The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 184 - When Are We Going To #ExposePublicSchools?

Episode Date: January 25, 2019

A New York Times reporter went fishing for negative stories about Christian schools. But if we are going to #ExposeChristianSchools, what about public schools? Should they be "exposed" as well? Also, a women sexually assaulted a man at the Women's March. And I'll answer a few very interesting emails. Date: 01-25-2019 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, a New York Times reporter goes fishing for negative stories about Christian schools. But with all this scrutiny on Christian schools, what about public schools? What about a hashtag exposed public school campaign? Also, a woman sexually assaulted a man at the woman's march. Nobody cares, but I think we should. We'll talk about that today, plus your emails on the Matt Wall Show. Welcome to the Matt Wall Show. Hello, thanks for being here. And I remind you to subscribe if you want to get the whole show. subscribe on iTunes or become a premium member of the Daily Wire. It's interesting, I think, to get a look at the makings of an anti-Christian media hit piece, to be able to see it, you know, to be able to see the sausage being made. And that's the opportunity that was given to us by a reporter from the New York Times.

Helpfully enough, Dan Levin of the New York Times, sent out a tweet yesterday. And the tweet said this, I'm a New York Times reporter writing about Hashtag, expose Christian schools. Are you in your 20s or younger who went to a Christian school? I'd like to hear about your experience and its impact on your life. Please DM me. And of course, the exposed Christian school hashtag is just an anti-Christian hashtag where people are complaining about their Christian school experiences.

So Dan has set out to write a negative story about Christian schools. And what he's basically saying here is, is, hey folks, look into paint. Christian schools in a negative light? Do you have any ammo? Come on, give me some ammo. This is what I need. Which, of course, I'm not surprised to see a New York Times reporter operating that way, but I am kind of surprised to see him do it so openly and publicly. Now, that hashtag exposed Christian schools, it basically consists of two things. Mainly it's a bunch of people, as I said, just generally mocking Christian schools, accusing them of providing a subpar education, especially in the realm of science. Also, there are people on a more serious note talking about the bullying they say that

they endured or in some cases even alleged sexual abuse that they say they experienced in Christian private schools. Now, I don't doubt that some of these stories are true and maybe most of them. I don't know. But the problem is the broad picture that people are painting of Christian schools as a place that's hostile to learning, a place that is emotionally, intellectually, even physically unsafe to be. I mean, if you go and you read those tweets, you get this impression of Christian school as just this horrific, hellish nightmare place. that why would anyone ever spend money to send their kids there? The kind of place that you would pay money to avoid going to.

You would pay money for the privilege of not having to send your kids there. That's the way that it's painted. Now, in order to illustrate why this broad brush approach is unfair and misleading and disingenuous, I thought, you know, maybe we should just examine how incredibly it easy it would be to do the exact same thing with public schools. And I could argue that a hashtag exposed public school campaign would be a far more important and worthy and critical endeavor considering the vast majority of kids go to public school. And the vast majority of people in our society went to public school so that we live in a culture, a society, largely shaped by public schools. so that if there are big problems in public schools, that becomes a problem for everybody, not just people who went to those schools.

So if we were to do a hashtag exposed public schools, what might we say? Well, in terms of sexual abuse, it is absolutely rampant in public schools. There was a study commissioned by the Department of Education several years ago, which found that one in ten public school students are targets. of sexual misconduct by teachers. Now, that works out to over 4 million victims. And out of that number, 3 million have experienced, allegedly, actual sexual assault. This means that the epidemic of sexual abuse in our public school system is 100 times worse

than the sex scandal in the Catholic Church, though it has probably gotten 100 times less attention. when are we going to get the the news article exposed public schools talking about this? And nobody cares about this. In fact, I wrote an article about this issue. I've talked about this many times, the sex abuse epidemic and the public school system,

because you would think it'd be something we care about, considering, again, the vast majority of us, I don't, but the vast majority of people send their kids in public school. You would think that when you hear 4 million victims of sexual misconduct by teachers in public school, you would think that we would all say, oh, well, that's a problem we should be talking about, right? But nobody wants to talk about it.

And the reason they don't want to talk about it is because they send their kids in public school. And so they don't want to have to confront this or deal with it because it's easier not to, which I would say is, of course, the height of cowardice. I wrote an article several months ago, and the title was something like the public school system is crawling with sex predators, but nobody cares. That was the title of my article. And it's true that nobody cared. That article, I think, like, I don't know, 10,000 reads or something like that in the first couple of days, which is very, very low. which, okay, it's not about the hits to the article. It's just about this should be something we care about. But it's clear, even at the, and there I've written about it other times too.

Every time I've written about this issue, it's just nobody wants to read about it. Nobody wants to hear about it. And this is only abused by teachers, by the way. Abuse by students on other students is also a crisis in the public. school system. Recently, the AP put out a report, and they found 17,000 cases of student-on-student abuse in a four-year period. And these are just the cases that are reported. So if you've got 17,000 reported cases of student-on-student sexual abuse in a four-year period, think about all the how many are not reported. You have to multiply that by what, three, four, five when you factor in

all the unreported instances? What about bullying? Okay, there was a lot of talk in the exposed Christian school hashtag about bullying in Christian schools. Well, we're told all the time that there's a bullying crisis in the schools generally. Is that all from the Christian schools? No, of course not. Many kids in public school face daily torment. I went to public school myself for 12 years. I'm not going to say that I face daily bullying and torment, but I saw it myself. I was in that environment with everyone else. And like anyone else who went to public school for all that time, I saw these things myself happening. This outright viciousness, this sort of emotional chaos, this Lord of the Flies like social environment in the public school system, the way that kids are alienated, mocked, excluded.

Suicide is an increasingly common phenomenon among children, even very young children. And many of those cases are connected to bullying. It seems like every case, almost every case that I've read has been in some way connected to bullying. Now, you might say, well, it's not fair to pin all of that on public schools. Yes, exactly. That's my point. So why are we pinning it on Christian schools? What's the point of a campaign of, look at all these terrible things happening in Christian schools,

when I could do the exact same thing with public schools, and that's where almost everyone goes to school. And then there's the quality of the education itself. Well, again, this is not really a conversation that works out well for public schools. And let's start with the fact that for the fifth time, most people in this country have been public schooled. So all you have to do is look around you. I don't even need to pull out studies and surveys and this and that. test results. Okay. Just look around you at society. Does it appear to you that most people in our society are well-educated, intelligent, well-read critical thinkers? Is that the sort of society that you imagine we live in? No, I don't think so. We all know that stupidity and intellectual laziness is endemic in our culture. You know, nobody reads anymore. No one

thinks for themselves. We frankly live in a culture filled with idiots, for lack of a better or nicer way of putting it. And where did most of those idiots go to school? Private or public? What do we think? This is just a matter of percentages here. What about anti-science indoctrination? Public school these days, you will learn that girls can have penises. Okay, so you want to talk about anti-science? That's as anti-science as it gets. You'll learn that gender is not biological. Again, as anti-science as you can possibly get.

And if we're offering anecdotes, that's the word I'm looking for. Although I'd like to have an antidote too, but if we're offering anecdotes, look at me. I went to public school. I don't even know the difference between an antidote and an anecdote. So, you know, I'm Exhibit A here. But if we are talking about personal stories, I can tell you about some of the utter nonsense that my science teachers taught me in public school. Like, I was taught that deforestation was going to deplete the world's oxygen supply within a few years. I was taught, or at least given the strong impression, that if you're in the same room as somebody smoking for even like 10 minutes, you could get lung cancer.

I was taught about, I was taught the myth of overpopulation, only I wasn't told that it was a myth. By the way, this was all in elementary school, where I was, where all of these paranoid delusions were being foist upon me and terrifying me and all my classmates, where we were given this impression of the world that was on the brink of collapse and, you know, if you even go near someone who's smoking, you'll, you'll, you'll die of cancer within days. This is the impression that we were being given. And then there's also just random dumb stuff. Like I remember my middle school science teacher taught us that blood is blue when it's inside your body, which is not, by the way. Just because it looks blue in your veins doesn't mean that it actually is blue. And I know that that's a common misconception that people have.

Well, number one, fine, it's a common misconception, but it should be a common misconception that a person who teaches science for a living has. And why is that a common misconception? Some of these common scientific misconceptions, why are they so common? Have you thought about that? It's because this is what people are being taught in schools. I saw plenty of educational incompetence.

I had a geography teacher who didn't know that Georgia is a country, which, fine, you know, if I just run into someone on the street who doesn't know about Georgia as a country, country, you know, maybe I won't pass too harsh judgments on them, but if you teach geography at school, you should know about the existence. I mean, you should know about the existence of pretty much every country. This is what you teach. I mean, am I crazy? Or like, shouldn't you have every country memorized? If this is what you teach, this is what you do? Shouldn't you at the very least know every country that exists? I had several teachers who taught

I had several Spanish teachers who did not appear to actually know Spanish. I had one who put on Selena, the movie Selena with Jennifer Lopez. We watched that all the way through like four times because I don't think she actually knew the language. And so we just sat there and watched Jennifer Lopez films. And that's a very, that's a time-honored tradition in public schools is just watching movies that are, you know, at best loosely connected to the subject, but have no educational value whatsoever with a teacher. And keep in mind, we're talking about 45-minute periods. So if the teacher says, you know, we're going to watch a two-and-a-half-hour movie,

that means it's almost an entire week of class is going to be spent watching this movie. So I had plenty of teachers like that. I had teachers who taught class by just handing out a worksheet and then sitting silently at their desk and doing whatever they were doing. I had teachers who taught. I had teachers who never taught. I had teachers sat in their class for a year. They never taught a class, ever, never taught.

What they would do is they would read from the textbook. They would hand out dittos. That's it. That's all they would do. And they would assign tests. There was never any teaching. No lecturing, no explaining, none. I had plenty of teachers like that. What about ideological indoctrination? Well, I experienced that at every level of public school, just as most public school students do. In every grade, in many classes, open hostility to conservative and Christian beliefs was utterly commonplace, totally expected and accepted. So why aren't we exposing public school? Oh, because it's somehow suddenly unfair to paint with this broad brush when it comes to public... When it comes to government education, suddenly it's no, no, no, we can't do that. Funny how that works. All right.

Owen Schroier is a reporter with Info Wars, and he was sexually assaulted by a demonstrator. at the Women's March over the weekend. The crime occurred on camera, and the woman who did it openly admitted to it. In fact, here's the, just watch this. Here's the video. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection,

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Is that sexual assault? Yes. So you just sexually assaulted me? I did assault you. So do you be arrested? Arrest me. I'm not going to arrest you. They're police officers right here.

So look at this. Women have so much privilege she can sexually assault. me and get away with it. If I did that to her, I'd get arrested. Now, okay, put aside however you may feel about info wars, because that doesn't make a difference here. That should make any difference. The fact remains the same. A woman walked over to Schroier, groped his genitals, announced that she had, quote, grabbed him, and then proudly said yes. When she was asked, is that sexual assault? She said, yes.

And then she, just to make it even more clear, she says, I assaulted you. It was assault. So she does it on camera, admits to it, brags about it. people surrounding her just applaud. There are police officers standing right there. There are police officers just standing there. Like, okay. And this video makes it online, and there's no outrage.

There is no reaction. Nobody cares. Now, I don't need to point out the obvious, but I'm going to anyway, that if the roles were reversed here, Let's just imagine that it was, let's imagine that it was the March for Life. Now, this would never happen at the March for Life. But let's imagine it was the March for Life. And there was a liberal reporter from, or whoever, from Salon or, I don't know, Jezebel or something. I don't even know if Jezebel has reporters. But there was some liberal reporter there, you know, reporting on the March for Life. and then a male pro-lifer walked over on camera and to make a point or to express his political frustration with the woman, he grabbed her by the genitals.

And then laughed about it and then said, yes, I assaulted you. Can you even imagine the reaction to that video? Now, think about the reaction that a 15-year-old kid got. when he was caught on camera smiling in the direction of a Native American. Now, think about the reaction to that. That was a week-long outrage cycle. It was death threats, bomb scares. They had to shut the school down because a kid smiled.

There were think pieces raining from the sky and people talking about, oh, the smile and people writing whole tweet threads and tweet storms about the problem with white people smiling. and that was just for a smile. Can you imagine if a guy did that? I mean, his life would be over, number one, which, I mean, he'd be a total scumbag for doing it, so he would, of course, deserve consequences. And it wouldn't just be social consequences.

He would also be arrested. That's the other thing. There's just no chance that a guy could do that to a woman with a cop standing right there without the cop intervening. So yet the reverse happens and it's just everyone goes, huh, okay. In fact, worse than that, the people surrounding her seem to get a kick out of it. So not only is this woman not facing consequences, but if anything, there are probably positive consequences for her.

She probably has just upped her feminist street cred. Now, you just can't claim that you care about sexual assault, you care about things like consent. If you're going to see a video like that and shrug it off, that is sexual assault. According to every definition that I have heard, that is 100% sexual assault. And if everything is equal and if everything is fair and everything's the same, then we have to agree. that that is just as bad as if a man had done him. It is exactly the same thing. So the outrage should be exactly the same. But it's not because, as I have said many times, including recently, the Me Too movement was completely fraudulent. It was ideological from the start.

And most of these, the feminists and everything shouting about the Me Too movement, It was all really politics. It was convenient to use this issue for political ends. But it was never really about stopping sexual assault, because if it was, then things like this would be plastered everywhere and everyone would be talking about it. And by the way, also, if the Me Too movement was really about sexual assault, then as part of the Me Too crusade,

we would have also been having a conversation about all these, female public school teachers who are sleeping with their, who are, excuse me, sexually assaulting their male students all the time. We would be having a conversation about that. In fact, what I just did there, you can see how even I could be programmed by the media sometimes. And I have to kind of catch myself midway, because the way that the media reports, when a, oftentimes when a female public school teacher sexually assaults a male student, the way that they reported, they'll say something like, I've seen headlines like a female teacher caught in sex romp with high school boy, or things like, or sleeping with, like the phrase that I use.

When really, no, no, no, no, no, it's not a sex romp, it's not sleeping with, it's not caught in a relationship with. It is sexually assaulting. But we are so programmed to just see that as something completely different and even maybe okay when it's not. All right. The family of 16-year-old Covading Catholic student, Nicholas Salmon, speaking of him, has hired a high-powered lawyer who specializes in going after media organizations for libel and slander. And I think this is great. This is the kind of fighting back that needs to happen. And it's usually difficult to win libel or defamation suits for many reasons. and I'm no lawyer, so I'm not going to try to get into the specifics of it, but as I understand it, difficult to win for a few reasons. Number one, you have to prove that the person engaging in this defamation or the libel knew that what they were saying was untrue about you,

and that they were saying it for, they were trying to hurt you by saying it. And then you also have to prove that you have been hurt by whatever thing was said about you. that has caused, that has damaged you in some way. And those two things can be difficult to prove. But in this case, I think it would be enormous, both things would be enormously easy to prove. You know, these various so-called journalists and media outlets and famous people who were spreading videos that they knew were out of context and that were continuing to push the narrative even after the full context came into view.

and that obviously had malicious intent in doing so. And some of them were openly saying, let's dox this kid or let's go after this kid, let's find out about this kid. There were people openly encouraging others to harass or worse these kids, these children. So I think they have a very good case to make. And although I normally would not wish unemployment

or financial ruination on people, in this case, the people who, slandered and defame these kids, I do hope that they are sued into bankruptcy and that they lose their jobs and that they suffer severe consequences because of it, professional and financial consequences, because that's justice, number one, and number two, this is the only way that we're going to stop these things for happening in the future. All right, one other quick thing to mention before I get to some of your emails, credit where it's due. I was complaining yesterday about the lack of leadership among Catholic bishops, in general in this country, but especially

after that New York law, abortion law was passed. And the, what I thought was pretty weak statement from the Catholic bishops in New York who expressed sadness about it and said that it was terrible and they were heartbroken, which fine. I agree it's sad and I'm also heartbroken. But there's got to be, there has to be more than that. You have to be angry. There has to be fire and brimstone calling down God's judgment on these people. That's the kind of reaction that you should have. And then there should also be excommunication. So it's not just verbally reacting or issuing condemnations, but actually doing something about it. A few bishops, though, have stepped up. Bishop, Rick Stikea from in Tennessee, I believe, said, tweeted this today. He said, someone asked me

today if I would issue an excommunication of a Catholic governor under my jurisdiction, if the governor did the same as in New York. I think I might do it for any Catholic legislator under my jurisdiction who voted for the bill as well as the governor. Enough is enough. He continues. Excommunication is to be a punishment, is to be not a punishment, but to bring the person back into the church. It's like medicine for them. But this vote is so hideous and vile that it warrants the act. But thankfully, I am not in that position. Very sad. Then Bishop Strickland of Tyler, Texas says, the video of the celebration of New York legislators as they condemn the even full-term unborn children

to death by choice is a scene from hell. Woe to those who ignore the sanctity of life. They reap the whirlwind of hell. Stand against this Holocaust in every way you can. Okay. Amen. Exactly. That's the reaction. That's what we need to see from leaders of the church, from Christians generally, is not just, oh, that's tragic, that's unfortunate, but actual anger. We need to see that you're

mad about it, that you're righteously angry about what's happening to these children. Finally, let's get to some of your emails. If you want to email the show, have any comment you want to make, question, concern. Email Matt Walsh Show at Gmail.com. Matt Walsh Show at gmail.com. This is from Joe. It says, I've really appreciated your shows for a good while, and I particularly appreciate your articles that I read a Daily Wire. Few are more clear and straightforward than you are. I'm really interested in how you describe the parallels between people today who support abortion and people in the antebellum South who supported slavery. You've got away with words that really sum things up. Maybe you could touch

on this point on your show. Thank you. Funny, you should ask that, Joe. There is a writer who, frankly, I think, is not terribly talented, and I personally find to be rather unimpressive in many respects. But he wrote a book called The Unholy Trinity by Matt Walsh. And this book available on Amazon, by the way, in this book, he and I mean I, of course, deal with this question exactly. So let me, it seems kind of self-indulgent to, but I did, I did, I kind of laid it out here in the book. So the parallels between the arguments for slavery and the arguments for abortion are, I think that they are pretty much exact parallels. So there is an appeal to privacy where we say, who are you to tell someone what to do with their own property slash body? There's an appeal to

the superseding right. My property slash body rights come before the rights of a slave slash fetus. There's an appeal to inevitability. Slavery slash abortion has been going on for thousands of years, and it's never going to go away. We might as well have a safe and legal system in place for it. There's an appeal to pseudoscience. Slaves slash fetuses aren't really people. They aren't like us. Look at them. They're physically different. Therefore, we are human and they are not. There's the appeal to socioeconomic concerns. If slavery slash abortion ends, most of these slaves slash babies will end up on the street without a job. Appeal to the courts. Slavery slash abortion was vindicated by the Supreme Court. It's already been decided. There's no point arguing about it. The appeal to faux compassion. Slavery slash abortion is in the best interests of Africans slash babies. The world can be a cruel place. it's best to protect them from it by keeping them enslaved slash killing them. Appeal to the Bible. Slavery slash abortion isn't specifically condemned in the Bible. If it's wrong, Jesus would have specifically said so.

So those are a number of parallel arguments. There are others, too, that you could probably think of. But when you look at it and you look at the ways that slavery was actually justified at the time, you're going to find that, yes, it really is like a mad lib. you could just take out everywhere it says slavery and plug in abortion and it would very often still the sentence would still work and make sense. And that's an interesting thing by the way, because it's easy for us now when we look at something like slavery and we say, well, that's just an evil, terrible thing. So we just see it. We look back on slavery as this

sort of historical phenomenon, even though it's still happening other parts of the world. But in our country, we look back on a historical phenomenon and we say, well, that was that terrible thing that happened in the past and that's all. And, of course, it was a terrible and evil thing. But we forget that plenty of actual people who would have seemed like normal people at the time and would have probably considered themselves to be decent people supported slavery or had slaves. and so they would have had arguments to defend, like actual arguments. There was a time, of course, it's not this way anymore, but there was a time when this was a live argument where there were two sides of it, and people would shout at each other and argue and debate it just like they do now. So it's important to remember that, and then go back and look at the arguments.

Not because the arguments are good, no, but because, of course not. But because what you'll find, if you go back and you look at history within its context, you'll find that evil dehumanizing, despicable, murderous things are always justified and argued for in the same way. So there's these same arguments and justifications that just come up again and again throughout human history to justify the latest evil institution that everyone happens to find convenient and so wants to find a way to justify. It's just the same argument. It's just the same argument. It keep coming up. And we don't notice it because we don't have a contextual view of history. We don't actually go back and look at it and put ourselves into that environment again and look at it from that perspective. Because if we did that, we would see that, oh, look, history really does repeat itself.

and all the cliches. But if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. I mean, all these cliches, they actually are completely true. Jenna says, Hi, Matt, I appreciate your logical approach to breaking down the arguments for abortion. Recently, you talked about four arguments for abortion, and I was wondering if you could address a fifth one. I was talking about the four arguments that people always use for abortion,

which, of course, are bad arguments. What would you say to someone who makes the argument for abortion in cases where the baby's health is very poor in his life, which may be very short, would be filled with complicated medical procedures, limited cognitive functioning, pain, et cetera. This is something I've heard from heartbroken women who say keeping the baby would be selfish. What's your logical rebuttal and how would you talk about it with women and families who've had an abortion for this reason? Thanks for a question, Jenna. You know, I think looking at this objectively, there's not much difficulty for me.

I understand if you're in the situation, you're in the position, you're in the position. you've got all the emotions tugging you and so that's different. But looking at it objectively, it's clear that it makes no sense to kill a baby because you're afraid that the baby's going to die anyway. Makes no sense to do that. Just because a baby is going to die doesn't mean that you ought to just kill it. Just because a life is going to be short doesn't mean that it's worthless. And so I think we see in this attitude a very utilitarian kind of superficial view of life where we say,

well, if you don't have X amount of days, if you're not going to get how many days, I don't know, but if you're not going to get a certain amount of days or a certain amount of time, well, then there's no point of life. But if we see life as eternally precious and valuable, then we see that one minute of life is something that ought to be protected at all costs. two minutes, an hour, two days, because it's life. And you're only going to get one. I mean, a child, every human, we only get the one mortal existence. And so it is the most valuable thing in the world, no matter how short it's going to be. So if a child's going to have a very short life, that's incredibly sad, but then why not give them that life, at least? And also the chance maybe at a longer life. Maybe there's a miracle. Maybe there's a miracle. Maybe

there's a medical breakthrough. I mean, it's extremely unlikely in many cases, but there's always a chance. You hear about these cases. And even if there's no chance, again, well, then that's all the life the child's going to get. So let them have that life. And if we say, well, it would be a miserable existence, pain filled, that's not, that's not up to us to decide. We don't get to make that determination for other people that, well, that life might not be, must not be worthwhile because there's pain and they're suffering. Because obviously, it's easy to see. It's easy to see the slippery slope there. If we are standing here and making those determinations for other people and saying that, well, if you're severely disabled or if you're impaired in some way, there's no point

of life. And so we're going to kill babies for that. Well, then it's obvious to see. It's going to start happening on the other end of life too. And it does happen in some countries that way. And it's a terrible thing. So every moment of life is enormously eternally precious. And so we should be allowed to live every moment of life that God has given us. And also, we cannot decide for other people, even for our children, that their life is not worth living. And just to kind of flesh this out a little bit, think about, you know, let's think of a kind of sci-fi hypothetical. Let's say it's in the future. And it's sort of a minority report situation where, or it's like the movie Gattaca, or one of these, one of these,

dystopian futuristic movies, where you can actually do some kind of genetic test and find out exactly when your child is going to die and of what? Let's just say that that was possible. Well, what if you find out that your child is going to live a healthy life for three years, but then get leukemia in the fourth year and die when he's five? What if you find out that your child's going to get hit by a car when he's eight years old? What if you find out that your child's going to die of some other illness when he's 12 or 13. I mean, would you just get an abortion then? I mean, would we just say, well, there's no point. If you're only going to live for four years, you're only going to live for eight, you're only going to live for 12, there's no point of living.

So we see what happens here. We see the problem. At what point? How many years do you need to get under your belt before we would say, well, that's that right there is the worthwhile life? it just becomes absurd when you think of it that way. And we see how that is just not a determination that we can make or should try to make. Joe, I think, well, I just read from a Joe. This is a different Joe, I think. Says, hi, Matt, besides your own father, could you speak a little bit about other father figures who have inspired you along your journey?

Joe, well, if we're leaving out my earthly father, and I assume you'll also mean aside from my heavenly father, then I'm left with just the great men that I've read about and read from, who've been hugely influential for me. So I don't know if they count as father figures, but huge influences, C.S. Lewis, Solgen Easton, John Henry Newman, and of course, Batman as well. From Alex, he says,

Matt, why do you feel the need to give your opinion on every single subject? That's what I've noticed about you, especially as I follow you on Twitter. You chime in on every kind of subject, as if you're an expert. It gets old after a while. I'm just wondering, why do you feel the need?

It's a medical condition, Alex. It's called Loudmouthitis. and I would appreciate it, and all of the members of the loudmouth community who deal with enough bullying and discrimination and harassment as it is, we would appreciate it if you would stop your bigotry.

From Mike, Matt, what is your least favorite amendment in the Bill of Rights? Okay, what is your least favorite amendment in the Bill of Rights? You know what? When I first saw this email, in my mind, I read that as

what is your favorite amendment in the Bill of Rights? And so I bookmarked it to answer on the show I'm only now noticing that it's actually your least favorite amendment in the Bill of Rights, which is a much more interesting question. And I would say that, you know what, Mike, I am tempted to decide with the Federalist and say that all of them are my least favorite. Maybe they should all be repealed. Not because I disagree with the rights themselves, obviously, but I have, you know, increasingly I have felt that maybe it was a, it really was a mistake to write the Bill of Rights because the whole idea originally with the Constitution is,

okay, we're going to enumerate the powers of the government and then that's all they can do. And if it's not in there, they can't do it. So there's no reason to get specific and say, you know, you have a right to free speech, you have a right to guns. Well, that's already implied because the government was not given the power in the Constitution to restrict free speech or to restrict your gun rights.

So you don't need to start laying all that out. The approach to the Constitution should be or should have been, arguably, that here's what the government can do. If it's not in there, they can't do it. And so everything else, those are your rights. There aren't only 10 of them. There are hundreds. Thousands, really. Maybe millions of things that you can do that the government can't stop you from doing or has no role in because it's not in there. So what happened, though, with the Bill of Rights is that things have been kind of flipped around and the Bill of Rights has arguably been. used ironically to limit rights rather than to protect them. Because the attitude now is, well, if it's not in there, then you don't have that right. I mean, these are your rights as a human. And if it's not there, then that means the government can do it. So you see how it's been exactly reversed. It was supposed to be, if it's not in there, the government can't do it.

Now it's, if it's not in there, the bill of rights, then you can't do it. So it has become limiting. And also, when you start trying to enumerate human rights, it becomes very problematic because there are way too many to list. And they are such sort of broad kind of concepts that you can start smuggling in other things that don't belong there, which we've seen the Supreme Court do, especially in the 20th century. So the Supreme Court could look at the amendments and say, oh, well, look at that. There's a right to abortion in there. You know, hey, what do you know? Actually, there's a right to abortion which is based on a right to privacy, a right to abortion, which is not in the Constitution, based on a right to privacy, which is also not in the Constitution. So these are the games of the Supreme Court was able to play because of the Bill of Rights.

So maybe it never should have been written in the first place, but it was. Finally, Jesse, hi, Mr. Walsh. I was interested to find out that you're a football fan. Well, I was, but I've retired from being a football fan. I just watched bass fishing out. because as a Ravens fan, I cannot deal with the heartbreak any longer, so I've given up at least until the next season starts. I have a question for you that you might not want to bother answering on your show, but I'd be interested to hear if you did. The NFL seems to make changes to its rules every year in the off season.

What rule changes would you recommend if it were up to you? Well, I would recommend, first of all, that they stop making rule changes every off season. I would also recommend that they just take their rule book, which is longer than the Bible at this point, and just, how about just randomly tear out half of the pages and just get rid of some of them? Because there are way too many rules.

But here's one rule, just to actually answer your question, here's one rule change. I believe that it should finally be allowed that coaches can challenge penalties. Because as you know right now in the NFL, you cannot challenge a penalty. I think coaches should get three challenges in a game, and they can challenge anything they want. They could challenge a call on the field. They could challenge a play. They can also challenge a penalty. Because penalty calls, erroneous penalty calls have such a profound impact on the game and can change the outcome of a game. Something like a pass interference call, an erroneous past interference call can completely change the outcome of game, can give the game to a team that shouldn't have won. This kind of

stuff happens all the time. And so obviously we should have the ability to stop and go back and take that back. You know, if a ref calls pass interference, then you look at the replay and the guy didn't even touch him. Well, as it goes now, we have to say, well, okay, we just got to go with it. I guess that team's going to win now because that ends up being a 30-yard penalty, two minutes left in the game, and they score a touchdown when otherwise it would have been fourth and 20, and now they win the game. Now we have to say, well, it's just how it is. When it would be really easy to just go back and look at it and say, oh, never mind, that really wasn't a pass interference. There's no reason why we have to stick with that

just because you threw the flag. So that's a rule change that I would make. All right, we'll leave it there. Have a great weekend, everybody. Godspeed. Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Trump associate Roger Stone is arrested. The FAA halts flights into LaGuardia, and the government shutdown reaches an end. This is the Ben Shapiro Show.