A police officer in Orlando, Florida arrested a 6-year-old girl who was having a tantrum in an elementary school. She was handcuffed, zip-tied and put in the back of a squad car as she pleaded for her life.
00:04:19.640Maybe part of the reason might be that I have a six-year-old daughter myself, and the idea that she could be arrested for anything at all is, first of all, simply ludicrous.
00:04:31.960Okay, if you know anything about six-year-olds, if you've ever met one, then you should understand how ridiculous this is.
00:04:41.020And my blood boils even more, because as I've been talking about this issue, I wrote something about it yesterday.
00:04:50.120A fair number of people, maybe it won't surprise you, defending the police officer.
00:04:56.320Now, as we'll talk about in a minute, even his own police department doesn't defend him.
00:05:00.600They fired him for this, and rightfully so.
00:05:03.500But there are still people who I think are, when it comes down to it, such bootlickers of the state, you know, refuse to criticize police officers for any reason whatsoever, no matter what they do, that they'll even defend this, which his own bosses would not defend.
00:05:21.640His police chief came out and was horrified by it.
00:05:24.380And yet there are people that will see that.
00:05:26.400You know, I saw some comments like, teach that spoiled brat a lesson, those kind of comments.
00:05:40.520Now, the courageous cop, valiantly defending society from ill-tempered first graders, can be heard later on in the body cam footage bragging about the fact that this six-year-old that he arrested breaks his record for the youngest child that he's ever arrested.
00:06:02.080There's no sense of seriousness here at all, just callous indifference for the child.
00:06:07.660And to him, it seems like it's just all a big joke.
00:08:09.100For instance, how did a callous incompetent like this guy, who's twice been put under investigation by his own department for abuse of force,
00:08:20.980How did he end up as a resource officer at an elementary school?
00:08:26.540And more broadly, is it really a good idea to criminalize childhood misbehavior?
00:08:32.580That's the fundamental question I want to ask.
00:08:37.240But grade schools all across the country have increasingly been treating discipline problems as legal infractions.
00:08:44.460This is a trend that we are seeing with increasing regularity.
00:08:49.720Kids who lack emotional maturity, not because there's something wrong with them, but because their kids, now face the possibility of a criminal record for behavior that, you know, for our parents and grandparents would have simply landed them in detention.
00:09:03.900But now we say, no, not detention, the detention center.
00:09:07.460The criminalization of schoolyard bullying is another example.
00:09:13.140There are many states across the country that have passed actual laws against bullying that affect even elementary schools.
00:09:21.500So a third grader who's bullying another third grader could be breaking the law now, and we're going to get the courts involved.
00:09:31.100So what you saw in the footage there is extreme, but not that extreme.
00:10:35.820Now, does this mean that misbehavior, disrespect, et cetera, should be tolerated, or that disruptive children should be given free reign to do whatever they want?
00:10:45.760But there's, see, to me, it seems like there's a lot of real estate in between letting a kid do whatever they want and arresting them and throwing them in jail.
00:10:56.200It seems like there's a lot of room in between that we could explore.
00:11:04.880Now, if an adult hits another adult, that's assault.
00:11:11.780When a six-year-old hits somebody, it's not assault any more than it's theft, it's legal theft if a toddler steals a Barbie doll from her daycare center.
00:11:24.200Does anyone think, I mean, if we're putting six-year-olds in jail for hitting somebody, then is it that crazy to put a three- or four-year-old in jail for stealing a Barbie doll from the daycare center?
00:11:34.820Bring them up on criminal charges of theft?
00:11:37.540There's only a two- or three-year difference between the three- or four-year-old and the six-year-old.
00:11:44.060But this is a matter of culpability, and we used to understand that children have very little of that.
00:11:52.020In fact, a child's culpability is so negligible that even if that girl, even if she killed somebody, okay, let's, I mean, let's take the absolute worst-case scenario we could possibly imagine,
00:12:06.500where this girl, rather than slapping somebody, which, by the way, there was no, no one went to the hospital, there was no injuries sustained, okay?
00:12:15.180I mean, if you're seriously injured by getting slapped by a six-year-old girl, then you're like Mr. Glass and unbreakable.
00:12:23.900So there's no injuries, but let's just say the absolute worst-case scenario you could ever imagine, six-year-old girl somehow gets her hands on a gun, shoots somebody on purpose.
00:12:33.020Even then, I would say it would be crazy to throw her in jail and charge her with a crime.
00:12:42.000Because if a six-year-old girl is doing something like that, it is 100% guaranteed that her mind has been warped by severe, severe physical and emotional abuse at home.
00:12:53.800And now she quite literally cannot control herself and doesn't know what she's doing.
00:13:00.200If you have a kid doing that, then you know that for a fact.
00:13:03.460And, in fact, even if she hasn't been abused, six-year-olds still don't really know what they're doing and aren't actually capable of intentionally killing someone the way that we can
00:13:12.500because they don't really understand what death is.
00:13:14.940They don't understand the permanence of death.
00:13:16.440So they couldn't possibly appreciate what it actually means to kill somebody the way that you or I can.
00:13:21.800So a six-year-old kills someone even in that case.
00:13:25.280Yeah, you might have to take them to a facility to protect themselves and others.
00:13:31.340But the goal there would be to treat them, to treat the very severe psychological and emotional problems that they clearly have.
00:13:40.580The goal is not to put them in a jumpsuit and throw them in the clink.
00:13:43.880That's not what we do with six-year-olds.
00:14:21.660Well, we know that's not the case because half of those cases of kids that are on psychiatric drugs have, quote-unquote, ADHD.
00:14:29.640All in all, about 6 million children, over half of them under the age of 11, have been diagnosed with this phantom disorder of ADHD.
00:14:40.500Now, as I've argued extensively elsewhere, and I won't get into the whole spiel again,
00:14:45.160but the ADHD diagnosis turns normal childhood behavior into symptoms of mental illness.
00:14:52.600Now, it may be true that these behaviors, a child who fidgets a lot, can't pay attention, has a lot of energy, you know, can't do busy work,
00:15:03.360that may be inconvenient, it may be difficult to deal with, but that doesn't mean that it's a symptom of a disorder.
00:15:12.660It doesn't mean that the child is mentally ill.
00:15:17.300If the school system's proper functioning depends on drugging millions of kids,
00:15:24.220if you're telling me that's the only way that this will work is if we drug these kids,
00:15:29.760then I would say it's the system that's disordered, not the kids.
00:15:34.860The sickness is not in our kids, but in our attitude towards them and our expectations of them.
00:15:41.140If millions of nine-year-old boys have a lot of trouble and seem incapable of sitting at their desk for eight hours a day,
00:15:48.660performing busy work and regurgitating information onto Scantron sheets,
00:15:52.660well, then maybe we should consider the possibility that this is not a very good way of educating nine-year-old boys.
00:15:58.780Or we could keep shoving drugs in their face or sending them to jail until they shape up.
00:19:01.560Here are five headlines worth knowing about it.
00:19:03.040Number one, Pope Francis yesterday suggested, uh, during his general audience in St. Peter's Square, that we give up trolling for Lent.
00:19:11.000So, if you're thinking of, um, you know, if, if you haven't thought of something to give up for Lent yet, he said that, um, that now would be a good time to give up trolling the internet.
00:19:27.520And if we give up trolling, what exactly are we supposed to do with our time?
00:19:31.520You know, you tell people not to troll, next thing you know, everyone's doing heroin.
00:19:35.540Because that, those are really the only two options that I can think of.
00:19:38.780By the way, speaking of, of the Pope, as a Catholic, um, I am pleading with the Pope during this time of the coronavirus to finally get rid of the sign of peace during Mass.
00:19:52.020Now, if you're not a Catholic, uh, maybe you're not familiar.
00:19:54.400That's the part of the service, about two-thirds of the way through, where randomly, uh, the, the congregants are required to exchange awkward and perfunctory greetings with the people around them.
00:20:05.100Um, so we take a break from, from the sacred moment, take a break in the middle of the service to exchange forced pleasantries with our, our neighbors immediately around us.
00:20:16.220Which, which, which of course makes no sense.
00:20:18.220It's a very silly and pointless ritual, in my view.
00:20:21.160Um, and, and also a great way to spread illness.
00:20:23.840So, maybe with the, you know, possibility of a pandemic, this would be a good catalyst for getting rid of that.
00:20:30.100And, if, if you gotta do it, look, you go to, um, there are many other churches.
00:20:54.320Number two, Donald Trump, speaking of the coronavirus, had a press conference with Mike Pence and the CDC last night to talk about the virus.
00:21:02.560And, uh, uh, President Trump was taking an approach of, of essentially downplaying it.
00:21:10.320This is, this is a little bit of what he had to say.
00:21:12.420Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low.
00:21:18.380We have the greatest experts in the world, really in the world right here.
00:21:22.680Uh, the people that are called upon by other countries when things like this happen.
00:21:28.500We, uh, we're ready to adapt and we're ready to do whatever we have to.
00:21:32.900As the disease spreads, if it spreads, uh, as most of you know, the, uh, the, uh, the level that we've had in our country is very low and those people are getting better.
00:21:46.640Or we think that in almost all cases, they're, the better we're getting, we have a total of 15.
00:22:09.060And, uh, we found that we were, it was just an obligation.
00:22:13.700We felt that we had, we could have left them and that would have been very bad, very bad.
00:22:19.900I think American people, honestly, I, I can't quite figure this out because it seems to me that the coronavirus is a perfect example of why we need strong borders.
00:22:33.460Why we need to control who comes in here.
00:22:35.360In fact, we'll talk more about this in a minute when we're canceling Elizabeth Warren.
00:22:38.740Um, so it's, it's, it's something that, that touches on that.
00:22:43.020It also touches on the need to not be so reliant on foreign, foreign manufacturing, because if there's a pandemic and major disruptions and we're reliant on China for all of our goods, that's a problem.
00:22:54.040So that would be an angle, a perfect angle for, for, for president Trump to take on this, given that those are two issues that he's talking about all the time.
00:23:05.840And instead, he's gone the angle of saying that, you know, this is no big deal.
00:23:13.960You know, I, I, I also believe there's no reason to panic and we shouldn't be panicking, but, uh, we, we, you know, you, you, you don't want to err on the side of appearing lackadaisical and unconcerned.
00:23:26.880Number three, related to the previous item, uh, Trump put Mike Pence in charge of heading up the coronavirus response.
00:23:34.060And this move has provoked the expected reaction.
00:24:11.500I mean, as someone who believes in science, I'd be interested to hear your answer on that.
00:24:15.820Number four, the house yesterday voted 410 to 4 to pass a bill making lynching a federal hate crime.
00:24:22.800Now, of course, it was already illegal everywhere in the country to lynch somebody.
00:24:28.940If you lynched someone prior to this bill, even if you had lynched someone anywhere, you'd be going to jail for probably the rest of your life if not facing the death penalty, as you would deserve.
00:24:39.200So, this bill doesn't make lynching illegal, um, but it does make it a federal crime, which means that, rather arbitrarily, this one particular method of murder will be a federal matter, whereas other methods are not.
00:24:52.620So, if you, for example, are trying to decide how to kill somebody, and you decide, okay, I'm going to stab them or beat them to death or shoot them, well, the feds have no interest in that.
00:25:02.260If you lynch them, okay, now the feds are interested.
00:25:17.660But then the whole category of hate crime is itself absurd and also makes no sense.
00:25:23.420The hate crime designation does two things.
00:25:25.460Number one, it puts the government in the position of trying to read the mind of a criminal.
00:25:30.240The government determines whether that person was hateful, whether they had hate in their heart when they committed the crime, which, of course, is actually impossible to determine because you can't read somebody's mind.
00:25:42.240And then, um, number two, the hate crime designation declares that crimes that are motivated by hatred are somehow automatically worse than crimes motivated by other things.
00:30:33.560So the way I think about this is first we think about allocation, kind of our overall approach.
00:30:40.220I'm going to be introducing a plan tomorrow to take every dime that the president is now spending on his racist wall at our southern border
00:30:48.680and divert it to work on the coronavirus.
00:30:54.900Okay, a few problems here, a few things.
00:30:56.940First of all, a wall cannot be racist.
00:33:00.140MattWalshShow at gmail.com is the email address.
00:33:02.640This is from Maria, says, esteemed Mr. Walsh, I would like to thank you profusely for writing your incredible, thought-provoking, genuine book.
00:33:10.580Which is the Church of Cowards right here.
00:33:13.720This needs to be required reading for all the West.
00:33:15.860Also, I must say, your book came at the most opportune time.
00:33:18.800I'm currently a high school student, and not only was your book the reason I didn't pay attention all day today, but, much less do my homework,
00:33:24.100but more importantly, your book is immensely beneficial in the writing of my argument as to whether America can truly claim to be a Christian nation.
00:33:29.720And it proved as an instrumental source for the sermon I will soon give to my youth group,
00:33:34.060God is not convenient, fitting your faith into your lifestyle versus making faith a lifestyle.
00:33:38.340Not only was your book instructive, but also hilarious, although, honestly, considering you wrote it, I don't know why I'm surprised.
00:33:43.560I know that the appreciation of a teenager isn't much, but for what it counts, I think you did an absolutely phenomenal job.
00:33:50.900This book stated what we all need to hear, the unpopular truth.
00:34:09.960From Ryan says, I'd like to hear your response to this counterpoint.
00:34:13.080You said a bachelor's degree only tells that the person could pay for college or was willing to take out a loan.
00:34:19.400Seldom is the situation such that you only know their level of degree, though.
00:34:23.180Generally, on a resume, you know their major, their GPA, and, of course, the school.
00:34:26.680If you know someone had a marketing degree from Yale and a 4.0, are you really willing to say you still know nothing about them aside from the fact that they have a degree?
00:34:35.900Well, Ryan, of course, a 4.0 GPA and a marketing degree from one of the top schools in the world would tell you something as an employer, of course.
00:34:46.000But those are additional bits of information.
00:34:50.400My point was that the simple fact that a person has a degree, that fact alone, just that, they have a degree, tells me nothing.
00:35:00.280Tells me absolutely nothing about the person.
00:35:03.100So if you tell me that Bob Smith has a college degree, and that's all you tell me, I know nothing about Bob Smith.
00:35:09.500He could be dumb, could be smart, could be lazy, could be hardworking, he could be anything.
00:35:14.700I don't know anything about him just by the fact that he has a college degree.
00:35:18.820And this is why a college degree, in and of itself, shouldn't be a prerequisite for many of these jobs.
00:35:27.620Because instead, the individual merits and experience of the individual applicants should be what we consider.
00:35:34.300So imagine that. Revolutionary idea. Someone's applying for a job.
00:35:38.920Why don't you look at them specifically and see what they bring to the table?
00:35:45.100Now, if you consider Bob Smith's individual merits and experiences,
00:35:51.000you might discover that he has a college degree, he has a 4.0, all that other stuff.
00:35:56.680And obviously now you know you have on your hands a very promising candidate for pretty much any entry-level job anywhere.
00:36:03.300But if you're willing to look at the specifics of Bob, then if you've got Jim over here, who has no college degree,