Ep. 278 - When The Smear Merchants Win, We All Lose
A Conservative activist has his Harvard acceptance rescinded because of bad things he said privately to his friends two years ago. The dirt merchants who dug up dirt for political reasons win again. I'll explain why that’s a loss for all of us. Also, OJ Simpson joined Twitter and 700 thousand people followed him. What does that say about our culture? Finally, a trans poet is "rearranging the alphabet." It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. Date: 06-18-2019
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a conservative activist has his Harvard acceptance rescinded because of bad things he said to his friends privately two years ago.
The dirt merchants who dug up dirt on him for political reasons win again, and I'll explain why I think that's a loss for everybody.
Also, O.J.
Simpson has joined Twitter and 700,000 people are following him.
What does that say about our culture?
And finally, a trans poet is rearranging the alphabet.
It's as nonsensical as it sounds.
We'll talk about that today also on the Matt Walsh show.
Okay, well, I don't want to get too cheesy here to start with, but I do have to begin
by wishing a happy birthday to a very special person.
This is someone who I love deeply.
Someone who, I mean, they're going to be embarrassed by this, but honestly, someone who's just really smart and generous.
Funny, kind, extremely good-looking, maybe the best person in the world.
This is someone who means the world to me.
So happy birthday to me.
It's my birthday.
I turned 33 today.
It's no big deal.
I don't want you to think it's a big deal.
Don't even worry about it.
It's not like you guys have to send me presents and money or anything like that.
I wouldn't want that.
I mean, I'd take the presents and money if you send them to me.
I would take them, but don't feel like you have to do that.
It's really no big deal.
It's just a birthday, so forget I said anything.
But you know, it is my birthday.
That's all I'm saying.
That's all.
That's all I'm trying to tell you.
Okay, Harvard has rescinded its acceptance of a prominent gun rights activist, Kyle Cashew, and we're going to talk about that in just a minute, but first, I have to let you know that today's podcast is brought to you by Vincero watches.
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All right.
Um, as you, uh, may have heard yesterday, Parkland shooting survivor, gun rights advocate, Kyle cashews, Harvard, uh, Harvard admission has been rescinded.
You have been accepted into Harvard.
Now it's being taken away.
Twitter sent it to me in case you didn't know.
Over comments that he made privately to his friends when he was 16 years old.
And the comments in question, I'm not going to repeat them here because I can't.
Suffice it to say, if you haven't seen them, they are gross, stupid, racist.
But they were also the comments of a high school boy joking around with his buddies and trying to be as shocking and outrageous as possible.
It's pretty obvious to me, when you see the comments, that that's what they're doing.
Now, teenage boys are known to do that.
I don't mean to scandalize you if you weren't aware of this, but boys, especially at the age of 15 or 16, this is what they do.
They say the most outrageous and offensive things that they can think of to each other privately.
Now, he was not a public figure at the time, and he would have had no idea that a couple of years later he would be in the limelight due to a massacre at his school.
This was not, as a 16-year-old kid, that was not anywhere on his radar, any more than it would be on any of our radars.
Now, he has apologized for his comments, which were leaked to the media in a transparent effort to destroy him for his Second Amendment advocacy.
Um, and since taking on this new role as a gun rights champion, he hasn't said or done anything to demonstrate racism.
So when he says that he's changed and that he's not the same person that he was when he was 16, well, there's no evidence to dispute that claim because he hasn't done or said anything since we've known about him to indicate racism.
Also, we know that in between the age of 16 and right now, He did experience a traumatic event.
A school shooting is a traumatic event, and those kinds of events can have transformative effects on people.
So when he says, I've changed, in the meantime, there's nothing absurd or unbelievable about that.
In fact, it'd be kind of unbelievable if he hadn't changed, considering what he went through.
during the shooting.
But despite his efforts to repair whatever damage, the gross jokes he told to his friends,
you know, might have done to the people who were exposed to them two years later
because of a coordinated effort to destroy his reputation, whatever damage that might have done,
and despite his apology for that, he was still punished anyway,
I think this move by Harvard is craven, It's nakedly partisan.
Every sane person knows that Kyle's affiliation with the conservative movement weighed heavily against him.
Would his omission have been revoked had he been an anti-Second Amendment advocate, like his classmate David Hogg?
Well, we can't know that for sure, but we have reasons to be suspicious.
And the reason we have to be suspicious is that we know the rules are not applied equally.
So, one example people have been using, which I think is a good example, is you take the governor of Virginia.
Now, the governor of Virginia, he had college yearbook photos.
Which surfaced months ago, showing somebody in blackface and somebody in a KKK hood.
And he originally said, oh, now remember, the way he originally responded to that was he said he wasn't sure.
Like he wasn't sure which one, who, if he was in the picture or who he was.
Maybe he wore a Klan outfit, maybe he wore blackface.
He wasn't sure.
Now, me, I can say definitively that I have never worn a Klan outfit or black.
I can say that because I would remember doing that.
The fact that Northam couldn't remember would seem to indicate maybe that either he's lying or he dressed that way so often that he can't remember who he was in the picture.
But then later he denied it, but then he came out and said, okay, well I wasn't that guy But I did wear blackface at another point when I was dressing up like Michael Jackson for a talent show.
He said he smeared shoe polish on his face to look like Michael Jackson.
Yet, Northam is still governor.
Despite the fact that he engaged in racist behavior, and that he engaged in that racist behavior in his 20s when he was an adult, he's still the governor of Virginia.
If you want to miss the point, which a lot of people do these days, You could argue that, well, these two cases are unrelated.
The Harvard admissions office has nothing to do with the governorship of Virginia, right?
Governor, you know, it's not like the people at Harvard can revoke or rescind the governorship from Northam.
Also, governorships are a lot harder to revoke from someone than would be their acceptance to a college.
But that's not the point.
Harvard made its decision Because of the relentless pressure placed on it by leftists and the media.
Northam, on the other hand, survived his racism scandal because there was not that kind of pressure.
Now, in the first couple of days after the blackface photo came out, you did have Democrats issuing statements and condemning Northam and so on and so forth, but you notice that You know, within two or three days, they moved on, and they don't talk about it anymore.
The media doesn't bring it up.
They don't bring it up.
They don't talk about it.
Why is that?
Well, I think, number one, it's because he's a Democrat, but also, when the blackface photo scandal first started, and Democrats were issuing statements, well, they thought that, okay, we'll just get rid of this guy.
The lieutenant governor is also a Democrat, so we'll just get him in there.
Also, the Lieutenant Governor is a younger guy, he's a black guy.
We'd prefer him over Northam anyway.
So it was self-serving.
But then it comes out that the Lieutenant Governor is multiply accused and credibly accused of rape.
And then the third in command, the Attorney General, comes out and admits that he also dressed in blackface as a younger man.
So then Democrats start realizing, wait a second, if we get rid of Northam, Um, for blackface, well then we also gotta get rid of the Attorney General for blackface, and then we've got this Lieutenant Governor who's accused of rape, who knows where that's gonna go.
Fourth in command is a Republican, so, you know, we don't wanna, we're just gonna forget about it, we're gonna drop this and forget about it.
That's why they moved on.
Because they never cared about the blackface thing.
They never cared about the racism.
It was all self-serving.
And then they realized that it's not in their best interest, actually, to get rid of Northam.
The best thing is just to move on from this and pretend it never happened.
And that's what they've been doing.
So, it is selective outrage.
Of course.
Now, if we were interested In developing a more consistent approach to these kinds of controversies, which I know a lot of people are not interested in that, but if we were, I would suggest that we take a few things into consideration anytime we have one of these controversies or scandals where offensive stuff from someone's past comes up.
I think we should take a few things into consideration.
Number one, how old was the person when they did or said the offensive thing?
Number two, did they do or say the offensive thing publicly?
Number three, were they public figures when they did or said the offensive thing?
Kyle was 16.
He said, or wrote, actually, the things privately.
He was not a public figure.
All three of these factors, in my mind, would seem to call for grace and forgiveness.
Northam was an adult.
His behavior was not private.
He did it in a talent show, by his own admission.
But he wasn't a public figure at the time either, and it happened a long while ago.
So I can see an argument for letting Northam off the hook on this one.
But I can't see an argument for letting Northam off the hook while holding Kyle to account.
It seems that you only have the intellectual credibility to call for forgiveness for Northam if you also call for forgiveness for Kyle.
There's no reasonable argument that can make Kyle the bigger bad guy here.
You see, that's the problem.
Now, for another comparison, consider Samantha Bee and Roseanne, okay?
Bee called Ivanka Trump a feckless C-word on her show.
Roseanne compared Valerie Jarrett to the Planet of the Apes.
Both of these women are adults.
Both made their comments publicly, as adults, in front of millions of people.
Both were public figures at the time that they made their comments.
Both should have known better.
Both put their employers in a difficult position by their own choices.
So there's a reasonable argument in favor of firing both of them.
There is no reasonable argument in favor of firing Roseanne, but not Samantha Bee.
Yet again, that's exactly what happened.
Roseanne was punished.
Her career is destroyed.
Kicked off her show, which was the number one show on TV.
Samantha Bee is, even though nobody watches her show in the first place and nobody cares about her, she still didn't lose her job and her career is not destroyed.
If anything, she actually benefited from that and she has more credibility and street cred among leftists.
So why is that?
Well, of course, because B is a liberal.
Roseanne is actually liberal too, but she's considered a conservative by default because she likes Trump.
And that's all that matters in the end.
Really, that's all that matters.
But, you know, I think as I've thought more about this with Kyle, you know, I'm talking about his age and the fact that he wasn't a public figure, so on and so forth.
I think that is part of the point, but maybe that's not even the main point here.
Because I've been thinking over the last day, I know that the situation with Kyle having his acceptance revoked, it makes me very uncomfortable.
And I'm trying to put my finger on what exactly makes me so uncomfortable about it.
I've already mentioned a few of the things.
And I know any liberal who's watching will say, oh, it's only because he's a conservative.
That's why you're uncomfortable.
You wouldn't care if he was a liberal.
Well, that's just not true.
You know, I, I, Roseanne, as I said, I, when Roseanne was fired, I said, yeah, she probably deserved it.
Um, so I don't make these, I don't personally, I don't judge these things on a partisan basis.
I don't care about that.
I'm looking for a more consistent way to evaluate these kinds of cases.
So the thing aside from age and all of that, Because I agree that the age excuse
does seem on the surface kind of weak considering he was 16 at the time but he's 18 now so it's not like this was 25 it's not like he's 30 now and it was he was 16 at the time or 40 that was only two years ago um but the gap between 16 and 18 uh is actually very significant or can be it's much bigger than the gap between 33 and 31 between 16 and 18 because of in in that age you're just growing a lot you know You know, physiologically there are a lot of changes happening and so someone can have a transformative change between 16 and 18 whereas between 40 and 42 that's going to be a lot less likely because you're kind of stuck in your ways at that point.
But you're not at 16.
Especially when you undergo a traumatic experience in the middle of that.
But that's not really the point.
The point is this.
The sorts of people who dig up dirt against their political or personal rivals should not get their way.
The only reason we know about this with Kyle is because these private conversations were leaked, and they were leaked by, I guess, friends who don't like him anymore because of his political advocacy, and they were, and it was, it was, These messages were taken and amplified by dirt merchants in the media and others who again are trying to destroy Kyle because they don't like his politics.
And that to me is very relevant.
You know, I think the court of public opinion should in this regard operate a lot like a court of law.
Where we should treat ill-gotten evidence as inadmissible.
Now, I know it doesn't work that way because the court of public opinion is not a court of law, but I'm saying in this particular situation, I think it should.
If we only know about something because of a smear campaign against someone where private conversations are being leaked in order to destroy them, I think, again, I know it will never happen, but I think what we should do is say, you know what, I don't want to hear that.
We have no business hearing that.
That's why I never actually thought that Northam should resign for the blackface photo.
I thought he should resign for publicly advocating infanticide when he was an adult and governor.
Now, that's something that he did on the radio as a governor.
Now, that we can hold him accountable for.
But we should be very wary of dirt dug up from the past because when the target of a smear campaign is destroyed, It's the dirt merchants who win.
Not justice, not tolerance, not inclusivity.
Raw vengeance and opportunism.
That's what wins the day.
And I consider that a loss.
So when you think about Kyle having his Harvard acceptance revoked, who wins?
Well, the people who leaked this stuff and tried to destroy him.
They're the ones who win.
I don't see how that's a win for society or for our culture or for anyone, except for those people.
I think it's best for society when smear merchants and dirt merchants lose.
I think it would be best for society when the dirt merchants come with dirt and they say, oh, look at this dirt we dug up on this guy.
And the rest of us go, yeah, you know what?
I don't care.
That wasn't meant for our ears.
We weren't meant to see that.
And if you think that sounds unreasonable, well, how do you respond?
Or how should you respond?
And if you think that sounds unreasonable, well, how would you respond or how should you respond if a gossip comes up to you just on a personal level?
Let's say someone you know who's very gossipy comes up to you and says, hey, you're never going to believe, guess what I found out about so-and-so?
Guess what they said to someone else two years ago?
Listen to this.
I got some dirt on this, but you want to hear this?
Now, if you're someone who likes to engage in gossip, you might say, oh yeah, give me the dirt.
Let me hear this.
This sounds good.
But I think we all know that the proper response to that is to say, I don't want to hear it.
Don't tell me.
It's not relevant to me.
You have no business telling me that.
I'm not going to engage in gossip.
I don't want to hear it.
I think most of us know that's how we should respond to gossip is, I don't want to, even if it's true.
Gossip doesn't always mean that it's lies or it's not true.
It could be true.
But most of us understand, even if we don't follow through all the time, most of us understand that the way to respond to gossips is to shut them down and say, I don't want to hear it.
I'm not having this conversation.
And so I think on a public level, We should do basically the same thing and say, I don't want to hear that.
So that's what it comes down to for me, is I don't like the fact that we are emboldening people like this.
All right.
Here's something else.
Famous murderer O.J.
Simpson is out of jail now and on Twitter, if you didn't hear.
He sent out a tweet a few days ago announcing his arrival to the platform, and everyone responded with disgust.
Oh, people say, oh, this is so gross.
O.J.
Simpson is tweeting now.
He should be in prison.
This is disgusting.
You know, Twitter is a cesspool.
It's what everyone said.
But here we are, two or three days later, and it will come as no surprise that OJ is still tweeting, and he now tweets to 700,000 followers.
So, while everyone pretended to be disgusted by OJ on Twitter, 700,000 of those people decided to follow him.
And think about what following someone on Twitter means.
It means that every time you sign on to Twitter, you want to see what this person is saying.
Right?
You want to follow them around in cyberspace and hear everything they're saying.
Whatever thoughts happen to pop into their head, you want to hear it.
Whatever comes to their mind, you want to have immediate access to it.
You want those thoughts posted in your feed so that you can see them right away.
A shortcut.
And 700,000 people so far want that kind of access to OJ Simpson.
A man who at this point is, now he was a famous football player before this.
He was in Hollywood for a while.
But the only reason he's really famous now, when you hear O.J.
Simpson, first thing you're thinking is that he decapitated two people.
And that's what people wanted to follow this guy.
The only reason I bring this up, I just can't think of a better, and it kind of relates to what I was just talking about, really.
I can't think of a better encapsulation of our culture than this.
And, or everyone pretends, like, oh, I'm so outraged, OJ Simpson, I'm so outraged, this guy.
And then all these people go, it's like, yeah, but I'll follow him anyway.
You know, I mentioned this on Twitter a couple of days ago, and people told me, well, I follow him so that I can be up to speed, or I follow him so that I can see what crazy and stupid things he's tweeting.
And you see, that's exactly the problem.
First of all, why do you need to be up to speed on what OJ Simpson is saying?
We've got this culture now of people feeling like they need to be in the loop, no matter what the loop is, never stopping to think, is this a loop that I actually need to be in or want to be in?
How is my life going to be enriched by this?
How is this actually going to make my day better or my life better?
We've got this obsession with being informed without any care for the relevance or the quality or importance of that information.
That's one of the reasons why when people talk all the time about, oh, we need to be more informed, people aren't informed enough.
No, people are informed enough.
People are informed too much, probably.
We live in the most informed civilization ever in history, without a doubt.
I mean, people have access to Tons of information.
And people have tons of information bouncing around their heads.
The problem is that most of that information is useless and pointless.
And there's no reason why anyone needs to know it.
And the problem also is that we have information, we are informed, rather than being knowledgeable and smart.
Because there's a difference between having knowledge and having information.
And then people say, well, I want to see crazy and stupid stuff that he tweets.
Well, why though?
This is a very unhealthy impulse that we have.
And it seems to be an insatiable appetite that we have for this.
I want to see all the crazy and stupid stuff.
Do you really not already have enough crazy and stupid in your life?
Isn't there enough crazy and stupid out there?
You can turn on the TV anytime and see Crazy and Stupid.
You can go anywhere on the internet and see Crazy and Stupid.
You can walk outside of your house and see Crazy and Stupid.
You can maybe even look in the mirror, if you're me, and see Crazy and Stupid.
So you can see Crazy and Stupid anywhere.
Do you really need more of it?
But it really is an insatiable addiction we have.
It's like, oh, there's more.
Oh, more Crazy and Stupid.
I need more.
Yes, more, more, more!
We see another source of crazy and stupid and we've got to get our fix.
We just need to surround ourselves by it all the time.
Why is that?
I don't get it.
Well, I do kind of get it.
I think we want a lot of crazy and stupid in our life because number one, it's just distraction.
And it prevents us from having to think or contemplate anything.
And I think number two, it makes us feel better about ourselves.
It makes us feel smarter, it makes us feel more sane, more rational.
But that's the thing.
Is it really smart, sane, or rational to go seeking crazy and stupid stuff and immerse yourself in it?
No, you see, that is both crazy and stupid.
So in our efforts to make ourselves feel better for not being crazy and stupid, we have actually become crazy and stupid.
That's the moral of the story.
Um, sounds like a, an ASAPs fable or something like that.
Okay.
I have one more, uh, thing to mention here.
If I can, I'm just stalling for a minute as I, as I pull it up.
Okay, here we go.
So on the website, queert.com, That's the name of the website.
Not a website I check very often, but this certain article has been all over social media.
The headline of the article is, Trans Poet Joss Charles Rearranges the Alphabet to Survive Its Ferocity Against Her Body.
I feel like I should read that again because it might have been confusing.
Trans Poet Joss Charles Rearranges the alphabet to survive its ferocity against her body.
And then there's an article about this poet who is rearranging the alphabet.
I'll read a little bit of the article for you.
Speaking of crazy and stupid, you see all the topics now are just blending into each other.
This is pretty good what I'm doing.
I hope you appreciate it.
It says, Charles has reworked the structure of language to capture the trans experience, establishing her as one of the most promising poets of her generation.
Charles combines a deep understanding of poetic traditions with her own personal experience to create works that address gender and identity issues in a unique and moving way.
Her second volume of poetry, Field, the name of the poetry book is Field, that's F-E-E-L-D, Not felt, field, creates a language resembling Middle English to challenge our limited vocabulary to describe the trans experience.
In the process, Charles has won praise as one of the most important young poets today and the appropriate recognition.
Field was chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best poetry books of 2018.
Field challenges readers, and not just because of the language, it is at once lyrical and pointed.
Here's a couple of lines they give us from the poetry book.
Here's a line.
Did you know not a month goes by?
A tran I know doesn't die.
And that's U spelled with just the letter U. No spelled K-N-O.
A month spelled M-O-N-T-H-E.
And by spelled B-Y-E.
And then some more lyrics here.
GENDER IS NOT THE TRAN ORGAIN.
GENDER IS YES, A HEMORRAGUE.
Well, that doesn't mean anything.
That's literally just nonsense.
Gender spelled G-E-N-D-R-E.
Orgain spelled O-R-G-A-N-E.
I don't know what that word is.
It's just a made-up word.
Anyway, it goes on from there.
You know, this is, there's so much that can be said about this,
or maybe there's not much.
It's just utter nonsense.
But you see a few things happening here.
Number one, we see the continued disintegration of language, of poetry, of art, where something like this, this gimmicky, ridiculous, nonsensical garbage, is named, you know, one of the poetry or this person, one of the poets of the year, poetry of the year, whatever it was.
But you also find, here's what jumps out at me, is we can't lose sight of this.
It's the incredible arrogance of this person, of the left, especially of gay activists, trans activists, This person is saying, oh, you know what?
The regular language isn't good enough for me.
Regular language?
I mean, there are thousands of words in the English language.
It just doesn't capture my experience.
My experience is so transcendent and so beautiful and so deep and perplexing and wonderful that there's just no—I have to invent new words for it.
And even regular words that already exist, you know, it's beneath me to use those words.
I'm going to rearrange the letters.
That's for the plebes, you know.
That's for the peasants to use regular words.
I need new words.
That's really what's going on here.
It's just incredible arrogance that you find.
I'm so constrained by the alphabet.
You know, I have lived my whole—I've lived 32—well, now 33 years of life, because it is my birthday, by the way.
I don't know if I mentioned that.
I've lived 33 years of life, and I have been able to express everything I've wanted to express using the regular alphabet and regular words.
And just everyone I know has been able to do that.
Almost everyone in the world has been able to do that.
But not you, of course.
You need special words.
You need special words.
Because everything needs to be special for you, because you're so special.
All right.
Let's move on to some emails.
matwalshowatgmail.com, matwalshowatgmail.com.
This is from Peter, says, Matt, I think I caught you in an inconsistency.
You say that you think people have the right to burn the flag because it's free speech, but you've also previously said that you think pornography should be banned.
I know those two things are not the same, but how can you be a free speech advocate with one and not the other?
Yesterday it seemed like you were taking a free speech absolutist position, but your previous statements reveal that you are not a free speech absolutist.
How do you explain the contradiction?
Yeah, we talked yesterday about the burning the flag issue.
I said it's free speech.
I have said in the past that I think porn should be banned.
So that's a good point.
That's a good thing to bring up.
Did you catch me in a contradiction?
I don't think you did.
And let me explain the difference.
I think when deciding whether something is covered by free speech, we need to consider two things.
Number one, is the thing in question speech?
In order for it to be free speech, it has to actually be speech.
Is the primary point of the thing in question to convey a coherent message?
Right?
That's what speech is.
That, to me, is speech.
It is conveying a message.
That's speech.
So, if someone is arrested for, for instance, urinating in public, Well, they can't claim free speech because the primary point of urinating is not to convey a message.
You're not trying to get a message across when you urinate.
You're just doing it because you have to.
So that's not free speech.
It is speech, in my mind, even if it doesn't involve spoken or written words, if the people who witness it can see it and say, okay, yeah, I get the message.
So that's why I think burning the flag is speech, but we'll get to that in a second.
So then the second thing to take into consideration is, does the speech in question cause real active harm to other people?
So this is why slander is illegal, because yeah, slander is speech, it conveys a message, but the point of the speech is to cause direct and intentional harm to another person, and so that's why it's illegal.
Okay, now let's apply this.
Is burning a flag speech?
Yes, I think obviously it is.
We all know it is because that's exactly why people are against it.
You're against it because you hate the message that it sends.
This is what I was explaining yesterday.
Now, if you see someone burning a flag, it's not the simple act of burning a flag that you oppose, right?
Because you could burn a flag for good reasons.
You could be disposing of the flag.
That's a proper way to dispose of a flag.
So it's not the burning of the flag you have a problem with.
It's the message that's being sent.
That's what you have a problem with.
And that's what everyone says.
Everyone says, oh, you know, you're burning the flag.
It's a symbol of, you're showing ingratitude.
It's a disgrace to our country.
You're spitting all over the sacrifice that our troops made.
I agree that, yes, that's what it does.
But you get the message, right?
So it is conveying a message.
You clearly understand the message.
Now, I don't agree with the message.
It's a bad message.
It's a stupid message.
It's an offensive mess, but it is a message, so it is speech.
In the same way, on the opposite end, if someone flies a flag, we all understand the message they're sending.
They're saying, I love America, I'm proud to be an American.
We all get that.
We know that's the message.
We all understand that.
Burning the flag is the opposite message.
We all get that, too.
Is pornography speech?
I would say no.
What message is being conveyed by two people having sex?
If you watch a guy burn a flag for two seconds, you know exactly what he's trying to say.
If you see two people having sex, what are they saying?
What message are they trying to send you?
What ideas are they expressing?
Now, you might say that sexual relations, the couple, the people having sex are conveying a message to each other, but that's not pornography.
Pornography involves the third party witness, right?
So what message is being conveyed to that third party witness?
I would say there is no real message.
And if you say that porn is speech, then you also have to say that prostitution is speech.
But prostitution is illegal almost everywhere in the country, and most people agree, unless you're a hardcore libertarian, you agree that prostitution should be illegal.
Well, porn and prostitution are the exact same thing.
It's transactional sex, and it's sex for money, which is transactional sex.
That's what pornography is, that's what prostitution is.
The only difference between prostitution and pornography is that in pornography the prostitutes are being filmed.
So, I mean, if you film a prostitute, is it all of a sudden not prostitution anymore because you're filming it?
That's absurd, obviously.
It's prostitution because you're paying the person to have sex.
In pornography, these are people who are being paid to have sex, or even if they're not being directly paid, they're somehow probably gaining money from it, profiting from it somehow.
So, that's why I think it's not speech.
It's prostitution.
And prostitution is not speech, it's a transaction, and that's not necessarily the same thing.
Number two.
Harm.
What harm does burning a flag cause to any person?
Provided it's done safely, it doesn't start a forest fire, what harm is done?
If you see a person burning a flag, it makes you angry, you're upset by it, you oppose it, does it harm you?
I mean, are you really traumatized by it?
Be honest.
Like, you see a guy burning a flag, I know it really pisses you off, as well it should.
Alright, is it going to affect the rest of your—you'll be so traumatized by witnessing that that you can barely move on with your life?
No.
It doesn't traumatize people.
It doesn't scandalize the public.
It doesn't cause people to become anti-American.
In fact, if anything, it galvanizes people the opposite direction to defend America.
Whereas with pornography, I would argue that it absolutely does cause real harm, especially to kids.
Kids suffer real trauma from their exposure to pornography.
It causes real damage psychologically to people.
It has a real effect on your brain, which is lasting.
And that's to say nothing of the harm the porn industry does to those in it.
When you look at the suicide rate, the drug abuse rate, the STD rate within the porn world, you see that it causes a lot of harm to everybody involved.
And so that's why I think you could argue for banning pornography, but not flag burning.
All right, this is from Maggie says, Hi, my name is Maggie.
I'm an 18 year old from Wyoming.
I'm a new listener, and the first show of yours that I happened upon was one in which you claimed that adding sour cream to eggs was the best way to achieve the perfect breakfast.
I didn't believe this in the slightest, but after listening to a few more of your shows, I realized that I agree with you on almost everything else, decided that your culinary opinions may also be something that I agree with.
After trying it, I concede that you are the supreme leader in the kitchen as well.
Keep up the good work.
This is from Dallas.
Matt, I'm always looking for better recipes, so I tried your scrambled eggs recipe the other day that I heard on your show.
I don't know if you came up with that yourself or not, but I don't think I'll ever find a better plate of scrambled eggs than the glorious manna I just finished eating.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
If you have any more gems like that one, I'd love to hear them.
This is from Brian.
Salutations, future theocratic dictator, overlord of this realm and any other realm inhabitable by human beings.
I want to start this email out by saying that I have no culinary experience whatsoever.
I'm a notorious egg burner.
After listening to your podcast and your recipe for fluffy scrambled eggs, I decided to give it a shot.
I went to the grocery store, picked up butter, not milk, and sour cream.
I did everything according to your explanation and eureka!
Breakfast was served and it was amazing.
I managed to not burn the eggs and ruin Sunday breakfast as well.
My girlfriend and I started calling the recipe huevos a la Walsh.
Anyway, thank you again and keep up the amazing podcast.
Those are just, that's a small sample of the emails that I got extolling the virtues of my scrambled egg recipe, which I shared on the show a couple days ago.
And if you missed it, you have to go back and find it, but I really did.
I think I did change a lot of people's lives because so many people have been making scrambled eggs incorrectly and humiliating themselves and all of mankind by serving up burnt, crispy, disgusting flakes of eggs that they call scrambled eggs.
No fluffiness, no flavor.
So many people have been doing this, so I decided to finally share the proper scrambled eggs recipe.
And anyway, those are just some of the reviews.
That's all.
All right, let's do one more.
This is from Jasmine, says, Matt, since you're a Christian, I wanted to ask you a question that's been nagging me.
As you may know, in Acts 4.32-35, it says, Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own.
But they had all things in common, and with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
Nor was there anyone among them who lacked, for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles' feet, and they distributed to each as anyone had need.
Although I am a capitalist, I read this and see the redistribution of wealth in the early church.
Does this mean that the Bible advocates for socialism?
Jasmine, no, that doesn't mean that it's socialism, because notice one element at play.
Choice.
The early Christians chose to live that way.
This is not socialism.
That's the opposite of socialism.
Socialism is compelled by the state.
The state comes in, takes charge, takes what it wants, redistributes.
That's what socialism is all about.
What you find there are people who choose to live a certain way.
Personally, I'm a huge critic of socialism, but I think it's great when people share, when they help less fortunate, when they give to charity, when they live simple lives.
I'm a big fan of that.
But I just think people should choose that.
And so, that's free market.
It's free.
People are living how they want to live.
Doing what they want with their own money.
By the way, why doesn't the Bible call for a giant welfare state?
Well, I think for one thing, God knows that governments are corrupt, and so when you give them too much money and too much power, horrible things are going to happen, as we have seen play out with socialist governments over the last 100 years or so.
But even more importantly, what's the point of sharing?
What's the point of giving to the less fortunate?
What's the point of helping those in need?
Is the point to cure poverty?
Well, no.
Because Jesus said we're always going to have the poor with us.
In fact, he even encouraged people to be poor.
So, I don't think Jesus saw poverty as necessarily a problem that had to be solved.
Yet, he did tell us to give to the poor.
So, how do you square that?
Well, I think that the answer is love.
Right?
That's really the point.
When you stop on the street and you give some food to a homeless person, yeah, he gains a meal, okay, which is a very practical and necessary and good thing, something that he needs to live, but he also benefits from the act of love.
You are extending a hand.
You are lifting him up.
You are noticing him as a human being.
You are making him feel more human, and in turn, he makes you feel more human by accepting your charity graciously and with gratitude.
And I think that's the real point.
Love is the point.
The point is to love your fellow man, to let them know that they are loved, to build them up with love, and that's it.
And that is lost.
That's completely lost when the government does it.
Because nobody feels loved by the government.
Nobody is humanized by the government.
Nobody is lifted up by the government.
The opposite is true.
To the government, you're a number.
You're a figure.
You're a statistic.
So that's one of the reasons why people get stuck on welfare and never get off of it.
Because it's dehumanizing.
It's depressing.
It just makes you feel like a number.
They throw an EBT card at you.
They send you a check, whatever.
They don't care about you.
You're dealing with bureaucrats.
And bureaucracy doesn't care about you.
It doesn't look at you like a person.
It isn't concerned about you.
Yet, an individual person who chooses to help you, well, that is someone who's That is when you feel the love, as it were.
So I think that's the difference.
And we will leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
What Harvard did to pro-freedom activist Kyle Kashuv sucks, and if you make excuses for Harvard, you suck.
But then the truth is, Harvard isn't Harvard anymore, just like the New York Times isn't the Times and Disney isn't Disney.
These once great institutions are just the skins of their former selves being worn by an alien being named leftism.
