The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 290 - The Truth About The "Gender Pay Gap" In Soccer

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

The US women’s team won the World Cup. Now they’re saying they deserve equal pay to the men. But that’s extremely absurd. In fact, if you look at the numbers, women are overpaid. I’ll explain why. Also, the media invented another controversy to try to make conservatives look stupid. This one has to do with a mermaid. Finally, if we have the right to an attorney in this country, why don’t we have the right to a doctor? I'll tackle that question. Date: 07-08-2019 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, the U.S. women's team won the World Cup, and now they're saying that they deserve equal pay, that they're underpaid, they're paid less than the men, they should get equal pay. And I want to talk about that claim, which is actually extremely absurd. In fact, if you look at the numbers, and I'm going to explain this, the women's team, they're actually paid too much. They're overpaid. That's what the stats show, and I'll talk about that today.

Also, the media invented another controversy to try to make conservatives look stupid. This one has to do with The Little Mermaid. They invented an outrage. invented a controversy surrounding the Little Mermaid of all things. We'll talk about that. And finally, if we have the right to an attorney, then why don't we have the right to a doctor? What's the difference between those two things? We'll discuss that as well today on the Matt Wall Show. So the U.S. women's team won the World Cup this week, which is great news. Job well done. It's a nice accomplishment. If only soccer was not a communist conspiracy. I think I could celebrate it even more.

I mean, it's a fine little game, okay? Don't get me wrong. It's just that I prefer sports and I love America. That's the only, so that's, those are the two things that prevent me from really appreciating and enjoying it more is just the fact that I'm a patriot and also a sports fan. But if I wasn't any of those, then I think I would like it more. And I'm not criticizing soccer. Just because I'm calling it a fake sport loved by comedies and traders doesn't mean that I'm, it's not a criticism. It's just a, you know, it's just an observation.

I don't want you to take it the wrong way if you're a sports fan. But, you know, we're told that the success of the women's team means that they should finally have equal pay, right? That they should finally be paid equal to the men, the men, that they're paid a lot less than a men soccer players, supposedly. And this is a sexist conspiracy is what we are being told. I want to deal with that claim today to start with because there's just, it's this whole thing about equal pay in sports of all places. It's just so emblematic, I think, of where we are as a society

because the whole conversation is so cartoonishly stupid and off base. So we're going to talk about that. But first, I want to tell you a little bit about Freedom Project Academy. them before and there's a reason because, you know, this year nearly $70 billion of taxpayer money will be spent on public education. That's $70 billion with a B. Yeah, there's a new report that came out that finds that just two and five American students are actually ready to attend college

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and everywhere else where you can get podcasts. Again, enrollment ends July 19th. So take back control of your kids' education. Freedomforschool.com, freedomfor school.com, freedom for school.com. Freedom for school.com. Okay. Now, equal pay for soccer players. I think that if people were better educated, maybe they'd have a better understanding

of these kinds of conversations. Some presidential candidates have also called for this. Kamala Harris, I think, or Kirsten Gillibrand or Bernie Sanders. They're all the same. I don't know. The women's players have made the same point, saying that they should get equal pay.

And then the crowd there at the stadium in France, after the victory during the celebration, they started chanting, equal pay, equal pay. So I want to, just for a few moments, Focus on this issue, which, as I said, is there's, it just shows you where we are. And I think it kind of reveals why our conversations about controversial issues oftentimes don't go anywhere. Because things like facts and logic just aren't allowed to enter into the discussion. So first of all, I keep hearing this claim that, and this is one of the things that the equal pay discussion is based on this claim that the women's team is better than the men's team because the men's team doesn't win anything and the women's team keeps winning the World Cup.

And all joking aside, I do respect their success. I think it's, I mean, they're good at what they do. And I respect anybody who's good at what they do as long as what they do is morally appropriate. and arguably soccer is morally appropriate, though. There's a discussion to be had there. We won't get into it. The men's team, I guess, is not very good in comparison to other men's teams across the globe. Because that's how we're judging this.

If you say, oh, the women's team is better than the men's team. You must mean by that when you say it that the men's team is not as good compared to their competition as the women's team is against their competition. And one of the reasons for it is in this country, I think the best male athletes end up going into different sports. I mean, well, I should say they end up going into sports, like soccer, I mean, sorry, football, I apologize for that slip. It was offensive. They end up going into sports, like football, basketball, baseball. And that's where I think the best athletes go. Whereas in other countries, the best male athletes almost all play soccer. So they, they, In other countries, they're Kevin Durants and their O'Dell Beckham's go to soccer,

where ours go to basketball, baseball, football. But even so, there's no question at all that the men's team is better pound for pound than the women's team. They may not be better against their competition, but when you say the women's team is better, if you actually mean that you think the women's team would beat the men's team, like they actually are better athletes, period, they're just better at playing. soccer, well, then you must be drunk or high or brain damage. There's just no way you could actually think that. Now, if you were to put, if the men's team, as bad as they are against other men, if you were to put them on the women's circuit, they would win every game 50 to

nothing, including beating the women handily. And one of the ways we know that is that, number one, they're men. And so they're just, they're male. They may not be the best athletes that the best male athletes that America has to offer, but even so, they are relatively successful male athletes in soccer, which means that they're just going to be better than the women. And it's as simple as that. As I pointed out before, the women's team a couple of years ago lost to a bunch of 14-year-old boys. And look, this is not mockery. The only reason I bring that up is because there are people out there claiming, and they do appear to actually think that the women's team is literally better than the men's team. And when you hear that claim, then you have to say,

okay, yeah, but they lost to, they lost the 14-year-old boys. And you could say all you want, oh, it was a scrimmage, they weren't trying that hard. Okay. I mean, do you think this men's team, is there any chance they would lose the 14-year-old girls? They could be out there on, they can be hopping around on one leg and they would still beat 14-year-old girls. So, and that just shows you. All it does, it just shows you the biological difference between men and women. That's all that is. And so when we say that men are better at a sport than women, that's not like, all that means that men just have a biological advantage. They didn't really do anything to earn that inherent biological advantage. If they become great athletes, then they've done a lot to earn that.

But just the very fact that they are men provides them with advantages, this is one of the reasons why myself and every other sane person were all against the idea of putting biological men into women's sports, biological men who claim to be women were against putting them into women's sports just because of that incredible biological advantage they have. It's just not fair. Now, the other side of this is the matter of revenue. As for that, let me read from Forbes, an article written by Mike Ozanian a few months ago. Here's what he says. He says, reading from his, he says, as Dwight James pointed out four years ago, after the U.S.

women beat Japan to capture the World Cup in Vancouver, there's a big difference in the revenue available to pay the teams. The Women's World Cup brought in almost $73 million, of which the players got 13%. The 2010 Men's World Cup in South Africa made almost $4 billion, of which 9% went to the players. The men still pull the World Cup money wagon. The men's World Cup in Russia generated over $6 billion in revenue with the participating team, sharing $400 million less than 7% of revenue. Meanwhile, the Women's World Cup is expected to earn $131 million for the four-year cycle, 2009 to 2012, and dole out $30 million to the participating teams.

Okay, that's what Forbes says. So let's think about these numbers for a minute. the men will share $400 million from the $6 billion they brought in. The women will share $30 million from the $131 million they brought in. So that's what, for the women, that's what, 20% or something like that, 20 some percent? 20% versus 7%. By that figure, it's not that if women want to be paid equally, then they should be paid less. women are actually overpaid. Equal pay should mean that they get an equal share in the revenue

they generate, which means they should get 7 or 8 percent. Or I should say they should get, yeah, if they, so it's 131 million, the women, the men got 6, 7 percent. So equal pay would mean the women would get 6 or 7 percent, which means that. that they would share, I don't know, eight or nine million bucks, not 30 million. But if they want equal pay in terms of just the pure amount they get to share, which would mean they also get to share $400 million, then that would mean that they are paid almost four times the amount that they generate in revenue. So where is that extra money even coming from? The entire women's world cup, it only generates 131 million. If they want equal pay, they want $4,000.

$400 million. Where's the extra almost $300 million coming from? It's just a claim that does. That's why I call it a cartoonishly stupid discussion. It has no basis in reality. The men and women in terms of revenue and also skill are in two different universes. And that explains why women are paid less than sports. It's, It's the same thing in basketball. And we hear this sometimes this complaint that WNBA players are paid much, much, much, much less

than NBA players, which is true. Now, I don't have the average is in front of me. The average amount that an NBA player is paid versus WNBA player, but I'm sure that the differences are huge. But that's because the difference in revenue

is huge. The whole league, okay, WNBA, the whole league generates $60 million in a year, the whole league, WMBA. The NBA, with men, generates $8 billion. The NBA generates significantly more in a week than the WMBA generates in a year. So that's why the men get paid more. There's more money to share.

There's just more money to go around. I mean, if men, if we were to give equal pay in the WNBA, well, giving the women an equal amount to the men by raising their salary would just be impossible because the money doesn't exist. It's just not there to give them. So the only way to really give them equal pay would be to give the men a lot, lot less. But then the question is, who gets all the extra money? I guess it just goes to the owners? Or excuse me, we're not supposed to call them owners now.

They're governors because owner is racially insensitive. So the rest goes to the governors. It sounds so stupid. I can't even say it. Even if I wanted to be politically correct, I can't say it. I can't refer to NBA team owners as NBA governors. It's just so creepy and weird. So that's the thing.

The money is there because there's so much interest in the NBA. And that's why the men get paid more. There is almost no interest in the WNBA. That's why the money isn't there. And the reason why there's no interest is because it's just not that fun to watch. I mean, these are, you're watching basketball with players who can't even dunk. And again, that's not an insult. It's just a fact.

One of the exciting things about watching basketball is to watch the high-flying, acrobatics, the dunks and all that crazy stuff. Well, the women can't even do that. So many of them anyway. So it's just not as fun to watch. How do you account for that gap, the gap in interest? The fact that there are more people interested in men's sports than are interested in women's sports. Is it patriarchy? Is it because of the internalized misogyny of sports fans that we all prefer to watch men play sports?

Well, no. Men are just better at sports. And therefore, they're more exciting to watch. Faster, stronger, they jump higher, they dribble faster, they're quicker. Everything is more exciting. Same for soccer. Now, while I hesitate to call soccer exciting in any context, it certainly is more exciting when men play it than when women play it because they're just better at it and that's all there is to it. Now, so that I'm not accused of being a sexist. Well, too late for that. I will be accused of being a sexist, which is just another day in the neighborhood for me.

But let's look at a different comparison and one that works out in favor of women. Okay, let's look at a different industry, the modeling industry. the modeling industry. I had to look this up because I don't know it off the top of my head. But apparently from what I read, the top 10 highest paid male models in the country made $8 million collectively last year. Those are the top 10 highest paid. So that's less than a million bucks apiece. Meanwhile, the single highest paid female model made three times that amount just by herself.

Okay? the top 10 female models made collectively 10 times what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, is that a sexist conspiracy in the other direction? Is there some kind of gender pay gap in the other direction, where now we have to equal things out so that male models make the same as female models? No, female models earn more because they're worth more. And why are they worth more? Well, for one thing, women are more beautiful than men. Okay, it's, it's a little bit harder to quantify beauty, beauty, than, but it is athletic talent, but there's no question that women generally are more beautiful than men. If you think of all the people you've ever seen in your life or met who just had stunning, earth-shattering beauty, right? Probably all of them are women. If you go out in public or if you're watching TV or whatever and you're just, and you see someone who's just so incredibly beautiful, then most of the time that's going to be a woman. And the thing is, even if you're a woman yourself,

that's probably true in your experience. Where you yourself, if you're out in public and you happen to notice that somebody is extremely beautiful, probably that somebody who you're noticing is a woman. And because it's just sort of, we say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, it's really not. A beautiful woman is just a beautiful woman.

It's just a fact that you recognize. Nothing more to it than that. Not only that. So that's one thing that women have in the modeling industry. It's an advantage that they have, that they're just more beautiful. I don't know who the top 10 female models are, but I imagine that if you saw them, it's just over here, well, those are beautiful women. It's extremely beautiful.

That's why they make all that money. Also, there's more for a female model to do. She can model clothes. She can model jewelry. She can model makeup. Male models can model clothes mostly, but men don't buy nearly as much jewelry. And thank God they don't buy nearly as much makeup, although I think the left wants to change that disparity.

But as it stands right now, most men don't buy makeup. So if you're looking for, if you're a jewelry company or a makeup company and you're looking for a model to show off your product, 99 times out of 100, you're going to pick a female model, and that's why female models make more. And that's all, that's it. They're just, they're worth more for those reasons. They have biological advantages. And they have, they have, which translate into advantages in the marketplace. There you go. Now, going back to the soccer thing for a minute, we have to realize that there's two conversations here, because there's, there's the amount that the women get paid by FIFA, which is the international soccer organization, the organization that

gives out the World Cup money. And that's where that big gap is, the 30 million versus 400 million. And that's where the big revenue gap is, the 6 billion versus 131 million. And then there's also discussion of what U.S. soccer players are paid here by U.S. soccer. And that's where the revenue gap is actually, it's I think from what I read, just when you look at U.S. soccer alone, historically, men generate more revenue, but that gap has been closing in recent years. So, okay, fine. But then if you look at what U.S. soccer pays their athletes, the pay gap is also not very large. Like, if you look at the top five highest paid male soccer players versus female, yeah, the men are paid a little bit more, but it's not an enormous gap. The big gap is with FIFA. It's with the World Cup money. Okay. And we should be clear that when when people talk about the pay gap and they want to, they want to close the gender pay gap in soccer, they are referring to FIFA also. Megan Rapino, she's been in front of cameras specifically calling out FIFA for the pay gap. The FIFA president apparently was booed at the World Cup largely over this issue, even though the men. in the World Cup, generate 40 to 50 to 60 times the amount in revenue. And so that's how

absurd this discussion is. All right. Speaking of absurd discussions and fake controversies, I wanted to mention this. So Disney is a company that has, well, ran out of original ideas probably 25 years ago. And so they just announced that there's another live action remake of a popular cartoon in the works. Actually, there's a few. So they're doing a Moulon remake, apparently, live action. And now they're also doing a Little Mermaid, live action thing. I mean, just think about how bereft of creativity the creative trust at Disney is, where now they're reduced to staging these literal shot-for-shot reenactments of their own films from only a few years. These are films from the 90s, sometimes the late 90s. I mean,

When did Mulan come out? The late 90s? It wasn't even that long ago. And now they're doing a shot-for-shot ring-enactment of it. It's not even like they're giving us a new interpretation of the original material. You know, it's not even that. It's just they're taking the cartoon and just redoing it, almost all the same dialogue, everything, redoing it with real people. We've got this Lion King thing coming out.

and they call it a live action Lion King. Well, it's not live action because all the characters are animals. So this is really just, this is a, this is an animated remake of an animated film. The only difference is that the animation is more realistic. But who cares if the animation is realistic? These are talking animals. It's not a realistic situation. In fact, I think if you, if you have a, it just, it looks somehow even more ridiculous to have a realistic animal talking.

If you're going to have talking animals, just make it a cartoon because that's what it is. But even in that, they're hiring some of the same voice actors. So they're getting a, they're getting a, now I'm Blaking on his name. Anyway, they're getting the same, how am I blanking on his name? They're getting the same actor who voiced Mufasa, a very famous actor. They're getting him from the knight to voice Mufasa again. So in this case, it's going to be a shot-for-shot remake with even some of the same voice actors, and it's just what's the point of this? Well, the point is it's a soulless cash grab, and they're doing it because they don't have any original ideas.

Anyway, so The Little Mermaid. A Little Mermaid is coming out, and they announced last week that the Ariel, the person who's going to play Ariel, is an R&B singer named Hallie Bailey. Hallie Bailey. And she's going to take on this challenging role of a mermaid. And she's a black woman. Okay. And the news of this casting arrangement was greeted mostly with mild shrugs from the vast majority of grown-ups who really are too busy paying bills and taking care of their

kids to worry about which actress is portraying a fictional fishwoman in the next Disney film. But in some quarters of society, the news prompted to Zuberant celebration as it finally explodes the pernicious and harmful myth that all aquatic creatures are Caucasian because this is apparently something that people thought, I guess, and now we're learning that's not the case. So little girls of all races can now dream of one day living in a coral reef and doing battle with an evil octopus who communicates her dastardly plans by singing spontaneous musical numbers. Now I guess any girl of any race can dream about that. Most people don't care about any of this, right? I mean, it's a Disney film. They can

have whoever they want, who cares? But that's not the story. If you were paying attention to the news and you were online last week, especially late last week, that's not the story that was being told. In fact, if you were to go right now and Google Ariel or The Little Mermaid, you're going to be greeted with dozens of articles reporting on an alleged outrage among racist. who were supposedly very angry that their favorite cartoon mermaid has changed colors. Apparently, there was this huge outrage. All these racists were like, oh, no, we can't have a black woman playing a mermaid. Oh, no, I'm racist and I don't want that.

That's what people supposedly were saying, according to the media. In fact, there was a hashtag trending on Twitter. Hashtag Not My Ariel was trending on Twitter with 100,000 people or over 100,000 people tweeting about it on whatever it was, Wednesday or Thursday. The problem, though, is that easily 95% of the tweets in the hashtag, Not My Ariel, hashtag, were not from people outraged about the casting, but we're from people outraged at the people who were outraged about the casting. So you go now, you go look through it yourself, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a single person who appears to be authentically angry

that Ariel is not white. Almost everybody is angry that people, are allegedly angry that Ariel isn't white. And this is one of the things that Twitter specializes in. It specializes in people being outraged about an outrage that doesn't appear to actually exist. BET put an article out on their website declaring in their headline, racists are big mad that a black girl is playing Ariel and a little mermaid. That was the headline. Now, leaving aside the phrase big mad, which is very annoyingly stupid, to prove that these, quote, big mad racist do in fact exist. BT provides precisely six tweets. Two of those tweets are from anonymous accounts with less than 10 followers that don't appear to be real people.

Two are from non-white people who, for whatever reason, thought that Ariel should still be white. And then there was another tweet from, and this is actually one that the website complex, the website, the Daily Dot, a few other websites, they did entire articles about this one supposedly racist tweet from a now suspended account. And it appears that that account, which I think sort of started all this, is a sock puppet with a stolen profile photo, which is probably why it's suspended. In other words, a sock puppet account is a fake account. So somebody, using a fake account with a stolen profile photo of a sort of generic looking blonde chick, but white blonde chick, someone using that account started this, pretended to be outraged about the fact that Ariel is not white and started this whole thing. Now, I have noticed a few real people annoyed, not that Ariel is black, but just annoyed by the double standard. Because a white cartoon character

could be portrayed by a black actress, but of course a black character could never be portrayed by a white actress. So that's the double standard. In fact, they came out with the remake of Aladdin, which apparently was horrible. And I remember that there was some grief that that movie caught

because the woman playing Jasmine was not erasional. enough. Like she was, she was Arab, but not Arab enough. She was a little bit too white looking. And so that created some outrage. You know, you now find people upset when gay characters and films are portrayed by straight actors. So when there's, when there's a switch in that direction, it does create actual legitimate outrage, mostly from liberals. And they've got this Mulan remake coming out. Can you imagine if a non-Asian woman was cast in, you know, as the protagonist role of the Mulan movie? Can you imagine if they had like, I don't know, Amy Adams or something playing?

No, it could never happen. Or the, what's the princess and the frog, Tiana, which, you know, a black princess. Can you imagine when they do that remake, which they will, can you imagine what would happen if they had a white actress playing Tiana, that again would be legitimate, real outrage from the left. So I have seen a few people pointing this out and saying, hey, look, I don't really care who plays Ariel, but the fact is you're switching her race. You're telling me I can't be upset about that. I'm not. But the fact is, if we were to switch it in the other direction with a different movie, you would really be upset about it. So that's a double standard. That's hypocrisy. So I have people pointed out, but that's not out, again, that's not outrage over the casting.

That is just annoyance over hypocrisy and double standards, which is totally justified. Now personally, you know, I think people of any race should be able to play fictional characters of any race. I don't think it matters. It's all imaginary. So make James Bond Black, doesn't matter. You can make Shaft white, who cares, make them both Chinese, make them green with purple stripes. I mean, what does it matter? They don't exist. It's fiction. The Little Mermaid is also fiction. But so is the outrage surrounding it. This is yet another phony backlash invented by people who are ideologically invested in the idea that America is so racist that we can't even have black mermaids without the racist Nazis getting upset about it.

So this is an invented outrage. It's like the Starbucks Cup thing. You remember a few years ago we were told by the media that conservative Christians were outraged and were very upset that the Starbucks cups were not Christmassy enough. And then when you looked into it, as I did, you found that there were maybe like two or three actual conservative Christians who were really, for some reason, dumb enough to be upset

that there weren't enough snowflakes on the holiday cups at Starbucks. Everybody else didn't care. This was mostly a controversy and outrage invented by the media to push a narrative and to make conservatives and Christians look stupid. and they do it all the time, and they did it again with this Little Mermaid thing. And that's another reason why you have to be very careful when you're consuming news or when you hear about some outrage.

Oh, apparently everyone's outraged about this or that. You should always stop and ask, are they really outraged about this? Go look into it yourself. And many times you'll discover that now actually nobody cares. Let's see. One other thing, there was, maybe we'll say this for tomorrow. There was this incident at a Starbucks in Arizona where some police officers say they were asked to leave the store or move to a different location because their presence was upsetting to some other customers who felt unsafe around police officers. And I think that this is something that needs a longer cover. I think we'll save this for tomorrow.

But the thing I want to talk about tomorrow with this issue is the comparison that's being drawn between this and the time that you may, you remember a couple of years ago where there were some black customers or they weren't customers. That's the point. But some black men at a Starbucks in Philly who were asked to leave, refused to leave. then the cops were called on them. And I defended Starbucks in that case. I'm not going to defend them when it comes to them asking the police officers to leave. And of course, I'll be accused because you're racist. Those were black men.

So, of course, well, no, there's a key difference between those two situations. And we'll talk about that tomorrow. Let's get to emails, actually. Matt Wallshow at gmail.com. Matt wallshow at gmail.com is the email address. this is from Phil says Matt, I see you've had several successes fishing.

Please tell us if your son was present and how he reacted. Well, I had to just read this email because I was bragging on Twitter about the fact that I did catch a five-pound and then a six-pound bass last week. We were staying at a lake at an undisclosed location.

And I won't disclose it because I don't want anyone else taking my bass from that location. And anyway, yeah, my son did do a fair amount of fishing with me, and they were very excited by those successes. Five and six-pound bass, you know, no big deal. Actually, it is kind of a big deal. So you should. I just wanted you to know that. This is from Lisa, says, greetings, Matt. A common point people will raise when refuting the idea of universal health care is that nobody has a right to another person's labor. In this case, the doctors. I agree with this point, of course, but I was watching a crime documentary recently and heard the words, right to an attorney. I was then reminded that everyone has the right to an attorney, even if they can't afford one.

The government will pay for one in that case. The words right to an attorney are not contested at all in this country. This isn't a controversy anywhere. Isn't this the same concept? How can we say that nobody has a right to a doctor's labor if everyone has the right to an attorney's labor? I haven't been able to figure this one out. And that's a really interesting point that I hadn't thought of before. So I had to think about this for a minute when I got your email, Lisa, yesterday.

And so I think that this is the way to sort through it. The right to an attorney, we should be clear, doesn't cover all types of attorneys. There are many different types of attorneys that are in different avenues of law and deal with different things. So, for instance, if you're suing Walmart because you slipped on a banana peel in the produce section, you don't have a right to an attorney to represent you for that case. And if you get sued by someone because they're walking through your kitchen and they slip on a banana peel, then you don't have a right to an attorney to defend you. You're on your own. You've got to do that on your own. The right to an attorney applies only to a defense when you're being prosecuted by the state. So that's when you have the right to an attorney.

And in that case, the attorney that is compelled to help you as a public defender, someone who chooses to work for an agency whose role it is to provide defense for people who can't afford to pay. So it's not even, you know, there are private, there are defense attorneys who are in private practice and they cost a lot of money. And they're the ones who can, you know, help you get away, literally get away with murder, but you don't have a right to them because, yeah, that would be essentially slave labor. The government can't come into some high-profile, private, expensive defense attorney and

say, oh, you have to help this guy. That's specifically public defenders. And if you choose to get into the role of being a public defender, this is what you do. I think the key difference, though. And the reason for that is that if the state brings a case against you, then the way our laws work, and I think it's a good, this is good, the state brings a case against you. The state should also have to provide you the means to defend yourself in that case. So that's why. That's why you have the right to an attorney. Because the state, they're the ones coming in and saying, hey, you know, we're going to put you on trial, we're going to try to lock you in prison. And if we didn't have that right to an attorney, then the fear is that there would be major abuses and the state could just, with impunity,

just lock people away and they'd have no chance of defending themselves. So that's the point. I've often said, and I'm not the only one who's made this point, that I think sometimes we are focusing on the wrong R word. We talk a lot. We talk a lot. lot about rights. I have the right to this. I have the right to that. I think maybe we should be talking more about responsibility. I think we should think of rights in terms of responsibility. And when we think of it in those terms, it starts to clarify issues to a large extent. Because every right has a corresponding responsibility. And we don't talk enough about that. So another way of looking at this is, okay, you have a right to an attorney. Well, that's true.

But it's more that the state has a responsibility to provide you with the means to defend yourself if they're the ones who are trying to put you in prison. So you have a right to it, but you have a right to it because of the responsibility that's on the state. That's how we should look at it. I've said the same thing when we talk about the right to life with abortion. And, well, it's true that we do have a right to life. but I think maybe a sort of clearer way of looking at this is that as a parent, you have a responsibility to your children. And that's what this comes down to. That's your child. You have

a responsibility to them. And so you can't kill them. You have to take care of them. Or you have to find someone who can take care of. So that's how I would look at that. And that's an interesting question. Thanks for bringing up. Bring it up an angle that I hadn't thought of before. And I think we'll leave it there. Thanks everybody for watching. Thanks for listening. The U.S. women's national soccer team, which two years ago was beaten five to two by a team of boys under the age of 15, has won the World Cup or something. We will analyze what the rise of soccer means for American politics. Then President Trump parades tanks through D.C. A 2020 Democrat may drop out of the race and Nancy Pelosi snipes at AOC.

Check it out on the Michael Knowles show.