The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 215 - The Fake Outrage Brigade Comes For Tucker Carlson

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

Tucker Carlson is in trouble for saying bad things on a radio show a long time ago. Now the Left is calling for him to be fired. I don’t think he should be fired. I don’t even think he should apologize. I’ll explain why. Also, we'll talk about why our obsession with selfies is becoming dangerous. Finally, I’ll answer an email about marijuana legalization. Date: 03-11-2019 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, Tucker Carlson, is in trouble for saying bad things and offering bad opinions and telling bad jokes on a radio show a long time ago. Now the left is calling for him to be fired, but I don't think he should be fired. And in fact, I don't even think that he should apologize. And I want to explain why. Also, we will talk about our dangerous obsession with selfies. People are getting hurt and killed because of this, and we'll discuss that. And I got an interesting email asking my opinion. about marijuana legalization.

So I'll tackle that question as well today on the Matt Walls show. You know what? Tucker Carlson is in trouble for saying some bad things. He said some bad things on a radio show a long time ago. But I think that he just has a different experience in the use of words. That's all. He just, that's all it is. That's the excuse that Nancy Pelosi offered for Ion Omar on Friday.

Those were her exact words. She said that, no, Omar isn't anti-Semitic. She just, she has a different experience in the use of words, which is just, that might be my favorite politician-y thing that any politician has ever said. It's certainly the most politiciany thing than any politician has ever said. It's so good that it probably made Bill Clinton jealous. Like, Bill Clinton heard that and said, well, why didn't I think to ever say that? That's a good one.

it depends on what the definition of is is that's pretty good but no she just has a a different experience of the use of words that's even better and that is an excuse that can really get anyone off the hook can't it so maybe carlson can use that now i want to talk more about the carlson thing and i'm going to explain why um i don't care at all what he said uh i don't believe he owes anyone an apology i don't think he should be fired I don't think you should face any consequences whatsoever. And I want to explain all that to you. But first, I'm going to tell you about the Freedom Project Academy.

Now, you know that I'm always on this show whining about the public school system. But rightfully, righteously whining, righteous whining. That's going to be the name of my memoirs one day. But I complain about the public school system. And what people will always ask me, they'll say, well, what's the alternative? What's a better plan? And I say, well, I don't give better plans. I just complain about the plan that everyone is doing.

But I don't, I'm not the solutions guy. I'm just the criticism guy. But this time I have a solution, and it's called Freedom Project Academy. We know that in the school system, real world skills like reading and writing and arithmetic and all these things, they're being replaced by social justice and indoctrination and this test-driven instruction where memorization and regurgitation, are what's required so that kids become like, basically like mother birds, vomiting out information that was just fed to them.

But Freedom Project Academy is a better choice. It is an accredited classical online school built on Judeo-Christian values for students in kindergarten all the way through high school. Freedom Project Academy has taken the interaction of the traditional classroom and created an online atmosphere. And what happens is students across the country are instructed online by live teachers in small classrooms. And the good thing is, it's not that they're told what to think, that they're told, you know, what information they have to regurgitate.

It's more that they're taught how to think and taught how to be critical thinkers, which is, which is supposed to be the point of education, right? So go to freedomfor school.com, and you can request your free information packet today. that's freedomfor school.com. You got enrolled by, enrolled by March 31st, and there are all kinds of discounts and stuff. And also, don't forget to subscribe to their weekly podcast, the Dr. Duke show, available on iTunes and more. Take back control of your kids' education. FreedomforSchool.com, freedomfor school.com, freedom for school.com. Okay. Now, Tucker Carlson, the fine folks at Media Matters. I'm not sure if fine is really the word description I'm looking for. You could put in a

different description if you want there. But the folks at Media Matters went and dug up a handful of clips of Tucker Carlson doing call-ins on a shock jock morning show called Bubba the Love Spunge. And I know it's very shocking to find out that maybe there were some inappropriate jokes told on the Bubba the Love Spun show, you know, in the mid-2000s. But that's the case. So they found clips from 2006, 2011. Some of this stuff goes back, you know, almost 15 years then. and the clips are bad okay bad jokes

bad opinions bad think bad speech let me play a little a little piece of it here Lexus Stewart we run into her all the time she seems like a she seems awful

they're very she seems extremely I like that word out of oh yeah I just I stepped over me she seems what now go ahead she just does seem a little you said it I'm just agreeing with you I don't use that word

right I'd love for Tucker Carlson tonight on MSNBC a girl that comes across kind of . I love women, but they're extremely primitive. They're basic. They're not that hard to understand. I feel sorry for unattractive women. I mean, something they did, you know? Anybody who answers my trophy wife is my favorite possession

is my hero. I don't care of I'm voting for the guy. Okay, so Carlson uses the C-word. He makes crude jokes about women. He makes a joke about a case of a 20-something-year-old teacher having sex with a 13-year-old boy. Now, of course, everyone is acting especially shocked and appalled about that joke, even though approximately 4 billion other people, and I counted, have made jokes about those situations, too.

This is the kind of thing that everybody jokes about. And I think that they're all bad jokes. I don't agree with them. You know, if you watch this show, I'm going on about the sex abuse problem in the public school all the time. I don't think it's a funny thing. But, you know, let's not act surprised here. This is just, it's the same thing that almost everyone says about it. And I do think it's interesting that all of the sudden leftists are so concerned about the sex abuse problem in the public school, apparently. Now that Tucker Carlson has caught making a joke about it 10 years ago, now all of a sudden they care. Now it's a very serious issue. Well, I've been trying to call attention to this problem for years and they didn't care. So, so, you know, excuse me if I just kind of roll my eyes at that. So then there are the Carlson also in talking about the Warren Jeff's situation, he shares some rather edgy opinions saying, among other things,

that in a arranged marriage between a 16-year-old and a 27-year-old isn't the same thing as rape. All right. Now, of course, the left is kicked into full gear, demanding that he be fired, demanding that advertisers drop the show, demanding that he apologized. Carlson for his part so far has not apologized. He issued a statement yesterday, and this is what the statement said. He said, media matters caught me saying something naughty on a radio show more than a decade ago. Rather than express the usual ritual contrition, how about this? I'm on television every weeknight live for an hour. If you want to know what I

think you can watch, anyone who disagrees with my views is welcome to come on and explain why. Now, of course, that response has just made the left even more angry. Personally, I love that response from Carlson, and I hope he sticks with that tact. I hope he doesn't back down. I don't care what the guy said on a radio show 15 years ago. I don't. I don't care about his bad jokes, and they were bad. No question about that.

if my child, if it was my son, you know, going around using that kind of language and saying those things, he would be in a lot of trouble. I would certainly be grounded probably for that. But Tucker Carlson is not my son. He's a grown man, made bad jokes a long time ago, and I don't care. I just don't. And I'm not saying this because it's a Fox News host either. I said the same thing with Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart is not a conservative. And I was, I defended Kevin Hart quite a bit. I don't care about jokes that people told years ago. And you know something?

Neither do you. Nobody does. You don't, I don't, nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody is actually offended. Nobody is traumatized. Nobody cried themselves to sleep last night because Tucker Carlson used a bad word on the Bubba the Love Spun show in 2007. Nobody did because nobody cares.

But some people pretend that they care. They pretend that they care. And then we're supposed to pretend that they're pretending. And I'm just dumb with it. And the only reason they pretend is because they hated Tucker Carlson already. In fact, if you go to Twitter right now and you go on the hashtag fire Tucker Carlson, you go click on that hashtag, you're going to see thousands of people saying words to the effect of, I always hated Tucker, he's always been a bigot, and now we have proof of it. So what they're admitting is that they

wanted him fired before this. So what do we care? If you're saying, well, fire Tucker Carlson, and then you're admitting that you always wanted him fired, well, then what does your opinion matter? If you're saying you're going to boycott Tucker Carlson and then in the next breath, you say that, oh, you've always found him to be a disgusting bigot, well, then what is it, what what is the point of your boycott? That's like if I said, that's like if I said, you know, we need to boycott Taco Bell. I've always hated it. Well, you see, the next part after boycott Taco Bell kind of undermines the boycott.

Because my boycott, if I've always hated it, then my boycott doesn't really do much, does it? So they've always hated him and then they dig up these bad thoughts that he shared and they think they got him. So it's all a game. In fact, I saw someone say exactly that. There was just one person on Twitter said slightly paraphrasing, but said something like, I've always hated him and now we got him. So it's a game is the point. And we should choose not to play the game.

and look, I'm not going to claim, or I'm not going to say that we should never criticize someone for things that they say, but there's got to be a statute of limitations on this stuff, right? And I don't know exactly what that statute of limitations is, but it's a small window. Like, I don't know, 24 hours, 48 hours? the point is, if somebody says something and you're going to be offended by it, you need to make up your mind quickly. Okay, you can't decide 10 years later that, oh, you know what, actually I was offended by that. You can't go back and say, oh, wait, remember that thing that he said during the Bush administration? Yeah, you know what? Actually, I'm really offended and upset by that.

Oh, boo-hoo. I'm really, really, look how offended I am. You see these invisible tears. You can't see them, but they're there. It's too late. Water onto the bridge. You had your chance. Okay, the outrage train was going through the station and you missed it by 10 years. It's too late now. You're going to have to wait for the next one. Now, you might argue that, well, well, nobody heard it back then. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared back then because he wasn't prominent back then like he is now. Okay, fine. Then it was no harm,

no foul, I guess. If nobody noticed it back then, then it was just, it was, it was a, a tree falling in the forest and nobody was there to hear the sound, so who cares? If nobody noticed it, who cares? Why does it matter? If anyone is really hurt by his words now, and I don't think anyone is because of sticks and stones and all that, sticks and stones, words will never hurt me. But if someone is actually hurt by these opinions and jokes that he shared 10, 15 years ago, it's only because the left went and dug it up and broadcast it so that people would be offended. The left is saying, hey, here's a great thing to be offended by guys. Check it out. So I'm just, I'm done with it. I'm exhausted by it. And it's not going to stop unless we stop playing along.

if we continue to allow ourselves to be manipulated and we react with the expected shock and outrage and horror when smear merchants go digging for for this kind of stuff then it's going to keep happening and they'll keep destroying people based on opinions expressed years ago and jokes that were made decades ago the only way it stops the only way this stuff stops is if when it happens, we all react by going, oh, okay, don't care. When the smear merchants, you know, have their treasure trove of offensive comments that they've dug up, and they come running into the room and they say, hey, guys, check this out. And we say, nah, you know what, I don't feel like getting up.

But yeah, I'll look at that later. Cool stuff. Good. Good job. Nice job finding that. I hope you, you know, it was two weeks well spent, I'm sure. Calming through every interview Tucker Carlson has ever done. Great job. Really well done. Thumbs up. If that's how we react, then this will stop happening because there'll be no reason to do it. This, the famous scene in scripture where the adulterous woman about to be stoned to death and Jesus, says, let he without sin cast the first stone, that line in scripture is often, I think, used inappropriately in situations it doesn't apply to. That phrase, you know, let he without sin cast the first stone, I think is misapplied often. But this kind of situation is exactly

the sort of situation it does apply to. Because if you really have not, you really have not, never, ever in your life said anything horrible, if you've never told a really bad offensive joke, if you've never gone off on some tangent expressing some opinion that you were later embarrassed by, if you've really never done that, ever in your life, then go ahead and throw a stone at Carlson. Go ahead. But realize something that one day they're going to come for you. Okay. If never do, it's just because you were never important enough and no one ever cared enough. But if you ever stick your head up far enough above the crowd and get a little attention and, you know, make some waves, then they're going to go digging to try to destroy you. And they're

going to check to see if you're really as clean and pure as you claim. And you definitely aren't because nobody is. And when they discover that you aren't and they find whatever bad thing you said and they ruin your life, how are you going to object? You can't because you were part of the mob yourself and now they've turned around on you. That's the way this goes. So, and that's why refusing to apologize, I think, is really the way to go here. And I would, I would be in favor of doing away with the public apology genre entirely, or almost entirely. I think 90% of the time, if not more, the public apology is completely pointless and there's no reason for it. If you have done something to actually harm someone, whether physically or emotionally or whatever,

If you have really caused harm to an actual individual person or individual people, then go and apologize to them. Okay. You don't need to apologize in front of the entire world. We don't need to be witness to your humiliation. We don't need to witness your regret. We don't need the ritualistic, as Tucker Carlson said, the ritualistic contrition. We don't need that. That's pointless.

Nine times out of ten, in the public apology situation, the person is apologizing to a public that hasn't been harmed. If Tucker Carlson owes an apology to anyone, I don't think he does, but if he does, it's not to the public. You and I weren't harmed by this. We don't care. The people who dug this stuff up, they certainly aren't owed an apology. So who is?

Who cares? the whole thing is just it's theater is what it is it's simply theater it's it's performance and the person who issues the public apology is taking part in the performance and the rest of us when we read or listen to the apology and we talk to each other but I don't know if he was

I don't know if he really meant it of course he didn't mean it he was only he was just forced to say that because he's groveling and he's trying to rescue his his ruined reputation and career and life. That's all. So we all know that. We all know that the public apology is not sincere. It never is. So why do we demand it? It's completely pointless. I think a lot about the, I've mentioned this comparison before, I think, but the play slash

movie The Crucible, I see so much similarity between that and our situation today. you know, the Salem witch trials where these people were forced to, you know, confess and apologize for being witches or they'd be hung. And there's the great scene at the end there where John, they're trying to get John Proctor to, you know, apologize and confess for being a witch. And he refuses and he says, is there no good penitence, but it be public, saying, basically why do you need this whole thing? Even if you think that I'm a witch, why do you need me? Why do you need all this? What's the point of this? What's the point of the theater? I'm not going to do it. And then he was, you know, hung. Fortunately, nobody's being hung these days, but it's, it is a less violent version of that where you've got to do the whole

performance. You've got to apologize. We're going to take your life away. We're going to take your career, your reputation, all that. We simply, we have to be done with it. All right. A couple other things. So I wanted to bring this up, not quite as important, but a woman was mauled by a Jaguar at a zoo in Arizona over the weekend. And the Jaguar, the Jaguar didn't escape. It wasn't like it got out of the thing and it went an attacker. No, the woman climbed over a barrier and went right next to the Big Cat's cage because of why do you think she did that? You already know why? Because she wanted to take a selfie, right? And so as she was at, taking the selfie, the cat reached out his paw and swiped her. It caused a really nasty gash on her arm,

though she's recovered in the hospital. I think she's going to be fine. It wasn't life-threatening or anything like that. But this brings me to one of my six million pet peeves, which is, which is, you know, and I'm not the first one to complain about it, but, okay, so you're at the zoo and you see a jaguar, and you say, I want to get a picture of that jaguar. And you say, I want to get a picture of that Jaguar because that's a cool picture and, you know, I'll put it online so that other people can see this Jaguar. Well, great. You know, I mean, we've all seen Jaguars before. I don't really think you need to put the picture online. I don't think you need the picture because I could always go on Google Images and look up a picture of a Jaguar. I could probably find a better picture

than whatever one you could take at the zoo, but that's fine. You want to take the picture fine. Why do you need your face in it, though? That's my thing. This thing we do now, where every picture we take, we need our own face in it. You see, if you're, you're, you're out on a hike or something, and you're at a, you know, you go up on some big cliff and there's a nice view and there's the sun setting and there's a lake down there. There are trees and there are birds going on. And it's just a beautiful view, right? Now, I personally think you don't need to take a picture of that at all. You really don't need a picture. Because, again, everybody online, we've all seen nice views before and we could find one if we wanted to

through Google image search. That's probably better than the one that you could take. So, I would say, forget about the picture completely. Just experience it. You don't need to file it away in here and in here. I mean, absorb it into your self as an experience. You don't need the picture. But if you're going to take the picture, why do you need your ugly mug in ruining the picture? That's what I don't understand it. Every single picture now is taken like this. No, turn it around and take the picture this way. Just take the picture. We know what you're face looks like. We don't need, it's not that interesting. I'm sorry, but in it ruins every picture it's in. So we don't need it. And this is what happens. I mean, there was someone who was

taking a selfie, I think, at the Grand Canyon or something relatively recently and fell off it. People are dying over this selfie obsession. And it's all because of this narcissistic need we have to put ourselves into everything. And I don't say it. I was on a, the one cruise that I've ever been on, um, with my wife on our honeymoon. And, uh, and I, I, I remember this especially, it just seared into my mind, um, when we were on the way back, uh, one night. And, uh, there was a, it was a, especially beautiful sunset over the ocean. And so everybody was on the deck looking at the sunset, except I say, well, I say everyone was looking at the sunset. I was looking at the sunset.

Everybody else had their back turned to the sunset so that they could get a picture of the sunset with their own face ruining it. And everything about that. Just no one needs a picture of a sunset. We've all seen sunsets. Experience it. And if you really feel the need to take, just take the picture. Why do you think your face is going to improve the sun? It's not going to.

All right. This was kind of funny, though. Let's something a little bit lighter. Alyssa Milano got herself into trouble with her leftist compatriots over the weekend when she tweeted. This is what she tweeted. She was responding to somebody. And I don't know. I didn't see the whole exchange.

It doesn't really matter. But this is what she tweeted. She said, I'm trans. I'm a person of color. I'm an immigrant, I'm a lesbian, a lesbian, I'm a gay man, I'm the disabled, I'm everything, and so are you. Don't be afraid of what you don't know or understand. No one wants to hurt you. We are all just looking for our happily ever after. I'm trans, I'm a person of color, I'm an immigrant, I'm a chair, I'm a table, I'm Wilford Brimley, I'm the color blue, and she's everything,

right? She is everything. Now, of course, I saw that tweet and I said, oh, she's going to get it for this. She wrote that to try to appeal to the left, but you can't do that anymore. How did she not know that she was going to get a lot of backlash for that? And sure enough, she did from all of, as I said, her leftist friends who said, well, we appreciate you're trying to be an ally, but you don't appropriate people or claim identities that don't belong to you as a way to relate to us. And so she was being scolded, scalded left and right for that. But it's kind of interesting because this sort of thing, this is exactly the kind of faux, spiritual, pantheistic, new agey gibberish that even as recently as 10 years ago probably would have been applauded by everyone on the lab. This is exactly the kind of thing that 10 or 15 years ago people would have loved and they would have ate it up.

But now identity politics have gotten to a point where you can't even do the faux-spiritual pantheistic gibberish anymore, which is really a shame because I kind of preferred that. I preferred that version of liberalism over what we have now because at least that version was kind of funny, right? But this new thing is not nearly as charming in my mind. Speaking of identity politics, I want to move on to emails. You can always email the show at Matt Wall Show at gmail.com. Matt Wall Show at gmail.com. This is from Jasmine. She says, Matt, gosh, I was so thankful for the clarification you gave in the victimization flowchart. My sister and I have often wondered in a survivor-style show starring all victimized classes, who would win. This explains so much. We obviously knew that white men are the first voted off

the island, but the subsequent steps were enlightening. question though, what happens when someone holds two victimized class cards? Jesse Smolett, for example, black and homosexual and the special card of Hollywood, how did he not automatically win the whole game? We've often wondered in the season finale between a Muslim woman and a black lesbian who wins. Anywho, super thankful for you and your efforts. Pray for you and your family often. Keep up the good work.

I'm sure it gets discouraging often. Hi, Jasmine. If you miss the show, anyone who missed the show on Friday, I went over the left's victimization flow chart. And in fact, this is nice because a listener by the name of Billy Park was kind enough to convert my victimization flowchart into a graphic, into a handy graphic so we can all kind of see it illustrated. So I'll put it up on the screen. Take a look at this. If you're watching on YouTube right now, you can see it. So as you can see, the victimization flows down, right?

Each group can only be victimized by the groups above it. So white men are at the very top, victimized by no one. And you can see there the victimhood scale on the side, which measures victim points. So white men have no victim points. They actually have negative victim points, while non-white transgenders have the most. So you see it there. And hopefully this answer to your question, Jasmine, because as you could see, non-white gay men do measure a solid 60 or 70 on the victimhood scale.

but they are not they are not the most, they're not the victimiest victims at all. There are three or four steps above them. And remember, this is the most important thing to remember for identity politics is that victimization always flows down.

It is, as I said on Friday, it's like a waterfall, and so you can never reverse the flow. White men are at the top. All of, that is really the source of all victimization, and it flows down from there. but other groups can be guilty of victimizing as well, but they can only victimize down, right? So your victimization goes down.

Your source of victimhood comes from above, right? So that's the way that it works. All right. This is from Lisa says, hey, Matt, in your Friday, in your episode on Friday, you mentioned God is love in regards to a certain topic, but it got me. thinking, a common mantra in society is love is love. But I thought God is love. Does this mean our society is essentially saying love is God? I believe I already know the answer, but thought this was interesting and it would love your take. Thanks, Lisa. Hi Lisa, I think that's an excellent insight.

We have flipped it on its head, haven't we? We go from God is love to love is love to love is God. and there is a big difference between God is love and love is love. This is not like a two equals two type of thing. So God is love, yes, but love is not God. And if love is God, then what we really mean to say is that our experience of love, our personal subjective feeling of what we call love is God, is final, is ultimate. It is the guiding principle upon which we base everything. So really it goes like this.

God is love. Okay, if that's not the case, then love is love. No, love is God. No, I am God. That's kind of, that's the genesis, right? If love is God, then I as the experiencer of love, the one that's conjuring it, that's making it, then I am God. and this is one of the reasons, by the way, why I think the phrase God is love can be confusing,

even though I use that phrase myself apparently. I don't remember using it, but I guess I did. And it's true that God is love, but I think it gets confusing. And it may just be better and easier and clearer to say, rather than saying God is love, just say God is love's source. Or even more simply, God is loving. God is perfectly loving. Doesn't mean exactly the same thing, but it gets the idea across because, right, when you say God is loved, then it sounds like you could flip that around and love is God. Let's see. This is from Courtney.

It's Ladies' Night, if you can't tell on the Matt Wall Show. All of these emails are from women. So if anyone ever accuses me of me of being sexist again, I can always say, I'm not sexist. I answer emails from women. So it says, from Courtney says, hi, Matt, I think I know your opinion on recreational marijuana, but what is your opinion on medical marijuana? Should it be legalized? Well, Courtney, if you know my opinion on the legalization of recreational weed, then that makes one of us, because I don't really know where I stand on that. It depends on the week, really, or the day.

Or it depends on which argument I've just read, because I'm easily swayed back and forth on this. I am a flip-flopper on this issue, which, have I, have I, I could just say one thing about that. We criticize people who are flip-floppers all the time, and often for good reason, because especially for politicians, what flip-flop really means is that they change their opinion to suit the situation or to suit the crowd or whatever. So it's really just another way of saying that they are hypocritical and opportunistic. But there's also some amount of flip-flopping as human beings that's pretty natural, isn't it? And I fully admit, there are some issues where I kind of vacillate between different positions

and I'm very susceptible to a good argument from either side. And so I'll hear an argument and I'll say, yeah, you know, I think you're right about that. And then someone will make an opposite argument and I'll say, yeah, you know what, maybe you're right about that. Because there are issues that I just, I don't care that much about, so I don't spend a lot of time researching them. And I simply can't make up my mind. I think that's normal. I mean, it's normal for people to be like that way. It's not like we set all of our opinions on every topic, and they're set in stone, and they'll never change.

It's just that's what they are. At least if we're critical thinkers, that's not the way it should be. So, yeah, so medical recreational marijuana, you know, there are arguments on both sides. I don't know. Medical marijuana, though, is something that I'm much more firm on. That I'm not very susceptible. I absolutely definitely support medical marijuana. And I think that the arguments against, I don't even know what the arguments could be. I do know, I've heard the arguments, but it's just to oppose it is simply not just wrong,

but inhumane and cruel and stupid. If somebody has stage four cancer and marijuana dulls the pain, then great. What kind of person would argue against that? How could anyone go to someone who's dying of stage four cancer and say, yeah, the marijuana dulls the pain and it makes your life at least somewhat bearable, but it makes me uncomfortable if you're using marijuana so you shouldn't be able to do it? It's crazy.

when it comes to painkillers marijuana is definitely a hundred times safer than many other forms of painkillers you take oxycotton for instance

people are prescribed oxycodden after a back injury or something and the next thing you know they're heroin addicts and it really does work that way and this is why we have everyone's wondering why do we have all these normal middle class soccer moms now

who are becoming drug addicts. And the answer is because of these prescription pills. It's because we're prescribing heroin to them, basically. And so, yeah, I think medical marijuana is preferable to that. Absolutely. This is from Megan. I thought this was an interesting one. She says, hey, Matt, I was wondering what you thought about fathers participating in dangerous

activities, especially ones with high rates of serious injury. According to statistics quoted here from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are between 88,000 and 100,000 injuries and 5,000 fatalities per year from motorcycle crashes. As an EMT, I have personally cared for motorcycle crash patients and those who do survive are often left with devastating traumatic brain injuries that leave them severely disabled. Saddest of all, these patients are usually young men between 18 and 45, and many of these men have children. I understand that the soul of a man craves adventure. I have heard for many of my male friends how alive and free they feel on a motorcycle,

and that in itself is a good thing. However, is it morally okay for fathers to risk death or serious injury unnecessarily? Doesn't a father have an obligation to do everything in his power to protect his life and his health when his spouse and children depend on him? What are your thoughts on this? The question goes beyond riding a motorcycle, but also statistically proof. dangerous activities like MMA, boxing, budget jumping, etc. God bless you and your family. Hi, Megan. I think it's a very intriguing question. And you've hit on something important here

because there's this balance that you need. On one hand, a man does crave adventure and danger, like you said, and it would be a bad thing for a wife or when he's younger, a mother to completely stifle that out of fear. You can't try to nag that out of a man because if you do that, all you'll succeed in is getting him to suppress it for a time until eventually he finds an outlet that may ultimately be a whole lot worse than what it would have been before that. So that's not a, it's not a, it's not in itself a bad desire and instinct in men. It's a good thing. On the other hand, it's true that a married man has a responsibility to his family. so for him to go and risk his life unnecessarily, recreationally, in a reckless way,

well, I think that that is probably selfish, because he's basically saying that his desire for adventure and excitement completely supersedes his children's need for a father and his wife's need for a husband. And of course, it's different if we're talking about a profession, right? Like there are some professions, police officer, firefighter, where those are dangerous jobs. But in that case, it's his job, it's his duty. And also he's providing something for his family in doing it. And not just money, but also the example of heroism and selflessness and courage is a great, is something he's giving to his family as well.

So we're not talking about that. We're talking about recreational things, I assume. Yeah, where do you draw the line there? Is it immoral to ride a motorcycle? I would say no. I don't know a lot about motorcycles, but it strikes me that motorcycles can be operated safely, right, or relatively safely. I'm guessing, you would know more than me as an EMT, but I'm guessing that many of the bad motorcycle accidents that you see probably involve people on motorcycles doing very reckless things, aside from just riding the motorcycle. the first place. Like when you see these guys of motorcycles going 90 miles an hour, riding down the middle of the highway in between lanes, well, that's just, I mean, that's verging on suicidal to do something like that. And I think that's part of what makes motorcycles dangerous is that they encourage you to behave recklessly like that because you can do things like right in between lanes and weave in and out of traffic and stuff like that. But if you don't do that and you're being responsible, then I think, you know, I don't see it as inherently reckless. simply to get on a motorcycle. But, you know, I think that there are other recreational activities that you would, that maybe would be rolled out, like, I don't know, base jumping or something where you jump off a cliff with a parachute, stuff like that, you know, I think, yeah.

So there is a balance. I don't know exactly where it is, but I do think it's something that you need to think about, that men need to think about. And the last thing I'll say is this is part of what, of what, of the, you know, father is supposed, this is a very important aspect of what the father does for his children, including especially his son, which I think isn't talked about enough, but this is why boys need fathers to show them how to take risks safely in ways that are not reckless, because boys are going to have that urge to go out and be rowdy and roughhouse and, you know, find adventure.

and so they need their dads there to show them how to do that and, you know, take them out to climb the tree and to do these things that are a little bit dangerous but in a safe way and so that they have that safe, um, responsible outlet for that. And that's something that fathers, you know, do for their, for their kids. And not just physical risks either, because this is about risk taking and teaching kids how to take risks, um, responsibly. But there are, there are other kinds of risks. that I think kids need to be taught how to take. Intellectual risks, you know, emotional risks even, going out on a limb and voicing your opinion, taking a stand. Those are risks as well. And I think that also is an example that fathers should provide for their children. All right. But thanks for the email.

Thanks for the emails, everyone. Matt Walshow at gmail.com, if anyone else wants to send in. And we'll leave it there. for watching godspeople today on the ben Shapiro show media matters goes after tucker carlson and alexander ocasio cortez embraces socialism full scale that's today on the ben shapiro show