The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 183 - It's Time To Excommunicate Pro-Abortion Catholics

Episode Date: January 24, 2019

Today on the show, we’ll talk more about that awful abortion law in New York and I’ll explain why the arguments made to support that law could apply just as well to post birth abortion. Also, why hasn’t Andrew Cuomo been excommunicated? Finally, why the State of the Union Address is a disgrace and an embarrassment. Date: 01-24-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Matt Wall Show, we'll talk more about that awful abortion law in New York, and I'll explain why the arguments made to support that law, and every poor pro-abortion law, apply just as well to post-birth abortion. Also, why hasn't Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, been excommunicated yet? Finally, we'll talk about why the state of the union address is a disgrace and an embarrassment and should be finally abolished. We'll talk about that today on the Matt Wall Show. Hello and welcome to the Matt Walls Show. Thanks for being here.

Remember to subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe on iTunes, subscribe on become a premium member of the Daily Wire. You can subscribe that way as well. Now, yesterday we talked about the barbarous inhuman law that was just passed by the New York State Legislature, which makes abortion legal through every stage of pregnancy. And I explained yesterday how this law indeed will give women the ability, the power to get an abortion at any time, at any point in their pregnancy, up till birth for any reason.

Now, the language of the law does stipulate that late-term abortions are reserved for women who have health concerns or in order to protect a woman's, a mother's health. But that language is so intentionally vague that it could apply to any situation at all. As I said, you know, are we talking physical health, emotional health, psychological health, financial health, spiritual health, it seems like any in all of those could be, could qualify. Besides, abortion is never actually necessary to protect a woman's health or her life. So anytime that qualifier is put into the law,

that means that there's something else going on, because that category of abortion doesn't actually exist. So what are they really doing there? Obviously, they're just providing a very kind of vague, way for anyone to get an abortion. As long as they, so maybe in New York, if you're a woman, you want to get an abortion at 30 weeks or 32 weeks or whatever, you might have to couch your reason in terms of health, but that's really it. And I think that this point is really crucial. I know that I hammered it yesterday, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it today,

but it's important that we stop and appreciate just how gratuitous. and how unnecessary late-term abortion actually is. Because the way that the left talks about it, the way that abortion advocates talk about it, they're going to say that, well, nobody even gets late-term abortions unless they really need it. So this is, this is, they act like late-term abortions are the most necessary forms of abortion,

as in nobody would ever get something like that unless they absolutely needed it. Well, that's not true at all. Of course, all abortion is gratuitous, and all abortion at any stage in any form is unnecessary and evil, but that's especially the case with a late-term abortion. Because here's the reason why. Because a woman in the third trimester, if she wanted to or needed to end her pregnancy, she could easily do it without killing the baby.

So even with an abortion, if she's getting an abortion in the third trimester, she's going to have to go into labor and delivery either way. If she gets an abortion, that means that the baby is going to be killed one or two days before labor and delivery. But you could just cut that step out, which is a dangerous step for the mother as well, by the way.

You can just cut that out and deliver the baby. Have a C-section, and you're good to go. Take the baby out, and boom, the pregnancy is over. It can be over in a few minutes. That extra step of killing the baby is completely unnecessary. It is just murder, that's all. There's no reason to do it. Even in a situation where a woman legitimately does have to end her pregnancy

because of some serious health complication, those situations happen. There's no reason, though, to directly kill the baby ahead of time. You could talk to any real doctor, anyone who's, or any nurse who's worked in the labor and delivery departments of a hospital. And they'll talk about, you know, they've plenty of situations where you have these emergency situations where you got to get the baby out. that does happen. It's rare in any individual case, but overall, it happens kind of frequently. But what they'll tell you, if they're being honest, is that there's never been a situation

where they had to directly kill the baby in the process. Why would you ever have to do that? There may be plenty of situations where you can't save the baby, sadly, tragically, despite your best efforts, but you have to directly kill it. Why? So killing the baby out of time is just, it's not only is it evil and terrible and awful, which all abortion is, but it's also, it's just as evil and just as unnecessary and just as egregious as killing the baby after the birth. There's no difference.

There's no difference at all, none, not even a, not even a slight difference. there is not even a slight difference between late-term abortion and post-birth abortion. And I would challenge any pro-abortion person to come up with an argument against post-birth abortion that would not also apply to late-term abortion. You can't do it. Or come up with an argument for late-term abortion that would not also apply to post-birth abortion. You can't do it. In fact, you really can't come up with an argument for abortion at any stage. that would not also apply to born infants. Let's think about this.

There are really only four arguments. There are four arguments for abortion. And they're all bad arguments, but these are the arguments. Okay, there are really no other arguments. Number one, the number one main argument now is the woman's autonomy has to be respected. It's what the woman wants to do.

The baby is a dependent on, her and on her body and on her life, and she has a right to autonomy, so she should be able to express that right, enjoy that right whenever she wants. And so if she decides that, you know what, I don't want this baby being dependent on me anymore, then that's it. So that's the number one argument, autonomy. Number two, they'll say that the fetus, scare quotes around fetus, is not fully developed, and thus it's not a real person. Number three, they'll say the fetus is dependent on his mother and thus not a person. And number four, they'll say sometimes the other argument is,

well, if the fetus is not aborted, it will just become an unwanted child, and we already have enough of those to deal with. Right? So those are the four arguments. Autonomy, not fully developed, thus not a person, dependent, thus not a person overpopulations. So those you go. There you go. That's the whole argument for abortion. Every single one of those arguments, every single one,

applies just as much, if not even more, to post-birth procedures, let's call them. So it's a matter of drawing lines, right? You've got to decide where to draw the line. And the point that pro-lifers have been making all along is that we've got to draw the line somewhere. the only sensible place to draw the line is at conception. To draw the line there and say you cannot kill the babies in the womb. Once conception has occurred, now you have a distinct, separate, living entity, which in the first few moments and days and weeks after conception might not look like a fully grown and developed person, but this is a distinct human entity, a person.

And that's the only sensible place to draw the line. Once you have that human living entity, you got to draw the line there, you can't kill it. If you don't draw the line there, then you're left with, there is no other non-arbitrary place to draw it. And if you're not going to draw it at conception, there is no reason at all to draw it at birth. Nothing really changes at birth. That's the thing. Nothing really changes at birth other than now the baby is in a different location. It was inside the mother before, now it's outside.

So what? What difference does that make? There's no reason to draw the line there. There's no reason to draw it in the moments after birth either. There's no reason to draw it in infancy. infancy. If a woman decides to keep her post-birth fetus for a while, she's still going to discover that this creature is an enormous strain on her body, on her time, on her energy, on her life. In fact, the infant is much more an imposition on her autonomy than it was while it was inside her body. Anyone who's had an infant knows this. Let me, anyone. Anyone, When you have an infant in the house, do you feel like an autonomous person? No, because you've got this infant that you have to take care of constantly. At least while the baby's inside your body,

you don't have to, you know, the process mostly takes care of itself, right? But with an infant, it's like every waking moment you're taking care of this baby, you're accounting for the baby, you've got to wake up in the middle of the night and feed it, and you're changing his diapers, and you've got to buy, you've got to buy divers, you've got to start buying all these things. So now there's that financial strain as well. An infant is as much, as I said, as much an imposition on a woman's autonomy and the father's autonomy, if he's involved, hopefully he is, as the baby was while it was still inside the mother's body.

So what if a mother decides, what if she comes to the conclusion after, say, two months or six months that motherhood actually is not the best decision for her. What if she decides that, you know, it's just, it's, she doesn't want to do this. She doesn't want to structure her entire life around this baby. She doesn't want to have to feed the baby. She doesn't, she doesn't want to do these things. It's her life, right? She's autonomous. What if she gets a major job offer and, and discovers that the infant fetus is, makes it difficult for her to thrive in her new position? or even that with this baby she can't even accept the position. Or what if a thousand other scenarios?

It's none of our business anyway, right? Don't want a post-birth abortion. Don't get one. Isn't that the slogan? So arguments one, two, three, and four that I outlined above, they all still hold in this case. The infant fetus interferes with her autonomy. It is not fully developed. It is completely dependent.

And now that it's unwanted, it has become a member of a member of a person. an overcrowded category. So why shouldn't she be able to consult with a licensed physician and make a decision that's best for her? Besides, post-birth abortions happen all the time anyway. You can make them illegal, but it's not going to stop them from habit. They still are going to happen. That's just the reality of the world. Isn't it better for there to be a safe and sanitary facility provided rather than for her to have to do it in a back alley or in a bathtub or something. And we can't draw the line either. So there's no reason to, if we're going to allow abortions of infants in the womb, there's no reason to not allow them of infants outside of the womb.

And there's also no reason to disallow abortions of toddlers or, you know, toddler fetuses or adolescent fetuses. Because these fetuses also continue to make demands on a woman's autonomy. They are also wholly dependent on their parents. They're also underdeveloped physically. Thus, apparently, they're not people in the strictest sense. So what if a woman discovers that motherhood is the wrong choice for her when her fetus turns four or six or eight or just enters middle school? If we don't draw the line anywhere in the child's utero development, then why draw it during its post-Utero development. And on what basis?

Now, am I suggesting that if we accept abortion, then we may as well allow a woman to abort her fetus at any age whatsoever? No, of course, I'm not saying that. Don't be silly. Because once the fetus graduates high school, then, and it becomes independent, emancipated, it's fully grown, it's gotten through puberty. Now it is a fully grown entity.

And so now I think there is the possibility that we could consider it a person, but only a possibility. Because we've already agreed, remember, that personhood is based on a fetus's physical development and on its ability to care for itself. So what about, for example, a 23-year-old disabled individual? What about an adult on welfare? What about someone who's homeless?

What about someone who's sick and elderly? What about those who are physically developed but never reach the intellectual development? that could rightly afford them a claim to personhood. Clearly, according to abortion advocates, we cannot, in good conscience, continue to consider all of them to be people. Those are just fetuses too.

By the way, remember, fetus is just Latin for offspring. So that's all that is. That's all that means. So those are also offspring that according to arguments, one, two, three, and four cannot be considered people and should be candidates for abortion. Now, it's easy to say that I'm making a straw man here, or I'm engaging in a slippery slope fallacy.

Well, it is a slippery slope, but it's not a fallacy. In fact, it's a fallacy to say that every slippery slope argument is a fallacy. That's not true. Because sometimes you are on a slope, and sometimes it is slippery. That's just the fact. And the point here that I'm trying to illustrate is, that I can take all of the arguments for abortion, all of them, and I can take them fully intact, and I can preserving their integrity, if I can call it that, and I can take them over here,

and I can apply them to infants, to toddlers, to adolescents, to the disabled, to people on welfare, to people who are intellectually stunted to the elderly, and so on. I can really apply all of those arguments to all of those groups. That should trouble you as a pro-abortion advocate. Because if you can look and say, wow, okay, all of my arguments could easily be used to justify the Holocaust, then that means that either your arguments are bad or your position is bad or both. That's the whole point of a slippery slope argument. That's why a slippery slope argument can be a very legitimate argument.

Because the whole point is to show you, if I can take your argument, whatever argument you made, if I can take it intact and use it to justify something that we all agree is hard. horrible, then there's something wrong with your argument or there's something wrong with your position. Now, in this case, there are no other arguments available for abortion, so that means there's just something very wrong with your position. Your position is bad. It's terrible. It's evil. Speaking of evil, Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York has been a huge cheerleader of this new law. He even lit the World Trade Center pink to celebrate it. Cuomo is an alleged Catholic.

Not only Catholic, but he cites his Catholic faith all the time to advocate for positions that he holds, which means that the bishops in New York really have a role to play here, don't they? It seems like they should have something to say and something to do as well. Well, what have they done? The Bishops in New York, they did issue a statement a few days ago about this law where they express their sadness. I'm going to read the statement to you. The statement is from the bishops in New York. Words are insufficient to describe the profound sadness we feel at the contemplated passage of New York State's new proposed abortion policy. We mourn the unborn infants who will lose their lives and that many mothers and fathers will suffer remorse and heartbreak as a result.

The so-called reproductive health act will expand our states already radically permissive law by empowering more health. practitioners to provide abortion and removing all state restrictions on late-term procedures, with an abortion rate that has already double the national average New York law is moving in the wrong direction. We renew our pledge to offer the resources and services of our charitable agencies and health services to any woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy to support her and bearing her infant, raising her family or replacing her child for adoption. There are life-affirming choices available, and we aim to make them more widely known.

It goes on a little from there. Okay, that's fine, right? That's a fine statement. I agree with it, obviously. You're sad about the law. You're mourning the law. It's a bad law. Fine. But this is not nearly harsh enough. It doesn't go nearly far enough. Not nearly strong enough. I should mention that Bishop Edward Sharfenberger of Albany, he wrote his own letter condemning the law, and it's better than that. It's a lot stronger. It's a good letter, but still, a lot more needs to be done. with these Catholic politicians who advance measures that will result in the deaths of thousands more babies. Specifically, the thing about the Catholic Church is that there is a step you can take, a rather dramatic step, and that is you can excommunicate. So every moment that Andrew Cuomo and Nancy Pelosi and these other fake Catholic Democrat politicians, every moment that they're allowed to continue calling themselves Catholic is a scandal for the church.

Because they can be publicly excommunicated and they should be. As in, their bishops can stand up and say, you are not a member of the church. You are not Catholic. You can call yourself that, but you're not. Now, consider this. In 1962, a group of Catholic segregationists were excommunicated for publicly supporting and advancing racist policies. Now, what got them excommunicated was that they kept doing it, even after they were told by their bishops to stop. Plus, they were making fallacious theological arguments for their evil position.

They were using their Catholic faith to justify this evil, which is a great public scandal, using their religion to advance evil. And so that's what got them excommunicated, rightly so, in my opinion. well, that's exactly what pro-abortion politicians are doing also. It's not just that they happen to be Catholic, which is bad enough. It's that they use their Catholicism to advance these sorts of policies. If these bishops had even a little small portion of a spine, they would excommunicate these people. Okay, one other quick thing to mention before I get to some of your emails, the saga over the state of the union address is continuing.

Now Trump says, Trump originally said he was going to insist that he gives the state of the union, even though Nancy Pelosi is saying you can't give the state of the union during the shutdown. Trump said he was going to give it. Now Trump sent a tweet this morning saying that he'll wait until after the shutdown to give the state of the union. And that is, look, I knew there was no way that Trump would agree to not do the state of the union after Nancy Pelosi suggested it. But I was really hoping that Trump would be the guy to get rid of the state of the union. Union. I know that I'm not breaking any new ground here. A lot of people complain about it. I just want to register my complaint as well, which will accomplish nothing, I'm sure, but I'm going to do it anyway. The State of the Union address is an absolute, I mean, it's a disgrace, in my opinion. The way that it's handled. Now, the way that State of the Union addresses were originally given, the way that they should be given, is the President writes a statement talking about the state of the Union and releases it.

and we can all read it. We all have the internet now, and so we can put it out there, we can read it, we can see it for ourselves. The problem is all the pageantry that goes into it. The president walks down the aisle, and everyone stands and claps, and then he gets up there,

and there are applause lines, and then that side doesn't applaud, and that side does. It's the theatrics and the pageantry of it, which is just not in keeping with the American spirit whatsoever. First of all, the whole idea of everyone's standing and applauding as the president makes his grand entrance down the aisle. Yes, I'm the president.

That's what kings do. That's not what presidents are supposed to do. The president is supposed to be a public servant who works for us, who we elected. That's what's supposed to separate us from so many other countries is that we don't do the whole thing where the guy walks down the aisle and everyone's, oh, yeah, let me reach out and touch. his hand that we're not supposed to do that. And the whole the pageantry of the applauding and the clap and all the, it's just, it's so dumb and ridiculous. And it's also completely useless in terms of actually finding out what's going on in the country. Because all the state of the union address has become is just a campaign speech by the president that ever, that becomes dignified by all

the pageantry that surrounds it. We all, we all sit and watch this campaign speech. Let me ask you, when was the last time in a state of the union address, you heard a president talk about the things that his administration did wrong and things that he needs to personally improve on? When was the last time you heard a president saying state of the union address? It's like, hey, you know, we tried this thing over here. Didn't work out. We made this mistake. If it was a legitimate state of the union address and he was actually just telling you what's going on and getting you up to speed and it was kind of objective in that way, then you would hear that. then presidents would do that.

But they never do because it's just, it's remarkable. Isn't it remarkable that in every state of the union address, it turns out that the president is doing a great job and that although there are some challenges the country faces were headed in the right direction, have you noticed that every single state of the union address that's been publicly given, it just so happens that that's the case.

I mean, it's a miracle. It turns out that every president is doing a great job and that the country's always headed in the right direction, according to the president during the state of the union. It's a total waste of time. And I am just waiting for the president who will say, you know what, I'm done with this. I don't need the pageantry.

I don't need you guys applauding. Here, I'll write this down. It's a couple pages long. You can read it. Boom. We're done. That's all. That's all we need.

Finally, let's get to some emails. If you want to email the show, Matt Wall Show at gmail.com. Matt Wallshow at gmail.com. From Timothy, he says, Matt, you talk so flippantly. about so-called late-term abortion, he puts that in scare quotes. You say, well, just take the baby out alive and put them up for adoption.

You make it sound so easy. Do you have any idea how many kids are waiting around to be adopted in this country? Get rid of abortion and you just create more orphans. Okay, so that's argument number four that I mentioned before. There are two problems with this argument. It's a very common argument. This whole thing about when you talk about pro-aborts, say, well, what, would, all the kids who already need to be adopted? Did you, have you adopted any

babies? Two problems here. Number one, it's, it's totally false. And this is, this is so often the case with arguments that pro-abortion people make, where the argument is, first of all, false, and also irrelevant anyway, where even if it was true, it still wouldn't matter. So this argument is both false and irrelevant. Let me explain why it's false. It's true that there are a lot of kids, there are a lot of children in the system now. In foster care, up for adoption, there are a lot of kids waiting to be adopted. That is true. And it's true.

That's true. And it's a very sad thing. But it's not true that there are a bunch of babies waiting to be adopted. In fact, if you had a baby, an infant, up for adopt. there would be a line around the block waiting to adopt that baby. Babies get adopted like that in this country. It is very easy to get a baby adopted. Just talk to any couple that has tried to adopt a baby an infant, and they'll tell you how long they had to wait, how difficult it was just because everybody wants to adopt a baby. So this idea that, well, you know, you put the child up

for adoption and he's going to sit in foster care and sit in an orphanage. It's just not true. There is a line miles long of people waiting to adopt babies. It's harder, unfortunately, sadly, to get older children adopted. A child is six or seven years old, and that's the really sad thing. But it's understandable from the perspective of any individual married couple and they're looking to adopt, and they'd really like to adopt a baby so they can be there through its entire life and form that bond sort of automatically.

There are a lot of extra challenges with adopting older kids, which, and that's why I have so much respect for the people who, the heroes who do adopt older children. I'm just talking about the reality of the situation. That's all. This is just the reality. That it's very easy to get a baby,

adopted. That's all. But second thing, it's irrelevant anyway. It's got nothing to do it. The issue of adoption and how many kids are up for adoption, that is very relevant to society. It's a very important thing. But in terms of evaluating the abortion issue, it's irrelevant. Because the question surrounding abortion does a mother have an inherent right to kill a child just because it's dependent on her? Is it true that you're not a person if you're not physically developed? Is it moral to kill a human being? Those are basically the three questions that surround abortion. They have nothing to do with adoption.

Even if there were a million babies waiting to be adopted, that would have no bearing on the answers to those questions. So if we determine that no, it's not okay for a woman to kill her child, and that no, your personhood is not dependent on your physical development, and that, yes, it is immoral to intentionally kill innocent life. Well, then abortion is wrong. Again, even if there are 50 million babies waiting to be adopted, abortion would still be wrong in that case.

So it's an irrelevant point to the abortion issue. This is from... This email is also from Tim. The other one was from Timothy. I think it's a different person. Matt, I'm a huge fan from even before you join the Daily Wire, even after you discredit my email. I'll still support you.

It's so obvious that our nation is under attack by outside forces as a collaborative effort. Obviously, it's not one evil little man with a mean white cat, but you and Ben sure do a good job of joking it off like that. For how smart the two of you are, I know you obviously see it. It's very clear that we're being destroyed from the inside out and that they are breaking down our morals and values. It's being done through our media and culture. Are you guys and the investigators trying to not cross a certain line

to stay appealing to a mainstream audience? By the way, you and Ben write good books, but Michael Knowles is the best. You and Ben should try and learn a thing or two from him. Thank you. I agree. I remain completely jealous of Knowles for selling a book with nothing in it.

Tim, look, obviously, I can't speak for Ben, but we both agree that the nation is under attack, that something is happening from the inside out, that our morals and values are. breaking down. I think it seems like what you're taking issue with is that neither one of us subscribe to the, to most of the conspiracy theories where the picture is painted of some kind of homogenous, devious force behind the scenes, pulling the levers and hatching plans and passing secret notes to one another, pulling the strings, you know, coming up with these

dastardly plots and so on. I reject that. I think Ben rejects that too. The reason I don't subscribe to it is because I just don't think that that is how evil generally works, especially in our culture. It seems to me that many powerful people, powerful forces, powerful institutions are all on the same ideological page so they don't need to get together and plot and hatch plans and conspire in darkened rooms. Like, do you think that journalists and media members and the CEOs of these companies, do you think that they all meet in rooms and agree to try to bring down Trump?

Well, no, because they already agree. It was an unspoken agreement. Of course they're going to try to bring down Trump, so that's what they've been doing. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy. They're all on the same page. It's understood. It is an unspoken conspiracy.

It is a, if you will, a non-conspiring conspiracy. Same for the media's decision to, for instance, ignore the March for Life every year. Now, that's the kind of thing. If you didn't know any better, and you saw how there's been this consistent blackout of the March for Life for 40 years, even though hundreds of thousands of people

show up in Washington, D.C., which is media headquarters, especially for political media, and yet they're ignored. And if you saw that, you would say, well, it seems like they, this is some sort of, this is a, they apparently have agreed.

You know, this is some sort of concerted effort on their part. But no, it doesn't need to be a concerted effort. It doesn't need to be a, coordinated ever. They all just agree that, of course, they're not going to cover that. And most things in our culture are like that. These forces understand where they want to go, where they're coming from, what sort of culture they want to build. And so they move us in that direction. So it's less dramatic. It's less cinematic, but it's extremely effective.

My other problem with conspiracy theories, by the way, is that they always seem to way, way, overestimate the intelligence and the competence of the powers that be. Take, and I know you probably weren't referring to this specifically, but think about the moon landing conspiracy. Not only is that conspiracy theory completely baseless and all of the evidence for it has been debunked a thousand times, but it also would require an enormous. amount of coordination and intelligence and competence from a great many government agencies and individual bureaucrats, not just in America, but across the world. And that's just, if you know anything about how the government works and how bureaucrats work and how bureaucracies work, you would know that that is just not possible. Finally, I want to answer more than the, but I'm going to cut it off here.

So Bridget emails and says, I really enjoy your show. I've appreciated your defense of the greatness of the men who founded our country as well as Columbus who discovered the land. Can you please give me your 30-second elevator speech about why people are wrong when they say that the Europeans stole the land? And therefore, we as Americans have no right to it. I would love to have a ready defense when those questions arise. as they so often do these days. 30 seconds. Well, I don't know if I can explain anything in 30 seconds.

I don't know if you notice. I can't do anything in 30 seconds. But I'll try to answer it as briefly as possible. And I'm speaking generally here, okay? There was some stealing that went on. Evil acts were committed. It was a rather messy period of history, as all periods of human history are messy. But broad strokes, the idea that we,

stole this land and that we're now on stolen land is absurd. It's ridiculous. It's not credible for two main reasons. Okay. So here's your ready-made defense. Number one, keep in mind, when we talk about Europeans coming to the Americas, we mean the Americas as in North, Central, and South America. And throughout the hemisphere, so we're talking about like the entire Western hemisphere. We don't know exactly how many indigenous people lived through all that space, but it was maybe 20 million, some estimates. There are some estimates as low as 10 million, some 20, some 50. Let's even take 50 million. Let's take a higher estimate. So 50 million indigenous people spread out over something like 16 to 17 million square miles. If you're chasing data down,

Instead of seeing it in one place, you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite. All your data in one place with built-in AI for real-time insights. Learn more at intuit.com slash ERP. Okay. Keep in mind, there are 300 and, there are over 300 million people living in just the United States today. So we're talking about, at most, maybe 50 million people over the entire hemisphere. So the idea that this relatively small smattering of disparate, isolated, disconnected tribes

somehow collectively owned the entire hemisphere is just absolutely nuts. So what? Human civilization was supposed to relegate itself to the other side of the Atlantic forever? Everyone was just supposed to stay over there. Nobody was allowed to come over here. The advance of human civilization was supposed to hit an imagination. Forgealbilt at the Atlantic and say, whoa, guys, no further. That's apparently what some people think.

Because keep in mind, they say that Europeans were invading as soon as they touched down. This is what these people, they'll say that anywhere the Europeans landed, they were invading. Anywhere over that 16 million square mile plot of land, two continents. apparently according to these people, the Europeans, it was hands off. You weren't allowed to have any part of either of those continents. So if settlers were setting up a village in the wilderness and there was an Indian tribe 300 miles away, what we're being told is that those settlers were stealing land from that tribe, even though they're in a part of the land that it's very possible the Indians have never even been in or even.

and certainly we're never planning on doing anything with. Let's just look at one example specifically. The Cheyenne, okay, the Cheyenne territory in the 18th century covered about 500,000 square miles. Do you know how many Cheyenne existed? About 3,500, maybe 4,000. You're telling me that 4,000 people owned 500,000, 500,000 square miles. miles of land in the middle of the country, nobody else was allowed to go there? Like the entire human race was supposed to leave 500,000 square miles allowed.

But they're supposed to cut out this chunk and say, no, no one's allowed to go there. There are a few people living on that land, and they're all bunched up in tribes. And so of that 500,000 square miles, I'd say about 490,000 square miles of it, completely unoccupied, but no one's allowed to go there. It just doesn't make any sense. Now, obviously, that doesn't justify the slaughter of Native Americans. It doesn't justify actual atrocities that were committed, but the idea that natives owned the entire Western Hemisphere is obviously ludicrous. I mean, how can anyone suggest that? Second point, we talk about Native Americans like they were some sort of homogenous unified group, but they weren't.

And they didn't see themselves that way. And so to say that we stole land from Native Americans, that sentence doesn't actually make any sense, because they were not one big group altogether. These were isolated tribes that warred with each other and killed each other and enslaved each other and stole land from each other. They stole land from each other all the time. So if the Europeans did steal land,

most likely they were stealing land that had already been stolen about 50 times before that. Now, that doesn't justify it again, but back in those days, everywhere in the world, this is how it worked. This is how human civilization spread. Not just European civilization,

not just white civilization, civilization of any type. This is how it spread, including among Native Americans and indigenous people. It was understood that if you had land, you had defended. If you can't defend your land, it's going to get taken from you. Most likely 3,000 people can't defend 500,000 square miles. It's going to get taken from you. That doesn't make it right? That's just how it worked back in those days. Among everybody, that was just how humanity spread. Those were the rules of the road back then that everybody understood and everybody abided by. So, yeah, you could say, well, that doesn't justify what the Europeans. Fine, but it also means that you can't just hang this thing around their necks. If you're going to blame them for stealing land, you have to blame everybody, including Native Americans, for stealing land.

And then once you start doing that, okay, well, this whole blame game doesn't make any sense anymore. Because now we're just castigating all of human civilization up until about 100 years ago. But if you're going to be honest and consistent, that's what you have to do. Think about when the Spanish came to Central America and they overthrew the Aztecs. The Aztecs were one of the most barbaric civilizations to ever exist on the face of the earth. they committed human sacrifices, tens of thousands a year, where they took slaves, they stole people from neighboring lands and tribes, and they brought them up the temple steps, and they ripped their hearts out, and then cut their limbs off and consumed the limbs,

and then rolled the bodies down the temple step. This is what they did to tens of thousands of people. This was a barbaric civilization. Anyway, the Spanish come. They band together with other neighboring tribes who all hated the Aztecs for good reason, you know, when your neighbor next door has just been, had his heart ripped out by the Aztecs, you might kind of be sort of salty towards them. So they band it together, they overthrew the Aztecs.

And this is used as an example of, oh, the Spanish stole the Aztec land. Where do you think the Aztecs got it? They got that land by stealing it. Not only stealing it, but they would steal it and then slaughter you and rip your heart out after they took your land. and take slaves. So again, you could say, well, yeah, they still stole it. Okay, but the Aztecs did too. So you can't mourn them. They're also thieves that stole land. So we got to trace all the way back. Who was the original person that owned that land? It's like if I stole your car and then someone stole your car from me, now we could blame that person for being a thief, but we can't say that I'm the victim. I stole the car. Not only did I steal the car, but I killed you when I stole it. Except in this case, we're talking about a car that's been stolen by like a hundred different people and no one even remembers who the first person was. So that's how I would respond to that argument.

That wasn't 30 seconds, but that's the answer anyway. All right, I got to leave it there. Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed. I'm Michael Knowles host of the Michael Knowles Show. A high school teacher in suburban New York, the only openly right-leaning teacher at his school, has been suspended without pay for showing a Fox News documentary about due process and college.

The personal aspect of this story, he was my teacher. We will interview him about the challenges that conservative teachers and students face. Plus the mailbag. Check it out at dailywire.com.