Ep. 346 - The Democrats' Money Laundering Operation
Planned Parenthood plans to spend 50 million dollars to get Democrats elected. Planned Parenthood has exposed itself once again as a money laundering operation for Democrats. So why didn't Republicans defund it when they had the chance? Also, explosive new allegations against Matt Lauer, but is there reason to be skeptical? And we'll check in on the latest stupid conspiracy theory concocted by people on the internet. Date: 10-10-2019
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I just saw this article in The Atlantic, it was published this week, written by Annie Lowry, and it has the title, Cancel Billionaires.
And it's a call, well, it's calling to cancel billionaires.
Get rid of billionaires is the exact phrase used in the article.
I'm not sure if we're talking about get rid of rich people like French Revolution style or get rid of them just by stealing their money or maybe a little bit of both.
But the point is there shouldn't be any billionaires.
That's the point.
Billionaires are a policy failure.
That's the way the left often puts it these days.
I just have one question when I read this kind of stuff.
I'm taking Annie Lowry, for example.
Do you think that if I offered her a billion dollars, she would turn it down?
If she had a long-lost rich uncle who died and was going to bequeath a billion dollars to her, or even a million, do you think she'd turn it down?
All of these people who whine about the rich, would any of them turn down a billion dollars?
Or a million dollars?
Or any money?
I'm guessing probably 0.0% of them would.
Why?
Well, because the main thing they hate about rich people is that they personally are not one.
So every time you hear someone going on about the rich, realize that what they're really saying, how you could really translate it, what they're really saying is, I am upset that I am not rich.
That's my issue.
It is a, the whining about the rich is very thinly veiled envy.
It is envy dressed up to look like moral righteousness, and that's really all it is, and we should always keep that in mind.
Alright, much to discuss this afternoon.
Planned Parenthood has announced that it's going to spend $45 million dollars, speaking of millions of dollars, Planned Parenthood has announced it's going to spend $45 million dollars to help the Democrats win the election.
That's an interesting plan for a tax-funded company, so we're going to talk about that.
Also, Matt Lauer is the subject of a brutal rape allegation, but I think there may be reason to possibly be skeptical.
We'll discuss it.
There's also a conspiracy theory percolating right now around the story of, you know, the police officer
who was convicted of murder for walking into someone else's apartment and shooting them,
claimed it was an intruder.
She thought it was an intruder.
She was in the wrong apartment, whatever.
Well, there's a conspiracy theory now around that whole story.
And we're gonna take a look at that also and more.
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All right, reading now from The Hill, Planned Parenthood's Super PAC announced a $45 million electoral campaign on Wednesday to defeat President Trump and Republicans in key Senate races.
The investment will fund a, quote, large-scale grassroots organization and canvas digital television, radio, and mail programs.
Kelly Robinson, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Votes, in an interview with The Hill, said, The stakes are higher than ever, and we're going out more powerfully than ever, with the largest investment we've ever made.
The campaign will focus on Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Those states are must-wins for Trump, but Republican senators are also fighting to keep their seats in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, in races that will determine which party controls the Senate after 2020.
The campaign, which could exceed $45 million, will tell voters there is a coordinated attack among Republicans and state legislators, and so on and so forth.
Robinson said, we know we're going to have a critical role mobilizing those folks to win back the Senate and expand the path to 270 to win back the presidency.
Win back the presidency.
Notice the language used there.
Planned Parenthood wants to win back the presidency.
Because they know that, well, how is Planned Parenthood going to win the presidency?
Well, because they know that if the Democrats have the presidency, then they have it, because they own the Democrat Party.
But this is very interesting.
Forty-five million dollars on an explicitly political campaign.
Forty-five million dollars to elect Democrats.
That's what they're trying to do, and they're open about it, right?
And that would be fine, because I think if companies want to do that, they can, except for the fact that this is a tax-funded organization.
They get $500 million a year from the taxpayers, and now they want to turn around and take that money that was taken from the taxpayers and spend it to advance a political agenda that will specifically help Democrats.
Now, it's a great deal for Democrats, as Planned Parenthood is nothing more than really a slush fund for them.
Well, a Democrat slush fund that also kills babies, which the Democrats are fans of also, that is, killing babies.
They're obviously big fans of that.
It's their favorite thing in the world, killing babies.
But this arrangement is a great deal if you can get it.
Again, they take money from taxpayers, give it to Planned Parenthood, And then Planned Parenthood turns around and gives the money back to them through campaign contributions and attack ads against their opponents and so on.
It is essentially money laundering.
Planned Parenthood is like the car wash in Breaking Bad.
Money laundering operation, except instead of washing cars, it kills babies.
Now, let's remember all of the hand-wringing that goes on whenever the possibility of defunding Planned Parenthood is brought up.
In fact, I found this online.
Here's a video that Planned Parenthood put out a few months ago talking about the danger of defunding them and all the bad things that will happen if we do.
Watch this.
Planned Parenthood provides care for patients across the country, no matter their zip code, their income, their race, their immigration status, their sexual orientation or gender identity.
No matter what.
In Washington, some politicians are trying to defund Planned Parenthood.
But what does that really mean?
Millions of people come to Planned Parenthood for health care services like birth control, STD tests, cancer screenings, and sex education.
Actually, can we stop there for just one second?
proudly provides safe and legal abortion, a medical procedure federal health programs won't pay for
except in extremely rare circumstances.
The care that patients get at Planned Parenthood prevents an estimated 579,000 unintended pregnancies
each year and saves lives through early detection of cancer.
Actually, can we stop there for just one second?
Because I just noticed this.
And let's freeze frame right here because how symbolically appropriate is this?
This is great.
Notice how the women in this graphic, they have no eyes.
They have no ears, no eyes, no nose.
They just have a mouth.
That's all they have.
Isn't that kind of interesting?
Because that really is how Planned Parenthood wants women to be when they come in.
That's how Planned Parenthood sees women.
That is how they want women to essentially act when they come in.
They want women to be blind, kept in the dark, not able to see clearly, don't look at the ultrasound, don't look at your other options, don't look at the literature that the pro-life people out front tried to hand you on your way in.
Don't look at any of that stuff.
Keep your eyes closed.
We'll lead you back in this back room here and we'll kill your baby.
Don't look at anything else.
They want their women to be eyeless, blind.
And so that is some stunning symbolism in that graphic.
Anyway, continue.
So when politicians talk about defunding Planned Parenthood, they're not talking about striking a line in the federal budget.
They're talking about blocking millions of women, men, and young people from getting essential and life-saving care.
Here's what their plan would cost Americans.
An estimated 1 in 5 women in America have been to a Planned Parenthood in their lifetime.
Nearly half of all Planned Parenthood patients are people of color.
For many people, Planned Parenthood is the only place they can get care in their community.
In fact, more than half of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural or underserved communities.
Defunding Planned Parenthood would be disastrous for our nation's health, and the people who would be hurt most would be those already struggling to get by.
Blocking women from life-saving care.
Defunding would be disastrous for women's health.
Think of all the poor women who will not have access to health care because of this.
This is what they tell us.
That's the argument.
That's what they say.
And yet they've got 45 million bucks to throw around on political campaigns.
So they tell us, if you stop giving us money, women will die.
And they also tell us, hey, we've got 45 million dollars to go and burn on campaign ads.
There seems to be a contradiction here.
In fact, it was just last year.
There was a very small sort of partial defunding of Planned Parenthood that happened, where the company was deprived of about, I think, $50 million.
I think it was $50 million.
$50 million of tax money isn't going to Planned Parenthood anymore.
Now, they're still getting about $500 million, so that $50 million is nothing.
It's a drop in the bucket.
But they told us, That even taking that $50 million away is disastrous and it's going to kill women.
So you take away $50 million, they won't be able to function without the $50 million, yet they have $50 million that they're going to spend on campaign ads.
So it would again appear to be a contradiction, and this is the thing, even if Planned Parenthood ...didn't murder 300,000 children a year.
It would still be an outrage to give them tax money considering how politically active they are.
Now, of course, if they didn't murder babies, they wouldn't need to be politically active because their political activism is all about protecting their bottom line and because they're worried that they'll be stopped from killing babies and making all the money they make off of that.
But if they didn't kill babies to begin with, then they wouldn't need to be politically active.
But putting all that aside, It is obviously corruption, blatant, naked corruption, for a tax-funded institution to donate to political causes.
And all I'll say is this, if you are okay with this, then I don't, and it doesn't matter how you feel about abortion, if you're okay with this, A company that gets $500 million a year in tax money, turning around and donating millions to political campaigns.
If you're fine with that, then I don't want to hear you whining about the influence of money in politics, or corporate greed, or corporate corruption, or anything else.
Because this is the number one example of all of that.
Of course, we should note that Republicans had a chance to cut off this pipeline and to put an end to this Democrat money laundering operation.
They had a chance to do it.
They could have done it.
They, for two years, they had the presidency, and they had the House and the Senate, and they could have done it, and they didn't, because the Republican Party is filled, of course, with idiots and cowards.
All right, well, moving on.
I hate to have to call this out, but You know, the hippies are at it again, out in the street protesting the climate.
And as you know, I love playing these videos for you.
Nothing better than hippie videos as far as I'm concerned.
But this one, this one really upset me.
Watch this.
Yeah.
All I'm going to say is is is look if you're going to copy my morning workout routine at least give me credit.
You damned plagiarists.
That's all.
Okay, so there's this book coming out, a book by Ronan Farrow, the guy who broke the Weinstein story and has broken a bunch of the Me Too stories, and he's got a book coming out.
And it talks about that story, but it also contains new allegations, including an explosive one about Matt Lauer.
We know that Matt Lauer got fired from NBC for... It was never clear exactly what he did.
It was just sort of inappropriate conduct and he was kind of a creep and that sort of thing.
But the book...
goes into details about what exactly Matt Lauer actually did, and that includes rape.
The allegation is from Brooke Nevels, a former employee of NBC.
Now, she had an affair with Matt Lauer, which I guess we knew about that, and both her and Lauer admit that there was a long-term, months-long relationship between the two, sexual relationship.
But Nevels says now, in the book, That at the beginning of the relationship, I guess I believe there was their first sexual encounter was a violent rape.
She says that they were at a hotel because they were covering the Olympics.
And she came up to Lauer's hotel room.
She was invited to Lauer's hotel room.
She came and apparently Matt Lauer answered the door in his underwear.
He was wearing boxers and she came in and then she says he forced himself on her and raped her.
It seems most people have taken this allegation, as people tend to do these days, they've taken this allegation and the others in Pharaoh's book as gospel, as fact, unquestioned.
There you go.
And maybe it is a fact.
I'm, you know, I'm certainly no Matt Lauer fan.
I didn't like the guy even before any of this stuff.
I always thought he was a creep.
He always came off to me as creepy, even before any of this.
When he got caught up in the Me Too thing, I was not surprised in the least.
I was very much expecting that.
That's always been my impression of him.
But that doesn't mean he's a rapist, of course.
He could be.
I don't know.
Maybe.
But I think there are two giant red flags here that we should point to.
We should point out that I think a lot of people are overlooking.
The first red flag, and this is a big one, Doesn't mean in and of itself that the allegation is false, but when a rape allegation is used to sell a book, that to me is reason for skepticism.
When, just in general.
In fact, forget about a rape allegation.
Anytime an explosive detail, or rumor, or gossip, or anything like that, anytime there's a juicy little tidbit about damaging, damning about someone, and it's put in a book, and it's used to promote the book, then that's a reason to be skeptical.
It doesn't mean it's not true, it's just you have to ask yourself, if this actually happened, is this the way that we'd be hearing about it?
Does it make sense that this detail has been sort of saved up to be used in a promotional way to sell a book?
You have to ask yourself that.
So at the very least, this is a very cynical thing.
In my mind.
The fact that Ronan Farrow is using this, if it did happen, using a rape to... Because this is going to sell a lot of books.
The book would have been a bestseller anyway, but now a lot of people are going to hear about this because it's in the news, and it's impossible to believe that that wasn't part of the calculation.
And so at the very least, we have something cynical.
Doesn't mean it's not true, but it's a reason to be skeptical.
And then the second red flag, as far as I can tell, is that Is that she admits that she continued the relationship with Matt Lauer after the alleged rape took place.
Which, again, maybe that's how it happened.
I can't say it didn't happen that way.
But it does seem strange, if you were brutally raped by someone, that you would then continue in a sexual relationship with them for months, consensually.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Seems strange.
So I think there's reason for skepticism.
And this shows again why the believe women slogan is flawed.
Or a slogan like this, the National Women's Law Center put out a tweet after the Lauer News broke, probably mainly in reference to it.
And here's the tweet.
Now, first of all, this thing on Twitter where people repeat a phrase over and over as if that makes it more convincing, I'm not a fan of that personally.
I don't think anyone's gonna read a statement and go, hmm, well, I'm not really sure about that, and then see that it's been repeated nine times and say, oh, okay, well, I mean, if they repeated it nine times, it must be correct.
But the point is that listen to survivors, as is being insisted here, is a bad motto.
It's a bad approach.
Because the whole point is, we don't know if somebody is a survivor just because they say they are.
We have to look first at the evidence to determine if someone is a survivor, and then if it seems like they are, then yeah, we listen.
But that's the whole question.
What this slogan really means to say, what it really seems to mean is, assume all accusers are survivors, and then listen to them.
Or, assume all women who call themselves survivors are, in fact, survivors.
And that is a very, very bad precedent.
A precedent that, in fact, undermines our entire judicial system.
Our entire approach to criminal justice is contradicted by, destroyed by, this believe women nonsense.
This is one of the fundamental principles of our judicial system is that, no, you don't just believe someone because they accuse another person.
The fact that an accusation is made is not in and of itself conclusive evidence that the accused thing actually happened.
Obviously.
So, no, we don't believe women.
We don't believe men.
We look at evidence and we believe credible allegations.
That's what we believe.
Doesn't matter if it's a woman making it or a man making it.
It makes no difference.
The fact that a woman is the one making the allegation, that doesn't make it more credible.
It doesn't make it less credible.
It's just, it's an allegation.
You have to look at it.
Maybe there's more evidence for this Matt Lauer thing.
I don't know.
But what we have now, as far as I can tell, is an accusation in a book Used to sell a book, and that's what we have.
Not enough to assume that it's true.
Okay, I wanted to talk about this because it's just, it's a really good example of how conspiracy theories develop and why conspiracy theories are almost always BS.
So you remember the trial of Amber Geiger.
She was the Dallas cop who shot and killed a man in his apartment, says that she was
confused about, she went to the wrong apartment, thought it was her apartment. There was a
guy in there, thought it was an intruder, shot and killed him. And now she's going to
prison for 10 years. She was convicted of murder, which by the way, I totally agree that she needs
to go to prison for that.
I thought the murder, I'm I'm a little surprised that she was convicted on the murder charge.
I thought it'd be more of a manslaughter thing because I don't think anyone thinks that this was premeditated, like she went in because she really just wanted to kill the guy.
I think her story about how she was in the wrong apartment, thought it was hers, probably is true.
But the fact that she killed someone, the fact that an innocent man is dead, and even if you didn't do it on purpose, you still have to pay the price for that.
That's what I would think usually would be manslaughter, but in any case.
So she's going to prison.
Joshua Brown is a man who lived in the same apartment complex.
He testified against Geiger at the trial.
And his testimony is part of what sent her to jail.
Although, I would imagine that even without his testimony, she'd probably still be going to jail.
Because the fact is, there's no denying it.
She didn't even deny it.
She did walk into this guy's apartment and kill him.
So, in some ways, you know, it's...
Even without the testimony, you'd think she's probably still going to jail.
But then it just so happens that after the trial, after the conviction, a few days later, Brown ended up dead in what police say is a botched drug deal.
Now, botched drug deals happen all the time.
There's nothing unusual about that.
People are killed in botched drug deals, unfortunately, all the time.
Nothing unusual about that either.
The only unusual thing is that, coincidentally, this guy had just testified against a police officer in a high-profile case.
That's what made it unusual.
So, the conspiracy theories start, with a lot of people on the internet and even some people in the media speculating that he was killed by police because he was a witness, and now they're coming up with this story to cover it up.
Some people are being coy about it, saying, well, I don't know what happened, but the official story seems to be a little fishy, I don't know.
And then you have, for example, stuff like this, this article in The Root titled, Nobody is buying Dallas PD's BS story about Joshua Brown's death.
And then the article basically comes out and just flat out accuses the Dallas Police Department of killing Joshua Brown.
The article says, when news broke that Brown was gunned down in the parking lot of his apartment complex as he exited his vehicle, many speculated that he had been snuffed out by the police or by the order of police.
He did, after all, testify against a cop and participated in a trial that ultimately sent her to prison.
And then it goes on to essentially endorse that view.
This is just a perfect example, as I said, of how conspiracy theories work.
There is no evidence.
At all.
None.
That police killed this man.
No evidence.
What you have here is a coincidence.
A guy testified, he was in the news for that, and now he's dead.
That's a coincidence.
Now, just because a coincidence has happened, that doesn't mean that you get to concoct this whole story around it.
You know, and never mind if the story makes no sense.
Brown already testified.
Geiger is already convicted.
So if you're gonna kill a guy to stop him from testifying, you'd probably do it before he testifies.
And before the person has already been convicted, I would think.
You know, if you're gonna testify against the mob in some trial, They're going to kill you beforehand so that you don't testify.
Once you've already testified and the testimony is out there, it's a done deal.
It's over.
So then maybe you say, well, it could have been vengeance.
Maybe it was revenge against this guy.
Which again, even though that makes no sense, there's no evidence, there's no reason to speculate that.
That is just a story you came up with in your head.
That's all.
That's all that is.
But the story also doesn't make sense because, again, if the Dallas PD, if there is this murderous cabal within the Dallas Police Department, and they are willing to and capable of murdering a guy and covering it up, like is being alleged here, Then again, they would have done it before he testified.
They wouldn't have waited until afterwards.
That's not how these things work.
The fact that this man was able to get up there and give his testimony unmolested, then that's a pretty good indication that there isn't any murderous conspiracy going on to kill off the witnesses.
And besides, why would they even do that?
Geiger killed an innocent man.
Nobody disputes the fact that she did.
She doesn't even dispute it.
The Dallas Police Department, they weren't coming out and going out of their way to defend her.
Why do they care if she goes to jail?
You think they really care?
If anything, they probably hate her more than everyone else does, because on top of the fact that she killed a guy, she also brought all this bad PR to the Dallas Police Department, so it doesn't even make any sense on that level.
Um, it's just, it's utterly, completely, totally ridiculous, but this is how conspiracy theories work, where you don't need evidence, you don't even need a story that makes sense, because we don't have either of those things in this case.
All you need is a coincidence.
And that's how, that's where most conspiracy theories come from.
You need some kind of You need two events to sort of coincide that will allow you to come in and construct an entire mythology around it.
That's all you need.
Or you don't even need a coincidence.
You just need something somewhat unusual.
You need an unusual thing to occur, and then you're off to the races, because you can go in and make up your story.
It's, of course, a totally illogical, illegitimate way to operate, but this is what people do.
And it's not exclusive to the right.
It's not exclusive to the left.
This is just something in human nature.
It's a flaw that we all have, where we tend to do this.
All right.
Let's go to emails, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Ben, says, hi Matt, I don't know enough people in my daily life who have seen the Joker movie, so I've decided to take my opinions to email in the hopes that someone else will either agree with me or tell me how wrong I am about my perspective.
This will be a slight spoiler, but you can read ahead and decide if you think there's enough to actually constitute a spoiler in here.
However, I'll try to be vague.
One of the things that struck me, so spoiler alert, Okay.
One of the things that struck me while watching the movie, and most of why I believe the left-leaning media have tried to get out ahead of the film with their scathing reviews, is that the villains in the movie are clearly leftists.
The character of the Joker himself is not political, he says as much himself, but his followers, the people who are inspired by him, are overtly leftist.
They carried signs that said, resist and wealthy equals fascist.
And watching the movie, it was almost impossible for me to ignore the connection to groups like Antifa and those who provide them cover in the media.
It's easy to think the movie inspires violence when you actually agree with many of the things the villains in the movie are fighting for.
If you think wealthy people are fascists and you regularly cover for groups like Antifa, then of course the Joker and those who support him seem like the protagonists.
On the other hand, if you watch the movie with a clear moral lens, you can see that the violence is depicted tragically, not celebrated.
I've heard this point before.
That's an interesting take on why the media was so against this movie and still is.
I guess what you're saying is, for those of us who are not Antifa apologists, it's easy for us to watch this and tell that this violence is not being condoned or promoted.
These are the bad guys, obviously.
But if you naturally sympathize with that side of things, then to you it's going to seem like encouragement.
So yeah, I guess there might be something to that.
Although I tend to think that the media's narrative about the Joker and their obsession with it was also somewhat random.
It just kind of naturally developed at first, where they came up with this narrative, and it was getting a lot of clicks, and so they just ran with it.
I think that's the main thing.
Joker was a movie a lot of people were interested in, a pop culture phenomenon, and the media came up with a narrative that was getting the clicks, and they went with it.
I think that's probably the main explanation.
This is from QB, says, Hi Matt, on Twitter you said, the newest Walsh has finally joined us, when my daughter was born.
I believe that premises matter a lot when it comes to politics, obviously the premise I have a problem with is the premise that babies are only valuable after birth.
Your daughter was already with you before birth, so I wanted to ask if pro-life people should stop using this kind of language and, like I do, refuse to celebrate birthdays.
I think all of this glamorizing of birth only feeds into the devaluing of pre-born babies.
What do you think?
There's a logic to your point.
I've heard this from other people.
I think refusing to celebrate birthdays probably takes it further than you need to.
I think what you call the glamorizing of birth, I think that only tends to highlight, to underline the significance of human life and how beautiful.
To talk about how amazing and miraculous and beautiful the birth of a new child is, I think that helps the pro-life cause.
I don't think it undermines it at all.
However, you're right.
The ways that we talk about a new child, or even what I did.
A lot of us do this.
When my wife was pregnant, I would say something like, I've got three kids and another on the way.
When really, no, I've got four kids.
It's just one happens to be located inside my wife's womb at the moment.
And I think you're right.
And I became more... Now, obviously, when I say that, and when any pro-lifer says it, we don't mean it literally.
We do obviously recognize that our child exists now and is a person, is a human, and all of that.
It's just a kind of a figure of speech.
It's a colloquialism.
But with this pregnancy, I did become more aware of that because I think you're right, that we should be careful with our language.
We don't have to be hypersensitive about it.
But the language does matter.
Especially when it comes to something like abortion.
Because for the left, their entire position revolves around, depends on, the manipulation of language.
Which makes it important for us to be cognizant of that.
Which, I guess, I tried to be with this pregnancy.
I obviously didn't quite totally succeed.
All right, let's go to Christine says, Hi Matt, have you ever heard of the trolley problem?
Here's how Wikipedia summarizes the dilemma.
You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied up or otherwise incapacitated people lying on the main track.
You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch.
If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track and the five people on the main track will be saved.
However, there is a single person lying on the side track.
You have two options.
One, do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
Two, pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Which is the more ethical option?
Or more simply, what is the right thing to do?
So Matt, what say you?
First of all, thank you for this email.
I love these hypothetical moral dilemmas.
I find them very fun to talk about.
And I have heard of the trolley problem before.
This one's kind of an easy one, I think.
And I think most people intuitively just kind of get it.
And first of all, so at the end of this hypothetical, there's the question, which is the more ethical option, or more simply, what is the right thing to do?
I think those two questions conflate.
That's not a legitimate conflation there, because those are actually two separate questions.
And the real question, the right question is, what is the more ethical option?
Because as for the second question, what's the right thing to do?
I think that insinuates that one of the options is the wrong thing to do, would be morally wrong.
And I think in a situation like this, whether you pull the lever or you don't, in either case, I don't think you've committed a moral wrong.
But I do think that there is a better ethical option, and that would be to pull the lever.
And this is where the principle of double effect comes in.
And the principle of double effect says that you can commit a positive action, which is meant to bring about a positive result, even if you know that there is a likely side effect of that action, which will be negative.
So in this case, you pull the lever, That's a positive action.
You're trying to save the five people and that is the intended effect is to save the five people.
Unfortunately, the side effect is that probably the other guy on the other track is a goner.
That wasn't your intention.
That's not the direct result you're going for.
You're not intending to kill the person.
But that is probably going to be one of the things that happens as a result of the action.
But it's okay.
So that's the principle of double effect.
Now, it's not the same thing as ends justify the means.
So in fact, I was reading a book recently that talks about the trolley problem.
I can't remember the book.
But in the book, the author poses a wrinkle.
Ok, now imagine that, let's say, same situation, trolleys coming down, five people on one track, one on the other.
Or even, let's say, forget about the other track.
A trolley's coming down, you've got five people on the track, there's nowhere else for the trolley to go, there's no lever.
You're standing up on like a bridge or something, watching this happening.
You don't have a lever to pull, but you do have a very fat man standing next to you on the bridge.
So would it be okay to shove the fat man onto the track to stop the trolley, which would kill the fat man, but save the five people?
Now, I think we all recognize that in that case, no, you can't shove the guy onto the track.
And we all kind of intuitively recognize that, though when you think about it, it is a very fine distinction.
Because whether you're pulling the lever, where let's say the fat man's tied on the other track and you pull the lever and he dies, what really is the difference between pulling the lever and sending the train in his direction or just throwing him on the track to begin with?
Well, the distinction is You know, one is principle of double effect and one is ends justify the means.
Because in one case you are directly killing this guy by throwing him on the track.
And the side effect of that evil action of killing someone is that you save five other people.
That is ends justify the means and that doesn't work.
So, I hope I answered your question.
I think that's the answer.
But there is another interesting A thing here which is we all as I said intuitively recognize most of us I think would answer this question in the same way and we would say yeah you can pull the lever but no obviously you can't throw somebody on the track to save the five.
We all intuitively recognize that even if we can't exactly explain why We would say, most of us would say, yeah, of course you can't throw the fat guy, but yeah, you can pull the lever.
I think a lot of us probably can't, even if we don't know the phrase principle of double effect and justify the means, even if we can't go into detail explaining it, we all just instinctively recognize and we can sort through what is really a complicated ethical dilemma and we could just do it automatically.
Which is a really interesting thing, and I think that fact poses a serious problem for people who try to explain human morality on strictly evolutionary terms.
Because it's not just that we have, as some people would claim, evolved the ability for moral reasoning.
It's not just that.
It is that we have this capacity.
It's not even really reasoning.
We have this capacity to automatically recognize intuitively within ourselves the correct moral action without even working it out in our heads.
I think that is very difficult to explain on evolutionary terms.
But anyway, that's not what you asked, so I'll stop rambling.
Thanks for the question.
Thanks everybody for watching and listening.
Godspeed.
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