In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Texas, some are calling for a ban on all red baseball caps, and others are concerned that the hats are a symbol of hate. Guest: Author and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Rebecca McKay.
00:00:00.920So an author, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, by the way, wrote on Twitter yesterday that people should stop wearing red hats, not just MAGA hats.
00:00:11.200They should stop wearing red hats in general. Any red hat at all is deeply triggering.
00:00:16.120Now, Rebecca McKay said, she said, is anyone else made really uncomfortable these days by anyone wearing any kind of red baseball cap?
00:00:24.340Like, I see one and my heart does weird stuff, and then I realize, and then I, she didn't say stuff, she said the S word.
00:00:33.320And then I finally realized it only says Titleist or whatever. Maybe don't wear red caps anymore, normal people.
00:00:40.180Also, for the love of God, the clever folks wearing Make America Read Again or whatever caps, no, you're making everyone scared. Don't do it.
00:00:48.420If you're here to be contrary, an equivalent here would be Western Hindus choosing not to use the swastika, the swastika symbol in public, despite it being sacred to their faith, because it would offend slash frighten people.
00:01:00.780The red hat has become a symbol of hate because of how its wearers act.
00:01:06.920You know, I have to really agree with Rebecca on this one.
00:01:11.240I think she makes a good point, but I would go a step further, because personally, I'm frightened at this point by anything red at all.
00:01:20.160I don't care. I don't care what it is. Any kind of red thing whatsoever.
00:01:24.560I was, I was, just for example, I was walking through a garden the other day, and, and I came up to a tomato plant, and I just vomited all over the tomato plant and, and wept.
00:01:37.140And I broke down in tears. I cried there for 15 minutes because I was so, uh, triggered and, and traumatized by the sight of the red thing.
00:01:45.720I panicked at a stop sign last week, which of course is red, and I plowed right into a whole group of people, and that's Trump's fault, not mine.
00:01:53.420Red is very frightening for me. I'm, I'm like a bull in a, in a rodeo. It just, uh, it's, it's, it just triggers me in that way.
00:02:00.300So stop with all the red people. I'm, I'm, uh, I'm in agreement with that. Actually, in all seriousness, the real truth is, and I don't know if I'm alone in this, but when I see the red hats, I still, I guess I'm stuck in the nineties because when I see red hats, I still think of Fred Durst.
00:02:16.980I don't think of Donald Trump, which, which is also pretty traumatizing actually. So I guess, uh, I don't know if I'm, that used to be, if you didn't grow up in the nineties, you don't know this, but red hats used to be a, that used to, someone else used to have that brand.
00:02:30.300And Trump co-opted it, which I think is pretty offensive. Okay. So the Democrats, um, somehow are getting more extreme in their anti-gun rhetoric. Maybe you didn't think that was possible, but, but here we are. Um, after that terrible mass shooting in Texas on Saturday, a psychotic killer, as I'm sure you heard, went nuts and, uh, started driving around, murdering random people, killed seven people, injured more than 20.
00:02:58.460Absolutely. Absolutely horrible. And the most horrible thing about it is just how completely normal this has, this has become. You know, we talk about it every time this happens.
00:03:11.740It's the same thing where we say, you think back 20 years ago and it, this sort of thing seemed like it was much less frequent. And when it did happen, it was a huge news cycle for months afterward. It seemed like it was like the only thing you talked about for months. You think about Columbine, for instance, but now it happens. And a couple of days later, we've all moved on because we're just so used to it.
00:03:37.700And that's, and that's, and that's, that's a, that's a terrible thing. It, it shouldn't be normal. It's become normal, but it shouldn't be. That's how it's become.
00:03:48.380Now, Democrats have their answer. And their answer is obviously to confiscate guns. When in many cases, as with this case, the real answer would have been, um, you know, in, in many of these cases, there are warning signs ahead of time.
00:04:09.820And if the appropriate people who were in a position to do something had done something, then it probably wouldn't have happened. So we don't need to get into laws and policies and everything else.
00:04:23.900We don't need additional laws. If the laws that were already in place had been enforced and the people who were in a position to do something had done something, then this might've been prevented.
00:04:36.820Because that's the thing about laws. You can add, you can, you can add 50 additional laws. You can add a hundred. You could pass 500 new anti-gun laws.
00:04:45.540It wouldn't matter if they're not enforced. And if we're not enforcing the ones we already have on the books, then what's the point of adding new ones?
00:04:54.500So we don't even need to get into the ideological aspect of it. It's just, we, if we're not enforcing the ones we already have on the books, then what's the point of additional laws?
00:05:02.400In this case, um, it's not a, it's not a matter of having enforced gun laws, but it turns out that the killer, uh, called the police. He was fired from his job on the day that this happened. He called the police himself and his, his job called the police.
00:05:21.640And apparently I think the FBI was notified as well, but nothing was done. And, uh, and then this happens.
00:05:30.560So we don't need to get into talking about gun laws, but of course we will. And that's, what's happened over the last few days.
00:05:37.040Um, now you, you, you, you may recall that up until very recently Democrats pretended that they were not interested in confiscating guns.
00:05:52.640They were very clear about that, uh, that this is not what they're looking to do.
00:05:58.420They want common, common sense gun regulations, so on and so forth, but they're not looking to confiscate guns.
00:06:04.620Now, for the first time they're, they're being relatively upfront about it, uh, as upfront as these people are capable of being anyway.
00:06:12.840Here's a Beto O'Rourke talking to reporters on Saturday and listen to what he had to say.
00:06:17.840Um, how do you address the fears that the government is going to take away those, uh, assault rifles, as you call them, if you're talking about buybacks and banning?
00:06:28.200Yeah. So I want to be really clear that, um, that's exactly what we're going to do.
00:06:34.680Um, Americans will, who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government.
00:06:41.660We're not going to allow them to stay on our streets, to show up in our communities, to be used against us in our synagogues, our churches, our mosques, our Walmarts, our public places.
00:06:53.340And then on Twitter, in reaction to the news that the shooter had used, uh, an AR-15, he said simply, buy them all back, period. Buy them all back.
00:07:01.920Now, I call this only relatively upfront. It's more upfront than Democrats have been in the past, but it's only relatively because the term buyback is, of course, a euphemism.
00:07:13.460Um, it's like, it would be like if, uh, if I were to, to commit an armed robbery, and when the police come, I said, hey, it wasn't armed robbery, it was a compelled donation, is all.
00:07:24.920It's the same kind of thing. A mandatory buyback, which is what the Dems want, is the same as confiscation.
00:07:32.300It is confiscation by another name. It's the exact same thing.
00:07:35.320It's confiscation with maybe a financial compensation tied to it, but the problem with the financial compensation is that it does nothing to address the violation of rights,
00:07:44.320the fundamental and, uh, you know, underlying violation of rights that, that's taking place.
00:07:48.460You can't, you can't, um, undo that by just giving someone money.
00:07:55.560So that's a problem, and it's compelled, and the government is just, in effect, giving you back your own money.
00:08:01.920Let's remember that if the government has money, whatever money the government has, it has because it's taken it from you and from me.
00:08:10.140And so now, they want to take your guns and then give you money in exchange, but they're giving your own money back to you.
00:08:18.880So they're buying back your gun with your money.
00:08:21.880It's basically like they're taking your gun and then taking your wallet out of your back pocket and taking a few dollars out of your own wallet and saying, here you go.
00:08:35.240Here's that, that, that, that, that's for your, here's for your trouble here.
00:08:42.080Meanwhile, here's, um, here's what Joe Biden had to say about, about guns.
00:08:46.280The idea that we don't have elimination of assault-type weapons, magazines that can hold multiple bullets in them, it's absolutely mindless.
00:08:56.800It is no violation of the Second Amendment.
00:08:59.180It is, uh, it's just a, a bow to the special interest of the gun manufacturers and the NRA.
00:09:24.320Um, so once again, the opponents of guns reveal that they really know nothing about guns, which is a problem.
00:09:31.720And it is a very telling thing that almost everyone who has a knowledge of the subject seems to be in favor of gun rights.
00:09:41.800That's an interesting correlation there.
00:09:46.980Um, but the, the most significant thing, aside from the ignorance on display, is just that the, the general anti-gun rhetoric, which is way more extreme and direct than it's ever been before.
00:09:58.080And what's really troubling about that, that the only reason why Democrats are doing this right now during the primary on the campaign trail is because they sense, they know, they've looked at the numbers, they've looked at the polls, they've done the focus groups and everything else.
00:10:13.700They have their internal polling data and they know that at least on their side of the aisle, there is a real appetite for this now.
00:10:22.240So if this was just a few radical politicians going around saying, oh, we got to confiscate all the guns, uh, I wouldn't be worried about that.
00:10:31.400What is worrying is that this is a trend now among democratic politicians because they are pandering to their base, which means there are millions of average Americans who are in favor of this.
00:10:47.760Not a majority, not a majority by any stretch, but they're out there.
00:10:52.960I think it's a, certainly a growing number of the, of the mob.
00:11:33.360A few years ago, TV celebrity, Rachel Maddow was at TV celebrity, Rachel Maddow.
00:11:38.040So, you know, it's an interesting label for it was at Rockefeller university to hand out a prize that's given each year to a prominent female scientist.
00:11:48.280As Maddow entered the auditorium, someone overheard her say, what's up with the dude wall?
00:11:53.340She was referring to a wall covered with portraits of scientists from the university who have won either a Nobel prize or the Lasker award, a major medical prize.
00:12:06.900So it's imposing, says Leslie Voss Hall, a neurobiologist with the university and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
00:12:13.960Voss Hall says Maddow's remark and the word dude wall crystallize something that has been bothering her for years.
00:12:21.020As she travels around the country to give lectures and attend conferences at scientific institutions, she constantly encounters lobbies, conference rooms, passageways, and lecture halls that are decorated with portraits of white men.
00:12:34.140Voss Hall says, it just sends the message every day when you walk by it that science consists of old white men.
00:12:41.000I think every institution needs to go out in the hallway and ask, what kind of message are we sending with these oil portraits and dusty old photographs?
00:12:48.260She's now on a committee that's redesigning the wall of portraits at Rockefeller University to add more diversity.
00:12:56.240Now, I'm not going to keep reading from it, but adding more diversity means, of course, taking down some of those portraits of those dastardly old white men.
00:13:08.100Those old white men who just so happen to accomplish marvelous things, and that's how they earn their spot on that wall.
00:13:13.960But we're going to take them down, not because they've been superseded in accomplishment by somebody else, but just because they don't have the right skin color or the right reproductive organs.
00:13:25.040So we're going to take down their portraits and put up portraits of women or people who don't have white skin, darker skin.
00:13:33.620Let's ask ourselves, though, why do all of these schools have all of these portraits, or why did they, at least, have all these portraits of white male scientists and doctors?
00:13:48.140Well, and I'm going to try to be as diplomatic as I can be when I say this, so as not to offend anyone.
00:13:58.000But the reason is that most of the greatest scientists and medical pioneers in history have been white males.
00:14:10.800Okay, so I just want to emphasize that.
00:14:14.860Most, by far, in fact, I mean, this is an understatement.
00:14:19.820By far, most of the greatest scientists in history have been white males.
00:16:06.900Okay, there's no additional, oh, he had help from the patriarchy.
00:16:10.480Like, no, this was just, if you understand how incredibly brilliant this guy was, you know, he went into a room and thought about it and invented calculus, okay?
00:16:22.680Same for Einstein and Copernicus and these other guys, just so incredibly brilliant.
00:16:30.120And that's why they're scientific, you know, pioneers.
00:16:37.360And that's why they get the credit for that.
00:16:42.480Now, what I also would not say, when we talk about, okay, so we have the fact that most of the greatest scientists in history have been white men.
00:17:10.480And I think one of the, you know, one of the ridiculous things about white supremacists, those that do exist, is that it's like they're trying to take credit for things that other people did.
00:17:45.200That's, aside from the, the, the, the moral, uh, the, the moral derangement of the white supremacist viewpoint, the, the, one of the other problems with it is just that you have these people who haven't done anything but, you know, post on message boards and play video games that are trying to take credit for these things that, that, uh, people other than themselves have done.
00:18:05.280So that's not the case, but it's just a simple fact that white men, uh, most of the great scientists have been white men.
00:18:18.660I don't see this as a point of shame or embarrassment.
00:18:23.700Okay, we are now told that we should be ashamed and we should be embarrassed that white men have done so much good in the world.
00:18:30.480Uh, and it, it's an interesting message because on one hand we're told, oh, white men are toxic bullies and oppressors.
00:18:38.800And on the other hand, we're essentially told they've done too much good in the world.
00:18:42.520They've contributed too much to medicine and science, so we have to take down their portraits and pretend that they didn't do it because it's, it's not fair.
00:18:48.760They didn't give anyone else a chance.
00:18:50.000Um, but I don't think embarrassment or, or anything like that is the right emotion.
00:18:59.180I, I would suggest a different emotion, maybe gratitude.
00:19:02.780Maybe we should be grateful for what these men have accomplished.
00:19:07.140Not because they're men or because they're white, but just because of what they accomplished.
00:19:57.180But when we start taking down and covering up the portraits and the statues so that they don't feel bad, that's, that's, that's not the right message.
00:20:05.480When you, if you have a young woman entering a university, she wants to be a scientist.
00:20:09.780She should be looking up to these guys.
00:20:12.240You got to keep their portraits up because you could say, look at what these incredible people achieved.
00:20:23.420So it's aspirational, but you lose that effect if you start taking it down and hiding it and saying, oh, don't worry about them.
00:20:30.400Um, and it's, it's absurd anyway, because if you're, if, if you're, if you're in a school and you're trying to get into the sciences and you're learning and you're reading textbooks, these, these white men whose portraits you've covered up or taken down, they're going to be all over the textbooks.
00:20:50.320Because like I said, these are mostly the people who invented modern science.
00:20:54.220So you, you can't escape them even if you want to.
00:21:05.360Uh, one of the things I wanted to talk about, uh, another article I wanted to read partially in mainly because it raises a question I've had for a while and maybe you guys can help me out with it.
00:21:15.560This is, this is just a question that I have.
00:21:21.760It says, it says a Catholic school in Nashville, Tennessee has banned the Harry Potter series because a reverend at the school claims the books include both good and evil magic as well as spells, which if read by a human can conjure evil spirits.
00:21:36.640According to the Tennessean, the publication obtained an email from Reverend Dan Rehill, uh, a pastor at St. Edward's Catholic school, Paris, which was sent to parents.
00:21:45.720In the email, Rehill explains, um, that he consulted several exorcists in the U.S. and in Rome, and it was recommended that the school remove the books, the Tennessean reports.
00:21:57.520Reverend Rehill said of the Harry Potter series, these books represent or present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception.
00:22:05.940The curses and spells used in the books are actual, are actual curses and spells, which would, uh, which when read by a human being, risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.
00:22:18.140Uh, and then it goes on how they, other parents had complained and so on, and that's, and so they took out the Harry Potter books.
00:22:24.840Um, I, I've heard this from other, from other people that the spells, the magic spells in Harry Potter are, quote, actual magic spells.
00:22:35.940Are they, though, I mean, actual magic spells?
00:22:43.380Because I don't think magic spells exist in reality.
00:22:47.920Have you ever seen anyone say a magic spell and then something magical happens?
00:23:00.460Um, so, but this problem with Harry Potter, this is a, a thing among some Christians, a not insignificant number of Christians in my experience.
00:23:12.940Some Christians are very uncomfortable with Harry Potter, uh, and maybe that's understating it.
00:23:17.980Um, but I have to say that I don't understand it personally.
00:23:27.640But this, and I haven't read it, and yes, I do say that even though I haven't read it.
00:23:34.520I mean, I also haven't read Twilight or, or, uh, you know, Fifty Shades of Grey, but I feel confident that I can say those are not literary classics, even though I haven't read them.
00:23:44.400Um, Harry Potter, I'm not going to say is at quite down at that level, but I, I don't think it's at the level of something like Lord of the Rings.
00:23:52.280But this idea that it's somehow spiritually dangerous, that I don't get.
00:23:58.960Yes, there are magic spells, there are evil spirits, evil forces, all that, but, but all of that exists, being a Lord of the Rings, all of that exists in Lord of the Rings too.
00:24:06.580And I get that Tolkien, Tolkien was a, was a, was a Christian, and there are some Christian elements in the Lord of the Rings.
00:24:12.180And Lord of the Rings is not a Christian allegory, as some people like to claim.
00:24:16.500Tolkien himself was clear that it was not that, wasn't meant to be that, but he was a Christian, a devout Christian.
00:24:46.920I, I think the depiction of evil in a story, whether it's magical evil or ordinary everyday evil, really doesn't much matter.
00:24:55.920The depiction only becomes problematic when the evil is either glorified or when we're given sort of a nihilistic view where there's really no difference between good and evil and they all blend together and in the end there is no good or evil.
00:25:11.640I think both of those are problems, especially for kids.
00:26:54.540When I was a kid, um, I was never a big Star Wars fan, but I definitely thought, like most people, I thought Darth Vader was by far the coolest Star Wars character.
00:27:17.260You've got Darth Vader, who's the cool bad guy that everyone sort of is more interested in.
00:27:23.140Uh, yet, as I said, Christians aren't worried about that.
00:27:25.900Um, and so I don't quite understand it.
00:27:30.300Now, there's a trend on the other side of the coin to get rid of literary classics like Huckleberry Finn and so on because it isn't politically correct and because it has language that is, uh, that's, they say is problematic.
00:27:43.320The stuff with Harry Potter, though I don't think that Harry Potter is a literary classic, but this stuff seems a little like the Christian version of that.
00:27:50.860But, um, if we're going to say, and I do say, that books with the N-word, books such as Mark Twain books with the N-word in them, should be allowed to stay on the shelves in schools because kids can be expected to take that in context and understand it in its context.
00:28:10.840If we're going to say that, then can't we expect kids to understand magical spells in their context?
00:28:23.760There's a, there's an interesting thing there, but I, I welcome your emails on that subject and I'm sure I will receive them.
00:28:30.140MattWallShow at gmail.com, MattWallShow at gmail.com.
00:28:33.900If you can, I would be interested if a Christian could explain to me why Harry Potter is a spiritual problem, but Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, for example, are not.
00:28:46.020That, that's the specific question I would like to read and answer to.
00:28:50.980And maybe I'll find out that there's a good answer.
00:29:11.740I can't believe I need to say it, but using FaceTime in public is completely outrageously inappropriate.
00:29:21.520And it's an absolute jerk move to do that yet.
00:29:25.360It seems to me in my experience that, um, that this is becoming more and more common where you've got, where you've got people that are sitting in a, in a coffee shop or something like that.
00:29:36.920And, and they've got their little pal on FaceTime talking to them as if they're in the room.
00:29:42.800Like put, talk, just pick up the phone and talk to them.
00:29:48.980You don't need to see their face the whole time.
00:29:52.780Now, is it, is that, is, is it like speakerphone?
00:29:55.360No, speakerphone is actually worse because there's really no reason for that.
00:29:58.920And I, and there are people who do that too.
00:30:00.100They'll sit there in public talking on speakerphone.
00:30:03.220You, in that case, you can't even see their face.
00:30:05.780So there's really no reason at all to not just pick up the phone and talk to them.
00:30:09.600We don't all need to hear the conversation.
00:30:13.500Now I know the, the answer is, well, what's the difference between sitting at a coffee shop?
00:30:18.840You've got someone on FaceTime talking to them.
00:30:21.820What's the difference between that and having an actual person sitting, you know, in the chair?
00:31:47.180Should faith come before reason or reason before faith?
00:31:53.460Yes, Danny, as with so many other things, I must disagree with Martin Luther here.
00:32:00.640And in fairness, that quote there, I'm sure there's a larger context to it, and I don't have the context here, so I'm just engaging with it as it's presented out of its context.
00:32:14.780Taking it like that, I would disagree with it.
00:32:17.260I think it's a big problem to sort of put faith over here and then reason and understanding over here as if they're two completely different categories of things.
00:32:34.360And then to say that they're at odds with each other and we should choose one or the other.
00:32:56.520Putting this Martin Luther quote aside, I hear this kind of thing from Christians sometimes.
00:33:02.620If we have to choose faith over reason, sense, and understanding, how do we...
00:33:07.760If you're saying, well, I have faith completely apart from your reason, your sense, and your understanding, then what do you mean that you have faith?
00:33:21.620What does that even mean in that context?
00:33:23.440What does it mean to say, I think this proposition is true, that there is a God, that Jesus is the Son of God, that the Bible is the Word of God, etc.
00:33:35.160What does it mean to say that you think that proposition is true if you are accepting it apart from reason and understanding?
00:33:42.820What does that mean, I think it's true?
00:33:44.440Well, you can't think anything without reason, and you can't understand the distinction between truth and falsehood without reason.
00:33:54.580That's what you use your reason for, it's what makes us human.
00:33:59.260To call something true is a judgment of reason, it seems to me.
00:34:04.920All of these things are linked, is what I'm saying.
00:34:06.940I don't think you can neatly separate them and put them into different compartments and different categories.
00:36:48.120So, anyone who would agree with that quote, I would challenge you to come up with a definition of faith that is completely separate from any notion of sense, understanding, or reason.
00:37:36.400That's kind of the definition of what reason is.
00:37:39.520Well, that's part of it anyway, is the ability to contemplate the truth or falsehood of a particular idea or proposition and come to a conclusion.