Matt Walsh: “We would be a better, healthier country if physical fights broke out in Congress every once in a while”
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From the November 15, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Matt Walsh Show
MATT WALSH (HOST): I'll start with this because I enjoyed it -- a fight almost broke out yesterday during a Senate hearing. And this is Republican senator Markwayne Mullin -- Markwayne is his first name. Markwayne, one word, two first names. Anyway, he challenged a Teamster leader named Sean O'Brien to a fight based on things that Sean O'Brien had been posting on Twitter. And then they almost got into a fight right there in the middle of the Senate hearing. Pretty great stuff. Let's watch.
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I totally unironically think that we would be a better, healthier country if physical fights broke out in Congress every once in a while. It would certainly make C-SPAN a lot more interesting to watch. And, look, this -- this used to be pretty common back in the day. I mean, these guys used to come to blows kind of frequently. Even all the -- all the way back in, like, 1790s, there was a fight between two representatives -- I don't remember all of the details, but, one of the guys, like, spit tobacco juice on the other and then he grabs his cane and goes after him, and then the other guy grabs a fireplace poker, and the next thing you know, they're having a full on, like, Jedi, lightsaber battle with a cane and a fireplace poker right on the floor of the House. And stuff like this happened. Before the Civil War there was an infamous case where a guy was, a senator, I believe it was, was beat unconscious with a cane. And, you know, that didn't work out particularly well in the end because there was a civil war, but it -- still, it's the way disputes were settled back in those days.
And here's why I think it's healthy because, first of all, it shows that they actually care, that they're really passionate, like they're getting angry. Politicians don't fight like this anymore because they agree too much on everything. They pretend that they don't agree, but they actually agree. They don't take the issues that seriously anyways, so they don't really take it personally. You know, it's all a show. People always complain -- people who are very oblivious complain that there's too much, you know, contention in Washington. It's too divisive, it's too partisan. But I've always said the problem is the opposite. It -- there's not nearly enough contention. The problem is not that these people agree -- or rather, it's not that they disagree with each other too much, it's that they -- it's that they agree far too much. And -- so, I think that's one advantage of a fist fight. It's -- on top of the sheer entertainment factor, it shows that they care.
And also, look, historically, it's always been understood that men should have outlets to settle a beef physically in a fair and honorable way. That's why dueling was common and acceptable for hundreds of years, both in this country -- well, in this country not for hundreds of years, but hundreds of years across the -- the Western world and beyond, and for a brief time in this country as well. You know, it kept people a bit more honest, I think, people were a little bit more polite back when dueling was -- you know, if you were insulted, a man -- another man would -- if you insulted another man, he'd walk up to you and say, I challenge you to a duel, and now you're really, it's like, you know -- and you don't wanna turn it down because then you're shamed and embarrassed for the rest of your life. And it gives an outlet for male aggression. But then dueling fell out of fashion. And for a while, though, men could still kind of fight it out, go toe to toe without going to jail for assault. This was even the case -- you know, this is what boomers always talk about when they were in school. The kids would fight and, you know, you just let them fight it out, and they didn't immediately expel everybody involved. They didn't have the zero tolerance policy sort of thing. Now all that has gone away, but has it made society less violent? Has it made society more civil? Of course not. If anything, the opposite because you still have violence, but instead of fist fights between two people, you get these sudden violent outbursts targeting innocent people.