Ep. 277 - Burning The Flag Is Stupid And Grotesque. It's Also A Protected Form Of Speech.
Some republicans are trying to ban flag burning, again. But is flag burning a form of speech? Is it protected by the First Amendment? I think yes, obviously. We’ll talk about it. Also, we’ll look at a powerful yet heartbreaking video of an incident that happened outside of an abortion clinic. And finally, Taylor swift has a new song out. It’s incredibly boring and obnoxious at the same time. An impressive combination. Date: 06-17-2019
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Today on the Matt Wolf Show, some Republicans are trying to ban flag burning again.
But is burning the flag a form of speech?
Should it be protected free speech?
Is it covered by the First Amendment?
I say yes, obviously, on all three counts.
But we'll talk about it.
Also, we'll look at a very powerful yet heartbreaking video of an incident that transpired outside of an abortion clinic recently.
And finally, Taylor Swift has a new song out.
It's at once incredibly boring and obnoxious at the same time, which is an impressive combination that Taylor Swift has seemingly perfected.
So we'll take a look at that song today on The Matt Wall Show.
Okay, well, I hope you had a great weekend, great Father's Day to all the dads out there.
I don't mean to brag, but I have been awarded, it's no big deal, but as you can see the, and I don't know if you can read in the camera, it's the best dad bod trophy.
And I got two of them, so I'm a two-time champion.
You see, my wife took the twins out to the store to get me a, oh, they left the price tag on too.
Disappointing.
My wife took the twins out to the store to get me something for Father's Day, and they ended up in the aisle with all the souvenir trophies, and my kids really wanted to get me a Best Dad trophy, but they can't really read, so they chose a Best Dad Bod trophy, unknowingly, and my wife decided not to correct them.
Which I respect.
And so this is what I got.
Now, you know, kids are known to speak a lot of truth accidentally.
And so I think this is yet another example of that.
Although I did also, again, I mean, I'm just the most probably best.
I also have the best dad.
The best dad ever.
That's what that says.
So I'm the best dad ever.
I've got the best dad bod.
I mean, this is just something that I can put on my resume, I suppose.
All right.
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All right.
Let's talk about First, anyway, let's talk about flag burning.
Always a fun topic.
And it's been back in the news because some congressional Republicans introduced, yet again, a proposal which would ban flag burning.
Actually, it's a proposed constitutional amendment which would give Congress the authority to ban the burning of the flag.
And they have to do it that way because the Supreme Court has ruled several times that desecrating the flag is a form of protected speech.
And this isn't just liberal justices who have said this, by the way.
Scalia was of this opinion as well.
He did an interview, I think shortly before he died, and he said that burning the flag is stupid and offensive, but also, of course, it's free speech.
Still, some Republicans are taking another stab at making it illegal.
A stab which will fail because this is obviously just a publicity stunt.
It's not, you know, to get a constitutional amendment passed, you know, you need a two-thirds vote.
It's very difficult.
I mean, I don't think, with the way that The way things work now, and with how sort of divided everything is, you're not going to get two-thirds approval on anything, especially not a subject like this.
So this is a PR thing.
It's a PR move.
Some red meat for that section of the conservative base, which always seems to fall for red meat.
And there is that, you know, I don't know, I'd say maybe 20 to 25 percent of the conservative base, that they will just gobble up any red meat you throw at them with just Without discern—undiscerning.
President Trump, of course, not one to miss an opportunity to join in the red meat fest, also came out and endorsed this proposal.
Candace Owens went a step further.
She tweeted yesterday, this is what she said, if I were president, the punishment for burning the US flag
would be the renunciation of citizenship.
No jail time, no fine, simply one year to liquidate your assets
and get the hell out of our country.
In exchange, we'd extend citizenship to a hardworking legal immigrant.
Of course, there are many issues here with that idea, starting with the fact that the president
doesn't have the authority to just unilaterally remove your citizenship
because he doesn't like something that you did.
Uh, no.
Now, this is the kind of thing, if you listen to this show regularly, this is the kind of thing that I often threaten to do, to remove citizenship, ban people from the country, deport them, send them to the moon, execute them.
These are threats that I often dole out, but I say that I'm going to start doing these things when I become dictator, which I will eventually be dictator, because I realize that I need to be dictator in order to do stuff like that.
In order to run the country like a dictator, you really need to be one.
I guess some people think presidents can or should act the same way.
I tend to disagree.
So let's, because I do find this interesting, let's look at the arguments Presented in favor of banning flag-burning.
Now, Trump made no arguments, as usual.
He just called it a no-brainer.
So it's a no-brainer.
Okay.
Owens makes no argument, really.
She just says that you should get the hell out of the country.
Fine.
Okay.
That's a statement.
It's not an argument.
Representative Womack, one of the people behind the legislation, offered this Justification.
Our flag is more than a cloth painted red, white, and blue.
It is a symbol of worldwide freedom, unity, and liberty.
It has guided troops into battle, flown during our triumphs and challenges, and has placed over the caskets of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.
Generations have fought to defend our stars and stripes, and the American people have simply given too much for the flag to not have the ability to protect it.
Okay.
Our flag is a symbol of freedom, therefore if you desecrate it, you should go to jail.
Can you really not see the irony there?
You're going to jail for desecrating freedom!
If you don't respect freedom, you can go to jail, buddy!
I don't think I need to explain the self-contradictory nature of something like that.
Let's back up for a minute and go through this because I do think it's important.
We're dealing here with free speech, which is one of the essential foundational principles of our country.
And it kind of appalls me, frankly, to see so many conservatives who have no interest in conserving free speech.
I mean, if you don't want to conserve free speech, then what do you want to conserve?
Why do you call yourself a conservative?
What are you trying to conserve exactly?
Now I think that there are other things worth conserving as well as free speech, but when it comes to a list of things that we need to conserve in this country, I would think that free speech is definitely at least in the top five.
Arguably the number one, because if we don't have the ability to do that, then we can't really do anything else.
Whatever else we have on our agenda as conservatives, it kind of relies on us having the ability to make these arguments and fight for that cause.
If we don't have that, then we don't really have the rest of it.
So it's certainly a really important thing.
If we're going to throw that out, then I think we've cut ourselves off at the knees.
Now, it should go without saying that I personally do not support burning the flag.
This is not an argument about should we burn the flag or not.
If that was the argument, it would be like a 98 to 2 ratio here.
98% of probably all Americans, if not more, would say you shouldn't burn the flag.
And probably 99.9% of all Americans have never burned a flag and never will.
So I don't think we should burn the flag.
I don't support it.
I think it's a stupid thing to do.
I have never done it.
I would never do it.
I think it's gross and gratuitous and offensive.
So again, this is not a discussion about whether or not we should do it.
So if you respond to what I'm saying now by describing all of the reasons why it's offensive and horrible, You're missing the point, because I agree that it's offensive and horrible.
That's not what we're talking about.
But I think there are a lot of offensive and horrible things, ideas, that are said, or otherwise expressed, that I think should not be expressed, yet I still think are protected by the First Amendment.
So there are a whole lot of things that people say, or do, or ideas they express, where I would say, yeah, I don't think you should be saying that.
That doesn't mean that I think that there should be laws against it.
When I say should not do, I mean you should make the choice as a free American to not do or say that thing.
That doesn't always mean that I think you should go to jail or be fined or penalized legally for doing it.
Let's face it, we live in stupid times, so 90% of all speech these days is stupid, it seems, yet it's free because we live in a free country, and I'd like to keep it that way.
Is there a coherent argument in favor of banning flag burning in spite of the First Amendment?
I think it's possible to make an eloquent and emotionally compelling argument, but not necessarily an intellectually coherent one.
Justice Rehnquist, in one of the flag-burning cases, Offered a dissent.
He was in favor of banning flag burning.
This is part of what his dissent said.
Let me give an eloquent defense of that position, so I'm not just engaging in straw man here.
So he says, the American flag then, throughout more than 200 years of our history, has come to be the visible symbol embodying our nation.
It does not represent the views of any particular political party, and it does not represent any particular political philosophy.
The flag is not simply another idea or point of view competing for recognition in the marketplace of ideas.
Millions and millions of Americans regard it with an almost mystical reverence regardless of what sort of social, political, or philosophical beliefs they may have.
I cannot agree that the First Amendment invalidates the Act of Congress and the laws of 48 of 50 states which make criminal the public burning of the flag.
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All right, so Justice Rehnquist offers his reasons for banning the flag.
And, you know, it's eloquently stated.
But this again is just talking about what an important symbol the flag is.
Which I agree, it is an important symbol.
But what's the principle then here?
So we're saying you can't desecrate important symbols?
Well, how is that not an infringement on speech?
And how far does it go?
There are many important symbols out there.
There are some symbols that I think are quite a bit more important than the flag.
The cross, for example, I personally think is not only an important symbol, but in terms of symbols, it's the most important symbol on earth.
As I said, certainly more important than the flag, which the flag represents the United States of America.
America is a country that has not always existed and will not always exist.
500 years from now, it's a good chance America won't exist anymore.
Most countries don't last that long.
Whereas the cross endures for all time.
But can you desecrate those other symbols?
It seems that if you say, well, you could desecrate any symbol you want, just not the flag, your position is arbitrary.
It's not grounded in any principle at all.
The principle is just, you can't, you know, you can desecrate important symbols unless they're really, really important to me, in which case you can't.
So you could desecrate symbols, yes.
Important symbols, yes.
But really, really important symbols that I find very emotionally No, you can't desecrate those.
As I said, that's arbitrary.
But if we outlaw the desecration of all important symbols, then how can we be said to live in a country with free speech at all?
It just doesn't make sense.
These arguments, including the one made by Rehnquist, really boil down to this.
They say, I personally find burning the flag to be very upsetting and very offensive.
Which, again, I agree.
I do too.
But the whole point of the First Amendment is to protect that speech which is very upsetting and very offensive.
We don't need the First Amendment to protect non-offensive speech.
You know, you can engage in non-offensive speech in countries that... You can go to North Korea and engage in speech which is not Which is not considered offensive to North Koreans, or at least to the North Korean government.
Non-offensive speech is non-offensive.
What is supposed to set America apart is that here, all speech is protected, even the kinds of speech that would be banned almost anywhere else in the world.
One of the things that's supposed to set America apart is that you can come here and burn our flag, legally.
Now, that's not the...
That's not what makes America, that simple fact alone is not what makes America great.
But I think that is a really profound, you want to talk about a symbol.
That is a profound symbol of how much we cherish free speech.
That you can even do that.
And you're going to do that, people are going to shout at you, you're going to be shamed and shunned probably by society, rightly so.
Because that's the consequence of speech.
And just free speech does not mean speech that is free of consequence.
But you could do it legally.
Of course, while respecting laws against public burning in general, which those are there for safety, so you know, you can't, there are a lot of places where you can't go and just burn, you can't burn anything in a lot of, you gotta go to a place where public burning is allowed for safety reasons, but if you're in one of those places, then you can do it.
Let's consider this, what is it, That makes burning the flag so offensive.
Those who favor laws banning flag burning would say that by burning the flag, you are disrespecting the sacrifice made by our troops, you're showing disrespect and ingratitude to our country, and so on.
And again, I would agree with all of that.
That's all true.
That's what makes it offensive, and that's why I'd never do it.
What if someone just came out and said, okay, so if that's what makes burning the flag offensive, um, what if somebody just came out and said, uh, I hate our troops and I don't care about their sacrifice and I don't care that they died.
Um, our country is evil and terrible, et cetera.
What if someone just said all of that?
What if someone said all of those idiotic and repulsive things?
Should that be banned?
I mean, The whole reason you think flag burning should be banned is because it expresses those very ideas, right?
So what if those ideas are expressed without burning the flag?
If you say that they should be banned even in that case, even when they're just said, then you may as well argue for the First Amendment to be repealed because you clearly disagree with it.
But if you say, no, that shouldn't be banned, it's just if you say it by burning a flag, that's when it should be banned.
On what basis?
Can you justify that?
It seems, yet again, the word I keep going back to is arbitrary.
Is there some mystical quality to the flag itself?
Rehnquist talked about the mystical reverence that Americans have for the flag.
Well, I don't think we should have mystical reverence for the flag, frankly.
I think mystical reverence for a flag, you know, it's one thing to respect the flag, but to have mystical reverence for an object like a flag, I think comes dangerously close to idolatry.
It would seem that you are imbuing mystical properties to the flag itself if you think that burning a flag should be banned, but saying the ideas that burning the flag expresses should not be banned.
And there really isn't... Think about this for a second.
There is no precedent, really, that I can think of for a law like that.
You know, in...
Back in the Middle Ages, in Europe for instance, there were all kinds of laws against blasphemy.
So, if you were to take out a crucifix and stomp on it, you would face very harsh punishments for that, up to and including death.
If you were to not involve a crucifix and just say the ideas that stomping on a crucifix expresses, if you were to just blaspheme vocally or through the written word, you would also face very harsh punishments.
Because either way, the point is blasphemy is illegal, and so no matter how you do it, you're gonna be in trouble.
So the idea of, you know, and really the laws against burning the flag, they're kind of like anti-blasphemy laws.
It's sort of the same idea.
In fact, that's exactly what it is.
We're saying that this is a sacred symbol and if you, you know, it's not because, you're not, you know, if you do it in a safe environment and where public burning is, it's not, you know, no one's safety is in danger.
You're not physically hurting anybody.
It's not like slander or something where you're, you know, saying things that are untrue and causing damage to another person.
All we're saying is it's a sacred symbol and you are desecrating the sacred symbol and so that's why it's illegal.
It is like a blasphemy law, which is another thing that makes me uncomfortable because it gets dangerously close to idolatry.
Because that's the only comparison that I can come up with.
But it's a very weird blasphemy law because, as I said in any other case, blasphemy in any form is illegal.
The idea that it's only illegal when it involves this particular symbol just doesn't make any sense.
So if you're going to advocate for these laws, you may as well go all the way, be intellectually consistent and say, yeah, you know what?
I don't think you should even be allowed to go out and say that you don't respect our troops or that you hate America.
Um, so it doesn't make any sense.
Uh, now there are those last point I'll address here.
There are those who say that, uh, will say that burning a flag, is not speech, that it doesn't count as free speech because
it isn't speech. Well, now they'll say, well, speech must be spoken or written. It
must involve actual words.
Well, again, the Supreme Court has repeatedly disagreed with that,
with that claim, which is good because of speech only includes spoken and written words.
You've given the state a very wide censorship brush, and that makes me pretty uncomfortable.
But I don't believe that the people who make this argument really believe it themselves.
Because where they say, well, you know, if it is the flight, it's not speech with the flight,
it will be speech.
What if a local township were to pass an ordinance banning flying the flag?
And we have seen cases like this where they say, oh, you're not allowed to put a flag on your on your front porch because it messes with the, you know, the aesthetically, it just doesn't work with what the other houses are doing.
Well, in those cases, what you find, especially among people on the right, is that that's a violation of free speech.
If I want to fly a flag and express my love for the country, I should be able to do that.
And I would basically agree that it is a free speech issue.
So hold on a second.
Flying a flag is speech, but burning one isn't?
Of course it's... When you burn a flag, it is speech which expresses the exact opposite sentiment that flying one expresses.
That's the whole point of someone doing it.
Right?
And again, that's the whole reason people want to ban it.
Okay, if I burned a flag because I was disposing of it according to proper flag code regulations, which does stipulate that you should burn a flag respectfully, if it's old and tattered and all that, So, if I burned it in that context, you'd have no problem with it.
If I burned it because I'm protesting something the government's doing, you would have a problem with it.
Both are the same act, literally speaking, but you disagree with one because of the idea that it expresses, which proves conclusively that it is speech.
And so when you say that we should ban it, you are trying to restrict speech.
And you are trying to restrict it because you personally find it repulsive.
And that is obviously a very, very dangerous road to go down.
And, you know, when you want to talk about slippery slopes and all that, I can see a slippery slope with laws against banning the flag because of the effect it has on free speech.
Allowing it.
I don't really see the slippery slope.
You know, you're gonna have a couple of wackos every year who burn a flag.
Doesn't hurt anybody else.
All they're really doing is advertising that they're stupid wackos so the rest of us know it, which is great, actually.
It's good for us to know.
And then we all go on with our lives, you know.
There's no real slippery slope there.
But there is on the other end.
All right.
Let's see what else.
I wanted to...
I'm gonna play some, well, I don't really want to play it, but there is some very upsetting video that was, it's going viral online right now, but I'm gonna play it for you.
A Twitter user named Kay Fellows posted this video of something that happened, I assume outside of her local abortion clinic.
It is outside of an abortion clinic.
I don't know if it's her local one.
And it kind of speaks for itself.
So watch this.
Tell her to listen.
No, don't do it.
Oh my gosh.
It isn't right.
I'm such a good dad.
I know, honey.
I do care for her kids too.
And the guy that she's left back in her life doesn't even take care of his own kids.
Yeah, he raised every one of his kids.
No matter what happens, Tyler, you've done the right thing, man.
What you saw there, a man begging for his child's life as the mother goes to kill the child, that is not a unique
situation.
Now, it may be somewhat unique to have it play out that way dramatically at the clinic.
That's not something that you see every day.
But many, many men have been in this same situation.
They are the silent One of the silent victims of abortion.
Of course, the primary silent victim is the baby who is killed, but men are also victims of it in many cases.
Certainly not in all cases and probably not in the majority of cases, but in plenty of there are plenty of situations just like this.
And I mean think about Just trying to put yourself in that, and there are probably men watching this who have been in his shoes before, so I don't need to describe it to you, but to anyone else, you try to put yourself into that man's shoes, where you're going to lose your child, not because of any disease or illness, but because the mother is going to kill him, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
You know, you can't call the police because it's legal, You can't even go into the clinic because they won't let you in.
Um, and this is what abortion laws have created or situations like this.
The powerful thing about that video is that it just blows to pieces the whole idea of abortion being simply a woman's issue.
And of course, if you're a smart person, you've always known that that is total BS.
The idea that it's a women's issue.
No, it takes two people to create a child and every single child that has ever been killed through abortion, all 60 million of them have had fathers.
And those fathers either supported the abortion or pressured it or they were horrified by it and tried to stop it or whatever the case is, they all had fathers.
And those fathers are affected.
So it is not just a woman's issue.
No woman has ever gotten pregnant on her own.
That is, biologically, by definition, that child is as much the man's as it is the woman's.
Now, I know that if you go on Twitter and you look up that video, and you make the mistake of reading some of the comments, you're going to find Pro-abortion people supporting the woman and basically insulting this man and saying, oh, how dare he try to control a woman's body.
And that also just shows you, I mean, if you, I don't care where you stand on the abortion issue, when you see that video, if you feel anything other than pity and compassion and sadness for that man, Then your soul is just dead.
You are a cruel, inhuman person.
And what you find is that so many pro-abortion people, they're dead inside.
There's just nothing going on inside.
They don't have the ability to feel compassion for human beings.
And that's the effect that supporting abortion has after a while.
I bring up kind of often this comparison between pro-abortion people and if you think about The Nuremberg Trials.
If you've ever seen any footage of that or read any accounts of the Nuremberg Trials, of course, after World War II, the Nazi, high-ranking Nazis were tried, many of them executed for their horrific crimes against humanity.
But the Nuremberg Trials is, that's where the phrase, you know, the banality of evil comes from.
Because many people noted as they watched these Nazis up there describing what they did.
And it wasn't even like they were laughing maniacally while they described it or, you know, like they were comic book villains or something.
So there wasn't, there certainly wasn't remorse in their voice or guilt.
And it wasn't so much pride.
It was just like this, just nothing.
They just described it like as if they were describing a trip to the post office.
Sort of bored and casual and just, yeah, whatever.
Like that kind of attitude.
And that is someone whose soul has just died inside them.
That is an empty husk of a person.
And I think you find the same thing with abortion.
And it happens inevitably.
If you're going to spend your time defending the murder of 60 million people, there's just no way that you can retain your conscience while doing it.
Because your conscience is going to eat at you.
It won't allow you to do it.
So you kind of have to choose after a while between your pro-abortion convictions or your conscience.
You gotta make a choice.
It's mutually exclusive.
You can't have both.
And pro-abortion people have chosen the ideology, that position, over their conscience.
And that's how they could see a video like that and feel nothing for that man.
Nothing at all for him.
Except disgust.
Alright.
Let's see.
Last thing here, just to maybe lighten the mood a little bit.
Taylor Swift Uh, released a new single a couple of days ago and it's, it's, it's woke.
It's a very woke single, not woke enough.
Okay.
Apparently it's a pro gay song with a lot of pro gay lyrics.
Um, including one of the lyrics or just, just to give you an idea of the poetry in this song.
One of the lyrics is, um, why be mad when you can be glad, but except it's glad G L A A D the gay and lesbian Alliance against defamation.
So that's the, I think that's the lyric of the song.
It's a cliche, but it's also, isn't that literally the slogan for GLAAD?
Isn't that trash bags or something?
Or Ziploc baggies?
I don't know.
I think it's a slogan for that company as well.
But she put a lot of pro-gay stuff in there, in the song.
But liberals are still upset because it's not pro-gay enough.
It's just, I don't know.
Taylor Swift, she just, she can't win.
Taylor Swift had become kind of a meme that Taylor Swift would get criticized by liberals for not being political enough.
And now she's gotten political and it's still not good enough because you just can't win with these people.
But anyway, to me, the real headline of the song is not the political leanings of it, because I don't care about that.
It's just how aggressively bad This song is.
It's a song that smacks you upside the head with its awfulness and screams at you, I'm awful.
Don't take my word for it.
Here, take a listen to the song.
You are somebody that I don't know.
But you're taking shots at me like it's Patron.
And I'm just like, damn.
It's 7 a.m.
Say it in the street, that's a knockout.
But you say it in a tweet, that's a cop-out.
And I'm just like, hey.
Are you okay?
And I ain't trying to mess with your self-expression.
But I've learned a lesson that stressing and obsessing about somebody else is no fun.
Okay.
Stop.
Okay, stop. Stop. Here's the thing about that song and so many others.
It sounds exactly like a million other songs.
It sounds completely derivative and indistinguishable from everything else on the radio.
Yet at the same time, amazingly, it's also uniquely bad.
So with each new pop song that you hear, you're bored to tears by it.
Because on the rare occasion, when I'm flipping through the radio, which I rarely do, but as I'm driving, And I stumble across a pop song.
It becomes a danger to my health because it puts me to sleep.
Within five seconds, my eyes are getting droopy.
It's just so boring.
I've heard this so many times.
It's exact.
Just the musical accompaniment, the melody, just everything about it.
We've heard it a billion times.
We've heard this.
So it's like that because it's so unoriginal, yet you're also nauseated because it sounds like the worst thing you've ever heard, yet you've heard it 40 billion times before.
So it's just really weird.
You hear a song like that, you're falling asleep, you're bored, you're also nauseous, So it's almost like you want to fall asleep and vomit at the same time, which is also really dangerous, by the way, because then you could, you know, that's not a good situation.
It's strange in that way to be both boring and horrifyingly awful at the same time is sort of impressive.
By the way, speaking of things sounding the same, how many songs is Taylor Swift going to make Where she just tells off the haters.
Because that's what this song is about, right?
She's telling off the haters.
You need to calm down, haters.
But that's the only subject she writes about.
I feel like I haven't followed Taylor Swift's career that closely.
But I think, what, back in 2006 or 2007, she would make these country songs, old love songs and stuff, and that was fine.
But then eventually, she made this transition, and for the last 10 years, every single song she comes out with is just about the haters.
She's just going after the haters, telling off the haters.
Taylor, listen.
The haters are told off.
You've done it.
Okay?
Mission accomplished.
Maybe find another subject.
I feel like you've explored the subject of haters as much as is possible.
You've made 150 songs over 10 years about the haters, and there's not much else to be said.
So maybe, I don't know, I just feel like there are other subjects out there you could talk about.
This is Taylor Swift's way of writing songs these days.
It's just to find some cliche You know, slogan or phrase that people use when they're telling off haters, like shake it off or you need to calm down.
And and just to turn that into us, just take that phrase and put it in a hook.
And that's your song.
That's Taylor Swift's songwriting.
All right.
Has she made a song yet called I Just Can't Even or I Just Can't?
It seems like Taylor Swift needs to... Here's my prediction.
Taylor Swift's next song is going to be called I Can't Even.
And it's going to be exactly that song, except in the hook it'll be I Can't Even that she's singing.
That's my prediction.
I guarantee she's going to write that song one day, folks.
And it'll be a huge hit, and she'll sell 50 million albums.
Because people still buy albums somehow.
All right.
You know what?
We're going to leave it there.
Got a bunch of emails, but I think I'll save the emails for tomorrow, and I think we all need to take a break after that Taylor Swift song and recollect, you know, recuperate, collect ourselves, and we'll talk again tomorrow.
Godspeed.
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Harvard participates in the worst persecution of a student I've ever seen.
