Ep. 235 -The Hypocrisy Of Mayor Pete
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Summary
Mayor Pete, the trendy Democratic presidential candidate of the week, is accusing evangelical Christians of hypocrisy. But then he claims to be a Christian while supporting late-term abortion. What about his hypocrisy? Also, Cory Booker has introduced a slavery reparations bill, and we ll talk about the left s efforts to cure injustice with more injustice. And finally, what about parents who use child leashes? Is that a horrifying practice or is it actually practical and smart? We will discuss that, as well, on the Matt Walsh Show.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Mayor Pete, the trendy Democrat presidential candidate of the week,
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is accusing evangelical Christians of hypocrisy, but then he claims to be a Christian while
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supporting late-term abortion. What about his hypocrisy? We'll talk about that. Also,
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Cory Booker has introduced a slavery reparations bill. We'll talk about the left's efforts to
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cure injustice with more injustice. They seem very fond of that sort of strategy.
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And finally, what about parents who use child leashes? Is that a horrifying practice or is it
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actually practical and smart? We will discuss that very important issue today as well on the Matt
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Walsh Show. So tonight I will be speaking at Baylor University, as I'm sure you've heard by now,
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here in Waco, Texas, as part of the Young America's Foundation campus tour. If you can't make it out,
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you can catch the live stream on YouTube at YAF TV. So tune in and share, share, share, share.
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I have to say flying into Dallas last night was a little rough. It was a very bumpy flight,
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and I'm an extremely nervous flyer. I fly all the time, but it doesn't get any better. So just to
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give you an idea of how bad my paranoia is, in the middle of the flight, while the turbulence was
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really bad, I was frantically trying to get connected to Wi-Fi so that I would be able to
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text my wife goodbye in case the plane started going down. That's where my head was. And then
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the other thought, this is even more sad, even sadder. The other thought that I had after I thought
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about my family. My second thought was that if this plane goes down, some of the protesters at
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Baylor are going to be way too happy about that. And I started thinking of all the snarky tweets they
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would send about the fact that I died in a plane crash. And so I just started praying to God,
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like, please, Lord, don't give them that satisfaction. Just please. So essentially,
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I was praying for the plane not to crash out of spite. That's what it was. And my prayers worked
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because I'm here today. So, all right, a lot to talk about today. And we'll get into all of that.
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But first, I have to say one other thing here at the top. We're never going to agree on everything,
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another rough night like I had last night. Get Bowland Branch. All right, let's talk about a person
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that I have avoided discussing on this show, mainly because I don't want to have to deal with
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pronouncing this person's name. And so this will be the first time that I pronounce it because up until
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now I've only written it. This is my debut pronunciation. Very exciting stuff. You all get
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to be here for this. Okay. Pete Budigig. Budig. Budig. Budig. Budig. Budig. Budig. No, I already
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said that. Budig. Budig. Budig. I think that's it. Budig. Budig. Budig. Sounds like I'm summoning some
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sort of dark force from the underworld. Budig. Anyway, well, maybe we'll just call him Pete
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from here on out. He's one of the sort of long shot Democrat candidates, 38-year-old mayor of
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South Bend, Indiana, getting a lot of attention because of his youth, but also because he does
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have an impressive and interesting resume. He's a Rhodes Scholar, a combat veteran, clearly a very
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intelligent person. Well-spoken, formidable candidate, I think. And in a crowd that includes
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some candidates who are over 300 years old, I think his youth is also a big plus for him.
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Mayor Pete is also openly gay. And this is a fact that has come to the foreground in recent days. It's
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come to the foreground because he has put it in the foreground. A couple of days ago, while giving a
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speech to a gay rights group, he had this to say. Watch this. People talk about things,
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like marriage equality, as a moral issue. And it is certainly a moral issue as far as I'm concerned.
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It's a moral issue because being married to Chaston has made me a better human being, because it has
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made me more compassionate, more understanding, more self-aware, and more decent. My marriage to
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Chaston has made me a better man. And yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God.
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You may be religious and you may not. But if you are, and you are also queer,
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and you have come through the other side of a period of wishing that you weren't,
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then you know that that message, that this idea that there is something wrong with you,
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is a message that puts you at war not only with yourself, but with your maker.
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And speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice,
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it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade.
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And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pence's of the world would understand.
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That if you've got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir,
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is with my creator. So he's decided for some reason to go after Mike Pence. And this isn't the
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first time that he's talked about Mike Pence. I mean, he's been talking about Mike Pence a lot
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over the last few days. Keep in mind that Mayor Pete is a mayor in Indiana. Pence used to be governor
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of Indiana. So you think, okay, well, maybe Pence mistreated Buttigieg Pete somehow while they were in
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Indiana. And maybe that's why Pete has something against him. Well, actually, interestingly enough,
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we do have a clip of Mike Pence talking about Mayor Pete back in 2015 when he was governor and Pete was
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mayor. And so here's what Pence had to say about him. Well, I hold Mayor Buttigieg in the highest
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personal regard. And we have a great working relationship. And I see him as a dedicated
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public servant and a patriot. That unbelievable bigot. I mean, how could he say that? Oh, wait a
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second. No, he just said that Pete's a great guy and a patriot. He could not have been more glowing in
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his appraisal. But the interesting thing about Mayor Pete is that while he's openly gay, very liberal
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in many respects as well, he talks a lot about faith and is sort of inculcating this image of being a
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devout Christian. As you saw in that clip, as he's talking about God, his creator and so on. And he not only
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talks about faith, but he uses it against his opponents. Watch this from Meet the Press a couple
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of days ago. You said something rather strong about the president that you said it's hard to look at his
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actions and believe that they are the actions of somebody who believes in God. How do you square
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that assessment with the fact that the evangelical Christian community is so devoted to his candidacy?
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Well, it's something that really frustrates me because the hypocrisy is unbelievable. Here you have
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somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture or in
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church, where it's about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another
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word for immigrants, and making sure that you're focusing your effort on the poor, but also personally
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how you're supposed to conduct yourself. Not chest-thumping, look-at-me-ism, but humbling yourself
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before others. Foot-washing is one of the central images in the New Testament. And we see the diametric
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opposite of that in this presidency. I think there was perhaps a cynical process where he decided to,
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for example, begin to pretend to be pro-life and govern accordingly, which was good enough to bring
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many evangelicals over to his side. But even on the version of Christianity that you hear from the
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religious right, which is about sexual ethics, I can't believe that somebody who was caught writing
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hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind of
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person you want to be leading this nation. Now, all things being equal, I agree with some of what he
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just said right there. It's true that Trump's behavior is often not at all consistent with
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the gospel or Christian ethics. There's simply no denying that. And it's true that Trump has,
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as we know, a certain base of obsessive supporters who basically worship him like a god and have
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humiliated themselves in their faith by actively excusing some of Trump's worst conduct, including
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paying off porn stars who he had affairs with while his wife was at home with their infant son.
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And so he's not wrong about some of that. But speaking of unbelievable hypocrisy,
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Mayor Pete demonstrates it himself because here he is, or he was just there talking about faith,
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bringing faith into it. And he does this a lot, talking about the gospel and Jesus, the creator,
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everything. But then, then watch what happens. This is interesting. So he's talking about faith
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everywhere. Watch what happens though, when he's asked about late term abortion.
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So do you, do you support the late term abortion legislation that was passed in the New York state
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legislature as well as in Virginia? I don't think we need more restrictions right now. And,
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you know, what I've learned in Indiana, being at a place where, you know, a lot of my friends,
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a lot of my supporters even come from a different place than I do, being pro-choice. I just believe
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that when a woman is in that situation, and when we're talking about some of those situations covered
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by that law, extremely difficult, painful, often medically serious situations where life or health of
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the mother is at stake. The involvement of a male government official like me is not helpful.
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Do states have a right? Should states have a right to ban abortion at 20 weeks?
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That sounds like a constitutional question. I'm not a legal scholar. What I know
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is that these questions ought to be resolved by women in consultation with their doctors,
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not by the intervention of male politicians putting politically motivated restrictions on women's
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health care. Well, wait, wait a minute. What happened to the gospel? What happened to the
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creator? Pete said that God created him gay. Well, we can talk about that notion, but
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he is right, at least, that God created him. That's true. But did not, did God not also create the
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little babies who are killed by abortion? Do they count for nothing? What about them? It's just,
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it's, it's very fascinating, isn't it? That, uh, he's, he's talking nonstop about the gospel. As soon
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as late term abortion comes up, he's got nothing to say about the gospel. Apparently, uh, apparently,
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you know, he thinks God has, has no opinion on, on that subject. He thinks God has an opinion on,
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uh, on immigration. Uh, God has an opinion on Donald Trump, but apparently God has no opinion on,
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on abortion. This is the problem that liberals run into. They feel that they have to defend abortion,
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all abortion, even late term abortion. But that defense undermines everything else they say,
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especially on matters of faith and morals. Pete's whole bit about evangelical supporting Trump
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may have had some kick to it and may have had some real bite, but then it's just blown to
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smithereens because this guy, when it comes down to it, will at a, at a minimum, tolerate the killing
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of 32 week old infants in the womb. At a minimum, he'll tolerate it. At a minimum, he'll, he'll put up
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with it and say, well, I, you know, I, I, that's none of my business. So abortion continues to be
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an albatross for Democrats. As long as they support it, nothing else they say matters.
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And some issues are like that. There are some issues that, uh, you know, just, if you get that
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wrong, it, it, it destroys everything else you say. I mean, imagine if there was a candidate out
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there, um, defending slavery or maybe not even defending it, but just saying, well, you know, uh,
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it's, it's none of my business. People have property rights and I'm not going to get involved.
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They don't need to hear my opinion. Even, even if there was, even if there was a candidate saying
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that, taking a, uh, a kind of hands-off approach to the, to the question, well, that would obviously
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destroy his candidacy. And we would all say rightly so that, listen, there's, you know, it doesn't
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matter what else this guy, it doesn't matter how smart he is. It doesn't matter about his resume.
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Uh, it doesn't matter about his leadership skills or what, I don't care what this, what else this
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guy has done. If you get that question wrong, then you're not fit for leadership and, uh, your
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opinion doesn't matter because whatever else you say, you're obviously operating from a foundation
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that includes, um, treating human beings as property, as, as, as, you know, livestock. And so
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if that's part of your fundamental worldview, then whatever grows from there, whatever springs forth
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from that is, um, is going to be deeply flawed, uh, to say the least. And so slavery is one of those
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topics. Um, there, there, rape is another one of those topics. If a, if a, if a candidate was out
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there defending rape, we would say, again, that's a, look, that's a deal breaker and it should be.
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Well, abortion is in that, is in that category. Holocaust, Holocaust denial. That's another one.
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If a candidate is out there denying the Holocaust or justifying it, um, again, doesn't matter what
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else, doesn't matter what else they've done. It makes no doubt if they've cured cancer, if they're a war
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hero, none of that matters. If you get that issue wrong, you're not fit. And abortion again is one
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of those. This is the genocide of the unborn. If you can't get that right, if you can't figure that
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one out, if either you lack the, um, intellectual clarity and, and moral insight to see what's wrong
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with it, or if you lack the courage to speak out against it, although you know that it's wrong,
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either way you're unfit. And so Pete, mayor Pete is unfit, just like all the other, just like all the
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other, uh, Democrats. Okay. Let's take a look at this story from the daily wire, uh, uh, by Paul
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Bois in an effort to differentiate himself from the pack by moving as far to the left as he can on the
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political spectrum. Senator Cory Booker has now introduced a bill to the Senate that would study
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the payment of slavery reparations, according to Fox news. Um, on Monday, the Senator said the bill
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will study whether or not slavery reparations will help to alleviate past racial injustice in the
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United States. Uh, Booker said the bill is a way of addressing head on the persistence of racism,
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white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country. It will bring together the best minds to
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study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to write the economic scales of past harms
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and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed. Booker added that slavery
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in this country fueled a subsequent, um, system of white supremacy designed to keep black Americans
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from competing economically. Uh, and he goes on from there talking about white supremacy and so on and so
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forth. Well, let me see if I can help our friend, uh, Spartacus out here. Can we alleviate injustices
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from a hundred, 150 years ago? Uh, well, really I could just stop the question right there. Can we
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alleviate injustices from 150 years ago? No, we can't. There's nothing we can do about them. It's
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150 years in the past. It's, it's over. We can't do anything to write that ship anymore. Um, it's,
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it's, it's, it's, it happened. It's over now, right? There's, there's nothing we can do to go back
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and make that. Okay. Slavery was a, it was an outrageous injustice. It will always be that way
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in the past. And we can't go back and change it. If we could, I wish we could, but we can't,
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but especially can we alleviate injustices from 150 years ago by taking money from people who had
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nothing to do with it and giving it to people who never suffered the injustice in question? No,
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we cannot just as I cannot alleviate the injustice of my grandfather getting carjacked in 1962 by
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slashing my neighbor's tires. Um, that's going to do nothing for my grandfather whose car was taken
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and that's all there is to it. And who is, who is dead now. Uh, anyway, I don't know if my grandfather
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was actually carjacked. This is just an example, but it's not going to do anything for my grandfather.
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Who's, who's, who's, who's not even alive anymore. And, um, the person that I am punishing for this
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injustice had nothing to do with it. So I'm teaching him a lesson that didn't need to be
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taught. As far as I know, he's never, my neighbors never carjacked anyone. Even if I discovered that
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my neighbor is a descendant of the guy who did the carjacking, even then the slashing of the tires
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would just be another injustice added on top of it. We would be adding injustice to injustice and
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that solves nothing. Maybe you've noticed this about leftist policies. Hopefully you have that,
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uh, they leftists are always seeking to cure injustice by creating more injustice. Have you
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noticed that? So you cure the injustices suffered by immigrants by allowing them to break our laws and
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undermine our national sovereignty, which is just creates more injustice. You cure the injustice
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suffered by a raped woman by killing her baby who had nothing to do with it. You cure the injustice
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suffered by the poor, by stealing from the rich. Um, you cure the, the, uh, supposed injustices suffered
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by gay people by taking first amendment rights from Christians. You cure the injustices of racial
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discrimination by discriminating against white people in the university system and elsewhere
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with affirmative action. And, and now you cure, uh, the injustice of slavery by stealing from people
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who never owned slaves. So everything is a zero sum game with these people. Everything is, um,
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And I think more, maybe it's, it's more so that everything is a kind of a competition.
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And this is one of the, uh, fundamental flaws with the left's whole idea of human rights,
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uh, their human rights, their version of human rights, their claims to human rights are always
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zero sum. Like in order for this group to have rights, we have to take rights away from this
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other group. And it always works that way with the left, but the way that you know that something is
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a real human right is that it doesn't work that way. Uh, if something is a real human right,
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then you can grant it to a group of people without taking anything from any other group of people
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or without, or I should say you can, if it's a real human right, you can grant, uh, it to a group
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of people without depriving any other group of their human rights. Now, if you want to grant human
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rights to slaves, then you are in a sense taking something from slave owners that they never had a
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right to in the first place. So you're not depriving them of human rights, but in, in granting rights to
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slaves, um, the slaves had rights, but you're not taking rights away from anybody else because they
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never had a right to that, to begin with. They never had a right to own another person to begin
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with. Um, and that's the way that it works. Uh, uh, religious liberty, freedom of speech.
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If you, if you give someone the right to go out and speak their mind, live their beliefs,
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that doesn't take anything away from anyone else. It may mean that other people have to be
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inconvenienced or by, by listening to ideas they don't like them. They might even have to be offended
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by listening to ideas they don't like, but they never had any right to not be offended in the first
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place. But with the left, no, it's, it's a competition. So with them, it's, well, if, if you want
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to give rights to, to, to women, um, that means that you have to take the right to life from the unborn.
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But that's how you know that what we're talking about with women here that will, it's not, it's
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not a right at all. Women have human rights. They do not have the right to kill anybody any more than
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men do. Um, so that's how you know, all, all of these competing claims to human rights, it gets very
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confusing. Well, if you ever find a situation where you've got two competing claims and if one,
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if one group gets their rights, the other group gets, has, has rights deprived of them. That's
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how you know that something is wrong here. That's how you know that, that we're not actually talking
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about rights anymore. We're talking about entitlements and privileges and so on. All right.
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Before we get to emails, I had something else I wanted to mention. Um, very important topic,
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extremely crucial. I, I have been traveling a lot this month, as I mentioned a lot over the past,
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like four years really. And so I've been in very many airports and I have noticed this is anecdotal,
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of course, but I have noticed that, um, there's been a huge uptick in the number of parents who have
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their toddlers on leashes. This is something I noticed, especially in the last like couple of
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weeks. It seems every airport now that I go to, um, there are at least a few parents walking their
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toddlers around leashed. Now, often the leash is connected to the child's backpack, but a leash is a
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leash. I mean, let's be honest now. I want to say this. I was thinking about it and, um, I have long
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been anti-leash. I have long been one of those people who looks at the leash wielding parents
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and shakes my head and says to myself, Oh, that's awful. Oh, that's, that's how terrible,
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how dehumanizing for that poor child. But I have three kids, uh, five and under now,
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and I've been in crowded places like airports with all of these kids at once. I have had those moments
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where, uh, one of them runs off and for about 12 seconds, you, you, you're panicked and you,
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you think the tragedy has struck. And I will say that I, uh, I get it. Okay. I get the leash thing.
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I didn't, I didn't used to get it, but I get it now. Now I don't use leashes, uh, because I can't
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bear the looks that I would get from people like myself. So that's the only reason I don't use them.
00:25:47.380
And I suspect that's, that's actually the reason why most parents don't use them. It's not that you
00:25:52.160
really have anything against it. It's just that you can't deal. You know, how you always looked
00:25:57.560
at those kinds of parents and you don't want to get those same looks. And that's why you don't do
00:26:00.820
it. But, uh, I do get it. It's, it's practical. It makes sense. And I mean, if you've never at least
00:26:07.180
considered the option of using a leash, then that tells me that you've never been in charge of
00:26:12.700
keeping track of multiple young children at one time in a busy place, because if you have, then at the
00:26:17.680
very least you've thought about it, you've at the very least had a, had a moment where you thought,
00:26:21.420
okay, yeah, I, I, I, I see it now. There are a lot of things, um, that parents do that non-parents
00:26:32.120
will judge rather harshly. And that's, that's why parents can get defensive sometimes because
00:26:39.700
when they get these judgments from people who aren't even parents,
00:26:43.680
it can be a little, a little annoying. Um, or even some, you know, I've noticed also that
00:26:51.020
as, as parents, especially of young kids, or, or just if you're a parent of children that you still
00:26:57.040
have to look after, you're going to get judged by non-parents and also sometimes older parents who
00:27:03.620
have kids that have long since grown and moved out of the house, who it seems like, um, have forgotten
00:27:09.740
what it was like to actually have young kids, or maybe they don't understand some of the challenges
00:27:14.760
that come with raising kids in the modern world. Um, but I, over time, and I think this is a process
00:27:22.380
that a lot of parents go through, I become much more tolerant than understanding. I'm not tolerant
00:27:28.080
and understanding in many aspects of life, but in this aspect, I, I am increasingly. So when it comes
00:27:34.100
to parenting, another example is I used to hate the idea of, uh, of TVs and cars. I used to think
00:27:42.360
that, you know, we have TVs everywhere. Uh, do you really need a freaking TV in your car for your kids
00:27:48.620
to watch? I used to be, you know, I'd be behind someone in traffic and I would see through their
00:27:53.240
car, the, uh, you know, the screen on and some Disney movie playing and the kids, you know, the kids
00:27:57.820
are in there watching the movie. And I used to think, is that really necessary? I mean, do you really
00:28:02.560
need the TV there? But then I actually experienced driving eight or 10 or 11 hours in a car with three
00:28:10.080
kids, five and under. And I experienced that enclosed up close and personal whining and talking
00:28:16.560
and constant question asking, and are we there yet? And I'm hungry and I'm bored and blah, blah, blah.
00:28:23.860
And, um, and so, yeah, I get why you turn a movie on for them now. Why not? It's a tool that you have
00:28:30.500
available to you. It makes everything easier. It's not hurting anyone. So why not do it?
00:28:36.540
I think here's what happens. Everyone has these grand ideas about what kind of parent, uh, they're
00:28:43.340
going to be, what sort of, what sort of rules and policies they'll have in place once they have kids
00:28:47.720
and then they have kids. And, and pretty quickly they realized that a lot of those ideas are silly
00:28:54.780
and pointless and they're not worth the trouble. Uh, you had all these notions about, Oh, when I'm a
00:28:59.820
parent, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do this. There's a, there's going to be none of
00:29:03.120
that. And, and then you become a parent and you're like, yeah, you know, it doesn't really matter.
00:29:07.780
Um, so now you don't hopefully abandon, abandon all of your priorities and principles, uh, you know,
00:29:15.100
hopefully, but you kind of boil them down to the essentials. That's what ends up happening.
00:29:19.760
You figure out which lines you feel you and your spouse feel cannot be crossed. And then you
00:29:26.960
compromise on the rest of it. And that's fine. Like for me, I, one of the things that was always
00:29:31.920
important to me and to my wife is I don't like the idea of young kids playing video games.
00:29:36.520
So I said, um, we're not going to get video games for our kids at this age, or probably for a while
00:29:43.120
longer, no matter if all their friends have them, which at this point, um, my, all my son's friends
00:29:48.780
do have video games, but that's not something I want for our family. So, and we've stuck to that
00:29:53.600
and we're not going to do that. It's important to us. It's not important to everybody. Some parents
00:29:58.620
not important to them. They don't see it as a big deal and that's fine. I'm not judging them. It's
00:30:01.920
whatever they want to do. Um, some parents feel strongly about dietary things like, like soda.
00:30:07.480
You know, they won't let their kid go anywhere near soda. Uh, well, we let our kids have soda on
00:30:12.260
occasion. We let them eat junk food on occasion. Uh, it's, I don't really care that much. It's not a big
00:30:16.740
deal. I don't see it as a big deal. Some parents do whatever. That's fine. You figure out what your
00:30:22.360
lines are and then you draw them. And, um, and, and there do, there have to be some lines that are
00:30:29.040
just there and that you don't cross. You've got to have some of those. You can't just erase all of
00:30:32.960
them. Uh, because then you're going to, you know, then you're going to end up with spoiled bratty
00:30:37.180
kids who get whatever they want. So you obviously can't do that. But, um, there are going to be a lot
00:30:43.420
of lines that you drew before you actually had kids and you didn't know what it was like. And you
00:30:47.080
didn't, you didn't know what you were doing. And then pretty quickly, you see those as superfluous.
00:30:51.640
And, uh, and so you make practical decisions and compromise and that's okay because parenting is
00:30:56.400
hard enough and you don't need to create more challenges for yourself. You don't need to
00:30:59.840
make it harder than it actually already is. One big thing about parenting is guilt. You always feel
00:31:05.600
guilty. You always feel like you're not doing a good enough job. Like everyone else is, everyone
00:31:10.520
else is squared away with their parenting, but you're not, but that's not true because nobody has it
00:31:15.900
figured out. See, that's the secret you learn after a while is when it comes to parenting, no one knows
00:31:20.280
what the hell they're doing. We're all just, we're all just figuring out as we go along. Nobody
00:31:24.300
knows. I mean, these, these, these kids are, I mean, they're, they're human beings. They've got
00:31:29.360
their own mind. Like they've, they've got their own identity. They're, they, they, they have free
00:31:33.520
will. They can, I mean, you can only control them so much. Um, and so we're all kind of fumbling
00:31:40.060
around in the dark and figuring it out. And, and, and that's all right. Um, and so if you have to use
00:31:47.300
a leash, then you use a leash. That's my point. All right. So that was about what, 27 minutes on
00:31:54.040
child leashes. Good, good stuff. Good content. All right. Let's go to emails. Um, Matt Walsh show at
00:31:59.880
gmail.com, Matt Walsh show at gmail.com. Um, let's see here. So it says, uh, this is from Carl says,
00:32:07.400
Hey Matt, I've listened to you to Ben Shapiro for years and I've heard you on and off. I
00:32:11.660
recently started listening to you regularly. I appreciate that you speak often on Christianity
00:32:16.020
and that you dive deep into subjects. You ask hard questions and don't claim to have all the
00:32:19.820
answers. I've been a Christian for almost 12 years now. And I found that, uh, some of the nastiest
00:32:24.260
encounters people slash people I have dealt with are Christians. I've been through two church
00:32:29.560
collapses that ended with people not talking, calling each other demonic friendships, ending,
00:32:34.320
et cetera. Um, you receive a lot of angry email from fellow Christians. Why do you think
00:32:39.420
Christians behave this way on such a frequent basis? Keep up the good work. You got another
00:32:44.320
new fan, Carl. Um, hi, Carl. Good question. I think that there's, um, there's a lot in Christianity
00:32:54.560
about being hated by the world, uh, being set apart from the world, um, resisting the world
00:33:03.340
and so on. And, and, and all of that is true and important. But if a Christian doesn't have
00:33:09.900
the right perspective on those injunctions, if they don't have the right heart about them,
00:33:15.260
they may start to think that the world is literally everyone except themselves. Um, that it's just them
00:33:25.020
as the sole right person, the sole, holy, good person, and everybody else is wrong and therefore
00:33:35.680
deserving of their contempt and scorn and ridicule and so on. And, uh, that's a real temptation. I
00:33:41.240
think that can spring from the true words and warnings in scripture about the world. Uh, so I,
00:33:48.320
I think that has something to do with it. You know, of course, I mean, the easy answer is Christians are
00:33:52.880
people. They're not perfect and they have all the same flaws and foibles as, as other people. And
00:33:58.440
that's true too. But there, there is, as I said, there is something, um, there are things about
00:34:07.700
Christianity that if you don't look at them the right way and approach them the right way, uh, can
00:34:12.940
encourage you to act the way that, that you're talking about. Uh, so that's something we all have
00:34:18.400
to look out for. This is from Joseph says, hi, Matt, a man from, uh, a fan for a man also a fan
00:34:24.480
from Croatia here. Uh, some time ago, I asked a question regarding penal labor. The question was
00:34:29.620
basically about morality of the penal labor. Is it moral and fair for an inmate to be required to do
00:34:36.460
a job in some kind of prison factory? And maybe in which cases it is, or isn't haven't gotten the
00:34:42.460
answer. So I thought I might try again. Love your work. God bless. Uh, thanks Joseph. Sorry,
00:34:48.000
sorry that I missed your email when you first sent it. I think it's, it's not only moral and fair to
00:34:52.260
have inmates work, but probably more moral and, and fair than the system that we have here in the U S
00:34:59.020
anyway, where most inmates just sit around in their cells all day doing nothing. Uh, the idea behind
00:35:05.840
putting them to work is not just cheap labor, but actually giving the inmates something to do,
00:35:10.740
um, a way to contribute. And that has a restorative effect. I think hard work is almost spiritual.
00:35:17.700
In that way, it helps to cleanse you, uh, refocus you. So I think it's, it's, it helps towards the
00:35:25.960
rehabilitation effort. Um, just being locked in a cage all day, like an animal, I think that's way
00:35:34.080
less humane. So yeah, the idea of penal labor, I think is perfectly humane and, and a good idea.
00:35:40.620
There is a hazard though. Um, if you look throughout history where you don't want to have penal labor
00:35:46.940
because of the cheap labor, if cheap labor becomes the point, then all of a sudden it's less penal
00:35:54.520
labor and more like slavery. And there have been many examples of that in history. Think about the
00:36:00.020
Soviets for instance, where cheap labor was so much the point of the gulag system that people would be
00:36:07.600
sent to prison on bogus charges, just so that they could be enlisted to build railroads or whatever
00:36:12.380
else. So, uh, obviously you don't want that. That's a risk. But if you, if you have a, if,
00:36:17.520
if you could have a system that is just and fair, uh, and, and where the people who are,
00:36:23.160
you know, and do you have a, one of the problems in the Soviet union is that you didn't have a real
00:36:28.540
court system to actually find out if people were guilty or not. Uh, you had people that eventually
00:36:34.180
were forced to admit their guilt through torture and so on. So if you don't have that, if you have
00:36:38.700
a real court system, then I think it could be a, a good thing to have. Um, this is from
00:36:44.180
John says, dear Matt, this is going to be a long email and I apologize today. My dad came up to me
00:36:50.140
saying he wants to take a job in two to three years that would move us from Chicago to Utah.
00:36:54.880
Uh, that sounds great as a conservative on paper, but my parents are divorced and I've been anxiously
00:37:01.400
waiting for the opportunity to be with my mom more as I don't see her, uh, as often. I would
00:37:06.460
be able to finish my high school career and all, but I would be shaken up a little going out, uh,
00:37:10.900
due to this. It's always been a dream of mine to also live in Chicago, like my parents, but it's
00:37:15.260
grown a little hard due to the blueness of the state. I know Utah is a fairly religious state too,
00:37:19.980
which would be a plus, but I just don't know how I would see my mom or what career I'd go into.
00:37:25.840
Uh, I want to go into broadcast communications. If you could help me out even a little,
00:37:29.800
that'd be greatly appreciated. Well, it sounds like a tough situation, John. Um, so I'm sorry
00:37:34.140
you're going through that, but listen, here's the good news. Eventually you'll be 18, right?
00:37:39.100
And, uh, you'll be 18 and you'll be out of high school and then you can live wherever you want.
00:37:44.820
Uh, so, you know, go with the program now. If your dad's the main one who's in charge of you,
00:37:49.760
then you go with him, but it's only temporary. And if ultimately you decide that you want to live in
00:37:57.040
Chicago, you could always move back to Chicago or you can move wherever you want. That's the,
00:38:01.820
nothing is permanent at a year age or really at any age. Um, you can always change it if you want.
00:38:07.920
And, uh, that's, that's something, maybe you've heard me preaching this before. That's something
00:38:11.720
that I think young people, uh, who, who, you know, are adults and, uh, emancipated in that way.
00:38:19.760
But, but that's something that I think young people forget. I mean, you can, once you're 18,
00:38:25.780
you can go live wherever you want and the whole world is open to you. And so I would say, I mean,
00:38:30.720
take advantage of that. Thanks for the email. Uh, this is from Paul says, rank these top nineties
00:38:36.720
TV shows, NYPD blue, Ally McBeal, Frazier, Seinfeld friends. Well, I hate to say it, Paul, but I,
00:38:44.280
and I'm going to lose a lot of cred as a nineties kid here, but I've only seen one of those shows,
00:38:50.460
uh, Seinfeld. I've never seen a single episode of any of that. I've never seen a single episode
00:38:55.740
of friends ever. Um, I have, I have seen every Seinfeld episode, probably multiple times.
00:39:02.360
So, uh, you know, I would have to just put Seinfeld at the top and by default, uh, I hate to say,
00:39:08.500
look when I, in the nineties, I was, um, I was born in 86. So most of the nineties for me was,
00:39:16.180
was Nickelodeon. So, you know, if you really, you got to give me Nickelodeon shows to rank,
00:39:20.480
and then I could do that for you. Um, this is from Travis says, hi, Matt. I enjoyed your review
00:39:26.140
of the nineties bands yesterday. Can you please rank these 90 comedy movies? Keep up the good work,
00:39:30.680
Matt. Love the show. All right. The movies are Clerks, Dumb and Dumber, Tommy Boy, Office Space,
00:39:35.580
The Big Lebowski. Okay. Well, this is good. I have seen these. All right. I can do this.
00:39:39.960
Uh, this is a tough one. It's actually really tough. I was thinking about this.
00:39:43.540
I spent hours thinking about this when I saw this email. Um, all right. So I'll go five to one,
00:39:49.700
one being best, obviously. Uh, number fives will be Clerks. I know Clerks is a quintessential
00:39:54.800
nineties movie. It doesn't really hold up. I don't know if you've tried to watch Clerks recently.
00:39:58.280
It's, it's pretty unwatchable now. So I'll put that at number five. Uh, number four would be Tommy Boy.
00:40:03.240
Look, I love Chris, Chris Farley. Everybody does, but, and it's a funny movie. It's just,
00:40:08.000
it's not, it, it, it, it's funny just because Chris Farley is being Chris Farley. It's not,
00:40:13.040
it's not an especially clever movie aside from that. Um, number three would, I guess I put The
00:40:19.740
Big Lebowski. I mean, The Big Lebowski is a great cult movie, uh, iconic movie, but I don't even know
00:40:29.040
if I'd call it a comedy. I mean, it is a comedy, but it's not, it's not like a laugh out loud,
00:40:32.360
funny all the way through. Uh, it's just, it's kind of, it, it, it kind of defies all genres.
00:40:37.300
So for this, these purposes, I put it at number three. Um, number two, uh, I would put Office
00:40:42.840
Space. This was a close one. The Office Space is a classic and that's, that's one you can watch
00:40:47.400
that, that you can watch that whenever that's on TV, you just watch it. You always laugh.
00:40:52.420
Um, I would put number one, Dumb and Dumber. I just think it, it, of course it's an incredibly
00:40:57.960
stupid movie. It's called Dumb and Dumber, but, uh, the comedy holds up. I've probably seen Dumb and
00:41:02.920
Dumber 30 times and, or more. And I still think it's funny. Office Space and Dumber Dumber. You,
00:41:07.960
you can really switch those around because they both are funny every time you watch them. But,
00:41:13.720
uh, I would put Dumb and Dumber at number one. All right, let's do one more. Um,
00:41:18.600
okay. We'll do a, we'll do a good theological one here. This is from Victor says, hi, Matt. My name is
00:41:23.800
Victor. I was posed an interesting question when talking with a coworker today about intelligent
00:41:29.560
design and he being an atheist asked me, where did God come from? Who made God? He stated that
00:41:35.480
he has never heard a good answer for this. Therefore cannot believe in God. Listening to your podcast
00:41:40.920
about addressing issues on a scientific or factual basis with non-believers. What's your thought on
00:41:45.240
this? Thanks in advance. Okay, Victor. Well, your friend's, um, question is not stupid. It's not a
00:41:55.320
stupid question. Um, sometimes Christians can treat this objection like it, like it is stupid. Um,
00:42:03.000
but it's perfectly legitimate. Uh, if, if we are insisting that God made the universe because
00:42:11.560
everything has to have a beginning and nothing could begin without a cause, then it is absolutely
00:42:17.000
legitimate and logical for someone to say, well, what about God? And if you don't, because that is
00:42:23.720
the argument, that's one of the most compelling arguments for God is for the existence of God is
00:42:28.200
that, is that, well, everything has to have a beginning. The universe began, uh, a thing cannot
00:42:34.600
make itself begin because in order for a thing to do anything, it has to first exist. So that's why a
00:42:41.240
thing cannot will itself into existence. That's a logical contradiction has to have a beginning.
00:42:45.960
So, so God, uh, so you need some sort of creative force. That's an argument for God. But if you're
00:42:51.960
going to say something like everything has to have a beginning and, and you also believe that God exists,
00:42:58.360
then he must be included in everything. He's part of that, isn't he? Um, especially if you believe
00:43:03.720
that God is omnipresent. So then he's really part of everything. Uh, he is, uh, you know, um,
00:43:09.720
in everything. Well, you want to be careful with that. You don't want to sound like you're a pantheist,
00:43:13.800
but you get the point. So that's a, that's a logical response. And too often I hear theists
00:43:21.000
respond to that by saying, come on. Well, yeah, obviously God's an exception. You don't want to
00:43:26.980
sound like you're special pleading. Um, so how do we respond to that? Well, we respond to it this way.
00:43:36.320
Uh, God, uh, God by the Christian understanding, um, by the, you know, really the monotheistic,
00:43:44.280
uh, understanding, the Abrahamic religion, understanding, really God is the, is the ground
00:43:52.240
of all being, right? He is, he is, he is not seen. Uh, we don't think of God the way the pagans do,
00:44:00.360
um, or did, uh, maybe still do. If there are pagans out there, we don't see God, despite how
00:44:06.340
the atheists portray our belief, we don't see God as a man in the clouds, um, holding a, you know,
00:44:12.760
staff with a white beard, sitting on a throne kind of thing. Um, such a, that kind of God would
00:44:19.080
absolutely need a beginning. He would need his own God to have created him, but that's not how we see
00:44:24.680
God. That's not this sort of sophisticated, um, idea of God in Christianity. We see God as the,
00:44:34.940
as the, the ground of all being, the foundation upon which all of reality exists. He is a non-contingent
00:44:44.240
being in that all things that exist that we see around us are all contingent on other things for
00:44:52.700
their existence. Uh, they, they, they contingent, they needed something else to have created them,
00:44:58.680
to have spawned them. Uh, they rely on something else for their existence. So all things are
00:45:03.600
contingent things, but God is not. And it seems a logical conclusion that we cannot possibly live in
00:45:11.660
a universe filled only with contingent things. If everything is contingent, if everything is
00:45:17.680
dependent on something else for its existence, then eventually you're going to get to the end of
00:45:22.680
that chain. And then what, what, what's at the end of it, what's there, you're going to get to that
00:45:27.720
sort of last link on the chain of a contingent thing. But then if it's contingent, then what's,
00:45:35.280
what is it a contingent upon? You're at the end of the chain, right? So that means that at bottom,
00:45:42.740
you have to get to something that just is, it just is, it just, it, it, it, it just exists.
00:45:49.940
It is existence. And that thing that is, must have the ability to create what else there is.
00:46:00.540
Um, that must be the non-contingent contingency. And that being must be timeless because time has a
00:46:11.720
beginning, um, and is therefore contingent. It must be spaceless because space has a beginning.
00:46:18.260
And, uh, so, and it must be creative because it created all these other things. So it must be a
00:46:25.440
timeless, spaceless, creative, non-contingent being. And that's what we mean by God. Um,
00:46:36.100
hope that made sense, but that's basically how you respond to that objection. And, and I would just
00:46:41.800
stress again, um, you know, respond to it in a, in a thoughtful way, not, not a dismissive way.
00:46:49.980
Um, because it's, uh, yeah, this idea of a non-contingent beings and all these guys. I mean,
00:46:56.720
it's not like this is, these are difficult concepts. And so if someone has never encountered
00:47:01.820
them or doesn't understand them, then that doesn't make them stupid. Um, doesn't make their
00:47:06.120
questions stupid. It just means that, you know, it's something that needs to be explained.
00:47:09.000
So, all right. Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Uh, hopefully I'll see
00:47:12.780
you out at Baylor, Baylor tonight. If you're, if you're in town and if not, I will talk to you
00:47:19.280
Hey everybody. It's Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan show. Trump says there's an
00:47:36.440
emergency at the border and the media Democrat complex spends hour after hour saying he's wrong.
00:47:41.680
And if he's not wrong, he's to blame. And if he's not to blame, look, there's a crying baby.
00:47:45.980
We'll talk about it on the Andrew Klavan show. I'm Andrew Klavan.