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July 12, 2018 - The Matt Walsh Show
26:31
Ep. 60 - The Left Won't Stop Pushing Its Religion On Us

We Christian conservatives are accused of "pushing religion" whenever we make pretty much any argument, but especially when we argue against abortion. But the argument against abortion has nothing at all to do with religion. It has to do with science, and with the universal moral law. It is the argument for abortion that is based on religion. That is, the Left's satanic religion of self-worship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So, we Christian conservatives are very often accused of trying to impose our religion on others, of trying to push our religion.
No matter what the topic is, no matter what we're talking about, it always comes back to that.
Our opponent is always going to accuse us in the end of, you're trying to push your religion on me!
And this will even happen when they're the first ones to bring up religion.
So I don't know how many times I've had a conversation like this where I'm talking often to a liberal and they'll say, well, you know, the Bible and Jesus agree with me on this topic.
I mean, Jesus said himself that he agrees with me on whatever topic we're talking about.
And then I'll say, well, no, he doesn't.
In fact, here are a couple of verses that prove, and then he'll say, stop pushing your religion on me.
Why do you bring up religion all the time?
I didn't. You did. So there's this weird thing that liberals do.
Their first tactic is to try to use my religion against me.
And when that doesn't work, then they'll claim that religion has nothing to do with it and we shouldn't be talking about religion.
So this is the way it usually goes.
This is especially the case when it comes to the topic of abortion and now Roe v.
Wade, which has been the subject of conversation, obviously, for the last couple of weeks.
And we were again, as conservatives, we were once again accused of this on, of all places, Fox News yesterday, when pro-abortion pundit Tommy Lahren took to the airwaves to declare on Fox News that overturning Roe v.
Wade would be religious judicial activism, and thus unconstitutional, she says.
And this is a Nancy Pelosi-level talking point.
The idea that it is unconstitutional and religious activism to overturn Roe v.
Wade is a Nancy Pelosi-level talking point.
And when I say Nancy Pelosi-level, I mean that it is radically progressive, and also it is extremely lazy and incredibly stupid.
And I don't know how else to put it.
Just lazy and stupid talking point.
And yet this, one of the most radical, one of the laziest, one of the stupidest leftist talking point, is coming out of the mouth of an alleged spokeswoman for conservatism, like someone that people turn to for Insights into conservatism.
I mean, it's mind-boggling.
But I think Tommy did us a favor by bringing this up because it gives us the opportunity to discuss why this claim of pushing religion by opposing the murder of infants is false.
And so I want to take advantage of that opportunity.
And there are a few points to make here.
So first of all, Roe v.
Wade and abortion are kind of two separate topics.
In that, if you are a rational thinking person, and you understand how the government works, and you understand how the Constitution works or is supposed to work, and you understand how the Supreme Court works or is supposed to work, then you should be opposed to Roe v.
Wade on that basis alone, even if you think abortion is the greatest thing in the world.
If you claim to be a constitutionalist, which Tommy does, Then you should definitely be opposed to Roe v.
Wade on constitutional grounds, even if you don't oppose it on moral grounds or on any other ground.
It is not judicial activism, much less is it religious judicial activism, to overturn previous examples of judicial activism.
That's something the court should do.
Roe v. Wade itself was judicial activism.
So the main legal argument against Roe is not that abortion is a terrible thing and it kills a person.
Although that is a legal argument against it, and I think a pretty good one, but that's not actually the primary legal argument.
The primary legal argument against Roe is that Roe itself was incorrect legal decision.
This is what happened in Roe v.
Wade. The Supreme Court found in the Constitution a right to abortion, even though abortion is never mentioned anywhere in the document.
There's no mention of abortion in the Constitution.
Nor did any of the framers even hint that they had abortion anywhere in their minds when they wrote the document.
But of course, the court recognized this obstacle because it had to.
And so this is what it did.
It inferred a right to abortion from the right to privacy found in the 14th Amendment.
The only problem, of course, is that the 14th Amendment doesn't say anything about a right to privacy.
There is no right to privacy.
The phrase right to privacy doesn't appear anywhere in the Bill of Rights at all.
The phrase right to privacy is a phrase used by previous courts.
So they use the precedent of previous courts to infer it in amendment where it didn't exist and where, even if the right to privacy did exist in that amendment, it still wouldn't have anything to do at all with abortion.
So again, the court founded its right to abortion, which is not enumerated, on another right, which is not enumerated, and which, even if it were enumerated, would not apply at all to abortion.
But the case is even more absurd than that, because let's look at the 14th Amendment, Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which is where this right to abortion came from, especially this part of it.
Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So there's nothing in there about privacy.
There's nothing in there about abortion.
But again, as just a rational person, If you were to, not knowing anything about Roe v.
Wade, or even anything about the Constitution, if you were to read that phrase, and then someone were to ask you, how does that apply to abortion, what's the first thing you would say?
You would say, well, clearly this is a law against abortion, because you can't deprive any person of life without due process of law, and also equal protection under the law.
So abortion obviously deprives a human being of a life.
That's a biological fact.
You have a living human organism, which is now not living anymore because of abortion.
And there's no due process of law.
Also, these unborn humans are, by definition, not treated equally.
Forget about equal protection.
They have zero protection under the law.
So that's the only way a sane person could possibly apply that clause to abortion.
But instead, the court found you can't deprive any person of life, liberty, property without due process of law as a codification of our right to kill people.
I mean, what? But, you know, apparently some conservatives find that to be completely rational.
This is judicial activism.
Judicial activism is when the court realizes that a particular thing is not in the Constitution, so it issues a ruling pretending that that thing is in the Constitution because it, the court, believes that it should be in the Constitution.
That's what judicial activism is.
And that's what the court did in Roe v.
Wade. Without saying it directly, although they almost said it directly, Their point was, well, yeah, of course the Constitution doesn't protect abortion, but it should.
And so we're just going to say that it does.
Here's the thing. There is a process.
If we decide, or if the government decides, if elected representatives decide, who allegedly are at the mercy of the people, if they decide that on behalf of the people, That a certain thing should be in the Constitution, though it isn't. Or a certain thing which is in the Constitution should not be.
There is a process by which those things can be added in.
It's called amending.
And that is a legislative process.
It is not a judicial process.
The judiciary cannot look at the Constitution and say, well, that should be in there, so we'll just say that it is.
They can't do that.
The legislative branch can do that.
And so when the judicial branch acts like the legislative branch, that is judicial activism.
So no matter how you feel about abortion, it is clear that Roe v.
Wade is the number one prime example of judicial activism.
Second thing, putting Roe to the side, okay?
So that's Roe if you wait. Let's ask this question.
Is it bad?
Is there something wrong with a Christian fighting against abortion, fighting for its prohibition legally, because he, the Christian, feels called to do so by his faith?
I mean, let's just, you know, according to Tommy and other leftists, we pro-lifers, you know, we're only fighting for this because we're Christians.
Well, let's just say that's true for the case of many pro-lifers.
So? Does that make us wrong?
Does that make us incorrect?
And if it does make us wrong, if it is bad, if it is theocratic, if it is disqualifying, well then guess what?
Guess what we've also disqualified?
The abolition of slavery, civil rights, many other things.
After all, many of the great human rights fights and victories in American history have been motivated on the part of many of the people fighting for them by Christian convictions.
So I ask you, is the legitimacy of slavery abolition now suddenly called into question because most of the abolitionists were devout Christians and the only reason that they were abolitionists is because of the fact of their religious faith?
Should we be scolding the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
for pushing religion on the country?
Because his conviction about civil rights and equal rights was clearly motivated by his Christian faith?
What about all the people?
If you were to, you know, find a World War II veteran and ask him, why did you go overseas and fight the Nazi scourge?
I guarantee you that a great many of them would answer that at least part of the reason was their faith, their Christian faith.
So does that call into question what they did?
Does that make World War II into a holy war all of a sudden?
Is America a theocracy because it has civil rights, just based on the fact that most of the people fighting for civil rights at the time were Christian?
Or do we recognize that though their motivations, in the case of the abolitionists, of the case of the people fighting for civil rights and so on, Though their motivations may have been Christian, their aim and the results of their fight were humanitarian and democratic.
Here's the third thing, and this is the real point.
Whatever might be the personal motivations of a pro-life, a person doesn't need to be Christian to be pro-life.
And the government doesn't need to be a theocracy to outlaw the murder of unborn humans.
The claim that pro-lifers are making, again, putting aside their personal motivations and their personal beliefs, because that is 100% irrelevant.
The claim that we make as pro-lifers, we make basically two claims, and neither of them have anything to do with Christian theology.
The first claim is a scientific claim.
We claim that humans in the womb are human because they can't be anything else.
A human in the womb is a living organism.
That is a biological fact that no scientist in the world disputes.
None. Not a single one.
A human in the womb is a living organism.
Period. End of discussion. That is a scientific reality.
There is no way around it.
Here's another reality.
If it's a living organism, it must belong to a species.
It has to. All living organisms do.
Here's another fact.
If it's a living organism conceived by two members of a certain species, then that living organism must also be a member of that same species.
So two kangaroos cannot conceive a shark.
Two sharks cannot conceive an ostrich.
Two human beings cannot conceive anything but a human being.
So we have a living organism who must be a human being.
That is our scientific claim.
And it's not even a claim, it is a fact that we are just asserting.
Here's the second claim that we make.
And I admit, this is a moral claim.
So we have the scientific claim, and now we have the moral claim.
That claim is that a human in the womb, because he is human, ought to be treated just like every other human, and ought to have the same rights as every other human.
So we make the exact same moral claim that the abolitionists made about slavery.
And you could disagree and you could say, well, no, it's not the same thing.
But the fact is, we are making the same moral claim.
It's not a Christian theological claim.
It is a moral claim.
And it has to be moral.
Because anytime you get into ought to...
Okay, so I'm saying that a human being ought to be treated as a human being.
Anytime you use the word ought to...
Then you're talking about morality.
So, if you have any ideas whatsoever about how a person ought to behave, and how we ought to act as a society, and how things ought to be, then those are moral beliefs that you have.
They're not scientific beliefs.
They are moral beliefs.
And in that way, every law, our whole legal system, is based on a moral framework.
Because the law, by definition, tells people what they should do and should not do.
And it even punishes them for doing things they shouldn't do.
That is a moral process.
Does that mean that the law itself is inherently Christian?
Does that mean that there were no laws before Christianity came along?
I mean, honestly, I'm flattered.
The way leftists talk about Christianity, they basically give us credit for, I don't know, Christians, we invented law, we invented human decency, dignity, we invented morality.
I mean, these are all ours.
And honestly, I'd love to take credit for all that, but no, these are broader and things that preexisted.
Christian theology. Now, it is true that the pro-life position, while not specifically Christian, is grounded inevitably in a belief in a creator God.
That is true. So I admit that.
But if that's what you mean by pushing religion, then fine.
But then the entire doctrine of human rights is also theocratic and should be abolished.
And what is the doctrine of human rights?
And the doctrine of human rights is, in fact, a doctrine.
It is a dogma.
It is not a scientific observation.
Human rights are not things that can be observed within the person.
If you look within a person, you're not going to find, oh yeah, there's their right to free speech right there.
No. Again, human rights, that is a spiritual doctrine.
And what is the doctrine?
Well, Thomas Jefferson helpfully outlined it for us.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
A human right cannot be unalienable.
It cannot be inherent.
It cannot be self-evident unless it is a part of our very nature as humans and endowed by a force above us, above humanity, a creative force.
That is the founding document of the United States of America, and that is what it says right at the top.
That we are founding this country upon this spiritual doctrine of human rights that are endowed by a creator God.
That is literally the foundation of the United States of America.
And it has to be that way, because if rights are simply assigned by the government or decided by the whims of the mob, Or voted on by the people, then rights are not unalienable, they are not self-evident, they are not inherent, they are not endowed supernaturally, and therefore the very foundations of our country are void and the Bill of Rights itself should be discarded.
But then, here's the problem.
So if we get rid of human rights, we get rid of the Bill of Rights, Then the basis for the right to abortion has also been discarded.
You can't disqualify the argument against abortion without disqualifying the argument for it.
That's the problem that you have if you're pro-abortion.
Roe v. Wade and pro-abortion people They claim that there is a right to abortion.
And I assume that they believe that it is an unalienable right.
In fact, I know they believe that, because they would say that if it's not unalienable, if it's a right that's just decided by the people, well, then you couldn't complain when the people decide to take the right away.
But no, you're saying it's an unalienable right.
And if it's unalienable, then it's part of our human nature.
And if it's part of our human nature, then it was endowed by God.
So what you're saying is that God has given you the right to kill your children.
That is a spiritual argument that you are making, and it is a demented, insane spiritual argument.
So the pro-life case is not Christian, but it is spiritual.
And the pro-abortion case is spiritual, too.
And if you have a problem with all of that, And you don't like to admit that these are spiritual arguments, then at least have the intellectual integrity to admit that you have a problem with human rights themselves, which are also spiritual, in that they cannot be observed, they cannot be a product of evolution, and if they are real at all, they must be inherent, and therefore objective.
So, fourth thing.
Or maybe I'm on the third thing.
I can't remember. I get kind of carried away.
Last point. I'll just put it that way.
As we've established, the pro-life case is a scientific case.
It's also a spiritual case, admittedly.
But it is a spiritual case in the same way that human rights themselves are a spiritual case.
But who is really making the religious case?
The specifically religious.
Like, you'd have to be a part of this religion to believe it.
The pro-life case is grounded in biological science and universal moral law.
Universal because all people everywhere agree that murder is wrong.
That is a universal...
This is also one of the most compelling...
Proofs for the existence of God, that there exists this universal morality that everyone everywhere in the world throughout history has agreed with.
You take even civilizations that never encountered each other before, and they came to the same kind of conclusion.
Now, it's also true that most civilizations, many, including ours, have tried to make exceptions to this idea that it's wrong to murder.
Or they have come up with forms of murder that they claim are not murder, but they all still agree in the end that murder is wrong.
What they try to do is parse it and kind of compartmentalize and so as to still allow the murder of certain kinds of people.
That's what the pro-life case is grounded in.
The pro-abortion case, on the other hand, is grounded in not science at all.
There's no science to it. It's pure dogma.
And it's grounded in some kind of moral law that is confused and incomprehensible and just completely, utterly baseless.
The pro-abortion person believes two things.
Believes, number one, That the biological status of a human person in the womb hinges on the desires and feelings of its mother.
This is what pro-abortion people say.
This is not a straw man.
If you were to ask them, when does life begin, what they'll tell you is, well, it's up to the mother.
So if the mother refers to her baby as a baby, then it's a baby.
If the mother wants the baby, then it's a person.
It's living. If the mother doesn't want the person, calls it a fetus, then it's a fetus and it's not a person.
That's what pro-abortion people believe.
That's what they'll tell you. There is no science whatsoever to back that up.
The idea that the biological status of a person can be dependent upon the preferences of another person, I mean, that's just, that's superstition.
That is the definition of anti-science.
So they have an anti-scientific view, and their moral view is not universal at all.
It's very particular to their belief system.
That's why I call it religious, or cultish, if you want.
Pro-lifers say you shouldn't murder.
Everyone agrees. And we might disagree about how you apply it, but we all agree, don't murder.
What pro-abortion people say, though, is different.
They believe that it can be morally acceptable to kill a defenseless and innocent human organism, but only on three conditions.
The first condition is that this life is inconvenient.
The second is that the life is not yet born.
And then the third condition is the most absurd.
The third condition is that the person killing the life or having the life killed is the parent.
So the person being killed must be the biological child of the person who is killing them.
So traditional morality would find that all murder is horrible, but no form of murder is more horrible than the murder of a child by a parent.
That's traditional morality most people in the world would say.
That's the worst kind of morality.
It's all bad. That's the absolute worst kind.
That's the most. It's an abomination.
But the pro-abortion version of morality will say that all forms of murder are wrong except for the murder of your own child.
Again, I can only call that a religious belief.
It's not scientific. It's not universal.
It's not self-evident.
It's not grounded in any kind of natural moral law.
It is a doctrinal view that is shared only by leftists.
It's a part of their religion.
So that's what we find.
That while pro-lifers are making a scientific case and a moral case, it is actually the pro-abortion people who are making a specifically religious cultish case.
They are the ones who are trying to establish their own kind of theocracy.
They want laws that govern according to their own specific particular moral views.
So that's why they don't want us to push our religion on them.
It's because they're trying to push their religion on us.
And they don't like all the competition, I guess.
All right. That's it for me.
Thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks for listening.
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