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April 15, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
52:07
Ep. 239 - Words Are Violence

The Democrats claim that conservatives incite violence against Ilhan Omar by quoting or criticizing her. This is nothing more than a deceitful ploy to shut down speech. We’ll talk about it. Also, Tiger Woods won the Masters and a deranged dog lover sends me one of the more disturbing pieces of hate mail I've received in a while. Date: 04-15-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the Democrats are now claiming that conservatives are inciting violence against Ilhan Omar by criticizing her.
This is just a dishonest, deceitful ploy to shut down speech.
It's reprehensible and we'll talk about it.
Also, I want to mention one of the great things about America that's embodied by the reaction to Tiger Woods A big, big win yesterday.
And an absolutely deranged dog lover sends me a disturbing piece of hate mail because I criticized dogs.
And we'll talk about what it is that goes wrong in a person's mind that makes them so unbelievably obsessed with their pets.
I want to talk about that as well today on The Matt Wall Show.
Listen, I just need to say one thing here at the top.
I I am really sick and tired of people hating on cargo shorts.
Every year around this time, as the weather gets warmer, You know, that's why I'm thinking about it now, because it's getting warmer out.
But what do you see?
You see people online who are mocking cargo shorts and the men who wear them and say, oh, you better not be wearing cargo shorts.
But I think this mockery is unfair and bigoted and hypocritical as well, especially coming from women, which is usually where it comes from.
It's usually women who are complaining about cargo shorts.
Let's think about this for a second, ladies, okay?
What happens when you go out with your husband or your boyfriend, right?
You don't feel like carrying a purse around and you don't have pockets in your skirt or your dress or whatever, so suddenly he becomes like your pack mule who has to carry around your phone and your ID and whatever other paraphernalia you feel like having with you, but yet if he decides That he wants to wear a pair of cargo shorts with extra pockets to accommodate the additional baggage?
Suddenly he's a nerd?
No.
See, that's just wrong.
And let me tell you something else.
If he wants to wear a fanny pack, that is perfectly acceptable too.
That's totally fine.
That is practical and stylish.
In fact, I'll say this.
A man in cargo shorts, a fanny pack, and velcro shoes is a man who knows how to combine utility and fashion.
That's a keeper right there, ladies.
You see a man like that, you know, that's a keeper.
That's the kind of guy you want in your life, alright?
That's all I'm gonna say.
I just felt the need.
As an avid Cargo Shorts fan myself, I felt the need to say that.
Okay, there's a ton of big news happening, and I started my show on a Monday talking about Cargo Shorts instead.
That's what separates me, really, from every other show, is basically my irrelevance is what separates me from the other ones.
I do want to talk about Ilhan Omar and Tiger Woods and all that stuff, but first, let's check in with Lightstream.
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Okay.
As far as Tiger Woods go, I was legitimately excited to see that Tiger Woods won the Masters yesterday, as you no doubt heard.
I don't watch golf.
I don't really care about golf.
The only professional golfer I can name is Tiger Woods.
But I will say that I was happy to hear about his victory, and I was happier about something else.
Which is that, you know, turning on the news, going online, whatever, it seems like almost everybody is happy, right, that he won.
Yeah, there are a few naysayers here and there, I'm sure, but most everyone's happy about it.
And I thought, as I was watching this reaction, I thought, well, this is good, because this is a positive thing.
that we all still seem to share as Americans, is that we all love stories of redemption, right?
We love underdog stories, we love comeback stories, stories of redemption.
Now, I've said in the past that one of the problems in America is that I'm not sure I can think of one positive uniting sort of principle or value or trait That we all share and if you want to have a real country you need to have you things that you all share besides the fact that you all happen to live on the same plot of land there needs to be something deeper than that and and I still think that there aren't many
Congratulations to Tiger Woods.
Here's something that isn't so great though.
But this might be one, maybe this might be the only one, is that we all love a good comeback story.
And that's pretty good.
I mean, that's not enough to build a country around or maintain a country around, but it is a good thing.
So at least we have that and let's hang on to it.
So congratulations to Tiger Woods.
Here's something that isn't so great though, Ilhan Omar.
Let's go back and review here for a moment to get ourselves caught up to speed
with everything going on with this.
So, Representative Omar, as you probably heard, was speaking at a CAIR banquet, that's C-A-I-R, the Muslim group CAIR, speaking at a CAIR banquet a few weeks ago, and during those remarks, that's when she said, infamously now, this.
CAIR was founded after 9-11.
Because they recognize that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.
Now, of course, everyone is focused on the part where she says, some people did something.
Because of how flippantly it dismisses 9-11.
But she also said in that same clip, she also lies about America and says that Muslims are losing access to their civil liberties because of 9-11.
Where is that happening?
She doesn't provide any examples of it.
This is by far not the first time I've heard this claim, that Muslims lost their civil liberties in America after 9-11, but how so?
Where did that happen?
Now, you could certainly argue that all Americans lost some of their civil liberties after 9-11, what with the Patriot Act and the TSA and so on, and I would agree with that claim, but to say that Muslims were somehow legally singled out is just simply false.
It's just a lie.
But that aside, the thing that most people have homed in on is the part where she says, you know, some people did something.
And for good reason, especially considering her history of this kind of thing.
Here she is not long ago, laughing about Al-Qaeda.
Watch this.
I remember when I was in college, I took a terrorism class.
Is that a subset?
Yeah, there was.
So you go, there is a lab for that?
There was a class.
Do you go to the lab?
No, we learned the ideology.
I'm glad you do that.
And so the thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said Al-Qaeda, he sort of, like, his shoulders went up and, you know.
Yeah, he's in command here.
Al-Qaeda, you know.
He's an expert.
What's his name?
We are not saying his name.
You'll probably get to see him on CNN.
Yeah, of course.
I love those guys.
But it is that.
You don't say America with an intensity.
You don't say England with an intensity.
You don't say the army with an intensity.
But you say these names because you want that word to carry weight.
You want it to leave something.
It has a cultural meaning, not just words.
Exactly.
So it's said with a deeper voice.
Now, the left, of course, has gone into overdrive trying to defend.
Well, deflect, really, not defend, because there's nothing you can say to defend it.
So instead, they're just deflecting, which is what they always do.
with these sorts of things.
So they've been trying to deflect in two ways.
Number one, they've been saying that the some people did something remarks were taken out of context.
And number two, they've been saying that we, her critics, by criticizing her, are putting her life in danger.
So we should just stop doing that because we are inciting violence against her.
Let's take a look at both of these, but we'll do it one at a time here.
First of all, it really appears to me that most people in this country don't know what the phrase, out of context, means.
It seems that most people, when they say that, when they say that, oh, that was out of context, what they really mean to say is that, in their opinion, the offending remarks weren't really that offensive.
Which may or may not be the case, but whether or not it is the case, that's not what out-of-context means.
Out-of-context is when just a portion of someone's comments are shown in order to convey a meaning that is actually the opposite of, or at least totally different from, their actual apparent meaning.
And one way of doing that is to show the clumsily worded portion, but then not some other portion of the same remarks where they sort of clarify and flesh out their idea more to frame it a little bit more appropriately.
Now, and that kind of thing happens all the time.
That's what out of context is.
It's when you, when it always starts with someone who has the whole, the whole picture and they purposefully, Take this one little part that that you know paints the entire situation in a in a different light Perfect example of this there are so many examples we could we could look at perfect example would be the Covington Catholic kids That is an example of taking something out of context where you have that one little snippet of
that at first that only showed the one kid and the rest of his friends kind of staring at and
look like he was in the face of this Native American smiling at him. And that's out of
context because then once you saw the entire context, it completely flipped the situation
on its head.
And you saw that, oh no, actually the Native American guy, Nathan Phillips, he was the one who instigated this.
He was, okay, so that's what out of context is.
Omar's comments were not out of context.
And to show you that, let's go to the Washington Post video.
The Post is, of course, running damage control for a member of their own party, which the Democrat Party is their party.
They are a member of the sort of PR, the unofficial PR firm for the Democrat Party.
They released a fact-checking, a quote-unquote fact-checking video, which supposedly shows the full context of Omar's comments.
And it's supposed to show that, well, really, it's not as bad as it looked.
This video is supposed to debunk the controversy and vindicate Ilhan Omar.
So let's take a look.
Now, again, this is the Washington Post.
They're trying to run cover for her.
They're doing the best they can.
And so this is the Washington Post putting those comments in context.
Watch.
Here's the truth.
Far too long, we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen.
And frankly, I'm tired of it and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it.
CARE was founded after 9-11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.
So you can't just say that today someone is looking at me strange, that I am going to try to make myself look pleasant.
You have to say, this person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it, I am going to go talk to them and ask them why.
Because that is a right you have.
Okay.
Does that change anything at all?
So that's the full context.
How does that affect what she's in trouble for saying?
If anything, it makes it worse because the rest of the context is her just painting Muslims as the real victims of 9-11.
That's the full context.
The full context is she's the victim and Muslims are the victims.
So I don't see how that helps her case at all.
She says, some people did something, and then she goes on to talk about the poor Muslims.
She doesn't make any additional comments about 9-11 that would shed a better light on the some people did something remarks.
Okay, she doesn't do that.
So this is not taken out of context.
Now, you may be confused and you may ask, well, What does the Washington Post even think that this video proves?
What's the pointer?
They're fact-checking and they're not adding anything to it at all.
What's their point?
Well, the answer is that they know that the video doesn't prove anything.
The point of the video is to not be watched.
The video exists just so that a debunking video exists so that most people will see it and say, oh, the Washington Post already debunked that, and not actually watch the video itself.
And that's true.
That's what will happen with most people.
It was the same thing, you remember, with the Planned Parenthood undercover videos.
Where they, Planned Parenthood officials, were caught saying all kinds of horrible things, trying to sell aborted baby parts.
And there were all kinds of articles that were written in the mainstream media and videos done debunking the controversy and so on.
But if you actually read those articles or watched the videos, you saw that, oh, they didn't really debunk anything.
They didn't even try.
Because they can't.
Planned Parenthood was caught red-handed trying to sell aborted baby parts.
It's right there on video.
But the mainstream media knew that most people they just want to see that there are articles out there debunking this.
They're not going to read it.
They're not going to take the time to read it.
They just want to know that it's there so that they can say, oh, that was debunked.
But it gets worse.
As the debunking video goes on, it gets much worse.
Watch this.
Plus not everyone always refers to the 9-11 terrorists as terrorists.
The rest of the world hears you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear
all of us soon.
Okay.
All right.
Now, Omar herself made the same comparison a few days ago as well.
So the Post and Omar are working from the same talking point sheet here, but that comparison is obviously completely absurd, and I don't think I need to explain why, but I will anyway.
George Bush was standing on the rubble of the tower, impromptu, talking into a bullhorn, And he was threatening to find and kill the people who did it.
Okay, so nobody thinks with President Bush, which by the way, I think that moment right there is one of the great Moments in presidential history.
It's one of the great moments any president has ever had, in my opinion.
So say whatever else you want about Bush, and there are plenty of things you can criticize about him, but that was just an all-time great historic moment by a president, and I think a moment that most presidents that we've ever had just wouldn't have been able, wouldn't have done that.
Anyway, he's standing on the rubble of the tower.
Pointing to it and saying, the people who did this, I mean, he didn't say it explicitly, but what he's saying is the people who did this, we're going to kill them.
Nobody in their right mind thinks that he was dismissing or downplaying 9-11.
You don't stand on the rubble of the destroyed tower saying, we're going to kill the people who did this because you want to downplay 9-11.
That comparison is, I mean, it's so unbelievably dishonest, but again, As far as The Washington Post is concerned, that little part of the video is about four minutes in.
They know that most people aren't gonna see that.
That's just filler.
So from there, Congressman Dan Crenshaw and many other conservatives have criticized Omar, and rightfully so.
And then a couple of days ago, Trump sent out this video via tweet.
CARE was founded after 9-11.
Because they recognize that some people did something.
So you have no idea right now?
Oh, there's another one.
Another plane just hit.
Some people did something.
Oh my goodness.
There is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon.
Some people did something.
It just flew straight into it.
And things just went nuclear from there, right?
On the part of the Democrats.
They're now crying that Omar's life is being jeopardized by the criticisms against her, and that Trump and other Republicans are inciting violence.
In fact, all the Democrats, especially all the 2020 Democrats, The ones running for president in 2020, basically in unison, started using the exact same language.
Incitement to violence.
They all latched onto the same term, almost as if it was coordinated.
Who knew?
They all latched onto that same term at the exact same time, and they just started saying it and repeating it over and over and over again.
Omar is the real victim, right?
Criticizing her is incitement.
Now, Ilhan Omar put out a statement last night hammering on this theme.
She says, Since the President's tweet Friday evening, I have experienced an increase in direct threats on my life, many directly referencing or replying to the President's video.
I thank the Capitol Police, the FBI, the House Sergeant of Arms, and the Speaker of the House for their attention to these threats.
Violent crimes and other acts of hate by right-wing extremists and white nationalists are on the rise in this country and around the world.
We could no longer ignore that they are being encouraged by the occupant of the highest office in the land.
Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226% increase in hate crimes in the months following the rally.
And assaults, insults increased when cities host Trump rallies.
This is particularly concerning given the president's visit to my home state of Minnesota on Monday.
Violent rhetoric and all forms of hate speech have no place.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
Of course, The term, the figure she's using there, 226% increase, you can't take any of that at face value.
I hope that, of course, you would know that.
But yeah, violent crime from white nationalists is on the rise around the world.
Yeah, well, does it come anywhere close to Islamic terrorism?
Not anywhere close to that.
But of course, Ilhan Omar, she's worried about white nationalist violence around the world, not so much about Islamic terrorism.
She doesn't really talk much about that, except to laugh about it.
And, okay.
Let's clarify a few things here.
Number one, if If we're inciting violence against Ilhan Omar by quoting her and accusing her of being flippant and dismissive of 9-11, which she was, then is she not inciting violence against the president when she claims that he's encouraging violence?
I mean, doesn't this go both ways?
And in any case, criticism is not incitement.
Do you know what incitement is?
Incitement is when you get up and actively and explicitly encourage people to commit violence.
That's incitement.
And that's illegal.
But nobody is doing that in reference to Omar.
At least not any prominent person is doing that.
What conservatives are doing is we're criticizing her, which we have every right to do,
and which we are completely, not just legally permitted, but we are morally justified in doing so
because what she said and the kinds of things that she always says are abhorrent.
If criticism is incitement, then I've been the victim of incitement thousands of times.
And if criticism is incitement, then President Trump has been the victim of incitement
hundreds of millions of times.
But it is interesting though, isn't it?
How Ilhan Omar and AOC and the other women in that contingent usually claim
to be strong, independent women, but the moment you criticize them,
they fall into a lump on the floor and become these damsels in distress, don't they?
into stress, don't they?
And something else is interesting, that leftists have spent two years claiming that the President of the United States is a secret Russian agent in league with Putin, claiming that Brett Kavanaugh is a serial gang rapist.
They've accused a bunch of random high school students of being racist bigots because they looked at a Native American man.
Yet now, after all of that, they're worried about incitement?
They're worried about irresponsible rhetoric after all of that?
Yeah, I don't buy that for a second.
Not for a second.
And when a liberal fired 70 rounds into a GOP baseball game a couple of years ago, did any of these Democrats say anything about incitement and rhetoric?
Did any of them?
All the ones that are so worried about it now, do they have anything to say about that?
Not a single one, because they are conniving frauds in the Democrat Party, almost without exception.
Okay, what else?
Well, a lot of people have sent me this study that was done, allegedly proving that men with facial hair carry around more germs than dogs.
And the only thing I'm gonna say about this is, if you see this study, It is vicious, dishonest, anti-beard propaganda, and the scientists behind it are all a bunch of beardless babyfaces who are jealous that they can only grow patchy peach fuzz.
Okay?
All anti-beard rhetoric, at the end of the day, originates from envious beardless people, be they men or women.
And that's all I'll say about that.
So you can just toss that.
Toss that to the side.
One other thing I wanted to mention before getting into some emails.
I don't mean to open up this can of worms again, but I also can't resist.
So, a few days ago, I said on Twitter, half joking, That dogs are the most overrated things in the universe, second perhaps only to the original Star Wars trilogy.
And now I do think that dogs and Star Wars are overrated, but obviously I'm engaging in a bit of joking hyperbole at the same time.
But from there, as you might expect, the dog people started coming and claiming that dogs are wonderful, they're the most loving creatures in the world, and so much more loving than people, and so on.
And I simply and calmly explained that dogs are fine, but actually dogs aren't really capable of love in the human sense.
Because they don't have that same awareness of themselves, they don't have the same ability to choose, you know, they're largely instinctive animals.
And love requires an awareness of the self.
It also requires an ability to choose, which, so animals just don't have that.
And their love for you is based mostly on the fact that you feed them.
If they were starving and you were incapacitated or dead, they would just eat you.
So, and that's fine, right?
They're dogs.
It's okay.
Dogs are dogs.
No big deal.
But if you really think that dogs are more capable of love than humans, I think that says a lot more about you than it does about dogs or other people.
It just means that you're a bit of a sociopath.
If you actually have people in your life who you really love, like children, spouse, you would never equate a dog's affection for its caretakers to human love.
And that's all I said, right?
A basic point, an obvious point, no big deal.
Well, as expected, since then I've gotten some very angry messages from dog lovers, including this one, which I have to read because it's so over the top.
Remember, again, keep in mind why this message was sent, because I just said that about dogs.
Dogs are fine, but they're not people.
That was basically my point, okay?
I never advocated that we go and kill all the dogs in the world or whatever.
I never said that.
But here's a message from someone.
Says, you hating dogs so much makes you a worthless quote-unquote human being.
Go F yourself because God knows that's the only way you get any unless you're white, unless you get your poor wife drunk.
I feel especially sorry for your kids who have a POS like you as a father.
The fact that you reproduced and the fact that you exist is sickening.
Now again, that was because I said that dogs are overrated.
The person who sent that message, by the way, is a middle-aged woman.
Looks to be just kind of like a normal soccer mom based on her picture.
And I'm sure that if you bumped into this person on the street, you'd think that this is just a normal person, right?
But behind the scenes, she's sending delusional, sexually charged screeds to people on Twitter
who don't like dogs enough.
And that's one thing I find interesting about what I do for a living, because I get a lot
of emails and messages every single day, and I think that they really give you an insight
into what people are really like, more so than interacting with people in the real world,
bumping into a stranger and exchanging pleasantries with them.
It doesn't really give you any sense of what a person's actually like, because even a serial killer is capable of making small talk on an elevator if he doesn't decide to kill you instead.
But it's on the Internet that people feel free to be themselves, which is why I don't like this delineation sometimes between, well, no, that's just how people are on the Internet.
That's not how they are in real life.
Well, no, but those are real people on the Internet, right?
These are actual human beings who are expressing their points of view on the Internet.
The Internet is just a mode of communication, that's all.
So, no, I mean, if you discover that A sizable portion of the people you encounter online are just absolute maniacs and scumbags.
Unfortunately, that means that there just are a lot of maniacs and scumbags in the world, because almost everybody is online.
And this is where people let their true color shine because they feel like they have the ability to do that
without shame or without fear of reprisal or whatever.
So that's the first thing.
The other point is that while this woman is obviously over the top,
she is representative of a group and not a very small group either,
who are just, I mean, I don't know what else you could call them besides dog worshipers.
I mean, they really... There are... It seems like there are a lot of people in this country who really do worship dogs.
They actually think that dogs are like gods, basically.
And I don't even think that that's hyperbole.
I think that that's really the case.
Now, I have no problem with people who love pets and love animals in general.
I think that's great.
I have a dog myself.
I like my dog.
But he's just a dog.
As I said, my feelings towards him do not even get close to the ballpark of my feelings for my kids.
Like, they're not even in the ballpark next door.
They're like on a ballpark on another planet somewhere.
Just not even in the, just not anywhere in the vicinity, right?
As in, if we were all starving to death and we had no other food, I would, in a second, kill my dog and feed him to my kids, right?
I wouldn't even have to think about it.
That's just, that's no problem.
That's where he ranks in the hierarchy.
But it's fine.
I like having him around and he's a dog and it's fine.
But there are people, and this woman is a member of this group obviously, Who really do love animals more than they love people.
Who love their pets even more than they love their own children.
And that's the really disturbing thing.
At a minimum, they consider their pets to be on an equal playing field with their human children.
And these kinds of people exist.
And I believe, based on my observations, that it is a growing group.
And it's a problem, because it's sort of a sign of a dying civilization when everyone starts to worship animals.
Like, we're reverting back to paganism.
All I want to say to this group, if you're in this group of people, all I want to say to you is this.
And I'm not talking, again, I'm not talking about people who love their pets.
That's fine.
If you love your pets more than you love people, and even more or equal to how you love your children, well, so what I would say is it's not okay to be how you are.
It's not okay to like animals more than people.
It really isn't.
That's actually a very demented and disturbed point of view.
And it stems entirely, and this is why it's such a problem, it stems entirely from your selfishness.
See, the reason you love animals more than people is because your relationship with your dog is all about you, right?
And that's what people like about dogs.
Your dog is obsessed with you, follows you around, fawns all over you, literally slobbering all over you, thinks of nothing but you.
While you're out of the house, he just wants you to come back, and when you're back, he's so excited.
And that's why people like dogs.
But human beings aren't like that, right?
People aren't going to live every second of every day thinking only of you, pining after you, wanting to be with you.
I don't know, I mean, personally, I wouldn't want that kind of attachment from another human being.
It's just, it's a little too much.
Like, I need a little bit of space.
But people have their own internal life and their own existence that is not all about you.
Their own identity.
And I think for the people who like dogs more than people, that's why you don't like people as much.
Because you've yet to meet a person who will structure their entire existence around you.
And you don't like that because you are a complete egomaniac.
So much of an egomaniac that as far as you're concerned, the hierarchy of beings is it's like you at number one and then dogs and then all other people.
That's a problem.
That's all I'm saying.
All right.
Let's go to emails.
mattwalshow at gmail.com.
mattwalshow at gmail.com.
All right, let's see here.
Maybe I'll save that one for tomorrow.
Okay, no, I won't.
I'll read this.
All right.
So over the last A week or so.
We've been having this debate on the show about whether or not we should use the Bible when debating with unbelievers, atheists, secular people about issues that are not explicitly theological.
And one example we've been using is abortion.
Like, if you're debating, if you're trying to persuade, you know, a non-Christian person about the evils of abortion, do you throw the Bible at them or do you use science, logic, reason, and those sorts of things?
And I have been arguing that, no, you don't throw the Bible, you use science, logic and reason.
Well, to make my point, I gave as an example, because it just so happened that a couple of weeks ago I was speaking at Boston University, and a woman stood up during the Q&A and said that that in fact, she had been convinced, persuaded over to the
pro-life side, by the arguments presented by me and Ben Shapiro and other people, the Daily
Wire and other conservatives.
So here's an example. And the reason I brought her up is because
the people on the Bible thumping side of it, what they like to claim is that, well,
you're never going to persuade someone with logic and science.
It's never going to happen.
You need to just quote the Bible to them and let that work in their heart.
That's the only way.
It's the only thing that can work.
You're never going to persuade someone just with arguments.
Well, I said, no, actually you can.
It happens all the time, actually.
It's very possible to do.
Here's one example.
And that woman happened to write an email sort of giving more context about her own personal journey.
And so I thought it'd be really interesting to read this email, especially for people who say that this is not possible, that you can't do this.
Well, you can do it.
And let me read the email to you.
She says, I saw your tweet yesterday where you mentioned when I stood up and spoke at your BU speech.
I've been listening and reading the debates you've been having about how to go about discussing abortion with people and would like to give you my two cents.
Like I said that night, earlier in my life, the 90s, I was a lefty and social worker, specifically for the parenting and pregnant teen programs that popped up after Clinton's welfare reform went through.
I watched teenage girls get abortions depending on who the father was.
I also had an 18-year-old with two kids who got an abortion every other time.
After really working for the government, child social services for five years, 9-11, and my older brothers having children all happening around the same time like a perfect storm, my views completely changed.
And now I am very much a libertarian conservative, and I see how dumb I was.
And see myself and all of these college kids who get up at your Q&As.
It's embarrassing.
But being a libertarian, I was still pro-choice.
A government shouldn't be involved, right?
Anyway, I remember the first time in the last couple of years that I started to actually think about my position.
The first thing that ever gave me pause.
I was technically pro-choice, but never felt it would be my choice.
You know, that whole argument.
In my life, no one ever gave logical arguments from the other side until Trump was elected.
No one on the right talked about this stuff out loud or confidently, especially during the previous eight years, and during the 2016 election, and after I got turned on to The Daily Wire and Steven Crowder.
The first thing that ever got me to really think about it was when one of you said, so in slave days, would you have just said, I would never own a slave, but I wouldn't tell other people not to?
That's when I told, that's when I would say my ears perked up for the first time and I was open to listening.
The next thing that hit me was when one of you said, if it's just a clump of cells, if it's really not a baby, and there's really nothing wrong with it, why is it always talked about being such a difficult decision?
Why are women agonizing and feeling ashamed?
I'd always found the whole rape and incest exception thing inconsistent.
It's either murdering a baby or it's not.
My thing was that I knew at a certain point it was not okay.
But wasn't sure what that point was and didn't give it much thought.
Then I saw that chart that Steven Crowder uses, and I think Ben uses it too, and you see at each point what it looks like, and it's hard to argue at any point that it doesn't at least look like a baby, even the tiniest of embryos under a microscope.
And I heard one of you say, does the vaginal canal have some magic power that instills life as a baby passes through it?
But I was still wavering, until...
DNA and fingerprints.
One of you said that they have their own unique DNA almost immediately.
The last argument that hung on is always, it's part of the woman's body, etc.
But to know that it has its own unique DNA and soon after its fingerprints means it's a separate entity unto itself.
It is separate from the mother, even though it's connected.
So I knew immediately how I felt, and I turned.
My husband and I would say to each other quietly that we knew we had changed how we felt since becoming aware of the Daily Wire and Steven Crowder.
But that's how we said it, like when we were voting.
We knew we were voting for Trump, but we never said the words out loud.
But not until the night at BU.
I did say it out loud, and I can tell you exactly why.
There were two things you said.
Number one, the whole relive your life backwards thing from today, reverse it back 10 years, 20 years to your birth, and then about 60 seconds before your birth.
Was that not still you?
She was quoting me there, paraphrasing.
Number two, everything is alive, dead, or inanimate.
It's another argument I made.
I realized that night, plants are alive, and they don't have a heartbeat.
Never thought about that.
And I still have a little trouble.
Like, the planet, is that alive?
Is the sun alive?
Is rain alive?
On the way home, I asked my husband, like, my kidney inside my body, is that alive?
And he said, yes.
And I said, I'm not sure about that.
What about my kidney by itself on a table outside my body?
And he said, that's dead flesh.
That made sense.
But the main point of my email, I was raised by a non-practicing Catholic mother and a rabid, anti-religious, atheist father.
Who, both good people, she says in parentheses, who took me under his wing and was always in my ear.
I turned out for most of my life a hardcore atheist.
Even though I went through the sacraments, I did so to prove a point that I was beating the system because I didn't believe and I could get married in a church.
I'd always thought to believe in religion was weak and shows you are not intelligent.
Until I was married with a child who we are raising in the Catholic Church due to my husband.
And I am seeing that spark I missed out on, the sense of purpose and being.
I don't know if the whole God thing is true, but there is something I definitely missed out on feeling about myself and not believing in as a child, if that makes sense.
And I wanted to back up your argument I heard you make on your podcast after you mentioned me standing up the other night.
You said, if you can get people to believe you about something like this logically, they may then wonder if you're right about other things too.
And that's what's happening to me now.
Listening to all of you crazy smart people being right about all these things and making complete sense, I am much more open to religion than ever before.
And the more I read Ben's new book and listening to you and hearing so many explanations to questions I always had when thinking, how can some smart people believe this?
So yes, I was converted on abortion by science, and now realizing you guys are so smart, my ears have perked up in just the same way about religion, and who knows where that goes.
Thank you, and then she doesn't want me to give her name.
Okay, so I wanted to read that whole thing, because I think that that's...
First of all, I mean, it proves a point.
This isn't a point about me, like, oh, look at this one.
She talked a lot more about other conservatives, Stephen Crowder and Ben Shapiro.
So it's not just, like, arguments that I presented.
So that's not the point.
The point is two things here.
Number one, it is possible, okay?
And she's not the only one who has been convinced, persuaded, by logical and scientific arguments, not just on abortion, but on so many other issues.
And not just by me or Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder, but by anybody, right?
It is possible.
So this is, for all the emails I've gotten saying it's not possible, you can't do it, okay, well, what about this woman?
Is she, do you think she's the one exception in the whole universe?
Or do you think maybe you're wrong?
Maybe it is possible.
And the second point here is, I think what you see in this email, why I wanted to read it, It's a testament to this person who sent the email that this is someone who has intellectual integrity, who's willing to admit that they might be wrong.
And that's all you really need.
If you're arguing with someone who doesn't have intellectual integrity, who's not intellectually curious, who doesn't have any sort of moral fortitude or courage, Well, in that moment, there's probably nothing you could say to persuade them.
You could probably plant some seeds in their mind that may sprout later on, but in that moment, there's nothing you can do, because they have to be willing to receive.
But if you're talking to somebody, even if they disagree with you vehemently, but if they have intellectual integrity, and they're at least willing to listen, and they're open to hearing the other side, If you're talking to someone like that, well, you could change their whole way of thinking.
In 20 minutes, you could, theoretically.
And that's why I think it's so important.
And you're never really gonna know, in the moment, whether you're talking to someone with intellectual integrity or not.
So you're not really gonna know that.
But if you are, and you've got someone who's open-minded and they're listening to you, The last thing you want to do is say something that's going to cause them to close their mind off to you.
Because you just had this amazing opportunity to convince someone of something.
And if you go the wrong route, they're going to close it off and you're going to miss that opportunity.
And I think as I've been saying, and as I've been arguing, um, If you have someone like this who you're talking to, if you go the Bible-thumping route, you lost the opportunity.
They're going to close you out because they've heard all that stuff before.
They don't want to be preached at.
There's a lot of baggage there.
I'm not going to repeat it all, but they don't agree with the premise and all of that.
All you've succeeded is they've closed you off.
They're walking away.
You failed.
You just failed.
If you can keep that avenue open, just keep the door open, Which I think requires a little bit of prudence and trying to meet them on their level.
If you can do that, then anything is possible.
So I think that's great.
I really enjoyed that email.
The credit goes not to me or Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder or anyone else who presented an argument to her, because the arguments we're making are just super obvious.
Most of the people listening, you all could make those arguments yourselves.
It's just that she grew up in an environment where she had never been exposed to that way of thinking.
And if you're not exposed to it, then, you know, then you need to be exposed to it first before you can
start thinking that way.
So the credit goes to her for being open to that and at least willing to listen,
which most people unfortunately are not. All right, let's see. This is from Michael,
says, Dear Matt, I attend a Baptist church and I'm frequently treated to sermons on the evils of
alcohol. How However, in my personal studies, every time the Bible addresses consumption of alcohol, it specifically refers to wine.
When I asked my pastor about this, he told me that wine is just the biblical shorthand for all alcohol beverages.
I am curious if this is the case or if wine is specifically mentioned due to its sacramental nature.
Would love to get the Catholic perspective as well as your personal convictions on the subject.
I think we've talked about the alcohol thing before on the show.
I'm not sure, so I don't want to repeat myself too much, any more than I already have.
But, yeah, the idea that the Bible condemns alcohol outright is theologically absurd.
That is just a theological invention, I'm afraid to say, on the part of your pastor, and any other pastor who gets up there and says, all alcohol is evil.
What they're doing is that's a personal belief that they have, which is fine.
You know, you're entitled to that personal belief and it's perfectly fine.
It's perfectly fine to have that personal belief and that personal conviction that alcohol is, you know, that you don't want to drink alcohol.
Great.
I have no problem with that.
But when you try to take that personal conviction and impose it onto the text, To try to make it into more than just your personal conviction.
To try to turn it into God's conviction.
Then I have a problem with that.
And not because... No matter what the subject is.
I don't care if it's alcohol or anything else.
I have a problem with doing that.
And I think it's wrong.
And honestly, it's dishonest.
Because there's just no... I'm sorry.
Jesus Christ's first miracle recorded in the gospel, as far as we know, his first miracle on earth, was providing wine for a wedding.
And if you try to tell me that it was non-alcoholic wine that he was providing to a wedding, I mean, that is just so ridiculous.
There's no textual reason for that at all.
You're not getting that from the text.
You're getting it from your own head.
By the way, I'm not yelling at you, Michael, because you're asking the question.
I'm just yelling at everyone who makes this claim, which isn't you.
It's completely ridiculous.
In fact, it even says that the guests at the party, at the wedding, were shocked that this was the finest wine, it was the best wine.
And they were shocked that it had been saved for the end.
Okay, do you think that non-alcoholic wine, that grape juice, is the finest wine, the best wine?
No.
And why is it that typically And this is a practice even still today.
Why is it that usually the lower quality alcohol is provided at the end?
Well, because by then, people have been drinking, and they're feeling good, they're feeling loose, and they're going to be less discerning about the alcohol you give them.
It's the same thing.
I have a Christmas party every year at my house.
My wife and I do.
And we stock the fridge with beer, and we've got the good, expensive beer, but I don't want to pay to stock the entire fridge with good, expensive beer, so we've got some good, expensive craft beer, and then we also get some Yingling or Coors Light or something.
At the end of the night, all that's left is the Coors or the Yingling, and then people start drinking that.
Because now they're a little bit less discerning about it.
So, okay, that clearly means that this is alcoholic wine we're talking about.
At a party.
Okay?
It's not a big emergency if you run out of grape juice at a wedding.
If you run out of wine, that's a problem, right?
Because it's hard to have a fun party without any alcohol.
So, Jesus Christ's first miracle on earth is to provide alcohol to a party And yet these people think that they can make some sort of argument that the Bible condemns alcohol outright?
Again, it's fine if you don't like it.
Just stop trying to put that on the text.
Just admit that this is your personal opinion, and that's fine.
It just annoys me.
All right, let's do one more here.
Oh, speaking of alcohol, here we go.
This is from Joe.
It says, Brother Matt, I believe you're mostly a bourbon man, but I'm curious if you fancy any ryes or scotches or other whiskeys.
Please rank your top five whiskeys.
Have a blessed holy week.
I could drink a rye or scotch, but I'm not, you know, I basically stick with bourbons myself.
Although if I'm at someone's house and they, you know, crack open a bottle of scotch, believe me, I'll have some.
So my top five, I won't rank them in order.
So this is not an order, but these are my go-tos.
It'll be Four Roses, Woodford, Knob Creek, Blanton's, and I guess Maker's 46 will be my... Probably Four Roses is, you know, it's not the highest quality of all bourbons by any means, but it's just a really good go-to, relatively inexpensive, and it's great stuff.
All right, we will leave it there on that wonderful note.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Democrats claim that criticism of Ilhan Omar is incitement, Scherer becomes a Republican, and Senator Cory Booker reveals a secret about sanctuary cities.
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