Matt Walsh: Dave Smith/Douglas Murray Debate, Transgenderism, and What It Really Means to Be a Man

Okay, so I'm going to, I'm not on X all that much, but I do read you. And sometimes I read your tweets and I'm like, Matt Walsh, ladies and gentlemen, spinning people up. Here's one. We've been saying for many years that gay adoption and surrogacy should be illegal. Now everyone else seems to be catching on. This is an abomination.

We've been saying for many years that gay adoption is an abomination. I've never heard anybody say that. Wow, we're just diving right in. We're diving right in. Gay adoption is an abomination. Yeah, well, I think there I was referring to social conservatives because social conservatives still somehow get a bad rap. So, you know, so-called social conservatives. Even among other conservatives and other people on the right, it seems to me.

So when I say we, I mean like so-called social conservatives. I've never heard them say that. I've never heard anybody. I think I agree with what you said. But I'm not, I don't think I've ever heard a single person say that. Everyone seems to be afraid to say that. Yeah, most people are. That's why I think – but so-called social conservatism is – And that's why it's not popular, even on the right. Can I ask you, is there anything more hated on the right than social conservatism?

I don't think so. So you could say, like, I think we should drop an atomic bomb on a bunch of people and just, like, kill them all and their kids. And people are like, well, that's a really good idea. But if you're like, actually, we should, like, save some kids, then they hate you. What is that? Yeah. Or we should... We should look at the way that human society was structured for thousands of years.

And we should probably consider that they were right about a lot of that stuff. Maybe not everything. Right. Maybe not everything, but there are just certain basic civilizational truths. that we have moved away from in recent decades? But I don't think there was any good reason to move away from them. And so if human beings did something a certain way for literally millennia in every civilization that we know of.

It's probably right. I mean, there's probably a lot to be said for it. Again, not in every case, but in most cases. It's worth pondering anyway. It tells you something if, right, if every civilization, none of... which that we know have had contact with each other, came to the same conclusions. Exactly. So it's something like the, you know, gay adoption.

And this isn't the only argument against it, but I think it is a worthwhile argument that there's never been a society anywhere on earth, anywhere, period, where they have had... two men in a romantic relationship starting a family. That's just, that's never existed. It's always been... A man and a woman start a family or in certain ancient civilizations and even some primitive ones today, you might have a man and several women. You might have polygamy.

That's a pretty common feature, I would say. Yeah, certainly common. But you never had... And why do you have polygamy? I don't support polygamy, but there was a logic to it, especially in ancient times. Yes. You got to create people, you know, and the whole point is to create, the whole point of the family is to make children and care for them. And, you know, a family that's headed up by two gay men is...

That's why it's an abomination. Well, it never happened before, and now it's happening, and that's why we call it progress, right? This is progress. It's something that has never been done. Yeah. Well, it's progress in the way that cancer progresses. So when I hear about progressivism... I think of progressivism. It is progress. So we're at stage four gay right now, would you say? Oh, yeah. Full on stage four. Yeah. Terminal. It's a terminal case.

Yeah, I just figured why not just jump right into it. So... But what is, so I think you make an obvious and very fair and smart point. We should pay attention to the way things have always been done because maybe we can learn something. It's like discarding it all. French Revolution style doesn't end well. I totally agree. But what's the more affirmative, detailed case against it?

These kids don't have homes, and here are two loving parents to watch over the child. Why is that bad? Yeah, well, I think that there are a couple of things. First of all... It's interesting to note that when this conversation about gay parenthood first started really in earnest like 10 years ago, most of the conversation was focused on adoption and gay men want to adopt. And now you've got a lot of these gay couples that are turning to surrogacy. So they're renting wombs. They're renting the...

They're purchasing the body parts of women and renting them, using them like an Airbnb rental. Wait, I thought we got rid of slavery. Yeah, I would have thought, but this is, this is exactly, this is the, in a very literal sense, the objectification of a human being, treating them like an object, using them as an object. So it's just interesting. There was a study done recently, a survey a couple of years ago, actually. that found that it was like 60 plus percent of gay couples.

When they think about parenting, they would prefer surrogacy. So it's a slight of hand trick you see on the left a lot where they want to bring about some social change and they present an argument for it. But then once they get what they want, they abandon that. And then you kind of you figure out what they actually wanted. So it's kind of like adoption has given way to surrogacy. And then the whole argument.

which I never bought, which is that we're rescuing kids who are in these terrible situations in foster care. That's out the window because these are not kids that you're rescuing. You're creating them. Rather than rescuing a kid from an unfortunate situation, you're creating them. to be in an unfortunate situation from birth.

which is a different thing. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is that even if we're talking... But would you concede that one upside to a collapsing post-industrial economy is there are a ton of poor people who are willing to have babies for profit?

I don't know that I would call that an upside. I'm just like, this is so like, people don't take three steps back. Like if this were happening and if Dickens were writing about this in the 1850s, you'd be like, wow, you know, London's a very screwed up place.

Yeah. Where we're taking advantage of the poor. Like, that's the step beyond prostitution. I mean, it really is treating someone, as you said correctly, as an object. But there's also the fundamental point, whether it's surrogacy or adoption. What does the child have a right to? We keep hearing about this right to parenthood. I mean, you have gay couples now that are...

that are demanding insurance cover fertility treatments as if the reason why two men can't make a baby is because of fertility problems. No, it's because of the laws of nature. But, and that is cloaked under this, it's sort of under this umbrella of why I have a right to parenthood. You don't have a right to parenthood. What does that mean? No one has a right to be a parent.

it's great to be a parent if you can, but you're not born with entitlement. You're entitled to a child. What the hell does that mean? Rather than talking about the right of the parent, let's talk about the right of the child. This applies to so many of them. This applies to abortion. This applies to a lot of topics. What does the child have a right to? And I would say a child has a right to a mother and a father. A child has a right to the...

basic, fundamental setup that billions of kids throughout history have had, which is a mother and a father. Now, if through the course of events... That is taken away from a child. I mean, you can have a parent that dies. You end up with a single parent. You can have a divorce, which I think is terrible. But it's not supposed to work that way.

you're looking for a mother and a father and to just say, okay, well, we'll give this child to two dads. You're basically giving up on that child. You're saying, well, yeah, we couldn't find the right setup for you. So instead you're getting this. And I just reject that. I reject that totally. And I also think, frankly, that

A lot of people won't like this, but I think we've passed the point. Yeah, right. No one likes anything that we're saying. A child being in foster care is far from an ideal scenario. It's very, very sad. A child going to two gay parents. I think it's worse. I think it's easily worse, actually. Why? It's just more disordered. It's more confusing for the child. Again, neither scenario is good. We don't like either thing. I don't see going to...

you know, gay parents as an improvement over what they had before. Do we know that it screws kids up or we just sort of intuitively know it? I think we intuitively know, but also there's been plenty of studies done about the mental health effects of kids that grow up in these single sex. Same sex parent homes. There's been a lot of studies done about it, but, but honestly, I don't, you can look at the studies, people will fact check and they're there.

I just, I don't need studies for this. It's the same thing with the trans topic, you know. From the very beginning, when we started talking about that, you had all these people saying, well, where are the studies? Where are the studies showing that we shouldn't chemically castrate a five-year-old or a 12-year-old? Well, there are studies now that will bear that out, but we don't need a study to tell us that.

This should be intuitive. We just intuitively know it. There are certain things as human beings that we just know. And one of them is that sexually mutilating a child is bad. Another one is that a child needs a mother and father. We just intuitively know that. I don't need any study. I don't care what any academic says about it. I don't care. So when you were born, the AIDS crisis, AIDS, was sort of in its early years.

And there were famous people who had AIDS, who died of AIDS, who lied about why they were dying because they don't want to admit that they were gay. So that was the world you were born into. And now being gay is like an advantage in college admissions in a lot of schools and in hiring. So it's moved completely. It's like the opposite of what it was in 40 years. Why do you think that happened? And what do you think its effects are? Yeah, I think that's...

It's the collapse of, well, it's just this war on, it's kind of what we started with. It's this war on normalcy, on civilization, really. It's part of the anti-family agenda, the anti-human agenda. And I think that, and that's always been there. Why did it catch on, though, to such an extent? I think that the side that was supposed to stand up for...

The family and Stand Up for Civilization largely failed and abdicated their responsibility to do so. You know, conservatives, the church has just largely failed. Not even failed, not even tried, really. Not even tried. Why is that? Fear, cowardice. hypocrisy. I mean, hypocrisy in the actual sense, in the literal sense of not someone who says something and does another, but someone who claims to believe something they don't, which is what actual hypocrisy is.

And so we have a lot of hypocrites on the right and in the church, unfortunately, who are just claiming to believe things they don't really believe. And so I think that the answer is, it's like, why don't... Why aren't there enough pastors in any church, in any denomination, standing up and talking about these issues and leading on these issues?

And the answer is, well, there's a lot of cowards, but also a certain portion of them don't really believe it. I mean, they don't believe. It's like whether or not they really believe in God is a question. I think that that's a part of it, too. What do you think the fact of it has been? Not just the acceptance of homosexuality, but the celebration of it.

I remember hearing, you know, 30 years ago when this was gathering steam, people saying, well, it's not a threat to you. Gays aren't going to break into your house and, you know, forcibly make you gay or something like, why do you care? And I thought that, you know, kind of made sense to me at the time. But there's a sense that's just not true, actually, that it did have a big effect on everybody else. Do you think that? It certainly did because...

Because it's always a lie, obviously, when they say, oh, this isn't, we just want to do what we want to do and we're not, it won't affect you and we don't need you to be involved. This is just what we're doing in the privacy of our own homes. That was a good argument, though, don't you think? In theory, in principle, it's a good argument. I'm just saying as a kind of matter of slogans, you know, like...

That's better than just do it for Nike or have a coconut smile. That's like a really effective ad campaign for Americans because that matches the American instinct. And there's a certain, it makes... If someone across the street from me is in their home doing some freaky weird stuff.

And that's it. They're just in their home doing it. And I never even know about it or see it. My children don't see it. My children don't know about it. Then, yeah, it's hard to make an argument that I'm somehow impacted by that. Because I'm not. Except maybe in the most indirect sort of way. But that's not how it actually works. That's just the slogan. That's not what really happens. And so we follow the trajectory and we've seen this time and time again. It always starts with...

They say, well, just tolerate this, which I guess we're supposed to think means. You know, people are doing this on their own. You don't have to, you could just stay out of it and they'll stay away from you and tolerate it, right? Tolerance, so it starts there. But then it goes to, very quickly, acceptance. And then they start saying, well, you should accept this. Well, accept and tolerate her.

Not exactly the same thing. How are they different? Well, tolerate means I just like put up with it. I allow it. I allow it. I put up with it. I don't try to stop it. Right. Is what tolerance means in the most literal sense. Accept means. I'm embracing it right you know it means I'm embracing it and

But then they don't stop at accepting because then they go to, well, okay, now actually we need you to celebrate it. So it goes from tolerance to acceptance to celebration. Pretty fast, actually. Pretty fast. Yeah, I think there was a time when that process might have taken, you know, 10 years, and now it seems like it takes 10 minutes.

So we went from decades ago, it was, hey, they're just in their private lives, in their own homes doing this, doesn't affect you, to now, well, they're literally marching in the street. you know, in leather bondage gear, like flaunting in front of confused children standing there. Having sex on the street, actually. Yeah, right. Engaged in sexual acts. And... Even worse than that, they're going into the school systems. They're putting this stuff in the school.

They're trying to tell my kids when my kids aren't in the school system, but, you know, they're trying to tell our kids. Do the authorities know your kids aren't in the school system? They do now. I'm in Tennessee, so we still have that right in Tennessee so far. But then they start going into the school system and they start promoting this. They start trying to tell our kids. that you should also tolerate this and accept it and embrace it and celebrate it. There's this kind of, there's a...

You know, what they're telling kids in school about homosexuality, for example, is not just biology. There's a moral message. They're giving them a moral message. And the moral message is. This is okay. There's nothing wrong with it. This is, you know, a gay couple is equal in every way to a straight couple. These are just different variations. You know, it's morally neutral.

That's their message. That's ideology. That's not biology. And once you start doing that, then it's very clear how this affects me. But how does it affect the society? Well, it could fundamentally transform society and our basic... how we live, what matters to us.

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Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com It scrambles the gender roles. That's what I notice, and that's what upsets me most, because I think everything is built on biology, on nature, and gender roles are a function of nature.

And I think if you scramble that, if you confuse that, if you convince people that there's no difference between men and women, like that's when civilization falls. Then you have like women fighting your wars. Yeah. You know what I mean? And gender roles is another one. human civilization worked a certain way for thousands of years and it seemed to work. And we went from, you know, mud huts to walking on the moon.

If you believe we walked on the moon, which I absolutely do. Well, you are taking some bold positions. That is bold. That is bold. You're taking on the entire internet. We, so we went, we went from, from there to there. with a kind of basic structure, with a basic setup. Gender roles is one of them. They were so basic, so fundamental that you didn't have a word for it. If you go back to 1700 and use the term gender roles.

To anyone. They're not going to have any idea what the hell you're talking about. Even though their entire society is structured around it. Exactly. And this is true even now. If you go outside of the kind of... liberal western bubble which i've done which i've done once when we were doing what is a woman i went to We went to Kenya and we talked to the Maasai tribe in Kenya. Did they know what a woman was? They did know what a woman was.

They were confused by the question, not because they didn't know the answer, but because they couldn't possibly understand why it would even be asked. Right. But then I remember a lot of this didn't make it in the movie because it wasn't totally connected, but talking about gender roles with them. And again, they had no idea what that term even meant.

But their whole society is completely structured around it. It was, if you're a man, this is what you do. If you're a woman, this is what you do. And that's it. And I remember asking one of the women, I was in there, in her hut, which is actually made of like cow dung. And it's a one room hut and they all sleep on one bed, you know, mud floor. And she was telling me what she does all day as the woman of the house, which is she takes care of the house. She takes care of the kids.

I asked her if she was happy doing this, and she laughed at me because it was such a ridiculous question. Because of course she did. And then I asked about depression, and this might be in the movie. I said, you know, where I come from, there's a lot of people are depressed. And one of the guys said to me, well, we don't have that here. We don't do that. We don't have depression. That's not a thing here.

And that's not, and yeah, of course there's unhappiness. It's not like a utopia. I wouldn't want to live there to be perfectly clear about it. But you do notice that. In these societies that are structured around gender roles, there's a lot of anxiety and hang-ups that they don't have because they know they have a basic concept of who they are. And what they're supposed to do. Well, they're not at war with nature every day. Right. You can't beat nature.

into a blizzard with my boxer shorts. I don't care. What, you know, my resolve level is or my courage, it's like I'm going to freeze to death because you can't beat nature because it's bigger than you because God created it. And we are certainly discovering that in this. in this culture. And that's why... You can go on TikTok, which I don't recommend, but you can go on TikTok anytime. It's a whole genre of video now on TikTok where you've got these young women.

It's usually young women who do these videos, these selfie videos, where they're in tears. crying because they went out into the working world and they found it so miserable and depressing and empty and they just hate it and they don't want to work and they don't want to do it and they just and they're in despair over it And that's exactly what's happened. I think we were, you know, the message to women. Wait, so you're not only against gay adoption, you're against women working at banks?

uh yeah for the most where did you get all these opinions you know it it's not the ideal setup because i mean and just to be clear i don't uh I think that there are families where both parents have to work. I think there are a lot of families where they think both parents have to work but they don't actually have to.

It just depends on what your priorities are and if you're willing to make the sacrifices. I think most families, people say to me all the time, well, I'd love for it to be one income. I'd love to homeschool. I'd love to have a family. We can't afford it. I mean, but you went to Harvard and had a big trust fund. It's easy for you to say. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

No, you didn't have any trust fund and you didn't even go to college. Right. And you worked at Blockbuster and then you told me this last night at dinner. I had no idea. You worked at a couple of Blockbusters. I did, yeah. Yeah. I was an assistant manager. Is that true? I was.

That's how low their standards were towards the end. It was definitely toward the end. I left Blockbuster and then they went out of business shortly thereafter. So you can connect the dots on that one. By the way, it's not the first company you've worked at that's no longer with us, which is interesting. You are. The Destroyer. But how old were you when you got married? 25. Then how long after that did your wife get pregnant with twins?

And in that point, I assume she was raising the twins, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was working. I was making about $40,000 a year at the time. Half that when we first got married. But by the time we had kids, I was making about $40,000 a year. And that was the only income in the family. That was the only income in the family. And no trust fund at all. No, no, no, no. No savings of any kind. You know, this was a time...

There was one time I remember I went to the gas station to get gas and my card was declined, got insufficient funds. I'm in the gas station. I have no money. And the gas tank is empty. Because when you're broke, your gas is always almost empty. And so I had no gas, insufficient funds. And I remember thinking, this is after I had two kids already. This is how broke we were. But I remember thinking, I'm going to have to...

Ask someone at a gas station for money. I'm gonna have to do this. I can't believe I'm gonna have to but I didn't I just started looking under the under the chair for coins And I found about like a buck 50 in coins and I went and paid for gas, a buck 50 worth of gas in coins, enough to get home and then we'll figure out the problem. But anyway, the point is we had no money. We were very broke.

And, you know, money went a little bit farther back then, but not that much farther. I mean, this wasn't 50 years ago, right? How many years ago? This was 11 years ago. 11 years ago. All of us remember 11 years ago. Same country. Yeah, it was the same country. And we had, so we had one, we decided we wanted to have one income. We wanted to have a one income family. So family of four on one income. It was not a high income at all.

It can be done, I think, in most cases. You just have to be willing to make the sacrifices. And a lot of people aren't. And that's fine, too, because you have to decide on what your priorities are. And so you might say, look, it's a priority to us that we... have a big enough house that each person can have their own room. We don't want to share rooms for kids. It's a priority to us that we have two cars, that we can go on vacation, a nice vacation once a year, that we can have two or three.

uh tvs that everyone can have a smart phone with all the plans and we want to have you know we want to have five different streaming subscriptions and we want to be able to eat out whenever we want like That's a priority to us. And if that's a priority, then yeah, in a lot of cases, you're going to need double income. But if you're willing to say, okay, we're going to downsize our home. We're going to share bedrooms.

We're going to have one TV. We're going to have one car. We're going to go on much more modest vacations. And we're going to cut things down to the bone a bit because it's worth it to us. To be able to keep mom at home and to be able to homeschool or whatever it is. So I think if you're willing to say that, a lot of people could do it. But do you think it is worth it? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Why? 100%.

Because a lot of other stuff doesn't matter, really. It's like there's no happiness in that. I think that's clearly true. On the other hand, you know, it's... It's a drag not having enough money. I've had more than enough money most of my life, but I have had periods where Didn't have enough and had to sell stuff. And everyone goes through that. And it's a bummer. It's very hard. Like I said, having gone through it, it's really difficult. I much prefer having money to not having it.

Not at the expense of having someone else raise my kids. So what's the upside of, you know, making the conscious decision to have the mother of your children raise those children? The downside, I mean, you just described it, like you're going to sacrifice in order to get that. But if you do get that, what do you get?

Happiness in the home is a big thing. Not perfectly happy. You're going to have your problems and your struggles, and some of them may be financial, and there can be some real misery that comes from that. I don't deny it. But it's just a fundamentally happier home in my experience. when the children are being raised by their mother, by their parents. The kids are happier and beyond happiness.

you can control how your children are raised and you can raise them with your value system and maintain that, which is... Almost impossible if you're putting your kids in public school, I'd say. It's almost impossible because the kids are going to spend... you know, seven hours a day, nine months a year for 12 or 13 years of their formative years, not with you or your wife in this government indoctrination center around their peers.

And so inevitably, they're going to be absorbing, they're going to start orienting themselves to the world based on that by looking at their peers, not even so much what their teachers are telling them, but what their peers are doing. And that's what's going to happen. So at a certain point, you're going to lose.

You run the risk that you're just going to lose them. And that's why you have these parents who turn around and everything they've instilled in their kids seems to have just gone out the window. And I think this is a big reason why. But then we're told that if you don't do that, if you don't submit to the culture, then your kids are out of step with their peers. They're weird. They never quite fit in. They're just weird. They're weird.

Is that a risk? Is that a meaningful downside? Like, what do you think of that? I don't think it's meaningful. Weird is... There are bad kinds of weird, but this is a good kind of weird. Yeah, I hear this a lot. People will say, well... How do you socialize them? Yeah. How do you socialize them? Do you want to keep your kid in a bubble? Yes. And it's like, yeah, I do. I absolutely want to keep my kids in a bubble. I really do. But are they getting enough porn if they're in that bubble?

Right. Enough porn, enough time on TikTok. I mean, all that sort of thing. That's the point. You are supposed to be providing an environment for your child. to grow and develop and mature physically, morally, spiritually. have a childhood, have actual childhood experiences. I hear from people all the time, people my age and older that say, oh man, I remember when I was a kid and we were outside, we would run around in the woods and we would be outside all the time playing tag.

I just wish my kids had that because kids these days are just on the screens all day. They don't have a real childhood. And I say that your kids can have that. There's no reason why they can't have it. My kids have that. I work in media, and yet my kids have exactly that kind of childhood because we just determined from the beginning that our kids are going to have a real childhood. They are going to run outside and scrape their knees and climb trees.

And that's what they're going to do. That's the kind of childhood they should have. And it is possible to have it. The only difference now is that it has to be a choice. You know, I think 30 years ago... That was just the default. So more than a choice. I mean, you have to organize. Well, you're the one with six kids who are homeschooled. So you tell me, but it sounds from the outside like you have to reorganize your entire life around that goal.

You do. It doesn't happen naturally, right? Right. It doesn't happen naturally. That's why I said it has to be a priority. If it's an actual priority, if you really are lamenting. that kids today don't have a real childhood, which I agree. I think that many of them don't. And I think it's a horrible tragedy. It really is.

But if you really care about that and if it troubles you, then yeah, you have to make it. So what if you, I mean, if you don't mind, if this is too personal, just say stop being so creepy and I will pull back. But if you don't mind, like describe. in specific terms, the steps that you've taken to protect your children and allow them a childhood in a world that would deny them one? Like, what have you done? Well, it starts with...

We don't sign into public school. We have always homeschooled from the beginning, so that's a big step. They don't have phones. They don't have access to any screens except for our family TV. We have a family TV. There's a policy my wife and I have had. since the beginning is we don't do screens. There will be no screens in a room that has a door on it. So we have one TV and it's in a very public area of the house where anyone can hear it when they walk in.

And that's it. So we do have that. Like our kids can watch TV. They can't watch it all day, but they can watch it. And we're going to know anything that they watch. You know, they're not going to just sit there on the TV and choose something and tell us what you want to watch. If it's something I've never heard of, well, you're not watching that until I can watch it first. And they don't have any internet access at all. You know, no phones, no tablet.

Nothing like that. Laptop. No laptop. No computer at all. And our oldest kids are almost 12 now. The only exception we make is if we go on long car rides, which for us is four hours plus. Then we have tablets that are for the car. There's no internet on it. It's books and like educational games. And the tablets have that. And in the car, if it's four plus hours, you can use those tablets. And then when we get to our destination, we're taking the tablets back.

And I've noticed this, that even this little bit of access to that kind of technology that we do give to our kids in the car in this really specific scenario. You see how this, it just has this pull on them. Yeah. And it becomes, especially if it's one, you know, we sometimes go places, it's a 15 hour, 16 hour ride over a couple of days. So during that time, they do have the tablets for a while. They're just, they're jonesing for the cabin. It's like giving them one jelly bean.

They want more. Exactly. Exactly. And I've had to take what some people would consider extreme steps to get them over that. How extreme? Well, to me, it's not extreme because it's like what my dad would have done. But I remember it was last year. We had just come back from a long car ride. And so we took the tablets away. And then my son, it was seven at the time.

freaked out like he want he started screaming that he wanted his tablet yeah and i said no we don't we're not that family we don't we don't have seven-year-olds screaming about tablets we're not going to do that And so I said, come here, bud, come over here. I brought him over to where our trash can is in the kitchen. And I said, here's where the tablet's going. It's in the trash.

And that's it. We're throwing it away. You're not getting it back. Did he have a funeral for it? You know, emotionally in his heart, he did. He was shocked. He was distraught. But we threw it away. I didn't give it back to him. It went in the trash. And like a year later, he got a new one for the car. And he freaked out and about 10 minutes later, he was fine. And he was running around outside.

Using a stick like a lightsaber or whatever. But it shows you why most parents, despite, I think, wanting to do what you do, I do think a lot of parents will hear this and say, man, I would like to do that or I should have done that. But the reason they don't is the pushback from the kids is really intense. Denying kids.

electronics, denying them what all of their peers, what all their friends have, like it's hard. It is hard. It is hard. And especially if it's easier, we have it a little bit easier because our kids are homeschooled. And most of their friends are like homeschool Christian families. And most of them are on the same page. Not all of them, but most of them are. And it does make it easier. It certainly does. If your kid's in public school, it's going to be a lot harder because they are.

There, there's a whole culture, you know, that comes out of these, out of the screens, out of the devices. There's a language that comes out of it. And when I, when I see one of my kids, like one of the 12 year olds. or the eight-year-old around one of their peers who are not part of the homeschool community, but just like a kid from public school or something.

The difference is stark. It really is in every way. The way that they speak, like I said, they have a different language that they pick up. The way that they carry themselves. i think a lot of these kids are a lot more just sort of jaded and cynical they seem a lot harder to impress They're overstimulated. They're not interested in things outside of the screen. You know, my son, my 12-year-old son is... And I was the same way when I was his age. I'm still this way.

But he goes through these phases where he becomes really obsessed with a certain topic. And it changes. It'll change every four to six months. He picks a new topic that he's just obsessed with. It's the only thing he cares about is this topic. And it could be anything from, he went through a phase where he was obsessed with Native American culture. It could be Lord of the Rings. It could be anything. You know, he did a dinosaur thing, as a lot of boys do. Anyway.

So when he's around his friends or he's around other kids, he wants to talk about whatever that is. He wants to talk about this thing that he's really interested in. And he'll learn everything there is to know about it. He'll end up knowing more about the subject than I do. I'm learning from him about it.

But I'll be around these other kids and he wants to, that's what he wants to talk about. He wants to talk about, hey, let me tell you this really interesting thing I learned. And with some of these kids, they'll look at him like he's, like he's weird, you know, because that's just not. They don't do that. They want to talk about you know, the Minecraft movie or whatever, you know. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but the idea you have any privacy online at all is not.

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You get an extra four months for free when you use this show's link. Scan the QR code on the screen or go to expressvpn.com slash Tucker and get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free. ExpressVPN.com slash Tucker. What do you think of video games? I've gotten a lot of trouble with some in my audience. You're not allowed to criticize video games or marijuana. Those are the two things I'm not allowed to criticize. You really can't. You really can't. Which to me only...

validates a lot of the criticisms that people are that attached to it. Because here's my thing with video games. I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with them. We don't do video games with our kids because it's a screen-based activity. And we've just decided that our kids are not going to have a childhood dominated by screens. And so we're just not going to do that. That's a decision that we made. But there's nothing intrinsically wrong with them. I think I would...

A lot of the gamers, they'll, anytime I offer some mild criticism of, you know, video games or anything. What's your mild criticism? It's not about the game itself. It's about the attachment to it. You know, it's about revolving your whole life around it. And so when we get into this conversation, the video game fans will say to me, well, this is no different. You know, you're a football fan, which I am. I'm a big NFL fan.

And they say, well, what's the difference between playing a video game and watching football on a Sunday afternoon? And I think that's a valid point. I think that there probably is little difference. I think there's a little bit of a difference, but not much. And I would say the same thing about being a sports fan, that it's fine to like sports. I do. I love football. It shouldn't dominate your life. And there are people out there who just their sports fandom is the central.

thing about them. It's their whole personality. And that's excessive. That should not be your personality. Your affinity for some group of guys playing a game should not be your personality. It shouldn't be your identity. And that's my point about video games. That's it. So that's why I say it's a very mild criticism. You want to play the games? That's fine. You don't need my permission.

But it should not be the central fact of your life. It shouldn't be your number one priority. You shouldn't have in... an attachment to it. You shouldn't have an excessive attachment to it. That's it. And I think that's pretty reasonable. You know, why are people touchy about that? People are, they, it's part of the culture. People take their, people take their entertainment and the recreation very seriously.

And I think for a lot of people, that is the central fact of their identity. And so they kind of take it personally. They take it as a personal attack, which is not how I mean it. Where are you on marijuana? Awful. I think it's terrible. I used to have a more kind of libertarian view of it. Yeah. If you were to go back 10 years, 15 years, my view was I don't like it personally, but you were never a weed smoker. I've had it. I've never been years and years and years ago. Not in adulthood.

It's not for me. It's not for me. And my view used to be, well, it's not for me, but... Probably all this, I kind of bought into the war on drugs thing and all this money that we're spending to try to stop people from smoking it is a waste. And so it should probably just be legal, even if I don't like it. There's this argument. from the marijuana fans that, well, it's no different than alcohol. And we know how prohibition of alcohol worked out.

And so if we're going to allow people to go out and get a drink, why shouldn't they be able to go out? It worked out pretty well, I think. I think cirrhosis deaths went way down, didn't they? I mean, they did. Yeah, I'm not convinced by the argument for that reason. I'm also not entirely convinced that alcohol and marijuana are... are comparable uh for one thing and alcohol can be really bad and there's addiction and it destroys it can destroy families and lives alcohol is though

At least a more social, it's a social lubricant. So. If you're with a group of people and you're having a drink, it can help you have, kind of loosen up, you have a better time, as long as you're not being excessive. Now, if somebody gets trashed, then it kind of ruins the time for everyone, and that can happen. I think marijuana is not like that. It kind of turns you inward. It makes you antisocial.

You know, so if you're sitting around a table with some people and a couple of them are drinking a beer, even if you're not drinking, you can have a perfectly nice time. But if you're sitting around a table and a couple of the people are stoned. It's lame. You don't even want to talk to that person. They've got nothing to contribute. Yeah. It does seem to isolate people. Yeah, I think it's isolating. I think it turns you inward. But regardless of all that, my opinion was...

Yeah, it should probably just be legal. But I also believe in when you get new data, you get new facts, you need to analyze them. You need to be willing to change your mind. And so we have legalized it in many places across the country, in many cities. And I've been to these cities, as many of us have, where weed is now, it's like cigarettes were 30 years ago. Everybody's smoking. And I think the early returns are not good.

You don't think Denver and New York are pretty great? I really don't. I think it's quite terrible. It's not all because of weed, but just the experience of walking around, everybody's high, it reeks of weed everywhere. How has this made anyone's life better? That's my question. That's what I want to know. I'd be willing to adjust my view on this. And I've asked this question before. I haven't gotten a satisfactory answer. But we've made weed legal in a lot of these places.

In what way has it measurably improved life anywhere now that it's legal? Well, I don't know. I mean, it's degraded people to the point where they're very used to control. Don't you think that's an upside? So if you're like running a criminal enterprise posing as a government and you don't want people to rebel violently against you, then you give them drugs so they won't.

And if I was in a position of power politically, then maybe I'd feel that way. But for me, that does take three steps back. Like, what is this? the whole population is like addled with something, you know? Ladies are on benzos, the kids are on amphetamines, the young men are on weed. Like, no one's in his right mind, but everybody's kind of grooving out.

to his own music and testosterone levels have just like dropped to the floor. And so probably not going to have an insurrection when everyone's high, right? Yeah. It makes people compliant. It makes them, uh, even more than I think people just sort of naturally are these days. And of course, in reality, these are all bad things. So it kind of goes back to... How has it made anyone's life better? And I don't know. I'm a simple person. Maybe I can be guilty of being simplistic sometimes.

so if that's the case then guilty is charged but to me it's like I think a policy is bad. If it makes people's lives worse and doesn't improve anything. What if it works in theory? What if it's a beautiful theory? Well, theories are great. Then we can talk about it. Then it's a lot of fun to talk about. It's like that famous DeGaulle line, which I think is probably fake.

We know it works in practice. The question is, does it work in theory? Yeah. And I do feel like that's in operation in the United States. It's like, well, you know, people have the right to X, Y, or Z. Therefore, we're doing this. And it's like.

actually, that's a disaster. But people have a right. You know what I mean? It's like there's no reference point in reality there. It's just like the theory makes sense. Let's go with it. Yeah, and that's why I increasingly, when people start talking about their rights, It doesn't mean a lot to me. I don't even know what people mean when they say it. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but...

The next time someone says, well, I have a right to this, just ask them, what do you mean you have a right to it? What does that mean? Oh, I know. They don't know what they're saying. I think the vast majority of people talking about their rights, if you ask them to define the word right,

They would not be able to do it. Define anywhere. What's white supremacy? What's racism? What's anti-Semitism? What is any word used as a cudgel to make people be quiet and control them? No one ever is forced to define what the term means. Right. In fact, there are even laws that I'm, you know, around those questions that are laws. They carry punishments. And the term is never defined. Yeah. I just, I feel like this is a trend where language.

isn't used to communicate, it's used to control and therefore it has to remain not fully defined. Right. And that's why I think All I can do in response to that is if it's one of these terms that doesn't mean anything anymore, then it, then. It's not persuasive to me in an argument. Right. It's a term that has become not useful. And it may have been useful at a time. It may even be a term that used to have a definition or should have a definition. Right.

But there are a lot of terms that are just not useful anymore in a conversation because they don't clarify anything. Wait, what? Well. rights, that's one. I'm not saying rights don't exist. I'm saying it's not a useful term in a conversation most of the time. Because when somebody says, oh, I have a right to this. I don't know what they mean by that, and I think they don't know what they mean by that.

I don't think they care, actually. But also racism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, any of the isms, these are not useful terms anymore. Because when you're calling someone racist. That doesn't tell me anything about him, actually. It could be. If you're pointing to a guy saying that guy's racist, maybe he thinks that all black people are inferior and should be enslaved. That's racist. So maybe that's what you're telling me about him.

But you could be trying to tell me that that's a guy who understands that young black males are disproportionately violent. And he has pointed that out. So you could be using the term to describe that also, which is not actually racist at all. So when you say racist, I don't know what you mean. So it's just, it's not a useful term. You need to be more specific. It means something I don't like.

Right. Like something that gets in my way. Right. Yeah, exactly. You're saying there's something about that guy that I don't like. Yeah, I want this thing and you're between me and this thing. And how do I get you out of my way? How do I incapacitate or destroy you so I can get what I want? You're racist or any of those other terms. Right. You're in the way. Exactly.

I should have asked you this, but I'm interested if you don't mind. What is your spiritual practice at home? Like you educate your children, you and your wife, I assume your wife primarily, educate your children. But as head of household, how do you think about your requirements as like the spiritual leader of your home? Yeah, we're Catholic. So, and we pray together every night as a family, which I think is, and we can get lazy about that. I think a lot of families do, but I think it's.

Really important. Doesn't have to be anything. It doesn't need to be a two-hour routine. But you say your prayers before bed. Right. As a family. All of you. All eight of you. Yeah. Well, not the babies. The two-year-olds, they get out of it for now. But basically, you've got a whole congregation. Yeah, we do. Yeah. I think it's important to be on your knees. This is just a bodily... Physically? Yeah, physically on our knees. Why? Because it's a...

a symbol of humility and submission before God. You don't have to be on your knees to pray. There's a perfectly valid prayer if you're not on your knees. But if you can, I think you should be. And I think it's a good image. For the kids to see. It's a good image. It's good for my kids to see me on my knees praying. It's good for them to see. Why? Because to my kids, I am the authority figure in the home. I don't answer to anybody in the home. I don't have to ask anyone's permission for anything.

And I'm ultimately like the source of discipline in the home as the father, as I should be. But for them to see that, oh, even that guy, even dad. who in the home, this is his castle, but even he is showing submission and obedience and humility. towards some power above him. I think that's a really powerful image for my kids to have and that I had with my own dad growing up. So we do that.

I think I'm at the point where it's kind of like my whole ideology, my political ideology at this point is that I want my kids to go to heaven. I want my kids to go to heaven and I want them to be good and happy people. That's what I want. So everything that we do in the home, and we're not perfect, we don't get this right perfectly, not even close to it, but everything we do in the home should be tailored towards that end. To help our kids be good and happy people.

And that's also, those are the policies that I support. Those are my politics. Sounds like Christian nationalism, Matt. Guilty as charged. I'm a nationalist, I'm a Christian, so. Another term I have never heard defined. Well, that's, wow, what an interesting way to frame it. What a great way to frame it. What do you think of as your duties as a husband and father? I think it's... You know, we talked about gender roles. So I do believe that the father should be the provider in more ways than one.

You know, you're providing financially, like bringing home the bacon is a really important part of that. And I think that the father should do that. But you're also providing... Safety. Security. You're protecting. Protecting.

And, you know, I know when you say that, it sounds like, well, that's easy because like, what are the chances that I'm actually going to have to fight off some bad guy that breaks in the house? It's not, it could happen. It's not impossible. They're increasingly high, actually. Yeah, increasingly high. But I haven't had to do it yet. And maybe I'll never have to do it. I hope I never have to do it.

But it's not just about that. You know, as a man, you should be, I believe, a stabilizing presence to your family. Like when they're around you, they should just feel safer and calmer. And not necessarily because they're worried that a bad guy is going to, that's part of it, but it's not just that. Like they're, they're. The world's a confusing place. The world is a dark place. Everyone has anxieties. And when you're there, they should just feel calmer and better having you around.

And if something goes wrong, if there's, you know, the shit hits the fan, there's a problem. they should be able to know that, okay, well, thank God dad's here. Or thank God my husband's here. And I think that's one of the central duties of a father, which means that... We've gotten away from, in large part in this society, we've gotten away from, we don't talk about stoicism as a virtue anymore at all.

No one really talks about that. I happen to believe in it a lot. I may take it a little bit too far. Maybe I err too much in that direction. But if you had cancer, you wouldn't tell anybody? Correct. I admire that. Yeah. It's easy to say, but I think if I was dying of cancer right now, you would not know. I would never tell anybody. Why?

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shopbeam.com slash Tucker, the code Tucker for up to 47% off in honor of President Trump, an American company, a great product. I have seen this firsthand, including recently, and I vehemently agree with you. And I think it's, I think it's a gender specific thing. I think that's a man's burden. Absolutely. But I, and I, again, I, I've seen it in a very profound way. It changed my life actually seeing it.

But I haven't thought through why it's important, but I know that it is. It sounds like you have thought through why that's important. Why is it? Well, it goes back to what I said, that as the man... You should be a stabilizing protective force in the house. You should be a calming force in the house for your family. You should be relieving their anxieties to the extent that you can. If you are verbalizing all of your many complaints and your anxieties,

then you've inverted that. Now you're looking to your wife and your children to sort of carry that burden for you. It's your emotional support animals. Right, right. And you're turning to them to carry this. That's totally right. And I just I don't I don't believe in that. And I think that. It is. It's just different. You know, women, it's not the same for a woman. I think that women are much more relational. Women share. They're feminine. We used to say the fairer, gentler sex.

And so it's just a different thing. And I also think for women. Now, most women, I think I've been conditioned that they aren't allowed to say this part out loud. But I think it's true that they also don't really want a man who's going to. complain and open up to them too much. Can you say that one more time? At a higher volume because I think that people need to, men need to hear this.

Right. Women will... We have been conditioned to believe that opening up and sharing your emotions is just a good thing. Crying in front of your girlfriend. Right. She really wants you to cry. That's what we've been told. And your girlfriend might... might tell you that. She might tell you, oh, you know what? I really want you to open up more. But what's she thinking inside? Right. He's such a bitch. Yes. That's why you never cry in front of your wife or your girlfriend. Like, never.

I mean, in the rarest of cases. You have a close family member dies. That's one thing. your daughter walking down the aisle. But other than that, just never cry in front of them. especially not because you're stressed out because you're just dealing with some kind of anxiety. And people think that this is extreme or they want to pretend that, well, if women can cry, the men can cry. But just imagine a scenario.

And it's, the weather gets really bad and then you get lost. Maybe the GPS goes out and, and you're lost. Weather's bad. It's really stressful. One of those stressful things is that it's dark, you know. It would not be uncommon in that scenario for, if you're with your wife, she might start crying. Like she's very nervous. She starts crying. Oh my gosh, we're lost. What are we going to do? And that would not be an uncommon thing. And as a man, you don't think less of your wife for that.

Hopefully you're there to comfort her and say, no, I got this. We're going to be fine. We got it. Now you as the man, if you started crying because you're stressed out and lost and it's dark and it's raining and you don't know where you're going.

and your wife saw that, she will never look at you the same way again. She will always remember that. She'll remember the time when it was stressful and she needed you to take over and be in control and figure it out. And you started crying like a little bitch. And I think we, again, I think we all intuitively understand that. We understand that it's, okay, in that scenario, for the woman to cry is normal. For the man to cry, it's ridiculous. It's shameful.

But it's interesting that you said at the outset, we've been told the opposite. And it's almost like... that all the ingredients in a successful marriage and family, and in fact, in a successful life, have been systematically targeted. by the people in charge and their proxies.

for destruction. So like everything you need to know to have a successful life has been undermined. Like, no, you definitely cry in front of your wife, like show your feelings. No, she should go get a higher paying job than you. Like you should do more of the housework. Like you need to be the woman actually in the relationship. No, it's totally fine to spend all Saturday playing video games while getting high or whatever.

We're getting not just like three degrees off good advice, but we're getting 180 degrees opposite advice. It's like our society, I'm not, it's not like our society has been targeted intentionally for destruction. And I'm wondering why, where does that come from? If you read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which came out, I think in the early 60s, you know, over 50 years ago, that book.

is like a recipe for destroying a society and yet it was promoted. That's sort of the root of modern feminism. What is that? Is it spiritual? Are these like spiritual forces working to destroy the West? Are they? Do you have any clue? It's so comprehensive. Everything you said is the opposite of what your kids are taught in school. It's certainly a spiritual attack. This all feels demonic because it is, in my opinion.

It's all an effort, I think, to destroy the family, to upend the fundamental societal institution, which is the family. Because all of the nefarious forces that want to control us. I want to control what we do, control what we think, control what our children think. The family is an enemy to them. The family is the one thing standing in the way. Yeah.

And so it's all about destroying the family. Even the things that seem little, like it's okay to cry in front of your wife. No, it's not. It's not. And that again, that's an attack on the family because if a man takes that advice. and starts acting feminine and emotional, it's going to hurt his marriage. It might destroy his marriage. Yes. And so that's the ultimate goal. And I think a lot of it, I mean, you mentioned feminism. I think a lot of this does go back to feminism. I think that

It was way more destructive than any plague in history. Feminism, by far and away, is the most destructive ideology in human history. It's not even close. I agree with that. Why do you say that? Well... Let's start with the body count. 60 million dead babies since Roe just in this country. And if we're talking worldwide, you know. Hundreds of millions. But in this country, 60 million children were killed through abortion, which is the feminist sacrament.

So you don't even need to go beyond that. That's kind of enough, I think, to make the point. But of course you can. Ever since feminism took hold. divorce rates have skyrocketed, birth rates have plummeted. We're watching the disintegration of the family unit in real time. And people are less happy. They're unhappy. I mean, as much as there's this cliche kind of image of the 1950s housewife who, you know, was depressed and all the Hollywood films are always like.

With this image of the housewife was depressed and she was on whatever drugs secretly. You know, the husband was off having sex with the secretary. And most of that is just Hollywood. It's a Hollywood cartoon. And in reality. It's kind of the opposite. Now is when all that is happening. The women are depressed, anxiety riddled, on antidepressants. Men too. So birth rates plummeting, 60 million dead babies, divorce rates skyrocketed. People are unhappy. They're on antidepressants.

You don't need to go much farther. No, you don't. So let's say you're emerging from adolescence into the world you're describing now. You're 18, 18-year-old male, American-born. What's your program? What's your advice to that kid? How do you make your way in this world? What do you do? How do you live a happy, meaningful life that gets you in the end to heaven, given that you're facing these cultural headwinds? What would you do if you're 18 right now?

I would do the same thing that I, a version of what I did do. You know, the roadmap is the same. Some of the obstacles are different. Some of the challenges are harder. Not all of them. In some ways, it's, you know, there are some things that are easier about today than 300 years ago, certainly. So a lot of the challenges might be different, but the basic path is the same.

you can't give up on it because to give up on it is, is despair. I mean, that's just giving up. So hold fast to your faith. Number one. Number two. Figure out what your vocation is, you know, and... And, you know, you'll have a professional vocation, something you're supposed to be doing with your life and go and pursue that no matter what it is and no matter how hard it is. And also keep in mind that if you're 18 years old, and I say this to younger guys all the time.

In many ways, I admit I'm quite happy that I'm not 18 years old, 20 years old in this environment. I am happy for that. And I'm certainly happy. Thank God that I'm already married. Certainly. But you do have one huge advantage, one enviable advantage, which is the same advantage that every young man has had, that you're young, you're hopefully physically healthy. You're not married, you have no kids, you have no dependents. So you can, it's very low stakes. You can go anywhere and try anything.

Right? Like you don't, if you're looking around and saying, well, there are no jobs in my town. I can't find any jobs. Go to a different town. Go anywhere. If you end up living in your car for a week or two months, it's not great. That sucks, but you can do that because it's just you. Now, for me, when I got six kids, so if things fall apart for me...

it's much higher stakes. And it's not as simple as I can't just like go anywhere and try to do anything. At this point, I can't just like, okay, well, I'll go get a job at McDonald's. It's not going to work. I got all these kids to take care of. But for you, you can go anywhere and do anything and you can take risks. And if it doesn't work out, it'll be hard, but it won't be disastrous. So that's one thing.

And that's whatever your professional vocation is. But there's the personal vocation that I think for all men is the same, which is that every man is called to be a father. Every man. For most men, that will come in the form of biological fatherhood. Not all. There are other forms of fatherhood. There's spiritual fatherhood. I think some men are called to religious life. If you're Catholic, called to the priesthood. You don't get married, but you are still a father in a spiritual sense.

But every man is called to fatherhood in some sense. No man is called to live for himself only and serve only himself. No man is called to live a life where they... Go to work, come home, play video games, have no one depending on them, no one that they love. No one is called to that life.

So go and pursue that. You know, go pursue that and go pursue it fearlessly and know what you're looking for and realize that there are a lot of women who are also looking for the same thing. I hear from... conservative Christian men all the time saying,

I'm conservative. I'm Christian. There are no good women left. Yes. There are no women out there who share my values. Constantly you hear that. But I also hear from women all the time who are conservative Christians saying, I'm conservative. I'm Christian. There are no good men. There are no men who share my values. And I'm like, well, you guys, you're both out there. You both exist. I know you're out there.

So you just have to pursue it and pursue it fearlessly and know what you're looking for. And don't waste your time. As a man, don't waste your time with women who you know don't share your fundamental values. When I met my wife, we got engaged six months later, we got engaged. So it was a quick, it was quick. And we talked about, on our first date, we talked about everything. We talked about religion, politics. Everything. Just got it all out in the open.

Because at that point, we were both, you know, I was 25, she was 24. But so young. You're getting old. Yeah. But by today's standards, that's, you know, young to be getting married. but we didn't want to we just didn't want to waste time like what's the what's the point If our fundamental values don't align, then this can only end in heartbreak. So there's no point. I'm not gonna waste my time. I'm not gonna waste two years of my life dating this person when there's no future.

And I know for a fact that the heartbreak is coming. It's the only way it can end. And I'm just delaying it for no apparent reason. I'm not going to do that. We laid all that out really early on. People ask, well, how do you know that someone's values align with yours? Ask them. That's one way to find out. Now, somebody can lie, but you can weed out a lot of people just by asking. And then, and then after you've done that and you go to the polygraph stage, right? Polygraph.

That's where dating comes in and you get to know them a little bit. It doesn't have to be that long. You don't need to date them for five years. It doesn't take that long to get to know someone, to know what they're really about, I think. And if somebody is a total fraud, if they're a terrible person, most people are not good at hiding it.

Like I think most of us can tell. I could talk to someone for two hours or less. Of course. I could talk to someone for 20 minutes. Easily. And if you're dating someone for six months, that's more than enough time. I mean, all the time you spend with them. it's more than enough time to figure out what they're really about. So, and it's still possible. And that's my main message to young men is that You know, there's this kind of, what do they call it?

MGTOW, men go their own way movement online among some right-wing men in the manosphere. What does that mean, men go their own way? I guess it basically means the whole system is rigged against men. and the family courts are rigged everything's rigged it's all true which is true yeah that's true i don't deny it what i deny is their conclusion which is that It's hopeless. Men just need to go their own way, do their own thing. Like, go be gay?

I don't think that they would. Sounds pretty gay to me. To me, it does. To me, it does. I think in practice, I don't know if it involves that in practice. I think often practice just means go get a job, live your life on your own and give up on the hope. With no girls? Yeah. Give up on the hope of ever having a happy marriage because it's not possible. So wake up by yourself every day? Exactly. That sounds like a lot of fun.

And that's despair. It's also weak. I mean, look, I think everything is rigged against men, obviously, particularly white men, obviously. But okay, then, you know, you've had tough tasks before. Make it your job, your duty to help fix it. Give the middle finger to the people who are oppressing you and be happy. Build a great, happy life. decent children like that's the greatest possible yeah counter attack that's exactly right and that's exactly the right message is

When someone says, well, everything's rigged, it's not fair. It's really hard. I might fail. Right. Okay. That's the answer. Yeah. Yes, you're right. Okay. What now? Now that we've established that, now that we've established how bad it is, which we have. What's next? What are you going to do tomorrow? Now, we're all on the same page. It's rigged. It sucks. It's bad. I hate it. I wish it wasn't this way.

And yeah, even after everything I just said, you could still get married and somehow you end up with a sociopath who was able to hide it. which I think is rare, but it can happen. And then you have kids and she cheats on you and she takes the kids. She ruins your life. Yep. Yep. I've seen all that. That can happen. Yep. Okay, now that we've established all of that, when you wake up in the morning tomorrow, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do with that information? What are you actually going to do with your life? You're going to say to yourself, I'm not afraid because I'm a man. I get hit by a bus. I could. Get ALS, like the number of bad endings that are possible in your life is just like limitless. And by the way, the end will be bad. Like you're going to die in pain and afraid. OK, we know that. But knowing all of that, you still like.

have to be courageous and just jump face first into it anyway. I mean, that's kind of the whole point, right? Right. And especially when you have kids. Once you have kids, the possibility... of tragedy increases exponentially oh yeah well i mean now now you because before it was like all the tragic things that can happen to you now it's what are all the tragic things that can happen to my kids oh yeah

And then times that by however many kids you have. Yeah. And then you've got your wife. And it's like, there are so many horrible ways that this could go. Oh, yeah. And may. Right. But then if any of that happens, what's the end result? The end result could be misery and despair. Okay, so then your solution is just to embrace misery and despair at the outset because you're afraid that it might happen? I agree. And I and I by the end, you know, I would rather.

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Well, you are going to end up miserable in some tragic scenario at some point. That's just a fact. Like, we shouldn't hide that from ourselves, actually. Like, something horrible is going to happen to you, for sure. You're going to get the diagnosis of someone you love is going to get the diagnosis, or worse. And the whole point is, you know, you're a dad. You're not afraid. Yeah.

Right? I mean, you're running toward the sound of gunfire and away from it. That's like your whole role. Yeah, I totally agree. That's, of all the unpopular messages that we've talked about, that's probably the most unpopular. Why? that like it's going to end in tragedy no matter what we're all going to die like we're all going to die Oh yeah, it's bad.

It's bad. That's the thing that nobody wants to think about and talk about. We should probably think about it and talk about it a lot more than we do. Oh, the more you think about it, the lighter you're bearing and the more cheerful you are. I was reading someone recently who said, you know, meditating on death every day is the most certain way to joy and cheerfulness and lightness. I think that's right. I kind of agree with that. I mean, I read a book

There's a book that was written years ago called Denial of Death. You ever read that? No. And I'm blanking on the name of the guy who wrote it. It'll come to me. But anyway, the book is called Denial of Death. I don't agree with, it's kind of psychoanalytical. There's a lot of psychobabble in it. It was written by an author who ironically wrote this book, published it.

One, I believe a Pulitzer and died and died of cancer. I think he didn't know that he had it when he wrote this book, but then he published the book and he died. But anyway, his, his, his kind of theory was that. Like all of modern society is actually fundamentally set up. to distract us from the fact that we're going to die. Of course. That terror of death is what drives everything. And he takes that farther than I would probably take it, but...

I think there's actually a lot of truth to that. I remember I read this book and I, and I, and I, and I, and I could see a lot of that in my own, in my own life. But then I, I, I discovered that, that once I, once I started actually thinking about that and meditating on it. Maybe not literally meditating, but really thinking about it.

I did become, I became less fearful somehow of it. Of course, because you've looked the monster in the face and like accepted, you know, there is something snuffling under your bed. You know, okay. So how have your, well, two part question. How have your views changed? And how has the definition, speaking of definitions of conservatism changed in say the past 20 years? Let's start with you. I don't know that any of my views have...

They haven't fundamentally changed. I've become more radical. I've certainly become radicalized on pretty much every issue. I'm just farther to the right on everything. My whole life I've just been, I started on the right. I come from a conservative Catholic family. And so I'm already starting like way over here.

Everything that's happened in the country and also in my personal life has only just moved me farther and farther. So that's the only way that my views. Where does that lead at the end? Like, what's your view of Francisco Franco? Where does it lead in the end? I don't know. So if you start right and you keep going right, where do you wind up? Are we still filming is the question.

Where is the 80-year-old Matt Walsh on the issues? That'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to check in. I'll be long gone. But I think, so that's my own personal trajectory. The definition of conservatism, though, has only changed in that I think it's... It has no definition. We talked about the words that don't mean anything anymore. Words that used to be useful and maybe used to mean something and they just don't anymore because of how they've been misused and abused and overused.

And I think conservatism is another one of those words. When you tell me now that someone is conservative... I don't, it doesn't tell me a lot about them. I don't know what you mean. It generally means I'm not going to like them. Yeah, well. They're going to be some kind of fraud, you know, on the internet. False prophecy. That's kind of what I think. That's my gut reaction. So discredited has that word become. But I mean, what.

The reason I ask this, it's a moving target. Of course, it means something different in every generation or maybe every year. But because Donald Trump just got elected after four, probably the worst four years since the American Civil War. Under Joe Biden, there is this like large group, tens of millions of people who are aligned in this thing, this movement, this block of voters, this ideology. And what is it and how has it changed?

These are big questions, Matt. So I'm going to give you a second to pause. Okay. Because I don't know what it is exactly is my point. I don't know what it is. I think it's, I know what it isn't, I think. So one thing that unites us is that we have this general idea of wokeness, leftism, whatever you want to call it. so i think we all have that in common you know we when we look at a

a woman with blue hair and a nose piercing, everyone on the right, we could look at that woman and we could say, we probably don't like her. And we probably don't agree with anything she thinks. So we don't agree with the blue hairs. That's one thing we have in common. And the main thing that we don't agree with them on is that we think free speech is like a foundational concept, the foundational concept of the United States.

And if you have an opinion, you ought to be able to express it. And I thought this was what everybody agreed on. I thought that's why they voted for Trump. Shows you how dumb I am. And then I wake up and I see these people, many of whom I know, scolding. Rogan, me, just scolding in general. You're not supposed to platform that person or that set of ideas or that those are words that shouldn't be spoken.

And I'm like, you know, we're 100 days into this and already people I thought were on my side are mad because of. Like naughty words or concepts or ideas or questions. Questions. Literally people in the so-called right are mad. about asking questions. It's like a parody or something. I thought that's like we made fun of the left. Like they'd be like, just asking questions. Your questions are more than questions. They're assaults on me.

And I'm literally hearing people on the right say that about me. So it pisses me off. But it's not just me. Like, what the hell is going on? Yeah, I don't take you seriously. If you use the word platforming. Yeah. Negative. I don't take you seriously. I've already lost respect for you. I agree. To me, that's a leftist thing. To me, that's the blue. When I think of the blue hair woman with the nose piercing.

I think of her as someone who scolds you for why did you platform that person? Well, that's why I don't like her. In all things being cool, I'd feel sorry for her. She's got blue hair and a nose ring. There's no man who loves her. I feel sad for her. That would be my default view. The only reason I don't like her is because she's scolding me for platforming people she doesn't agree with. Right.

Well, I don't like her for a lot of other reasons too, but I don't feel so true. You're a lot nicer than me. But yes, so using that term as like a pejorative. as this forbidden thing, that should be a leftist. I mean, that should be one of the quintessential, we think about wokeness, that's one of the quintessential features of wokeness, whatever that is exactly. is this idea you don't want to platform people. I just don't agree with it. I mean, what is...

What does that even mean? And also, usually when someone is accused of platforming someone else, It's like it doesn't even make sense to begin with because the person that they're saying is being platformed already had a platform. We all have platforms. We're out there saying what we think already. So usually when they say platforming, what they really mean is...

You talked to that person. It's not that we don't want you to platform that person. They already had a platform. We don't want you to speak to that person. And have any kind of conversation with them. But what they're really trying to do is set guardrails around my mind.

and treat me like a slave, a non-human being. They're trying to tell me you're not allowed to think certain things. And I reserve the right, I think it's an absolute right to think whatever I want, A. B, if you disagree with what I think, it's incumbent on you to convince me that I'm wrong.

My views are naughty. The person I'm talking to is naughty. They're discredited. They're bad. I mean, that's like a species of religion and a false religion, I would say. And yet I'm seeing that impulse, that reveals a way of thinking that is totalitarian. and low and dumb and embarrassing and that I associate with the left, but I'm seeing it everywhere on the right. Like, what the? I'm trying not to use the F word. What the heck is going on, Malone?

Like if I disagree with you, Matt Walsh, I would say I disagree with you and here's why. Right. And I would pay you the respect of taking your ideas seriously and trying to dissuade you from those ideas. I would not say how dare you, Matt Walsh, think that. Because that's insulting not simply to you, but I'm insulting my own intelligence. That's how dumb people communicate, right? Yeah.

And I believe in free speech in principle. So people should, and to me, free speech is, it's not a complicated thing. idea. Free speech means that you have the freedom to express whatever opinion or perspective you want. Now that doesn't extend to things like, in my mind, hardcore pornography. That's not speech. That's not an opinion that's being expressed. That is digital prostitution.

But if it's an opinion, if you're just sending a message about what you believe, you should be able to do that, period. So that's the first thing. But then also strategically. When you start complaining about platforming, it's a bad strategy because when you point to someone and you say, that person shouldn't be platformed.

All you're doing, if you're worried about what that person is saying, all you're doing is making people more interested in what that person says. I know I'm that way. If I hear... that there's a controversy because so-and-so was platformed. And I've never heard of that person. I immediately say, oh, what's this person all about? I got to look into them. Yeah. I always do that.

Oh, I take it one step farther and then book the person on the show. Yeah. Yeah, always. Of course. Because it's like, whatever it is you said that upsets people, I'm interested because people are so upset. I might not agree with it, but I'm interested. And I just reject in principle. Like if you are telling me that I shouldn't hear that person or talk to them or take them seriously or listen to their ideas. Just in principle, I want to say, no, F you. Now I'm going to listen even more.

Now I'm going to listen to a two-hour podcast that I wouldn't have listened to otherwise just because you said that. Exactly. And especially if you don't explain the person's ideas and why they're wrong. I mean, I think a lot of ideas are wrong and there are a lot of poisonous people out there. selling crap, poisonous crap.

I completely agree with that. I just think it's important. It's essential. It should be required to explain why it's wrong, not just that it's bad. What did you think of the debate? A lot of this kind of broke through the surface in the debate. between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray on Rogan a couple of weeks ago. Did you watch that? I did. I ended up watching. I wasn't planning on watching the whole thing, but I watched the whole thing. over the course of a few days. It was a long debate.

You know, I have a different, I come in with a different perspective than maybe some people who are really interested in the debate in that I don't have a dog in the fight. I don't. Everyone is... I'm constantly hearing from the peanut gallery demanding that I... kind of give my verdict or my take on Israel and Israel versus Palestine and all this kind of stuff. And I have given my take. And my take is I don't care that much.

So I just don't care that much. I'm not just America first. I'm an American chauvinist in that I only care about my own country. I honestly don't care about other countries. I wish them well. I don't wish any of them, I don't wish them ill. I wish the people of other countries well. I think they all have a right to defend themselves and they should. I think that if you can't defend yourself as a nation or if you can't survive without... being propped up by another government, say ours.

then you shouldn't exist as a country. That's just the way of the world. Wait, wait, wait. If you can't exist without being propped up by another government, say ours, you shouldn't exist. Israel cannot exist without being propped up by the United States. You think so? Its nuclear program came from the United States. Its weapons come from the United States. Its economy is supported by the United States. I'm not attacking Israel. I'm just saying in point of fact, I think that's true.

And, I mean, Israel thinks it's true or they wouldn't have armies of lobbyists and influencers in the United States. Bibi wouldn't have shown up twice in the past three months. Yeah. I mean, the way... From my perspective, it seems like they can handle themselves quite fine. But any country, if there is any country out there that fundamentally cannot exist without being subsidized by American taxpayers.

Then not only should that country not exist, but that country already does not exist. It's not really. That's interesting. It's not really a country. Right. No, it's. And unless we want to go back to the old way, which was back in the bad old days when we did real empires. You know, if you want to just be conquered and you're going to be a vassal state of ours and we're going to sort of own you, then that's one system. But we don't really do that, at least not directly anymore.

Can I just ask you, that's such an interesting, not only does it have no right to exist, it already doesn't exist. It's not a real country. Yeah, not a real country. Any country that that's true of. Yeah. Now, I'm not convinced at all that that is true of Israel. I'm not convinced at all. I mean, I don't know either, by the way. And I think Israel seems like a perfectly functional and strong country.

including with a strong economy that goes up and down. But basically, I mean, they have a robust tech sector. They've got a lot going for them. And so... I think I kind of agree. I'm just saying they don't seem to feel that way, but who knows what the truth is. I think that if we were to withdraw, I think we should withdraw all federal, all foreign aid from every country. I don't think we should be doing it at all.

I think if we did that, I think Israel would still exist. I think if we took away all the foreign aid. Tomorrow, next week, two months from now, Israel would still be a country. I agree with that. Yes. There are probably other countries on the planet that just would not exist anymore. But countries have to make more realistic decisions when there's no backstop in the same way that people do and in the same way that people on welfare or people with trust funds.

equally kind of tend to make terrible decisions about their own lives. I think it's also true for countries. You get way overextended when you're dependent. Yeah. And this is, and by the way, this is when I say. That a country that can't survive without us shouldn't exist or doesn't exist. That's not any kind of like moral judgment. It's just, this is the way of human civilization. You have to be able to.

You have to be able to stand on your own two feet to even qualify as a country. Right. And I think the American taxpayers have been saddled for many years now. with propping up country after country after country. when that is not a responsibility that should fall to me or you or to my kids. Our responsibility is to ourselves. And it's also true of us. If we could not exist. I agree. You know, if we were depending on welfare from some other country in order to exist.

Then I would say that like, we're not a country anymore. So, you know, take it away and like, let whatever happens, happens. Let the thing fall apart. And maybe from the ashes, we can build a real country. That would be my take if it was true of us. So... How did we get... I vehemently agree with you. I don't think I've ever heard it as well put.

But I don't think anything you said is radical. I think it's, as you just said, it's the way of human civilization. How do we get to a place where that qualifies as a radical view? I think it's it's people have been conditioned that You know, xenophobia is a great sin. So I don't know. I don't really understand it because I've never felt it. For a lot of people, it feels wrong to them to actually prioritize their own country. I guess it feels unnatural to people, which is crazy. It's bizarre.

Because to me, it's the most natural thing in the world. Like, I... It's not, it should not be controversial to say, I care more about my country than I care about anybody else. I care more about the people in my country than I care about anyone else. And the amount that I sort of care about you. It increases the closer you are to me. That's the way people work.

So I care the most about my own kids. I care more about my own kids than anyone else. If my kids are in a fire and someone else is in a fire, I'm saving my own kids a thousand times out of a thousand. If I had to choose between one of my kids and a thousand other people, I'd save my kid over the thousand. Because that's my, you know, they're my kids. That's my blood. And then, you know, branching out from there.

I care about my family, my larger family. I care about, from there, my community, where I live. And then, you know, there's a subsidiarity. And then branching out from there, I care about it. Encentric circles of obligation. Exactly. And that should just be so natural. That's how people work. And that's how everyone works. If I told you, anyone who hears this and thinks that it sounds cruel or something, well, if I came to you and told you that...

Your friend's child died. You would be really broken up, I would assume. In tears, yeah. You'd be in tears about it. If I came to you and said... You know, just a few minutes ago, a child in China was hit by a car and died. You would say, that's too bad. And then you would not think about it again. Correct. You would move on with your life and never even think about it.

Even though that's a child, it's a child. The child died. It's a terrible thing. It's really sad. Objectively, that child in China dying objectively is as terrible as your friend's child dying. But your attachment to that child in China is much less, is basically non-existent. your obligation to that child. But the idea is that what you're describing is sentiment, sentimentality, really. And that it's our job as evolved beings to override that false sentimentality.

with like a clearer moral code. I don't think it is sentimental. I think it's the opposite. I think the idea that we should... But do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's what they say. This is effective altruism, actually. It's like... know that every human life has equal value, which I think you would agree with as a Christian. Absolutely. Yeah. Therefore, our obligation to every human being is identical.

And you're right that they would, so what I'm saying, they would call false sentimentality, but that is false sentimentality. This idea that we're citizens of the world and we value everyone the same is a false sentiment. No one actually thinks it. You would save your own child from the fire. Is it because you think your child has more moral worth than anyone else's child? Is it because your child dying in a fire is objectively more sad than someone else's child? No.

But that's your blood. That's not sentiment. That's your blood. That's your family. That means something. But blood doesn't matter. Genetics aren't real. it's one of the most real things there is you know and um And it's obligation, you know, it should be inherent, it's instinctual, but it's also, you have an obligation to your child. And then branching out in the concentric circles, you have an obligation.

to your country and you have an attachment you should have an attachment to your country and a pride in your country um these are your people this is your history these are your ancestors um And so that's it. I mean, and to me, it's the most natural thing in the world. And so nationalism is not really an ideology. It's just like.

It's just the default position. It's like... Yes, it's the natural state of human being. It's the natural state of human being. It's the natural way that societies are organized. That's all natural. Why is everyone afraid of it and against it? I think it's... A lot of it is confusion, not understanding what nationalism even is.

It's part of the kind of globalist agenda. It's part of this destructive. Like I said, a lot of it comes down to destroying the family. And we do that by inverting everybody's priorities. Yeah. So that. Like, they want to get you to the point where you're more concerned about... peace in Ukraine than you are about

protecting your own child. Well, they've absolutely succeeded, by the way. They have. I go on social media, which I really try to avoid, but whenever I go on it, and it's all right-wingers or whatever they are now, but it's all Trump voters, right, in my feed. They're yelling at each other over mostly about Israel, but also about Ukraine, but about foreign countries. That's what they're mad at. I mean, they're totally obsessed.

And by the way, I think it's legitimate to have views on all four. I've got a million views on a million different foreign countries, including those two. And that's their overriding concern. It does seem, I hate the word op, but it does seem like by design, someone has sapped the vital energy.

from Trump's voting base by convincing them that what's happening in these foreign countries is more important than what's happening in their own. That's what I see. Do you see this? I do see it. And I don't... I don't understand it. I don't understand why. How do we get to a point where...

The dominant conversation in this country is about what's happening in other countries. I don't understand it. I don't understand the people that are obsessively focused on it, on either side of it, really. I agree. Because... Can I say, America's role in the world is a different question. Like, we play a role in the world we certainly have.

What's the appropriate role is a question that Americans should be concerned with because it's our money and the lives of our... young men so but this is something different you're saying people's like obsession about a foreign conflict between two like foreign actors Is that what you're saying? Or I don't want to put words in your mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Obsession with a conflict. Taking any foreign country and making it the centerpiece of our political debates makes no sense to me.

And I think people on either side do that. When I go on Twitter, go on X. No matter what the topic is, it seems it's like, you know, it used to be six degrees of Kevin Bacon or whatever. Yeah. Now it's two degrees of Israel. No matter what the topic is, it always comes back for a lot of people to Israel one way or another.

And that's not how I see it. I don't see Israel as the centerpiece of any of these debates at all. It does seem like it's blowing or blowing up is probably too strong, but it's definitely dividing. Trump's voter base. Big time. Do you feel that? I do, and it's a shame because why are we being divided over that? Of all things. Let's be divided over fentanyl or tariffs or whatever, something.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's going all the way back to actually your question that I never answered. I don't think I gave you a chance. I was off. Well, I was also off. But about the Dave Smith and Douglas Murray debate. My point was I'm going into it. I don't really have a dog in the fight. I don't know why these guys either. And I don't know either of the guys. I don't really, I'm not following the issue that closely. I'm just not. I'm focused on America.

And so I'm really just interested to see how this turns out. I'm listening to both arguments. And I thought that... Douglas Murray, who seems like a really smart guy. I thought he made a crucial mistake in the debate by starting, it seemed like the first 45 minutes to an hour was this kind of this litigation over who's an expert and who isn't.

And that's just not, you're not going to win the argument that way. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody should want to hear it. Credentialism, you're not an expert. You know, we've seen what the expert class has. given us, especially over the last five years? Pretty good job or no? I would give it a solid D minus. Very generous. Very generous. So nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to hear about... Calling yourself an expert goes back again to words that don't mean anything anymore. Yeah.

That's a word that should mean something. It is possible. Expertise is a real thing. There are people who can be experts. on a subject. I would hope that the pilot of my plane is an expert in flying a plane. As we've seen, we can't rely on that being the case either anymore. But that's what it should mean. But we've also used the word expert and applied it to people who are making outrageously false claims. I mean, the experts are the ones who told us that.

You know, you can castrate your son and turn him into a girl. But that was the expert opinion. That was the opinion of the expert class for years and still is with some of them. So in a world like that, in a world where the experts are telling us that women have penises and men can have babies, the word expert just doesn't mean anything anymore.

Which means that if you're going to have this conversation, skip past that. We don't need to litigate what an expert is or who an expert is. You want to begin with the merits of the debate. Right. Just get into it. It doesn't matter. This guy that you're sitting next to. whether he's an expert or not, makes no difference. I don't care if he's a scholar. I don't care if he's a homeless guy who just pulled off the street.

His arguments are valid or they aren't. Exactly. And that's all that matters. That's all that anyone cares about. Is this one on for an hour? Yeah, I'd say the first hour was about who was an expert and who isn't. What is that? I mean, Douglas Murray is famous for being smart. What do you think that was? I don't know. I honestly don't. I thought it was just a strategic error, a pretty serious one. And then...

By the time you actually get into the debate then a lot of people have just kind of checked out because it comes off as kind of snobbish. And it comes off as, you know, as credentialism, as you're trying to invalidate the argument before it's even presented. So that was the mistake. Then when they actually got into the actual conversation, I found it to be, I just thought it was interesting. I really did. And I thought they both made.

Valid points. They both know more about the subject than I do. A lot more. That was very clear to me. And I think if you could chop off the first hour of the debate, it was an interesting conversation. Who do you think made a more compelling case once they actually got down to the question at hand? So Douglas Murray said one thing. He made one point that I thought was really good, which is a simple one. I like simple points. Me too.

At one point he asked Dave, because once they got into arguing about what happened after October 7th, how Israel responded. And Dave has all of his criticisms about what Israel has done. And then Douglas Murray said, well, what would you have them? What would you prefer for them to have done? If they want to rescue the hostages and also destroy Hamas, what do you want them to do instead?

And then from what I remember, Dave, he pointed out that, OK, destroying Hamas and rescuing hostages are kind of are not necessarily the same objective. And then they started talking about rescuing hostages. They didn't really circle back to the destroying Hamas part. And I would have liked to see him stick on that point. Like, get an answer. So, if you're Israel, you have a foreign enemy that's come into your country, slaughtered hundreds of people.

How should you respond to that? And I think he should have pressed that, and he didn't. And so it became sort of unfocused. Because I would have legitimately liked to hear the answer to that. For sure. What would you have them do? So we could talk about maybe there are other ways to rescue the hostages, but do you think they should try to destroy Hamas, given what happened? And if you do, how else should they go about it?

But they kind of moved on to other things and it became this kind of, it became a sort of unfocused, in my mind, sort of like circular conversation. As these debates tend to devolve into very often. If you were in control of what people on Twitter debated, what would they be debating right now? Everything we talked about for the first hour of this conversation is what, like, let's talk about the war on the family, on marriage, things that affect our kids.

How do we raise healthy, happy kids? Let's talk about that. Any of these issues is like serious, deep cultural issues in our country. Yes. Is what we should be talking about in my mind. You feel like it's very hard to go from affluence to less affluence. It's very hard to move backward. It's like hard for the human brain to deal with it, but it's possible. You feel like the United States could become significantly poorer, not poorer, but less rich than it is now.

And still remain cohesive and happy people with meaningful lives who love their neighbors and their spouses and their children. But you're not going to do that without families. You can't do that if people are living in studio apartments by themselves with their cats. Like, that's just not going to happen, right? Right. So I just think objectively that's the most important issue. Why isn't it the topic of discussion or debate?

And why did the Republican Party shunt aside social conservatives like circus freaks for 40 years? Like, what was that? I think there are a lot of people invested in it not being the topic of conversation because once you start talking about it, you start noticing things that they don't want you to notice. Well, you start noticing the actual agenda to destroy the family, to destroy marriage. You start noticing that...

Took kind of a left turn veer off away from the way civilization was structured for thousands of years. It hasn't really worked out. You start looking at any of these things and you say, okay, well, we started making all these changes, all these reforms, all this supposed progress. And a lot of these wheels have been in motion for decades. How has it worked out? By its fruits you shall know it. So how has it worked out? None of it has worked out.

And I think you notice that. And I think there are people who don't want you to. And also some of these social issues when you're talking about families and these kinds of things. It hits closer to home, that's for sure.

As it should. More than tax rates. You can hurt people's feelings. Yeah. It hurts. It's closer to home. And so people feel everyone has, they have their own hangups. They have their own sensitivities. They have maybe mistakes they feel they've made in their own families or their own marriages or with their own kids. They feel indicted, I think. So I think for some people, it's just feels it's safer to talk about issues that are 10,000 miles away.

I mean, there are plenty of conservative so-called influencers who, you know, have personal lives that are what you're describing as bad. Do they ever call you and say, hey, Matt Walsh, you hurt my feelings? Certainly don't call me. No, they don't call me to say it, but... Plenty of conservative influencers, quote unquote, will, you know, they'll all say something. They'll send out a tweet. They'll attack me publicly. So I much prefer the call. I much prefer the.

It's not hard to get my number if you're in the business or send me a message or something. But people don't generally do that. That's not how people operate. Have you noticed like a huge percentage of war crazed Republican senators are secretly gay? What is that? Are there? Yeah. What is that? What is the connection between... Which are the ones that are secretly gay? I don't know. They're the ones who are secret about it.

But there is some kind of, I guess all I'm saying, I'm not being catty. I'm trying not to be catty or cruel or whatever. But I do think there's a connection to the way that you live at home. connection between the way you live at home and like the policies that you espouse and the impulses that you have and like the vision that you have for the country you lead. Like, I don't really know if you want people with, like, truly unsettled, dark personal lives with power. Do you? No. I mean, I...

Even outside of the people running the country, I... I automatically have at least some semblance of respect for a man if he's a good husband and a good father. And you can't always tell that, but I think often you can. And those are the kinds of people I want to surround myself with. I don't want to be around people who aren't. People have disordered personal lives. I don't really want to be around them. So if I don't want to be around them, I don't want them running the country. Fair.

Last question, broad question, 100 days into Trump, how's it going? Are you happy with it? I assume you voted for Donald Trump? Yeah, yeah. I mean, has it been what you expected? In some ways, it's been better than I expected, in some significant ways. I think that my number one criticism of Trump in his first term was, despite all the talk about how he's a fascist dictator.

In reality, in his first term, it seemed to me he was very... shy about wielding his power and his authority um he seemed to be a lot more worried about what people say about him what the media says about him a lot more focused on the coverage and all that sort of thing And this time around, that doesn't seem to be the case. And jumping in with 2,000 executive orders or whatever it was, dozens, touching on some real hot-button controversial issues. What was your favorite?

Well, I mean, as someone who's been really invested in this issue, there's several executive orders dealing with gender ideology. I mean, even something as simple as a legally defining. what a man and woman is. We shouldn't have to do that, but we did, and he did. prohibiting to the extent that it's possible from his position, the castration and mutilation of children.

Now, Congress has to follow up with these executive orders and codify them into law, which hasn't happened with I don't think any of them. Which I am worried about because the thing about an executive order is that when the next guy gets in there, if he's a Democrat, he can just, he can undo that as quickly as it was done. So that's, that's a, it's a bandaid. It's not the permanent solution.

Why hasn't there been a law yet passed by Congress federally banning the mutilation and castration of children? Because they're for it. For it or they don't care that much. Well, same thing. You know, same thing, I think. I mean, if you're in a position to stop something, it's not that hard. And you don't, I think it's fair to assume you approve of that thing. Yeah, you approve of it or you just don't. You don't care enough to try to stop it, which effectively it's one in the same.

So all that was good. I liked all that. And I think that he's using his power as authority. He's not afraid to do that this time around, which I think is really good. If there's one major criticism or area for improvement, I don't know what the deportation numbers are exactly. I think they should probably be a lot higher. Easier said than done, of course. And also, I acknowledge that there are fewer people coming in now, which is going to bring your deportation numbers down.

But I think that should be a lot higher. And I think that I understand politically focusing on illegal aliens who have committed heinous crimes. We should focus on them. But not just them. I mean, we should be deporting anyone who's in this country who's not supposed to be here. I don't care if you had a speeding ticket or... A DUI or a manslaughter charge. I mean, I care. That's a big difference. But in any of those cases, or if you had nothing.

You shouldn't be in the country. But there are plenty of people, the majority, I would say, of people in Washington are arguing the opposite, which is like, you know, it doesn't matter that they're breaking the law. That's what they're arguing. In fact, they should be protected as they break the law. So why are you following laws? As someone who was born here, paying all the taxes for all this stuff. Are you following the law? As far as you know, I am, yeah. As far as I am.

Text your wife and find out. I hope not, because you'd be an idiot to do that, wouldn't you? Yeah, well, well, except that, of course, I realized that this, this, you know, get out of jail free card is doesn't is not does not apply to everybody. But do you feel like a fool? you're propping up a system with at least half of the money you make every year, at least half, more than half if you total it all up, even in Tennessee. And you're paying for a system in which...

Like you're the, it's only downside for you. And it's upside for people who are mocking the laws that you pay to enforce. I don't like. Do you feel like a foolish? Yeah, you feel like a sucker. But also, what's the alternative? Because if I were to say, well, hey, if they don't have to follow the law, then neither do I.

Well, really quickly, the system will come along and disabuse me of the notion that this is a... That you have as many rights as a Haitian. Exactly. Because I don't. So that won't apply to me, especially as a dreaded white man. So we're kind of left with no choice.

I'm only throwing it out there because you said you were becoming much more radical, and I'm trying to accelerate the process by pointing out some things that I want you to think about. Well, I appreciate that. It'd be hard to accelerate it at this point. I can tell. I love it. There's a forest fire of truth within you. Matt Walsh, thank you for submitting to all this. I really enjoyed it. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

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