Ep. 186 - You Can't Have A Real Education Without The Bible
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
177.68364
Summary
Trump endorses the idea of Bible Literacy Classes in public school. The left and the media are upset about that, but Trump is absolutely right. You can t have a real education without the Bible, and we ll talk about why. Also, the Kamala Harris sex scandal that nobody cares about, and finally, CNBC claims that having kids will make you go broke, which is absurd. And we'll talk about that today on The Matt Welch Show.
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.
00:29:47.940
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