Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Roe v Wade: When Josh & Joe Rogan Debated Abortion
Transcript
- 0:00Good day, humans. What a week in the United States at least is raising all kinds of questions
- 0:09about human rights, women's rights, women's right to choose. Obviously, I'm getting a lot
- 0:17of questions on social media about what I think about the leaked document from the Supreme
- 0:23Court. That alone is unprecedented. The idea that a draft decision would be leaked to the press
- 0:30to Politico, and I'm sure there will be all the necessary hunting down of whether or not that came
- 0:36from liberals inside the court, whether it may have come from a justice or a clerk, whether it
- 0:41could have come from the conservative side of the court trying to make this decision to fade a
- 0:45complete. If you're not across it, basically the constitutional decision, the Supreme Court decision,
- 0:51Roe vs. Wade, that has ensured a woman's right to have an abortion for decades, it seems
- 1:00is about to be overturned. I don't know whether or not there's that's a done deal yet.
- 1:07I have no special insight into the workings of the court and whether or not they could consider
- 1:11to wind it back, but this draft decision written by Samuel Alito certainly seems to be the writing
- 1:18on the wall for a conservative Christian really goal of the past half century to come to fruition
- 1:25this year, and this will be probably the biggest legacy of the Trump administration. Of Trump's
- 1:30first term, shall we say, in case he has another. I haven't wanted to talk about this on the
- 1:35year on my radio show. It's not really the place for it, but I do want to have, share a few thoughts
- 1:41here. So instead of releasing our scheduled episode, which is with the extraordinary individual
- 1:48Kurt Furnley, who you'll hear from next week, I thought we should just try to unwrap some of
- 1:54this and hopefully help you to think about it. I have long publicly held that courts are too
- 2:02overweighted in American democracy and that it's full-hardy to entrench rights too much in the
- 2:10justice system rather than in the legislative branch, which I think is where we and a democracy
- 2:16should come to decisions about big issues like abortion. What's scary about this decision for me,
- 2:25quite apart from the obvious fact that it's going to derange the lives potentially of millions and
- 2:33millions of American women and leave open the possibility of a future Republican administration
- 2:39with a Republican House and a Republican Senate conceivably imposing a ban on abortion in all
- 2:45states, not just the ones who choose to ban it now, is that the decision also throws into question,
- 2:53although it claims not to. All of the other constitutional decisions that the Supreme Court has
- 2:58arrived at, which are also based on the same premise in the Constitution. The right to game
- 3:05marriage is also obviously not written in the Constitution, it's a right that is discovered and
- 3:11that the Supreme Court has interpreted the 14th Amendment as implying, treating everybody equally.
- 3:21There are all kinds of potential ramifications if you wanted to think about the ripple effects
- 3:26of all this, that this court or future courts, which may yet be even more conservative, who knows,
- 3:32good undo. And it's a caution, retail, about what happens when conversation becomes so polarized,
- 3:43that you start using the umpires as a way of achieving legislative victories.
- 3:50It's the wrong place to locate our democratic disagreements, the control of the court. I think
- 3:59this has been clear for some years and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
- 4:04It's also worth noting that even when the legislative process is inadequate and laws are imperfect,
- 4:11the temperature of American democracy is so hot that it doesn't allow for the fuzzy edges that
- 4:17other democracies enjoy. It may sound a bit weird to say that fuzzy edges are something that you would
- 4:23enjoy, but there is a kind of don't ask, don't tell approach to these hot button issues and a lot
- 4:31of other democracies that doesn't seem to exist in the US because the moment you give anyone an
- 4:37inch, they will take a mile. So to articulate exactly what I mean, in the jurisdiction where I live,
- 4:42New South Wales, the most populated state in Australia, do you know when abortion became legal?
- 4:49Less than three years ago. Do you know how many people were getting abortions prior to that?
- 4:56Loads. I have two friends who have had abortions and they certainly didn't technically meet the
- 5:04requirements of the law. So just to fill you in a little bit, prior to 2019 in New South Wales,
- 5:12abortion was explicitly listed as a crime, but the interpretation of that law was subject to a
- 5:19ruling, a court ruling, the Levine ruling, which held an abortion to be legal if a doctor had an
- 5:25honest and reasonable belief that due to any economic, social or medical ground or reason,
- 5:31the abortion was necessary to, quote, preserve the woman involved from serious danger to her
- 5:36life or physical or mental health, which the continuance of the pregnancy would entail.
- 5:44Now, that language was big enough to drive a truck through or to drive thousands of abortion
- 5:50through as the case may be. And if we lived in a culture which was inclined to litigate everything
- 5:58and to push for our rights as far as is humanly possible and to test the very limit of every word
- 6:04in every statute, I can fully imagine a scenario in which any one of my friends who had gotten an
- 6:11abortion could have told someone else who might then sue their doctor, the question of whether
- 6:19they'd have standing, I suppose maybe they would have to be a partner or something like that who
- 6:23didn't want the abortion to go ahead, but you could, you know, if you were a conservative Christian
- 6:26lobby group, you could certainly find such a person with whom to launch such a case and you could
- 6:32say, well, hang on, what was the serious danger here? And the reality is that doctors just interpreted
- 6:40a serious danger to mental health as being the fact that the woman wants an abortion.
- 6:45And if she doesn't get it, that poses a serious danger to her mental health. Therefore,
- 6:50there were plenty of widely available abortions funded by the federal government,
- 6:55at least in part, depending on where you were. And on it went, and that was only codified into law
- 7:01in October of 2019, when abortions up to 22 weeks were legalized after 22 weeks, you need
- 7:08two doctors approval. That's the state in New South Wales, and now the law has caught up in every
- 7:13state and territory. But I just say that to point out those two points. One, there is room in a
- 7:21democracy for a little bit of closing our eyes to big culture war fights and just sort of allowing
- 7:28things to happen in the background. You could argue, make the same case against
- 7:32euthanasia, which, you know, physician assisted suicide is still illegal in New South Wales.
- 7:40It's the only state in Australia where it is still illegal, and it still takes place sometimes
- 7:46in the shadows. Now, I've argued in print in the past that that should cease to be the case,
- 7:50we should legalize it, we should have systems in place, we should make sure that it is
- 7:54codified. But that's largely so that you don't have abuses of the system where it takes place
- 7:59without the kinds of guardrails that you would have if there was a law governing how it can be done.
- 8:05That's largely to appease people who are opposed to euthanasia, to ensure that you have the
- 8:12necessary number of doctors signing off on it, and that it only takes place under certain conditions
- 8:17when the person is terminally ill and there are no other options. Because at the moment,
- 8:21it's a wild west, just like with the war on drugs. When you ban something entirely,
- 8:28it's essentially completely unregulated, and you're handing it over to the black market,
- 8:31you're handing it over to take place in the shadows. Now, in the case of the war on drugs,
- 8:36I think that's a calamity. In the case of abortion prior to 2019, it just kind of potted along,
- 8:42and it was just kind of okay. Now, I know that's not an ideal situation. I know that women's rights
- 8:48activists will think that that's an abomination that I would even suggest to that. I think it's
- 8:54good that it's now legal in New South Wales, but my point is simply that when things are very,
- 9:01very hot to touch, maybe it's just best not to touch them. Then the second point I would make
- 9:07is just that this should be located in Parliament. This should be located in Congress. See,
- 9:12the state congresses or federal congress. Ideally, people should have the right
- 9:19to form whatever political system they want to as close to home as they can, rather than having
- 9:23it far away and Washington DC making rules about what goes on in Wyoming. But if Washington DC is
- 9:29going to make rules about what's going on in Wyoming, then surely it should be the democratically
- 9:32elected representatives of the people who are making those rules, not a bunch of justices.
- 9:38I got into a chat about this a few years ago on Joe Rogan's show. As many of you will know,
- 9:49I've been on Joe's show seven times since 2014, and our discussion got a bit heated. I want to
- 9:56play you a little bit of it here, just so you can hear Joe and me fleshing out how we think about
- 10:04who has standing to talk about this, to think about this, to make rules about this sort of thing,
- 10:09and it'll articulate better than I can right now here by myself my thinking about this.
- 10:16Here is some of Joe Rogan and me from five years ago. That's where it gets weird, but isn't this
- 10:22like life in general? Yeah. It's slippery. Yeah. There's, I mean, it's like we're talking about
- 10:28with abortion. Like what is it? Is it killing a baby? Yeah. Or is it a medical procedure? You know,
- 10:32can we all just agree that it's both, but that like that? I don't understand why there is,
- 10:36especially in this country, like it's so, so polarizing here. No, this is not a debate. No.
- 10:44Oh, come on, man. No. Dawkins. Dawkins tweeted something about it that there's nothing that
- 10:51people like a human embryo was essentially the same thing as a pig embryo. It was like
- 10:56ridiculous comparison to abortion. Look, the religious right will always be
- 11:02crazy about the things that it's crazy about. And people will always get offended on Twitter
- 11:07when Rogan Dawkins tweets something that's unpopular. But I still affirm that in the state,
- 11:12in the states, the conversation around abortion is uniquely different from the way that it is
- 11:17in Europe and in Australia. It's much more of a, it's just much more of a fault line issue.
- 11:24And I wonder whether in hindsight, it wouldn't have been better for Rog the way it not to actually
- 11:30have been decided by the Supreme Court that way. What? Well, just because I don't know.
- 11:35People are going to hate this as well. You fucking cisgender piece of shit. I believe,
- 11:40I believe in abortion, I believe in abortion rights, but I don't believe that it's,
- 11:45that you can find in the constitution of the United States a right, so inalienable,
- 11:52that the Supreme Court, like where is it in the constitution? Well, the Supreme Court said there's
- 11:55a right to privacy. Therefore, there's a right to abortion because we don't want to interfere
- 12:02in women's affairs. But that presupposes that the embryo isn't a human. You don't have the right
- 12:10to privacy to kill somebody, right? I mean, if I go into a room, my right to privacy doesn't extend
- 12:16to me being able to get away with killing a baby. The question of whether or not it's a baby is
- 12:21the relevant question that's not addressed in row. So I think that it should be legal, but I think
- 12:28that it should be legal through the legislative process. I think that is a legitimate democratic
- 12:33aspiration for people to be able to, and if it means that it's not legal in Alabama because
- 12:38a majority of people in Alabama don't want it, I don't think the founding fathers would have a
- 12:41problem with that. Well, there's a strong amount of the large amount of people that don't want
- 12:46men talking about this at all. You should be able to discuss this. That is one of the main problems
- 12:54in female issue. I can understand a woman being upset that a man with no stake in the game
- 13:00is stepping up and saying that a woman's shooter should not be able to have an abortion.
- 13:04Well, how do I have stake in the game of whether or not for example murder should be legal?
- 13:10Okay, this is not that. This is, this is something different. This is someone, if there's
- 13:15like three cells in the body, it might be to you, but it might not be to them. If it's just having,
- 13:22like, okay, here's the morning after pill. Is that the same as an abortion?
- 13:28I don't care because I don't think there's a role with abortion. No, I don't think there's
- 13:31any wrong with abortion. But sure there is. If it's a nine-month-old baby, the baby's in there.
- 13:35It's about to come out the next day. You decide to open her up and stab it in the head.
- 13:38This is what I'm arguing for is a, is a kind of incrementalism, which you were just
- 13:42alluding to, right? It's not a black or white thing. Why can't we, why can't we all appreciate
- 13:46that it's both because it's become so polarized in the United States that both positions
- 13:51are bullshit. And people on both sides know that both positions are bullshit. It's bullshit
- 13:56to say that it is just a woman's health issue and has no ethical implications whatsoever. Even if,
- 14:03as you say, you're talking about cutting a woman open at nine months and stabbing the embryo
- 14:08in the head. It's also bullshit to say that the instant an egg is fertilized, that is a person
- 14:13that should have all of the rights to life that an adult should have and that it's murder to kill
- 14:19a blast assist that's smaller than the size of the head of a pin. Both of those positions are
- 14:23stupid. This is an incremental situation. Life evolves, it grows, a fetus grows, it becomes a human
- 14:30being. I mean, Peter Singer, the great philosopher, also on Australian, says that under certain conditions
- 14:35in fantaside, the killing of babies should be legal and could be ethical. Well, he's an animal
- 14:39in that. He loves animals more than the placebo. Yeah, but he makes a legitimate point, which is that,
- 14:44you know, why does it make a difference one day after the baby is born? Suppose you've got a
- 14:48premature baby that's born, you know, four weeks early. In fact, now we can already make babies
- 14:55survive at right around the point of viability, which is where abortion is still on the, on the
- 15:01fringe of. So say you've got a 22 or 23, 24 week old baby, not, not weak old baby after
- 15:08birth, you know, timing from the, from the moment of inception, conception. That could live outside
- 15:15the womb, but the moment it gets born, it becomes murder to kill it, but you could have killed exactly
- 15:20the same organism with exactly the same future and exactly the same prospects and exactly the same
- 15:25life. If it was inside the womb, in certain states, well, with unabortioned, I'm not talking about
- 15:33late term, I'm talking about the point of viability. What is the probability of a viability time?
- 15:39It's been interpreted as being like that 20 to 24 week. But does this specifically say that?
- 15:44I don't, I don't think I don't know whether or not that comes out of the actual ruling where
- 15:48they were writing it in Roe v Wade, but I do know that that is the way that it's been interpreted
- 15:52by lower courts since then. But maybe they actually spelled out the number of weeks. Either way,
- 15:57you know, he's pointing to a legitimate, an undramed sort of moral hypocrisy. It's a very
- 16:03complicated, slippery issue. It's not simple, black or white. Right. And the idea that we shouldn't
- 16:08be allowed to think and talk about the moral quandary of this because we can't have babies.
- 16:13Well, I'm not agreeing to that. I'm not agreeing to that. No, and I'm saying that is an argument
- 16:17that women want to take because they feel they feel like there's this unjust sort of male dominance
- 16:27on the female reproductive system. Look, when I see a bunch of white men,
- 16:31white old men sitting in Congress making rules against women, predominantly young women,
- 16:38predominantly young women of color who are in areas that have less the least amount of access
- 16:44to safe and legally women of color. How so? Because safe legal abortions are more difficult to
- 16:50obtain in places like rural Alabama than they are in places like New York City. Yeah, but there's a
- 16:55lot of white people in rural Alabama. I don't necessarily think it's a racial issue as much as
- 16:59a poverty issue. Yeah. Especially like things like Planned Parenthood and shutting down Planned
- 17:04Parenthood. They're just going to affect people that don't have much money. Yep. Who are disproportionately
- 17:07people of color as well? Disproportionately in terms of the actual numbers of human beings or
- 17:12percentage wise. In terms of percentage wise. Right, but the actual numbers of human beings,
- 17:17it's not. Right, but you can understand how it would look bad. If you're black woman,
- 17:21you add people of color to that. It accentuates the issue and makes it even more problematic. It
- 17:25makes it more of a big left-wing progressive issue. Right, they can't be argued against. Do you
- 17:30think the optics discrimination against people of color? Oh, don't want to do that? It's people.
- 17:35It's human beings. But do you think that the optics would look as bad if all of the old white
- 17:39men who were riding the laws were black? I think it all looked bad. I don't think it'd look
- 17:44as bad. Wait a minute. Hold on a second. You're saying that if old white men make these issues,
- 17:50it doesn't look as bad. No, I'm saying it looks worse. As bad as possible. It looks
- 17:54worse than if old black men were making this issue against all poor people. Yeah, because old white
- 17:59men just seem to drip privilege because every single check box they've got going for them. They're
- 18:05both male, they're white and they're all tortured argument. Anyway, very tortured argument.
- 18:10I think you understand that. You don't think it looks weird when Clarence Thomas votes against
- 18:13abortion. Yeah, I do. Yeah, so there you go. But I mean, my point, my point is simply,
- 18:20I take the optics as being a bad thing. I think the optics are worse if it's white people and if
- 18:25it's black people, but I'm happy to yield that point to concede that point if that's a sticking one.
- 18:31The point is we have to be able to have conversations about anything without allowing our identities
- 18:37to prevent us from being able to think. I agree with you by the time that I came on this show.
- 18:43It was because I was getting into an argument with an activist about whether or not I had a right
- 18:49to have an opinion about whether or not Stephen Colbert had been racist.
- 18:55Right. And she was claiming that I didn't have a right to have a conversation about it because I'm
- 19:00a white man. Well, that was just the way she tried to get out of the argument. You know, the whole
- 19:06thing before that was her not understanding the joke. And she didn't want to own up to the fact that
- 19:11she didn't understand the joke. And then when you sort of explained it to her, she was using the
- 19:15you as a white man thing to try to deny your opinion. But don't you think it happens all the time?
- 19:20I think we're both on the same page here in that I think we both agree that you should absolutely
- 19:27be able to have a conversation about this. The question is should a man be able to decide
- 19:33what a woman can and can't do with her body and should we be able to make the laws?
- 19:37But you just smuggled in the term with her body. Well, it is a baby if it's a plasticist and it
- 19:41is in her body. Right. It's a plasticist in her body. Right. So that is a decision that we're
- 19:47talking about that. So when it gets to be an embryo or a fetus along the way, somewhere along
- 19:52the way it ceases to be just her body. But an unrelated male human being, when should that person
- 19:58be able to make a decision and should a male human being be able to make a decision at all? Because
- 20:02if you can make a decision about the embryo or a fetus, can you make it about the plasticist?
- 20:07Like, when can you decide and why should a man be able to make that decision in the first place?
- 20:11Because he's got a brain as well. And we're all interested in. No, no, no, no, no. You're talking about
- 20:15controlling someone's body. You are talking about controlling a body. No, which a woman with a
- 20:20plasticist inside of her. You tell her she can't take care of that plasticist and remove it. She
- 20:24must make it viable and bring it to birth. We're talking about when a homocypian comes into existence.
- 20:29That's a philosophical and ethical question. No, it's not. If you're telling a woman, if you're
- 20:33telling a woman's body, no, no, no, because we're talking about the rights giving someone a right
- 20:37or stopping them and controlling them. Yeah. If you're talking about a plasticist inside a woman's
- 20:42body and you're a man and you decide, you don't even know this woman. You decide by your moral
- 20:46argument and judgment, she should not be able to terminate that plasticist. Then you are deciding
- 20:51what she can do with her body. No, you're deciding what she can do to the plasticist. It's in her body.
- 20:57It's inside her body. Sure. It's also inside her body when it's nine months old. So you're saying
- 21:02a man, unrelated man should be able to have input on whether a woman should be able to terminate a
- 21:07plasticist. No, I'm saying that the democratic institutions of the state should be able to
- 21:12decide that. I'm not talking about democratic institutions. We're talking very specifically about
- 21:16a man. What are you talking about? Well, if it's a dictatorship, then I don't agree with it. I
- 21:21do believe that people should be able to, I think this is something that people ought to be able to
- 21:25vote on. Yes. I personally, again, favor abortion rights, but I don't think that the gender of the
- 21:32person who is voted into power by the voting public is relevant in terms of whether or not the
- 21:38voting public thinks that embryos are human beings. I don't think that embryos have a right to life,
- 21:45but I don't think that it makes sense to say that an embryo is just the woman's body.
- 21:50We're not talking about an embryo. We're talking about the entire process, right? The entire process
- 21:54of conception to birth and that's somewhere along the line. What are you arguing? Are you arguing that
- 21:59if there are males in positions of power in Congress that they should have to abstain from ruling?
- 22:05Should the male justices on the Supreme Court have to abstain from voting on abortion cases?
- 22:10I'm arguing that it's problematic when a man decides, can I get pregnant? Decides when a baby
- 22:21is actually a baby. So should men not be allowed to vote for? I'm not saying that. I'm saying
- 22:25candidates that are anti-abortion. Don't you think it's problematic that a guy should decide whether
- 22:30like say if you're a hard-core right-wing person? Yeah, I've already said it looks bad.
- 22:33Like, it's not just the looks. It's the fuck looks man. But what does problematic mean other than looks?
- 22:37Well, it's not. It's a huge issue. It's not looks. It's a huge issue that someone who cannot get
- 22:43pregnant decides that another human being that they're totally unrelated to can't make the
- 22:47decision that five cells that have bundled together must be brought to life. They think that those
- 22:52five cells are a person. Well, they don't even know this. I mean, you're just a lot of cells.
- 22:56They don't even know this person. They don't know this person. Why should they have any power over
- 22:59this person? Well, why should they have any power? Are they determining whether or not are they
- 23:04controlling a person's body and when are they saving a baby? Well, that's precisely the question,
- 23:09isn't it? Right. It is the question. Should they should a male have the right to determine whether
- 23:13or not a woman can murder her newborn baby? It's a good question. I say no. At least she's consistent.
- 23:21Yeah. I don't think that you should be in one year old. I don't think anybody should be able to
- 23:26murder a baby. I don't think a man should have the right. I think we society as a society. No,
- 23:32collective. No, no, no, no. You were just I thought you were just saying that you you think
- 23:35that a man should not be able to prevent a mother from killing her baby. No, that's I said that
- 23:39wrong. What I mean is no because that is what you're saying with regard to the to abortion.
- 23:44You're saying that a man shouldn't have a should not have the right to prevent a woman from
- 23:48killing her baby. It's a very hot in the eye. It's not going to work. Okay. I know what you're
- 23:54saying. And I know that you're saying that we should all have a stake in this. We should all be
- 23:57able to discuss this. I just think that when you talk about like especially like a blastocyst
- 24:02eventually becoming an embryo, we have to agree in some way, shape or form that you and I don't
- 24:08have a stake in it. We're not going to get pregnant. No, it's a way bigger issue for a woman that
- 24:14it is for a man. Yes. So we agree. We agree that it's a way bigger issue for a woman that is
- 24:21for a man, but you should be able to discuss it. I just think we both agree that you should be
- 24:24able to discuss it. Yeah, I mean, you should be able to help us from here to be where I'm coming
- 24:28from here is that I feel like we use identity politics to deprive other people of standing
- 24:35to discuss questions that are actually universal because they're moral questions. Right. And I think
- 24:40we all have so I one thing that I try to do as much as possible is understand where people who I
- 24:45disagree with are coming from. And I know you do that as well. So I am pro abortion rights,
- 24:51but in order for me to understand where people who detest abortion are coming from, it's necessary
- 24:57for me to make the sort of leap of empathy and logic into their camp and see things from the way
- 25:03that they see them, which is that the instant egg is fertilized for them, that becomes a sacred
- 25:08a sacred question of a new life where it's no longer about the woman's body. It's now a moral
- 25:13and ethical question that we're all involved in because we're all involved in what our culture is
- 25:17allowed to do and who it's allowed to kill and how it's allowed to kill them. So it becomes a bit
- 25:21more like a death penalty question where you might say, well, I'm never going to be up for the
- 25:25death penalty because I'm never going to do anything that would require that would put me on death
- 25:29row. So what standing do I have to be in favor or against the death penalty? That's sort of a moot
- 25:35question like we're all in this society together. We'll have to figure out what's right and wrong.
- 25:40And if we've got a brain, we should have conversations about what's good or bad.
- 25:43And the fact that I'm unlikely to be in a specific scenario doesn't actually really give me
- 25:47less standing to have a conversation about it or even to write laws about it if people vote me
- 25:52into a position where I can write laws about it. Well, I certainly think it does when you're talking
- 25:56about a blasticist. I certainly think it does when you talk about the argument of conception and
- 26:00when something becomes alive. So there you have it. Jo and me arguing two white guys arguing
- 26:07about abortion five years ago. Look, my thoughts are with all women in America, especially who are
- 26:17trying to process this and trying to think about what this means for you and your kids and your
- 26:21grandkids. I hope that this doesn't open the door to the Supreme Court then striking down a whole
- 26:30bunch of rights that people have have here to fall been taking for granted on the basis that they
- 26:36were unjustly decided. But that is the risk that you pose when you fail to legislate these things
- 26:45as a community through your elected representatives and leave them in the hands of the courts. You never
- 26:50know how that court is going to be comprised. Now, the counterpoint to that is, of course, you never
- 26:54know what a future government is going to do either. Up until now, I think a lot of left-wing
- 26:59people have thought that the Supreme Court is more stable and more of a guarantor of rights than
- 27:05the whims of a democratic mob are. But this just goes to show that when the Supreme Court
- 27:11does shift its balance of power, that can then have implications that all of a sudden send
- 27:17shockwaves through the whole demos and the whole way that society thinks that it is structured
- 27:23in terms of what it can and can't do with the hottest button culture war issues. You have to be
- 27:28able to find ways of litigating these things in the place where they are supposed to be litigated
- 27:33in a democracy, which is in the democratic chamber itself. America is broken. America has all kinds
- 27:38of problems. I mean, the filibuster is a problem. The undemocratic representation in the Senate
- 27:43is a problem where you have a small minority of human beings in the smallest states holding
- 27:50the balance of power and carrying as much weight as such large populations in the big liberal
- 27:56states. You have the electoral college system, which itself is undemocratic. America needs democratic
- 28:01reform. America needs fundamental democratic reform to its institutions. You need a reform of the
- 28:08way that the Senate does its business. You need a reform of the norms about exactly how
- 28:14these things should get resolved. It's a shamozl, frankly. That's the technical term for it.
- 28:22It's a shamozl. You've got calls now from people on the left for Joe Biden to stack the court to
- 28:27add, you know, additional two or four justices to the court. That would be nuclear. I mean, yes,
- 28:34look, what Mitch McConnell did at the end of Donald Trump's term by, you know,
- 28:40quickly allowing Donald Trump to appoint a new Supreme Court justice after having said at the
- 28:46end of Obama's term that, you know, the end of a president's term is not a time to be able to
- 28:51do so and holding up the appointment that Obama rightly should have gotten for nine months.
- 28:57All of that was abysmal, but it was an abysmal breach of unwritten codes to actually rewrite
- 29:06the Supreme Court and pile in more justices would be, I think the beginning of a monumental
- 29:16political and cultural war in the United States, the likes of which we haven't seen since
- 29:21the early 1960s. And I'm not sure that that's the way to go. I can't tell you how to do business
- 29:28America, but at some point the left has to realize that with the way the system is, even though
- 29:36it's rigged against you, you're still losing. You're still losing way too much and you're going to
- 29:40lose again this year in the midterm elections and the Biden administration is going to massively
- 29:46lose the House of Representatives and you got to figure out why. I'm not going to go on a rant now
- 29:52about cancel culture and wokeness and all of the distractions that the left is playing around with,
- 29:57but something that the left is doing in America is not resonating with the heartland and you need
- 30:02the heartland to win and you need to win to get lasting change in the place where the change
- 30:07matters and that is Congress and the White House. It shouldn't always be. It never has been the
- 30:14Supreme Court. Have a wonderful week. I'll be back with regular programming next week. Take care,
- 30:21continue to strive as best you can to have conversations that are civil, but as much as possible,
- 30:27uncomfortable. Uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma. Follow me, Josh
- 30:37Epps on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest. May your day be fruitful, your mind humble,
- 30:43your enemies generous and your conversations perfectly, sparklingly, delectably, uncomfortable.