Ep. 422 - The Barbaric Extremism Of The Democratic Party
Pete Buttigieg was given the opportunity to come out against killing fully developed infants moments before birth, but declined. He is a coward and an extremist. Just like the rest of the Democratic field. Also, AOC says it's impossible to "pull yourself up by the bootstraps." Interesting point coming from a bartender-turned-congresswoman. And David Hogg continues to be brainwashed by his college education. It's a fascinating process to watch.
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We had a little scare this morning, tornado warning in our neck of the woods, another consequence of climate change, no doubt.
So we went into the basement, And I was with my wife and kids, and if you think that I had to comfort my terrified children about the tornado, you don't know my children.
They were absolutely ecstatic about the entire thing.
They apparently seemed to think that the tornado would suck us up and bring us to Oz to meet the munchkins, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that.
If it hits our house, we ain't going to Oz, to put it mildly.
But I was brought back in my mind to the time when I was about their age and we had flooding on our street where we lived.
And I couldn't understand why my parents were so distressed about it because I kept thinking, well, a flood, you know, it's gonna, the flood will come into our house.
It'll turn our whole house into a pool.
There'll be like a water slide down the steps.
It's gonna be so exciting.
And I just couldn't, I didn't understand their lack of enthusiasm.
But now I think I get it.
All right, well, Pete Buttigieg may or may not have won Iowa.
The AP announced yesterday that they can't announce a winner because they don't know.
The whole process is so messed up, it's too close to call, and screw it, basically.
To paraphrase, that was what they said.
Either way, the significance of Iowa is less about the delegates and more about the momentum and the media coverage heading into the rest of the primaries, New Hampshire, and so on.
So whether Buttigieg won or not, He's been robbed of that benefit, which I think is great.
It could not have happened to a more deserving person.
Buttigieg is, I think, perhaps the most formidable politician Left in the field, simply because he's not a communist, or he's not an out-and-out communist, he's not known as a communist, and he's also not 987 years old.
And so, those two factors alone, I think, make him the most formidable, but that's not a compliment, really.
Certainly not a compliment of his character.
Because character-wise, he may well be the worst of the bunch.
And I want to show you another example of that.
Buttigieg yesterday was given the opportunity to come out at least against infanticide, that is the killing of fully developed infants outside of the womb.
He was given the opportunity to at least say he's against that.
And he declined.
So you really need to hear this audio, and I'm going to play it for you in just a moment.
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Okay, so here's Meghan McCain with Pete Buttigieg.
And Meghan here, first of all, subjects Buttigieg to exactly the line of questioning that every Democrat should be subjected to.
So I want you to watch this.
Pay attention to Buttigieg's answers, or non-answers, but also to Meghan showing exactly the sort of questions that these people ought to be asked, and so rarely are.
So here it is.
Watch this.
If this is a late-term situation, then by definition, it's one where a woman was expecting to carry the pregnancy to term.
Then she gets the most perhaps devastating news of her life.
We're talking about families that may have picked out a name, maybe assembling a crib, and they learn something excruciating, and are faced with this terrible choice.
And I don't know what to tell them.
I respect it.
I respect what you're saying because you didn't back down from it.
This is going to hurt you in the middle of the country with the Republicans you're trying to win over.
People like me, this is a hard line, and quite frankly, that answer is just as radical as I thought it was.
I'm sorry.
Now, it was no doubt made more difficult by the clapping seals in the audience, but the only additional thing I would have liked to hear Meghan McCain see her do, it really is bear down on a firm hypothetical.
So, a baby, eight months gestation, physically healthy, all of its limbs and everything intact, no health problems, should it be legal to kill that person or not?
That's... I would love to see the question phrased exactly like that to these people.
And so the question was not quite as pointed as that, but it doesn't matter because we know his answer based on what he said there.
He did give an answer to that question, effectively.
He's not willing to entertain any limits on abortion whatsoever of any kind.
He was given the chance to draw some kind of line, any line, Draw a line at least disqualifying partial birth abortion and infanticide, and he wouldn't do that.
Partial birth abortion, which now with infanticide said, oh, no one does that, that's not happening.
Okay, well, if nobody does it and it's not happening, it should be really easy for you to say it shouldn't happen.
It should be very, if it's a non-existent thing, should be very easy to say I'm against it, right?
Partial birth abortion, Which, by the way, involves the killing of fully developed infant humans as they are emerging from the birth canal.
So this is infanticide.
These are infants that are partially out of the birth canal already.
They are in the process of being born.
And they're killed with an incision in the back of the skull and then a tube is inserted into that incision and their brains are sucked out of their heads while they're still alive.
That's how it works.
And that, quote, procedure has been done in this country.
Thousands of times, actually.
That's what she was asking about, and Buttigieg wouldn't even come out against that.
Now, by the way, as we talked about yesterday, this dodge of, well, no woman would choose this unless there's a serious medical problem, that dodge is nonsense.
It's not true.
It's a lie.
You can look up the figures yourself.
Look up the figures In pro-abortion sources, if you want.
Go to the Guttmacher Institute, look at pro-abortion sources, and see how they describe it.
Even there you'll find that with late-term abortions, and very late-term abortions as well, they can happen for reasons that have nothing at all to do with dire medical conditions.
That's a fact.
And, which is why, what you'll find when the pro-abortion side talks about abortions for health reasons or abortions for the health of the mother.
When they talk about that, for the health of the mother, and then you really get into defining what they mean by that.
What do you mean by health?
Well, what they mean is physical health, yes, Which, again, there has never been and could never be an abortion conducted in order to protect the physical health of the mother, so that's a non-existent category.
But physical health, but they also mean emotional health, psychological health, spiritual health, financial health, all of that is put into it.
And a great many of these late-term abortions, 5,000 every single year, are done for, not for physical health reasons, but financial health, emotional health, that sort of thing.
Okay, but putting that aside, whatever the reason for this, quote, procedure, it is obviously always, and in every case, immoral to suck the brains out of an infant's head.
That's not something I should have to say, but I do.
There is no scenario that could ever make that anything less than One of the most barbaric things you could ever do.
I mean, if you want to talk about the most barbaric and wicked things a single human can do to another single human, I think this is at the very, very close to the top of that list, if not at the very top.
We are now in the realm, morally, of things like child rape and cannibalism.
Okay, we've now made it up there, or I should say down there, to that level.
The worst things imaginable.
You have to put partial birth abortion into that category.
And even this, Buttigieg won't condemn.
He's a coward.
A liar, a fraud, a sad, pathetic little man.
That's what he is.
I know he likes to present himself like some sort of war hero, but he is a coward.
If you won't come out and at least say, no, we should not be stabbing infants in the skull and de-braining them while they're still alive, if you cannot even say that, if you're not willing to even say that, then you are the lowest, most contemptible sort of person.
And that's Buttigieg, and not just him, that's all the rest of them too, in the democratic field.
Because you would get the same answer from all the rest of them.
My point here though is if he has the reputation of being one of the more reasonable ones or one of the more moderate ones or one of the at least he's got good character or something.
No.
No.
Okay, let's play some more audio for you.
This is AOC at some sort of hearing yesterday being very literal as she tends to be.
Ms.
Hutchinson, I also want to thank you about bringing up the poverty draft and this idea of a bootstrap.
You know, this idea and this metaphor of a bootstrap started off as a joke because it's a physical impossibility to lift yourself up by a bootstrap, by your shoelaces.
It's physically impossible.
The whole thing is a joke.
Shoot for the stars?
That's scientifically impossible.
We don't have the technology.
The nearest star is four light years away.
That's 24 trillion miles.
We never may get there in time.
This whole thing is a joke.
Which, actually, I have to admit, when I see those inspirational posters, Like, every guidance counselor's office at every school in America has one that says, shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll be among the stars.
That one does kind of annoy me, because I understand that it's a metaphor, but really, if you shoot for the moon and miss, you're just going to be floating in the vacuum of space.
You're not going to be anywhere near the closest star.
The closest star would be the Sun, which is millions and millions of miles away.
And if we're talking about interstellar travel, then you're trillions and trillions of miles away from the nearest star.
So if you shoot for the moon, you damn well better hit it.
Otherwise, you're going to die in the black abyss of space.
But anyway, that is being overly literal, which is what AOC seems to be doing here, who doesn't understand the concept of metaphors.
And that's...
That's what that college education I suppose gets you.
The greater point though is...
The sort of anti-inspirational message from AOC and her ilk.
She's saying not just that pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is physically impossible, which she's right about, but that's not really the point.
She's also saying that a person trying to get ahead in life on their own, without the government, may as well be defying the laws of physics because that's how impossible it is.
But think about who this is coming from.
This is coming from a woman who is today one of the most influential and powerful members of Congress, God help us, and yet just a few years ago was a bartender.
She went from bartender to Congresswoman.
She actually is an example of pulling herself up by the bootstraps, and credit to her for that.
I respect that aspect of her story.
Now, she's college-educated, she's had a lot of privileges in life it seems like, but Even so, to go from being a bartender to being in Congress, that's quite an achievement.
And I give her credit for that.
But it's hard for me to give her credit for that because then she gets there, to this successful point, and she turns around and tells other people they can't do it.
And that's what I hate about these socialists, the ones on the national stage.
Because they're all successful.
They've made something of themselves to their credit.
They've used the free market system.
They've used our freedoms to their advantage.
Fine.
Good for them.
And yet now they turn around and say to everybody else, you can't do it.
It's impossible.
Rather than using themselves as an example and saying, uh, no, you can do it.
This is, this is, this is very possible to do.
Doesn't mean that you're not going to need help.
Yes, every successful person has had some kind of help.
But we still live in a country where you are uniquely able, where someone is, where there is the unique ability to go from the very bottom to the very top.
It's not true for everybody.
We talked about this a couple weeks ago.
That we don't want to overplay that hand.
And act like everybody who's at the bottom could easily go up to the top.
It's not easy, number one, and there can be circumstances that make it basically impossible.
So that's true.
But to take this position, which AOC has taken, and the other socialists, that climbing the ladder is impossible in principle, that's some sort of myth, even while they themselves have done it, Is pretty shameful.
Okay, speaking of college educations, David Hogg, you remember him, is in Harvard now.
And it's been really quite fascinating to watch this kid get brainwashed in real time.
Disturbing.
Also fascinating, now he went into college a liberal, clearly, but we can see the university system taking his mind, his susceptible mind, and molding it and shaping it and deforming it and misshaping it.
We could see this happening.
So for example, he tweeted a couple of days ago.
This tweet that went kind of viral says, the majority of the people that live in the United States are the descendants of illegal colonizers that committed a mass genocide.
Now, this is, of course, exactly the kind of thing that kids learn in college today.
And I saw someone on Twitter say that this is exactly what parents worry that when their kids come home from college, they're going to come home saying stuff like this.
This is basically every parent's nightmare, that their kids are going to go to college and come back saying crap like this.
And that's what's happened with him.
But it is what kids learn in college.
It's exactly what you expect a Harvard student to start saying in his first year.
And so Hogg has fulfilled that stereotype rather beautifully.
The problem, though, of course, is that it's nonsense.
First of all, European settlers may have been colonizers.
They may have been unwelcome colonizers.
They may have been disliked colonizers.
You could say that their colonization was unfortunate, if you want.
You could describe it any of those ways, if that's your opinion.
But what you can't say is that it was illegal.
That would be an incorrect statement.
That's not just an opinion, that's incorrect.
The word illegal means something.
They weren't illegal because the United States at the time was not a country.
So this goes for all the people that say, Our ancestors were illegal immigrants.
Everybody is... Any white American is the descendant of illegal immigrants.
That's not true.
That's simply not true.
America, at the time, North America, was a landmass very sparsely populated by a collection of disconnected tribes.
Very sparsely populated.
You think right now in the United States we've got 330 million people, not counting the illegals.
The actual illegals.
So we've got 330 million, give or take, in the United States.
Back before this land was settled by the Europeans, there were, across the entire North American continent, there were a few million spread out all across those millions of square miles.
Okay.
So that's what it was.
To call them illegal makes no sense.
It's inaccurate.
Illegal implies that there were laws being broken.
And laws being broken require some sort of central government of some kind making those laws, which there wasn't.
Now, if you come into the United States now, Without going through our standard immigration process, you're coming in illegally because you're breaking our laws that are in place.
If you do that in Mexico, you're going into Mexico illegally because they have laws in place.
China, same thing.
All of these established countries, if you go into those countries and settle there without going through the established process, you're breaking their laws.
Here's my question.
The colonizers that came here, The European settlers, what law were they breaking?
That's all you have to answer.
If you say they were illegal immigrants, okay, what law were they breaking?
Show me the law.
Pull out whatever law book and show me the chapter and verse.
I could do that with our immigration laws.
Today.
The entire North American landmass was not owned collectively by these tribes.
And in fact, the idea that as the world population grows and technology develops, that what, the entire North American continent we would just leave alone?
Nobody would come here?
Leave it to the two or three million people living there?
No one else gets to come?
Doesn't make any sense.
And the second point, of course, is that When you say a majority of the people in the United States are descendants of illegal colonizers, committed mass genocide, and so on, leaving aside the fact that the word illegal doesn't make any sense here, the general sentiment that he's trying to express would apply to pretty much everybody on Earth.
Pretty much everybody in the entire world.
And this is something that I'm always trying to explain, especially to those on the left who don't seem to understand it.
That the Europeans were not unique in colonizing, they were not unique in building empires, they were not unique in slavery, not by a long shot.
None of that was unique.
Empires across the world function that way.
And anywhere in the world where you go, where there are lines drawn, this country, that country, there's a line.
That line has been fought over.
And we're not talking pillow fights.
So all of the settled land, pretty much across the entire world, the people living there now, if you were to trace their lineage back, you're going to find that they probably, quote, stole it from somebody.
At some point, you're the descendant of someone who moved into an area and killed people and took over.
Because that's the way the world was settled.
Everywhere, not just here.
Now, the responses you often hear to that, number one, the first response is, that might be true, but, it's not might be, it is true.
That might be true, but that doesn't, that's no excuse for the Europeans.
Yeah, it's not an excuse.
But that does mean that if we're having conversations about ancestral sins, if we're having conversations about the terrible things that people did hundreds of years ago, the conversation shouldn't solely and only be focused on white Europeans.
That's what it means.
Yeah, we can have that conversation.
We could say, wherever they did commit genocide, that was a terrible thing.
Wherever they did steal land, they shouldn't have done that.
Fine.
Agreed.
Once we've established that, and I think we have established it, can we talk about the rest of the world?
It's like if we're discussing slavery.
Slavery in North America was a horrible, disgraceful evil.
Of course.
And I think we've pretty well established that.
I think everyone agrees.
I've never met anybody who would disagree with that.
And if I did meet them, I would assume that they're psychotic.
But if we're going to have slavery, can we at some point discuss the fact that it existed everywhere else on the globe?
I mean, if we're going to talk about the history of slavery, why would that discussion only be focused on this part of the world where we live now and only go back a few hundred years?
There is a larger picture here, a larger context that we could look at and discuss.
I think that's a reasonable thing for someone to point out.
So that's the first dodge.
The second dodge is to say, yes, Of course there was empire building across the world, of course there was slavery across the world, but the Europeans were unique in the way that they industrialized it, especially slavery, and in the way that they traveled across the entire world to far-reaching corners of the world and colonized even there.
Other empires didn't do that.
That's sort of basically true, but what do you think?
What stopped, say, Genghis Khan?
from conquering more land than he did.
Was it ethical qualms?
Did he say, I don't want to go any further than this.
This, this is enough guys.
I don't want to go in now.
No, it's, it was logistical.
Uh, it was a matter of logistics.
It's just, they weren't, he wasn't capable of going further than he did.
It wasn't ethical qualms.
So if other empires in history didn't colonize to the extent that the Europeans did, it's not because they figured, hey, let's calm down, fellas.
This is enough.
It wasn't ethics that stopped them.
It was the force of history that stopped them.
It was a lack of ability that stopped them.
It was a lack of technology that stopped them.
The Aztecs.
Enslaving all of their neighboring tribes.
Harvesting their neighboring tribes for human sacrifices.
Coming in and taking women and children.
Ripping their hearts out.
Feasting on their limbs.
Rolling their de-limbed bodies down the temple, down the steps of the temple.
In these barbaric, satanic ceremonies.
Okay.
Yes, they did that.
But the Aztecs weren't getting in ships and going up and trying to invade Europe or Africa.
Why not?
Is it because they could have but they decided not to because they figured they'd be taking it too far?
No, it's just because they didn't have the interest.
They didn't have the ability.
They didn't have the technology.
They didn't have the drive to do that.
They didn't have really the interest in going and discovering other far-reaching lands.
That's what stopped them.
The main focus for the Aztecs was, they felt, they had to continue to offer blood sacrifices to their gods.
And that was the entire focus of their civilization.
You had the, right in the middle of the Aztec capital, you had the temple there, and this was literally the focus.
And so from their perspective, why would they get in ships and go somewhere else?
It's just a matter of efficiency.
We just need to keep the gods satiated with more blood, more blood, more blood, more blood.
To spend time and treasure going off across an unknown sea to an unknown destination, there's no reason to do that.
That would actually have interfered with their ability to continue killing and ripping out hearts and feeding those sacrifices to their imaginary gods.
So that's what stopped them.
And you find similar situations in other empires across the world.
So, I feel like if we're going to have these conversations about the history of slavery and the history of empire building, At some point, maybe, perhaps, especially in university systems, maybe we extend our, we widen the lens a little bit and realize that there's a whole, that the world does not begin and end with the United States.
There's a whole greater picture out there that we could look at.
All right, let's go to emails, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Aaron, says, huge fan of the show, love the way you think even if we don't always agree.
Logic is important and it seems less and less people use it and it's what makes your podcast so compelling.
That being said, I'm interested in your thoughts on the simulation argument.
It's based only It's based on only three paths humanity can take.
One, humanity is never able to create a simulation.
Two, humanity has the ability to create the simulation, but for some reason decides against it.
Three, humanity creates a simulation.
And if three is true, the probability is that we are in a simulation.
Curious on your thoughts?
If you don't know a lot about the argument, you can listen to Joe Rogan and Nick Bostrom discuss it on episode 1350.
But I warn you, part of this podcast is painful because Rogan doesn't grasp it.
Thanks for your podcast.
Well, I'm not sure that I grasp it either.
So when you say simulation, you mean that we're all living in the Matrix, essentially?
Or that we're in a Sims game and we're the Sims?
I'm familiar with that hypothetical or thought experiment.
I'm not familiar with the formal argument that you've laid out there, so I'd have to look into it, I guess.
Here are my general thoughts.
First of all, it's so important to distinguish, and this is a principle that I think applies far beyond this particular discussion.
It is so important to distinguish between possibility and probability.
And people rarely do this in these kinds of discussions.
Is it possible that we're living in a virtual world and we are all virtual girls, to paraphrase Madonna?
Yes, it's possible.
I must say it's possible because it's not logically impossible.
And anything that isn't logically impossible is therefore logically possible.
It's possible that Superman exists.
It's possible that there are large pink dragons living on the moon.
It's possible that a real Nigerian prince will actually email me tomorrow and really offer me 20 million dollars.
These things are possible.
But is there any compelling reason to think that they're actually true?
Well, no.
It's definitely possible that the pink dragons live on the moon.
Nobody can say that's impossible.
Is there any reason to think they do?
No.
There's no evidence for it.
So this is just a possibility that I've conjured in my imagination.
And so it may be possible, but it's not remotely probable or plausible.
Now the simulation idea, yes, it's possible.
No, it's not remotely probable.
And there's no evidence for it.
There's no indications pointing to it.
There's no particular reason to believe that it's actually true.
And I certainly don't buy the premise that human technology is moving inexorably towards this eventuality of building a simulation.
I don't see why it has to go in that direction or have that result.
And even if it is, and there is a simulation built, or there will be, I don't see how the simulated beings would be conscious, how could you simulate a person, simulate them, which means that there's no actual person, so how could you simulate a person and then that simulated non-entity begins to experience its own existence in some way?
I mean, you could sooner convince me that we're all very lifelike robots, but with a simulation it means that we're not flesh and blood at all, right?
So then how would we be conscious?
And if that's possible, then how do we know that video game characters today aren't conscious?
Maybe Mario's been conscious this whole time.
Who knows?
But that makes no sense, really, because simulated beings are not organic, they don't have brains, they don't have bodies, they don't have any of the things that seem to be necessary conditions for consciousness, at least in this world.
So, that's why I wouldn't be persuaded.
Although, I mean, I love the idea, sort of, that maybe I'm Neo, so I kind of am entertained by that, but...
I can't say that I'm convinced.
This is from Sean, says, Hi Matt, somebody yesterday accused you of trying to appease people and appeal to the masses, but I think that's the least accurate possible way to describe you.
It seems like you sometimes go out of your way to piss off your own fans.
You're basically the least pandering media person I've ever seen.
I've, it's almost like you don't, you don't want to be liked.
I've noticed that when you get on a subject that's turning your listeners against you, you'll then stay on it for days just to prove a point.
It's weird, but I respect it.
Keep doing you.
I appreciate that, Sean.
I think if that was a compliment, though, despite common perception, I actually don't try.
I don't try to piss people off for the sake of it.
And I don't really enjoy being disliked.
I don't think anybody does.
I like being liked who doesn't, but I can't help but lapse back into being myself, I guess.
And that's where I run into trouble.
Let's see.
Uh, Okay, here's one I wanted to read.
This is from Anonymous.
It says, Hi Matt.
Subject line, by the way, is, Can lying ever be ethical?
I know that lying is wrong and sinful, especially when you do it to the ones you love.
But is it ever ethical?
I was married to a physically and emotionally abusive man for, I'm not going to say the number of years to protect anonymity here.
One day a few years ago, after he slapped me across the face, I decided I had had enough.
I left him that same day and never spoke with him again.
Except in email format over the divorce dealings.
I didn't find out until later that I was pregnant with his child.
I knew that I had to protect my baby at all costs.
I knew all too well that he was what he was capable of and the bruises on my body were still purple.
The mere thought of him laying a hand on my baby enraged me.
I vowed never to tell him so not to risk my child's safety and well-being.
I immediately moved back to my home state to be close to my family.
I was very careful about social media because I didn't want anything getting back to him.
Outside of my immediate family, mom, dad, and sisters, I told everyone that I was artificially inseminated.
My family agreed that it would be best to tell people that story so that the chances of him finding out could be as minimal as possible.
Nine months later, I had my beautiful baby girl.
She is the light of my life and the greatest blessing God has ever given me.
My sweet little girl is six now and has never known the truth about her conception.
When she was three years old, my now husband entered into our lives, and he's been her father ever since.
My husband is a loving, caring father and husband, and I am so grateful that my daughter gets to grow up in a normal family.
I think I did the right thing in not telling my ex about my daughter, but in doing so, I've lied to everybody.
My husband thinks the same thing that everyone else thinks, that I was artificially inseminated.
I had to tell him that story when I first met him because I didn't know yet if I could trust him.
I also didn't feel like I could tell my daughter the truth.
What if she tries to contact him when she's a teen?
When I fabricated this whole story, I initially decided to only tell my daughter the truth when she's 18.
That way, he won't be able to take her away from me.
I know in my heart that I'm doing this to protect my child, but I feel really guilty still, and I find the thought of lying to my daughter almost unbearable.
Luckily, she hasn't asked me yet who her real father is, but I know she will someday.
Is it wrong to lie, even when you're protecting someone?
As a mother, I would do anything to protect my baby.
Lie, cheat, steal, if necessary.
So why do I feel so damned guilty?
Should I have handled this differently?
Well, that's quite a situation, as I'm sure you're aware.
Now, to answer the question in the subject line, can lying ever be ethical?
I would say, yes, it can be.
Now, when I read that subject line, I thought that this was going to go in some hypothetical academic sort of direction with the question, and maybe you'd have one of those.
The classic hypothetical is, Would it be ethical to lie to the Nazis if you're in Nazi Germany and they're knocking on your door and you're hiding Jews in the attic?
Would it be ethical to lie to them and tell them that no you're not?
I would say of course it's ethical.
The only other option in that case would be to tell the truth, to save your own skin out of cowardice, thus sending those people to their horrifying painful deaths.
Clearly to me that's not the ethical choice.
But just because lying Can be ethical doesn't mean that every example of lying, ostensibly to protect somebody, actually is ethical.
And I have to say that to me, from my limited perspective as somebody who doesn't know anything about you other than what I just read, I would say that your case would definitely seem not to be an example of ethical lying.
I would say this is very unethical lying.
Now leaving someone who's a danger to you, that of course makes sense.
He has no right to treat you the way that he did.
You had to leave to save yourself from who knows what he might have done next.
So I get that.
I think anybody gets that.
Nobody would have any qualms with that.
And if they did, who cares?
Because you had to do what was right for you, for your safety.
And it may even be perfectly ethical to try and keep him from having any kind of extended contact or relationship with your daughter.
If you have good reason to think that he's a danger to her, then yes, that would be ethical too.
But do you have the right to keep him from knowing the very fact that he has a daughter?
No.
I would say no, because that's his daughter, like it or not.
Even if he's a scumbag, that's still his daughter.
I think he has a right, at a minimum, to know that she exists.
He did help to conceive her, after all.
If he's a dangerous man, if he's an abuser, which he sounds like, then it doesn't mean he has any right to be involved in raising her.
But he does have a right to know, at least.
And putting that aside, your daughter definitely has a right to know that she has a father, and who he is.
That she wasn't conceived in a petri dish.
Yeah, you're right.
At this age, she probably isn't wondering about that or doesn't understand anyway, but eventually she's going to want to know and I think she has a right to know and your current husband even has a right to know the truth.
So from my vantage point, I would say that the ethics of lying really depend on whether the person you're lying to has a right to know the truth about are you keeping A truth from someone that they have a right to.
Now, the point with the Nazi example is that the Nazi has no right to know whether you're hiding a Jewish family in the attic or not.
They have no right to that information.
And there could be less extreme examples.
Where somebody is demanding information, they have no right to it, and maybe you feel like the only way to keep that information they have no right to in the first place from them is to tell an untruth.
And I would say in that case, it's perfectly ethical because they have no right to it, right?
But in this case, there is information here.
There's a truth that people in your life have a right to.
You don't own that truth.
Your daughter has a right to know who her father is.
Her father has a right to know that he has a daughter and who she is.
Your current husband has a right to know, I think as well.
And I think you know all this, which is why your conscience is eating at you and that's why you're emailing in the first place.
Don't take this as any kind of harsh judgment.
I understand that you, I understand why you did what you did.
You were seemingly in an impossible situation.
You made a choice.
You know, you decided to tell a lie, and this is the classic thing that everyone learns to some extent in their life at some point.
You tell a big lie, and eventually you've got to follow that up with more lies, more lies, and more lies.
There's no such thing as telling one big lie.
It never happens.
Because you're going to have to support that lie with other lies, and eventually you've weaved this web of deception where you're looking back at it and you realize there's no way to justify this.
This is obviously wrong.
And I would say the same in your case.
Now, as far as what to do from here and how to go about revealing the truth, because I don't think that you just run into the living room at the drop of a hat and say, let me tell everybody.
I don't think that's the way to handle it.
I think you have to be thoughtful and considered and careful about how you reveal the truth, which I do think you should reveal.
But how to go about that?
What I would really recommend, first and foremost, is that you seek the counsel of not people in your immediate family, not that their counsel is irrelevant, although I think they counseled you wrong six years ago, but of course you continue talking to them and relying on them, but I think you need to seek the counsel of somebody who doesn't know you as well as they do, isn't so emotionally tied to you, but also knows you a lot better than I do because I don't know you at all.
So, you know, I don't know if you go to a church, if there's a pastor you could talk to.
I would seek the counsel of someone who knows you and who you can sit down with face-to-face, but isn't so emotionally invested in it, and talk to them about how should you, you know, you know that you're in the wrong here.
It sounds to me like you know you're in the wrong.
Where do you go from here?
How do you get yourself out of this?
And so I would talk to somebody about that.
But thank you for the question in any case.
All right.
One last question.
This is from Luke.
Says, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt.
Just for the record, some of us do respect the office of president, regardless of who's sitting there.
Even though I'm a registered and voting Republican, I always made the point of saying President Obama in conversation during his time in office and never said blatantly disrespectful things about him in conversation, regardless of how I felt about his policies.
Side note, I know you won't read this on air because you only read stuff you argue, you can argue with, and you won't be able to argue with this, so feel free to stop reading at this point, you coward.
A short precursor, you are my second favorite person on the Daily Wire lineup, right behind Ben.
You coward, you're the, you're my second favorite person.
So I normally agree with you.
I would say 85% of the time we align, but when we don't, I can respect and understand your reasoning.
At least I could until now.
You gave a few reasons as to why we would have no reason not to respect the office of a politician.
You gave a few reasons as to why we would have no reason not to respect the office of a... Hold on a second.
I gotta work through this sentence.
You gave a few reasons as to why we would have no reason not to respect the office of a politician.
We would have no reason not to respect.
So we would have a reason to respect.
But I was saying that we don't... Okay.
Anyway, I'll charge forward.
First was that it's not the office of a monarch.
Now, you did not explicitly say that one should respect a monarch, but it was heavily implied.
If not for the simple reason that, why else would you even pose this as a reason unless you implied that a monarch is to be respected?
I wholly disagree.
Monarch rule is imposed, and elected officials' rule is subject to the people.
Respecting the office is respecting the people's rule by proxy.
This is a great reason to respect the office of the president.
Luke 1, Matt 0.
Secondly, you said that they are our employees.
Now you're implying that employees aren't to be respected.
I spent five years working as a manager at a retail pharmacy chain, and I always respected my employees, and in return, I earned their respect.
I'm actually surprised at your candor on this subject, considering the fact that your boss, Ben Shapiro, almost outright says on air that he respects his employees, you among them.
It should be a given that we should respect our public official on the ground, on this ground alone.
Luke to Matt Zero.
Next, you said that you respect them if they earn it, and you don't if they don't.
I think you're confusing respect and agreement.
You can disagree with the actions and words of a politician and still respect the office or the officials themselves.
I think that in order to lose my respect, a politician would have to do something terribly egregious.
On the other hand, you're making it sound like we should not start out in a place of respect and make them earn it.
And I wholly disagree with that notion.
Luke 3, Matt 0.
Actually, Matt negative 1, because you're a disgusting human being.
Now I know you're going to think I'm disrespecting you in this email, but that is exactly the childish thing you would think, you sniveling baby.
I'm only disagreeing with you, and that's all I have to say about that.
Thanks for that email, Luke, and I appreciate it.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate your candor.
But I'll have to maintain my original position, which is... And my first point with, we say, respect the office, My first question is, what actually does that really mean?
I understand it's a phrase, it's a slogan, it's a nice thing to say, but on a day-to-day basis, what do you mean respect the office?
How do you respect an office, abstractly?
I understand how to respect the person, okay?
I don't really understand how to respect an abstract office.
So you're gonna have to explain what that means exactly.
So I'm not sure I get it.
Secondly, I go back to what I said, that with politicians, I think in America, one of the things that sets us apart, or should set us apart from other places in the world, from almost every other place in the world, is that we do not, we certainly don't worship, we don't adore, Our politicians, we are very skeptical of them.
We are very open.
I guess what I'm saying, this is how it should be, because especially in recent times, it hasn't actually been this way.
That's a problem.
But the way it should be, the way the system was originally set up, is that we are skeptical, we are critical, we're not supposed to fall into cults of personality.
With our politicians, we look at them, they are our employees, and we say, do your job.
If you don't do it, we're going to fire you.
And, you know, we're not going to bow down before you.
If you want us to respect you, you have to earn it.
That's my essential point.
Politicians should earn our respect.
And if there is a politician who is not respectable because they're corrupt, and they're a liar, and they're not doing their job, and they're not representing the interests of the people.
Okay.
Even if it's not the president, let's say it's a congressman, and there are plenty of congressmen out there like this.
And Congresswomen.
So, if this were, let's say, a contemptible human being, and a liar, and a phony, and a fraud, and an opportunist, I have no respect for them, but I respect their office.
How do you even delineate that in your mind?
And what does that mean in practice?
I just don't think it means anything.
I think it's a very simple concept.
Earn my respect.
Do I go in immediately not respecting politicians?
No.
I'm sort of neutral.
I have no feelings about them.
Show me.
Show me what you can do.
Prove it.
That's my approach.
This is why I've so often said we shouldn't be fans of politicians.
Any politician.
We could be supporters, but our support should be very conditional.
And very tentative.
In sports, we don't like fair-weather fans.
I get that.
But with politics, we shouldn't be fans at all, but we should be fair-weather supporters.
As in, I'm supporting you now because to some extent, I believe that you have the character for the job, that you have the integrity for the job.
I support your policies, and so I support you.
But if it's revealed that you have bad character, and if you don't follow through on your promises in terms of policies, then that's gone.
I don't support you anymore.
Why would I?
What am I supporting?
I never supported you because I love your smile.
I supported you for what you were going to bring to the table.
If you don't bring that to the table, like you promised, then I'm going to kick you out of the dinner party.
That's the way it should go.
So, unfortunately, Luke, I still think you lose this conversation.
But thanks again for the email.
And I guess we'll leave it there for the weekend.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
And I remind you again that my book, Church of Cowards, has gone on sale.
Pre-sale comes out February 25th.
But please go on Amazon and pre-order.
Pre-order one for yourself and your friends, for your whole church.
You know, I won't stop you from doing that.
And look out for that on February 25th.
All right, that's it.
Godspeed.
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