The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 228 - An Epidemic Of Groupthink

00:00:00.000 Today on The Matt Wall Show, I want to discuss the epidemic of groupthink in our society.

00:00:05.080 People seem to be less and less willing, or even able perhaps, to think for themselves,

00:00:10.420 to form their own ideas and opinions and perspectives, and I want to analyze that problem.

00:00:15.060 Also, Jussie Smollett's lawyer has come up with a really hilarious, but also pathetic, alibi.

00:00:22.140 PETA embarrasses itself yet again, and I want to deal with the claim

00:00:26.040 that Jesus was just a polite, nice guy who never would have insulted or confronted anyone.

00:00:32.880 We'll talk about all of that. Packed episode today of The Matt Wall Show.

00:00:40.800 So I want to say something at the top here.

00:00:42.880 You know, I was watching another documentary about flat earthers last night.

00:00:48.340 The second one that I've seen, because I find these, this one was on YouTube,

00:00:52.360 and it's just, it's fascinating. It's fascinating in the same way that, you know,

00:00:56.720 staring at a mangled car wreck is fascinating. But as I, as I thought more about it, I realize

00:01:02.400 how fitting and perhaps inevitable it is that flat eartherism should enjoy a renaissance in our day

00:01:10.880 and age, which appears to be what's happening here. We have all of the information in and about the

00:01:18.860 world available to us. And any amount of critical thought or independent research

00:01:24.300 will reveal the truth about our spherical planet to anyone who feels like expending that sort of

00:01:30.660 mental energy. But the problem is that some people don't want to expend that mental energy.

00:01:34.720 So they just buy into this. We have become a country of intellectual tribes, I think.

00:01:43.460 And the flat earth tribe is especially embarrassing and weird and stupid, but the other tribes aren't

00:01:51.720 much better, honestly. And I think we need to stop and think about ourselves. Am I part of one of these

00:01:58.140 tribes? It seems that the availability of information and the possibility of becoming really informed and

00:02:07.020 really knowledgeable is just, it's too much for some of us to bear, for some of us to handle. So

00:02:13.100 we retreat into a hive and we let the hive do our thinking for us. I think that Donald Trump has

00:02:19.960 done a lot, mostly unintentionally, to expose this dynamic in our culture. And it's really been

00:02:25.220 something to behold. So those who are in the resistance tribe, they of course automatically

00:02:31.720 adopt the opposite of whatever Donald Trump says or believes. Whatever his opinion is, they just

00:02:37.260 say the opposite. But then there are those who are in Trump's tribe and they cling to him like,

00:02:42.940 barnacles, and they defend passionately whatever he says, and they believe whatever he says, and that's

00:02:49.820 all there is to it. Both groups are united by their vacuous hive minds, by their inability, unwillingness

00:02:57.800 to think for themselves. That, by the way, is why I've never been much of a fan of these Trump rallies,

00:03:05.880 like the one that was in Michigan last night. I know that this is an unpopular view, especially

00:03:11.240 from a conservative. But to have all of these fawning swarms of people who are hanging on the

00:03:18.700 president's every word and applauding whatever he says and treating him like he's a boy band or

00:03:25.160 something, that's not the kind of relationship that we're supposed to have with our politicians.

00:03:30.500 That's just, that's just not it. That's not what it's supposed to be. It is another symptom of the

00:03:37.960 groupthink disease that is infecting our culture. And we are well familiar with the other manifestations

00:03:44.200 of this disease. College students, you know, who collapse into puddles of tears when they encounter

00:03:50.240 an opposing idea. Pitchfork mobs that panic in unison over the trendy outrage of the day,

00:03:56.740 whatever it happens to be. Cable news audiences who sit for hours listening to their tribes'

00:04:02.820 talking points repeated to them over and over again. People who reflexively shout labels like

00:04:08.580 racist and sexist at their opponents and so on. These are all people who are in intellectual tribes,

00:04:14.640 people who don't want to think for themselves. We have become a nation of parrots at precisely the

00:04:20.160 moment when independent and critical examination of issues is easy and accessible for everyone.

00:04:29.640 You know, anyone, we carry around in our pockets these devices that give us access to all of the

00:04:36.000 information in the world. And we could use this tool to become really critical independent thinkers,

00:04:43.080 but it's had the opposite effect. Scrolling Facebook or Twitter should be a window into a diverse array

00:04:50.900 of interesting and challenging and different and unique ideas. But instead, what you get is a

00:04:56.660 selection of two or three ideas presented in slightly altered form by millions of different people.

00:05:02.360 Now, it's understandable that social media would become inevitably a toxic, disturbing,

00:05:08.880 pornographic, garbage heap. We knew that was going to happen, but it has no excuse to be boring.

00:05:15.020 Okay. It should not be a boring, toxic, disturbing, pornographic garbage heap. Yet everyone is saying

00:05:20.540 the same thing about everything. So it is boring. Here's my point. The most remarkable thing about being a

00:05:30.620 human being is that we can think, you know, we can analyze, we can be critical. We can come up with our

00:05:41.100 own views and ideas and perspectives. And that is such a beautiful, amazing, mysterious thing. As far as we

00:05:49.860 know, we're the only species on planet earth that has this capacity. As far as we know, we're the only

00:05:56.020 species in the universe with this capacity. We certainly know that a worm or a goat or an elephant

00:06:01.880 can't ponder the issues of the day and develop their own unique insights on these subjects. But we

00:06:09.240 can. But we don't. You see, we farm that job out to CNN or Fox or Trump or our favorite YouTube

00:06:17.900 conspiracy theorist or a political party or the social media mob or whatever. The goat has no choice

00:06:25.160 but to be a goat. What's our excuse? If we won't think for ourselves, if we won't really think for

00:06:32.900 ourselves and try to come up with our own ideas, then we waste our lives. It would have to be said,

00:06:40.760 although it probably wouldn't be said, at least not at the eulogy, that a man who dies without ever

00:06:45.160 trying to develop his own ideas has squandered his existence. His entire life was a joke, a waste.

00:06:52.880 It was one big wasted opportunity because he never did with it the one thing that he and no one else

00:07:01.000 could do, and that is use his mind. That's the one thing no one else can use his mind. It was given to

00:07:07.520 him. So his physical death in that case is much less of a tragedy than the fact that he never had an

00:07:13.660 intellectual life to begin with. So I think it would be a good practice, and I challenge myself

00:07:21.420 to do the same, it would be a good practice for all of us to stop and run a mental inventory, right,

00:07:27.960 and think how many of our thoughts and ideas have been adopted or inherited or passively accepted

00:07:38.820 rather than established through a process of independent inquiry. Of course, look, we have to

00:07:48.660 accept some things on authority. We have to accept some things based on a quick and logical assumption.

00:07:55.060 Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to function. If you drive up to a bridge and you see a bunch of

00:08:00.200 cars crossing the bridge, you're going to assume, a very quick assessment, that the bridge is probably

00:08:04.820 safe. You're going to drive over it. You don't have enough time to do an investigation of the bridge

00:08:08.940 and all of that, and you don't have the expertise to do it anyway. So you have to rely on the authority

00:08:12.900 of the people who have built this bridge and the ones who are supposed to maintain it.

00:08:16.940 So yeah, that's one thing. But as for our deepest convictions and our deepest held beliefs and

00:08:24.740 values and opinions, when it comes to that, we should do our own work. We should use our own effort

00:08:34.800 for those. I suspect that almost all of us could rattle off a list of principles and priorities that we

00:08:43.180 supposedly hold. But few of us, I think, could convincingly answer a very simple follow-up

00:08:50.060 question, which is, why? Why do you think that? Why do you believe that? And so I think we need to

00:08:58.780 figure out our whys. That's what we all should do. All right. Jussie Smollett. I'm not going to spend

00:09:10.420 very much time on this at all, but there is an update that I can't just, we've been talking about

00:09:14.320 this all week. I can't just pass over this because Jussie Smollett has found himself,

00:09:21.200 fortunately for him, he has found himself the sort of shameless hack lawyer that I suppose a man like

00:09:28.060 him needs at a time like this. So his lawyer was being interviewed yesterday and she came up with

00:09:33.980 a very interesting explanation to account for the fact that Smollett claimed that two white dudes

00:09:39.820 assaulted him and now they're admitting that no, it was his two Nigerian friends. So I'm going to

00:09:45.160 play this for you. Watch this. According to the court records, Smollett was very clear with police

00:09:49.740 on the night of the attack that his attackers were white. He said they had masks on and gloves,

00:09:54.360 but he saw their eyes and he saw the skin surrounding their eyes. Was that a false statement?

00:09:59.560 So he, just to be clear, he only saw one of the attackers, one of them he didn't see. He saw

00:10:03.940 one through a ski mask. Again, he could not see their body. Everything was covered and he had a full

00:10:08.720 ski mask on except the area around the eyes. He did tell police that he, from what he saw,

00:10:14.600 he thought it was pale skin or white or pale skin was I think what he said. And that was what he,

00:10:21.760 and that's why he initially did have a hard time. Why did he say that? He could have said,

00:10:26.220 I don't know. He could have, but this, again, he's being truthful. But if it's the Osindiro brothers,

00:10:30.360 what are the chances that that's the case that he saw somebody with light skin? Well, you know,

00:10:36.300 I mean, I think there's, obviously you can disguise that. You could put makeup on.

00:10:40.800 There is actually, interestingly enough, a video, you know, I think police did minimal

00:10:44.660 investigation in this case. It was, it took me all of five minutes to Google. You know,

00:10:48.660 I was looking up the brothers and one of the first videos that showed up actually was one of the

00:10:52.340 brothers in white face doing a Joker monologue with white makeup on. And so it's not, it's not

00:10:56.680 implausible. So there you go. Sure. The guys were wearing Joker makeup and a ski mask. That really is

00:11:04.720 it, it, you can't, what, you can't satirize this. You can't make any jokes about it. That's how absurd

00:11:13.520 it's gotten. I guess they also, you know, went to voice acting lessons and they, and because they

00:11:20.980 would have needed to disguise their heavily accented voices as well, I don't have anything else to say

00:11:28.320 about that. It's just, um, the stupidity of this case. And speaking of people not being able to think

00:11:36.240 for themselves, if you go online, there are still people who are clinging to this idea that, yeah, well,

00:11:44.120 maybe, maybe he's, maybe he's telling the truth. And we still have people in the media saying, I don't

00:11:49.740 know, I don't know what to think about this. I'm still just, it's all so confusing. It's absurd.

00:11:56.780 Moving on, uh, Jordan Peele. I've been wanting to mention this for a few days now. Jordan Peele,

00:12:00.820 who's the director of a get out and now the horror film us, which just came out, I think last week.

00:12:07.220 I haven't seen either movie to be honest with you, but he has announced that he probably will never

00:12:13.240 cast a white man as a lead in his films. Um, let me read a little bit from the daily wire

00:12:19.640 report says, according to the Hollywood reporter, fresh off the box office success of the horror

00:12:24.200 movie us director, Jordan Peele said he does not see himself casting a quote white dude as the lead

00:12:29.860 in one of his future films. Um, he said at an appearance at the upright citizens brigade theater

00:12:36.020 in Hollywood, I don't see myself casting a white dude as the lead of my movie. Not that I don't like

00:12:40.220 white dudes, but I've seen that movie. Um, and then of course, apparently that comment drew loud

00:12:45.480 applause and shouts of agreement. Uh, and then he goes on for there. You know, I've seen some people

00:12:52.560 complaining about this comment where he's saying, I'm not going to cast white dudes. I have no problem

00:12:57.760 with it. Honestly, they're his movies. He can cast whoever he wants. Uh, he's obviously coming from

00:13:04.960 the perspective of a black man. He is a black man, right? Um, and so as a director, it makes sense

00:13:13.000 if his actors and his characters reflect that perspective. So I ha I have no issue with that.

00:13:20.060 It would be dumb for, for me to have an issue with it. It's dumb for anyone to have an issue with

00:13:24.200 that. He can cast who he wants and, and his movies are going to reflect his unique perspective, but

00:13:30.780 it just doesn't work. It doesn't make sense to say that Peele is totally in the right when he swears

00:13:39.060 off casting white male leads. And we, we obviously know it goes without saying that if a white director

00:13:45.720 had made the same kind of comment about how he's only going to cast white male leads, then, um, that

00:13:50.600 person would never get another job in Hollywood again. So it doesn't make sense to say that it's

00:13:56.400 okay for Peele to make that announcement, but then to say that there's something necessarily wrong with,

00:14:02.340 for instance, you know, uh, keeping James Bond as a white male. Now I don't personally care

00:14:09.060 if they cast the black guy as James Bond does, doesn't matter to me. I don't care about the race

00:14:14.500 of the lead characters of movies that I watch. It makes no difference. It would be lame if they made,

00:14:19.240 uh, you know, James Bond into Jane Bond, made it, made him into a woman, but I don't care what his race

00:14:24.660 is. But what if someone is of the opinion that James Bond is a white guy, that's who he is.

00:14:31.500 That's the character. And so he should stay that way. Um, it doesn't make sense to call that racist

00:14:38.820 yet to say that Peele is not a racist when he categorically declares that no white male will

00:14:45.720 ever, ever be the lead in one of his films, no matter who the character is. So that's,

00:14:51.240 that's what doesn't make sense. It's the double standard. And people need to understand this.

00:14:57.580 I think liberals who are used to going around and, uh, blaming white males for everything and

00:15:03.440 constantly complain, cutting down white males, demanding that we apologize for everything and

00:15:09.120 everything's our fault. We're the villains of history. It's like, they really don't understand

00:15:12.580 that. You can't, that message is, it's just, it doesn't work. It's not going to resonate.

00:15:17.380 You can't expect an entire group of people to simply accept double standards. They're not going

00:15:26.720 to do that. Um, now I, uh, I wanted to get into a, an email a little bit earlier in the show than

00:15:37.980 usual, because it brings up a subject that I want to discuss. I have a bunch of emails I'm going to

00:15:43.040 answer towards the end of the show. But, um, there's this one that I wanted to mention here

00:15:47.960 because it requires a little bit of a longer answer. So let me read the email to you. It says,

00:15:53.940 um, hello, Matt, you claim to be a Christian, but the spirit of Christ is not within you.

00:16:01.180 You constantly cut people down, mock and criticize. Jesus would not insult and mock as you do.

00:16:07.340 Your demeanor is not of scripture. It is of the world. I think you do a disservice to the faith

00:16:13.240 by representing it this way. I will pray for you. Which by the way, the, the whole thing that

00:16:19.240 Christians do, where you say you're going to pray for someone passive aggressively, can we,

00:16:23.100 can we stop doing that? That's, that's one of my least favorite things. Uh, because the thing is,

00:16:30.340 you're not really going to, if you're going to actually pray for me, then, then, then great.

00:16:33.560 I appreciate your prayers. But I think most of the time in that context, when someone says,

00:16:38.460 I'll pray for you, they're not actually going home and getting on their knees and praying for

00:16:42.720 that person. It's just something that they say it's there. It's their way of saying, uh, I am,

00:16:47.540 I am literally holier than you. That's that's, you may as well just cut to the chase and say that

00:16:52.020 now I've gotten many emails like this over the years, as it may not surprise you to learn,

00:16:59.000 uh, emails and tweets and messages and so on just a few days ago. Uh, well, here, here's the setup

00:17:05.340 to that. Uh, a few days ago, United airline announced a new policy that it will officially

00:17:11.640 let you declare whatever gender you want when you, when you buy a ticket. Um, now I'm not sure that

00:17:18.460 I really want to fly on an airline run by a company that doesn't know the difference between

00:17:22.720 men and women. Uh, so that makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but I responded on Twitter saying,

00:17:27.520 okay, well then I'm going to identify as first class. I thought, you know, that's a loophole,

00:17:32.820 right? If we can identify as whatever we want, then I'll, I'll be first class. And someone responded

00:17:37.080 by telling me basically what this emailer said, saying I'm mocking and Jesus wouldn't mock. He

00:17:42.340 would never do that. It becomes clearer and clearer to me that 90% of the people who say what Jesus

00:17:50.840 would do or wouldn't do have never actually picked up the book and read it. I mean, actually read it

00:18:00.060 for themselves. That's the theme here. Thinking for yourself, reading for yourself, doing your own

00:18:04.520 work. Um, and I think there are so many people who go around and say, well, Jesus would never do that.

00:18:10.440 Um, they haven't read it. They've maybe lifted a quote here and there, or they've listened to someone

00:18:19.440 tell them what's in the book. But as far as picking it up to read it themselves, they haven't do that

00:18:24.720 because if you actually pick it up and read it, this image of the meek and mild Jesus who would never

00:18:33.060 utter a harsh word to anyone evaporates immediately upon actually reading the book.

00:18:41.140 Jesus in the gospels calls people, snakes, vipers, hypocrites, liars, thieves, adulterers, fools,

00:18:50.380 Satan. Um, so Jesus wouldn't use an insult. Well, what is it then when you call someone a snake? Is

00:18:58.960 that a, is that supposed to be a compliment? It's, it's, he certainly wasn't a literal statement. He

00:19:02.640 wasn't observing that they're, well, they weren't actually snakes. That seems to me to be an insult

00:19:08.120 that Jesus actually used. The entire Bible is filled with, um, scorn and, and, and insults

00:19:20.040 heaped on degenerates and idiots and all over the place. It's all over the Bible. That's the reality.

00:19:25.820 Now I'm not telling you what to think about that reality. I'm not telling you how to interpret it,

00:19:30.220 but that's the fact. Just pick it up and read it. In the old Testament, prophets are constantly

00:19:36.460 haranguing people, calling them essentially prostitutes and fools and perverts and on and

00:19:42.240 on and on. Um, God in the old Testament is famously less than gentle in his words and actions.

00:19:48.760 The apostles, Paul, especially followed in this tradition. Paul has some very choice words that

00:19:54.640 he uses. In fact, at one point he, uh, he's talking about people who still advocate circumcision.

00:20:02.280 And he says that he hopes that those people castrate themselves. All right. That's his

00:20:06.860 response to those people. Again, that, that seems like kind of an insult. And if I were to ever say

00:20:12.880 that, um, if I were getting heated about a topic and I said about the people who disagree with me,

00:20:19.080 I hope they castrate themselves. I would get tons of emails from people saying, yo, that's,

00:20:24.180 that is unbiblical. How dare you use language like that? No, it is, it is literally biblical. It's

00:20:29.520 right in there. So the polite lovey-dovey thing, uh, there just isn't a lot of support for it in the

00:20:35.640 Bible. It's, it's, it's, it's not there. Uh, if you read it, you'll see that Christianity is a rough

00:20:44.000 militant, confrontational religion. Whether we like it or not, that's what it is.

00:20:53.300 Any honest reading of scripture will bring you to this conclusion. Uh, I'll put it this way.

00:20:58.740 The crusaders had a lot more biblical justification and precedent for their actions

00:21:03.820 than did say the Quakers. A lot more. Now, does that mean that we have carte blanche to go around

00:21:10.960 insulting people? No, but it does mean that God apparently isn't very squeamish about a bit of

00:21:17.060 tough language because it is all over the Bible. So do I apologize for the language that I use on this

00:21:24.720 show or on social media or when I, or in my writing, do I apologize for it? No. Um, because

00:21:33.580 when I read the Bible, I see that, uh, there, there, there certainly is a time and place for it.

00:21:40.480 And I would encourage everyone to pick it up and read it sometime.

00:21:44.060 Okay. Before we get to, to some other emails, I wanted to check in with, uh, our good friends over

00:21:50.020 at PETA and want to show you something that they posted this week. All right. Now we know that PETA,

00:21:57.580 I mean, they don't really do anything in terms of actually helping animals. Uh, their whole goal is,

00:22:02.900 is just to get attention to themselves by these ridiculous publicity stunts.

00:22:07.480 And so probably the best reaction to PETA with a publicity stunt is just to ignore them,

00:22:12.460 but I'm not very good at ignoring trolls. So here we go. Um, and this week PETA is speaking out against

00:22:19.720 milk. So I want you to look at this, look at this picture. Uh, this is what they tweeted. It's a picture

00:22:24.700 of a cow in the shape of a woman, very disturbing. And the cow is breastfeeding what appears to be an

00:22:30.100 elderly man. And then the caption says, looks weird, right? It's what you're doing. If you drink

00:22:35.460 cow's milk, raise your hand. If you know that humans shouldn't be drinking cow's breast milk,

00:22:39.740 it was made for their babies, not you. All right. Um,

00:22:45.900 he here's my only question. I, I, I've wondered this about, you know, vegans for the people who think

00:22:53.300 that we shouldn't be eating cows or drinking their milk and okay. Well, if that's the case,

00:22:58.940 then that means that the cows shouldn't be on farms, right? I mean, we're not going to keep

00:23:03.600 cows on farms if we're not harvesting their milk and their meat. So, all right. So what then

00:23:13.040 let's say that PETA and the vegans, let's say they win. And everyone says, nevermind,

00:23:19.840 don't want hamburgers and milkshakes anymore. Let's be done with that. Now I personally would

00:23:24.880 fight. I would literally fight to the death before I would give up hamburgers and milkshakes,

00:23:29.820 but, um, just going along with the hypothetical for a minute, for the sake of argument,

00:23:34.900 let's say we all swear it off. Well, then what, what, what do we do with the cows? What happens to the

00:23:43.040 cows, PETA? So what do we, we release all the cows into the wild and then the whole species goes

00:23:49.660 extinct in like 15 minutes. What do you think is going to happen to the cows? These are big,

00:23:55.840 dumb, docile, slow, meaty, delicious animals with no defense mechanisms. What does a cow do

00:24:02.920 if you're coming after it and it wants to defend itself? It has, it has, there's nothing it can do.

00:24:07.680 Um, the only safe place in the world for a cow is a farm. That's the only,

00:24:14.000 literally the only place that a cow could survive unless we're going to set up some sort of island

00:24:21.100 for them. Um, cow Island and send all the cows off to cow Island. Uh, but then who, you know,

00:24:27.460 they're going to eat all the grass, all the grass will be gone. Who's going to feed them. I mean,

00:24:30.180 they need to be taken care of. So it's really for their own good is I guess is what I'm trying to

00:24:34.540 say. Um, it's for their own good that we eat them. That's my point, PETA. All right,

00:24:42.720 let's get to, I got a bunch of emails, uh, some really interesting ones. So let me get to those

00:24:46.560 now. Um, you can email the show, mattwallshowatgmail.com, mattwallshowatgmail.com. This

00:24:52.320 is from Jake. It says, good afternoon, Matt. I enjoy listening to your show. I, I, and agree with

00:24:57.940 you on most things you say. I appreciate seeing fellow young Christian people speak out proudly

00:25:03.040 about their Christian beliefs and conservative views. Um, if I'm being a hundred percent honest

00:25:07.860 though, yours is my second favorite podcast to listen to. I listen to Ben Shapiro's before yours

00:25:11.820 every day. How dare you? Uh, he is your boss though. So you must approve. That's a good

00:25:16.700 point. You spoke about C.S. Lewis recently and how his Lord lunatic or liar argument was

00:25:21.460 not as strong as theological argument. I being a Christian have obviously heard a lot about

00:25:25.120 C.S. Lewis, but I never actually read any of his books. I know what you're thinking.

00:25:28.340 Are you even a Christian? If you've never read C.S. Lewis contrary to popular belief, it

00:25:31.800 is possible. I'm interested in becoming a real Christian though, quote unquote, and was wondering

00:25:36.140 if you could suggest a book to start with. Um, if it is too late for me, then I will begrudgingly

00:25:41.940 accept my fate as a less than average Christian. Uh, I will forgive you for having never read

00:25:45.740 C.S. Lewis. Uh, I guess this, this sort of standard starting point, at least for his apologetic

00:25:50.420 work would be mere Christianity. That's what everyone would say. Start with that. That's

00:25:54.120 not his best work, um, by a long shot actually. Uh, but it's a good place to start. And then

00:25:59.940 from there I would go to, um, I've talked about the book many times, A Great Divorce, his sort

00:26:04.940 of vision of the afterlife, I think is very powerful. I would read that next problem of

00:26:08.420 pain deals with his answer for the, you know, the problem of pain and suffering, which we've

00:26:13.940 also talked about on the show recently. So I would, I would read those three, uh, and

00:26:17.360 then, and then branch out from there. This is from, uh, I'm going to try to pronounce this

00:26:22.900 correctly. Lailani, I think is, I'm sorry if I am mangling that. It says, my name is Lailani

00:26:31.480 and I have a few questions for you. One, I'm 16 and I live in Hawaii, but I lean toward

00:26:35.700 the right. Do you have any advice on staying alive in a deep blue area as a conservative?

00:26:41.840 I have noticed in my classes, uh, my teachers are openly left wing. Occasionally I will speak

00:26:47.420 up to offer a different opinion, but I usually don't say anything. Is it worth speaking up?

00:26:52.420 Uh, two, how slash why do you think conservatism became counterculture? And three, I've heard

00:26:59.300 you talk about vegetarianism slash veganism. I just did a second ago, uh, briefly when

00:27:03.760 you were talking about how certain animals are seen as normal to eat, whereas others

00:27:06.980 are not. I was wondering, given your take on that, would you ever consider veganism or

00:27:10.580 vegetarianism? I doubt you will ever see this, but if you do, thanks for reading. Thank you

00:27:15.220 for your show. I try not to be a fan, fan girl about anything, but I am a big fan of

00:27:19.080 your show. Um, hi, well, great to have you all watching all the way from Hawaii. I'll

00:27:26.340 try to tackle your questions one at a time here. Um, so number one, you ask if it's worth

00:27:31.080 speaking up to oppose the insanity you see around you. I'm going to say, yes, of course,

00:27:37.440 I think it's worth it. Um, but you should do so with prudence. You know, you aren't called

00:27:46.960 to spend every day, all day shouting your opinions into the sky. Like I do. Um, this

00:27:54.320 is something I was on the backstage show last night. I mentioned this, that people who are

00:27:59.600 in this line of work, the pundits and commentators who are in front of cameras or on the internet,

00:28:04.620 uh, I think we often get way too much credit because people will say to us, oh, you're so

00:28:10.940 brave and courageous. You're, you're, you're speaking your mind and sharing your opinion.

00:28:15.300 And well, yeah, but that's, that's my job. This is what I do. So I don't have to worry about

00:28:21.400 losing my job or having my whole life be blown apart because I state a controversial opinion.

00:28:26.100 It's literally what I do for a living. If it's not what you do for a living, then I understand

00:28:30.980 that you're in a bit of a different situation. Um, so you have to be prudent, uh, about it.

00:28:37.620 One of my favorite movies, uh, which I would recommend watching, which was originally a play,

00:28:42.300 uh, it's called a man for all seasons and it's about St. Thomas More. Long, long story short,

00:28:48.780 Thomas More was a close friend and advisor of King Henry, Henry VIII. King Henry wanted to divorce

00:28:54.320 and remarry, which is against the rules in the Catholic church. So eventually the King decided

00:28:59.640 to start his own church for, for this purpose. And, um, uh, he wanted to start a church basically

00:29:07.960 just so he could divorce and remarry. Yet that church still exists today, uh, which, which began

00:29:13.160 for the purpose of divorce. Um, anyway, and he wanted, he wanted Thomas More to come out and support this

00:29:19.080 move, but more was a Catholic and couldn't do that. But here's the thing. Thomas More didn't go out of

00:29:28.120 his way to martyr himself. Um, he didn't go around screaming from the rooftops that the King is a

00:29:33.900 heretic. He wasn't doing that. He wasn't, he wasn't begging to be a martyr. He took a more prudent

00:29:39.620 approach, trying to advise the King privately, uh, going through those channels and doing everything he

00:29:45.280 could to remain loyal to the King while also not betraying his beliefs. There's a great scene, um,

00:29:54.640 in the movie where he's explaining his, his approach to his daughter. And this is what he says. He says,

00:30:00.620 um, listen, Meg, God made the angels to show him splendor. He made animals for innocence and plants for

00:30:07.520 their simplicity, but man, he made to serve him wittingly in the tangle of his mind. If he suffers us

00:30:12.700 to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may, then we may stand to our tackle as

00:30:17.580 best as we can. And yes, Meg, then we can clamor like champions if we have the spittle for it,

00:30:22.520 but it's God's part, not our own to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in

00:30:28.160 escaping. Meaning that he wasn't going to deny his faith or do anything dishonest or cowardly,

00:30:34.340 but he also wasn't going to throw himself under the guillotine blade. Um, though eventually,

00:30:41.280 despite his prudence, he did end up getting beheaded, which fortunately isn't going to

00:30:46.040 happen to us these days. So all of that to say, stick to your principles, never lie for anyone's

00:30:53.240 sake, never pretend that you believe something you don't, um, speak up when you feel moved to do so,

00:31:01.020 and you feel like it's the right time, but also at your age and at your station in life,

00:31:05.700 one of your most important duties is to get through school, succeed in, in, in that environment,

00:31:12.280 get into adulthood. Um, so it's okay sometimes to say, you know, I'm not going to inject myself

00:31:18.560 into this controversy. I'm not going to weigh in on this. And yeah, I look, I've been through it too.

00:31:23.360 You, you're, you're sitting there in class and you hear your left-wing teacher say one lie after

00:31:28.460 another, after another, it's very frustrating. But, um, if you're arguing with your teacher

00:31:33.980 every day, all day and interrupting her constantly, that's just not going to be a key

00:31:38.400 to success. It's probably not the prudent approach. So you just kind of choose your spots and don't

00:31:42.980 feel like you're being cowardly or something. If you're not constantly, um, begging for confrontation,

00:31:48.800 uh, number two counterculture. Well, of course, uh, uh, the counterculture is whatever is against

00:31:55.460 the general movement of the culture, whatever stands against that tide and the tide has shifted

00:31:59.940 left rapidly. And so, um, now if you're heading right, then you're going to be counter to it.

00:32:04.840 You're rebelling against it, which aside from the difficulties that we've just talked about that

00:32:09.920 come with being counterculture, it's also kind of exciting, isn't it? It's, it's fun to be a rebel.

00:32:15.680 And especially when you're young, you know, young people, we don't want to just, I'm going to lump

00:32:21.500 myself in with a young person as well. Uh, we don't want to just typically youth is when you

00:32:28.000 have that energy to be rebellious and, and, and you don't want to just go along with the flow.

00:32:32.340 And so that's the advantage of being a conservative these days. And then as for vegetarians, I guess

00:32:37.600 I just answered that. I respect vegetarianism. Uh, as long as you don't shove it in people's face

00:32:43.860 all the time. I, I, I totally respect it. I could just never do it. Uh, I, I couldn't, I really could

00:32:51.420 not live that way. All right. This is from Nathan says, uh, I just wanted to say, I've listened to

00:32:56.100 all your episodes and during yesterday's episode, when trying to read responses to Cardi B's apology,

00:33:01.160 you said your first on air, I can't even, which essentially counts as a type of baptism.

00:33:06.860 Congratulations. You finally earned your millennial card. Yeah, Nathan, I, I guess I,

00:33:12.080 I finally understand that phrase. Sometimes you really just can't even even, you might not even

00:33:19.720 know. It's not, you don't even know what you can't. It's just, you just can't. That's the

00:33:23.800 only response possible. So I do finally understand that. Um, let's see here. Uh, we'll do one more.

00:33:32.200 Um, all right, we'll do this. This is from Rick says, Matt, I was following your comments about

00:33:39.080 Calvinism on Twitter a few days ago. Um, I knew you weren't a Calvinist, but I was surprised by

00:33:44.760 some of what you said. Do you really think that God doesn't have the right to decide who goes to

00:33:48.660 heaven? That's what I picked up from your statements. No, that's not what I think, Rick,

00:33:54.320 just to get everyone else up to speed on Twitter. A few days ago, uh, we were, I don't remember how it

00:34:00.600 started. I think honestly, I was, I was on a flight and I was just entertaining myself by having a

00:34:06.360 theological argument on Twitter. And so, uh, the discussion turned to predestination, which we've

00:34:11.420 talked about before. And I said that I reject the idea. I reject absolutely the idea that God

00:34:17.180 would send people to hell without any choice or involvement of their own. Uh, I reject the idea

00:34:24.780 that God makes some people and then destines them from hell to hell from, from the beginning,

00:34:31.620 you know, from, from even before their conception, they're already destined for hell, regardless of

00:34:36.640 what they do or believe or anything. Um, and I heard from a lot of people saying something similar,

00:34:42.860 uh, to what someone who emailed the show yesterday said, which is that, well, you know, none of us

00:34:47.880 deserve heaven. Uh, we all deserve hell. So you can't really complain about it. Well, the word deserve

00:34:53.180 in this context is a little bit tricky. Uh, so I'm not, you know, I certainly am not going to sit here

00:34:59.120 and say, I deserve heaven. I'm not going to say that, but everyone deserves hell automatically.

00:35:04.580 Uh, so a four-year-old who dies of leukemia deserves hell.

00:35:12.020 Where, based on what, what kind of a idea is that, do you really believe that?

00:35:19.720 See, that's, people say this kind of stuff. I, I don't, I don't believe that you believe it. I,

00:35:23.800 I can't believe that you believe that. I can't believe that you could look at a child dying of

00:35:28.180 cancer and say, yeah, yeah. The child deserves hell because that's what you're saying. You say,

00:35:31.920 well, everyone deserves hell. Some people are predestined. Yeah. They can't complain because

00:35:35.020 we all deserve what, I understand that might be your doctrine, but does it actually make any moral

00:35:42.700 or logical sense to you at all? And if it doesn't, then maybe there's a problem. Um, you know, I can

00:35:50.660 make sense of the doctrine of hell. If it's something that people essentially choose

00:35:56.360 of their own free will, they reject God, they don't want anything to do with them. And so

00:36:00.860 they don't get them. Uh, so I can understand that. But as a destination of eternal conscious torment

00:36:08.860 that a supposedly loving God makes people in order to send them to, no, because that's how

00:36:17.480 predestination would work. God makes people, puts them on a one-way street to eternal suffering.

00:36:22.800 They have no choice, no role. Uh, they are, they are made to suffer for all time.

00:36:31.160 And it does no good to say, well, they don't deserve heaven because even if I agreed with that,

00:36:36.100 well then why make them in the first place? That's what was the point of that creation?

00:36:43.940 What's the point of creating something simply to suffer forever? And then you're going to tell me

00:36:50.100 that such a God would be loving and merciful. As I've said before, uh, you know, come up with a

00:36:57.600 definition of love and mercy that includes that because I don't think you can. Um, so I reject

00:37:04.800 that. Absolutely. All right. Uh, actually I'll do one more really quickly because this has to do

00:37:08.300 with the daily wire or the backstage show last night, which was a lot of fun. Um, this is from

00:37:13.920 Mike. It says, I really enjoyed your discussion on daily wire backstage about the importance of marriage

00:37:17.860 and staying married. You make a great point about how going into a marriage, just as you're entering

00:37:23.100 adulthood, strengthens the bond and the likelihood that the marriage will stand the test of time.

00:37:27.380 However, for those who do get married later in life, what is your opinion on prenuptial agreements?

00:37:32.380 I know that most people go into marriage with the best of intentions, but it's difficult not to

00:37:36.340 look at it in a very practical way in knowing that there is always a possibility that it could end

00:37:40.500 a divorce. So when large sums of money are tied up in wealth and assets that could potentially be

00:37:45.160 divided, it creates a wicked incentive for divorce. If the marriage is failing,

00:37:49.080 especially when lawyers get involved, I've personally seen friends and family negatively

00:37:53.360 affected by this. And it terrifies me to even think about not having a prenup going into marriage.

00:37:58.020 I know this is probably not a very popular point of view among religious folks, but I am awfully

00:38:02.400 curious what you think about it. Um, so yeah, Mike, I, I, we talked about this on the daily

00:38:09.040 while or the backstage, uh, about divorce and everything. I understand the inclination towards

00:38:17.640 a prenup on, as you said, a practical level. It does make practical sense in a certain way.

00:38:23.300 Um, we can all say that marriage is indissoluble. It'll be until, you know, you stay married until the

00:38:31.160 bitter end, until death do you part. But the reality is you, you can't actually stop your spouse

00:38:37.420 from up and deciding to run off and leave you 10 years into the marriage. This does happen to people.

00:38:44.000 Um, if it happens, it happens. You, you, you can't stop it. Um, so then you think on a practical

00:38:52.000 level, well, maybe I should just be prepared for that just in case. It's, I don't think it's going

00:38:56.700 to happen, but in case it does, I should be prepared. But I think in the end, it just doesn't,

00:39:02.800 that just doesn't work. Uh, it, it can't work. You both have to go into the marriage,

00:39:11.360 absolutely committed to it, absolutely determined to stay in until death. You, you, if you have any

00:39:19.220 escape plan at all, any plan B, um, that will obviously make it clear that your commitment is

00:39:27.260 not absolute. It might be serious, but it's not absolute. And I, you, you can't go into a marriage

00:39:34.120 without that absolute commitment because then at that point, what's the point of the marriage at all?

00:39:40.060 If it's not going to be an absolute commitment, and if you're allowing for the possibility at the

00:39:44.720 very beginning that maybe this thing will fall apart, then I would say, why even get married?

00:39:49.900 Just don't get married. Um, yeah, without a prenup, a divorce might be a whole lot messier,

00:39:56.060 more expensive, more disastrous and everything, but maybe that's a good thing because maybe that's

00:40:00.820 all the more incentive not to bail. Divorce should be a horrible, expensive, catastrophic thing. Um,

00:40:10.100 because that that's what it is. This is kind of how I think about it. Imagine that you're,

00:40:17.000 you're sitting on a plane waiting while everyone else boards the plane. And you're sitting there,

00:40:22.060 of course, praying that no one sits in the middle seat next to you. And then you see the captain

00:40:26.180 board the plane wearing a parachute. Uh, and you say to your flight attendant,

00:40:33.420 why the hell is the captain wearing a parachute? And then she says, Oh, don't worry. It's just a

00:40:39.160 precaution. It just in case don't, don't worry. It probably won't be needed, but in case it is,

00:40:45.440 if things go wrong, well, the captain needs to be able to bail out. Uh, and, uh, you know,

00:40:49.880 because he doesn't want to die, obviously. Well, see that, that answer is not going to be

00:40:56.520 acceptable to you because what you want from your captain is an absolute commitment to not crash the

00:41:04.160 plane, right? That's what you want from your captain. You want your captain to be absolutely

00:41:07.680 committed to death, um, to the, to the proposition that he will keep the plane in the air. And you

00:41:15.940 want that commitment, even though, you know, that planes do crash, it does happen. It happened

00:41:20.420 recently. Uh, it's a tragic thing. It does happen. Even in spite of that, when you get on that plane,

00:41:27.020 you need to know that that captain is 100% committed and would literally die before bailing on the plane.

00:41:35.820 Um, and I think in a marriage, you need the same sort of commitment where I would, I would die before

00:41:45.220 I, the, the, this ends with my death, uh, and I would die before I would give up on it.

00:41:51.300 Also to, to extend the metaphor a little bit, let's remember that in this metaphor, I suppose,

00:41:56.720 you know, if, if, if marriage is the plane, uh, then you and the spouse are captain and,

00:42:01.820 and co-captain, um, well, who are the passengers that, that would be the children, right? In most

00:42:07.820 marriages, there are children involved in most divorces. There are children involved. Well,

00:42:13.160 um, you know, so you're flying the plane, the kids are running around back there. They're there.

00:42:21.500 You might have a bailout plan. You might have a parachute, but the thing is in a, in a marriage,

00:42:26.680 even if you have a parachute for yourself, there really is no parachute for the kids.

00:42:32.800 Um, the kids are going down with the plane. There's nothing that's going to stop a divorce

00:42:38.860 from, as Andrew Klavan put it to the backstage last night, from blowing up their world. Uh,

00:42:44.380 a divorce blows up the kid's world. Nothing is going to make it. Maybe the prenup makes it easier

00:42:48.820 for you. It's not going to make it easier for them. As far as they're concerned, their family was

00:42:54.140 just obliterated. So that's another reason to, uh, I think, be careful about prenups and we will

00:43:03.940 leave it there. Thanks for watching everybody. Hope you have a great weekend. Godspeed.

00:43:09.040 Today on the Ben Shapiro show, president Trump loses it at a Michigan rally. And it's pretty

00:43:26.640 hilarious. That's today on the Ben Shapiro show.

The Matt Walsh Show - March 29, 2019

Ep. 228 - An Epidemic Of Groupthink

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