Today on the show, NPR issues an Orwellian language guide for discussing abortion. I’ve got my own language guide that I’d like to offer. Also, Tarantino is accused of sexism because women don’t spend enough time talking in his latest film. Jeff Daniels says our Democracy is coming to an end if Trump is reelected. And Michael Avenatti is charged with fraud. We’ll take a trip down memory lane and remember all the time the media spent hyping this guy as the savior of the Republic. Date: 05-23-19
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, NPR issues in Orwellian language guide for discussing abortion.
I've got my own language guide, which I think is a little bit more honest and straightforward.
I'd like to offer it up to you today.
Also, Quentin Tarantino is accused of sexism because the women don't spend enough time talking in his latest film.
Jeff Daniels says that democracy is coming to an end if Trump is re-elected.
And Michael Avenatti is charged with fraud.
We're going to take a trip down memory lane and remember all the time The media spent hyping this guy up.
It's sad and hilarious at the same time.
We'll do all of that today on the Matt Wall Show.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for watching.
A lot to talk about today.
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Okay.
As I, or as the Daily Wire reported, I should say, this week, NPR has issued what they're calling a guidance reminder, which is an appropriately Orwellian phrase to describe an appropriate, you know, an Orwellian
thing that they're doing.
The guidance reminder, what it is, is it's instructing journalists on which words and
phrases they should avoid and which they should employ when reporting on the abortion issue.
So NPR, just to give you, I'm not going to go through their whole memo that they released
on this, but just to go to the highlights here, NPR suggests that reporters avoid writing
or saying partial birth abortion.
And instead of partial birth abortion, they say that you should use the term intact dilation and extraction.
Intact dilation and extraction is the term you should use instead of partial birth abortion.
They say don't use the term abortion clinic.
Instead, medical or health clinic that performs abortion.
A little bit of a mouthful.
But, there you go.
It's recommended that you don't refer to abortion doctors.
Instead, they say, well, you could talk about someone, a doctor who operates clinics where abortions are performed.
Of course, it says don't use unborn baby.
That's a big no-no, because NPR says it's not a baby until it's born, and before that, it's a fetus.
So use the word fetus.
You must not under any circumstance refer to pro-lifers.
No, no, no.
They are abortion rights opponents, not pro-lifers.
Journalists are even cautioned against using a phrase like fetal heartbeat, which is a medical phrase Even has fetus in there.
You'd think they'd like that.
Fetal heartbeat.
Medical phrase.
They say, don't use fetal heartbeat.
It's got too much baggage.
You know, it might make someone think of a fetus as a living person.
And we wouldn't want that.
Right?
You don't want to talk about that.
The point at every turn here is to utilize language that will make abortion seem as clinical and sanitized as possible while making pro-lifers seem as crazy as possible.
That's the idea.
Now, while I respect NPR's steadfast commitment to partisanship and distortion and their loyal submission to the abortion lobby, I tend to think that these code words only make the abortion conversation more confusing, which of course is precisely the goal.
Obviously, I know that's what they're trying to do.
Pro-aborts always want to talk about abortion in a way that will not encourage anyone to actually think about abortion.
They want to put that as a side.
Even though you're talking about this issue, they want to make the issue you're discussing a side thing.
De-emphasize it.
As much as they can.
As a pro-lifer myself, but more importantly as someone who values honesty and clarity, I take the opposite approach.
If we're going to talk about killing babies, we should be straightforward and frank about it.
We should use terms and phrases that make it clear what we're talking about.
Just like we should be doing that in any conversation.
You should be using language that clearly conveys the meaning of what you're trying to say.
So I thought I would offer kind of an answer to their guidance reminder with my own guidance reminder of ideas of, uh, you know, phrases and terms that we could use in place of some of the more commonly used ones.
So let me go through a few of these.
Um, number one, fetus simply means offspring in Latin.
If you're going to insist on fetus, you may as well insist on, uh, in, in, in Japan, Japanese for infant is Aka-chan.
Which I knew off the top of my head, I didn't have to look that up.
I'm fluent in Japanese, in case you didn't know.
That's a lie.
So, infant in Japanese is akachan.
It'd be like if you said, no, no, no, they're not babies, they're akachans.
Okay, it's the same thing, you're just using a different language.
In your effort to avoid using the word baby, you're still using the word baby, you're just...
It's, as I said, a different language is all.
But even the word baby or unborn baby might not be the best choice.
And I think maybe people just tune out that phrase now, especially pro-abortion people, which is why here's my first guidance reminder.
I have been advocating, maybe as you've heard before, I have been advocating that we refer to the unborn as undocumented infants.
Because after all, the only difference between an infant in the womb and an infant outside of the womb is that the former lacks a birth certificate.
That's really the only difference.
So they are literally undocumented infants.
Number two, intact dilation and extraction sounds like something that your dentist might do.
Which, obviously, is the point.
That's how it's supposed to sound.
But it's probably not an appropriate term To use to describe a procedure where a fully developed viable and living infant child is pulled from the womb feet first until just his head remains in the birth canal and then he's executed via suction tube to the back of the skull and his brains are sucked out of his head while he's still alive.
Okay, that's what a partial birth abortion is.
That's how it's conducted.
That's not me making it up or exaggerating in the slightest.
That is literally how they do it.
So intact dilation and extraction, no.
We need something that communicates the horror of it because it is a horrible thing.
Partial birth abortion doesn't quite capture it either, I don't think.
So in place of both of those euphemisms, I would suggest cervical infanticide.
Partial birth abortion is literally the killing of an infant as it passes through the cervix.
So cervical infanticide, that would be my idea.
Number three, reproductive rights is a misnomer.
Nobody is challenging a woman's right to reproduce.
Reproduction has nothing to do with this debate at all.
I will say it again.
Reproduction has nothing to do with this debate.
It is irrelevant.
Scientifically speaking, reproduction occurs at conception.
Now, that's a scientific fact.
We don't have to... Now, it's also a scientific fact that life begins at conception, but we can even put that to the side.
Whenever you think life begins, there's no doubt that reproduction happens at conception.
That is the moment of reproduction.
I've been in the hospital for the births of three children, and I don't remember anyone shouting and saying, look, she's reproducing!
Nobody says that because that's not when reproduction happens.
It doesn't happen as the baby emerges from the birth canal.
That's because birth and reproduction are not the same.
A woman who avoids conception entirely, either through abstinence or birth control, has failed to reproduce and as such has exercised her reproductive rights.
By choosing to reproduce or not reproduce, that is to conceive a child or not, Or to engage in the activity which could result in conception.
That's where your reproductive rights come into play.
Once the baby is produced, reproductive rights have nothing to do with it anymore.
A woman who gets an abortion is killing a child that's already been produced, which is why instead of, you know, through abortion she's not exercising her reproductive rights, she is exercising her parental murder rights.
Because she is the parent of that child, and we are saying that as the parent, she has the right to murder her own child, as long as the child is still located physically in her body, even if he's on the way out of her body.
Still, as long as he's there, we got him on a technicality, we can kill him.
So those are parental murder rights.
I think that's the term we should use instead of reproductive rights.
Abortion doctor, number four, is a problematic term because it includes the word doctor.
I agree with NPR that we should discard that terminology, which is confusing and I think has the tendency to obfuscate.
Though their recommendation for a replacement term is obviously absurd.
I would suggest the term medical assassin, that we use that instead.
Because this makes it clear that these are professionals ostensibly in the medical industry.
Now, they did go to medical school.
They are in that industry.
No way around that.
But they aren't doctors, because by definition, doctors treat and cure.
I'm sure, in fact, if you were to look up the definition of doctor in Merriam-Webster, you would find something like that, about how they treat and cure illness and sickness.
That's what they swear to do in the Hippocratic Oath.
Abortionists do not treat any diseases.
They do not cure anyone of anything.
So they're not doctors.
They kill.
That's what they do.
They are assassins.
When someone is paid to kill another person, you know, that's a hitman or an assassin.
A mercenary.
Maybe medical mercenary, I think, is better.
Yeah, I think we'll... You know what?
I'm gonna change my guidance.
Medical mercenary is the better one there.
So that's what... Number five, Planned Parenthood.
I have a problem with using the phrase planned parenthood.
It's technically the name of an actual organization, so maybe you could justify using it, but it is so ironic and so divorced from what planned parenthood actually does on a daily basis.
When you think planning parenthood, you're thinking of planning parenthood, planning to be a parent, whereas you go to planned parenthood because you don't want to be a parent anymore.
And so even just saying Planned Parenthood, it feels like we're complicit in this lie about what Planned Parenthood does.
I would, you know, I'm not settled on what we call it instead.
Maybe Margaret Sanger's Killing Field could be a, you know, a suggestion.
But I'm open to suggestions there.
But we do need something other than Planned Parenthood.
Finally, pro-choice.
Is just a completely ridiculous phrase, as it would seem to suggest that pro-choice people are somehow in favor of choices generally.
But as I have explained in the past, being pro-choice, saying that you're pro-choice is like saying that you're pro-shooting.
Plenty of people are pro-gun.
But their opinion about the wisdom of shooting a gun will depend entirely on why the gun is being shot, and in what context, and at what target.
So, everyone—plenty of people are pro-gun.
That's fine.
Pro-Second Amendment.
Nobody would describe themselves as pro-shooting, because that's different.
Depends on where you are and what you're doing.
There are plenty of times when someone who is pro-gun would be anti-shooting.
They say, no, this is not a good time to shoot the gun.
Because it's contextual.
Choices are the same way.
Nobody thinks that every choice is a good choice.
No one is in favor of all choices.
No one thinks that we should have the right to make literally any choice we want.
And if that's not your position, then don't call yourself pro-choice, because there are plenty of circumstances where you would be against choice.
There are plenty of circumstances where you would say, no, a person shouldn't have that choice in this particular situation.
So you're not pro-choice.
Stop using the phrase.
It doesn't make any sense.
When someone says they are pro-choice, what they really mean is that they are pro one particular choice, which specifically in this case involves the direct killing of an innocent human being who also happens to be the child of the person making the choice.
So maybe that's the phrase we should use instead of pro-choice.
Is that a pro choice?
It's pro one particular choice, which specifically in this case involves a direct killing of an innocent human being who also happens to be the child of the person making the choice.
It's a little bit wordy, but at least it's honest.
So that's my guidance reminder.
I'll forward that over to NPR.
All right.
Let's see.
Quentin Tarantino.
Has a new movie coming out.
Tarantino is obviously a talented filmmaker.
I think he's a little bit overrated.
His last movie was awful, in my opinion.
And it's hard to make... His last movie was a Western called Hateful Eight.
It's hard to make a bad Western.
At least, it's hard to make a Western that I will think is bad.
I like to think I have relatively discerning taste when it comes to movies.
But with Westerns, I don't.
I like almost every Western.
If you just put some dudes on horses and have them shooting bad guys out in the desert somewhere, I'm all about it.
I like almost all of those movies.
And yeah, they almost always have the same sort of plot and everything, and I think it's great.
I could sit for 10 hours and just watch Western after Western.
My point is, Tarantino makes a Western, and somehow he manages to make not only a bad one, but one that's unwatchable, even for someone like me.
It was way too self-indulgent, among other problems.
But, anyway, he's got this film coming out called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and he was at a press conference after the film's debut, when a feminist who had been keeping track of the amount of time that women had been allowed to talk in the movie, or had been given lines of dialogue in this movie, she decided to stand up and take him to task.
Watch this.
Quentin, you have put Margot Robbie, a very talented actress, actor, in your film.
She was with Leonardo in Wolf of Wall Street, I, Tonya.
This is a person with a great deal of acting talent, and yet you haven't really given her many lines in the movie.
And I wondered, I guess that was a deliberate choice on your part, and I just wanted to know why that was, that we don't hear her actually speaking very much.
And Margot, I wanted you to also comment about being in the film in this part.
Well, I just reject your hypotheses.
I am like I said, like I said earlier, I I.
I always look to the character and what the character is supposed to serve to the story.
Now as I said, I'm not a huge Tarantino guy, but this is an unbelievably stupid criticism.
Especially against Tarantino.
Tarantino made a movie called Jackie Brown.
Where, which has a female lead character named Jackie Brown.
He made a two-volume action film with a female lead, Uma Thurman, Kill Bill.
Some of his most iconic characters have been females, so there are fewer females in this one?
Who cares?
Feminists are, you know, I was thinking about this, feminists really are like my kids.
In that they're constantly whining.
Well, constantly whining in general.
But especially constantly doing this comparison.
Where whining like, but why did you give him more cereal than me?
Look at all the cereal you gave him!
I want more cereal!
Now, that's... when you've got five-year-old twins like I do, you hear a lot of that kind of stuff.
And that's why I just... I have become less and less patient with feminists as a parent.
Because I already have to deal with exactly this kind of whining in my house.
I don't want to have to deal with it out in the world, too.
Or when I go online.
But it's the same kind of thing.
It's just constant comparing.
Oh, you gave him more than her!
That's not fair!
It's not fair!
No, that guy had 14 minutes of dialogue and she only had 11!
This isn't fair!
Jeez.
You whiny insufferable.
This is why people hate feminism.
And I think it's important for feminists to realize.
Now I'm not saying that we hate you.
I'm saying feminism.
The ism.
You need to understand that this is why people hate it.
I mean, people really hate feminism.
And there's not a lot of in-between.
It's either you are a feminist yourself, or you hate feminism.
Almost nobody has an in-between view of it.
And that's becoming more and more the case.
Because it seems like your entire goal in life is just to find examples where you can make yourself the victim and then complain about it.
And the problem is that all you can ever find in America are frivolous examples.
Except for the one or two really good examples of women being, or legitimate examples I should say, of women being victimized, even systematically victimized, but you don't say anything about those.
Where, for instance, women are told to shut up while men invade their bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams.
Okay, that is a systematic victimization of women.
That's a good thing to focus on.
Now, you got a point there, but you don't say anything about that.
Instead, you're focused on this.
All right, a couple other clips here.
Michael Avenatti was charged yesterday with defrauding Stormy Daniels.
He apparently stole a big chunk of her book advance.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now, the fact that somebody called Stormy Daniels was given hundreds of thousands of dollars in a book advance is a travesty unto itself.
But now Avenatti might be headed to prison for stealing some of it.
Avenatti, of course, for a number of reasons, has become a huge embarrassment to the left, to the Democrat Party, and especially to the media.
And I think it could be good at this juncture to remember how the media once hailed Avenatti as a savior of the Republic, literally.
Now, the Washington Free Beacon has gone to the trouble to compile this just to take a walk down memory lane of how the media treated Avenatti up until just a couple of months ago.
And this is gold.
Watch this.
He's Donald Trump's worst nightmare.
Michael Avenatti!
Joining us once again is Michael Avenatti.
Let's bring in Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti, thank you very much.
He's out there saving the country.
Don Meacham says he may be the savior of the republic.
You are something of a folk hero now.
I owe Michael Avenatti an apology.
I've been saying enough already, Michael.
I've seen you everywhere.
What do you have left to say?
I was wrong, brother.
You have a lot to say.
I am just dying to hear what you think.
These people all like you.
I'm the only person right here Donald Trump fears more than Robert Miller.
We think you guys are the tip of the spear that's going to take down Donald Trump.
Michael Avenatti's a beast.
Okay, that's true.
He's a beast.
He's a beast.
I hand it to her, and I hand it to Michael Avenatti.
But here's a bigger calling here, that being a lawyer is minimal compared to what he's doing.
No one has talked tougher directly to Donald Trump on TV than Michael Avenatti.
And Donald Trump is afraid to mention his name.
That's fascinating.
Donald Trump is terrified of Michael Avenatti.
He gives Trump a run for his money more than anybody else, Michael Avenatti.
An existential threat to the Trump presidency.
The Democrats could learn something for you.
You are messing with Trump a lot more than they are.
He has no doubt created sheer panic in Donald Trump's very fragile mind.
Michael Avenatti is laying down the law as guest co-host.
And is he really thinking about running for president?
One reason why I'm taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news.
You look at the field of Democrats right now and Avenatti's the one who stands out.
If they decide they value a fighter most, people would be foolish to underestimate Michael Avenatti.
I have always said that they need a fighter.
Look, I mean, we're going to continue to use the media.
I think we've used it with great success.
All of my sexual fantasies involve handcuffs.
Yeah, in some ways it's low-hanging fruit to point to examples of the media embarrassing itself, but that is pretty devastating when you see all of that.
And then when you consider, well, what is it about Avenatti that the media liked in the first place?
Why did they ever latch on to him?
And it goes back to their insane, delusional Trump hatred.
Where they just can't see past it, and Avenatti was anti-Trump, and so they figured they simply embraced him for that reason.
Speaking of insane, last clip I want to play for you.
Speaking of insane, delusional Trump hatred, Jeff Daniels was doing a news interview yesterday, and he is very concerned, to say the least, about what will happen if Trump is re-elected.
This is what he says.
After the election, I was surprised at some of the people.
You know, I said, can you believe this election?
They go, yeah, isn't it great?
And you're going, whoa, my wife's on Facebook, and these, oh, we got another Trumper, you know?
And it's just, you didn't see it coming.
Atticus goes through this.
I know these people.
They're good people.
There's, there's, there's, and there are reasons why.
And he's an apologist.
He's an enabler.
And I think there are people in the Midwest, between the coasts, who don't pretend, who don't know anything about, who don't care about this, who don't have time for this.
Who have to make a decision now.
You have to decide whether, like Atticus, you believe that there is still compassion, decency, civility, respect for others.
Do unto others.
Remember that?
Do unto others.
All that stuff you guys believe in, and you still voted not for Hillary or for Trump.
Where are you now?
Because your kids are looking up at you going, but he lies.
And I think there are a lot of people in the Midwest who are going, It might be enough for them.
We're going to find out if, you know, if the big gamble is to go all the way to November 2020, which I agree, and lose, it's the end of democracy.
It's the end of our democracy if Trump is re-elected.
Can I say that, and I say this to both sides, I know it's fruitless, I know there's no point because it's going to continue, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Can we just stop With every single election, people on both sides saying, if we lose, it's the end of democracy!
Every election in my lifetime, there have been people insisting that on both sides.
If we lose, it's the end of democracy, end of democracy.
No, this, no, seriously, no, no, no, no, I know I said it 50 times already.
This time though, seriously, hey, seriously guys, this time if we lose, it really is the end of democracy.
Oh, we lost and it wasn't the end of democracy.
Okay, but in this election?
No, no.
Last time that was different.
This one, though?
This is the end of democracy, if we lose.
Okay, it didn't end.
But no, no, no.
Hold on a second.
This time.
Really, guys.
This time it's the end.
It is the end this time.
The end!
And somehow people continually take this doomsaying seriously.
I don't get it.
No, I will say, If Trump wins, it will not be the end of democracy or the end of our country.
If Trump loses, it will not be the end of our country.
I think that there will be negative side effects.
Not even, side effects, not side effects.
There will be many negative effects, profound negative effects to having Democrats in charge of the White House.
And if they seize control of the entire government, you know, then I think a lot of bad things could happen.
That doesn't mean that the country is coming to an end.
It's possible to communicate your opposition to a political party or a political candidate and to talk about the bad things that might happen if this or that person wins without insisting that it's literally the apocalypse if they win.
It is possible to do that, and I think we should strive for that.
All right, let's see.
I said I had a bunch of emails I wanted to get through.
Before emails, one other thing I wanted to mention.
Because you see, tragedy struck in our home yesterday.
The dog ate one of my wife's fancy decorative pillows.
And now I've told you already about my wife's Pillow obsession and how she spends $90,000 a year on pillows.
She has a whole fleet of decorative pillows for each new season.
And I've told you about how our couch is covered in decorative pillows that you can't even sit on the couch without being sucked into the pillows and drowned.
I mean, we have lost... We had a house guest a few days ago who drowned in the pillows and unfortunately died.
And we can't even find him.
He's buried under the pillow somewhere.
So this is what happens with the pillows.
But just because we have so many pillows doesn't mean that any one particular pillow is expendable in my wife's mind.
Be clear about that.
So yesterday I knew it was bad news when I came downstairs, being the only human being at home, And I found the dogs standing triumphantly over a fancy pillow that he had just ripped to shreds.
I see these videos online sometimes of dogs doing something bad, and then the video, they look guilty, right?
And that's what's funny, it looks like they know what they did was wrong.
I've never seen a look of guilt on my dog's face.
There have been many circumstances where he should have guilt for what he's done, but no, he looks excited about it.
Defiant, every single time.
And now this dog does not know or appreciate just how often I cover for him.
If he eats a kid's toy or a kid's stuffed animal, which he does all the time, then what I'll do is I'll throw the thing away so the kids won't notice because everyone knows about little kids.
The thing about little kids is if they can have a toy and then forget about it, never play.
They could have a toy, forget about it, not play with it for three years, never see it again, they won't remember.
But if after three years, they stumble across it and it's broken, or they see their sibling playing with it, all of a sudden, now that toy is the most important thing in the world to them.
So I can avoid that just by... The dog destroys something.
I throw it away.
They never know.
The dog's probably eaten half of their toys.
Don't tell them.
They're not aware of it.
Nobody knows that but me.
It's a secret.
Not anymore.
I just throw all the stuff away.
I can't do that with my wife's stuff.
I tried, but I can't.
Because she'll know.
If she has 53 pillows laid out on the couch and she walks by the couch and there's only 52 on that couch, she's gonna stop and say, wait a second, why is there only 52 pillows on the couch?
What have you done with the 53rd pillow?
Where's the 53rd pillow?
That's the way it goes.
So, I knew that wouldn't work, so I did the only thing that... The only other alternative was for me to run away.
And what I did was I just left the house.
Because my wife wasn't home yet.
I left the house and I just left the door.
I said, this is for you.
You gotta deal with this, buddy.
This is on you.
And I left the house.
The reason why I did that is because I'm a coward.
But number two, because...
This is what happens, and this is really the serious thing I wanted to discuss.
This is what happens with men.
In any house where there's a woman, a man, and a dog, what ends up happening, it's a mystery, it's mysterious, and I'm hoping maybe a female viewer or listener can explain this to me.
What happens is that whatever the dog does, the man gets blamed for it.
I don't understand why, but that's the way it works.
So I could be upstairs, and my wife would storm in and say, you know, the dog just pooped on the rug.
How could you let this happen?
I'd say, what, me?
I didn't do it.
I didn't conspire with the dog and tell him, hey, buddy, you know what would be really funny?
Go poop on the rug.
Yeah, go do it.
Go do it.
Poop.
Poop.
I admit that if I could get him to poop on command on the rug, I'd probably have him do it every once in a while, just because it's funny.
But I can't, so it's not my fault.
Yet it happens.
I'm not the only household.
This is a thing where men get blamed for what dogs do.
I don't understand it.
It gets even weirder when you consider that we have a cat also, and the cat is not nearly as annoying or destructive, but sometimes she can be.
And if she does something, like vomits on the rug, I don't get blamed for that.
So it's not just pets, it's specifically the dog.
There is this link, somehow, where we become avatars of each other.
I don't get it.
But that's the way it works.
Maybe someone can clear that up for me.
Alright, I'm taking a few days off, so I'll be back on Wednesday.
And I wanted to get through as many of these emails as I can.
Before I go, so let's go.
This is from Amy says, Hi Matt.
I wonder if you could address an issue that came up for me recently.
Last month I was on a business trip out of town and I found out I was experiencing an ectopic pregnancy.
The baby had implanted into the fallopian tube instead of the uterus and had already died as a result.
I had to have emergency surgery that night to stop the extensive bleeding.
I'm grateful to be alive, but devastated to lose my baby.
After trying to get pregnant for five years.
In the past couple of weeks, I've had a couple people accuse me of having an abortion.
I'm Catholic and 100% pro-life.
I know this is wrong, but was shocked to hear that many people think of this as an abortion.
Note, my baby was already dead.
How could I abort him?
Would you address this issue and educate your larger audience?
Hi, Amy.
First of all, I'm sorry for your loss and everything that you went through, which is traumatic, and I'm just sorry to hear about that.
The people accusing you of having an abortion are not only wrong, but they are horrifically inappropriate jerks who I hope you will ignore henceforward.
I don't know who these people were.
If you can, I would probably cut those people out of my life, saying something like that, at a time like that.
Not that there's ever an appropriate time.
But I can't even wrap my head around it.
Again, I don't know who those people were.
If there are people close to you, then that's just terrible.
So, first of all, if you're bleeding internally, then yes, you need to have a surgery because you'll die if you don't.
No sane pro-lifer thinks that a woman should just go down with the ship, as it were, and die for the sake of a pregnancy that cannot possibly go to term.
That's crazy.
We should treasure all life, including our own.
And a woman should value her own life also.
That's the whole point that we're making as pro-lifers.
It's not that a woman's life means nothing.
No.
All life is infinitely valuable, including the woman's life.
So we shouldn't throw our lives away for nothing.
Choosing to bleed out during an ectopic pregnancy makes no sense, and it would be a suicidal decision in my view.
And obviously, I mean, you did nothing wrong at all, clearly.
It sounds to me like you had a DNC procedure, which, yes, is how they perform abortions in the first trimester.
It's also what they do in the case of miscarriages, some miscarriages, if the material from the pregnancy, for lack of a better term, is still inside the mother.
In that case, they'll do a DNC to avoid infections or any other terrible result.
It's not an abortion.
No one is being killed in this procedure.
This is, in that case, a legitimate medical procedure.
So again, those people are wrong.
They're idiots.
They're horribly inappropriate.
And I hope you will ignore them.
And I'm sorry again for everything you went through.
This from Erica says, thank you for your show.
I noticed a few days ago that during your whole show you were out of focus, but your bookshelf in the back was in focus.
Was that some kind of artistic choice?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's go with that.
It was a, it was an artistic choice.
I was trying to make a point about how Something.
I was making some kind of artistic point.
I'll let you figure out what the point was.
But the main point is that it was not that I'm a massive, massive idiot.
That was not the reason for that.
It was something else.
From Graham says, Hi Matt, what do you have against vegans?
Short and sweet question.
I wouldn't say I have anything against vegans.
Vegans can be vegans if they want.
I have no problem with that.
I just think, number one, arguably it's immoral to not eat steak.
Arguably.
I think you could make that argument.
I'm not saying I make that argument, but you could make the argument.
I have had steaks that were so good that I think I had a moral duty to eat them.
And if you're offered a steak that good, I think maybe you're obligated to say yes.
Possibly, okay?
Maybe, perhaps slightly more convincingly, I just think the vegan ethic is a little incoherent.
Because it seems to me that if we are superior to animals, if we have authority over them, if we take precedence over them, which is what I believe, Then obviously it is justifiable to consume them.
We shouldn't kill them for no reason, we shouldn't abuse them, but it can be justified to eat them.
All right, but if we're not superior, if we are equal to animals, if we're no better than them, which is what I think many vegans seem to believe, then we can't be expected to act any differently, right?
And we have just as much a right to eat meat as they do.
Animals eat meat.
Why can't we?
If we're just like them, and vegans like to say, well, we're animals too.
Okay, well, what do animals do?
Look at how animals treat each other.
Why should we be held to a higher standard?
It seems to me that if you're holding us to a higher standard, then you're saying that we're superior.
But if we're superior, then I think that goes back around to, we can eat steak.
So either way, it leads back to eating steak.
Um, this is from Christian, says, oh great bearded one, I believe I know why everyone was so upset about the ending of Game of Thrones, and that is that the writers gave the Iron Throne to the wrong person.
Every viewer in their heart of hearts knows that in fact Matt Walsh has the only just claim to any throne under heaven, fictional or not.
And the people are disgusted that these writers had the audacity to deny your basic right.
We all await the day when you rise to power and bring justice upon these foolish writers.
On another note, I know that you have said that you do not find Pascal's wager to be a convincing argument for faith because anyone convinced to believe by it will almost certainly lack sincerity.
However, I believe that this argument would better be suited for abortion.
If we're wrong, we have inconvenienced people by our pro-life laws and efforts.
But if they are wrong, they have participated in the largest ongoing genocide.
I don't think this is our best argument, but it might be effective on someone who remains unconvinced of our position.
I'd love to hear what you think and keep up the good work.
First of all, You may think you can avoid the executioner by flattering me, and you're right.
So, well done.
As for Pascal's wager related to abortion, I think that's an excellent point, actually.
Yeah, when it comes to faith itself, I don't think Pascal's wager is a good argument, and I don't think it will get you there.
But I do think that that sort of approach does make sense in other contexts.
Um, so it's kind of like, okay, so I, so, so even if we don't know whether the being in the womb is a person or not, even though we do know, but let's say we don't, doesn't it make sense to treat it like it is?
If pro-lifers are wrong, then as you said, we've, we have, we have, what have we done if we're wrong?
We have accidentally treated a non-person with more respect than it was due.
Okay?
That's, we've accidentally given too much respect to this entity.
But if pro-abortion people are wrong, then we have murdered 60 million people.
Which is the more horrifying possibility?
So, yeah, if you're on the fence, it seems like wouldn't you err on the side of not killing people?
Yeah, I've made a similar argument about the idea that the unborn child is a potential person.
There are some people who say it's not a person, it's a potential person.
And my point is similar that, okay, let's say that it is a potential person.
Let's say it's not a person, it's a potential person.
Again, that's not the case.
It is a person, but for the sake of argument.
But then why does it follow—how does it follow—that we can then kill the potential person?
Would you not treat—why wouldn't you treat—a potential person as an extraordinarily valuable thing?
It's a potential person, for goodness sakes!
Think about that.
The analogy I've used, which doesn't work completely, but it almost works, doesn't match up completely, a little bit of a crude analogy, but the analogy I've used is a lottery ticket.
Imagine that you had a $50 million winning lottery ticket, you're on your way to cash it at the lottery office, And you've got it in your hand, waving it around.
Not a smart move, but let's say you do.
The thing you have in your hand is just the potential for $50 million.
It is not itself literally, physically $50 million.
It is the potential of $50 million.
In a literal sense, all it is, is a receipt.
But if I ran up and stole that receipt from you and destroyed it, you would react as though I had just destroyed $50 million.
And I could not make you feel any better by saying, no, that wasn't $50 million, it was just the potential of $50 million.
It was just a thing that was about to become $50 million, but it was not yet a $50 million itself.
Well, in that situation, you would see no distinction.
Your response would be, yeah, okay, but it's basically the same.
It's not exactly the same, but for all intents and purposes, you just destroyed 50 million dollars.
I was about to have 50 million dollars, now I don't, because of you.
That's the point.
This potential person was about to be a person, now it's not going to be, because we killed it.
So, even if I accept that argument, it still doesn't get you to, yes, let's kill it.
This is from Travis, says, Matt, I agree with you that the age limit to buy tobacco or to drink legally should not be raised.
However, I do disagree with you on the idea that grown adults no longer view drinking as cool.
From my experience, many adults in today's society are simply older versions of their younger selves.
Their social media posts are filled with pictures of their current drink.
Their conversations are routinely centered around how they wish they currently had a drink.
Many of their weekend plans are also heavily centered around drinking excessively.
Perhaps I have this perception because I'm someone who doesn't drink alcohol, so therefore finds the emphasis on alcohol by today's society to be misplaced, but I tend to think the infatuation with alcohol continues into adulthood and is not experienced slowly or solely by young or underage drinkers.
My perception doesn't apply to all adults who consume alcohol.
You yourself are an example of this.
However, I believe too many adults look to alcohol as an escape from the responsibilities of their life.
Yeah, I think you're definitely correct.
Lots of people have an unhealthy Relationship with lots of different kinds of substances, substances, alcohol included.
But my point, I guess, is that 16 year olds drink.
If a 16 year old is going to drink, he is going to do it almost entirely because it's cool and he wants to fit in.
That's almost definitely going to be the reason with our current situation in society and the laws being how they are.
If he's going to drink, that's going to be the reason, right?
He doesn't enjoy the taste.
It's not like about relaxing with a drink at the end of a hard day.
That's not what it is.
It's just he wants to, it's cool and he wants to do it.
And part of the reason why it's so cool in the 16-year-old's mind is because it's forbidden.
With adults, I think there are a lot of unhealthy reasons to drink, and plenty of adults exhibit those reasons.
Or drink for those reasons, you're right.
I don't think there are very many grown adults.
And yeah, I think that's a... When we talk about grown adults, that's almost an age we have to raise.
When we say grown adults, we should be talking about 18+, but really I'm talking about, like, 25+.
If even that young.
And people like that, I think there are a few of them that do it because it's cool and they want to brag about it.
Because as a grown man, I mean, if you go around bragging, 16-year-olds will brag.
They'll talk about, oh man, I had a beer last night.
Let me tell you about the beers I had.
Grown adults aren't going to do that as much because you would just seem like a loser for doing it.
It would defeat the purpose.
And so I think That's the dynamic that we want to try to address.
We want teenagers to learn healthy and responsible drinking habits.
And we want to reduce the peer pressure.
And I think we also want to reduce kind of the cool factor a little bit.
And I think you can accomplish all of those things, not completely, but you could help to accomplish all those things by lowering the drinking age.
Letting people do it younger, learn from adults.
If they start to see it, as I've been talking about this, I've heard from people in other countries, as I mentioned before.
Where you go to Italy or whatever, and it's not uncommon that you'll have a family dinner, you're sitting down for dinner, you have a glass of wine, and you have 14-year-olds that are just having a little bit of wine with dinner.
It's a normal thing, not a big deal.
And so I think someone like that, they're going to be less likely to see it as this, oh, it's this cool, mysterious, forbidden thing.
Because for them, it's just normal.
And so I think that's where we want to get as a society, but instead we're headed in the opposite direction.
All right.
This is from Jake says, majestically bearded dictator.
I've heard the argument among Christian conservatives that perhaps we should take the libertarian view of marriage.
While my instinct was initially to say that we should work toward keeping marriage legally defined the same way it is biblically defined, I'm starting to think that's not an option anymore.
So it seems the argument is growing to abolish marriage in the legal world altogether.
Ben Shapiro essentially made this argument a couple weeks ago.
What are your thoughts on this?
Is this too much of a compromise for Christians or is this the right way to go?
What are some implications I might not be thinking of?
I'm slowly becoming convinced it's the best way to go because then at least government doesn't have the say.
In what it thinks marriage is, so it can't demand that marriage is between a person and any other person, thing or things.
At the same time, I'm afraid it would encourage further sexual immorality if people take advantage of the abolition of legal marriage.
The particular argument that you're talking about that Ben proposed, I'm not sure what it was, so I can't speak to that.
But from my perspective, I think marriage is the foundation of human civilization.
It is what it is.
It serves a certain purpose.
It has a certain function.
It is essentially procreative.
It is the fountain from which the family springs.
I don't think we can ever give up on it, or on the definition of it, or on defending it.
We give up on marriage, we give up on civilization.
That's how I see it.
All right, we'll do one more.
This is from... I don't think I got the name here.
I was wondering what your personal chili recipe was, because my wife's, or my high school orchestra's picnic is this weekend, and seeing as how you seem to be a master at all things chili, I thought I might learn something from the master himself, and wow everyone there.
Well, I can't give you my recipe, because it's a state secret, but a few tips.
Basic tips if you're doing chili.
Use no beans or minimal beans.
I can't believe I'm even going to say this, but I think if you are making chili for a mass audience, especially for chili novices, For the kinds of people who will be disturbed by the lack of beans in the chili because they don't understand what real chili is, and will be so distracted by it that they can't even enjoy this masterful creation that you have given to them out of the kindness of your heart, then in that case, throw a few beans into the pot, just so they'll shut up.
So, minimal beans.
Number two, the only things you should use to make the base or broth For your chili, if you need to add liquid to the chili, there are only two things you should ever use.
Beer and beef broth.
Those are the only two.
Never water, never tomato juice.
Tomatoes, I cannot stress this enough, there is no reason for tomatoes to make an appearance in your chili.
It is not a tomato soup.
It's not about tomatoes.
Number three, season, season, season.
Just tons of seasoning.
There's an epidemic in this country of people under-seasoning their food.
Whatever, just put the amount of seasoning that you think is appropriate, and then do three times that.
And then finally, the last tip I would say is remember that beef is the star of the show.
Again, it's not about tomatoes.
It's not about beans.
It's not about peppers and onions.
And I think there's nothing wrong with putting peppers and onions in the chili.
But this is about the beef.
And everything should be in service to the beef.
Everything should bring the mind and the heart and the soul back to the beef while enjoying it.
So always remember that.
We will end on that inspirational note.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
I'll talk to you next week.
Godspeed.
Hey, everybody, I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are saying that the last season of American Democracy is not as good as some of the others.
When the show opened, we had characters like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington expounding brilliant ideas and living lives of admirable courage and virtue.
