Say what you will about Matt Walsh, but the Daily Wire’s chief rabble-rouser knows how to rouse a rabble. The man’s favorite targets are the left’s most protected groups, and what’s more, he’s good at it. This ranks him as one of the most targeted people by the left, and they go above and beyond to discredit and destroy him.
Take, for instance, this little video that was clipped by Media Matters of Walsh speaking on a podcast in 2011. Walsh was talking about how teenage pregnancy was far more common than it is today, noting that 1957 was the peak in terms of teen pregnancies. He noted that pregnancy among teens was, until very recent history, kind of normal.
Walsh used this historical fact, not as an advertisement for teenagers getting pregnant, but to set up another point.
He noted that marriages truly stood the test of time even then when people were married younger. He said the problem with younger mothers today isn’t teen pregnancy, it’s unwed pregnancy. Girls, even in their later teens, begin having urges to begin families and that’s not something that can just disappear from human biology.
Walsh noted that society has changed its minds about teen pregnancy for a couple of reasons, one is that we have hyper-extended what we consider to be adolescence:
What I’m saying, though, is that if society was, if society was different and that we stopped insisting that you’re a kid until you’re 25 and we just deal with the reality that at about 16, you’re an adult who is mature and can make decisions — you are that at 16. I don’t care what anybody says. And if you’re going to tell me it’s different, well, then how come for the first 10,000 years of human civilization, that’s the way it was? It’s just recently where all of a sudden we’re all ret***** until we’re 25?
Is Walsh wrong?
Historically, he has a point. Even dating back a couple of generations to baby boomers and beyond, marrying and having children quite young wasn’t exactly uncommon. The societal landscape was far different for past generations. Finding suiters for teen daughters was very important for many families.
Walsh is also correct that teen pregnancies didn’t collapse societies like they do today because these teen mothers were safe in stable households with fathers who were present and providing. These children would go on to be stable people who would help advance the world as we know it today.
This is a strong indicator that it’s not teen pregnancy that’s the problem but unwed pregnancy as Walsh said.
Today’s society does, however, look far different. Our expectations and goals have changed. Women are now expected to join the workforce with high-paying jobs just like men are and, as a result, more focus has been put on education in younger years. Failing to get an education limits the growth of even a two-parent household as two incomes are now needed to stay afloat in today’s middle class.
Pregnancy and even marriage are now seen as hurdles to this end. Getting married and having children in your early 20s is now considered “too young.” What we considered important in terms of homemaking and raising a family has been pushed off into the late 20s or even 30s.
These are all just simple facts.
What I don’t see is Walsh indicating that we need to start impregnating teenagers or forcing young women into marriages. What I am seeing — and what the left seems to be missing — is that two-parent homes with present fathers are something that benefits society so much that it makes a huge difference no matter what child-bearing age group you fall into.
Yet, the left has grasped onto this audio featuring Walsh and is using this to paint him and people defending him over this as groomers and pedophiles. For reference, check the responses to this tweet of mine.
The left’s strategy here seems pretty clear. Thanks to continued exposure to the left’s attempts to indoctrinate kids with LGBT ideology and sexualization of children via schools, they’ve exposed themselves as very real groomers and pedophiles themselves.
This hasn’t done them any favors in terms of winning elections, much less public approval, so the strategy is to do what the left does all the time. They need to find a reason to accuse their opponents of the very thing the left is guilty of in order to take the heat off.
This is an example of PR sleight of hand but more than that, it reveals real desperation by the left to shake off a heinous title that’s dragging them down.