AS206: Abortion Debate Criticisms

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 206, and I am your host, Thomas Smith. I'd like to welcome to the show now two absolutely furious commenters. Commenters that are surely going to have my head on a plate after... No, not really. But some commenters, Lee and Jayme, who have emailed and commented about the abortion episodes, and we're gonna have a little discussion about it today. So welcome, Lee. Welcome, Jayme. Jayme let's start with you. How you you doing? And how did you find the show? And, uh, how long have you been an atheist? How about that? Simple questions to start.

0:01:09 Guests: Great. Yeah, those aren't simple questions. Um, I'm doing great. That one's simple, I guess. I'm Jayme. I have been listening since there were two people on the show. So I've been listening for a really long time, I think since the beginning.

0:01:24 Guests: I found the show probably you were on one of the other 87 atheist podcasts I listened to a week, probably.

0:01:30 Thomas: Hmm. It's a good bet.

0:01:34 Guests: And I've been an atheist for just about 15 years now, it was, I was actually raised in a super, super, super fundamentalist Christian home and, uh, kind of got out of it. It was either I was gonna be an atheist or I was going to go to seminary, and I didn't go to the seminary. Yeah.

0:01:39 Thomas: Wow.

0:01:53 Thomas: Wow, yeah, that really fork in the road there. Could have gone either way, yeah. Well, I would be very curious to hear about that at a later date. Uh, but, as it is, we've got a lot on the table, so I'm going to ask Lee same questions. Christians.

0:01:57 Guests: Yep. Okay.

0:02:08 Guests: So, um, I've been listening to the show for I don't know, maybe a couple, a few months, maybe four or five months at the tops. And, you know, just you have some interesting subjects, and then when this abortion issue came up, of course I got very, you know, interested in it because it is one of my very big areas of focus. And and I want to start right off by saying, you know, I apologize for any yelling at you or any telling you how to behave. That's not my intention. It's just that I was upset because I, I felt like we were kind of accepting a premise that wasn't correct. And so I've been an atheist for maybe 20 years.

0:02:57 Guests: I'm in my 50s now, and I was late to the table. I didn't really call myself an atheist or even non-religious maybe until I was in my early 30s. So and I, like Jayme, I came from a super religious background, and I am an atheist because I started out questioning why women were worth less than men in my family. In my family, the men are it and the women are shit. And that's 100 percent true. I just, you know, example after example of how women are devalued and based on the religiosity. And so I just kept asking the questions, both of myself and then seeing how the response was when I asked anybody else. And it was just, it didn't match up to what made sense to me. So that's where I came from.

0:03:10 Thomas: Wow.

0:03:51 Thomas: Can I ask, you didn't happen to be Mormon, did you? Was it a Christian denomination?

0:03:55 Guests: Well, no conservative Baptist.

0:03:58 Thomas: Oh, Okay. Yeah. Well, I definitely, I know I have my share of friends from growing up who were in those kind of families where the male was certainly the patriarch and told all the women what to do. And I have a lot of sympathy for wanting to get out of that, that's for sure. Sure. So I'm glad you got out of religion, though. Glad you, you know, found a way to fight against the misogyny of your family. And especially as I've read through the Bible, I can see that if you want to follow the Bible at all, you're going to have to do some very misogynistic things. So that's how it goes. All right. Well, Lee, I'm told you would like to start and you have a lot of things you'd like to say to kind of set up the conversation. And you certainly had the first comment that I noticed. So how about I let you take it away?

0:03:58 Guests: Oh, Well, thanks. Thanks. Okay, so I just want to start out by saying that, you know, the mistake that I think that a lot of people who are discussing abortion, anti-abortion, you know, forced pregnancy issue is they start out accepting that the personhood position that is put forward by the anti-abortionist, you know, people. And I don't accept the personhood position, but even if, you know, if I'm discussing it with somebody, I can still treat the position seriously. But to do so, um, I, I don't want to, you know, narrow down and drill down on the philosophy of personhood. Instead, I want to look at the reality of implications of that position. And I don't believe that those with that really fully thought out the implications of personhood. Really, I have, you know, I kind of thought this through and I have five points. And the first one is that life is complex, not simplistic, a scale. And, and this is all of life, not just, you know, person at the beginning of life, in, in the uterus.

0:06:03 Guests: It's a scale versus a switch. And my second point is that pro-life personhood positions are inconsistent. And I have a lot of details that I can talk to about that.

0:06:21 Guests: My third point is pro-life anti-abortion positions are unequal in the male versus female, male citizen position versus what's considered normally is the pregnant woman versus the fetus. I say male versus female, anti-abortion is unequal. It has unequal burden on women. And number four, anti-abortion isn't ideological. It's cruel and impractical. And a pro-abortion, a pro-choice position, is practical, compassionate, and kind. And it is humanistic.

0:07:06 Guests: And my fifth point is that anti-abortionists are not motivated for positive action. They do take a lot of action, but those actions are negative actions. They're against, against, um, someone's choices. They aren't positive, um, actions like, you know, uh, uh, doing research and raising money. And I can go into, you know, the other things that I have around that. But I think that, um, there may be some things that I've missed, but those are pretty much my five points. And, um, then, you know, there's always other, uh, philosophical, uh, areas to explore. But I, I think that those have some pretty strong weight.

0:07:55 Thomas: Okay, so I want to let people know we're battling the connection a little bit. A couple of your words dropped out, but I think we pretty much got the full message. But I may have to ask you to repeat something in the future if there's a dropout, Lee. But okay, so that's a good starting point. I mean, it sounds like your initial trouble with the show, though, with the interview I did or with the debate or whatever you want to call it, was simply that I wasn't emphasizing the aspects that you wanted to emphasize enough. Is that right? I mean, because my problem, I guess, is that I take Tyler at his word that personhood is what he cares about. He thinks the fetus, he basically, in his mind, the fetUS is a baby or, you know, is a person, like an actual person.

0:08:43 Thomas: And people who commit abortions are just murdering that thing violently. And that's his position. And it's, I totally disagree with it, but it's I wanted to engage him at the level he was working at. So what do you think I perhaps could have done differently in your mind?

0:09:02 Guests: Yeah, well, I know that that's his position. And I don't have any problem with taking him at his word. You know, that's the place to start. But what I had a problem with was that he continued on that point where it's complete focus on the fetus. And I think that it should be focused on the person that's already there, the citizen, the woman. And so when you are talking about, you know, some mistakes that you made were incorrect conclusions, you're talking about well, you should we be able to kill, you terminate pregnancies from rape. And then you said, well, if you take that to its logical conclusion, we should be able to kill people who are born of rape.

0:09:52 Guests: And the problem with that is by focusing on the product of conception, the fetus, the person who, no, it's the wrong focus. You have to focus on the woman because the point is once she's not pregnant, there's just no issue anymore. You don't talk about killing someone who's born from rape because they're born. They're not reliant or dependent on that woman's body anymore. And so

0:10:19 Thomas: Well, I think it's possible You might have misunderstood what I was saying there a little bit, because the point I was making to Tyler was, if you are pro-life, and if you think the fetus is a person, I absolutely think you have to be pro-life in every single case to be consistent. That's all I'm saying. That point about a child of rape or whatever was simply that in his mind, in Tyler's mind, once again, arguing against the philosophy he's presenting, there should be no difference for him between a fetus that's a product of rape and a person like an adult that's the product of rate. And so that tactic was to get him to challenge possibly his intuitions on that, because if he wants to say, well, it's OK to abort the fetus if it's a product of rape,

0:10:20 Guests: I

0:11:06 Thomas: Then then he's kind of made a mistake because there really is no difference if he's calling them both a person. So, but I agree. I mean, that, what, okay.

0:11:13 Guests: Understand. I understand now. If I could jump in for just a minute, I've

0:11:17 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. I was, I was just going to try to bring you in. Go ahead.

0:11:19 Guests: Tried To be kind of quiet and let everybody speak. But I just kind of want to go back to the initial point that Thomas raised when he was talking, talking about, he wanted to give Tyler the benefit of the doubt and meet him on his ground and and have the conversation about personhood rather than about the abortion issue, but I think that's really what my comments to Thomas were focused on is that I, I don't think it's necessarily helpful to discuss just the personhood issue rather than the abortion issue, because I don't necessarily think that the personhood argument is a very good argument. And it's a harmful kind of misleading, not even necessarily intentionally a red herring argument, but it has the effect of a red herring argument.

0:12:11 Guests: So that instead of talking about societal harm or bodily autonomy or privacy, because it is a medical issue, we're pulling the discussion closer and closer into a religious realm, the more we talk about personhood and it becomes a very real slippery slope because we move into, okay, well, when are you a person? How many cells make you a person? Do you have to have, that doesn't necessarily, I'm not going to say it doesn't matter, but it starts to drag you into a place where the conversation turns into, okay, we've got two lives. Now we can start discussing which life is more important. When we decide the woman doesn't matter at, you know, number of weeks, the woman doesn't matter, we're just talking about figuring out when the woman doesn't matter.

0:13:03 Guests: And that's when it can start to sound offensive, I guess, is like, we just need to figure out when it's a person. And then we don't have to think about women's bodily autonomy, right? Wait, wait, wait. Let's go back.

0:13:19 Guests: Because, but I think that can be the result of the type of discussion that you and Tyler were having, which I think both of you wouldn't want, that's

0:13:25 Thomas: Yeah, it, it may have been, it might have been worthwhile for sure to try to go into merely the autonomy discussion with him. But I, I will let you know that he, he doesn't also, obviously he also doesn't recognize those arguments as valid. He thinks that, and granted, Tyler thinks a lot of things that I've, most things he says I disagree with, but he says that, well, I don't know. My problem is that I'm not 100% convinced on the personhood argument not mattering at all. I really am. And here's the thing. I'm fully open to changing my mind on that. And I think the important part is I definitely don't mean any offense to women in that and in discussing that philosophically.

0:14:16 Thomas: But it seems like you guys were both pretty offended by how I discussed it. So I'm really, I'm sorry for that. And I don't, I didn't, certainly didn't mean it. But I think that was what happened. I've not been entirely convinced by the, I keep getting sent the same argument from, you know, the atheist experience guy, you know, Matt Dillahunty. I keep getting sent the same clip of him saying, if a woman doesn't have to donate a kidney to a child, she doesn't have to provide her body for a child. And that's sort of his knockdown.

0:14:52 Guests: Roe versus Wade. That's why that keeps getting sent to you. That's that's privacy and that it's a medical thing. That But I, I think the reason that I, I agree with you that that there, we should talk about when personhood is a thing, but because that's important that we're thinking about, you know, morals, and we should always question our our moral standpoint and our philosophy and our reasons. But I think when, when you meet on this issue where it is such a slippery slope, and where science does have things to say, but we're not listening to the things that science has to say, it's, you can, you can ask the Catholic Church when personhood occurs, and the Catholic Church has a standpoint, and that doesn't have anything to do with science?

0:14:54 Thomas: Yeah, okay.

0:15:42 Guests: And I didn't hear Tyler give any reasonings that had anything to do with science. And when you ask people, you know, I think a good way to judge that it doesn't have anything to with science is you have to ask at the beginning of a personhood debate, when do you believe personhood starts? Well, why the hell do we care about your belief? You know, don't, there, there is medical science that, um, should be a part of the discussion, there's philosophy that should be part of a discussion, but there's a reason that we're having this discussion on an atheist podcast, and there's reason it's got such a strong religious divide, and part of that reason is that it's about beliefs rather than

0:16:05 Thomas: Right.

0:16:33 Thomas: Well, okay, now I need to try to separate the issues that are going on here. Because what You're talking about is critique of Tyler's position, which I'm all for. I mean, that's 100% the point of having him on. I wanted to try to refute his position on personhood, doing the best philosophy I can, and albeit I'm limited by my own capacities, but doing the most philosophizing I can to try to talk him out of what I think is a bogus position on personhood. That's a separate issue. So I think we're fully in agreement on that. I think what I'm really concerned with is I was very concerned with sort of the idea idea that me talking to him on that level is being offensive to women, and I really don't want that to happen. Okay,

0:16:33 Guests: Yeah Sorry, I just really wanted to hear you, or it's not meeting him on his level as offensive to women. Meeting him on his level is offensive to him. That's, that's a, you know, oh bummer, you can't talk about women as grown-ups, but we have to kind of read his mind because there wasn't a lot of cross-examination on the the innocence issue, or the appeals to, you know, what was the intent of the mother, there's a reason we talk about, well, well, does it matter if it's rape or incest, and that reason is, can we blame it on the woman, if it's her fault, then she has to deal with the consequences.

And I feel like part of the things I really like about your show is that you challenge everybody to, at least I am personally almost always challenged when I listen to your show because I don't always agree with everything you say, and I have to think about, okay, why don't I agree with that?

But I think Taylor kind of just got, or Taylor, I'm sorry, Tyler, um, he kind of got more of a, he didn't really question a lot of why, for him, you didn't do the you know, okay why, okay why, and he got to make a lot of statements that were untrue or offensive or strange

0:17:31 Thomas: Fair

0:18:39 Guests: And they kind of got a pass in a way that I don't think you would necessarily give other people because you were so, I'll guess I'll go with noble on meeting him on his ground. Yes.

0:18:51 Thomas: Enough. Let's go back to Lee. What do you think about this and where the discussion is going right now?

0:18:57 Guests: I'll say that I agree with Jayme's point, that it felt like, yes, I mean, I have nothing against him making his statements and you saying, okay, I hear that you say this. But to me, the next point is, now, what are the implications of that? If the fetus is a person, does that mean that, you know, a woman who is a pregnant woman who who has attempted suicide should be jailed until her pregnancy is completed? Does that mean that a 10-year-old girl who is pregnant should be detained in some kind of medical center until her pregnancy has completed? What are the implications?

0:19:43 Guests: And that's where I felt like you were kind of drilling down on what his thoughts were, but you didn't open it up to the wider implications. And I'd like to just make a point about the personhood position is a simplistic position. And life is complex, not simplistic. The end of life, the end of personhood is complex. It's not a point in time. It is a judgment. And the same way with the the beginning of life or personhood, it's a judgment. We're all arbitrary. It's just that I feel that the people who are holding that personhood position are saying that they're not. But the fact is, if you look at, I don't know if you've heard of the Soraites paradox, the paradox of piles. Have you heard of that one?

0:19:59 Thomas: Sure.

0:20:37 Thomas: Yeah. When does a pile of sand become a pile of sand versus a grain of sand?

0:20:42 Guests: Exactly. And so my position is that's where conception to, you know, uh, the product of conception to embryonic zygote fetus, that's that's one of those, you know, um, uh, complicated decisions that's that's arbitrary to each person and you might be able to convince somebody else, but you can't stand and say "I'm right here and and you're wrong" unless, you know, it's just by societal agreement together. And so the fact is that even if you agree with personhood, you have to also bring up the fact that rights are in conflict.

And we use judgment, we use societal judgment, we use legal judgment, and privacy, privacy sovereignty of your own human body are in conflict with fetal rights and so that's a judgment not a hard line and so, that's pretty much my, you know, thing of it just felt like his conversation with you on personhood just felt, like, there was a big blank hole where he wasn't and getting challenged on what are the implications. Yeah, he got to talk about abortion in terms of just the fetus. He didn't have to, he Got to have kind of their dream conversation on abortion where it's just about the fetal. And I would never claim that

0:20:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:13 Guests: Abortion is just about a woman. She's a big part of it. She is half of the equation if you want to be generous.

0:22:22 Guests: And, I think that any conversation about abortion should never be a conversation conversation just about fetal rights or just about women's rights, it's about that interplay and about that connectedness and it's it's almost at a fundamental level, it's about where one being's rights begin and where another being's rights end, and to just have a personhood debate seems like, you know, having a, almost like having, this is going to be hyperbole, I can't think of a better analogy, if you can, let me know. But it seems like having a slavery debate where we're not talking about the slave. You can't have part of that conversation. You have to have... I

0:23:09 Thomas: Well, I think what's funny about that is literally Tyler has made the same statement the other way, and that, you know, if you don't talk about the fetus as a person, then it's like slavery without time. But I, fair

0:23:21 Guests: Agree with that. I do. And I think that, you know, that's why you have to have both issues. And if you don't have both issue, it's always going to seem like there's this gaping hole and I think that's what I picked up on as my Concern

0:23:40 Thomas: Enough. Yeah, I think What I'm gathering from You guys and what I am learning from what you are saying is I think it would be better for me and for everybody if I challenged, when I have a debate like this, even if I don't think philosophically it's going to disprove them from anything, because here's what will happen. And I'll say, OK, Tyler, what about the implications of abortion and the fact that, you know, women, you know, do have to often turn to unsafe means of abortion if it's illegal, or they do all this and this, like, dire consequences? He'll say, well, that's a separate issue, I don't care about that, like, he'll say I. But maybe it's important to get him to say that, like, it may be, it may be important to give him to state that position because he can really just say murder. All of that doesn't justify murder for him. And even, yeah.

0:23:42 Guests: Yeah.

0:24:25 Guests: I Think That Is important, and I, that's the important, I think why we have debates is to make us, like, take a really hard look at our reasoning and, you know, is that a separate issue, why do I think that, I I got talked out of my religion throughout, in a lot of ways, this is gonna sound, this is a tangent I warned you about, I've been to a Kent Hovind debate when he was not in prison and It was the atheist speaker that made me start going "wait a second," I was one of those people in the audience that got convinced by a debate, and I think that we can convince people by debates and I Think It's important, well

0:25:09 Thomas: Well, I certainly think so too, but let me, okay, maybe this is what is going on for me, because when I think about possibly convincing someone like Tyler, well, first off, it's, I mean, unfortunately, it is really not going to happen. But assuming, being optimistic and saying someone who holds roughly Tyler's position, or maybe some of Tyler's position, how am I going to convince them? What I focused on was personhood because for people like Tyler, and again, this may be just an error in my judgment, I'm happy to admit that I might have been wrong in my focus, I just really want to make clear that, and I want to do whatever I can in the future to avoid the implication that it's because I don't care about women, because I definitely don't think that's the case, and if somehow that is the case case inadvertently, then I need to fix that. But fair enough.

0:25:58 Guests: I never, I never made that assumption, I will say that I, I never ever assumed That you don't care about women. It was just one of those, come on, poke him.

0:26:07 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. But let me finish what I was saying.

0:26:10 Guests: Yeah, sorry.

0:26:10 Thomas: For him, it's so easy for him. And the reason I was trying to talk about person is so easy. And I can tell you, he's already done this in personal messages. Because he heard the comments that I read from you guys, or I can't remember if I read yours, Jayme, but he listened to the shows after. And he said, yeah, I mean, he just thinks murder trumps everything. Like Like murder of a person trumps all those other concerns for him. So I'm wondering, I do see the importance in light of what you guys are saying of highlighting the concerns, making sure that everyone knows I'm on the same page with the concerns of what are the actual implications of abortion? What about, you know, the woman's choice, all that stuff. However, what would you say? What would you guys do or say in a debate with Tyler if he says, yes, I understand that that there are bad consequences to abortion.

0:27:02 Thomas: Yes, I understand that the mother has rights. However, none of those rights trump a right for someone to live. That's roughly speaking his position, I think. Sorry to Tyler if I'm misrepresenting him.

0:27:17 Guests: I'll take that if I could. So yeah, so first of all, I want to go back to what we were just discussing before and just say, a tell when people are discussing a fetus and giving it priority over the woman, a tell is that they will refer to the vessel, the womb, the uterus, instead of saying the woman, they are depersonalizing the woman and increasing, you know, increasing the value of the, of the fetus. And so the, the fact is that, you know, he's saying that it's murder. And it may very well be, you know, that may be your decision on that.

0:27:18 Thomas: Sure.

0:28:07 Guests: But the fact is, you can say, there are times when killing someone is a valid act. And this is a time when it can be self-defense for a woman who, I mean, one of the things is not, you you know, brought up and evaluated at a very high level is that, you know, there's no consideration in the personhood argument of the risks of pregnancy and the fact that, you know, it's something like a hundred times more risky to go through with a pregnancy than it is to have an abortion for death and the myriad number of health implications of every pregnancy. No woman gets through a pregnancy without having having negative health impact.

0:28:55 Guests: And so, you know, to me, it's a self-defense. And it's also, you know—to enforce a pregnancy is saying you agree that a woman should be, what, held down, jailed, to force her to continue a pregnancy. That's a really big step to say that you're You're taking away someone's freedom. And that's that's the area where these pro-life positions, pro-like personhood positions are inconsistent, because if, you know, like I said, with jail, how about, you know, a nine year old, 10 year old 12 year old girl, are you going to force her to go through what could either wreck her body for life to go I mean, you would say yes if you think that that person that has been conceived inside her has the same value.

0:29:52 Guests: And what about if she takes drugs? Are you going to then say, okay, she needs to be punished for a jail sentence for having had impact on this fetus or future person? How about if she wants to have a medically induced birth two weeks early? Well, that's not in fetuses. So how how about if it's four weeks early? How about if it's six weeks early, it still comes down to that paradox of the piles is, it's all a gradient. And to say that personhood is an on off switch is just to me, a wrong view. It's gradient, it scale, it it's, you know, a sliding value. And that's where I think that the personhood issue needs to be pushed back on and say, personhood is not an on-off switch.

0:30:43 Thomas: Well, I'll note that that is what I said. And I did say that personhood, I don't think even comes up until after sometime after birth. I don't think in real terms, in real philosophical terms, I don't think a child is a person until later. But we need to keep these distinctions in mind, though, and kind of keep the issues separated when they need to be, because you made a statement, okay, if it's a person, self-defense, you know, that sort of can justify it. And then you're saying personhood is a gradient, it's unclear. So, like, it's either one or the other is what we're talking about, right? I mean, if you, are you, Lee, just willing to grant personhood and then say, even if the fetus is is a person. It doesn't really matter because the mother has the right to choose.

0:30:43 Guests: Okay.

0:31:29 Thomas: Is that how you prefer like engaging the argument? Or it kind of sounds like you said two different things. I'm just looking for clarification on that.

0:31:38 Guests: So to clarify, yeah, I will grant that it's a person at a certain point. At a certain point, if I'm pregnant at seven months, I've taken on the responsibility, yet I still have not given up my right to self-defense. If I have a medical emergency or critical situation where I want that child, I'm pregant with it, to me, it's person. To everybody else who's around me, they think it's a person, yet I'm looking and saying, I'm going to have severe life consequences if I don't abort this child. Whose choice is it? That's what I'm saying is, that's a self-defense situation, even if I do grant personhood.

0:32:22 Thomas: What about, okay, so what kind of consequences are we talking about? Because I will note that somewhat early on, I think Tyler said, if it's to save the mother's life, then it's not an abortion. He said, If the goal is to save the mother's life from some imminent danger, then it's not really, the fetus dying is sort of an after effect. And he said that philosophically, that's not, that is like an unintended consequence of it.

0:32:47 Guests: Okay, I'd like to just very quickly respond to that and say, That termination can only be by the woman and her doctor, because when you say it's a life threatening situation, that is, you know, that could be determined by any manner of factors. And it may be that she will commit suicide because of the mental anguish. But a person like Tyler would not consider that because her physical body is not in danger from having this pregnancy. So to me, you know, if, if somebody else, if the state fate is making a determination on what's okay for a woman to determine with her body, then she no longer has sovereignty over her body, and to me sovereignty is the thing that trumps personhood. Yeah.

0:32:51 Thomas: Sure.

0:33:51 Thomas: Here you have for part 1 with Jayme and Lee! Very interesting stuff, lots more to come in part two. That comes out on Monday unless of course you are a Patron over at patreon.com/atheist. That's where you can get that early content. You can get the episode right away. I've been making these two-parters available immediately just to give the fine, fine patrons of the show a little extra benefit, and if not, no big deal. No harm, no foul. You'll have the episode on Monday.

Thank you in either case. Thank you for listening. Thank you for telling a friend or telling a forum or tell anywhere you can tell it. Go tell it on the mountain. Either way. Thank you in any case. Got a lot of brand new patrons to thank. Thank you, I can't remember where I left off, but let's say Michael Halprin, thank you Anthony Gillis, thank you Andy, thank Ben Young, thank Jayme, Thank Michael Barrett, thank Ryan Jones for Travis Peterson, and thank you Raechael. Thank you guys so much, I appreciate you signing on, lots of newbies.

And then of course I gotta thank my all-time greats, that's Kaile Riser, Zimu Zinu Jr., Adrian Borschoff, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Nutty Bits, Christian Jaeh, Peter Skelton, Brian Gareford, Dale, Matt Garrett, and Samantha, thank you so much for showing your support for the show that does this sort of thing, that has on people who disagree, and we talk it out, and see where we can get, it's something that I want more of in the world, and I'm gonna be the change that I wanna see in the wor- Now I won't be so- I'm going to try my best to put out there what I think would be good.

0:35:31 Thomas: And that's what I'm doing here, and glad some people are liking it and appreciating it. So, thank-you so much, I will see you guys Monday! Day.