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Oct. 18, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
43:02
Ep. 352 - Maybe We Should Actually Build The Wall

Mexico has turned into a warzone. Now seems like a good time to build that wall. Also, a police officer is charged with murder after shooting an innocent woman in her own home. Why does this keep happening? And an article encourages women to live and die alone for the sake of destroying the patriarchy. Date: 10-18-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So Mexico has descended into total chaos.
I mean, Mexico, of course, has been in a state of chaos for decades now, but descended further, I suppose, is what I mean.
The catalyst for this recent wave of anarchy and violence was the Mexican government.
Capturing Ovidio Guzman Lopez, who is one of the most powerful drug lords in the country.
Also the son of El Chapo, who recently was arrested.
Well, arrested for the third or fourth time after escaping each time.
Now he's in federal prison in maximum, maximum security.
So, Mexican government They captured this guy in the northern Mexican city of Culiacán.
Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, but probably not.
Well, what led up to this?
Well, the immediate events leading up to this, anyway.
Apparently some drug gang guys started, from a house, started firing onto police in the city of Culiacán.
Police went into the house, they surrounded it.
They found Guzman there, and then they successfully captured him, which is a very impressive accomplishment that they've got, like I said, one of the most powerful drug lords in the country.
Well, because this is someone who, you know, wanted to stay in the family business, and so he's a drug lord as well.
But then the cartel retaliated, full force, and the city turned into a war zone.
And I'm going to play for you just a few of the sights and sounds out of Mexico over the last 24 hours to give you a feel of what it's been like.
So, here's, we'll start with this.
You can't see much, but you can hear it.
So, again, sounds like a war zone.
Listen to this.
There is a strong shooting in the sector of University Avenue and...
There is a shooting in the sector of University Avenue and...
A strong confrontation right now.
We don't know how many are dead.
There's a strong shootout right now.
There's a strong shootout right now.
And this video has been circulating a lot on social media.
you see gunmen patrolling the streets of the city as if they've taken over, which they basically have.
What do you want?
Are you armed?
What?
You want to see what they're doing?
What the fuck?
And then here's what it looked.
Here's what it looked like.
We say it was a war zone.
Here's what it looked like last night.
Okay now we get to the really sad, pitiful, terrifying part.
Which is that the government decided to release the drug lord.
They released him.
They arrested him, the cartel showed up, started shooting everybody, and the government said, okay, you can have him back, never mind.
And so the cartel wins.
This is the kind of thing that happens in a failed state, where you no longer have any real system of government.
It's just, it's a free-for-all, which is what it is.
The rule of law is completely broken down, and criminals are running the show, and that's the situation in Mexico has been for a long time.
It's only getting worse.
And that leads me to this.
Hey, maybe actually the wall is a good idea.
I don't know.
When you see video, that's why I wanted to play some of that footage for you.
When you see that footage and you think that's what's going on directly south of our border, that's what's happening in the country that is directly to the south of us, and you think, well, maybe building a wall on the southern border makes a lot of sense.
When you've got a crime-riddled, cartel-infested, failed state where gunmen patrol the streets with machine guns directly to the south of you, you build a wall.
It's not going to solve all the problems, but it makes sense to do that.
Might be a good plan.
It would be nice if we actually did it, because we haven't yet.
The wall has not been built.
We have... Trump has replaced...
Some of the existing fence with nicer fence.
So we've done that.
But that is not quite the big beautiful wall with the one nice beautiful door that we were promised.
I would like the big wall with the big door.
Or maybe no door at all, in fact, would be even better.
But we haven't gotten that yet.
There really is no argument against this.
What are the arguments against building the wall?
People have been arguing against it for years, and I don't know what the argument actually is.
Because there isn't one.
It's emotion.
The argument is emotion.
It's, well, it makes me feel weird to have a wall down there.
Makes me feel claustrophobic, kind of closed in.
That's not an argument.
And so we should just build a wall, in conclusion.
Alright, let's talk about this case.
Really sad, concerning case, especially considering the timing.
We have now another situation of a police officer shooting an innocent person in their own home.
We're all familiar with the Amber Giger case.
That's the Dallas cop who went into a man's apartment last year, shot him dead, said she thought it was her apartment, she was in the wrong apartment, and rather than try to figure out what's going on, Or think maybe I made a mistake, she just decided to shoot the guy.
Well now she's going to jail for 10 years.
Only a week or so, maybe two weeks, after that verdict and sentencing was passed down, we've got something eerily similar in the same general geographic area, though with a few key differences.
In this case, Officer Aaron Dean, Fort Worth officer, so like I said, very close to where the Dallas shooting happened.
He's shot and killed at Tatiana Jefferson in her home at 2 in the morning, a few days ago.
She was entirely innocent, did nothing wrong.
She was apparently in her house staying up late with her nephew playing video games.
Next thing you know, she's dead at the hands of a police officer, on the job.
In some ways this case is even worse than the Amber Guyger thing because this guy was on the job.
In some ways it makes it even worse.
Although I guess it's hard to rank it when you've got innocent people being gunned down by the government agents that are supposed to be protecting them.
It's hard to rank which is worse.
They're all terrible.
What led up to it?
Well, obviously there's going to be an investigation.
More facts will come out.
Dean was arrested, charged with murder, so there's going to be... We don't know everything yet, and all of these things are going to come out.
But we do know enough to say, I think, that Jefferson certainly did not deserve to be shot.
That's for damn sure.
We can say that much.
So what led up to it?
A neighbor of Jefferson noticed that her door had been left open and it was late at night.
So the neighbor was concerned.
He was just trying to be a good neighbor.
And think about how this, they did an interview with the neighbor and he was devastated and said he felt like it was his fault.
Partly his fault, which of course is not his fault at all.
He was being a good neighbor.
How was he supposed to know the police were going to show up and shoot the woman?
But he saw the door open, and he was a little bit concerned, so he called a non-emergency number, as I understand it, and said, hey, my neighbor's door's been left open.
She doesn't usually leave it open.
Not sure what's going on.
Can you send someone to check it out?
I'm paraphrasing, but that was the vibe.
That's generally what he said.
So Dean and his partner got the call.
They are told that it's an open structure, so it's an open structure call, which, and anyone with law enforcement experience right now, you can probably offer more of an insight into what an open structure call is, and so you can email me with that, I'd be interested.
But as I understand it, an open structure call is kind of a vague, Non-specific thing, but it does mean that it could be a burglary.
So open structure, as in there's a structure that someone left open, and who knows why.
Could be bad, could be neutral, who knows.
So, Dean and his partner show up.
They see the door open.
They see the lights on in the house.
Apparently they see, you know, toys and things around, because there's a kid there.
Rather than go up to the door, rather than announce themselves, maybe ring the doorbell, or shout into the door, hey, is everything okay in there?
Rather than doing anything like that, they sneak around back in a poorly lit part of the yard, and they try to peer through a window.
Now, Jefferson inside, try to put yourself in her shoes.
It's two o'clock in the morning, she's minding her own business.
She hears someone outside her house, in her yard, Uh, right near the window.
And so she gets scared, you know, understandably so.
And, uh, she pulls a gun out of her purse.
Um... Keep in mind, this is happening through a window.
Okay, so she's in her room.
Here's someone outside the window.
Window is, as I understand it, closed.
There's a glare.
Nobody can really see exactly what's happening, what's going on, which means that Jefferson's actions are totally warranted.
Again, she's in her house.
She knows that there's somebody in her yard.
She has every right to assume that they mean her harm.
She pulls a gun.
Totally an appropriate response.
But the officer, on the other hand, also doesn't know exactly what's going on because he can't see.
Which means that his actions are completely unwarranted.
Because he has his gun out, and he yells apparently, put your hands up, show me your hands, and seconds later he opens fire, through the window, kills her.
Now he's charged with murder.
And that put your hands up thing, First of all, I'm not sure that the guy ever announced himself as a police officer.
So the quote that I saw in the media was, put your hands up, show me your hands, not police, put your hands up, show me your hands.
So when someone starts shouting, when you're in your house in the middle of the night, minding your own business, and all of a sudden you hear someone shouting at you, put your hands up, You, again, have every right to assume they mean you harm and you are under no obligation to obey that order.
You don't know who the hell this is or what they want.
You're not going to say, oh, he wants me to put my hands up.
I guess I'll do it.
But here's the thing.
Even if she knew that it was a police officer, which we have no reason to think she did know that, but even if she did hypothetically know that it was a police officer, She still did nothing wrong in having her gun.
She has every right to defend herself in her own home.
Police officers don't have the right to just come to your home and shoot you.
They aren't gods.
They aren't kings.
They are supposed to have laws they obey, and there are laws against that.
And this is where some gun rights advocates seem to take their eye off the ball a little bit.
Because we hear all the time from gun rights people that we need guns not just to protect ourselves from burglars and bad guys, but to protect ourselves from the government.
And in fact, we hear from gun rights people, and I am a gun rights person, I say this myself all the time, that this is, the Second Amendment is not just, or even primarily, about protecting yourself from fellow citizens, it's about being able to protect yourself from the government.
Yet many of those same people would say that if an agent of the government comes with a gun, no matter the context, No matter anything, you have to obey everything they say, even in your own home.
And if you don't and you get shot, it's your fault.
And this is what confuses me.
So what the hell happened to the Second Amendment protecting us from tyranny?
It just really confuses me when these people who always are going on about how we need the Second Amendment to protect us from the government, yet they're the same people who say, cops tell you to do something, doesn't matter what it is, in what context, where you are, you do everything.
Doesn't matter.
And if you disobey even a little bit and get killed, it's your fault.
I am not making a straw man.
I'm not exaggerating.
That really is the position that a lot of people, unfortunately, on the right have.
Not everybody.
But I've had this conversation before.
I've gotten emails.
That really is how a lot of people feel.
If you disobey police officers, it doesn't matter.
Any failure to follow orders, you get shot.
Your fault.
It's done.
It's kind of amazing.
That people can abandon their support for liberty at the drop of a hat in favor of their more statist impulses.
But anyway, I think hopefully we can all agree that she had every right to pull a gun and defend herself in this case.
And he had no right to fire blindly through a window into a woman's home and kill her in her own home.
I would hope that's not controversial.
The question that's raised, though, is why do these things happen?
Yes, we should stipulate, as always, that the majority of cops are good, competent.
They aren't going around shooting innocent people.
They aren't shooting through windows.
They aren't going into guys' apartments and shooting them.
This is obviously a small minority of cases.
Of course.
But we all see the news.
We know these kinds of cases do happen.
They happen way too often.
One time is too often.
And they've happened a lot more than once.
I think we could agree.
So we don't need to get into a... We don't need to get into a contest or exactly how many... The point is, it happens too much.
Hopefully we can agree with that.
Where people are needlessly killed in situations where the officer involved obviously had other options.
Not happening in the majority of cases, but it does happen.
Why?
Well, it of course has been pointed out that Jefferson was black, the officer is white.
Just as Geiger is white, and her victim was black.
So the racial angle has been highlighted, uh, I would say exploited by the media, which we knew was going to happen.
I don't think race had anything to do with this whatsoever.
In fact, part of the outrage here is that the officers in both of these particular cases couldn't even really see who it was.
They couldn't see what they were doing, which is, which is why, partly why they shot because they were scared.
And that's also what makes it so outrageous and wrong.
But I don't think there's any, we have no idea if the officer in this case could even see Jefferson tell anything about her.
Same for the victim in the Amber Giger case.
So I don't think that race really had anything to do with it.
I think, I'm in fact, I'm in agreement with the Dallas Morning News today.
They had an article saying that Jefferson's death is a result, first of all, of an officer who didn't follow proper procedure, because none of that was proper procedure.
He didn't announce himself.
He didn't go to the door first, snuck around back in the dark, shooting through a window.
That's just not what you do.
But second, it also has to do with police training that emphasizes the safety of the officer over the safety of the community.
And this is something that I've noticed for a while now.
I've commented on it before.
People get upset when I talk about it, but it's true.
We hear all the time, every time a questionable shooting happens, And this shooting we're talking about now is not questionable.
This is a bad shoot, period, but completely wrong and outrageous.
But anytime there's a bad shoot or a questionable one, what we hear from apologists for the cops is that, well, look, they can't take any chances.
They're protecting themselves.
That's what we hear.
Okay, but maybe they should take a little bit of a chance.
Because not taking a chance is just another way of saying, shoot a civilian just to be safe.
Even if it's not strictly speaking necessary, shoot him just to be safe.
Shoot first, ask questions later.
So not taking a chance is really saying, not giving the civilian a chance.
Think of that horrible case in Arizona that we talked about a couple years ago of cops gunning a guy down In this case, it was a white guy.
Again, not that the race matters.
But they gunned this guy down in the middle of a hallway in a hotel, while he was crawling on his hands and knees, literally begging for his life.
And you had three cops in a hallway, guns trained on this guy, while he's crawling on the ground on his hands and knees.
And they shot him and killed him.
And even in that case, which to me was so obviously outrageous and wrong and was murder, what I heard from apologists was, well, hey, you know, he had it coming because he reached for his waistband.
He could have been going for a gun.
And yes, he did reach for his waistband, but that's because his pants were falling down and he was trying to preserve a little bit of his dignity.
He was already on the ground crying, begging for his life, while these three agents of the state are shouting at him, giving him contradictory, conflicting orders that don't make any sense.
His pants are falling down, so reflexively he goes to pull up his pants, which to me seems perfectly reasonable, and so they shoot him dead.
Now, you could say, well, he could have been going for a gun.
Could have been.
Can't take any chances?
Well, okay.
But number one, you can really probably see pretty well he doesn't have a gun.
Number two, you can tell that he's trying to cooperate with you.
He is totally submissive.
He couldn't be any more submissive.
Number three, even if on some off chance, he really did have a gun hidden in his basketball shorts, and he really was going for that gun, well, he is on his hands and knees, You are standing five feet away from him with your guns already trained on him.
There's three of you.
You're in a 10-foot wide hallway.
Even if he does grab a gun on that off chance, you'll be able to shoot him before he can get a shot off at you.
Unless you're the worst shots in the world.
Unless you are, unless you are, unless you totally skipped all that whole part of police training.
That all three of you would somehow miss this guy.
In a 10-foot wide hallway, when he's on the ground, hands and knees.
So, even if he went for it.
So, you have to think.
What are the chances, percentage-wise, what are the chances that he actually is going for a gun and not just trying to pull his pants up?
Very small percentage.
Even if he has a gun, what are the chances that he could actually do any damage to you?
Before you get a chance to just pull your... Because he needs to grab his gun, bring it up, before you just do this with your fingers.
So, overall, percentage-wise, what was the percentage chance that these officers would have been at all physically harmed by this guy?
I don't know.
Obviously, any percentage we put on it is basically arbitrary, but it's a small percentage.
1%?
.05%?
Very small.
Um, this idea that police have to protect themselves at any cost, even the cost of killing innocent people just to be on the safe side, is to me the antithesis of what cops are supposed to do.
Their job is to protect the community.
You don't protect the community by shooting at it.
Oh, it's easy for you to say that, Matt.
So easy for you to say while you're sitting.
Yeah, you know, it is easy for me to say.
You're right.
It is totally easy for me to say.
But, I didn't sign up for that job, though.
So to say it's easier for me to say, okay, I didn't sign up for it.
That's not the job I signed up to do.
If you signed up to do a job, I think we can expect you to do it without killing innocent people.
I don't think that's too much to ask.
Just like if we talk about negligence among medical professionals.
Well, it's really easy for you to say, if you're not a surgeon, That that surgeon shouldn't have been negligent during a surgery and killed someone.
Really easy for you to say.
You don't know anything about being a surgeon.
You've never been in that situation.
You don't understand how high pressure and high stress it is.
So it's easy for you to say, sitting there on your butt, eating Cheetos, saying, oh, that surgeon shouldn't have done that.
Yeah, it's really easy for you to say.
But you aren't the one who signed up for the job of being a surgeon.
You're not the one getting paid to do it.
You don't get any of the perks and the respect that comes with that job because you don't do it.
In a society, we expect the people who sign up for a particular job to do that job.
And in fact, as citizens, especially when the job is something that has to do with the state, and government and authority as citizens in a supposedly free country, we have every right to expect and demand that you do that job without killing innocent people.
So this idea that, you know, we as citizens should just sit here silently and submissively because, oh, well, you know, we're not the ones doing the job.
That's not how it works.
They're supposed to protect and serve us.
They're supposed to work for us.
We pay their... Yeah, I don't do the job.
I pay for that job, though.
Um, so, the job of a police officer is to serve and protect the community, and it seems to me that the emphasis should be on that, over protecting, you know, for a police officer, the emphasis should be on protecting the community, over protecting himself.
Now, that doesn't mean that he should have to charge into gunfire unarmed, or that he should have to be suicidal.
Or do anything that is reckless, or put himself in harm's way for reckless reasons.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying that, like, hey, if there's a 95% chance that this person is not a threat, and a 5% chance that they are, yeah, shooting them just in case will make you safer, but maybe don't.
Right?
I guess that's the way that I would look at it.
We could go on and on with examples.
Tamir Rice, another classic example.
12-year-old child shot and killed by a police officer.
He had a fake toy gun.
And yet again, you hear from apologists that, well, hey, they didn't know it was fake and he could have been a threat, so they just shot him.
Again though, what are the chances that the 12-year-old kid is playing with a real gun on the playground?
Not impossible.
And in some parts of the country, that chance is going to be much higher than you would like it to be.
It's certainly not a 90% chance.
If it's a child with a gun on a playground, what are the chances that it's a real gun versus a fake gun?
I mean, at most you can do 50-50, but it's probably not even that.
It's probably more like 70-30, 90-10.
I don't know.
And then, even if it is a real gun, what are the chances that this child will be able to get off a shot at you, you, the trained law enforcement officer, before you are able to neutralize that threat?
So, in that case, I think the cops should have taken the chance And not kill the child, even if it meant that they were putting themselves in harm's way a little bit, because it is just a little bit.
But when it's a choice between putting myself in harm's way a little bit, or shooting and killing a child, probably you want to put yourself in harm's way.
Shouldn't we expect that of our law enforcement officers?
I mean, isn't that why we say, oh, these people are heroes?
It's because they put themselves in harm's way.
Well, if we're also saying, well, no, don't put yourself in harm's way.
Just kill everybody just in case.
That's just not right.
OK.
A couple other things.
There's an article in The Guardian, not going to spend much time on this, but an article in The Guardian that says, the headline is, You don't have to settle the joy of living and dying alone.
And then it says, data confirms more women have realized there are far worse things than dying alone, which is bad news for the patriarchy.
And this whole article is about how wonderful and joyful it actually is to live alone and not have a family and all of these things.
When I read this article, Which is obviously just something, it's more sad than anything.
This is obviously written by someone who themselves is alone and lonely.
Not capable of forging a meaningful relationship.
And that's how they ended up alone like this.
Because that's really, if you end up alone in life, there are only a few ways to end up alone.
Totally alone.
One is through tragedy.
If people around you have died or something, which is terrible.
That's not what we're talking about here.
Or you could, maybe you go into, it could be monastic.
You're going into religious life and taking a vow of celibacy.
Okay, that's perfectly wonderful.
But then, if it's not one of those options, and you end up alone in life, probably it's because you are not capable of forming human relationships because you are a selfish, miserable, narcissistic person.
And I think that's the category we're talking about with an article like this.
And that is the category that some feminists advocate and celebrate.
Your life is all about you.
Don't worry about anybody else.
Just be a miserable, selfish jerk.
They don't say that part, but that's implied.
It reminded me, when I was reading this article, it reminded me of a great quote from, well, that I saw in the movie Into the Wild, but it was actually a true story.
If you've never seen that movie, I think it's a great movie, about Christopher McCandless, who's the guy who abandoned society.
Decided to go on this journey of self-discovery and burned his social security card and his license and set off across the country on this huge adventure.
Ended up in Alaska by himself and he ends up getting trapped up there in Alaska in the wilderness, can't get out, and he ends up essentially starving to death and he dies.
And this really happened, they made a movie about it, but right before he died, he wrote in a book One of his journals, he wrote, happiness is only real when shared.
Which is, I think, a really powerful—especially when you consider what he went through to come to this realization, where he was out searching for happiness and fulfillment, but doing it completely alone.
And then he died out there alone, and what he realized is, okay, this is great that I can find my own fulfillment, but I don't have anyone to share it with.
It's just me.
And this is not how people—man is not meant to be alone.
We're told in the Bible, and that's true.
And that's what it comes down to for everyone.
The fact is, when you see older people who are alone now because they've alienated everyone in their life, and again, there are older people who are alone for other reasons, That are not their fault.
But there are some who are alone now because they've alienated everyone, because they've been selfish, miserable people their entire lives.
And no one wants it.
Their kids don't want anything to do with them.
Their spouses have all left them.
Their multiple spouses have left them.
And now they're alone.
These are not happy people.
That is not a recipe for happiness.
That's the definition of unhappiness.
That is the picture, the illustration of unhappiness.
Because I think when it comes down to it, It's part of our nature.
It's in our nature.
We are not capable of being truly happy if we are completely and totally alone.
Which is why, in fact, even in those monastic traditions, even where someone's in a religious life and they take a vow of celibacy and they don't have a biological family, they're still not alone.
They still are in a community and that community becomes their family and it becomes very important to them.
But as people, you cannot just live completely alone.
You need people.
Happiness is a shared experience.
Finally, there was this headline in the Washington Post that says, according to a new study, excessive brain activity is linked to a shorter life.
Which all I can say is, this is great news for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
That's all I had.
I just had that one joke.
I have nothing else to say about that study.
I didn't even read it.
Okay, let's go to emails.
mattwelshow at gmail.com, mattwelshow at gmail.com.
From Lindsey, he says, Hi Matt, thank you for the discussion on the survey of biologists who nearly unanimously agree that life begins at conception.
It was encouraging to hear that, even though most of the surveyed professionals were either pro-choice, non-religious, or democrat.
In fact, most of them were all of those things, Lindsey.
They were still able to admit that life begins at conception.
My worry is that as conservative pro-life movement convinces more people of this truth, there will still be way too many people who admit to this fact, yet say that a woman's right to choose is more important societally than a pre-born infant's right to life.
What do you think we can do about it when hearts are that hardened?
Yeah, well, I think actually, Lindsay, that's exactly the direction that the pro-abortion movement is headed.
That's the direction that it has to head.
That is, strategically, the smartest direction for it to head, because they have lost the biological argument.
As science has progressed, and as we've learned more about What happens in the womb, and essentially where babies come from, and how babies come about, more specifically.
As we learn more and more about that, it just continues, every step, every discovery, just more and more vindicates the pro-life position.
Because what we find is that every single discovery confirms this fact, that these are human beings.
And so the pro-abortion side has lost the Biological argument.
The pro-abortion argument, the biological argument for pro-abortion people was a lot more tenable 50 years ago, 60 years ago, 70 years ago.
It still was not tenable, it still wasn't a good argument, but it was more tenable than it is now.
Now it just doesn't work.
So, as you point out, I think the move is to say, well, okay, Fine.
It's a human being.
It's even a person.
It doesn't matter.
Because I'm getting an abortion because it's what I want to do, and it's my body, and I can do what I want.
This is the bodily autonomy argument.
That's what this is all about.
So the scary thing about that argument is that number one, it requires someone to, it requires
them to have morally and spiritually descended to this state where, into this darkness where
they can even admit to themselves, yeah, you know what?
Abortion is killing a human life, and I'm okay with that.
Because at least when you have a pro-abortion person who's trying to argue that, oh, it's not really a human, it's not really a person, that's a bad argument and it's bad that they're making it, but at least it shows that they still recognize at some level that it's wrong to kill humans.
And so what they have to do to rationalize it is pretend that it's not really a human.
So that gives you something to work with.
Because that shows that they still have some moral sense within them, they still have some moral compass a little bit, they still have a conscience.
And so now that gives you something to hold on to, to grasp on to.
And if you can only really get them to put their defenses down and see it for what it is, maybe you can convince them.
But if someone says, I don't care about that, it's just about bodily autonomy, yeah, that makes it a little bit more difficult to...
It's not a good argument.
And I'm not going to go into a whole 30 minute thing about it.
I could.
I've talked about the bodily autonomy argument.
I've written about it.
I wrote about it in my book a few years ago.
I've dealt with it in many different places.
So you could go look up any of those places where I've talked about it.
But the bodily autonomy argument is, it's not a good argument.
It's a stupid argument.
It just takes a little bit more nuance to diffuse it as you go through step by step
to show that when it comes down to it, it's still fallacious.
And even with so-called bodily autonomy, it is still murder.
You are still killing an innocent, defenseless human.
Now, if someone on the pro-abortion side is willing to throw all of that to the side and say, fine, it's a human, fine, it's a person, fine, bodily autonomy, whatever, doesn't matter, but yeah, it's murder, fine, I don't care.
If they're at that point, then there's no argument anymore you can present.
This is someone who has forfeited their soul.
And until they make an attempt to reclaim it, there's not much you can say to them.
Another way of putting it is, once a pro-abortion person is saying that, then you've won the argument.
Even if they don't admit it, the argument's over.
You won.
And that's all.
Okay, this is from Adam, says, What is your opinion of the libertarian argument that discrimination, while ethically abhorrent, should be protected under the Freedom of Association Clause in the First Amendment?
Well, there are a few problems with your question, Adam.
One problem, really.
It depends on what kind of discrimination you're talking about, and in what context.
I don't agree that all discrimination should be... Well, I don't agree that all discrimination should be protected under the First Amendment.
And on the other hand, I also don't agree that all discrimination is ethically abhorrent.
It really depends.
Keep in mind that discrimination is simply, or can be simply, the act of choosing one thing over another.
Or even simply, recognizing the differences between one thing and another.
It is a word related to discernment in this context.
Discrimination can just be that.
It can also be prejudicial treatment against someone based on race or creed.
It all depends on the context.
And this is why the idea that... I don't mean to get into semantics or be pedantic about it, but this is really important, because you hear people say, ah, discrimination is evil, discrimination is terrible, anti-discrimination.
All of this stuff doesn't make any sense.
We all discriminate constantly, every day, all the time.
And most of that discrimination is perfectly ethical, Or at least morally neutral.
Something as simple as putting on a red shirt rather than a white shirt.
That's discrimination.
And then there are more morally engaged forms of discrimination than that, that are still perfectly fine.
As we go through our lives, we make decisions, we choose one thing or another, and that's all discrimination.
As for the prejudicial context, prejudicial against race or creed or whatever, I agree that it's usually unethical, but yes, I do think that in the context of two private individuals, Or private entities, it is protected by the First Amendment, or at least it should be.
Now, for the state to treat people prejudicially, that is unconstitutional.
That's not okay.
We're all guaranteed equal treatment under the law.
That's a very important guarantee that we have, and that should be enforced.
But if I, for example, walk into a store, and the owner of the store tells me to get the hell out because I'm not welcome there, for whatever reason, my religion, my race, me personally, he doesn't like, whatever it is, That's discrimination.
I wouldn't like it.
I'd probably be angry about it and embarrassed.
And I would feel inconvenienced.
But I think he should have every right to do that.
For this reason.
He owns his labor.
He owns his property.
And to say that he must serve me would be to violate freedom of association, freedom of speech, and it becomes a form of forced labor.
It is literally forced labor.
That's not an exaggeration.
Because this person is being forced by law.
To provide me with a good or service against his will, which is, again, by definition, forced labor.
And I think it is obviously, therefore, in violation of both the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
And so, I think there are exceptions you could get into and talk about.
Where, for example, it's a matter of life and death.
I don't know.
There aren't a lot of examples.
So, for example, a hospital can't refuse to save someone's life because they don't like their race or creed or whatever.
So that makes sense, if it's literally life or death.
Outside of a medical context, I can't think of, at least in modern society, modern American society, I can't think of a There's no form of discrimination among private entities outside of a medical context that would put someone's life in danger.
I'm sure there probably are, but... So, I don't know.
If somebody has just stumbled out of the desert and they're dying of thirst and they come into your restaurant and they need a drink, I think you should not be able to say no because that would be putting this person's life in jeopardy.
So outside of those kinds of scenarios, I think people should broadly have the right to refuse service to whoever they want.
Let's see, this is from Phil, says, Dear Supreme Bearded Overlord, Far be it for me to refer to you as anything but flawless, but there is a problem that I must address.
Someone, a lackey of some sort, obviously, has introduced a typo in your end credits.
Senior Producer is misspelled as Senior, S-E-N-O-I-R Producer.
I noticed this recently and thought I should bring it to your attention.
Your lowly servant, Phil.
Phil, rest assured that for causing me this humiliation, the person who did that typo has been fired.
Because I do have that kind of authority.
And for pointing this out and embarrassing me in public, your penalty upon my ascendancy to the throne will be far worse.
Let's just say that there will be firing involved for you, but of a different sort.
And there goes my phone.
Whoever just called me and embarrassed me there too, that person also We'll be executed.
And now that I have again threatened to execute my own viewers, just a normal Friday, I think we can wrap this up for the day.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great weekend.
Godspeed.
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