Speaker 1: And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the
Speaker 1: George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 3: Armstrong and Getty and he Armstrong and Getty strong Man.
Speaker 3: Welcome to a replay of the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: We're off all week long. We give a lot of thanks,
Speaker 3: we eat a lot, we watch a lot of football.
Speaker 3: We'll come back refreshed. But I hope you enjoyed this stuff.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be really good, some delicious leftovers if you will.
Speaker 4: The flavors have made friends overnight in the French Plus
Speaker 4: drop by Armstrong at getty dot com, download podcasts, or
Speaker 4: grab an ang t shirt.
Speaker 5: Earl corn You's Central Valley is, without question, one of
Speaker 5: the most vital agricultural regions in America, producing seventeen billion
Speaker 5: dollars worth of crops twenty five percent of the nation's
Speaker 5: food supply, and to help grow and harvest those crops,
Speaker 5: many farmers here rely on undocumented workers. The Department of
Speaker 5: Agriculture estimates that about half of the hired crop workers
Speaker 5: do not.
Speaker 3: Have legal status.
Speaker 5: That is estimated to be more than three hundred and
Speaker 5: thirty thousand workers in the Central Valley.
Speaker 3: Alone, three hundred thousand workers in the Central Valley alone.
Speaker 3: That if you followed what recent poling says, sixty percent
Speaker 3: of America wants would all be booted out of the country.
Speaker 3: And that would be obviously, if he did that all
Speaker 3: at once, would be quite the wrecking of the whole
Speaker 3: agricultural system. Doesn't mean it's not a good idea, though,
Speaker 3: because you got to have a system of some sort
Speaker 3: for having workers. It's the job of Congress to come
Speaker 3: up with and be implied and follow through. I don't
Speaker 3: know if they're going to or not, but Joe and
Speaker 3: I have been talking about illegal immigration in farm workers
Speaker 3: for geez, twenty five years or whatever being on the air,
Speaker 3: and this very part of the a California in the
Speaker 3: country that they're talking about on ABC this week, And
Speaker 3: we used to talk about it all the time when
Speaker 3: we were only on in the Sacramento area. People had
Speaker 3: always talk do you want tomatoes to be five dollars? Well,
Speaker 3: then you know it's kind of pick the lettuce, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: It was always the conversation, and our answer was always
Speaker 4: somebody or nobody or a machine, Well, let's hear from
Speaker 4: a couple of farmers in the Central Valley and their
Speaker 4: theories on why you need to have illegals picking.
Speaker 3: Here's more from ABC this week. We can't afford a
Speaker 3: labor shortage.
Speaker 6: Back during Obama, we had a labor shortage and there
Speaker 6: were a time where we actually lost some crop.
Speaker 5: I think people will look at say, but wait a minute,
Speaker 5: they're Americans who are unemployed.
Speaker 3: Why can't you just hire them.
Speaker 6: They don't want to come out here and work in
Speaker 6: this in this extreme conditions one hundred plus degree temperatures,
Speaker 6: dust hard work.
Speaker 3: What if you paid them more, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 6: You know, we pay some of the highest wages for
Speaker 6: farm workers in the nation right here in California, and
Speaker 6: they won't come out.
Speaker 3: And just so before we have that conversation, here's a
Speaker 3: different farmer, same question, same topic there. I don't care
Speaker 3: what you pay them. I don't care if we pay
Speaker 3: them twenty six dollars an hour, that ain't going to happen.
Speaker 3: They're not going to get up at four or five
Speaker 3: in the morning, drive to the field and pick fruit.
Speaker 3: So and that question was, why why don't you just
Speaker 3: hire Americans? They won't do it. I don't care what
Speaker 3: you pay them. They're not going to get up that
Speaker 3: time of day and come out and do that job.
Speaker 3: So I don't understand why that isn't a hold on pause,
Speaker 3: let's have a conversation about that sort of revelation On
Speaker 3: ABC this week, they just move on to em They
Speaker 3: see Americans won't do this work, so it makes sense
Speaker 3: to have illegal brown people do it. What what How
Speaker 3: do you craft a society like that? How about why
Speaker 3: would people who are unemployed or underemployed take the option
Speaker 3: of not doing a job even if it paid really well? Right? Right?
Speaker 3: How could they do that? How does that work? How
Speaker 3: does that fin How are they paying the rent? How
Speaker 3: are they eating?
Speaker 4: Can you imagine if you went to family counseling and
Speaker 4: and you said, my children refuse to do their chores,
Speaker 4: and the counselor said, well, let's talk about how you
Speaker 4: can hire someone to do your children's right. No, that's
Speaker 4: not the right question, right, Yeah, Oh that's funny.
Speaker 3: But we've been we've been talking about this very topic
Speaker 3: for decades now. How have we just accepted that people
Speaker 3: born in this country shouldn't have to do work that's
Speaker 3: not i don't know, glamorous or kind of hard. Or
Speaker 3: it's outside or whatever. The reason is people don't want
Speaker 3: to do it. I did that kind of work when
Speaker 3: I was in high school. Lots of us did. You
Speaker 3: can't do it any many Americans did?
Speaker 2: Ye?
Speaker 3: But is everybody okay with that? Creating a welfare state
Speaker 3: so lavish that people can choose not to do jobs
Speaker 3: that they don't find like something they want to do,
Speaker 3: even even if it pays twenty nine dollars an hour
Speaker 3: and one more amusing irony, This is amusing me for many,
Speaker 3: many years.
Speaker 4: Is the more quote unquote progressive you are, the more
Speaker 4: in favor of white.
Speaker 3: People, won't do this work. Let's bring in some of
Speaker 3: those brown people.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's the further left yard, the more you're
Speaker 4: a hardcore open up the borders and let an in person,
Speaker 4: which I think is hilarious.
Speaker 3: There's also the unspoken, unstated realization that if millions of
Speaker 3: people come here and do those jobs they're getting by,
Speaker 3: they must be able to live somewhere and have a
Speaker 3: car and eat and you know, do all the things
Speaker 3: you want to do with a job right by definition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just it's it boils down to a couple
Speaker 4: of very very simple principles. Number one is the purpose
Speaker 4: of getting the reins of government is to be able
Speaker 4: to distribute money from the treasury. Doesn't matter what the
Speaker 4: system is. They vary in how they do that, but
Speaker 4: that's the point. And in our system you've got to
Speaker 4: get a little support.
Speaker 3: From a lot of people.
Speaker 4: Kim Jong Oun just needs a hell of a lot
Speaker 4: of support from a fairly small group of people. But
Speaker 4: in a democracy, you need a little support from a
Speaker 4: hell of a lot of people. How do you do
Speaker 4: that by handing out money? Government benefits you know, three
Speaker 4: and a half dozen different social programs that make sure
Speaker 4: nobody's going to starve. And so the second very broad
Speaker 4: and easy to understand principle is people go for their
Speaker 4: best alternative. They will do their best option. And for
Speaker 4: Americans working in a field in the heat, in the dust,
Speaker 4: bent over is not nearly their best option. For some
Speaker 4: Guatemalan it is.
Speaker 3: I just I don't understand how we got to where
Speaker 3: we're okay with that or think that that's a workable
Speaker 3: plan going forward that doesn't end up with like I've
Speaker 3: been taking in a lot of French Revolution stuff over
Speaker 3: the weekend. You know that sort of society falling apart.
Speaker 4: I believe the French Revolution is your Roman Empire, although
Speaker 4: you are quite interested in the Roman Empire as well.
Speaker 4: It is so the answer of how we get there
Speaker 4: is because nobody asks the question, the moral question there,
Speaker 4: the one that we keep harping on is it's not.
Speaker 3: Part of the conversation at all. No, it wasn't. ABC
Speaker 3: this week did a long segment on this topic and
Speaker 3: not a word of Does it seem a little weird
Speaker 3: to have a society where you've declared certain jobs off
Speaker 3: limits for your citizens, Like, no, that's too grungy a
Speaker 3: job even at twenty nine dollars an hour you just
Speaker 3: don't want to have to do. I mean, would you
Speaker 3: do that with your own kids. I'll keep supporting you,
Speaker 3: you know, until you're thirty or a past rather than
Speaker 3: you go do that job. What? Yeah, who would live
Speaker 3: their lives like that?
Speaker 4: Democracy's end when they realize they can vote themselves money
Speaker 4: from the treasury. Can you imagine running on the platform
Speaker 4: I'm going to get you off of your couch and
Speaker 4: into the field.
Speaker 3: Good luck? What at right? We're a soft, decadent country.
Speaker 3: That's just that's it we really are, Which is what
Speaker 3: France was when they fell apart, not to get back
Speaker 3: to the revolution, but and then here they wrapped up
Speaker 3: the conversation with this portion.
Speaker 5: Deporting undocumented workers in California is complicated.
Speaker 3: The state enacted a measure.
Speaker 5: In twenty seventeen that prevents state resources from being used
Speaker 5: for federal immigration enforcement. And while that law varies by
Speaker 5: city and county, California is the sanctuary city capital of America,
Speaker 5: with dozens of cities and counties protecting undocumented residents from
Speaker 5: a rest based solely on their immigration status.
Speaker 3: So that's a problem. I mean, it all fits together
Speaker 3: as part of a puzzle. I hate the whole thing.
Speaker 3: But if you're going to accept I'm not, but apparently
Speaker 3: we have accepted that our American born people shouldn't have
Speaker 3: to do those jobs. Well, then you're gonna have to
Speaker 3: have illegals here. And then if you're going to have
Speaker 3: illegals here, you can't have them being deported. So you
Speaker 3: got to be a sanctuary county. I mean, it all
Speaker 3: fits together, or you.
Speaker 4: Just admit all of the above and you design a
Speaker 4: temporary worker program, which is.
Speaker 3: What Congress should do. Also, not a part of the
Speaker 3: conversation where they said, well, if you want it to
Speaker 3: be this way, and apparently people do well, then Congress
Speaker 3: needs to sit down and come up with a very
Speaker 3: complex system for workers or making these people citizens or
Speaker 3: whatever it is you're gonna do. But you got to
Speaker 3: come up with a plan. The all the arguments I
Speaker 3: seem to see on the Sunday talk shows, nobody was
Speaker 3: offering anything other than continuing to just randomly let people
Speaker 3: come in buy the millions, come and go, buy the millions,
Speaker 3: not know who they are. Martha Radditt's even admitted to
Speaker 3: whoever was pushing back on this story, there are six
Speaker 3: hundred thousand known criminals, not the crime of being illegal,
Speaker 3: but like other crimes from Mexico or Venezuela, six hundred
Speaker 3: thousand criminals in the United States right now. We don't
Speaker 3: know where they are. What kind of who does that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's nuts. Yeah it is.
Speaker 4: It's self destructive, it's it's horrible because we won't get
Speaker 4: to the root questions and the final annoying reality I'd
Speaker 4: like to trot out there. This is why I don't
Speaker 4: get many invitations to dinner parties. Oh you invited, mister
Speaker 4: annoying reality. Oh good is the Left raises money from
Speaker 4: soft heads, in my opinion, with their no human being
Speaker 4: is illegal, bill bridges not walls, nonsense. And the right
Speaker 4: raises money on boot them all out, seal the borders,
Speaker 4: and to say we're going to craft a guest worker
Speaker 4: program that's going to let one point one million people
Speaker 4: in temporarily, we'll keep tracking them, blah blah blah, we're
Speaker 4: gonna streamline the course.
Speaker 3: That's just you can't raise money on that. It's too complicated.
Speaker 4: The devil is in the details, and there's always plenty
Speaker 4: to anger, you know, virtually everybody.
Speaker 3: In the discussion. So I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't mean to be discouraging, but as long as
Speaker 4: small money donations rule politics, it's going to be hard
Speaker 4: to work out stuff like this.
Speaker 3: I'm just appalled by the idea. I've always cringed when
Speaker 3: anybody says those are jobs of America won't do. That
Speaker 3: makes me cringe. You cannot be a strong, functioning, successful
Speaker 3: society if you've decided certain jobs are off limits to
Speaker 3: your citizens. That's sickening as a notion.
Speaker 4: Well, that's how empires fall back to Rome. Or if
Speaker 4: you'd prefer I assume with your French Revolution passion. You'd
Speaker 4: like to say, see guillotines all over America cutting off
Speaker 4: the heads of the disloyal or immigrants.
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're crazy world.
Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or Jack your Joe podcasts and our hot links
Speaker 1: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: Here's your freedom loving quote of the day. It's an
Speaker 3: absolute classic.
Speaker 4: Frank Sanatlong you said, it's probably a little long, but
Speaker 4: what the heck, we always have time for it. It's
Speaker 4: from Lord Woodhousily, also known as Alexander Fraser Tyler, from
Speaker 4: back in the seventeen hundreds. The democracy cannot exist as
Speaker 4: a permanent form of government. Can only exist until the
Speaker 4: voters discover they can vote themselves largest from the public treasury.
Speaker 4: From that moment on, the majority always votes for the
Speaker 4: candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with
Speaker 4: the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy,
Speaker 4: always followed by a dictatorship.
Speaker 3: Then he goes into a bit of history.
Speaker 4: These nations have progressed through the sequence from bondage to
Speaker 4: spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage
Speaker 4: to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness,
Speaker 4: from selfishness to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence
Speaker 4: back into bondage.
Speaker 3: So where are we right now? Somewhere between apathy and dependence. Uh, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: I would say so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've certainly progressed past selfishness to apathy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apathy to dependence. I think you nailed it. Yep.
Speaker 3: Baby boomers were the selfish and removed into the apathy.
Speaker 3: Now we're headed into the dependence. Yep, there you go.
Speaker 3: That sounds right accurate. I think that's absolutely right. And
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this last night when I went
Speaker 3: to bed for some reason, about how there's a shelf
Speaker 3: life to these things and it just is, always has been,
Speaker 3: probably always will be, and it's suppressing, really freaking depressing,
Speaker 3: unless you consider the following. This is your cheery you up. Note.
Speaker 4: During every one of those stages, smart people, energetic people.
Speaker 3: Well I'm not very energetic, so let's.
Speaker 4: Just go as smart, smart, and semi energetic people have
Speaker 4: found ways to craft happy, productive lives.
Speaker 3: It just gets a little tougher.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, what in the words of the old bluesman,
Speaker 4: What is you gonna do?
Speaker 3: Right? I understand if you're gonna focus on you and yours,
Speaker 3: but kind of like the whole thing to last for
Speaker 3: a while. I wanted a pony for Christmas? All right?
Speaker 3: Wake up, grow up mail bag?
Speaker 4: Jeez drove us a nope mail bag at Armstrong and
Speaker 4: geddy dot com when convenient. I I had a screed yesterday.
Speaker 4: I unleashed a screed about how the Internet fertilizes stupidity.
Speaker 4: I never would have thought of it again as long
Speaker 4: as I lived, except several emailers have brought it up.
Speaker 3: That is pretty good. I forgot it a horedy myself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Rich says Joe's book about in the Internet fertilizing stupidity. Well,
Speaker 4: he says, true, but it's not fertilizing women, hence the
Speaker 4: low birth rates. That could be an angle on my book. Rich,
Speaker 4: I'll give you full credit, thanks, Bud.
Speaker 3: The Internet fertilizes stupidity might be your best quote ever.
Speaker 3: And I forgot I said it anyway.
Speaker 4: Mark and Stanton writes gents regarding the MSNBC Reporter and
Speaker 4: the other media chuckleheads, describing our Marjorie Taylor Green as
Speaker 4: the most conservative Republican in the House.
Speaker 3: Whatever, which is an absurd description.
Speaker 4: I think a better description was inadvertently coined earlier in
Speaker 4: the show by Joe. You might say, Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 4: is a grand standing moron quote fertilizing stupidity in her caucus.
Speaker 4: Judging by the Republican caucus actions lately, this is producing
Speaker 4: a bumper crop of dysfunction and asininity.
Speaker 3: The sun is a mighty powerful eat mark instant.
Speaker 4: Well, and one of the reasons I love that is
Speaker 4: a sign off by the way mark. One of the
Speaker 4: reasons I hate the so much is portraying a variety
Speaker 4: of things as conservative, is that it comes from the
Speaker 4: liberal media.
Speaker 3: They want conservative to have a stench to it. But
Speaker 3: there's nothing conservative about Marjorie Taylor Green or Matt Gates
Speaker 3: that that's they're not extra conservative as they're portrayed in
Speaker 3: the media. That's not what they are.
Speaker 4: I would have to work for a while to come
Speaker 4: up with a term for exactly what they are.
Speaker 3: More like, trumpy is not bad, well, I don't think.
Speaker 3: I don't think you would turn to political science for
Speaker 3: a label for them, though, correct. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you would turn to Marshall McCloughan. Is that the name
Speaker 3: of the guy who coined the media as the mess
Speaker 3: and just the modern postmodern media world whipping up interest
Speaker 3: and fervor and clicks and that sort of thing. We're
Speaker 3: out of time already. I've got a lot of great
Speaker 3: stuff here, Mike. We've got to believe a lot more
Speaker 3: of a show to wat quick question for you, what
Speaker 3: if you happen to miss this unbelievable radio program.
Speaker 4: The answer is easy, friends, Just download our podcast, Armstrong
Speaker 4: and Getty on demand. It's the podcast version of the
Speaker 4: broadcast show, available anytime, any day, every single podcast platform
Speaker 4: known demand.
Speaker 3: Download it now, Armstrong and Getty on Demand.
Speaker 2: Armstrong, the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4: So quick aside, before we get into the main thrust
Speaker 4: of the segment. I am a very very lucky man
Speaker 4: in that, in addition to the other aspects of our relationship,
Speaker 4: my wife and I are are best friends. And she
Speaker 4: was walking our dog apparently and texted me we'd surveyed
Speaker 4: yesterday whilst walking Baxter in our neighborhood there was a
Speaker 4: dead possum.
Speaker 3: And how do you know it was not just playing
Speaker 3: It's main I tell you what.
Speaker 4: It was a method actor because it had gone to
Speaker 4: the trouble of decay, surraying itself. Okay, there was no
Speaker 4: bodily integrity there. I don't want to get too disgusting.
Speaker 4: But anyway, my best friend my wife just texted me
Speaker 4: keeping me up to date. There is very little of
Speaker 4: that possum left. The vultures must have found it, keeping
Speaker 4: an eye on the DP right, just like bringing a
Speaker 4: man up to date.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, how's that dead possum? I don't know. I'm
Speaker 3: at work. I had a similar thing going with my
Speaker 3: wife back in the day about it what we called
Speaker 3: the j o U the jud give me a second. Okay, well,
Speaker 3: now I got it because I remember the story. But
Speaker 3: jugo urine, because there was a big giant jug of
Speaker 3: urine that some truck driver apparently had dropped off in
Speaker 3: a corner uh oh where you get on the interstate,
Speaker 3: and it was there for days. I would get texting
Speaker 3: the joh you is still there. Oh, that's so cross
Speaker 3: it is. But truck drivers say, oh, they got needs,
Speaker 3: and they am out there filling our stories with of goods.
Speaker 3: It's important work.
Speaker 4: They needs to pull over and pee in a toilet, please,
Speaker 4: so on a much more serious topic. Part of me
Speaker 4: wants to. I don't know, I don't want to. I'm
Speaker 4: looking at the clock. Yeah, we'll give it a try.
Speaker 4: I'm a we'll take a break midway through. I am
Speaker 4: not as hardcore, I think, as some view on the
Speaker 4: right to life, and I don't mean abortion, but as
Speaker 4: an individualist and a small libertarian, I actually think that
Speaker 4: if you are afflicted by a terrible, terrible dread disease
Speaker 4: and you decide no, I'm going to end my days
Speaker 4: on Earth on my terms as opposed to the diseases terms,
Speaker 4: I actually think you have that right.
Speaker 3: What if you're just bored with life? Well, see that's
Speaker 3: the problem.
Speaker 4: And we're talking here about Canada, which and this isn't
Speaker 4: aside our closest allies, Canada in particular and Great Britain
Speaker 4: are doing some crazy, crazy stuff in terms of constitutional
Speaker 4: rights and progressive policies and stuff like that. If you
Speaker 4: think they're like America but with funny accents, that's not
Speaker 4: true anymore. Anyway, more on that another time, maybe I'll
Speaker 4: go through a list. But I have not been staunchly
Speaker 4: against some of the right to die discussions. But at
Speaker 4: the same time, if you look into it in a
Speaker 4: sober way, you realize there are many slippery slopes you
Speaker 4: can go down. And indeed, Canada, which has embraced the
Speaker 4: idea of assistant suicide. The sub headline of the Wall
Speaker 4: Street Journal opinion piece by Nicholas Tomino, which I found
Speaker 4: extremely compelling, is assisted suicide was sold as compassionate and
Speaker 4: practice it has turned out to be monstrous.
Speaker 3: That's interesting because it's all it's all my life, and
Speaker 3: it's always been a talk radio topic. It's always been theoretical.
Speaker 3: But now somebody has tried at large scale and we
Speaker 3: have some evidence of how it actually would turn out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he quotes Charles Crouthammer, and that's underdone lately.
Speaker 4: As he was a brilliant man. He was looking at
Speaker 4: a Supreme Court case called Vaco v.
Speaker 3: Quill.
Speaker 4: The court was looking at physician assisted suicide, and the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court held unanimously that the Constitution does not create
Speaker 4: a right to that procedure. Krauthammer wrote, quote, we are
Speaker 4: being asked to become a society where when the tormented
Speaker 4: soul on the ledge asks us for our help in
Speaker 4: granting him relief, we oblige him with a push.
Speaker 3: Lawrence Tribe, I think the tormented soul would say, my
Speaker 3: relief is going to be not having to be alive anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, right, But Crowdhammer is saying that we a society
Speaker 4: should not put ourselves in the position of pushing them
Speaker 4: or I don't know, it's difficult in a situation where
Speaker 4: you don't need any help to come up with the
Speaker 4: right metaphor. But anyway, Lawrence Tribe, who argued the case
Speaker 4: for the plaintiffs, suggested that the slope would not be slippery.
Speaker 4: The procedure would be granted to the patient with n
Speaker 4: stage heart failure, not the man on the ledge. At
Speaker 4: the same time, Tribe positive that people at the threshold
Speaker 4: at the end of life enjoy the liberty to decide
Speaker 4: how they die. And I would agree, sure in principle,
Speaker 4: in principle, but Crowdhammer spotted the arguments whole. Why couldn't
Speaker 4: the chronically ill who face a lifetime of agny that's
Speaker 4: a quote from the case, or the healthy but bereft
Speaker 4: availed themselves of the same right. Where do you draw
Speaker 4: the line for who has that right?
Speaker 3: And why would the government ever draw a line about
Speaker 3: that right? And as a discussion.
Speaker 4: I think it's a really interesting and compelling one what
Speaker 4: happens when someone tries it. But as Soel said, you
Speaker 4: know a lot of recent history is replacing what works
Speaker 4: with what sounds good, and you really have to think hard.
Speaker 4: Is it so easy to get duped by what sounds good?
Speaker 4: You've got to think of, all right, what will be
Speaker 4: the second tier effects of this?
Speaker 3: What will be the effects of those effects?
Speaker 4: How will human beings actually act if we change the
Speaker 4: world in this way? So Canada's undergone a crash course
Speaker 4: in what the country calls medical assistance in dying, or
Speaker 4: made they call it. It began in twenty fifteen when
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't like giving this a kind of cutesy
Speaker 3: acronym to cover up what's going on there. That seems
Speaker 3: like on an intentional thing right there. Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: uncomfortable even saying it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But the Supreme Court and ruled in Carter versus
Speaker 4: Canada that the law prohibiting physicians assisted dying and interfered
Speaker 4: with the liberty and security of people with grievous and
Speaker 4: irremediable medical conditions, and Parliament codified this decision the following year.
Speaker 3: Do you know what this reminds me of before you
Speaker 3: even go further to where I know you're going. Sure,
Speaker 3: is the marijuana argument and how it happened in America.
Speaker 3: It was always the oh so, people who have cancer
Speaker 3: and have no appetite can't have marijuana, when the intention
Speaker 3: of most of those people all along was to legalize
Speaker 3: recreational use of marijuana. But they had the cover of
Speaker 3: the oh so, cancer victims can't patients can't have marijuana.
Speaker 3: That's what I wonder, what's going on here? You know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think some of it may be premeditated. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of it's just naives in this case.
Speaker 4: But draw your own conclusions. Certainly, so lawmakers thought that
Speaker 4: they were imposing limits. The Justice Minister at the time said,
Speaker 4: and I quote, we do not wish to promote premature
Speaker 4: death as a allusion to all medical suffering. And the
Speaker 4: plaintiffs lead lawyer in that case said, quote, in almost
Speaker 4: every case, doctors will want to keep help keep their
Speaker 4: patients staying alive, not die. We know physicians will be
Speaker 4: reluctant gatekeepers. But it turns out that the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: of Quebec ruled shortly after the original law was passed
Speaker 4: that it was unconstitutional because some of the wordings said
Speaker 4: that an applicant's death from a quote grievous and irremediable
Speaker 4: medical condition must be reasonably foreseeable. And they said, well,
Speaker 4: that's a little vague or it just doesn't work in practice.
Speaker 4: So Parliament amended that, opening wider the door to facilitate
Speaker 4: a death. The new law dropped some of the safeguards,
Speaker 4: such as the minimum ten day assessment period between request
Speaker 4: and provision. They say it also proposed mental illness as
Speaker 4: an eligible condition, the implementation of which the government delayed
Speaker 4: for a few years. But the message for everyone else
Speaker 4: remain the same. If you want to die, you needn't wait.
Speaker 4: And the numbers are astounding. Assistant suicide is now at
Speaker 4: least the fifth leading cause of death in Canada.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Wortage to thirteen thousand plus lives in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: They have fleeting cause of death. Wow.
Speaker 4: Keeping in mind that I don't think I'm wrong that
Speaker 4: Canada's population is less than that of California, Right.
Speaker 3: It's about the same. Yeah, it's thirty some million. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's very very small country for the geographic size of it.
Speaker 4: Now the government believed doctors wouldn't merely rubber stamp applications.
Speaker 4: Yet in twenty twenty two, more than eighty one percent
Speaker 4: of petitions resulted in deaths, including for a vision slash,
Speaker 4: hearing loss, and diabetes. He documents that the percentage of
Speaker 4: denied requests has been falling from years, from eight percent
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen to three and a half percent two
Speaker 4: years ago, even as the number of applications has increased.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm just too much of a libertarian on this
Speaker 3: for some people. But if if somebody goes blind and
Speaker 3: they say, I don't want to live the rest of
Speaker 3: my life blind, I'd rather be dead, I don't understand
Speaker 3: the government's role in telling them they can't.
Speaker 4: I would agree, absolutely agree. Here's the part that really
Speaker 4: really bothers me. I think that's a bad decision. I
Speaker 4: think there'd be plenty of ways to find a way
Speaker 4: to have a very rich, enjoyable life while blind, for instance,
Speaker 4: or a number of other things. And I think your
Speaker 4: kids would like to have you around. But I'm just
Speaker 4: saying I don't know the government gets to step in
Speaker 4: and say no, we don't think so, we think you
Speaker 4: should keep going.
Speaker 3: I would agree.
Speaker 4: I think it's a perfect case of I would argue
Speaker 4: vehemently or compassionately against that as your solution, but I
Speaker 4: recognize your right to do it nonetheless. But there's the
Speaker 4: case of this gentleman, Roger Foley, who suffers from a
Speaker 4: degenerative neurological disorder, and as his condition worsened, he resigned
Speaker 4: from his job. After several years in home care in
Speaker 4: which he says he was mistreated, he was placed in
Speaker 4: a mental health board. He said, I became extremely suicidal.
Speaker 4: After he shared those thoughts with staff, they began to
Speaker 4: float the idea of euthanasia. That alarmed him, so he
Speaker 4: began to record the conversation secretly. He later shared them
Speaker 4: with Canadian journalists. In one, a hospital ethicist threatens mister
Speaker 4: Foley with denial of insurance coverage and said they would
Speaker 4: cost him north of fifteen hundred dollars a day to
Speaker 4: stay in the hospital. When mister Foley protested, the ethicist retorted, Roger,
Speaker 4: this is not my show. My piece of this was
Speaker 4: to talk to you about if you had any interest
Speaker 4: in assisted dying, and he didn't. Then the person tried
Speaker 4: to argue him into it, and then what there is
Speaker 4: well and then there's the and I've been hearing this
Speaker 4: argument against it for a very very long time. Once
Speaker 4: you open this door, there will be pressure from insurance companies.
Speaker 4: There will be pressure from relatives who might want to
Speaker 4: inherit your money or they might be paying the bill,
Speaker 4: and God bless them if you are being ruined financially
Speaker 4: providing end of life care to someone who is going
Speaker 4: to die.
Speaker 3: I don't think it makes you a monster to not well,
Speaker 3: to not want it to happen today as opposed to
Speaker 3: next Wednesday. If the difference is like one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Right, right, So the concern is, and it's borne out
Speaker 4: by the Canadian experience. When you open the door to this,
Speaker 4: the worst impulses of humanity run wild.
Speaker 3: That argument gets my attention definitely, because that not only
Speaker 3: could happen, guaranteed to happen, guaranteed to happen, And then
Speaker 3: you're in and having been a guy, so I had
Speaker 3: cancer and was in treatment for nine months chemotherapy and radiation,
Speaker 3: and I had to I at least thought about this some.
Speaker 3: You know, jeez, if it goes wrong, what going to
Speaker 3: be like at the end, How miserable do I want
Speaker 3: to be? I'm miserable right now. So I didn't think
Speaker 3: about it a lot, but I thought about it some.
Speaker 3: But if if i'm if I'm headed down the road
Speaker 3: of miser First of all, you're on so many drugs.
Speaker 3: I couldn't even think that clearly as it was a
Speaker 3: lot of times, let alone end of life sort of drugs.
Speaker 3: You're in no situation to to to have presence of
Speaker 3: mind even make a decision from a chemical standpoint, let
Speaker 3: alone the emotions. Then you got family members who might
Speaker 3: not like you, who want you to die because they're
Speaker 3: gonna get sure would like to get that inheritance before
Speaker 3: summer so I can get my boat. You're gonna tell
Speaker 3: me that's not gonna happen. Of course that's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah. And there's an interesting principle. I'm sure there's
Speaker 4: a probably a Latin word for this. It's the reason
Speaker 4: prostitution is illegal. It's to keep it at a certain level.
Speaker 4: There is no real intention to stomp it out, stamp
Speaker 4: it out completely. It would take way too much time
Speaker 4: and money. But if something is illegal, it's like speed limits.
Speaker 4: Nobody expects you to actually go sixty five, but it
Speaker 4: keeps people from going on and ten. The reality, and
Speaker 4: I have this unfairly good authority in the United States,
Speaker 4: is that there are plenty of doctors who, convinced of
Speaker 4: your sincerity and sober mindedness at the end, might not
Speaker 4: stand in the way of certain things happening that would
Speaker 4: end your life, perhaps pharmaceutically, for instance, And maybe that's
Speaker 4: the way it ought to be.
Speaker 3: Man, this is a tough one then. So my stated
Speaker 3: thought is the government has no business whatsoever deciding whether
Speaker 3: or not I want to be alive or not. Zero.
Speaker 3: But you get just the other side of that, and
Speaker 3: you're right into the insurance stuff and everything else. Right,
Speaker 3: Maybe the.
Speaker 4: Best situation is it's only done when it's clearly the
Speaker 4: right thing, and everybody keeps their mouth shut.
Speaker 3: I personally, and this is probably easy to say when
Speaker 3: I'm not in horrible pain end of my life, but
Speaker 3: I personally would like to have the full human experience
Speaker 3: of having it happened naturally. Whatever that.
Speaker 4: If I say, doc, I have a list of people
Speaker 4: I'd like to take with me, how does that send?
Speaker 3: Armstrong?
Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3: So I was talking to a babysitter I was interviewing
Speaker 3: yesterday and we got into this topic. This is not
Speaker 3: anything we haven't discussed before, we haven't thought about. She
Speaker 3: was a political science major, so we got into a
Speaker 3: little bit of a conversation about that. I just was asking,
Speaker 3: do you think things will ever go back to where
Speaker 3: this isn't everybody's life all the time following politics constantly
Speaker 3: and pendulum or continuum. That sort of stuff kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: But I said, you know, you're you're young, so you
Speaker 3: don't know this. But people didn't used to talk about
Speaker 3: politics all the time. In fact, we almost never talked
Speaker 3: about it. I said, you know, when I none of
Speaker 3: my and I hadn't thought about it because she's in college.
Speaker 3: All my friends in college, I don't have the slightest
Speaker 3: idea what their politics were. The slightest idea never came up.
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I couldn't tell you now, people that I
Speaker 3: hung out with all the time what their politics were
Speaker 3: old beer were our politics? And she looked at me
Speaker 3: like I was crazy. She said, wow, I said, in girlfriends,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of all the girlfriends I had in college.
Speaker 3: I don't have any idea what their politics were or
Speaker 3: their parents. And she said that's crazy. She said, that's
Speaker 3: the first question you ask somebody when you meet them. Now,
Speaker 3: the first question. Wow, And we both couldn't believe each
Speaker 3: other's life experience around this. I have no idea what
Speaker 3: any of my girlfriend's political positions were because we never
Speaker 3: discussed it. And who cares? And who cares?
Speaker 4: I like it when you when we spay and spend
Speaker 4: time together and talk one thing you do.
Speaker 3: I love when you do that. But I don't care
Speaker 3: whether you're public democrat. That's perverse.
Speaker 4: It's absolutely perverse, and it speaks to a couple of.
Speaker 3: A handful of things. They can't be good.
Speaker 4: Well, there are books written about this stuff, but it's
Speaker 4: the omnipresence of government in our lives, in the decay
Speaker 4: of our other social institutions that gave our lives meaning
Speaker 4: and a sense of belongingness.
Speaker 3: Right, And I was thinking, okay, so that's fine if
Speaker 3: you're a lefty, and the first question is always you
Speaker 3: know what, who do you vote for? What's your politics?
Speaker 3: Because you can, you know, be out and proud and
Speaker 3: whoever the girl you're talking to, I'm thinking about myself
Speaker 3: as a guy. The girl you're talking to is almost
Speaker 3: the same as you guaranteed. But what if you're not,
Speaker 3: you either have to lie or not date anybody or
Speaker 3: have any friends. I guess that is correct, Yes, absolutely correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, you know to that end, we don't have
Speaker 4: much time, but I can squeeze this. In recent polling
Speaker 4: shows the married men are fifty nine to thirty nine
Speaker 4: Republican fifty nine to thirty nine. Married women are fifty
Speaker 4: six to forty two. Republican. Unmarried men are fifty two
Speaker 4: to forty five. Republican unmarried women are sixty eight thirty one.
Speaker 3: Democrat.
Speaker 4: The Democratic Party has become the party of unmarried women,
Speaker 4: and to some extent, either low T males or those
Speaker 4: who are just so desperate to have a woman that
Speaker 4: they pretend to be Democrats. I don't know, but that's shocking.
Speaker 4: So Taylor Swift's endorsement, for instance, how could that be
Speaker 4: a surprise to anyone that's like her entire constituency.
Speaker 3: Oh and it's worth also mentioning.
Speaker 4: The New York Post had an interesting piece the other
Speaker 4: day pointing that over the last eight years, especially the
Speaker 4: last eight years, women have become much much more left
Speaker 4: wing than they were. It's not just that they're left,
Speaker 4: they're way more left.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and getty