Pete Buttigieg BRINGS THE HOUSE DOWN with must-see speech

what i know is that for as long as i've been alive and a lot longer than that the general path of social and political life in america and the general path of jurisprudence in this country has been toward more freedom more liberty and more rights and the question that i think has now been called is did we just live to see the high water mark of liberty and freedom and rights in this country the the moment that will be remembered as the furthest we got before things started moving the other way or will that wave recede and we'll get even further i think that's the question in front of us so as somebody who believes in a woman's right to choose as somebody who believes in the decision we made as a society not just the decision that was made in the court but i would argue a decision that we have made at least a majority of us are on board with as a society that even if we cannot come into alignment on the incredibly complex difficult philosophical moral and sometimes spiritual questions over things like where to draw a line when deciding about terminating a pregnancy that we could at least agree on who gets to draw that line i trust women to draw that line for the last 50 years america has trusted women to draw that line has recognized that as a right and now it would appear that the court is poised to take that understanding away and of course not only is that a source of fear for so many americans for so many women but it raises the question about what other rights are going to be put on the table uh i was with spectrum folks earlier we didn't get a chance to really dig into this but i know how this is hitting the lgbtq plus community especially because unlike some rights that we have had for decades that if you're an undergraduate age student you have not known a country that didn't have those rights some of the rights that have come to the queer community are quite new you know when i became mayor of south bend wasn't that long ago the idea that i could be married certainly the idea that i could be a confirmed cabinet member from indiana talking about my two kids that my husband and i are raising would have been somewhere between unlikely and preposterous and that possibility was secured by an action of the court and so we know how fragile that is and i think we're all feeling in the face of our political institutions and our non-supposedly not very political institutions our judicial institutions having been shaky for some time that this is not theoretical it's been talked about in theoretical terms up until now but this is not theoretical this is going to shape what our lives are going to be like as all political and judicial decisions of course do but sometimes they get kicked around on political tv shows and and sometimes in academic environments as if it's theory and it's not is it it's how our lives are going to go then you have the uh agenda that has led to things like the don't say gay bill which in my view is a little narrower though not less uh um destructive but a little bit narrower than the 40-year-long conservative political project that is culminating in what we're seeing perhaps about to happen to rowe and what i mean by that is there there's a there's a more superficial political pattern that i think has driven some of the politics of the behavior of people like these people in florida that don't say gabo and that is when all you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a culture war so you you got a political faction that really doesn't have a lot of answers for many of the questions that people are wrestling with they love talking about gas prices but they don't have an answer on gas prices they don't have an answer on inflation many of them answered our call for bipartisan infrastructure work with a no haven't seen an answer on what to do about the price of prescription drugs they voted against lowering that don't have an answer on what to do about the cost of child care don't have a great answer on taxes actually want to raise taxes for the poor that's a new one i thought i'd seen it all then i saw senator scott's proposal to raise taxes for the poor that's not great territory for them to be debating on so what do they do they find somebody vulnerable and pick on them which at the moment is largely the trans community and they find something to talk about which can go between the laughable because donald duck gonna make your kid gay to the incredibly dark which is the suggestion that the very presence of someone who is gender non-conforming or trans or or gay or lesbian or otherwise different the very existence of somebody like that is an adult subject right that that that if if if my kids in let's say first grade classroom were to mention in passing that over the weekend they had they had a great time going with their dads to the zoo that they would have somehow by saying that uttered something age-inappropriate and get us really fired up about that fight and it's just politics it's motivated by just politics so i guess what i'm saying is we're seeing a lot of overlapping patterns that are all pointing in the direction that the worst tendencies in human politics always have which is to take rights and freedoms away and to make it harder for vulnerable people in the service of some imagined political gain and there are two answers to that kind of thing two kinds of answers i would argue one answer is to argue against it and fight against it which what i do people who are involved in politics and public life go on television and do and the other is to see to it that that is in fact not a way to gain power politically because of course the biggest test of any of these tactics isn't were they well argued were they convincing the biggest test of these tactics is did they work and i'm going to be careful saying anything more about that because i'm here in my capacity as a federal official and i'm not here to talk about campaigns um but i will say just as a matter of policy and as a matter of the kind of political maneuvering that takes place among officials certainly in washington ultimately if things that hurt people help you get more power people will continue to do them and the rest is up to us i mean what can i really say that people judge hasn't already said better but there's one thing in this speech that really struck me one thing that i hadn't considered and that is the notion that we've already reached our high water mark in the united states in terms of what rights americans will be able to enjoy and i know it's a strange thing to think about because for our entire history as a country we've moved forward we've expanded rights and yet now for the first time in american history those rights that we've enjoyed for decades are being stripped away they're being contracted and i know what you're thinking how could the party that lavishes praise onto itself for supporting freedom and liberty be systematically stripping rights away from people don't they care about freedom no the fact is that it was never about freedom freedom was just a buzzword a shiny veneer that they used to cover for the fact that what they're really interested in is ensuring that everyone else conforms to their beliefs they want freedom of religion so long as it's christianity they want freedom of speech so long as that speech conforms to republican values in reality it was never about freedom it was simply about their own politics and influence and power and that's not just me opining florida governor ron desantis and the republican-led legislature in florida literally punished disney for daring to criticize their don't say gay bill moving immediately to strip the company of its self-governing status and of course republicans and states across the country have imposed abortion bans none of which literally zero enjoy the support of the majority of those citizens in each state there's not a single state in the country where support for overturning row exceeds even 30 percent because for the umpteenth time this is not about following the will of the people because it quite literally doesn't follow the will of the people it's about imposing the will of a small faction of far-right crystal fascist theocrats onto everyone else now while i think that they've skated by over the years with stupid cultural war attacks about socialism and wars on christmas and migrant caravans that were to some degree or another effective what they've done now will backfire this isn't just blocking progress it is rolling progress back it's taking women's reproductive rights economic freedom rights to privacy and their very bodily autonomy away from them this is not a left versus right issue this is an issue of basic humanity it's evidence that republicans won't just stop at roe they'll come after your right to use contraception the rights of same-sex couples to marry the rights of interracial couples to marry everything is on the chopping block what they've done thus far isn't their endgame it is a blueprint so look i understand that so often your politics are your identity but my message to conservatives is this at what point is the rubber stamp vote for the republican on the ballot for your team worth all of this worth telling women what they can or can't do with their bodies worth setting the precedent that the government can dictate your health care this isn't about political party anymore it's about basic fundamental freedom if you're for that then there is only one party you should consider supporting right now and it's not the one that's in the process of stripping rights away from americans [Music] to see more videos like this click the subscribe button right here on this screen and if you want to support my work subscribe to my podcast no lie with brian tyler cohen i cover the most important stories each week and my guest is always one of the top political figures including vice president kamala harris jen saki 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Channel: Brian Tyler Cohen

Views: 655,590

Keywords: Brian Tyler Cohen, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, brian cohen, abortion, roe, roe v wade, women's rights, lgbt rights, abortion pill

Id: 5ysZYwjuFes

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/TillThen96]

I would so much rather have Pete B. teaching my children than someone like

Cruz, DeSantis, Greene, Alito, or any of the other Qnutters. I can't even put their names on the same line with Pete. It just feels wrong.

Imagine the utter obscenity of Moscow Mitch teaching your kids.