Ep. 1355 - The Government Is Gearing Up To Declare A ‘Climate Emergency,’ Which Will Wipe Out What’s Left Of Our Freedoms
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the Biden Administration is gearing up to declare a “climate emergency.” What does that mean? Well, we need only look up to our neighbors in the north to see what that entails. And it’s not pretty. Also, Joe Biden has his worst Rob Burgundy moment yet. A leftist campus protester has trouble explaining why she’s protesting. AI is about to wipe out a huge number of jobs worldwide. Should we allow that to happen? And Greg Abbott says he’s having pro-Palestine protesters arrested because “antisemitism won’t be tolerated in Texas.” But is that a valid reason to arrest people? Of course not.
Ep.1355
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For several years now, it's been clear that the Biden administration has been thinking about officially declaring a climate emergency, quote-unquote.
Beginning on the day Biden took office, several politicians have floated the possibility, and some have gone further than that.
The Democrats' leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, publicly called on Biden to make the declaration within a week of his inauguration, and ever since then, There have been articles and deep dives in various outlets, including Politico, The New York Times, and others, suggesting that it'd be a really good idea to essentially go to war with the weather.
Now, as of now, as his term winds down, Joe Biden has resisted these demands.
Biden has said that he's practically declared a climate emergency, signaling that he likes the idea, but he hasn't actually gone ahead and done it officially.
Even so, the demands have kept coming for several years, which is a little odd when you think about it, because the definition of the word emergency is, quote, a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.
So, the very fact that you have to deliberate for three years about whether something is an emergency would seem to indicate that it is not an emergency.
So that's the most important point, that there is, of course, not, in fact, a climate emergency, and everybody pushing this hysteria understands that very well.
Well, they'll never stop pretending that this is an urgent crisis, because the moment they stop pretending, they lose some measure of control over our lives, and, well, they can't allow that to happen.
The Biden administration's flirtation with this whole idea Also tells you something else, which is that the White House sees an emergency climate declaration as a potential sort of nuclear option to deploy when they get really desperate.
And with pretty much every major poll showing Donald Trump leading Joe Biden right now, that desperation has really started to set in.
So, right on cue, a climate emergency is now back on the agenda.
According to Bloomberg, the White House is now seriously considering the idea of declaring a climate emergency in the very near future.
CBS recently spoke to a Columbia climate professor about this idea.
Watch.
The White House is considering declaring a national climate emergency to unlock federal powers and stifle oil development.
That's according to Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, the administration is announcing several projects this Earth Week.
The plans include solar energy conservation, clean water, green transportation, and cutting pollution.
Tell me what a climate emergency is and what that might entail.
So when we talk about the potential for the president to declare a climate emergency, what it's saying is, you know what?
There's a national emergency going on, and I need extra powers to be able to respond to it to protect the U.S.
Oh, so that clarifies that.
What is a climate emergency?
Well, it's when the president says, there is an emergency.
Okay, well, thanks for clarifying.
So, the climate emergency is when the administration declares it, and it supposedly unlocks massive new powers over the economy, and especially the oil industry.
Of course, already the administration has done everything it can to gut the energy sector in this country.
They've suspended new oil and gas leases.
They've scrutinized and shut down many existing permits for the development of fossil fuels.
And just for good measure, they've sold off much of the strategic petroleum reserve just to make sure that we're as reliant on foreign energy as possible.
So what Biden wants to do now is adopt new powers to destroy the economy, which exceed the powers he's already employed to destroy the economy.
And specifically, these new emergency powers would potentially include the ability to ban all crude oil exports indefinitely.
Now, put that in perspective, right now we export millions of barrels of oil per day, accounting for tens of billions of dollars in revenue.
All of that could disappear overnight in the event of an emergency climate declaration.
Additionally, the Biden administration would be able to kill all new oil and gas drilling on more than 10 million acres of federal waters.
They'd also be able to cut overseas investments in fossil fuels and greatly reduce imports and exports of fossil fuels. That's
according to various media publications that have looked into the emergency powers already.
But the truth is that once it declares a national emergency,
the federal government can pretty much do whatever it wants.
The courts give the alleged experts vast and completely undeserved deference on this point.
There are really no guardrails in a national emergency.
Everybody knows that after experiencing the COVID lockdowns, which of course were the pretext of the coming climate emergency.
And there were never any consequences for those lockdowns and mandates.
There hasn't really been any reckoning with the destruction those policies wrought on our lives.
There's been no accountability.
In fact, it would have shocked people.
You could go back in time and tell people in 2020 that the COVID lockdowns would not even be a factor in the 2024 election.
Nobody would even be talking about it like it never happened.
Nobody would have believed you.
But that's where we are.
Because no one's even interested in talking about it.
So what does that mean?
It just means it's going to happen again.
It means the government learned that they can do that.
They can shut down your life completely And take away all your freedoms, and it won't matter.
Like, you'll get over it.
You'll just get over it as soon as they stop.
You'll get used to it.
And so what does that mean?
It means that they'll keep doing it, and make no mistake, if they can force the entire country to stay at home because of a virus, including young people who are at virtually no risk from that virus, then they can absolutely restrict every single one of your freedoms in the name of saving the climate.
Just in case you need a confirmation of that fact, you can always look north, to our perpetually embarrassing neighbors in Canada.
Several years ago, Canada's government declared a national climate emergency, and just to drive the point home, several major cities within Canada, including Vancouver, also declared their own climate emergencies, so you have climate emergencies on top of climate emergencies.
Now at the time, the idea behind this emergency was to enable the Canadian government to take steps to reduce the country's carbon emissions, even though the entire country of Canada essentially emits zero carbon compared to the rest of the world.
The whole country could commit mass suicide, which they're sort of in the process of doing right now, and it would have no impact on global carbon emissions.
But even so, Canada enacted a bunch of carbon taxes that made life even more expensive for its citizens.
And it's worth noting quickly, although I've made this point many times before, that even if you buy into the idea that carbon causes climate change, there is nothing that the U.S., much less Canada, can do about it.
As Zach Weinberg pointed out this week, China and India comprise the vast majority of carbon emissions in the world.
The U.S.
accounts for less than 15% of carbon emissions and we're falling fast.
Canada is well under 2%.
So, the whole idea of taxing carbon to reduce emissions and save the planet was always a scam, even if you subscribe to the Left's theories on climate change.
But it was never going to end there.
Again, once you declare an emergency, without any clear way to solve the emergency, things will continue to escalate.
Give the government vast, undefined powers, and rights will continue to erode until they're all gone.
As Milton Friedman said, nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program, and Canada, once again, is a perfect example of that.
Earlier this year, in the name of Saving the climate during this supposed emergency.
Canadian legislators introduced a bill to suspend freedom of speech.
And what does that have to do with the climate?
Well, Canada's NDP party, which is a key part of the coalition keeping Justin Trudeau's government in power, introduced legislation that would actually make it illegal to speak positively about fossil fuels.
Yes, that's not an exaggeration.
This legislation would make it illegal to express positive opinions about fossil fuels, in any context.
Quoting from Canada's National Post, quote, an NDP bill is seeking to criminalize the promotion of fossil fuels and prescribe jail time even for Canadians who say scientifically true things, such as how burning natural gas is cleaner than burning coal.
The bill goes well beyond merely banning advertising by oil and gas companies.
Violate this as a regular citizen and the act prescribes summary conviction and a fine of up to half a million dollars.
Violate it as an oil company and the punishment could be as strict as two years in jail or a fine of a million dollars.
Now, even after reading this article, and as cynical as I am especially about Canada, I still couldn't believe it.
I thought, like, are we missing something here?
So I pulled up the text of the bill, and the text of the bill indeed says that, quote, it is prohibited for a person to promote a fossil fuel or the production of a fossil fuel in a manner that states or suggests that a fossil fuel or the practices of a producer of the fossil fuel industry would lead to positive outcomes in relation to the environment, the health of Canadians, reconciliation with indigenous peoples, or the Canadian or global economy.
So basically, private citizens who say anything good about fossil fuels can be fined $500,000, which is enough of a fine to completely bankrupt 95% of Canada's population.
You can't even say that Indians would benefit from fossil fuels, even though many Indians in Canada would disagree with that statement.
Now, to be clear, this is not one rogue politician introducing this bill.
Canada's federal minister of the environment and climate change has said that he welcomes the bill.
And various members of Canada's public health establishment have endorsed it.
I want you to take a look at this press conference from the NDP party announcing this legislation.
It's like something out of a satire film, but it's real.
It's not overstating things to say this is the single most demented press conference to occur in the Western world in at least the last decade.
At the very least, it's in the top five.
Here's just some of it.
Watch.
Good morning.
Bonjour à tous.
I am Charlie Angus, Member of Parliament for Timmins-James Bay, and very proud to be here on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation.
Last summer, over 200,000 Canadians were forced from their homes because of massive climate damage.
In cities across North America, children could not go outside because of the risk to their health.
This is why I'm so proud to stand here today with representatives of Canada's medical community to state that the time has come to ban all oil and gas advertising.
The big tobacco moment has finally arrived for big oil.
The legislation will make it illegal to falsely claim that the use of one fossil fuel product is somehow better than another fossil fuel product in improving the environment.
To claim that there are clean fossil fuels is like saying there are safe cigarettes.
We know that is simply not true.
This legislation will make it illegal for Canada's oil and gas giants to falsely identify themselves with the health and positive lifestyles of Canadians or with reconciliation of Indigenous people on whose lands the toxic contamination is highest.
Bonjour, hello everyone.
I'm happy, oh I'm too short.
I'm happy to be able to join you today to put the full support of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment behind the important legislation that Mr. Angus has introduced today.
Disinformation is being promoted as though this is some kind of woke agenda.
So the reality is I think that ordinary people know that their kids can't go outside.
Without choking on toxic fumes.
That's something average people understand, no matter what the disinformation machine says.
You gotta love every part of that, including the beginning.
This is the unceded lands of the Algonquin people.
He says, well, they haven't ceded it.
So apparently the Indians have not ceded the land.
So what does that mean?
So who cares?
You haven't ceded the land, but we have it, so what does that mean?
Apparently, everyone knows, according to this guy, that their kids can't even go outside in Canada without choking on fossil fuels.
You can't go outside.
It's impossible.
How are these people going to get from the press conference to their cars?
Why are they even driving cars?
You can't go outside, you need like a gas mask, I guess, to go outside.
That's the position of a member of Canada's parliament who, again, is trying to put Canadians in prison and bankrupt them if they disagree with him about climate change.
Now I listened to that whole press conference, even though it was excruciating because they spoke in French for half of it.
But that was actually the better half, because the other half I had to actually understand what they were saying, which is even worse.
It was a half hour of Canadian public health experts and politicians saying that they're right, and everyone who disagrees with them needs to be in jail.
Keep in mind, everybody promoting this legislation got every conceivable aspect of COVID wrong, but they have no shame, only a desire for more power.
So, they're back, and everything is a public health emergency now, even the weather.
The press conference concluded with a question and answer session with Canadian media, which was even more surreal somehow.
None of the journalists seemed outraged in any way by what they just heard.
Instead, they mostly asked procedural questions about when the bill might come up for a vote.
In fact, one reporter even asked if Russia was helping the fossil fuel companies spread disinformation.
If you want to lose all faith in Western democracy, I recommend you go to YouTube and pull up the footage from this press conference yourself.
It's almost unbelievable.
And the point of talking about Canada isn't to suggest that we should care about Canada.
I mean, that would be absurd.
You know, the whole country just pretended that sewage sites were burial grounds for children in order to justify burning dozens of churches.
This is not a serious place we're talking about, and the Canadian people have mostly given up on their country and on themselves.
So, good riddance.
I mean, let the country burn.
This is what they want, and they deserve to get it, good and hard.
But Canada does have one purpose, which is to serve as a bellwether of what we can expect in this country if we get too complacent.
If we allow Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency, then he won't simply dismantle the energy sector in this country and destroy our economy.
Give him a few years and he'll throw you in prison if you complain about it.
Or at least his successor will, because he's not going to be around in a few years, let's be honest.
Those are the stakes.
It's not worth going through how climate activists have lied for generations about this emergency.
I've done that many times before.
At this point, you know, they know they're liars.
We know they're liars.
Which is why their ultimate goal is to silence you.
That's why Joe Biden wants to declare his climate emergency.
And unless we want to end up like Canada, which is a fate worse than death, we have to prevent it from happening.
Now let's get to our five headlines.
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So, I've got a couple of fun clips for you.
I mean, fun if depressing things are fun for you.
First, here's Joe Biden.
Listen.
Imagine what we can do next.
Four more years.
Pause.
Four more years.
Pause.
Four more years.
Pause.
Four more years.
Pause.
Four more years.
Pause.
He says, of course, reading the prompter, In a just world, this would be the final nail in his campaign's coffin.
A small thing on its own, a funny thing on its own.
And if somebody who didn't have dementia did this, if they pulled a Ron Burgundy and just read a note on the prompter that was not meant to be read out loud, you would laugh about it and you would move on.
But for Biden, of course, as we understand, this is another symptom of his dementia and of the fact that he's not present mentally.
And it should be the final thing that makes people say, okay, this guy is not fully conscious.
We can't elect him.
We just can't.
We cannot have somebody like this running the country.
But unfortunately, this is all baked in.
It's kind of like with Trump.
That's what makes this whole election cycle so absurd.
That you got two guys that have been in the public eye forever,
and everything is so baked in that nothing, it's like it doesn't
matter, nothing matters, nothing happening right now matters
politically.
Or at least very little of it does because it's all baked in.
And with Trump, there's nothing he can say,
there's no controversy he can generate by saying something
supposedly offensive that will have any effect on him politically,
Because again, it's all baked in.
That's why you notice, like in 2016, it was just one news cycle after another with the media freaking out about something that Trump had said or tweeted.
And we aren't getting nearly as much of that this time around.
We're getting some of it.
Yeah, every once in a while he'll say something, then we get a news cycle, this is the latest thing Trump said, it's so terrible.
And usually they're lying about it or taking it out of context, and we know the whole routine.
But they're not doing it as much because they know it's pointless.
They know that we don't care.
If you're the kind of person that gets all bent out of shape about stuff that Trump says, there's no chance you're voting for him anyway, and everybody else, you've made up your mind, and that's who Trump is, we get it.
Trump's being Trump.
Why point it out?
What's the point of, why point it out?
We all know that.
But with Biden, of course, it's much worse because the thing that's baked in
is not that he's prone to speak in his mind and just saying whatever he feels like.
With Biden, it's that he's a vegetable.
And the people who have decided to vote for him know that.
And they've decided to live with it.
Which means that... I mean, look, the guy could...
People who are, people, conservatives are kind of waiting for that one final definitive moment where something so embarrassing happens, where Biden demonstrates his dimension in such a clear way, as if that hasn't already happened a bunch of times, but he demonstrates it in such a clear and dramatic way that it has to be over.
Like, you can't vote for him.
But that will never, it can't happen.
I mean, Biden could, he could fall down He would shit his pants and then fall asleep on the stage, you know, in succession.
And it would have no effect on his polling.
Like, maybe two points.
Maybe he'd lose two percentage points temporarily if that were to happen.
But other than that, it would have no effect because everybody would see that.
Like, everybody who would be rightly horrified by that spectacle, well, we're not voting for him anyway.
And all the rest of them would look at it and say, yeah, well, yeah, he's basically dead.
We already knew that.
He's essentially a dead man, but we're gonna vote for him.
Speaking of brainless vegetables, here's another clip.
This is of a protester at NYU explaining, or trying to explain, the, you would think, important question of why is she protesting in the first place.
Listen.
And what would you say is the main goal with tonight's protest?
I think the goal is just showing our support for Palestine and demanding that NYU stops.
I honestly don't know all of what NYU's doing.
Is there something that NYU's doing?
I really don't know.
I'm pretty sure they're... Do you know what NYU's doing?
About what?
About Israel.
Why are we protesting here?
Palestine will be free!
I wish I was more educated.
I'm not either.
So why are they protesting?
Well, yeah, I mean, that is the million-dollar question, isn't it?
That should be the one thing you know when you're in a protest is why you're there, because you must want something.
So why are they protesting?
Well, yeah, I mean, that is the million dollar question, isn't it?
That should be the one thing you know when you're in a protest is why you're there.
Because you must want something, otherwise, what are we doing?
And if you're protesting a certain institution, you should have some idea of what you want
that institution to do.
But these protesters, they're all shouting at NYU, and NYU says, like, why are you mad at us?
I don't know, but we're mad.
There's a reason.
And here's what I don't get.
If you know, if you know that you don't know why you're protesting, then why would you volunteer to talk to the guy with the camera in the first place?
Like, what did you think was gonna happen?
How did you think the conversation was gonna go?
She at least is, she's at least aware of her own ignorance.
And if you're aware of your own ignorance, then why, then if somebody tries to stop you with a camera and talk to you, just say, oh no, I don't know, I don't have time.
Sorry.
Gotta get back to protesting.
For reasons I can't explain.
Now, of course, it's not a surprise that they didn't know why they were protesting.
And as much as we talk about the radicalism of these protesters, we can't forget that the radicalism is really among the ringleaders, the most devoted ones.
The ones shouting to bullhorns and so on.
So you have like three levels when it comes to these kinds of protests.
You've got the people that are bankrolling it, you know, and they don't really care about the reason.
The pretense is irrelevant to them because their agenda is beyond that.
Um, and then you've got the ringleaders on the ground, right?
The people that are there on the ground, in the bullhorns, organizing, they're there, they're actually taking part.
Those are the true believers.
Those people.
And then those people go and recruit people like this.
Um, who, uh, you know...
Aren't really radical at all.
They don't even understand what the cause is.
They don't care.
They don't know why they're there.
This is just a social event for them.
It's just what you do.
All your friends are going protesting.
It's trending on social media.
Seems like a fun thing.
So let's go do it.
And that's going to be the bulk.
That's going to be the lion's share at a protest like this.
James Lindsay tweeted in response to that clip that protesting is leftist church.
And of course, he's right.
And that's kind of a great way of putting it.
And just like real church, it's a similar dynamic in real church.
If you go to real church, you've got your devout believers who are there and are the most excited and all of that.
But then you've got an even larger contingent of sort of social churchgoers.
And they go because it's what you do.
It's the culture.
It's where they find some semblance of community.
It's where they find some semblance of structure and purpose in life.
And so they go for that reason.
But they don't necessarily believe all the doctrines or even know what the doctrines are.
It's the exact same scenario for these protests.
So talking to this woman, it's like It's like if you were to stop some casual Christian coming out of Christmas Mass.
You know, one of these types that only goes to Mass or goes to church on Christmas.
And this is Christmas.
For people that are in protest church, this is Christmas.
This is their big holiday event for the year.
But it's like stopping one of those at Christmas Mass and asking them really any question about basic Doctrine or theological questions.
Like, they're Christmas men.
Maybe stop them and say, hey, which Gospels have an infancy narrative?
How many Gospels have an infancy narrative and which ones?
And of course, the answer you're gonna get is like, infancy what?
What do you mean?
Is there more than one Gospel?
What are you talking about?
Do they not all say exactly the same?
They have no idea.
They're there to celebrate the birth of Christ, ostensibly, and they couldn't tell you the first thing about the birth of Christ, or where it is in the Bible.
Like, if you gave them a Bible and said, okay, I'll give you 30 seconds, find the part in the Bible, or one of the parts in the Bible, that has this story, they would not know how to do it.
That's like the majority of people you'd find at a Christian church.
And again, very, so now I've really just gotten into complaining about that because that is a bigger problem as far as I'm concerned as a Christian.
But it is a similar thing on the left.
And this is their religion.
And they go just to be there.
So, you know, when we're talking about, and we're going to get into this more actually in the Daily Cancellation, but we're talking about the reasons why people go to these protests and what motivates them.
It is important to keep in mind that it's not just one thing.
There's a lot... To end up with a situation like this where you have mass protests across the country, there's a lot that goes into it.
It's a multi-faceted phenomenon.
And one of the things that goes into it is an immense amount of ignorance.
You need a lot of ignorant people who will just show up and they don't care.
And by the way, That's also one of the reasons why, on the right among conservatives, we have a harder time getting protest movements going, or getting even a single protest going.
It's a lot more difficult to organize.
It's this sort of thing.
If there's a mass protest movement with people all across the country, especially one that seems to spring up spontaneously, even though it's not spontaneous, Even before you know any of the details, you automatically know that it's a left-wing thing.
Because on the right, it basically never happens.
There is one that I can think of, there's one kind of perennial, consistent, annual protest movement on the right, which is the pro-life movement, March for Life.
Outside of that, it just never happens.
And there are a couple reasons for that.
But a big part is, you look at, again, the three levels.
To have the pro-Palestine protest, there are three levels.
You've got the big money backers, who don't really care about the issue, that are funding all of this.
Then you've got your devout believers on the megaphones.
And then you've got your ignorant people who just show up because it's something to do.
The left has all of that, has all those layers.
On the right, we only have the middle layer.
We don't have the big money backers.
We don't have institutional support for our protest movements.
So we're not going to have shadowy billionaires coming along and offering us lots of money with a lot of different shell organizations and all this kind of stuff who are contributing to it.
So we don't have that.
We do have the true believers.
We've got the people that are the bullhorn types, right?
Like the actual activists.
And then we don't have the final layer either, which are just like the ignorant masses who will just show up because it's something to do.
So if you're on the right, and I know this as someone who's been a part of organizing these kinds of rallies and things a time or two, I know this from experience, that the only people who will show up are the ones who really care about this, which is great.
It's great to have them.
But if you want to have the mass event, you want to get thousands of people showing up, especially all across the country.
You need to get people who will just show up because, like, I don't know.
It's just what we do.
The left has that because, again, it's part of their culture.
It's part of their culture.
It's a habit.
It's a recreation for them.
On the right, it's not part of the culture.
It's not recreational.
And so for conservatives, if you want to convince, if you want them to come to a protest, you gotta convince them that it's really worthwhile.
And even most of the ones that agree that it's worthwhile, they're like, eh, I'm not gonna go, I don't, I gotta work, I don't, I'm not gonna take, I'm not gonna take, alright, you want me to take off work for this?
I'm not gonna do that.
I don't care that much.
That's the way most conservatives look at it.
Which is not really the right way of looking at it, by the way.
I mean, you do have to worry about your job and all that, but this is an advantage the left has, that they see this kind of activism as a top priority, and they see it as an effective way of moving their agenda forward, and oftentimes it is.
All right, News Nation has this report.
The next time you order a Frosty, there's a chance you'll be talking to a robot.
After months of testing, Wendy's is expanding its artificial intelligence partnership with Google to streamline the drive-through experience at its restaurants.
Starting in 2024, franchisees will get a chance to test the company's fresh AI chatbot, according to The Chain, which announced on Monday.
Right now, the tech is only available at four company-operated restaurants in Columbus, Ohio.
Wendy started testing the AI chatbot back in May.
The company said service times at an AI pilot location were 22 seconds faster than the local market average.
In terms of accuracy, Fresh AI has successfully handled 86% of orders without an intervention from staff.
That number is expected to improve as the AI model continues to iterate, according to Wendy's.
Now, this article's from a couple of months ago.
They have now started actually rolling these out across the country.
And here's what the drive-through chatbot experience is like.
Watch.
Welcome to Wendy's.
What would you like?
Can I have a chocolate frosty?
Which size for the chocolate frosty?
Medium.
Can I get you anything else today?
No, thank you.
Great.
Please pull up to the next window.
Okay, now, first of all, if you really want this to feel real, then you need your AI chatbot to be a lot less friendly, especially at a place like Wendy's.
Now, if Chick-fil-A goes to the AI chatbot, then that works, because that feels pretty lifelike for Chick-fil-A, but at any other place like Wendy's or Burger King or McDonald's, If you want it to feel real, you want us to feel like we're really talking to a person, then you need the chatbot to be a lot more surly and a lot less interested in you.
So the chatbot needs to come on like, yeah, what do you want?
Number one?
Okay, pull around.
No thank you, no nothing.
Now, I'm going to take an unpopular position.
As I tend to do sometimes.
And this is unpopular anyway with conservatives who tend to worship the free market with a kind of religious conviction.
And I believe in the free market, too.
I'm a big proponent of economic freedom.
I'm such a big proponent, actually, that I think that the income tax should be abolished.
And not only that, but I think a constitutional amendment should be passed prohibiting the government from taxing income.
So I am farther to the right on economic freedom than most people, including most conservatives.
But why do I favor economic freedom?
Well, it's for the same reason that I favor any kind of freedom.
Because I think that it leads to human flourishing.
If it didn't, if it interfered with human flourishing or prevented human flourishing, then it would be bad and I would oppose it.
Because it's not the freedom or the right in and of itself that's good.
It's what it leads to.
And anything that, on balance, makes people's lives worse, and more importantly, makes people worse.
Like, makes people into worse people.
Anything that does that, on balance, is bad.
What I'm saying so far should not be controversial.
This is basic.
If you don't believe this, then what's the point?
If we're not fighting for human flourishing and for people to have better lives and to be better people, then what the hell are we even fighting?
Who cares about anything?
If that's not the thing that matters most to us, then what does matter?
What could rank above that?
So, anything that prevents human flourishing is bad.
Not something you want in society.
And I think, on balance, freedom makes people's lives better.
So I'm in favor of it.
But I'm not in favor of complete freedom.
Nobody is.
Like, I don't think that you should have absolute freedom.
I don't think you should have the freedom to do whatever you want.
There are limits.
Everyone agrees that there are limits.
We just disagree about where the limits should be.
And one of the reasons we disagree about where the limit should be is because many people don't have a clear idea, again, of what's the point of allowing people to be free.
What is that supposed to accomplish exactly?
And if you understand what it's supposed to accomplish, then you clearly start to see where the limits are.
The limits are only confusing if you have no underlying notion of what the purpose of life even is.
What's the project here?
What are we even doing?
Why do we exist?
If you have no notion of that, or if you haven't thought about it, then a question like, well, where do you draw the line on freedoms becomes very, very confusing.
It becomes very vague.
But if you have a clear idea, then those lines are delineated more clearly.
So for me, the limits are kind of clear.
With freedom, when you push past the point of human flourishing, When it gets to the point where it now makes people suffer, where it makes their lives worse, it makes them worse, it harms the body and the soul, but the soul more importantly, then you have reached the limit.
That's where freedom should end.
It should not go beyond that point.
Which is why I think, for example, that you shouldn't have the freedom to kill your baby, or gender transition your child, or bring a kid to a drag show.
All of that, along with many other things I think you shouldn't have the freedom to do.
But the reason I take that view on those topics is because that stuff is pretty well past the line, right?
That is the kind of freedom It is a kind of freedom.
It's a freedom for people to do, but it's a freedom that harms people, and harms society, and harms the soul, and makes everything worse for everybody.
And so it's bad.
Okay, so that's my brief dissertation on freedom.
How does that relate to AI chatbots and the drive-thru line?
You know, if this is as far as it goes, the drive-through, if this is the limit, if AI is going to take over drive-throughs and that's it, then I'd probably be fine with it.
But we know that it doesn't end here.
It begins here.
Which is why I feel quite strongly that there should be laws in place heavily regulating the use of AI by businesses and outright banning it in some cases.
I know, again, if you're on the right, and especially if you're kind of the Fox News conservative type, and you hear the word regulation, you think, well, this is blasphemy!
How could you possibly suggest that regulation should be passed?
Obviously, we have a lot of regulations that are bad.
We have too many regulations.
But clearly there should be some regulations.
Obviously.
We're not so stupid that we take the position that nothing should be regulated ever.
Clearly, there is a place for some form of regulation in some context.
I hope we can all agree with that.
And I think this is one area where it should be.
And the reason I say that is that if nothing is done, if no laws are passed, then AI is going to replace easily 80-90% of all the jobs on the planet.
Like, that will happen, and it will happen rapidly, within the next 20 years, okay?
80 to 90 percent.
And I think that's probably a conservative estimate.
Now, it's speculation.
You could say, well, how do I know that?
I don't know that.
But it seems very likely to me.
And all you have to do is imagine, with current technology, how many jobs could be replaced right now with current technology?
Many.
But then from there, you said, okay, well, how many jobs conceivably could be replaced with just a little bit more advancement in our technology?
Well, many more.
So, like, one big example is self-driving cars, AI that drives cars.
Now, we already have a little bit of that.
That technology is in its infancy.
But I think we all understand that if nothing prevents it from happening, that certainly within 20 years, probably sooner than that, you're going to have self-driving cars all over the road, and it'll be very common.
Most cars, that'll be a standard.
Eventually, it'll be probably mandated.
And then there's a whole bunch of jobs that go out the window just with that alone, just that piece.
Truck drivers, any kind of Uber, taxi driver, anything in that industry, all that stuff.
Delivery drivers, out the window.
That's thousands and thousands of middle class jobs just from that piece.
Gone.
And I think that's bad.
I think that's very, very bad.
I think that will lead to suffering on a massive planetary scale, actually.
And I think that we should prevent that kind of suffering.
I think that massive planet-wide suffering is bad.
And if we can prevent it, we should.
We can't prevent all of it, but if it can be prevented, Then it should be.
And if we see ourselves right now actively creating the circumstances for future suffering, we should probably stop and say, well, maybe we should stop doing this.
Like, we are right now choosing to do things that's going to harm a lot of people.
And we can stop.
Let's not do that.
So, now you might argue, as many people have, that People have always predicted doom, you know, whenever some new technological advance comes along.
And they've always been wrong, supposedly.
Right?
They worried that cars would take jobs away from horse and buggy manufacturers, right?
And so on.
But this is different.
Okay?
This is a different kind of thing.
It just is.
Any analogy that you try to draw will fail.
Because all of that is different.
Now, I'm all about historical analogies, but not everything has an analogy.
There are unprecedented things that happen in history sometimes, and this kind of technology is unprecedented.
Go back 100 years ago.
What was their version of AI?
It didn't exist.
They didn't have a version of it.
It just was not a thing that existed.
It didn't.
So, you know, with the horse and buggy example.
That was a massive technological shift.
Totally changed human society.
But people went from driving horse and buggies to driving cars.
The thing that they used, the tool they used, changed.
You just had to learn how to use the new tool.
That's a big adjustment, but that's it.
That's all that happened.
People went from writing one way to writing another way with the invention of the printing press.
And any other example you can think of, but this is a different sort of thing.
It just is.
Other technology has been artificial, man-made, right?
But this technology is artificially intelligent.
We are inventing intelligence, which is simply different from inventing a new tool for intelligent people to use.
We invented cars, right?
But they didn't drive themselves.
At least not at first.
Now that will happen, but...
At first, and up until now, they didn't drive themselves.
So we invented cars, and yeah, you're not doing horse and buggy anymore, but now just use a car, because the car's not going to drive itself.
We still need people to do that.
So it's the self-operation, it's the intelligence that sets this apart.
And the problem is that it takes away whole industries, it takes away whole categories of jobs, and doesn't replace them with anything.
It gives people less to do, a lot less to do, fewer tasks to perform, rather than giving us new things to do and new tasks to perform.
It makes people themselves obsolete and irrelevant.
It creates a few jobs, comparatively few.
They're the people that create, maintain the AI and that sort of thing, but it is not a one-for-one trade at all.
I mean, in reality, we will just be erasing entire industries from the face of the earth.
Where does that lead?
Well, the optimist, the AI advocate, will say that it will freeze people up.
I was talking about this on Twitter today, and this is the response I got from a lot of people, that it frees people up to seek more fulfilling, worthwhile, creative pursuits.
You know, why waste your time running drive-thru lines?
Now the would-be drive-thru worker can become a poet or a philosopher or, you know, go be a painter.
Or they could take up a trade, one of the few that hasn't been consumed by the AI blob.
They can take up one of the trades.
That's the positive spin here.
It's also completely delusional.
You have to have some understanding of human nature in order to participate in a conversation like this.
And if you just don't understand how people work, then your opinion will not be very useful.
And that is not how people work.
That's not how it has worked.
So far.
What will happen instead is that, for one thing, the welfare rolls will explode even more than they already have.
It's going to put millions more on the government dole.
All those immigrants coming here to run our drive-thrus, guess what they're doing?
They're not going home, okay?
They're going on welfare.
Even more of them.
So that's what will happen.
And while we become a welfare state, even more of a welfare state than we already are, people will be sitting around, staring at screens, amusing themselves idly and pointlessly, with no sense of meaning or purpose.
That has been the trend, okay?
All you gotta do is look at, even without AI, All these other technological advancements, although they haven't made human beings obsolete yet, like AI will, they have freed up a lot of time for us, right?
So we do have a lot more free time.
We have a lot more free time now than people did 100 years ago or 200 years ago.
Okay, well, how are we using that free time?
You tell me.
Is there any evidence, any evidence, that on the whole, human beings will take all that free time where they don't need to do anything and use it to pursue worthwhile pursuits?
No!
What do we do?
We spend 10 hours a day staring at screens.
That's what we do.
That's what people do.
That's just the reality.
And that's what will happen.
It has already been happening.
And it will continue to happen.
And so you take away all these jobs, that is what, now, you can say all you want, well, running a drive-thru is soul-crushing work.
Oh, so just sitting at home and looking at your phone and doing this for 15 hours a day, this is better?
This is more enriching to the soul?
Just this move?
All day?
That's a heck of a lot more enriching, isn't it?
At least when you're working a job, you're doing something.
You're interacting with people.
You're performing some sort of task.
You're providing a service or a good to people.
You have a reason to get up in the morning and take a shower, hopefully, and get changed.
People need work.
People need something to do.
They need a purpose.
They need a task.
They need to wake up in the morning and feel like I've got something to do.
I have a reason to get out of bed.
They need that.
People need that.
You cannot take that away from people.
You can't take it away from millions of people all at once and expect anything but total catastrophe to come as a result of that.
And so, that's what's going to happen.
Don't say I didn't warn you, but you know, I guess we'll check back in 20 years and I can do the I told you so game.
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Now let's get to our daily cancellation.
On this show just yesterday, I went into detail arguing that these protests are BLM reborn.
There was always destined to be some kind of race-related protest movement in the spring and summer before the election.
In 2020, it was George Floyd.
This time around, it's taken the form of sympathizing with Hamas.
But at bottom, it's the same people, the same activists, funded by the same wealthy backers who, just as in 2020, can ultimately be traced back to George Soros, who else, And they're angry about basically the same things, many of them.
Even if the conflict in Israel has nothing at all to do with racial grievances in the U.S., these activists, and the left more broadly, are still viewing it through that prism.
They see Hamas as revolutionaries fighting back against white power structures and white colonialism.
They see this as marginalized brown people warring against white oppressors.
It's all about systemic racism.
Everything is always about that.
As I've said many times, they will always side with the less white side or the browner side, if that's how you want to put it.
So I'm not a fan of these people or their movement.
In fact, I despise everything they stand for.
And I've also said, including just yesterday, that Any protestor breaking the law should be rounded up and dragged away in handcuffs immediately.
Throw the book at any of the lawbreakers.
If they're setting up illegal encampments, if they're vandalizing or causing any property damage at all, if they're engaging in any acts of violence at all, if they're making explicit threats of violence against Jewish people or any other group of people, if they're standing in the road and blocking traffic, if they're engaging in criminal activity of any kind, They should be thrown in jail.
And if hundreds of them are committing crimes at once, then arrest hundreds of them.
Put them in buses and take them to jail.
Very simple.
And I've been clear about my feelings on that subject.
But right now I have a bone to pick with the other side of this dispute.
And before we get to the more significant problem, I will, first of all, confess some annoyance at some of the people who have been so bold in speaking out against these protests.
Take Speaker Mike Johnson, for example, who went to Columbia University yesterday to denounce the protests and call for the president of the university to resign.
Watch.
Sadly, Colombia's administrators have chosen to let the threats, the fear and the intimidation of the mob rule to overtake American principles like free speech and the free free exchange of ideas and the free exercise of religion.
They have co-opted First Amendment arguments to protect genocide.
And to elevate the voices of anti-Semitism.
They have proven themselves to be incapable of achieving their basic responsibility, which is keeping students safe.
We just can't allow this kind of hatred and anti-Semitism to flourish on our campuses and it must be stopped in its tracks.
Those who are perpetrating this violence should be arrested.
And I'm here today I am here today joining my colleagues and calling on President Shafiq to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.
As Speaker of the House, I am committing today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes hiding in fear.
In the House of Representatives, we've already acted to address anti-Semitism on campuses.
We have passed a number of statutes to address this matter, and we call upon the U.S.
Senate to act upon our legislation.
Okay, we'll get back to the anti-Semitism bit in a moment, but the point is that Mike Johnson was very clear about condemning this movement, and when asked about his message to Columbia students participating in the protest, here's what he said.
What is your message to the students inside the encampment right now?
My message to the students inside the encampment is go back to class and stop the nonsense.
Look, if we want to have a debate on campus about the merits of these things, let's do that.
But you can't intimidate your fellow students and make them stay home from class.
Think about that.
Is that right?
Do you think that's right?
Stop wasting your parents' money, Congressman Lawler says.
I think that's right.
So, you're wasting your parents' money, he says, and he's right, they are.
I take no issue with what was said in that second clip.
But it's hard not to notice a stark contrast here.
You know, when it comes to the pro-Palestine demonstrations, he is bold and loud in his denunciations.
But what did he have to say only a few years ago, when BLM mobs were torching our cities?
Now, those protests, quote-unquote, were far, far, far more destructive.
Like, by an infinite margin.
What was Mike Johnson's response back then?
Well, let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
What did you feel when you watched the video of George Floyd being killed?
I was outraged.
I don't think anyone can view the video and objectively come to any other conclusion but that it was an act of murder.
And I felt that initially, as everyone did, It's so disturbing, and the underlying issues beneath that are something that the country is now...
Struggling with, and I think it's something we have to look at very soberly and with a lot of empathy, and I'm glad to see that's happening around the country.
You know, what it's taught me is we now have four other children of our own, and my oldest son, Jack, ironically this year is 14.
And I've thought often through all these ordeals over the last couple of weeks about the difference in the experiences between my two 14-year-old sons, Michael being a black American and Jack being white, Caucasian.
They have different challenges. My son Jack has an easier path. He just does.
The interesting thing about both of these kids, Michael and Jack, is they're both
handsome, articulate, really talented kids gifted by God to do lots of things. But the reality is,
and no one can tell me otherwise, my son Michael had a harder time than my son Jack is going
to have simply because of the color of his skin. And that's a reality. It's an uncomfortable,
painful one to acknowledge. But people have to recognize that's a fact. What should we do about that? I
think that we need, we really do need, systematic change.
I think we need transformative solutions.
Systematic change for our systemically racist country.
How bold and courageous.
So, turns out...
Mike Johnson did not denounce the BLM rioters.
He didn't hold any press conference at the site of any of these riots and condemn the protesters to their faces.
He didn't tell them to go home.
Instead, he went on national television and declared that George Floyd was murdered.
He threw Derek Chauvin under the bus.
And then proceeded to validate and agree with the BLM rioters and their claims about systemic racism in America.
That's what he did.
And now he wants us to give him credit Because he's at Columbia University making fun of the dumb college kids.
I don't give him any credit for that.
And I'm picking on Mike Johnson here for good reason, he's the Speaker of the House, but I could play this game with almost any Republican politician who has been vocal in their denunciations of the so-called Free Palestine Movement.
Almost none of them showed even a fraction of that boldness when BLM was terrorizing not just Ivy League campuses, but the entire country, whole cities, communities of normal people.
Not these dumb Ivy League college kids.
Now of course the same can be said, can even more be said, for the people in corporate media, academia, elsewhere who have been speaking out against the campus protests this month.
All of them, literally all of them, were on the side of these same activists four years ago when those activists were looting and burning our cities.
Now this is not just some cheap gotcha moment.
The point is that most of these people pretending to be shocked and appalled by the campus protests are at least partially to blame for them.
You validated these activists and their tactics.
In fact, you validated tactics much worse, much more destructive, much more disruptive than this.
And now you're speaking out without ever acknowledging your own role in this or apologizing for your cowardice.
And why are you speaking out now?
Why now but not back then?
Well, because the BLM movement of 2020 was anti-white.
And it is not safe to denounce anti-whitism.
Which is why Mike Johnson never has denounced it and never, ever, ever will.
And we all know that.
It is much safer and much more acceptable in polite society to denounce anti-Semitism.
So, they're happy to do so.
You know, there's nothing wrong with denouncing antisemitism, of course.
Antisemitism, actual antisemitism, which is the hatred of Jewish people for being Jewish, is evil and should be denounced, and very often is denounced by both sides of the political divide.
However sincere or insincere that may be with their denunciations, they do denounce it all the time.
But hating white people for being white is evil too.
And yet again, most of these people have never once, not once ever, not ever explicitly condemned that kind of bigotry or even acknowledged that it exists.
And that imbalance and double standard really matters.
It does.
So, that's my first issue with some of the people on the other side.
Here's my second.
Yesterday, students at University of Texas at Austin joined in the protest fun, but they were greeted with a much different response from what their comrades on other campuses have experienced.
As soon as they began their walkout, police were on the scene and making arrests.
Let's watch.
So according to CBS News, at least 30 of the U2 protesters were arrested.
And why were they arrested?
Were they threatening violence?
Were they setting up illegal encampments?
Was this an unlawful assembly?
Maybe so.
Well, we can't know for sure based on that video.
You know, you can't really tell.
So it's up to those in a position of authority to communicate with us.
They have to tell us why they are making these arrests.
And especially when you're arresting protesters in the middle of a political demonstration, it is very important to be clear about why you're doing it.
So, what did Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, say?
Well, yesterday afternoon he retweeted that video of law enforcement swarming the area and he said this quote
Arrests being made right now will continue until the crowd disperses
These protesters belong in jail Antisemitism will not be tolerated in texas period
Students joining in hate-filled antisemitic protests at any public college or university in texas should be expelled
now, um There are plenty of conservatives who have tried to
Twist themselves into pretzel-like shapes in search of some defensible interpretation of greg abbott's own words
[BLANK_AUDIO]
But we should not have to twist ourselves into any shape for the sake of our political leaders.
That's not our job.
Your job is to communicate clearly, especially in a time like this.
And the clear, simple, most direct interpretation of Abbott's statement is that these protesters are being arrested for being anti-Semitic.
Again, quote, these protesters belong in jail.
Anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in Texas.
If you tell me that that does not indicate that they're being arrested for anti-Semitism, then you are being intentionally stupid and you know it.
Stop it.
The only way to avoid interpreting this as a direction for protesters to be arrested for their anti-Semitic views is to assume that the first sentence in that statement has nothing to do with the second sentence.
Like, these are two completely separate, unrelated thoughts that just happen to be put into the same tweet for no particular reason.
But that is absurd, of course.
And anyone interpreting it that way is being willfully obtuse.
And again, if you're in that category, you know it, and I know it, so just cut it out.
So we are left with two possibilities.
Either Greg Abbott really did direct law enforcement to arrest protesters for being anti-Semitic, or he wants us to think that he did.
Either they are being hauled away in handcuffs for anti-Semitism, or they're being hauled away for actually breaking the law, but Greg Abbott is presenting it as a crackdown on anti-Semitism.
In either case, it's a problem.
It is a very big problem, in fact.
And that is because anti-Semitic speech is not illegal.
Okay.
Now, directly calling for or inciting violence is illegal.
And if somebody does that, then arrest them for that.
Arrest them right away.
And tell us that's what you're doing.
But anti-Semitic speech, more broadly, that is, speech that conveys a hatred for or opposition towards Jews, is not illegal.
You are allowed to hate Jews or any other group in this country.
You cannot make it illegal to simply hate a group of people or say that you hate them.
Or you can do that, but if you do, free speech is over.
It's just done.
If we have free speech at all, then that umbrella must cover what we now call hate speech.
And this is entirely leaving aside the question of whether all of these protesters actually do hate Jews.
And I think it's clear that many of them don't.
Some of them are Jewish themselves.
Others are there because, as established, they see Israel as a white Western power, and that's why they hate it.
Others are there just because they want to protest something and they don't care about the reason or know about the reason.
We just heard from one of those people.
She doesn't even know why she's there.
And others are there because they oppose Israel as a political entity, but not Jews as people.
And then some are there, yes, because they hate Jewish people.
That crowd is certainly present at many of these protests.
You can hear them.
It's absurd to deny all of these other motivations and reasons and assume that all of them are protesting just for that last reason.
But even if they were, it shouldn't matter legally, because legally we have the First Amendment.
Now, if free speech does not include the kind of speech society judges to be most vile and unpleasant, then there's no such thing as free speech.
If protesters don't have the First Amendment right to express views that those in power find especially detestable, then they don't have the First Amendment.
If the governor declares, you have the right to say whatever you want, except for that, because that's really mean.
Well, if that is declared, then clearly you do not have the right to say what you want.
It's not hard to see what happens next once this precedent is set.
If the governor can send the cops in and have you arrested for being anti-Semitic, if he can declare indeed that anti-Semitic speech will not be tolerated in his state at all, which is what he said, then why can't you also be arrested for so-called homophobic speech?
Or transphobic speech?
Or racist speech?
Is it now up to the governor of each state to decide which forms of hateful speech will be tolerated and which will not be tolerated?
Is that what it means to live in a supposedly free country?
There are many forms of bigotry, yet there's only one that Greg Abbott has decided will not be tolerated in Texas.
He certainly never declared during the BLM riots that anti-whiteism won't be tolerated.
He appears to have a lot of tolerance for that.
Well, that's why our free speech rights should not hinge on the tolerance and preferences of our political leaders.
You as the leader might find this form of hate to be especially appalling even more than other forms.
I don't care.
I don't give a damn what you personally feel is worse.
That shouldn't make a difference.
You're allowed to have your opinion.
You can't arrest people according to that.
No one has the right to directly call for or threaten violence against anyone.
But you do have the right to hate whoever you want and to express that hatred verbally.
I'm not saying hatred is good.
I'm not recommending it.
But you have the right.
Human beings experience hate and they talk.
Yes, you have the right to do that.
It's that simple.
If we legitimize the criminalization of so-called hate speech, we embrace the final destruction of the First Amendment.
And we invite the left to use this as a weapon against us, which they will.
And happily so.
And that's why Greg Abbott is, once again, I'm afraid to say, cancelled.
