The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 421 - The Collapse Of Identity Politics
Episode Date: February 6, 2020A Hollywood actress comes out as "queer" in a defensive move to ward off the outrage mob. Donald Trump pushed for a ban on late term abortion, as abortion advocates claim late term abortion doesn't ex...ist. And a listener emails with a difficult family-related dilemma. Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://www.dailywire.com/coldwar. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership. If you like The Matt Walsh Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: WALSH and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at https://www.dailywire.com/Walsh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
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Welcome into the show, everybody. I have to say I'm glad that this impeachment saga is over. I think I probably speak for lots of people right now. I put so much effort into covering the impeachment thing on my show that it was getting exhausting and that's why I'm grateful. And by so much effort, I mean that I almost completely ignored it. I mean I put in almost zero effort in covering it, which I actually considered to be perhaps my greatest professional achievement, ignoring impeachment.
entire time and the greatest kindness that I could have possibly bestowed upon you, the audience.
So you're welcome for that.
Trump is now acquitted, of course, as a result that was absolutely insured from the very
beginning of this extremely pointless spectacle.
The only person to vote for conviction, of course, was Mitt Romney.
Only person in Trump's party to vote for conviction, I should say, was Mitt Romney, along
with every single Democrat.
A decision by Romney that I don't personally find especially objectionable.
I know that I'm somewhat, maybe not entirely alone, but I know probably most people don't feel that way, at least on the right.
I think Mitt Romney did what he thought was the right thing to do, and that's what he's supposed to do.
He's supposed to follow your own conscience and judge these things according to your own judgment.
The idea that he did it for some self-serving reason is, I think, plainly ridiculous,
even though I disagree with him.
But considering he probably guaranteed he's going to be voted out of office,
and he's now persona non-grata in his own party,
I'm not saying that makes him a hero.
So I think we have two versions of Mitt Romney that are being put forward now by either side.
You have Mitt Romney, the scum, scoundrel, coward, traitor, and then you have Mitt Romney, the knight and shining armor, the hero, and that's coming from the left.
And of course, the irony here is that these are the very same people that when he was running for president in 2012, said that he was racist and sexist with his binders full of women, and so on and so forth.
So we know that that's hypocritical and we know that it will change on a dime the moment that Mitt Romney does something they don't like.
So we understand all of that.
My point, though, is I don't really think he's either of those things.
I don't think he's a hero, but the accusation that he's a coward or an opportunist is preposterous
unless I completely misunderstand what the word opportunism means, because I don't know what the opportunity is here for him,
other than he's ruined his own, at least the latest iteration of his political career.
In any case, that's the end of it, and I'm very happy for it to be over.
And we can all move on as I will.
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Well, if we can go back to very ancient history here,
way back to a period of history that archaeologists are just now discovering and uncovering and learning about
that would be this past Tuesday, the State of the Union Address.
During his state of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Trump called for a ban on late-term abortions.
Played that clip yesterday on the show.
This plea was made all the more vivid and powerful by the presence of a two-year-old girl in the audience
who was born at 22 weeks gestation.
And I thought that was a great illustration.
of what we're talking about here.
When we're talking about late-term abortions,
we're talking about aborting this child,
who was born at 22 weeks, which is now viable.
Medical advances have made pregnancies, quote, viable
well before the third trimester,
and there's no reason to think that this trend
toward earlier and earlier viability won't continue.
This is yet another example of the way
that pro-abortion people are anti-science
and anti-medical advancement.
Of course, the argument for banning late-term abortion is morally unassailable.
There is no clump of cells dodge available to the defender of this practice.
Babies in the second trimester are at least the size of an adult's hand.
So we're not talking about a microscopic embryo.
Okay, we're talking about a child that's at least that long.
And despite what pro-aborts would like to imagine, like us,
to imagine of this microscopic tiny, inventimal little thing. No. And midway through the second
trimester, they could be safely delivered with all of their limbs intact and other recognizable human
features. Abortions at this stage are therefore necessarily brutal. The cervix is,
and as I say, it's brutal, so some content warning.
here, but I think it's important for us to understand exactly how these, these procedures,
these quote procedures are done. So I'm going to explain it if you don't already know. And if you
don't want to hear an explanation, you're welcome to mute the show for the next minute. The cervix
is pried open. The amniotic fluid around the child is sucked out. The victim, the child, is then
ripped apart limb by limb with something called a sofa clamp, which is a long clamp,
almost looks like a long pair of pliers
with a sharpened edge
with little teeth that allow it to
attach itself to the limbs of the child
and the child is ripped apart while still alive
okay
third that's second trimester
this is what Donald Trump says we should ban
third trimester abortions
even more barbaric
a poison needle is stabbed through the mother's
abdomen into the baby's skull
now humans
at this stage obviously have fully developed fully functioning nervous systems. So this is agonizingly
painful for the child. Just imagine how it would feel for you to be stabbed in the head with a
poison needle. That's how it would feel for the child. There's no effort made whatsoever to limit
the child's suffering because such efforts would acknowledge the humanity of, or at least the life of the
child, which is something the abortion industry can't do. And then the mother, and after the child
dies, the mother is forced to carry the dead baby around in her womb for two days, at which point
she will deliver the corpse. They hope in the abortion office, but oftentimes it ends up happening
in a bathroom at a hotel or something where they're staying. In some cases, though, the baby survives
the initial injection, and so has to be given another. Now, I want you to think,
about the pain that child is in for the two days after he's been stabbed with the poison
needle still alive suffering in agony and then two days later poisoned again unless of
course you have a Gossnell situation in which case the baby would just be delivered
alive and then killed at that point which by the way is what Ralph Northam was
famously infamously advocating for
I describe all of that because, number one, this is happening in the world and we should know about it.
It's happening in our country, not just the world.
And I don't think we have the right to turn away from it and say, oh, I don't want to hear about that.
That's hard to hear.
Yeah, it is hard to hear.
That's the point.
How hard do you think it is to go through for the child?
But also, this is what Donald Trump is trying to ban.
But the abortion industry's minions in the media can't accept any restrictions on abortion at all
and lacking any ethically sound argument in favor of literally tearing viable children apart limb from limb,
they resort to lies that are so absolutely shameless that they'd be funny, if not for the subject matter.
In response to Trump's comments last night, a number of abortion advocates went on social media,
or two nights ago, rather, went on social media and spread the bizarre claim
that there's no such thing as late-term abortion.
term abortion is, quote, not a thing is what abortion advocates, prominent abortion advocates on
social media were saying. This, it would not be any crazier or more delusional for me to rebut
Elizabeth Warren's billionaires are evil schick by claiming that billionaires don't exist.
It's the same kind of thing. On the contrary, late-term abortions are most certainly a thing.
Even estimates in liberal publications tell us that this quote very rare
Read existent procedure accounts for quote only 1.3% of abortions
This was in I think the Guardian had an article about it
Liberal publication in the context of
Advocating for abortion and it's only 1.3%
Okay, well 1.3% of abortions
That amounts to over 5,000 babies every single year that
that are ripped apart limb from limb.
5,000.
Now, I want you to think about how we react
when there's a school shooting
and nine kids are killed, let's say, or 10 or 12.
It's horrific.
It's evil, it's terrible, it's a tragedy, it's all of those things.
We react exactly as we should to it.
My point is, though, 5,000.
Think about a mass attack, a mass slaughter
of some kind that killed 5,000 people.
We wouldn't see that as such a small number.
It's only small in comparison
to the gargantuan body count
that the abortion industry racks up every year.
That's the only reason it seems small.
The fact that that's a small number
only tells you, it tells you a lot more
about the total number of abortions
and how large that number is
than it does about the actual number of late
from abortions.
Now, also, rape and incest account for less than 1% of abortions.
Yet pro-abortion people try to bring every abortion discussion back to this minority of cases.
Well, you can't have it both ways.
Either the 1% of cases are relevant or they aren't.
The other lie that is only slightly less egregious is that these abortions are only carried out to save the mother's life.
Yet even former abortionists and current OBGYNs have come out in the past and said that this is
simply not true.
There's no such thing as a life-saving abortion.
To borrow a phrase, that is not a thing.
It is never necessary to kill a viable baby in order to save his mother's life.
How could it be?
If there's a potentially fatal complication with the pregnancy, the child needs to come out of the mother, but he could be simply delivered.
In fact, either way, the child has to be delivered, alive or dead.
The only thing you're doing with an abortion is you're adding in an extra step of killing the child before you deliver him.
There is no reason why that could have any medical value for the mother.
In reality, late-term abortions can happen because the mother decides she doesn't want the child.
They can happen for the same reason that earlier term abortions happen.
These are not all extreme situations.
The procedure, quote unquote, is it is extreme, extremely brutal, but it's not always that some extreme position that the mother's been found, finds herself in, is what leads to the late-term abortion. That's not the case.
It could just be that, you know, she, she decides at 25 weeks that she wants, she doesn't want to have a kid.
things have changed in her life, she loses a job, she loses a relationship, okay, those certainly can be
reasons and there are plenty of, in those 5,000 every year, a not small number of them are going to be
situations like that. And then there are going to be other situations where, let's say the child
has some serious ailment or disability of some kind, or we're often told that, you know,
these late-term abortions only happen when the child's going to die anyway.
Well, it's simply not true that that accounts for all or even a majority of cases.
But that does happen sometimes.
But killing a person because he's disabled or because he's going to die anyway
is not medically necessary.
That's not medicine.
And if we call that medicine, if we call that a medical procedure, then we have ventured fully into eugenics territory.
and the implications extend far beyond the womb.
You know, you simply can't call that a medical treatment.
You know what it is?
It's a mercy killing is what it is.
And that's a euphemism in itself, and I hate that phrase.
But if you're looking for a euphemism that's at least closer to the reality,
it's not medical treatment, it's mercy killing.
And go ahead and advocate for that.
advocate for the
mercy killing of
disabled children
advocated for if you want
you're not going to be alone
I mean there's a long history of eugenics
even in this country
and back a hundred years ago
the people who advocated for eugenics
were a lot more open about it
and they would have and did
Margaret Sanger being one of them
come out and explicitly advocate for it
and say no these people their
lives aren't worth anything it's not worth living
so we should just kill them
you're arguing for the same thing.
You're just using different words.
So you may as well confront
what your position actually is
and see if you can stomach it.
No matter how you look at it,
the talking points offered by the pro-abortion side
are ridiculously false.
President Trump is right to call for a ban
on this barbarity.
And I think all decent people
in the country agree with him.
And that's really what it comes down to.
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okay here's a story
this is a story all right reading from
BBC.com
says Jamila Jamil
has announced she is
quote queer after receiving criticism
for being cast in a new LGBT interest show.
U.S. broadcaster HBO announced on Tuesday
that the actress and model will be a judge
on its new unscripted vogueing contest, legendary.
I confess I have no idea what voging is.
The news prompted an online backlash
from people who said
the Good Place star was not representative
of the black LGBT
community. That prompted her to issue a statement addressing her sexuality. Opening with Twitter
is brutal. She explained that she identified as queer and had previously struggled to discuss
the topic because it's not easy within the South Asian community to be accepted. She mentioned
that nobody in her family was openly out. In that quote, it's also scary as an actor to openly
admit your sexuality, especially when you're already a brown female in your 30s.
Yes, I'm sure it's really scary to be in the LGBT community.
in Hollywood.
Right.
Jamil went on,
this is absolutely not
how I wanted to come out
and adding that she's logging off of
Twitter.
Oh, and hold on, they actually explain what Vogueing is.
All right. It says, Vogueing is a genre of dance
that originated in New York in the late 1980s.
It was founded by black and Latino LGBT people,
many of whom were disowned by their families
for their sexuality and gender.
It came to mainstream attention
through Madonna's 1990.
hit Vogue and the accompanying video, as well as the documentary Paris is burning.
Okay, hold on a second.
But first of all, Madonna is not in the LGBT community, is she?
Not as far as I know.
And so she's the one who started this Vogueing thing.
And now you're not allowed.
So it was started by a straight woman and now a straight woman isn't allowed to be involved in it.
Or not started by a straight woman.
It was popularized, okay?
It was brought into mainstream attention through a straight woman,
and now we're saying if you're straight, you're not allowed in.
All right.
So there's a lot that's still mysterious here.
And maybe it would be cleared up if I kept reading, but I've lost interest.
I don't understand why you need to be gay to go vogueing.
Are you telling me that I can't vogue?
I could get up in vogue right now if I wanted to.
It's one of my greatest passions after I learned about it 10 seconds ago.
In any case, the upshot here is that this Hollywood actress was getting criticized for the crime of hosting a show while straight.
She was being attacked for not being gay, and so she came out and said, oh, you know what?
Funny thing actually turns out I am gay.
Or not gay, but quote, queer.
This actually gives me an idea for what I might do the next time I'm being attacked.
I get attacked all the time, as you know.
And maybe this is a good way out of it.
But notice the brilliance of this move by by Jamil here.
She comes out as queer, right?
Not gay, but queer.
So what does queer mean?
Well, nobody really knows.
It's entirely undefined.
It means whatever you want it to mean, basically.
So you can claim that the LGBTQ.
Now, I believe Q can also mean questioning.
So you can be queer, you can be questioning.
Anyone can claim that.
There's no way to confirm it.
You could just wear that label and go about your day like you were before.
Don't change anything.
So it was a smart move.
And nobody's allowed to question her self-identification.
Just like when a man comes out as a woman.
You can't question it.
It's a checkmate.
They win.
That's all it is to it.
Notice also here how my victim pyramid is illustrated once again.
Remember, on the left, victimhood is currency, right?
Whoever has the most victim token wins.
But the Uber victims, the chiefs,
victims. Those who have the greatest wealth of victim currency by far are the LGBT folks.
Women, even ethnic minority women, are beneath the LGBT people in the hierarchy.
So Jamil is a woman, ethnic minority, a feminist. She was just, you may recognize the
name because we talked about on the show last month. She was just last month bragging about
her abortion. She was shouting her abortion. So she's an ethnic minority woman who shouts her
abortions. You would think that that would get her to the top. But no, she still is beneath the
LGBT camp. It doesn't earn her enough identity token points to even host a dancing competition
on HBO. Because the LGBT camp decided that she shouldn't be allowed to do that. And what they say
goes on the left. If they say it, that's it. They're in charge. If they say you're not allowed to do
that, that's it. That's it.
if they say we're going to do this we're going to do it if they say to women hey these these dudes
are going to be coming into your locker rooms now that's just how it is they're going to be on your
sports teams too no no no shut up shut up you're not allowed to protest you bigot shut up
they can do that the LGBT can do that they can they can talk to women like that and they do
talk to women like that.
So what does
what does Jamil do? She says
Oh funny story
this is the problem that the left is running
into. On one hand
everything comes down to identity politics
right? All that matters is the
demographic you fall into
that's going to determine
that will determine what you're allowed to do
what you're allowed to say
what you're allowed to think
the reality shows you're allowed to host
it determines everything
It determines what kind of person you are.
It determines the value of yourself as a person.
But they've also made identity into this nebulous, hazy thing.
They blurred the lines of distinction, relativized identity, thrown out all the objective categories,
leading now to a mad dash to the top of the hierarchy, because anyone could be there.
All you have to do to be considered a part of any particular category is simply say that you're in that category.
And that's it.
No other steps required.
So now everyone can say they're LGBT,
and the hierarchy becomes very top-heavy.
So now it's become sort of a ruling class
without anybody to rule.
Kings and drag queens without any subjects.
You've got a bunch of pharaohs
and no peasant class, no slaves to maintain the pyramid,
which is quite a predicament,
except you still have white men, for the most part.
Okay, we could still all agree
that white men like myself are scum.
problem though is that a white man like myself I'm all the way at the bottom of the pyramid
I could in one fell swoop leapfrog all the way to the top just with a simple phrase I'm a
woman I say that and now I'm at the top so even even the the rely the most reliable you would
think you would think that at least they can they can rely on on having the white men down
there that they can all turn in hate even that's not so reliable
because we can escape this ghetto any moment just by saying,
oh, you know what?
Turns out I'm a woman.
Yeah.
Oh, I don't look like a woman.
I don't have any of the parts of a woman.
I've never said I was a woman before.
Doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter.
It's got to take my word for it, I'm afraid.
We're going to go to emails in a second.
But first, you know, what a year this month has been.
And the election race is, unfortunately, just getting started.
The best way to stay informed.
and on top of all of it is to become a DailyWire member
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you've got to download the Daily Wire app, a member exclusive so you can get push notifications
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want to miss it. All right. This is from Rodolfo.
wall show at gmail.com.
It says, hi, Matt.
I really need your advice on how to navigate the situation.
My sister who was in with my sister who was in a same-sex relationship whose partner conceived a baby through IVF, I assume.
Before they broke the news to us, she asked me what my thoughts were.
I calmly explained how the baby is entitled to a father and mother and how the two contribute
different needs to the child.
She refused to acknowledge that they provide different needs and kept insisting as long as they have to,
as long as they have loving parents, they're fine.
I completely forgot to insert
how the extra frozen fertilized eggs are human beings
and deserving of life,
but now that her partner has been blessed with a child,
I don't know how to go about day-to-day interactions.
Do I attend the baby shower pretending I approve of this?
Do I tell my daughter?
Do I pretend I approve when other family is around?
Thank you for all you do.
Rodolfo.
Well, what you tell your daughter really depends on how old she is,
and I don't think you mention that.
If she's very young, if she's like my kid's age,
then I would not tell her anything.
because she wouldn't understand it anyway.
As for approving of it, look, obviously,
you're going to accept the child, right?
And you're going to love the child as a niece or nephew.
You're not going to spurn the child and say,
no, you're not going to do that.
And you love your sister, even if you don't approve of her choices.
So I think on a day-to-day basis,
your approval is kind of irrelevant, right?
you don't have to act like you approve or you don't approve. You just act like their family,
which they are, and you go about your business. You aren't going to ostracize or disown them,
right? I think we would agree that's not going to be an option. So, and that wouldn't be the
right response at all. So what other option is there but to love and accept them? Now, when I say
accept, okay, this word acceptance can be a problem.
given that it has such a broad meaning now to a lot of people,
but really accepting someone as a person and as a family member
is not the same thing as approving of their choices.
We tend to think of those things as the same, but they're not.
So we should accept our family members,
accept them in the sense of love them,
and embrace them as family members.
That's what acceptance would mean here.
It doesn't mean approve of everything they do, which is good because I don't think anyone has a family where they approve of everything that everybody in their family does.
That's just not how families operate.
So I think all of us, or at least many of us, have family members who have made choices we disagree with, maybe that we strongly disagree with.
But unless that choice makes them a physical danger to you and your child,
I think you still treat them as family because they are.
I don't think you should pretend to approve, as you say,
but the point is 99% of what you do with your family
and how you treat them has nothing to do with approval or disapproval anyway.
So it really doesn't come up.
I'm not trying to dodge your question,
but I think you were asking mainly what do you do on a day-to-day basis.
and she's your sister.
That's it.
That's what you do on a day-to-day basis.
This is from Abigail.
Abigail says,
Hey, Matt, I have an incredibly important question for you.
In fact, it may be the most important question
you've ever answered, so please don't answer it hastily.
My reputation as a college student
in relationship with my peers depends on this.
Is the correct pronunciation of ramen noodles,
ramen or Raymond?
Well, I guess I already answered that, didn't I?
Who says Raymond noodles?
Raymond noodles?
Is that a thing?
I hope you're not in the raman noodles?
Raymond noodle camp.
Raymond noodle sounds like the name of a party clown or something.
No, it's definitely ramen noodles.
And if you were in the Raymond camp, Abigail, I'm afraid to say that you deserve to have
your reputation destroyed and to lose all your friends for an infraction such as that.
This is from Ian says, why can't you support our president without throwing in your little
insults?
You said you liked his state of the union.
Great.
Why did you need to go on about how he's no good off the script?
Trump off the script is exactly what won him the presidency, so your point makes no sense.
It seems like you try to play both sides of the fence, sometimes throwing in anti-conservative
opinions to appeal to the left.
Hey, anything for ratings and acceptance, I guess.
It seems like you're really a never-trumper at heart, and you try to disguise it, and that's
too bad because the never-trumper's are grifters and cowards.
I hate to think the same about you, but you make me wonder, and I'm not the only one.
Well, Ian, first of all, I didn't say anything yesterday that could possibly be construed as an insult of Donald Trump.
I was applauding his performance.
It's my opinion that he's better on the script than off, that his rambling routine on the campaign trail and his tweets are at best kind of stale at this point and at worst, extremely off-putting to a lot of people.
That's my view.
And I've been very consistent about that this entire time.
Not an insult, though.
Criticism, yeah, but not all criticisms are insults.
And anyway, insult or not, how is that anti-conservative?
It's anti-conservative now to criticize the Republican president.
So the entirety of the conservative cause comes down to your personal feelings about a dude,
a guy, the president.
He is now the embodiment of everything that it means to be conservative.
And all you have to do, all you have to do to be conservative is just to agree with him
all the time about everything.
Is that your position?
Now, I'm being somewhat intentionally obtuse here
because I know that is exactly the position
that some quote-unquote conservatives have
and have had this entire time with regards to Trump.
But I find it to be ridiculous, empathetic.
And I also think that, at least for me,
if being a conservative means anything,
one of the most crucial
aspects of being conservative
is to have a healthy skepticism of the government
which means being critical of the government
and not being afraid to criticize the government
Donald Trump runs the government
so he's part of that
so my point is in my view
to say that you shouldn't criticize
or even insult quote unquote the president
is one of the most anti-conservative
un-conservative positions you could possibly take
And let me just clarify something for you, just so you know.
You say that I throw in these little anti-conservative opinions, as you put it.
And from the sound of it, you mean more than just the Trump stuff.
You are saying that the times when I venture from standard accepted right-wing talking points,
I'm doing it for ratings and appeal and acceptance and so on.
And you say the never-trumper's, whatever that means, whoever they are, are also in it for personal game.
Okay, just so you know, in my position as, I guess, a conservative media person,
there is nothing at all to be personally gained from straying from the party line.
There's nothing to be gained from that.
Now, unless you have a full-scale conversion to leftism and you decide to start parroting left-wing
talking points across the board, as some former conservatives like Jen Rubin,
have actually done under Trump.
Now, if you do that, it's still kind of a gamble
because there's no guarantee
you're going to be accepted by the left.
But if you do that, then yes,
that could be a calculation for personal gain.
Might earn you a spy gig on MSNBC
or CNN as their token, quote,
reasonable conservative fine.
But there is no business advantage,
no opportunistic benefit at all
to doing anything other than
parroting
right-wing talking points or left-wing talking points.
You could choose one of the other,
but if you choose option, you know, C, D, E, or F, or X or Y or Z,
you know, if you go anywhere besides those two options,
there is no real benefit to it
other than you're just being honest about what you think.
So A and B, right, right-wing talking points, left-wing talking points.
in my business, those are the safest and most profitable things.
Outside of that, however far you venture outside of that, you sacrifice money and ratings.
The most profitable thing for a conservative media person by far is to be a diehard Trump fan,
to never criticize him, always defend him, and to just sort of put your finger in the air,
see which way the wind is blowing with your base, and talk about popular conservative topic,
and give popular conservative opinions.
Don't go too far, right.
Don't go left.
Don't go in the middle.
Don't go off in that direction.
Don't go in any direction,
except just right there, in that lane.
And if you have an audience as a conservative
and you stay in that lane,
you're guaranteed a job in perpetuity,
you're guaranteed an audience,
you're guaranteed money.
It's a good business.
Profitable business anyway.
my point is anyone who does anything other than that anything other than that there could only be
one reason why they do it and that is they're just being honest um now does does that make
it's kind of like i was saying about mint romney not that i'm comparing myself to him but
am i saying that when i stray outside of the normal talking points i'm i'm doing something heroic and
us, no. I'm still doing fine for myself and taking care of my family. It's not like I'm,
it's not like I'm making some huge sacrifice, not at all. But I just want to be, just so you understand.
I think there are a lot of people who don't understand how this works.
Saying that someone who strays outside of the talking points is doing it for the money
would be like saying that a person became a trash collector because they're a germaphobe.
Or they got into social work for the money.
I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, the accusation is exactly the opposite of the reality.
Okay.
If you want to know who the potential grifters and opportunists are among conservative media figures,
all you have to do is look at the people who never, ever, ever challenge their own audience and are always just right in line with what most people think on the right.
everything is appealing to the crowd
everything is
you know
everything is crowd pleasing all the time
look at those people
now I'm not saying that all of them are grifters
and opportunists I don't know I can't see inside their heart
it's possible that their views really do
just happen to line up
with what most of the audience wants to hear
extremely unlikely
but it's possible I can't say for sure
but those are going to be the potential
that's where you want to look for for
suspected grifting. You want to look over there. Okay. All right. What else here? I wanted to tell you,
you know, back in July, friend of Daily Wire, Bill Whittle, hosted this excellent four-part series
podcast called Apollo 11, what we saw. And I really enjoyed it. I think a lot of people loved it.
Speaking of getting away from normal talking points, this is something entirely different.
It's not politics. And this was Bill taking you back in time, living through.
through it experiencing the space age again.
Now Bill has a new season of a show all about the Cold War.
Be sure to check out the Cold War what we saw.
Not only is it a very compelling story, but it's also an important reminder of what it is
like to live in back in those times and to live through that with no future, which is where
we all end up if the far left makes it to the presidency.
As the host Bill captures what it was like to live through major events like the Berlin
Air Lift, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
space race, and the story ties all these milestones together to create this picture of the apocalypse
that never happened. The story is so well told, and the setting is so brilliantly descriptive that
as you go through these events, you start to understand the battle not only for capitalism,
but for civilization itself. They've released two episodes of this 12-part series already,
so it's the perfect time to go catch up. Just go to dailywire.com slash cold war and start
listening to this incredibly important story. That's dailywire.com slash cold war.
All right, one more email. This is from Henry says, hey, Matt, I take issue with the idea that there are not any restrictions or that there are any restrictions on free speech. You mentioned that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. In this case, it's not the speech that's illegal. It's the inciting of a stampede. That's the problem. In the case where the girl convinced her boyfriend to kill himself, it's not the word she said that need to be restricted. It's the act of causing someone to kill themselves. That's illegal. Same thing with Charles Manson. You could repeat every word that Charles Manson ever said and you would have the right,
because you have a right to free speech.
However, you don't have the right to cause someone to commit murder.
The slippery slope that I'm afraid of is that once you can see that there are some restrictions
of free speech, why can't we also restrict hate speech, for example?
I'm from Canada, where we have hate speech laws and comedians get fine for making offensive jokes,
and this is where I think you will inevitably end up if you believe there are restrictions
to free speech.
Anyway, I think you'll understand my point.
Well, Henry, I think you're trying to play a semantic game to get around the reality that we do and must restrict speech,
and we always have.
But you say it's not speech, that's the problem,
but the inciting of a stampede
or the brainwashing of people to kill people
or, you know, or what have you.
Yes, but how is the stampede incited?
How are the people brainwashed with speech?
So this would be like if I murdered someone
and you said,
no, it's not the shooting that's illegal,
but the causing of someone to be dead.
Yeah, well, that's a distinction without a difference.
It's true that shooting people isn't always illegal.
You could be shooting in self-defense.
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But shooting someone to kill them is, you know, to murder them is illegal.
So the right to shoot, as it were, is restricted for obvious reasons.
Just like our right to speech is restricted.
not that I'm comparing saying words to shooting someone, but I think hopefully you get my point.
And it must be restricted in the situations I've described and in many other situations besides.
Now, I understand your revulsion to and discomfort with the idea that free speech can be restricted,
because that means, as you seem to realize, that there actually isn't any such thing as free speech,
not in an absolute sense.
and if it's not if speech is not absolutely free then it's not really free at all
if we're not talking about freedom in an absolute sense then why are we even using the word
it seems like a it seems like a word that misses the point right and yeah that is the uncomfortable
truth but it's truth nonetheless free speech is as we've been talking about a very imprecise phrase
more of a symbolic phrase not one that can be taken totally literally and that goes
for all freedoms, really, because none of them are absolutely absolute, because anyone could think of
exceptions. You have the freedom of religion. I believe in that. Absolutely. Or not absolutely. I certainly
believe in that, but what if you belong to the ancient Aztec religion and you want to perform human
sacrifices? Well, you better get a job at Planned Parenthood. Otherwise, you're not going to be
allowed to do that. Now, you can say all you want that, oh, well, that's not really restricting
freedom of religion. That's different. No, it is.
It is, that's a religion and that's a religious practice.
And we're saying you shouldn't be allowed to do it.
So it's a restriction on freedom.
Yes, the reason you can't do it is because it's going to kill another person.
Nonetheless, it is a religious practice that we are saying you cannot do.
It is a restriction on religion.
There's no way around it.
I know we want to find ways around it so we could phrase it a different way or maybe start.
A lot of times what people will do it.
is they don't want to admit that there are restrictions on freedom,
so instead they'll say, well, maybe we need to think about the word religion.
Maybe this Aztec religion isn't really a religion.
Or maybe we don't want to admit that laws against slander are a restriction on free speech.
So maybe slander isn't really speech.
Where we try to adjust the word speech rather than the word free.
But that doesn't work.
And I don't think it really convinces anybody.
I think we all know.
The truth.
Now, the good news is that these restrictions on speech have always been in place.
It's never been legal to slander somebody, to libel someone.
It's never been legal to tell someone to go kill another person.
It's never been legal to do those things.
And yet, we still live in a country where you can basically go out and say what you want.
or at least express any idea, any political idea that you want.
At least in this country we do.
Maybe not in Canada.
So I don't know if the free, if the slippery slope has really panned out exactly as you're saying.
Which doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant.
I think we still have to be vigilant because there are people who would like to infringe even on our ability to express political views and that sort of thing.
And that certainly is a problem.
But I don't think, I think we have to meet those challenges.
I don't think we meet those challenges by pretending to be free speech absolutist.
When free speech absolutism is nonsensical.
Okay, we'll leave it there.
Thanks for the, thanks for the email.
I did have another email I was going to read.
I think I'll save it for tomorrow.
But somebody, well, somebody writes me with, I often get, just like the one from Rodolfo,
I get questions from people about family dilemmas where they want my opinion.
And on one hand, I'm not sure my opinion really means anything.
I don't know that I have any insight that's really going to be helpful to people with these situations.
But I get the emails anyway.
Someone wrote me with a dilemma involving their family that is certainly the most difficult dilemma anyone's ever emailed me before.
And so I think I'm going to say that for tomorrow because that's going to be a longer conversation.
and have a great day. Godspeed.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton,
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