Ep. 389 - A Hate Crime The Media Doesn't Want To Talk About
Members of a black supremacist group shot up a Jewish grocery store in a racist and anti-Semitic attack. The media isn't very interested in the story, for obvious reasons. Also, Trump trolls Greta Thunberg and the woke-ified version of "Baby It's Cold Outside" fails hilariously. All of that and your emails today on the show.
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Well, you know, I always enjoy a news cycle focused around a Trump tweet.
And by enjoy, I mean it makes me want to jump in front of a cement truck.
But that's the big topic today.
Donald Trump trolled Greta Thunberg on Twitter.
Tweeting in reaction to her winning the Person of the Year, Trump tweeted, so ridiculous, Greta must work on her anger management problem, then go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend.
Chill, Greta, chill.
The media saying that this is terrible, evil, etc, etc, etc.
Because he's... I even saw there was at least one blue checkmark on Twitter saying that he should be impeached just based on this tweet alone.
Because he's attacking a child and everything else.
And some people are pointing to... Some people are pointing to...
Man, I'm boring myself already just talking about this.
Why am I doing it?
Well, because there is a point I want to make.
There is a point I want to make about the tweet, and I just have to get to it, so bear with me.
Some people are pointing to the perceived hypocrisy of the right and Trump attacking a kid, while at the same time the right freaked out last week about that dumb joke that the woman told at the impeachment hearing about Barron Trump.
And so they're saying, well, that's hypocrisy.
Okay, so here's my point.
With the stipulation ahead of time that none of this matters at all.
My point is that, first of all...
I personally continue to be not a fan of the president trolling on Twitter.
I do actually think that presidents should be above that and should have more important things to do.
I troll Twitter all the time.
So when I bring this up, someone always says, well, what are you doing on Twitter?
Yeah, no, I troll Twitter all the time.
I'm a petty and immature person.
But importantly here, I'm not the leader of the free world.
So I like to think that the president has more important things to do than I do.
Though of course that will change when I, as you know, ascend to my rightful throne.
So I'm not a fan of it.
No matter what he's saying, I'm just, I'm not a fan.
I don't think he's winning converts this way.
I think more people are turned off by the dumb tweeting than are turned on by it.
Well, I hope nobody's turned on by it, but you get what I'm saying.
I think that he's more likely to Repel people than he is to win them.
I don't think that there's anyone, I don't think there's anyone out there saying, you know, I don't really like anything about Trump, but man, that tweeting, I love it.
I hate everything about him, but the tweeting I love.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people saying, you know, I kind of like a lot of the stuff Trump's doing, but the tweeting, I just, I really hate it.
So there are a lot of people saying that.
I don't think there's anyone on the other side of that fence.
Maybe there's one or two weird weirdos on that side of the fence.
But, um, so I just, politically, I don't think there's a lot of benefit to it.
With that said, when it comes to this attacking a child thing, And look, I thought that the conservatives who were fainting over the Barron Trump joke were being extremely dumb and embarrassing.
That was just very stupid.
It was not a big deal.
Nobody was attacking Barron Trump.
But there is a difference between going after a kid who's not in politics and going after a kid who is an activist out on the public stage making a case, making an argument.
And it's important to acknowledge this distinction because the left's move has been, recently especially, whether it's with Greta or David Hogg or whoever else, the move has been to elevate these kids to the spotlight, use them as mouthpieces, insist that we all take their ideas seriously, and even to point to them as an example of why the voting age should be lowered to 16, because look how competent and insightful and intelligent these kids are.
But then when we criticize, then they go, well, how dare you?
She's a child, you monster.
Well, if you're going to do the, she's just a child thing, then stop expecting me to take her seriously and get her off the stage.
You can't have it both ways.
And this is why I'm firmly against getting kids involved in politics.
I don't like to see kids getting attacked, whoever they are.
I don't care who they are.
I don't, I don't like to see it.
But when you put a kid on the public stage to argue a case, to get involved in the public debate, and especially when you're using that kid, as was the case with David Hogg, who's not a kid anymore, but when you're using the kid as a means to argue for taking away people's constitutional rights, you are putting that person in the line for criticism.
And there is a line between just attacking somebody and criticizing them.
But the problem is that the left says, you can't criticize or attack.
You know, attacking is wrong, but criticizing is wrong, too.
You can't do that.
You just can't.
This person's making an argument.
It doesn't matter how old they are.
I'm going to respond to it.
And if you don't think that the child should be involved in that kind of dispute, if you don't think that we should be taking the argument seriously enough to criticize it, then probably that person shouldn't be on the stage making the argument in the first place.
That's the point.
And so, get kids off of the stage.
And I don't like it when the right does it either.
They do it less often.
It does happen sometimes.
But I don't care if it's right or left.
I don't think kids should be... And also, I just...
A kid doesn't know anything about politics or about the way the world works.
I have never, and I say this with all due respect, I was a kid once myself, but I've never heard a 14 or 15 or 16 year old say anything that made me go, oh wow, I never thought of it like that.
Wow, that's a great insight.
I've never heard that.
And maybe on occasion, there's a really super insightful, brilliant 16-year-old who says stuff like that, but for the most part, they just don't know anything.
They're still at a point in life where they're learning from us.
They're turning to us to tell them things.
Which is what kids do.
But it's...
And that's why we don't, but when the left puts these kids on the pedestal, it's not because they've got some great insight into the issue.
It's because they're using the kids as human shields.
These kids are puppets regurgitating the talking points that the left assigns to them.
And then the left hides behind these kids.
Because we're not allowed to respond because then we'd be attacking a child.
I am just not a fan of that at all.
Okay, enough of that.
In fact, I do have an actual important story to discuss today.
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Okay, so there was a mass shooting on Tuesday, a hate crime that left Six people dead, including a police officer.
The two shooters were both killed as well.
Probably haven't heard much about it.
Maybe you've heard something about it.
Hopefully you've heard something at least, but not much.
The media is not focused very intently on this story.
Let's try to figure out why.
First, let's look at what happened.
A kosher supermarket in New Jersey, in Jersey City actually, was targeted Tragic story, also pretty dramatic.
customers that grocery were killed. When police responded, there was a shootout and it was during
the shootout that the cop was killed. And finally, thankfully, the suspects were taken down.
Tragic story, also pretty dramatic. It's the kind of thing that you'd think would be big headline
news, except there's a problem from the media's perspective.
The problem is that the assailants are linked to the black Hebrew Israelites.
The Black Hebrew Israelites are essentially a cult, an anti-Semitic racist cult, and as it says right there in the title, these are Black people.
So you have two Black people committing a racist, anti-Semitic hate crime, and they are linked to a hate group, a Black supremacist hate group.
The media doesn't want any part of that.
And maybe you've, if, I don't know how widespread these people are.
I know that, you know, I see them in Baltimore, you see them in D.C.
all the time, and they stand on the street corner just shouting at people going by, shouting racist stuff to white people walking by.
That's their whole thing.
To make matters even worse for our warriors of truth in the media, this group, the Black Hebrews, you may remember that name.
Maybe it's from seeing them on the sidewalk screaming at you.
Or maybe it's because they were the people who started the altercation in DC that was blamed infamously by the media on the Covington Catholic kids.
So you remember that, of course.
We got that out-of-context clip of Nathan Phillips banging his drum in the face of Covington kids.
And then next thing you know, the media is going after these kids and there's bomb threats and death threats and everything, and they're trying to destroy their life.
What we didn't see initially is that the black Hebrew guys got the ball rolling by screaming racist, anti-gay, anti-white, anti-Native American rhetoric at the Covington kids and at the Native Americans.
And so they're the ones who got this altercation going.
Someone went, cut all of that out, and just left it with a short clip of the kids and Nathan Phillips.
And they got blamed for something that was the fault of the black Hebrews.
And now we have the same group linked to a terror attack, a hate crime in New Jersey.
And so for the media, this is bad news because it doesn't fit the narrative.
It doesn't fit what they're trying to do politically.
And it also brings to mind one of the worst things they ever did, which was to completely slander These Covington Catholics and try to destroy them for something that they did not do So that's why the media doesn't want to emphasize this and when I say doesn't want to emphasize this because I brought this up yesterday online and Some people responded saying well, what do you mean?
I I saw the media covering this and Yeah, of course they're going to cover it.
That's not how fake news works.
Yes, they're going to cover it.
They're going to cross the T's and dot the I's, and they're going to do their story about it.
So you can always claim, and they can always claim, that, hey, we did stories on it.
What are you talking about?
See?
The point is on the emphasis.
That's so much of what fake news is.
It's what do they choose to emphasize, and what do they choose to de-emphasize.
And on this story, yeah, they don't have any choice but to talk about it, obviously.
It's a mass shooting.
It's a hate crime in New Jersey.
What else are they going to do?
But they're not going to emphasize it the way that they would if this was a white supremacist group that was responsible for this.
And that's fake news.
Okay, I thought this was pretty interesting.
Reading now from the Daily Wire, it says, the Women's Liberation Front, W-O-L-F, or WOLF, I suppose, for short, a group that views itself as a radical feminist organization, wants to hold an event at the Seattle Public Library, but the library is considering the complaints of another group that calls WOLF a hate group.
And that group is?
Not some kind of Christian group or right-wing group, but the Gender Justice League, which my Northwest host, Jason Rantz, terms a far-left LGBT group.
They're upset because Wolf's event, titled Fighting the New Misogyny, a feminist critique of gender identity, intends to offer, quote, a critical analysis of gender identity.
Rantz notes that Wolf dislikes instances where biological women are disadvantaged by trans women, thus the Gender Justice League, So we've got the Women's Liberation Front versus the Gender Justice League.
Can we stop for a minute and focus on Gender Justice League?
Quite a name for an organization.
Imagine unironically putting Justice League in the name of your organization.
Thus, the Gender Justice League granted the end result of a hate group using the library as a venue to critique the existence of a minority group creates a hostile environment and is unacceptable.
The Gender Justice League wrote, uh, we recently find out, found out that an anti-trans organization has booked an event at the Seattle Public Library with the express purpose of arguing to take away legal rights for trans people.
The library has put out an immediate response to continue to look at their options of the situation.
And then the Gender Justice League added a legal threat as well.
And so anyway, you get the idea.
They're, uh, they're trying to shut down this event.
And so what you see here is the burgeoning civil war on the left between what I guess we now would call radical feminists and the people who are proponents of the gender ideology and gender identity.
But think about what's happened here, where now you're a radical feminist if you simply take the position That only human beings with female reproductive organs are in fact women.
That is now a radical feminist position to take.
But these are, and I'm no, I'm certainly no defender of feminism by any stretch of the imagination.
But these feminists, and I have no doubt that they are radical in other areas.
If we started talking about abortion, I'm sure that their true radical nature would come to the forefront.
But what they're saying about the trans stuff is not at all radical.
That's just science.
But also, what they realize, this group of feminists, and I think it's a relatively small group within the larger feminism, But what they're doing is they're trying to preserve and protect the gains of feminism over the last several decades.
Many of those gains, I'm not a fan of, and I would like to see them lose those gains, such as the quote, gain of being able to kill children.
But they do realize That what's happening with the gender identity stuff, gender ideology, is that all of that now is threatened.
Because what feminists have been doing, it's all about drawing this distinction between men and women.
It's about painting women as victims.
It's about creating this tension, this competitiveness between men and women.
You know, presenting women as a group that has to struggle against this other group of men, the patriarchy and everything.
In order for any of that to work and make sense, we need to know what women are.
And it needs to be the case that only women can be women.
Because if men can now be women, then everything feminists have been doing is blown to smithereens.
So you've got these two groups now destroying each other.
And it's a weird situation for someone like myself or anybody on the right, because on one hand, I think radical feminists are, what they stand for is vile and evil, destructive.
These are often just, I don't think there's any word for it, but bloodthirsty people.
When you look at their approach to their utter disregard for the unborn and their support for killing babies at any stage of development for any reason.
On the other hand, when it comes to the gender stuff, they're absolutely right.
So I don't know.
I don't know who to root for.
I guess it's one of those You just root for both sides to lose, I suppose.
All right, so I'm late to this, but I was, speaking of feminism, I was reminded about it yesterday when Emily Zanotti, a colleague of mine at The Daily Wire, tweeted about it.
It's the woke version, the woke version of Baby, It's Cold Outside.
John Legend and Kelly Clarkson recorded a progressive version of the song because they were concerned that the original is offensive in the Me Too era.
So you're familiar probably with the criticism of the original Baby, It's Cold Outside.
People say that it sounds like the man is trying to violate the woman's consent.
All of that, when really, in reality, it's just a song about a man and woman flirting.
The woman is playing hard-to-get.
She's clearly dropping hints that she wants to stay, and the man's trying to convince her, so it's this back-and-forth flirtatious thing.
That's the song.
These days, though, it's problematic.
So, they did this new version, and I heard it about a month ago, and I thought it was hilarious.
Really, I laughed hysterically, and then I forgot about it.
But it really is very funny unintentionally.
So I don't know if you've heard it yet, but I want to play a part of it for you, and so that we can all enjoy this together.
Take a listen.
I really can't stay.
Baby, it's cold outside.
I've got to go.
I can call you a ride.
This evening has been so very nice Time spent with you is paradise
My mama will start to worry I'll call the car and tell him to hurry
My daddy will be pacing the floor Wait, what are you still living home for?
So really I'd better stay Your driver, his name is Murray
Maybe just a happy stranger Oh, we're both adults, so who's keeping score?
What will my friends think?
I think they should rejoice I have one more dream
It's your body and your choice Oh, you really know how
Your eyes are like starlight now.
One look at you and then I fell.
I ought to say no, no, no.
Then you really ought to go, go, go.
At least I'm gonna say that I tried.
Well, Murray, he just pulled up outside.
I really can't stay.
I understand, baby.
Maybe it's cold outside Yeah, I... I love that.
That's great.
I love it for none of the reasons that John Legend probably intended.
Because it's another example of trying to go woke but going broke instead.
It's another example of something getting woked even though it wasn't broke.
And now you end up with a progressive version of a song that's less progressive than the version it's trying to improve.
So they tried to make it unsexist, and they ended up with something that's way more sexist than what was originally there.
Because now, rather than the man pursuing the woman, and the woman playing hard to get, and dropping hints at everything, which is what the original song is, now, because they didn't change the woman's lines in the song, right, it sounds like, isn't it, I don't think the lines changed at all.
So she's still saying the same things, it's the same lines.
So now you've got the woman dropping hints, Saying that she wants to stay, but, you know, she shouldn't stay, she kind of wants to stay, while the fed-up man is trying to kick her butt out.
So the whole song is the woman saying, gee, I really shouldn't stay, but, you know, maybe, and the man going, no, no, no, no, you should definitely leave.
Definitely, just, no, seriously, go.
Just go.
Are you sure?
Because, I mean, I shouldn't stay, but, no, yeah, I'm definitely sure.
Please, just, please, I mean, I've already called you an Uber, just please get the hell out.
Meanwhile, he calls her an Uber, and the Uber driver, Murray, poor guy, is outside freezing his butt off, waiting, while this chatty woman keeps going on and on and on about all the reasons she can't stay, but she really wants to.
There are a few ways to interpret this, and none of them are particularly progressive.
One is that the girl is a mistress, and the dude's trying to get her out before his wife comes home.
And that seems to be the working theory among most people on the internet.
The other is that he's just annoyed with her, and not into it, and trying to get her to leave.
And the other possibility is maybe he's paranoid, in the Me Too era, And he doesn't want to express any desire for her because he's afraid that he'll be accused of assault.
And so, you know, none of those, I don't think any of that is what they were going for when they made this song.
I tend to think of those options as probably the second one.
He's not into it.
She is.
And now he just wants this girl to leave.
My favorite line you heard at the end there is when the girl says, I ought to say no, no, no.
And then the guy goes, then you should really go, go, go.
You see what they've done?
Rather than the man pursuing the girl who's interested, now we've got a girl pursuing the man who is not interested.
So now it's like we're eavesdropping on a super awkward conversation after a date didn't go well.
It went from a love song to an anti-love song, and that is completely fantastic.
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This is from Kevin says, Matt, the porn podcast is the first podcast I've ever even slightly disagreed with you on.
I absolutely agree it should be regulated, but banned, I disagree with.
Maybe that's a bit libertarian of me as a self-described conservative, but here are a few things in society that we regulate, but have no positive good to society and could potentially be banned based on this same reasoning.
Number one, probably the most directly applicable, violent video games.
You did a podcast on this yourself not long ago.
Should they be outright banned or should we have better restrictions on them?
Number two, cigarettes slash cigars.
There's no positive in my opinion.
They're harmful to the user as well as non-users in the vicinity.
Now you could make the argument that like alcohol, nicotine has a calming, relaxing effect on the user, but many porn viewers could make the same claim about masturbation.
You could make the argument that nicotine has certain side effects that help with anxiety and attentiveness, but the porn defenders could also make the argument that masturbation is good for prostate health.
I don't mean to come off like I'm defending porn again.
I absolutely agree that we should be far more strict about regulating it.
I think we're reaching an era with the internet where users, and more importantly parents, have far better controls over what they and their kids can and cannot access or be unwillingly exposed to.
The internet blindsided the boomer generation with no idea what content was available, how available it was, how to control it, what effect it might have on their children.
Today, we have controls at our fingertip, and I think, I hope, I pray, parents will use the tools at their disposal to shield their kids from pornography and violent video games and cigarettes and drugs and alcohol.
But ultimately, I think it's up to the family, not the government, to raise our children.
Okay, Kevin, first of all, the point you make about Our parent, you know, as a millennial, I'm the same age as you, so our parents' generation, blindsided by the internet, I think it's very true, is a very unique, not unprecedented, but very unique time in history when this new technology exploded onto the scene.
And nobody except for people who are working in the industry, you know, knew all about this.
Most of the people in society didn't see it coming.
And so parents were scrambling in real time trying to figure out how to deal with this new thing that's taken over the world.
And it really was.
I mean, I can remember I still remember the first time I ever encountered the internet.
And I was in, I don't know, I was in elementary school, I don't remember when, maybe third or fourth grade.
And I was at a friend's house.
And he had a computer.
I didn't have a computer at the time.
I knew what it was, at least.
I knew what a computer was, didn't know what the internet was.
And I guess he had AOL 1.0.
And that was when the entire internet was contained.
You remember AOL?
I think my first AOL was 3.0 when we finally got it at our house.
Um, but even then is the entire internet is contained on this one home screen.
And remember, you could go, you could click here for sports.
If you want news, then there's a kid's section where you go play games or whatever, whatever you did there.
I don't remember.
Um, and that's what the internet was.
And then within just a few years, it.
It became this massive other universe that was slowly encroaching on and devouring our universe.
And whereas now it's the two are indistinguishable.
Uh, so that's kind of neither here nor there, but I think you're right.
Um, in the situation that our, that our parents generation faced, and at least we're a little bit more prepared for it.
But as for your arguments, I think we can always get into the, what about this?
What about that game?
So even if you're right about that, these other things you mentioned are similar in their corrupting influence.
I don't see how that in itself is an argument against banning porn.
And as for the things you mentioned, I think both of them, alcohol too, like someone said yesterday, and as you mentioned, Those things are not intrinsically disordered the way that pornography is.
They are not perverse.
They do not corrupt psychologically and emotionally the way pornography does.
They are not in a front to the dignity of the participants and the viewers in the same way, and on and on.
I just, I think they're not the same.
I think that they're not even really similar.
Video games.
I think most video games, in moderation, are fine.
Some of them do go overboard on the violence, certainly.
I'm not a fan of that.
But again, I don't think it's the same as pornography, and that stuff is already regulated.
There has to be ratings and everything.
And the way it's supposed to work is you can't be, you're not supposed to be able to be, a 12 year old shouldn't be able to go to the store and buy a video game that has the M label on it.
So it's not exactly the same.
Tobacco.
Well, here, obviously, again, we have something that is very heavily regulated.
And those regulations have succeeded in preventing most kids from smoking cigarettes and certainly cigars.
This is a good example, actually.
Because we talk about politics is downstream from culture.
And I agree.
I say that all the time.
I think it's true.
But...
Politics can also influence the culture.
And as conservatives, I think we get so hyper-focused on how change the culture, you change politics.
Meanwhile, we're not changing the culture.
We're failing utterly in that regard.
So we're not changing anything.
We're saying, oh, there's no point in trying to change things through government.
Won't work anyway.
Let's focus on the culture.
Okay, well, when are we going to get around to doing that?
Because we're not doing that either.
We're just changing nothing while the entire culture moves on without us.
But it's also a mistake because, yeah, you don't want to focus, you don't want to see government as the ultimate end here, the ultimate goal.
And it is true that culture is ultimately what determines things, but laws and politics and government, they can have an influence on culture.
I think that the cigarettes is a great example of this.
Our parents' generation, right?
When they were kids, everybody smoked cigarettes.
And it was cool.
It was the coolest thing to do.
And then you have all these laws and regulations and all these campaigns and PSAs and trying to focus on getting kids to stop smoking cigarettes.
Cigarettes aren't cool.
They'll kill you.
They're bad for you.
And it took some time, but it actually worked.
And if you look at the numbers now, people still smoke cigarettes, but the vast majority of cigarette smokers are older.
They're the people who in previous generations had started smoking.
Most kids aren't smoking cigarettes.
So it does have an effect.
Now, as I've said before, though, you're probably not ever going to stop kids from smoking something.
So now, yeah, they don't smoke cigarettes, but there are a lot more people smoking weed now, I think, and vaping certainly is very popular as well.
But I'm not convinced with vaping.
I'm not convinced that that's the same kind of serious health drawback that, you know, cigarettes have.
I don't think there's enough literature to demonstrate it.
But again, tobacco in and of itself is not an evil thing.
It's not perverse and corrupt, corrupting and degrading in the same way.
It's just not the same.
It can be very dangerous, obviously, but with tobacco, alcohol, sugar, fast food, chocolate, video games, all of those things, we're talking about things that are basically harmless in moderation, even tobacco.
I smoke a cigar like once a month, right?
I can't sit here and say it's never gonna have a health drawback, but I'll probably be fine.
It's not enough volume to do much damage.
And, you know, same with having fast food.
It's probably better if you never eat at McDonald's.
It's not like it's healthy to eat at McDonald's.
But if you have McDonald's once every few weeks, you'll probably be okay.
Unless you develop some other health problem, some digestive issue where that's going
to exacerbate it, then that's different.
But for a normal healthy person, have McDonald's every once in a while, it's not a big deal.
So I think these are things that are basically harmless in moderation.
They're not intrinsically disordered or corrupting or evil.
And they don't have any kind of traumatic effect on kids just by being exposed to them.
So a kid has a Happy Meal one time, it's not going to ruin his life.
It's not going to affect him emotionally and psychologically.
A kid even has a cigarette one time.
It's not going to have that effect.
I think that pornography is different just by its nature.
And so that's going to continue.
And I've gotten this argument from people many times.
What about this?
What about that?
Why aren't we banning this?
And my response is always going to be, I don't think those things are the same.
I think that pornography is a different kind of thing.
From Thomas says, Hi Matt, there's been a lot of talk of a new civil war.
My question for you is twofold.
Do you think that that's where we are headed?
And what is your take on the first civil war?
Was it really fought over slavery or is that an oversimplification?
Well, Thomas, as to your first question, no, I don't think we're going to fight any kind of civil war in this country anytime soon.
Keep in mind, a civil war is, well, a war.
It involves two sides, two armies meeting on the battlefield.
So I don't see that happening.
We don't have millions of people amassing into armies on either side and getting ready for coordinated campaigns against each other.
That's not happening.
Where we are headed, I think, is civil unrest, not civil war, but civil unrest.
So I could see a situation like what we saw in Ferguson and Baltimore, the stuff that Antifa is doing.
I could see something where that becomes much more common, widespread, more violent, more devastating, has a larger impact.
I could see that happening.
In fact, I sort of think it's inevitable that we are headed there, unless there's some massive, miraculous, sudden cultural shift.
I think that's where we're headed, but not to actual war, I don't think.
Now, as for the actual Civil War, the first Civil War, as you call it, yeah, it would be an oversimplification to say that it was fought over slavery, in my view.
It would also be an oversimplification to say that it wasn't fought over slavery.
So either thing is an oversimplification.
There's no question that one of the primary motivations of the Southern states in seceding, especially the first batch of seceding states, so South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, There's no question, especially for them, that slavery was a primary concern.
Now for the later states, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, I think it's a little bit more complicated.
But all of the states issued articles of secession, and four of the early states, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, they issued something called, documents called a Declaration of Causes.
And these four documents, all, that's a Declaration of Causes.
They're telling us what caused them to make this split.
And all of them prominently cite slavery as a reason, a cause.
So there's no getting around it.
The people who claim that it was all states' rights, it was nothing to do with slavery, I mean, you can't claim that because we have primary sources Of these states saying, yeah, slavery is a reason.
Not the only reason, but a big reason.
So you do have that.
I think there's this reaction.
You've got this oversimplification that happens, especially in the school system, where it was all about slavery and all the Confederates are a bunch of evil scumbags.
So there's a reaction to that.
Where we oversimplify on the other side and say, no, slavery didn't have anything to do with it whatsoever.
No, we can't do that.
If you do any kind of research into the history of it, you can't escape the fact that slavery was all over this conflict.
It was definitely an issue, a big one.
Now, does that make it a simple slavery caused it sort of thing?
Can we just say the war was over slavery?
No, absolutely not.
For one thing, there were other causes cited by these states and the other states that joined as well.
They were upset about political things.
They were upset that Lincoln was elected.
They were concerned with states' rights.
There were issues related to tariffs and taxes and the economy.
More broadly speaking, culture.
I think essentially these two, this North and the South, had already turned into two different countries, basically, in their culture.
And so these were two sides looking at each other and they just felt like they had nothing in common, culturally, and no interest in sticking together for that reason.
Also, we have to distinguish between the causes of secession and the causes of the war, which aren't necessarily the same.
Early in the war, right up until the aftermath of Antietam, Antietam was fought in, I think, September of 1862.
So up until that point, the war was most certainly, most emphatically, not about slavery.
Lincoln made it clear that he was fighting to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves.
He was very explicit about this.
And in the South, leaders like Robert E. Lee, They were very clear, too, that their motivation in fighting was to defend their homes.
Famously, Robert E. Lee was asked by the North at the start of the war to lead the Northern Army, and he considered it, but he declined.
And his reason was not, oh, no, I've got to defend our right to own people.
No, his reason was, this is my home, Virginia is my home, you're gonna be marching an army into Virginia, I can't lead that army against my own home, against my own family, my own sons, I can't do that.
We have to understand culturally, this again is the cultural difference, in those days, especially in the South, when people talked about their country, they meant their state, that's just how people saw it.
And I would argue that that is how it was originally intended to be.
Where people identified first and foremost with their state and their local community, not with the federal government or with the overall conglomeration of states.
I think that's, that's certainly how the South saw it.
I don't think they were wrong for seeing it that way.
Um, okay.
So, so you have the leaders on both sides, the military leaders, and even the political leaders, at least on the North in the beginning, certainly were not fighting over slavery in their minds.
That's not what, not why they were fighting.
I don't think it was any denying that.
And then you look at the infantry, the men on the field, the men that did the bleeding and the dying, the vast majority of them had no notion that they were fighting over slavery.
The Southern boys considered themselves to be fighting to protect their homes.
The Northern boys were fighting, they thought, you know, a gang of traitors who were trying to destroy the Union.
And that's the way they looked at it.
And this is what makes the question complicated.
That really, by my reading of it, it seems to me that the men on both sides, for the most part, were noble, brave, considered themselves to be fighting for a noble cause.
And in both cases, a noble cause that had nothing to do with slavery.
But that changed after Antietam, and then Lincoln noticed that the public's faith in the war was starting to wane.
He was worried about Europe getting involved and taking to fight alongside the South, which was a very real possibility.
And so he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that I think most people know did not free a single slave and was specifically written so that it would not free a single slave.
And it stipulates in the document that, because at that time, the North did control slave-holding states, and those states are exempted.
So basically, the document says the slaves that the federal government has the power to free right now are not freed.
It's only the slaves that we have no power over at the moment that are freed.
So it was a political document, but a genius one.
And the idea was to reframe the narrative of the war, not actually to free the slaves.
Lincoln really was not the great emancipator.
But his goal here was to preserve the Union.
And so by changing the narrative, making it about slavery, now Europe's not going to get involved on the side of the South.
It's going to change the perception of the war.
And I think that's what it did.
And probably from that point on, at least among the leaders in the North, they started to think, OK, we're fighting to free the slaves.
But in the South, I don't think there was ever a point where most of the generals or most of the men doing the fighting ever considered themselves to be fighting to keep slaves, especially considering almost none of them had slaves.
Among the infantry, I mean, these were poor farm boys, didn't even have shoes, a lot of them.
They certainly didn't own slaves, and so they're not going to go out and die for the sake of some rich plantation owner's right to own slaves.
That's not what they considered it to be.
And even on the North, I mean, Grant's own wife owned slaves.
So do you think that he felt so strongly about the issue that he was charging into battle to kill people for owning slaves when his own family owned slaves?
No.
Look, it's a fascinating period of history.
It's an important period of history for us to read about and understand, especially given where we are right now in our culture.
But just like with so many human conflicts, whether we're talking about conflicts on a large scale between countries or conflicts between individuals, it's rarely as simple as people try to make it out to be.
And there is rarely a clear good guy, bad guy.
Sometimes there is.
Obviously.
But I think in most cases there isn't.
And you have to be willing to look at it from a more nuanced perspective.
And you have to be willing to accept that the answer to a question like, what caused this?
You're not going to be able to answer it in one sentence.
And you're certainly not going to be able to answer it with one word, like slavery.
Okay, so that was it.
That was my history lecture for the day.
Thanks for bringing that up though.
Interesting topic.
And I think we'll leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
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Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified before the Senate on his report, and it turns out that the mainstream media have been lying to us about everything.
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