The Matt Walsh Show - Institutions Are Lowering Standards To Fight “Racism” ｜ Proof For Your Liberal Friend

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00:00:30.000 It feels good. The people have been listened to, and it feels good.

00:00:35.840 I'm just happy that taking down the history behind it is not something that should be celebrated.

00:00:42.280 We've got another. It seems like there's been a kind of revival of the statue toppling brigade.

00:00:50.040 They never went away, but it's kind of they toppled all the statues and they took a break, I guess, for a few months.

00:00:55.120 And now they're back at it again.

00:00:56.900 So this is from USA Today.

00:00:59.280 Crews removed a Confederate monument from a Jacksonville, Florida park earlier Wednesday morning after years of debate and controversy over its removal.

00:01:07.740 Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan ordered the removal of the Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy Monument,

00:01:13.840 which has stood north of downtown in Springfield Park since 1915.

00:01:19.940 Deegan said the monument was a divisive presence that had no place in a city park.

00:01:23.640 She said, quote, symbols matter.

00:01:26.400 They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be.

00:01:29.400 By removing the Confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity,

00:01:34.020 that we're all created equal, the same flesh and bones, the same blood running through our veins, the same heart and soul.

00:01:39.280 A crowd gathered on the sidewalk erupted in shears as crews took down two bronze statues,

00:01:45.160 one of a woman in robes carrying a Confederate flag and the other of a woman reading to two children.

00:01:51.600 An opponent to the removal, State Representative Dean Black blasted the move as a stunning abuse of power by Deegan.

00:01:56.700 He said doing it without consulting city leaders or having a vote by the city council is another in a long line of woke Democrats' obsession with cancel culture and tearing down history.

00:02:04.620 So, once again, this was something that was done just like over at Arlington National Cemetery.

00:02:09.260 I mean, they're doing this without any authority to do it.

00:02:13.240 They're just taking it upon themselves to do it.

00:02:15.740 Here's some photos.

00:02:16.640 I just want you to see photos of them taking down the statue.

00:02:20.440 So, there they are.

00:02:23.540 I just want you to get a look at that statue.

00:02:26.240 Look how offensive that is.

00:02:28.800 Look how gross and offensive and objectionable.

00:02:34.620 I'm sure I'm glad they got rid of that finally.

00:02:38.760 I mean, look at that.

00:02:40.440 Just terrible.

00:02:43.440 You know, a woman reading to a child. 0.91

00:02:46.660 Very offensive stuff.

00:02:48.420 It's just gratuitous.

00:02:50.280 You can't have that in a park.

00:02:52.880 What will the children think?

00:02:54.220 What will the children think if they look at that statue of a woman reading?

00:03:00.180 Well, once again, you know what the children will think?

00:03:01.540 They'll think nothing.

00:03:02.120 Like, they'll think, oh, that's a pretty statue.

00:03:08.960 It'll be no big deal to them unless you make it a big deal.

00:03:13.420 You know, I was thinking about this the other day.

00:03:14.820 You know, because they say that, I mean, and this one is a particularly egregious example

00:03:19.860 where they tear down a statue that, it's like, you look at the statue

00:03:24.300 and even you can read, in most cases, like the plaques and stuff.

00:03:29.960 It doesn't look offensive.

00:03:32.220 Nothing about it appears objectionable.

00:03:35.280 These are, for the most part, not statues showing like a plantation owner beating a slave or something.

00:03:43.520 That's not what these statues are.

00:03:44.700 This one is a woman who's reading to her children.

00:03:49.600 But they say, well, even though they don't look offensive, they have to come down because of the intention behind them.

00:03:56.680 That's what they say.

00:03:58.100 And the claim is that the monuments went up during Jim Crow as a racist symbol and so they have to be removed.

00:04:03.740 Now, I don't think that's true for most of them.

00:04:10.180 Many of them, including this one, did go up 100 years ago, which is all the more reason to keep it up, by the way.

00:04:16.220 The fact that it's been there for 100 years.

00:04:19.040 That in and of itself, just because something is there for 100 years, in and of itself alone is not always a reason to let it stay there.

00:04:26.440 But that should always be a factor in its favor.

00:04:29.280 However, and I don't agree that these statues had racist intentions, but even if that was true, I mean, let's pretend that they had racist intentions in putting up the statues in some of these cases.

00:04:43.400 Well, first of all, first of all, why can't we give the statues a new intention, a new meaning?

00:04:49.360 You know, if the person who put up the reading statue was a racist engaged in a racist conspiracy, why can't we look at the statue and today and see it as, well, we could say, well, that might be what he intended.

00:05:04.520 But today we see it as it promotes motherhood and family, literacy.

00:05:09.820 And before you say that's ridiculous, you know, you say, well, we can't come up with a new meaning for a statue.

00:05:18.260 Well, this happens all the time. 0.72

00:05:22.520 Look at what happened with the N-word.

00:05:24.620 An actual racial slur was taken and turned into like this all-purpose word that appears five times per sentence in every rap song.

00:05:34.080 It's even used as a term of endearment.

00:05:35.860 And say what you want about that.

00:05:40.060 The point is just saying that, you know, a racial slur can become a greeting for the people who the slur was originally used against.

00:05:49.500 And yet a statue of a woman reading to a child can't be interpreted or seen in any way beyond how it was allegedly intended when it was erected 100 years ago.

00:06:00.340 And again, I'm not agreeing that it had a racist intention.

00:06:02.580 I'm saying for the sake of argument.

00:06:05.860 But here's the more important point.

00:06:07.360 If the alleged intent behind the statue is what matters, more even than like the statue itself, then so does the intent behind removing it.

00:06:20.000 And this has always been my argument all along.

00:06:23.820 Or one of my arguments anyway.

00:06:25.360 No matter how you feel about these statues in a vacuum, what you have to remember is the intent, the people who are taking it down, why are they doing it?

00:06:38.860 And what message are they trying to send?

00:06:41.440 You can claim that the statues were not intended to be unifying, but you removing the statue is also not intended to be unifying.

00:06:53.200 None of this is about racial unity or healing or anything like that.

00:06:59.180 And it never has been.

00:07:03.760 This is part of a radical left-wing campaign to erase history and to rewrite it.

00:07:12.780 I mean, that is the intention.

00:07:14.000 That's what they're trying to do.

00:07:18.400 Which is why if you're a smart person, even if you tend to feel yucky about these statues for whatever reason, you should still say, and even if, as I said all along, some of these individual statues, you might look at some of them individually in a vacuum and say, yeah, you know, for that particular one or this one, I can see an argument for taking it down.

00:07:42.420 Even if you said that to yourself, you should still be smart enough to realize that, okay, yeah, I could see an argument in a vacuum, but we're not in a vacuum.

00:07:51.040 And even if there's an argument for taking this particular statue down or that statue down, it should not be taken down like this for this reason by these people. 0.98

00:08:01.940 You know, it should not be done as part of a moral panic in response to the drug overdose death of a scumbag criminal. 0.95

00:08:09.540 You know, that's not, even if I don't like the statue, you can find a statue that I don't even like. 0.98

00:08:17.080 And if you had this mob coming to tear it down, I would say, no, you know what?

00:08:22.680 Now I'm a fan of the statue because not you people, you're not going to be the ones to do this and not for this reason.

00:08:28.280 Um, that should be how we look at these things.

00:08:34.820 A little bit more school craziness.

00:08:36.220 A school district in Illinois is looking to take Thomas Jefferson's name off of a school, but they're having trouble now figuring out who to replace, what name to put in place of Thomas Jefferson.

00:08:47.520 Because what they're discovering is that everyone in history, even like recent history, even recent presidents like, say, Barack Obama, are also problematic by the left standards today.

00:08:59.680 Here's a report on this from the local affiliate, the local ABC affiliate.

00:09:04.040 Let's watch that.

00:09:05.400 Those against the Obamas as a named choice say the former president failed to deliver on promises to the immigrant population.

00:09:11.940 Tonight, Waukegan's Board of Education heard concerns from the public over one of the finalists in the running to be the new name for Thomas Jefferson Middle School.

00:09:20.460 I want to urge the school board to drop the names of Barack and Michelle Obama from consideration.

00:09:25.180 I personally don't object to the name, but I have to be aware of the concerns.

00:09:31.580 The country's first black president and first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama, is one of the top three choices for the school's new name,

00:09:37.960 but one that's drawing opposition in the area with a large Latinx population.

00:09:41.340 We feel that Barack Obama disserviced us, he denied us, and he didn't stop the deportations the way he promised.

00:09:51.180 Members of the area's Latinx community held a protest outside the meeting's doors.

00:09:55.380 If you're removing the name of Thomas Jefferson, one oppressor, the name of Obama is another oppressor, and our families do not want to see that name.

00:10:06.240 Mauricio Sanchez's father was deported in 2015 during the Obama administration.

00:10:11.340 It was something very sad. We couldn't even say goodbye to our dad. We just hoped for him to be able to get out.

00:10:20.260 He said his dad is still in deportation hearings to this day, and the Sanchez family says the Obama name is a reminder of their current struggles.

00:10:27.700 You got to love it. You got to love it. You got to love it. Obama's an oppressor, too. You remove one oppressor, Thomas Jefferson, can't replace him with another Barack Obama.

00:10:38.540 Yep, he's an oppressor. Fine. Everybody is. There's no getting around it. Nobody. I mean, really, nobody is woke enough now.

00:10:50.760 It's impossible. The only people who could be woke enough is someone maybe who was born yesterday. That's how recent it has to be.

00:11:05.140 Everybody name all the schools after infants. After gender-fluid infants. They're the only ones who could possibly be woke enough. 1.00

00:11:12.600 Anyone who existed prior to five years ago is going to have done things that are considered problematic now or held views or said things that are considered problematic.

00:11:24.520 I mean, my goodness, Barack Obama was anti-gay marriage for most of his life.

00:11:32.540 He ran in 2008 as a pro-traditional marriage candidate, which is crazy to think now, but it's true. 1.00

00:11:40.920 And they haven't even brought that up yet.

00:11:46.000 He deported a few people. He was against gay marriage. Man, this guy was a bigot.

00:11:53.220 I guess you got to take all the names down, all the statues down, replace them with nothing.

00:11:58.040 Give all the schools numbers. That's it.

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00:13:19.640 So this weekend in Albany, the capital of New York, we saw maybe the clearest example in recent history of both construction and destruction happening simultaneously.

00:13:31.120 Under the cover of darkness at 5.30 in the morning, the city removed a statue of Revolutionary War hero and U.S. Senator Philip Schuyler.

00:13:39.540 And at the very moment that workers took Schuyler's statue away, the so-called Progress Pride flag was waving in the background, for the first time in the city's history, by the way.

00:13:50.580 So here's what that looked like. You can see it there.

00:13:52.960 Taking the statue away, and then we've got the multiple Pride flags flying proudly as the statue was hoisted away, including the brand new non-binary, BIPOC, trans, whatever flag.

00:14:04.620 They got all the flags there.

00:14:05.560 Now, if that seems like a carefully engineered juxtaposition, it is.

00:14:11.000 It's choreographed to deliver a very clear message.

00:14:15.540 Mao's disciples in the New York state government know that if they want their new flag to have any kind of legitimacy, then Philip Schuyler's statue can't remain.

00:14:23.840 You can't have construction without destruction.

00:14:26.980 If you want revolution, you can't introduce a new idol without erasing the one that came before.

00:14:32.360 So that's exactly what the local government did, as explicitly as they possibly could have done it.

00:14:38.000 If you're not trying to engineer a revolution, if you're just an average person living in New York with reasonable political views, what few of those may remain, then none of this really makes any sense.

00:14:48.460 What was wrong with that statue exactly?

00:14:51.800 As far as can be told here, no one ever bothered to ask a significant number of New Yorkers that question.

00:14:57.960 No one ever ran a poll on this, at least not one that we could find.

00:15:00.940 There was certainly no statewide referendum on whether people actually wanted Philip Schuyler's statue to be removed.

00:15:07.100 A few bureaucrats in New York just decided to do it a few years ago, and this weekend they cut through the red tape and they did it.

00:15:13.740 A local news station did conduct a man-on-the-street-style interview with a couple of residents in the city to get their perspective.

00:15:21.400 But none of them could explain why the statue is being removed.

00:15:25.300 Even the people who supported removing it couldn't really explain why they supported it.

00:15:30.680 No big surprise there, but let's watch.

00:15:33.560 It feels good.

00:15:34.740 The people have been listened to, and it feels good.

00:15:37.660 I'm just happy that taking down the history behind it is not something that should be celebrated.

00:15:43.200 Mary Liz Stewart is the executive director and co-founder of the Education Center.

00:15:47.820 I think it's time. I was glad to see some action finally taken on an issue that actually percolated, what, about four years ago, I think.

00:15:56.440 She says the group of teenagers spent a whole school year investigating a whole variety of aspects that related to the statue.

00:16:04.160 Not only the history of it, but why was it made, what the cost was to make it,

00:16:09.060 and what other communities were doing with controversial statues that related to enslavement.

00:16:14.260 Stewart says the students wrote to Mayor Sheehan recommending it be removed but not destroyed.

00:16:21.220 Rather, to preserve it and use it for educational purposes.

00:16:25.260 One of the things that was very important for the teens about moving the Schuyler statue

00:16:28.720 was the fact that, from their perspective, City Hall should be a place that's welcoming to everybody in the community,

00:16:34.540 and it was hard to say that was the case with Phil, you know, standing there.

00:16:40.160 Yes, a century-old historic artifact memorializing a Revolutionary War hero was not only taken down,

00:16:45.720 it was taken down at the behest of a group of teenagers.

00:16:49.060 And the primary reason, as we heard in the clip, is that the absence of the statue will make City Hall more, quote-unquote, welcoming.

00:16:56.040 But welcoming for who?

00:16:59.080 If the standard is that any unwelcoming statue needs to go,

00:17:02.680 then why exactly can't we destroy the monument of George Floyd that sits, for example, outside City Hall in Newark?

00:17:09.240 But George Floyd didn't own slaves, you might say.

00:17:11.420 Well, that's true.

00:17:11.940 All George Floyd ever did was break into a woman's home with five other people,

00:17:15.700 hold a gun to her chest, rob her in front of her kid. 1.00

00:17:18.260 And then after getting out of prison, all George Floyd did was take enough opioids and meth to kill a horse 0.96

00:17:24.280 before trying to rob a store and fighting with several police officers.

00:17:28.060 Despite all that, you're not allowed to even criticize the George Floyd statue.

00:17:31.540 You'll lose your job if you do.

00:17:34.060 Under the new rules, George Floyd's statue is welcoming.

00:17:37.020 The Revolutionary War general is unwelcoming.

00:17:40.300 You understand that?

00:17:40.980 Well, probably you don't understand it, but then you aren't supposed to understand.

00:17:43.920 Because part of the point behind these arbitrary decisions is that they make no logical or moral sense.

00:17:50.300 You're meant to go along with it, whether you understand or not.

00:17:53.060 We might ask why, but the powers that be will treat us like we're children.

00:17:58.620 And they're our impatient parents.

00:18:01.120 Because I said so, they respond.

00:18:03.740 It's also contrived.

00:18:05.260 Philip Schuyler is an iconic figure of the Revolutionary War era.

00:18:09.320 He's one of the reasons this country exists today.

00:18:11.220 Multiple towns and forts are named after him in New York.

00:18:15.060 And curiously, no one had a problem with him until very recently.

00:18:18.740 Ten years ago, in an article, the Albany Times Union described Schuyler this way.

00:18:22.780 Quote, Philip Schuyler was a leading American statesman and a key general in the American Revolution

00:18:27.100 who served at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga.

00:18:30.540 He was named a representative to the First Continental Congress of Philadelphia

00:18:33.180 and an advisor to General George Washington, who stayed at Schuyler's mansion in Albany.

00:18:37.760 The Times Union went on to describe Schuyler as, quote,

00:18:40.280 instrumental in the victory of the American colonists at the Battle of Saratoga in the fall of 1777,

00:18:45.120 a turning point of a Revolutionary War.

00:18:46.840 Residents of Albany, fearful that their city might be occupied by British soldiers,

00:18:50.880 instead celebrated an unexpected victory at Saratoga.

00:18:53.840 It was the first major win for the colonists,

00:18:55.940 and the residents of Albany rang church bells, fired cannons, roasted an ox, and gathered around a large bonfire.

00:19:01.840 Schuyler returned to the city of his birth as a hero.

00:19:04.060 Now, you can read the whole article, it's still on the Times Union's website from 2013.

00:19:08.780 There's not a single mention of slavery or slaves in the entire piece.

00:19:13.560 But guess how the Times Union, the same newspaper, describes Schuyler now?

00:19:17.720 Here's a recent article from the paper from this year.

00:19:19.840 Quote, while noted as a politician and Revolutionary War hero,

00:19:23.340 Schuyler enslaved over a dozen people at his Saratoga and Albany homes.

00:19:27.420 The Times Union of 2023 goes on to cite, and this is not a joke,

00:19:32.180 a report by five high schoolers who say that Schuyler is a bad man and his statue has to be removed.

00:19:39.160 That's the report you heard referenced in that news clip as well.

00:19:42.560 So here's how the Times Union describes the findings of these high school students.

00:19:47.920 Quote,

00:19:48.120 This is also the report that the Albany government relied on to justify removing the statue.

00:20:16.060 Facile does not begin to describe this.

00:20:20.180 I mean, in the 18th century, no one had the same attitude towards slavery that we do now,

00:20:25.860 even the people who opposed it, which relatively few people did back then on a global scale. 0.99

00:20:32.280 It's not surprising that a bunch of dumb, arrogant kids would lack the proper historical perspective 0.98

00:20:37.560 and think themselves qualified to pass moral judgment on historical figures who lived 250 years ago. 0.99

00:20:43.920 But that's where adults are supposed to step in.

00:20:47.760 The problem is that there aren't very many adults left in this country.

00:20:52.060 What's really going on here is that Schuyler, like Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt,

00:20:57.020 all the other historical figures who've had their monuments destroyed,

00:21:00.620 is that, you know, these are heroes of a different nation.

00:21:05.840 One that the city of Albany considers to be a foreign enemy, basically.

00:21:09.920 And they know they have to erase him if they want their revolution to succeed.

00:21:13.860 The Biden administration understands this as well, obviously.

00:21:16.460 Look at this grotesque display currently hanging at the White House.

00:21:20.440 They put this up over the weekend.

00:21:22.240 And that is a pride flag hanging on the White House.

00:21:25.700 And it's in between two American flags.

00:21:28.480 There are similar displays all over the country, of course, at 30 Rock and so on.

00:21:31.740 But putting this flag at the White House, just like the flag at Albany City Hall,

00:21:36.280 has particular implications.

00:21:39.220 And, you know, most conservatives, as that was put up over the weekend, reacted to it.

00:21:44.160 And we're saying that it's horrific and it's evil for the White House to not only fly the pride flag, 0.96

00:21:50.100 but to give it a place of primacy in between two American flags.

00:21:54.380 And, of course, it is both of those things.

00:21:56.000 It's horrific and evil, for sure.

00:21:57.860 But what they don't understand is that the White House is also properly representing its own nation,

00:22:04.800 which is not our nation.

00:22:08.440 Okay, we are two nations in one.

00:22:10.200 There is the old United States that conservatives still cling to and cherish.

00:22:14.760 And there's a new country with its own flag, its own traditions, its own heroes and foundational myths, etc.

00:22:21.040 That's the nation that the Biden regime, the media, academia, Hollywood all speak to and represent.

00:22:26.740 Why do you think that the city of New York took down Teddy Roosevelt's statue recently?

00:22:31.220 I mean, liberals used to love him.

00:22:32.300 He was one of the greatest presidents this country ever had.

00:22:34.480 He broke up big monopolies.

00:22:36.060 He was well-read.

00:22:36.820 He saved the middle class.

00:22:37.900 He established national parks.

00:22:39.260 He was a pioneer, an explorer.

00:22:42.220 They took down Teddy Roosevelt's statue in New York for a specific reason, which was to replace it.

00:22:47.260 Instead of Teddy Roosevelt, New York recently put up the horned statue of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

00:22:52.680 And that's now happening at scale.

00:22:54.700 The nation we had before is being replaced.

00:22:57.300 It's not just that demographics are changing, though they are.

00:23:00.940 The activists who are leading this revolution, like all totalitarians,

00:23:04.060 understand that to take full control, they need to erase our shared history.

00:23:08.080 And they're executing this plan right in front of us, in plain sight, as obvious as they possibly can.

00:23:38.080 The Toronto International Festival of Authors, October 29th to November 2nd.

00:23:43.420 Details and tickets at festivalofauthors.ca

The Matt Walsh Show - October 11, 2025

Institutions Are Lowering Standards To Fight “Racism” ｜ Proof For Your Liberal Friend

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