Ep. 422 - The Barbaric Extremism Of The Democratic Party
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Summary
Pete Buttigiegiegieg may or may not have won the primary, and why you should be worried about the future. And why you need to get a life insurance policy to protect yourself and the people you care most about.
Transcript
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Welcome to the show, friends, neighbors, kinsmen. I hope you've had a satisfying Friday so far. We
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had a little scare this morning, tornado warning in our neck of the woods, another consequence of
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climate change, no doubt. So I went into the basement and I was with my wife and kids.
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And if you think that I had to comfort my terrified children about the tornado,
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you don't know my children. They were absolutely ecstatic about the entire thing.
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They apparently seemed to think that the tornado would suck us up and bring us to Oz to meet the
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munchkins. And I didn't have the heart to tell them that if it hits our house, we ain't going to Oz,
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to put it mildly. But I was brought back in my mind to the time when I was about their age and we had
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flooding on our street where we lived. And I couldn't understand why my parents were so distressed
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about it because I kept thinking, well, a flood, you know, it's going to, the flood will come into
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our house. It'll turn our whole house into a pool. There'll be like a water slide down the steps.
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It's going to be so exciting. And I just couldn't, I didn't understand their lack of enthusiasm.
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But now, now I think I, now I think I get it. All right. Well, Pete Buttigieg
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may or may not have won Iowa. The AP announced yesterday that they can't announce a winner because
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they don't know. The whole process is so messed up. It's too close to call and screw it.
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Basically, to paraphrase, that was the, what they said. Either way, the significance of Iowa is less
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about the delegates and more about the momentum and the media coverage heading into the rest of
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the primaries, New Hampshire and so on. So whether Buttigieg won or not, he's been robbed of that
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benefit, which I think is great. It could not have happened to a more deserving person. Buttigieg is,
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I think, perhaps the most formidable politician left in the field, simply because he's not a communist
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or he's not an out and out communist. He's not known as a communist. And he's also not 987 years old.
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And so that those two factors alone, I think, make him the most formidable. But that's not a compliment,
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really. Certainly not a compliment of his character. Because character wise, he may well be the worst of the
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bunch. And I want to show you another example of that. Buttigieg yesterday was given the opportunity
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to come out at least against infanticide. That is, the killing of fully developed infants outside of
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the womb. He was given the opportunity to at least say he's against that. And he declined.
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So you really need to hear this audio. And I'm going to play it for you in just a moment. But first,
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a word from policy genius. You know, the future is unknowable. That's the thing about the future.
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You never know what's going to happen. And that's why the only thing we can do, you know,
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you can't be paranoid, as maybe I can sometimes tend to be. There's no need for that. Just be prepared.
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Be prepared for whatever might happen. And make sure you're protecting yourself and the people that
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you love the most. And the year 2020 shows up, you know, a lot in science fiction. A lot of people
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predicted that by now we'd be teleporting to work or living on Mars and, you know, at least having a
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hovercraft. I was hoping at least for hovercraft. I figured at least by now we'd have that. But we
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don't even have that. A lot of those predictions were wrong. The truth is, we're always going to get
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the future wrong, which is why we need to get life insurance right now. And that's where policy genius
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this is all about getting ready for the future, being ready for the future, whatever might happen,
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and protecting yourself, protecting your family. And so not just life insurance,
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but home insurance, auto insurance, all that stuff. And that's why you need policy genius.
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Okay. So here's Meghan McCain with Pete Buttigieg. And Meghan here, first of all,
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subjects Buttigieg to exactly the line of questioning that every Democrat should be subjected to.
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So I want you to watch this. Pay attention to Buttigieg's answers or non-answers, but also
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to Meghan showing exactly the sort of questions that these people ought to be asked and so rarely are.
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If this is a late term situation, then by definition, it's one where a woman was expecting to carry the
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pregnancy to term. Then she gets the most perhaps devastating news of her life. We're talking about
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families that may have picked out a name, maybe assembling a crib, and they learn something
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excruciating and are faced with this terrible choice. And I don't know what to tell them morally
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about what they should do. I just know that I trust her and her decision medically or morally
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isn't going to be any better because the government is commanding her to do it in a certain way.
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I respect it. I respect what you're saying because you didn't back down from it. This is going to hurt
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you in the middle of the country with the Republicans you're trying to win over. People like me, this is
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a hard line. And quite frankly, that question, that answer is just pretty, it's just as radical as I
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thought it was. Sorry. Now it was, it was no doubt made more difficult by the clapping seals in the
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audience, but the only additional thing I would have liked to hear Meghan McCain see her do, it really
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is bared down on a firm hypothetical. So a baby, eight months gestation, physically healthy, all of its
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limbs and everything intact, no health problems. Should it be legal to kill that person or not?
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That's, that's, I would love to see the question phrased exactly like that to these people.
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And so the question was not quite as pointed as that, but it doesn't matter because we know his
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answer based on what he said there. He did give an answer to that question effectively. He's not
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willing to entertain any limits on abortion whatsoever of any kind. He was given the chance to draw
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some kind of line, any line, draw a line, at least disqualifying partial birth abortion and
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infanticide. And he wouldn't do that. Partial birth abortion, which now with infanticide said, oh,
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well, no one, that, that, that, no one does that. That's not happening. Okay. Well, if nobody does it
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and it's not happening, it should be really easy for you to say it shouldn't happen. It should be very,
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if it's an, if it's a non-existent thing, should be very easy to say I'm against it, right? Partial
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birth abortion, which by the way, involves the killing of fully developed infant humans as they
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are emerging from the birth canal. So this is infanticide. These are infants that are partially
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out of the birth canal already. They are in the process of being born and they're killed with an
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incision in the back of the skull. And then a tube is inserted into that incision and their brains are
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sucked out of their heads while they're still alive. That's, that's how it works. And, and that
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quote procedure has been done in this country thousands of times, actually. Um, that's what
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she was asking about. And Buttigieg wouldn't even come out against that. Now, by the way, what, as we
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talked about yesterday, the, this dodge of, well, no woman would choose this unless there's a serious
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medical problem, that dodge is nonsense. It's not true. It's a lie. It's, it, it, it, you can look up
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the figures yourself, look up the figures in pro-abortion sources, if you want. Um, you know, go to the
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Guttmacher Institute or look at pro-abortion sources and, and, and see what, how they describe it.
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Um, even there you'll find that with late term abortions and late in very late term abortions
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as well, they can happen for reasons that have nothing at all to do with dire medical conditions.
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That's a fact. And which is why, uh, what you'll find when, when, when the pro-abortion side talks
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about abortions, uh, for health reasons or abortions for the health of the mother, when they talk about
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that for the health of the mother, and then you really get into defining what they mean by that.
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What do you mean by health? Well, what they mean is physical health. Yes. Which again, uh, there has
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never been and could never be an abortion conducted in order to protect the physical health of the
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mother. So that doesn't, that's, that's a, that's a non-existent category, but physical health, but
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they also mean emotional health, um, psychological health, spiritual health, financial health. All of
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that is, is put into it. And a great many of these late term abortions, 5,000 every single year
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are done for, not for physical health reasons, but financial health, emotional health, that sort
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of thing. Okay. But putting that aside, whatever the reason for this quote procedure, it is obviously
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always, and in every case immoral to suck the brains out of an infant's head. That's not something I
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should have to say, but I do. There is no scenario that could ever make that anything less than one of
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the most barbaric things you could ever do. I mean, if you want to talk about the most barbaric and
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wicked things a single human can do to another single human, I think this is at the very, very
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close to the top of that list. If not at the very top, we are now in the realm morally of, of things
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like child rape and cannibalism. Okay. We we've now, we've now made it up there, or I should say down
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there to that level, the worst things imaginable. You have to put partial birth abortion into that
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category. And even this Buddha judge won't condemn. He's a coward, a liar, a fraud, a sad, pathetic
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little man. That's what he is. Uh, I, I know he likes to present himself like some sort of war hero,
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but he is a coward. If you won't come out and at least say, no, we should not be stabbing infants
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in the skull and de-braining them while they're still alive. If you cannot even say that, if you're
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not willing to even say that, then you are the lowest, most contemptible sort of person.
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And, uh, that's Buddha, not just him. That's all the rest of them too in the democratic field,
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because you would get the same answer from all the rest of them. My point here though, is
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if, if he has the reputation of being one of the more reasonable ones or one of the more moderate ones,
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or one of the, at least he's got good character or something. No, no. Okay. Let's play some more
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audio for you. This is AOC at some sort of hearing yesterday, being very literal as she tends to be.
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Ms. Hutchinson, I also want to thank you about bringing up the poverty draft and this idea of
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a bootstrap. You know, this idea and this metaphor of a bootstrap started off as a joke
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because it's a physical impossibility to lift yourself up by a bootstrap, by your shoelaces.
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It's physically impossible. The whole thing is a joke. Shoot for the stars. That's scientifically
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impossible. We don't have the technology. The nearest star is four light years away. That's 24
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trillion miles. We'd never make it there in time. This is, this whole thing is a joke,
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which actually I have to admit when I see those inspirational posters, uh, like every,
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every guidance counselor's office at every school in America has one that says shoot for the moon.
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Even if you miss, you'll be among the stars. That one does kind of annoy me because I understand that
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it's a metaphor, but really if you shoot for the moon and miss, you're just going to be floating in
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the vacuum of space. Uh, you're not going to be anywhere near the closest star. The closest star would
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be the sun, which is millions and millions of miles away. And if we're talking about interstellar
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travel, then you're trillions and trillions of miles away from the nearest star. So if you shoot
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for the moon, you, you damn well better hit it. Otherwise you're going to die in the black abyss of
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space. But anyway, um, that is, that is being overly literal, which is what AOC seems to be doing
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here. It doesn't understand the concept of metaphors. And that's the, that's what that college
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education, I suppose, uh, gets you. The greater point though, is the sort of anti inspirational
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message from AOC and her ilk. She's saying, uh, not just that pulling yourself up by the bootstraps
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is physically impossible, which she's right about, but that's not really the point. She's also saying
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that a person trying to get ahead in life on their own without the government may as well be defying the
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laws of physics because that's how impossible it is. But think about who this is coming from.
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This is coming from a woman who is today, one of the most influential and powerful members of
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Congress, God help us. And yet just a few years ago was a bartender. She went from bartender to
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Congresswoman. Okay. She, she actually is an example of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps
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and credit to her for that. I respect that aspect of her story. Now, uh, she, she's college educated.
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She's had a lot of privileges in life. It seems like, but, um, even so to go from being a bartender
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to being in Congress, that's quite an achievement. And I give her credit for that, but it's, it's hard
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for me to give her credit for that because then she gets there to this successful point and she turns
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around and tells other people they can't do it. And that's what I hate about these, these, these
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socialists, the ones on the national stage because they're all successful. They've made something of
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themselves to their credit. They've used the free market system. They've used our freedoms to their
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advantage. Fine. Good for them. And yet now they turn around and say to everybody else, you can't do it.
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It's impossible. Rather than using themselves as an example and saying, uh, no, you can do it.
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Doesn't mean that you're not going to need help. Yes. Every successful person has had some kind of
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help, but we still live in a country where you are uniquely able, where someone is, where there is
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the, the unique ability to go from the very bottom to the very top.
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It's not true for everybody. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago
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that we don't want to overplay that hand and act like everybody who's at the bottom could easily go
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up to the top. It's not easy. Number one. And, and, and there can be circumstances that make it
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basically impossible. So that is, so that's true. But to take this position, which AOC has taken
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and the other socialists, that climbing the ladder is impossible in principle. That's some sort of
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myth, even while they themselves have done it is, uh, is pretty shameful. Okay. Speaking of college
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educations, David Hogg, you remember him is in Harvard now, and it's been really quite fascinating
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to watch this kid get brainwashed in real time. Disturbing, also fascinating. Now he, he went into
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college, a liberal, clearly, but we can see the university system taking his mind, his susceptible
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mind and molding it and shaping it and deforming it and misshaping it. We could see this happening.
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So for example, he tweeted a couple of days ago, uh, this tweet that went kind of viral. It says,
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a majority of the people that live in the United States are the descendants of illegal colonizers
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that committed a mass genocide. Now this is of course exactly the kind of thing that kids learn in
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college today. And I saw someone on Twitter say that this is exactly what parents worry that when
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their kids come home from college, they're going to come home saying stuff like this. This is, this is
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basically every parent's nightmare that their kids are going to go to college and come back saying
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crap like this. And, uh, and that's what's happened with, with him. So, but it is what kids learn in
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college. It's exactly what you expect a Harvard student to start saying in his first year. And so
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Hogg has fulfilled that stereotype rather beautifully. The problem though, of course, is that it's nonsense.
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First of all, European settlers may have been colonizers. They may have been unwelcome colonizers.
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They may have been disliked colonizers. Uh, you could say that their colonization was unfortunate
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if you want, you could describe it any of those ways. That's if that's your opinion,
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but what you can't say is that it was illegal. That would be an incorrect statement. That's not
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just an opinion. That's incorrect. They weren't, the word illegal means something. They weren't
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illegal because the United States at the time was not a country. So this goes for all the people that
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say our ancestors were, were illegal immigrants. Everybody is, is, is any, any, uh, white American is
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the, is the descendant of illegal immigrants. That's not true. That's, that's simply not true.
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America at the time, North America was a land mass, very sparsely populated by a collection of
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disconnected tribes, very sparsely populated. You think right now in the United States, we've got
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330 million people, not counting the illegals, the actual illegals. So we've got 330 million,
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give or take, uh, in the United States back before this, this land was settled by the Europeans.
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There were across the entire North American continent. There were a few million
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spread out all across those millions of square miles. Okay. Um, so that's what it was to call them
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illegal makes no sense. It's inaccurate in illegal implies that there were laws being broken and laws
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being broken require some sort of central government of some kind making those laws, which there wasn't.
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Now, if, if you're coming to the United States now, uh, without going through our standard immigration
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process, you're coming in illegally because you're breaking our laws that are in place. If you do that
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in Mexico, you're going into Mexico illegally because that they, they have laws in place. China,
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same thing. All of these established countries, if you go into those countries and settle there
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without going through the established process, you're breaking their laws. Here's my question.
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The colonizers that came here, the European settlers, what law were they breaking? That's all
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you have to answer. If you say what they were, they were illegal immigrants. Okay. What law were they
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breaking? Show me the law, pull out whatever law book was in, was in, and, and, and, and show,
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show me the chapter and verse. I could do that with our immigration laws today.
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This, um, the entire North American landmass was not owned collectively by these tribes. And in fact,
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the, the idea that as the world population grows and technology develops that what the entire North
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American continent, we would just leave alone, nobody would come here, leave it to the two or
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three million people living there. No one else gets to come. Doesn't make any sense. And the second
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point of course, is that, uh, when you say a majority of the people of the United States are descendants
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of illegal colonizers, committed mass genocide, and so on, uh, leaving aside the fact that the word
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illegal doesn't make any sense here, the general sentiment that he's trying to express would apply
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to pretty much everybody on earth, pretty much everybody in the entire world.
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And, and, and this is something that I'm always trying to explain,
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especially to those on the left who don't seem to understand it,
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that the Europeans were not unique in colonizing. They were not unique in building empires.
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They were not unique in slavery, not by a long shot. Um, none of that was unique. Empires across
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the world function that way. And anywhere in the world where you go, where there are lines drawn,
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this country, that country, there's a line, that line has been fought over and not, we're not talking
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pillow fights. So all of the settled land pretty much across the entire world.
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The people living there now, if you were to trace their lineage back, you're going to find that they
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probably quote, stole it from somebody. At some point, you're the descendant of someone who moved
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into an area and killed people and took over because that's the way the world was settled everywhere,
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not just here. Um, now the, the responses you often hear to that. Number one, the first response is
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that might be true, but it's not might be, it is true. That might be true, but that doesn't,
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that's no excuse for the Europeans. Yeah, it's not an excuse, but that does mean that if we're having
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conversations about ancestral sins, if we're having conversations about the terrible things that
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people did hundreds of years ago, the conversation shouldn't solely and only be, be focused on white
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Europeans. That's what it means. Yeah, we can have that conversation. We could say wherever they did
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commit genocide, that was a terrible thing. Wherever they did steal land, it was bad. They shouldn't have
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done that. Fine. I agreed. Once we've established that, and I think we have established it. Can we talk
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about the rest of the world? It's like if we're discussing slavery, uh, slavery in North America
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was a horrible, disgraceful evil, of course. And I think we've, I think, I think we've pretty well
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established that. I think everyone agrees. I I've never met anybody who would disagree with that.
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And if I did meet them, I would assume that they're psychotic.
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But if we're, if we're going to have slavery, can we at some point discuss the fact that it existed
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everywhere else on the globe? I mean, if we're going to talk about the history of slavery, why would it,
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why would that discussion only be focused on this part of the world where we live now
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There is a larger picture here, a larger context that we could look at and discuss.
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I think that's a reasonable thing for someone to point out.
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So that's the first dodge. The second dodge is to say,
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yes, of course, there was empire building across the world. Of course, there was slavery across the
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world, but the Europeans were unique in their, in the way that they industrialized it, especially
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slavery, and in the way that they traveled across the entire world to far-reaching corners of the
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world and colonized even there. Other, other, uh, empires didn't do that. That's sort of basically
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true. But what do you think, what, what stopped say Genghis Khan from conquering more land than he
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did? Was it ethical qualms? Did he say, I don't want to go any further than this? This, this is
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enough guys. I don't want to go. And now, no, it's, it was logistical. Uh, it was a matter of logistics.
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It's just, they weren't, he wasn't capable of going further than he did. It wasn't ethical qualms.
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So if other empires in history didn't, didn't, um, colonize to the extent that the Europeans did,
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it's not because they, it's not because they, they, they, they figured, Hey, let's, let's, let's
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calm down, fellas. This, this is enough. It wasn't ethics that stopped them. It's just, it was,
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it was the force of history that stopped them. It was a lack of ability that stopped. It was a lack of
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technology that stopped them. The Aztecs, uh, enslaving all of their neighboring tribes,
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harvesting their neighboring tribes for, for human sacrifices, coming in and taking women and
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children, ripping their hearts out, feasting on their limbs, rolling their delimbed bodies down the
00:25:32.280
temple, down the steps of the temple in these, in these barbaric satanic ceremonies. Okay. Yes,
00:25:41.580
they did that, but the Aztecs weren't getting in ships and going up and, and, and trying to invade
00:25:48.220
Europe or Africa. Why not? Is it, is it, is it, is it because they could have, but they decided not
00:25:55.240
to because they figured that'd be taking it too far? No, it's just because they didn't have the
00:25:59.000
interest. They didn't have the ability. They didn't have the technology. They didn't have the,
00:26:03.800
the drive to do that. They didn't have the, really the interest in going and discovering other
00:26:09.520
far-reaching lands. That's what stopped them. The main focus for the Aztecs was, uh, they felt
00:26:19.700
they had to continue to offer blood sacrifices to their gods. And that was the entire focus of their,
00:26:27.320
of their civilization. You had, you had the, right in the middle of the Aztec capital, you had the,
00:26:31.540
the temple there, and this was literally the focus. And so from their perspective, you know,
00:26:37.340
what, why would they get in ships and go somewhere else? It's just, this is a matter of efficiency.
00:26:41.640
We're going to, we just need to keep, we need to keep the gods satiated with more blood, more blood,
00:26:46.640
more blood, more blood to, to, to spend time and, and treasure, um, going off, uh, on across an unknown
00:26:55.540
sea to an unknown destination. There's no reason to do that. That would actually have interfered with
00:27:02.180
their ability to continue killing and ripping out hearts and, and, and feeding those sacrifices to
00:27:06.660
their, to their imaginary gods. Um, so that's what stopped them. And you find similar situations in
00:27:14.400
other empires across the world. So, uh, I, I feel like if we're going to have these conversations
00:27:21.200
about the history of slavery and the history of empire building,
00:27:25.220
at some point, maybe perhaps, especially in university systems, maybe we extend our,
00:27:34.160
we, we widen the lens a little bit and realize that there's a whole, that there, that the world
00:27:39.540
does not begin and end with the United States. There's a whole great, greater picture out there
00:27:44.860
that we could look at. All right, let's go to emails, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow
00:27:51.760
at gmail.com. This is from Aaron says, huge fan of the show. Love the way you, you think,
00:27:58.500
even if we don't always agree, logic is important and it seems less and less people use it. And it's
00:28:03.580
what makes your podcast so compelling. That being said, I'm interested in your thoughts on the
00:28:08.240
simulation argument. It's based only, it's based on only three paths humanity can take. One,
00:28:14.360
humanity is never able to create a simulation. Two, humanity has the ability to create the simulation,
00:28:19.100
but for some reason decides against it. Three, humanity creates a simulation. And if three is
00:28:23.400
true, the probability is that we are in a simulation. Curious on your thoughts. If you
00:28:28.320
don't know a lot about the argument, you can listen to Joe Rogan and Nick Bostrom discuss it
00:28:31.860
on episode 1350. But I warn you, part of this podcast is painful because Rogan doesn't grasp it.
00:28:38.720
Thanks for your podcast. Well, I'm not sure that I grasp it either. So when you say simulation,
00:28:44.020
you mean that we're all living in the matrix essentially, or that we're in a Sims game and
00:28:48.420
we're the Sims? I'm familiar with that hypothetical or thought experiment. I'm not familiar with the
00:28:54.540
formal argument that you've laid out there. So I'd have to look into it, I guess. Here are my general
00:28:59.160
thoughts. First of all, it's so important to distinguish, and this is a principle that I think
00:29:05.880
applies far beyond this particular discussion. It is so important to distinguish between possibility
00:29:11.940
and probability. And people rarely do this in these kinds of discussions. Is it possible
00:29:20.340
that we're living in a virtual world and we are all virtual girls, to paraphrase Madonna? Yes,
00:29:26.660
it's possible. I must say it's possible because it's not logically impossible. And anything that
00:29:32.460
isn't logically impossible is therefore logically possible. It's possible that Superman exists.
00:29:36.660
It's possible that there are large pink dragons living on the moon. It's possible that
00:29:41.900
a real Nigerian prince will actually email me tomorrow and really offer me $20 million.
00:29:47.620
These things are possible. But is there any compelling reason to think that they're actually
00:29:53.080
true? Well, no. It's definitely possible that the pink dragons live on the moon. Nobody can say
00:30:01.780
that's impossible. Is there any reason to think they do? No. There's no evidence for it.
00:30:08.060
So this is just a possibility that I've conjured in my imagination. And so it may be possible,
00:30:15.920
but it's not remotely probable or plausible. Now, the simulation idea, yes, it's possible.
00:30:21.840
No, it's not remotely probable. And there's no evidence for it. There's no indications pointing
00:30:26.700
to it. There's no particular reason to believe that it's actually true. And I certainly don't buy the
00:30:31.740
premise that human technology is moving inexorably towards this eventuality of building a simulation.
00:30:40.020
I don't see why it has to go in that direction or have that result. And even if it is, and there is
00:30:45.860
a simulation built, or there will be, I don't see how the simulated beings would be conscious.
00:30:52.820
How could you simulate a person, simulate them, which means that there's no actual person. So how
00:30:59.140
could you simulate a person? And then that simulated non-entity begins to experience its own existence
00:31:05.140
in some way. I mean, you could sooner convince me that we're all very lifelike robots, but with a
00:31:14.400
simulation, it means that we're not flesh and blood at all, right? So then how would we be conscious?
00:31:17.960
And if that's possible, then how do we know that video game characters today aren't conscious?
00:31:24.560
Maybe Mario's been conscious this whole time. Who knows? But that makes no sense, really,
00:31:29.780
because simulated beings are not organic. They don't have brains. They don't have bodies. They
00:31:34.220
don't have any of the things that seem to be necessary conditions for consciousness, at least in
00:31:38.060
this world. So that's why I wouldn't be persuaded. Although, I mean, I love the idea, sort of, that maybe
00:31:44.120
I'm Neo. So I kind of am entertained by that, but I can't say that I'm convinced. This is from Sean
00:31:50.640
says, Hi, Matt. Somebody yesterday accused you of trying to appease people and appeal to the masses,
00:31:55.120
but I think that's the least accurate possible way to describe you. It seems like you sometimes go out
00:32:01.180
of your way to piss off your own fans. You're basically the least pandering media person I've
00:32:05.760
ever seen. It's almost like you don't want to be liked. I've noticed that when you get on a subject
00:32:12.160
that's turning your listeners against you, you'll then stay on it for days just to prove a point.
00:32:17.620
It's weird, but I respect it. Keep doing you. I appreciate that, Sean, I think, if that was a
00:32:24.240
compliment. Though, despite common perception, I actually don't try. I don't try to piss people off
00:32:29.700
for the sake of it, and I don't really enjoy being disliked. I don't think anybody does. I like being liked.
00:32:35.080
Who doesn't? But I can't help but lapse back into being myself, I guess, and that's where I run into
00:32:42.000
trouble. Let's see. Okay, here's one I wanted to read. This is from Anonymous. It says, Hi, Matt.
00:32:52.720
Subject line, by the way, is, can lying ever be ethical? I know that lying is wrong and sinful,
00:32:58.200
especially when you do it to the ones you love, but is it ever ethical? I was married to a physically
00:33:02.780
and emotionally abusive man for, I'm not going to say the number of years to protect anonymity here.
00:33:08.360
One day, a few years ago, after he slapped me across the face, I decided I had had enough. I
00:33:14.420
left him that same day and never spoke with him again, except in email format over the divorce
00:33:18.940
dealings. I didn't find out until later that I was pregnant with his child. I knew that I had to
00:33:24.040
protect my baby at all costs. I knew all too well that he was, what he was capable of, and the bruises
00:33:29.180
on my body were still purple. The mere thought of him laying a hand on my baby enraged me. I vowed
00:33:34.200
never to tell him so not to risk my child's safety and well-being. I immediately moved back to my
00:33:38.640
home state to be close to my family. I was very careful about social media because I didn't want
00:33:42.260
anything getting back to him. Outside of my immediate family, mom, dad, and sisters, I told everyone that
00:33:48.540
I was artificially inseminated. My family agreed that it would be best to tell people that story so that
00:33:53.040
the chances of him finding out could be as minimal as possible. Nine months later, I had my beautiful
00:33:57.760
baby girl. She's the light of my life and the greatest blessing God has ever given me. My sweet
00:34:02.800
little girl is six now and has never known the truth about her conception. When she was three
00:34:08.640
years old, my now husband entered into our lives, and he's been her father ever since. My husband is
00:34:15.720
a loving, caring father and husband, and I am so grateful that my daughter gets to grow up in a
00:34:20.080
normal family. I think I did the right thing in not telling my ex about my daughter, but in doing so,
00:34:24.700
I've lied to everybody. My husband thinks the same thing that everyone else thinks, that I was
00:34:28.160
artificially inseminated. I had to tell him that story when I first met him because I didn't know
00:34:31.840
yet if I could trust him. I also didn't feel like I could tell my daughter the truth. What if she tries
00:34:36.380
to contact him when she's a teen? When I fabricated this whole story, I initially decided to only tell
00:34:40.920
my daughter the truth when she's 18. That way, he won't be able to take her away from me. I know in my
00:34:45.700
heart that I'm doing this to protect my child, but I feel really guilty still, and I find the thought
00:34:50.940
of lying to my daughter almost unbearable. Luckily, she hasn't asked me yet who her real father is,
00:34:56.060
but I know she will someday. Is it wrong to lie even when you're protecting someone? As a mother,
00:35:01.120
I would do anything to protect my baby. Lie, cheat, steal if necessary. So why do I feel so damned guilty?
00:35:08.940
Well, that's quite a situation, as I'm sure you're aware. Now, to answer the question in the subject
00:35:21.960
line, can lying ever be ethical? I would say, yes, it can be. Now, when I read that subject line,
00:35:29.600
I thought that this was going to go in some hypothetical academic sort of direction with
00:35:34.080
the question, and maybe you'd have one of those. The classic hypothetical is, would it be ethical
00:35:40.080
to lie to the Nazis if you're in Nazi Germany and they're knocking on your door and you're hiding
00:35:45.500
Jews in the attic? Would it be ethical to lie to them and tell them that, no, you're not? I would say,
00:35:51.260
of course, it's ethical. The only other option in that case would be to tell the truth, to save your
00:35:56.380
own skin out of cowardice, thus sending those people to their horrifying, painful deaths.
00:36:04.500
Clearly, to me, that's not the ethical choice. But just because lying can be ethical doesn't mean
00:36:10.200
that every example of lying, ostensibly to protect somebody, actually is ethical. And I have to say
00:36:15.440
that, to me, from my limited perspective, as somebody who doesn't know anything about you other
00:36:20.200
than what I just read, I would say that your case would definitely seem not to be an example of
00:36:26.620
ethical lying. I would say that this is very unethical lying. Now, leaving someone who's a
00:36:33.480
danger to you, that, of course, makes sense. He has no right to treat you the way that he did.
00:36:39.040
You had to leave to save yourself from who knows what he might have done next. So I get that. I think
00:36:45.940
anybody gets that. Nobody would have any qualms with that. And if they did, who cares? Because you had
00:36:50.160
to do what was right for you, for your safety. And it may even be perfectly ethical to try and keep
00:36:58.320
him from having any kind of extended contact or relationship with your daughter. If you have good
00:37:02.480
reason to think that he's a danger to her, then yes, that would be ethical too. But do you have the
00:37:07.340
right to keep him from knowing the very fact that he has a daughter? No. I would say no, because that's
00:37:14.900
his daughter, like it or not. Even if he's a scumbag, that's still his daughter. And I think
00:37:20.260
he has a right at a minimum to know that she exists. He did help to conceive her after all.
00:37:28.700
If he's a dangerous man, if he's an abuser, which he sounds like, then it doesn't mean he has any right
00:37:34.360
to be involved in raising her. But he does have a right to know at least. And putting that aside,
00:37:40.620
your daughter definitely has a right to know that she has a father and who he is. That she
00:37:47.580
wasn't conceived in a Petri dish. Yeah, you're right. At this age, she probably isn't wondering
00:37:52.400
about that or doesn't understand anyway. But eventually she's going to want to know. And
00:37:57.000
I think she has a right to know. And your current husband even has a right to know the truth.
00:38:05.380
the ethics of lying really depend on whether the person you're lying to has a right to know the
00:38:13.080
truth. About are you keeping a truth from someone that they have a right to? Now, the point with the
00:38:24.380
Nazi example is that the Nazi has no right to know whether you're hiding a Jewish family in the attic
00:38:32.300
or not. They have no right to that information. And there could be less extreme examples where
00:38:38.580
somebody is demanding information, they have no right to it. And maybe you feel like the only way
00:38:43.760
to keep that information they have no right to in the first place from them is to tell an untruth.
00:38:49.100
And I would say in that case, it's perfectly ethical because they have no right to it.
00:38:52.740
Right? But in this case, there is information here. There's a truth that people in your life have
00:39:00.380
a right to. You don't own that truth. Your daughter has a right to know who her father is.
00:39:05.840
Her father has a right to know that he has a daughter and who she is.
00:39:10.100
Your current husband has a right to know, I think as well.
00:39:15.140
And I think you know all this, which is why your conscience is eating at you. And that's why you're
00:39:19.380
emailing in the first place. Don't take this as any kind of harsh judgment. I understand that you,
00:39:23.960
I understand why you did what you did. You were seemingly in an impossible situation.
00:39:27.360
You made a choice. You know, you decided to tell a lie. And this is the classic thing that everyone
00:39:34.880
learns to some extent in their life at some point. You tell a big lie and eventually you got to follow
00:39:40.140
that up with more lies, more lies, and more lies. There's no such thing as telling one big lie. It
00:39:44.480
never happens because you're going to have to support that lie with other lies. And eventually you've
00:39:49.680
weaved this web of deception where you're looking back at it and you realize there's no way to justify
00:39:54.780
this. This is obviously wrong. And I would say the same in your case. Now, as far as what to do from
00:40:03.800
here and how to go about revealing the truth, because I don't think that you just run into the
00:40:10.360
living room at the drop of a hat and say, let me tell everybody. I don't think that's the way to
00:40:13.600
handle it. I think you have to be thoughtful and considered and careful about how you reveal the truth,
00:40:20.620
which I do think you should reveal. But how to go about that? I, you know, I, what I would really
00:40:26.220
recommend first and foremost is that you seek the counsel of not people in your immediate family,
00:40:32.580
not that their counsel is irrelevant. Although I think they canceled, counseled you wrong six years
00:40:36.840
ago. But of course you continue talking to them and relying on them. But I think you need to seek
00:40:43.420
the counsel of somebody who doesn't know you as well as they do, isn't so emotionally tied to you,
00:40:48.760
but also knows you a lot better than I do because I don't know you at all.
00:40:52.440
So, you know, I don't know if you go, if you go to a church, if there's a pastor you could talk to,
00:40:57.400
just, I would seek the counsel of someone who knows you and who you can sit down with face to face,
00:41:02.180
but isn't so emotionally invested in it and talk to them about how should you, you know, you know
00:41:08.760
that you're in the wrong here. It sounds to me like, you know, you're in the wrong. Where do you go
00:41:12.380
from here? How do you, how do you get yourself out of this? And so I would, I would talk to somebody
00:41:15.980
about that. But thank you for the question in any case. All right. One last question. This is from
00:41:26.940
Luke says, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, just for the record, some of us, some of us do respect the
00:41:33.040
office of president, regardless of who's sitting there. Even though I'm a registered and voting
00:41:36.920
Republican, I always made the point of saying president Obama in conversation during his time
00:41:40.660
in office and never said blatantly disrespectful things about him in conversation, regardless of how,
00:41:44.980
of how I felt about his policies. Side note, I know you won't read this on air because you only
00:41:51.020
read stuff you argue, you can argue with, and you won't be able to argue with this. So feel free to
00:41:54.960
stop reading at this point. You coward. A short precursor. You are my second favorite person on
00:41:59.420
the Daily Wire lineup right behind Ben. You coward. You're the, you're my second favorite person.
00:42:05.660
So I normally agree with you. I would say 85% of the time we align, but when we don't, I can respect
00:42:10.660
and understand your reasoning. At least I could until now. You gave a few reasons as to why we
00:42:14.660
would have no reason not to respect the office of a politician. You gave a few reasons as to why
00:42:20.900
we would have no reason not to respect the office of a politician. Hold on a second. I gotta, I gotta
00:42:25.580
work through the sentence. You gave a few reasons as to why we would have no reason not to respect the
00:42:33.640
office of a politician. We would have no reason not to respect. So we would have a reason to
00:42:39.880
respect. But I was saying that we don't. Okay, anyway, I'll charge forward. First was that
00:42:46.200
it's not the office of a monarch. Now, you did not explicitly say that one should respect a
00:42:51.400
monarch, but it was heavily implied. If not for the simple reason that, why else would you even
00:42:55.460
pose this as a reason unless you implied that a monarch is to be respected? I wholly disagree.
00:43:00.000
Monarch rule is imposed. An elected official's rule is subject to the people. Respecting the
00:43:06.080
office is respecting the people's rule by proxy. This is a great reason to respect the office of
00:43:11.140
the president. Luke 1, Matt 0. Secondly, you said that they are our employees. Now you're implying
00:43:18.540
that employees aren't to be respected. I spent five years working as a manager at a retail pharmacy
00:43:23.000
chain, and I always respected my employees. And in return, I earned that respect. I'm actually
00:43:27.240
surprised at your candor on this subject, considering the fact that your boss, Ben Shapiro,
00:43:31.020
almost outright says on air that he respects his employees, you among them. It should be a given
00:43:34.780
that we should respect our public official on the ground, on this ground alone. Luke 2, Matt 0.
00:43:40.580
Next, you said that you respect them if they earn it, and you don't if they don't. I think you're
00:43:45.760
confusing respect and agreement. You can disagree with the actions and words of a politician and still
00:43:49.900
respect the office or the officials themselves. I think that in order to lose my respect, a politician
00:43:54.940
would have to do something terribly egregious. On the other hand, you're making it sound like we
00:43:58.920
should not start out in a place of respect and make them earn it. And I wholly disagree with that
00:44:02.900
notion. Luke 3, Matt 0. Actually, Matt negative 1 because you're a disgusting human being. Now I know
00:44:08.780
you're going to think I'm disrespecting you in this email, but that is exactly the childish thing you
00:44:12.480
would think, you sniveling baby. I'm only disagreeing with you, and that's all I have to say about
00:44:16.560
that. Thanks for that email, Luke, and I appreciate it. I appreciate your candor.
00:44:22.680
Um, uh, but I, I'll have to maintain my original position, which is, and my first point with,
00:44:30.860
we say, respect the office. My first question is what, what actually does that really mean?
00:44:37.720
I understand it's a phrase, it's a slogan, it's a nice thing to say, but on a day-to-day basis,
00:44:41.820
what do you mean respect the office? How do you respect an office abstractly in the, in the,
00:44:47.080
how do you, I understand how to respect the person. Okay. I don't really understand how
00:44:51.920
to respect an abstract office. Um, so you're gonna have to explain what that means exactly.
00:45:01.120
So I'm not sure I get it. Secondly, I go back to, to what I said that, um, with politicians,
00:45:08.300
I think in America, one of the things that sets us apart or should set us apart from other places
00:45:13.600
in the world, from almost every other place in the world is that, you know, we do not, um,
00:45:22.480
we certainly don't worship. We don't adore our politicians. We, we are very skeptical of them.
00:45:28.560
We are very open. I guess what I'm saying, this is how it should be because especially in recent
00:45:33.300
times, it hasn't actually been this way and that's a problem, but the way it should be,
00:45:36.400
the way the system was originally set up is that we are skeptical. We are critical. We're not
00:45:40.900
supposed to fall into cults of personality with our politicians. We look at them. They are our
00:45:45.980
employees and we say, do your job. If you don't do it, we're going to fire you. And, uh, you know,
00:45:53.300
we're not going to bow down before you. You, if you want us to respect you, you gotta, you have to
00:45:58.880
earn it. That's my essential point. Politicians should earn our respect. And if there is a politician
00:46:08.100
who is, is not respectable because they're corrupt and they're a liar and they're not doing their job
00:46:19.120
and they're not representing the interests of the people. Okay. Even if it's not the president,
00:46:22.940
let's say it's a congressman and there are plenty of congressmen out there like this
00:46:25.540
and congresswomen. So this is a, if this were, let's say a contemptible human being and a liar and
00:46:32.700
a phony and a fraud and an opportunist. I have no respect for them, but I respect their office.
00:46:40.180
What, how do you even delineate that in your mind? And what does that mean in practice?
00:46:46.820
I just don't think it means anything. I think it's a very simple concept. Earn my respect.
00:46:53.640
Do I go in immediately not respecting politicians? No, I'm, I'm sort of neutral. I have no feelings
00:46:59.900
about them. Show me, show me what you can do. Prove it. That's my, that's my approach.
00:47:07.920
This is why I've so often said we shouldn't be fans of politicians, any politician. We could be
00:47:14.020
supporters, but our support should be very conditional and very tentative.
00:47:21.920
We, in sports, we don't like fair weather fans. I get that. But in, in, with politics,
00:47:27.440
we shouldn't be fans at all, but we should be fair weather supporters. As in, I'm supporting you
00:47:33.040
now because I, you know, I, I, to some extent, I believe that you have the character for the job,
00:47:40.000
that you have the integrity for the job. I support your policies. And so I support you. But if it's
00:47:45.640
revealed that you have bad character and if it's, and if, and if you, if you don't follow through on
00:47:49.980
your promises in terms of policies, then I, then, then that's gone. I don't support you anymore.
00:47:53.280
Why would I? What am I supporting? I never supported you because I love your smile. I
00:47:58.520
supported you for what you were going to bring to the table. If you don't bring that to the table,
00:48:01.960
like you promised, then I'm going to kick you out of the dinner party. That's the way it should go.
00:48:09.680
So unfortunately, Luke, I still think you lose this conversation, but thanks again for the email.
00:48:16.540
So, and I think, I guess we'll leave it there for the, for the weekend. Have a great weekend,
00:48:22.160
everybody. And I remind you again that my book, Church of Cowards, has gone on sale, pre-sale,
00:48:27.460
comes out February 25th. But please go on Amazon and, and, and pre-order, pre-order one for yourself and
00:48:33.600
your friends, for your whole church. You know, I won't stop you from doing that.
00:48:40.420
And look out for that on February 25th. All right, that's it. Godspeed.
00:48:46.540
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
00:48:50.020
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on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Also be sure to check out the other
00:48:59.060
Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show, Michael Knowles show, and the Andrew Klavan show.
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Thanks for listening. The Matt Wall show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer,
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Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay, supervising producer, Mathis Glover,
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supervising producer, Robert Sterling, technical producer, Austin Stevens, editor, Donovan Fowler,
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audio mixer, Robin Fenderson. The Matt Wall show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
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If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the
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insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to the Ben Shapiro show. We'll get a whole lot