The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 19 - We Have Nothing In Common Anymore

00:00:00.000 So I came across a few things in the last couple of days that I wanted to mention to fold into

00:00:04.840 this topic here. One was a recent survey in Pew, which revealed that Americans are more divided

00:00:11.360 now than ever before, according to the survey. And we're divided in terms of, you know, not just

00:00:16.920 the number of issues that we disagree about, which is basically every issue, but also the severity,

00:00:22.660 the depth of those divisions. And then second, there was an article in the Washington Post a

00:00:28.460 few weeks ago, which cites a different survey and also argues that the so-called value divide

00:00:34.180 between Republicans and Democrats is getting wider and wider and wider. Now, I agree with those 1.00

00:00:41.440 surveys. I think it's kind of self-evident that this is a situation. It appears to me that we have,

00:00:49.560 as a country, we have nothing in common anymore. We have no shared value. We have no shared goal.

00:00:57.880 We have no shared sense of purpose, no shared sense of tradition or identity, nothing, nothing.

00:01:06.380 I wrote about this a few months ago, about our lack of shared values and our shared identity.

00:01:11.540 And a lot of people, and I know, as I say this now, you're probably thinking the same thing.

00:01:15.820 A lot of people told me, they said, well, we do have shared values and those values are freedom

00:01:21.340 and equality. Americans love freedom and equality. What are you talking about? That's what we all have

00:01:26.440 in common. We're a free country. Okay. First of all, we are not a free country. We're not. I hate to

00:01:34.200 break it to you. And second, we are only united by freedom and equality in the sense that we all like

00:01:40.980 those words. Okay. We all like to use the words freedom and equality, but we do not all actually

00:01:47.420 value freedom and equality. Okay. If you look at what we consider those words to mean and how we think

00:01:53.900 they should be applied, you'll find that I have, you know, my definition of freedom and equality

00:01:58.800 is about as similar to my neighbors as it would be to someone in North Korea's. It's about the same. 0.72

00:02:05.720 You're not going to find very many people on earth who profess to despise freedom and equality in

00:02:11.940 principle, but you will find a lot of people who despise it in practice. And a lot of those people live in

00:02:17.600 this country and some of them work for our government, unfortunately. Now, remember our, our, our wonderful

00:02:24.180 nation under God, our wonderful free nation, our nation of freedom legally exterminates a million

00:02:32.400 children a year. We have killed 60 million human beings since Roe v. Wade, 60 million. So that's freedom 0.86

00:02:45.500 and equality, except for the 60 million we've killed. I know it upsets people when I say this, but no,

00:02:52.460 we are not a free country. How dare you, how dare you say anything about a free country when we've

00:02:59.460 killed 60 million babies? I honestly, how dare any of us babble on about our freedoms in a situation

00:03:07.420 like that? This is the worst human rights atrocity in the history of mankind. And we are responsible 0.99

00:03:16.860 for it as Americans. While we continue to babble about our freedom. I can just imagine two people

00:03:25.580 in a car, you know, talking about, Oh, it's so great to be free in America as they drive by a,

00:03:30.880 an abortion clinic, but it doesn't end there. Of course. I mean, that's just one example.

00:03:38.040 Um, our free and equal country also happens to be one where Christian business owners, as of right

00:03:42.840 now, Supreme court's going to rule on this, but as of right now, they can be forced to participate in

00:03:48.660 gay wedding ceremonies against their will. 60% of Americans agree that they ought to be forced, 0.80

00:03:53.160 that they ought not to have freedom of, uh, of religion. Uh, 60% of Americans support some version

00:03:59.500 of socialized medicine. Over half of all Americans think that their fellow citizens should be forced

00:04:04.580 to fund the abortion industry. And we are forced to fund it. All of us, a majority of Americans

00:04:09.380 believe that businesses should be forced to provide contraception to their employees.

00:04:14.000 And the situation gets even worse when you look at the young, at the younger generations, that is

00:04:17.860 the generation, uh, the generation that's going to, you know, that's, that's taking over the country. 0.91

00:04:23.920 40% of millennials think that we should limit speech that's offensive to minorities.

00:04:28.800 Over half of adults in their twenties don't believe in free market capitalism. Over 30% are avowed

00:04:34.220 socialists. 50% of millennials would give up their right to vote. If only their, if only their

00:04:39.000 student loans would be forgiven. So get a hundred random Americans into a room and you won't find that

00:04:46.120 even half of them actually care about freedom or they care about a freedom that doesn't include

00:04:52.700 the unborn Christians, business owners, taxpayers. So we don't share that principle, not in any 1.00

00:05:01.440 meaningful way. What do we share then? Americans used to be united by their common belief in a creator

00:05:07.940 God from whom all rights originate. Not anymore. America today is, is home to a record number of 0.93

00:05:14.620 atheists, a record number of empty or emptying churches. Even Americans who call themselves 0.95

00:05:20.320 Christians, which is a record, a record low number, of course, um, can't come to an agreement about what 1.00

00:05:25.340 being a Christian means. Many attend churches that have rainbow flags hanging from them where they hear

00:05:30.820 about a God who, uh, who loves gay marriage and abortion. That is many Christians are not actually 0.99

00:05:37.860 Christian. So we don't have that. What else do we have? I've heard some people say Americans value

00:05:45.400 family. We all love our families and we, we love family. We're all, you know, we're, we're pro family.

00:05:52.560 The delusions of some people, it's, it's pretty incredible. And I'm almost envious of it.

00:05:57.580 How can we say that we all value family when we live in a country where the average family consists of

00:06:04.600 three people, a record low number of, uh, of, uh, of women have, have no kids at all. Or a record 0.91

00:06:12.160 number of women have no kids at all. I should say divorce is rampant. Fatherless homes are endemic 1.00

00:06:18.020 in some communities. The numbers as high as 70 or 80% record numbers of young people are putting

00:06:24.620 off marriage or plan to never get married at all. Record numbers of young people say they never want to

00:06:29.780 have kids at all. Most Americans are, are, are saving, you know, having kids for a point when

00:06:36.600 they cannot physically even conceive kids anymore because they care more about amassing physical

00:06:41.500 wealth and going on vacations and everything. So family, no, that's, that's, uh, for a great many

00:06:47.960 Americans, family is not even the top three of their list of priorities. So what else do we have? 0.96

00:06:55.140 Language? We don't even have language anymore. We don't even share a language. So what's left?

00:07:02.360 Nothing of substance. I mean, we have physical proximity. We all share, we, you know, we share

00:07:06.980 zip codes with each other. We share area codes with each other. Beyond that, we have our, I'll tell you

00:07:12.980 that the, the, the one thing that we really do all have in common, the one thing that binds us

00:07:18.100 is our vices. We all love to buy things. We all love to go out on black Friday and just

00:07:25.740 accumulate a bunch of stuff that we don't need and bring it back to our houses that are filled with

00:07:32.780 more stuff that we don't need. So we all like to do that. We're all consumerists. We watch too much TV.

00:07:39.960 We spend a lot of time on the internet. We love porn. Okay. When I say we, I'm talking about general, 0.89

00:07:47.400 you know, the general American, the average American, this describes that person. Is that

00:07:52.180 enough to make a country? No, that's enough to make a, uh, a Reddit community. Okay. That's enough

00:07:58.220 to make a club. It's not enough to make a nation, especially not a nation that was originally built

00:08:05.080 upon ideals. America is unique or used to be because it has a creed. It has an almost religious

00:08:11.460 creed. Most countries don't have creeds. We do. Most countries aren't founded that way. They're not

00:08:16.980 founded with this declaration of what we believe. That's how religions are founded. Our country was

00:08:25.240 founded like a religion. And what is our creed? We all should know the creed. We hold these truths to

00:08:31.460 be self-evident. All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

00:08:39.020 Among these are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. And that to secure these rights,

00:08:43.560 governments are instituted among men deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.

00:08:49.600 This is our creed. And it says that Americans believe first in self-evident, objective truth.

00:08:56.380 Americans believe in a creator. Americans believe in the inherent dignity of human beings.

00:09:01.680 Americans believe in the right to life and the right to liberty. Americans believe in the consent of

00:09:07.940 the governed. Those are the six things, the six doctrinal points that are supposed to hold all

00:09:18.100 Americans together. Now I ask you, how many Americans believe in all six anymore? How many believe in even 0.50

00:09:26.580 one of them? And what happens to a nation founded on a creed when half the country no longer believes in

00:09:35.140 the creed? What happens? You know, I'm not imagining things and neither are you. If you ever get the feeling

00:09:45.060 that you no longer even live in the same country as your fellow Americans.

00:09:52.420 And when I look at it, I see that many Americans exist in a place where there is no God. There is

00:09:57.420 no such thing as man or woman. There is no truth. There is no objective morality. Babies aren't people. 0.60

00:10:02.260 Marriage is nothing but a societal construct. The whole point of life is to make money and to buy

00:10:06.580 things and to go on nice vacations. And the government's job is to take care of us. That's the

00:10:12.580 country that a lot of Americans live in. And I don't relate to that country or to those people. They're

00:10:20.680 foreign to me. I share nothing at all in common with them. You know, forget about shared ideals. We 1.00

00:10:25.960 don't even share a universe anymore. We don't even share a reality anymore. We cannot agree on even the most

00:10:35.600 fundamental definition of what reality is. Okay? That's how bad the division is. We can't even all agree

00:10:45.400 that there is such a thing as reality. There are a lot of us who think that we can just make up reality as we go

00:10:51.540 along. And that's why we're more divided now than we were during the Civil War. More divided. I've been

00:10:59.660 studying the Civil War for a long time. It's been an interest of mine. And when you read about the Civil

00:11:04.320 War, the thing that jumps out at you is that, yeah, Americans were obviously deeply divided,

00:11:10.020 not just over slavery, but culturally. There was a deep cultural division. Yet, they still shared an

00:11:18.700 essential belief in God and in truth and in virtue. They still had that. They applied those beliefs

00:11:28.700 differently, and they didn't include everyone in that belief. Okay? Both sides were filled with racists,

00:11:33.820 let's be honest. But they still had the belief. And that's why when you read about these stories from

00:11:40.640 the Civil War that seem so strange, so bizarre to us nowadays. But you read about these incidents

00:11:48.100 where, and it happened more than once, where the night before a big battle, you'd have the two sides

00:11:55.820 on either end of a battlefield. And the night before, they would meet in the middle and exchange,

00:12:03.480 you know, they'd trade tobacco, and they'd talk, and they'd maybe share food. Sometimes there'd be

00:12:10.160 dancing and all this kind of stuff. And then they'd go back to their sides and kill each other a few 0.96

00:12:15.140 hours later. And that's what makes the Civil War such a sad story, aside from the 600,000 people

00:12:20.900 that died. What makes it so sad is that these were really brothers. These were brothers. It really was

00:12:27.120 brother against brother, literally in some cases, but also in the sense that these were countrymen.

00:12:33.600 They were brothers. They had this, there were certain ties that still bound them together.

00:12:39.240 And so you found there was this mutual respect. Even while they were, while they were shooting at

00:12:49.580 each other and stabbing each other to death with bayonets and, and, and blowing each other apart

00:12:54.620 with cannonballs, even in the midst of that, there was still this respect, um, between the two sides.

00:13:02.180 There was more respect, I think, on a Civil War battlefield than there is now on Twitter.

00:13:11.880 Because now we don't have anything at all in common. We don't even have that essential belief

00:13:18.200 in God, truth, morality, virtue, dignity. We don't even have that. Now we aren't shooting at each other.

00:13:25.680 There's no Civil War breaking out. And I think part of the reason for that is that the divide is not

00:13:29.640 exactly geographic. And so it's hard for there to be a civil war when everyone's kind of intermingled

00:13:35.160 with each other. Um, but second, I think people are also too lazy for a civil war. We wouldn't want 0.99

00:13:41.620 to do anything that would jeopardize our ability to go home and watch Netflix at night. And that's

00:13:45.900 the main thing that we care about. So really we're not shooting each other because we're too lazy for

00:13:50.560 that. And, uh, and we'd rather watch TV and maybe that will be our saving grace. And that'll be the

00:13:55.760 thing that, that, uh, saves us from another gruesome war like the Civil War. But still the division is

00:14:03.180 there. And listen, I know people will say, uh, Oh, you're such a pessimist. It isn't that bad. Get

00:14:10.200 out of your bubble, go into the real world, get off the internet, go meet people. People are fine in

00:14:15.080 the real world. They get along fine. You're basing all this on the internet. Well, let me say two things

00:14:20.500 in response to that. Number one, I live in the real world. Okay. I'm not in a bubble and I travel

00:14:28.680 the country and I meet thousands of people every year. I've probably been about, I've been to probably

00:14:33.860 about 30 or 35 different States in the last two years for speaking events. And yes, people are

00:14:40.260 basically polite to one another. We, we basically get along. Okay. For the most part, there isn't a chaos

00:14:46.360 in the streets most of the time, although sometimes there is, but the problem is I could travel anywhere

00:14:52.240 in the world and it would be the same. I might avoid a place like Syria, but if I went to France 1.00

00:14:59.680 or China or Thailand or Australia or Mexico, I could walk by people on the street and say hello. And they

00:15:07.300 would say hello. And we'd be friendly to each other. I could make pleasant, small talk if I knew the

00:15:12.040 language anyway. Um, and people would be basically, you know, nice to each other, but that's not enough

00:15:18.480 to make us countrymen to be my country, man. There needs to be something deeper holding us together

00:15:25.540 than just mere niceties and small talk and pleasantries. And I wouldn't have that deeper thing

00:15:31.880 tying me to somebody in China or France. And I don't have it here anymore. The second thing, uh, just,

00:15:40.740 just quickly, the internet is the real world. Okay. I hate this thing that people do where they say,

00:15:49.460 oh, you know, people are nasty to each other on the internet, but not in the real world.

00:15:53.900 What do you think the internet is? Do you think this is a dream? You think this is a hallucination?

00:15:59.620 No, this is real. This is a real tool whereby real humans communicate with other real humans.

00:16:06.620 So if you're a terrible, monstrous jerk on the internet, that means that you're a terrible, 1.00

00:16:11.980 monstrous jerk in general. That's the kind of person you are. And if it seems like there are a 1.00

00:16:15.520 lot of bad people on the internet, that's because there are a lot of bad people in the world.

00:16:20.360 The fact that they're, you know, that they, that they save all their badness for the internet,

00:16:25.260 then they go out and act nice in the real world. That just proves that they're cowards. It doesn't 0.98

00:16:29.680 prove anything else other than that. So yes, I think, I think that, uh, that even the internet

00:16:37.000 is indicative of the divisions that exist in our country. And now's the part I know where I'm

00:16:43.100 supposed to offer an answer. People get angry when we talk about these things and, and, uh,

00:16:48.020 and they say, oh, you know, what are your solutions? Don't just point out the bad things,

00:16:53.280 offer solutions. Well, I'm sorry. I don't have a five-step solution. I don't have a five-step plan.

00:17:00.320 For how to, uh, solve our societal implosion. Okay. I don't have that.

00:17:07.100 Is it even possible for a civilization to pull itself back from the brink?

00:17:12.160 Is it possible for it to go right up to the edge of destruction and then pull a U-turn and go back

00:17:17.800 the other way? I, you know, has any civilization in history ever done that before? The Romans couldn't

00:17:23.700 pull it off. The Mayans couldn't, the Mesopotamians. I mean, could we be the first ones ever to 0.91

00:17:29.600 do that? We can hope so, but that certainly won't happen if we refuse to face the reality

00:17:36.480 of our current situation. The more that we cling to these silly slogans that nobody really believes,

00:17:43.060 Americans love freedom. Americans love equality. As long as we cling to that, there's no hope for us

00:17:48.920 because that means we're just going to skip, you know, we're, we're just going to hold hands and

00:17:53.340 skip right into oblivion. If there is any way to stop this, it has to start with accepting the reality

00:18:02.960 of the situation. Acceptance is the, is the first step, right? And then once we've accepted it,

00:18:10.020 what's next? Pray. The next step is to pray. If there's any chance at a national revival,

00:18:17.520 it's only going to happen with God's blessing. God will decide. And if God looks at our country

00:18:23.080 and says, nope, you guys had your chance, you screwed it up, and now you're going to reap what

00:18:28.280 you sow. If he says that, then that's it. It's over. The judgment has been made, but we could pray to

00:18:37.360 God and beg for another chance, beg for him to allow us to turn things around. I don't think we deserve

00:18:46.560 that. We deserve to fall apart. We do, but we can beg for what we don't deserve. So do that and tend

00:18:57.420 to your family, hold your children close. I don't know if we can save the entire country from collapse,

00:19:03.460 but I do know we can save our own families and we have to focus on that now. We have to focus on

00:19:08.380 shielding our children from the debris if everything does start falling apart. And beyond that, be

00:19:13.260 vigilant because I do believe that there are tough times ahead. I don't know what those tough times

00:19:18.720 will look like exactly, but I do believe they're coming. So be vigilant and sure, pray for a miracle

00:19:27.220 because a miracle is what it's going to take. But while you're praying for the miracle and

00:19:32.260 hoping for the miracle, maybe in the meantime, buy yourself a gun just in case. All right,

00:19:39.460 that's it for me. Have a great day, everyone. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 30, 2018

Ep. 19 - We Have Nothing In Common Anymore

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