EPISODE 476: THE TRUTH ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL, POPULATION THEORY, AND THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS WITH ASHLEY ST. CLAIR
On this week’s Sunday Special of Human Events Daily, Jack Posobiec is joined by Ashley St. Clair to discuss a multitude of topics all revolving around the societal war against women. The pair take on the history of Planned Parenthood and its founder, as well as the inconsistent messaging being pushed by third wave feminists. Next, Poso and St. Clair discusses population theory as birth rates continue to fall across the United States. To end the conversation, Jack and Ashley discuss her recent...
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Margaret Sanger was born in 1879 in New York.
She was one of 11 children born into an impoverished family.
Sanger's mother died at an early age.
Though the cause of death was listed as tuberculosis, Margaret always attributed her mother's early death to the fact that she was weak from bearing so many children.
This deep-seated disdain for large families would encompass Margaret's life and contribute to a belief that women should limit, or be limited, in the number of children that they have.
In 1914, Sanger started her own publication to advocate for birth control.
In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood.
She was soon arrested and spent 30 days in jail.
Sanger appealed the conviction, which was not overturned.
However, the judge did make an exception to the law.
This allowed doctors to prescribe contraception for medical reasons.
This decision opened the door for the future legalization of birth control.
In 1917, Sanger began publishing her famous journal, The Birth Control Review, which would run until 1940 and would be a haven for racists, eugenicists, and even Nazi writers.
Then, in 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League.
In 1942, the board of directors voted to change the organization's name to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Human Events Sunday special.
We are so excited to have on Ashley St.
Clair, the author of the fantastic children's book, Elephants Are Not Birds.
the United States so that there may be more well-born and fewer ill-born children, a stronger, healthier, and more intelligent race, unquote.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this Human Events Sunday special.
We are so excited to have on Ashley St. Clair, the author of the fantastic children's book, Elephants Are Not Birds, also a diversity hire over at the Babylon Bee.
And Ashley, it's been remiss of me not to have you on, but you and I were chatting and I saw you on Tim Pool not too long ago, and you were just ranting and raving like a crazy woman all about birth control.
What was amazing to me is that you told me.
And, and you told the entire audience so many facts about birth control that I don't even think regular people.
Had ever heard of certainly stuff I had never heard of before.
I saw the audience was was aghast.
People didn't even know.
I didn't know, for example, that Planned Parenthood was originally founded as a birth control organization.
So, Ashley St.
Clair, welcome to the show.
Breakdown for us the truth behind big birth control.
Hello, hello.
Thanks for having me on, finally, Jack.
But, you know, it's interesting how little, with how many women, we have millions and millions of women on birth control.
You can order it online now.
Most women are put on it at 13, 14.
And there's so little education about the history of birth control and what it's currently doing to women now.
And the history of it, as you said, comes from eugenicists like Margaret Sanger.
And it's hysterical to watch the left who wants to label everyone right of center Nazis.
Yet all of their people that they prop up and all of these organizations that they founded have ties to eugenics and population control.
And this is facts.
You can see this also in the decisions of Roe v. Wade.
Their decisions were influenced by population control theory.
But the issue with birth control is that there's so many women who do not understand how bad it is for them.
And the reason being is because they're put into this mill so young.
I myself was put on it at 14.
And this is true for many, many women.
I had light acne.
And looking back, it was not really acne, right?
It was like killing a mouse with a rocket launcher to put me on birth control for what my skin looked like at 14 years old.
It was very normal being a teenager and having that.
But these women are put on it for very minuscule issues like acne at 14.
They're not told about any of the dangers, despite there being Swedish studies.
linking it to suicide and depression.
Women are not told about the dangers of birth control, and they're put on it at 14, 13, and they don't get off for decades, Jack.
Many women do not get off.
And I know when I got off and when many women get off, it's like a cloud is lifted from your head.
Birth control really hinders your ability to think.
If you're on a hormone for basically your entire life, especially through your developmental years, there's no way that it doesn't impact you.
Well, so I've obviously I've never been on birth control, right?
I don't even know what that would do if a guy started taking it.
Well, what's interesting about that... We'll have to have Chloe Cole on to talk about some of the detransition.
I will say... So, tell me about, though, I guess, what's it like, if you can describe that to us?
So I'll go to your point about men being on birth control first.
They actually tried male birth control studies and they had to stop them because when men reported the same symptoms that women have currently on birth control, they had to stop the studies because they were too intense for men.
Yes, so this was tried.
And the original studies for birth control for women were done in poor Puerto Rican areas, where the women wouldn't complain and there wasn't going to be too much of a fuss or a tizzy about these side effects.
But it makes women depressed.
There is an undeniable correlation between the birth control pill, depression, higher rates of suicide, weight gain.
It makes women fat and psychotic.
Well, so I remember, of course, by the way, if and for folks who don't remember the history of the 2016 election, these actually were headlines that were written by Milo Yiannopoulos when he was still at Breitbart, that Hillary Clinton went and gave a speech about attacking it as saying, oh, let's look at this far right misogynist.
Look what he's saying about birth control.
Of course, we know that Hillary Clinton's entire career was indelibly tied to Planned Parenthood.
But now what's amazing to me is that, and you were actually the one who was telling me about this, is that these very same side effects are actually going viral on TikTok.
And it's not Milo doing it, it's young women that are now talking about birth control.
But here we are almost, not quite a decade later, but almost a decade later, eight years later, saying the exact same things, but it's not in any kind of political context.
It's coming from the context of just young girls actually talking about this openly for the first time.
I do have hope.
There is this trend on TikTok going around of women, especially Gen Z, ditching the pill.
And I think they're finally getting to the point where they realize so much of what was sold to them through feminism was not helpful towards women.
It was actually, in many ways, a war on women for us to be taking these hormones for decades on end, just for primarily the benefit of men.
And so I think there's a lot of women who are rejecting this.
I think there is going to be more of a move towards abstinence as well, because even issues like abortion, you can debate the morality of abortion all day, but nobody really talks about the negative impacts that abortion has on women.
And that, to me, is the most sinister part of the left's push for abortion, is that they're not educating women on the real effects of abortion on their psyche, on their body.
Instead, they're saying, shout your abortion.
And it's no different than birth control.
It's a great alternative if you miss a pill.
Well, and it's clearly, and even if you look at the history of Planned Parenthood, like we're talking about here, that it was originally founded as a birth control federation, that they...
Pitch abortions use as a form of birth control as just another form of birth control that's being given out.
So, okay, you know, the pill didn't work and IUD didn't work.
Well, if you still got pregnant, then don't worry.
We can, we can take care of that in the first place.
So to me, it, it almost sounds like what you're saying is that the agenda all along isn't necessarily about helping women.
It's actually anti children.
Yes, absolutely.
It is anti-children and in many ways it's anti-women because women are the ones who are having these side effects.
Women who got abortions, they did a study, a majority of women who got abortions in this study were put on psychiatric medications that they were not on previously and despite having no history of mental illness.
100% of respondents in this study reported zero positive side effects from their abortion.
Zero positive side effects.
And this is not spoken about at all.
They do not speak about, and you know, it's, it's very easy to demonize people who are making decisions that we don't agree with.
But for the most part, these women are being manipulated that this is easy.
This is women's rights.
This is reproductive rights when it is the opposite.
So what's interesting to me is that you're making an anti-abortion argument, not necessarily from a faith-based perspective or from the rights of the child, but you're actually making it from the perspective of females.
You're making a pro-female argument against abortion, which is something that I don't even hear this from the pro-life community, and that's not a knock on them, but it's just a totally different angle on the entire situation.
No, because what's happening is they want women and all of us to be slaves to the workforce for as long as we can.
There's nothing more sinister to me, and I don't know why there's not more women outraged over this, that Starbucks and all of these big corporations, Facebook, are offering to pay for your abortion so that you can work for them longer.
How is that freedom?
How is that reproductive freedom?
Well, they'll say that it's It's freedom because, uh, you don't depend on a man to be your, the breadwinner.
So therefore you're able to get out of the house.
You can have children.
And this is the whole marketing pitch of Planned Parenthood.
We've got about two minutes left in the segment, but the whole marketing pitch is, oh, well, the, you can have kids on your own schedule this way.
And you won't be forced to have a child or as Barack Obama once famously said, uh, if one of my daughters gets pregnant, they're not going to be punished with a baby.
It's horrible.
And it's an attack on women, it's an attack on the family unit, it is an attack on what makes us happiest as women is to nurture and care for our children.
And I think there's a lot of women who don't want to accept this because they would have to accept that they bought into a lie.
And I really think that's where this cognitive dissonance comes from.
And you see it in so many magazines, right?
The Fulfilled Woman, Sex and the City, you're riding the subway.
Or the girl boss.
Yeah.
Which I mean, you are kind of a girl boss.
Like I got to say, but, but you also, but you're also a mom, but you're also a mom.
And that's something that I think people don't realize because, and actually funny enough, when my mom was on, was on Tim pool one time, because she had come with us, we were at something together and she talked about how she had had, uh, my brother and myself when she was in her early twenties and then went on to have a great career.
And she said, look, I spent a lot of time with you guys when you were young.
Then when you got older, I went back to school, got a higher degree, continued working for a company and went on to have a great career.
And this idea that, oh, women aren't good enough.
You can't have all of it.
That doesn't strike me as something that's even a pro-woman statement to begin with.
No, they have told us as women that the only way we'll be good enough is if we do the same job as men.
The same exact job, Ashley, hold that thought because I have so many more questions.
I want to get into you the war on womanhood, the truth about birth control in America.
Stay tuned.
We'll be right back here.
Human events, Sunday special.
And we're back human events, Sunday special with the lovely Ashley St.
Clair.
Now, Ashley, when we first were, uh, we're chatting about this, you were talking about how they present this dichotomy.
To young women today that you can either have a family or have a career.
And they don't really necessarily come out and say it, but you see this in movies.
You see it in sitcoms.
Like of course, uh, sex in the city is probably the biggest one.
They say, if you want to be a fulfilled and fully actualized woman, a modern woman that you have to have a career and you can't possibly have a family, you can't possibly have children.
There's no way you can do both.
And your point is, I think that not only is that a lie, but also there are so many people that are taught that are, are essentially benefiting from this.
Can you walk us through that?
Yes.
It's essentially just a sinister rebranding of greedy corporatism.
In my opinion, they have told us that you can't afford to have a family because they've made it that way for many in this country.
You absolutely should be able to work and have a family and have children.
But unfortunately.
They have made that very difficult to do, and it's a weird place to be in to want to promote family values and tell women, you should have children.
But at the same time, they've made it very difficult for women to be able to provide for their families or just one parent to be able to provide.
It's very rare nowadays that you can have just one parent, one person in the household, go out and work and still be able to provide for a family.
That is rare to see nowadays.
Well, and not only you're right, because the high cost of childcare is absolutely through the roof.
And, you know, even when, when Tanya Tay and I are looking at different things, like we, um, we have our kids, uh, in a, in a, like a language program.
And even that I remember looking at it sometimes like, Whoa, you know, it's only a couple hours a day.
And, and how much are we paying for this thing?
Like, do they really need to learn different languages?
But obviously we want them to learn different languages.
Um, but it's, it, it definitely jumped out at me.
I got a little sticker shock.
It's kind of like.
Uh, well pretty much everything, everything right now, when you go, when you go out to eat, when you go anywhere, you're getting sticker shock right now because of Bidenflation.
Um, I'm like, I did not eat $80 worth of food.
No way.
And that was, I had like crap.
And though at the same time, what, what gets me is you, you say that this is based on corporatism.
And I think what, what I constantly see is.
And I'm seeing a lot of pushback now.
And maybe you can speak to this about some of these new, these new trends that we're seeing come up, like the trad wife or pro family values, these different trends that are coming up on, on Tik TOK and Instagram and different things out there with Gen Z, because I'm seeing a lot of people push back on this and say, number one, just because you are.
Giving up a family that doesn't mean you're attaining freedom.
What it means is that your slot, you're lashing yourself to enslavement with a corporation for eight hours a day for your nine to five plus another two hours of commuting.
So great.
You've given up something that could be a joy in your life for the ability to what work in a cubicle and have an email job.
Um, and then number two.
I'm seeing, and I see this even, even more broadly, not just young women, but Gen Z in general, I think I've seen a lot of people saying, That Gen Z is saying we want to strike a balance between work and life.
And that's something that a lot of other generations have really pushed aside.
They say, Oh, you work 80 hours a week, 90 hours.
I've heard, I can think of myself doing that.
I'm saying, Oh, I put in this many hours this week.
I put in that many hours this week.
And look, like I like to work, but now that I have kids, it's definitely something I think about more.
Cause it's like, look, you get 24 hours in a day, but how are you spending them?
So talk to me about some of these new trends that you're seeing arise.
You know what I think it is?
I think you're absolutely right.
I think that Gen Z, especially Gen Z women, are really pushing back on this.
But what did Gen Z grow up with that the other generations didn't?
Hardcore pornography?
No.
That's rampant pretty much everywhere.
The internet.
The internet.
And what happened with the internet... Well, that's what I said.
It's the same thing.
What happened with the internet is you were able to be inundated with advertisements.
The last episode of Community Events Daily, everyone.
You were able to be inundated with advertisements and branding all of the time.
So Gen Z has a really uncanny ability to pick out ads and rebranding and marketing.
And I think a lot of Gen Z is picking up on this rebranding of their greedy corporatism.
And they're saying, wait, you don't actually want us to be girlbosses.
You just want us to work for you.
You just want us to make you more money.
So I think they're picking up on that and there's pushback and there's anger.
I am seeing a lot of despair from women in my generation who are saying this can't be it, this can't be the future for us, that we have to choose between freezing our eggs at Facebook or raising a family and having that ability to be a woman do the only thing That sets a support for men, right?
We are how all of the people come into this world.
And many women are not able to live that purpose and live that life of sacrifice.
That is what being a mother or being a parent is, is a sacrificial love that is very, it doesn't mesh with this narcissistic society that we've created.
That's, that's actually cool to hear.
I was gonna, I was gonna make another comment, but that's actually pretty cool.
And no, I just, I genuinely appreciate Hearing that that's something that's coming back into the world, the importance of family, the importance of having that kind of unity, especially when we live in such disassociated world where, okay, you know, everything exists through a, a screen.
And I was, I was being flippant about it earlier about, about the rise in hardcore pornography, which then, and the accessibility of it.
Right.
When I was a kid you know, you would have to go and at the video rental store, right.
Which was a thing that existed for you, you whippersnappers.
Um, and there was always like, there was always like this, this curtain in the back of the store that went into another back room.
And it was always like, Oh, what's back there.
And it's like, Oh, you're not allowed to know that's, that's not for kids.
That's adults only.
And you would see it might, it might actually say adults only, or, you know, the back row of the magazine rack.
And so you, you were sort of aware that there was another, you know, like another portion of.
the store, but you know, you, you weren't allowed to go back in there.
And of course, like when you get like 12, 13, you would try to like pee or something that was just normal.
But, but now, now it's in your face and it's everywhere, but also, okay.
And let me, let me put it at you this way because of the rise of social media it's given us.
So we've, we've stripped away the ideals of privacy, right?
So this idea that everyone's, you know, whatever you do is in the privacy of But we don't have privacy in our own homes anymore because everybody's living out their lives on social media.
Myself, obviously included.
Um, you, you follow Tanya Tasey, for example, like you literally like track all of us.
I always ask her, by the way, I say, can you just wait like a day until we leave somewhere before you start posting all of the videos about what we were doing?
Just so that, you know, Antifa and the left can't track us down.
But I think there's something that's going on.
And this is my thesis is that because of The loss of privacy and the growth of social media.
It's that you can see lifestyles now through social media.
And so you can almost go in and instead of seeing the lifestyle of your neighborhood or the people that go to your church or the people that are immediately around you, the people that are at your school now through social media, you can see the entire vast array of lifestyles that are out there at the moment.
And then you can kind of decide Which one seems to make sense or which one seems to be an absolute failure.
Like you can look at someone's life and say, boy, that, that looks terrible.
That looks horrible.
Um, and then of course, you know, obviously we're talking about Benny Johnson.
I'm just kidding.
Um, and then I was thinking of Benny's, uh, blackout coffee commercial where he's like, and I did not see that one.
And I was hilarious.
You got to watch it and I'll see if I can put it in post, but, No, it's that you can sell like, okay, here's someone who lives with their family and here's someone who is going to church and they have a stable family.
And this one's, it just seems better versus you can see people who have these sort of broken lives, who are depressed, who are angry all the time.
And you can sort of, you can try it on almost for size by following someone on social media.
And I think you're seeing people opt out.
This is a very long way of stating this.
And I haven't even really put it down in words yet.
I think it's the first time I've mentioned it, but I think it's one of the reasons That you're seeing the rise of these trends because they can see, they can see what works and what doesn't.
I basically, I put it this way for myself when I was in the military.
Uh, the last unit I was in was pretty, uh, pretty high op tempo, high mission speed.
Um, I mean, you were traveling a lot, you were going out, attaching to some cool guy units, go into different parts of the world, doing cool guy stuff and you know, high speed, low drag, all that stuff.
And I remember that there were guys in the unit that had been in for 15 years, 20 years, 25 years.
And they had the, I mean, absolute coolest war stories.
I mean, Iraq, Afghanistan, parts unknown parts of Africa, parts of Asia.
And it's like, wow, you guys did that really cool stuff.
But at the same time, the one thing I noticed was that their family life, their home lives all sucked.
Their kids hated them.
Uh, they were totally just committed to their work, committed to their job.
And they didn't really have anything going for them outside of that.
And I remember thinking, you know, that's, it's fun and it's awesome.
And, you know, I got some cool stories that, you know, you're at Guantanamo Bay, but at the same time, I remember thinking that, yeah, I don't know if I want to do this forever because that's not the life I envisioned for myself.
Well, and that's the dangerous part about social media and specifically celebrities and idolizing people that have followings, right?
And Bo Burnham spoke about this a lot in his performances.
But it's the me generation who was told, express yourself.
Everyone cares about what you have to say.
And then they grew up and they realized nobody really cares about what they have to say.
So they flock to these entertainers and these performers.
And most of these people really aren't giving a true No, I think you're exactly right.
what they're doing.
And instead, these people are chasing these desires of fame and money and luxury cars, which is all very vapid and narcissistic.
And the media, in my opinion, has bastardized our consciousness and what we value as humans, as a society.
It's all over the place.
No, I think you're exactly right.
We're coming up on a break here, but I really want to get back into something you mentioned earlier in the show about Roe v. Wade and And I've seen you talk about this before.
You're the only person who I've seen talk about this, which is crazy to me because I've been going to the March for Life since I was in high school.
Um, I've been a member of obviously the Catholic church, but then also the pro-life movement.
And I've never heard the specific take that you've given on this.
And that's why folks were talking to Ashley St.
Claire, She works over at the Babylon Bee.
She is a diversity hire over there.
She is also the author of the children's book, Elephants Are Not Birds, which, by the way, I have read that to both Jack-Jack and AJ out of all the Brave books, where I also have one up.
That is probably the one they ask for the most.
So stay tuned right there.
We'll come right back.
And we're back.
Ashley St.
Clair.
Now, Ashley, we were talking before the break about Roe v. Wade, and you mentioned in the beginning to this about This idea that Roe v. Wade, the actual decision at the Supreme Court was influenced by population theory.
Now, I know you broke this down on Tim Pool, but can you walk us through that again?
Because I've never heard this before.
Yes, there's a fantastic book on the entire abuse of discretion that was Roe v. Wade, and the book is called Abuse of Discretion.
And it really breaks down all of the ways that Roe v. Wade was an abuse of discretion in many ways, just on judicial and precedent matters.
And one of the things they talk about is clerk notes that were citing populationist theory and population control theory.
these decisions on Roe v. Wade.
And that is what stuck out to me the most, because what that says, you know, you can go again, you can go back and forth all day on the majority of abortion, but any ounce of population control theory influencing this means that the people at the highest echelon making the decisions for us at the Supreme Court think that but any ounce of population control theory influencing this means that the people They would like us to be dead.
That is what it tells me, that they think there are people who are more deserving to live than others, and that they think you don't deserve to have a family.
You You shouldn't have a family.
We have too many people.
And that to me was the most sinister part of all of this.
Yes, it's sinister to convince women that they shouldn't have children in general, but if it's influenced by this global idea that we need less people, that to me is inherently evil.
Right.
So I pulled it up here.
What is population theory?
Population theory is Malthusian population theory.
that suggests a reduction in the population pressure on existing resources through emigration or just a reduction reduction in population in general could trigger a rise in birth and survival rates in the sending population.
So it's actually this idea that if you reduce the population that you'll basically this there's too many people for the resources that we have on Earth right now, there's too many people for the food supply There's too many people for the energy supply.
So in order for the survival of the species longterm, you actually have to kill off a certain perspective or a certain percentage of the species, or allow for the fact that if you're going to take this to the next level, which we know that Margaret Sanger did, then you want to make sure that certain parts of the population don't Uh, procreate.
So you're talking about, and I'm not just talking about, um, if, if you have mental illness, I'm talking about what they would call undesirables.
And this idea that you're at, you're basically pre you, you are conducting eugenic population control by taking social experimentation and then introducing it to whether you're a minority, whether you're someone who they believe is a, uh, you know, if you're sub 100 IQ, this type of thing that you're going in and sterilizing people,
Or in these cases, of course, making sure that those people get birth control and, uh, go in for eventually abortion because, and I'll, I'll read it back again here.
Uh, the growth they believe Malthusians believe that the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population decline.
But actually, aren't we actually seeing the opposite right now?
Because now we have declining birth rates.
And a declining population.
And it ain't just us.
You see, China, they're going off a cliff with this thing because China went crazy with Malthusianism when they went for the one-child policy from 1980 all the way up to 2016.
They just started getting away from this because they realize how bad things are.
Japan is seeing this.
Russia is seeing this.
Western Europe is seeing this.
You've got countries out there like Poland and Hungary.
We had Tania Tay on the show when we were in Budapest after we actually sat down with Orban and had this discussion with him about how there are positive ways to grow your country.
You don't need to open borders.
And yes, and what's crazy to me is, and I think this came out in that episode, but did you realize that in Hungary, they didn't even ban abortion.
They just created the economic incentives for people to grow families, and the abortion rate dropped on its own.
Isn't that amazing?
Yes, and like you said, the truth of the matter is there are plenty of resources.
There is plenty of food.
And we can fit a whole lot more people here and be just fine.
Countries like Japan are going to get hit hard.
We're going to get hit hard by this declining birth rate.
We're not going to see these effects immediately.
We're going to see these decades down the line.
And isn't it interesting, Jack, that the answer for so many issues on the left is just don't have children.
The climate's getting bad?
Don't have kids.
The economy's bad?
Don't have kids.
So what you're saying is they, they're in search of this answer.
So they're in search of a problem that gives them that answer because they've already started from that.
You're trans, don't have kids, sterilize yourself.
How is it the answer to all of these things to not have children?
That is the cure for so many of these issues.
How is that the cure?
Well, and you even had in the past so many celebrities out there look at like Ashley Judd and others who were coming out and saying that they were just straight up Uh, promoting themselves as antinatalists.
They were like, no, no, we definitely don't want kids.
We I'm, I'm not going to do this.
I don't think it's good.
I think it's good for the society, for a country, et cetera, et cetera.
And I remember thinking like, what a shame, just what a shame that is to not have kids to not, uh, want there to be younger versions of yourself to have that joy of raising children.
It's it's, I mean, my, my two or my five, excuse me, a five-year-old is sitting in the other room right now.
And I can't wait to go and hang out with like a whole day planned after this.
I just can't even imagine what living without that would be like.
But doesn't that motivate you, Jack?
And that is the thing that's concerning to me.
The effect of having less and less people who understand purpose.
That is purpose.
To have a sacrificial love is purpose.
And that extends outward into our neighbors, into our community, that sacrificial love.
When we have less and less of that, we become incredibly dysfunctional.
Because it is a society fueled by narcissism, as opposed to what we were supposed to be fueled by, and this sacrificial love for our children in our community.
And when we don't have that, we're seeing a rise in this.
Everything you do, right Jack?
You think about your kids.
You think about making this world, this country, a better place for your children.
And that's what's driving you.
And when that's not driving you, the intentions and what's coming out of these people's mouths, I would be very incredulous towards.
And when you look at how many world leaders out there right now don't have children, so many of the leaders in Europe and Western Europe, Kamala Harris doesn't have kids of her own, that there are so many out there that don't have children.
And yet somehow Angela Merkel rise all the way up to the highest levels in their country.
And your questioning is, What exactly are they operating off of?
What are they working for?
Jack, do you believe that you could teach anybody that sacrificial love you have for your children?
No.
And so these people are operating and they can have a certain level of empathy but they are never going to be able to make decisions with that purpose and sacrifice and teach a purpose and teach sacrifice in the same way that people who do have children are able to do.
There's, uh, like when you're in the military or, or, you know, they, they always ask you like the secret service question, like, you know, Oh, would you, would you take a bullet for the president?
Would you, it's like, well, I hope not, you know, I prefer not to like for to give the other guy bullets first.
Right.
Situation.
Um, but you know, I don't know.
Right.
You, you obviously that's never, never the goal, but like, but then when I think about that for my kids, you don't have to think about it.
You don't think about anything.
It's of course I would.
Of course.
Like how many, how many bullets do I have to take?
Right.
You know, all of the bullets.
Like I, I would do anything to spare my kids one moment of, of, of that type of pain.
I'm not saying by the way that you should take all challenges away from kids because that's different.
Um, you do want to introduce challenges.
And I think that's something that a lot of like a lot of Gen X parents and not to, not to get on Gen X too much, but, I think a lot of Gen X parents, because they, they were the latchkey kids.
They, they were brought up well, mom and dad are like doing drugs and yoga and like, who knows whatever else they're doing that they, and like kids downstairs watching like, you know, the Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island or whatever.
But, you know, they were like, okay, well, I'm not going to do that with my kids.
So they overcorrected.
And so that's what led to the helicopter moms and the, this like totally protecting my kids, making them bubble boys and girls from the whole world.
And it's like, no, you have to have skin knees.
You have to have scraped elbows.
You have to let them do stuff like that and let them fall on their own or else they're never going to learn.
Then you get, that's how you get an entire generation.
You see those millennials plot that are totally afraid of confrontation.
They're terrified of it.
Well, I will say, and I do, I agree with you on that point, but I do think our kids are getting scrapes and bruises in ways that we really haven't seen before.
Uh, Not that long ago, I was at a luncheon, and it was all basically school teachers at this table, and they were speaking kind of down about the students.
They all have anxiety, they all have depression, they all have something.
And in my mind, it's like, of course, because they are consuming more than we as people were ever made to consume constantly.
What we're doing right now with social media, they can't get away from any of this.
So while they may not be going outside and falling off their bike, our children right now are facing unprecedented scrapes and bruises on their psyche with everything they're being inundated on in this bastardization of our consciousness that I think is the most damaging.
I see what you did there.
I see what you did there.
Different, different type of scrapes and bruises.
No, I'm all for that.
I'm all for banned social media.
Um, if you have, by the way, we recently deleted YouTube.
We just got rid of it.
We got rid of it completely.
There's no YouTube on any, any of the TVs or, uh, any of like, we give them screen time every once in a while, like we're traveling or something, but there's no more YouTube because you know what it is.
It's that he knows how to find stuff on there.
And it also, I think, increases, uh, or I would say decreases his attention level because he's always going to find the next video.
He's like, Oh, I don't like this video anymore.
I'm going to go watch the next one.
I don't like this video.
I want to watch the next one.
He'll watch like five seconds of something.
He won't sit down and watch an entire episode or entire show.
And it's like, I don't like this.
I don't like this at all.
Plus who even knows what kind of stuff that you're able to find on YouTube.
Those are, by the way, there's some great angel studios is out there.
It's got some kids stuff.
Angel Studios is great.
There's a great providers out there that are coming every single day for kids and we need to start introducing that stuff in front, loading it and saying, look, you know, there might be a transition period, but I say this as someone who might, you know, my son's five, but for our younger son, I don't want him on YouTube at all ever.
And I think that as not just conservatives, but as concerned parents, you don't want kids falling into these traps that you're talking about.
The traps we're talking about before, because, They're pushing these products and psychological changes on kids at such a young age.
Come back final segment, Ashley Sinclair.
You know, Ashley, one thing that we definitely have to talk about, and I know we get on this on the show a lot, but I want to get your take is that we've seen, it almost feels like a rise in mental illness and people with various types of mental illness throughout the country in recent years.
And I've said this before, and I think conservatives need to start talking about this issue a little bit differently and just waking up and saying, look, if you're going to have a country full of people that are on one type of mind altering pharmaceuticals or another, and at the same time have a country that has near unlimited or at least somewhat limited access to firearms and high powered firearms that You're going to eventually those two are going to come into contention.
And we've seen horrific situations, uh, not just at the covenant school with, with Nashville, um, but case after case after case, uh, Louisville.
And every time there's one of these mass shootings, it feels like it comes out that, Oh, the person was on some kind of medication.
The person was getting treatment for something, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And obviously to use mass shootings is a pretty, pretty, um, Uh, highly, highly provocative kind of, kind of take on it.
But I do think that we are living through an era of high mental disorders and conservatives don't really seem like they're even willing to address this.
They, they look at all of these things as if they're happening like in a vacuum.
And I think it's, it's causing a lot of that.
You know, there's some people over there like, Oh, we got to beat the left.
We got to debate the left.
We got to argue the left.
It's like, nah, that's not the way I look at it as well.
I look at it is.
There's the left, and then there's the right, and then there's normies.
And the name of the game is red-pilling the normies.
And if you can't have the discussion as to what the normies are even thinking about, then they're not going to listen to you.
They're going to listen to the left.
And the left is going to say, oh, it's guns.
It's all guns.
We're going to ban the guns.
And then if they can't ban the guns, then they'll ban you using the guns.
And they won't even, but the left, and this is what's interesting, because they're getting so much money from big pharma, so much money from healthcare providers these days.
That they will never talk about mental illness.
And so I guess my, my question for you is, do we need to talk about the financial incentives here?
Because there are massive financial incentives, not just from a social media perspective, but also from just a big pharma perspective, because there are people who, so it's pharmaceuticals starting it with birth control.
But then to your point, the depression, the anxiety, psychosis, schizophrenia, these other issues that are all coming out, well, guess what?
There are people who are profiting off of misery, too.
Absolutely.
I agree on most of these points here, and we have an unprecedented mental health crisis in the country, and the media has caused it in a lot of ways, and they're also accelerating it.
Kids in this country, American kids, age 13 to 18, one in five of them have been severely depressed or had a severe mental illness that has been debilitating.
That is a very scary number.
And when we have this number of growing people from children to adults who are mentally ill, I don't really think we should be focusing on anything else except solving this mental health crisis.
And the left is really brilliant at this because they know conservatives are just going to say that's a horrible idea to have more social workers and therapists, whereas the left is causing this with the media and they're financially incentivized to do this with the media, with big pharma.
And then they're the only ones offering a solution that they know is not going to work because they know talking it out isn't going to help.
They know getting on antipsychotics isn't going to help.
And in fact, as you mentioned, many of these mass shootings, these people have been on these medications and they have severe side effects that many times are worse than the initial illness.
But if we do not talk about it, it's never going to stop.
But I don't think they're going to because it would involve an entire dismantling of the way things are run in the media and what we're consuming.
If you start getting fat, you are going to look at your diet.
Yet when we start getting mentally ill and we see all of these people, an unprecedented number of people becoming mentally ill, no one's talking about our mental diet and what we're consuming on a daily basis.
And we were never made to consume everything that we're consuming right now.
So the question is, How do we address this?
And I don't really think there's anybody in our government willing to sit down and have an honest discussion about what have we done?
Has this machine gotten out of control?
Is there any going back?
And if there's not, how do we mitigate it?
Is it social workers like the left?
Is it therapists?
Is it psychiatric medications?
There's no real honest conversation about what's happening right now.
Look, I've told this story a million times, but so my father worked in a Uh, a mental health facility, a state hospital in Pennsylvania for, uh, 25 plus years.
And when he was retiring, when he was getting out, he actually saw the, the place being shut down and they shut down building after building.
There was so much defunding that was going on.
And, uh, look, uh, conservative started this Reagan started this.
Um, but then both sides went in on it because, Hey, it's like, we don't have to pay for something anymore.
We can use that money for something else.
And the whole idea was that we're going to shut down the mental facilities around the country and then move toward towards community, uh, community health center and community health.
And it's like, what does that mean?
Right?
Because when you're in one of those places, a guy like my dad would come by and be like, all right, you're going to take your pills.
And then he would sit there and watch you.
And he would say, show me under your tongue, show me your cheek.
I'm going to make sure you took your pills, took your meds.
And he's in there checking out.
They can't go anywhere because they have to take their pills because they've been committed.
Uh, but these days it's, you go to the psychiatrist if you go and then you get your prescription and then maybe you're taking them, maybe not, but more than likely you're, you know, one of these places like LA or Denver or here in Washington, DC, up in New York that you're, you're like living under a bridge and you're like, You know, in some kind of tent city and you're essentially just being homeless, uh, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, these are all over the place now.
And no one's actually making sure as to whether or not these people are being helped.
And we, we say that we're better.
And we say that we're being progressive by just letting these people live out on the street.
Many of them then turned to self-medication through drugs.
And we act like our actual narcotics.
And then they, and then we turn around and say, Oh, we're egalitarian.
Look how progressive and good we are.
Absolutely.
And I think we do need to bring back the psych wards.
But the other issue is, there's a growing number of relatively normal people who are having mental disorders now.
So how do we combat that?
Why is this happening?
Why are there so many people who are crawling out of their own skin?
Let me ask you, I'll ask you a spicy question, because Ashley, you know, I follow you on Twitter.
You know, you're a good follow.
I recommend Ashley, even though you get fact-checked, community noted, pretty often.
Um, but who doesn't, if you're not getting checked on a regular basis, then you're not, are you even doing anything?
Um, but I've noticed some, some threads with a certain, some replies between you and Mr. Elon Musk.
And I don't know if, uh, do you think this is something that if you started tweeting about, uh, here and there, would you ever, you know, consider maybe tagging him?
Put it this way.
We know that Elon has bought Twitter.
We know that he's obviously got a very different take on social media, I think, than the other folks that ran Twitter before or anyone who runs TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or any of these others.
What do you think his take on this would be?
Would it be something that you'd be willing to bring up with him?
So I actually did tweet about this, and Elon did respond about this unprecedented mental health crisis.
And he said, along the lines of what you and I said, that we used to have more mental hospitals, and we shut them down.
And the truth of the matter is, there are certain people who just need to be in those facilities.
And that's the truth of the matter, which I also agree with.
But I think it's unempathetic to not also address the growing number of people Who maybe shouldn't be in a mental facility should there, if there were not these societal conditions contributing to the depression, the anxiety, the big pharma issues.
So I think it's twofold.
Well, that's what I was going to get at too, because we've, we've heard, I know Senator Hawley has talked about this a little bit when he talks about social media addiction.
So one of the things they get into is the gamification of social media, right?
When you look at You know, any of these social media platforms, you get this dopamine rush when you're using it.
You, you have this endless scroll, you have your, you know, your follower count, your retweets, and you're always checking, okay, how did that post do?
How did that one do?
Is that one bad?
I don't, you know, I'm guilty of it as well, you know, more than anybody.
And it's, I guess this question of, do you think that he might be open to, I don't know, introducing some of the, some of the possible remedies to Twitter As a service that would maybe put short circuits in, uh, in that usage so that people would know, like, Hey, you've, you've spent this much time on Twitter or, Hey, you're, you're all caught up.
You can, I think Instagram used to have that.
They used to have like a, you've, you've caught up.
You don't need to scroll anymore.
That would pop up every once in a while.
So Instagram and TikTok both have had that, and it really doesn't work.
It doesn't stop people from spending time on the app.
I think there's a bigger discussion to be had about the effects, especially on young minds.
I wrote for Post Millennial a little bit ago about the lawsuit against Meta.
For a young girl who ended up self-harming after she got an Instagram account and it was within months of her creating an Instagram account that she was drawing photos of herself saying everyone hates me and all of these horrible words saying you know
Unalive yourself coming from her phone and it was a really graphic drawing that this 11 12 year old girl had drawn just months after getting Instagram and being inundated with bullying and eating disorder content and she was herself she developed into an eating disorder and when I spoke to a man from the social media victims organization there's a whole organization that will sue these social media companies for addiction and their children having issues that come up what really stuck out to me is he said
The incredible thing about her case, this girl who I was writing about, is that she lived to tell the tale.
And he said that so many of the families that he works with, 11, 9, 13-year-old kids have killed themselves.
And there's no remedy for that.
And these companies know that.
And the Facebook papers showed this unequivocally, that they know the damage that's happening to our children with these products.
And they're not doing anything to stop it.
Wow.
That's something that I feel like, I feel like if that were something that Elon was, was privy to, that would be something that he would consider.
Cause he's a guy who, and I'll, you know, for, you know, every once in a while, I'm like, Hey man, this guy seems like a little too in with China, but you know, he's been incredible when it comes to talking about having kids.
Obviously he's got what, like a million kids or something.
He's fixing the birth rate.
Yeah, no, right.
He's fixing it.
Him and Nick Cannon.
And, uh, they've got a little thing going and it, it strikes me as something that I don't think he'd be okay with.
Now, I don't get the impression that a lot of little kids use Twitter because it's, it's, it's mainly a text-based app.
Um, it's not really, but we know that he's going into video.
So we know that video is going to be a big push for Twitter going forward.
So I would, um, I hope he learns about that and I hope that, that those stories and I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to follow that up.
So producers.
We're going to see if we can get on the advocates about this because this has been incredible.
Ashley St.
Clair, what an amazing interview.
It's been remiss of us.
We've wanted to have you on for so long.
Incredible to have you here on Human Events.
Tell people your coordinates.
Where can they follow you to get more information?
