Ep. 337 - Environmentalists Save The Environment By Littering
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I talk about the importance of having a backup plan for when things don t go your way in the NFL. I also talk about how important it is to have a plan in case things don't go as planned.
Transcript
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Well, I hope you all had a good weekend. Everything went okay for me, save my Baltimore
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Ravens losing yesterday. Though I did enjoy one thing that happened during the game.
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I went to a bar with my wife to watch it because we got three kids. So if I want to watch a game,
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this is the point we're at now. If I want to watch a football game, I got to hire a babysitter,
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leave the house, go to a bar. Not that I'm complaining. My life is so hard I had to watch
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a football game at a bar. That's how difficult my life is. Anyway, we were there. And at one point,
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the Ravens marched down the field. They scored a touchdown. Not enough to win the game. But this
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fan at another table, after the touchdown, he turns to someone else at the table and he goes,
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see what I tell you, they need to take the ball, go down the field and score a touchdown.
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And that's one of the things I enjoy about watching football is that it gives you a chance
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to make insightful observations like that. And everyone does it. And I do the same thing. Actually,
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at a different point during the game, the Ravens were trailing. And so I turned to my wife and I
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said, we really got to put some points on the board here. And it was just, it was, you know,
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because it was just, it was a moment of inspiration that came to me. And I realized, you know what we
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could use? Points. That's the thing. And oftentimes the best part is when you give advice to the
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players while they're playing. So a lot of times, like if a, if a player drops, you know,
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wide receiver drops the ball, doesn't make the catch, I'll say something. I'll say,
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oh, come on, you got to catch that. It was in your hands. And the great thing is because they
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can hear that, of course. And it is also good advice because then they hear that and they say,
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oh, that's, oh, catch it. You mean, that's what I'm supposed to do. So that's, um, that's,
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that's, that's part of watching football. But I hope that, uh, that you're,
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if you're a football fan, that it went better for you. And if you're not a football fan,
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then get the hell out of the country, you communist. Speaking of communists, um, there
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were a bunch of climate protesters swarming DC this morning, shutting down the morning commute,
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trying to shut down DC, uh, as, as they put it, which in another context, I'm perfectly fine
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with shutting down DC. I'm all about that, but not the way they went about it. Um,
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but it leaves a question of what were they trying to accomplish exactly? And whatever they were trying
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to accomplish, is this a reasonable way to go about it? We're going to, we're going to, we're
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going to try to tackle that, um, today, but first, uh, a word from Vistaprint. You know,
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when you support our sponsors. Okay. So, um, we talked last week about the climate strikes
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and climate walkouts at school. Well, that that's still going on today. A group of, of hippies decided
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to shut down a bunch of intersections in DC as a means to, to save the environment, I guess.
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But of course, forcing a bunch of cars to idle on in the road probably isn't going to do much to
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help the environment. Um, stopping global warming by causing traffic jams. That's, that's certainly a
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counterintuitive way to do it. Uh, but I think, uh, I'm not sure how much it's really going to,
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to accomplish. The group's Facebook page says, um, they're going to quote block key infrastructures
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to stop business as usual, bringing the whole city to a gridlock standstill. Parents, workers,
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college students, and everyone who's concerned about the climate crisis will skip work and school
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and put off their other responsibilities to take action in the climate crisis. This is the mass
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uprising that everyone with climate anxiety has been waiting for. This is an uprising for life itself,
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fighting back against the forces of destruction. This is your chance to take action,
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to save the people, plants, and animals you love. Let's rise to the challenge and shut down DC mass
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uprising. Let's take a look at this mass uprising. Uh, here are some sights and sounds as documented by
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There you go. There you go. There is a lot of people, but it's a lot of people, but it's a lot of people,
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the, uh, the mass uprising. They're going to save the planet and that's how they're doing it. They're
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dancing in the street. Um, and here's a group called extinction rebellion, which sounds like the
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lamest name for a nineties punk band you've ever heard, but, uh, they're not making music. They are
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instead strapping themselves to a boat in the middle of the street. Again, this is to save the climate,
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save the environment. Remember? Um, and, uh, and here's what that looked like after the natural
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treasure that we're losing every single day. And also because it's a huge barrier.
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So there you go. They're there. And, and police had to come and, uh, spend a lot of time
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getting those people unstuck from the boat because they weren't going to tow the boat off of the road
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without first cutting the chains to get them out. Now, I think you could make an argument.
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Look, if you're going to disable a vehicle or, or, or, or tow a boat out into the middle of the highway
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and then chain yourself to it, I think police would be well within the rights to just tow the thing off
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the road with you attached to it. Uh, because that was your choice, right? But they weren't going to do
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that. In fact, the police were, um, extremely understanding and polite and cooperative the entire
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time. And this seems to be a theme with left-wing protests and we call it protest. This is, we can't,
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this isn't really a protest. This is just, this is illegal is what it is to, to, to walk into the
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street and shut down trap. You can't do that. That's not legal. You're not allowed to just do
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that. If I went into the middle of the street, if I went out outside right now and just sat down in
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the middle of the street, okay, the police would probably come and drag me off the street, if not
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arrest me. But the thing with these left-wing quote unquote protests is that it seems like they're,
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they're giving a ton of leeway to just do what they want and nobody gets arrested. Um,
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Julio Rosas on Twitter gives us a view of, uh, just to give you an idea of the traffic and the,
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the, the, uh, the gridlock that was caused by this. He gives us a view of one of the traffic
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jams caused by these people. Take a look at this.
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Now, if you've ever, if you've ever been to DC, which I don't recommend going, but, um, if you have
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ever been, especially during rush hour, especially on a Monday of all days, you know that it's hell
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on earth as it is. It is absolutely miserable. I have no idea why anyone would choose to live in a
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place like DC, but that's another discussion entirely. But you take that, imagine how it goes
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when it, when it's already that bad without any idiots in the street blocking traffic on purpose.
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Imagine how it would be when you do have the idiots in the street blocking traffic on purpose.
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Um, it's obvious of course, that most of these protesters don't have jobs. They were just
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protesting last week and they, and, and the kids were skipping school last week. So now they're
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skipping school again, but not all of these people are, are, are school age. As you could tell,
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some of them would look like they are working age yet. They're not working.
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And that's how they're able to protest four days a week. But now they're trying to stop other people
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who do have jobs from getting to their jobs and making money to feed their families. And let's
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remember that it's not like DC is made up only of lobbyists and bureaucrats. That is an unfortunate
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percentage of DC, but there are also working class people who work, you know, in the restaurants and
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in the places where those lobbyists and bureaucrats go for, for lunch or whatever else. Um, these
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protesters are stopping those folks, those working class folks from getting to their jobs also.
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And that's the thing about left-wing protests is that they so often betray a total contempt for the
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working class because they have no compunction about shutting down traffic, about preventing people
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from getting to their jobs. They don't care about that because they don't have jobs themselves because
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they've got mommy and daddy taking care of them and, or they've got daddy government taking care of
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them. And so there, as far as they're concerned, the rest of you can just screw off. They don't care.
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It's not their problem. I really hope I, all those people who are stuck in traffic,
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I hope they took note of who these people are and whose side they're on or more precisely who's on
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their side because the people on their side are not on the side of, of, of the working class.
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That's for sure. So let's review in order to save the environment. They're causing traffic jams.
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They're, they're causing local law enforcement to waste resources. They're impeding people's abilities
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to get to their jobs. Um, that's the plan here. That's the strategy. Oh, and they're littering
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also on purpose. Watch this. Yes, yes, that that'll do it. Great job there. That'll save the planet.
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I mean, that guy is literally prancing down the street, throwing trash on the ground. He's skipping
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down the road, just throwing trash on the ground. And this is an, in a protest in favor of the
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environment. And that's what he's doing. You might as well just take an aerosol can and spray it in the
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air. Save the environment. Yes. You might as well just do that. It's the same exact thing. Oh,
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and they're lighting trash on fire too. Look at this picture that somebody took, um, an actual
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dumpster fire that was lit by these people who care so much about the environment. So, um, as with
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every other left-wing protest, much of this is just an excuse for unemployed morons to dance around in the
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street and feel important. That's what most of this is. They're begging for attention, um, attention,
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not for the cause, but for themselves. They want attention for themselves. That's what a lot of this
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is. And that's why protesting is so, um, popular these days. I don't think it's a coincidence that
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we've got all these protests that, that, that it seems like, um,
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now that everybody's got phones and everyone's on social media. And so everyone's also carrying a
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pocket or a camera around in their pocket. It seems like now that that's the case, we've got protests
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four times a week. And why is that? Because these people, they want, you know, they, they want the
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opportunity for the selfie. They know they're going to be on Twitter, on social media, and that's what
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they want. It's for them. It's got nothing to do with the cause. That's what it really comes down
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to. And I'm not trying to be cynical about it. You know, you know me, I would never be cynical.
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I'm the, that's the last thing I am. No one would ever accuse me of that. But, um, it seems to me
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if you really cared about the environment, you wouldn't be blocking traffic. You wouldn't be stopping
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people from getting their jobs. You wouldn't be littering. You wouldn't be dancing in the street.
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All of which has nothing to do with helping the environment. And it was only going to undermine
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your case, both by the, by the damage it does to the environment. And also by the fact that you're
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just taking everybody off and you're, and you're making them less sympathetic to your cause.
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Who, who is going to see that? If, if you're, if you're in traffic because of these people,
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are you going to be more or less likely to be sympathetic to their cause?
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If you didn't care that much about the environment, when you got in your car to go to work that
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morning, are you going to care more about it now? Because you've got a bunch of environmentalists
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in the street, stopping you from getting there. Is, is there any chance of a strategy like this
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doing anything positive for the cause that it's ostensibly, um, supposed to, supposed to help?
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No, of course not. Which leads me to the cynical conclusion that this isn't really about
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all these protests, whether it's this or Antifa or whatever, it's not about whatever
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thing they have on the, uh, on the banners and on the poster boards. It's just about them.
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If you really cared about the environment, I think what you would be doing instead,
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you would take a more serious and sober approach and you would be leading by example.
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Now, whenever someone makes this point, and I've made this point before, and I'm always accused of
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doing a, a, a kind of cheap, lame, gotcha thing, that, if you really cared about the environment
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and, uh, what are you doing on your phone, wouldn't you be, but, but there's truth to that.
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It's not a gotcha. If you're telling me, look, if you really believe that the world is actually
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coming to an end potentially, and soon in the next few years, you really believe that.
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And you really believe that what we're doing, the way that we're living is bringing about a
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doomsday. Um, then wouldn't you be making radical changes in your own life and, and, and, and thereby,
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number one, uh, making sure that you yourself are not contributing to the problem. And number two,
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leading by example, if you think that radical changes need to be made in the way people live,
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which, which, which is supposedly your message, then why aren't you making those radical changes
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yourself and showing us how to do it and to, and showing us that it can be done?
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Why aren't you doing that? And these environmentalists, they're not because you can
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see them. They, they, they're just like anybody else. Yeah. They go to the protest and then they go
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home to their normal house with their phone and all this, they got their refrigerator. They got
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everything. They got their car. They're not making any changes in the way they live. It's not a gotcha
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moment. Like, like with, uh, with, uh, AOC when, when, when she says, Oh, we gotta, we gotta get rid of,
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uh, of airplanes and air travel because of what it's doing to the environment. And then she gets on an
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airplane and she flies. And, uh, and we say, well, what are you doing flying? You just, and then,
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and then the response I was, Oh, come on, don't, don't, don't do that. You're being,
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don't, don't you're being pedantic. It's not pedantic. If you're saying that we, that this
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is a sacrifice we need to make, then make the sacrifice show us. Yeah. It it's, it's, it would
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be very difficult to, um, have a job that requires travel and not use an airplane. That is difficult,
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but you're the one telling us that, well, those are difficult things we need to do. So do it and show us
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so AOC could actually say, you know what? I'm not going to board a plane as difficult as that is,
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as, as, as hard as it's going to make my life doing what I do, whatever that happens to be.
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Um, I'm not going to do it in, in, in, I'll show people that it is possible. Yeah,
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it's harder, but it's possible. It's just very striking that very few of these environmentalists
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are doing that. Yeah. You know what? I mean, I think I've mentioned before I have, um,
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one of my, uh, uh, you know, I, there are people very close to me who, who I, who I know in my
00:18:00.700
family who live, uh, you know, out on homesteads, um, and, and solar energy. Okay. Um, all of that
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stuff, compost toilet. All right. I, people are close to me that live the way not, not because they're
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environmentalist hippies, but just cause that's how they want to live. But so I know it's possible
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to live that way. Why aren't more environmentalists living that way? It, it's, it's politics. It's a
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sacrifice for sure. It's a, it's a, it's a very different way to live. It's possible to do. There's
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a lot to be said for it. Actually, even if you're not an environmentalist, it's, I think there's a lot
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to be said for it. I, I, I could definitely see the appeal. So why aren't they doing it?
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I mean, for goodness sakes, 12, we got what, 12 years until the end of the world,
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or at least until, until, until, until something catastrophic that will potentially be the end
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of human civilization at a minimum. Um, uh, uh, then, then, then I, I just don't get it.
00:19:07.480
Yeah. I think these people that are out in the street, they really should, they should be out
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living in the woods in a cabin, compost toilet, solar energy, uh, you know, uh, nuts and living
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on nuts and berries like John the Baptist, locusts, locusts and wild honey. Maybe you hunt for game.
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I don't know. I'm not sure if that's okay or not because of the environmentalist thing,
00:19:31.960
but, uh, whatever. I, I think that that's how they should be living. Show us,
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show us how to do it and how wonderful it is and how possible it is to live that way.
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Until you're going to do that, I reserve the right to just completely ignore you
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because I think you're a fraud. And if you don't take your own, um, claims seriously,
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then why should I take them seriously? This is the same thing that I say about Christians.
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I've had this message many times. You know, we as Christians, we have to take our own religious
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claims. And like I said last week, environmentalism really is a religion. If you don't take your own
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religious claims seriously and try to live by them, then why should anyone pay attention to what you
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have to say? If you don't even take it seriously, then why should they? All right. Um, let's a couple
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of things before we get to emails. Uh, this one quickly, Megan Fox, remember her? She was in,
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uh, what was she in? She was in some stuff. She was in, she was in some movies, I think. Anyway,
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she appeared on a talk show a couple of days ago and there's no better way to regain some relevance
00:20:38.400
in America than to go on a talk show and brag about your cross-dressing child. That's the way
00:20:43.280
to do it. You want to get attention. You want to, speaking of getting attention, you want to be
00:20:47.080
relevant and that's what you do. And she did, and she's being celebrated for this by the media,
00:20:52.180
people on social media. Um, here's what she had to say about her cross-dressing six-year-old boy.
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Listen to this. So he's, he's really into fashion and he's the one like sometimes he'll, he'll dress
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himself and he likes to wear dresses sometimes. And he'll, and I send him to a really liberal,
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like hippie school, but even, even there here in California, he still has little boys going like
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boys don't wear dresses or boys don't wear pink. And so we're going through that now where I'm trying
00:21:19.180
to teach him to be confident no matter what anyone else says. He just, he finally, he had
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stopped wearing dresses for a while. He just wore one two days ago to school and he came home and I
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was like, how was it? Did any of the friends at school have anything to say? And he was like,
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well, all the boys laughed when I came in, but he's like, but I don't care. I love dresses too much.
00:21:40.720
Okay. A couple of, of brief things here. The other boys at her son's school are correct. Uh,
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they are correct. That boys don't wear dresses. So she says that like, it's a bad thing. She says,
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I sent my kid to a hippie liberal school, but even, even those boys say, Oh, boys don't wear that.
00:21:56.600
Yeah, they're right. That's exact. That's right. They're, they are correct. Um,
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their reaction of looking sideways at that of, of maybe even laughing at it. That's the right reaction
00:22:12.440
because you know why? Because it's absurd. It is absurd for a six-year-old boy to be wearing a dress
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and going to school. Um, that is an absurdity. It's an absurd thing. And as human beings,
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when we see absurdities, we, we react to it. We react in a way usually that, that, that is consistent
00:22:32.600
with the fact that the thing we're looking at is absurd. Um, now, uh, it's, it's, it's very sad
00:22:38.780
and unfortunate that her six-year-old boy is dealing with that and has to endure that treatment.
00:22:44.360
I don't like that. I think it's a terrible thing. I think it's, I, I think it's very, very sad,
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but whose fault is it? Here's the point. Whose fault is that? Is it the fault of the other six-year-old
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boys? Is it really their fault when they see some kid coming in to wear an address? Like it's really
00:23:00.220
their fault that they're, that they're looking at that like, well, what's he doing? We're going to blame
00:23:04.280
them and not you as the mother for putting your six-year-old boy in a dress. Who's to blame here?
00:23:13.660
And don't tell me, I didn't put him in that. He chose it. Oh, shut up. You put him in that.
00:23:18.660
Your six-year-old boy does not have any clothing that you didn't buy for him. He doesn't wear
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anything that you don't let him wear. So don't tell me, oh, he made his own choice.
00:23:29.080
Uh, and, and it's just such a coincidence, isn't it? That you have all these radical liberal parents
00:23:37.580
who just so happened to have kids and sons who just so happened to want to express their gender
00:23:43.220
identity, but cross-dressing. No, you didn't encourage that at all. No, not at all. They just
00:23:47.620
so happened to want that. Bull. Okay. That's bull. Your six-year-old boy wants to wear a dress.
00:23:55.860
99% chance it's because you pushed him in that direction because you want that because it makes
00:24:01.340
you feel enlightened and everything. And even if it ostracizes your kid or makes him feel
00:24:05.440
uncomfortable or puts him in line for bullying, you don't care because this is all about you.
00:24:10.960
Your child is just like some accessory, some, some, some fashion statement.
00:24:17.460
I really hate this. I hate what people do to their kids. I hate it when they treat their kids this way.
00:24:22.160
If you're a six-year-old boy, and you know what else? I, I, I, I'm, I'm willing to bet Megan Fox and her,
00:24:31.940
uh, these Hollywood parents, um, I'm willing to bet if their kids wanted to go to school in Kmart
00:24:40.360
clothing. What if they wanted that? What if they wanted to go to school in Kmart clothing? What if
00:24:43.940
they wanted to go to school in, in, in, in clothing that was dirty and had holes in it? I bet you then
00:24:49.020
you, but you'd have a problem. He is like, no, no, no. You don't wear that to school because
00:24:52.500
that's going to make you look poor and cheap and you don't want that. So if your kid's going to
00:24:56.940
wear a dress to school, it's gonna be a nice dress, isn't it? It's gonna be a really nice one. It's
00:25:00.080
gonna be expensive brand name. I just let my kid express them. No, you don't. You let your kid
00:25:09.380
express, express himself in ways that are reflective of your ideology. That's what you're doing. And you
00:25:15.760
know it. What if your kid wanted to go to school every day and mismatching shoes? What about that?
00:25:23.460
You know, what if he wanted to wear a Nike on one foot and Adidas on the other?
00:25:27.700
I bet you wouldn't let him and you shouldn't actually.
00:25:33.200
Is it going to hurt him? Is it morally wrong to wear mismatching shoes?
00:25:38.240
If you want to take a really reductive view of it, is it a big deal at all? No, but it's absurd.
00:25:45.480
Okay, so unless you are poor or something and that's all you have and that's all you can put
00:25:50.380
your kid in, in that case, you do what you got to do to survive, to get by. But if you have an option,
00:25:57.660
you're going to put your kid in matching shoes, even if he wants to wear mismatching shoes. At
00:26:02.600
six years old, now if he's two years old and he wants to run around the house with mismatching
00:26:07.000
shoes, you say, oh, that's cute. You laugh about it. But at six years old, he's old enough now,
00:26:11.200
you wear matching shoes. Why? Just because that's what people do. You're teaching your child how to
00:26:18.160
be a functioning person in a civilized society. And so you tell them, no, this is how you wear
00:26:25.840
your shoes. Okay? You want to wear the shoes on the wrong feet because that's how you express
00:26:30.100
yourself? No. You want to, but you're not going to. Okay? Because kids want to do a lot of things
00:26:36.400
that are just, that we shouldn't let them do. Isn't that the crazy thing? I got three kids.
00:26:42.220
I got a fourth on the way. I find myself saying no to my children constantly
00:26:49.780
and having nothing to do with, with them wanting to gender bend because fortunately that hasn't been,
00:26:57.120
that hasn't been an issue. Again, coincidentally, you know, I don't have any great desire for my
00:27:02.380
kids to gender bend. And so weirdly, coincidentally, strangely, they themselves have never expressed
00:27:08.300
any real desire for that. Again, it's just that it's that odd coincidence where you have these
00:27:15.100
really super liberal enlightened parents who just so happen to have kids who just so happen to want
00:27:20.540
that. Weird, isn't it? That's not conditioning at all, is it? But in any case, in so many other
00:27:31.680
contexts, I am telling my kids, no, you can't do that. You can't do that. Stop doing that. Stop
00:27:35.900
climbing that. Stop trying to eat that. Stop wearing that. Stop, you know, this is what you
00:27:40.640
do as parents because we have to, because kids don't know anything about anything. They have no
00:27:47.860
idea how to function as, as, as humans in society. So you teach them and that's going to require a lot
00:27:58.100
of no. It's going to require a lot of control, especially in the beginning. And then as they get
00:28:04.040
older, you give them more and more freedom. And if they get to be 18 years old and they want to wear
00:28:07.880
mismatching shoes, they can. If they want to wear a boot on their head and go to, and go out there,
00:28:11.980
you know, they can. You would, you would, you would recommend they don't, but they can.
00:28:18.080
In the beginning though, as, as parents, we, uh, we are there to, uh, to give them instructions.
00:28:26.780
And look, even if you, uh, even if you see no, even if you personally see no real problem with a
00:28:38.760
kid cross-dressing and doing the gender bend routine, even if you personally see no real issue
00:28:43.920
with it, and you should, because there are issues with it, but, but even if you don't,
00:28:48.920
I mean, how about just protect your kid? How about just don't, don't put them in line for that kind
00:28:54.100
of bullying? I get, I know it makes you feel good. Uh, it makes you feel good to have kids that are
00:28:58.700
bullied for that because it makes you feel like a really enlightened and courageous parent. So great.
00:29:02.640
Good for you. Pat on the back. Here's a cookie. You want a lollipop? You can have one too. Okay.
00:29:08.180
But, but it's not good for your kid. Your kid is not a social experiment.
00:29:15.140
So, so, so, so, so, so why not give him a chance to just have a normal childhood and be a normal kid,
00:29:20.340
a normal boy, make friends, you know, how about just give him that chance? And if he gets to be
00:29:26.000
18, he wants to go wear a dress out, but he can do that. But by then it's going to really be his
00:29:30.340
choice, not yours. I really hate this, this stuff we're doing with our kids. I just, I hate it so
00:29:38.860
much. It is so unfair to these kids. All right. Um, finally, ABC news has a video of, uh, of what
00:29:49.260
they're calling husband of the year. Husband of the year's wife was in labor for two days. So he
00:29:55.400
went to the delivery room with his camera rolling, of course. And, uh, well, let, let me now, now,
00:30:01.620
so I want to show you this. I want to get, I'm interested to get your opinion. That's the honest
00:30:05.240
truth. I, especially as a woman, if you're a woman watching this, um, uh, I would like to get your
00:30:10.560
opinion or a man because men can have babies too, I'm told. So, so if you're a man with a baby or a woman,
00:30:15.000
uh, either way, I'm interested, I'm interested to get your opinion on this, what you think of it.
00:30:21.300
And I'll give you my opinion. I'm not looking to, you know, make fun of this guy,
00:30:25.480
but he's the one who put this online for everyone to see. So he put it online. So let's take a look
00:30:31.720
at it. This is what he did for his, uh, for his, his wife who was in labor. Watch this.
00:30:45.000
Okay. What do you think about that? Ladies, if you're in labor, if you're listening on iTunes or
00:30:58.860
SoundCloud, you couldn't see that. What happened was this woman, she was in labor for two days,
00:31:02.480
uh, and her husband came into the delivery room with, with these big, uh, flash, like flash cards.
00:31:09.760
And on the flash cards, he had little messages that he wrote little loving messages. And he had it on
00:31:14.800
camera and he had the camera rolling and he, uh, he, he, he showed her one at a time, the messages on
00:31:19.840
the flash card, which said, which said a bunch of nice stuff about how, I don't know, I love you and
00:31:24.060
you'll be a great mother and blah, blah, blah. Um, and, and, and so, but my, here's my question.
00:31:30.440
Why? What? Why? I feel like if my, if, if my, my wife's going to be in labor any day now, any day
00:31:40.760
now, um, we're, we're, we're coming up against it. And when she's in labor, I feel like if I went in
00:31:47.540
with a whole stack of flash cards and said, Hey honey, um, just, I want to show you something.
00:31:54.440
If you could just stop, you could just calm down for a second. I want to show you this. Look,
00:31:57.700
look at these flashcards. And I just started going through the flashcards. What she would be
00:32:01.600
sitting there with this look on her face, like what? And then she would either laugh in my face
00:32:07.660
or kick me in the stomach. Maybe both. I think maybe a kick in the stomach, a swift kick in the
00:32:12.560
stomach and then laugh in my face, maybe the other way around. I don't know, but I think that would be
00:32:17.060
her reaction. If you want to go and be supportive of your wife while she's giving birth, that's a great
00:32:24.620
idea. Why not just say it, whatever you wanted to say on the flashcard, just say it and use your
00:32:31.080
words. Like I say to my kids all the time, use your words and say it. There's an idea. I don't know.
00:32:38.640
But my main thing is why do you need to have it on film? That's what I don't get. Why do you got
00:32:45.480
to put it on film? It's your wife's giving birth. The delivery room, there is no reason
00:32:52.240
to ever, in my opinion, have a video camera rolling in the delivery room. I just, you don't
00:32:59.580
need to, even, especially not if you want to put it online, but even if for your own recollections,
00:33:06.540
I don't, the experience of someone giving birth is, it's, that's a very, it's going to be very
00:33:15.240
vivid in your mind. You won't need to go back and see the camera footage to remember it. You'll
00:33:20.180
remember it. So I can't imagine if I had video of my wife in the delivery, I can't imagine sitting
00:33:27.420
there years later, oh, you remember this? Let's watch the video again. But even if you want to do
00:33:34.240
that, that's your business. Just don't put it online. Do you want to do something nice for your
00:33:38.240
wife? Whether it, whether it plays or not, whether it works out, you don't, it doesn't need to be
00:33:44.480
videotaped. Does it? Videotape. I don't know why I still say videotape. You don't need to videotape
00:33:53.020
it so you can put it in your VCR. Kids these days. All right. But that was very sweet. That was very
00:34:00.080
nice of him. Mattwellshowatgmail.com. Mattwellshowatgmail.com is the email address. This is
00:34:05.780
from Michael says, hi, Matt. Thank you for your honest and accurate assessment of why young people
00:34:09.840
are leaving the church. For the Southern Baptist Convention, the figure is 80% plus from 2005 of
00:34:14.740
young people that leave the church at 18 years old and never return. It was staggering. It's a
00:34:20.520
staggering number. As a newcomer to the Christian church myself, I experienced exactly the problems
00:34:25.220
you spoke about, i.e. evasion, easy but incorrect answers, etc. I had to come to Christ partially on
00:34:31.080
my own and also through the good example of my landlord who invited me to the alpha class program
00:34:35.480
because I was desperate for, I don't know what the alpha class program is, but because I was desperate
00:34:39.940
for answers and heard only bad things and tales of hypocrisy from so-called Christians. Now that I
00:34:45.640
have found Christ, I understand it is still a constant battle to maintain my beliefs and faith.
00:34:50.000
For example, am I really a Protestant or is Catholicism the correct faith? And that is a minor point
00:34:54.840
compared to doubts that crop up from time to time from about things I read in the New and Old
00:34:58.680
Testaments. The bottom line is, as you say, that we need a mature and modern understanding of these
00:35:04.040
documents, one that puts them in proper historical, cultural, archaeological, and theological perspectives,
00:35:09.620
but that doesn't shy away from the disagreements within branches of Christianity while also uniting
00:35:14.040
believers around Christ, which is what the alpha program tries to do. Also understanding that what
00:35:19.360
Christ asks us to do and what we want to do are often not the same things. If we didn't have
00:35:24.820
to battle with sin, we would be God. But since we do, it is honest to admit that we fall short of the
00:35:29.220
glory of God. Anyways, long story short, just wanted to thank you for your honest and accurate
00:35:32.760
talk from today's September 21st version of the show. Thank you and Godspeed. And thank you for
00:35:38.900
that, Michael. There's nothing I really need to add to that, but I thank you for listening and for that
00:35:44.060
input and insight as well, especially as someone who just recently entered the church and
00:35:49.420
congratulations on that, by the way. This is from Jeffrey, says, Dear Matt, as a church-going high
00:35:53.580
schooler who is deeply involved in my youth group and church, I could not agree with you more on your
00:35:57.740
perspective on youth ministry. I've read my Bible consistently for the past 400 days, and I get the
00:36:03.440
impression that I do it more than the vast majority of mature adult Christians. You certainly do if
00:36:08.660
you've been reading it consistently for 400 days. That's more than most adult Christians have ever
00:36:12.620
spent reading the Bible. I also feel like that in order to get the deep, hard-hitting theology and
00:36:18.960
apologetics that I crave, I'm forced to seek it out independently, whether that be looking for the
00:36:24.020
internet, sitting in on adult small groups that occasionally meet at my house, or reading the
00:36:28.780
books by intelligent theologians like Sproul, Lewis, Hamm, or Piper. One of those names does not belong
00:36:36.900
with the others. That's all I'll say. Three of those people are brilliant theologians. Nobody ever
00:36:44.440
discussing things like the apparent contradictions of the hard and difficult passages at my youth
00:36:48.780
group or in chapel sessions at my school, which has filled me with a deep resentment for both
00:36:53.120
activities. I also get the feeling that my pastor is oblivious to this because he never avoids hard
00:36:57.800
questions or difficult passages, and so he's really the only person in my life I have interest in
00:37:01.900
listening to. As a youth myself, it is blatantly obvious to me why my peers are falling away. The people
00:37:07.640
that are supposed to be educating and training us are only trying to make Jesus look appealing and not
00:37:11.380
preaching anything that will be of serious use when we move away and go to college, where our faith will
00:37:16.040
be harshly challenged and the allure of sin will be strong. I think that all young Christians should
00:37:20.560
realize that their faith has to be taken extremely seriously, and I also believe that the adult church
00:37:24.440
that is supposed to be an example to us is seriously lacking. And thank you for that again, Jeffrey.
00:37:32.060
But, okay, so they weren't, I didn't only get emails of agreement, believe you me on that one.
00:37:39.700
This is one from someone who's not quite in agreement, says, from Miles, Matt, I thought
00:37:44.000
your analysis of why people leave the faith was way off and very troubling. If anyone leaves,
00:37:48.800
it means they were never in it to begin with. If you lose your faith, you never had it. It's not
00:37:53.980
possible to lose faith if it's real. The fact that you don't realize this makes me question your faith,
00:37:59.460
frankly. Well, Miles, thanks for that. Really appreciate it. You're totally wrong,
00:38:05.540
unfortunately. What's more, I think your position is arrogant and pretentious and a sign of intellectual
00:38:14.280
cowardice. And I really don't mean any offense by that. You want to think that anyone who leaves
00:38:21.900
must have been a fraud all along, because that gives you an excuse to not take them seriously,
00:38:26.500
to not listen to them, and especially not to listen to any of the questions they might have about faith,
00:38:31.960
not to listen to any of the reasons they might give for why they left. It gives you license to
00:38:39.140
ignore their objections completely and to continue living in your bubble. And I find that, frankly,
00:38:44.840
pathetic. And I don't mind saying that because, you know, you clearly wanted to make this a personal
00:38:50.040
thing. I don't mean it as a personal thing. That's just how I see that. And you're by no means alone
00:38:55.500
in this idea that anyone who, it's not, if you really have faith, it's not possible ever to lose
00:39:04.720
it. I just, to me, that's ridiculous. To me, that is self-evidently ridiculous. You're suggesting
00:39:15.560
that it's impossible to believe something and then not believe it anymore. You're denying a basic fact
00:39:23.280
of human nature. It's just, it is definitely possible for someone to believe something and
00:39:28.740
then not believe it. They really believed it and now they don't. That's a thing. People do that.
00:39:35.100
Now, and they could be wrong. You know, someone could believe something and be right and then
00:39:40.560
believe something that's wrong. That happens. Or they could be wrong and then believe something.
00:39:44.760
It's that, those, these things happen. That's how the human mind works. We're not,
00:39:49.300
you know, you just, just because you come to a conclusion and say, oh, I think this,
00:39:57.000
that doesn't mean you're going to stick with that conclusion forever. You could change your mind
00:40:01.460
for better or worse. That does happen. And to deny that it happens, it's just, why? Well,
00:40:09.760
I know why and I'll get to that in a minute, but you certainly have, there's no rational basis to
00:40:14.560
deny that. We all, you know, in your own experience, Miles, that there have, I would hope there,
00:40:20.560
there have been things that you believed, you know, putting religion aside, maybe not religiously,
00:40:24.640
but you've, there have been things that you believed and then later came to the conclusion
00:40:29.400
that you were wrong. Or have you never done that? Have you never in your life ever changed your mind
00:40:34.680
about anything? If so, then I would say that you're, that's a sign of being a very close-minded
00:40:38.920
person. But probably you haven't. So you know how that works. You really believe something and now
00:40:44.860
you don't. Okay. It does happen. But I think the bigger problem is, is, is you are accusing every
00:40:54.960
single person who has ever left the faith of either being liars or too stupid to understand their own
00:41:00.440
reasons and their own mind. So when they say, yeah, you know, I really believe this and now I don't
00:41:05.480
anymore because, and they give a reason like, you know, whatever. I rattled off a bunch of the
00:41:11.360
objections and questions people have who leave the faith. I did that in the last show. You can listen
00:41:14.900
to it. But, um, uh, okay. Just, just for one example, someone says, I left the faith. I really
00:41:22.800
believe in God, but I didn't because, uh, for example, I was reading the old Testament and, uh,
00:41:27.480
it just seemed to me that the God of the old Testament is a moral monster. And I, I, I just can't
00:41:32.260
believe that anyone would, would endorse this kind of stuff. Okay. That's, that's a, that's a very
00:41:36.520
common objection that you hear from people who leave the faith. Um, very, in my experience,
00:41:40.540
very common, they'll cite the old Testament and the things in their slavery, genocide, rape,
00:41:45.280
you know, all these things. Um, uh, uh, not all of it certainly endorsed or commanded by God,
00:41:52.500
but that's, but that's the, that's the impression that some people that many people have when they read
00:41:56.860
it actually. Um, and that's the reason they give now, rather than you engaging with that reason
00:42:03.920
and saying, you know, listen, I think you, I think you, I think you have a misunderstanding of
00:42:07.260
the old Testament texts. Let me talk about rather than doing that. What you're saying is, oh,
00:42:10.280
then you never believed at all. You were a fraud. You're lying now. That's not really why you left
00:42:16.160
or you're too stupid to understand why you left. Yeah. You never really believed in the first place.
00:42:21.980
That's what you're saying to them. Maybe not in those words, but that's the message.
00:42:25.620
That's the message they hear. No, it is indeed possible for a person to believe in God with all
00:42:33.460
their heart and then to, at a later date, come to the conclusion that they were wrong.
00:42:39.600
In my, uh, opinion, it is a, that's a wrong conclusion. The new conclusion is wrong. They
00:42:45.160
were right before, but that happens. People do that. You know, they were right and now they're wrong.
00:42:50.920
You just have no basis at all. None, none to claim that they never believed what they say they
00:42:58.380
believed before. That's how you want to look at it. You see, Miles, that's why I call it intellectual
00:43:03.420
cowardice is that you want to see it that way. You hope that it's that way. That's how you would
00:43:07.860
prefer to see it because you don't want to take them seriously and you don't want to engage their
00:43:14.020
objections. Maybe you don't know how to, maybe you haven't studied this stuff yourself.
00:43:16.900
The objections that people raise, for example, about the old Testament, those are serious
00:43:22.000
objections. They're not crazy. The fact is read the old Testament, read it. There is some really
00:43:27.560
troubling stuff in there that you can't deny. Denying that is not going to help. And so to,
00:43:32.820
and so to, to, to confront those objections head on is, it can be a difficult thing intellectually,
00:43:41.020
emotionally. Um, and so it seems to me that you would prefer to avoid that. And so instead,
00:43:46.820
you're like, yeah, you never believe I don't have to teach whatever.
00:43:51.180
This is exactly the kind of attitude that makes the problem worse.
00:43:54.940
You know, you're making it worse. You personally are making it worse. If someone has a crisis of
00:44:00.060
faith, if they leave the faith and you're sitting there completely delegitimizing their experience,
00:44:05.680
completely discounting their reasons for leaving and waving away their previous, however many years,
00:44:11.360
I mean, someone, let's say someone was, was a Christian for 40 years and then, and then they had a
00:44:14.740
crisis of faith, all this stuff. They leave that you're sitting there. You're just waving away 40
00:44:18.720
years of their life. Thank that. No, it was nothing. It mean anything. Wasn't real.
00:44:26.660
They, they are, it was perfectly reasonable for them to respond and say, how dare you? Who the hell
00:44:30.880
do you think you are? How could you possibly know what was in my mind before? Where do you get off
00:44:37.280
making those kinds of declarations? This is just not the right approach. I cannot stress this enough.
00:44:45.400
I feel so strongly about this as you could tell. So I'm talking about it again. I just, I, it's really,
00:44:50.280
really bad. This is not the right way to go about it. You are chasing people away. You might as well
00:44:55.220
go to a church with a broom and just swat people away and say, get out, get out of here. You might as
00:45:00.980
well do that. It's the same kind of thing. It's just so, so wrong. Um, I think the right approach
00:45:10.740
is to go to them and say, listen, your doubts are valid, even reasonable. Um, your questions are
00:45:21.700
good questions. The things that you're bringing up about this or that old Testament problem of
00:45:27.600
suffering, um, you know, uh, going down the list, those things I've thought about them too. This
00:45:33.840
is what you could say. I thought about them too. Uh, it's something that I've had. I have wrestled
00:45:37.980
with it also. If you've never wrestled with it, then you just, then you have no business even,
00:45:42.720
then, then, then, you know, you certainly have no business passing any judgment on them. If you've
00:45:46.680
never even wrestled with these questions, but if you've, if you have wrestled with them and that's
00:45:52.520
all the more reason to go up to them and say, look, I get, I get it. I understand why you're
00:45:55.760
wrestling. It is, this is tough stuff, but let's talk about it. Let me give you some ideas about
00:45:59.920
how we might sort through this. Let me give you some, some people you might read who've done a
00:46:04.340
good job, who helped me when I was going through the same thing you did. I think that's the right
00:46:11.240
response saying, Oh, you were never a Christian to begin with. You're a fraud. That is a remarkably
00:46:17.040
stupid way to respond to a person's crisis of faith. And all you are doing is all but
00:46:25.740
ensuring that they will never come back because this is the other thing I hear. I told you
00:46:31.940
yesterday, I hear from all these people who've had, had these crises, crises and, um, talking
00:46:38.800
about the questions that they had and so on. The other thing I hear very often is that when
00:46:45.600
they were in the midst of this crisis or, or even when they came out on the other end of
00:46:51.800
it and they found that they had no faith anymore, the response from the church and from other
00:46:58.700
Christians was so horrendously bad and that, that they just said, you know what? I don't,
00:47:06.560
I want nothing to do with these people. These people are, this is, I'm, I don't want to,
00:47:11.600
I wouldn't want to, I'm done. Goodbye. This is a real problem. I mean, it, it is a real problem
00:47:20.080
in the church. Um, and I'm sure I've been guilty of it to myself, but we really need to
00:47:28.260
take a step back and because 80% of the number he had, this is the second email I've gotten out.
00:47:36.200
People claiming 80, 90% from what I've read. I have read those studies say 89 and it depends on
00:47:41.360
what denomination, what church, but some churches, some denominations are losing 80 to 90% of the
00:47:46.160
next generation. Some, a good figure would be like losing 60% or something. This is, this is
00:47:53.240
catastrophic. It cannot go on. Don't you understand? If it continues like this, there will not be
00:48:00.120
Christianity in America in another 50 years. It won't exist in this country. That's where we're headed.
00:48:04.960
So I think it's a good idea to step back and to do a serious re-examination of everything. I mean,
00:48:12.820
just all the ways that we usually have approached this problem, our entire way of thinking about this
00:48:17.860
problem of people leaving the faith, why they leave, how we should deal with it. We need to
00:48:22.080
re-examine all of that because it's clear that we are doing something wildly wrong. And I think,
00:48:28.880
Miles, you gave us an example, helpfully, of one of the very wrong ways that we go about this.
00:48:39.040
All right. I guess we'll leave it there. Thanks, everybody, for watching. Thanks for listening.
00:48:48.680
If you're in D.C. today, I feel sorry for you. I'll pray for you. God have mercy on your soul,
00:49:24.360
Boring. Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover,
00:49:29.220
and our technical producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Donovan Fowler. Audio is mixed by Mike
00:49:34.640
Coromina. The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
00:49:38.520
Hey, everybody. It's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. You know, some people are
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depressed because the American republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching,
00:49:47.200
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