The Matt Walsh Show - January 29, 2019


Ep. 186 - You Can't Have A Real Education Without The Bible


Episode Stats

Length

30 minutes

Words per Minute

177.68364

Word Count

5,411

Sentence Count

285

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

13


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, Donald Trump endorses the idea of Bible literacy classes in public
00:00:05.160 school. The left and the media obviously are upset about that, but Trump is absolutely right. You
00:00:09.380 can't have a real education without the Bible, and we'll talk about why. Also, the Kamala Harris
00:00:14.180 sex scandal that nobody cares about. And finally, CNBC claims that having kids will make you go
00:00:20.440 broke, which is absurd, and we'll talk about why today on the Matt Wall Show.
00:00:24.760 Well, President Trump caused a bit of a controversy yesterday, kind of a change of
00:00:33.660 pace for him, of course. There was deep concern on the left and among the media because he lent
00:00:42.020 his endorsement to the idea of Bible literacy classes. So in a tweet yesterday, he said,
00:00:48.560 numerous states introducing Bible literacy classes, giving students the option of studying
00:00:52.500 the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great. Now, I'm not sure what, starting to make a turn
00:01:01.000 back. I guess he meant turn back to the time when we studied the Bible. Either way, I agree. It is
00:01:08.560 great. So the laws that he's talking about, which the media tells us are controversial,
00:01:15.400 these laws, which are being advanced in a few states, including Kentucky is one of them, a few
00:01:19.440 other states. They would introduce elective Bible classes in school. Kids, that's elective means
00:01:26.560 you choose. You elect. You don't have to take it. You could take it if you wanted to.
00:01:31.340 And the classes would teach the Bible in terms of history and literature. So obviously, students are
00:01:37.960 not going to be required to affirm any of the doctrines in the Bible or to affirm its infallibility,
00:01:44.800 nor would they be taught or forced to adopt, accept any of the moral prescriptions in the Bible or any
00:01:53.920 of the—or will they have to accept any of the supernatural claims in the Bible? So that's—in a
00:02:00.560 public school setting, that's obviously not how the Bible is going to be taught. And I think we all
00:02:04.220 agree that it should not be taught that way. And Christians, most of all, I think, would not want the
00:02:10.860 Bible taught that way in a public school setting, and I'll get more to that a little bit later on.
00:02:15.140 But the Bible would be presented as a literary work, and its historical context and its impact
00:02:22.440 on history would be examined. That's the idea. Now, why is this a controversial idea? Well, there's—for
00:02:29.240 no good reason. The reason why it's a controversial idea is that we live in a very, very stupid
00:02:35.240 culture, filled with nincompoops who think that where it says in the First Amendment, Congress shall
00:02:42.860 make no law respecting an establishment of religion, they think that means that schools have to ignore
00:02:48.800 the very existence of religion. They think actually—they think that every public institution, every public
00:02:55.380 person, anyone in the public square, everyone has to ignore the existence of religion, and the public
00:03:01.700 square has to exist as if religion does not exist. And that's what they think that phrase in the—or that
00:03:10.120 clause in the First Amendment means. But that's not what it means. Congress shall make no law respecting
00:03:15.100 an establishment of religion. What that means is—and there's no way for me to really explain what it
00:03:20.400 means without just repeating it—but what it means is that Congress, which is a legislative body,
00:03:27.180 cannot write a piece of legislation, which would then become law, which would force anyone to
00:03:37.820 accept any particular religion. So that's what it means. Congress cannot make a law forcing you to
00:03:46.220 accept or adopt any religion. That's what the First Amendment is trying to tell us.
00:03:49.860 That's got nothing at all to do with teaching the Bible in public school. Because you teach the Bible
00:03:56.540 in public school, first of all, that's not Congress. Second, there's no law being passed.
00:04:01.200 Third, no one is being forced to accept any religion whatsoever. So it's got nothing to do with what
00:04:06.500 the First Amendment says. And the thing is, you can't really have a well-rounded education
00:04:15.600 if it's divorced entirely from the Bible. It's just not possible. It really is impossible to have
00:04:22.600 a well-rounded—a real and well-rounded education in America if you're just going to ignore the
00:04:28.820 existence of the Bible. You can't do it. Because no matter what you believe or what God, if any,
00:04:35.320 you worship, the simple fact is this, that the Bible is the most influential, important book ever
00:04:42.160 composed. It is the most translated, the best-selling, the most widely read, the most quoted, the most
00:04:47.040 debated, the most cherished, the most loved, the most hated, the most debated over—I already said
00:04:53.280 that one—it is the most everything, basically, is this book. This book, more than any other book
00:05:00.720 that's ever been written or composed or compiled, has molded the world in which we live, especially in
00:05:07.580 the West. So if you rip it out of education, you are going to leave a Bible-shaped hole behind,
00:05:14.660 which cannot really be plugged in with anything. So just to break it down a little bit,
00:05:23.780 you cannot begin to appreciate the works of, say, Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or
00:05:33.020 Dickens or Dante or pretty much any Faulkner. I mean, any great novel or play or poem that's been
00:05:41.600 written in the West any time between, like, the 1st and 20th centuries, if you want to appreciate
00:05:47.820 them and fully understand what they're saying and what they're doing, you have to know something
00:05:52.380 about the Bible. I mean, the idea that we could teach kids about Shakespeare without them
00:05:59.580 understanding the biblical themes that are dripping all over Shakespeare's works, it's just—it's
00:06:06.660 impossible. You would be hard-pressed to think of a great piece of writing that was written
00:06:12.000 from about the year 90 to maybe the year 1900 that was not, to some degree, influenced by Old
00:06:20.260 or New Testament texts. And obviously, the New Testament didn't exist in the year 90, so that's
00:06:24.640 what I'm saying. Old or New Testament texts, pretty much any great piece of writing, it would
00:06:30.440 be very difficult to find one that is not in some way influenced. And a lot of it was heavily
00:06:35.920 influenced by the Bible. You're going to have also a difficult time comprehending or appreciating
00:06:41.840 Renaissance art. I mean, I don't see how you could take Renaissance art out of schools. Obviously,
00:06:49.920 kids are going to learn about that. How are you supposed to know anything about that if you—all
00:06:54.880 of it depicts biblical scenes. So how could you possibly teach that without teaching them about
00:07:00.580 the Bible stories that they depict? So what are you going to do? You're going to show them an image
00:07:07.700 of the Sistine, the painting on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel, and say, yeah, it's just that,
00:07:12.040 you know, those are just—nobody knows what that is. Those are just random, you know,
00:07:16.340 people flying around, no one we don't really know, you know? You'll have to go home and ask
00:07:21.420 your parents what that's all about, but we're just going to show you that's what it is, right?
00:07:25.780 Just doesn't make any sense. You know, Western philosophy, the Enlightenment, the Reformation,
00:07:33.000 all of these—the abolition of slavery—all of these historical events, again, are dripping
00:07:38.540 with biblical influence. And then also, how are you going to give people an appreciation of the
00:07:47.440 biographies of guys like Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln or Magellan or Columbus or even
00:07:53.400 Gandhi, who read the Sermon on the Mount every day, reportedly? How are you going to do that if you
00:07:58.560 don't have a handle on the Bible? Because that's what drove these men, largely. Now, I'm fully aware,
00:08:05.060 as I'm saying this, that many of these topics are being increasingly ignored in our public school
00:08:10.320 system. And look, if we've simply given up on offering kids a real education, and if we're now
00:08:16.900 unconcerned with silly little subjects like history and literature and philosophy and art, then, yeah,
00:08:23.560 I guess the whole biblical literacy concept is kind of irrelevant. Biblical literacy is necessary for
00:08:29.580 general literacy in many of the subjects I've just mentioned. But if we're throwing those subjects out,
00:08:34.420 then it's a moot point, I suppose. But in that case, we've just tossed out education,
00:08:40.500 and there's no point of—what's even the point anymore of sending kids to school?
00:08:44.900 If our educational facilities are going to actually try to, you know, educate, then the Bible must
00:08:52.600 necessarily be a bedrock of that—not the only bedrock, not the only thing, but it obviously has to
00:09:00.580 be a crucial part of that effort to understand these things. Now, a couple of other points. Some
00:09:08.320 people will say that, yeah, sure, we should teach them the Bible. So let's have kids learn about the
00:09:13.120 Bible, and let's have it as part of a world's religion class, and we could teach it alongside
00:09:18.420 and give it equal time to, say, the Koran and the Gita and, I don't know, the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
00:09:28.160 right? Now, I completely agree that we should teach kids about those texts as well. We should teach kids
00:09:34.020 about those religions. You can't very well learn much about the Far East if you don't know something
00:09:39.300 about Buddhism. You can't learn anything about the Middle East from about the year 600 till now if you
00:09:45.100 don't know something about the Koran. You obviously can't learn anything about India if you don't know
00:09:50.160 something about Hinduism and the Bhagavad Gita and those kinds of works. And we do obviously want to
00:09:56.840 teach kids about those other parts of the world and those other cultures. But it's not the same.
00:10:02.460 You know, the idea that we should give those texts equal time to the Bible is obviously absurd
00:10:06.640 because none of them come close to influencing Western art and literature and philosophy. That is,
00:10:12.020 the civilization we actually live in. And that's, kids need to get a handle on their own civilization
00:10:18.740 first because this is where we live. And then you can move on to study those other civilizations.
00:10:24.140 But as far as this, as far as everything that's around us, all of that has been to some degree
00:10:29.880 influenced by the Bible. Whereas, I mean, you could learn about many of those subjects without ever
00:10:36.820 picking up the Bhagavad Gita. And, you know, you can learn everything you need to know about
00:10:42.620 Shakespeare without knowing anything about Hinduism.
00:10:46.780 One other point, as I mentioned, that actually, I think the only people who could make a feasible,
00:10:52.340 logical case against teaching the Bible in public schools, ironically, would be Christians.
00:10:56.900 And I've heard some Christians say this over the last couple of days. They've said that, you know,
00:11:01.100 I don't actually want the public schools teaching anything about the Bible because, well, obviously,
00:11:08.280 I wouldn't want them teaching the theology of the Bible. I'm not, I wouldn't trust a public school
00:11:12.000 teacher. I wouldn't trust some random history teacher to teach theology, which they're not going
00:11:19.080 to do. But then at the same time, I don't really want the Bible being taught as a purely literary
00:11:24.520 piece of work, because that could be confusing for my kids who are Christian. We're teaching them
00:11:28.200 that this is, that this is the Word of God, and then they're going to go to school and learn that
00:11:31.760 it's a piece of literature. So, so that's the only objection that to me could make any sense
00:11:37.060 whatsoever. From a secular perspective, there's, there's just no objection that makes sense.
00:11:42.880 Obviously, from a secular perspective, fine, you see the Bible as a piece of literature. You can't
00:11:48.640 factually deny its influence and importance, even if you hate it. So clearly, it needs to be
00:11:54.500 taught in schools. But the concern from a Christian perspective of teaching the Bible as literature,
00:12:00.720 when you're also trying to teach it as the Word of God, I understand that concern. And, and that could
00:12:06.000 get a little bit dicey to have somebody teaching the Bible who really doesn't think that there's
00:12:10.840 anything spiritually significant about it, and is just teaching it as, and then what do you do? Maybe
00:12:15.880 they're, they're teaching Exodus. The story of Exodus, again, very influential story, which you can see
00:12:23.220 those themes repeated and echoed in many other pieces of literature and pieces of art and so on.
00:12:29.740 So you do need the kids to understand that story. But what if you've got a teacher teaching Exodus,
00:12:35.620 who's going to tell the kids, hey, by the way, this never happened. Moses didn't exist. This is
00:12:40.020 just a story. It's a fable, whatever. So that is a, that's a, that could be a problem. But the fact,
00:12:45.380 all we're, we're just dealing with a simple fact here, that if you're going to give kids a well-rounded
00:12:52.440 education that touches on philosophy, literature, art, and all of that, they need, they need to be taught
00:13:00.000 the Bible as well. The Bible needs to be part of that. You just can't separate it from it. And if you're
00:13:05.600 saying, well, I don't trust the public schools to deal with that, well, then maybe that's just a good
00:13:09.060 education that you shouldn't be sending your kid to public school. That's all I can say about that.
00:13:15.140 All right. Quickly, the, the former mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, wrote what I guess we
00:13:20.940 will call a column in the San Francisco Chronicle. And this is what he had to say. He said, I've been
00:13:26.680 peppered with calls from the national media about my relationship with Kamala Harris, particularly
00:13:31.620 since it became obvious that she was going to run for president. Most of them I have not returned.
00:13:35.140 Yes. Yes. We dated. It was more than 20 years ago. Yes. I may have influenced her career by
00:13:41.120 appointing her to two state committees when I was assembly speaker. Um, and I certainly helped with
00:13:46.660 her first race for district attorney in San Francisco. I've also helped the careers of house
00:13:50.280 speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Dianne Feinstein, and a host of other politicians. The difference is
00:13:55.800 that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I so much as
00:14:01.680 jaywalked, quote unquote, while she was DA. Now, by the way, um, this story has gotten like no
00:14:09.280 attention whatsoever, even though you've got a guy admitting that he dated Kamala Harris and helped
00:14:15.780 her, um, get her first steps into politics. Now, when we say dated, what he means is had an affair
00:14:24.440 with, he was married at the time. Maybe his wife was estranged or whatever, but still he was married.
00:14:29.580 So this was an affair. He had an affair. He had an affair with Kamala Harris. And so Harris slept
00:14:36.500 with a married man and use that relationship to get a step up in politics. Um, again, you would think
00:14:43.020 that that would be a significant story that you've got this guy admitting to this. Kamala Harris pretends
00:14:51.840 to be a champion for women, but, but according to, to, uh, to Willie Brown, um, she's a champion for
00:14:58.480 women, I guess, except for the woman whose husband she slept with in order to get ahead in politics.
00:15:07.680 So, and of course, when we're talking about the character of Kamala Harris, uh, this is the same
00:15:14.320 person who has attorney general of California collaborated with Planned Parenthood to prosecute
00:15:19.840 the, the undercover journalist who exposed its sale of baby parts. So Kamala Harris has been in the
00:15:25.200 pocket. She's been a minion of the abortion industry for a very long time. Um, and even that,
00:15:31.000 what the way that she, uh, you know, as someone who has accepted, um, so much money from the abortion
00:15:39.120 industry, and then she comes to their defense, you know, that's a story that you think should have
00:15:45.780 gotten a lot of attention, which of course it wasn't going to because it deals with the abortion
00:15:49.280 industry. And now we have this and people are just kind of yawning, which doesn't make any sense to
00:15:56.980 me. So for me there, obviously I'm, I wouldn't be tempted to support Kamala Harris anyway. Um, so
00:16:03.020 there are a lot of reasons not to support her, but I think that maybe this would be one of them.
00:16:08.660 All right, let's check with a CNBC, which ran an article a few days ago titled, here's how much
00:16:14.160 money you save when you don't have kids. So this is just another propaganda piece trying to convince
00:16:19.440 people of the benefits of dying alone. Um, let's look at it. It says, uh, in part, your friends may
00:16:27.520 tell you having kids has made them happier. They're probably lying. Research shows that parenthood leads
00:16:33.040 to a happiness gap. Maybe that's because the pleasures of parenthood are outweighed by all the
00:16:38.120 extra responsibilities, housework, and of course the costs. Um, and then a little bit later on,
00:16:43.780 it gets to the supposed costs of having kids. It says the average middle income married couple
00:16:48.660 spent between $12,350 and $13,900 on each of their children in 2015. Extrapolating from that number,
00:16:58.460 and you're looking at spending $233,610 per child from birth through age 17, uh, higher income families
00:17:08.860 will spend, um, around $370,000 supposedly. And then it just goes on from there. Now, first of all,
00:17:17.860 these numbers are completely insane. And the media loves to do this. I mean, you see these stories
00:17:21.740 every, every couple of months, you have one of these stories about here's how much it costs to have kids.
00:17:25.780 Um, $14,000 per year, per kid, 14 grand per kid. Now I have three kids. That means according to
00:17:37.000 these numbers, we're spending $40,000 on just our kids, which is, which is completely believable and
00:17:45.360 makes sense. If you're buying your kids a brand new wardrobe of designer clothing every week,
00:17:51.060 and if you're eating out for every single meal, and if you buy a new car, uh, every year,
00:17:57.620 and it basically, if you're about as wasteful as humanly possible, then I could see maybe spending
00:18:03.600 14 grand per kid per year. Um, and, uh, a quarter of a million dollars on one kid through, through their
00:18:10.680 entire childhood, which means that if you have like four kids, um, that's a million bucks,
00:18:17.560 right. That you're going to be spending. But if you actually exercise even a small amount of
00:18:25.360 financial discipline, then it will be much, much cheaper. I mean, we don't spend anywhere close to
00:18:31.580 that per kid. I don't even, do we even spend 14,000 on all three kids combined? Uh, that to me seems
00:18:38.240 doubtful. Our, you know, our grocery bill is, is a little bit higher than it would be if it were just
00:18:44.060 the two of us. But, but the point is if you actually make, if you, if you actually, I don't
00:18:47.620 know, cook meals with, with, with ingredients, then it's, uh, it's, it's not nearly as expensive
00:18:55.120 as you think. And if you're not dead set on getting your kids brand new, fancy brand name clothes all
00:19:02.680 the time, if you're okay with like hand-me-downs, you know, um, I, we've, my oldest son, now we're
00:19:09.020 passing his clothes on to, uh, to, uh, our youngest son. So we, we really have no new clothing costs
00:19:15.380 for, for our youngest son. So numbers like this would assume that with our youngest son, we're
00:19:21.460 just going to throw out all the old clothes and go get him new clothes, which would be an incredibly
00:19:26.320 stupid and insane thing to do. But to get to, just so you understand, if you don't have kids or
00:19:31.320 anything and you see numbers like this and you, and you're scared by them, you think, well, you know,
00:19:34.840 I have to be like a freaking millionaire to have kids. Well, yeah, that's what the media wants you
00:19:39.660 to believe because they're trying to convince you. There are people in the media who are just
00:19:43.720 desperate to convince everyone that they shouldn't have kids. And I think because a lot of the, now
00:19:48.400 the person who wrote this article, I have no idea if they have kids or not, but I think a lot of the
00:19:51.500 people who are behind this propaganda, they themselves don't have kids. They've made that
00:19:56.180 decision in life. So they're trying to convince other people to join them in their loneliness. Um,
00:20:01.100 but all I'm saying is, is, uh, is don't do that. At least if you're going to make the decision not
00:20:05.600 to have kids, don't make it based on this because I get, look, I, I know, um, I know families that
00:20:13.100 have six or six, seven, eight kids. And according to these numbers, that means that they, they would
00:20:20.760 be spending over a hundred grand a year just on their kids. But some of these families, I know that
00:20:30.280 have these big, a lot of kids, they don't even make a hundred grand a year. So according to these
00:20:36.880 numbers, it's, that's impossible. Like how, how are they surviving? But then you look at these
00:20:41.700 families, not only they surviving, but they're thriving. They're not living in rags in the
00:20:46.260 gutter. I mean, they have homes, they have, they have, uh, they have food. I mean, everyone is
00:20:50.460 perfectly well-fed, perfectly happy, well-adjusted families that have a lot of kids and somehow find a
00:20:57.600 way to pay for it on, um, you know, on a not even six figure income, which again, according to the
00:21:03.120 media should be impossible, but it's not impossible is the point. Um, but the, you know, the, the more
00:21:11.160 fundamental issue here is this whole idea that you should be making these kinds of decisions
00:21:16.320 based on these sorts of financial considerations, which, which you really shouldn't be. Now,
00:21:25.040 I'm not saying that you should, you know, you shouldn't take the finances into account at all,
00:21:29.300 but, um, if you feel called to start a family and you really want to start a family,
00:21:37.680 then, then do it. Uh, yeah, I mean, it might be, you might have to make some sacrifices. You,
00:21:44.280 you know, you might have to give up a few vacations here and there. And, uh, you know,
00:21:49.180 maybe you won't, won't be living with exactly the same sort of luxury you would be living with,
00:21:53.380 living with otherwise, but, um, but that's not the, the, the main point here. The main point of
00:22:01.380 life isn't just to save money. Now, I hate to, I hate to be reduced to cliches here, but you can't
00:22:06.200 take it with you. And if you don't have kids, you don't even have anyone to pass your money down
00:22:11.260 to. So what's the point? So you, you don't have kids because you want to save money and then you
00:22:15.780 save a whole bunch of money and you die. And then so what, what, what good does it, you don't even
00:22:21.180 have anyone to bequeath it to. So it's just completely pointless. Um, all right. Finally,
00:22:30.580 I want to answer it. Cause we don't have a, I'll just have to do a couple. We're running out of
00:22:34.460 time here, but, um, if you want to send a message, an email to the show, Matt wall show at gmail.com
00:22:40.320 a couple of quick emails from Cody. He says, Hey Matt, I recently listened to your show where you
00:22:49.080 talked about Elizabeth Warren and her ultra rich tax. I loved what you said. And I thought I'd
00:22:52.960 offer a bit of insight into some other relevant discourse and get your opinion on it. A lot of
00:22:58.100 people talking about this issue will claim that it is immoral for billionaires to have that much
00:23:02.800 money. And as an economist, that strikes me as odd. It certainly rubs me the wrong way. However,
00:23:07.120 when people claim it's immoral because the billionaires do it quote on the backs of exploited
00:23:11.180 workers for the majority of corporations and businesses and firms, this is impossible because
00:23:15.620 of how corporate production works. Production is a combination of labor and capital and firms will
00:23:21.400 only hire labor or buy slash rent capital until the benefit, i.e. increased revenue from increased
00:23:26.800 output outmatches the cost wages for laborers and rent investment for capital. This makes it impossible
00:23:32.360 for firms to make any profit off of workers because the amount they're paying all their workers
00:23:36.700 is always equilibrated to the revenue they get. So they don't get any profit from that. The profits
00:23:41.920 for a firm usually come from owning the capital they use instead of renting it and thus paying
00:23:47.320 themselves the rent they would normally get. Thank you for that, Cody. That's adding some extra
00:23:55.480 context and insight. And here's what I find. This is just anecdotally. But when we have these kinds
00:24:02.180 of discussions, the people who are on the more socialist side of it and say, oh, it's making
00:24:08.420 money off the backs of exploited workers and we've got to redistribute the wealth, I very rarely hear
00:24:14.420 from someone with that opinion who has the kind of knowledge about the subject that Cody clearly has.
00:24:24.380 So it's just it's odd to me, right, that all the and if you're on the socialist side, that should concern
00:24:29.600 you that all of the really knowledgeable people who really know how business works and can write
00:24:34.800 an email like that. Almost all of them seem to be on the free market side. From Trevor, he says, Matt,
00:24:42.680 I'm a fan of your show and would like to thank you for your insights. On your Monday show, you mentioned
00:24:46.220 that you didn't go to college. If you would be willing to tell if you would be willing, could you tell a bit
00:24:50.980 of the story of your self-education and how you got into political commentary? It was just a bit
00:24:55.380 surprising to me that you didn't have a higher education. Thanks for all you do and Godspeed.
00:24:59.620 Trevor, I won't go into my whole autobiography because I think it'll be terribly, terribly boring
00:25:03.900 and irrelevant. I'll just say that in terms of education, I discovered that it was possible
00:25:09.040 to learn quite a bit just by reading books and to a lesser extent through the internet as well,
00:25:15.760 which can be a great tool for learning if you know how to use it and you're responsible in using it.
00:25:19.700 So I discovered that not only could I learn that way, but actually for me, it was the best way to
00:25:25.060 learn because not everybody excels in the kind of formal environment of an educational institution.
00:25:30.960 Some people need a sort of freer and looser approach to it or a self-guided approach to
00:25:37.400 education, I guess is the best way to phrase it. That's what I discovered was the case for me. In fact,
00:25:42.880 I discovered that when I was still in grade school and I realized that this kind of sitting down,
00:25:50.240 having someone regurgitate information and I have to regurgitate it onto a sheet of paper to show that
00:25:54.700 I've picked on, but it's very focused on memorization and you're only learning about
00:26:00.980 this subject for a certain amount of time and then you got to move on to this subject
00:26:05.520 and everything. And just that whole, there are some people who excel in that environment and do
00:26:10.300 very well in it. But there are also some people who just don't. And it's not because they're stupid.
00:26:15.660 It's not because they can't learn. It's just because they learn differently. And I knew that
00:26:21.100 that's the case for me. And that certainly is the case for me. The way that I tend to learn is I get
00:26:26.740 very obsessed with one particular subject. And I read all about it. So the only thing I want to read
00:26:32.740 about or talk about or think about for weeks or months or longer. And so I just dive into it. I
00:26:41.640 learn everything I can about that subject. And then some other subject will strike my fancy and
00:26:46.320 I'll dive into that and learn everything I can about that. And I'll learn it through different
00:26:50.000 ways. I'll read books. I'll watch documentaries. I'll listen to audio books. I'll read essays and
00:26:55.800 articles and stuff. So you just, if you're going to school, again, in a more formal education
00:27:03.560 environment, you can't really learn that way. But outside of school, you can. So that's why I say to
00:27:10.440 people, and I sound like a broken record, but before you go to college, before you sign on that dotted
00:27:16.500 line and sign up for all of that debt, you should know something about not only what you want to do with
00:27:23.140 your life and what your passions are and what your interests are, but also you should know
00:27:26.600 something about how you learn. And if learning this way is actually beneficial or even possible
00:27:33.580 for you, because if it's not, that doesn't mean that you're not going to go, you know, that you're
00:27:39.080 going to decide not to go to college and you're going to end up being stupid and illiterate and lacking
00:27:44.440 in knowledge and information. No, it just means that maybe you go and learn some other way.
00:27:48.380 Um, finally, let's see, I'll read, uh, I'll read one more. Audrey says, Matt, you recently talked
00:27:57.880 about the whole PETA thing with them pretending to be cooking a dog or whatever. Uh, and I thought I
00:28:03.040 would share some of my views on the matter as a student studying animal science. The reason why
00:28:07.360 eating dogs is seen as different from eating sheeps or pigs is mainly because of differences in
00:28:11.500 domestication. Dogs were domesticated to 20,000 ish years ago. And as we've evolved, they have evolved
00:28:17.920 alongside us as companions and protectors. Livestock were domesticated for food. They've
00:28:22.800 evolved to be the most efficient and giving us what we want from them, like milk or meat or whatever
00:28:27.120 produce it is. Um, dogs and livestock have served different purposes for thousands of years and
00:28:32.180 will continue to serve different purposes, probably forever. Another big reason why people don't want
00:28:36.960 to eat dog meat. And this one sucks is because it's a common belief in Asia that tortured dog meat
00:28:42.620 tastes better. People in Asia will actually burn dogs and skin them alive. There's even an
00:28:47.860 annual festival, the Yulin Festival in China, where over 10,000 dogs are tortured and killed.
00:28:53.400 In contrast, in the United States, we try our hardest to make sure that livestock have the best
00:28:57.300 life possible and are killed in the most humane way possible. If we were going to slaughter dogs for
00:29:02.040 food in the U.S., at least we would have the good feeling that they weren't skinned alive. So if anyone
00:29:06.660 in a foreign country serves you Fido lasagna, maybe politely decline. Audrey, this rarely happens,
00:29:14.280 but you have convinced me and you've changed my mind. I think that my position on eating dog meat,
00:29:20.840 which again, I said I would never do here, but if I went to a foreign country and it was,
00:29:24.460 and if they did serve me, you know, a Rex stir fry, um, you know, a Clifford, the big red dog stir fry,
00:29:32.460 if they served it to me in a foreign country, I would eat it to be polite and also maybe a little bit
00:29:37.880 out of curiosity. But with that extra context, I think I would have to say, um, no, I'll pass.
00:29:44.160 I think I'll just have a salad, please.
00:29:47.940 So thank you for that. And thanks everyone for your emails. Um, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.
00:29:52.920 Hi everybody. I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. How stupid is elite American
00:30:04.520 political discourse? Well, think of this. While virtually every journalist in the country is
00:30:08.600 worrying about whether Donald Trump called Roger Stone to find out what Hillary Clinton wrote
00:30:13.220 in her emails, Vladimir Putin is helping to engineer the destruction of Venezuela so he can
00:30:19.860 hike the price of oil and send thousands of refugees to our undefended border. That's on
00:30:25.320 The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.