The March For Life is happening in DC today. I want to talk about the most incredible and inspiring thing about the march. It's something that often gets overlooked. Also, a congressional Democrat makes an evil insinuation about a Republican senator. And finally, we’ll talk about the negative effects of too much screen time, contrasted with the wondrous effects of reading. Date: 01-18-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the March for Life is happening in D.C.
Today, I want to talk about what I think is the most incredible and inspiring thing about the March for Life.
Also, a Congressional Democrat makes an absolutely evil insinuation about Lindsey Graham.
And finally, we'll talk about the negative effects of screen time,
and we'll contrast that with the wondrous effects of reading. And I'll even give you
a few reading suggestions as well, as a bonus, on The Matt Wall Show.
Somebody on Twitter asked, put this question out there for everyone,
what advice would you give to your teenage self?
And so I know exactly what advice I would give.
I would say to my teenage self, invent the Snuggie, which is just a blanket with arms, make a couple of million bucks off of that, invest it in Netflix and Amazon stock, and then go build a compound in the wilderness.
And drop off the grid for good, because things are going to get pretty weird.
And you might want to avoid it as best you can.
All right.
The March for Life is happening today in D.C., which is why I'm wearing my Make Unborn Babies Great Again shirt.
Hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers taking to the street, calling for an end to abortion.
That's what's happening right now.
The hideous evil of abortion is what they're standing up against.
Now, it's not going to get anywhere close to the kind of media coverage, of course, that literally any other march of this size would get and has gotten, which, by the way, is a very small category.
So when I say marches of this size, there aren't very many other marches that fit into that category.
There have rarely in American history been marches the size of just your average, ordinary Annual March for Life.
The so-called Women's March a few years back.
Now, that may have been around the same size, and think about all the media coverage that thing got.
But that was one march.
That was just one time.
They couldn't sustain it.
And the incredible thing about the March for Life is that they do this every year, year after year, year in, year out, for 40-plus years and counting.
And there is always a huge turnout every single time.
And they do it in the winter, too.
They do it in the dead of winter, where it's very cold, a lot of times there's snow on the ground, like there is now, and there's ice.
If they move the march to, like, April or May, and they also didn't have competing marches, because that's the other thing, there are other marches for life around the country in other cities, some today, some at other points in January.
If they were to boil it down to one march and then do it in April or do it in May, I think they could easily get a million people or more.
But even with those disadvantages, they still get hundreds of thousands of people.
Now, I'm not going to give you a whole speech about the march.
You've heard it before from me.
You already know how I feel about the March for Life, and you know how I feel about the aims of the March for Life.
But there's one thing about the March for Life that I wanted to I just wanted to highlight, you know, I wanted you to notice.
It's a really obvious thing, but it's easy to overlook.
And this is the profound thing that separates the March for Life from pretty much any other kind of march, aside from the turnout.
The other thing that separates it is this.
Nobody is there to march for themselves.
Okay?
Nobody is demanding anything for themselves.
Just think about that.
Nobody, not one single person, if there are 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 people to march, not a single one of them is going to be there marching for their own rights.
Because everybody marching has already been born.
If we're not counting the, you know, the many pregnant women that are going to be there with With babies in the womb.
So all the people who made the choice to get into a car or a bus and drive to the march, they are there for others, okay?
They're there for those who cannot be there.
In any other kind of march that you can think of, it's always people there, for the most part, Now, there may be some people who show up who are there to support, but for the most part, predominantly, in any other kind of march, the people there are saying, I want my rights.
I want respect for me and dignity and whatever else for myself.
And there's nothing wrong with that if the cause is just.
Then there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with marching for your own rights.
It's a good thing to do, an American thing to do.
The problem, of course, with the women's march is that they weren't marching for their own rights because women already have.
To the exclusion of unborn females, women already have all the same rights as men.
So they weren't marching for it.
They already have all the rights.
What they wanted was, you know, like free birth control and those kinds of things.
So they were demanding things that are not rights.
They were demanding extra entitlements.
So that is an unjust cause.
But there are plenty of other rights and demonstrations that have happened throughout history, throughout American history, where the cause was just and it's good that people came to demand their rights.
But in this case, you know, the people who are being deprived of their rights cannot march for obvious reasons.
So others are there in their place.
And here's the other powerful thing.
Despite what you may be told, and I want you to, if you can't make it out to the march, if you're not going to be there, After the march has happened, try to find some footage of it.
It's going to be kind of difficult to find actual footage of the march because the mainstream media, they're not going to show you.
Now, they might mention it.
They might make a quick mention of, oh, anti-abortion demonstrators are in D.C., or what they'll like to say is something like, People are in DC today demonstrating on either side of the abortion issue.
Meanwhile, there are 400,000 pro-lifers and like 10 pro-abortion people, and the mainstream media will portray it as if it's kind of an even split, right?
But what they won't do, they won't show you a huge kind of panoramic view of all the people who showed up.
They're not going to show you that.
So it might be hard to find it, but if you go to pro-life sites, LifeSiteNews, or something like that, you can find it.
And I would recommend, or go on social media, go on Twitter, and look at the pictures, because what you're going to notice is that despite what you're told, it's not a bunch of old white men there who are trying to control women's bodies.
Now, there are going to be some old white men, which, great, God bless them.
They are needed in the movement as well.
But most of the participants in the March for Life, And most pro-life activists in general are younger, and most are women.
So these are young women, predominantly.
So think about that.
Not only are these young women marching for others, aside from themselves, but they're marching demanding laws that would, in a sense, restrict their own legal rights.
Okay, they are marching, demanding laws that would deprive themselves of certain legal powers that they currently possess.
So they're saying, no, these women who march in the March for Life, what they're saying is, no, I should not have the right or the ability or the power to take innocent life.
I should not have that right.
That is not a real human right.
I shouldn't have it.
Take it from me.
And in exchange, Give basic human dignity and human rights to the unborn.
Now, that's a really powerful message, isn't it?
Think about that message.
Think about how unprecedented it is for a message like that.
Especially in this day and age, when people are constantly prattling on about rights they don't have.
You know, they have all the rights in the world, and now they want more.
They want entitlements.
They want this.
They want that.
But these women who are at the March for Life, and women in the pro-life movement generally, they are saying exactly the opposite.
They're saying, yes, I want all of my God-given human rights, but the right to kill a child, that is not a God-given human right.
I should not have that right.
Take it away.
Give rights to the child.
What a powerful, beautiful message.
And as I said, unprecedented.
All right.
Let's talk about something a little less inspiring.
Representative Omar, who's a Democrat, is making insinuations about Senator Lindsey Graham.
It's important, just for some background reference here, just so you understand how despicable this is, the thing that we're talking about is, there has long been a rumor in DC that Lindsey Graham is gay, okay?
A rumor as in it's just something that his political enemies will sometimes say or insinuate.
It's just an implication, whispers, right?
I'm not aware of there being any truth to it or basis for it whatsoever at all.
But you need to know that this rumor exists so that you can understand What the Democrats are doing here.
So, a guy named Kasim Rashid calls himself an Islamic educator, said on Twitter this week, in reaction to Lindsey Graham's kind of change of tone about Donald Trump over the past few years, Rashid said, I can't even imagine what they have on Graham.
Now, there's an obvious implication there.
If you're aware of the rumors and you say, well, I can't imagine what they might have on him, it's really obvious what you're trying to imply.
And then Representative Omar, a Democrat, sitting member of Congress, she responds with her own tweet and she says, they got to him.
He is compromised.
So that's not even like she's saying her opinion or she's presenting this as a theory.
She's saying, no, they got to him.
He is compromised.
What does she mean by that?
Well, she was pressed on this by CNN.
CNN did a rare bit of actual journalism, actually pressing a Democrat, and here's how that conversation went.
That's quite a charge to make.
You say you're pretty sure, based on what evidence?
What facts?
That's a remarkable comment to make about a sitting U.S.
Senator.
The evidence really is present to us.
It's being presented to us in the way that he's behaving.
But that's not evidence.
That's your opinion.
But now as a sitting member of Congress, you would have tweeted, they got him on this.
Again, just based on what evidence, Congresswoman?
My tweet was just an opinion based on what I believe to be visible to me, and I'm pretty sure there are lots of Americans who agree on this.
Uh, so she's, you see there, she's trying to backpedal a little bit and sort of, she's trying to leave the insinuation sort of dangling out there for, for people to, so they know it and understand it, but she's not, but that's the point of the insinuation.
She's not going to say it.
She's not going to come right out and say it, because she's also a coward.
Meanwhile, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle has gotten in on the act as well.
Here she is on MSNBC a couple of days ago, kind of feeding into this rumor as well.
Before Donald Trump got elected, Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a racist, xenophobic bigot.
That is Lindsey Graham's words.
I doubt Lindsey Graham could tell you Donald Trump's had a change of heart in the last 24 months.
I bet what the change of heart has been with Lindsey Graham, not the president.
Or it could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham.
Okay, so you see how this goes, right?
Liberals spend all day insisting that all lifestyles are great, and equal and wonderful and they should all be accepted and so on, but then they will not hesitate to imply that a person is gay in order to insult or discredit them.
And they do this all the time with conservatives, not just with Lindsey Graham, but any conservative who stands up for biblical marriage or talks about this issue at all, what you're gonna hear from liberals is, oh, you know, I bet he's hiding something.
Yeah, we all know what's going on with that guy.
Which, of course, is ridiculous for a number of reasons.
But anyway, so what if he is hiding something?
That should be a total non-story, right, to you, as a liberal.
It should be a non-issue to you.
So you're implying that Lindsey Graham is gay.
Well, that's a libelous, despicable thing to do, to make implications with someone with no evidence or anything like that, to feed into rumors.
But even aside from that, what does it matter to you?
That should be a non-issue, non-story to you.
And not only that, but if somebody were gay and they were hiding it for whatever reason, then you should respect their right to what?
To come out when and how and if they choose, right?
But that's not what happens.
And this is even leaving aside, by the way, this whole thing with Lindsey Graham, this idea that he's being blackmailed, or what's going on with Lindsey Graham, he changed his tune, he was against Trump, now he's for him.
Actually, Lindsey Graham has, I mean, Lindsey Graham came out against Trump yesterday because of the letter that Trump sent to Pelosi canceling her travel plans, which I thought that letter was great, by the way, and hilarious.
Lindsey Graham came out against it and said it was sophomoric.
So, look, I disagree with Lindsey Graham a lot.
But it does appear to me, for the most part, he just calls it as he sees it.
So he's come out strongly against Trump, and he's strongly defended him.
And if you're trying to figure out, well, why is he against him here?
Could it maybe just be that he agrees with Trump on this issue and not on that issue?
And I respect that.
Even if I disagree with where Graham lands on certain issues, It would appear that he's just saying how he feels and reacting to the situation as it comes up.
So there's, on top of the, how despicable it is to feed into rumors, it also just, it doesn't even make any sense to even be getting into this.
Considering Lindsey Graham is still one of the senators who is willing to criticize Trump and has criticized him plenty of times, including as recently as like 12 hours ago.
All right, running through a few other stories here.
I want to mention this before the week is up.
According to a recent survey, Americans spend nearly half of all of their waking hours, 42%, staring at screens.
Like I am doing right now, and like you are doing right now.
So whether TV, computer, phone, whatever, Americans are spending half the day Looking at a screen of some kind.
And this, of course, is not surprising.
And it also isn't surprising, according to another recent survey, a third of all people say they would not be able to live without screens.
It's such an integral part of their day, they can't imagine life without it.
Meanwhile, a new study from the National Institute of Health says that kids who spend a couple of hours a day, let alone half the day, but even just, say, two hours a day looking at screens, tend to score lower on language tests.
There have been many studies of this kind, all finding similar things, talking about the detrimental effects of screen time on kids and on adults.
Although another study made headlines recently, so there are studies all over the place going back and forth, but this one made headlines by going against the grain.
So reading now from the website sciencealert.com, it says, leading pediatricians said there is little evidence that shows screen time is toxic for children, even after other research suggested that just a few hours a day could damage developing brains.
New guidelines or guidance for under 18-year-olds from the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health in the UK said that evidence that time in front of a screen has a negative effect on children is, quote, contested.
And that, quote, the evidence of harm is often overstated.
The evidence is so weak, according to the group, that it could not offer parents a guide for how much they should be limiting their children's screen time.
Again, this doesn't meld with what most studies have found.
It also just doesn't track with our basic common sense.
Of course it's bad for you to spend half of your life Staring at a screen?
Of course that's bad for you.
I mean, to spend half your day doing anything is probably not good for you, unless we're talking about breathing, in which case you should probably spend a little bit more than half your day doing it.
But especially something as sort of sedentary and lethargic and passive and unthinking as just sitting there staring at a screen.
The effects of that, I think, are literally immeasurable in that it affects you in so many areas and so deeply that you can't possibly quantify all of it.
And I think a lot of the effects, it's something that we notice intuitively.
We don't even need all these studies.
I think we all know.
We can see the effect That if you spend, if you go on some binge with Netflix and you watch a TV for six hours, how do you feel?
I mean, do you feel sprightly and alive and energetic?
And do you feel like you just spent your time doing something productive?
Do you feel great about it afterwards?
No.
So I think just based on the effect, just based on your own experience, you know that it's not good for you.
Just like you don't really need anyone to tell you that scarfing down a whole Cinnabon at the airport in 2.5 seconds before you board a flight isn't good for you.
You don't need, plenty of people will tell you that, but you don't need them to because you just know based on how it makes you feel.
The moment you take that last bite, you're going, oh wow, that was not, yeah, I really wish I just had a smoothie or something like that, or maybe some baby carrots.
So it's the same sort of thing.
And it's not hard to see why.
Because as I said, watching a screen is a passive experience.
It is passive, but then also superficially stimulating and fast-paced.
And this is why it's so bad for kids.
And this is also why kids shows these days are so obnoxious, most of them, because there's just so many things going on and so many different colors and sounds and noises and everything just bombarding a kid's face.
But it's that way for most of us when we watch most of the stuff on TV or whatever you're doing.
It's just you're having all of these things pounded into your brain while you just sit there comatose, ingesting it unthinkingly.
And the effect is that you get lazy intellectually because you're not using your brain.
Your brain is being used rather than you using it.
Now, okay, you might say, it is possible to actually engage intellectually with something on a screen.
You could read a book on a tablet, so that's perfectly fine.
Or you could read a challenging article or essay or something.
Again, you know, that's great.
And there are even a few shows and movies you could watch that have some real depth to them, some real substance that are really intelligent and artistic.
And I think maybe you could become smarter by watching them, or at least you could become not dumber.
Because these are shows or films that function more like novels and that really challenge you and make you think and are not handing everything to you.
They're not spoon-feeding everything to you and they're not pounding your brain constantly with stimulation.
But the vast majority of the entertainment on your screen is not like that.
The vast majority, and we all know it, is aggressively, aggressively stupid.
I think this, every time I'm watching football, which of course watching football is a completely mentally engaging thing to do and it makes us all smarter, right?
Or maybe not, but whatever.
But if I'm watching it and then I see a commercial, like I'm watching a football game on Fox or something or on CBS or whatever, and then I see a commercial for the new slate of broadcast sitcoms, that are coming out this season.
Every time I see these commercials for these sitcoms, I sit there and just after watching a 30-second spot for a sitcom, I really feel like my IQ has collapsed.
Just in those 30 seconds.
It is so, so, so, so stupid and mind-numbing that I practically lapse into a coma just by half a minute of exposure.
And I always think, and I make the same point to my wife if she's in the room every time we see one of these commercials, I always say, like, who watches this stuff?
Who sits down?
I can't even stand a 30-second commercial.
Who is sitting down on your average Tuesday night and saying, I'm gonna watch stuff like this for two, three hours?
I can't even imagine it!
I mean, Lord help them!
Have you ever noticed something?
Have you ever noticed how if you sit down to read a book at like 9.30 at night, you'll get really, really tired, and within the hour, you're ready to go to bed, right?
Which is one of the excuses people will always give me for why they don't read.
They say, I'd love to read, but it makes me tired.
Okay, well, maybe it's not such a bad thing to be tired at the end of the night.
You know, maybe that's a good thing.
You might as well say, well, you know, I'd love to go for a jog, but it makes me tired.
Yes, that's the point.
That's part of the point.
It's good that it makes you tired.
That's a good thing.
So, and I've noticed this myself, so if I sit down and read a book at night, yeah, it does make me tired.
And then I'm going to probably be going to bed a lot earlier than I normally would.
But, if it's 9.30 at night and I sit down and I put on the TV, I could be up until 3 o'clock in the morning.
I mean, I'm not going to get tired.
Why is that?
Because the book is working your brain.
It's tiring you out.
It's making you think.
Whereas the show, on the other hand, is catatonic.
It puts you into this kind of mental stasis or stupor, and then you just sort of coast mentally.
Psychologically, not asleep, not awake, and I think that's one of the reasons why people complain about having trouble sleeping these days.
It seems like everyone is claiming to be an insomniac.
It's because you're sitting there watching the TV.
A lot of people have TVs in their room, so they lie down in bed, they put on the TV, and then they can't figure out why they can't sleep.
And okay, maybe, you know, it's fine sometimes to watch some really stupid thing that puts you into a mental stasis, but every day?
For hours?
That can't be good for you.
It's the same thing if you sit there, you know, if you're sitting there in bed, which I've done this plenty of times, but if you're sitting there in bed just mindlessly, you know, scrolling through social media, and you could sit there for five hours and do this and not even notice it.
Because, again, it's shutting your brain off.
Which, maybe sometimes that's fine, but half the day, every day, every night, no.
And this is why I am a big proponent of books.
I think books are great.
I wish more people read books.
I wish I should read books even more than I do.
If you just get yourself into the habit of reading, And it'll be kind of tough at first, I think.
But if you get yourself into the habit and you make that your relaxation time, you just say to yourself, this is going to be my time to relax.
It's going to be, no, I'm not watching TV.
I'm reading a book.
And at first, yeah, it's going to be a little tough because it's so easy to just put on the TV and shut the brain off completely.
But if you try to force yourself to read, force yourself to like it, develop an interest in it, find books, figure out what kinds of books interest you.
And stock up on those and then maybe eventually you'll look forward to it.
Make it a whole thing, right?
If you have a fireplace, put the fireplace on.
You sit there.
You gotta drink something when you're reading.
You can't enjoy a book unless you're drinking something.
For me, it's whiskey.
Maybe for you, it's wine.
It doesn't have to be alcohol.
It could be tea.
It could be coffee, if you're the kind of person who can drink coffee at night.
But you need some kind of relaxing drink that you sip on, okay?
So a glass of water isn't going to cut it.
You need some kind of drink.
You need some sort of thing, like you need some little reading spot where you sit and you read and you have your book and you read.
And if you do that, I think over time, you'll actually begin to look forward to it.
And I think you're not going to regret spending, if you sit down and you read a book for an hour, you're not going to say after that, oh man, I wish I hadn't done that.
And I know for me, When I get into a thing where I'm reading a lot, I feel fresher, I feel smarter, I feel more engaged with life.
I also think I'm a better writer when I'm reading during those times.
So that's what I would recommend.
And finally, this dovetails nicely with the last thing I wanted to talk about.
I had planned to go to the mailbag, the email, and answer an email today, on Friday.
And I found this email yesterday, and I knew that I wanted to talk about the screen thing.
And give my little reading speech.
So when I saw this email, I thought this would be a good one because it kind of works with it.
So someone emailed me a few days ago, said, Dear Matt, assuming that bookshelf behind you during your show isn't there just for show, can you tell us what are your top five or six favorite books on that shelf?
I could really use some good reading suggestions.
No, those books are not actually totally for show.
Some of them are completely blank.
They're just there as decoration.
No, they're not for show.
And I like this question because it limits me.
I thought about maybe I would cheat because it says, what are my top five or six books on that shelf?
I have other books that I like that are elsewhere in the house.
I thought maybe I would cheat, but I'm not going to cheat.
So I went, I did go to that particular shelf and found my top five or six books on that shelf and I'll share them with you and then here's some good, uh, you know, if you, if you decide you want to, um, Become a nerd who reads a lot, then here are some good suggestions for you.
So, five or six quickly from that shelf.
Here's my first suggestion.
I don't even know if you can see.
Problem of Pain by C.S.
Lewis.
This is not my favorite C.S.
Lewis book.
My favorite C.S.
Lewis book is A Great Divorce, which was not on that shelf, so I can't do that.
But The Problem of Pain is, I think, still C.S.
Lewis at his best, where he's dealing with the One of the biggest problems, one of the biggest issues for a believer, which is how could there be a God who is overseeing a world with so much suffering and pain?
Such a difficult problem.
One that C.S.
Lewis takes very seriously, obviously, but he deals with it in a way, and this is why C.S.
Lewis is so great, is that he deals with it in a way that's very accessible.
There are a lot of great theologians who you try to pick them up and read them and you can't get through a page because you don't even understand what they're saying.
C.S.
Lewis didn't have that problem.
He could break down these very complex, deep kind of subjects in a way that even someone as stupid as myself can understand.
Then the Solzhenitsyn reader I mean, my favorite Solzhenitsyn book isn't on the shelf, so I'll just give you this.
And the great thing about this is it has some of his writings from some of his novels, like, you know, the Gulag Archipelago, but it also, Cancer Ward, it also has his speeches, including the iconic speech that Solzhenitsyn gave to Harvard, and I think 1976 or it was in the 70s, I believe, after Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union for being such a strong critic.
of that regime.
He was exiled.
He came to the United States.
He was a hero here.
He was invited to give this commencement address.
Everybody thought it was going to be kind of like this rah-rah, shish-koomba, go USA, stars and stripes kind of thing.
And it wasn't that at all.
He gets up there after being exiled from the Soviet Union.
He's embraced by the West.
And he gets up there and he just offers this searing indictment Of Western culture.
Very accurate indictment of Western culture.
And so he was hated by people in the West after that.
He was just kind of this man in between, hated by everybody.
And I think he's one of the great heroes of the 20th century.
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace.
I think his short story collection, supposedly a fun thing I'll never do again, is better, but I didn't have that on there.
I think David Foster Wallace is...
My favorite essayist that I've ever read.
He's got a great insight into the human condition.
He was not a Christian.
Obviously, if you know his story, he died in tragic circumstances.
He was a seeker looking for the truth.
And despite the tragic end of his life, I still think that there's a lot that even a Christian could glean from his essays.
The Lord by Romano Guardini is my favorite piece of spiritual writing of all time, easily.
I would recommend that.
And then finally, I'll go with The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
William Shire, my favorite piece of history writing that I've ever read.
As you can see, it's pretty long, but it's just, I mean, it's absorbing, it's compelling, it's terrifying, it's disturbing.
But if you really want to understand what led to World War II, and kind of more importantly, just how could a guy like Hitler, This started life as just this obscure kind of vagabond, this sort of, you know, anti-Semitic nutcase radical who manages to, you know, become one of the most powerful men of the 20th century and, you know, threatens to take over the entire world.
How did that happen?
And how is it that people fell in line behind this ridiculously evil man.
If you want to understand that, which is one of the great questions of the 20th century, one of the great questions of history, I don't think you could do any better than reading that book.
It gives you such an insight into it.
You're not going to go away from that book having a very cheerful Impression of Human Nature.
It's not a cheerful read at all, but I still would absolutely recommend it.
So there are some... I also had Crime and Punishment as Dostoevsky.
I don't know.
That might be sad.
I don't know how many I've recommended, but Crime and Punishment is Dostoevsky's second best book behind Brothers Karamazov, in my opinion.
So there you go.
If you want to start reading, there's some recommendations for you if you happen to care.
Again, I want to say God bless all the people at the March for Life.
