Ep. 503 - The United States Of America No Longer Exists
Episode Stats
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Summary
The United States of America no longer exists. What does that mean, and where do we go from here? We re going to talk about all that today on the Matt Wall Show. Also, a new game that I invented called the Cringe Challenge. It s a difficult game to play, and the winner loses.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, years ago, I wrote that the United States of America no longer exists.
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And sadly, I think recent events have only proven my point. We are not united in this country,
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and that is not going to change anytime soon. So what does that mean, and where do we go from here?
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What's just the reality of the situation? We're going to talk about all that today. Also,
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five headlines, including, you may have heard of those insurrectionists who are taking over
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parts of Seattle. Well, now they're trying their hand at building a self-sustaining
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commune, but these are all a bunch of city dwellers who have no survival skills whatsoever.
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So it's going about as well as you might imagine. And later, we're going to play a new game that I
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invented called The Cringe Challenge. It's a very difficult game, sort of a harrowing game to play,
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and the winner loses, really. But we're going to play that today. All that's coming up. Stick around
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Paint your life. Celebrate the moments that matter most. All right. So I want to have a
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conversation, something I mentioned on the show at various points a few times in the recent weeks.
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But now I want to dig into this and really talk about it in depth. But to do that, I have to go
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back to something that one of the first articles I wrote, actually, for The Daily Wire was a typically
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optimistic and cheerful piece titled The United States of America No Longer Exists. And at the
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time, it was not met with a very warm reception from a lot of readers. And I kind of understand
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that because, number one, I just started at the site. So I think a lot of people, they didn't know
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who I was. And they thought, who is this guy? Who is this guy coming in here? One of the first things
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he tells us the United States doesn't exist. It was a tad bleak, I admit. Three years later,
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it brings me no pleasure to say, I told you so. Usually one of my favorite things to say,
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my wife will tell you. But in this case, not so much. My basic thesis in that piece was that our
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country, though existing still as a legal and geographic entity, cannot be meaningfully described
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as united. So the United States of America no longer exists, except in name. We have nothing but
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the law and the land holding us together. And that is not enough to make a nation, to make a people.
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There needs to be something else, some uniting principle, some defining commonality that binds us.
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If we are going to be united, we must be united around something and by something.
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Today, three years later, all of that holds true, only more so. The key difference between now and
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three years ago is that arguably we no longer even have the law holding us together. Between the
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unconstitutional lockdowns and the sudden abandonment of those policies in order to allow
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rampaging mobs to wreak havoc in the streets for weeks on end, the rule of law has broken down.
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And with our borders still about as porous as they've ever been, you know, it's hard to say
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that we are meaningfully united even on a geographic level. So with these two pillars crumbling,
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pillars that were already insufficient in themselves to keep a country together, what's left is the
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question. Many nations around the world and throughout history have been held together by the
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bonds of their common heritage, ancestry, language, tradition. These are the kinds of things that for
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many countries, that's what makes it a country. Now, the United States has always been different in
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these respects, but we once did have a common language and at least a few cultural traditions
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that we all had in common. Now, though, it's ethnocentric and xenophobic and racist to expect
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immigrants who come to this country to learn the language of the country they're immigrating to.
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As for traditions, our national holidays like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day have been abolished
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in many quarters, and that trend is rapidly gaining speed. The trend is going in the direction of it
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happening more, not less. No doubt Memorial Day and Independence Day will be on the chopping block
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soon enough. These holidays are being torn down along with the statues of our historical icons
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and politicized like the sporting events that once gave us respite from the political back and forth,
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and now even those are platforms for the culture war, are political events almost.
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These losses are not insignificant. To lose holidays, to lose the statues,
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you know, that is not an insignificant thing. Healthy, vibrant countries have always had their
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traditions, have always had their holidays, have always had their heroes. We're going to try to be
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the first country in history without any of that. I don't think the experiment will prove successful.
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But the thing that has always made America unique, of course, is that it's a nation founded on ideas,
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on a creed. So you could say that, hey, we can survive, tear down the statues, get rid of the
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holidays. That's not what makes America, America. And I agree, that's not what makes America, America.
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If nothing else, we were once joined by our shared belief in the ideas and the creed that lays at the
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foundation of our country. We have never succeeded in actually applying all of those lofty principles
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to everybody equally, you know, that all men are created equal, endowed by the creator with inherent
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dignity and value. We have never succeeded in actually applying that to everybody. Never. And we
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don't now. Now we exclude the, you know, one million babies who are killed every year.
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So these are, there have always been some really glaring and terrible exceptions that we have made to
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that. But we shared these ideas on an aspirational level, at least. Now we no longer even aspire to be
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that sort of country. Many Americans fundamentally reject the inherent dignity of human beings.
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It's not just that they believe in the inherent dignity and they profess it, but they don't apply
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that principle to babies. That would be bad enough. No, it's, it's that for a lot of people, they just
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don't believe that that's the case. They don't think people have inherent dignity and worth.
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So we, we are no longer at least aspiring to be the sort of country that, uh, protects and values all
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people equally. And our ideas of what it means to be equal are, are, are so elementally opposed as to
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render the term meaningless. Are we joined then by our shared desire to be free? Is that, is that
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something that we can say at least, and maybe we don't have anything else, but we're America, we love
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freedom. We've got that going at least for us. No, in the minds of many people, the ultimate vision of
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freedom is a socialist utopia where the free market is abolished. The government provides all the basic
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needs. Um, everything is basically controlled and planned by the government. Now to me and to many
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others, this is a vision of slavery. This is not a vision of freedom. So it may be true that all
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Americans talk about freedom, that we all say we want freedom, but the only commonality between the
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competing views of freedom is the word itself, nothing else. Can we be bound by our passion for human
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rights? Again, no, the situation with rights is, is much like that with freedom. Those on the left,
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not just on the, on the leftist fringes, but in the mainstream would say that mothers have a right
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to kill their offspring. Uh, some Americans have a right to the money and property of other Americans.
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Biological males have a right to enter a woman's locker room or be on her sports team. Gay couples have
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a right to the goods and services of Christian business owners and so on. They see a human right
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as something always in competition with other rights claims. So for them, rights are a competition,
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a struggle. Um, one right must always supersede another right. So we've got this concept of superseding
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rights. The woman's right to autonomy trounces violently, a child's right to life,
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a college student's right to be free of debt, overpowers a wealthy man's right to the fruit of
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his own labor, and so on. Now, I would say that what they're really describing is one group's
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struggle for power and dominance over another. You know, this has nothing to do with rights.
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Rights are inherent to our human nature. By definition, human rights, real human rights,
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cannot be in competition with one another. If you find yourself weighing these claims to
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superseding rights and trying to figure out whose right comes before, you know, you know,
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whose right comes before the other. If you find yourself doing that, it means that your whole
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concept of rights, human rights, is flawed. That's the way that I would see it. And since we have
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fundamentally opposing definitions of the term human rights, we cannot be united around it.
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If we cannot be united around tradition, around language, around heritage, and we also cannot be
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united around a shared belief in freedom and human rights, then what's left?
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We would appear already to be two different countries, or perhaps several different countries.
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And even that is generous, because really, when a man, when I talk to somebody, and he tells me that
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he believes babies aren't people, that it's okay for a mother to kill her child, who we call it,
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which he calls a fetus. Biological sex doesn't exist. Men can get pregnant. Police department should be
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abolished. America is racist to its core. I'm a white supremacist if I disagree with any of these
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points. When I'm told this, I find myself questioning whether we're even from the same planet, let alone
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the same, from the same universe, let alone the same country. This is how absolutely opposed we are on
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all levels, with almost no common ground, no shared frame of reference. And that's why, if you're
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wondering why our arguments and debates are so unproductive, they never go anywhere, it's because
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we have no way to argue these points. We have no way to communicate. In order to communicate and
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debate someone, you have to have some frame of reference that you share between you two.
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There has to be something there. I mean, there has to be some common value you both have,
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and that's going to be your starting point. You're going to build from that when you're having your
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debate. But if you don't even have that, there's just nothing that can happen here. It's not going
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to go anywhere. And that's where we are in our country, where we've got people, there's just
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nothing there at all that they share. And it is not an exaggeration to say that in this way,
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we are far more divided now than we were during the Civil War. I mean, you read about the Civil War,
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and obviously, we can't romanticize or idealize the Civil War. 600,000 people died. It was a brutal,
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violent, horrible, horrific, nightmarish time. So there's no doubt about that. But even then,
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fundamentally, the two sides were not nearly as opposed, sort of philosophically, as we are now.
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Because they at least had some common ideas, like common ideas like dignity and manliness and honor.
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You know, they had that between them, at least. I mean, they even both valued freedom. It's just
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that they had very different ideas of what freedom meant. But they did, and you know, which is the case
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now, you could say. But they did believe that, you know, you had human rights endowed by the
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Creator. Inherent human dignity. They believed in that. They didn't apply it equally. They didn't apply
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it all the way. There are obviously some huge blind spots there, just like we have now.
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But on an aspirational level, they had that. There was something there. There was a morsel of
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something, which is why, you know, the Civil War ended. Reconstruction was a terrible time as well,
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in many ways. But the country did survive. Somehow. 600,000 people die. Brutal, violent. It was the worst
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war we've ever seen, still, to this point, in America anyway. The deadliest war. It survived.
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And America went on to become a powerhouse. How did that happen? I think one of the ways it happens
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is that there was at least some commonality, some shared uniting principles that they had,
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as opposed as they were on so many other things. We don't have that now.
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What does that mean? Well, you know, I guess this is the part where I'm supposed to have a solution.
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You know, I'm supposed to give you the one, two, three step plan of how we can solve all these
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problems and come together. I don't have it. That's sort of my point. I just think that we need to begin
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by confronting and acknowledging the situation we are actually in as a country. And we need to be
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realistic. And so if you're sitting there calling for unity and saying, we need to put our differences
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aside. It's not going to happen. It can't happen. In order for that to happen, millions of Americans
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on one side or the other are going to have to radically change how they see reality.
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And that's not going to happen overnight or at all, potentially.
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So we just need to start thinking about what we can actually do in light of all of this.
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You know, the only problem people talk about breaking apart as a country and, you know,
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forming two different countries. I think there's a lot to be said for that, actually. Listen,
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no country lasts forever. No country does. They all come to an end. We have to confront that
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reality, too. The only problem is, though, that our division is not as geographically defined as it was
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during, say, the Civil War. So I don't know how that would work. But I think we need to start
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thinking along the lines of what can we do in light of the fact that there are these unbridgeable gaps
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separating one group of Americans from others. All right. We're going to move on to
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headlines in just a second. But before we do, a word from Legacy Box. You know, if you're looking for
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Go to LegacyBox.com slash Walsh and save 50% off while supplies last. Okay, headlines. Number one,
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Antifa people in the so-called autonomous zone are making a stab at self-reliance. They've started a
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little farming project. Take a look at the picture here. Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever
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seen? And look at the guy sitting there watching the plants, expecting like an entire large salad
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to just sprout out of the ground all at once. But so they've got topsoil on top of cardboard,
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and that's where they're starting it. But then it looks like they've got some of the plants
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that aren't actually planted. They're just sitting on the top of the soil. Maybe that's what they
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think topsoil means. It's topsoil, so you just put the stuff right on top. And then you see in the
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back there, they've got that little watering can. They're going to try to keep this whole plot watered
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with a little plastic watering can. Like the thing that my daughter uses to water the garden because
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she wants to feel like she's helping. And the problem is, even if all those crops come up,
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which they won't, you've got enough food there to maybe, maybe feed three people in a couple of
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months. In late August, there'll be enough food for, for, you know, three adults to have a couple
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slices of tomato, handful of lettuce, a cucumber. So this is pretty pathetic. You almost feel sorry
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for these, uh, these city slickers playing, play acting as survivalists. And, and here's the thing,
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you know, if, if, if you're really serious about this and you want to have your own commune and your
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own little community, and you want to be relatively free of government interference, and you really just
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want to be on your own, make your own rules. I respect that. Actually, I got nothing but respect
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for that. You want to drop off the grid, do your own thing, say, screw you to modern society. I love it.
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I think it's a great idea. You can't do it in the middle of Seattle. Okay. That, that's not what
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you do. If you're serious about it, go off into the wilderness. There's a lot of wilderness still,
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still left in America. And you could go off into the woods somewhere, into the mountains,
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into the desert, wherever you want to go and take a stab at it. And if you do that, you know,
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um, for the most part, the government will leave you alone with some rather notable and awful
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exceptions. If you were serious about it, but they're not serious about it. This again is just
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play acting. This is like a theater performance on their part. Um, they're not serious about actually
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trying to create their own state or community. Uh, and, and of course, if they did try to go into
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the woods and survive, they'd all be dead in three days. So, uh, maybe they shouldn't actually do
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that, but you know, that's anyone, anyone can, you can go and go give it a shot. All right. Number
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two, big news from NBC, Eric Wemple of the Washington post reports effective immediately. NBC news and MSNBC
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will capitalize the B in black when referring to people or the community across all the networks
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platforms. So black people capital B. Why? I have no idea. Um, well, we know why, because we've, we've learned
00:21:29.440
that proper grammar is violence. And so that's, that's, that's not, that's not proper grammar, but this is a
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struggle against many things, including, um, grammar. Number three, crazy story out of Baltimore reported by
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Fox 45, according to a woman named Courtney Lancaster in Baltimore County, her son was having
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his virtual, uh, class recently. He's a, he attends public school, elementary school, and he was doing
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his virtual class. Like so many kids are across the country during the, uh, during COVID. And someone
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notices on the wall behind him in his home, a BB gun, which is, which is, uh, hanging there on the wall.
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The principal notifies the school resource officer. He calls the cops and then the cops show up at the
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woman's house and, and, and search her house because of a BB gun. And the principal, apparently,
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according to the mother said that having a BB gun in your own home during a virtual class is tantamount
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to bringing it to school because, because now they own your house, right? You send your kid to public
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school. They own your kid in their minds. If you do virtual school, they still own your kid. And now they
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own your house too, because they can see it. Get your kids out of the public school system. People
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get them out. Number four, the Dallas police department put out a video yesterday, um, kneeling
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in submission to, uh, the black lives matter organization. Here's a little bit of, of that
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Pretty bold stuff there from, uh, from that officer, right? Hey, if you're raped, you're not
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hating your heart for people of color, get over it. Okay. Because this city is a minority majority
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city. And this city is a city where blacks and whites and browns and legal and illegal all get
00:23:42.380
together because we judge each other by the content of our hearts.
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Pretty bold stuff there from, uh, from that officer, right? Hey, if you're racist, get over it. I disagree.
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I disagree with racism. You hear me? I'm not afraid to say it. Racism is bad. Yay. And then the crowd cheers.
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Uh, no. How about this? Don't kneel. Don't kneel. Get it, get up, get off of your knees and do your
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damn jobs. How's that for an idea? Enforce the law. You can't do it from your knees. Get off your knees.
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Stop embarrassing yourself and do your job. Protect the community. That's what people want.
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That's what communities want. At least the people in the community who you should be listening to
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want the law to be enforced. Number five, finally, here's Donald Trump, um, talking about the takeover
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in Seattle by the anarchists. If there were more toughness, you wouldn't have
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the kind of devastation that you had in Minneapolis and in Seattle. I mean, let's see what's going on
00:24:52.060
in Seattle. But I will tell you, if they don't straighten that situation out, we're going to
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straighten it out. And what do you mean by that? Like what, I don't know if you caught up, but Governor
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Cuomo was so upset with Mayor de Blasio of New York. He said, I'm going to displace him.
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I don't really know how that would work. But I mean, is that what you mean in Seattle?
00:25:07.420
What I mean is very simple. We're not going to let Seattle be occupied by anarchists.
00:25:13.900
And I'm not calling them protesters. Have you talked to the mayor?
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I'm not costing. No, but I got to see a performance that I've never seen. I mean,
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you think he was a weak person in Minneapolis. The woman, I don't know. Has she ever done this before?
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I like what he says there. Of course, a lot of people on the left are upset,
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as always. Every time he opens his mouth, they're upset. But I like what he says there. Sounds
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good to me. The only problem is with Trump, oftentimes, the problem is when it comes to
00:25:45.900
actually doing it. So I like what you're saying. Great stuff. Tweeting it. That's good stuff, too.
00:25:53.260
Trump's been tweeting a lot. He's doing a lot of tweeting during all this. He keeps tweeting law
00:25:58.700
and order in all caps. He's tweeted that, you know, like 10 times. I agree. Law and order is good.
00:26:07.740
At a certain point, though, you have to go beyond tweeting and just saying it and actually do
00:26:13.420
something. That's part of governing. So he's got the tweet down. He's got all that down.
00:26:21.740
But it makes it so much worse. And I know there's no point in complaining about it now. I mean,
00:26:26.300
Trump is Trump. It's not ever going to change. He's 74 years old. He's not going to change.
00:26:29.900
And the Twitter thing, it's not ever going to change. Never will.
00:26:35.180
You know, he'll go down. I mean, if he's going down, he's going to go down tweeting. Even if
00:26:39.420
tweeting takes him down, he doesn't care. He's going to cling to that. All right. I get that.
00:26:43.820
All right. But even so, the reality is that when you've got riots and the breakdown of law and order,
00:26:53.660
and the president isn't really doing anything except just tweeting the phrase law and order,
00:27:00.940
it looks impotent and pitiful and weak. And that is not the image that Trump should be projecting.
00:27:10.540
So what I would like is for him to actually do something about it, actually follow through on
00:27:13.820
some of these threats for a change. If you're not, though, then probably stop tweeting law and order,
00:27:20.120
because it only highlights the fact that there isn't law and order right now and you're not doing
00:27:24.840
anything about it. Okay. Let's go to our daily cancellation. Before we do, I want to tell you
00:27:32.200
about our very good friends over at rockauto.com. This is a no-brainer. If you can get the auto parts
00:27:39.160
from the website rather than going into an auto parts store, then you're going to want to do that.
00:27:43.400
It's a literal no-brainer. I mean, someone without a brain like myself knows this.
00:27:47.800
Rockauto.com is so much easier than walking into a store, and especially when they're just going to
00:27:52.840
order the part online anyway. Rockauto.com always offers the lowest prices possible. They're not
00:27:58.120
going to change the price. They're not going to try to get as much as they can out of you,
00:28:03.080
like happens in so many industries. Rockauto.com is a family business. They've been doing this for a
00:28:07.880
long time, for 20 years, but they're also online. You go to rockauto.com to shop for auto and body
00:28:13.240
parts from hundreds of manufacturers. Whatever you're looking for, I guarantee you they're going
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to have it. Best of all, prices at rockauto.com are always reliably low, and the selection is
00:28:23.560
always reliably expensive. The rockauto.com catalog is unique, easy to navigate, quickly see the parts
00:28:30.120
you're looking for, and then make your decision, make your purchase. Go to rockauto.com right now,
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see all the parts available for your car, truck, write Walsh in there, how did you hear about us,
00:28:37.880
box, so that they know that we sent you. Okay, for our daily cancellation, it's a little bit
00:28:42.600
different. I'm going to be canceling all of the celebrities in the white guilt celeb PSA that I'm
00:28:49.240
going to play for you in just a second, but I'm not going to spend time explaining why they're
00:28:54.280
canceled and why it's dumb and all of that. That should be pretty obvious, and the incredible thing
00:28:58.440
is that with these celebrity videos, these celebrity videos are roundly mocked by almost everyone on
00:29:07.720
all sides every time. They are always a huge fail, and yet the celebs keep doing it. They keep doing
00:29:15.400
it. They must know at this point that it's just going to be made fun of by everybody, not just
00:29:23.160
conservatives, everyone. In fact, I started the show talking about there's nothing that binds us
00:29:28.040
together and unites us. This might be the one thing left is that we all hate celebrity PSAs. This is the
00:29:33.680
one thing holding us together, which means probably they should keep doing it. This is the only
00:29:37.620
thing stopping us from a full-on civil war, is that at least we have this in common.
00:29:44.340
Now, what I'd really like to do then is a little game, a little challenge I came up with called the
00:29:52.660
Cringe Challenge. The game is to watch this video for as long as you can until the cringe factor is
00:30:00.880
overwhelming, and you have to stop it for fear that you might die of second-hand embarrassment.
00:30:05.400
Now, I warn you, this is not for the faint of heart. If you've seen any of these celeb PSAs in
00:30:11.560
the past, you know how cringey they get. This one is way worse. Okay, this is the ultimate right
00:30:20.680
here. This is expert-level Cringe Challenge. So if you've never played the Cringe Challenge,
00:30:26.460
we're going to be jumping into the deep end with this. It's a dangerous maneuver, but I think now's
00:30:31.460
the time to do it. So we're going to watch it together. I'll see how far I can go. And one
00:30:37.300
note about the rules, okay? You can try multiple times to see how far you can make it, but if you
00:30:44.860
have to stop, then you have to go back to the beginning and do it all from the beginning again.
00:30:48.880
Those are the rules. Sorry, I don't make them up. Actually, I do make them up, but still,
00:30:54.220
those are the rules. All right, so let's, let me pull the video up.
00:31:00.540
Okay, we're going to watch this together. It's 2.06. The video is a little bit over two minutes.
00:31:06.900
Can we get through the entire video? Let's see. All right.
00:31:11.680
Okay, I got to, I got to stop. All right. I got to stop already.
00:31:24.840
That Aaron Paul, the pause there, the pause with the, with the hands like this. Oh man.
00:31:32.900
The pause did me in. I couldn't even, what was that? Four seconds, five seconds. And that's Aaron,
00:31:38.600
that's Jesse Pinkman. It kills me. It kills me that Jesse Pinkman is being corny right now.
00:31:43.740
Why did Jesse Pinkman, E2 Jesse Pinkman? Okay, we're going to try again. Let's give this another shot.
00:32:00.500
I take responsibility. I take responsibility. I take responsibility for every unchecked moment,
00:32:12.520
for every time it was easier to ignore than to call it out for what it was.
00:32:27.120
Oh man. That guy. Who is that guy? Is that, who is that? I don't even know who these people are.
00:32:35.000
I can't even, I don't know who these, Jesse Pinkman I recognized. Is that, is that, uh,
00:32:41.460
is that Justin Theroux? Is that who that is? I don't know. Anyway, he,
00:32:46.260
whew, that's a tough one. That's a tough, he, he, he's really, he's got the finishing move,
00:32:51.560
doesn't he? What is that? 20 seconds. He's coming in. I mean, that's, that's,
00:32:56.360
that's a hard one to get past. Okay. Let's try again. We'll try one more time. I know I can do
00:33:02.560
better than this. I, you know, I've, I've been watching cringe comedy, like The Office,
00:33:08.940
a lot of British comedy, Ricky Gervais. Now I've been watching cringe comedy my whole life. I,
00:33:13.820
I thought that this would prepare me for this moment, but it turns out that it's, it's,
00:33:17.520
it's different at game speed when you're actually doing it in real life. It's a lot harder. So,
00:33:21.300
all right, let's try again. I take responsibility.
00:33:26.780
I take responsibility. I take responsibility. I take responsibility. I take responsibility
00:33:33.880
for every unchecked moment, for every time it was easier to ignore than to call it out for what it
00:33:40.000
was. Every not so funny joke. Every unfair stereotype. Every blatant injustice, no matter
00:33:48.340
how big or small. Every time I remained silent. Every time I explained away police brutality
00:33:54.880
or turned a blind eye. No, no, no. I'm done. I can't do it. The pauses, it's, it's the dramatic
00:34:05.020
pauses that are, that's, that's the cringiest thing somehow. It's not even, it's not what they're,
00:34:09.760
it is what they're saying. I mean, it's everything, everything about this, the music, the black and
00:34:13.300
white, the everything, those dramatic theatrical pauses they keep taking.
00:34:23.040
Oh, yeah, that's it. 36 seconds. I'm a failure. I can't do it.
00:34:30.200
Um, all right. That's, that's, that's, that's the best I could do. I kind of want to, let me
00:34:36.600
just keep playing a little bit. I'm not going to go, I'm going to break my own rules because I can
00:34:39.580
break my own rules. I'm going to play a little bit more of this just to, uh, the game's over.
00:34:43.640
I already lost, but I want to see what else I do want to see. Who is this right here that we're
00:34:49.580
looking at? Um, I don't know, but I want to see what she has to say. We'll just go a little bit
00:34:54.720
further into this. I take responsibility. Black people are being slaughtered in the streets,
00:35:01.000
killed in their own homes. These are our brothers and sisters, our friends, our family.
00:35:07.520
We are done watching them die. We are no longer bystanders. We will not be idle. Enough is enough.
00:35:15.180
I will no longer allow an unchecked moment. I will no longer allow racist, hurtful words, jokes,
00:35:21.780
stereotypes, no matter how big or small to be uttered in my presence. Okay. All right. That's
00:35:29.360
it. We're good. We're fine. I've done enough to be uttered. We're no longer allowed to be uttered
00:35:35.820
in my presence. Why do you say it like that? And the thing is they're reading. You can tell
00:35:40.880
they're reading a script. They could even memorize their lines. I will no longer allow racism to be
00:35:50.080
uttered. It won't be uttered. No. All right. Um, that's it. That's, that's the most I could do.
00:35:58.160
I told you that's a tough one, but that's too, if you want to go on your own and try it, it's, it's,
00:36:02.580
if you want to play this game at home on your own, uh, and see if you can get all through all two minutes,
00:36:07.160
let me know if you can do it. I want to move on to emails. Um, haven't read emails in a while. Uh,
00:36:13.660
and we're going to do that in just a second, but first, uh, you know, the daily wire reader pass,
00:36:19.660
we've been telling you about 99 cents right now, uh, to get a reader pass. If you do it right now,
00:36:24.160
because there's so much going on in the news. Uh, and if you want to get that in-depth analysis
00:36:27.920
from the daily wire, cut through all the liberal BS, then you need to get a, uh, a reader pass.
00:36:33.940
Now the membership tier is already a bargain at $3 a month, but if you join today, you get your first
00:36:38.960
month for 99 cents. You also get access to our mobile app and receive push notifications for
00:36:43.240
breaking news and special content, as well as you join the community of daily wire members who
00:36:47.260
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00:36:52.600
all of the daily wire news, exclusive op-eds and more on our, on our mobile app, all for the low
00:36:57.280
price of $1. Best of all, um, your dollars are getting you the news you need without the left to
00:37:02.200
spin. So go to dailywire.com slash subscribe right now and begin. Okay. Uh, we haven't done a lot of
00:37:09.700
emails in a while. So I want to, I want to read a couple of them. You can email the show by becoming
00:37:14.280
a daily wire member as well. Uh, that will give you access to the mailbag. And this is from Ron
00:37:21.080
says, Matt, first, I would like to let you know how much I enjoy your show. Your common sense approach
00:37:26.340
is refreshing on today's show. You mentioned the Gulag archipelago was Solzhenistin's magnum opus
00:37:31.380
and then said, he had many great opuses. Opai maybe is the plural of that. I just about fell
00:37:37.500
out laughing. I live in Japan and opai is the Japanese word for breast, specifically female
00:37:43.280
breast. So what went through, what went through my mind was he had many great opai. I just thought
00:37:49.700
it was funny and that you may appreciate the humor. Um, well, Ron, no, I don't appreciate the humor at
00:37:56.440
all. I knew that opai was the word for female breasts in Japanese. I am fluent in Japanese.
00:38:05.180
Okay. But this was a test. I was testing you to see how enlightened and tolerant you are.
00:38:12.120
And sir, you failed miserably. There should be nothing funny to you about a man like Solzhenistin
00:38:18.320
having many great female breasts. Why is that funny?
00:38:21.980
Let's say Solzhenistin had two female breasts. Maybe he had three, maybe he had one, maybe he had
00:38:29.880
seven and a half. It's up to him. Okay. This is his life. It's his choice, his truth. If he wants to
00:38:37.500
have seven and a half female breasts on his body, who are you to say he can't? The fact that you would
00:38:44.960
laugh at something like that is shocking, outrageous. Uh, and I find your cruelty to be
00:38:56.960
traumatizing for me. I can only imagine how Solzhenistin must feel even though he's dead.
00:39:05.520
Just makes it even worse. Insult to injury. So, um, we still have far to come as a society is my point.
00:39:11.660
So, uh, we'll move on to the next email. It says from Amanda says, hi, Matt, I enjoy your show.
00:39:17.900
That said, I think you're off on your take on the statue issue. You glossed over it during your
00:39:23.120
segment, but the fact remains that Columbus enslaved women and children. He was a murderer
00:39:26.740
and a slave owner and traitor. I don't see why traitor as in T-R-A-D-E-R. I don't see why a man
00:39:32.920
like that needs to have a statue and the Confederates. Do you really think it makes sense to have
00:39:36.940
statues of traitors on American soil? Traitor as in T-R-A-I-T-O-R. Okay. This is going to look
00:39:42.360
confusing. Do you think it makes sense to have statues of traitors on American soil?
00:39:46.920
Traitors and traitors is what we got, I guess. Uh, Amanda, you know, I, I think I already addressed
00:39:51.660
many of your points in, in, you know, over the last few days, I've addressed a lot of this in the
00:39:57.320
case of Columbus. Yes. I think he deserves the statue being one of the most significant men in
00:40:02.440
history. One of the greatest men in the history of the world. Uh, you know, a little detail like
00:40:06.480
that, like being one of the great men in history, I think that is deserving of a statue or two.
00:40:12.120
Um, did he engage in slavery and other atrocities? Yes, he did. Was that bad? Yes, it was.
00:40:17.180
Can we assess his moral culpability for those actions through our 21st century lens and hold
00:40:21.800
him to a modern standard on those issues? No, we certainly cannot. We cannot do that.
00:40:26.580
You know, you have to understand, Amanda, 500 years ago is a long time. It's a very, very long time.
00:40:35.060
I know that might seem obvious, but apparently for a lot of people like you, it's, you know,
00:40:40.620
it's not so obvious. Very, it's half a millennium ago. The world back then was nothing like what it is
00:40:49.360
now. It may as well have been an alien planet in outer space somewhere in terms of how different it
00:40:55.360
was from our experience in modern times. It was a brutal, violent age across the world.
00:41:03.000
Concepts like the absolute equality of the races didn't exist. Nobody believed in that. I mean,
00:41:08.540
not a single person who existed in 1492 would pass as racially enlightened and woke by our standards
00:41:15.400
today. Not a single person. Um, and you know, all of the great men everywhere in all parts of the world
00:41:22.820
were by necessity, hard bitten, violent, tough, cruel, you know, we could shake our heads about
00:41:30.720
that now, but we do it from the comfort of our modern life, enjoying the fruits of the labor
00:41:36.460
done by those men. We have the benefit, the luxury, the privilege to be scandalized by the brutality of
00:41:42.520
older times. They didn't have that privilege. You know, for them, it was reality. That doesn't excuse
00:41:48.500
anything. We're talking, we're not talking about moral truth. We're talking about moral culpability.
00:41:52.100
I'm not saying that, uh, slavery was morally okay back then, uh, just because most people thought
00:41:58.680
it was. I'm saying the moral culpability, when we assess the moral culpability of someone, you know,
00:42:03.900
someone who owns slaves, if, if, if your neighbor, Jim was found to have been owning slaves that he had
00:42:11.040
tied up in his basement or something, uh, he would be much more morally culpable for his slave
00:42:16.980
ownership than a person 500 years ago would be. And I think that's just undeniable. It's, I mean,
00:42:22.840
any thinking person must realize this. Um, and so I, you know, we have to judge everyone through that
00:42:29.880
lens, Columbus included. Now, one other point though, a different point, you're arguing that
00:42:37.100
these statues shouldn't exist. That's what you're arguing. You're saying that they shouldn't have the
00:42:40.880
statues. That is, that's different. There's a distinction here. That's different from arguing that
00:42:45.700
they should be torn down. So maybe you see the difference. Um, I would say statues are all about
00:42:54.320
symbolism. Tearing a statue down is, is symbolism. There's, there's, there's symbolism in that,
00:43:02.360
especially when an angry mob tears it down illegally. It's a lot of symbolism in that.
00:43:07.460
What I would say is that the symbolism of tearing down a historical statue, particularly when it's a
00:43:15.340
mob doing it is terrible, awful. Um, and so for that reason, I think, you know, a reasonable person
00:43:27.960
could be of the opinion that a particular statue isn't great and they don't love it and they wish
00:43:33.420
it was never put up, but they are not in favor of it being torn down. I think that's a position
00:43:40.500
a person could take. That's not my position when it comes to Columbus. I like the statues and think
00:43:44.120
they should be up. If it were up to me, I'd put them up, but there's, there's just a, like, it's,
00:43:48.700
it's one thing if, you know, you're, you're part of a community and they're talking about putting a
00:43:52.680
statue up that isn't up yet and you don't like the statue. And so you're saying, no, don't put that
00:43:57.100
statue up. That's a very different argument from saying this statue has been up for a hundred
00:44:01.680
years. Let's tear it down. Especially when it's part of a, of a, of a hysterical rush, a panic to
00:44:09.640
tear down statues all across the country. These are not isolated incidents. This is happening all
00:44:13.040
across the country. And what is the symbolism in tearing all these statues down all at once
00:44:17.660
across the country at the behest of the mob? The symbolism is, is one of affirming mob rule.
00:44:23.920
It's one of, of, you know, condemning completely our, our historical, what, what, who were once our
00:44:31.340
historical heroes. You know, when you tear down Columbus statues all over the place,
00:44:36.100
the message you're sending is not that, okay, we need to have a more nuanced view of Columbus.
00:44:44.200
I mean, there, you know, there were, there were a lot of bad things that he did. We need to,
00:44:47.120
we need to also be talking about that. That's not the message. The message is this was a scum.
00:44:52.140
He was dirt. He's nothing. We shouldn't even remember him. That's the message you send when you
00:44:57.240
tear him down all across the country. That's a terrible message to send. If, if, if, if we want
00:45:04.480
to have a more nuanced perspective on the, the people who pioneered and founded and shaped Western
00:45:12.780
civilization and later on the United States of America, I'm all about that. Thomas Jefferson,
00:45:18.640
George Washington, you want to talk about the slavery issue in relation to them? They were slave
00:45:23.240
owners. Um, yeah, I'm fine with that. These were not perfect men. They weren't saints. I don't think
00:45:33.600
any church anywhere is canonizing these people. Uh, so I'm fine with that, but tearing down the
00:45:39.680
statues is not what you do in order to begin a nuanced conversation. That's what you do when you
00:45:45.940
are condemning totally these people and throwing them on the ash heap. And that I oppose. Absolutely
00:45:54.340
oppose. We, we can't do that. All right. Um, we will, I had a couple other here, others here,
00:46:04.620
but I'm long winded as usual. So we'll have to save those for later and hope you guys have a great
00:46:08.740
weekend. Godspeed. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to
00:46:15.800
help spread the word, please give us a five-star review. Tell your friends to subscribe as well.
00:46:20.260
We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there. Also be sure
00:46:25.300
to check out the other daily wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show, Michael Knowles
00:46:28.340
show, and the Andrew Klavan show. Thanks for listening. The Matt Wall show is produced by Sean Hampton,
00:46:33.140
executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
00:46:37.780
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens edited by Danny D'Amico. And our audio was mixed by Robin
00:46:43.820
Fenderson. The Matt Wall show is a daily wire production copyright daily wire 2020. If you prefer
00:46:50.240
facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the insanity filling
00:46:55.040
our national news cycle. Well, tune in to the Ben Shapiro show. We'll get a whole lot of that and