The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 223 - The One Thing Saving Us From Civil War

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, with all of these very deep ideological and cultural divides,

00:00:04.860 are we on the verge of a civil war? A lot of people are talking about this and seem to think

00:00:10.120 we're headed in that direction, but are we? We'll talk about that. Also, how old is too old to be

00:00:15.060 to be president? Should there be an age limit on the presidency? And finally, what does it mean to

00:00:20.460 say that the Bible is the inspired word of God? This obviously is what Christians say, 0.99

00:00:25.420 but what does that mean exactly, practically speaking? We'll talk about that as well today

00:00:29.680 on the Matt Wall Show. Well, you've heard the old canard probably having you about how a movement,

00:00:40.000 if it sticks around too long, it will eventually become a business and then it goes from a business

00:00:44.880 into a racket. And I think that that has proven correct over history. It is certainly true of

00:00:55.040 the so-called Never Trump movement. Now, Never Trump meant something. It served a purpose in the

00:01:03.200 campaign, especially in the primaries. The idea was very simple. Trump cannot be the nominee. We

00:01:07.860 cannot support Trump as a nominee. That was the idea. But as you may remember, he did become the nominee

00:01:16.300 and then he became president. So it makes no sense to still identify as Never Trump when Trump is the

00:01:24.960 president. What does that even mean now? It's not a matter of voting anymore. He's already there. So

00:01:31.520 Never Trump, never what? Never Trump what? What is it that you're never doing in regards to Trump?

00:01:37.680 Now, the only thing that makes sense now, now that he's president, and this has been my strategy for

00:01:46.200 the last two years, I think it's the only honest path forward, the only rational path forward, and

00:01:51.920 that is to hold Trump accountable like we should for any president, any politician, to criticize him

00:01:58.820 when he's wrong and to support him when he's right. And that, again, is what we should do for any

00:02:04.380 politician, any president. And it is the only morally and intellectually defensible path.

00:02:10.960 Any path aside from that is absurd. Now, some former so-called Never Trumpers,

00:02:21.600 myself included, although I never really liked that label, but I would have been lumped in with that

00:02:27.200 category during the primaries. So this is what I've tried to do. I will defend Trump a hundred times

00:02:34.380 in a week. I'll defend him passionately if I think that he's right or if I think a certain attack is

00:02:41.300 unfair. I've defended him on many topics, including very stridently on the whole Cohen thing. I think

00:02:50.280 that the whole concept of taking the president's lawyer and forcing him to give up dirt on the

00:02:58.220 president is dangerous and unethical in the extreme. So of course I'm going to defend Trump

00:03:03.960 on that. But I will also criticize Trump and I will criticize him passionately if I think that he's

00:03:10.340 wrong. I'm not shy about that. I don't care. And as far as I'm concerned, anyone in the audience,

00:03:17.640 anyone who reads me or watches the show, listens to it and has and cannot stomach any criticism of

00:03:24.160 Trump whatsoever. Well, then that's not someone that I care to appeal to. And if they decide to

00:03:28.200 never listen to me again, I'm perfectly fine with that. Honestly, that's someone who I don't think I

00:03:33.320 even want to appeal to that sort of person. Someone who's just a narrow-minded sycophant

00:03:41.280 who is just a groupie for a politician. That's just not the kind of audience that I personally want to

00:03:50.400 assemble. So for instance, Trump obsessively whining about a man who died months ago and

00:04:02.160 attacking the man's family and complaining that no one thanked him for allowing the man to have a

00:04:07.180 funeral. That I think is completely ridiculous. And you have to be a totally sold out sycophant to 0.97

00:04:15.900 defend Trump on that score. Not saying that, I mean, there are plenty of reasons to be opposed

00:04:24.920 to the kinds of things that John McCain did when he was a politician. And I was certainly a big

00:04:30.980 McCain critic myself. But this obsession with him and attacking him after he died, this is just the

00:04:37.080 kind of thing that, of course, if any Democrat president did that to anyone, it doesn't matter who

00:04:42.500 they are. Um, every Republican would be freaking out about it. So, uh, it's just, it's, it's, it is

00:04:48.740 indefensible. Now there are other never Trumpers who have, uh, who have become sold out, who have

00:05:00.260 become sold out sycophants themselves. They went from opposing Trump and warning that he would be

00:05:05.120 disastrous for the country and for conservatism. And now they follow him around like a puppy,

00:05:10.100 licking his palms, begging for treats. Um, some net former never Trumpers have done that. They

00:05:16.300 have completely flipped. They went from, no, we can't have Trump to now they are bowing before him

00:05:21.300 as a God and they defend him on everything. Now, those are people that when they were never Trump

00:05:27.380 and now these are just people that, that are, uh, they're just pandering to whatever they think the

00:05:32.640 biggest audience will be. Um, they have no integrity. They have nothing to offer. There's no reason to

00:05:38.140 listen to them on anything. On the other end though, you have some former never Trumpers who

00:05:43.120 have become essentially Democrats and they have decided to get revenge on Trump by becoming full

00:05:48.800 time lackeys of the left. And I find these people completely repugnant. Uh, Bill Kristol donated to 0.98

00:05:57.360 Ralph Northam's campaign in Virginia because he's so, uh, Trump made his tummy hurt. And so then he went

00:06:03.380 and donated to Ralph Northam. Ralph Northam is the radically pro-abortion infanticidal governor of

00:06:09.700 Virginia who also wore blackface. Now we didn't know about the blackface thing. We also didn't 1.00

00:06:14.320 necessarily know about the infanticide thing when he ran. We did know that he was a Democrat and a

00:06:20.120 pro-abortion Democrat. That's the only kind that exists anymore. Um, Kristol, uh, supported him

00:06:26.520 because he hates Trump so much. Kristol also helped to start a publication called the Bulwark.

00:06:32.080 It is a, it's a never, a never Trump, uh, a liberal website because that's, that's basically

00:06:37.880 what never Trump means of you. If you still identify as that, that means that that's what

00:06:42.160 it's become. It has become a liberal racket. Uh, it has become a wing of the Democrat party.

00:06:47.660 And that's not because I'm not saying that if you criticize Trump, you're a Democrat. No,

00:06:52.060 that's a stupid thing to say. Uh, what I'm saying is if you still identify as that, 1.00

00:06:56.800 what that means now is that you will oppose Trump no matter what he does and whatever he says,

00:07:02.160 you're going to take the opposite approach. So even when, so that means if Trump comes out and

00:07:06.240 says, Oh, we're going to take some money from Planned Parenthood, or we're going to do this

00:07:08.900 pro-life thing, you're all of a sudden against it. Uh, so that just makes you a Democrat is what

00:07:13.140 it makes you. They have this, uh, Kristol started this, helped to start this publication called

00:07:19.200 the bulwark, uh, which claims to be a website defending conservatism, which is a total joke.

00:07:25.520 It is a website which now pushes, uh, democratic liberalism. It is in the business of attacking

00:07:33.800 conservatism and, uh, and conservatives individually and conservative values. They sent a pro-abortion 0.93

00:07:41.420 extremist to CPAC, to mock pro-lifers, just to give you an idea of, of what, uh, the never

00:07:47.340 Trump crowd's up to now. They also had an article reason I'm bringing this up. They had an article,

00:07:52.520 um, making the rounds yesterday, blasting a whole, a whole host of conservatives for,

00:07:59.640 according to the article, agitating for civil war. Um, and the article gives examples of various

00:08:08.480 conservatives who have been warning that a civil war is on the horizon. And, uh, the writer of the

00:08:13.900 article wags his little finger at these, uh, conservatives who are supposedly engaging in

00:08:19.220 violent and dangerous and, uh, scary rhetoric about civil war. Uh, except that obviously the

00:08:29.640 people who are saying that we may be on the verge of a civil war, it's not that they want one. They're

00:08:35.840 not saying that let's have a civil war. They're saying that I think that's where we're headed. 0.99

00:08:40.060 Now, is that true? Well, I think it is. Uh, it might not be fun to talk. Now, I think we are on that

00:08:52.940 path, but I don't think there actually will be a civil war and I'll explain why. Uh, and, and this is

00:09:01.560 all, it's not fun to talk about. It is unpleasant, but that doesn't make it wrong. We have most of the

00:09:09.060 ingredients now for civil strife and unrest, if, if not full on civil war. Um, so let's think about

00:09:17.400 it here. We have first and foremost, deep and unbridgeable ideological divides. When I say

00:09:24.800 unbridgeable, uh, I mean, unbridgeable in the sense that there is no meeting in the middle. There's no

00:09:30.880 compromise. Okay. It's not like you've got one side saying one thing, another side saying another,

00:09:34.660 and you could meet in the middle and, you know, you each could have a little bit of,

00:09:38.460 you know, it's, it's, you're, you're come to an understanding or something like that. Um,

00:09:43.640 it, the divides are so deep and irrevocable that the only way to meet is for one side or the other

00:09:51.700 to give up their defenses and to surrender and say, you know what, you're right. That's,

00:09:56.400 that's the only thing that can happen. Um, so you have one side saying, for instance,

00:10:00.600 that babies aren't people and advocating for the continued slaughter of, uh, the unborn.

00:10:07.560 Uh, they say that it's that, uh, that biological sex isn't real. Um, they say that America is

00:10:14.480 systematically racist and sexist. Masculinity is toxic. Religion is poison. Uh, let's, let's have 1.00

00:10:21.980 drag queens come in and talk to kindergartners, that kind of thing. Then you have the other side 1.00

00:10:25.900 that takes the opposite position on all of those topics. Um, these are positions that cannot be

00:10:31.920 brought together in understanding like either unborn babies are people or they aren't either.

00:10:39.200 It is a horrendous crime against humanity to kill those individuals, or it's perfectly fine. You know,

00:10:45.300 it can't be sort of one and sort of the other. So we have that. We also have as a corollary to the

00:10:53.900 ideological divide. We also have a, a cultural divide. And this was one of the primary things

00:10:58.620 that led to the, the civil, the first, let's hope the only civil war, um, in 1861, even aside from

00:11:07.240 slavery or politics or economics, all of those things obviously played a part in, in, in the civil war.

00:11:13.320 But the fact also was that the antebellum South and the industrial North were like two different

00:11:19.600 countries. Um, with people in both countries who didn't understand or particularly like the folks

00:11:30.300 in the other, uh, on the other side. Now our cultural divide isn't so much between industrialized

00:11:39.180 and agricultural or whatever, but it's, it, our divide is more religious and, um, ideological and kind

00:11:46.940 of, uh, uh, philosophical in nature, which I think is, shall we say, an even spicier issue to be divided 0.93

00:11:56.220 on. Um, because at the end of the day, even in civil war times, you had people with very different,

00:12:03.780 from very different cultures, different priorities and things, but they did agree on some really

00:12:10.420 fundamental basic issues. Uh, first and foremost being, they were all religious. Um, they were almost 0.53

00:12:17.640 all Christian. They believed in God. I mean, almost all of them did. And so that is a, obviously a, a,

00:12:26.660 one really significant foundational similarity that we don't even have that anymore.

00:12:33.260 Um, we also have economic divides. We have geographic divides. Now the geographic divides

00:12:42.700 aren't quite as clear cut as North versus South, but you could point on a map to, well, these are

00:12:48.700 basically liberal areas and here are conservative areas. The point is, yes, if civil war is a chili,

00:12:56.060 let's say, then we've got most of the ingredients. We've got the beef, we've got the pork. Yes, you should

00:13:00.520 put a little pork in your chili. Uh, we've got the spices, we've got the peppers, no beans ever in

00:13:05.360 chili. Um, but we are missing one ingredient. We're missing the beer in the chili and you can't

00:13:09.680 make a chili without a beer. Um, and the beer for us in this particular chili is, is really simple.

00:13:17.460 It's, it's willingness. We have, um, we don't, that's the difference. We don't, we don't have sort

00:13:26.940 of the willingness to fight like they did back then. So the men in the civil war era era, these

00:13:34.780 were, these guys were fighters, especially in the South. They were willing to fight it out. Um,

00:13:39.820 they also were not living comfortable lives. Many of them, a lot of the generals were living

00:13:44.540 comfortable lives, but the, the grunts, the infantry guys, they were coming from poverty.

00:13:51.980 They were coming from dirt floors and working in the fields. That's the life that they have.

00:13:56.580 Um, the thing that saves us from violent conflict, I think is that we're pretty comfortable at the end

00:14:02.260 of the day. We're pretty lazy. Uh, we're unwilling to, to completely upend our apple cart and make the

00:14:09.360 sacrifices that such a conflict would require. And I say that with gratitude. I mean, I don't like that

00:14:16.120 people are lazy, but I'm grateful that we're not going to have a civil war. I don't, that's,

00:14:20.180 I don't want that. 600,000 people died in the civil war. Anyone who would root for that is a

00:14:24.880 psychopath. Um, but my point is simply that people aren't, you know, the, the, the factor that I

00:14:33.100 think prevents civil war in our case is that people aren't willing to do it. Um, back in the civil war

00:14:39.740 times, guys were still dueling, right? You had duels. Like if a guy insulted you, you would say,

00:14:45.800 sir, I challenge you to a duel and you would go out and you would shoot bullets at each other's 0.99

00:14:50.440 head. Uh, these, these were guys willing to die to defend their honor. Now, these days, 0.98

00:14:57.860 if somebody insults you and you pull out a gun and say, sir, I challenge you to a duel. The guy's

00:15:02.280 going to say, Whoa, wait, dude, dude. Okay. I'm sorry. Nevermind. Forget what I just said. It's

00:15:06.400 the calm down, man. Like take it easy. Uh, and that would be the end of it. And that's probably

00:15:12.220 good. It's better to end that way than by shooting someone in the head. But, um, but those 0.99

00:15:17.320 were, uh, different sorts of men. And, uh, they were men who weren't afraid of death really

00:15:22.400 not, not nearly, they were afraid, but not nearly as afraid as we are. Um, they had much

00:15:27.820 more physical courage typically. And I'm not advocating that we prove our courage by dueling

00:15:34.060 or by fighting civil wars. I'm just observing a fact. So that was the beer in their chili.

00:15:40.160 That was the one remaining factor that they had. They had, we have a lot of the things

00:15:43.740 that they have. Um, but they also had, they had that kind of desperation, that willingness

00:15:48.420 that, uh, for lack of a better term, that more violent kind of nature that we don't have.

00:15:56.280 And that's, what's going to stop it. But, um, it prevents a civil war. I think it will not

00:16:02.760 prevent the continuing and deepening divide between us. That's the thing.

00:16:10.160 Um, and where does that divide lead? I don't know exactly. I'm not a, I'm not a prophet.

00:16:16.760 I can't prophesy about it. Uh, but it doesn't lead anywhere good. And I could more realistically

00:16:24.980 see a scenario where, um, I could see a scenario where you've got, I mean, look at the, the riots

00:16:35.980 and things we had, um, especially for a period of, you know, a year or two there where it

00:16:41.000 seemed like every few weeks or every couple of months, there would be a riot in one of

00:16:45.240 these cities. Um, I could see a scenario where you see where things like that happen much

00:16:51.500 more frequently. Um, how do we stop? How do we pull ourselves back from that? I wish I

00:17:00.100 had the answer to that question. I don't know, because as I said, there is no easy

00:17:05.560 middle ground that we can find.

00:17:12.520 All right. Uh, let's see here. Joe Biden, a little bit of political news. Joe Biden is

00:17:16.840 about to announce his presidential campaign. Um, Biden, by the way, is 76 years old, soon

00:17:23.420 to be 77. So I want you to think about something here. You have to be 35 years old to run for

00:17:29.540 president. Uh, now nobody seems to complain about that, right? Nobody calls that ageism.

00:17:37.520 There are certain realities about age. And one of those realities is that typically wisdom,

00:17:44.420 uh, and it, when you age, you gain wisdom and you gain experience. And so we would say that

00:17:51.720 if somebody is 25 or 26 years old, they aren't, they are going to probably be short on wisdom and

00:17:59.260 experience. And so that's someone who we don't want in the white house, not because, not because

00:18:04.720 we're discriminating against them or because there's anything wrong with being 25 or 26 years

00:18:09.100 old. There's nothing wrong with being any age. It's just, you can't help it. You're, you're

00:18:13.820 inevitably going to be every age until eventually you die. And then you're not going to be any more

00:18:18.300 ages after that. Um, so we don't, we don't consider that ageism. Well, there are realities about age

00:18:30.920 on the other end of the spectrum too. And the most harsh reality on the other end of the spectrum

00:18:37.980 is that age will eventually kill you unless something else does the job first.

00:18:44.340 Uh, age is a deadly thing. And before you die, if you live long enough, your mental and physical

00:18:54.400 capacities will diminish. It's going to happen. The only way that it won't happen to you is if

00:19:01.000 you die before that. But if you don't, then it will happen. It happens to everyone. We are mortal

00:19:06.480 animals. This is part of the package. And so that is why it's completely absurd for elderly men 0.96

00:19:13.100 in this, when you're 78 years old, Joe Biden is going to be 78 years old on inauguration day. That

00:19:20.480 is elderly. The, the, the life expectancy for men in America is 76. Now, yeah, that number is way down

00:19:28.380 by men who die much younger, but still point is it's, it's really old. Um, way too old to take on

00:19:37.400 the most stressful job on the planet. Now, as I pointed out before, think about what the job did

00:19:44.940 to George Bush, who was a young man when he got into office or Barack Obama also, you know, both of

00:19:50.820 them relatively young men. Think about what they look like after eight years. Um, it aged them

00:19:56.060 considerably. Now think about what it would do to a guy who's 78 when he gets into office.

00:20:02.040 By the time midterms roll around, Joe Biden will be 80 years old at 80 years old. You will be,

00:20:09.580 you will have been AARP eligible for 30 years at 80, uh, 80 years old is also the age where people

00:20:17.500 typically start to get dementia. If they're going to get it, it's not ageism. Okay. I'm not being,

00:20:23.460 that's just a reality at 80 years old, your chances of getting dementia, uh, of developing

00:20:28.960 dementia are, are pretty good at it. At the age of 50 or 60, they are very, very low.

00:20:36.860 What happens when a president gets dementia? Does anyone know? What do we do about that? I mean,

00:20:42.160 how, how do we know that he, I mean, sometimes it's not obvious right away. And what happens when

00:20:48.640 he has the early onset of dementia? Do we, what do you do? Well, um, we've never really had to figure

00:20:56.760 that out, but Joe Biden's insatiable thirst for power may force us to, to figure it out. Uh, Joe

00:21:03.960 Biden and Bernie Sanders have been running for political office or holding political office

00:21:08.580 for a hundred years between them. They just can't get enough of it. And they're going to keep going

00:21:14.380 until it literally kills them. And I think that's reason enough to, to, to oppose their candidacies.

00:21:19.820 And I haven't even gotten into their bad policy ideas. But before you even get to that,

00:21:25.220 the fact is these are elderly men who are obsessed with power and cannot let it go.

00:21:31.640 Um, anyone who wants to be president so bad that they'll run for president at the age of 78,

00:21:39.600 that is someone who should not be president.

00:21:42.100 You know, the other problem I think with having someone at that age be president is that an elderly 1.00

00:21:51.240 person isn't going to be around to reap the consequences of their policies and their actions.

00:21:57.180 And I think that's just not fair to the rest of us. Like, it's not fair that you have control

00:22:03.020 over the future of America and it's a future you're not even going to be a part of.

00:22:07.500 That's not fair to us. We deserve to have somebody in there who's going to have to also live

00:22:12.800 with the consequences of whatever they do. Um, how do you hold such a person accountable? I mean,

00:22:19.360 when someone is 80 years old and they're president, they are almost definitely going to be dead

00:22:24.680 within 10 years, probably be within five. Now that I look, it's, it's not a pleasant reality.

00:22:31.680 It's just the reality of the situation. Most people don't live past 85, especially men.

00:22:35.280 Yeah, there are exceptions, but most people don't. So it's just, why should a person like that care

00:22:43.800 what the voters think? Well, they're not going to, they have nothing to lose. And you know, it's,

00:22:49.180 it's, it's, it's, it, it's difficult enough when you have a lame duck president, like when you've got

00:22:55.280 a, some, a president on his second term and he knows he's leaving after this. Well, what about when

00:23:00.800 you have someone who's about to be term limited out of existence itself? I mean, how do you,

00:23:06.140 how do you control someone like that? Now there are many reasons to not vote for Bernie Sanders

00:23:12.160 and Joe Biden. I just think that, um, this is, this is definitely one of them. And this is why

00:23:20.820 there should be an age limit on the presidency. It should be, you can't run until you're 35 and you

00:23:25.660 can't run after you're 75. That gives you a good 40 year window to become president. And guess what?

00:23:31.140 If you, if, if you can't do it in those 40 years, then it's just over. I let it go, go home and play

00:23:37.120 with your grandchildren. Um, you don't get to be president. Well, you know what? Almost nobody gets

00:23:41.720 to be president. So that's okay. It's not much of an injustice. I'm never going to be president.

00:23:45.640 You've never been president and never will be. So, so, so why should Joe Biden be president?

00:23:50.080 Joe Biden ran for president the first time 30 years ago. Okay. I mean, you, it's let it go now. It's,

00:23:58.560 it's over. Every time I talk about this, there are people who say, uh, I was talking about it

00:24:05.080 yesterday and someone said, well, my, my, uh, grandmother is, is 92 years old and she's sharp

00:24:10.960 as a tack. And your, your, your generalizations are ageist. Oh, come on. First of all,

00:24:16.540 nothing I have said here is factually inaccurate. Are you going to deny that, that your mental and

00:24:24.360 physical capacities diminish generally over time? Are you going to deny that you're much more likely

00:24:28.300 to get dementia at 80 than you are at 50? Are you going to deny that most people die before they're

00:24:32.640 85? No, you cannot deny any of that. Those are just facts to call something ageist because it's a,

00:24:37.720 that's like, if I said, you know, uh, one-year-olds can't, uh, can't, you need, need diapers because

00:24:43.180 they can't, they can't use the toilet. And you said, well, that's ageist. How could you make

00:24:46.540 such a sweeping statement about one-year-olds? It's not ageist. That's just a reality of their

00:24:50.660 age. Yes. Your 92 year old grandmother may be sharp as a tack, but, uh, there are most 92 year 0.93

00:24:59.520 old, most people don't live to 92. Most people die before that. And, and most 92 year olds who

00:25:05.980 are living, they may be sharp for 92, but they're not as sharp as they were when they were 50.

00:25:11.560 And they, and so physically they're definitely not going to be as, as there is no 92 year old

00:25:18.440 living today who is, uh, in good physical shape compared to a 50 or 40 year old.

00:25:26.180 It's just this, we are mortals. Okay. It's just what happens. I know it's uncomfortable to think

00:25:31.860 about. I, you know, I think part of this, when I talk about this and people are react, well, how dare you

00:25:36.400 say that? I, you know what? I think part of it, because the reaction on the surface seems so

00:25:40.980 ridiculous because everything I'm saying is factually correct. You cannot deny it.

00:25:47.100 But the people who react that way, I think part of it is just a fear of death. Like they're afraid

00:25:51.960 of their own mortality. They don't want to admit that this is just what happens. Like we are all

00:25:56.760 marching into this. We're all marching into the abyss of, you know, of death and diminishment. And

00:26:05.960 that's where we're headed. It's just, I'm sorry. I don't, I don't like it any more than you do.

00:26:12.700 Um, there is no good reason. I, there is no good reason to have 78 year olds running for president. 0.96

00:26:21.000 There isn't, there isn't, it does not benefit the country. You cannot think of a good reason for it.

00:26:26.200 Um, it would not harm the country in any way whatsoever to cap it at 75. And I could think

00:26:32.060 of many ways that would help us. Uh, I mean, at 75, you forget about running for president. You

00:26:39.740 should have to go and retake driver's debts. I mean, the fact that we let people drive until

00:26:45.380 they're 90 without, that alone is crazy enough. Um, let alone be president. So, all right, let's see.

00:26:58.700 Uh, I think I'm going to jump ahead to emails because there were several emails,

00:27:04.900 emails that I wanted to answer some really interesting, um, subjects.

00:27:08.840 Okay. Let's, uh, check in with the inbox, mattwalshowatgmail.com, mattwalshowatgmail.com.

00:27:17.260 If you want to, um, get ahold of the show, this is from Daniel says, dear Matt, I am a

00:27:22.200 firm believer in Jesus Christ and thoroughly enjoy the subject of apologetics. One of the

00:27:25.960 tougher subjects that I have often wrestled with is the veracity of scripture. While the

00:27:30.840 Bible states that the word of God is forever preserved in heaven, it does not explicitly state

00:27:36.040 that God preserves his word here on earth. A great example of this is found in second Kings 22,

00:27:42.460 where King Josiah finds the book of the law hidden within the temple. This means that there was a long

00:27:47.320 time where the people of God did not have portions of scripture. How do we defend the canon that we

00:27:52.100 have today? I've often heard, uh, the Bible challenged in that it is simply a conglomeration of

00:27:56.920 texts chosen by men. Historically, this is true. And the accusation is hard to deny. Ultimately, 0.99

00:28:01.600 I personally accept the veracity of scripture by faith, since it is so accurately describes the

00:28:06.740 world around me and how I relate to God. That being said, that is a defense from faith. And

00:28:11.800 while there is nothing unholy about it, it is a difficult defense with which to convince a skeptic.

00:28:17.180 Along this topic, I have a couple of other related questions. Being a Protestant, I have a general

00:28:21.800 understanding that the Catholic faith accepts the Apocrypha. I am not sure where you stand on this,

00:28:26.460 and please correct me if I'm wrong, but could you let me know why or why not you accept the Apocrypha

00:28:31.220 scripture? Last of all, within Protestant circles, there is often a very strong debate concerning

00:28:37.000 translations. While I do not believe that any translation is God-breathed, there are many

00:28:41.900 around me who do, namely the King James Version. I believe that translations can be open to error,

00:28:47.300 and the only truly scripture, the only truly scripture, the only, I think it means to say,

00:28:53.140 the only scripture truly inspired by God are the original manuscripts, which appear to have been lost

00:28:58.120 to time. I do believe that a translation can be truly evil when it distorts and changes biblical

00:29:03.240 doctrine, but I believe there are many consistent and faithful translations that I would deem

00:29:07.900 acceptable for knowing God. How would you define the need for looking at translations, as well as

00:29:12.940 addressing those who choose one translation only and condemn the rest? All right.

00:29:18.040 Thanks for that email. That's a great email. Very meaty. And this is why, this is my favorite part

00:29:25.700 of the show, because I get these great topics, and I don't even consider them questions. Like,

00:29:30.400 it's not like you're coming to me so I could teach you, because I think a lot of you probably know more

00:29:35.260 than I do about almost everything. But it's just, you're bringing up a topic that we could talk about,

00:29:39.620 which I really appreciate. And I also like how, Daniel, you, same thing I said to someone yesterday,

00:29:47.120 I think. I think it's great how you're thinking about these things and being critically minded.

00:29:57.460 I love when I see that in Christians. I think that, unfortunately, it's somewhat rare.

00:30:03.620 I could be wrong. My general impression, my feeling is that most Christians, at least in America, 0.82

00:30:11.720 don't really think about these things. They don't think about the Bible.

00:30:18.280 They don't really try to understand it, especially not from a historical standpoint.

00:30:23.620 And I think that's unfortunate. And so then one of the problems is, you probably run into this,

00:30:28.600 Daniel, is that if you are someone who thinks about this and reads about it and wrestles

00:30:33.540 with it, struggles with it, it can get to feel kind of lonely. Because when you try to talk to

00:30:38.680 someone else about it, another Christian, you just get this blank stare, like they've never even 0.99

00:30:43.200 thought about it. And so this could be a forum for these kinds of conversations. So we know that

00:30:51.600 we're not alone. And I think that that's a good, that's enough. All right. So we do believe the Bible

00:30:57.700 isn't the inspired word of God, obviously. However, that idea of the inspired word of God

00:31:05.500 doesn't have one obvious meaning. So it's easy to say, oh, it's the inspired word of God. Okay.

00:31:14.920 Yes. What does that mean, though? What does it actually mean?

00:31:19.260 Um, and don't just spit talking points at me or doctrine. Like, what does it actually mean,

00:31:25.540 though? There's a debate to be had, and a debate has been had for centuries about what that means

00:31:32.240 exactly and how that works. The very simplistic sort of childish understanding is that God basically

00:31:39.200 bent down from heaven. And he said, hey, come over here. And he audibly spoke the words of that would

00:31:46.520 eventually be in the Bible. He spoke those words to the writers of these various books.

00:31:51.080 And those writers just became essentially cosmic stenographers. And they just wrote down

00:31:56.180 what God was telling them. And they said, well, hold on. What was that you that you said there,

00:31:59.080 God about? Okay, let me write that down. Um, and that is not how it worked. As we grow and we study and

00:32:08.560 we mature, we begin to see that that's just not the way the Bible came together. Uh, the Bible is a 0.72

00:32:15.140 collection of different types of literature across many centuries, um, and written for many different

00:32:23.160 reasons to many different sorts of audiences and written by people who did not know that they were

00:32:31.160 writing something that would eventually be compiled in a book that we now call the Bible. Um,

00:32:36.780 that's the reality. And we also know, this is the important part. We know that many of these writers

00:32:45.220 used sources or probably they all did used sources. They conducted investigations. They went through a

00:32:53.800 process, um, that would have looked like a very human process and they incorporated oral tradition and

00:33:00.620 they incorporated all these different things. Um, Luke, you know, Luke even tells us at the

00:33:06.140 beginning of his gospel that he conducted interviews and he did research and so on. Luke does not say

00:33:11.140 that, Oh, an angel came down from heaven and told me all this. And I wrote it down. He doesn't say

00:33:15.540 that he says he, he, he went in and he tried to investigate and figure out what the heck's going on.

00:33:19.500 And this is what he came up with. He tells us that. So, um, what does it mean to say that the Bible is

00:33:26.460 inspired? It means that God somehow guided that human process. Um, and that everything in the

00:33:36.040 Bible is in the Bible because God wants it to be, I think it's sort of as simple as that. I think

00:33:43.920 that's the best way of looking at it. Everything's in the Bible because God wants it there. I think

00:33:51.300 it's better to say that than to say something like everything in the Bible is accurate. I'm not

00:33:59.300 saying that everything in the Bible is not accurate, but I am saying that there are many different forms

00:34:03.880 and genres of literature in the Bible. And for some of those genres to call them accurate just makes

00:34:09.360 no sense. What does it mean to say that the song of Solomon is accurate? What does it mean to say that

00:34:14.380 the Psalms are accurate? Uh, what does it even mean to say that, you know, the book of James is accurate?

00:34:21.300 Uh, you know, when you've got poetry or, um, you know, uh, essentially sermons, which is,

00:34:31.240 which is what the, the, the epistles do letters to call them accurate. It just, it's true in a

00:34:38.440 certain sense, but it's not exactly the word you would use. Uh, like you're not going to listen to,

00:34:44.140 um, uh, you know, a Mozart sympathy, sympathy, sympathy, sympathy. I can't even speak symphony.

00:34:50.860 You're not going to listen to Mozart and say, well, that, that's very accurate. Like that doesn't

00:34:54.520 mean anything. Uh, what you're going to say is that it's beautiful. It's deep. It's meaningful.

00:35:00.540 I'm going to use a lot of great words to describe it. Not necessarily accurate. So I, I think that

00:35:06.900 the, the best way of putting it is, as I said, it's there because that's God wanted it to be there.

00:35:12.260 Um, because we will get something from it that we need to get from it. And what that thing is,

00:35:19.240 will be different depending on what book we're reading. Um, so how do we defend that notion?

00:35:29.160 Well, I agree that you can't defend it by demanding that the person you're talking to

00:35:34.300 believe the Bible on faith. Um, you can't defend the Bible by using the Bible. This, this is something

00:35:41.920 that Christians try to do. And it's kind of embarrassing because it's, it's, they're 1.00

00:35:47.940 essentially trying to prove the veracity of the Bible by pointing out that the Bible claims that

00:35:52.660 it has veracity, which first of all, uh, is, is circular reasoning to say, well, why should I believe

00:35:59.420 the Bible? Because the Bible says it's true. Yeah, but why should I believe that? Well, because the

00:36:04.140 Bible is true. You see, it's a circle and that's just, that's not good reasoning. You're not gonna be

00:36:07.600 able to convince anyone that way. And the second problem is that the Bible actually makes no claims

00:36:12.600 about itself because no, as I said, no one who contributed to the Bible knew that they were

00:36:19.720 contributing to something that we now call the Bible. None of them knew that. So I think we have to be

00:36:28.040 able to launch a more sophisticated defense, uh, which is a whole other subject I could talk about

00:36:33.300 for 10 hours, but I think that defense has to be historical, philosophical, theological, literary,

00:36:44.180 spiritual, all of it. We have to be able to launch a defense that is multifaceted and that engages on

00:36:52.280 all of these different levels. Uh, and what, what we certainly know is not the case is we can't

00:37:00.460 convince someone that the Bible is true by just throwing it at them and beating them over the head

00:37:05.560 with it and say, the Bible says it, the Bible says it. And that's a stereotype. It's a cliche, but that is

00:37:11.880 what some Christians do. And it is so incredibly ineffective and they're making fools of themselves. 0.99

00:37:16.760 Um, you ask about what you call the Apocrypha. That would be a collection of books in the Old 0.66

00:37:23.940 Testament. Uh, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Maccabees, a couple others. I don't remember all of them. Uh,

00:37:31.040 the Protestant Bible excludes those books and you know, you call it Apocrypha. Obviously I don't call

00:37:36.260 it Apocrypha. It's sort of a negative label to use obviously. Um, so why do I accept it? Well,

00:37:43.060 it's simply a matter of history for me. When I look at the Septuagint, the, the Greek, uh,

00:37:48.140 tran the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Um, I see that most of those books are in

00:37:54.020 it and that is very convincing to me. When I read the church fathers, I see that most of them

00:37:59.740 accepted these books. That's very convincing to me. Um, I think that a Bible with those books has a

00:38:06.860 better historical claim than a Bible without them. And it's really as simple as that. And by the way,

00:38:11.960 the Catholic church is not the only one that accepts them. The Catholic church accepts them.

00:38:15.380 The Coptic church accepts them. The Coptic church has been around since the very beginning. The

00:38:19.860 Coptic church, the Coptic church can trace its roots back, uh, almost 2000 years. Um, the Greek

00:38:26.540 Orthodox church accepts them. The Russian Orthodox church accepts them. A lot of very ancient churches

00:38:33.540 accept these books. And that should tell us something. If somebody decided in the 16th century

00:38:40.720 that these books shouldn't be in there. Well, personally, I'm more inclined to listen to

00:38:45.280 someone in the third century or the fourth century, someone who was a little bit closer

00:38:48.780 to, um, not only when these books were written, but when they were ultimately compiled and everything.

00:38:55.560 Finally on translations, uh, as I've said before, the claim that the King James Bible,

00:39:01.620 the King James version is the most accurate. The only inspired translation is completely absurd.

00:39:07.180 Um, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. As I talked about a few weeks ago,

00:39:11.680 just based on the fact that the King James version has the Johanna and comma,

00:39:15.700 which is, um, an interpolation in the epistle of John, which talks about the Trinity and that we

00:39:21.940 know was not in the earliest manuscripts and was added in centuries later by someone who decided,

00:39:28.300 Oh, you know what? This should really be in there. And I'm just going to put it in.

00:39:30.340 Um, so that it shouldn't be in there. The King James version has it almost no other Bible

00:39:35.500 translation. You're going to find in America has that because most, almost every scholar knows it

00:39:40.300 shouldn't be there. So that's a pretty glaring error that the KJV has doesn't make it worthless.

00:39:45.580 I still, I still read the KJV. I like that style, especially for certain books, but, um,

00:39:53.820 to call it the most accurate or the only inspired version is just completely wrong. Um,

00:39:59.120 I'm not dogmatic about translations. I have a bunch of translations back there. I flip between them.

00:40:05.600 Uh, as you said, they, you know, some, some of them have issues, they have different sorts of

00:40:11.080 issues. And so, you know, you can't get too attached to one translation. That's my feeling,

00:40:14.200 by the way, uh, if you don't read Greek and you don't read Hebrew, then all you're, you're only

00:40:19.280 stuck with pale imitations. Talk to someone who reads Greek and they'll tell you that 0.96

00:40:23.540 what you're getting in the English Bible, it is, it's the best you can do. It's better than nothing,

00:40:28.020 but it is, you're missing a lot. Um, when you don't know the original language and I don't know

00:40:34.520 it. So I already know. So it's just, it's, it's already weird to be really attached to an English

00:40:40.720 translation. If you're going to get really attached to a translation, then get attached to a Greek

00:40:45.400 train, learn Greek and get attached to that. All right. Um, okay. That was a long answer.

00:40:52.420 There was one other here. This is also a long one. That's all right. I'll do it. Uh, from

00:40:57.920 Robert says, hi, Matt. I enjoyed your thoughts on Pascal's wager. I agree that it's the weakest

00:41:02.160 Christian argument. I think the best Christian argument, at least one of the best is one from

00:41:06.560 C.S. Lewis saying that Jesus must have either been Lord, lunatic, or liar because only someone

00:41:11.980 who's a con man, crazy, or actually God would claim to be God as Jesus did. I've always thought 0.96

00:41:16.960 that this is a really logical argument and I'm not sure how unbelievers deal with it or dismiss

00:41:20.900 it. Seems rock solid to me. Have you heard this argument? What do you think?

00:41:27.600 Yeah, Robert, that's the trilemma argument. I've actually dealt with it on the show. 1.00

00:41:32.020 I, I'm pretty sure. I love C.S. Lewis. Uh, I get what he's doing in the argument,

00:41:38.260 but no, I'm afraid that it's, I don't think it's a good argument. Uh, I think it's maybe

00:41:43.260 even weaker than Pascal's wager. And I think it's the, by far the weakest argument that C.S. Lewis

00:41:48.720 ever made, which is, which is a shame that it became his most famous argument. He made a lot

00:41:52.620 of great arguments. Um, and I think that maybe is his worst one yet. That's the one that a lot

00:41:57.500 of people have grown attached to. So let's, uh, let's read what C.S. Lewis did. He's not the first

00:42:03.840 one to make this argument, by the way, but he did popularize it. This is from near Christianity.

00:42:08.680 C.S. Lewis says, I'm trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that 0.89

00:42:13.500 people often say about him. I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept

00:42:18.300 his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the

00:42:23.920 sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the 0.97

00:42:29.440 level with a man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make 0.99

00:42:34.360 your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can 0.99

00:42:40.560 shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and call him a demon, or you can fall at his feet and 1.00

00:42:46.000 call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great

00:42:51.360 human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Now, it seems to me obvious

00:42:57.860 that he, that he, that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend. And consequently, however strange or

00:43:03.380 terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God.

00:43:09.780 Very eloquently put, but there are two problems. First, the argument operates from the assumption

00:43:16.740 that Jesus actually did say everything that the gospels claim he said. And that's a fine 0.83

00:43:23.720 assumption among us Christians. It's one that I share, but the argument isn't for Christians, 0.97

00:43:29.580 right? If you're going to, you're not going to make this argument to another Christian. They already 1.00

00:43:32.860 agree. So if you're making this argument, then you must be making it to someone who is outside the 0.64

00:43:37.820 faith, to non-Christians. And non-Christians do not assume that the gospels are 100% accurate. If

00:43:45.680 they did, they'd already be Christian. So you know, you're talking to someone who looks at the gospels

00:43:50.740 and says, you know, that's a book like every other holy book. It's a, you know, there's maybe some

00:43:55.580 accuracy in it. There's some fables, there's some this and that. That's how they're looking at the

00:43:59.580 Bible. So when you say, Hey, Jesus claimed to be God, which means that he must've been God or else

00:44:04.860 he was crazy or a con man. The obvious response from an unbeliever is okay. Well then he didn't 1.00

00:44:10.020 claim to be God. And this would be a perfectly logical retort from the perspective of an

00:44:17.780 unbeliever, especially because almost all of Jesus's most explicit claims to divinity are in the gospel

00:44:25.240 of John, which was written, um, written last and written maybe 60 or 70 years after Jesus died.

00:44:34.040 So all a person needs to say to diffuse this argument from C.S. Lewis, all a person needs to

00:44:40.540 say is, uh, well, the gospel of John was, it was written 70 years later by someone who obviously was

00:44:47.200 not an eyewitness from their perspective. And it is a theological and poetic work and also a

00:44:54.800 mythological work. And so I just don't, I don't accept that it's historically accurate.

00:45:00.680 And, uh, like I said, that's a, that is a logically sound response. The second problem with the argument,

00:45:08.800 though we don't need a second argument because the first problem is enough, is devastating enough.

00:45:13.440 But the second argument is that it's not necessarily true that anyone who claims to be God

00:45:18.940 and isn't God, uh, must be lying or crazy. I mean, even today you could talk to people who are kind

00:45:26.960 of these new agey pantheists and they'll say that, yeah, I'm God. We're all God. You know,

00:45:32.600 God is everything and everyone we're all God. Now that's nonsense. It doesn't mean anything,

00:45:37.560 but that's what they would say. Um, Jesus was not a pantheist, obviously, but the point simply is that

00:45:44.560 you could conceivably come up with a spiritual, you could come up with a scenario where a person may

00:45:52.160 develop a spiritual notion of their own divinity without necessarily being totally insane and while

00:46:00.420 actually believing what they say. Um, it is, it is so, I just, I think that it's, it's too simplistic

00:46:09.660 on those grounds as well. Uh, I think it is, it's conceivable that a person could come to think of

00:46:17.560 themselves as some sort of divinity, um, without being crazy. Uh, especially in ancient times. I mean,

00:46:26.100 the Roman emperors, uh, considered themselves divine. They weren't crazy and I don't think they were lying

00:46:34.580 exactly. They, they really thought it was true. Of course it wasn't. So, you know, those are the two

00:46:41.580 problems with it. I would recommend everyone go, go read CS Lewis. So many great arguments, so many

00:46:48.440 great points that he raises. Um, that's just not, that's just not one of them. Uh, and, and I'm telling

00:46:56.040 you, I mean, take this argument and present it to any atheist. And what I just said, that's exactly what

00:47:03.340 they're going to say. Uh, and then, so then what, what the argument really becomes is, is an argument

00:47:08.880 about proving, uh, the historical veracity of the gospels because that's what it all hinges on.

00:47:14.760 So I would say now cut out the trilemma thing and just talk about that. And if you feel like you can 1.00

00:47:20.740 prove that or provide evidence for that, then great. Just do that. Uh, because if you can get

00:47:26.240 them to accept the historical veracity of the gospel, then you don't even need the trilemma because

00:47:30.940 they're already going to be Christian at that point. Right. All right. We'll leave it there. 0.95

00:47:35.140 Um, thanks for the great questions and have a great weekend. Godspeed.

00:47:53.480 Today on the Ben Shapiro show, a time magazine journalist reveals the true motivation behind

00:47:58.520 AOC's rise and we checked the mailbag that's today on the Ben Shapiro show.

The Matt Walsh Show - March 22, 2019

Ep. 223 - The One Thing Saving Us From Civil War

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