A conservative writer was fired from The Atlantic because in the past he said people who get abortions should be executed. Whatever you think about that position, it is far, far less offensive than supporting the mass execution of 60 million unborn babies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| Hey everybody, welcome to the show. | |
| Hope you had a great weekend. | |
| As you can see, I am dressed in my all-black outfit. | |
| Again, just in case I happen to run into a funeral today, or a bank I want to rob, or I want to enter the Matrix, or anything like that, then I'm ready to go. | |
| I've got the costume on. | |
| Now, I want to talk about this Kevin Williamson situation. | |
| If you're not on Twitter, you maybe haven't even heard about it. | |
| Kevin Williamson... | |
| Was hired by, he's a conservative writer, right-wing writer at least, and he was hired by The Atlantic, which, as you probably know, is traditionally a leftist publication, hired by them a few weeks ago, has now been fired, before I believe he even wrote anything for The Atlantic, he's already been fired, because of a coordinated and relentless smear campaign against him by the left, and The Atlantic caved to that pressure after only a couple of weeks. | |
| This, in spite of the fact that Kevin Williamson is one of the most talented writers in America, and he really is one of the most talented. | |
| I'm not just saying that. He's one of the most talented writers in America, and one of the most interesting writers, because he doesn't He doesn't pander, and that's a very rare quality among commentators and pundits and colonists and writers on both sides of the spectrum. | |
| Most of what you get on both sides of the spectrum with these paid opinion givers, most of them, all they do is just pander. | |
| They have their audience, and they've got their base of support, and they just tell those people. | |
| They just echo the They figure out whatever those people are already thinking, and they echo those thoughts back to them in even simpler and less nuanced terms than they're already thinking. | |
| So they're just a wall to bounce your own opinions off of. | |
| And that makes them bland and boring and just painfully, painfully dull. | |
| Williamson doesn't do that. | |
| That's what makes him interesting. But he's been fired. | |
| The thing that got Williamson into trouble, well, really the thing that got him into trouble is just that he's not on the left, that he's considered part of the right wing, and so that's why they hate him. | |
| But And they would have wanted to destroy him and get him kicked out of the mainstream anyway. | |
| He was writing for the National Review before then. | |
| If you're a conservative person and you try to leave the conservative sphere and go to something considered more mainstream, then the left is going to react against that and try to get... | |
| They're going to find a reason to kick you back to the conservative camp. | |
| The reason that they found for Kevin Williamson is... | |
| That he has stated, on a few occasions, that he believes that women who have had abortions should be hanged. | |
| Now, I don't think he meant this literally. | |
| It's kind of clear to me that he's not actually stating a plan or something, and he's not saying that women right now, today, who have had abortions should be hanged. | |
| What he's talking about is, well, if abortion is illegal, And it's legally murder. | |
| Well, that means what it means. | |
| That's what he actually said. Now, most pro-lifers, myself included, would oppose the idea of executing women who get abortions. | |
| However, it's not an irrational or delusional point of view. | |
| Because in a world where abortion is illegal, it would and should be treated as murder, which is the point he's trying to make. | |
| So if you are someone who supports capital punishment, and a lot of pro-lifers don't, which is the first reason why they wouldn't execute anybody involved with abortions is because they don't believe in executing anyone at all. | |
| But if you believe in capital punishment and you believe in capital punishment for people who commit murder, particularly murder of children, well then there's kind of an obvious connection here. | |
| Personally, I wouldn't support that because I believe, you know, capital murder charges should be reserved for the abortionists who not only carry out these killings, but also take advantage of and exploit women and young girls who are often ignorant. | |
| They're scared. | |
| And the abortion industry takes advantage of them. | |
| That doesn't alleviate their moral guilt entirely. | |
| And there's no doubt that many of them go into the procedure with very clear eyes. | |
| They know what they're doing and calloused hearts. | |
| And there are women who get multiple abortions and they just don't care at all about the lives of these children. | |
| And so there's just that callousness there. | |
| But I also think that a lot of people don't understand The level of exploitation that goes on. | |
| And this is a really important part of the pro-life message. | |
| This is something we need to communicate. | |
| People don't understand the level of exploitation and just the scare tactics that these abortion clinics use. | |
| And the ways in which they ensure that these women remain in the dark and remain ignorant. | |
| They don't want them to have any information. | |
| That's why they're always opposed to, oh no, we can't let them see a sonogram. | |
| We can't give them any information. | |
| If you try to pass any law at all imposing any standards on these clinics or saying, look, you need to equip these women with at least some information about what you're doing to them. | |
| Any amount of that whatsoever, the clinics react against. | |
| Even though they consider themselves a medical, right? | |
| They're a medical clinic. | |
| Well, any other medical clinic you go to, there are all kinds of laws and regulations, and if they're going to perform any procedure on you whatsoever, they have to give you... | |
| There are all kinds of laws requiring the clinic or the medical establishment to provide information. | |
| There are not nearly as many such laws for abortion clinics. | |
| Why is that? Because the abortion clinics want these women to be ignorant. | |
| They want them in the dark. | |
| Because if you're in the dark and you're ignorant and you're already in the situation where you're pregnant and you don't want to do, then that's going to breed fear. | |
| And then the abortion clinic, they take that fear and they use it and they profit off of it and they turn it into death. | |
| And that's how they convince these women, oftentimes, To kill their babies and to give up this precious gift, this gift of motherhood, and to give it up without fully realizing what they're doing. | |
| And that's why if we're going to give first-degree capital murder charges to anybody, it should be the abortionists and the officials in these abortion clinics. | |
| But however you feel on that subject, and whether you think that Williamson's position is correct, or horrifying, or somewhere in between, I think two things are immediately clear here that I want to cover. | |
| First of all, it's very chilling, and this is the thing that most people are focusing on, it's very chilling that a writer can be fired for his political beliefs, especially when he was hired to communicate those beliefs, after a coordinated assault on his character. | |
| And especially when, by the way, it's not like he was hired for The Atlantic and then the first thing he did was write an article about executing women. | |
| This is something that he mentioned in a tweet and in a podcast well before he was ever hired by The Atlantic. | |
| And as far as I know, he's never proposed it in any kind of writing that anyone has paid him to write. | |
| So really, he's getting fired for his opinions and his personal beliefs after this assault that was waged against him, which was completely politically motivated. | |
| And that's a pretty chilling thing. | |
| But here's the bigger point. | |
| Every pro-abortion columnist and pundit in the country harbors views that are infinitely more offensive and disgusting and outrageous and shocking than Williamson's. | |
| Now, he may hypothetically be suggesting capital punishment for people who kill their babies, but pro-abortion people, and there are obviously millions of them out there, and there are hundreds of them in the media, pro-abortion people support the actual real-life execution of human children. | |
| Let me ask you, which position is more shocking? | |
| Supporting the hypothetical execution of people who kill their kids, or supporting the real-life, actually-happening-now mass execution of 60 million human babies? | |
| Because that's the position that every pro-abortion person in the country holds. | |
| 60 million babies have been executed, and executed in ways that are far more gruesome than hanging, by the way. | |
| If you look into how these abortion procedures are carried out, it's not a... | |
| When we say that these babies are slaughtered and butchered and ripped apart, that's actually what happens. | |
| That's how these procedures are carried out. | |
| But the pro-abortion crowd, they not only support this wholesale slaughter of babies, but they applaud it. | |
| They applaud it. | |
| They applaud it as a... | |
| As this victory for womanhood, this victory for self-actualization, autonomy. | |
| So that's what's so ironic here. | |
| That's what's ironic, that only pro-lifers, only pro-lifers have any ground to stand on when it comes to criticizing Williamson. | |
| We can criticize each other within our own movement. | |
| We have the moral leg to stand on because we're the ones opposed to killing babies. | |
| But guess what? If you support killing babies, you don't get to act shocked or outraged at anyone's opinion on any subject because you have the most disgusting, awful, indefensible position available In the world. | |
| So you don't get to do that. | |
| You don't get to turn to anyone else and say, how could you possibly believe that? | |
| You don't get to do that while you stand on the graves of 60 million dead babies. | |
| Sorry. But pro-lifers, while they will, and many of them have criticized Kevin Williamson's position, argued against it, they would never call for his firing. | |
| It's only the pro-baby-killing hypocrites who would join that chorus. | |
| And that's why they should be completely ignored. | |
| But you see here... | |
| Okay, you see the strategy that the left employs. | |
| And it is a devastatingly effective strategy, so we should look at this and learn something from it. | |
| What the left does... | |
| Especially when it comes to abortion, but really when it comes to any position at all, that they don't like. | |
| You'll notice, when you articulate a point of view that they don't like, they're not just going to say, oh, I disagree with that. | |
| I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree with it. | |
| Let's engage in a discussion. | |
| They're not going to say that. They're going to recoil in horror. | |
| They're going to act like what you just said is the most disgusting, insane, idiotic thing that anyone has ever uttered. | |
| They're going to say that not only is this position wrong, but it is not fit for human civilization. | |
| It is not a position that anyone should hold in a human society, in a civilized society. | |
| They're going to shriek, they're going to snarl, and they will generally give off the impression that the person who said whatever this thing is, is just completely delusional and horrific and evil. | |
| That's how they act. | |
| And it's a smart strategy. | |
| Okay? It works. | |
| It obviously works. | |
| The only problem is that it's dishonest. | |
| There's not necessarily any problem with reacting to somebody's opinion that way. | |
| Because if they really do have a horrifically stupid and awful opinion, well then it should be treated that way. | |
| So the problem is not quite, it's not really their reaction. | |
| It's what they're reacting to. | |
| It's that they react to the truth that way. | |
| And the truth does not deserve to be treated that way. | |
| Kevin Williamson, even if you disagree with his position on executing people who get abortions, it's grounded in the truth. | |
| It's grounded in the belief that it's completely wrong and awful to kill babies. | |
| And that's what the left is really reacting against. | |
| It's that that they want to... | |
| That's what they're punishing. | |
| I think that pro-lifers would do well to adopt... | |
| A little bit of this approach. | |
| And in their case, it would be okay. | |
| In our case, it would be okay, because it would be honest. | |
| The pro-abortion position is actually and really horrific, disgusting, crazy, irredeemable. | |
| And it should be treated that way. | |
| That's how we should treat it. | |
| One of the problems among pro-lifers, especially the kind of nominal pro-lifers, but even many sincere and active pro-lifers, is that we listen to the pro-abortion side and we take it seriously. | |
| And we treat the opinion with respect. | |
| We've got someone up there saying, yeah, 60 million dead babies, let's kill more. | |
| And we sit there and we listen and we say, oh yeah, okay, well let's engage in a dialogue about that. | |
| We should be the ones recoiling in disgust. | |
| We should be the ones saying, I'm not even going to entertain that view. | |
| If you have that view, then I can't take anything you say seriously. | |
| The problem is that there are many conservatives, pro-lifers, who say that... | |
| For instance, they'll say that... | |
| Well, we shouldn't call abortion baby murder and so forth. | |
| We shouldn't call pro-abortion people pro-abortion. | |
| We shouldn't use words like slaughter and butcher. | |
| We shouldn't do that. We should adopt the language that the left has assigned to us. | |
| We should play the game on their terms. | |
| We should adopt all the same code words that they use. | |
| We should help them cover up their evil deeds in all of these nice little sanitary euphemisms. | |
| We should be polite. | |
| We should be reasonable. | |
| We should afford their position, respect. | |
| We should lead by example and be the mature and respectable ones. | |
| No. Our position, okay, I have no problem saying this. | |
| Call me a hypocrite. On abortion, my position is due respect. | |
| I am due respect as a pro-life person. | |
| My position is respectable, and you should respect it. | |
| If you're pro-abortion, your position is not respectable. | |
| And it is not due respect. | |
| And I do not respect it. | |
| Guess what? | |
| I'm going to demand that you respect my position even while I don't respect yours. | |
| Because your position is not respectable. | |
| You are arguing for murdering babies. | |
| I'm not going to respect that. | |
| I'm saying we shouldn't. | |
| You should respect that if you're a decent and civilized human being. | |
| Your position in that case is murderous and wicked and ridiculous and anti-science and not grounded in any kind of reality or logic at all. | |
| Now, I know that obviously different occasions call for different approaches. | |
| And there are plenty of situations when you're a pro-lifer when you've got to be more gentle and maybe you don't go throwing around words like slaughter and butcher and baby killing. | |
| For instance, sidewalk counselors who just have a wonderful and godly ministry where they're the ones who go to the clinics and they're trying to approach these women As they're walking into the clinics and minister to them and provide them with information and show them love and show them support. | |
| So a sidewalk counselor is not going to run up, no matter the caricature of pro-lifers that pro-abortion people use, the reality is that sidewalk counselors, they're not going to run up to a woman and say, oh, you're killing a baby and so forth. | |
| They're going to go up and show support and show love. | |
| And that's very, very effective in that situation. | |
| Because again, these women walking into the clinic, they have been made to be afraid. | |
| The message on the pro-life side is don't be afraid. | |
| Don't be afraid of motherhood. | |
| Don't be afraid of the situation that you're in. | |
| It's a blessing. Embrace it. | |
| The message for the abortion clinic, their message is be afraid. | |
| Be very, very afraid. | |
| Your life is over. All you can do is kill your baby. | |
| It's the only thing you can do. | |
| No other solution is going to work for you. | |
| So that's why the sidewalk counselors have to go up with a gentle, loving message. | |
| But the national conversation about abortion, okay, when we are generally talking about abortion, or when we as pro-lifers are, you know, generally communicating our position to a large audience, like I'm doing now, that conversation cannot be had in the tone and using the language of a sidewalk counselor. | |
| Because the vast, vast majority of people in our culture who are engaging in this conversation, they're not just about to have abortions. | |
| Most of them have never had abortions. | |
| What it is for most people, when it comes to abortion, the position that most people have is they just wanna live in peace and not be forced to confront the horror of this Holocaust. | |
| And most pro-abortion people, that's all they want. | |
| They just want to say, okay, yeah, go ahead and kill the babies. | |
| I don't care. Let me just sit here and watch TV. Don't bother me about it. | |
| And so that's why we as pro-lifers, we have to come in and Okay, they want that peace and that tranquility and they want to ignore what's going on. | |
| We have to take that peace from them and take that tranquility from them and force them to confront the horror that they support. | |
| They have no right. | |
| You live in a country where 60 million babies have been killed. | |
| You have no right to look away from it. You have no right to ignore it You don't And so as pro-lifers we have to force you we have to take this bored apathetic lazy cowardly effeminate ridiculous culture and | |
| slap some sense into it and force them to confront the reality of This Holocaust that is happening right now all around us That's the strategy and the tactic that we should use. | |
| Okay, we have to stop. | |
| We have essentially, in the abortion conversation, It's the pro-abortion people who have cornered the market on this kind of moral, righteous indignation. | |
| They're the ones who react like, how dare you? | |
| I can't believe that you would ever say something like that. | |
| And we let them do it. | |
| We let them act like they're the ones who not only have the moral position, but have the position that is self-evidently, obviously the most moral and the most correct. | |
| And they're the ones who support killing 60 million human babies. | |
| We need to take that ground from them. | |
| And every single person who supports executing babies, we should treat their position The way that the left has treated Kevin Williamson. | |
| I'm not saying we try to get them fired from their jobs, but we treat that position as just horrific and wrong and not even worth... | |
| It's like we can't even listen to that side of the discussion because it is so completely insane. | |
| We have a right to react that way because we're the ones... |