The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 330 - The Non-Existent Vaping Crisis

00:00:00.000 Okay, so the media and politicians tell us there's a crisis, an epidemic, an outbreak,

00:00:08.500 a catastrophe. These are actual headlines. These are actual words. And it's gripping our country.

00:00:14.400 And worse yet, our children. Think of the children. They are caught in the middle of

00:00:19.400 this thing. And the disaster is so very disastrous that the White House is now leaping into action.

00:00:25.660 President Trump has announced that his administration will move for a ban on flavored

00:00:31.680 e-cigarettes. So yes, vaping. Vaping is the crisis. Vaping is what threatens to bring down

00:00:38.160 the very structures of human civilization. It will bring about Armageddon if we do not act

00:00:43.380 immediately. We'll talk about this, this vaping ban, which I think is not only stupid, completely

00:00:52.380 without basis, unjustified, but also politically catastrophic for the president in many ways.

00:01:00.260 We're going to talk about that in a second. But first, no one, you know, really has time

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00:01:59.860 to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in Walsh. That's

00:02:05.020 Stamps.com, enter Walsh, and start to save time and money. So, vaping is,

00:02:15.200 the crisis that we're dealing with this week. Trump, at the White House yesterday, talked to

00:02:21.760 reporters about his plan to ban most, almost all flavors of e-cigarettes. And, well, I'll play this

00:02:34.280 for you. And you tell me if his explanation makes any sense at all. Listen to this.

00:02:39.860 But we can't allow people to get sick, and we can't have our youth be so affected. And I'm hearing

00:02:45.920 it. And that's how the First Lady got involved. She's got a son together that is a beautiful young

00:02:53.620 man, and she feels very, very strongly about it. She's seen it. We're both reading it. A lot of

00:02:59.940 people are reading it. But people are dying with vaping. So we're looking at it very closely. And,

00:03:05.520 you know, if nothing else, this is a conference that's going to let people know about it, because

00:03:09.580 people are going to watch what we're saying. And parents are going to be a lot tougher with

00:03:13.560 respect to their children. A lot of people think vaping is wonderful. It's great. It's really not

00:03:18.340 wonderful. That's one thing I think we can say definitely, Commissioner. It's not a wonderful

00:03:24.540 thing. It's got big problems. We have to find out the extent of the problem. It's so new.

00:03:29.120 It's so new. But we're going to find out. And I hope that parents that, you know, they have

00:03:36.480 children, and the children are a certain age. I hope they're going to be able to make wise

00:03:41.780 decisions, maybe based on what we're saying today. But the Commissioner and Alex Azar, they're

00:03:47.220 going to be coming back over the next pretty short period of time, a couple of weeks, with

00:03:51.100 some very strong recommendations.

00:03:53.120 Well, okay, then. Yeah, let's ban it because Melania doesn't like it. That's basically his

00:03:59.960 reason. Yeah, my wife doesn't like it. So we're going to get rid of it. Great idea. Yeah, because

00:04:05.020 Melania's son, not his son, Melania's son, people are harping on that, where he said Melania's son.

00:04:13.060 And I'm not going to harp on it, but it is a weird way of describing your own child. I can't

00:04:19.320 imagine referring to my son as, you know, my wife's son. Just very strange. But anyway,

00:04:25.980 he says Melania's son is a beautiful young man, and that's why we should ban vaping. All right,

00:04:32.780 great. Makes total sense. Now, leaving aside the not insignificant question of whether the

00:04:39.760 president has the constitutional authority to unilaterally ban a consumer product, and by

00:04:44.600 the way, the answer is no, he does not. Not even close. I think the question we have to ask

00:04:50.460 ourselves is, is all of this apocalyptic fervor justified? Is there really anything that might

00:04:58.800 reasonably be described as a vaping epidemic, as we're being told? And this isn't just, again,

00:05:03.660 the president. This is the media. These are many other politicians are talking about the vaping

00:05:08.780 epidemic. Is there one? Are people dropping dead left and right in the street because of vaping?

00:05:18.800 The answer, of course, is no. Not even close. There have been six deaths in America possibly

00:05:29.040 linked to vaping. Now, I say possibly. Now, the media reports it as, yep, these are vaping deaths.

00:05:34.060 But I don't think we're at a point where we can 100% make that connection. So these are deaths that

00:05:42.400 are possibly in some way to some degree linked to vaping. Six. That's out of the more than 11

00:05:49.060 million people who report using e-cigarettes. If you're keeping track at home, six out of 11 million,

00:05:54.680 that is a fatality rate of 0.0005%. Okay, so that is a half of a half of a half of a half of a percent

00:06:06.320 have died. By comparison, if you look at other substances that also have a death toll of their

00:06:14.680 own, 88,000 people a year die from alcohol-related causes. 128,000 people every year die from

00:06:21.760 prescription pill-related things. The death toll in both of those cases does represent, of course,

00:06:29.560 a small percentage as well. But it's probably a higher percentage than 0.00005%.

00:06:37.320 So no matter how you look at it, the numbers do not come anywhere close to justifying words like

00:06:43.600 outbreak and catastrophe and crisis and epidemic. And they certainly don't justify an unconstitutional

00:06:50.360 action from the president. Not that anything ever could justify an unconstitutional action from the

00:06:54.460 president, but certainly if anything ever could, which it couldn't, this wouldn't be it.

00:07:00.060 But the panic is, so hopefully by now, with all of those facts in mind, if you hadn't done any

00:07:07.580 research on this, hopefully just being told that 0.00005% of the people who vaped have died,

00:07:17.260 allegedly maybe possibly because of it, that should be enough to tell you this is not a crisis. This is

00:07:23.240 not an epidemic. If that level of fatality rate is enough to ban something, then we need to ban

00:07:31.120 literally everything. Because I think any object or substance you can think of probably kills at least

00:07:41.400 0.0005% of the people who come in contact with it or use it. I mean, just any carrots. I'm willing to

00:07:49.500 bet that more than 0.0005% of all people who've eaten carrots have died from choking. I don't know.

00:07:58.040 I'm just making that up, but I bet you that percentage is at least around that number, probably more than

00:08:03.560 that. So that should be enough. But the panic that around vaping is even more absurd and

00:08:10.820 counterproductive than it first appears. Because keep in mind that the majority of people who've

00:08:14.980 gotten sick or died from vaping were using unlicensed black market products. What they're

00:08:21.400 banning here are flavored, the fruity flavored e-cigarette stuff that you can go and buy at the gas

00:08:28.380 station or the grocery store. That's not what's killing people. The very, very small percentage

00:08:33.800 of people who've been killed or gotten sick, most of them, over 80% of them, by the number that I saw,

00:08:41.100 were using unlicensed black market products that they got off the street.

00:08:46.260 So now here's the point. Just put this together. By outlawing most e-cigarettes,

00:08:54.340 what we're doing is we're, it's not just that we're missing the point and we are outlawing

00:09:00.960 something that hasn't even been caused a problem, but actually we're driving more people towards

00:09:05.860 precisely the kind of vaping that's causing the problem in the first place. So if the point,

00:09:13.360 if you, if you ban it and you say you can't get it, then the only way people can get it is on the

00:09:17.840 black market, which means now you're going to have more people going to the black market than were

00:09:21.100 before. This is a solution to a fake problem that will inevitably cause the fake problem to become

00:09:29.000 a real problem. In other words, this is exactly the kind of solution our government specializes in.

00:09:35.300 Now I say, I just want to stipulate here. I say all this, um, uh, not because I like to vape. I don't

00:09:47.060 vape. I've never vaped. It's not my thing. I find it kind of weird to be honest. And I think it looks

00:09:52.880 weird and it looks stupid in my opinion. And, and so I, it's just, it's not what I would do. If,

00:09:59.320 if I want to smoke something, I'm going to have a cigar on occasion, which by the way is way more

00:10:07.160 unhealthy than vaping. And I, and I fully acknowledge that smoking a cigar is like smoking

00:10:13.340 40 cigarettes at once or something. It's just insane amount of tobacco that you are inhaling

00:10:20.200 when you smoke a cigar. Um, but I do on occasion, that's my choice as an adult. Um, the fact that I

00:10:27.740 find vaping to be kind of weird and not my thing, that is not in itself enough to justify sweeping

00:10:34.220 prohibitions. This fact apparently is news to the president who thinks that the fact that his wife

00:10:40.400 doesn't like something means that we should get rid of it. Um, now really my, my toxin of choice

00:10:47.000 aside from cigars is alcohol. I drink in moderation, but I do like to drink beer, bourbon, whatever. Um,

00:10:55.880 and it, it would probably be healthier if I didn't drink at all. There have been studies that show that

00:11:00.780 whatever, having one glass of wine a day is good for you, or I don't know what it was. One glass of

00:11:05.200 wine a week or something. Um, so there've been different studies, but, but probably

00:11:10.080 overall, it would be healthier if I didn't drink at all. Probably maybe even I would live longer,

00:11:17.380 a little bit longer. Like if I'm going to die at 83, if I'm, if I am set to die at 83 or 85,

00:11:23.540 let's say. And if I didn't drink, maybe if I I'm set to die at 85, um, if I don't drink,

00:11:29.500 if I do drink, I'll die at 83 or something. I don't know. You know, it, it could be something

00:11:32.960 like that. They say it shaves a couple of years off your life. Um, but that's my decision and

00:11:40.080 that's my concern. And the way I look at it is it's something that I enjoy doing. And, uh, you

00:11:46.240 know, it's, it, it makes life a little bit more enjoyable. It's just a small little joy. And, uh,

00:11:52.100 so if this small little joy shaves off a couple of years at the end of life, then I'm willing to make

00:11:56.920 that, that, that bargain. I mean, probably if I didn't drink at all and I didn't eat any red meat

00:12:01.880 and, uh, you know, I was, I, I didn't eat, I've never had any junk food. And I, I just got rid of

00:12:07.380 all those pleasures in life. I could tack on, I don't know, five years for me, that trade just

00:12:14.440 really isn't worth it. What's the point, but that's my concern. That's my business. That's my decision

00:12:20.700 is the point here. You don't have to agree with it. Doesn't matter. You know, I, it doesn't,

00:12:26.680 I don't care what your opinion is. I don't care what the opinion of the president is. I shouldn't

00:12:31.240 have to care. You can give me your opinion. You shouldn't be able to impose it. You shouldn't

00:12:36.860 be able to say, I don't personally like that thing. So therefore let's get rid of it. That's

00:12:41.280 not how it's supposed to work in a free country. But if we are going to start banning unhealthy

00:12:47.120 substances, the thing is we have a lot of banning to do before we get to the comparatively mild

00:12:54.200 and safe e-cigarettes. Um, and we shouldn't start with alcohol either. The government tried

00:13:02.380 that once you may recall, and it didn't turn out very well. The leading cause of death in America

00:13:06.820 is obesity. So with obesity, okay, now you're talking about something that maybe you could

00:13:14.680 actually call it a public health emergency. People are very fat in this country and they're

00:13:20.740 only getting fatter yet. Soda and fast food, which are two staples of Trump's diet, by the

00:13:26.340 way, remain not only legal, but are often marketed specifically to kids. So how are you going to

00:13:35.520 say, well, it was, we got to get rid of the fruity, uh, e-cigarettes because kids are using

00:13:39.420 them. Meanwhile, you've got happy meals that, I mean, what do you think is going to kill you

00:13:42.860 soon? If you eat fast food every day, or if you vape every day, who's going to die sooner?

00:13:46.920 Let's do a race. Have one person eat fast food every day. Have another person vape every day.

00:13:50.880 Who lives longer? What do you think? Or who gets to their gravestone sooner? Let's put it that way.

00:13:59.160 Probably the person with the fast food. Yet that's still legal.

00:14:06.040 Because if I feel like having an unhealthy lunch, I'm going to have an unhealthy lunch. I don't care

00:14:09.700 what your opinion is. I'm just going to do it because I want to, because I'm an adult and this

00:14:13.900 is America. This is one of the things that's supposed to set us apart from other countries.

00:14:17.980 So, uh, it, it, it just, it's, this is completely insane. It really is an insane move by, by the

00:14:26.580 president, especially. Um, and I think politically disastrous now banning vaping. Who is that going

00:14:35.500 to appeal to politically? We've talked about, we've talked about whether or not this makes a logical

00:14:41.020 sense and it doesn't. So this, this law cannot be logically or moral or morally or legally justified

00:14:48.980 on a constitutional basis. But then let's ask a, a, a, a more peripheral question, which is it does,

00:14:54.540 does it at least make political sense? Um, and the crazy thing is it doesn't even make political

00:15:01.700 sense. So it's a bad, stupid policy that won't even help president Trump politically. Who's it going

00:15:10.140 to appeal to? This is going to appeal to a certain collection of basically Fox news viewing baby

00:15:17.300 boomers that see kids vaping and they say, ah, this stupid kids with a vaping, get rid of that.

00:15:24.740 It's going to, it's going to appeal to that particular set of people. Those are going to be

00:15:29.520 the only ones who are in favor of this. The thing is though, um, that is a relative, there's a lot of

00:15:37.860 people in that, that group, but it's a comparatively small group. And the other thing is president Trump

00:15:43.220 already has those people. Fox news viewing baby boomers are 100% behind Donald Trump. They're

00:15:49.160 going to be there in droves already. So then you have to look at who are you potentially alienating

00:15:56.560 with something like this? Uh, well, primarily millennials, younger voters.

00:16:02.160 And those are exactly the voters that Trump does not automatically have. Those are the ones he needs

00:16:08.340 to win. He won in 2016. And I keep saying this, I know that there are Trump fans who want to believe

00:16:15.500 that Trump won by a landslide and it was just a huge outpouring of support. And it wasn't,

00:16:21.920 he won with 3 million fewer votes overall. And he won because of a few hundred thousand votes in a

00:16:28.680 few States and he got, and, and, and, and, and he was helped by the fact that the Democrats put up

00:16:35.600 for the, for, for, for in the general election, easily the most unlikable major party candidate

00:16:42.780 ever in American history. And even with that advantage, he won by a few hundred thousand votes

00:16:48.300 in a few States. It's a razor thin margin. And considering he's probably, he's not going to

00:16:56.160 again, have the advantage of running against Hillary Clinton. That's not going to happen

00:16:59.800 as much as we would like it if it did. So he's going to probably need more votes than he had last

00:17:07.040 time. He's not going to be able to skate by with what he had last. He's going to need more than that.

00:17:10.880 He needs to build his coalition, which means doing more than just appealing to the Fox news,

00:17:16.320 viewing baby boomers. And by the way, no disrespect to the, to those of you, if you're in that game,

00:17:20.780 no disrespect to you. I'm just saying you're in, you know, you're, you're in Trump's corner. Great.

00:17:25.760 He needs more than, than you. Um, and he needs millennials and, and this at least some, you know,

00:17:31.700 he needs at least some, he needs, he needs a certain coalition of younger people. And this is the kind

00:17:36.920 of thing that just isn't going to help. And I'm not talking about just people who vape and won't like it.

00:17:45.800 Like I said, I don't vape. I'm extremely annoyed by this because I really hate it when the government

00:17:51.100 does this, when the government starts banning this nanny state BS. I hate, I hate it on principle.

00:18:02.640 They started banning large sodas in New York. I hated that too. I don't live in New York and I

00:18:06.840 don't drink soda. I still hate it. I don't like being treated like a child by the government.

00:18:13.060 And I don't like it when government officials try to impose their own personal preferences

00:18:18.740 on the public. All right. Uh, let's see.

00:18:28.220 I thought this was, this was interesting back just really quickly. I wanted to, I wanted to

00:18:32.880 mention this back in 2009. Um, archeologists unearthed two skeletons in Italy dating back

00:18:39.480 to, uh, maybe the fourth century AD. And these were skeletons that were buried holding hands

00:18:47.320 apparently. And, uh, and when they were dug up, they were, they were still holding hands.

00:18:51.960 Um, they become, the skeletons became known as the lovers of Modena. And, uh, and anyways, we,

00:19:00.100 we, we knew about that. And, and so you see the skeletons holding hands and you start coming up with

00:19:04.520 all these narratives of some, some romantic epic that must've led to these two lovers supposedly

00:19:10.460 dying together, holding hands. Well, scientists have just completed some studies on these skeletons

00:19:14.700 and they've discovered based, based, based on the proteins in their tooth enamel, which is amazing

00:19:21.700 by the way that they can do this 1600 years later, they can analyze protein in tooth enamel and come

00:19:28.480 to the conclusion that these were both males, both guys, which, uh, which means that they,

00:19:35.660 they weren't lovers because back in the fourth century, you know, they weren't going to bury two

00:19:39.760 gay men together romantically with their hands clasped. That just, that wasn't, that wasn't the,

00:19:44.180 it wasn't the culture back then. So, uh, they were probably family members or maybe soldiers who died

00:19:48.280 in battle or something like that. In any case, this is, this is what just jumped out at me about it.

00:19:53.260 Isn't this interesting that they could determine the sex of people who lived 1600 years ago,

00:20:03.120 16 centuries, and they can tell the sex of these people. Hmm.

00:20:09.760 Hmm. It's almost like, I don't know, but it's almost like sex is a physical trait that can be,

00:20:18.560 uh, scientifically determined by observation. It, it, it almost seems that way, doesn't it?

00:20:25.540 If we can go back to people who died over millennia, a millennium ago and find out their sex, it, it,

00:20:33.360 it would seem that sex is a, therefore a biological trait. I don't know, but that's just,

00:20:39.100 that's, that's how it would seem to me. Um, and in all seriousness, we are, I, I, we're going to get

00:20:46.580 to the point with this, um, woke gender identity stuff on the left. We're going to get to the point

00:20:54.960 where basically archeologists and anthropologists and scientists who deal with this stuff won't be

00:21:00.840 able to do their jobs anymore. Uh, cause eventually the left's going to notice that, hold on, wait a

00:21:06.220 second. If we go back and we start saying, you know, digging up skeletons and saying what sexy

00:21:11.120 people, that completely undermines our entire gender identity thing. And so eventually they're

00:21:16.120 going to circle back and say, no, no, you guys can't do that anymore. You're not allowed to.

00:21:21.280 All you could do is dig up a skeleton and say, we know nothing about it. This is just,

00:21:26.000 this could be anything. Might not even be a human. Who knows?

00:21:28.540 All right. You want to see the saddest thing of all time. Hillary Clinton participated in a,

00:21:34.680 an art exhibit in Venice that involved her sitting behind a fake resolute desk for an hour and reading

00:21:40.760 her emails. I'm not kidding. This actually happened. Take a look at this. Here's a, here's a photograph

00:21:45.300 of it. There she is. Um, yes, she, this was an art exhibit. She went to Venice and she sat behind a

00:21:53.420 fake presidential desk, um, and read her emails. Well, I, I have, I have nothing else to say about

00:22:02.080 that other than that really is the most pitiful site I've maybe ever seen. I mean, it almost makes

00:22:09.320 me want to cry and I don't even like Hillary Clinton. It just, it's so sad and just embarrassing.

00:22:14.160 You just, you, you want to, you cringe into a, into a small, tiny little ball. Well, this, okay. So that

00:22:21.840 either that was the most pitiful and saddest thing I've ever seen, or maybe it's actually this. I'm

00:22:29.800 not sure. Um, there was yesterday on nine 11, there was a, a QAnon rally in DC and Will Summer of the

00:22:40.260 Daily Beast. He has, he took some, some pictures. Um, uh, he went to the QAnon rally, took some pictures

00:22:45.260 of it. Here's, here's one of his pictures, uh, showing this, this, uh, rally, obviously, as you can

00:22:49.840 see, they're very, very heavily attended. And, uh, that's, that again is the QAnon rally. Now,

00:22:56.440 if you're not familiar with QAnon, it is, it's, it's basically the, the Uber conspiracy theory,

00:23:04.980 all of the conspiracy theorists got together and they said, listen, our theories aren't quite

00:23:10.340 deranged enough. Uh, we need something bigger. We need something dumber than anything we've conceived

00:23:15.580 before. And they came up with this mega conspiracy that brings all the conspiracies together. Um,

00:23:22.260 and as I understand it, the theory is, and it's all very convoluted and as conspiracy theories tend

00:23:27.700 to be, um, and everyone sort of has their own slight variation and twist on it. But as I understand it

00:23:33.100 and all the, the people that showed up in DC, this is what they believe that there exists this

00:23:38.200 massive, but secretive cabal of Satanists who are running the world and they're pulling the strings,

00:23:44.340 you know, behind the scenes on everything that happens. They, these, the small group of people,

00:23:48.060 they just determine everything with their God-like powers. Um, but there's someone deep on the

00:23:54.440 inside, someone, someone, I guess at the, at the white house or maybe at the Pentagon, I don't know.

00:23:58.000 Uh, someone named Q, a codenamed Q. And he's sending messages through internet message boards,

00:24:04.020 letting everybody know about the efforts by Trump and by, I guess, Q is, is, is Trump supposed to be

00:24:10.040 Q. I don't know. Probably not. Right. I don't know. Um, but anyway, Trump is, is, is working behind

00:24:16.940 the scenes to destroy this cabal of Satanist. And, um, and Q is, is, is telling everybody about it on

00:24:24.720 the message boards. And so Q is the, the kind of savior figure along with Trump. And he tells us all

00:24:30.540 these stories on the message boards and some, and some people believe it. Now, of course, in reality,

00:24:36.400 if anyone cares about reality anymore, Q is just an internet troll who made up a story

00:24:43.080 and posted it online, provided no evidence, provided absolutely no reason for anyone to

00:24:48.580 believe it. He just said it on a message board and, uh, and a bunch of people read it and said,

00:24:55.360 yeah, I'll believe that. Sure. Why not? It's, it's no, it really is no different from if I were to,

00:25:02.340 if I were to make a, an anonymous fake Twitter account and then claim that I'm, that I have

00:25:09.120 access to a secret government time machine and I am traveling through time and, and tweeting back

00:25:16.360 and telling everyone what I see. I sent out a tweet like, Hey guys, hanging out with Christopher

00:25:20.640 Columbus. Everyone smells bad, which side note, I've always thought that it'd be cool to be in a time

00:25:26.700 machine. But what I always think, when I think about time machines, the first thing I think is how bad

00:25:30.580 everyone must've smelled up until about maybe 1950. And so then I think I actually wouldn't want to

00:25:35.860 travel back in time anyway. Um, and then imagine I were to do that. And then people were to see

00:25:40.460 those tweets and a few people were to say, wow, well, this must be true because it's how someone

00:25:46.020 said it, therefore it's true. How else could someone say something if it isn't true?

00:25:51.920 It does. Uh, listen, I'm, I'm not trying to, to, uh, join the dog pile on these maniacs, but,

00:26:02.880 uh, it does bring to mind a question we've talked about before, but that I find endlessly fascinating,

00:26:10.840 a psychological question of why people go for this stuff. It's, it's, it is a, it's certainly a,

00:26:19.320 a minority of people. Uh, and you can tell from that picture there, it's a rather small

00:26:24.120 minority, but, but it's also, it, it also is a bigger group of people than you would like to

00:26:29.240 believe. Like with the, the flatter, the flatter thing. I talked about the flatter theory a while

00:26:36.200 ago on the show. And I discovered that, yeah, of course the vast majority of people believe that

00:26:41.640 the earth is round, but there is still a sizable minority of people who actually believe that the

00:26:46.880 earth is flat and that there's a conspiracy among NASA and all these government agencies to, uh, to,

00:26:52.960 to delude us to the fact. And so it, it, that's the question is, um, why do people, how do people

00:27:03.160 believe this? Why? And the answer I think is that, is that we as human beings are amazingly adept at

00:27:10.520 convincing ourselves to believe things that we want to be true. Um, and it's, it's hard to understand

00:27:24.460 how that's even possible, even though to some extent we've all done it and we all do it.

00:27:28.500 And that's why we have to work so hard to be critical thinkers. And that's why we have to

00:27:33.060 constantly be, be stopping and reassessing our own beliefs, even our deepest held beliefs.

00:27:39.640 We have to constantly sort of turn the, the, the, the mirror back on ourselves and, and look and

00:27:47.120 inspect and evaluate those beliefs because we know that it is so easy for people to believe things

00:27:55.460 that are crazy and, uh, and to convince themselves of things just because they want those things to

00:28:01.660 be true. We know. And so it's easy for us to say, well, yeah, obviously people do that. A lot of

00:28:06.760 people do it. Everyone does, but not me. I don't do that. That's just everyone. It's, that's an

00:28:10.420 everyone else problem, not a me problem, but we know everyone does it. Um, and so I think that's

00:28:14.440 why we have to, even if we're not QAnon people, we probably have a few beliefs that if we were to

00:28:22.360 just stop and reevaluate them, we would realize, wow, there is no reason for me to believe this.

00:28:27.760 I just do. And, uh, and so that's why we have to do that. Now for me, there is, I feel like from my,

00:28:35.260 no, I know that I have this problem too. We all have, we all have this problem. Um, I also,

00:28:40.780 I guess because I'm neurotic, I also have an opposite problem. So I have both. My opposite

00:28:45.120 problem is I I'm also very good at convincing myself that things I don't want to be true are true.

00:28:52.100 So I'm very good at, this is where hypochondria kicks in where I could, I mean, I could, you,

00:29:00.600 you tell me about a disease, any disease, and I can convince myself in five minutes that I have it.

00:29:06.200 I can really convince myself that I have that disease and really believe it. Even as I realize

00:29:11.240 that what I'm doing, that this is, there's no, I'm just, I'm inventing this. It's all psychosomatic.

00:29:16.540 I can still convince myself of it. I don't know why I do that, but I do, uh, because I'm, I'm also

00:29:22.720 insane. The human mind is a very, uh, a very strange, very strange place. We'll go to emails,

00:29:31.640 mattwalshowatgmail.com, mattwalshowatgmail.com. This is from Teresa says, dear Matt, I am a 22 year

00:29:38.820 old woman from, uh, Vienna, Austria. And I listened to your show almost every day in a recent show.

00:29:45.220 You were talking about rights and the fact that the word is being used too much for things that

00:29:49.700 are luxuries and conveniences rather than rights. Well, I am a Catholic myself and believe in God

00:29:54.000 given rights. I find it hard to argue for the existence of objective rights without invoking

00:29:58.060 a religious belief. Rights, um, are by your statement, something that doesn't have to be

00:30:03.440 given to the individual by an authority like the state, but then what are rights? How do we know

00:30:07.420 without arguing religiously that we even have rights like a right to life, et cetera? Does the fact

00:30:12.460 that we are alive conclude that we should have a right to live? I just decided to play devil's

00:30:17.720 advocate on this one. Thank you for your great insightful show. This is a, so this is a great

00:30:21.040 example of, uh, and I didn't even plan it this way, but this is a great example of what I just

00:30:24.200 talked about. This is, this is turning the mirror back around and reevaluating your own beliefs and

00:30:28.840 the things that you've just assumed to be true. And so, uh, you should be commended for that,

00:30:33.300 Teresa. And that's a, that's a good question. We talk about this idea of rights. We take it for

00:30:37.380 granted, but what actually is it? Where do we get this idea that people have a right to anything?

00:30:41.760 Maybe no one has a right to anything. I think that, yeah, I was talking recently about the book

00:30:47.680 Sapiens by Yuval, uh, Harari and, um, a book that, as I said, I found interesting, even though I disagree

00:30:53.820 with 85% of it. He argues that rights don't exist. He says that there's just a cultural myth

00:30:58.880 that we came up with, um, because it, for sort of obvious reasons, it makes society work. Now that

00:31:07.520 is from his presumably atheist perspective. And from that perspective, he's right. I think

00:31:13.240 without God, the idea of rights has no real objective meaning. A right is, is, is then determined

00:31:19.380 culturally and politically because where else could it come from? If there is no God, if we live in a

00:31:28.860 and there's nothing beyond that, then there's, then rights are just an idea, then it is really a

00:31:34.080 myth. It's a story. It's a narrative that we've come up with and we tell each other. Um, and we

00:31:38.780 agree to it culturally and politically. Anytime we use the word rights, then we use it in the sense that,

00:31:46.000 um, I would use it if I said something like, you know, I have a right to X amount of money from my

00:31:51.600 employer. What I would mean by that is, um, this is the amount we agreed to. It's not that

00:31:58.860 it's God given. It's not that I just could march in and say, I have a right to this money. No,

00:32:04.400 it's, it's, it's that we sat down and we agreed to X. And so I have a quote right to it because

00:32:11.240 that's what we agreed to. So it's in that, in that case, a right would be, it seems to me

00:32:17.240 an arbitrary thing. Like we agreed to this amount. We could have agreed to that amount or that amount.

00:32:22.140 This is just the amount we agreed to. Um, so then rights would be by, by it from the secular

00:32:30.260 perspective, rights, it would seem to me are arbitrary things that we agree to, um, as a

00:32:39.400 society. That's what rights become from a secular perspective. The deeper sense of rights, it seems

00:32:47.040 to me are that's entirely religious. And see, that's the problem when people would get in this

00:32:53.480 discussion about, was America founded on Christian values and so on and so forth. It's, it's clear

00:32:57.640 that our founding fathers, many of them were not Christian, uh, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin,

00:33:03.500 many of them were deists, um, which is to say not Christian by any stretch of the imagination,

00:33:09.740 but they did believe in, in God. They did believe in, in some sort of creator. And, and, and it's,

00:33:15.900 it's clear that although our country wasn't founded on Christianity in the sense that it's not a

00:33:21.360 theocratic state, it was founded on a religious notion of human rights. There is no other way to

00:33:29.260 put it. That's what it says in the Declaration of Independence. It, the Declaration of Independence

00:33:35.260 explains what the founders considered rights to be. And they said, rights are things that are endowed

00:33:39.820 by the creator. If there's no creator, there's no one to endow them. And then rights are, as I said,

00:33:44.500 arbitrary things that we came up with. Um, and I don't think there's any way around that.

00:33:54.440 So I guess that, that, that's the answer that as, if you believe in God, then I think you can talk

00:33:59.940 about rights in a way that is coherent and makes sense, but you can't really talk about it in an

00:34:06.160 entirely secular way. Now, if, if some, if a secularist or atheist out there wants to try to

00:34:13.540 meet the challenge and give me an objective definition for rights that does not rely on

00:34:19.160 anything metaphysical, I would love to hear it. Um, I don't think you can though. All right. This is

00:34:26.340 from Andy says, hi, Matt, you're, you're, you're reminiscing of nine 11 made me realize that you and I

00:34:31.260 are the same age. So my crucial question to you is what are your top five albums of 2003?

00:34:38.220 Mine are five room on fire, the strokes for heavier things, John Mayer three shoots to narrow, uh,

00:34:44.600 the shins to love is hell. Ryan Adams, one elephant, the white stripes. Second question. When you become

00:34:50.260 our Supreme theocratic fascist dictator will into club 50 cent be vilified and cause for a swift

00:34:56.340 execution when played, or will it be allowed if it's enjoyed ironically? So I like this question. It's

00:35:02.260 very specific. 2003. I had to, I had to go look up what albums were released in 2003 and I found out

00:35:08.060 there are a lot of great albums. Maybe that's why you choose, chose the year 2003. A lot of great albums

00:35:11.980 came out in 2003. Uh, here's what I would say. Number one, I'm going to agree with you. Elephant,

00:35:16.460 the white stripes, great, great rock album. Um, two, I'm going to go Jay-Z, the black album three, uh,

00:35:23.360 decoration day by the drive-by truckers. Cause I really, I like the drive-by truckers a lot

00:35:26.980 for, uh, the, the, the, the outcast album that came out there. I forget the name of it. I didn't

00:35:31.840 write it down. And then five, I'll go with the shins shoots to narrow. Now, when you mentioned

00:35:37.840 in the club as far, that's just a great classic song. So I, you know, in fact, if you, if you enjoy

00:35:45.020 it, ironically, that's when you're going to be in trouble because there should be no irony that it's

00:35:49.140 just a good solid song. And I will stick by that to my dying day. This is from, uh, Simon says,

00:35:57.080 hi, Matt. I am a former atheist and currently a Christian. I really enjoy C.S. Lewis's books

00:36:00.900 about Christianity. Screw, screw tape letters, problem of pain and mere Christianity are all

00:36:05.860 really insightful books that I've, that have strengthened my belief. Atheists often talk about

00:36:10.800 pain and suffering as proof that there is no loving and good God. This argument is easy enough to

00:36:15.440 debunk. In short, I say that our suffering is a result of our abuse of free will. However,

00:36:19.380 humans suffer for other reasons as well. The most obvious of which are natural disasters.

00:36:23.520 Us Christians believe that God has orchestrated the flow of events in the universe, which has caused

00:36:27.720 the world to be set as it is. The one anomaly is the free will of human beings. Natural disasters

00:36:32.320 are obviously not products of humanity's free will. Uh, I have heard Christians argue that God uses

00:36:38.360 natural disasters to punish humans for our sins. However, infants are among the victims of these

00:36:42.840 catastrophes who are unable to sin for the time being. I am very curious as to where you stand on this

00:36:47.860 issue and how you argue against these atheists. You've probably talked about this in the podcast

00:36:52.040 before. So I apologize for asking such a normal question. Well, Simon, I don't, um,

00:36:57.800 um, I don't think the problem of suffering is easy enough to debunk as you say. Um,

00:37:05.640 um, in fact, I don't think it can be debunked at all. I wouldn't use the word debunk.

00:37:12.000 And I suspect that if you were to, if CS Lewis were alive today, and I think problem with pain

00:37:16.560 is a great book, which is a, one of the best treatments of this question that I think has

00:37:24.080 ever been produced by a Christian. Uh, and one of the things that makes it a great treatment is that

00:37:28.180 it's simple. It's easy to understand. There are a lot of Christian philosophers out there who have

00:37:32.220 dealt with this in a problem in a more intricate, denser kind of way. But those, a lot of those books

00:37:38.060 can be very hard to read and understand. CS Lewis was, was great at breaking it down,

00:37:42.840 simple concepts. Everyone can understand it. Um, anyway, but I suspect that if you were to

00:37:49.340 talk to CS Lewis, if he were alive today, he would say that, no, I didn't debunk the problem

00:37:54.220 of suffering, uh, or the problem of pain. Wouldn't use that word at all. Um, in the sense of, I don't

00:38:01.020 think we can, we can say, well, see, uh, here's why they're suffering. I've proven it. Next question.

00:38:05.900 That's over. I don't think we can do that. It is a, a live question as it were. And I think it will,

00:38:12.960 it will remain a live question forever. Partly for the reason you mentioned in your email,

00:38:16.960 that suffering includes lots of things that are not directly the result of human choices.

00:38:20.740 Natural disasters are one of them. Dorian destroyed the Bahamas. Nobody in the Bahamas did

00:38:25.860 anything to cause that. That's not how hurricanes work. We know how weather patterns work now and we

00:38:30.740 know where they come from. Um, it's a meteorological phenomenon and, uh, uh, and, and, and that's it.

00:38:39.040 That's how they happen. Uh, and it's not just natural disasters. I saw something on Twitter

00:38:43.720 yesterday, a picture of a four-year-old child that a mother had posted, um, four-year-old child

00:38:49.960 with leukemia who was, um, leaning over a, a toilet vomiting. Um, and a picture that just as a parent

00:39:00.380 absolutely gutted me. I cannot imagine going through that. I cannot imagine my, my child going

00:39:08.820 through that and me as a parent having to watch helplessly. I, I, it's unthinkable. It's the worst

00:39:13.600 thing in the world. I can't even, it takes my breath away just thinking about, um, but, uh, so

00:39:20.660 did that four-year-old choose that? Is that his free will that caused cancer? Obviously not. He is

00:39:26.360 suffering entirely apart from his own choices. And there are many other examples. There are billions

00:39:32.240 of examples we could list of, of, of, um, suffering that people go through that they didn't cause.

00:39:38.240 So the free will answer doesn't entirely solve the problem. It's, it's, it's, especially when you

00:39:46.700 take into account the view of God as the sort of ground of all being, um, which is Paul Tillich's

00:39:54.020 phrase. Tillich was a Protestant theologian, uh, 20th century would, I guess, be considered liberal,

00:39:59.580 uh, which I think is maybe an oversimplification, but he, his ideas with God would be his idea. Many of

00:40:06.780 his ideas about God and the Bible would be rejected by most Christians, myself included.

00:40:12.420 Um, but if you understand that phrase a certain way, at least this is how I understand the idea

00:40:18.340 of God as the ground of all being, which maybe is not how Tillich understood it. God is the ground

00:40:23.040 of being in the sense that God is the source of all being. God is the necessary reality. Everything

00:40:29.240 else is contingent upon God. God is what, another way of putting it, God is what holds all things in

00:40:35.100 existence. Um, so the, you know, the old children's song, he's got the whole world in his hands in a

00:40:41.800 sense. I think that's true, you know, in a, in a metaphorical sense, he's not literally with physical

00:40:46.860 hands holding up the globe, but in a sense, he holds all things in his hands. Nothing can exist

00:40:53.160 outside of God's will. Um, there can't be anything existing where God goes, gee, I would really like it

00:41:00.760 if that didn't exist. Uh, and I would stop it from existing if I could, but I just can't, my hands are

00:41:05.080 tied. That, that, that can't be because then God would not be, um, all powerful. So if something

00:41:12.320 exists, then it seems to me that God must not only accept that it exists, but must in some way maintain

00:41:18.580 it, must keep it in its being. Um, because otherwise it could not exist. That is not to say

00:41:24.680 that all bad actions that people do is really God doing them. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying all

00:41:31.520 things that exist, all, um, phenomena, uh, uh, that is, you know, all natural phenomena, all of that

00:41:40.680 must be held in existence by God, right? I don't see any way around that. This makes the problem of

00:41:47.440 suffering more profound because then we must ask, uh, you know, when a, when a person has cancer,

00:41:54.740 when a child has cancer, is it not the case that in a certain sense, God is holding that cancer in

00:42:06.720 existence? What I mean is God could snap his fingers metaphorically and the cancer would go away,

00:42:15.860 but he doesn't most of the time. Um, God could have made all four-year-olds impervious to cancer.

00:42:26.840 Now that's not, and why didn't he, you know, and that's not an easy question for Christians to

00:42:36.000 wave off. I think, you know, my, I think sometimes we wave this off and we say, wow, that's stupid.

00:42:40.820 Why would he have done that? Hey, you can't, you can't ask these questions. You can't ask these

00:42:44.920 questions and they're good questions that don't have easy answers because after all, if you were

00:42:52.860 God, that's what you would do, right? And you can say, well, yes, but you're not God and we cannot

00:42:57.180 understand the ways of God. That's true. But when we call God loving, we can only understand love as

00:43:03.620 in some sense, analogous to human love. If it isn't, you know, if God's love is not in any sense,

00:43:09.340 analogous to human love, then it doesn't make any sense for us to call him loving because then that

00:43:13.540 word doesn't really mean anything in relation to himself. So it must be, if we, if we are supposed

00:43:18.360 to understand God as being loving, then it must, then his love must be in some way analogous to our

00:43:24.600 love, although a, a, a perfect version of it. And so then, um, uh, we would say, well, uh, you know,

00:43:34.220 if, if, why wouldn't God's love, uh, prevent four-year-olds from getting cancer? Because if,

00:43:42.000 if I could, I would. So there are only three ways of answering. And so this, to me, this is the,

00:43:49.600 the hardest, we talk about the problem of suffering, as you said, you know, the, the,

00:43:54.420 the sort of easiest version is why do, why do bad, why does God allow bad people to do bad things?

00:44:00.700 Okay. Free will. Got that. Okay. I think that is, that's as close to sort of debunking as you can

00:44:05.560 do for that part of the question. Gotta have free will. If we don't have free will, then we're just

00:44:11.500 robots. We're automatons. What's the point of existence in that case? And if we can't choose

00:44:17.200 to do evil, then how can we really choose to do good? How can we choose to love if we can't choose

00:44:21.380 that? All of that. Great. Okay. The hardest element of the problem of suffering is what we're talking

00:44:29.040 about right now. Natural disasters, children with cancer. To me, that is like where it re that's

00:44:33.300 when you're the rubber really meets the road with this question. And, uh, that's when all of the

00:44:38.600 trite pat simple answers just do not work. So, um, but it seems to me that there, there,

00:44:45.240 there are three ways of answering this riddle about, for instance, just using this example of

00:44:50.360 children with cancer. Okay. One, there are three possible answers that a person could give.

00:44:56.320 One, God is not really loving. Two, God does not exist. Three, God is loving and does exist.

00:45:06.040 And childhood cancer fits into that picture in some way that we cannot possibly understand or conceive.

00:45:13.000 As Christians, we give the third answer, right? But the third answer isn't really an answer exactly.

00:45:19.980 It's the admission of a lack of answer. It's, it's the faith that someone other than ourselves

00:45:26.060 has the answer, namely God. And that's the best we can do. I think, um, there, there is no debunking

00:45:35.760 here. I think there is only a humble acceptance of our own ignorance and a faith that some deeper truth,

00:45:42.780 some as yet unseen clarity exists outside of our realm of understanding. I, you know, I,

00:45:49.540 I've thought a lot about this problem as I think you have, a lot of people have thought a lot about

00:45:54.220 it. I've read a lot about it. And my conclusion is that that's the best we can do is there must be

00:46:02.400 an answer. I don't know it. And that's the problem of suffering. Um, as I see it, but you know, we,

00:46:11.260 it's, it's something we, uh, you know, that also means that we, we don't just, I don't think we ever

00:46:16.040 get to a point where we can just put it on the shelf and say, yeah, forget about that. I think

00:46:18.960 we can, you continue to think about it and meditate on it. Um, and, uh, you know, pray about it and

00:46:25.200 think about it and study it. And, uh, maybe you'll come to a better conclusion than the one that I've

00:46:31.300 arrived at, which as I said, is not really a conclusion at all. All right. We will leave it on

00:46:36.240 that rather morbid note. And I'll talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed. If you enjoyed this episode,

00:46:47.540 don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star

00:46:51.000 review and tell your friends to subscribe as well. We're available on Apple podcasts, Spotify,

00:46:55.720 wherever you listen to podcasts. Also be sure to check out the other Gellywire podcasts, including

00:47:00.060 the Ben Shapiro show, Michael Knowles show, and the Andrew Klavan show. Thanks for listening.

00:47:04.320 The Matt Wall show is produced by Robert Sterling, associate producer, Alexia Garcia Del Rio,

00:47:09.600 executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis

00:47:14.840 Glover. And our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Donovan Fowler. Audio is mixed by Mike

00:47:21.040 Coromina. The Matt Wall show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:47:25.660 Hey everybody. It's Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan show. You know, some people are depressed

00:47:29.800 because the American Republic is collapsing. The end of days is approaching and the moon is

00:47:34.200 turned to blood. But on the Andrew Klavan show, that's where the fun just gets started. So come

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The Matt Walsh Show - September 12, 2019

Ep. 330 - The Non-Existent Vaping Crisis

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