The Matt Walsh Show - May 21, 2019


Ep. 264 - Why Religious Married Couples Are Happier


Episode Stats

Length

38 minutes

Words per Minute

175.48502

Word Count

6,787

Sentence Count

509

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on the Matt Wall Show, in a shocking development, the New York Times publishes an
00:00:04.980 article claiming that religious women are happier in their marriages than non-religious women,
00:00:10.560 which is only shocking because it's the New York Times saying it. I'm not shocked at all by the
00:00:14.960 claim. I think it's probably true, and I want to talk about why. Also, Republicans want to raise
00:00:20.020 the smoking age to 21, which is very stupid, and I'll explain why there as well. Also, what's the
00:00:26.040 preferable living situation, city or country, urban or rural? This apparently is a controversial
00:00:32.120 topic, and we'll talk about it today on the show.
00:00:39.900 Well, do not be alarmed, folks. I did, as you can see, transition to the summer beards. I took quite
00:00:46.260 a bit off. And, you know, whenever you have a beard and you make a beard change, people always feel
00:00:52.120 entitled to give their opinions and to tell you that, oh, they liked it better before or whatever.
00:00:58.400 Well, let me just say, I have beard autonomy, okay? My beard, my choice. And you can't make
00:01:04.140 decisions with my beard, and I believe that strongly. Although there are times when, you know,
00:01:08.560 someone likes the change of beard, and that's offensive too. So, like, you know, I cut this down
00:01:14.720 this morning, and then I came out of the bathroom to show my wife, and I said, hey, it's a lot shorter.
00:01:19.080 What do you think? Kind of shocking, right? And she said, no, I think it's great. I like it a lot.
00:01:23.100 It's good. And I said, oh, so you didn't like the beard before, is what you're saying. You thought I
00:01:28.640 was ugly before, is what you mean. You hated my beard before, just like you hate me. And then I
00:01:33.660 ran back into the bathroom and wept into a pile of beard clippings. Kind of a weird way to start the
00:01:39.400 day. But, you know, I start every day by weeping in the bathroom, actually. All right, let's, a lot of
00:01:45.380 interesting topics to talk about today. But before we do that, I want to tell you about
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00:02:06.480 hamburger. Who knows? They could have been feasting on a dirty diaper right before that. So think about
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00:03:25.360 let's begin with a story that you would never expect to see in the New York Times, but indeed it
00:03:29.000 was in the New York Times. The headline is, this is what it said, it turns out that the happiest of
00:03:35.880 all wives in America are religious conservatives. You know that the New York Times is readership.
00:03:42.200 They're going to be a big fan of stories like that. And we'll get to how the readership reacted
00:03:46.360 in a minute, but the article begins, blue marriages are better, or at least that's the conventional
00:03:51.560 wisdom. Couples who live according to egalitarian values, sharing domestic responsibilities like
00:03:56.640 housework and cooking have long been seen as superior by most academics, journalists, and public
00:04:01.280 intellectuals engaged in the national conversation about the American family. Well, there's your
00:04:06.600 problem right there, first of all, that we've got intellectuals, public intellectuals, journalists,
00:04:10.980 and academics who are apparently leading the conversation about the American family. Well,
00:04:15.800 I don't really trust what any of them have to say on the subject of what makes the healthiest family.
00:04:21.420 I don't trust them on a lot of things, but especially on that subject. So it's no surprise that they
00:04:26.700 were wrong. The whole problem with this equal marriage idea, the egalitarian marriage, is that
00:04:32.260 the problem is not, let's be clear what the problem isn't. The problem isn't that spouses are sharing
00:04:40.040 household duties. Of course spouses should share household duties. I cook, I clean, I do all that
00:04:46.700 stuff. I'm not a baby. I'm going to contribute to the house. Clearly everybody in the house should be
00:04:51.940 contributing. Kids too, right? Husband, wife, kids. So that's great. But the egalitarian approach is
00:05:00.400 generally, the way it works is it ends up being a 50-50 thing, kind of a splitting Solomon's baby
00:05:07.040 situation where I'll do 50, you do 50. If I ever have to do 52 and you're doing 48, that is a travesty
00:05:14.900 and an injustice. And so then there's always this bean counting going on that has to be exactly equal
00:05:21.620 all the time where I go this far, you go that far, neither of us have to go further than the other
00:05:26.500 person goes. And that approach doesn't work. And it doesn't work because it's selfish and therefore
00:05:34.900 it's not sacrificial. And in a marriage, the thing that makes a marriage tick and work and the thing
00:05:41.760 that's going to make a happy marriage is when you have sacrificial service, when you are sacrificially
00:05:46.620 serving your spouse, which means that you're not always keeping track to make sure that they're
00:05:54.980 doing equal to you. And there are going to be times when you do 52% and they do 48. There are
00:06:00.680 going to be times when you do 80% and they do 20%. There are going to be aspects of running the family
00:06:06.640 in the house where you're doing almost everything and your spouse is doing almost nothing in that area.
00:06:13.140 And then there are going to be other areas where your spouse is doing almost everything and you're
00:06:16.340 doing almost nothing. It's not equal. So you're not, you're not focused on equality or just focused
00:06:21.780 on serving the house, serving the family and doing what needs to be done. I think that's the only way
00:06:26.020 to have a healthy marriage. Like in my family, you know, we're a single income family. So I earn the
00:06:32.940 income. And as far as earning income goes, I do basically 100% of that. But my wife, when I'm gone,
00:06:43.860 she's doing basically 100% of the parenting of for, for that period of time. So it's, and we also
00:06:51.560 can't say, I can't really say actually that I'm earning 100% of the income because I couldn't do
00:06:56.300 this if my wife wasn't doing what she's doing and she couldn't do what she's doing if I'm not doing
00:06:59.860 this. And so I think that's the way that it works. The other problem with the equal marriage
00:07:03.840 thing, and I'll get back to the article in a second, because I, it'll take forever to get through
00:07:08.120 this if I pontificate for 30 minutes about each sentence that I read. One other thing though,
00:07:12.340 the problem with the equal marriage fundamentally is that marriages are not equal and cannot be equal
00:07:18.500 because husbands and wives are not equal. And they're not equal because they're different.
00:07:23.460 I'm not saying that one is superior to the other. It's not the point. Non-equality is not always about
00:07:30.220 inferiority and superiority. Sometimes it just means that two things aren't the same. Equal means the
00:07:35.840 same. Non-equal therefore means not the same. If you were to ask me, are trees and flowers equal?
00:07:42.220 I would say, well, that's a really stupid, weird, non-sequitur question. No, they're not equal.
00:07:47.620 And then if you said, well, you're saying trees are better than flowers? No. What does that even mean?
00:07:52.700 Better? I don't know. What does that mean? No, they're just different. I like them both. They're
00:07:55.760 both great. I like having them both in my, uh, in my yard. They both serve a purpose. It's just,
00:08:01.140 they're not the same as all. And it's the same with husbands and wives. They're not the same.
00:08:04.820 So they're not equal, but it doesn't mean that one is better than the other. All right. Um,
00:08:12.000 going back to the article, it turns out the happiest of all wives in America are religious
00:08:16.020 conservatives followed by their religious progressive counterparts. Fully 73% of wives
00:08:21.480 who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands
00:08:25.860 have high quality marriages. When it comes to relationship quality, there is a J curve in women's
00:08:30.620 marital happiness with women on the left and right, enjoying higher quality marriages than
00:08:34.900 those in the middle, but especially wives on the right. Um, when we look just at women's political
00:08:41.420 ideology, using the general social survey, another nationally representative survey of American
00:08:45.620 adults, we see a similar curve in marital happiness for American wives. It turns out the bluest and reddest
00:08:51.000 wives are most likely to report that they are very happy in their marriages. To be sure the general
00:08:56.120 social survey curve is closer to a U curve as the level of marital happiness for the group of extreme
00:09:01.040 liberals and liberals and the group of extreme conservatives and conservatives is essentially
00:09:05.380 the same. Um, together, these two groups account for about one third of American wives. All right.
00:09:10.660 The point is what they're saying is that the people on the so-called extreme ends of the spectrum
00:09:16.480 are the happiness, happiest, while people in the middle are less happy.
00:09:21.060 Um, which may, so you've got religious conservatives who are the happiest and then second place are
00:09:29.500 progressive religious women. And then the people in the middle are miserable. It turns out now the
00:09:36.760 article suggests some reasons for that. It says maybe folks in the middle don't have the same community
00:09:41.600 support because when you're affiliated with a group, you know, religious group, a church, you're going
00:09:46.660 to have that community support will make you happier. There's probably some truth to that.
00:09:51.000 They also talk about how the men on both ends of the spectrum tend to be more involved, which makes
00:09:55.280 the wives happier, which obviously is true. And I think all that's true. We'll get back to the,
00:10:00.320 to the men in a second, but I think there's something else at play here and it's much more, um,
00:10:07.100 foundational. Marriages are happier and healthier when they are structured around something,
00:10:14.680 around something greater than the marriage itself. So the marriage has to have a point to it
00:10:20.080 that goes beyond itself. And it's the same for people. We have to have a point that goes beyond
00:10:26.800 ourselves that looks, that looks outside of ourselves, um, above ourselves. Religious couples
00:10:34.360 answer to a, to a higher authority. They, they have a higher purpose that they look to and that they
00:10:41.000 call upon. So they're not winging it as they go. They're not making it up as they go along.
00:10:46.140 Um, they're not confused as much. And it means that ideally that there's going to be humility as
00:10:53.240 well because both partners realize that they are not the ones in charge. Right. I think non-religious
00:11:02.240 couples aren't always sure about the grand plan. Uh, ultimately they don't know what direction
00:11:07.600 they're going as a family. They make up their purpose every day. They try to build a new
00:11:11.660 foundation for their family every day and, uh, from scratch. And it just doesn't work. There's
00:11:19.160 going to be confusion and, uh, resentment and competition and all of that. It all creeps in
00:11:26.560 when you don't have that religious foundation. Um, now the part about men is important too.
00:11:33.720 The article says, in fact, in listening to the happiest secular progressive wives and
00:11:39.280 their religiously conservative counterparts, we noticed something they shared common devoted
00:11:43.200 family men, both feminism and faith give family men a clear code. They're supposed to play a big
00:11:48.260 role in their kids' lives. And it shows both culturally, culturally progressive and religiously
00:11:52.860 conservative fathers report high levels of paternal engagement. Now I have to be skeptical about the
00:11:58.660 idea that feminism gives men a code. I mean, the code for men and feminism is shut up and get
00:12:03.620 out of the way, which is exactly the opposite of what you want husbands and, and, uh, fathers to
00:12:08.760 be doing. But it is true that men do need a code. That's John Wayne said, a man's got to have a code,
00:12:15.020 uh, something to live by. And he's exactly right about that. Religious men have that code to live
00:12:20.680 by, which gives them purpose and meaning. And they bring that purpose and meaning into the family.
00:12:25.560 Um, and it gives their family purpose and meaning. And I think that's where a lot of the happiness
00:12:28.980 comes from. I thought it was interesting reading the comments about this article on social media,
00:12:34.700 uh, because the comments are filled with people insisting that there's no way religious people
00:12:42.900 are actually this happy. Let me read a few of these comments. It says, this is hilarious.
00:12:50.720 They all asked their spouses if it was okay to answer the survey in the first place. Then they made it a
00:12:55.460 dinner table conversation to make sure they answer the questions correctly. I know evangelicals.
00:12:59.900 Women do not have separate lives. Does this, does this person sound like someone who knows
00:13:04.220 evangelicals? Yeah. They're all sitting around the woman, uh, the, the wife was afraid to answer
00:13:08.880 the survey. So they all sat around the table and the wife said, gee, how should, what should we say
00:13:13.900 folks? Uh, should we all say that we're, that we're happy? Is that what we should tell the survey
00:13:17.640 person? And the husband is sitting solemnly at the head of the table. You will say you're happy.
00:13:22.900 We are a happy family. Damn it. Um, that is, that's how progressive secular progressives
00:13:30.280 see religious people. That's, that's how they imagine our family's work. It's not by the way,
00:13:36.700 someone else says can confirm what all other ex-evangelicals are saying. Self-reporting
00:13:42.120 on this is not a reflection of reality. Conservative women are taught that being anything other than happy
00:13:47.040 is a spiritual and moral failure. I have never heard that taught ever in a church. Um, someone
00:13:54.900 else says what Christian wife is going to fill out a form with anything, but extremely happy. It's in
00:13:59.300 the Bible to state things that might not be true to bring them into fruition and on and on and on.
00:14:05.680 What you notice about unhappy people, and I can call these people unhappy because it's very clear.
00:14:10.980 Uh, and I know that they're unhappy because unhappy people cannot accept and don't want to hear
00:14:21.680 that anyone else is happy. If other people's, if other people's happiness makes you cynical
00:14:29.320 and ticks you off, that's a pretty good indication that you are a very unhappy person. And that's what
00:14:36.640 you see happening here. All right. Um, let's, uh, let's move on. So the Republicans have decided to do
00:14:44.800 a little bit of nanny stating. They just can't help themselves. You know, Republicans have a few good
00:14:49.200 weeks and then they got to follow it up by going back to the nanny state. Well, and, but this actually
00:14:55.140 proves this particular bill I'm going to talk about proves my theory that bipartisanship is actually
00:15:01.520 bad because this is a bipartisan bill brought by McConnell and Tim Kaine, a Democrat. And this bill
00:15:07.940 would raise the minimum age for buying tobacco to 21 from 18. And the idea here we're told is to stop
00:15:15.940 the epidemic of teenage vaping because there's always got to be an epidemic of teenagers consuming
00:15:21.840 something that they're not supposed to consume. And that's, that's going to kill them. And so we
00:15:26.460 got to have laws and pass laws and everything to stop teenagers from doing it. Um, and it never works
00:15:32.640 ever, never works. So let's get into this a little bit, raising the tobacco age to 21. Um, okay. So,
00:15:42.560 uh, first of all, at 18, you are a legal adult. Okay. Your parents are no longer responsible for
00:15:53.260 you. They can kick you out of the house and kick you to the curb. And it's not child endangerment
00:15:58.380 anymore because you're not a child. You can go overseas and die in combat. You can be, you can be
00:16:03.500 executed. You can earn a life sentence. You can vote. You are an adult and treated like an adult by
00:16:10.760 the law in every way, except you can't buy a beer. And now they want to say you can't buy tobacco
00:16:15.200 products either. And that's absurd. It's simply absurd. If a person is old enough to fight and die
00:16:23.000 for their country, they are old enough to buy a beer period. I think it's, I think that's a pretty
00:16:27.300 straightforward and logical equation. If you are psychologically competent enough to take on that
00:16:36.760 responsibility of fighting for your country or to be held responsible for committing a crime to the
00:16:41.300 point of death or to vote and participate in our democracy, if you're psychologically competent for
00:16:47.360 all of that, then you're psychologically competent to drink and certainly to buy a tobacco product.
00:16:53.000 I have never heard a good argument explaining why a person should be able to die for their country at
00:16:59.840 18, but not buy a beer. I have never heard a good argument for that because every argument always
00:17:05.280 goes back to, well, I personally don't like it. I, I that's, that's every argument basically is I
00:17:10.800 don't like drinking. It's better if you don't, in my opinion. And so therefore, yeah, 18 year old
00:17:15.320 shouldn't be able to do it. Well, there are a lot of things that I, that, that you might not personally
00:17:20.620 like and that you might not think personally people should do, but that doesn't mean that we can set
00:17:25.420 arbitrary age limits and prohibitions. And it certainly doesn't mean that we should do that or that those
00:17:32.740 efforts by the government are going to be at all effective. Um, you know, so raising the, the age,
00:17:42.860 uh, it's accomplishes nothing. What has, think about the drinking age at 21. What has that accomplished?
00:17:50.420 Has it prevented a single teenager from drinking? I hate to scandalize with this information,
00:17:55.700 but college kids are binge drinking every night in this country. 18 year old college kids are drinking
00:18:01.240 as much as they could possibly want, uh, and way more than they should want every single night.
00:18:07.540 And the laws against it have accomplished nothing at all. 16 year olds are playing beer pong in their
00:18:13.300 friends' basements. This is a common occurrence. The law is not stopping it because alcohol is
00:18:19.040 everywhere because it's legal for everyone else, which means that there's no, that there is no shortage
00:18:23.140 of it. And, uh, even if you did make it illegal for everyone else, there still wouldn't be a shortage
00:18:29.080 of it as prohibition conclusively showed us. So, um, what does a higher age limit for this kind of
00:18:37.400 stuff do if it doesn't actually accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish? Well, I think it does
00:18:42.780 two things. Number one, when you make the, when you heighten the age limit for something,
00:18:51.360 you make it seem cooler to teenagers. Now, this is one of the basic truths of life and of teenagers.
00:19:02.000 When you tell them they can't do something, it's just going to seem cooler to them, which doesn't
00:19:06.480 always mean that you should tell them they can do it, but it is something to keep in mind that
00:19:11.620 whatever you're telling them not to do it, you've just made it cooler. Something to remember.
00:19:16.880 It's a fact. If you know any teenagers, or if you were a teenager yourself at one point in your life,
00:19:22.900 and most people were, I'm told, then you must know this drinking beer seems really cool when
00:19:28.160 you're 16 and 17 years old, largely because you can't do it legally. Now, when you get older and
00:19:33.280 you're of drinking age, you know, I'm 32 years old. I drink beer. I enjoy beer. I don't see it as
00:19:39.220 this cool, impressive thing with a mystique to it, where whenever I drink, I got to brag about it,
00:19:44.900 take pictures of myself drinking, post it online, tell everybody, hey, man, guess what I had last
00:19:50.420 night? A beer. Yeah, pretty cool. I had three beers, you know, that whole thing. Grown adults
00:19:57.800 don't do that. Kids do that because they think it's so cool because it's illegal is the point.
00:20:04.600 And so not only have we made it this forbidden elixir, which is now cool to kids, but because
00:20:15.580 they can't do it legally in full view of everybody else, what we've ensured is that they're going to
00:20:20.520 go down in their friend's basement to drink because every teenager has a friend whose parents are
00:20:26.340 neglectful and don't pay attention to what they do in the basement. So they're going to go to that kid's
00:20:30.120 basement and they're going to drink. Um, they're going to go to house parties. They're going to
00:20:34.080 drink in a parking lot somewhere at 10 o'clock at night. I mean, they're going to find a place to
00:20:37.940 do it and they're going to do it. And, and so all you've done is you, you have ensured that they
00:20:43.660 aren't going to learn responsible drinking from adults because adults are now legally prevented from
00:20:49.280 teaching them responsible drinking. So instead of learning it, instead of looking up to adults and
00:20:54.800 saying, oh, that's how you drink responsibly, they're going to look parallel to their friends and
00:20:59.780 they're going to learn drinking habits from their other irresponsible, stupid friends.
00:21:05.140 That's the way it goes. And then, as I said, once you hit the drinking age,
00:21:10.640 alcohol loot is the mystique. And pretty quickly, in most cases, people stop doing keg stands and they
00:21:16.120 just have a drink of wine with dinner because it's a normal everyday thing. It's not a big deal.
00:21:22.480 That's the point. We make a big deal out of alcohol in this country. We make a huge deal out of it.
00:21:28.640 And that only makes it worse. Whereas I think you'll find in some countries where they don't
00:21:34.240 make a big deal out of it and where kids are drinking wine with dinner at the age of 13.
00:21:41.140 Again, not every case, but in many cases, you're not going to have all this binge drinking
00:21:44.300 because it's normal to them. So that's what the drinking age does. It makes alcohol seem cooler,
00:21:51.440 ensures that kids are not going to learn responsible drinking.
00:21:53.560 And I think a similar thing will happen with tobacco. Do you realize how cool you'll make
00:21:59.900 vaping seem to 18-year-olds if you tell them they can't do it? They already think it's cool.
00:22:06.080 I don't. Personally, if you're going to have tobacco, I think a cigar is the way to go.
00:22:10.580 But I guess I'm not going to be doing any anti-tobacco PSAs anytime soon with that message.
00:22:15.660 Hey, kids, try cigars instead. No, but kids already like it. So if now you go and say,
00:22:25.120 oh, you're not allowed to do that until you're 21, it's illegal now. You'll get a citation if
00:22:29.580 we catch you vaping. All you've done is you've ratcheted up the vaping cool points by like 50.
00:22:34.960 It's completely stupid. All right. Before we get to emails.
00:22:44.560 Sally Goldenberg is a reporter, city hall bureau chief at Politico, New York. She's been traveling
00:22:51.400 through Iowa, apparently, venturing outside the safe confines of the concrete jungle. And she's
00:23:00.240 been shocked by what she's encountered. And she wrote this over the weekend. She said,
00:23:05.860 observations from Iowa. It is very flat. Driving is monotonous. There is more unbuilt land in one
00:23:12.040 block than New York has in an entire borough. Dirt roads are terrifying. No one carries almond milk.
00:23:19.140 And caucus goers are extremely well informed. So at least she put one positive in there.
00:23:24.340 I could do something similar for, you know, for New York. I could say observations from New York.
00:23:28.840 It's crowded. It smells weird. Driving is impossible. There are more billboards in a city
00:23:34.920 block than Iowa has in the entire state. Homeless people pee on the sidewalk. People drink almond
00:23:41.020 milk for some reason. You can walk 27 miles and never see a tree. The gas stations don't sell live
00:23:47.080 bait. Much more horrifying experience, in my opinion. And, you know, Sally is getting a lot of flack for
00:23:56.740 this, and rightly so. Because it's a problem that the people who are tasked with reporting the news
00:24:03.880 and with keeping us informed, with telling us, you know, what we need to know, don't understand us.
00:24:12.260 That's what we get from this. They literally do not understand us. They only understand life and
00:24:16.980 culture in their urban bubble. Because if you're surprised and horrified by dirt roads and a lack of
00:24:23.600 almond milk, then that's a problem. That tells me that you don't understand the country well enough
00:24:30.460 to speak to it. I don't want to get into the culture war thing about urban versus rural, although
00:24:37.060 I did inadvertently get into that, and I'll talk about that in a second. When it comes to the people,
00:24:43.120 I think it's a stupid thing to get into, are there better people in the city or in rural?
00:24:46.900 Well, I've been all around the country. I've lived on the East Coast most of my life. I've spent a lot
00:24:51.880 of time in Baltimore, New York, Washington, Philly, you know, up and down that corridor.
00:24:58.440 And I've also, I've lived in the country. I've lived in Kentucky. I've visited probably 30 or so
00:25:04.620 states in the last few years, everywhere from North Dakota to LA to, you know, California,
00:25:09.760 Alaska, uh, Ohio, Montana, all around. Um, and people are people everywhere you go. In my
00:25:20.720 experience, there are good people, bad people, nice people, mean people everywhere you go.
00:25:26.460 But in terms of personal taste, in terms of the environment that you're in, uh, I can't
00:25:34.320 see how anyone would prefer the city over the country. I, I, I don't get that.
00:25:40.580 And I, I made this point in response to Sally Goldenberg. I made the point that out in the
00:25:45.140 country, you have open spaces, uh, grass, trees, wildlife, privacy, quiet. And I just,
00:25:53.720 how could you prefer crowds and concrete to that? And then I wrote that tweet and I found out this
00:26:00.520 morning that apparently the tweet sparked a backlash, which, which I do. Sometimes I spark backlashes.
00:26:05.680 I don't mean to, but I do. And this one did, I didn't even know it, but this, uh, New York
00:26:12.360 news channel, they did a story about my tweet. It's, it's just watch this.
00:26:18.120 This is, uh, from a provocative right wing blogger named Matt Walsh. So, but maybe it
00:26:25.000 was meant to, to get this reaction, but, but here's what he wrote. Yeah. How can anyone
00:26:29.240 actually prefer living in a crowded city over a more rural area with open space, green grass,
00:26:33.940 trees, privacy, and quiet? I mean, do you really need to have 98 stores within walking distance?
00:26:38.740 Is proximity to retail really the most important thing? I don't get it.
00:26:43.760 Walsh often says outlandish things looking for a response. And he got a response from a bunch
00:26:49.940 of New Yorkers, including New York ones, Jillian Jorgensen, who said, imagine thinking the only
00:26:55.940 thing an urban lifestyle offers is proximity to retail. I mean, shaking my head at this whole
00:27:01.520 thing. Darla said the opportunities to be exposed to other cultures, lifestyles, religions,
00:27:06.340 and creative hubs, all also within walking distance. Arguably part of the problem of America
00:27:12.140 right now. Robert says, oddly enough, people over the age of four understand that not everybody
00:27:19.420 likes exactly the same stuff they do. Hear, hear. Newsworthy stuff there, folks. That is newsworthy
00:27:26.980 material. I don't like cities. You know, uh, halt the presses, let everybody know. I don't like cities,
00:27:33.520 but I stand by it. I stand by it. Number one, because I have found out that apparently people in cities
00:27:41.540 are kind of whiny and sensitive, especially New Yorkers. I, that is the one critique I'll make
00:27:45.820 of, of the people. Not true of all of them, but I have noticed this about New Yorkers that if you
00:27:52.540 don't bow down and worship New York and talk about, Oh, it's the greatest city in the world. Such a
00:27:58.160 wonderful city. Oh my gosh, New York, New York. It's wonderful. If you don't do that, they get very
00:28:03.680 offended. They need you to tell them that New York is great. They need to hear that from you. And if you,
00:28:10.240 if you don't say that, God forbid you go to New York and you say, yeah, you know, it was all right.
00:28:15.060 That's kind of my feeling about New York. I visited. It's fine. There are a lot of people,
00:28:18.920 there's stuff, there's buildings and there's, uh, restaurants and yeah, it's nice. It's fine. It's,
00:28:24.000 it's okay. I'm happy to leave. I'm happy to be there for a few hours or a couple of days,
00:28:28.320 but I'm also happy to leave. And a lot of New Yorkers can't handle that reaction. They don't like it.
00:28:34.260 They need you to love it. Um, a little bit needy in my opinion. I think, uh, people out in the
00:28:41.880 country, a little bit less needy. They, they, they definitely don't care. That's one thing I'll
00:28:47.180 say. As far as the people go, if you go out into the country in rural areas, those people do not
00:28:51.960 care if you like it or if you like them. They're friendly people. They're nice people, but your
00:28:57.300 opinion of them and of their lifestyle, they couldn't possibly care less. They're not going to try to
00:29:02.160 convince you. If you say, Oh, I don't like it. There are too many cows. It smells like cow poop.
00:29:07.040 They're going to say, well, you're, you're free to go. See you later. Um, but in the responses to
00:29:16.720 this, to what I said, the one thing that jumped out at me is when people are talking about why
00:29:22.480 living in the city is better than living in the country. One thing that kept coming up is convenience
00:29:28.460 and how the, the, the city is much more convenient. And I think that's interesting
00:29:34.220 because yeah, I agree in some respects. Now traffic is not convenient, but yeah, in a city,
00:29:41.080 depending on where you live, you could walk outside, walk right down the street to convenience
00:29:44.680 store. You, you, you've got everything you want. Some, depending on where you live, you could have
00:29:48.820 everything you want within a couple of blocks. Uh, whereas if you live out in the country, you might
00:29:53.620 have to drive 20 or 30 minutes to get to a grocery store, God forbid. So that's convenient, but I
00:29:59.940 don't think we want to structure our lives around convenience. GK Chesterton said that an adventure
00:30:06.880 is an inconvenience wrongly considered, meaning that, yeah, you could look at it as an inconvenience or,
00:30:14.540 you know, if you've got to drive 30 minutes to the grocery store, you could look at it as an
00:30:18.720 opportunity. If you live out in the country, you look at it as an opportunity to, to see the view.
00:30:25.580 Um, go look at it that way. And if you live in a rural setting, here's what I know. You walk outside
00:30:31.900 your house in the morning, you're going to hear birds chirping. You're going to hear wind rustling
00:30:37.440 the trees. You, if you have a, a, a brook on the property, you might hear water gurgling. Uh, you'll hear
00:30:44.320 maybe in the, in the faintly in the distance, you'll hear a cow mooing or a dog barking or something.
00:30:49.580 And it's serene and it's beautiful. And it's, uh, to use a new agey phrase, it's very centering,
00:30:56.600 right? It helps you center yourself, whatever that means. It's human, I guess. It feels like a more
00:31:04.560 human experience. Whereas in the city, there are a lot of other humans. So it's human in that sense,
00:31:10.760 but I don't think people are meant to live in gray and concrete all the time. I feel like this is a
00:31:18.980 need. You need, you need trees and air and you need that. I, at least I do. Um, all right. It is
00:31:29.480 interesting though, when you think about it, that so many of the people who live in cities identify as
00:31:33.820 environmentalists, yet they're nowhere near a natural environment. Whereas out in the country,
00:31:39.780 nobody calls themselves an environmentalist yet. They live in the environment all the time.
00:31:44.960 I mean, I am a, I am an environmental conservationist. I'm a beekeeper. Okay. I am
00:31:50.520 helping the environment. I would never describe myself that way, but, uh, but that's what I'm doing.
00:31:56.160 All right. Um, by the way, yesterday was world bee day and none of you jerks wish me a happy world
00:32:04.120 bee day, even though you know that I'm a beekeeper. And I'll tell you something. I am not going to forget
00:32:09.580 that. How dare you? All right. This is from Paul Matt wall show at gmail.com Matt wall show at gmail.com
00:32:14.700 from Paul says, Mr. Walsh, you poor, poor wretched creature. I wonder what could possibly have happened
00:32:20.480 in your childhood to make sure to make you such a sniveling coward that a few girls reject you in
00:32:25.360 high school. You poor baby. I know that I know that stings, right? But reacting to such a blow to
00:32:30.800 your fragile little ego by spewing hatred towards half of the species that knows how unappealing you are
00:32:36.020 will only make matters worse for you. I understand from your stupid little bio that you found a woman
00:32:41.060 who was willing to be with you. That's not what he said. He used a more vulgar phrase,
00:32:46.240 vulgar phrase. So why are you still so sad and scared and angry? Incidentally, the phrase
00:32:52.600 theocratic fascist is an oxymoron. And if you truly believe in your deluded little noggin that you're
00:32:58.220 somehow carrying the message of Christ, I've got news for you. If this mythical figure were an actual
00:33:02.940 one, he'd have you earmarked for an eternity in hell for being such a baby. F you, please die.
00:33:13.100 Hi, Paul. Thank you very much for that feedback. Valuable as it is. I don't have much to add except this.
00:33:22.040 Perhaps I am as terrible as you say. Maybe that's true. Maybe I'm an awful person. Who knows?
00:33:31.240 But then how does it make you feel that you are over in your corner stewing over me, thinking about
00:33:39.540 me, hating me, writing to me, describing me to myself, and yet I don't know who you are or care.
00:33:51.000 And I never will know who you are or care. And after this moment right here, this moment,
00:33:57.820 this is your moment to shine. This is the moment I'm speaking to you. But after this moment,
00:34:01.700 I will never think about you ever again as long as I live. And yet I'm stuck in your head.
00:34:11.020 That's got to stick, doesn't it? Thanks, Paul. All right. From Patrick says, let's see. Hi,
00:34:19.320 Matt. On the show, you were discussing your view on capital punishment. I'm curious what you think of
00:34:22.560 the argument that capital punishment shouldn't be allowed given that there is, although small,
00:34:25.820 a chance of a wrongful conviction. I do believe there are some horrendous actions one may take
00:34:29.940 that deserve death as punishment. But since our judicial system is not flawless, I'm unsure whether
00:34:34.880 or not the government should be trusted with the power of sentencing people to death. Keep up the
00:34:38.800 good work on the show. I'm a big fan. Thanks, Patrick. Yeah. Our justice system is not, you're
00:34:47.560 correct. It is far from flawless. And that is a concern, obviously. It's a big concern. Maybe the
00:34:55.920 number one concern with the death penalty. To put an innocent man to death is unspeakably unjust. And
00:35:02.220 we know that it has happened in America. But I think you can get, you can be really, really,
00:35:13.060 really, really certain that somebody is guilty. Or I should say, Becca, you can get really, really,
00:35:21.860 really, really close to certainty that someone is guilty. So you can be very, very close to certainty.
00:35:28.440 You'll never be 100% certain. In the sense that I can't even be 100% certain that this desk exists.
00:35:36.900 I am very, very, very close to 100% certainty. But I'm like 99.99999%. But there's a chance I'm
00:35:44.020 dreaming. There's a chance I'm hallucinating. There's a chance I'm high on LSD. I've never done
00:35:49.120 LSD, but who knows? I mean, maybe if you did it, you'd forget that you did it. I don't know how it
00:35:52.520 works. There's a chance that I'm in the matrix. There's a chance that this is actually a
00:35:58.080 transformer that'll turn into a giant wooden robot. Who knows? Technically, those are all
00:36:05.440 possibilities. But they're so remote, so slim, that you effectively don't have to consider them.
00:36:13.540 And for all intents and purposes, you're certain. I think you can get close to that with a guilty
00:36:19.280 conviction these days. Because you've got DNA evidence. You've got even like video, GPS. I mean,
00:36:26.840 cops can check on your phone, see where you were. You can see you were there, DNA. They got a murder
00:36:31.580 weapon. Now, there are plenty of times people are convicted without all this stuff. But what I'm
00:36:35.840 saying is we can theoretically get very close to near certainty. And then also people will admit,
00:36:43.580 there are plenty of people on death row who have admitted that they did the crime. Now, but here's my
00:36:48.600 point. Is it possible that someone, you could have DNA evidence, video, GPS, a confession,
00:36:59.020 and the person is still innocent? Yes, it's possible. But it's probably about as possible as
00:37:06.720 the idea that this death doesn't exist because I'm dreaming. It's like in that same realm,
00:37:12.940 which is why the standard is to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond any doubt. If we have
00:37:21.300 to prove guilt beyond doubt, then we could never convict anyone of anything because you can never be
00:37:26.620 technically beyond doubt about, especially about something that someone did that you weren't there
00:37:32.900 to see. And even if you were there to see it, we know that eyewitness testimony is notoriously
00:37:37.620 unreliable. So it's reasonable doubt. If you're beyond reasonable doubt, then I think that's enough
00:37:43.780 to put someone in prison. And if it's enough to put someone in prison, I think it's enough to
00:37:47.480 execute them as well. Because it's certainly almost as bad, it would seem, to put an innocent man in
00:37:55.920 jail for his whole life as it is to execute him. So either way, it's horrific, which is why you want
00:38:01.140 to be beyond a reasonable doubt. Got a few other emails. I think we will save these for tomorrow.
00:38:13.640 mattwalshowatgmail.com, mattwalshowatgmail.com. Thanks, everybody, for watching. Thanks for listening.
00:38:17.660 Godspeed.
00:38:31.140 Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, a court targets President Trump over his accountant's records.
00:38:35.820 Plus, Trump moves to stop his former White House counsel from testifying. That's today on The Ben
00:38:40.040 Shapiro Show.