The Matt Walsh Show - Institutions Are Lowering Standards To Fight “Racism” | Proof For Your Liberal Friend

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

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It feels good. The people have been listened to. it feels good. I'm just happy to take him down the history behind it. It's not something that should be, you know, celebrated. We've got another, it seems like there's been a kind of revival of the statue toppling brigade. They never went away, but it's kind of they toppled all the statues and they took a break, I guess, for a few months. And now they're back at it again. So this is from USA Today.

Cruz removed a Confederate monument from a Jacksonville, Florida Park earlier Wednesday. morning after years of debate and controversy over its removal. Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan ordered the removal of the tribute to the women of the Southern Confederacy Monument, which has stood north of downtown in Springfield Park since 1915. Deegan said the monument was a divisive presence that had no place in a city park. She said, quote, symbols matter. They tell the world that we stand for and what we aspire to be. By removing the Confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared human.

that we're all created equal, the same flesh and bones, the same blood running through our veins, the same heart and soul. A crowd gathered on the sidewalk erupted in shears as Cruz took down two bronze statues, one of a woman in robes carrying a Confederate flag, and the other of a woman reading to two children. The opponents of the removal, State Representative Dean Black, blasted the move as a stunning abuse of power by Deegan. He said, doing it without consulting city leaders or having a vote by the city council is another in a long line of woke Democrats' obsession with cancel culture.

and tearing down history. So once again, this was something that was done, just like Arlington National Cemetery. I mean, they're doing this without any authority to do it. They're just taking it upon themselves to do it. Here's some photos. I just want you to see photos of them taking down the statue. So there's, there they are.

Just want you to get a look at that statue. Look how offensive that is. Look how gross and offensive and objectionable. I sure I'm glad they got rid of that finally. I mean, look at that. Just terrible. You know, a woman reading to a child? Very offensive stuff.

It's just, it's just gratuitous. You can't have that in a park. What will the children think? What will the children think if they look at that statue of a woman reading? Well, once again, you know what the children will think? They'll think nothing. Like, they'll think, oh, that's a pretty statue. it'll be no big deal to them unless you make it a big deal.

I was thinking about this the other day, because they say that, I mean, and this one is a particularly egregious example where they tear down a statue that it's like you look at the statue and even you can read in most cases like the plaques and stuff. It doesn't look offensive. Nothing about it appears objectionable. These are for the most part not statues showing like a plant. owner beating a slave or something. That's not what these statues are. This one is a woman who's reading to her children. But they say, well, even though they don't look offensive,

they have to come down because of the intention behind them. That's what they say. And the claim is that the monuments went up during Jim Crow as a racist symbol, and so they have to be removed. Now, I don't think that's true for most of them. many of them, including this one, did go up 100 years ago, which is all the more reason to keep it up, by the way, the fact that it's been there for 100 years. That in and of itself, just because something is there for 100 years, in and of itself alone,

is not always a reason to let it stay there. But that should always be a factor in its favor. And I don't agree that these statues had racist attentions. But even if that was true, I mean, let's pretend that they had racist intentions and putting with the statues in some of these cases. Well, first of all, first of all, why can't we give the statues a new intention, a new meaning?

You know, if the person who put up the reading statue was a racist engaged in a racist conspiracy, why can't we look at the statue and today and see it as, well, we could say, well, that might be what he intended, but today we see it as it promotes motherhood and family, literacy. And before you say that's ridiculous,

you know, you say, well, we can't come up with a new meaning for a statue. This happens all the time. Look at what happened with the N-word. An actual racial slur was taken and turned into like this all-purpose word that appears five times per sentence in every rap song. It's even used as a term of endearment. and say what you want about that. The point is just saying that, you know, a racial slur can become a greeting for the people who the slur was originally used against. And yet a statue of a woman reading to a child can't be interpreted or seen in any way beyond how it was allegedly intended when it was erected 100 years ago.

And again, I'm not agreeing that it had a racist intention. I'm saying for the sake of argument. But here's the more important point. If the alleged intent behind the statue is what matters, more even than like the statue itself, then so does the intent behind removing it. And this has always been my argument all along. Or one of my arguments anyway. It's like the matter how you feel about these statues in a vacuum, what you have to remember is the intent, the people who are taking it down,

Why are they doing it? And what message are they trying to send? You can claim that the statues were not intended to be unifying, but you removing the statue is also not intended to be unifying. None of this is about racial unity or healing or anything like that. And it never has been. This is part of a radical left-wing campaign. to erase history and to rewrite it. I mean, that is the intention.

That's what they're trying to do, which is why if you're a smart person, even if you tend to feel yucky about these statues for whatever reason, you should still say, and even if, as I said all along, some of these individual statues, you might look at some of them individually in a vacuum and say, yeah, you know, for that particular one or this one,

I can see an argument for taking it down. Even if you said that to yourself, you should still be smart enough to realize that, okay, yeah, I could see an argument in a vacuum, but we're not in a vacuum. And even if there's an argument for taking this particular statute down to that statute down, it should not be taken down like this, for this reason by these people. You know, it should not be done as part of a moral panic in response to the drug overdose death of a scumbag criminal. You know, that's not, even if I don't like the statute, you can find a statue that I don't even like. And if you had this mob coming to tear it down, I would say, no, you know what? Now I'm a fan of the statue because not you people. You're not going to be the ones to do this.

And not for this reason. That should be how we look at these things. A little bit more school craziness. A school district in Illinois is looking to take Thomas Jefferson's name off of a school, but they're having trouble now figuring out who to replace what name to put in place of Thomas Jefferson because what they're discovering is that everyone in history, even like recent history, even recent presidents like, say, Barack Obama are also problematic by the left standards today. Here's a report on this from the local affiliate, the local ABC affiliate.

Let's watch that. Those against the Obama's as a name choice say the former president failed to deliver on promises to the immigrant population. Tonight, Waikigan's Board of Education heard concerns from the public over one of the finalists in the running to be the new name for Thomas Jefferson Middle School. I want to urge the school board to drop the names of Barack and Michelle Obama from consideration. I personally don't object to the name, but I have to be. aware of the concerns. The country's first black president and first lady Barack and Michelle Obama is one of the top three choices for the school's new name but one that's drawing opposition in the area with a large Latinx population.

We feel that Barack Obama disservice us. He denied us and he didn't stop the deportations the way he promised. Members of the area's Latinx community held a protest outside the meeting's doors. If you're removing the name of Thomas Jefferson one oppressor, the name of Obama is another oppressor. And our families do not want to see that name. Maricio Sanchez's father was deported in 2015 during the Obama administration. It was something very sad. We had to.

We couldn't even say goodbye to our dad. We just hoped for him to be able to get out. He said his dad is still in deportation hearings to this day. And the Sanchez family says the Obama name is a reminder of their current struggle. You got to love it. You really do. Obama's an oppressor too. You remove one oppressor. Thomas Jefferson can't replace him with another. Barack Obama. Yep, he's an oppressor. Fine. Everybody is. There's no getting around it. Nobody. I mean, really, nobody is woke enough now. It's impossible. The only people who can be woke enough is someone who maybe who is someone maybe who is, born yesterday. That's how recent it has to be. We name all the schools after infants, after gender fluid infants. They're the only ones who could possibly be woken up. Anyone who existed prior to five years ago is going to have done things that are considered

problematic now or held views or said things that are considered problematic. I mean, my goodness, Barack Obama was anti-gay marriage from most of the people. I mean, my goodness, Barack Obama was anti-gay marriage for most of his life. He ran in 2008 as a pro-traditional marriage candidate, which is crazy to think now, but it's true. And they haven't even brought that up yet. He deported a few people. He was against gay marriage. Man, this guy was a bigot. I guess you got to take, just you take all the names down, all the statues down, and replace them with nothing. Give all the school's numbers. That's it. Picture this. You walk over to your computer, pull up your entire browsing history, hit print, and then nail those pages to your front door for every neighbor to see. Sounds pretty insane, right? Well, that's essentially what's happening every single day unless you're protecting yourself with Express VPN. Here's the thing most people don't realize. Your internet provider can see every single website you've ever visited. Even when you're browsing an incognito mode, in many countries, they're actually required to keep detailed logs of your online activity for years, just in case the government wants to take a look. And if you're in the U.S., it gets even

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Find out how you can get four months free by scanning the QR code on screen. Click the link in the description box below or by going to expressvPN.com slash Walsh.Y.T. So this weekend in Albany, the capital of New York, we saw maybe the clearest example in recent history of both construction and destruction happening simultaneously. Under the cover of darkness at 5.30 in the morning, the city removed a statue of Revolutionary War Hero and U.S. Senator Phillips Schuyler. And at the very moment that workers took Schuyler's statue away, the so-called Progress Pride flag was waving in the background. For the first time in the city's history, by the way. So here's what that looked like. You can see it there. Taking the statue away, and then we've got the multiple pride flags flying proudly as the statue was hoisted away,

including the brand new non-binary BIPAC, trans, whatever flag. They got all the flags there. Now, if that seems like a carefully engineered juxtaposition, it is. It's choreographed to deliver a very clear message. Mao's disciples in the New York State government know that if they want their new flag to have any kind of legitimacy, then Philip Schuyler's statue can't remain. You can't have construction without destruction. If you want revolution, you can't introduce a new item.

without erasing the one that came before. So that's exactly what the local government did, as explicitly as they possibly could have done it. If you're not trying to engineer a revolution, if you're just an average person living in New York with reasonable political views, what few of those may remain, then none of this really makes any sense.

What was wrong with that statue exactly? As far as can be told here, no one ever bothered to ask a significant number of New Yorkers that question. No one ever ran a poll on this, at least not one that we could find. There were certainly no statewide referendum on whether people actually wanted Phillips Scholar's statue to be removed.

A few bureaucrats in New York just decided to do it a few years ago. And this weekend, they cut through the red tape and they did it. A local news station did conduct a man on the street-style interview with a couple of residents in the city to get their perspective.

But none of them could explain why the statue is being removed. Even the people who supported removing it couldn't really explain why they supported it. No big surprise there, but let's watch. Hey, honey, it's mom. Did you know if we switch to Verizon,

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See Verizon.com for details. It feels good. The people have been listened to, and it feels good. I'm just happy taking down to the history behind it. It's not something that should be celebrated. Mary Liz Stewart is the executive director and co-founder of the Education Center.

I think it's time. I was glad to see some action finally taken on an issue that actually percolated about four years ago, I think. She says the group of teenagers spent a whole school year investigating a whole variety of aspects that related to the statue. Not only the history of it, but why was it made, what the cost was to make it, and what other communities were doing with controversial statues that related to enslavement. Stewart says the students wrote to Mayor Sheehan recommending it be removed but not destroyed, rather to preserve it and use it for educational purposes. One of the things that was very important for the teens about moving the Skylar statue was the fact that from their perspective, City Hall should be a place that's welcoming to everybody in the community.

And it was hard to say that was the case with Phil, you know, standing there. Yes, a century-old historic artifact memorializing a Revolutionary War hero was not only taken down. It was taken down at the behest of a group of teenagers. And the primary reason, as we heard in the clip, is that the absence of the statue will make City Hall more. or quote unquote welcoming. But welcoming for who? If the standard is that any unwelcoming statue needs to go, then why exactly can't we destroy the monument of George Floyd that sits, for example, outside City Hall in Newark? But George Floyd didn't own slaves, you might say. Well, that's true. All George Floyd ever did was break into a woman's home with five other people, hold a gun to her chest, robber in front of her kid. And then after getting out of prison,

all George Floyd did was take enough opioids and meth to kill a horse before trying to. to rob a store and fighting with several police officers. Despite all that, you're not allowed to even criticize the George Floyd statute. You'll lose your job if you do. Under the new rules, George Floyd's statue is welcoming. The Revolutionary War General is unwelcoming. You understand that? Well, probably you don't understand it, but then you aren't supposed to understand.

Because part of the point behind these arbitrary decisions is that they make no logical or moral sense. You're meant to go along with it, whether you understand or not. We might ask why, but the powers that be will treat us like we're children, and there are impatient parents. Because I said so, they respond. It's also contrived. Philip Schuyler is an iconic figure of the Revolutionary War era. He's one of the reasons this country exists today.

Multiple towns and forts are named after him in New York. And curiously, no one had a problem with him until very recently. Ten years ago, in an article, the Albany Times Union, describes Skyler this way. Philip Schuyler was a leading American statesman and a key general in the American Revolution who served at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga. He was named a representative to the First Continental Congress of Philadelphia and an advisor to General George Washington who stayed at Schuyler's mansion in Albany. The Times Union went on to describe Schuyler as, quote, instrumental in the victory

of the American colonists at the Battle of Saratoga in the fall of 1777, a turning point of Revolutionary War, residents of Albany, fearful that their city might be occupied by British soldiers instead celebrated an unexpected victory at Saratoga. It was the first major win for the colonists and the residents of Albany rang church bells, fired cannons, roasted an ox, and gathered around a large bonfire. Schuyler returned to the city of his birth as a hero. Now, you can read the whole article still on the Times Union's website from 2013. There's not a single mention of slavery or slaves in the entire piece. But guess how the Times Union, the same newspaper, describes Skyler now. Here's a recent article from the paper from this year.

Quote, while noted as a politician and revolutionary war hero, Skyler enslaved over a dozen people at his Saratoga and Albany Homes. The Times Union of 2023 goes on to cite, and this is not a joke, a report by five high schoolers who say that Skyler is a bad man and his statue has to be removed. That's the report you heard referenced in that news clip as well. So here's how the Times Union describes the findings of these high school students. Quote, the report titled What to Do with Phil, a 2022 report from the Young Abolitionist Leader Institute, was created by five Albany High School students who met between October 2021 and June with two adult facilitators.

While the report notes Skyler's accomplishments as a Revolutionary War General and politician, his legacy is still marked by owning human beings, it says. This is also the report that the Albany government relied on to justify removing the statue. Fascile does not begin to describe this. I mean, in the 18th century, no one had the same attitude towards slavery that we do now, even the people who opposed it, which relatively few people did back then on a global scale.

It's not surprising that a bunch of dumb, arrogant kids would lack the proper historical perspective and think themselves qualified to pass moral judgment on historical figures who lived 250 years ago, but that's where adults are supposed to. to step in. The problem is that there aren't very many adults left in this country. What's really going on here is that Skyler, like Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, all the other historical figures who've had their monuments destroyed, is that, you know,

these are heroes of a different nation, one that the city of Albany considers to be a foreign enemy, basically. And they know they have to erase him if they want their revolution to succeed. The Biden administration understands this as well. obviously. Look at this grotesque display currently hanging at the White House. They put this up over the weekend, and that is a pride flag hanging on the White House, and it's in between two American flags. There are similar displays all over the country, of course, at 30 Rock and so on. But putting this flag at the White House, just like the flag at Albany City Hall, has particular implications. And, you know, most conservatives, as that was put up over the weekend, reacted to it. And we're saying that it's

horrific and it's evil for the White House to not only fly the pride flag, but to give it a place of primacy in between two American flags. And of course, it is both of those things. It's horrific and evil, for sure. But what they don't understand is that the White House is also properly representing its own nation, which is not our nation. Okay, we are two nations in one. There is the old United States that conservatives still cling to and cherish. And there's a new country with its own flag, its own traditions, its own heroes and foundational myths, etc. That's the nation that the Biden regime, the media, academia, Hollywood, all speak to and represent. Why do you think that the city of New York took down Teddy Roosevelt statue recently?

I mean, liberals used to love him. He was one of the greatest presidents this country ever had. He broke up big monopolies. He was well-read. He saved the middle class. He established national parks. He was a pioneer and explorer. They took down Teddy Roosevelt statue in New York for a specific reason, which was to replace it. Instead of Teddy Roosevelt, New York recently put up the horned statue of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And that's now happening at scale. The nation we had before is being replaced. It's not just the demographics are changing, though they are. The activists who are leading this revolution, like all totalitarians, understand that to take full control, they need to erase our shared history. And they're executing this plan right in front of us in plain sight, as obvious as they

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