The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 204 - We Live In The Most Tolerant Civilization Ever, But Leftists Aren't Happy

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, we live in the least racist, most tolerant civilization ever to exist on the planet.

00:00:07.880 So why aren't liberals happy? We'll talk about that.

00:00:10.660 Also, Democratic presidential candidates are coming out in favor of reparations for slavery,

00:00:15.400 and we'll discuss why that is an insane idea.

00:00:18.600 And we'll talk about how it is that we can have free will as human beings,

00:00:23.600 even though God knows what we're going to do ahead of time.

00:00:26.080 And that old chestnut, we'll see if we can solve the riddle today on the Matt Wall Show.

00:00:42.040 You know, guys, I'd really like to focus on the positive for just a minute here.

00:00:48.020 Jussie Smollett is catching a lot of flack for what he did, staging a hate crime.

00:00:52.960 But here's the thing. He did create two jobs at way above minimum wage.

00:01:00.940 I mean, he paid thirty five hundred bucks for just, you know, less than an hour's work.

00:01:06.220 And that's that's a lot better than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has done so far in Congress.

00:01:12.360 I mean, she lost her city twenty five thousand jobs. 0.99

00:01:15.460 So Smollett, by comparison, is an expert job creator.

00:01:19.380 He has created twenty five thousand and two more jobs than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have.

00:01:27.200 So that's that's one thing that I'll that I'll say for him.

00:01:30.420 And that's got to count for something.

00:01:32.940 And let's focus on let's focus actually on another positive thing here for for a minute.

00:01:37.440 We live. Despite what you may have heard, despite what is advertised, we live in the least racist, least sexist, least homophobic, most tolerant, most accepting, most open minded civilization ever to exist on planet Earth.

00:01:57.800 And it's not even close. That's the truth.

00:01:59.500 Now, we aren't perfect. I would never say that.

00:02:04.000 And I would say as a pro-lifer that our acceptance and our tolerance and our very welcoming attitude stops, unfortunately, at the womb, which is a massive oversight, which has led to the death of 60 million human beings and counting. 0.94

00:02:21.240 But speaking of issues about of race and gender and sexuality specifically, when it comes to that kind of thing, we are without question the most tolerant civilization ever, period.

00:02:36.460 Now, that doesn't mean that racism and sexism don't exist.

00:02:41.020 Nobody's claiming that there is racism and sexism in this country.

00:02:44.300 But it does mean that we in modern civilization, modern Western civilization, I should say, have come as close to eradicating those things, racism and sexism, as anyone ever has, which is pretty impressive.

00:03:01.900 And it means that no matter your race or your gender or your sexual orientation, you can be as successful in this country as your ambition and your intelligence and your your skill will will take you.

00:03:17.500 And it doesn't work that way in every country in the world.

00:03:21.540 And there was a time when it didn't work that way in this country because it didn't work that way anywhere.

00:03:27.060 But it does now and it does here.

00:03:29.800 And that's pretty incredible.

00:03:31.120 That that's something that we should be grateful for.

00:03:33.280 Doesn't mean we stop working to make things even better.

00:03:35.560 But but why not stop and have a little bit of gratitude for that?

00:03:39.920 Why not stop and say, wow, I mean, we really are fortunate to live here.

00:03:46.220 Because the fact is, I don't care who you are.

00:03:49.740 I don't care who you are.

00:03:51.140 I don't care what your race is, what your gender is, what you know, I don't care what of the 57 different genders you belong to. 0.96

00:03:57.760 But if you could be born in any time and any place you would choose right here, right now, you would not want to go anywhere else in the world at any other point in history.

00:04:15.700 That's a fact.

00:04:17.760 And so that's something, isn't it?

00:04:20.660 Isn't that something?

00:04:21.600 But what we find is that, and this is what gets me, is that on the left, they just there is no gratitude.

00:04:29.420 And there's, I think there's little gratitude anywhere else.

00:04:33.700 Gratitude is something that's sorely missing in our society.

00:04:38.240 I know that it's even missing from, you know, I need to work on being more grateful.

00:04:43.920 I think we all need to work on it.

00:04:45.200 But the problem on the left, what you find is that we live in the most tolerant and open civilization in the history of the world, but they seek validation and identity in oppression.

00:04:58.000 And so for them, it's like unfortunate.

00:05:02.740 It's not just that they lack gratitude, it's that they actively wish that it were that it were otherwise.

00:05:09.840 And the rash of fake hate crimes, to include Smollett's, shows how desperate the victimhood mongers have become.

00:05:18.500 I mean, think about Smollett for a minute. 0.83

00:05:19.800 He's a gay black man who is successful, or was anyway, before he destroyed his career, you know, a millionaire, a gay black man who's a millionaire, 0.93

00:05:34.020 making tens of thousands of dollars per episode to do his show, which wasn't enough for him, which is why apparently one of the reasons why he staged a hate crime. 0.80

00:05:44.560 So, someone who, in other parts of the world, would face possibly violent persecution, and at other points in history in our own country would have,

00:06:00.580 now is, you know, a millionaire, successful, living in this, you know, nice part of this city, in a nice fancy high rise.

00:06:10.060 And he was so desperate to be persecuted that he had to hire people to do it for him.

00:06:20.640 He wasn't, you know, apparently that was a job.

00:06:23.920 We always hear about immigrants doing jobs that Americans aren't willing to do.

00:06:27.780 Well, oppressing Jesse Smollett apparently is a job that no American was willing to actually do, so he had to go hire someone to do it.

00:06:36.240 But it's not just this.

00:06:37.400 I mean, think about, just think about other recent events.

00:06:40.060 Just from the last few weeks, we had the Covenant Catholic thing.

00:06:43.700 The media spun this dramatic yarn about Catholic students randomly accosting an innocent Native American man.

00:06:53.360 And then this week on Twitter, like we talked about, the leftists dusted off an old, a 50-year-old interview with John Wayne and spent the day scolding his corpse.

00:07:03.820 And then just a couple days ago, feminists, as I mentioned on the show as well, feminists got very upset because the director of the upcoming Ghostbusters movie said that he wanted to give the movie back to the fans, which apparently is hurtful to women for some reason or another. 0.95

00:07:19.740 And then there were stories I saw yesterday of the vagina monologues being canceled at various colleges because apparently it's now offensive to transgenders to have the vagina monologues because it excludes, you know, because it insinuates that you have to have a vagina to be a woman. 0.97

00:07:36.800 God forbid. 0.96

00:07:38.380 The point is that the left apparently now has to dig up the dead or hire Nigerians if they want to be oppressed. 1.00

00:07:49.300 They are reduced to searching for oppression in Ghostbusters movies and in the vagina monologues. 1.00

00:07:56.420 They find martyrdom now in a facial expression.

00:08:01.160 Think about all of the think pieces that were written about the smirk of the innocent Covington Catholic student.

00:08:09.400 Oh yeah, he didn't do anything, but look at that smirk.

00:08:12.280 I'm traumatized by the smirk, by the way that he smiles.

00:08:17.180 Because they can't just admit that we are the least racist, least sexist, least homophobic, most open-minded and welcoming society ever to exist.

00:08:24.420 They just aren't. They can't accept it. They can't admit it.

00:08:28.120 And rather than express gratitude for the unearned privilege of living in by far the most accepting time and place imaginable,

00:08:36.960 they go around turning over every rock, looking into every crevice with a flashlight,

00:08:41.900 searching desperately to find the faintest hint of something that they might construe as bigotry.

00:08:47.840 And if they can't find it, then they just invent it.

00:08:49.800 So what we've achieved in this country, this unprecedented level of tolerance and acceptance,

00:08:57.940 which is supposedly the very thing that these people are fighting for,

00:09:01.400 it's being squandered, it's being wasted on a generation of people

00:09:05.060 who spend their whole lives convincing themselves that they're persecuted.

00:09:09.620 And that is the great shame.

00:09:11.040 That after, in this civilization, after we climbed out of the muck of bigotry and racism and slavery and all of that,

00:09:25.980 climbed out of that, built this tolerant civilization,

00:09:35.060 and yet it's being wasted on people who do not appreciate it.

00:09:44.240 On a related note, Democratic presidential candidates are coming out now in favor of reparations.

00:09:53.700 So this is happening, folks. This is really happening.

00:09:56.620 Reparations is becoming a mainstream Democratic talking point.

00:10:01.360 And both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have expressed their support for the idea of reparations,

00:10:07.960 which is the idea of giving payments to Black Americans because of slavery,

00:10:13.260 a payment that would have to come from white Americans.

00:10:16.380 Now, as I said, both Warren and Harris have endorsed this idea.

00:10:22.380 Here is Harris on a radio show called The Breakfast Club making her case for reparations.

00:10:28.480 Well, look, I think that we have got to address that, again, it's back to the inequities.

00:10:35.400 They're through, you know, look, America has a history of 200 years of slavery.

00:10:43.700 We had Jim Crow. 0.89

00:10:46.020 We had legal segregation in America.

00:10:50.300 We have got to recognize, back to that earlier point, people aren't starting out on the same base

00:10:56.540 in terms of their ability to succeed.

00:11:00.540 And so we have got to recognize that and give people a lift up.

00:11:06.000 Now, this is obviously a crazy idea for a whole host of reasons.

00:11:10.180 I don't even know where to begin with it.

00:11:12.000 But first of all, a large percentage of Black Americans in this country now are not descended

00:11:18.220 from slaves because people immigrate here from Africa every year. 1.00

00:11:25.340 Thousands of people come here from Africa.

00:11:29.020 So there's a large percentage of Black Americans who came to this country after slavery had already

00:11:35.040 been abolished.

00:11:35.800 Second, a large percentage, a very large percentage of white people are not only not descended from

00:11:44.940 slave owners, but their ancestors weren't even in the country during the slavery era.

00:11:50.360 My ancestors were dying of the potato famine while slavery was happening here in America.

00:11:55.920 So to kind of break this down, white people versus Black people and say, well, the white people 0.72

00:12:04.340 have to pay the Black people for slavery, it doesn't make any sense.

00:12:08.380 Third, even if you limited reparations to only those Black Americans who are descended from 0.91

00:12:15.020 slaves and you took money only from those white Americans whose families lived here during slave 0.82

00:12:19.860 times, which isn't how it would work or could work.

00:12:23.100 But even if it did work that way, it would still be incredibly unjust because you're punishing

00:12:28.100 people for the sins of long dead relatives and you're rewarding other people for hardships

00:12:34.280 that they themselves did not experience.

00:12:38.380 Now, if this was 1860 and we were talking about reparations, then I would say, okay, yeah, 0.79

00:12:43.180 but it's not.

00:12:43.780 It's 2019.

00:12:45.060 It's 150 years later.

00:12:46.820 Fourth thing, liberals love to talk about spectrums, right?

00:12:55.060 Gender is a spectrum.

00:12:56.780 Everything's a spectrum.

00:12:58.520 Well, oppression and privilege is also a spectrum, right?

00:13:03.940 That also exists.

00:13:05.900 You have oppression over here and privilege over here, and there's a spectrum as you get

00:13:12.860 closer to privilege.

00:13:14.240 Uh, slavery was a unique horror, but it's not the only form of oppression.

00:13:22.420 It was worse in degree from other forms, but it's not alone in the category of oppression.

00:13:30.740 Um, so if we're giving people payments for historical persecution, then what about Native Americans?

00:13:36.860 What about women who couldn't even vote in this country until a hundred years ago? 1.00

00:13:41.300 What about the Japanese who were sent to internment camps?

00:13:44.880 Um, what about any other ethnic or racial minority that experienced, uh, prejudice?

00:13:52.740 Um, what about the Irish who were persecuted in their home country and then came here and

00:13:58.760 were discriminated against when they got here?

00:14:00.320 If you think the Irish have had it easy historically, then I would encourage you to pick up a book and

00:14:05.360 read it.

00:14:06.460 The point is, uh, it's actually not easy to find people in America whose ancestors did not

00:14:13.700 suffer some form of persecution or discrimination.

00:14:17.640 That's, it's, it's very difficult to do.

00:14:19.800 I mean, arguably most, I wouldn't even say arguably most people, um, can say that they belong to a

00:14:30.760 category that at one point in America and certainly elsewhere in the world was, uh, you know, discriminated

00:14:39.660 against.

00:14:41.940 So you really, you really, you pretty much have to limit yourself to white male Protestant Anglo-Saxons.

00:14:48.340 That's, that's probably the only group you can find that, um, has not been widely and historically

00:14:58.460 discriminated against in America.

00:15:01.720 Now, and that's not because America was uniquely racist or uniquely prejudiced.

00:15:06.720 It was for a while, simply non-uniquely prejudiced for a very long time.

00:15:12.140 The entire world was tribalistic, discriminatory, suspicious of outsiders and so on.

00:15:18.240 That's, that's the way human civilization worked for thousands of years.

00:15:22.120 But if we're doing reparations, uh, I don't see how you can ignore those other groups.

00:15:27.740 I think they should get something too, shouldn't they?

00:15:30.820 And certainly to make them pay reparations, uh, would be severely unjust.

00:15:36.780 So the, the whole idea of course is crazy.

00:15:41.260 I mean, there's, there's, I hesitate to say this because every time I think things can't

00:15:46.660 get, um, any dumber they do, but it seems to me that there's, there's no way that this

00:15:51.900 could actually become a policy because it's such, it's such a wildly unpopular, um, and 0.93

00:15:57.980 insane idea.

00:15:59.120 But the fact, look, the fact that you've got it so far, and I'm sure others will join,

00:16:05.020 jump on the bandwagon, but so far you have two democratic presidential candidates, including

00:16:10.460 the one who a lot of people think is the favorite Kamala Harris, who are coming out in favor of

00:16:16.580 this idea.

00:16:17.220 I mean, that just shows you how far left and crazy extremist wacko the democratic party has

00:16:23.680 become, uh, Barack Obama was the most liberal president we had ever had. 0.96

00:16:30.600 And he was also, as you remember, still is a black man.

00:16:34.640 Um, but even he, he, he, he didn't, he was not in favor of reparation.

00:16:39.760 This subject came up a couple of times and he did not endorse the idea.

00:16:44.000 Uh, so, and that was not that long ago.

00:16:49.080 So there is this, the democratic party is, is running, running left very rapidly.

00:16:58.180 And this is just another, um, symptom of that.

00:17:03.220 Here's one more symptom, by the way, I've been meaning to mention this. 0.90

00:17:06.240 Maybe you saw this, but, uh, speaking of crazy leftist stuff, the transgender 1.00

00:17:13.500 actor, India Moore, who's a biological male who claims to be a female and, uh, apparently

00:17:19.300 is the star of some show, uh, called pose, I think on maybe FX or somewhere.

00:17:26.360 Anyway, he, uh, he, he sent out a tweet a couple of days ago, which got a pretty big

00:17:32.420 reaction. 1.00

00:17:32.740 The tweet said, if a woman has a penis, her penis is a biologically female penis. 1.00

00:17:38.940 Uh, yeah, maybe the most concerning thing about that tweet is the last I saw it, it had like 0.99

00:17:50.180 5,000, it had several thousand likes people that were agreeing with it. 0.99

00:17:56.580 If a woman has a penis, her penis is a biologically female penis. 1.00

00:18:00.160 That that's, that is exactly like saying if a square is a circle, it's a circular square. 1.00

00:18:08.100 It just, it, it is a, it's a total non sequitur.

00:18:12.260 It makes absolutely no sense. 0.96

00:18:14.920 And of course, when you, when you're using a phrase like biologically female penis, then 0.95

00:18:21.080 you have just the, the term biologically female now has no meaning.

00:18:27.640 What does the, what does the term biologically female mean? 1.00

00:18:30.740 If you can have a biologically female male body part, it just, it doesn't mean anything. 0.86

00:18:39.040 It we have, we've just gotten rid of it.

00:18:41.240 Now I bring this up for two reasons.

00:18:43.220 Number one, it's just a, it's, it's more evidence of, uh, of how crazy left the left has gotten.

00:18:49.180 Um, but number two, if, if it's important to keep up with, with this, to, to understand what the argument is.

00:18:59.360 So, you know, what you're arguing against.

00:19:01.200 And there was a time not that long ago when, uh, the left would, they would, they would acknowledge that there's at least a distinction between biological sex and gender, or I should say, I say they would acknowledge the distinction.

00:19:16.440 I, I mean, they invented a distinction between something between this thing called gender and sex.

00:19:22.000 And so, but, but they were at least for a while maintaining that there is something called biological sex.

00:19:28.520 There is a certain reality to it.

00:19:30.900 Um, but what they argued is that gender is this other thing that can override biological sex.

00:19:38.200 That was the argument for a long time.

00:19:41.020 Now that's gone.

00:19:42.260 Now they're saying, no, biological sex is not a thing.

00:19:44.980 It doesn't exist.

00:19:45.580 There, there is, if, uh, if a man decides that he's a woman, then he is now a biologically female woman.

00:19:53.360 His biological sex is now female because of his, because he desires to be female. 0.94

00:19:59.260 So by the force of his own will and his own desire, he can now literally change his biology.

00:20:07.080 That is the argument that the left makes.

00:20:10.560 Um, and of course it should go without saying that if you make that argument or if you agree with that argument, um, you lose the right to even say the word science from now on.

00:20:25.940 Um, and you certainly cannot go around accusing anyone else of being anti-science because this is the very definition of anti-science.

00:20:37.140 Um, this is, this is what it means to be anti-science.

00:20:40.480 It's all right.

00:20:43.740 So we've, um, I got a bunch of emails I want to get to.

00:20:49.300 Actually, actually, hold on.

00:20:50.360 Before we get to the emails, I had something else.

00:20:51.960 I had one other thing I wanted to, I wanted to talk to you about, um, a very important thing, actually.

00:20:57.500 Uh, so I wanted to talk about soap for a minute.

00:21:01.220 Um, I was thinking about this last night because these are the kinds of things I think about.

00:21:08.100 You see, when I was a single man, I had two different types of soap in my apartment.

00:21:15.380 Only two.

00:21:16.900 I had bathroom soap and I had kitchen soap and that's all.

00:21:22.340 And whatever needed to be cleaned in the kitchen, I would use the kitchen soap for that.

00:21:26.760 And whatever needed to be cleaned in the bathroom, I would use the bathroom soap for that.

00:21:30.740 And if I ran out of bathroom soap, I would take my kitchen soap and I would bring it to the bathroom and I would use it as bathroom soap.

00:21:37.020 You know why?

00:21:37.740 Because it's just soap.

00:21:39.240 Soap is soap.

00:21:40.160 All soap is basically the same.

00:21:43.780 But then I got married.

00:21:46.960 And now I have 14 different kinds of soap just in my shower.

00:21:52.060 And masses of different soaps on the bathroom counter.

00:21:55.420 And soaps of all sizes and consistencies and some soap even that is just there for decoration.

00:22:01.440 So there is soap to be used and soap to be viewed and soap for each individual body part.

00:22:09.040 I have three soap dispensers by my kitchen sink.

00:22:14.020 There are even different kinds of soap for the laundry.

00:22:17.740 And there's just soap everywhere.

00:22:18.900 We spend $19,000 a month literally on soap.

00:22:24.160 And why?

00:22:26.340 Why do we do this?

00:22:27.540 All soap, as I said, is the same.

00:22:29.880 I've got news for you.

00:22:31.420 You could bathe with laundry detergent and you'd be fine.

00:22:35.620 Okay?

00:22:36.320 That's when I was a kid, we took baths with laundry detergent.

00:22:41.300 We walked to school, uphill both ways.

00:22:47.660 It's just out of control is my only point.

00:22:50.140 And if you add that to, as I've already discussed, my wife's pillow addiction, it's just all the blankets everywhere, all the pillows and the candles and the soap.

00:22:59.240 And I'll tell you this, that if we were on the Oregon Trail or something, we would be screwed because we'd need a whole new, we'd need a whole separate wagon just for the soap.

00:23:09.440 And we need a separate pack mule just for the blankets and the pillows.

00:23:13.520 And this is why we can't go on road trips anymore because we go on road trips, 87% of our luggage consists of various soft, fluffy things.

00:23:23.120 Do you know how many soft, fluffy things I bring with me if I'm traveling alone?

00:23:27.520 None.

00:23:28.380 And I don't bring any soap either.

00:23:29.800 Do you know why?

00:23:30.220 Because wherever I'm going in modern civilization, they're going to have that stuff when I get there.

00:23:36.340 So my point simply is, I'm not sure what my point is.

00:23:40.740 I'm just complaining.

00:23:42.020 But also, I want to say that, ladies, I think, far be it for me to suggest this, but I think you could maybe condense things down a little bit, a little bit of efficiency here. 0.82

00:23:55.980 So here's my suggestion, okay, to all women.

00:24:00.920 Choose four soaps that you like for the whole house.

00:24:04.540 You get four soaps.

00:24:05.360 Now, all you really need is one.

00:24:07.220 Two is extravagant, but I'll give you four.

00:24:11.820 Choose two pillows and two blankets.

00:24:14.000 And that's all you need.

00:24:15.140 You don't need any more than that.

00:24:16.540 And you can donate the rest to charity or whatever, or whatever you want to do with it.

00:24:25.100 All right.

00:24:26.960 Now that I've gotten that off my back, I'm going to get to some of your emails.

00:24:31.500 mattwalshow at gmail.com.

00:24:32.940 mattwalshow at gmail.com is the email.

00:24:34.320 There's a lot of interesting emails.

00:24:37.220 That's why I wanted to give it some extra time.

00:24:38.660 So this is from Albert.

00:24:41.400 It says, hi, Matt.

00:24:42.240 Albert here.

00:24:42.860 Love your show.

00:24:44.120 I listen all the way from Africa.

00:24:45.600 I've heard you speak twice about classroom situations involving students disrespecting teachers, such as that young man who was assaulted and the one who was recently arrested.

00:24:56.460 As a teacher myself, I'm very appreciative of how well you understand our situations and what we have to deal with.

00:25:01.660 You're always spot on in your analyses of the classroom incidents.

00:25:05.260 Well, hi, Albert.

00:25:06.820 And thank you for listening all the way from Africa.

00:25:08.800 And thank you for that comment.

00:25:11.080 You know, I'm sometimes accused of hating teachers or, you know, being against teachers or whatever.

00:25:17.600 But nothing could be further from the truth.

00:25:19.360 I'm a big critic of the public school system here in America.

00:25:22.060 And I'm a critic of the teachers union. 0.79

00:25:24.320 And I do believe that there are some really bad teachers out there who unfortunately become like these educational parasites that you can't get rid of, mainly because of the union. 0.88

00:25:32.840 So I do believe that.

00:25:33.800 But there are also a lot of very good teachers.

00:25:36.460 And I fully realize, and I've said many times, as you allude to, that teachers these days are put in a really impossible situation.

00:25:42.640 And we need to appreciate that because they have to deal with these out of control, you have to deal with these out of control kids, kids who've had no discipline or respect or anything instilled in them at home.

00:25:57.060 And then the teachers are tasked with trying to teach in spite of that.

00:26:03.060 And to make matters worse, whenever one of these out of control kids gets really out of control and becomes an intolerable distraction in an educational environment, whatever the teacher then does to deal with that situation, to address the problem, will be opposed by the bad kids, bad parents who refuse to believe that their precious little child is actually an enormous brat or worse.

00:26:29.040 And so, you know, I think about that, and I think about my own experience in school, and I have a lot of respect for and sympathy for the good teachers who are burdened with dealing with that.

00:26:43.440 I certainly wouldn't want to deal with it.

00:26:46.300 So thanks again.

00:26:47.280 This is from Nathan.

00:26:48.040 He says, Matt, Anthony asked a question about God and suffering last episode, but you kind of skipped over the part of the question I really wanted to hear your opinion on.

00:26:56.320 He led with, I paraphrase, how can God have a plan for us while also allowing us freedom of choice?

00:27:03.680 I've wondered this a lot as a Catholic, and I can't come up with an answer on my own.

00:27:08.920 It seems to me silly for God to have a plan for us, seeing as he allows us free choice and also knows all the choices we'll make.

00:27:16.760 It doesn't really fit with the definition of a plan.

00:27:19.420 If he has a course he wants us to take, it seems like that would involve violating our free will, which kind of violates a lot of theological ideas.

00:27:26.320 For example, people often say, as I used to say, that it was God's plan that I ended up with my wife, but everything that led to our meeting could have changed if I made a different choice.

00:27:36.940 Is it possible for God to lead us to a certain thing without violating our ability to freely choose?

00:27:42.480 Thanks for your input, and God bless.

00:27:44.060 You're right.

00:27:48.920 Now that you mention it, I did skip over that, because Anthony asked, there was an email I asked yesterday, talking about, I guess, there was this question, and then also about the problem of suffering, and how can God allow suffering?

00:28:03.500 So I kind of focused on that element and not on this.

00:28:07.060 So this obviously is a classic question as well, and it's a classic challenge to believers.

00:28:12.960 If God knows what we are going to do, how do we have the choice to do anything else other than what he knows we're going to do anyway?

00:28:24.140 If we do something other than what he knew we'd do, doesn't that mean that he is an omniscient?

00:28:31.600 But if we can't do anything else, doesn't that mean we aren't free?

00:28:37.340 And so we don't have free will.

00:28:38.640 Now, I actually think that the more serious and the more difficult challenge, Nathan, isn't related to God's knowledge of our actions, but actually it's related to God's knowledge of his own actions.

00:28:56.760 So a popular atheist argument is that the Christian conception of God is a logical contradiction.

00:29:03.440 And it's a logical contradiction, they say, because if God is omnipotent, then he can do anything.

00:29:09.460 If he's omniscient, then he knows everything.

00:29:12.660 But if he knows everything, then he knows what he himself is going to do in the future.

00:29:20.260 But if he knows what he's going to do in the future, then he can't do anything else other than what he knew he was going to do.

00:29:25.860 And if he did something else, then that would mean that he's not omniscient.

00:29:33.440 But if he couldn't do anything else other than what he knew he was going to do, then that would mean that he's not omnipotent.

00:29:39.300 So it's the same kind of challenge, but I think framed in a way that's even more, well, challenging, I guess.

00:29:45.660 The answer to both, though, I think is the same, and it has to do with the nature of time.

00:29:50.540 So there's a problem in the way that we talk about this question, because our premise is flawed.

00:29:59.000 We say that God knows, this is the way we put it, we say, well, God knows what we are going to do, or what he is going to do.

00:30:07.300 But that assumes, you're talking in a context of a future, that assumes that there is a future for God,

00:30:16.100 and assuming there's a future, assumes that he exists in time.

00:30:19.900 So it assumes that he is in time, and he knows what I'm going to do tomorrow,

00:30:25.780 because he can look sort of into the future, like he's looking into a crystal ball, and see it.

00:30:32.580 But that's incorrect.

00:30:34.700 Time is a dimension of reality.

00:30:37.760 Time itself has a beginning.

00:30:40.080 Everybody agrees with that.

00:30:40.940 Even atheists agree that time, we haven't always had time.

00:30:45.680 It is possible to be outside of time, because time has a beginning.

00:30:51.040 And the creator of time, God, obviously has to be outside of it, because he created it.

00:30:58.080 So what that means is, it's not that he knows what will happen, it's that he knows what is happening.

00:31:05.480 Everything is now for him.

00:31:07.380 It is an eternal now.

00:31:09.100 So remember that the Christian conception of God also includes changelessness.

00:31:18.380 We say that God is changeless.

00:31:20.960 And to be changeless means that you have to exist outside of time, because time is an agent of change.

00:31:27.580 Time is potentiality.

00:31:30.520 So I am in time, and that means that there's potential.

00:31:35.080 Like, I could do this, I could do that.

00:31:37.080 I'm always becoming something.

00:31:39.300 When you're in time, you're always in a state of flux, a state of change, a state of becoming.

00:31:44.960 But God has no potentiality.

00:31:46.800 God is only actuality.

00:31:48.120 He is actuality itself.

00:31:49.640 He is the ground of all being.

00:31:51.440 This is kind of like the philosophical idea of God that's been developed through Christian thought.

00:31:58.100 God is the I am, right?

00:32:00.060 He is existence, the now.

00:32:04.160 So he doesn't see the future.

00:32:05.800 He sees the now, and all is now.

00:32:09.640 Another way of looking at that is if I had a...

00:32:12.720 Okay, so to use a prop.

00:32:14.660 So I have this mini cigar.

00:32:16.960 Sometimes I smoke the mini ones because the bigger ones take forever.

00:32:20.100 Anyway, so you have this mini cigar.

00:32:23.880 So basically, you look at something like this, right?

00:32:26.520 And if this is my life, if this little cigar here is my life, then if you're listening on iTunes, you can't really see that.

00:32:33.920 But so I have to experience this, right?

00:32:36.360 Like along this.

00:32:37.640 So I start here.

00:32:38.520 This is my birth.

00:32:39.340 And then I go to here, to here, to here.

00:32:40.840 And so I'm experiencing my life sequentially, one moment at a time.

00:32:46.260 And then I get to the end of my life, which is the other end here.

00:32:48.760 And then I die.

00:32:50.520 And I can only see my life one little centimeter at a time, right?

00:32:55.240 But God can look at this, and he sees the entire thing all at once.

00:33:00.860 He's not watching it happen inch by inch.

00:33:05.320 He sees the entire thing.

00:33:06.620 Like this is my life.

00:33:07.540 He sees it.

00:33:07.960 So obviously, the whole idea of someone existing outside of time, we can't wrap our head around that.

00:33:20.920 We can't fully conceive of what that means.

00:33:26.180 But we know that is the case for God.

00:33:28.420 And so that is the way of sort of dealing with this challenge of God knowing what we're going to do.

00:33:35.360 So as for your point about God not planning your marriage to your wife, I agree with that. 1.00

00:33:40.440 I have said that, you know, my wife and I were not faded in the stars.

00:33:46.160 We were not destined to be together.

00:33:49.280 I could have married someone else.

00:33:50.820 She could have.

00:33:51.960 She could have said no to me when I proposed. 0.95

00:33:54.900 She could have left me at the altar. 1.00

00:33:56.240 And frankly, maybe she should have.

00:33:57.680 She probably could have done better, honestly.

00:34:01.220 But she didn't.

00:34:03.760 And so we had this choice.

00:34:04.700 And this is why, at least in the Catholic right, I'm not sure about other churches, but I know that when I got married, one of the first questions that we were asked by the priest is, are you here of your own free will and volition?

00:34:18.900 And the point is that it has to be your choice.

00:34:25.400 It has to be free will.

00:34:27.020 And if you're not there of your own free will and volition, then it's not a valid marriage.

00:34:30.720 A marriage cannot occur unless you choose it. 0.99

00:34:34.400 The sacrament of marriage is bestowed by the spouses onto each other through their own choice.

00:34:39.200 And that's what makes it so exciting and beautiful and wonderful and romantic and terrifying is that it wasn't meant to be.

00:34:47.160 It was a choice that you made.

00:34:48.620 It is a choice.

00:34:49.820 It was one of a million other choices you could have made, yet you made that choice.

00:34:54.100 And now, now through that choice, you are meant to be.

00:34:58.360 Now, you weren't before.

00:35:00.840 When I met my wife, first second I met her, I thought, wow, she's beautiful.

00:35:05.720 But no, love at first sight.

00:35:07.640 How can I say I loved her when I didn't know her?

00:35:11.760 You know, it's love is a choice.

00:35:15.220 Marriage is a choice. 0.86

00:35:16.620 And once you make that choice of marriage, now you're meant to be until you die.

00:35:23.160 So what does it mean for God to have a plan for us yet for us to have free will at the same time?

00:35:27.500 I think it just means that God is the ground of being, of existence.

00:35:30.660 He holds us all into existence, providing the context for our choices, consenting to everything that occurs,

00:35:36.460 which isn't to say that he makes the choices for us, but every second that we exist, he is allowing us to exist.

00:35:45.320 And ultimately, he works all things to his greater glory, but he chooses to work with the material, with the raw material of our choices.

00:35:56.480 Hopefully that answered the question, sort of.

00:36:00.700 Let's see what else.

00:36:01.600 From Aaron, he says, why did you stop doing your podcast in your car?

00:36:04.640 I'm sure I'm not the first one to ask you this, and I'm not quite sure why you haven't addressed it,

00:36:08.980 but I will send you this question every day until you answer it, so you might as well do it now.

00:36:13.640 Well, Aaron, with that kind of threat, I suppose I have to answer.

00:36:16.060 And the answer is that I stopped doing the shows in my car because my car is in the shop.

00:36:23.260 Let's do one more email.

00:36:27.880 Let's see.

00:36:28.440 From Tim, he says, your show is brilliant.

00:36:30.860 I'm going to copy your tattoo anyway.

00:36:33.360 Go for it.

00:36:34.640 It's not trademarked.

00:36:37.180 Matt, in yesterday's show, an emailer mentioned that Democrats should be protecting the unborn because of their victim status.

00:36:43.000 The main reason why they don't care about the unborn status as a victim is because they don't vote.

00:36:48.500 The unborn don't vote. 1.00

00:36:49.860 I promise you, the only way Dems will care is if Dems could somehow win votes from the unborn. 0.55

00:36:57.660 I think that's a very good point.

00:36:58.780 And I'll read one more from Sari.

00:37:00.840 He says, hi, Matt.

00:37:01.720 I'm a stay-at-home mom of four children.

00:37:03.420 I love your podcast.

00:37:04.220 Don't agree with everything you say, but appreciate being challenged by your point of view.

00:37:07.520 You've said some very interesting things that really make me think.

00:37:09.740 I want to address your perspective on this drag queen story hour.

00:37:13.520 As a Christian mom, I am personally disgusted by this recent development.

00:37:18.380 You had mentioned a point I had never considered, and that was that drag queens tend to dress as over-sexualized versions of my gender. 1.00

00:37:24.840 It got me to thinking that if a drag queen really wanted to represent a female gender, they would don yoga pants, a pink graphic tee that says, we'll work for tacos, and put his hair in a messy top knot or messy bun. 1.00

00:37:36.600 I personally don't dress this way because I love my husband and children.

00:37:39.740 I believe I should take a little more care with my parents for their sake, since they have to look at me.

00:37:43.440 But the majority of my demographic has reverted to the style preference, mostly out of humor and convenience.

00:37:48.460 Anyway, I just thought you made an excellent point.

00:37:50.360 I myself am concerned about the long-term effect of these new cultural norms, what they will have on my children.

00:37:56.360 Yeah, I think that's a good point, and that's the thing.

00:38:01.520 And that's why minstrel shows and blackface is so racist and horrible, because it reduces someone's identity to a shtick, basically, and to a costume and a shtick. 0.88

00:38:22.000 And that's the same thing that drag queens do and drag shows and everything. 1.00

00:38:25.340 It's taking the female identity and making it into a cartoon, making it into a shtick, into a costume. 0.97

00:38:33.040 And, of course, that is a degrading, demeaning, cheapening sort of thing.

00:38:40.620 So that was an excellent point.

00:38:42.280 Thank you for emailing.

00:38:43.260 Thank you, everyone, for watching.

00:38:44.760 And I'll talk to you next week.

00:38:46.020 Have a great weekend.

00:38:46.980 Godspeed.

00:38:52.000 Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Jussie Smollett heads back to Hollywood. 0.50

00:39:04.460 The justice system utterly fails underage victims of a major political donor, and voter fraud is a reality.

00:39:10.240 That's today on The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Matt Walsh Show - February 22, 2019

Ep. 204 - We Live In The Most Tolerant Civilization Ever, But Leftists Aren't Happy

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