, foolhardy
00:41:26.420
position to take. It's certainly not my position. I think racism doesn't exist, of course. Obviously,
00:41:34.420
it does. And the whole problem with people on the left who look for racism everywhere and in everything
00:41:44.180
and manage to find it everywhere and in everything, and the ones who say things like all white people
00:41:51.640
are inherently racist, the problem, one of the problems is that buried under this avalanche of
00:41:58.700
absurd hyperbole and generalization are actual cases of racism that get lost in the shuffle,
00:42:05.220
and the word racism itself loses all meaning because of its chronic overuse. If you take any
00:42:13.960
word and apply it to too many things and use it way too much and expand it into oblivion,
00:42:20.700
it's going to lose its meaning. And that's what's happened with racism, which is very unfortunate
00:42:25.260
because racism is a real thing. It's an important thing for us to talk about. But now it's hard for us
00:42:31.340
to talk about it. Because when you say the word racism, me as the listener, I have no idea if
00:42:38.860
you're talking about real racism or just a white person doing or saying something completely innocuous,
00:42:50.120
which according to the racial theories of the left, literally anything a white person does is,
00:42:57.300
in a sense, a racist act. Because they are inherently racist as part of their nature,
00:43:03.680
embedded in everything they do, or nearly everything. It's the same thing with false
00:43:09.480
rape claims. The position has never been, at least I've never heard anyone express the position,
00:43:14.700
that rape never happens or doesn't exist. That would obviously be insane. It does.
00:43:19.440
And clearly when it happens, it is a terrible, terrible evil. But when you have all these false
00:43:37.760
rape claims, and when the word rape is used to describe things that are not rape, when, for example,
00:43:44.500
we're calling an awkward and regrettable yet consensual sexual encounter rape, the problem
00:43:51.640
there is that, once again, real cases of rape are minimized or forgotten, and the word rape begins to
00:43:57.720
lose its meaning. And when someone says rape, now, without any context, I don't know if you're talking
00:44:04.720
about someone being forcibly, you know, being violently forced into a sexual act, which is what most of us
00:44:13.580
would consider rape to be? Or are you talking about, you know, a guy and a girl getting together
00:44:19.640
and having sex consensually, and, but it was kind of awkward, and the girl regretted it the next day?
00:44:26.300
Just based on the word rape, I don't know which way, which, which, what you're talking about.
00:44:31.100
And that's a big problem, because I should know. And, you know, up to about 10, 15 years ago,
00:44:38.180
we knew, if you said the word rape, we all immediately knew what you meant.
00:44:41.320
Same for racism. So, but yeah, I'll take a look at those studies, and we will leave it there.
00:44:47.920
Thanks for watching, everybody, and listening. Godspeed.
00:44:50.220
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
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00:45:32.040
Hey, everyone. It's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. Well, that was the state
00:45:36.460
of the kaboom as Trump dropped a word bomb on the teensy, tiny little Democrats who were running
00:45:42.680
for their lives. We'll have that plus the mailbag so all your problems will be solved on The Andrew