Ep. 432 - Church of Cowards
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Summary
My new book, Church of Cowards, is finally released, and I want to talk about why I wrote it and what problem I hope it addresses. Also, the issue of student loan debt is center stage in many ways this campaign sees, and it s one of the central issues of the 2020 election. And a surprising person today must be canceled on the show.
Transcript
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Welcome to the show, friends, neighbors, comrades. Today is my new book, Church of Cowards,
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which you can see displayed very tactfully and subtly beside me, is finally released.
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And I want to talk about why I wrote it and what problem I hope it addresses. Also,
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the issue of student loan debt is center stage in many ways this campaign sees. I think it's
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one of the central issues of the 2020 election. And it's central to the rise of Bernie Sanders.
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So I want to discuss that. And specifically, one of the biggest villains in the story of student
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debt, one group that is among the most responsible for driving the crisis, yet has escaped somehow,
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for the most part, the public's wrath. So I want to draw attention to that group and talk about that.
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Also, we'll do a roundup of five other news headlines worth knowing about. And a surprising
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person today must be canceled on the show. I have to cancel someone who I, it brings me no
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joy at all to cancel them, but I must do it. And we'll get to all of that coming up. But first,
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let's check with AncestryDNA. You know, there are many paths to finding your family story,
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whichever way you choose, tracing your family generation, generations back with a family tree,
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or uncovering your ethnicity with AncestryDNA. It's easy to get started with Ancestry. And that's
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one of the things I want to highlight is just how easy this is to do. I know when I did it,
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it seemed kind of daunting at first. I thought it'd be a whole complicated process. It's really not.
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It's very quick and easy to do. And then, you know, AncestryDNA, it tells you where your ancestors
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are from. And also, billions of records and millions of family trees let you discover their
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personal stories. So it's not just about the geographic locations, although that's a very
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interesting part of this. It's also about their stories and who they were and what they were like.
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So you could find out you have an infamous relative, or you could, you know, find a photo of
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your great-great-grandmother as a little girl. Many, many possibilities. Whatever you find,
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it's sure to change the whole way you look at your family history and also yourself. AncestryDNA can
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reveal ethnic origins. They can provide historical details that bring unique family stories to life.
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And that was my experience with it. As I said, a very easy process. And it's just been fascinating to
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see, kind of discover more about who I am. And what I've discovered is that, and I think this is what
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everyone finds out, is that your family history is much more interesting and complicated and diverse
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than you ever expected. That certainly has been my experience. So you could start exploring your
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family story today. Head to my URL at Ancestry.com slash Matt to get your AncestryDNA kit and start your
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free trial. That's Ancestry.com slash Matt. Ancestry.com slash Matt. Okay, my book, Church of Cowards,
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released today. That is my second book. And I can tell you that after two books, I very much relate
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to, I think it was a quote from Dorothy Parker originally, who said, I hate writing, but I love
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having written. And that's very much my feeling on the day of a book release. It's a feeling of,
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I'm so glad that's over. And to be perfectly honest with you, this book I found especially
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difficult to write in some ways. And the reason is that it's an emotionally draining topic. One that
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I think we all may prefer at times to turn away from and ignore, but we can't. As Christians, we can't
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do that. We have to face it. And that's why I wrote the book. And I hope you'll go to Amazon and buy it.
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Or, you know, if you're old fashioned, you can go to an actual bookstore and pick up a physical copy
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there and buy it that way as well. Now I call this book, Church of Cowards, A Wake Up Call to
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Complacent Christians, because I believe that cowardice and complacency is the cancer, the poison
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that has seeped into the church in America. Now you compare our situation to that of Christians in so
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many other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, parts of Africa, parts of Asia,
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America, particularly North Korea, places like that. In those regions, Christians are directly,
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violently, bloodily persecuted, killed, martyred, thrown into concentration camps in a place like
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North Korea. And yet, yet the faith itself, for those who remain alive and free, the faith is
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vibrant and strong and surviving, persisting. Christians in those countries really believe,
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it seems. Here, though, you know, we're under no real threat of violence, no threat of that kind of
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direct violent persecution. You can go to church on Sunday with minimal concern, perhaps not no concern,
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but minimal, that your physical safety and the safety of your family will be in jeopardy. And you
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can live your life as a Christian, go about your day, generally speaking, proclaim your faith. You
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can shout it from the rooftop if you want. And for the most part, the most you're going to face, at worst,
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is snide remarks, maybe, from strangers, insults. Maybe some frowny face emojis will be tossed in your
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direction on Facebook. And yet, in this country, people are leaving the faith in droves.
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Our, you know, the situation is worse, really, than the statistics would show.
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Because if you look at the statistics, you'll find that the percentage of Christians has dropped over
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the years. But it will say, depending on what you, where you look, it'll say that there are, what,
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80%, you know, 80% or something of the American population is still Christian. Well, that's a
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smaller number than it was before. But even that number, I think we all know, is not accurate. It's
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not really 80%. Not really 80% of people who are truly believing Christians on fire with the faith,
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right? But if you do look at the polls and the surveys, and I cite a number of them in the book,
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you see that increasing numbers of Christians are denying basic doctrinal tenets of Christianity.
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We see that our children, the younger generation, they're not remaining in the faith. They're
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leaving, oftentimes around college age. Now, why should we, in our comfort and our luxury, be falling
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apart as a church, while the Christian communities that have every external reason to fall apart
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or not? Well, I think it comes down to complacency. We're sort of drifting along.
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We don't have to think much about our faith, about religion, about our mortality. We don't have to
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make sacrifices. You know, Christ says, pick up your cross and follow me. But we feel like we don't
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have to. Why should we? Because life is comfortable. Life is supposed to be comfortable, we believe.
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And, you know, I'd rather just, I'd rather leave the cross outside, go inside and watch Netflix or
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something. And so there's a spiritual atrophy that happens. Now, many leaders of the church will not
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jolt people out of this stupor. They're not going to call their flocks to deeper and more authentic
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faith. They're not going to call their flocks to repentance because they don't want to scare people.
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They don't want to upset anybody. They don't want to run against the cultural grain. They're
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cowards. But their cowardice doesn't pay off on any level, really, because what they find is that
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their reluctance to challenge the people that are sitting in the pews only leads to those people
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being bored to death and deciding that there's really no reason for them to go to church or to
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remain active in the faith or to pay attention to Christianity at all. If this is all it has to
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offer, you know, there's a reason why the conservative and Orthodox churches tend to be
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younger, more vibrant, bigger, healthier, more energetic, because those churches give people
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a reason to come, right? They give people an experience that is distinct from the culture,
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an experience that has a purpose, a direction. But of course, if you take your church in that direction,
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there's going to be, there might be initially a purge that happens first. There's going to be
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growing pains where first the lukewarm Christians who are in the pews are scared away. So you're going
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to lose those people before you gain more. You're going to lose those people. And that's okay because
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it's better for lukewarm Christians to run away, to leave, to confront who they are and what they
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really believe for their own sake. As I say that we say is 80% of Christians in this country. I don't
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know what the real number is. It's not 80%. What is it? 10%? 20? 5%? I'm not sure. That's a thing.
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Nobody knows. But it'd be better to get down to that core so we know where we stand as a church.
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And then we can build from there. Now, I go into detail about these issues in the book. I also offer
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what I think is a prescription, part of a solution. And that takes me many pages to explain, so you'll
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have to read it. But I will say that it begins with, I think, us as Christians calling each other and
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calling ourselves to a faith that is active, that is lived, that's authentic, that's distinct,
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that's noticeable to the outside world. Because to believe, and I have a whole chapter on this in
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the book, to believe in Jesus, you know, part of the problem is we, I think we have our concept of
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what that even means in the West is very superficial. I think to believe in Jesus is not just an
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intellectual proposition. It's not merely an assent to a fact. It's not just saying,
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yes, Jesus is God. I agree with that statement. That's not faith. That's agreement. That's
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acknowledgement. Is that all we're meant to do is just acknowledge something and say, sure, yeah,
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yeah, okay. Yeah, I believe that. Yeah, okay. Fine. I think faith is lived. Faith is something that
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we do. It's an act. It's like love. You know, you love your spouse. And I think we would all agree,
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we say we love our spouses. It's not merely something we feel, even less is it a fact that
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we acknowledge. Yes, we acknowledge them. We know they exist, but that's not what loving them means.
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It's something that we do. It's a sacrifice that we make. It's a daily task. And the doing,
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the acting, the living, it's not that you prove your love that way. That's not what it is. It's
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that you love that way. That's how you do it. That's what love is. And I think love for God is
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the same. Faith is the same. It's not something that you can entirely do while lying on your couch
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covered in Cheetos dust at all hours of the day. So this is a call to an active, lived public faith.
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And that's really just the beginning of it. I talk in the book also about the concept of repentance.
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I talk about as Christians, our interaction with the culture and the need to balance being in the
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culture with protecting ourselves from its temptations. I talk about, you know, the reality
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of evil. I talk about virtue, false virtues that are often sold in the modern church versus real
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virtues and many other things as well. Church of cowards, go buy it right now, I demand. Okay.
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So next we're going to discuss student loans. And as I said, the villain in the story that often
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escapes our wrath. But first let's run through a little lightning round of other headlines worth
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knowing about to get you up to speed. Number one, we got five stories here. Number one,
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at a town hall yesterday, Bernie Sanders was asked about the fact that he's an old geezer.
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A person in the audience wanted to know if he's going to pick a running mate because, you know,
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he's going to die soon. That wasn't directly said, but that's of course the implications. And
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Bernie had an interesting response. This is what he said.
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And yes, the answer is we will do that. But it's a little bit presumptuous right now. I will tell you
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one thing though, uh, you know, is, uh, that person will not be an old white guy that I can say
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definitively. Okay. Now here's, here's a, here's a question nobody in the media will ever ask.
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Hey, Bernie, if you have a problem with old white guys and you think old white guys shouldn't be in
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power, then why don't you an old white guy drop out and throw your support behind someone who is not
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an old white guy? I mean, how do you, an old white guy justified trying to prevent a woman
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or a younger person or a minority from becoming president? Because that's what you're doing.
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You right now, Bernie Sanders, you say, I'm not going to have an old white vice president. Okay.
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But you are right now actively trying to prevent a woman from becoming president. I mean, Elizabeth
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Warren's a woman and she even has all the same ideas you do. You're trying to prevent her.
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How do you explain that? Uh, but of course that question will never be asked precisely because
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there's no good answer that Bernie could provide. And so the media is not going to
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ask it. Number two, a website called the recount.com has put together an interesting compilation,
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which, which, which seems to give more ammunition to those who claim
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that Pete Buttigieg is trying to be the white Obama. Look at this.
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The way we do every other election by giving it to the person who got the most votes.
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Just a thought brings us together. This country, this country was built and there's a movement
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reaching in and church basements and barbershops and universities and with our kids. And if we can
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change the world, then we can chip a city shining as a beacon around the world once more.
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And this is our chance to answer that call. Now, when Pete releases his birth certificate to prove that
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he wasn't born in Kenya, then we're really going to know that this is a copycat situation. Number three,
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Harvey, Harvey, Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty on two counts, rape and a criminal sex
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act. So he faces five to 29 years in prison. Now I've seen some media people congratulating
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themselves for all the good work the media did in exposing Harvey Weinstein. This is the,
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the level of self-awareness that the media has. They were the ones who refused to report
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on Weinstein's predatory behavior for decades, literally decades. Remember it was an open
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secret. Everybody knew. So he's going to jail now, but he should have went to jail years and years ago.
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And if he had, uh, there, there are many women who were victimized who would not have been
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Hollywood protected him. The media protected him. Let's not forget that. Number four, Pixar has a new
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movie coming out. Uh, this one is called onward comes out. I think this weekend, maybe next weekend.
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It's about, from what I can tell from a previous, it's about two trolls who have to bring their dad's
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legs to a magical wizard or something so that they can retrieve his torso and the rest of him.
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That is actually the plot of the movie or something like that. It's unique. At least I'll give them that.
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But Pixar is a, here's the not so unique part. They're really going for the woke points on this
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one because this film will feature Pixar's first ever lesbian. There's going to be a lesbian, uh,
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character and we're told that her lesbianism will be made explicitly clear.
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Hopefully not too explicit. This is a kid's movie after all, but you never know these days.
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I will never understand this idea, this claim that there aren't enough gay characters in movies and
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on TV. So we have to keep adding them in. And every time we do, there's cause for celebration.
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You know, it seems to me based on my own, you know, anecdotal experience from what I've seen,
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there's a gay character on almost every TV show now. And every year there are movies about gay
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love affairs that are getting awards and so on and so on. So how much of this do we need before we can
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say that gay people are represented? Is it, is it, is it enough yet? Can we officially say they've
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been represented or do we need, I'm just, what exactly is the, is the quota we're shooting for?
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That's my only question. Uh, finally five scientists have discovered the first known
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animal that doesn't breathe, uh, which, which I find very interesting. It has no respiratory genes at
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all, which sets us apart, sets it apart from every other multicellular organism that we're aware of.
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Uh, this creature is according to live science.com, a gelatinous parasitic blob.
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So anyway, I'm surprised to find out that Michael Moore doesn't have lungs. It's, um,
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that was a cheap shot, but honestly, his, his name was the first one that popped into my head
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when I read gelatinous parasitic blob. It's not my fault and no offense intent, no offense,
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no offense. But, uh, that's just the first thing that popped into my head. All right. Um,
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now I want to talk about, as, as I said, this, this student loan issue.
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Um, there are many villains in the story of, of the student debt bubble.
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The universities that charge exorbitant tuition rates simply because they can bilking working
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families out of thousands of dollars for an education that isn't worth even a fraction of
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that cost. Uh, they should be first in line to absorb the blame. And it seems like
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somehow they're not, at least when you listen to somebody like Bernie Sanders talk about it,
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he's not pointing so much to the universities themselves
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because you know, on the far left, you don't want to upset academia. We, we, we, because we want to,
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to, to trust, to trust academia. So I, but I think they're first in line. I'd blame them first,
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but it's a long line. Indeed. The government has earned a hefty portion of our collective scoring for
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issuing these predatory loans to kids fresh out of high school with no assets, no income. And then
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blame goes to the public schools who are, we're funneling kids into the university system
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indiscriminately, regardless of an individual kid's aptitudes and skillset, just pushing them
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all into colleges. Parents as well are, are adding to the pressure, which I'm convinced for many
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parents pressuring their kids in the four year institution. It has as much to do with, with the,
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the parents own vanity as it does their concern for their, for their child. I'm not saying they're
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not concerned for their child, but I think part of it at least is that the parent wants to be able to
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say my kid is going to such and such school. Parent doesn't want to say my kid's not in college,
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but there's another group. So we can thank all of those people for the 1.5 trillion dollars in
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student debt. There's another group though, that seems to have largely somehow escaped the public's
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wrath, despite their unique role in driving this problem. And that would be employers. We take it for
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granted that our kids need, quote unquote, to obtain a college degree because so many jobs require them,
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but the need is artificial. In the vast majority of cases, thousands of employers across the country
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have chosen to artificially inflate their job requirements, uh, often demanding that applicants
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have, have, have degrees for positions that absolutely do not really necessitate them.
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And they've chosen to do this and it's only getting worse. You know, uh, positions that didn't require
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any degree 20 years ago now require a bachelor's degree and positions that required a bachelor's
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degree 20 years ago now require a master's. And you know, before you know it, you're going to need to
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have a PhD to be a sales associate at a JC Penney. This again is, is artificial. People without degrees
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could perform the tasks necessary for most of these positions, but employers disqualify them from
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consideration right out of the gate and for no good reason. Now, obviously, and every time I talk about
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this there, I, I, I, I hear from people saying, what about doctors and lawyers? And yes, obviously,
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some jobs do require additional formal schooling, but not every job does. And not even most jobs.
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Nobody is suggesting that a guy with a high school diploma should be hired right off the street by Johns
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Hopkins to perform brain surgery. No one is suggesting that, but most jobs outside of science and medicine
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have to be learned by doing, you know, uh, the, the vast majority of people who right now have a job,
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any job outside of science and medicine, almost everything they're doing right now. I mean, including
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you, if you're listening to this and you have a job and that is not that it's not in the science and
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medicine field. Most likely, if you think about it, everything you do in your job, you learned how to do
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in the job itself. Or these were skills that you brought in, um, uh, on your own that had nothing to do with
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schooling whatsoever. That's how most jobs are learned. They're learned by doing. Now, it's not as though
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one excuse you hear is, well, companies are saving money on, on having to try train new hires by requiring the
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the college degree. And so this is about saving money. That's not the case. The companies still
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have to train the college graduates. You know, these employers are discovering to their shock somehow
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that, you know, when, when, uh, when, when someone comes in at the age of 23 and they've been in a
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classroom their whole life and haven't done anything, you still have to train them just as much as you
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would have to train someone without a college degree. So what's the point of the degree? It serves no purpose, no function.
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Um, now it might be argued that employers look for the degree because even if the degree is in dance
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theory or comparative religion, it at least proves that the applicant is competent and hardworking
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and so on. Well, you know, I, I would like to see some research, research supporting that assumption
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because I don't believe it. I see no reason to conclude that college grads are any smarter,
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any more competent, any harder working than non-college grads. I understand that that's
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maybe the assumption that employers are making. I'm saying it's a bad assumption. I'm saying it's
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an assumption based on nothing. In fact, I would wager that the scales probably tip the other way
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because a 23 year old who's been working and supporting himself since the age of 18 has already
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demonstrated at a minimum that he has the basic life skills necessary to be a functioning adult in
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society. There are many college grads who don't even have that because if you graduate college
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with a, with a, with a bachelor's degree, congratulations, not taking anything away from you,
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but it doesn't prove that you know how to do anything. It doesn't prove you have any skills at
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all. It doesn't prove that you're a functioning adult. It doesn't really prove anything.
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You know, what it proves in and of itself, in and of itself, all the degree, if you tell me,
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if the only information I have about someone is they have a college degree, you tell me that,
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you know, Bob Smith has a college degree. What does that tell you about Bob Smith?
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The only thing it tells you is that he either had the money to get a college education or he was willing
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to take on the debt. That's the only thing it tells you. Now it might be that Bob Smith is a brilliant
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guy, a hard worker, so on and so forth. What I'm saying though, is that the fact of the degree doesn't
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tell you that. You got to look deeper into who Bob Smith is. But if we're looking deeper into who
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people are, then why can't you do that with non-college grads? Well, we all know the truth.
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I think employers demand the high price degrees for entry level positions, entry level positions
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that in many cases, a moderately intelligent monkey could learn in less than a week.
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The reason why they, they require it is that it's, it's just out of laziness.
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The degree requirement is a way to call the herd of applicants to whittle things down a little bit,
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making it easier to sift through. It's just, you know, it's all, it's just, it's just sort of,
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you got a stack of a hundred applications or resumes and you just, you, you toss 50 of them
00:24:33.100
out just because it's hard to go through a hundred. You'd rather go through 50. And,
00:24:37.980
and that's basically the reason that's why these, these employers do it. If qualified applicants are
00:24:43.820
tossed to the side, that's a sacrifice the employer is willing to make for the sake of
00:24:47.500
streamlining the process. But if it wasn't for the demands of these lazy, the arbitrary demands of
00:24:54.620
these lazy HR departments who don't feel like doing their jobs, don't feel like actually evaluating
00:25:00.620
applicants based on the individual merits of the people who are coming in for the job,
00:25:07.180
if it wasn't for that, kids out of high school may not feel the need to take on crushing debt just
00:25:12.540
to obtain a piece of paper that may only ever function as a symbolic calling card that prevents
00:25:18.140
their resume from automatically being thrown in the trash. It's crazy. It's crazy that we,
00:25:23.180
that we tolerate this as a society, that we just take it for granted that this is the way it is.
00:25:29.980
Perhaps the companies that unjustly discriminate against competent workers who lack a piece of paper
00:25:36.460
should finally start absorbing some of the scorn and the blame that we directed everybody except them.
00:25:42.220
Now, yes, they have every right to come up with whatever unnecessary and expensive job requirements
00:25:48.060
they want, but, but they deserve to be named and shamed for it. They should have to explain, you know,
00:25:55.020
these companies that are requiring degrees for jobs that will 100% be learned on the job regardless,
00:26:04.460
they should have to explain why they're doing that. They should have to give us a good reason.
00:26:08.620
I don't think they can. They can't. It's pure laziness. And as I said, we accept it because
00:26:18.540
that's just the way it is. We say that's the way it's always been. That's the, it's not the way it's
00:26:23.260
always been. This is a very new thing that we've decided. It's very new, very recent in modern history.
00:26:29.820
We've decided that if you want to get a basic job that, that anyone could do, you need, you first
00:26:36.700
need, uh, you know, uh, uh, four years at a, at a university and you need to spend $90,000 on a
00:26:43.260
degree. That's, that's, it's, it's not always been this way. There's no reason why it needs to be this
00:26:48.060
way. We've just decided that it will be. And, uh, I think we should probably make other decisions.
00:26:58.700
Okay. And I want to give a shout out to all of our daily wire members. You guys are the ones that
00:27:02.660
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00:27:07.100
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app and, um, all for the low price of $1, less than a dollar. So give it a shot. It's worth it.
00:28:02.640
And now, um, it's time for our daily cancellation. And today, uh, I'm, I'm afraid that I have to cancel
00:28:10.200
someone and I have to cancel myself. Um, I am canceled and I wish I didn't have to be canceled,
00:28:18.700
especially on the day that my book comes out. It's not, not a, not a very advantageous time,
00:28:22.660
but I have no choice. There's of course, a list of reasons, five light years long for why I should
00:28:28.240
be canceled. And I have been canceled time and time again. The reason this time though, is that, um,
00:28:34.420
this weekend for the second time in as many weeks, I managed to dump a whole cup of coffee
00:28:41.140
in a Starbucks, a whole venti cup of coffee dumped on the ground, splattered everywhere,
00:28:49.460
everywhere. If you ever, if you've ever spilled something in public, you know, that somehow it
00:28:53.040
manages, it's like defies the laws of physics and you dump it and in a hundred feet away, there's,
00:28:59.800
there's, there's splatters still. So it's, that's what I did. Um, and in fact, I have,
00:29:04.600
this is going to sound like an exaggeration, but it's really not. I have now spilled an entire cup of
00:29:08.940
coffee in a Starbucks five times in the last year, five times. This is my fifth time doing it
00:29:13.600
all in different locations. I'm like a terrorist on a, on a, on a spilling spree all across the
00:29:18.360
Eastern seaboard. Now I'm not doing it on purpose. I am just a very clumsy and awkward person and I
00:29:24.440
have long limbs that I can't control. So I'm when I, when I walk, I'm just flailing all over the place,
00:29:29.000
knocking things over everywhere I go. I'm like a drunken Gumby basically barreling around. Although I have
00:29:34.620
to say that Starbucks, in fairness to me, Starbucks should be partially canceled as well. This is
00:29:38.380
partially their fault because part of the problem is yes, I'm a bumbling oaf. That's true. But their
00:29:44.860
tables are so small. So I'm sitting at their thumbtack size table and I've got my, my laptop
00:29:50.940
and I got the cup of coffee. I moved my laptop slightly cup knocks over. This has happened five
00:29:55.680
times already the last year. And then there's the awkward thing of, I have to go to the counter
00:30:00.420
and tell them that I spilled something. And then I always offer to clean it, but it's more symbolic
00:30:06.200
because I know that they, they can't accept my offer. So they have to send the girl out with the
00:30:09.800
mop. And then there's the even more awkward thing where I have to ask for another coffee because I
00:30:15.040
still need my coffee. Let's be real here. And then as the girl is mopping it up, I just slink out
00:30:20.240
the other door and disappear into the fog, never to be seen again. Though nothing could be worse.
00:30:28.480
I mean, that was bad enough. Nothing can be worse than the time. And this happened in the past year
00:30:32.700
also. Um, the time when I dropped a bottle of red wine in the grocery store, uh, uh, as I was,
00:30:40.300
I was going up to pay for it. I dropped it red wine everywhere. I mean, everywhere. And the guy came
00:30:48.120
up, the employee came up and, and he saw it and these were his exact words. He said, Oh my God,
00:30:52.920
just like that. You never want that reaction when you're out in public from, from anybody for any
00:30:57.900
reason. Um, and I, you know, I, I tried to, I admit, I tried to pass the buck a little bit. I
00:31:03.740
said, yeah, you know, I, I don't know what, I don't know what happened. I think the glass in your
00:31:08.900
wine bottles is kind of weak. You guys have a weak glass problem. I, you should probably look into
00:31:12.880
that. I don't know what, you know, someone could get hurt. I don't know. Well, I don't know how this
00:31:16.180
happened. It wasn't, it was not me. I mean, it just happened. And then again, I left and I never,
00:31:20.980
I never returned to the places where I spill things. Um, at this point, my options of places
00:31:25.580
where I can go has, has been severely limited. So that's why I unfortunately have to be canceled.
00:31:35.440
I don't, I don't exempt myself from the canceling and I never would do that, but I, uh, I, I,
00:31:42.720
I forge on ahead anyway, in spite of being canceled. All right, let's go to emails. We'll read a few
00:31:47.100
emails now. This is a, uh, Matt Walsh show at gmail.com. Matt Walsh show at gmail.com is the
00:31:51.540
email address. This is from Michael says, Hey Matt, as a former infantry Marine with two deployments
00:31:55.640
to the Middle East, I appreciate your commenting on that story that the commandant of the Corps
00:31:59.720
says that he has a new priorities. It's beyond dumb and is going to make the Corps more combat
00:32:06.220
ineffective. Anyway, thanks for throwing that in there. Notice you haven't been answering questions
00:32:10.520
on the show recently, but I'll ask a question. Anyway, when you rise to your rightful place as the
00:32:14.780
supreme tyrannical dictator, will you allow the Marines and other services to grow beards
00:32:18.800
while serving? Thanks, man. Love the show. Well, Michael, not only will I allow the Marines to grow
00:32:25.000
beards, but I will require it. I think this should be a requirement. I believe that the prohibition of
00:32:30.940
beards in the military is one of the great moral outrages that we currently face as a society. I also
00:32:37.500
think it puts lives at risk because everybody knows that men become more, become stronger and more
00:32:42.440
resilient as they grow their facial hair. And so I think, look, you go back to the civil war
00:32:50.040
and there were glorious facial hair styles on display. In fact, back in those days, it was
00:32:56.960
understood that one of the primary roles of the military was to promote facial hair and model new
00:33:03.420
facial hair styles. And I would like to get back to that point. So yes, absolutely. This is from Matt
00:33:10.080
says, Matt, as a fellow Matt, I have to say that you missed the mark on today's show when you stated
00:33:14.200
that 10 years from now, nearly all leftists will be arguing in favor of pedophilia. Although the
00:33:18.420
leftists are absurdly arguing that children can choose their own gender, I highly doubt that even
00:33:21.840
a significant portion of leftists will actually advocate pedophilia. Yes, you could argue that if
00:33:25.660
a five-year-old child has the mental and emotional capacity to choose his or her gender, then the
00:33:30.280
natural extension of this is that they must have enough maturity to consent to sexual activity.
00:33:34.180
However, I just don't buy it. There is no way that our society will allow things to
00:33:37.840
progress that far. Although as I type this, I realized that in 2010, I would have stated that
00:33:41.980
10 years from then, there is no way our society would be advocating that five-year-old boys could
00:33:45.840
decide that they're actually five-year-old girls. Who knows? Maybe they are that crazy. Well, Matt,
00:33:50.960
you said it yourself, 10 years ago, you could not have possibly imagined or predicted that 10 years in
00:33:55.480
the future in 2020, all leftists in the country, all of them, including, you know, in the mainstream
00:34:00.200
would Democrats, presidential candidates would be saying that three-year-old boys can choose to become
00:34:05.760
girls. You would not have predicted that. And if somebody had predicted that to you 10 years ago,
00:34:09.860
you would have thought they were crazy. And so that should be enough reason to give you pause
00:34:14.660
when I talk about this. You know, you would have reacted 10 years ago to that the way you're
00:34:20.460
reacting now when I talk about how 10 years in the future, the left's going to be advocating for
00:34:24.600
pedophilia. There's a logical progression here. I'm not issuing some kind of prophecy based on a vision
00:34:30.380
of the future I had in a dream. That's not what's happening here. I'm saying there's a logical
00:34:34.740
conclusion. If children have the emotional and psychological capacity to decide to change their
00:34:39.360
gender, if they have this capacity, even as toddlers, and if their decisions should be respected
00:34:44.100
so much and trusted so much that we even give them drugs to chemically castrate them, to aid them in
00:34:50.300
their transformation into girls, then it's not a far leap to say that they have the mental and emotional
00:34:55.760
capacity to consent to sex. If they can consent to a sex change, then why not a sex act? So yes,
00:35:06.740
10 years from now, we will be told that we need to respect the lifestyle choices of adults who have
00:35:13.140
sex with children. That's what we're going to be told. We're going to be told that children are
00:35:16.840
perfectly able to consent and that if they want to be in these relationships, we should respect it.
00:35:21.780
And it's bigotry for us to do otherwise. That's where we're headed. And unless we as a culture
00:35:30.760
revolt against this nonsense and put a stop to it. But if we let it continue on the path it's going,
00:35:37.240
that's where it goes. Finally, this is from Connor says, Matt, I read your article about blaming
00:35:41.240
employers for the debt problem. You sound like a socialist yourself. First of all, employers have
00:35:46.740
the right to make these decisions. What happened to the right of business owners? Second, it is perfectly
00:35:51.440
valid for them to focus on college graduates. They will know that college graduates at least
00:35:55.680
have basic literacy and are capable of completing tasks. Your rant was silly. Well, Connor, I never
00:36:01.800
said that employers don't have the right. Okay. So I'm talking about what is the right thing to do.
00:36:06.160
I'm not talking about what we have the right to do. This is two different concepts. So that's
00:36:10.840
completely irrelevant. Second, I need a citation needed. Okay. You say that college graduates are
00:36:16.840
going to be better able to complete tasks and they have basic literacy. Well, as far as basic
00:36:20.700
literacy, you can easily tell that. You don't need a college degree to tell that someone's
00:36:25.340
basically literate. Just by interviewing them and by looking at their resume, that should be enough to
00:36:30.460
tell you. And if you need, how about adding an additional step, an additional test? You could
00:36:35.620
even just have a brief questionnaire with essay style answers talking about why, asking applicants to
00:36:45.380
explain why they want the job or why they'd be best suited for the job. And just based on that, you can tell
00:36:53.640
that they're literate or not. And you could tell a lot about their intelligence. As far as being able to
00:36:59.740
complete tasks, well, call me crazy. But if somebody has work experience, if they've been at a job, especially
00:37:04.960
a related job for a number of years, that tells me they can complete tasks. They can do things. It tells me
00:37:10.740
more than a degree does. You know, you've got two candidates. One has been in college the last four
00:37:16.880
years. The other has been working in the working world. You're telling me that the former, the college
00:37:21.920
grad, has better proven his ability to work, to do things, to complete things? How so? You know, I mean,
00:37:32.580
if the other guy, even if the other guy has been at McDonald's for the last four years,
00:37:36.280
well, that tells me that he's reliable. He gets up and he comes to work. He's trainable. He's
00:37:41.300
teachable. There's a number of things you can tell right away. And you can also call up his boss
00:37:45.880
and ask him. So the point is, for most of these jobs, there's just no good reason to rule out
00:37:52.340
non-college grads. Plenty of them could be better suited, could be better workers than college
00:37:58.240
graduates. The only reason they're ruled out for the job is, as I said, laziness. And
00:38:05.160
I don't think that's right. I don't think that's enough of a reason. I don't think the need that
00:38:11.140
employers have to streamline a process and not put any effort into it, I don't think that's a
00:38:15.120
good enough reason to justify $1.5 trillion in student debt. That's my point. And we will leave
00:38:22.940
it there. Again, my book, Church of Cowards, is out now. Please go buy it. And I will talk to you
00:38:30.760
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
00:38:34.340
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00:38:43.120
the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knowles Show, and The Andrew
00:38:47.360
Klavan Show. Thanks for listening. The Matt Walsh Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer
00:38:52.480
Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover, supervising producer Robert Sterling,
00:38:57.820
technical producer Austin Stevens, editor Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Robin Fenderson.
00:39:03.540
The Matt Walsh Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:39:08.000
If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by the brutal truth, and you can still laugh at the
00:39:12.540
insanity filling our national news cycle, well, tune in to The Ben Shapiro Show, where you'll get a
00:39:16.740
whole lot of that and much more. See you there.