The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 133 - Why Mass Shootings Happen

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, after a horrible week last week, ending with the slaughter of 11 people at a synagogue,

00:00:05.880 we are all asking again, yet again, why does this happen? Why does it keep happening?

00:00:11.300 Well, I'll try to tackle that question today.

00:00:13.600 Also, a column on the Daily Wire this weekend pointed out that young people, millennials, tend to be shallow and unmotivated.

00:00:21.260 Well, I'm a millennial myself, and I want to talk about why young people tend to be that way.

00:00:26.300 Hint, hint, it's the education system. Sorry for the spoilers.

00:00:30.000 We'll talk about all that coming up.

00:00:34.600 Well, last week was not a good week, to put it lightly, ending with the horrific slaughter of 11 worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh,

00:00:42.280 beginning with the mail bombs apparently sent by a clearly insane Trump supporter. 0.98

00:00:48.120 And midway through the week, there was a shooting at a Kroger in Kentucky carried out by a racist white man targeting black people. 0.98

00:00:55.540 Two were killed in that attack. 0.57

00:00:58.140 So I have a few things, a few things I want to say here.

00:01:02.160 And let me first say, speaking specifically about the 11 killed at the synagogue for a moment,

00:01:07.840 and I know that this is not exactly a bold statement, not exactly a statement that requires great courage or insight to say, 1.00

00:01:15.700 but it must be said all the same, but it must be said all the same, that anti-Semitism is evil and incredibly stupid. 1.00

00:01:23.560 Bigotry towards any racial group or ethnic group or any group at all, religious group, is evil and stupid. 1.00

00:01:32.520 Bigotry is an evil, stupid thing for evil, stupid people. 1.00

00:01:37.700 But I think especially anti-Semitism among professing Christians, and this scumbag killer claimed to be a professing Christian. 1.00

00:01:48.060 He's not really a Christian, but that's what he claimed to be. 1.00

00:01:51.420 Christianity, and especially among professing Christians, it is evil and idiotic to an extreme. 1.00

00:01:58.380 For I would think a rather obvious reason, which is that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, was a Jew. 1.00

00:02:03.780 All of the apostles were Jews.

00:02:05.660 Paul was a Jew. 0.92

00:02:06.720 They were all Jewish.

00:02:08.520 Christianity is founded upon Judaism. 0.57

00:02:15.760 In fact, I heard someone say once that the thing that really kind of is strange about Christianity,

00:02:20.440 the thing that's one of the things that separates it from other religions,

00:02:23.300 one of the very unique things about it is that it is the only religion in the world that agrees with one other religion.

00:02:31.440 Christianity affirms all of Judaism, in that it affirms the Old Testament. 0.86

00:02:42.800 Now, we have the New Testament, which rests upon the pillars of the Old Testament.

00:02:47.980 We have that additional Testament then, of which, on that point, we certainly do not agree,

00:02:53.360 and that is obviously an essential point.

00:02:55.540 It is the center point, the centerpiece of the Christian faith, but we are in full agreement on the Old Testament,

00:03:04.000 which I would think is rather significant, right?

00:03:07.660 So how can a Christian hate Jews then?

00:03:11.160 How do you think that conversation will go when you stand before your Lord on Judgment Day?

00:03:17.520 How are you going to explain to your Jewish Lord that you hate his people? 0.98

00:03:24.540 An anti-Semitic Christian, to me, seems a bit like a racist white jazz musician or something. 0.56

00:03:32.140 I mean, how could you possibly hate the people who founded the thing that you've given your life to? 0.98

00:03:38.640 You may as well hate yourself.

00:03:40.300 You do sort of hate yourself in that case, and I think that bigotry, what lies at the root of bigotry,

00:03:44.620 much of the time is a kind of self-loathing in all forms of bigotry,

00:03:49.220 but particularly when it comes to any Christian who hates Jews.

00:03:53.260 But with bigotry in general, to deny, to reject the dignity of an entire group of human beings

00:04:00.940 is to deny and reject the inherent dignity of all human beings,

00:04:06.440 which is to say that you reject your own dignity as well.

00:04:10.400 Now, we should also stipulate, I think it's important to note and to be clear,

00:04:14.880 that anti-Semitism obviously is a huge problem around the world, has been throughout history, has always been.

00:04:22.420 And in America, there are fringe, whack job, crazy, but clearly dangerous groups that also share that anti-Semitism.

00:04:32.740 But I think we can say safely that anti-Semitism is not at all common among modern American Christians.

00:04:42.620 Not at all common.

00:04:45.180 Bigotry in general, I would say, is not common among modern American Christians,

00:04:49.740 because we understand that Jesus condemns all forms of hatred.

00:04:56.040 But when it comes to Jewish people, I think it's true that, and I'm biased, but I don't think anyone can really disagree, 0.94

00:05:06.680 that the biggest supporters of Jewish people and of Israel outside of Judaism itself are Christians,

00:05:15.540 and specifically evangelical Christians.

00:05:18.340 Now, when this event was unfolding, I wanted to see what was going on, of course, stay up to date.

00:05:26.980 So I could either watch cable news or I could go online.

00:05:29.780 That's the choice that we all have, and that's the ultimate lose-lose, the ultimate no-win situation.

00:05:35.320 But I usually go with the Internet, and that's usually where I go for my news,

00:05:39.980 and especially when there's a breaking news thing, I'm on the Internet not really watching TV,

00:05:43.440 because I can't stand the theatrics of cable news in the wake of tragedy or at any other point.

00:05:49.580 But the problem with being online, on social media, when something like this is happening,

00:05:54.100 is that you get a view of humanity at its absolute worst.

00:06:00.880 So as per usual, as to be expected, if you were online when this was all going on,

00:06:07.680 you would have seen that people were immediately politicizing the tragedy without any hesitation,

00:06:13.440 the narratives were being formed, the mud was being flung,

00:06:17.040 the sickening, almost gleeful fervor of people who believe that a mass killing

00:06:22.260 will be useful to them politically and ideologically, all of that was on display.

00:06:27.680 And we're so used to that display, we're so used to that spectacle,

00:06:30.420 that there's almost no point in bringing it up or complaining about it at this point.

00:06:32.940 It's not going to change, it's never going to change,

00:06:34.840 but I do bring it up here because I think it speaks, in some ways,

00:06:37.760 to the question of why this stuff happens, which is the question that we always have.

00:06:41.500 Why is this happening?

00:06:42.320 And these mass killings do seem to be happening with a certain terrible frequency.

00:06:50.640 It's true that the media may exaggerate the frequency of mass killings for political reasons.

00:06:56.940 They'll tell you that there have been, whatever, 200 school shootings in a year,

00:07:00.660 some crazy number like that, which simply is not true.

00:07:04.560 And there's no reason, not only is it cynical and awful to lie about something like this,

00:07:10.320 but there's no reason to lie about it because it is, there are plenty of real examples that you can use.

00:07:16.140 And so no matter how frequent it is, no matter how that stacks up compared to other points in history,

00:07:23.640 we know that it's far too frequent now.

00:07:27.300 And so why?

00:07:29.420 Why is it happening?

00:07:30.380 Well, we've already talked about bigotry.

00:07:33.220 Clearly, bigotry plays a big part.

00:07:34.960 But that's not the whole story, because even the average rabid bigot probably isn't going to go and kill anybody.

00:07:42.920 You've got a subset of bigots, and among those bigots, there's a smaller subset of bigots who are willing

00:07:54.660 and who may actually go out and do something like this.

00:08:00.140 Because there's something else there.

00:08:02.600 There's bigotry, there's hate, but there's something else.

00:08:05.900 There's another ingredient, I think, that's needed in order to make a mass killer.

00:08:13.820 And I think you can see that ingredient, you can observe it,

00:08:17.500 by looking at the kinds of people who excitedly exploit these kinds of events

00:08:22.620 and practically cheer when the culprit ends up being someone from the other side.

00:08:28.520 Because those people, I mean, it really seems like they are happy when this happens.

00:08:35.680 They are happy when it happens, if it's something that they can use.

00:08:40.380 There are people like this, that's really what it seems like.

00:08:43.920 They would never say that, they would never be explicit about it, they would never admit it.

00:08:49.680 But when you listen to them, when you see the way they carry on, there doesn't appear to be any sadness.

00:08:55.740 There is no moment of somber reflection or compassion.

00:09:02.600 It is just, I'm going to grab this thing right after the bodies have hit, a second after the bodies hit the ground,

00:09:08.640 I'm going to grab it and I'm going to use it as a club to beat my political enemies with.

00:09:14.220 A person who does that, I think that's a person who has a complete lack of empathy.

00:09:23.400 That is a person who is callous, who is empty, who is unable to recognize, it would seem, the humanity of their fellow humans.

00:09:32.160 They see these kinds of events.

00:09:34.480 They don't see, they don't see the cost in human life.

00:09:39.220 They don't, that's not the point to them.

00:09:40.780 They don't really, that doesn't register on them.

00:09:44.260 They just see, oh good, well that, here's a point I can raise in an argument.

00:09:48.800 I think among the ingredients that make a mass killer, the indifference to human life, this sort of hollow, unhuman disposition, this emptiness,

00:10:02.580 this all is, if you will, the yeast that makes the bread rise.

00:10:06.920 And my point is that you find that ingredient, and this is the really terrifying truth,

00:10:12.820 but you find that ingredient in the hearts of many people, of apparently normal people.

00:10:19.800 Of, of every person who goes on Twitter seconds after the bodies hit the ground and cheerfully uses a mass killing to their advantage in an argument,

00:10:27.540 all of those people have a bit of this ingredient within them.

00:10:31.120 Now, do I think that all of them are going to become mass killers?

00:10:33.100 No, because they need the other ingredients, right?

00:10:35.320 But, but they do have, they are part of the way there.

00:10:40.020 And I would even say a significant part of the way there.

00:10:45.180 Because that is the main thing that you need.

00:10:48.800 To make, to cook up a mass killer, the main thing, more than anything else, is indifference, callousness, lack of empathy, emptiness.

00:11:00.740 Because with that ingredient, you don't even, you don't necessarily even need the hatred and bigotry.

00:11:09.160 There have been plenty of mass killers who don't, don't appear to really, it would seem they have hatred,

00:11:15.000 but they don't appear to have any special bigotries.

00:11:17.020 The main thing is they are completely empty.

00:11:20.120 And it's easy to, it's easy, I think, to become like that in this country.

00:11:34.820 It's easy to become, at a minimum, desensitized to the loss of human life because we hear about it so much.

00:11:41.900 And it just becomes, it can become, if we're not careful, part of the background noise.

00:11:47.440 It can become just a thing, a news cycle that you read about and then move on.

00:11:52.680 But then, even more than that, I think, when we're, we spend so much time online,

00:12:01.120 it's never a surprise to me with these mass killers that, you know,

00:12:06.340 you find that they spend so much time staring at screens, so much time online,

00:12:11.220 in these various internet forums and whatever.

00:12:13.860 Or, it's almost every time you find that.

00:12:17.200 And that's no surprise to me because when you spend so much time immersed in this world,

00:12:21.860 in this kind of insulated, anonymous world where you're interacting with a lot of different people,

00:12:27.540 but it's very easy in those interactions, in that artificial cyber world,

00:12:31.800 it's easy in those interactions to forget that that's an actual other human being.

00:12:35.160 And, um, I think if you, if you are in that environment enough, too much,

00:12:43.820 and you don't keep a proper perspective, eventually you may find yourself,

00:12:46.880 even when you're outside of that environment, walking around in the real, real world,

00:12:50.140 you still have that same desensitized, um, compassionless mentality.

00:13:00.780 Just look at, we get, again, we get so used to it.

00:13:03.840 Uh, but look at any of the horrible comments that you see under news articles or YouTube videos,

00:13:10.900 people telling other people to kill themselves and so on and so forth.

00:13:14.300 Um, and we say, well, that, that's normal.

00:13:17.960 That's just how people are on it.

00:13:19.100 No, it's not.

00:13:19.800 It may be normal for, for the internet, but it's not a normal thing for people.

00:13:26.600 You say something like that to someone, it doesn't matter that you're online saying it.

00:13:30.080 That's it. 0.99

00:13:30.480 That is a horrible, horrific, evil, wicked, disgusting, despicable thing. 0.92

00:13:33.840 To say to someone. 0.87

00:13:35.840 And the fact that you're saying it online makes no difference.

00:13:38.140 It's, it's still just as evil.

00:13:41.040 But the fact that we think that, well, you're online and you're saying these things,

00:13:44.300 so somehow it's not quite as bad.

00:13:47.240 Well, see, that's the problem.

00:13:51.600 And, um, I don't know.

00:13:52.820 I think people can, it, it, it builds a kind of mentality that I think can ultimately contribute

00:13:59.760 to, to, to this.

00:14:02.520 Um, all right.

00:14:04.680 One other thing I want to talk about, uh, switching gears.

00:14:09.420 Dennis Prager had an interesting column on the daily wire yesterday.

00:14:12.960 He was talking about his experience car shopping recently and, uh, what it taught him about,

00:14:17.640 about young people.

00:14:18.820 And he says that, um, that the, the young salespeople that he encountered, uh, while he

00:14:26.800 was car shopping, they were, they were friendly.

00:14:30.060 They were very sweet, but they, they knew nothing about cars.

00:14:33.440 He said, and, um, they didn't appear very anxious to actually land a sale.

00:14:38.200 They didn't seem very ambitious.

00:14:39.340 Like they didn't know anything about cars.

00:14:40.840 They didn't really care about selling them.

00:14:42.580 And he, he, he pointed out that young people, millennials tend to be less ambitious and less

00:14:47.920 knowledgeable about things.

00:14:48.840 And, um, so he was using this anecdote as a way of illustrating that point.

00:14:53.120 Now there's plenty of truth in what he says.

00:14:57.520 And I enjoyed his column.

00:14:59.140 I found it interesting.

00:15:01.960 I do think for the record that the, that the problem is not confined to, uh, millennials and

00:15:07.420 to young people.

00:15:07.840 I think it's more cultural than generational.

00:15:10.800 I've, I'm like, we all have.

00:15:12.980 I have also encountered plenty of not very knowledgeable, not very ambitious, not very

00:15:17.720 helpful customer service people in my day and people in general.

00:15:21.620 And, um, I would not for a moment say that a significant majority of them have been millennials.

00:15:27.220 I I've dealt with plenty of older people who fall into that same category.

00:15:31.100 I was one example.

00:15:34.040 I was at a restaurant a few days ago, the waiter, um,

00:15:37.840 probably in his forties or fifties.

00:15:39.660 And he was one of the worst customer service people I've ever come across in my entire

00:15:44.140 life. 0.96

00:15:44.440 He was absolutely horrible.

00:15:45.460 Um, and so, you know, that's not uncommon, right?

00:15:49.560 Um, so, and I've, and I've had plenty of customer service interactions with people that

00:15:54.480 are about my age or younger, and they're very knowledgeable, very ambitious, very energetic

00:15:58.060 and all that kind of stuff.

00:15:58.760 So it's, you know, you get it across the board.

00:16:01.700 I do think a lack of ambition is a problem among millennials more than it's a problem 1.00

00:16:06.400 among older generations.

00:16:07.640 Certainly ignorance, lack of knowledge.

00:16:10.440 I don't think that's uniquely a millennial problem at all. 0.96

00:16:13.580 I, I have, I have, I have run-ins with ignorant people all the time, all the time, 0.62

00:16:18.020 um, mostly online, but also in the real world quite a bit. 0.62

00:16:20.760 And, uh, plenty of them are, are older. 0.99

00:16:23.860 I find plenty of incredible ignorance and, uh, frankly, stupidity among older people and 1.00

00:16:31.440 among younger people. 1.00

00:16:32.000 So I think, I think, again, that's kind of, kind of even, but lack of ambition.

00:16:37.080 Yeah, that's, that's more uniquely a young person problem.

00:16:40.200 It's a bad, it is a real problem too.

00:16:42.940 Um, but even that, you know, that's to some extent there's, there's another

00:16:47.780 side of that coin.

00:16:49.620 And so on the other side, you have boomers who I think in life have some of them, many

00:16:56.760 of them have tended to be, you might say too ambitious or ambitious in the wrong way,

00:17:01.300 valuing money above all else, being very materialistic at the expense of their families and their

00:17:06.920 marriages, which is why the boomer generation has, has been a disaster for the marital institution. 1.00

00:17:12.440 The boomer generation has been a wrecking ball on the marital institution. 1.00

00:17:16.140 Divorce was epidemic in the eighties and nineties.

00:17:19.200 And a lot of that was because our parents' generation had decided that professional

00:17:23.580 success was the only thing that mattered.

00:17:25.600 So they were ambitious at the office, at work about making more money.

00:17:30.480 They were not necessarily ambitious about, about being good spouses and good parents.

00:17:35.960 This is a generalized comment.

00:17:37.520 I realize it's not the case for all of them, but if we're going to make generalized comments

00:17:40.080 about one generation, we can make them about the others too.

00:17:42.320 Right.

00:17:43.260 Um, my point here is simply that there are flaws in every generation and if older generations

00:17:49.720 want to convey anything to younger people, they have to begin by admitting what they did 0.99

00:17:57.760 wrong, what their flaws are.

00:17:59.840 And this is one of the reasons, I'm just telling you, it's one of the reasons why millennials

00:18:04.000 have closed themselves off and are not interested in hearing the criticisms of baby boomers because

00:18:09.880 we can look at the baby boomer generation and say, wow, what a disaster this has been in 1.00

00:18:16.540 so many ways.

00:18:17.500 Um, there are some very obvious problems in that generation that have manifested themselves 0.99

00:18:24.760 in, in catastrophic ways.

00:18:27.760 So if you're not going to acknowledge that and all you're going to do is look at younger

00:18:33.100 people who, by the way, your own kids, who you raised, uh, this is the generation you raised.

00:18:36.560 We should clarify.

00:18:37.480 And you're going to look at them and blame them for everything.

00:18:39.560 Well, it's just, how are we supposed to take that?

00:18:41.780 We can't take it seriously.

00:18:42.780 We couldn't possibly take it seriously.

00:18:44.680 So there has to be some self-analysis and some self-criticizing that I, you just don't,

00:18:50.400 I don't see that often among the older generations.

00:18:53.280 And I say this as some, as a millennial, I criticize millennials all the time.

00:18:57.480 I mean, they're millennials criticize the millennial generation all the time. 1.00

00:19:00.700 It's, we, we, it's a very common thing.

00:19:02.800 And I have spilled much ink, uh, over the last four or five years doing exactly that.

00:19:08.600 You just don't find that as much with boomers.

00:19:11.020 I'm not saying it never happens, but there seems to be less of a willingness to look within

00:19:16.600 and say, wow, we really screwed up in these areas.

00:19:20.400 Now, I don't mean that as a comment directed at, uh, Dennis Prager, by the way, I, who I

00:19:24.460 think is a brilliant guy and I really admire him.

00:19:26.200 I just mean this as a general comment.

00:19:28.600 Um, but to Prager's point, okay.

00:19:31.000 I don't want to, I don't want to, I'm not going to try to ignore it.

00:19:34.100 I think it's, uh, let's focus just on millennials here.

00:19:37.740 There's a lot of truth to what he said.

00:19:40.300 Um, no matter how prevalent these problems may also be in other generations, he's absolutely

00:19:44.480 right that among millennials, there is not enough passion, not enough ambition, not enough

00:19:48.540 knowledge, not enough expertise, not enough skill, but the lack of passion and, and, uh,

00:19:53.660 and ambition to me is, is what, because I've, I've got a lot of problems myself, a lot of

00:19:59.700 flaws.

00:20:01.320 That's, that's one that, um, I haven't struggled with as much.

00:20:06.760 So it's hard for me to even understand, like, how could you be a young person and not have

00:20:10.920 goals and dreams and the willingness to go out and grab them?

00:20:13.560 To me, that just seems so natural.

00:20:16.680 Um, and so when I see that in younger people, I also feel like what, what in the world is

00:20:21.260 wrong with you?

00:20:23.440 But I think if we're going to talk about that, let's talk about why that might be the case.

00:20:29.420 What has gone wrong that has potentially created, uh, a general, multiple generations now of people

00:20:38.180 who do not seem very knowledgeable and do not seem very ambitious. Well, if we're going to,

00:20:44.000 if we're going to try to figure out why, and I don't mean to, to, uh, beat up on one of my

00:20:48.780 favorite punching bags here, but you know, I I'm sorry. We do have to look at the education system.

00:20:55.080 If you're talking, especially you're talking about a guy, you know, a young person who's 25 years old.

00:20:58.880 Well, this is someone who has been in, who, who just recently emerged from the education system

00:21:03.080 and has been in that system his entire life up until this point. So if you want, and if there's

00:21:08.700 something wrong with him, and especially if there's something wrong with an entire generation 0.76

00:21:12.580 of people around that age, it makes sense to look at the system that they spent their formative years

00:21:19.860 in. You probably can find, um, the source of many of these problems in that environment, logically.

00:21:27.340 So it must be said that the education system is simply not set up to develop skills or to give a

00:21:36.760 deep base of knowledge in any subject at all, or to find and ignite a person's passion or anything

00:21:41.620 like that. It does the opposite on every score. And it is even designed to do the opposite.

00:21:47.500 It creates people. This is what the education system does. It creates people who are,

00:21:51.560 who are like very large, sprawling, wide kiddie pools. It creates a person who, you know,

00:22:00.960 the, the, the typical person coming out of the education system is going to be like a one mile wide,

00:22:08.340 two inch deep kiddie pool, very broad, very shallow. At the end of 12 or 13 years in the education

00:22:17.680 system, a kid will have a tiny bit of knowledge on many subjects. Um, he will not be competent in any

00:22:24.840 of them. He will have no area of expertise or specialty or special interest. And then he will

00:22:31.180 go to college as a kind of blank slate, which is how it's designed. That's what the colleges want.

00:22:36.480 Right. And, um, and he'll have no idea what he's good at, no idea what he cares about,

00:22:42.800 no real idea what his interests are. And he'll decide sort of randomly then what his major is

00:22:48.600 going to be. And at the end of four years, five years of college, he'll be 22, 23, 24 years old

00:22:53.420 with still a very shallow, but broad base of knowledge, no expertise, no skills, no special

00:22:58.720 interest. And, and his one area of more in-depth knowledge, his major will be maybe an area that he

00:23:04.680 doesn't even care about, uh, because he picked it arbitrarily and without knowing anything about it

00:23:09.500 before he chose it. Now, as I've shared before, when I was in school, I, I, I, I realized very early

00:23:17.300 on that I was specially interested in writing and history. I also realized that I was specially

00:23:22.980 terrible at math and I hated it. And, and with a passion, um, and I was in it, it just did not click

00:23:32.640 for me. It clicked, you know, up through arithmetic and the really basic stuff. It click, click, click.

00:23:38.500 Once we started getting into algebra and things like that, that's when it, it, it, it left me

00:23:43.080 behind and I did not have the brain for it. Um, whereas I can remember even being in, in, you know,

00:23:51.360 in, uh, a much younger student and looking around at some of my, some of my fellow classmates who

00:23:59.820 seemed to struggle with writing and reading and things like that. And, um, it was hard for me to like,

00:24:05.000 how could you struggle with this? Is this how, and I would see kids who are really brilliant at math

00:24:09.800 and seem to be very smart, but then it's like, they, they write, they were, I, you know, see how

00:24:14.420 they were right. They're writing at a level that was, um, three or four steps below where I was.

00:24:20.040 And that's how people are, you know? Um, so here, here's the problem.

00:24:32.020 Those, there were, there were the subjects that I were, that I was really interested in and I really

00:24:36.240 cared about and I was good at in, in an education system that's effective and in an education system

00:24:44.640 that is set on creating the kind of people that Dennis Prager wants and that I want and that most

00:24:49.800 of us want, uh, in that kind of system, I would have been able to double or triple up on, on the

00:24:55.320 subjects that I really cared about, dive into them, explore my interests in those areas, develop those

00:25:00.780 skills, learn those subjects. And at the end of my time in school, I would have a, a deep base of

00:25:06.520 knowledge, a deep reservoir of knowledge on a few subjects. And I would then have the beginnings

00:25:12.060 of a skill and a vocation and a calling, right? Um, most people, unless you're Leonardo da Vinci,

00:25:22.840 unless you are a historic genius, most people are never going to have a deep reservoir of knowledge

00:25:28.700 on every subject. The most you can hope for to be a really competent, interesting, interested,

00:25:35.680 um, successful, knowledgeable, smart person. For, for most people like that, it's, you have it,

00:25:42.580 you have, you have that deep base of knowledge on a few subjects. Um, but the school's not

00:25:48.440 interested in that. You know, they're not trying to create people like that. Instead, the school says,

00:25:52.480 um, no, you can't spend too much time on those subjects that you care about and that you're good at

00:25:56.920 because we need you to, um, take Spanish, uh, for some reason and trigonometry and you need a credit

00:26:04.520 in some kind of art class and you need to take physical education for one year for some reason.

00:26:08.940 And, oh yeah, we need you to take something like aquatic science too, you know, because why not?

00:26:13.320 And, um, and, oh, you have to keep advancing into more and more advanced math classes and science

00:26:19.100 classes. Even if you have not mastered the first level, we're going to, going to push you on anyway.

00:26:23.640 Um, but the problem is there's, there's, there's, there's no point in, in knowing just a little bit

00:26:35.000 of Spanish or a little bit of calculus or a little bit of aquatic science. It's great to know a lot

00:26:44.160 about those subjects. If you're, if you're bilingual, great, that's a great advantage to have. Um, if you're, 1.00

00:26:50.920 if you are, if you know calculus backwards and forwards and you really know math and you're a

00:26:55.120 math, math expert, great. There's a lot you could do with that. There's, and it's, it's not just do

00:27:00.400 with it, but that, that will make you a more knowledgeable, intelligent person. So that's all

00:27:05.000 fantastic, but you can't do anything with a little on those subjects. So with something like a foreign 1.00

00:27:13.060 language, there is no point in forcing a kid starting in ninth grade from like ninth to 11th grade to

00:27:20.900 take a couple of Spanish classes for 45 minutes. So, you know, every few days for, you know, it's

00:27:26.520 like, there's no point in that. You're not going to learn a language that way. You're not going to

00:27:30.320 really learn anything. The most you could hope is that at the end of that, they're going to know how

00:27:34.980 to say a couple of sentences. They can ask for the bathroom, name the colors. Um, you know,

00:27:40.000 and that's the most they'll know, but that's nothing. That's not even hardly the beginning

00:27:44.460 of something. There's no point. Um, with those kinds of subjects, either you've got to really

00:27:52.280 know them or you might as well not know them. Here's, so I graduated high school and, um, I had,

00:28:01.660 uh, I had that, that very shallow, um, bit of knowledge on all these different areas, but what

00:28:08.640 happens with shallow water, it evaporates. And so that's what happened with me. A lot of my

00:28:14.280 knowledge, whatever little bit of knowledge I was forced into my head on, on advanced math concepts

00:28:20.460 and foreign languages, um, and aquatic science, whatever little bit of knowledge was, all of that

00:28:26.000 evaporated. It was, it was already useless. I couldn't have done anything with it. But then within

00:28:29.520 a couple of years, it was completely gone because I didn't care about it. I didn't try to build on it.

00:28:33.540 I didn't want to, I knew I didn't want to. And so it just went away. Um, what was the point?

00:28:41.900 There was no point. It was a total waste of time, but you know what? There is a point

00:28:48.180 in knowing just a little bit about the mechanics of a car. There is a point in knowing just a little

00:28:55.780 bit about like budgeting and things like that. Because even if you never expand on that base of

00:29:02.240 knowledge, even the bit, you know, will be useful to if, if the only thing you know about a car is

00:29:05.940 you can name a couple of the, you can point to a couple of the parts of the engine. You can change

00:29:09.360 the oil, check the fluids, change the tire. Um, um, maybe, you know, when you hear the clanging of

00:29:15.400 the engine, you can kind of figure out it might be this or that. Like if that's all you know about

00:29:19.400 cars, that's, that, that, that's not enough to get a job as a car mechanic, but that's, that's

00:29:23.740 going to be very useful to you. So if the schools are going to force kids to, to develop a little

00:29:29.900 bit of knowledge in certain areas, why not those areas? Why not force every kid to take a cup,

00:29:35.060 to take at least a class on about cars? We all drive cars. That that's actually useful knowledge

00:29:40.700 that kids could use even if they never master it. But the school say, no, well, we don't have time

00:29:48.000 for it. We don't have time for that because we need you taking calculus when you're in 11th grade.

00:29:51.460 Even if you're, even if you'll never touch math ever again, when you graduate.

00:29:58.700 And I know people say, well, what do you mean you use algebra as a daily, you could use algebra

00:30:03.000 every day. No, you don't. I have lived, you know, I like to say pretty competently and successfully

00:30:09.840 as an adult for many years now, I have never really used algebra ever, never used it. Whatever

00:30:16.240 little bit of math I need to do, I just pull out my phone, do it on the calculator. That's,

00:30:19.920 that's the modern world for you. I have no need for it. So it just, it doesn't make any sense.

00:30:29.760 The subjects where a little bit of knowledge would be useful, those are precisely the subjects

00:30:33.740 where kids are given no knowledge. And the subjects where there's no point to those subjects,

00:30:39.920 unless you're going to master it, kids are forced to develop a little bit of knowledge. It's just a

00:30:44.160 total waste of time. So it's no surprise that young people have little knowledge and little in

00:30:50.860 the way of interest and ambition, because these things have not been fostered. They have in fact

00:30:56.100 been stifled purposefully by the school system. The school system wants broad, shallow, docile people.

00:31:04.280 And it will resort to pretty much any measure to create those kinds of people.

00:31:14.680 And so that's how you end up with my generation, or at least that's, that's maybe not the whole story.

00:31:22.100 That's a big part of the story. What can we do about it? What can we do differently? Well,

00:31:26.300 I think for the education system, for the education system to really function properly and to really

00:31:30.300 create knowledgeable, intelligent, competent people, I think for that to happen, there would

00:31:38.760 need to be a total overhaul of the education system. The education system needs to be rebuilt from the

00:31:44.560 ground up. I think it's just completely wrong in how it goes about almost everything. But that's not

00:31:49.820 going to happen anytime soon. It might never happen. Which means that most of us, what needs to happen

00:31:56.300 instead is that once we get out of the system, and we are young adults, that's when the real work

00:32:02.180 begins of actually learning and growing and developing skills, developing knowledge. I've

00:32:07.560 said before, and I really believe it to be the case, that almost everything I know now, I learned

00:32:12.900 after I graduated. Almost everything. So that's the work that we need to do. All right, we'll leave it

00:32:18.540 there. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

00:32:21.620 Good to be back.

00:32:27.500 .

00:32:28.480 Good to be back with you in Queensland.

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The Matt Walsh Show - October 29, 2018

Ep. 133 - Why Mass Shootings Happen

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