Trump delivered a magnificent speech last night packed with made-to-go-viral moments. He also spoke about life and faith issues in a way that most other Republicans wouldn't dare. This should be our focus today, but instead everyone is talking about Nancy Pelosi tearing up the speech afterwards. I'll explain why Pelosi's stunt, while petulant and childish, may have been a brilliant political move. Also, a straight woman "politically opposed to heterosexuality" writes to Slate asking for advice. And I'll answer your emails.
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Trump's State of the Union address was last night.
I'm not sure if you heard about it.
It was sort of a little minor understated event.
I think maybe they aired it on C-SPAN or something.
And here's what I'll say about the State of the Union.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because, in fact, I assume that you have I heard plenty of coverage about it, but it was, as
everybody on the right agrees, and even some on the left seem to be saying, a wonderful speech.
Donald Trump, as I've argued from the beginning, Donald Trump is much better scripted.
His unscripted campaign speech ramblings seem to play very well to the audience that's physically in the room with him, and I think his base still likes it, but I think most people outside of that are pretty bored with it at this point.
But his scripted speeches are often brilliant.
And it's true that he doesn't write his scripted speeches, so this could be seen as another way of saying Donald Trump is brilliant when he's not acting like Donald Trump.
It seems like a backhanded compliment in some ways to say, oh, you know what I love about him is when he's scripted.
That's the best part.
But that wouldn't be the correct interpretation, because even if he doesn't write the speech, these are still Trump speeches through and through, in that he is willing to say things And present things in a certain way that most other politicians are not, especially Republican politicians, which is why, and this is why I wish he'd give more scripted speeches because as opposed to the unscripted where he's kind of rambling and going in a million different directions, you don't really take anything from it.
There's no message.
There's no coherent message in it.
With scripted speeches, if he stays on the script, and he's willing to let someone help him formulate it, he's willing to say things.
He can get a message across, and he's willing to put things in a certain way that could be very valuable, and that other politicians, other Republicans won't do.
So, during the State of the Union Address, not just this one, but his other State of the Union Addresses, we hear things about abortion, protecting life, the family, protecting religious liberty.
That we wouldn't hear from other Republicans except in a very roundabout way.
They would allude to it.
But Trump just goes right into it and talks about it in a style we wouldn't hear from anybody else.
Sometimes, though, it's kind of subtle, which is surprising because you don't expect to hear the words subtle and Trump used in the same sentence.
I'll play a clip for you from last night.
I'm only going to play a couple of clips.
This is him talking about late-term abortion, and there's something subtle in this, maybe you'll pick up on, that I thought was really good.
Listen to this.
That is why I'm also calling upon members of Congress here tonight to pass legislation
finally banning the late-term abortion of babies.
Whether we are Republican, Democrat, or Independent, surely we must all agree that every human
life is a sacred gift from God.
As we support America's moms and dads, I was recently proud to sign the law providing new parents
in the federal workforce paid family leave, serving as a model for the rest of the country.
-♪♪ Okay, so he's talking about late-term abortion,
which is something that no other Republican would do in a State of the Union address.
That's not the subtle part.
But notice how he throws in the phrase, of babies.
He says, late-term abortion of babies.
That's, as I said, subtle, but it's a very important thing to add.
Because what are we talking about when we say abortion?
Because the word abortion sounds impersonal, sounds abstract, detached.
Abortion.
It just sounds like this thing that's hanging out there.
It doesn't really affect anybody.
But in fact, it is an act that happens to someone.
Right?
And to whom?
Babies.
So to say that, to make sure you say that, the late-term abortion of babies, Not late-term abortion in general, not late-term abortion of fetuses or of pregnancies, but of babies.
So I thought that was good.
And then there was his addressing of religious liberty.
And this is not so subtle, which is good.
I'm glad it wasn't.
In fact, he's going right at the issue, using phrases like, in America, we celebrate faith and cherish religion.
And this again is handled in a way that I think only Trump would handle it.
Listen to this.
In America, we don't punish prayer.
We don't tear down crosses.
We don't ban symbols of faith.
We don't muzzle preachers and pastors.
In America, we celebrate faith.
We cherish religion.
We lift our voices in prayer.
And we raise our sights to the glory of God.
Just as we believe in the First Amendment, we also believe in another constitutional right that is under siege all across our country.
So long as I am president, I will always protect your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
So for me, these are the highlights.
These are the take-homes, right?
These are the things that we should remember.
Although, I think most people, of course, will remember, as far as what happened in the speech, most people are going to remember this the most.
For the past seven months, she has done it all while her husband, Sergeant First Class Townsend Williams, is in Afghanistan on his fourth deployment in the Middle East.
But Amy, there is one more thing.
Tonight, we have a very special surprise.
I am thrilled to inform you that your husband is back from deployment.
He is here with us tonight and we couldn't keep him waiting any longer.
Obviously a beautiful moment there.
Thank you.
And this is what's worth talking about.
Now, the routine thing that we do after a State of the Union address is we complain about the Democrats not applauding this or that.
Every year we do this.
The opposition party doesn't applaud the president's accomplishments, and the supporters of that president, whoever it is, act outraged.
How could you not applaud that?
And that's a topic of conversation maybe for half a day or so at most, and then everybody forgets about it.
And all of that, the applauding and everything and deciding when to applaud and when not to, it's pageantry.
It doesn't really mean anything.
Speaking of which, speaking of pageantry, I'm going to be very much in the minority on this, I understand.
So I'm taking a minority position, which is something you're probably not surprised by.
I do it somewhat often, much to the chagrin of some people who watch this show.
The thing people are really talking about today, of course, is this moment.
So there's Nancy Pelosi, after the speech, on camera, tearing up her copy of Trump's speech.
Now, my personal feelings on this are that I don't really care.
I actually find it kind of funny.
I laughed when I saw that.
Pelosi and Trump hate each other's guts.
They're constantly cutting each other down, ripping each other apart, taking petty digs at each other.
I mean, Trump calls her Crazy Nancy.
That's his name for her that he refers to her by.
Which, I know we take this for granted, but that has not been normal decorum for presidents in the past.
Where they have a nickname like crazy so-and-so for their political, for not just their political enemies, but the people they're supposed to be working with, calls her crazy Nancy.
Now, okay, doesn't really bother me that much that he says that.
And he's not wrong either.
So, but I see this as another volley in that feud.
And it doesn't bother me.
And the outrage for people on the right, well, how dare she do that?
How dare she?
Come on.
First of all, you don't really care.
You're not that offended by it.
And you can't, I mean, considering he's, it's in line with the stuff they do and say to each other all the time.
It's not that much worse than anything he's done or said in regards to her.
So who cares?
And before that, you know, she put her hand out, tried to shake his hand.
He left her hanging, didn't shake her hand.
You could make an argument.
Maybe he didn't see that she was trying to do that.
I don't know.
I'm sure I really buy that.
I think he did.
He did leave her hanging on purpose, but who cares?
Yet there's been, as I said, quite a bit of the sort of performative outrage on the right about this moment.
A lot of, we have to respect the office.
She has no respect for the office.
Which for the record, the respect the office shtick is something that people only ever say when it's their guy in office.
Nobody says that.
So the right is now saying respect the office.
Nobody on the right was talking about respecting the office when Obama was in there.
That was something the left said, respect the office.
Now they don't respect the office.
So it's just back and forth.
Can we just put that aside?
Can we all please admit that none of us really respect the office, and in fact, none of us even know what that means exactly?
What do you mean respect the office?
How do you respect an office?
And if you are going to respect an office, why would you have a blanket respect for a politician's office?
This is not a monarchy.
This is not a king or an emperor that we're talking about here.
This is a politician.
And they're supposed to work for us.
They're our employees.
That's the way it's supposed to go.
Doesn't really work that way, but ideally, that's how it's supposed to be.
And when you say respect the office, you're talking about ideals.
Well, I say the ideal is, no, they are our employees.
They respect us.
That's a lot more important than us respecting them.
I think with politicians, it's the same with anybody else.
You respect them if they earn it, and you don't if they don't.
That's it.
Whether or not you think Trump has earned respect is up to you.
Each person decides that.
Whether or not you think Obama earned respect, it's up to you.
But the idea, the fact that the notion that they're owed respect somehow just because they desperately wanted to run the country and enough people voted for them, I don't see it, personally.
So it didn't bother me.
That's not my point, though.
I think, and this is the part where I'm really in the minority, I think this was a rather brilliant political move by Nancy Pelosi.
It was a very Trumpian move, in a way.
What she's done is she's made the whole conversation after the speech, the whole news cycle, about her ripping up the speech.
The news cycle is about her ripping the speech, rather than Trump giving the speech.
She's got people on the right, most media people on the right, talking about Her ripping the speech rather than amplifying and highlighting the content of the rather spectacular speech that Trump gave.
So she stole the news cycle.
This is a news cycle that rightfully belongs to Donald Trump, but she took it, which is something Trump does.
She stole it with something negative, yes, but so what?
Her base will love it.
She's not at any political risk because of this.
The only people really pissed are Trump fans who hate Democrats anyway.
So no loss.
The point is just to make the conversation something else, anything else, instead of the positive points of Trump's speech.
So think about it.
This is, you know, I go on Twitter this morning.
The top three trending topics on Twitter were about Nancy Pelosi.
One of them was hashtag Nancy the Ripper, which just makes her sound like a badass.
Another was Nancy rocks with leftist defending her.
And then there was another one, Nancy Pelosi tantrum or something like that.
And that was the negative one, but who cares?
After the speech, big speech, everyone's in a lot of, a lot of big viral moments in that speech, all the trending topics on social media about Nancy Pelosi.
Now, of course, 10 months from now, when it's time to vote, nobody's going to care either way about any of this.
And the people saying that swing voters will be swayed against the Democrats because of this, I think are living in a fantasy land.
Nobody's gonna, 10 months from now, no one's going to the polls and voting based on the fact that Nancy Pelosi ripped a piece of paper.
That's not gonna motivate anybody at the polls 10 months from now.
And that's part of the harsh reality of the world we live in now, is that nobody remembers anything or cares about anything for more than 48 hours at most.
10 months from now, you're not gonna be thinking about any of this.
You're hardly gonna remember it.
Now, you know, Trump has given Now three brilliant State of the Union addresses.
Can you remember anything about the one he gave last year?
Can you remember any of the outrages afterwards about what Democrats did?
Can you remember any of the great lines he had in that speech?
Anything he talked about?
Can you remember anything about it?
No, you can't.
Because we have very short attention spans and memories now.
Because there's so much information coming at us constantly from all directions, and we're absorbing so much information all the time that we don't have room.
It's a logistic problem.
We don't have room to store all of these distant memories.
By distant, I mean last week.
So those get discarded, leaving only dim remnants, maybe, to make room for the new stuff.
So, which means that 10 months from now, I say this was a brilliant political move on Pelosi's part.
I think it was.
But 10 months from now, I don't think it's going to hurt her.
I don't think it's going to help her.
It's only about winning this particular news cycle.
And that's always been Trump's strategy.
Trump's strategy has always been that you win a news cycle if you make it about you, even if it's bad.
As long as it's about you, you're sucking up the oxygen and you win.
It doesn't matter what it is.
That's how Trump got elected in 2016 is that he made almost every news cycle about him for nine months leading up to the election.
It was, he just took all the, there was no room for anybody else.
Now Pelosi isn't going to be making every news cycle about her for the next 10 months, but she did win this one.
I know we don't look, I know for on the right, we don't want to admit it.
Um, But I think that's the fact.
I think people played right into her hand.
And, you know, if she was on the other foot and Trump had done something like that, I know he couldn't have done that exact thing because Nancy Pelosi isn't giving the State of the Union address, but if Trump had done something like that and stolen the attention, I think everybody on the right would be hailing his political brilliance.
So I would say the same thing here.
Okay.
Let's move on.
Here's something that I talked about this already.
I don't think I did.
It's been in a queue for a while now.
There is a slate.com has an advice column where people now, how far do you have to fall in life that you would be going to slate for advice?
That's a different question.
But they have an advice column.
People write in with questions.
There was a question somebody wrote to Slate a few days ago that got some attention.
And I'll read it to you.
This is from someone who signs the letter Radical.
It says, I'm a cis woman in kind of a classic millennial sex pickle.
I'm really repelled by heterosexuality politically and personally, but I'm also really into Expletive, but she means men.
She's really into men.
I've been thinking maybe I should look for bi dudes slash bi curious gay dudes, but I'm not sure how best to do that.
Rich, that's the name of the guy who gives the advice.
Rich, what do you think of a woman being on Grindr or Scruff?
I do want to be respectful of gay men's spaces and not horn in where I'm not welcome.
But I really would love to find a VERS guy with queer politics Verz, I have no idea what that means.
A Verz guy with queer politics who would be up for casually dating a woman.
What do you think?
If you were me, where would you look?
Okay, now, getting the obvious out of the way, Millennial Sex Pickle would be a great name for a band.
Maybe just The Sex Pickles would be a wonderful name for some sort of indie punk band, possibly.
So, there's that.
Now, what's the advice that she gets from Rich here on Slate?
Well, his advice is kind of lengthy.
I won't read the entire thing, but it does boil down to this.
He actually recommends that she go to gay sex parties.
That's the advice that she's given.
That's, that's what it's, it's not often.
It's maybe the first time in the history of advice columns that the advice has been go to a gay sex party, but that's what he, that's, that's the advice he gives.
Okay.
The only thing I take from this.
And I know this is obviously an extreme example.
That's why it went viral.
But I think what you see here is identity politics as a religion.
This is someone for whom identity politics has become a religion, a cult.
It has taken over her life to such an extent that she can't even have normal romantic relationships.
And she's going to embrace a weird kind of abstinence, of sexual abstinence, at least abstaining from straight men who she's attracted to because of her political feelings.
She's politically opposed to heterosexuality.
What does that even mean?
How can you be politically opposed to a sexual orientation?
I have no idea.
And at any rate, whatever it means, aren't we not supposed to be that?
Hasn't that been the whole point of the last 15, 20 years?
You're not supposed to be opposed to sexual orientations?
Well, yes, there's a lot of contradiction there.
But the real point I take from this, as I said, is this is what identity politics does to a brain.
This is identity politics taken to its logical yet extreme extent.
And this is what it does Uh, to your brain.
So stay off identity politics, kids.
Speaking of brain damage, I wanted to get the emails in a second, but first I wanted to, uh, just tell you maybe as a disclaimer, if I've seen maybe a little bit off these past few days, there's a reason for that.
I think it may be because I have suffered brain damage.
Well, additional brain damage on top of the brain damage I'd already suffered probably as a, as a baby.
Um, at least that's what most people assume when they hear me.
Share my opinions on things.
Anyway, you see, over the weekend, um, I was downstairs in the living room and I heard, and the twins were upstairs, and I heard from upstairs this, this thumping sound.
It's like kind of dull, thud, thump, banging sort of sound.
And, and then I, as I was listening closer, I heard after every thump, it was followed by cackles of laughter.
That's never a good sign.
Because that means my kids are banging something and finding it funny.
That's a combination of noises, as a parent of young children especially, that you simply never want to hear.
As most parents know, the worst noise to hear when your kids are in the other room is no noise.
The absence of noise is the most terrifying.
But laughter and banging is a pretty bad one.
So I go upstairs, I find my son literally banging his head on the ground, on the hard wood floor ground, and laughing hysterically.
And I come to find out that they're playing a game that they've invented, and I don't know how many times they've played it in the past, hopefully not too many.
But, um, They're playing a game they invented called Hard or Soft.
That's the name of the game.
And the way it works is like this.
One of them flips a coin, and if it lands on tails, then the other has to bang his head on the soft carpet.
If it lands on heads, you have to bang your head on the hard ground.
That's Hard or Soft.
Now, of course, the way that this was being played is that his twin sister, my daughter, she was the one doing all the coin flipping, and he was doing all the head banging.
Unsurprisingly.
And so, of course, I did play the game with them for a few rounds.
I ended up getting hard, like, two or three times in a row.
I'm pretty sure they rigged it.
So they found a way to trick Daddy into banging his head on the ground.
They did do that.
And I should stipulate that my wife did not find this game funny at all.
I told them to go downstairs and show it to my wife, and show it to Mommy, and she was not amused.
Something about concussions or something or other?
I don't know.
Honestly, I was impressed by the ingenuity.
It was sort of like a, it's like a child's version of Russian roulette.
And I, and maybe I should be disturbed that they came up with that, but I was, it was, I was somewhat proud.
All right.
Let's, uh, these, these are the kinds of games that kids come up with.
And I guess, you know, we have a whole thing where we don't let them watch a lot of TV.
So we're one of those parents.
We're very, we tend to be strict with the TV.
Maybe this is the lesson we learned.
You don't let them, you don't let them watch TV.
They're going to just literally beat their heads against the floor.
Maybe the TV is better.
Let's go to emails, matwalshow at gmail.com, matwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Adam, says, you say ketchup is for kids, but what if ketchup is put on meatloaf before baking it, or do you prefer ketchup-free meatloaf?
Why in God's name would you put, I've heard of this custom, but why would you put ketchup on meatloaf?
No, you're not putting ketchup on meatloaf because you're supposed to be topping the meatloaf with bacon.
Obviously.
Do you make meatloaf without bacon?
Is that a thing that people do?
Why would you ever do that?
What would be the point of that?
So no, ketchup does not belong anywhere near meatloaf or anywhere near any other kind of food.
Ketchup is a sugary, sweet, faux tomato mucus.
If it enhances the food, that only tells you that the food is bad.
If you know how to properly make a hamburger, properly season French fries, or anything else, you might put ketchup on it.
If you know how to really make those dishes, it shouldn't need ketchup.
This is from Aaron, says, Dear Matt, I think you are completely wrong about the girl who talked her boyfriend into killing himself.
What she engaged in, while morally atrocious, was pure speech.
She did not assist him in any way, other than by encouraging him.
When it comes to legal situations, we have to put our own feelings aside and look at the constitutional issue.
The First Amendment says that Congress can make no law abridging freedom of speech.
Go back and read it.
There are no exceptions whatsoever mentioned.
The 14th Amendment says that the rights in the Constitution apply to the states.
It does not leave an exception for free speech.
So this girl was exercising her First Amendment rights.
When she said what she said, I fully acknowledge that you personally disapprove of the way in which she exercised them, but that's irrelevant.
She was exercising them.
That's all that matters.
As for the slippery slope, because you don't seem to understand, Here's what it is.
If the government is allowed to punish people for saying things, even deeply offensive things, and things that result in people doing horrible actions, what's to say that some judge in the future doesn't come along and decide that your opinions and your beliefs are too offensive to be allowed to be said?
What if you're the one being carted off to prison for incitement 20 years from now or hate speech or harassment or any other such nonsense?
I can't wait to hear the, well, that's different.
Everyone conveniently believes that their own beliefs and opinions are deserving of protection.
If and when they come for you, using the same rationalizations to destroy your constitutional rights as they did to her, maybe then you'll understand the slippery slope.
You don't have to agree with what the girl said, I certainly don't, and I agree with you that she's an atrocious human being, but the issue being explored here is whether or not she had a constitutional right to do what she did, and in that case she certainly did.
The punishment for these sorts of things should be done at the social level, not at the legal level.
The law should stick to punishing actions, not speech, that really, really, really, really hurt our feelings.
I know you're going to say that speech is an action, but I am talking about the expression of an opinion.
And the sentence, you should kill yourself, is not an action, it's an opinion.
And even if it's said a thousand times to the same person, it remains just that, an opinion.
Aaron.
Okay, Aaron.
So, you're presenting a concept of free speech wherein literally anything that is said out loud, anything, is legal, is, as you say, pure speech, As long as it's not accompanied by physical action.
And even if it is, I would assume you would say it's the physical action that's the problem, not the speech.
I'm not strawmanning you, right?
That's what you just said.
That is what you said.
Okay.
That's the vision of free speech that you are presenting here.
Correct?
But I noticed you didn't actually engage with my strongest argument, which had to be a calculation on your part because there's no way you missed it.
Which is that what Michelle Carter did was very similar, almost identical in kind, to what Charles Manson did.
The death toll for Manson was larger, but that's irrelevant for our purposes.
The fact is, he, using words, brainwashed a group of followers, of groupies of his, and convinced them to go out and kill people.
And they did.
So you're saying that Charles Manson never should have gone to jail.
You're saying that, in fact, a dangerous, charismatic psychopath, willing to and capable of and guilty of already brainwashing others to commit violent acts, should be allowed to remain on the street, free, even after he sends his minions to go kill people.
That's what you're saying.
You made no attempt to draw a distinction between this version of free speech you're articulating and Charles Manson's.
I can only assume that you think he's covered.
He has to be, according to what you said.
And then what about calling it a bomb threat?
If there's no bomb, it's just speech, right?
What about slander?
No physical damage is done?
If somebody goes out in public and calls you a child molester, for example, Well, they aren't physically doing anything.
It's all verbal.
And maybe it's their opinion that you are.
Now, you're not, but it's their opinion that you are.
That's their opinion, right?
I mean, are you going to say that it's okay to express your opinions as long as the opinions are true?
Well, that's a slippery slope, isn't it?
I assume that's not a stipulation you would put on this.
Well, you didn't.
You said pure speech.
If you're saying it, it's fine.
That's what you said.
So if somebody goes out and accuses you of child molestation, rape, any of the most horrible things in the world, damages your reputation because of it, you get fired from your job, whatever.
Well, they didn't do that.
They're not the ones who fired you.
They're not the whatever happened.
Even if they whip up your neighbors against you and then one of your neighbors kills you, On the belief that you're an abuser of children.
Well, they didn't do it.
All they did was they said it.
They expressed an opinion.
According to you, perfectly legal, or at least it should be.
What about somebody who shares secrets with a foreign enemy?
What about someone in the government who shares secrets?
Well, as long as they are sharing it by saying it, all verbal.
Pure speech.
Lending no material support to them, it's all verbal.
Just expressing themselves.
Should that be legal?
According to you, yes.
I could go on and on here.
The point is that obviously you can't literally say whatever you want in all situations.
There are limits.
And obviously our founders never intended free speech to be an absolute, unyielding dictum that legalizes literally anything and everything that a person might verbally say or write.
Just like The right to bear arms.
It says right to bear arms.
Yes, but I assume, like we talked about a few days ago, I assume you would agree that there are some limits on that.
For example, I assume you would agree that your neighbor Jim should not be allowed to own a nuclear missile.
I would assume that that's a... Maybe I'm... I could be assuming wrong.
Maybe you think that right to bear arms means that you can even walk around with nuclear missiles.
Or maybe you couldn't really walk around with them, it'd be a little heavy, but you can have them in your garage.
But that is not what our founders intended.
And, you know what?
Even if they did intend it that way, which they didn't, but even if they did, that would be crazy, and there's no reason why we should have to live by their craziness in perpetuity for all eternity just because it was their opinion.
They're not gods.
I mean, they wrote what they wrote, but whatever their personal opinions were, that doesn't necessarily mean we're beholden to that forever and it could never be changed.
But anyway, that's irrelevant.
I don't wanna get hung up on that because it's clear that that's not what they intended to do.
They didn't intend to legalize slander or death threats or things of that nature.
So we have in this country restricted many kinds of speech, all the kinds I listed.
And we have to be able to restrict them.
Otherwise, imagine living in a country where slander is legal, where verbal treason is legal, death threats are legal, on and on.
Imagine living in a country where you can do all of that without any kind of penalty.
But that's not the kind of country we live in or have ever lived in.
Ever.
And yet, And yes, I know you might say, well, then it's not free speech.
And yeah, I agree with you.
This is what maybe, I don't know if you watched the show a few days ago, but we were talking about this and concepts like equality, rights, free speech, free, you know, that we attach the word free to things.
These are not, these are imprecise words and they're not literally true.
And I think we need, we should probably be using different words.
Um, we're, we're grasping at a concept.
We're trying to describe something, but I think we're describing it in a way that is confusing because yes, I would, I would openly say that we talk about free speech.
We don't really mean it literally.
Now there is a truth there.
There is a certain kind of speech that should be free, but not all speech is free.
And what so what kind of speech?
Well, we happen to live in a country where you can go out and express pretty much any point of view you want without reprisal by the government.
Pretty much any point of view, any sort of idea about culture or politics, critical opinions of the government, so on and so forth.
We still live in a country where you can go and do that.
Now, you may be in for it when it comes to the big tech companies.
You may get kicked off of Twitter or Facebook or whatever, and I'm not a fan of that, but that's a different thing.
So your slippery slope hasn't really panned out.
This thing with Michelle Carter, it's not going to make the slope any slipperier.
Hers was an extreme case of her not just saying kill yourself one time, but of a prolonged campaign to manipulate a mentally ill person to kill themselves.
This is so obviously illegal, so clearly a crime, that the only way to think otherwise is to have a laughably simplistic idea of free speech and one that completely ignores how free speech is actually interpreted legally and has always been interpreted legally.
I mean, what if I... I mean, I could spend all day talking about the absurd extremes that you would now justify with your vision of free speech, but what if I were to go up to somebody Um, let's say a mentally insane meth addict who's currently high on meth.
And I were to go up to him and I would start whispering in his ears, tell in his ear, telling him that all these bad things that you've done to him, I can say, yeah, that guy over there, you know, that guy, he insulted your mother.
Yeah.
That guy, he, uh, oh yeah, he was, he was over there.
He was talking a lot of, a lot of stuff about you.
Yeah.
You should go, you should go over there and tell him and show that guy.
Yeah, you should go over there and teach that guy a lesson.
Yeah, he was saying a lot of horrible stuff.
You should really, yeah, you should go.
And then he goes over and beats you within an inch of your life.
You're saying I have no response?
I am totally legally in the clear.
I have purposefully incited this mentally unstable drug addict to come and beat you half to death.
And it worked, and he did exactly what I wanted him to do.
You're saying, I'm good to go.
I'm clear.
I should face no legal penalties whatsoever.
That's just crazy.
I'm sorry.
That's absolutely crazy.
But if that is really how you feel, then I think you could write another email and just acknowledge it.
Because I acknowledge that you think Charles Manson never should have gone to jail.
That the scenario I just described of sending a crack addict or meth addict to come and beat you up should be perfectly legal.
Slandering you should be perfectly legal.
Calling in a bomb threat to your work, perfectly legal.
If you're going to say that any of those things should be illegal, then you are admitting that there are some restrictions on speech.
And if you're admitting that there are some restrictions on speech, now we just have to talk about whether or not this thing with Michelle Carter should be one of those restrictions.
But you can't take this absolute, principled stance anymore of saying, well, no, it's based on free speech.
That argument is gone now.
Now you have to look at the specifics of this case and think, well, should that kind of thing should be legal in this country?
The kind of thing of purposefully, really, actively trying to encourage someone to kill themselves.
Should that be a legal thing to do?
And I'm saying no.
Why should it?
Here's the only, by the way, here's the only... If this, if we're on a slippery slope with this, if this is going to lead to anything...
Because I don't think it leads to it being illegal for someone to just say, kill yourself online.
There'd be no way to enforce that anyway.
And there's obviously a clear distinction to be drawn between what Michelle Carter did and someone just anonymously, kind of by instinct, as a reflex, reflexively saying, kill yourself like people do online.
There's a difference between those two things that I think any sane person can recognize.
But think about the cases And there have been plenty of cases of this, of a disturbed person killing themselves and live streaming it on the internet.
And in those cases, what you often find is that people are watching and encouraging the person to do it.
Saying, yeah, do it.
Yeah, kill yourself, right?
In this case, this is not a reflexive thing saying to somebody on Twitter because you don't like their opinion.
This is someone who really wants to kill themselves, and you are really trying to encourage them to do it.
Maybe we're leading to a place where the people who do that are prosecuted.
And I say, fine.
Great.
I don't see that as any dystopian nightmare.
I don't see that as oppression or persecution.
Oh my gosh, you mean I can't actively encourage a mentally unstable person to kill themselves?
I'm oppressed!
I'm persecuted!
Come on.
Let's see.
This is from Matthew, says, Dear Mr. Walsh, my name is Matthew.
I've been a supporter of the Daily Wire for some time.
I love that you discuss topics outside the mainstream and political realm.
I wanted to tell you that I've been inspired by the new book you've written about the Church of Christ, and more importantly, the body of Christ, and how we can't wash the gospel for the good of the world.
I'll be looking forward to reading it soon.
I want to leave you with this thought of mine about the State of the Union last night.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
What's upsetting?
What's upsetting?
It isn't going to be about the best speech of President Trump's term so far, but about the nonsense Speaker Pelosi did.
Thanks.
Yeah, well, I agree with you.
Your last statement there, I absolutely agree.
And that's what I was saying at the beginning of the show.
And I appreciate your thoughts about the book, which I will take this opportunity to remind everyone that my new book, which comes out February 25th, went on pre-sale yesterday.
It's called Church of Cowards.
Go on Amazon and order it on pre-sale right now.
And finally, this is from Austin, says, hey Matt, I saw you talking about sentencing differences between men and women, and I wanted to get your opinion on other sentencing issues.
On another sentencing issue, I saw the study from the University of Michigan that you cited, and she also had a paper on sentencing differences between whites and blacks.
It showed that blacks received 10% longer sentences than whites, while holding all variables like the crime committed and criminal history constant.
I found a similar study from the U.S.
Sentencing Commission that showed blacks received 19% longer sentences than whites with the same variables held constant.
I'm a conservative and don't believe in the mystical racism hanging over everything in our lives, but I'm looking at the data from what seem to be credible sources and it appears there could be some racial bias in sentencing.
I hope conservatives can look at issues with an objective eye and not be so loyal to our ideology like the left so often is.
What are your thoughts on this subject?
Well, I haven't seen, Austin, the studies that you mentioned.
I'll look at them.
But if it holds that black people, when controlling for all variables, received sentences up to 20% longer than white people for the same crimes, then I think it'd be impossible to deny a racial bias.
I did, after all, just allege a gender bias based on the same sort of statistic.
So if that's the case, Then I'm not all of a sudden gonna deny it here.
There'd be no reason to.
Look, it's never been my position that racism doesn't exist.
And I don't consider it a conservative position to deny all cases of racism.
At least that better not be a conservative position.
That would be a very stupid, foolhardy position to take.
It's certainly not my position.
I think racism does exist, of course.
Obviously it does.
And, um...
The whole problem with people on the left who look for racism everywhere and in everything, and manage to find it everywhere and in everything, and the ones who say things like, all white people are inherently racist.
The problem, one of the problems, is that buried under this avalanche of absurd hyperbole and generalization are actual cases of racism that get lost in the shuffle.
And the word racism itself loses all meaning because of its chronic overuse.
If you take any word and apply it to too many things and use it way too much and expand it into oblivion, it's going to lose its meaning.
And that's what's happened with racism, which is very unfortunate because racism is a real thing.
It's an important thing for us to talk about.
But now it's hard for us to talk about it.
Because when you say the word racism, Me as the listener, I have no idea if you're talking about real racism or just a white person doing or saying something completely innocuous.
Which, according to the racial theories of the left, literally anything a white person does is, in a sense, a racist act.
Because they are inherently racist as part of their nature.
Embedded in everything they do.
Or nearly everything.
It's the same thing with false rape claims.
The position has never been, at least I've never heard anyone express the position, that rape never happens or doesn't exist.
That would obviously be insane.
It does.
And clearly when it happens, it is a terrible, terrible evil.
But when you have a bevy of...
you have all these false rape claims and when the word rape is used to describe things that are not rape, when for example we're calling an awkward and regrettable yet consensual sexual encounter rape, the problem there is that once again real cases of rape are minimized or forgotten and the word rape begins to lose its meaning.
And when someone says rape, now, without any context, I don't know if you're talking about someone being forcibly, you know, being violently forced into a sexual act, which is what most of us would consider rape to be, or are you talking about, you know, a guy and a girl getting together and having sex consensually, but it was kind of awkward and the girl regretted it the next day.
Just based on the word rape, I don't know what you're talking about.
And that's a big problem because I should know.
And, you know, up to about 10, 15 years ago, we knew.
If you said the word rape, we all immediately knew what you meant.
Same for racism.
So, uh, but yeah, I'll take a look at those studies and we will leave it there.
Thanks for watching everybody and listening.
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 Robin Fenderson.
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Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Well, that was the state of the kaboom as Trump dropped a word bomb on the teensy tiny little Democrats who were running for their lives.
We'll have that, plus the mailbag, so all your problems will be solved on The Andrew Klavan Show.
