Ep. 186 - You Can't Have A Real Education Without The Bible
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Donald Trump endorses the idea of Bible literacy classes in public school. The left is upset, of course, but Trump is absolutely ight. You can’t have a real education without the Bible. Also, the Kamala Harris sex scandal no one cares about. And finally, CNBC claims that having kids will make you go broke. They're wrong.  Date: 01-29-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Donald Trump endorses the idea of Bible literacy classes in public school.
The left and the media obviously are upset about that, but Trump is absolutely right.
You can't have a real education without the Bible, and we'll talk about why.
Also, the Kamala Harris sex scandal that nobody cares about.
And finally, CNBC claims that having kids will make you go broke, which is absurd.
And we'll talk about why today on The Matt Wall Show.
Well, President Trump caused a bit of a controversy yesterday, kind of a change of pace for him,
There was deep concern on the left and among the media because he lent his endorsement to the idea of Bible literacy classes.
So in a tweet yesterday, he said, numerous states introducing Bible literacy classes,
giving students the option of studying the Bible.
Starting to make a turn back?
Great.
Now, the, I'm not sure what, starting to make a turn back.
I guess he meant turn back to the time when we studied the Bible.
Either way, I agree.
It is great.
So the laws that he's talking about, which the media tells us are controversial, These laws, which are being advanced in a few states, including Kentucky as one of them, a few other states, they would introduce elective Bible classes in school.
Kids, elective means you choose, you elect, you don't have to take it, you could take it if you wanted to.
And the classes would teach the Bible in terms of history and literature.
So obviously students are not going to be required to affirm any of the doctrines in the Bible or to affirm its infallibility.
Nor would they be taught or forced to adopt, accept any of the moral prescriptions in the Bible, or will they have to accept any of the supernatural claims in the Bible.
In a public school setting, that's obviously not how the Bible is going to be taught.
And I think we all agree that it should not be taught that way.
And Christians, most of all, I think would not want the Bible taught that way in a public school setting, and I'll get more to that a little bit later on.
But the Bible would be presented as a literary work, and its historical context and its impact on history would be examined.
That's the idea.
Now, why is this a controversial idea?
Well, there's for no good reason.
The reason why it's a controversial idea is that we live in a very, very stupid culture filled with nincompoops who think that where it says in the First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, they think that means that schools have to ignore the very existence of religion.
They think actually, they think that every public institution, every public person, anyone in the public square, Everyone has to ignore the existence of religion, and the public square has to exist as if religion does not exist, and that's what they think that clause in the First Amendment means.
That's not what it means.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
What that means is, and there's no way for me to really explain what it means without just repeating it, but what it means is that Congress, which is a legislative body, Cannot write a piece of legislation, which would then become law, which would force anyone to accept any particular religion.
So that's what it means.
Congress cannot make a law forcing you to accept or adopt any religion.
That's what the First Amendment is trying to tell us.
That's got nothing at all to do with teaching the Bible in public school.
Because you teach the Bible in public school, first of all, that's not Congress.
Second, there's no law being passed.
Third, no one is being forced to accept any religion whatsoever.
So, it's got nothing to do with what the First Amendment says.
And the thing is, you can't really have a well-rounded education If it's divorced entirely from the Bible, it's just not possible.
It really is impossible to have a well-rounded, a real and well-rounded education in America if you're just going to ignore the existence of the Bible.
You can't do it.
Because no matter what you believe, Or what God, if any, you worship.
The simple fact is this, that the Bible is the most influential, important book ever composed.
It is the most translated, the best-selling, the most widely read, the most quoted, the most debated, the most cherished, the most loved, the most hated, the most debated over.
I already said that one.
It is the most everything, basically, is this book.
This book, more than any other book that's ever been written or composed or compiled, has molded the world in which we live, especially in the West.
So if you rip it out of education, you are going to leave a Bible-shaped hole behind,
which cannot really be plugged in with anything. So just to break it down a little bit,
you cannot begin to appreciate the works of, say, Shakespeare, or Tolstoy, or Dostoevsky, or
Dickens, or Dante, or pretty much any Faulkner, I mean any great
Novel or play or poem that's been written in the West, any time between like the 1st and 20th centuries, if you want to appreciate them and fully understand what they're saying and what they're doing, you have to know something about the Bible.
I mean, the idea that we could teach kids about Shakespeare without them understanding the biblical themes that are dripping all over Shakespeare's works, it's just impossible.
You would be hard-pressed to think of a great piece of writing that was written from about the year 90 to maybe the year 1900 that was not to some degree influenced by Old or New Testament texts.
And obviously the New Testament didn't exist in the year 90, so that's why I'm saying, you know, Old or New Testament texts, pretty much any great piece of writing, it would be very difficult to find one that is not in some way influenced.
And a lot of it was heavily influenced by the Bible.
You're going to have also a difficult time comprehending or appreciating Renaissance art.
I mean, I don't see how you could take Renaissance art out of schools.
Obviously, kids are going to learn about that.
How are you supposed to know anything about that?
All of it depicts biblical scenes.
So how could you possibly teach that without teaching them about the Bible stories that they depict?
So what are you going to do?
You're going to show them an image of the painting on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel and say, yeah, nobody knows what that is.
Those are just random people flying around.
We don't really know.
You'll have to go home and ask your parents what that's all about.
But we're just going to show you that's what it is, right?
Just doesn't make any sense.
You know, Western philosophy, the Enlightenment, the Reformation, all of these, the abolition of slavery, all of these historical events, again, are dripping with biblical influence.
And then also, how are you going to give people an appreciation of the biographies of guys like Martin Luther King Jr., or Abraham Lincoln, or Magellan, or Columbus, or even Gandhi, who read the Sermon on the Mount every day, reportedly?
How are you going to do that if you don't have a handle on the Bible?
Because that's what drove these men, largely.
Now, I'm fully aware, as I'm saying this, that many of these topics are being increasingly ignored in our public school system.
And look, if we've simply given up on offering kids a real education, and if we're now unconcerned with silly little subjects like history and literature and philosophy and art, Then, yeah, I guess the whole biblical literacy concept is kind of irrelevant.
Biblical literacy is necessary for general literacy in many of the subjects I've just mentioned, but if we're throwing those subjects out, then it's a moot point, I suppose.
But in that case, we've just tossed out education, and there's no point of it.
What's even the point anymore of sending kids to school?
If our educational facilities are going to actually try to, you know, educate, then the Bible must necessarily be a bedrock of that effort.
Not the only bedrock, not the only thing, but it obviously has to be a crucial part of that effort to understand these things.
Now, a couple of other points.
Some people will say that, yeah, sure, we should teach them the Bible, so let's have kids learn about the Bible, and let's have it as part of a world's religion class, and we could teach it alongside, and give it equal time to, say, the Koran, and the Gita, and, I don't know, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, right?
Now, I completely agree that we should teach kids about those texts as well.
We should teach kids about those religions.
You can't very well learn much about the Far East if you don't know something about Buddhism.
You can't learn anything about the Middle East from about the year 600 till now if you don't know something about the Koran.
You obviously can't learn anything about India if you don't know something about Hinduism and the Bhagavad Gita and those kinds of works.
And we do obviously want to teach kids about those other parts of the world and those other cultures.
But it's not the same.
You know, the idea that we should give those texts equal time to the Bible is obviously absurd because none of them come close to influencing Western art and literature and philosophy.
That is, the civilization we actually live in Kids need to get a handle on their own civilization first, because this is where we live, and then you can move on to study those other civilizations.
But as far as everything that's around us, all of that has been to some degree influenced by the Bible.
Whereas, I mean, you could learn about many of those subjects without ever picking up the Bhagavad Gita.
You can learn everything you need to know about Shakespeare without knowing anything about Hinduism.
One other point, as I mentioned, that actually I think the only people who could make a feasible, logical case against teaching the Bible in public schools, ironically, would be Christians.
And I've heard some Christians say this over the last couple of days.
They've said that, you know, I don't actually want the public schools teaching anything about the Bible because Because, well, obviously I wouldn't want them teaching the theology of the Bible.
I wouldn't trust a public school teacher.
I wouldn't trust some random history teacher to teach theology, which they're not going to do.
But then at the same time, I don't really want the Bible being taught as a purely literary piece of work, because that could be confusing for my kids who are Christian, and we're teaching them that this is That this is the Word of God, and then they're going to go to school and learn that it's a piece of literature.
So, that's the only objection that, to me, could make any sense whatsoever.
From a secular perspective, there's just no objection that makes sense.
Obviously, from a secular perspective, fine, you see the Bible as a piece of literature.
You can't factually deny its influence and importance, even if you hate it.
So clearly, it needs to be taught in schools.
But the concern from a Christian perspective of teaching the Bible as literature, when you're also trying to teach it as the Word of God, I understand that concern.
And that could get a little bit dicey, to have somebody teaching the Bible who really doesn't think that there's anything spiritually significant about it, and is just teaching it as, and then what do you do?
Maybe they're teaching Exodus.
The story of Exodus, again, very influential story, which you can see those themes repeated and echoed in many other pieces of literature and pieces of art and so on.
So you do need the kids to understand that story.
But what if you've got a teacher teaching Exodus who's going to tell the kids, hey, by the way, this never happened, Moses didn't exist, this is just a story, it's a fable, whatever.
So that could be a problem.
We're just dealing with a simple fact here.
That if you're going to give kids a well-rounded education that touches on philosophy, literature, art, and all of that, they need to be taught the Bible as well.
The Bible needs to be part of that.
You just can't separate it from it.
And if you're saying, well, I don't trust the public schools to deal with that, well, then maybe that's just a good indication that you shouldn't be sending your kid to public school.
That's all I can say about that.
All right, quickly, the former mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, wrote what I guess we will call a column in the San Francisco Chronicle.
And this is what he had to say.
He said, I've been peppered with calls from the national media about my relationship with Kamala Harris, particularly since it became obvious that she was going to run for president.
Most of them I have not returned.
Yes, yes, we dated.
It was more than 20 years ago.
Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state committees when I was assembly speaker.
And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco.
I've also helped the careers of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Dianne Feinstein, and a host of other politicians.
The difference is that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I so much as jaywalked, quote-unquote, while she was DA.
Now, by the way, This story has gotten, like, no attention whatsoever, even though you've got a guy admitting that he dated Kamala Harris and helped her get her first steps into politics.
Now, when we say dated, what he means is had an affair with.
He was married at the time.
Maybe his wife was estranged or whatever, but still, he was married.
So this was an affair.
He had an affair.
He had an affair with Kamala Harris.
So Harris slept with a married man and used that relationship to get a step up in politics.
Again, you would think that that would be a significant story that you've got this guy admitting to this.
Kamala Harris pretends to be a champion for women, but according to Willie Brown,
she's a champion for women, I guess, except for the woman whose husband she slept with in order to get ahead in
politics.
And of course, when we're talking about the character of Kamala Harris,
this is the same person who, as Attorney General of California, collaborated with Planned Parenthood
to prosecute the undercover journalist who exposed its sale of baby parts.
So Kamala Harris has been in the pocket.
She's been a minion of the abortion industry for a very long time.
And even that, the way that she, you know, As someone who has accepted so much money from the abortion industry and then she comes to their defense, you know, that's a story that you think should have gotten a lot of attention, which of course it wasn't going to because it deals with the abortion industry.
And now we have this and people are just kind of yawning, which doesn't make any sense to me.
So for me, obviously, I wouldn't be tempted to support Kamala Harris anyway.
So there are a lot of reasons not to support her, but I think that maybe this would be one of them.
All right, let's check with CNBC, which ran an article a few days ago titled, Here's How Much Money You Save When You Don't Have Kids.
So this is just another propaganda piece trying to convince people of the benefits of dying alone.
Let's look at it.
It says, in part, your friends may tell you having kids has made them happier.
They're probably lying.
Research shows that parenthood leads to a happiness gap.
Maybe that's because the pleasures of parenthood are outweighed by all the extra responsibilities, housework, and, of course, the costs.
And then a little bit later on, it gets to the supposed costs of having kids.
It says, the average middle-income married couple spent between $12,350 and $13,900 on each of their children in 2015.
Extrapolating from that number, and you're looking at spending $233,610 per child from birth through age 17.
Higher income families will spend around $370,000, supposedly.
from that number and you're looking at spending $233,610 per child from birth through age 17.
Higher income families will spend around $370,000 supposedly. And then it just goes on from there.
Now, first of all, these numbers are completely insane and the media loves to do this.
I mean, you see these stories.
Every couple of months, you have one of these stories about, here's how much it costs to have kids.
$14,000 per year per kid?
$14,000 per kid?
Now, I have three kids.
That means, according to these numbers, we're spending $40,000 on just our kids.
Which is completely believable and makes sense if you're buying your kids a brand new wardrobe of designer clothing every week, and if you're eating out for every single meal, and if you buy a new car every year.
And basically, if you're about as wasteful as humanly possible, then I could see maybe spending $14,000 per kid per year, and a quarter of a million dollars on one kid through their entire childhood.
Which means that if you have like four kids, that's a million bucks, right?
That you're going to be spending.
But if you actually exercise even a small amount of financial discipline, then it will be much, much cheaper.
We don't spend anywhere close to that per kid.
Do we even spend $14,000 on all three kids combined?
That to me seems doubtful.
Our grocery bill is a little bit higher than it would be if it were just the two of us.
But the point is, if you actually cook meals with ingredients, then it's not nearly as expensive as you think.
And if you're not dead set on getting your kids brand new, fancy, brand name clothes all the time, if you're okay with like hand-me-downs, you know, my oldest son, now we're passing his clothes on to our youngest son.
So we really have no new clothing costs for our youngest son.
So numbers like this would assume that with our youngest son, we're just going to throw out all the old clothes and go get him new clothes.
Which would be an incredibly stupid and insane thing to do.
But just so you understand, if you don't have kids or anything, and you see numbers like this, and you're scared by them, you think, well, you know, I have to be like a freaking millionaire to have kids.
Well, yeah, that's what the media wants you to believe, because they're trying to convince you.
There are people in the media who are just desperate to convince everyone that they shouldn't have kids.
And I think because a lot of the, now the person who wrote this article, I have no idea if they have kids or not, but I think a lot of the people who are behind this propaganda, they themselves don't have kids.
They've made that decision in life.
So they're trying to convince other people to join them in their loneliness.
Um, but all I'm saying is, is, uh, is don't do that.
At least if you're going to make the decision not to have kids, don't make it based on this.
Because I get, look, I, I know, um, I know families that have six or six, seven, eight kids.
And according to these numbers, that means that they would be spending over a hundred grand a year just on their kids.
But some of these families I know that have these big, a lot of kids, they don't even make a hundred grand a year.
So according to these numbers, that's impossible.
How are they surviving?
But then you look at these families, not only are they surviving, but they're thriving.
They're not living in rags in the gutter.
I mean, they have homes, they have food.
I mean, everyone is perfectly well-fed, perfectly happy, well-adjusted families that have a lot of kids and somehow find a way to pay for it on a not even six-figure income, which again, according to the media, should be impossible.
But it's not impossible, is the point.
But the more fundamental issue here is this whole idea that you should be making these kinds of decisions based on these sorts of financial considerations, which you really shouldn't be.
Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't take the finances into account at all, but if you feel called to start a family and you really want to start a family, Then do it.
Yeah, I mean, you might have to make some sacrifices.
You might have to give up a few vacations here and there.
Maybe you won't be living with exactly the same sort of luxury you would be living with otherwise.
But that's not the main point here.
The main point of life isn't just to save money.
Now, I hate to be reduced to cliches here, but you can't take it with you.
And if you don't have kids, you don't even have anyone to pass your money down to.
So what's the point?
So you don't have kids because you want to save money, and then you save a whole bunch of money, and you die, and then so what?
You don't even have anyone to bequeath it to.
So it's just completely pointless.
All right, finally, I want to answer—we don't have a—I'll just have to do a couple.
We're running out of time here.
But if you want to send a message, an email to the show, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
A couple of quick emails.
From Cody, he says, Hey, Matt, I recently listened to your show where you talked about Elizabeth Warren and her ultra-rich tax.
I loved what you said, and I thought I'd offer a bit of insight into some other relevant discourse.
And get your opinion on it.
A lot of people talking about this issue will claim that it is immoral for billionaires to have that much money.
And as an economist, that strikes me as odd.
It certainly rubs me the wrong way, however, when people claim it's immoral because the billionaires do it, quote, on the backs of exploited workers.
For the majority of corporations and businesses and firms, this is impossible because of how corporate production works.
Production is a combination of labor and capital, and firms will only hire labor or buy-slash-rent capital until the benefit, i.e., increased revenue from increased output, outmatches the cost.
Wages for laborers and rent investment for capital.
This makes it impossible for firms to make any profit off of workers because the amount they're paying all their workers is always equilibrated to the revenue they get, so they don't get any profit from that.
The profits for a firm usually come from owning the capital They use instead of renting it and thus paying themselves the rent they would normally get.
Thank you for that, Cody.
Adding some extra context and insight.
And here's what I find.
This is just anecdotally, but when we have these kinds of discussions, the people who are on the more socialist side of it and say, oh, it's, you know, making money off the backs of exploited workers and we've got to redistribute the wealth.
I very rarely hear from someone with that opinion who has the kind of knowledge about the subject that Cody clearly has.
So it's just, it's odd to me, right?
That all of the, and if you're on the socialist side, that should concern you, that all of the really knowledgeable people who really know how business works and can write an email like that, almost all of them seem to be on the free market side.
From Trevor, he says, Matt, I'm a fan of your show and would like to thank you for your insights.
On your Monday show, you mentioned that you didn't go to college.
If you would be willing, could you tell a bit of the story of your self-education and how you got into political commentary?
It was just a bit surprising to me that you didn't have a higher education.
Thanks for all you do, and Godspeed.
Trevor, I won't go into my whole autobiography, because I think it'll be terribly, terribly boring and irrelevant.
I'll just say that in terms of education, I discovered that it was possible to learn quite a bit just by reading books.
And to a lesser extent through the internet as well, which can be a great tool for learning if you know how to use it and you're responsible in using it.
So I discovered that not only could I learn that way, but actually, for me, it was the best way to learn.
Because not everybody excels in the kind of formal environment of an educational institution.
Some people need a sort of freer and looser approach to it, or a self-guided approach to education, I guess is the best way to phrase it.
That's what I discovered was the case for me.
In fact, I discovered that when I was still in grade school.
And I realized that this kind of sitting down, having someone regurgitate information, and then I have to regurgitate it onto a sheet of paper to show that I've picked on, but it's very, it's very focused on memorization.
And you're only learning about this subject for a certain amount of time.
And then you got to move on to this subject and everything.
And just that whole, there are some people who excel in that environment and do very well in it.
But there are also some people who just don't.
And it's not because they're stupid.
It's not because they can't learn.
It's just because they learn differently.
And I knew that that's the case for me.
And that certainly is the case for me.
The way that I tend to learn is I get very obsessed with one particular subject.
And I read all about it.
So the only thing I want to read about or talk about or think about for weeks or months or longer.
And so I just dive into it.
I learn everything I can about that subject.
And then some other subject will strike my fancy, and I'll dive into that and learn everything I can about that.
And I'll learn it through different ways.
I'll read books, I'll watch documentaries, I'll listen to audiobooks, I'll read essays and articles and stuff.
So, if you're going to school, again, in a more formal education environment, you can't really learn that way.
But outside of school, you can.
So that's why I say to people, And I sound like a broken record, but before you go to college, before you sign on that dotted line and sign up for all of that debt, you should know something about not only what you want to do with your life and what your passions are and what your interests are, but also you should know something about how you learn.
And if learning this way is actually beneficial or even possible for you.
Because if it's not, That doesn't mean that you're going to decide not to go to college and you're going to end up being stupid and illiterate and lacking in knowledge and information.
No, it just means that maybe you go and learn some other way.
Finally, let's see, I'll read...
I'll read one more.
Audrey says, Matt, you recently talked about the whole PETA thing with them pretending to be cooking a dog or whatever, and I thought I would share some of my views on the matter as a student studying animal science.
The reason why eating dogs is seen as different from eating sheeps or pigs is mainly because of differences in domestication.
Dogs were domesticated 20,000-ish years ago, And as we've evolved, they have evolved alongside us as companions and protectors.
Livestock were domesticated for food.
They've evolved to be the most efficient at giving us what we want from them, like milk or meat or whatever produce it is.
Dogs and livestock have served different purposes for thousands of years and will continue to serve different purposes probably forever.
Another big reason why people don't want to eat dog meat, and this one sucks, is because it's a common belief in Asia that tortured dog meat tastes better.
People in Asia will actually burn dogs and skin them alive.
There's even an annual festival, the Yulin Festival in China, where over 10,000 dogs are tortured and killed.
In contrast, in the United States, we try our hardest to make sure that livestock have the best life possible and are killed in the most humane way possible.
If we were going to slaughter dogs for food in the U.S., at least we would have the good feeling that they weren't skinned alive.
So if anyone in a foreign country serves you Fido lasagna, maybe politely decline.
Audrey, this rarely happens, but you have convinced me and you've changed my mind.
I think that my position on eating dog meat, which again, I said I would never do here, but if I went to a foreign country and if they did serve me, you know, a Rex stir fry, You know, a Clifford the Big Red Dog stir fry.
If they served it to me in a foreign country, I would eat it to be polite.
And also, maybe a little bit out of curiosity, but with that extra context, I think I would have to say, no, I'll pass.
I think I'll just have a salad, please.
So thank you for that.
And thanks everyone for your emails.
I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Godspeed.
Hi, everybody.
I'm Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
How stupid is elite American political discourse?
Well, think of this.
While virtually every journalist in the country is worrying about whether Donald Trump called Roger Stone to find out what Hillary Clinton wrote in her emails, Vladimir Putin is helping to engineer the destruction of Venezuela so he can hike the price of oil and send thousands of refugees to our undefended border.
