The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 264 - Why Religious Married Couples Are Happier

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 0.99

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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00:03:25.360 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. 0.99

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 1.00

00:04:40.040 household duties. Of course spouses should share household duties. I cook, I clean, I do all that 0.98

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 1.00

00:06:59.860 this. And so I think that's the way that it works. The other problem with the equal marriage 0.99

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 0.92

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. 0.98

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. 0.73

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 1.00

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 1.00

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. 1.00

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 0.97

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.92

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 0.55

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 1.00

00:12:03.620 out of the way, which is exactly the opposite of what you want husbands and, and, uh, fathers to 0.97

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, 0.92

00:12:15.020 uh, something to live by. And he's exactly right about that. Religious men have that code to live 1.00

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 0.94

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.98

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 0.99

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 1.00

00:20:59.780 they're going to learn drinking habits from their other irresponsible, stupid friends. 1.00

00:21:05.140 That's the way it goes. And then, as I said, once you hit the drinking age, 1.00

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. 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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? 0.99

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.95

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 0.95

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 0.99

00:32:25.360 high school. You poor baby. I know that I know that stings, right? But reacting to such a blow to 1.00

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 1.00

00:32:41.060 who was willing to be with you. That's not what he said. He used a more vulgar phrase, 1.00

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 0.99

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. 1.00

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. 0.99

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.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 21, 2019

Ep. 264 - Why Religious Married Couples Are Happier

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