Ep. 387 - Actress Insists She's Happy After Abortion, Nobody Is Fooled
An actress sent a series of tweets bragging about her abortion and claiming she's wonderfully happy now that her child is dead. But she's lying to herself, of course. Speaking of lying to yourself, the singer Lizzo went to an NBA game wearing a dress with a huge hole cut out at the butt. This is supposed to show her "self-confidence," but it actually shows the opposite. And I respond to a few of the many, many emails I received from my show yesterday.
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And a quick reminder that If you don't have your tree and your Christmas decorations up by now, you are officially a part of the war on Christmas.
You are waging a war on Christmas.
You are a belligerent on the side of the anti-Christmas army.
That's what you're doing.
And, I mean, think about it.
Starbucks.
Okay, Starbucks had their Christmas stuff up, or their holiday stuff anyway, but we all know what they're doing.
They had it up before Thanksgiving.
Are you really going to be out-Christmased by Starbucks, of all things?
Christians always complain about Starbucks, but they've got more Christmas spirit than 90% of Christians today.
It's a disgrace.
I can tell you, in my neighborhood, very few of the houses right now—and here we are, December 10th, right?
We are well into December.
I mean, we've already lost a week of December.
And many, most of the houses in my neighborhood, no decoration, not even a wreath on the door.
Except for one house that has inflatables.
And that's really, the inflatable decorations are even more offensive than having no decoration at all.
Which is why, under my regime, of course, every house, Christian or not, will be required to decorate for Christmas.
And the displays must include white Christmas lights, a nativity scene, inflatables are banned, Colored lights are banned.
Christmas cheer is mandatory.
Because I'm going to end the war on Christmas with an iron fist.
And look, I'm not saying that you can't add additional decorations to go along with the white Christmas lights and the nativity scene.
In fact, you should.
But the white lights and the nativity are staples and everything has to sort of work with that.
It has to be harmonious.
And agents from my Merriment Enforcement Department, MED for short, will conduct, of course, random checks and make sure that your display is tasteful and it all works together.
And if it isn't, then your house will be bulldozed on the spot with all of the inhabitants still inside.
And again, this is all just being done to make sure that everybody has a nice Christmas.
But you have to break a few eggs to make an eggnog, as they say.
All right, so we have a lot to talk about today.
Obviously, yesterday was a show dedicated to the porn problem and me explaining my arguments for banning or regulating porn.
As you might expect, tons of feedback on that, tons of emails about it.
And actually, I've been very surprised by the emails from the show I did yesterday.
Pleasantly surprised.
Whereas the response on Twitter, if you go to Twitter, you can still see it, it's 95% negative,
the response there, if not 99%.
And the feedback on, I've written now two pieces, about two columns for the dailywire.com,
and the feedback on those articles, if you read the comments, again, like 95% negative.
But the emails that I got after, at mattwalshow at gmail.com,
the emails that I got after the show I did yesterday, by and large, very positive.
Lots of men who say they struggle with porn addictions and agree with me.
Lots of women whose husbands and and sons have been caught up in it, and also agree that it's
a problem that needs to be addressed.
So that feedback has been pretty fascinating. And the difference in the feedback from, you know,
one forum to the next has been interesting as well. I don't know exactly how to account for it,
other than to say that maybe the people who are anti-porn are, ironically, in our culture,
in a situation where they feel ashamed to say it publicly.
So, the people who are pro-porn, they have no shame about saying, I love porn!
Porn's great!
And they'll say it publicly, they'll write it on the internet.
But the people who are against it are the ones hiding in dark corners, whispering, feeling they have to send private messages because they don't want to say it publicly.
In fact, several of the messages and emails I've gotten have had that disclaim, of saying, yo, I really, I support you, I like what you're, I didn't want to say this publicly because I don't want people coming after me, but here's my thought.
This is, this, no, it should be the other way around.
You're saying that you're against smut and obscenity, that's not a shameful position to take.
Um, I'm not blaming those who are nervous about saying it publicly.
What I'm saying is this is, this is, this is how backwards everything is in our culture.
We're now, if you're not in favor of, of smut and obscenity, that's the shameful thing.
So we'll get to all of that.
We'll, we'll talk about, we'll continue the porn discussion in the email portion of the show.
But, uh, before we get to that, I want to begin with actress Jamila Jamil from NBC's The Good Place.
Well, she's recently been on social media bragging about her abortion.
Speaking of a lack of shame, she's been bragging about abortion, attacking pro-lifers.
But her most recent post about her abortions has been, I think, was very instructive and revealing.
So here's what she said.
And this again is after many other posts about her abortions where she's celebrating it and so forth.
Then she says, receiving thousands of messages about how I made a mistake having an abortion
seven years ago and how I must be a miserable person.
I am in fact a happy, thriving, multi-millionaire, madly in love with free time, good sleep,
and a wonderful career and life, but thanks for checking.
Then when she was asked about babies who have a heartbeat and are viable outside the womb,
asked, well, what about them?
Would you say at least they should be spared?
She said, if it's at the cost of a woman slash little girl slash rape or incest victim slash disabled person who doesn't want to put their life and body through hell for a baby they don't want and can't take care of, yep, every time.
The choice is the landlord's, not the tenant nor the neighbor's.
And at another point, she went into the whole familiar shtick about, oh, pro-lifers are only pro-birth.
You don't care about babies after they're born.
Okay, now, a few things here, going through these.
First of all, as for the pro-birth shtick, well, I don't even think I need to spend time on it.
This is the laziest argument from pro-abortion.
And they make a lot of lazy arguments, but this is the laziest possible argument.
First of all, is there anything wrong with being pro-birth?
Of course not.
Yes, I am pro-birth.
I am in favor of babies who are conceived being born.
I think if a baby is conceived and is not born, whether because of being murdered by a human or a miscarriage, I think that's a terrible thing.
I am very much in favor of every conceived child being born.
So yes, pro-birth.
I wear that label proudly.
But of course there are many other problems here.
One being that the people who say that pro-lifers don't care about babies after they're born, they have no evidence, no statistics at all.
Okay, it's not like they have statistics proving that pro-lifers are less likely to adopt, less likely to give to charity, less likely to volunteer their time.
They don't have that.
In fact, if they looked, I can guarantee you they'll find the opposite.
Many pro-lifers adopt children.
Many pro-lifers are very charitable, donate to the poor, help the sick and the needy.
It's a very common thing among pro-lifers.
And of course it is.
Because if you're a pro-lifer, you're already spending a lot of your time defending people who cannot speak for themselves.
So that's going to come from a place of compassion.
This is a problem the pro-abortion people have.
They really desperately want to believe that pro-lifers are pro-life because of some selfish, self-serving desire.
But what's... How is it selfish and self-serving for someone to say that, I don't think you should kill babies?
I don't benefit from that.
When I sit here and say, you shouldn't kill babies, I don't benefit at all.
If I advocate for pro-life legislation, I don't benefit from it.
It's not like I'm saying it for my sake.
I'm already born.
Now, I'm not saying that I sacrifice a lot either by advocating for this.
I don't think I do.
But it's not self-serving.
The pro-abortion case is self-serving and they know it.
Because what they're saying is, no, if I conceive a child, I want to have the ability to kill it because I'm more concerned about my lifestyle.
So they have the self-serving and selfish perspective.
They know it.
And so they're trying to find some way to make us into the selfish ones.
And it's just absurd.
It doesn't work.
So this claim, pro-birth, not pro-life, there's no evidence for that, no statistics, none at all, zero.
And it makes no difference anyway.
If somebody says, hey, we shouldn't murder homeless people.
I'm against murdering the homeless.
Would we say to that person, well, that opinion doesn't count if you're not volunteering at a soup kitchen.
What, so unless I volunteer to Soup Kitchen, I can't say don't kill homeless people?
Is it not just morally correct that it's wrong to kill homeless people?
Isn't that a morally correct statement regardless of how I spend my time?
Regardless of how charitable I personally am, and yes, I should be a charitable person, but even if I'm not, even if I'm a selfish SOB, I'm still correct that you shouldn't kill the homeless.
And you have done nothing to disprove my anti-killing-the-homeless position by accusing me arbitrarily and without evidence, by the way, of being a selfish, hypocritical, uncharitable person.
Alright, I thought her thing about the landlord and tenant was very interesting, putting aside that it's a totally deranged way of looking at the relationship between mother and child.
And this is another thing that pro-abortion people are desperately trying to find some analogy, because they realize that the analogy of having a child is like having a parasite, or tapeworms, or it's like having cancer.
They realize how cruel and just...
Unfeeling and everything that comparison sounds.
And dehumanizing.
So they're trying to find some other comparison and this is what she comes up with.
It's like landlord and tenant.
Well, this is interesting because I can pretty much guarantee you that this person, Jamila Jamil, doesn't actually believe That real actual landlords can evict their real tenants for any reason they see fit.
So she certainly doesn't believe that tenants, that landlords can kill their tenants, which is what, now she's saying that it's like a landlord tenant relationship.
And so that allows the landlord to kill the tenant in this case.
But in a situation where I'm a landlord and I own a house and I've rented it out as apartments, I'm pretty sure she's gonna tell me that if I get tired of one of the tenants in the tenant living in apartment 1B, I'm pretty sure she doesn't think I can just walk in there and kill him.
But not only that, I am very sure that she would also say, given that she's a member of the progressive left, She would also say, I don't have the right to evict him for any reason I see fit.
So, for example, if he's a homosexual, she's gonna say, I can't evict him for that.
Transgender, I can't evict him for that.
So, she uses the landlord-tenant analogy to justify a mother killing a child, when in fact, she believes that landlords have very little authority or power over their tenants.
And in fact, she believes that tenants may have a right to remain in their landlord's property against the landlord's will.
That's her belief.
So her analogy that she uses destroys her own case.
Because there are times when, yeah, you have a tenant in a building, there are times when The tenant may have the right to continue living there on the landlord's property against the landlord's will.
In fact, I would even agree with that.
In some circumstances.
Because this is a contractual arrangement.
And the point is that the landlord can't just tear up the contract at any moment.
He has to honor it.
Well, I think you could also argue, taking her analogy here, okay, Well, the tenant in the mother's womb, number one, didn't choose to move in there.
That tenant was put there by the landlord, in this case, which is the mother.
And the father.
They're the ones who put that child in that apartment.
It wasn't a choice made by the tenant, in this case.
And I would say that now we have a contractual arrangement here.
You have put that tenant there, and now that tenant gets to be there through three trimesters of pregnancy.
And then we have the stuff about how happy and wonderful her life is, how rich she is, and so on.
Good rule of thumb here, if someone is publicly insisting that they're happy, they aren't happy.
And the problem is that all the things she mentions That are comforts, luxuries.
These things don't bring joy.
It's nice to have money.
But nobody finds joy in money.
Which is why, infamously, rich celebrities are often depressed, miserable, drug-addicted, self-destructive.
Having a lot of free time.
Being able to sleep in.
Yeah, that's very nice.
That's enjoyable.
But that's not joyful.
You aren't filled with a deep sense of joy and contentment because you have free time.
In fact, usually if you have too much free time, you get bored.
And sleeping in, I mean, the irony is that only parents who rarely sleep in can actually take joy in sleeping in.
If you sleep in every day, then it's just part of your life and you probably don't appreciate it that much.
But parents who get one chance in five months to sleep in really, really appreciate it.
In fact, they might find joy in it because they don't get to do it very often.
The other thing is that most of what she mentioned, aside from sleeping in and free time, the other thing she mentioned, money, career, and so forth, you can have that with kids.
She could, right now, have the career, have the money, have the nice house, and even have the free time and the sleeping in, probably, because she could hire a nanny if she wanted to, if she is a multi-millionaire.
She could have all that, and also have a baby.
She could have the nice house, and the nice house doesn't have to be depressingly empty.
She could have the joy of motherhood and everything else.
That's the false choice that the abortion industry presents.
They say, well, you have to choose between the baby and financial success in life and a nice career and all of that.
Well, no, you don't have to choose.
Of course, if you did have to choose, and you had to choose between a baby's life as a parent or the career you want, than the correct choice, and also the choice that is going to make you happier in life, ultimately, and that won't lead to a life of guilt, which is the life that Jamila is living, whether she says it or not.
The choice would be to choose the child, of course.
But my point is, you don't really have to even choose between the two.
You should prioritize your child over your career, over these other things.
But you can have both.
And this is what's funny because feminists, they're the ones limiting women and saying, no, you gotta choose.
When it seems to me, the more empowering message for a woman is, you can have it all.
You don't have to choose.
No, you could be a mother and you can go and live your life and do the things that you want and pursue your dreams.
You could do both.
You might have to do it differently than you imagined.
Okay, you might have to take a more circuitous route than you originally thought, but that happens no matter what, whether you have a baby or not.
Your life isn't going to go exactly as you planned.
You can have your goals and your dreams and your objectives, but it's not going to be a straight A to B, point A to point B, right across, as the crow flies, sort of route.
You're going to end up taking detours and doing all this.
So that happens whether you have kids or not.
But just because you have a child, you don't have to just throw those dreams and goals out.
You don't have to abandon them.
You might find as you grow and, and, and, you know, as you grow older as a person and you grow into your role as a parent, that your dreams and goals change.
If they do, they do, but they don't have to.
All right.
Um, so what else here?
Reading now from, let me pull this up.
A disturbing story, and I will save you any images that might accompany it, except for the mental images, which, unfortunately, I cannot save you from.
This is an article on the Daily Wire.
Amanda Press Giacomo says, Wearing a black thong and buttless black dress, hit singer, songwriter, and body positivity icon Lizzo twerked for the cameras while standing courtside at a Los Angeles Lakers game on Sunday evening.
The media, especially left-slash-feminist-leaning magazines and websites, gushed over the singer's bare-booty gyrating.
And those who criticized the Truth Hurts singer for being inappropriate, considering NBA games are frequented by kids and families, were dismissed as fatphobic and sexist.
And then, um...
There's a video there if you go to the Daily Wire, but you probably don't want to see.
Elle magazine gushed over Lizzo's outfit and twerking moves and praised her for her brazen confidence.
The singer wore a shirt dress with the back cut out so everyone could see the black thong she was wearing with her fishnet stockings.
Then she flaunted it when she twerked for the Jumbotron.
That is honestly the kind of brazen confidence we should all take into 2020, the magazine said.
E!
News titled their piece on the singer's antics, Lizzo is a true winner after twerking in her thong outside of the Lakers game.
And then we go through other media outlets that are similarly celebrating.
But I think you probably generally get the idea.
So we have Lizzo, the obese singer, who went to a Lakers game with a dress with a big hole cut out around the butt area, wearing a thong.
Now, a few obvious points here.
Number one, if a man went out dressed like that, we would all just call him a pervert and a sexual harasser.
Okay, so if you had a man doing that, We would all say this is why we need the Me Too movement.
This is a man who's imposing himself on others.
This is a man... Right?
And that's what we would say.
And it would be true, by the way.
We would be totally... It would be accurate to say that a man who does that is a pervert and a degenerate.
It's also true when a woman does it.
So we're not making exceptions.
There is no female privilege here.
Second point is that it's, on top of everything else, extremely unhygienic.
And disgusting that you're sitting down on chairs that other people are going to use.
We don't need to get too graphic about that.
But here's the main thing that jumps out at me.
And it's kind of similar to what we just talked about.
Where you had a woman, had an abortion, and now is insisting, no, I'm happy, guys.
I'm so happy.
You have no idea how happy I am.
And it's similar here, where you have a woman Advertising in increasingly desperate ways how confident she is in her body.
All this body positivity and self-confidence, most of it is people who are desperate for attention and are not comfortable with themselves at all, actually.
If you're comfortable with yourself and you go to a basketball game, You're just going to wear normal clothing.
You're going to go to the game.
You're going to sit there.
You're going to have a beer or something, and you're just going to watch the game.
That's if you're comfortable with yourself.
That's what people who are comfortable with themselves do.
They go about their day.
They don't need to stand out.
They don't need attention from everybody.
They don't need to be celebrated everywhere they go.
They don't need to make a statement all the time.
They just go about their day.
That is what confident, self-assured people do.
Someone who has no confidence, no self-assurance, someone who hates themselves, someone who desperately needs the approval of others will do exactly what Lizzo does here.
Will do anything for attention.
That's the main point.
Most of what you've seen from these celebrities and pop culture, whether it's women or men, This is a woman, Lizzo, who is addicted to attention and approval and needs it so much from everybody.
It's pathetic.
It's sad.
And the other problem, of course, with body positivity is that You shouldn't be positive about everything about your body, necessarily.
If there's something that is unhealthy and that you can control about your body, then, no, you shouldn't be positive about it.
So, being positive about morbid obesity is like an alcoholic being positive about liver damage.
It's like an alcoholic going around celebrating, yeah, I have liver damage, isn't it great?
Has an image of his damaged liver that he, you know, prints out and puts on a t-shirt.
Wears it, wears it.
Hey everyone, look at my damaged liver!
There's nothing to be positive there.
You're destroying yourself.
Doesn't mean you should hate yourself.
In fact, it means you should stop hating yourself.
And you should start respecting yourself.
And stop doing this to yourself.
So there is a happy in-between.
But there is somewhere in between this body positivity, I'm celebrating everything about my body, and hating myself.
There is somewhere in between.
Where I have confidence in myself, I'm not looking for attention or approval, I don't hate myself, but I also realize that there are things about me that can be improved.
And so I'm going to try to improve those things.
All right, let's now get right to emails, because there's a bunch of them.
matwalshowatgmail.com, matwalshowatgmail.com.
Obviously, I can't read all of the messages people have sent about the porn topic, but I'll do as many as I can.
This is from Jerome, I think.
J-A-R-O-M.
That's what I want to say, Jerome.
Jerome, maybe?
I've been listening to your show for a few months, and I agree with your views and love your arguments supporting them.
I'm so glad that you came out and strongly supported your view that porn should be banned on the show yesterday.
I especially appreciated your stance that conservatism has its roots in morality.
For a while now, I have felt like my morally conservative views are at odds with some right-wing ideas.
However, the way you explained it yesterday made so much sense.
I feel it is not only a victory for the left when we abandon what is good, but also a victory for Satan.
What do you feel needs to be done to help steer the right back to a foundation in moral thinking and policymaking so as to avoid the weak, don't legislate morality position held by so many today?
Love to hear your thoughts.
Well, I think people just need to take a moment to think through their own positions, follow the thread of their own thinking.
The idea that morality shouldn't be a part of our policy debates is not only dumb and weak, but also nonsensical.
Because if you stop to think about it for a moment, you realize how impossible it is to separate morality from law, morality from policy.
You just can't do it.
So I think people need to do the intellectual work themselves.
I don't know if there's a lot we can do to make people think.
People need to be willing to do that themselves.
This is from Trey, says, Dear Matt, you do realize that you just lost a lot of listeners, right?
We don't tune in to hear your insane lectures about porn.
Well, thanks, Trey.
Yeah, I don't.
Here's the thing about that.
I don't care that much.
You know, you lose people, you gain people.
It's the way it goes.
And now, personally, I don't really understand that.
I would think if you listen to this show, it's because for whatever reason you're interested in what my opinions are.
Not saying you should be interested, but that's why you're here.
So then you hear an opinion you don't agree with, why would that make you run away?
If it does, fine.
I don't know why it would have that effect.
Unless you come here because what you really want to hear is your own opinions shouted back out at you.
So I think that's probably the case with you, Trey, and with a lot of other people.
They listen to podcasts or they watch cable news and all that.
They listen to pundits.
They're not really interested in what those people are saying.
What they want to hear is what they already think echoed back at them.
And so what I would suggest is you can save a lot of time and money.
If you just want to hear your own opinions, you could You know, maybe walk into a big, uh, you know, maybe like a big cavernous building and, or a cave and just shout your opinions and you'll hear your opinions back in your ears through the echo.
If that's all you're looking for.
I mean, another thing you could do is you could just record your own opinions and then play them back in your ears.
Soothing music as you go about your day.
This is from, but thanks for listening.
This is from Lance, says, Dear Matt, I just want to reach out to say that I agree with you 100% when it comes to banning porn.
I myself have struggled with and still struggle with porn.
If I remember correctly, I was introduced to porn at around 11, started out as a complete accident.
I looked at nude pictures at first, but then started watching pornographic videos.
It's something that I wish I never had access to and something I wish never existed.
And I'm ashamed to be addicted to it.
Lance, thanks for that feedback.
There's a few other emails similar to that, which I'm going to read as well, and then I'll...
This is from Jacob, said, Dear Matt, I've been struggling with porn addiction and your episode on porn was amazing.
While I understand it's not the only reason to rid our lives of porn, your comment that the viewer doesn't know if the act is consensual and doesn't care really hit me hard.
It's a hell of a motivator to keep fighting the addiction.
You are right.
Porn does ruin lives.
I was so desensitized.
I struggled to have intimate moments with my wife.
I'm now divorced.
I was exposed to porn at a very young age.
Though this was pre-internet, it became a lot easier to gain access to it with the internet.
Nobody warned me of the dangers of porn.
The issues were not widely known, and to this day it is rarely talked about.
Society treats porn like it's normal human behavior, but it's not.
This is not what God intended, and it can easily rip your life apart.
Thank you for taking the time to get the word out.
I only wish more people would.
This is from Anonymous, says, hello sir, big fan of your show.
I work in a treatment facility that works with male juvenile sex offenders.
I have worked with around 20 young men.
Most of these young men have offended against a younger sibling.
Most of the clients I meet come from broken families, but what every single one of them has in common is they were all exposed to pornography at a young age.
I realize that making an argument to make pornography illegal based on this would be fallacious because the data is too small, but I think it's a testament to how destructive pornography really is.
You don't have to be a biblical scholar.
Heck, you don't even have to be a Christian to see just how morally evil pornography is.
I'd 100% support legislation to make porn illegal.
I appreciate the work you do.
Thank you.
And there's a ton of emails like the ones I just read, so that's just a sampling.
And I think it's a really powerful testimony from people who, you know, like this email here, people that work with Kids who've been exposed to pornography have seen it, and you have men.
The first two emails I read from men who struggle with it, you have a man whose marriage was destroyed by it.
These are really common stories.
These are not exceptions, this is not aberration.
This is what porn is doing to families, and to people, and to men, and to women, and to children.
This is what it's doing all across the country.
Millions of cases of it.
Millions of examples.
So if you're sitting there still trying to insist that this is a matter just between consenting adults and it's not a big deal, it's just images, it doesn't really have any effect on society, I think you're hiding from what is clearly the reality.
You're burying your head in the proverbial sand.
This is from Marcus.
Says, Matt, you're the one who sounds like a leftist right now.
Someone can't disagree with you without being branded a leftist or a believer in leftist thought.
Grow up.
Not all of your fans have to agree with everything you say.
And if they don't, you'll mark them for being a leftist.
This is coming from someone who listens every day and someone who has not disagreed with you yet until today.
Stop with the shallow branding and name-calling.
You don't always have to be right.
Also, I agree with the regulating porn strictly, but not outright banning.
Well, Marcus, I think I was pretty specific with the leftist charge.
I said that when a conservative reflexively defends hardcore porn, which it sounds like you're not, But when one does, and many have, yes, that is a conservative who has bought into leftism without even knowing it.
And I stand by that.
There is nothing in conservatism historically that lines up behind a defense of hardcore porn.
That's just not what conservatism seeks to conserve.
Also, I said it's a leftist claim to say that the common good is a subjective or relative concept.
Which it is, because that is, literally, relativism.
And relativism, moral relativism, is the opposite of what conservatism is.
Again, conservatism is not seeking to conserve moral relativism.
Or hardcore porn.
Or the ability of children to see smut on the internet.
That is not what conservatism historically has been looking to conserve.
I think that lines up much, much more with the left's cultural agenda.
This is from... Let's see.
This is from Abraham, says, You repeatedly make the point that porn has zero good and only bad influence.
But if you were to take alcohol into consideration, alcohol is the same idea.
No good can come of it.
Specifically when you give it to kids.
Now we tried to ban alcohol prohibition and that didn't work out.
So they put stronger regulations on it, which is great.
So instead of banning porn, maybe put stronger regulations on it, making it harder for young kids to access.
I don't think that banning porn is a good idea.
Same way as I believe banning prostitution is a bad idea for some people.
It's the only thing they have if you, for some people, it's the only thing they have.
Well, okay, Abraham, first of all, as I said yesterday, I'm fine with the idea of heavy regulations.
That's better than nothing.
Not as good as a ban in my view, but it's a good step, so we don't necessarily disagree on that.
As to alcohol, I'd argue that alcohol and porn are very different in a number of ways.
First of all, I do think that alcohol has redeeming qualities.
And I'm not just talking about the studies showing that, you know, a glass of wine a few times a week is healthy for you, has health benefits.
Although that is an important point, I think.
But I think alcohol in moderation can help facilitate social interaction.
It has the effect of de-stressing people a little bit, loosening them up a bit, which can help with social interaction, again in moderation.
In fact, this is a true story.
I went to a doctor a few years ago because I have chronic jaw pain.
Which, by the way, I am a victim for that, so I do get a place somewhere on the victim hierarchy for my chronic jaw pain, just so you know.
Keep that in mind the next time anyone wants to criticize me or insult me.
You're insulting a man with chronic jaw pain.
You don't know my struggle.
So anyway, I went to the doctor for that, and I was told that there's really no medicine they could prescribe, but what the doctor essentially prescribed, suggested, is that she said, well, why don't you have a drink when you get home at night?
And it helps.
Now, I'm not trying to claim that I drink primarily medicinally, although I could make that claim, but I don't.
I would probably have the drink anyway.
But the point is, there are, I think, some benefits to having a drink.
Now, again, in moderation.
Obviously, if you go overboard and you're getting drunk, then now you're an alcoholic and you're destroying yourself, and there are all kinds of problems there which we're all familiar with.
Now, porn, you know, you could try to argue that it relieves stress, I suppose.
I'm sure that there are people that are going to argue that now.
But actually, ultimately, it doesn't.
People who watch porn are more depressed, on average, as studies have shown.
So porn creates more stress than it relieves.
And whereas alcohol, you know, having a beer with a friend, you sit down with some friends at a bar or something, you have a beer, nobody's getting drunk, there's no downside.
Nothing bad's happening, and you're having a discussion, you're enjoying yourself.
It could facilitate a wholesome social environment.
Porn does the opposite.
Porn is isolating.
It interferes with social interaction.
It interferes with the sort of cohesiveness of society.
In fact, I think it's one of the reasons fewer people date and get married these days is because they're just looking at porn instead.
And then also, alcohol is a physical product that can be locked away.
It has to be bought in a store.
You need an ID.
There are all kinds of precautions that can be taken.
They aren't 100% effective, obviously, but my point is that it's a hell of a lot easier to stop a 12-year-old from drinking a beer every night than it is to stop a 12-year-old from looking at porn.
And finally, moderate exposure to alcohol, even for a minor, really has no effect.
So, whereas moderate exposure to porn can be traumatizing, So compare an 11-year-old who sneaks a swig of his dad's beer to an 11-year-old who sneaks a peek at hardcore porn.
Does anyone think that they're going to be equally damaged?
The 11-year-old who snuck a swig of the beer, which in fact I did that when I was around that age, I wasn't damaged by it at all.
In fact, I hated it.
I thought it was disgusting and I didn't want to touch beer again for a while because of how gross it was.
No ill effect.
It didn't do anything to my body.
It was just that small, tiny little bit of alcohol.
And that's it.
I wasn't traumatized by it.
It's not something I'm going to be telling my therapist about.
Whereas, in fact, you've already heard some of these emails.
Just that one brief exposure to hardcore porn for a child can have a lasting effect that they'll remember for the rest of their life.
So I just think that these two things are entirely different.
This is from Luke.
Says, Matt, you said in Monday's episode that government exists for the good of society.
While I agree, how would you refute the point that free health care in college would also be good for society, therefore we should legislate it?
Well, I would say that it's not good for society.
See, this is my point.
When the left makes an argument and says we should do this for the common good, for the good of society, because it's morally right, I think our answer should be, no, it's not good, it's not morally right, and here's why.
Our answer should not be, and this is unfortunately how conservatives often answer.
What conservatives will often do is they'll say, well, who cares if it's the right thing to do?
It's too expensive.
At least that's how the argument comes across often.
So we come across like these utilitarian, unfeeling scrooges.
Who cares if people are starving to death?
It's all about the money, the bottom line.
That's the way it comes across.
No, I think, you see, the moral arguments, the arguments from what is good and what is right, those are far more powerful, far more effective, far more important.
It's more important to do the right thing, morally, than it is to do the thing that's going to be the most financially advantageous.
So we should be engaging on that level.
And so my response is, for example, the tuition forgiveness.
My answer is not, oh yeah, that'd be great for society, but I don't think we should do it, because I don't want you taking my money, you leeches.
No, my answer is, it'd be horrible for society.
My answer is, it's morally wrong.
You're taking money from other people, many of them are not rich and can't afford it.
You're taking money from them, giving it to someone else.
And all these people that made financial sacrifices to pay off their loans, now you're going to take money from them to pay off the loans of people who haven't made those sacrifices?
That is morally wrong, because these people are victims now.
You're taking money from them.
It's theft.
So that's my answer, and I think that that's going to be a more effective approach.
And also, again, it gets down more to the heart of the matter.
This is from Mike, says, Matt, it's not true that all laws are created to stop evil or immoral acts.
Some examples, two or more only in the carpool lane.
It's illegal to start your car and let it warm up in your driveway without being in it.
You must have a garbage bag in your car.
You must register your vehicle.
You must pay an exorbitant tax in order to keep your home or your vehicle.
These are just a few laws that have nothing to do with morality or the safety of others.
There are dozens more.
Now, Mike, remember I said that all laws have a moral basis, but they can be incorrect.
Obviously, there have been many immoral laws.
Slavery was legal, and that was an immoral law.
But the people who instituted those laws protecting slavery would have claimed that it was moral and that it was ultimately helping society.
It was the right thing to do.
It was for the common good.
That's what they would have claimed.
They were hideously wrong, obviously, and I don't think they really even believed what they were saying, but the point is that the pro-slavery law ultimately did make a moral claim.
Did claim to be moral, as all laws do, whether rightly or wrongly.
The people who make laws can be wrong, often are, but laws by their nature are rooted in a moral conception.
Good or bad conception, still a moral conception.
So the laws you mentioned are definitely rooted in morality.
Two or more in the carpool lane.
This is meant to make traffic more orderly, make things run smoother, so people can get where they're going easier and safer.
Why does that matter?
Why do we care about keeping things safe and orderly on the highway?
Because it's morally right.
The thing about the garbage bag in the car, I've never heard of that before.
I don't know where that's a law.
I've just never heard that.
I assume the reason for that law.
I think it's a stupid, petty law, if it exists.
But presumably the reason is to stop people from littering.
And so that is an attempt at a moral law.
And then right down the line, taxes.
Okay, there are way too many taxes, there are a lot of bad taxes, there are a lot of immoral taxes.
But the people who institute taxes would say they're doing it for the common good, for the benefit of society.
They might be lying, but that's the claim.
So, again, every time a law is passed, It is an attempt, supposedly, to do something moral for the good of society.
What you would need to do is find an example of a law that, at bottom, is not attempting to do anything moral at all.
A law that, when it comes down to it, has no moral implications whatsoever and is not intended to have moral implications.
You would need to find an example of a law like that, and I don't think you can.
Finally, this is from Jenna, says, Hi Matt, thank you for your episode on porn.
You made a lot of great points, and I mostly agree with everything you say, and I agree that porn's a huge problem in society.
My question is about hate speech.
Couldn't all of your arguments about banning porn also be used to ban hate speech?
So isn't there a slippery slope there?
Well, Jenna, I think that there are some major differences between hate speech and porn.
First of all, whereas I think porn is, well, explicit, literally, hate speech is not.
And so what I mean is, we all know what porn is when we see it.
There's little confusion about it.
I'd wager that 99.9% of the porn on the internet is obviously porn.
Maybe there are some very rare exceptions, some gray areas, and you're always going to have that with the law.
You're always going to have those fringe cases, gray areas, where you have to stipulate and there's a little bit of a debate there.
But for the most part, you know what porn is.
There's not a lot of confusion.
Hate speech, on the other hand, is entirely vague and ambiguous.
Nobody has a precise idea of what it is, and the judgment is completely subjective.
Also, the categorization of hate speech depends on making judgments about the intent of the speaker.
You are assuming that the speaker was hateful in what they said and in their intent in saying it.
Now, sometimes that might be obvious, but often it isn't, whereas the intent behind porn is very clear to everybody.
Also, I think that so-called hate speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment because it is speech.
It's right there in the name.
It's the expression of an idea, a point of view.
Maybe a bad idea, maybe an offensive point of view, but it is speech.
Nobody can deny that, because you can't even say hate speech without admitting that it is a form of speech.
Now, you can easily make the argument, as I did, that porn is not speech.
But you can't do that with hate speech.
Also, policing hate speech requires the government To police what people say and what they think.
Even putting the constitutional issues aside, I think this seems impossible to me.
Policing porn is difficult but not impossible.
It is a product published on the internet, publicly, so this makes it at least feasible, at least possible, to regulate it or control it.
So I think those are just some of the differences between hate speech and porn.
Uh, and then maybe we'll do one more.
This is from Devin says, I'd like to get a look at your internet history.
It's always the guy like the guys like you who end up being into the freakiest porn.
You're such a hypocrite.
I can't believe I ever listened to your show.
Well, Devin, um, if you looked at my internet history, you'd find that I spend way too much time reading analysis of the NFL game from the previous weekend.
And it is actually kind of embarrassing because I spend a lot of time Reading analyses of games that people played.
I don't actually watch porn.
And the fact that you apparently think it's impossible for a guy to not watch it says more about you than me.
But this is also irrelevant.
Because as you heard in these emails, plenty of guys watch it and yet agree that it's bad and should be banned or regulated or controlled.
Are they hypocrites?
No, I would say that they are admirably honest and courageous.
Courageous to look honestly at what they're doing, see it for what it is, and speak out against it.
I think speaking out against opposing your own behavior is not hypocrisy.
So I find the testimony of an anti-porn man who watches porn to be extremely compelling.
And I find it to be far more compelling than dudes who watch porn and want to defend it because they like it.
That's really basic.
That's easy.
That's just self-serving and that's easy to figure out what's going on there.
But someone who's coming out against their own interests, saying, yes, I enjoy doing this.
Well, I maybe not enjoy it anymore, but I do it.
And yet I think I should be stopped from doing it.
Isn't that really powerful testimony?
Shouldn't it make you stop and think, now why would people who do this be against it?
And besides, let's say that I am a hypocrite.
So what?
Would that make my arguments wrong?
It's like we just talked about with the pro-life thing.
Are arguments automatically wrong if they come from the mouth of a hypocrite?
See, this is the laziest move, what you're doing here.
To impugn the motives of the person making the argument, rather than to engage with the argument itself.
That is lazy, cheap, stupid.
It's like if a woman makes an argument against abortion, and then you find out that she had an abortion.
Does that make her argument about abortion wrong?
She's making claims.
She's saying that the unborn child is a human.
She's saying that it's a person.
She's saying that it's morally wrong to kill people.
These are claims about science.
These are claims about morality.
She's either right or she's wrong.
And what she's done in her past, and what she does in her private life, is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of those claims.
And besides, it wouldn't even make her a hypocrite.
It really makes her someone who has experienced this, has been down into that darkness, has seen it for what it is.
And so that lends her argument more weight, not less.
It makes her more credible, not less.
Her perspective is more interesting, just like the perspective of the men who watch porn but are against it.
It is a more interesting perspective, and we can learn a lot more from it than we can from yours, for example.
And final thing, this is just a pet peeve of mine, and I don't mean to be pedantic, but this is not even what hypocrisy is.
Hypocrisy is not saying one thing and doing another.
That's not hypocrisy.
So if I say that it's wrong to tell a lie, yet I've told lies in my life, that doesn't make me a hypocrite.
Hypocrisy is, and if that does make someone a hypocrite, then we're all hypocrites and there's no point of accusing anybody else of it because we're all that and it's just part of being a human.
Which maybe hypocrisy is part of being a human, but here's what hypocrisy actually is.
I think it's far more insidious, actually.
Hypocrisy is pretending to believe something that you don't actually believe.
So if somebody says something and then does another thing, that might be evidence that they don't believe what they said, but not necessarily.
It could just be evidence that they're weak, because they're human, and they have trouble with follow-through, like we all do.
But that's what hypocrisy is.
Hypocrisy is a fraud, a fake.
Someone who goes around preaching a position that they don't even really believe in their heads.
And one thing I can guarantee you is that I don't take positions that I don't believe.
If I'm saying something, it's because I believe it.
I might be wrong.
I might be an idiot.
There's a lot of things you can say about me, but at the very least, you can be confident that what I'm saying, I do at least believe it.
I might be the only one who believes it, depending on what it is, but at least I do.
Otherwise, I wouldn't be saying it.
All right, we'll leave it there.
Thanks for the email, Devin, and thanks everybody else for tuning in.
Godspeed.
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The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring, Senior Producer Jonathan Hay, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Supervising Producer Robert Sterling, Technical Producer Austin Stevens, Editor Donovan Fowler, Audio Mixer Mike Coromina.
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Despite all of their charges collapsing, Democrats plan to move forward with two articles of impeachment against President Trump.
We will examine why it's happening now.
How did we get to the point where we can't agree on anything?
Some people blame Trump.
Some blame the IG report.
Some are blaming a weak Democratic field.
The real root cause is far deeper.
We will examine how this rot has been building since at least the 1980s.