The Matt Walsh Show - June 25, 2018


Ep. 53 - It's Not The Government's Job To Be ＂Compassionate＂

Topics
morality vs. laws compassion vs government enforcement
Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Obama
Ep. 52 - There Isn’t Any Nice Or Pleasant Way To Enforce Our Immigration Law Ep. 54 - We Shouldn't Be Ashamed Of Our History

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

144.32

Word count

2,454

Sentence count

200

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Compassion is one of the most overused, misused, abused words in the English language. Compassion comes from Latin, which means "compassionate" and "suffering." When you're compassionate, you're sympathetic, you have a consciousness of another person's suffering, and you want to alleviate it. When you have compassion for someone, it means that you're feeling what they feel. And then, if it's real, you feel as if you feel real compassion, then you're acting on that feeling. It's useful.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I've often been told by viewers and listeners that my show is not as classy and not as professional as the other shows on The Daily Wire because I'm always doing it in my car or in my house.
00:00:17.260 You know, in fact, I've been told that my show isn't even really a show because I don't have the nice background and the fancy setup with all the nice whatever the desk and the lights and all that kind of the makeup artist.
00:00:32.920 OK, special effects. I don't have any of that stuff. I've been listening to those criticisms and I've decided to finally solve that problem.
00:00:40.660 And so what I did is I went out and I got a globe. You see this globe right here. I don't mean to brag.
00:00:47.640 About my globe. But everyone knows that when you add a globe into a setting, it ups the classiness quotient and the professionalism quotient by quite a bit.
00:00:58.400 In fact, there was even a study done recently, I think, that demonstrated there's there's a direct correlation between your IQ and how many globes you have in your home.
00:01:10.460 I have three globes just in this room right here. I don't mean to brag about my globes, but, you know.
00:01:16.460 And let me ask you this. Yeah, the other shows on The Daily Wire, they're very professional looking. How many globes do they have? Do they have any globes? I rest my case.
00:01:26.680 Now, we talked last week about the immigration debate, and I gave my opinion, which is very simply that our laws should be enforced and that the border should be protected.
00:01:36.700 I don't like to see kids separated from their families, and I certainly don't like to see the kind of abuse that has happened in some situations to these kids starting under the Obama administration.
00:01:47.920 But the law has to be enforced, certainly, which means stopping these families, detaining them, preferably detaining them together so they're not being separated, and then sending them back to their rightful legal homes.
00:02:02.720 Now, I received an angry email after that show, and it is a show, especially now with the Globe.
00:02:10.360 After that show on Friday, I received several angry emails, as per usual.
00:02:14.900 But this one in particular gave voice to a common objection, and this person said that my position and the position of any advocate for immigration enforcement, that position lacks compassion.
00:02:30.060 And we need to have compassion for illegal immigrants.
00:02:35.480 It's important to be compassionate.
00:02:37.600 The government has to be compassionate.
00:02:39.600 We need to have compassionate laws and to be compassionate to these people.
00:02:44.600 Compassion is, I'm sure you've noticed, one of the most overused, misused, abused words in the English language.
00:02:53.380 So I want to talk about compassion, and I think we should begin by defining compassion.
00:03:00.340 And so I went to the dictionary to do that.
00:03:02.840 But before we get to the definition, here's my basic position on compassion.
00:03:08.800 I don't want the government to be compassionate towards illegal immigrants. 1.00
00:03:15.900 I don't want compassionate laws.
00:03:19.500 I don't want compassionate policies.
00:03:22.800 I don't want a compassionate government doing compassionate things.
00:03:27.220 And the word compassionate in all those previous sentences, just imagine the scare quotes around it.
00:03:35.780 I think that any law or policy or government action that's justified on the basis of compassion, like, say, welfare, for instance, is always in the end a bad thing.
00:03:49.120 And it's always, in the end, something that does more harm than good.
00:03:54.420 So, no, I don't want compassion.
00:03:56.700 When someone says, well, don't you want the government to be compassionate towards illegals?
00:04:00.320 No, actually, I don't.
00:04:01.480 I think compassion is great.
00:04:04.640 Compassion is not just great.
00:04:06.140 It's necessary.
00:04:07.380 It is required.
00:04:09.740 But I don't want the government to be compassionate.
00:04:12.000 I don't think the government can be compassionate.
00:04:17.260 So, now we'll look at the definition of compassionate.
00:04:20.640 This is what compassionate means.
00:04:22.280 Compassionate means sympathetic consciousness of another person's distress together with a desire to alleviate it.
00:04:31.980 So, when you're compassionate, you're sympathetic, you have a consciousness of their suffering, and you want to alleviate it.
00:04:42.360 Now, compassion comes from the Latin.
00:04:44.500 If you follow its etymology, it comes from Latin.
00:04:47.540 And from an etymology perspective, it means co-suffering.
00:04:51.880 Okay?
00:04:52.360 So, it's related to empathy.
00:04:54.340 When you have compassion for someone, it means that you're suffering with them, that you're feeling what they feel.
00:05:02.420 You feel as they feel.
00:05:05.140 And then, if it's real compassion, if it's useful compassion, then you're acting on that feeling.
00:05:12.800 But you notice something about this definition.
00:05:16.780 It is an intensely personal thing.
00:05:19.960 A person is compassionate towards another person.
00:05:26.580 And what I would submit is that only a person can be compassionate towards another person.
00:05:35.100 An institution cannot be compassionate because an institution doesn't feel anything.
00:05:43.240 A law cannot be compassionate because a law does not feel.
00:05:48.140 Compassion is an action, but it's also a feeling.
00:05:52.520 It starts with a consciousness, at least.
00:05:58.440 But laws and institutions can't do that.
00:06:01.820 Now, as I said last week, the government should act according to a moral standard.
00:06:06.900 And laws should be written and enforced by a moral standard because moral is a matter of objective right and wrong.
00:06:15.280 And the government should, emphasis on should, do the right thing.
00:06:19.660 So, when I say the government should act morally, what I'm saying is the government should do the right thing and not the wrong thing, even though a lot of times the government does the wrong thing.
00:06:27.440 And laws should be right in the right thing.
00:06:31.820 In the sense that a law should be written according to this moral standard and a law should never prohibit anything that's good.
00:06:40.120 And laws should only prohibit things that are bad, which isn't to say that the law should prohibit everything that's bad.
00:06:47.200 It's just to say that everything that is prohibited should be bad, but not everything that's bad should be prohibited.
00:06:55.700 So, but none of this, I'm getting off into the weeds now.
00:06:58.220 None of this has anything to do with compassion, which, again, is personal.
00:07:02.600 So, morality is an objective standard against which all people, laws, institutions can and should be judged.
00:07:10.500 But compassion is a personal feeling, a personal conviction, which motivates an individual.
00:07:18.220 But laws and institutions and policies should be concerned with feelings and convictions.
00:07:26.280 They should only be concerned with what's right and wrong.
00:07:29.520 And it is right to have a border, and it is right to have laws concerning citizenship and immigration.
00:07:36.120 Not only right, but necessary.
00:07:37.780 And because it's necessary, it is then right.
00:07:41.080 You know, in other words, it's in order to have a country, it's necessary to have these laws.
00:07:46.200 So, therefore, it's the government's job to come up with those laws and enforce them.
00:07:50.380 But feelings don't factor in.
00:07:52.940 And they shouldn't.
00:07:54.580 And they can't.
00:07:55.960 Because the government doesn't feel.
00:07:57.780 The government is not a feeling institution.
00:08:01.680 It can't.
00:08:03.480 Feelings are not collective things that you do together.
00:08:08.400 They're something that you do individually.
00:08:11.020 And you see, I think this is a big part of the story of liberalism in modern times.
00:08:18.400 You know, the left, what the left has done is they've tried to pawn compassion and sympathy and generosity, you know, and charity and all these things.
00:08:32.740 They've tried to take all of that and remove it from the individual and give it to the government.
00:08:38.440 The individual leftist wants to relieve himself of the burden of being compassionate personally and empathetic personally and generous personally and charitable personally.
00:08:51.460 And so he creates in his mind this idea of the state as this kind of benevolent organism which can take on the job of being virtuous so that the rest of us don't have to be.
00:09:05.700 So the left, the left sees the state as almost this kind of perverse backwards Christ figure.
00:09:16.240 You know, whereas Christ took on the burden of mankind's sin and suffered for our sins so that we don't have to.
00:09:25.240 The state, in the mind of the left, takes on mankind's virtue and acts virtuously so that we don't have to.
00:09:35.640 And so it's a really weird thing that they've done.
00:09:40.860 And so that means, you know, that explains if you're, you know, if you believe in enforcing immigration law or if you advocate for getting rid of the welfare state or something,
00:09:51.040 a liberal will say to you, well, where is your compassion?
00:09:55.320 Where is your generosity? You don't have any compassion.
00:09:59.100 And the reason why they respond that way is because they see no distinction between the state and the individual.
00:10:09.380 And therefore, they see no distinction between the virtue of the individual and the virtue of the state.
00:10:14.240 And therefore, if we take these virtuous acts away from the state, then in the mind of a leftist, we have taken them away from the individual.
00:10:26.060 It seems like they really don't understand that I could make the case, and I do make the case, for getting rid of entitlements.
00:10:34.640 Yet I strongly believe on an individual basis that we as individuals are called to help the less fortunate, and we should do that.
00:10:47.440 So what I want to do is I want to take that away from the state and give it to the individuals.
00:10:54.860 But the left, if you talk to a leftist, he doesn't think that's possible.
00:11:01.440 The state cannot be virtuous.
00:11:03.000 It can't be empathetic.
00:11:05.300 It can't be compassionate.
00:11:07.980 It can only use those concepts, which are personal concepts, and it can only use them as a cover to gain more power and control for itself, which is what the state has done.
00:11:21.600 Which is why I say we need to turn the picture back around and restore things to their proper order.
00:11:28.400 So let the individual be generous.
00:11:31.260 Let the individual be compassionate.
00:11:34.540 Let the individual be virtuous.
00:11:37.400 Absolutely.
00:11:38.680 If you're concerned for the poor, and you should be concerned for them, then go and care for them.
00:11:45.640 Go out into the street right now. 0.99
00:11:48.200 Okay, turn this stupid video off, and go out into the street. 0.99
00:11:52.080 If you're leaving a comment right now, say, oh, this is wrong. 0.99
00:11:55.200 Where's your computer?
00:11:55.960 Okay, then turn the video off.
00:11:57.720 Shut your computer.
00:11:59.140 Go out into the street right now. 0.96
00:12:01.500 Find a homeless person.
00:12:02.800 Find a poor person.
00:12:04.280 Take them out to lunch.
00:12:05.680 Give them some of your money.
00:12:06.920 Take $40 out of your wallet and just give it to them.
00:12:10.760 Or go buy them a bag of groceries.
00:12:12.900 I mean, go volunteer at a soup kitchen.
00:12:15.000 Okay?
00:12:15.160 That's what you should do.
00:12:17.120 That's what we all should do.
00:12:18.540 You can go out and give your own money and your own time and your own resources to the poor.
00:12:25.480 You should do that.
00:12:27.360 That's compassionate.
00:12:28.440 It is your job individually to be and act compassionately.
00:12:36.780 The government can't do it for you.
00:12:39.780 You have to do it.
00:12:42.300 Stop looking for the state to be compassionate in your place.
00:12:46.220 Go and do it yourself.
00:12:48.100 And if you're concerned for immigrants, and you should be concerned for them, then there are many ways to help them.
00:12:56.080 There are many ways to serve the less fortunate in foreign countries.
00:12:59.840 You could donate to them.
00:13:01.560 You could find a great charity.
00:13:02.920 Give them your money.
00:13:03.840 You can give them your time, your resources.
00:13:09.780 You could even go down to Central America, go to Mexico, serve the poor there.
00:13:14.740 I mean, you could do all these things and be compassionate towards them.
00:13:19.200 And you should be.
00:13:20.880 But that's your job.
00:13:22.640 It's not the government's job.
00:13:24.660 The government's job is to enforce the law.
00:13:27.280 And to enforce the law justly and to enforce laws that are moral.
00:13:33.980 And the law that says you have to be a citizen to live here, that is a moral law.
00:13:41.560 A moral law in the sense that it is a law that's perfectly in keeping with moral standards.
00:13:50.480 You see, the left really has it backwards in more ways than one because, you know, a leftist will say that the law and the government should be compassionate and empathetic, ascribing these kinds of human qualities to institutions.
00:14:09.160 But then a leftist will also say that we can't legislate morality and morality is not the government's concern.
00:14:18.140 So what the left has done is they've turned morality into this completely subjective, personal, emotional thing.
00:14:26.000 And then they've taken compassion and sympathy and turned them into impersonal, objective, bureaucratic things.
00:14:33.700 So once again, they've turned everything, they've just, it's completely backwards.
00:14:39.300 The moral law is objective, like gravity is objective.
00:14:44.040 And any human institution is subject to it.
00:14:47.000 But compassionate, compassion can only be practiced by the individual, not by the government.
00:14:54.320 It's compassion that is a personal thing, an emotional thing.
00:15:01.140 It's not for the government.
00:15:03.700 We have to stop looking to the government to operate based on emotional convictions.
00:15:10.980 The government can't do that.
00:15:13.180 And it's a really, really bad idea to ask it to.
00:15:18.620 The government should be concerned with enforcing the law.
00:15:22.540 And then we as individuals, we can come around and be compassionate.
00:15:29.000 So another example, somebody breaks someone, a United States citizen breaks the law, commits a felony, you know, kills somebody, robs a bank, whatever.
00:15:39.480 And, well, what the government should do, we're not looking for the government or the law to have any feelings towards that person.
00:15:48.100 The government's job is to enforce the law, enforce it fairly, enforce it justly, which is going to mean putting them in prison.
00:15:55.720 And then we as individuals, we can go visit that person, if you're concerned with that person, and you want that person to feel compassion, well, then you as an individual, you can go to the prison and visit that person and minister to them and care for their family.
00:16:10.120 And there's so much that you can do for them.
00:16:11.720 The government did its job, putting this person in prison, forcing the law, now it's up to you to be compassionate, and emotional, and sympathetic, and generous, and charitable.
00:16:24.800 That's on you.
00:16:26.820 So I guess the answer to the question, when somebody says, where is your compassion?
00:16:30.980 Well, my compassion is, it's in here.
00:16:33.440 No, it's inside myself.
00:16:35.980 It's not out there.
00:16:37.900 It's not with the government.
00:16:39.660 It's within me.
00:16:43.080 And it's up to me to act on it, not to ask the government to act on it.
00:16:48.940 All right.
00:16:50.140 Yeah, I think the globe really improved that whole discussion, don't you?
00:16:54.940 I feel like it did.
00:16:57.000 Thanks for watching, everybody.
00:16:58.140 Thanks for listening.
00:16:59.340 I'll talk to you tomorrow.