All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 4, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
41:32
Ep. 363 - Smear Merchant Adjacent

The Boston Globe smears the Daily Wire, calling us "white supremacist adjacent" and "an alt-right outpost." We'll talk about all of the reasons why this smear is insanely stupid. Also, AOC discovers her own humanity by listening to Bernie Sanders. And I have an impassioned and very sincere plea for Hillary Clinton. Date: 11-04-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, a new poll just came out that has Joe Biden at the head of the Democratic primary pack, which isn't surprising.
But Hillary Clinton is just about tied with him.
She's ahead of everybody except Biden, who she's almost tied with.
And let me say, if I could, and I'm being honest here, I don't like to admit this, but I think I can speak for all of the card-carrying members of the American right, of which, of course, I am a part of that group.
But I speak for all of them when I say that I am absolutely terrified of a Hillary Clinton candidacy.
It scares me so much.
So please, Hillary, do not run.
I beg you, please don't run.
If you ran, Hillary, you know, you would just cruise to victory, and it wouldn't be fair.
It would not be fair to do that, to run for a third time.
So we all come together, all of us conservatives, and we join our hands and our voices and we plead with you.
Have some mercy on us.
Don't run for a third time.
You are the one contender we fear.
You are so dynamic, so formidable, such a powerful force and personality, and so electric.
People are just... and magnetic.
You know, people are drawn to you, as we saw the first two times you went.
I mean, really, I think if you did run, we would throw up our hands and say, no point in having an election now.
Why even do it?
What's the point?
Why waste our time doing the whole election thing?
In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine recently.
We were out at a bar, at kind of a right-wing bar.
Everyone had assault rifles strapped to their backs, and we were all wearing NRA hats.
And like we do, we're just hanging out.
And he goes, phew, thank God Hillary isn't running.
That lady is unbeatable.
And I said, I agree she's unbeatable, but I think she still might run.
And then he started crying.
I'm not making this up.
He started crying when he was thinking about it.
And everyone in the bar, everyone started crying, thinking about what would happen if Hillary Clinton ran for president.
This is how it always goes.
You say the name Hillary to any conservative, and they start trembling with fear as tears well up in their eyes.
And really, Hillary, with all this stuff about Epstein in the news and everything, your husband being such a good friend of his, I think that would be a huge help on the campaign trail as well, because it gives you such a great insight into the issue.
You know, you could really talk from experience about all the times your husband rode on Epstein's private plane, or went to his rape mansions, and all that stuff.
It kind of gives you this insight that no one else has, which I think is also a great asset.
So, the point is, please don't run.
I promise you, that is the last thing we want.
And I guess I just have to move on, because I can't even think about this anymore, because it just disturbs me so much.
All right, there's much else to talk about today, but before we do that, I need to tell you about PaintYourLife.com.
We just had our painting sent to us, and it's absolutely beautiful.
And I have to say, I was really impressed not just with the final result, which is gorgeous.
That's spectacular.
But the whole process was great.
It's very easy to navigate and the folks over at Paint Your Life are very helpful and responsive through the whole process because they take great pride in your painting as well and they want you to love it and they're going to make sure you do.
So how it works is that you send them a photo of your children, yourself, a family member, a special place, a pet, whatever you want.
And they'll make you a gorgeous painting at a price that you can afford.
This is a true painting.
It's done by hand.
This is not some computer graphic thing.
Done by hand by a world-class artist and created from a favorite photo that you sent to them.
And it's just the difference between a photograph and a painting.
The painting just brings something out of that photo, brings it extra character that's kind of hard to describe or grasp.
You just have to see it for yourself.
I think this is great to do, you know, just for yourself.
You could do it as a gift for yourself, for your home, for your family.
Or, obviously, it makes a great gift as we get into the holidays.
Birthday gifts, wedding anniversary, it's great for all of that.
And there's no risk, because if you don't love the painting, you don't love the final painting, you get your money refunded.
But you will love it, trust me.
And right now, as a limited offer, you can get 30% off your painting.
30% off your painting right now.
You're not going to get a deal like this for very long, so you want to go right now.
It's free shipping as well.
To get this special offer, you want to text Matt to 64000.
That's Matt to 64000.
M-A-T-T to 64000.
Okay, I want to start with this just because it annoys me.
The Boston Globe ran an article on Friday complaining about Facebook.
Which is great because we've only seen about 10,000 of those kinds of articles in the last month.
So in case you didn't get the point yet, the Boston Globe was there to clarify things and talk about how Facebook is terrible and evil and all of that.
During the article, they decide to take a shot at the Daily Wire, which also is not a unique thing either.
But here's what the article says.
Quoting now.
In response, we saw him, Zuckerberg, launch a repurposed news section that sets up partnerships between the networks and a wide range of publishers, and then in parentheses, including white supremacist-adjacent alt-right outposts like the Daily Wire.
Yes, white supremacist-adjacent.
Alt-right outpost.
Those are the two ways they describe the Daily Wire.
Now, I have a couple of questions here.
First of all, what the hell is white supremacist adjacent?
What does that even mean?
White supremacist adjacent.
Well, I'll tell you what it means.
It means that they really wanted to just come out and call us white supremacists.
That's what they really wanted to do.
But they realized that they couldn't because Ben Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew.
And calling an Orthodox Jew a white supremacist is a bridge that they'd love to cross, but they know they really can't.
I mean, the media has crossed that bridge many times before.
Many times.
They end up getting blasted for it from all directions because it's not only stupid and wrong, but it's grotesque.
So instead they decide to pull their punch a little bit on this one and they say, white supremacist adjacent.
They take the coward's way out.
And this way they can say, oh no, no, no, we didn't call you white supremacist.
We just said that you're white supremacist adjacent is all.
Sure.
Okay.
Boston Globe.
So this article was written by a guy named Michael Andor Broder.
And what I would say about Michael Andor Broder is, well, I would never call him a stupid, lying, disgraceful smear merchant.
I would never say that.
I just wouldn't.
It wouldn't be right.
It would be very Christian of me.
So no, he's not a stupid, lying, disgraceful smear merchant.
He's just stupid, lying, disgraceful smear merchant adjacent.
You see?
He's adjacent to that.
He hangs out in the vicinity of being a lying moron. I'm not saying that he is. No, no,
no. I wouldn't ever say that. I'm saying that he's, he just, you know, lying morons are right here
and he's kind of walking alongside them adjacent, you see, and they, they like go to the same
school and a lot of times they end up wearing the same shirts accidentally and they hang out
after class, you know, but I'm not saying he's He's just he's always so adjacent, very much adjacent with that group, is what I'm trying to say.
And then there's the next part, which is calling us an alt-right outpost.
Now, this is great, of course, because there is no conservative site on the entire Internet that the alt-right hates more than The Daily Wire.
And if you don't believe me, you could just ask them.
Or go to one of their dark and grimy corners of the internet and see what they have to say about The Daily Wire and the people who work for it.
And there's also no person in the media who's been targeted by the alt-right more than Ben Shapiro.
The rest of us have also gotten it, not quite as bad as he has, but still.
We've gotten our share of that treatment.
The alt-right has gone after me many times.
I spent like three days on this show a few months ago screaming about one of them, which was probably not a great use of my time or yours, but the point is, you know, we're not exactly on friendly terms.
And calling the daily wire of all websites alt-right, that's like, well, it's like calling an Orthodox Jew white supremacist, or excuse me, white supremacist adjacent.
But this is the way it always goes.
This is the tactic.
Just throw a label at your opponents, right?
If you don't like someone, if you don't agree with them, label them.
Doesn't matter if the label is true.
Doesn't matter if it makes sense.
Doesn't matter if it's coherent.
That doesn't have to be any of those things.
Just all you need is the label.
And the problem with this That strategy.
One of the many problems, aside from the fact that it's dishonest and unethical and cowardly and all of that.
One of the other significant problems is that what happens is the labels rapidly lose their meaning.
Now, a term like white supremacist, look at what the media has done with a term like white supremacist.
That term does mean something, or at least it should.
And there are actual white supremacists out there.
I know because I have the hate mail from these people.
I know that they're there.
I don't know how many people, how many of them are.
I think that they are a fringe, I'm certain they're a fringe group, but they do exist.
But when you call everybody a white supremacist, when that term comes to mean just, you know, people I don't like, Then the label has lost its purpose and its meaning.
And that becomes very difficult when it comes time to talk about actual white supremacists.
See, when you call everyone a white supremacist, then what are you going to say when you actually encounter a real white supremacist?
Well, you're going to call them a white supremacist, but nobody knows anymore.
So we're at a point now where if someone calls someone else a white supremacist, The rest of us that are hearing this, we have no idea what that means.
We should know what it means.
You know, if you go and say, such and such is a white supremacist, everyone that hears you should know, okay, well, I know what I need to know about that person.
But we don't know anymore.
Okay?
Now, it could mean that the person you're referring to is an actual racist who believes in the supremacy of the white race.
That's what a white supremacist is.
And so you could be telling us that that's, you know, that that describes the person you're you're talking about.
Or, but you could also simply be saying you don't like the person, even though the person has never said anything remotely racist, you just don't like them.
And so this is what you're saying.
And we don't know is the problem could go either way.
Which I don't think I have to spell this out, but what happens is it provides cover to actual racists and white supremacists.
You have lumped them in with millions of people who are not racist and white supremacists, and so they're able to kind of hide.
You have turned them into a sort of needle in a haystack.
Um, when it doesn't, it shouldn't be that way and it doesn't need to be that way.
Now, it gets better, because after people like myself and Ben and Michael pointed out all of this to the Boston Globe, they issued a correction the next day.
And their correction says, because of a reporting error, the large column in today's arts section, which is printed in advance, mischaracterizes the conservative media outlet, The Daily Wire.
Its founder, Ben Shapiro, has spoken out against the alt-right.
The Globe regrets the error.
Now, a couple of problems with this correction.
First of all, it wasn't a reporting error.
That makes it sound like, oh, it's silly us.
We didn't mean to.
Sorry.
Just kind of a typo.
No, that was a deliberate intentional lie and a smear.
That's what that was.
It wasn't a reporting error.
It was a deliberate, it was a smear is what it was.
And also Ben Shapiro has spoken out against the alt-right.
That way, way understates it.
Ben Shapiro has dedicated much of his time to going after the alt-right, just like everyone else at the site has done as well.
So, it understates it, but the real problem is they say they regret the error.
Okay, what did they do about the article?
Did they take it down?
No.
Well, did they at least chain, delete the smear against the Daily Wire and take out that whole part?
No, they didn't do that.
Instead, they went back and they changed it.
And instead of saying white supremacist alt-right outpost, now it says routinely bigoted outpost.
Of course, we're back to the same problem.
They didn't provide any evidence of that.
They didn't provide any examples of anything that any of us have said that's bigoted.
They just throw it out there.
But the thing that I like about this, and you can kind of laugh about it because no one takes the Boston Globe seriously anyway, but the thing that I like about it is you can see just how meaningless these labels are when they're used by the media.
Because we can see in real time as they're just cycling through one label after the other.
They put one label on and everyone says, oh, that's not right.
And then, and then the Boston Globe says, okay, well, we'll go with this one instead then.
Yeah, no, that's not true.
Okay.
Well, how about this one?
They've got this just carousel of slurs, this carousel of, of, of labels that they'll, you know, they're going to rotate.
They're going to put, they're going to put one on you.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter if it's accurate or not.
They're just going to put it there.
You take issue with one, they'll just replace it with something else.
It's like Mad Libs.
Just an absolute joke is what it is.
Okay, this was kind of funny, by the way.
Here's a video from the Sanders campaign.
It's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talking about Bernie Sanders in very glowing terms.
It wasn't until I heard of a man by the name of Bernie Sanders.
I began to question and assert and recognize my inherent value as a human being that deserves health care, housing, education, and a living wage.
Now, now, okay, wait a second.
You didn't think you had Inherent value as a human being until you heard Bernie Sanders?
Really?
That is the saddest thing I've ever heard.
I really might start weeping over it.
I mean, I was at the gas station a few days ago, and I saw someone in the back of the gas station playing a slot machine video game.
And I thought that was the saddest thing I'd ever seen.
Until I saw this video.
Because this might actually beat it.
Listen, if you're learning anything at all about life or yourself from a politician, that's a very bad sign.
And it also makes me question your fitness for office.
AOC is a member of Congress.
But she only discovered that she's human when she heard Bernie Sanders.
Well, when was that?
I think that's a fair question.
Now, granted, Sanders has been in office since the first Continental Congress, so who knows when she first heard Bernie Sanders speak, but I'm wondering when it was that AOC had this Bernie-induced revelation.
I think we need to know that.
Also, what did she think before she heard Bernie Sanders?
Did she think that she had no value as a person?
So she thought she had no value as a person.
She turned on the TV, saw Bernie Sanders waving his hands wildly and screaming about millionaires and billionaires.
And that's when she had this eureka moment and said, oh, wow, I think I do have value.
That's very, very strange and very sad.
And it's also this, There's a cult of personality.
I talk about all the time, this cult of personality around politicians.
It's always sad and pathetic and un-American.
And you don't just see it on the left.
There's a cult of personality around Donald Trump.
You've got a cult of personality around Bernie Sanders.
There's a cult of personality around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez herself.
So, you know, she's in the Bernie Sanders cult, but she's got her own sort of splinter cult going on.
All of this is just way off base.
Okay?
Politicians are politicians.
They're not spiritual gurus.
They're not prophets.
They're also not rock stars that we should be fans of.
They're politicians.
They're representatives, supposedly, of the people.
They are supposedly our employees.
They work for us.
That's the way it's supposed to be.
And I think we would do very well to keep that in mind with how we look at these people and talk about them.
Okay.
Now, um, let's see, before I get to emails, I wanted to talk about this also.
And I don't mean to pick on this person.
I don't know who she is and it doesn't matter.
Uh, the person is not the point.
It's just the sentiment that I wanted to talk about.
So someone on Twitter posted something that I only saw because it was retweeted a bunch of times.
And what the tweet says is, um, Y'all really want to get married and have sex with the same person for the rest of your life?
Question mark, question mark, question mark.
All caps.
And for some reason, this got like 10,000 likes, people, it resonates.
I'm just using this as a jumping off point because this is, well, there's a reason why it was a popular tweet, that this is a very common objection that you hear all the time.
And anecdotally, it seems to me that it's an increasingly popular argument against marriage.
Though, of course, it's not at all new, but this is something people have been saying for a long time.
So I've been thinking about this after I saw this tweet.
And I wanted to say something to anyone in the audience who might share this point of view about marriage.
You know, I don't want to have sex with the same person for the rest of my life, that kind of thing.
A few things about that.
First of all, yes, if you want to consider marriage in the most pessimistic possible way, If you want to take the most negative view of it that you could, you might say that marriage means being stuck with the same person forever, not just sexually, but in all things, in life in general.
Fine.
Yeah, you could look at it that way if you want to.
But what's the most pessimistic possible way of considering the alternative?
Now, as a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist myself, I have no problem.
I think it's a good idea, before you make any particular big decision, you should think to yourself, what is the worst possible way that I could think of this thing?
Maybe that's not the healthiest way to make life choices, but as a pessimist, that's what you do.
Another way of putting it is, what's the worst case scenario here?
You have to at least consider that, right?
Well, the alternative.
What's the worst case scenario?
What's the most negative view of that?
Someone who's concerned about having sex with the same person for the rest of their life and so therefore avoids marriage.
What's the negative view of that choice?
Well, the negative view is that you're going to end up having a series of meaningless encounters with strangers who don't love you or care about you until eventually you get too old for that and you don't have the same looks that you did when you were younger and you're not desirable in the same way that you were before to strangers.
And now all of your peers are spending their free time going to the playground with their grandchildren while you're alone and pitied by everyone who knows you.
And then you die and there's no one to mourn you and you leave no legacy behind or even any trace that you ever existed at all.
So I guess you have to decide.
Between those two options, which one sounds worse?
And another thing.
And I've noticed this.
I was thinking about this this morning.
Because it's kind of strange.
When I talk to people who don't want to get married, the first thing they often say is something like this about how they don't want to have sex with the same person or they don't want to be stuck with the same person for their whole life and all that.
But, and they're concerned about how tedious and boring and monotonous that will be.
But then the next thing they say, or the second most common objection to marriage that I hear, is that after you get married, you never know how much the other person is going to change, or in what way they might change, and so it's too much of a risk to tie yourself to them.
So you notice the paradox here, I'm sure.
On one hand, they're worried that there won't be any change, and on the other hand, They're worried that there'll be too much change.
On one hand, marriage is too safe and too boring.
On the other hand, it's too much of a risk.
So you see how those two things don't quite match up.
Now, again, if you're committed to the pessimistic interpretation, you might say that, well, that's because marriage is the worst of both worlds.
But I don't think that's true.
I think that these two competing objections just speak to the fact that marriage is, first of all, dynamic and unpredictable and very human.
There's two human beings involved in this thing.
And on the positive end, the point is that, yes, you're committing yourself to one person, but a person is a fascinating and compelling thing.
I think a person is way more interesting than people.
So when you're just out doing the random hookup thing, all you have are people.
You have this kind of general, vague, collective mass, and you're working your way through the crowd.
Everyone is faceless.
Everyone is basically nameless.
You forget about them in two days.
That's people.
But in a marriage, you get a person.
Not people.
You get a person.
A real, living, breathing, human person.
Somebody with a name and a face and a personality and hopes and dreams and goals and flaws and foibles and virtues and strengths and weaknesses and pet peeves and idiosyncrasies and all of it.
You get all of that.
And you're with that person as they grow and change and develop.
And maybe not all the changes are favorable from your point of view.
And obviously sometimes things will go horribly wrong and everything falls apart.
But no matter what your life choice is, things can always go horribly wrong and fall apart.
So, you know, that's no different.
The goal though of marriage is to be with this person and to grow alongside them.
And I think that that can be a very exciting thing.
So where if you're looking for the pessimistic view, you say it's the worst of both worlds, another way of looking at it is it's the best of both worlds.
Where you do get the change and the differences and the variety, but you get it with one person.
So at the same time, you get that commitment and the love and the, you know, the experience of being really known by another human being.
Which I think is an experience that we all deeply need.
I guess as human beings we can never be completely known by anyone on earth because they can't read our minds.
But in marriage you can, not just in a physical sense, but you can intimately know another person.
And that's what you get from marriage, along with the variety of the fact that the person does change and grow and everything else.
And I also say this all the time when we talk about should you get married younger or not.
And I understand the logic of waiting until you're older and you're more established in life and all that kind of stuff.
And if you're already a little bit older and you haven't gotten married yet, then that's fine.
You could still get married and have a wonderful marriage.
But if you are younger and you're trying to decide, I think there's a lot to be said for getting married younger because this is what I'm talking about.
You grow and live alongside the other person.
Where marriage, rather than being the capstone of adulthood, it's the cornerstone, it's the foundation.
And you build from there and you're with this person and you're both growing and maturing.
So, I got married when I was 25.
My wife was 24.
Obviously, when we got married, we didn't have kids.
As far as I'm concerned, we were basically kids ourselves.
So, on one hand, I could say, yes, I've been married to the same person for eight years, but especially when you get married younger, it technically is the same person, but we've changed so much through the process of growing and living that it kind of can be deceptive to put it that way.
So, just something to consider.
I think marriage is great.
Marriage and family.
Maybe not, you know, not every life choice is for everybody.
There are exceptions, of course.
And there are people who are called to different ways of living.
But I think there are a lot of people who are called to marriage But don't do it because they're afraid for these two reasons or other reasons as well.
And I think that's a big mistake.
All right, going to emails.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
This is from Colin, says, Future Supreme Overlord, I am bothered by how soon Christmas commercials are being played.
As soon as Halloween is over, the Christmas commercials start playing.
Is it not more reasonable to begin commercials after Thanksgiving or December 1st?
As dictator, will you enforce a limitation on when Christmas commercials can begin playing?
Your humble servant and soon-to-be-executed subject count.
No.
In fact, if anything, I'll go the other way.
And certainly, the harsh penalties will not go to the stores that play Christmas music early or people who put up Christmas lights early.
No, the harsh penalty goes to the people, the un-American, joy-hating people who complain about that.
I am a big believer in, look, I mean, if you want to start playing the Christmas music
in July, go ahead.
I don't even understand the complaint.
You hear Christmas music when you're out shopping and it's not December yet and you get angry
Now, I get angry about a lot of things.
I basically get angry professionally.
It's basically my job.
And even I can't figure out how to get angry about that.
I cannot figure out how to get angry when I hear Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
How could you get mad about that?
I don't even understand it.
So anytime I hear Christmas music, Even as a Scrooge myself, it warms my heart.
It warms my cold, dead heart.
And I feel something approaching joy.
And it doesn't matter what time of year it is.
So, you know what?
Just... Colin.
How dare you?
From Mark, this says, Hi Matt, I can't stand all these people that rejoice over their extra hour of sleep.
They obviously don't have young children.
The end of daylight savings time means parents have an extra hour of parenting.
Then to get your kids back on a normal schedule, you keep them up until their normal bedtime and the final hour is full of meltdowns.
Once your rule commences, will you end daylight saving times and abolish all the gloating, well-rested jerks?
Thanks for the great show.
Prayers for you and your family.
Yes, this is something.
And I have this experience every year.
I think all parents do.
And I had it on Saturday where I thought, oh, you know, it's daily saving times.
I get an extra hour of sleep.
And then you look around and see all the kids running around your house, and you remember that, oh, yeah, I'm a parent.
Never mind.
All this means is that rather than my kids being up at 6 a.m., now they're going to be up at 5 a.m.
That's all this means.
Um, now as dictator, of course, I, first of all, I can force people to get up with my kids and watch them.
So that would be my first move.
I don't, I don't, so I don't really have to worry about that as a dictator.
Um, and, uh, and I would certainly have people, you know, I would have people taking care of the kids in the morning and at night and overnight and during the day.
And my job is just to pop in every once in a while.
That's real parenting for you.
That's how you really parent.
As far as Daily Savings Time, taking the parent issue aside, this is another thing.
People complain about Daily Savings Time, just like they complain about Christmas music too early.
With Daily Savings Time, except for the parent complaint, which is a legitimate complaint, aside from that, I don't really understand The problem with it, I kind of like it.
And in fact, the fact that it's so weird and pointless and arbitrary that we just arbitrarily pretend to move the time forward and back, I kind of like it.
Imagine aliens landing on Earth sometime in the future and finding out about daylight savings time.
And us trying to explain it to them where we say that, Oh yeah, it's just, you know, we pretend that the clock is, we just, we move the, we move the time, time back and forth randomly just because, and they would have absolutely no idea the point of that or why we do it.
And we have no idea why we do it either, but we just do.
And that's what I like about it.
It's kind of quirky and weird, and it's just something we do.
And I, I say, I'm a, I'm a traditionalist and I believe in, you know, just sticking with the tradition for no reason.
That's why I like it. From David says, Hello, Matt. Hope all is well and that the new baby
is doing great. Yesterday you were talking about the topic of criminalization of assisted suicide.
I believe the government shouldn't criminalize it because that would allow them the option to
remove freedom from people because the government deems it to be for the good of the person,
which then allows the government to also do it for other actions they don't want people doing
because the government sees us as it not being for their good.
That doesn't mean I don't think doctors and others shouldn't try to help these people to go on living.
But said help should not be forced on these people, nor should that remove their freedom.
The government will always be able to justify any removal of right as being for the good of the person, so I side with people keeping their freedom, even if it's not for their own good.
We shouldn't encourage suicidal people, but if they do decide they don't want to help, they don't want help, at that point they should be able to seek the end they want.
Unfortunate as it is, if people decide so, what worries me is the government deciding for them.
and arbitrarily removing their rights in the process.
Would you trust the government to know better for the person than the person does for themselves and allow the government to the power to remove the rights of the person as such?
Well, first of all, OK, a couple of things here.
As far as knowing what's best for the person or having a better idea of what's good for a person than they do themselves, You know, if you were walking down the road, and you looked up and saw someone standing at the edge of a building, like they're about to jump, I'm sure you would shout to them and say, no, don't do it, and you would try to stop them, right?
You would never say, oh, he probably knows what's best for him, and just keep walking.
So in some situations, it actually is clear that someone doesn't know what's best for them, and they do need someone to step in.
And kind of force the issue, force them to do what's best for them.
It can never be best for you to jump off a building or to intentionally poison yourself.
That could never be the best thing for you.
How could it be?
Because you're abolishing yourself.
You're getting rid of yourself.
It's the end of yourself.
How could ending yourself be the best for yourself?
It doesn't even make any sense.
So, And I think on a, so now let's, you could say, well, that's okay, but these are, I'm a free, I'm an individual person, and this is a, you know, I'm not an agent of the government.
Okay, well, you see the person standing on the edge of the building.
They're going to jump.
Do you call the police?
I think, because you're a decent, compassionate person, you call the police.
I would.
Well, the police are agents of the government.
And what do you want the police to do?
You want the police to stop them from jumping.
If a police officer, in fact I saw, there was a video that was making the rounds online a few months ago that I happened to see of someone that was about to jump off a bridge, might have been the Golden Gate Bridge, I don't know.
Somebody was about to jump off a bridge and a police officer stopped his car, ran up and grabbed the person at the last minute and dragged him back from the edge.
And everyone is hailing this police officer as a hero for good reason.
I think he is a hero.
But would you say that that police officer did the wrong thing?
You know, this was a person making a choice for themselves.
Here was an agent of the state preventing them from making that choice.
The interesting thing to me is that it seems like almost everybody would agree that the police officer did the right thing.
Yet many of those people who agree the police officer did the right thing still think that assisted suicide should be legal on the basis that the government shouldn't prevent people from killing themselves.
So it just, you see the disconnect there?
If you think it would be cruel and negligent in the extreme for the police officer to just sit back and watch the guy jump, If you think that would be cruel and negligent, then how is it not also cruel and negligent for the government to not just allow people to kill themselves, but to legalize a method for which they can go through to kill themselves?
I don't see it.
It seems to me that if the state is right in the one hand, then they'd be right on the other hand of making assisted suicide illegal.
So that's the first thing.
Second thing.
With assisted suicide, we're talking about assisted suicide.
We're not talking about someone just taking their own life, as the saying goes.
There are some states maybe where it's technically illegal to commit suicide, but of course the reality there is if someone succeeds in doing it, then it's the law was sort of a moot point.
And of course, if somebody really wants to commit suicide, if they really want to, there's nothing the state can do to
stop them.
Short of, if you know about it ahead of time and they're admitted into a psychiatric facility
or something like that, then short of that, there's nothing that the state can do.
But What we're talking about here is getting a third party involved.
So it's not really a question of, should a person have the right to kill themselves?
It's, should the third party have a right to help kill someone?
And to that I would say no.
So it's on two levels here.
On one level, I do think the state has a role in preventing people from killing themselves.
And as I already described, I think you probably agree, at least in some circumstances.
And if you agree in some circumstances, then why not in every circumstance?
But we can even put that argument to the side, because that's not even really what we're talking about here.
We're talking about a third party coming in, and it just so happens to be a doctor.
It happens to be a representative of the medical community coming in and poisoning someone.
So you don't even have to think of it as, does this individual have the right to kill themselves?
The question is, does that doctor have the right to go and poison somebody?
Whether they want it or not.
And my thing is that that third party should not have that right.
It should be illegal for a doctor to intentionally and directly kill someone.
And I think that should be the law.
And I think that there's really no downside to that.
There's no downside to, I should say, there's no downside to a law that says it's illegal for a doctor to intentionally and directly kill someone.
I think there are a lot of downsides to opening that door and saying, well, maybe sometimes they can.
And, you know, I don't think I need to describe where the slippery slope leads, and we're already seeing the slippery slope when doctors get into the business of killing.
What is the slippery slope?
If we just said doctors can't kill people, what's the slippery slope scenario for that?
What's the dystopian vision of a world where no doctors are killing people?
I just see absolutely no downside to that.
Whereas there is nothing but downside to the alternative.
Okay, but thank you for the email, and thanks everybody else for watching and listening.
Godspeed.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe as well.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Michael Knowles Show, and The Andrew Klavan Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Robert Sterling, associate producer Alexia Garcia del Rio, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Donovan Fowler, audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
The Democrats are beginning to wake up to the fact that their candidates stink and their impeachment nonsense is going nowhere.
It's as if the entire Democrat Party woke up naked in Times Square.
We'll try to get that image out of our heads on The Andrew Klavan Show.
▲
Export Selection