All Episodes
April 22, 2020 - The Matt Walsh Show
48:30
Ep. 471 - There Is No Such Thing As A Non-Essential Business

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, we hear a lot about non-essential businesses these days, but I want to talk about why I think there is no such thing as a non-essential business. Also, Five Headlines, including a mother arrested on a playground, and airlines coming up with a pretty horrifying way to reconfigure their seating arrangements in response to the coronavirus. Plus, the Daily Cancellation and your emails. Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://bit.ly/2z2j1NB. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership. If you like The Matt Walsh Show, become a member TODAY with promo code: WALSH and enjoy the exclusive benefits for 10% off at https://www.dailywire.com/Walsh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Today on the Matt Wall Show, we hear a lot about non-essential businesses these days, but I want to talk about why I think there is no such thing as a non-essential business.
I think that's a category that doesn't actually exist.
I'll explain why.
Also, five headlines, including a mother arrested on a playground in front of her kids for bringing her kids to a playground, and airlines are coming up with, it looks like, a pretty horrifying way to reconfigure their seating arrangements in response
to the coronavirus, plus the daily cancellation and your emails and a lot more all coming up
on the show.
But first, I want to tell you about our friends over at ExpressVPN.
We often think about internet privacy and security when we're at the office, but what
I think there's a false sense of security that sometimes we have that we're at home and we think we have that privacy.
Being stuck at home these days, you probably don't think much about internet privacy on your own home network.
Even in incognito mode though, your online activity can still be traced, even if you Clear your browsing history.
Your internet service provider can still see every single website you've ever visited.
That's why, even when I'm at home, I never go online without using ExpressVPN.
ExpressVPN makes sure that your ISP can't see what sites you visit.
Instead, your internet connection is rerouted through ExpressVPN's secure servers.
Each ExpressVPN server has an IP address that's shared among thousands of other
users, that means everything you do is anonymous,
and it can't be traced back to you.
ExpressVPN also encrypts 100% of your data with the best in class encryption that you could possibly
find so your information is always protected.
This is just about privacy when you're online.
This is something we all need and want, is privacy.
So, to protect your online activity today with the VPN that I trust to secure my privacy, visit my special link at ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh, and you can get the extra three months free on a one-year package.
That's ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh.
E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Walsh.
ExpressVPN.com slash Walsh.
Well, first of all, this isn't what I originally wanted to talk about to begin the show, but I did want to just mention this controversy involving the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick.
Now, if you didn't hear, he's getting a ton of criticism and blowback for something that he said on Tucker Carlson a few days ago.
When he was discussing the coronavirus response, he was advocating, you know, as he's been an advocate all along for opening the economy up, he made the point that the mortality rate, especially in Texas, is very low, and we're killing the economy, and there's gonna be serious consequences from that.
So that's his point.
And in the process of making that point, he said this.
We're crushing small business.
We're crushing the markets.
We're crushing this country.
And what I said when I was with you that night, there are more important things than living.
And that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.
And I don't want to die.
Nobody wants to die.
But man, we got to we got to take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.
Now, there's been a huge freak out over this because he said there are more important things than living.
And to a lot of people these days, apparently that is a scandalous thought.
So, people are very upset about that.
Of course, meanwhile, he's exactly right.
Of course.
Of course he's right.
Yes, there are more important things than living.
Without even knowing the context.
If you just told me he said that, and I had no idea of the context, even without the context, I would agree.
I would say, well, of course there are more important things than living.
I can rattle off a list of things right away that are more important than living.
Faith, integrity, dignity, love.
I mean, basically anything you would rather die than forfeit.
Anything you would hold on to until death.
Like if somebody put a gun to your head and said, give up this or I'll kill you.
If there's anything that even in that scenario you would say, well then kill me, that means that you believe there are more important things than living.
Now, if you have no such things, if somebody put a gun to your head and you would give up anything at all that they ask for, and do anything that they want you to do for the sake of just continuing to breathe, then yes, for you there is nothing more important than living.
And that's an understandable attitude from a sort of primal, Self-preservation standpoint, but it's also cowardly and pathetic Okay So there's nothing wrong with this statement.
This is Ideally, you know, I mean we can never know exactly how we would respond if we had a gun to our heads But ideally I think most of us should be able to agree that an ideal scenario There are going to be things more important to us than living and it becomes So so the statement is not wrong the statement becomes even less wrong and more right and When you look at the context.
Because what he's saying, he's saying as an older man, somebody in a vulnerable group, he would rather risk death for himself for the sake of preserving our civilization for his children and grandchildren and everybody else's children and grandchildren.
And that is also the right attitude.
In fact, I would say if you're a parent and you don't have that attitude, if you are not willing to risk death for yourself for the sake of preserving your child's future, then you're a bad parent.
You don't love your kids enough in that case.
I'm not saying you have to agree with him about the shutdown if you love your kids, but you should at least agree with the basic principle that you're willing to take on a risk for yourself for the sake of your kids.
In principle, you should agree with that, or you're not a good parent.
And that's all he's saying.
So what's the controversy here?
What are people freaking out about?
Well, they're freaking out because they're stupid.
Because we live in a very stupid time.
And even very basic, easy-to-understand points become a reason for people to panic.
Now, So what he's saying, for him, the preservation of his own life is not the most important thing.
It's important, but it's not the most important.
And in his mind, we are doing something with these shutdowns that will cause enormous damage to future generations, and to him, that is not a price worth paying.
To preserve his life, and yes, the lives of people in his peer group, his age group, what he's saying is, That's not worth the cost of destroying our civilization for our kids and grandkids.
And again, how do you see that as anything but an admirable attitude?
Now, the only problem with this line from the Lieutenant Governor is that it sounds like he's sort of conceding that the lockdowns are saving lives.
But, and what he's saying is that even if they are, it's not necessarily worth the price.
And he would still be right, even in that case, but it's actually not true, necessarily, that the lockdowns are saving lives.
They may, in fact, be doing more harm than good.
Even with respect to fighting the virus itself, they may be doing more harm than good.
So it's not a choice between saving lives or not, it's a choice between a dubious method of saving lives that will also be certain to crash the economy and bring with it all sorts of horrific consequences as well, or it's a choice between that or Keeping the economy going, continuing to live our lives while taking precautions, and thus trying to stave off the worst-case scenario with the virus, as well as the worst-case scenario with an economic collapse.
So those are the two choices.
It's not true at all that if you're in favor of the lockdowns, you're necessarily in favor of the method that will save more lives, because it may in fact not.
And in fact, I've got some stuff coming up in the headline section that I think shows that the consequences of this shutdown may well kill not just more people than will die from the virus, but a lot more people.
Exponentially more people, speaking of exponential growth.
So, we'll talk more about that in the headlines.
But I do have something else I wanted to talk about at the front.
Before we do, a quick word from Rock Auto.
You know, if you're having car trouble right now, this is kind of a bad time for it.
I've gone through this already with both of our cars.
You might not be able to go out to get out of the house.
Maybe the places around you that sell the auto parts aren't open, whatever the case may be.
Well, the good news is, Rockauto.com is there. The rockauto.com catalog is unique
and remarkably easy to navigate.
Rockauto.com is so much easier than walking into a store.
So even if you could go to a store, it still is better to go to rockauto.com. And besides, when
you go to the store, you know, they're going to ask you a lot of confusing
questions. They probably don't have what you need. They're going to end up ordering it online
anyway. Why not just cut out that whole middleman process and go there yourself? Rockauto.com has
everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil, new
carpet, whatever you need for whatever kind of car you have. They're going to have it
there at rockauto.com.
Always offering the lowest prices possible rather than changing prices based on what they think the market will bear.
And these days especially, right?
We all need to save money as much as possible.
So go to rockauto.com right now.
See all the parts available for your car or truck.
Write Walsh in there.
How did you hear about us box?
So that they know that we sent you.
Now, One other point I wanted to make, or idea I wanted to talk about, I thought about this when I drove to, I had to run some essential errands over the weekend, and I had to specifically go to an essential grocery store to buy some essential food, and on the way there I noticed, and I hadn't noticed this before, but Best Buy was still open.
There's still people, a ton of people actually, in the parking lot at Best Buy, going to Best Buy.
I also passed a Dunkin' Donuts.
Still open.
I passed a Dairy Queen.
Still open.
All of these open.
So apparently donuts, ice cream, TVs, these are all considered essential services and essential businesses, which doesn't surprise me in modern America, nor do I necessarily disagree.
I mean, these donuts, ice cream, and TV have certainly been essential components of my own life, I will certainly admit.
But it does raise a question about What the government actually means when it declares a business essential, thus allowing it to stay open, or inessential, thus forcing it to close and possibly driving it irretrievably into ruin.
Now, I'm not arguing that the stores that I mentioned, Best Buy, Dunkin' Donuts, and stores like it, or for that matter, the liquor stores that are open, or any of the other businesses that our benevolent overlords have allowed to stay open, I'm not arguing that they should be closed.
That's not my point.
I'm glad they're open.
I'm happy about that.
My point is that every other business should be open too.
Because the government's system of designating something essential or inessential is arbitrary, unjust, absurd, and subjective.
And I don't think it's a coincidence that the wealthy and politically connected big corporations are so often allowed to stay open whilst the small businesses that don't have a lot of money and don't have connections and don't have power that are being destroyed, being wiped out.
You know, I don't think that's a coincidence.
So, I think we've accepted this essential versus non-essential designation without much question.
We should have questioned it a lot more and asked the question of Very basically, what do you mean by that?
If the term essential has any objective meaning when applied to a business, it would have to be, as far as I could tell, that an essential business is one that people depend on for survival.
And the government must be taking a pretty broad view of that, because no one's gonna die without Dunkin' Donuts or Best Buy.
Or Dairy Queen or Taco Bell.
But, you know, the fast food places, they sell food.
And Best Buy sells stuff that you might need for work.
So, understanding this in a very broad way, they sell things that you might need, you might depend on, right?
Okay.
But then, every other business fits that bill as well.
That's the point.
Every business has people depending on it.
Even if a business is expendable as far as the customers are concerned, and even that might not be the case, I mean, to whatever extent customers depend on Best Buy, I bet there are people who depend on, you know, even like barbershops just as much.
I would put those, as far as the products and services they provide, I would put those about on the same level, in terms of how essential they are.
Taking a broader view of it, however the customers look at it, the fact is that any business is going to have people depending on it.
Certainly the employees and the people that run the business depend on it.
And that is why every business is, in a very real and urgent sense, essential to somebody.
So it's obviously ludicrous to suggest that Walmart and Target are essential to me, Because that's what they're saying, right?
When the government says, this business is open because it's essential, what they're really saying is, it's essential to you as a member of the community.
Target Walmart are essential to you.
Whether or not that's the case, your job and your income are more essential to you.
It doesn't make any sense to say that Walmart is essential to you, but your own job is not essential to you.
Because the essentialness of a product is kind of irrelevant if you don't have the money to buy it.
Which means that your income will always be more fundamentally essential than anything you might find at a store.
So as we speak, there are thousands of people across the country waiting in line for hours at food banks because they can't afford the so-called essential services that these businesses are providing.
Their source of income has been declared less essential than the items they would use their income to purchase.
That doesn't make any sense.
The insanity of that kind of system, I think, should be readily apparent to everybody.
If a product or service is essential, then the means by which I purchase that product or service must also be essential.
If you remove the latter, then you've also removed the former.
If you deprive me of the latter, you deprive me of the former.
Because again, the word essential doesn't mean anything if we're not talking about essential to people.
And nobody can deny that one of the most essential things to a person is his job.
So all businesses are essential, which means that it's time to open them up again.
And I'm glad that some states are starting to do that.
We're going to go to we have a number of important news stories we're going to go to in just a second.
But speaking of important, before we do that, you know, even during this At a time when people are locked at home, your beard hygiene and your facial hair appearance are still very important.
You can let everything else go to hell, but at least have, as a man, or a woman if you have a beard, you know, I don't judge, you gotta have enough self-respect to keep the beard in tip-top shape.
If you're sitting at home giving the quarantine beard a shot, you probably already know that it's not as easy a look, it's not as easy as it looks.
To have, I mean, this beard that I have here, and I've got it trimmed a little bit short right now.
But there's a lot of work that goes into this.
To look this good with the beard?
It's not that easy, okay?
Beards can dry out, they can get itchy, they can look bad sometimes, as heretical as it may seem to say.
Beard Supply helps keep your beard healthy, itch-free, soft, smelling great, and more than 10,000 beards agree.
Beard Supply products are the best out there and 10,000 beards can't be wrong.
One beard can't be wrong.
Each Beard Supply beard oil is handcrafted from 100% natural ingredients with no synthetics, no mass market essentials, no sulfates, no paraffin.
I don't know what paraffin is.
It sounds like something you'd find in the ocean.
I don't know.
This stuff is basically just squeezed right out of earth directly onto your beard.
Plus, they come in tons of great smells like the woods.
Winter, the year 1975, great smell.
Historically great smelling year, I think.
I also thought 1993 was a great smelling year.
Join thousands of other bearded guys who are enjoying softer, better smelling, less itchy beards.
For a short time, Beard Supply is offering Matt Walsh Show listeners 25% off.
Just go to Beardsupply.com and use the promo code WALSH.
Again, that's Beardsupply.com, promo code WALSH.
So this is going predictably viral as we go to our first story here.
It's a footage of a mom at a playground in Idaho, arrested for being on the playground with her kids.
Because it's being easy.
Because you guys aren't listening.
I just told you to exit the playground.
But we're not trespassing.
Are you going to now incite everyone for not social distancing?
Ma'am, ma'am.
Are you going to arrest me for not social distancing?
You have five seconds.
No.
Arrest me for being a deportee.
Do it.
Record it.
Okay, this is not... Officer, you don't want to do that.
Officer, you don't... Am I being arrested or detained?
Am I arrested or detained?
Someone call Idaho Freedom Foundation right now and get them on the phone.
Call now.
I'm recording.
Someone else call.
Okay, can you call?
Her kids are here!
That, again, is in Idaho, where there have been less than 2,000 confirmed or probable cases, as the Idaho.gov website puts it, and about 50 deaths.
Yet, they don't want you to go on the playground.
Now, the defense I've seen of this, of the cop anyway, the defense that some people have offered, is that he's doing his job, he didn't make the rule, he tried to be nice, the woman was being difficult.
All of that is true.
But what happens, let's say, if all or most of the cops in a department just stand up and say, we're not going to enforce these kinds of rules.
We're not going to go and put a mother in handcuffs for having her kid on a swing.
What if the cops say that?
Are they going to fire all the cops in the town?
I think what we need is police officers to step up here, do the brave thing in these cases, and simply refuse to enforce policies like this.
Because, as we know, following orders is not always a sufficient excuse.
Number two, here's a fascinating case, speaking of kids, you know, on playgrounds and elsewhere.
This is interesting, from The Guardian.
Reading now from the Guardian says, a nine-year-old boy who contracted COVID-19
in Eastern France did not pass the virus on despite coming into contact with more than 170 people.
According to research that suggests children may not be major spreaders of the virus.
The boy was among a cluster of cases linked to Steve Walsh, the businessman
who became the first person in Britain to test positive for coronavirus
after attending a sales conference in Singapore in January.
Walsh unwittingly, as far as I know, but who knows, passed the infection on when he joined 10 British adults
and a family of five at a chalet in a ski resort's resort.
ski resorts.
We are the world.
Region... It goes on from there.
But anyway, the point is, just summarizing.
We don't need all the details.
This was a young child.
Showed moderate, you know, mild symptoms.
He wasn't very sick.
Came in contact with 170 people.
Didn't pass it on to anybody, apparently.
Now, this is just one case, but it is very interesting.
And if it holds true, then this would mean that we already know that kids are not personally affected by this very much or very often.
And if they also are not likely to spread the virus, then you have to start to wonder why the school's still closed.
Why the playground's closed, right?
Number three, I hope you're ready to be severely creeped out.
Because here's a poll that was posted by Morning Joe and MSNBC.
They posted a poll.
The poll question, should non-essential workers be allowed to move freely outside?
Results, 75% of the respondents to the poll say no, they should not.
How much of a bootlicking submissive do you have to be to say no to that question?
Should they be allowed to move freely outside if they're non-essential?
What an absolutely creepy question.
Everything about that.
It's not even just, should non-essential workers be allowed to go to work?
Saying no to that, in my view, is bad enough.
Another thing, should they be able to move freely outside?
No.
Now let's go to something a little bit more inspirational and positive.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York set up a tip line, a phone number, where people could call or text to report any violations of social distancing that they observe in their communities.
A snitch line, basically, for godforsaken tattletales.
That's not the inspirational part.
The inspirational part is that people really stepped up to the plate, did the right thing, and flooded the tip line with obscene pictures and prank calls.
Beautiful.
I mean, God bless America.
This is the America that I know and love.
Not all the people snitching on their neighbors, but this is what America is all about.
So, reading from the Daily Wire, it says, The New York Post reports that New Yorkers and other assorted de Blasio critics flooded his new tip line with crank complaints, including photos of genitalia.
And people flipping the bird.
Photos of extended middle fingers, the mayor dropping the Staten Island groundhog, and news coverage of him going to the gym have all been texted to a special tip line that de Blasio announced Saturday, according to screenshots posted to Twitter.
The outlet adds that it is not immediately clear whether the offending texters all live in New York.
Some of the mayor's detractors took particular delight in reporting de Blasio himself to the tip line, especially given that the New York mayor dragged his feet in instituting shelter-in-place orders and so on.
And he was, like they say, he was going to the gym, he's driving whatever it is, 12 miles to go to walk in a park, so... It looks like he was the main one reported to his own tip line.
Beautiful stuff.
Now, we go from that to very tragic again.
Reading now from CNN, it says, the world is facing multiple famines of biblical proportions, quote-unquote, in just a matter of months, the UN has said, warning that the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation.
Famines could take hold in about three dozen countries in a worst-case scenario.
The executive director of the World Food Program said, 10 of those countries already have more than a million people on the verge of starvation.
He cited conflict, economic recession, a decline in aid, and a collapse in oil prices as factors likely to lead to vast food shortages, and urged swift action to avert the disaster.
So, 100 million people on the brink of starvation because of this.
And by the way, remember, the collapse in oil prices, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she loves to see, she absolutely loves it.
She loves that the oil prices are collapsing.
And yet millions of people will be on the brink of starvation because of it.
So she loves that.
But beyond that, I mean, this is a large part of the reason here is because of the shutdowns, not just in America, but across the world.
The disruption in the supply chain.
And that's going to spur on potentially mass starvation.
So like we were talking about before, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that the shutdowns have actually saved lives.
There seems like a pretty significant likelihood that it will lead to many more deaths.
This is one aspect we haven't talked about.
We've talked about suicide rates going up, drug abuse going up, domestic violence, things like that.
And just even people in this country who are not able, you know, homelessness and all of these factors on the rise, and that puts lives at risk.
And then when you look, when you step back and you look at it on a global scale, and you think about the potentially tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who could be on the brink of starvation, it's looking like the shutdowns could be a humanitarian disaster, unlike anything we've seen in recent times.
Six, finally, a bonus story here that I wanted to mention.
Airlines are trying to figure out how to reconfigure their seating arrangements in a post-corona world.
And here's what one manufacturer came up with.
This is a potential model that could be used by airlines.
So take a look at the picture.
You see there, you've got... I mean, my God in heaven.
I would... You get the middle seat.
Middle seat was already bad enough.
And now, already dehumanizing and claustrophobic enough, now they want to imprison the middle seat in a plastic case so that there's definitely no space for your elbows or anything.
And then even worse than that, I mean that's bad enough, but now they want to flip the middle seat around so that you're directly facing the people in the aisle and window seat behind you.
And then what happens if you have to cough?
Now you're coughing towards other people.
This is their solution.
Now, I would say that at least this works out if you're on an aisle or a window seat, because then the person next to you is encased in glass, so that would avoid, you think, okay, that's going to avoid unwanted conversation, which is great.
But the problem is that the middle seat in front of you, now you've got their dumb face looking at you for the entire flight.
So this is going to mean that the most coveted seat on the entire plane will be the window seat at the very front of the plane.
Because now you've got the privacy, because you've got the glass case on one side, you've got the window on the other, no one's talking to you, no one can, and then there's nobody in front of you facing you.
So that's going to be a very coveted seat.
There's going to be violence, riots over that seat.
Plus, there's going to be an upcharge, of course.
It's going to be $700 upcharge just to sit in that one good seat left on the plane.
Of course, if the airlines really cared about reducing transmission of diseases and everything, rather than finding ways to keep people crammed together, what they might consider doing is, like, removing the middle seat, even, in some cases, to give people more space.
And now we could be socially distanced on the plane.
But they don't want to do that because that means they're going to sacrifice money.
Alright, let's go to our daily cancellation.
I'm going to be cancelling the brand Burt's Bees, which I think makes lip balm and some other stuff.
Actually, this specifically is the Burt's Bees Baby brand, and they make, I don't know, lip balm for babies, I'm not sure.
But anyway, Burt's Bees Baby posted something on Instagram.
Now, especially on Instagram, brands will often attempt to be inspiring, relatable, encouraging.
And these attempts, as the kids would say, are cringe.
Almost always.
Now, here's the thing, brands, if you are a brand.
Just be a brand.
Sell your product.
Don't try to inspire me.
I'm not going to a brand for inspiration.
I'm not looking at an advertisement to be inspired.
Just sell what you came here to sell and be on your way.
All right, just get to it, sell your product, and be done with it.
But the reason Burt's Bees Baby is getting canceled in particular is because they went, when it comes to trying to inspire people, they went way, way, way, way over the top in this desperate attempt to be encouraging and inspirational.
So I want you to look at this post.
Here's the picture.
This is on Instagram, their Instagram page.
This is the picture.
Then the caption from the brand, this is what it says.
This is not what you had planned.
This is not what you'd envisioned.
There are no visits from friends, no loving doula bringing you soup, no mommy and me yoga classes, no coffee dates, no stroller walks through the park.
There is empty space where you had planned comfort and company.
There are long days with no one but your little one to talk to, and this big transition to navigate all alone.
I know it's lonely, Mama.
I know the... Mama.
Isn't that creepy to have a brand talking to you this way?
I know it's lonely, Mama.
I know the walls of your house feel tight and the days feel so long and you crave a warm hand on your knee and the soft embrace of a friend.
You wish for someone by your side to marvel at this beautiful baby of yours and to wrap an arm around you when the feelings get too big and scary.
I remind you, this is a brand that makes lip balm, okay?
We were never meant to do this alone.
Motherhood has never been a solitary sport, and yet here we are in this odd chapter of isolation and distance with no choice but to do it by ourselves.
But Mama, know this.
We are alone together.
You are surrounded by all the other mothers who are navigating this tender time in isolation.
You are held by all of us who have walked the path before you and who know how much you must be hurting right now.
You are wrapped in the warm embrace of Mama Earth.
As she too settles into this time of slowness and healing, this too shall pass.
And when it does, hugs and coffee dates and visits from friends will taste so much sweeter.
Soft kisses on your cheek and arms around your waist and gentle laughter in your ear will be the joyful medicine after this trying time.
Until then, hunker down, mama.
Find the coziest, warmest spot on the couch.
Sink into the pile of unfolded laundry and spend this spring with that sweet babe warm on your chest.
Jeez, Burt's Bees.
Take it down a notch.
Take it down several notches.
Just calm down a little.
You sell lip balm, okay?
This is what we're talking about here.
Take it easy.
By the way, um, crave a warm hand on your knee?
Is that... Now, look, I'm not a woman, as far as I know.
But who knows?
I mean, anybody could be these days.
So, but maybe I'm a little bit ignorant of this.
I tend to doubt that... I guess you tell me, ladies.
Do you crave a warm hand on your knee?
Is that a thing that... I mean, is any woman sitting around craving a warm hand on the knee?
I mean, any kind of hand at all would be bad enough, but a warm hand?
We know you want a warm, sweaty, clammy hand creepily caressing your leg.
Did Joe Biden write this thing?
Now, in fairness to Burt's Bees, I looked at the comments on this Instagram post, and there were, I have to admit, a lot of women commenting with stuff like, wow, I needed this today, thank you, or I'm in tears, thank you so much.
But I refuse to believe that those people are real.
I think that they're bots, or they work for Burt's Bees.
I refuse to believe.
Who goes to Burt's Bees' Instagram account looking for solace and comfort?
I really needed to feel a human connection, so I went to a brand's social media page to find it.
I guess that's a sign that you really are lonely.
Maybe you could use a warm hand on the knee.
Who knows?
So, Burt's Bees is cancelled, and so is anybody else who got inspired by what I just read there.
You're all cancelled.
Okay.
Let's go to emails.
But before we do that, you know, during this quarantine, we've been trying to find ways to Little ways to keep people entertained and help people out a little bit.
Well, here's a great deal.
When you become a Daily Wire Insider Plus or All Access member, right now, you will get not one, but two of the highly coveted Leftist Tears tumblers.
And this is a tumbler that, you know, there are a lot of tumblers out there on the market, but none of them can do what this tumbler does, which is it holds liquid, okay?
And now you can hold one liquid and another liquid because you've got two of these things.
Daily Wire members get many amazing benefits along with the magnificent Leftist Years tumblers.
You also get an ad-free website experience, access to our live broadcast, show library, the full three hours of the Ben Shapiro show every day, access to the mailbag, and now exclusive election insight op-eds from Ben Shapiro.
Daily Wire members also get to ask us questions during the backstage.
And you also get to participate in the All Access Live shows as well, so you just get a ton of benefits here, along with, as I said, the two Leftist Tears tumblers.
Not just one, but two.
So, become a Daily Wire Insider Plus or All Access member, and you also get 10% off if you use coupon code WALSH.
Speaking of the backstage events, tune in today, 7 o'clock Eastern Time, there will be a backstage Live show, which are always a lot of fun.
I'll be stopping by virtually for that as well.
And so tune in for that.
Now, let's go to emails, and you can also email.
If you become a Daily Wire member, you can email using the mailbag.
This is from Mike, says, Can a guy cry during a movie while you are supreme and ultimate emperor?
For example, I couldn't help but shed a tear during the movie Crash.
Specifically, when the little girl was shot and the dad cried in pain.
Couldn't help but think, what if that happened to one of my children?
That's a sign from Mike.
Okay, well Mike, We've talked about this, and it is acceptable for a man to cry during a movie.
But that movie has to be... I mentioned Rudy.
Okay, Rudy's an example.
You could cry during that movie.
There might be a few other examples.
Some people say Old Yeller.
Now, I think crying over an animal as a man is not acceptable.
When my pets die, I don't cry.
I harvest them for meat and fur like a real man.
Again, that's how a man should respond to that.
But there are movies, is the point, where you could cry.
Is Crash one of them?
Absolutely not.
In fact, you could not have chosen a less manly movie to cry over.
This is probably the worst movie that you could possibly cry over.
I can't think of a worse... I mean, maybe a worse one would be if you cried over, like, The Devil Wears Prada because Meryl Streep is being so rude to her employees and you cried over that.
That might be a little bit worse.
But only a little bit.
This is pretty bad.
Crash?
Come on.
This is a permanent revocation of the man card.
You're never getting it back.
You might as well transition at this point, because the man card's never coming back to you.
Sorry.
From Brian says, despite often agreeing with you, I have to say I disagree with your take that our elected officials are implementing these extreme lockdown measures simply out of greed.
I believe it is out of a fear of appearing to not take the coronavirus seriously enough.
I live in Pennsylvania, so let's use that as an example.
Once all is said and done, the governor of PA is going to be judged by the public and the media by the statistics in the state, number of deaths, death rate, hospitalizations, etc.
Therefore, whether or not these lockdown measures work, he's implementing them so that he can point to all of these extreme policies and at least say, hey look, we tried our best.
Sure, some politicians may be power-hungry, but it is more out of a risk aversion than anything else.
Yeah, Brian, I don't disagree.
It's not an either-or here.
Anytime you've got disastrous policies from the government, There are going to be multiple things going into it.
And the various bureaucrats and politicians involved in bringing that plan and that policy to fruition are going to be motivated by different things.
So I don't think it's an either-or.
I do believe there's a huge element of, as you're talking about here, a CYA cover-your-ass move here by the politicians who, they see everybody else locking down and so they figure, I gotta do it too.
And they also think, Okay, let me do this and then I won't be liable for the deaths.
And then also you can't blame me for destroying the economy because everybody else is doing it too.
And so there's this security they find in numbers.
Basically, so that's part of it.
But it's also very clear that a lot of these bureaucrats and politicians are having a power, are power drunk, are high on their own power, are enjoying all the power they've been given, and want to exert that and express it for its own sake.
So I think that's also happening.
Let's go to Julia, also my daughter's name by the way.
Hi Matt, this isn't really a why you're wrong thing, because I'm only partially sure that you are wrong, but in your diatribe defending homeschooling, you seem to avoid the best argument against it and for formal schooling, and that is socialization.
What would you say to the argument that parents should send their kids to school to be socialized?
Okay.
Yeah, we talked about homeschooling a few days ago on the show because Harvard had published, Harvard Magazine had published an article advocating banning homeschooling.
They're also doing a summit on the dangers of homeschooling where they're going to talk about regulations that should be put on homeschooling to protect kids from the horrible dangers of homeschooling.
You bring up the socialization argument.
Well, first of all, not to get into semantics here, but I don't agree with your dichotomy between formal schooling or Or homeschooling.
Homeschooling is a form of formal schooling.
It is formal.
Now, there is something called unschooling, which I'm not an expert on it, so I can't speak very intelligently about it, but from what I understand of the unschooling strategy, that is essentially informal schooling, where there's no formal structure.
But that's not what homeschoolers do.
If somebody's an unschooler, then they're unschooling, and that's what they'll say.
So, homeschooling is formal.
That's the first thing.
In terms of being socialized, what I always say about that is if the public school system is the best way to socialize your kid, then I say the proof should be in the pudding.
So show me the pudding.
Let's take a look.
We've got multiple generations of kids, many of them now grown adults, multiple generations of people who were largely shaped and formed by the public school system.
They were public schooled, right?
Or at least they were in the private school.
They were in the education system in some capacity.
So let's just look around at society and you tell me, does it appear that people are very well socialized?
I would say no.
So we don't need to theorize about whether or not the public school environment is a good way to socialize kids.
We don't need to theorize about it.
I can say we have enough data at this point that you can look around and see clearly it's not working.
And then when you look in the schools and you see the bullying problem, I mean, it's the media, the people who are advocates of the public school system, they're the ones who are constantly telling us about the bullying epidemic and so on.
So, according to them, there's a bullying epidemic, there's peer pressure, there's, I mean, we know that things like suicide, the suicide rate among kids is way higher now than it's been in the past.
And so I don't see the evidence that kids are becoming well-adjusted, quote, socialized people through the public school system.
I don't see the evidence for it.
And I don't see the evidence that homeschooling is turning kids into weirdo recluses.
I know that that's the stereotype, but in my experience, that is simply not the case.
So there's no evidence for this.
And when you get beyond that, I think it's pretty clear that the public school system is not a great way to socialize kids, and here's why.
Because when we talk about socializing our kids, what do we mean?
I guess maybe we need to define our terms a little bit.
We could mean different things by it.
But when I think about socializing a kid, what I mean by that is helping them to become Mature, well-adjusted people who can function in society.
That's what I mean.
Well, what's the best way to do that?
Or maybe a better way of putting it.
Who is best equipped to socialize a kid?
To get them to a point where they are mature and well-adjusted and ready to be functioning members of society?
My answer is adults.
Adults should be the ones socializing kids, teaching them how to become well-adjusted people.
Problem, though, in the public school system is you're throwing kids into a school.
There's 30 kids in a class.
You know, the kids way outnumber the adults.
And so who is doing the socializing in the public school environment?
The answer is other kids.
So the kids are being socialized by other kids, by that sort of peer culture.
They're being oriented to the world by their peers.
And the thing is, they're looking at their friends for social cues and for cues on how they're supposed to act and what kind of person they're supposed to be, while their friends are looking back at them.
So they're just running in circles and nobody has a... It's a classic blind leading the blind scenario.
In homeschool, even if you have a big family, which a lot of homeschoolers do, the fact is, you know, the ratio of kid to adult is much lower.
And on top of that, it's also, you know, it's a parent rather than being some stranger, a teacher who has the kids for 45 minutes for a period and then they go for, you know, they have another teacher.
So, um, I think there's a much better chance in homeschooling of a child being socialized and oriented to the world and to society by an adult taking cues from adults.
And so it's, and I know this is anecdotal.
Okay.
I don't have any studies in front of me.
Although I'm sure I could probably dig some up.
But in my experience, it seems like homeschooled kids are way more mature, way more mature than public school kids are.
And this is, and I've got a lot of experience, you know, I went to public school myself.
I've met, I know plenty of public school families, but I've also been in the homeschool environment for a long time.
Even before I homeschooled my own kids, I've been to tons of homeschool conferences and conventions and everything, speaking at them or attending them myself.
And so, you know, pretty, pretty big sample size.
My experience is homeschool kids are way more mature.
Even things like, I've noticed things that are subtle, or maybe not so subtle, but things like homeschool kids, it seems to me, much more likely to shake your hand and look you in the eye, or just in general, look you in the eye when you speak to them.
Whereas other kids, often when you talk to them, they're looking down like this, they don't want to look at you.
So things like that.
Homeschool kids tend to be better at it.
And I think my anecdotal evidence probably holds true because of this reason that I'm giving.
That it is, you think about the environment that they're in.
They're learning from their parents.
They're being oriented to the world by the parents.
They're taking social cues from the parents.
They're learning from adults.
Rather than you throw them into this sea of other kids and they're just caught up in all that chaos and trying to figure out, you know, what kind of person to be based on their peers.
And they also become Because they're in this peer culture, they become very desperate to be accepted by their peers, and they're going to do whatever they can to be accepted.
Because to be in a public school environment, you know, if you're a young kid in public school, you know you're going to be in this environment for 12 years, starting in kindergarten, or 13 years starting in kindergarten, longer than that for some kids, but you know you're going to be in this environment for a long time.
And so, if you're ostracized, if you're not accepted, Then that's going to be very hard to deal with through your entire formative years of your childhood.
And so kids become desperate to become accepted.
And when they're not accepted, that's why we have the suicide epidemic.
It's not as simple as a kid is bullied and they feel bad about themselves and they go home and kill themselves.
It's not that simple at all.
What it is, is kids are, their entire world becomes their peers.
And when they are not accepted, when they're rejected, then it feels to them like they're being rejected by the entire world.
And they don't know how to handle that.
They don't know how to cope with it.
And sometimes they resort to...
Horrific things.
And even if it's not suicide, drug abuse and other things, you know, in that desperation to be accepted.
So, that's what the socialization process involves in public school, and I just don't see it as superior at all to homeschool.
In fact, it is, for me, the number one argument for homeschool.
You ask me what's the, if I could give you one reason why you should homeschool your kids, it would be exactly this.
Socialization is the reason that I homeschool, more than anything else.
All right, but thanks for that question.
Very interesting topic, and we'll leave it there.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review.
Tell your friends to subscribe as well.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knoll Show, and The Andrew Klavan Show.
Thanks for listening.
The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Danny D'Amico, and our audio is mixed by Robin Fenderson.
The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Donald Trump has become the smartest man in America.
Export Selection