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March 8, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
44:09
Ep. 214 - The Victimization Flow Chart

Why are Democrats reluctant to condemn antisemitism? It all has to do with the Victimization Flow Chart, which I will explain today. Also, I’ll answer listener questions relating to women in the draft, atheism, and introversion. Date: 03-08-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today on the Matt Wall Show, why are Democrats reluctant to condemn antisemitism?
Well, it all has to do with the left's victimization flow chart, their equation of victimization.
And it's all very complicated, but we'll talk about that today, try to sort through it.
Also, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thrives on false narratives, and she was pushing another one yesterday, a pretty absurd one.
We'll discuss that.
Finally, I'll answer some interesting emails from listeners tackling subjects like the draft, Atheism introversion so a lot of interesting stuff to talk
about today on the Matt Wall Show Well today is the day folks
This is the day.
Captain Marvel is finally coming out.
I've been waiting for this moment my whole life, actually.
Captain Marvel is, without question, and I can say this as someone who has not seen it and never will, but it is, without question, the most significant human achievement of the last 2000 years at least, aside from Black Panther.
So it's, well, Black Panther and Moonlight, and then it's third.
It's the third most significant human achievement in 2000 years, and that's pretty good.
I can't wait to not see it.
By the way, my favorite genre, speaking of Captain Marvel,
my favorite genre of tweet is the one where people invent conversations
that they had with their woke kids.
So you see this on Facebook sometimes too, where someone will make up this conversation that they had with their very enlightened, you know, five year old or eight year old.
I don't know exactly why people do this, but you see it all the time.
And it's not meant to be—it's hilarious, but it's not meant to be hilarious.
Like, we're actually supposed to believe that the conversation happened.
So, here's one that someone just posted.
I just saw this.
A guy named Kasim Rashid tweeted this verified account on Twitter.
Must be an important person.
This is a conversation he claims that he had with his 10-year-old son.
So, 10-year-old son.
All these Marvel movies, this is the first one with a female lead.
Me.
Yep.
Ten-year-old.
Shaking my head.
I wish women didn't have to wait till 1920 to vote.
Me.
Why?
Ten-year-old.
I bet if they could vote sooner, we'd have more women superhero leads by now.
And then him with a mind-blown emoji.
My favorite part of that made-up conversation where a 10-year-old connects Captain Marvel to women's suffrage, my favorite thing is that he claims that the 10-year-old actually said SMH, shaking my head.
He actually said it.
Now, my kid's not 10-year-old, but is that how 10-year-olds speak now?
Or are they actually shaking my head?
They narrate what they're doing, because maybe they do.
I don't know.
Who knows?
All right.
So, so the the house yesterday passed a resolution condemning hatred.
What is the point?
Of such a resolution?
Well, there is no point.
There was a point to it originally, but that point was lost.
So originally, it was supposed to be a resolution condemning specifically anti-Semitism, and even more specifically, the anti-Semitism of Ilhan Omar, the freshman representative, Democratic representative, who seems to have a real problem with Jews.
But Democrats, or fellow Democrats, didn't want to condemn the views of a Muslim woman.
So instead, the resolution ended up, and this is just such a perfect illustration of the nature of politics these days, and especially of the Democrat Party.
So originally, it was supposed to be a resolution condemning Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitism.
But then it became a resolution condemning all kinds of hatred.
So this is what the actual language says.
It condemns the hatred of quote, African-Americans, Native Americans, other people of color, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, immigrants, and others.
Um, they just throw them all in there, you know, uh, throw in the whole, the whole, uh, The whole kit and caboodle.
But it didn't mention Omar by name.
In fact, Omar celebrated the resolution, pretending that it was a big win for her.
You know, she came out and said, finally we passed this resolution condemning hatred.
Because I hate hatred myself.
When originally it was supposed to be a resolution condemning her.
And she knows that, but she's trying to Turn it into a big win for her.
Now, there are some people who seem to be confused about why the Democrats would be so hesitant to simply come out and register officially their disapproval of Omar's comments about Jews.
It seems like a pretty easy thing to do.
Especially when, and this I think the thing that confuses people, is that most Jewish Americans are Democrats.
So it's not like they would be defending some demographic that isn't part of their constituency, because of course they would never do that.
But the American Jews are in their constituency, yet they don't want to come out and do it.
And why is that?
Well, this becomes less confusing If you understand the victimization flowchart.
Okay, now in the past, I've talked about this before in the past, I have called it and I think I've contributed to some confusion, unfortunately, because in the past, I've called it the the victimhood pyramid.
But I think that terminology is a little bit confusing.
It's really a flow chart, okay?
On the left, they have a flow chart of victimization.
So not so much of victimhood, but of victimization.
Literally charting the flow of victimization from one group to another.
So it goes like this, all right?
So just imagine this in your mind.
First, you have white men.
Okay, and then the victimization flows to white women, and then non-white men, and then non-white women, and then gay men, and then lesbian women, and then transgenders.
Now, the flow of victimization starts with white men, which means that they victimize everyone.
They cannot be victimized by anyone, and they victimize everyone.
And then on the other hand, and you have transgenders who are victimized by everyone and can themselves victimize no one.
So think of it like a waterfall.
It can never be reversed.
You got white men at the top, the oppression, the persecution, the victimhood, uh, victimization, it all flows down and you can never reverse the flow ever.
Um, it always goes, it's, it is a one way street.
It can never go the other way, which means that, uh, White, as I said, white men cannot be victimized by anyone.
White women cannot be victimized by non-white women.
Black men cannot be victimized by gay men.
It always goes the other way, right?
Now, in this chart, Jews are counted as white.
For the purposes of the oppression Olympics and for the left's victimhood equations, they're going to basically count Jews as white, which means that if you're a Jewish man, then you get lumped in with a white man, and that's what you are, so you're in that category, and it's just, you can't, according to the left's way of looking at things, you can't be a victim of bigotry.
Ilhan Omar, as a non-white woman, is several steps away on the flowchart from, especially a Jewish man, from the left's point of view.
And so she can't really be guilty of bigotry against Jews.
That's what it comes down to.
It just cannot happen.
And I'm not making this up.
This is not me just being flippant.
It is also me being flippant, but it's not just that.
This is what they teach in college.
You send your kid to college.
If you're spending $100,000 to send your kid to college, this is what he's learning.
This is what you're paying for him to learn.
You know what?
Give me the $100,000, and I'll tell your kid about this.
I can brainwash your kid into leftist orthodoxy.
If you give me $100,000, I would do that for you.
Because, you know what?
I'll do it for $50,000.
Now, when they teach it in college, they don't teach it as a victimization flowchart.
They would talk about it in terms of privilege.
So what they would say is that white men are the most privileged And then it goes on from there.
And each person with more privilege cannot be victimized by someone with less.
So yeah, this is literally what they teach.
White men have all the privilege, and so they cannot be victims of bigotry.
They can be victims of, in other senses, they can be the victim of a carjacking or something, But they cannot be.
It's impossible to be racist against them.
It's impossible to be sexist against them.
It's impossible to be bigoted.
It's impossible.
That's what they say.
So.
Now this gets a little bit more complicated, because you might point out that Muslims are rarely condemned for homophobia.
So doesn't that put them at the end of the victim flowchart as the victimiest victims of all?
Instead of, and I put transgenders at the end of it, but wouldn't it actually be Muslims?
Because it seems like no matter, they're never condemned for homophobia.
Homophobia, even though you see, especially in Muslim countries, not just homophobia, but you see violent anti-gay bigotry.
So, well, this becomes kind of an intense debate.
This is a subject of intense debate among victimologists on the left.
And I think that there's a difference of opinion.
I'm not going to wade into it.
I'm not an expert on this.
So I can't decree on that.
Except I will say that I think the reluctance to condemn Muslims, especially when it comes to the anti-gay stuff, that's more about the left's determination to keep the homophobia claims focused on white Christians.
So that's really what it's about.
It's not that they categorically refuse to condemn homophobia in the Muslim world.
It's just more that if they're going to talk about homophobia, they want to talk about the ultimate villains who are white Christians.
If white Christians didn't exist, if all white Christians were to evaporate, which I'm sure would be a A reason for great celebration among many on the left.
If that were to happen, then I think maybe then they would find some time to talk about all the gays being thrown off roofs in Saudi Arabia and so on.
That's just how it works.
And the chart can change, by the way, all right?
Now, white men will always be on that end of it, incapable of being victimized by anyone.
But the other positions can move around and shift.
And so there's a little bit of jockeying.
There's a competition within these groups to be more victimized than the other.
And so that's always going on.
It's very fascinating to watch that soap opera play out.
And so you see how, from this, there are many forms of actual oppression.
And many oppressed groups that just don't count.
They aren't noticed.
Jews are arguably the most oppressed group in history, period.
Yet that oppression doesn't really register on the left.
It doesn't really, they don't really count it.
The Irish, I mean, are also a very historically oppressed group.
There aren't many groups that have had a harder time of it than the Irish, but again, it doesn't really count.
It doesn't register.
They don't really count that because their skin color is just way too light.
There are, in fact, there are whole historical events And eras that have to be wiped from the history books because they so contradict the victimization flowchart.
The Barbary slave trade, for instance, where for 200 years hundreds of thousands of white Europeans were kidnapped, bought and sold as slaves by Africans.
And that whole 200 year slice of history has been erased.
They don't talk about it in school.
You're not going to find it in the history books because it is such a complete contradiction of the victim narrative.
And so they can't, they cannot talk about it.
They have to, they have nothing they can say about it.
They have to pretend it never happened.
And that's basically how intersectionality works.
And it requires you to make all of these omissions and to censor this and to forget about that.
And it, it becomes very, very confused.
And it's why it's best not to adopt that mentality and instead of having this complicated ideology of victimhood, to look at things on a case-by-case basis.
All right, let's see.
Okay, I wanted to mention, this is kind of a comparatively small and petty thing, but I think it's worth noting.
It's pettiness is what makes it so revealing, and therefore worth noting.
There was something that happened yesterday that I thought was a very revealing moment.
Okay, so the far left, there's a website called Raw Story.
It's a far left website.
And it they very often publish misleading, dishonest articles about conservatives.
And yesterday they published one of their typically dishonest hit pieces, and they were claiming that a conservative is boycotting Girl Scout cookies because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used to be a Girl Scout.
That was the claim.
And that's the claim that they make right in the headline.
They say, the headline is, from Raw Story, the headline is, conservative calls for cookie boycott because AOC used to be a Girl Scout.
Now the conservative is a columnist for World Net Daily, and her name is Jane Chastain.
If you actually take a brief look at her piece that is being referred to here on WorldNetDaily, you see that the raw story headline in the article is a rather predictable distortion.
In truth, what the author is saying is that she's not going to be buying the cookies, and she never calls for a boycott.
She never uses the word boycott or calls for everybody to stop buying.
She just says she's not going to buy the cookies because of the overall political and ideological shift That the Girl Scouts have undergone over the past several years, and it's very true.
She accuses the organization correctly of pushing God and country and those values to the backseat in favor of left-wing causes and ideas.
And she cites, for example, the Girl Scouts' well-known affiliation with Planned Parenthood.
We talked about that yesterday.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is mentioned only because the Girl Scouts celebrated her election on their website.
So this author uses that as an example of the Girl Scouts political bias.
And then at one point she says, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a Girl Scout and she Cortez represents sort of the ideological shift of the Girl Scouts, and so if you don't want your daughter to end up like her and have her values, then don't send her into the Girl Scouts.
But she never calls for a boycott at all, and she certainly doesn't call for a boycott because Cortez used to be a Girl Scout.
That's not at all what happened.
So it's a dishonest headline in a leftist online rag And certainly not the first, won't be the last, in and of itself not a big deal if it weren't for the fact that Cortez herself seized on that headline, that lie, and she amplified it, which is what she does all the time.
So Cortez posted a screenshot of Raw Story's headline on Twitter.
With her own snappy little caption where she mocks conservatives for boycotting Girl Scout cookies for such a dumb reason.
And her followers, of course, jumped on the bandwagon.
They were heaping scorn on all the stupid conservatives who are boycotting the Girl Scouts for such a stupid reason.
Meanwhile, in Realityville, No conservative is boycotting anything for that reason.
Nobody is saying we're going to boycott this or that organization because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used to be in it.
Nobody is saying that.
But notice the effort on Cortez's part.
Because the most natural thing would be if you see an article online and there's something about it that you want to share, what do you do?
You just share the article.
That would be the most natural thing.
But notice how instead, she takes a screenshot of the article's headline, and then crops it down, you know, takes that little bit of effort, and posts the screenshot to Twitter.
Why did she do that, rather than just posting the article?
Because she knows that the headline is dishonest.
And if you're able to actually click on the headline and go read the article, you're going to quickly discover that it's dishonest.
And she doesn't want anyone to do that.
So instead, she just put the screenshot there, knowing that most people aren't going to take the effort to actually go to Google and investigate.
They're just going to take it at its at its word.
Like I said, it's a smetty, a small, petty thing.
Or smetty is what I just combined.
That's a small and petty.
It is a small, petty thing.
But this is the small pettiness that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thrives on, this kind of thing.
She's obsessed with the idea that conservatives are constantly attacking her for dumb reasons.
She's constantly looking for opportunities to make herself into the victim of unfair Ridiculous attacks by conservatives.
And in almost every case—not every case, but in almost every case—the attacks are either absurdly exaggerated or invented out of whole cloth.
But she's always looking for this, to do this.
And this is another case where she's promoting this lie to try to make conservatives look stupid.
And also to continue the narrative that everyone's talking about her and it's all about her.
So to put it more directly, Cortez is a lying propagandist.
She's not the first of that type to walk the halls of Congress, she won't be the last, but her lies and propaganda tend to be more damaging than usual because of her platform, and because she so successfully plays the kind of fun, innocent, idealist, unfairly maligned, bi-petty, right-wing lunatics card.
That's the card that she's always playing, and she plays it well, and dishonestly, and so it's very effective.
And in the process, all she's doing is creating more divisions, sowing more suspicion and contempt into the culture, into a culture that has more than enough of those things already.
And so that's just the latest example.
And I found it to be, yeah, I just found it to be contemptible.
And the fact that it's such a small thing is what makes it even more contemptible.
It's like you couldn't have, really?
You had to latch on to that?
You couldn't have just let that go?
You saw your name in a headline and it was attached to this, so you had to put it out there.
You couldn't have moved on from that.
All right.
I'm going to start answering emails a little bit earlier because there are a few good ones that I want to have a chance to get into.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
So we'll go to the inbox.
This is from Jesse.
He says, Matt, I listened to your show from a few weeks ago, a few days ago, when a listener asked about your opinion about women being drafted.
I agree with both of your opinions.
However, it struck a chord with me when you said, I'm paraphrasing, that since he had lived through it and is an expert, his opinion is what matters, not mine.
Why does that same response not ring true for kids who've lived through, say, for example, a school shooting and want to abolish the Second Amendment because they're now experts since they've lived through it?
I should be asking myself the same question because these kids are not experts.
What say you?
Um, yeah, that's an interesting question.
This is actually one of my one of my many pet peeves is when people act like personal experience automatically confers special knowledge or wisdom and makes them an authority on a certain subject.
Um, experience does not always confer knowledge or, or, or, you know, wisdom.
Um, now in the case of the draft, yeah, that was an email from someone who fought on the front lines, was a veteran.
And was of the same opinion of almost every veteran I've ever spoken to about this issue.
His opinion was we shouldn't be drafting women and we shouldn't have women on the front lines.
Now, in that case, I said his experience does make him an authority.
Because I think being on the front lines of combat does give you special, relevant knowledge when it comes to this issue.
You're going to know more about modern combat, how it works, the practical considerations, the psychological effects, etc.
And so if a bunch of people who've all had that experience are all saying, no, we shouldn't draft women, no, we shouldn't have women on the front lines of combat, then I think that carries a lot of weight.
Because, yeah, that's one of those things where if you've done it, then you are going to know a thing or two about it, and you're probably going to know more than people who've never been there.
That doesn't end the conversation.
Their word is not the first, last, and only word that anyone can speak.
Everyone else has a right to contribute to the discussion, and you could have plenty of valuable things to contribute to that discussion, even if you've never been to war.
But I think this is a case where experience, because of the nature of the experience, does involve knowledge, creates, confers knowledge, right?
On the other hand, being in the proximity of a school shooting, does not confer knowledge about the Second Amendment, or about constitutional law, or about guns, or about anything, really, except the emotional impact and psychological, personal trauma of being involved in something like that.
So that is a perspective that's, it's a valuable perspective, but it's not a perspective that really has anything to do with gun rights.
It's a non sequitur to say, well, their school was shot up, therefore we should listen to them about the Second Amendment.
No.
Being in war requires knowledge about war.
Being involved in a school shooting does not require any knowledge about anything.
It's something that happens to you, tragically.
In much the same way that getting cancer doesn't make you a doctor.
But as I said, this is something people do a lot where they try to shut down a conversation by saying, Oh, yeah, well, I've been through this.
Have you been through it?
Listen to my experience.
And often, I would say most of the time, their personal experience doesn't really make their opinion more credible at all.
Sometimes it actually can arguably make it in some ways less credible.
Like, for example, when we've had debates about ADHD, And I make certain philosophical points about the human condition, the sort of flawed methodology involved in calling something a disorder.
I make points about neuroscience and so on.
I'm not an expert in any of those things, but I'm making points about them.
I can study them and think about them just the same as anyone can.
And I always get people.
In fact, the conversation always, every time, always devolves into people shouting at me that, well, my son has ADHD and you don't know what you're talking about.
I've been through it.
You don't know what it's like.
Okay?
What does that have to do with the objective realities we're discussing?
It doesn't make me wrong and it doesn't make you right.
Just because your son has ADHD does not make you an expert.
Um, it simply doesn't.
And in fact, it could make you, it could cloud your ability to judge this objectively because if your kid has it and you've already got them on drugs, well then now you've got an incentive To justify the decision you've already made.
So there's going to be a bias there.
It doesn't mean that we shouldn't listen to your perspective.
I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying that there's also a clear bias that you have now as well.
So whatever knowledge your experience might confer, I think it's sort of cancelled out by the bias that you have in trying to justify decisions you've already made.
So, you know, another one is talking about abortion, and someone says, well, you've never had an unwanted pregnancy.
You don't know what it's like.
Again, not relevant.
It's simply not.
That has nothing to do with the objective issues we're discussing.
So bringing up your per—and this is why I don't like it, is that when people do it, in many cases, what—it really amounts to nothing more than emotional blackmail.
They're trying to shut down.
It is not about enhancing the discussion or advancing the discussion.
It's about shutting it down and using their own personal issues as a kind of sledgehammer to bludgeon everyone with and to say, you're not allowed to talk about this.
I'm the one who's been through it.
I have suffered.
So your opinion doesn't count.
And I really, I just, I have come so much to dislike That strategy.
I really do.
Again, there are exceptions, but I just can't stand it.
There are people that you can't... Anytime you try to have a conversation about anything, there's always someone who ruins it by getting into some emotional, personal story that... It doesn't advance the discussion.
All it means is that now the rest of us can't be honest about our opinions anymore because you have emotionally blackmailed us and said that, well, just so you know, guys, if you're honest about your opinions, you're going to hurt my feelings because here's my personal experience.
I really, I don't like it.
All right.
From Connor, he says, Matt, I think, hi Matt, I think in your show yesterday you confused atheism with agnosticism.
You said that atheism doesn't require faith because atheism is just the lack of faith.
That's not correct.
Agnosticism is a lack of belief.
I don't know.
Atheism is a belief that God does not exist.
Hope this helps clear things up.
Hi, Connor.
I think you're mistaken, actually.
And this is a common misunderstanding that people have.
And I'm in the weird position now of, it's almost like I'm defending atheism or something.
I'm not defending atheism.
What I'm doing is I'm trying to define our terms.
I think it's important to define our terms, to know what we're dealing with.
So, most people think that agnosticism is, as you said, I don't know.
And atheism is, I know that God doesn't exist.
That's not really true.
And if you listen to pretty much any sophisticated, thoughtful, intelligent atheist, they will absolutely not say, I know God doesn't exist.
They're not going to say that.
They're going to be more careful than that.
They might say, In regards to a particular theological system or a particular God, they might say, I know that God doesn't exist.
But again, these are the thoughtful, sophisticated, I'm not talking about the atheists in a comment section on YouTube.
I'm talking about the ones, the Sam Harris's of the world.
They are, so they might say it about About a particular theological system, they're not going to say it about the kind of general concept of God, to include the deistic concept of a sort of first mover who's got everything going and is now somewhere not paying attention, right?
So, now they may think that, or feel that way, that they know that God doesn't exist, but that's not the way they formulate their argument.
They're going to speak in terms of probabilities, and so they're going to say something like, based on current evidence, it seems improbable that God exists, or something along those lines.
Now, again, I think they're probably being more cautious in their wording of the argument than they actually are in their convictions inside their heads.
But we could only engage with the arguments as they're presented, not as we think the presenter really means them, which is the point that I made about people do that to us, atheists do that to us all the time, where they act like the claim we're making Is that God is a bearded man in the sky who is sitting up there with his big staff or whatever on a literal throne in the clouds looking down on us.
And so that's the argument that they often engage with.
But that's not the argument that a sophisticated, intelligent, thoughtful Christian or theist makes.
There may be some more immature Christians who do think of God in those terms.
But as an atheist, your responsibility is to engage with the sophisticated arguments that your opponents are actually making, not the argument that you think they're thinking.
Right?
So I think on both sides, that's what we have to do.
So here's how it really breaks down.
Agnosticism It has that root Gnosis, or Gnostic, right?
So think of the ancient Gnostics, the Christian Gnostics, who believed that spiritual liberation was attained through divine knowledge.
Not through atonement, but through knowledge.
That's what they believed.
So, and there's still strands of Gnosticism around today.
I mean, I have a friend who's a Kabbalist, and I talked to him about, it's not Christian, that's an offshoot of Judaism.
And I've talked to him about Kabbalism many times, and I've always tried to pin it down with him, like, what is this?
What are you saying?
Is it pantheistic?
What is it?
But as I've studied more about Gnosticism, I've realized that, oh, okay, he's a Gnostic, is what he is.
Anyway, so Gnosticism is all about knowledge, right?
Gnosis, knowledge.
Gnosis means knowledge.
A true Gnostic Believes not only that God's existence is unknown, but, this is what a real agnostic, okay, believes, that God's existence is unknowable.
It cannot be known.
It is outside of our comprehension.
We cannot know it.
So in that way, agnosticism is actually more dogmatic than atheism, in a sense.
An atheist, on the other hand, is a non-theist.
That is the literal definition of the term.
A non-theist.
Someone who is not atheist.
That's what an atheist is.
An atheist doesn't believe in theism, is not a theist.
There is no positive truth claim necessarily involved in atheism.
Now, every atheism does make positive truth claims, but just the generic form of atheism does not make a claim, it rejects a claim.
So an atheist is seeking to shift the burden of proof back to the theist, saying, you simply haven't proven your assertion, therefore I don't believe it.
The common thing that you hear from atheists all the time is they'll say that, well, referring to atheism, it's like calling someone a non-stamp collector.
It's like defining someone by a hobby they don't have.
And I think that that's reductive and oversimplifying on their part.
But again, just the absolute generic form of atheism, that is kind of what it is.
It is a not.
It is a non.
So it's all about the nature of knowledge.
It's kind of an epistemological discussion, ultimately.
So an agnostic says, we cannot know of God.
A theist says, we do know of God.
An atheist says, we don't know of God.
So, you look at it like this.
Take a non-theological claim.
Say that I claimed that the universe is exactly 100 trillion light years across.
Okay?
The whole universe, let's say I said, is exactly 100 trillion light years across.
The atheist response to that claim is to say, I don't believe your assertion because I don't think you have evidence for it and it seems like you made it up.
Maybe you're right, but there's no reason to believe it because you don't have sufficient reasoning for your belief.
The agnostic response is to say, nobody can ever know exactly how big the universe is.
It's simply outside of our scope of knowledge.
We'll never know.
And I have nothing else to say about it other than that.
The theist response is to affirm the claim.
Now, in that particular example of the size of the universe, I'm more of the agnostic.
I don't think we could ever know how big the universe really is.
When it comes to God, I'm a theist because I think there is good evidence, good evidentiary reasoning for believing, but more importantly, I also believe, and this is where faith comes in, I believe because of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit, which is faith, And which has, we must admit, no evidentiary value to anyone outside of myself.
So the fact that I have this internal conviction, that I believe is granted from the Holy Spirit, I can't give that to you.
I experience it within myself.
Which doesn't mean that it has no value in affirming a claim.
I believe that it does.
But it's internal.
Um, in such in much the same way that my internal conviction about the love I have for my wife is extremely evidentiary for me, but not for anyone else.
So for anyone else, If I tell them that I love my wife and they ask for proof, for evidence, well, I cannot put them inside my head or inside my heart, my soul, so that they can experience the love that I have for my wife, which is an experience more than an emotion.
But I could provide some evidence.
I could show them that, OK, I've done this and that for my wife.
You know, I could show her the things that I could show this person the things that I've done to prove it.
And so that is some good evidence that I love my wife.
But it doesn't tell the whole story because the whole story of love is not external.
It is external and internal.
And so I would be diminishing and cheapening love if I claimed that I could completely and totally prove it.
Through external things.
Because I would be removing the entire internal experience of love.
And I think God, who is love, is like that, in my view.
There's the external indications, experience, evidence of God, which I find to be compelling.
Quite compelling.
But then there is also the internal experience, which is faith.
And which is not something that we should be embarrassed by.
So that's where this all came from.
This thing where Christians do where they say, oh, atheists have more faith than us.
Why are you treating faith like a dirty word?
Why are you embarrassed by it?
You shouldn't be.
No, they don't have more.
We have more faith than them.
Our view requires faith.
Theirs does not.
And that's okay.
If you think there's something wrong with that, then it seems to me that that's kind of a, you need to work that out.
That's a problem, right?
Because Faith is a virtue.
Faith, hope, and love, right?
So I don't understand.
I don't understand why many Christians are dead set on this idea that atheists have to have faith.
Why can't you admit they don't?
Unless you think that there's something wrong with faith, which in that case, why are you a Christian?
All right, finally from Maria says, Hi Matt, love the show.
I've been wanting to write to you about a show you did months ago about introversion.
It was such a huge help to me as an introvert myself.
I always feel very out of place in the world.
I was fascinated to find out that you are also an introvert because you're so outspoken and I know you go around giving speeches as well.
I could never do that as an introvert.
My question is, how did you overcome your introversion in order to do what you do for a living?
Maria, thanks for the message.
You know, I didn't overcome it at all, and I don't think of it as something that needs to be overcome.
I think it's awesome that you're an introvert, and I don't think you need to look at it as something that you have to get past or overcome or whatever.
So I wouldn't look at it like that.
It's not like there's something wrong with you.
There isn't something that needs to be fixed or changed because of this.
So, introversion As I said in that show I did, it's not the same thing as shyness.
You can be a non-shy introvert, just like you could be a shy extrovert.
My wife is kind of like, my wife is a huge, my wife is a quintessential extrovert, in every sense.
But she also has a certain shyness to her, which would shock anyone who Anyone who doesn't know her very well will be shocked by that to find out that she has a certain shyness to her, but she does in that she can be apprehensive sometimes in a social situation, but then once she gets into it, you know, she's a social butterfly and she's talking and she, and she loves it and she, and she just enjoys the experience.
She's very energized by it.
Uh, but there is that little bit of sometimes apprehension leading into the situation.
Um, so, You know, I'm not shy at all.
I'm not.
Not only can I get up in front of a crowd of people and speak to them, but I enjoy it.
And in fact, the bigger the crowd is, the more I enjoy it.
I am more comfortable.
I've spoken in front of a group of 1,000 people.
I've spoken in front of a group of 10 people.
And I really prefer the 1,000.
The smaller groups make me less comfortable.
And the least comfortable of all for me is when I have to have an individual small talk conversation.
I would much prefer to be up in front of everybody and talking.
So that's not shyness.
That is because, yeah, shyness is you don't want to get on the stage.
That's just introversion, is what that is.
Being an introvert simply means that you feel energized by, not so much by small talk and social interaction, but by time alone, time to yourself.
You enjoy being in your own head, thinking, contemplating, whatever.
This is definitely me.
Again, my wife does not like this.
She does like, you know, time to herself, but a lot of times she'll say, you know, can I get a break?
Can I get some time to myself?
And of course she needs that as well.
But then a lot of times she'll spend that time on the phone talking to her friend or something.
She'll call up one of her girlfriends and talk on the phone.
And now to me, that's completely, I can't even, it's mind boggling to me.
Like, you want time alone?
You want a break?
So you're on the phone?
To me, being on the phone is the worst thing.
It's the most draining thing.
I hate talking on the phone.
But for her, that's what she enjoys.
So that's extrovert-introvert.
As an introvert, it's draining to be in a social situation.
Doesn't mean you fear it.
Doesn't mean you hate it.
But it is draining.
It zaps your energy.
And it's not where you feel the most at home and the most comfortable.
And OK, so there's nothing wrong with that at all.
It's OK to be that way.
It's great to be that way.
You don't need to overcome it.
You don't need to change it or fix it.
The world needs introverts, OK?
The world needs... I mean, we can't all be talking 24-7, right?
So the world needs... I think the world needs both types.
And just to make that point, I talk to people all the time, it seems like it's a very common setup, apparently, to have introverts and extroverts getting married.
And because then there's, you know, opposite attract and all that, but there's also kind of the you kind of get both, you get both bases sort of covered in that way.
And so it works.
And I think it shows that we need that in society as well, even though I think society is skewed to be more accepting and encouraging of extroverts.
Which means that we are victims.
Okay, I think we belong to be we should be on the victimhood flowchart somewhere.
We are persecuted.
All right.
Thanks, everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
And I'll talk to you next week.
Godspeed.
I'm Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles Show, a federal judge rebukes special
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