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April 23, 2019 - The Matt Walsh Show
46:39
Ep. 245 - The Insanity Of Student Loan Forgiveness

Today on the show, Elizabeth Warren comes in with Santa’s sack of toys and offers college loan forgiveness. We’ll talk about why her plan is not only financially unsound but morally atrocious. Also, speaking of atrocious, Bernie Sanders wants felons to vote -- in prison. Date: 04-23-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, Elizabeth Warren has come in with her Santa sack of toys and she is now offering college loan forgiveness for almost all Americans.
We will talk about why her plan is not only financially unsound but also morally atrocious.
And speaking of atrocious, Bernie Sanders wants felons to vote in prison.
He wants people, including the Boston bomber and convicted rapists, in prison to vote.
And we'll discuss why that doesn't work and shouldn't work today on The Matt Wall Show.
Welcome to the show, everybody.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for listening.
We're going to talk about several things today, including student loan forgiveness.
We'll get into that in just a moment because Elizabeth Sanders, Elizabeth Bernie Sanders, unveiled her student loan debt relief plan, and it's something to behold.
So we'll get into that in just one second.
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All right.
Elizabeth Warren is drowning in the polls.
Uh, not a lot of excitement around her campaign.
Uh, even, even after she, I mean, she's, she's tried a lot of things.
She now she's, she's live blogging the game of thrones and that didn't work.
Um, so, Not working out.
Now she's going with the tried-and-true democratic strategy of, well, if I can't convince you to vote for me through conventional means, then I will just buy your vote.
And that's what she's doing now.
If she can't get young folks to vote for her by drinking brews on Instagram videos or by watching HBO, then she'll bribe them instead.
And so that's where Elizabeth Warren's plan for student debt relief, which she announced
yesterday has, um, uh, comes from.
Now I want to talk a little bit about her plan specifically, and then I want to discuss
why the whole idea of student loan forgiveness in general or student loan relief, we're calling
it now is terrible.
Uh, we'll do that, but let's start with her plan.
Reading now from an article on CNN, it says, uh, Warren's proposal of forgiving outstanding
student debt goes a significant step further than previous, um, democratic policy plans.
Warren's plan would offer debt relief based on income.
Households that make less than $100,000 a year would get $50,000 in loan cancellation, with the amount of relief getting gradually smaller as income level goes up, with households that make more than $250,000 not eligible for any debt relief at all.
Altogether, it would wipe out all student debt, including both federal and private loans
for more than 75% of Americans with outstanding loans.
The universal free college portion of Warren's plan makes public college free for everyone,
regardless of their finances.
While Sanders, Bernie Sanders' 2015 proposal offered free tuition for everyone,
a 2017 bill scaled back eligibility based on income, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so by this plan, you could be, by this plan, you could be getting,
you could be making 20 grand, you could be making $200,000 a year in income
as an engineer or a doctor or something, and you could still get your loans
at least significantly discounted.
Now, here's the question, of course.
How are we going to pay for this new bundle of goodies?
Go back to CNN.
For that, it says, the campaign estimates that the plan would cost $1.25 trillion over 10 years.
The revenue from Warren's wealth tax proposal, a 2% tax on wealth above $50 million and a 3% tax on wealth above $1 billion, would pay for her newest proposal, according to her campaign.
Okay, so she claims we can pay for this whole thing by taking money from the evil wealthy folks and redistributing it.
Now, there is, of course, no reason at all to believe that this responsibility would ultimately land just on the wealthy.
These kinds of proposals never remain as limited in practice as they were on paper, and this proposal is not even that limited on paper in the first place.
Not to mention, You have all the familiar problems of further encouraging job creators to leave the country, especially now that you're advertising that you're going to force them to pick up the tab for all of the student debt in the country.
And you have the problem that these kinds of taxes tend to trickle down as the cost gets passed on to the working class.
So that's just the beginning of our problems, right?
There are many other problems, and I want to go through them one by one, or as many as I can name in a few minutes.
Number one, from a financial perspective, you are talking about doing something that will make inflation massively worse, which feeds the problem that you're supposedly trying to solve.
So let me here's a few lines from an editorial this morning on the National Review, which talks about the inflation aspects of the aspect of this.
The inflation of college costs is a genuine concern, and one that is of especially intense interest to the federal government, which thanks to the Obama administration made itself into a monopolist in the student loan business.
But Senator Warren here proposes to put out a fire with gasoline, i.e.
to mitigate the effects of inflation by dumping money on the problem.
In inflation-adjusted terms, government spending on higher education has never been higher.
It has climbed by nearly $2,000 per student since 2001.
As the Foundation for Economic Education points out, Pell Grant spending alone rose 72% in the few short years from 2008 to 2013.
Tuition and other expenses have risen right along with the spending.
And then, you know, it goes on from there.
So, if you want to get control over tuition inflation, as the point the National Review is making,
is you gotta turn off the spigot.
You can't, you're making the problem worse by just dumping money onto a problem
that has a lot to do with inflation.
So that's the financial part of it.
Second, there are a lot of people, a lot of working class people,
who chose not to go to college, who accepted a life of lower income
because they couldn't afford it.
And they knew they couldn't afford it, and they didn't want to take on the debt.
And that, that, that seemed like a prudent and wise decision that a lot of people in the working class made.
I can't afford it.
I'm not going to buy it.
So what you're now saying to them is that their prudent and wise decision to not buy something they couldn't afford was actually foolish.
They are suckers yet again, uh, because they should have just went ahead and bought it because they wouldn't have to pay for it anyway.
They could have gone and not paid, is what you're telling them.
They made that sacrifice for nothing.
Student Loan Forgiveness is a plan that helps the upper class and screws the middle and lower classes where most non-college grads reside.
So just think about it.
This is a plan to bail out people who are, you know, sometimes making $150,000, $180,000 a year,
while those making $60,000 or $50,000 or $40,000 a year are still going to be stuck with all of
their debts, house, car, credit card, whatever. So it's completely absurd.
This is basically, uh, this is, you know, student loan forgiveness is essentially welfare for the upper class because that's where most college grads are.
They're going to be middle, you know, upper middle class to upper class.
Um, whereas the millions of people who did go to college oftentimes are lower middle to lower class.
And so this is a plan that helps those people on the upper echelon while doing nothing for the people who are below them.
Third problem.
What about all the people who went to college and paid their debts?
Okay, what about the person who has just paid the last dime on their $100,000 debt, and made all those sacrifices along the way, and had to work very hard to pay it off, and they did it.
And now they're going to turn around and see that everyone else's debt is just wiped clean anyway.
Is that not an injustice?
Is that not grossly unfair?
Are you going to refund them?
I mean, how can you possibly say... Think about the sacrifices that these... There are many people that are going to be in this situation who are just on the verge of paying off their loans.
Think about all the sacrifices they had to make.
Think about how their life has been affected by this.
And now you're going to just wipe everyone else's clean after they... Do they get a refund is the question.
Um, how is it, you know, equality under the law is supposed to be guaranteed.
How is it equality under the law to give this massive unearned bonus to a certain segment of the population while everyone else is out of luck?
Fourth problem, even putting aside the financially disastrous effects of a plan like this and putting aside how it screws the working class and it screws people who are responsible for their debts in the first place, we're still left with a very simple fact.
Nobody forces anyone to take on these loans.
That's a choice that you make.
If you have student debt, you have it because you agreed to it.
You signed on the dotted line.
Now you can say, I was 19, I didn't know it.
Okay, but you still made that choice.
You made a legal agreement.
Everything else aside, it is immoral For a third party, such as the government, or Elizabeth Warren, to come in and say, oh, never mind, you don't have to fulfill your obligations and keep your promises.
Just the very idea that Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders or any of these Democrats, the very idea that they would say, oh, I'm gonna forgive that loan.
It's not for you to forgive.
What do you mean you're gonna forgive it?
You didn't grant the loan.
It's not up to you to forgive it.
And it's certainly not up to some other private citizen To have to come in and pay off the loan out of forgiveness.
If you took the loan out, this is your responsibility.
And so that's really, see, that's what you'd have to explain.
And this is my challenge, okay, to any college grads who are arguing for loan forgiveness.
This is my challenge to you.
If you're listening right now, this is what I want you to do.
Present a morally and logically sound argument explaining why some other citizen should be forced by the state to pay your debt that you assumed by choice for a product that you bought and will keep.
That's what you have to explain.
And maybe phrase it in exactly these terms.
I believe someone else should be forced to pay my loans because, and then fill in the blank.
I don't, I don't, I'm not sure that you can fill in the blank.
And the point is, you know, we talk about student loan relief and forgiveness, and we talk about it in these sorts of abstract, ambiguous terms.
No, what we're talking about, and if you are advocating for student loan forgiveness, what you are saying is that someone else, some other citizen, should have to pay your loans.
That's what you're saying.
And so you should at least phrase it that way and make your argument.
Here's another way of looking at it.
You're in debt.
Okay?
And it sucks.
I know.
It's not fun.
Maybe it's even unfair.
Who knows?
I don't know.
You did agree to it, but whatever.
The point is, you're in debt.
The debt has to be paid, okay?
Someone has to pay it.
The debt you agreed to while purchasing the product you want and will keep, that has to be paid.
So it can't just be erased.
The only question is, who should pay it?
You or someone else?
Should it be the person who took on the debt who pays it or the person who did not take on the debt?
And so what you have to do is come up with an argument to explain why, yeah, this debt has to be paid, but it shouldn't be by me.
It should be by that guy over there.
Fifth thing, whatever possible argument could be made, whatever you might be able to put in the blanks there to say, well, someone else should pay my loans because, It would clearly apply just as much to any other form of debt.
Mortgage, car, credit card.
So if you're struggling with student loan debt, and it's making your life difficult, but I didn't go to college, but I'm struggling to pay my mortgage, where's my get-out-of-jail-free card?
Why are you special?
Why do you get to get this?
What about the rest of us who are stuck with debt?
And don't say, oh, well, you can file for bankruptcy, okay?
Bankruptcy ain't free.
That's not the same thing.
You don't have to, under these plans, you're not going to have to file for bankruptcy.
You just get, you just get, you get, you just get to walk away from it.
Like it never happened.
Well, what about me?
Why don't I get that?
And see, when I, when I make this argument, say, well, what about me?
I want something too, right?
You can't say, oh, that's selfish.
That's selfish.
Well, you know, you're the one being selfish.
I mean, if this is the way it's going to go now, Where the government just, you know, you're in a tough spot so the government comes in with someone else's money and bails you out, then it is perfectly valid for me to say, you know what, I want it too, okay?
I got this debt, I got that debt, I'm struggling with this, I want all that taken care of.
Maybe you should have to pay for it.
You know?
If someone else has to pay your loans, then maybe you should have to pay mine.
You know what?
I want you to pay my mortgage.
That's what you should have to do.
Because I don't want to pay it.
It's hard for me.
I could pull out the violin and I could sing you a whole song, a whole sad song, about how difficult it is to pay my mortgage.
And so you should have to pay it.
That's what I think.
Yeah.
I shouldn't have to.
You should have to.
Well, I mean, it was predatory.
I mean, they never should have sold me this house in the first place.
They should have known I can't afford it, right?
Sixth thing here.
This whole problem can be solved long term with a very simple societal change.
We don't need loan forgiveness or free college or anything else.
There's a very simple change that could be made.
If people would just wait a couple of years Before going to college.
Okay, that's that's really I think that could almost solve all these problems.
This idea and I you know, I just I go on about this all the time because it's so obvious to me.
That number one as I've said many times, you know, not everyone has to go to college and there are way more people going to college than should be.
And, but that doesn't mean that everyone shouldn't go.
Like, if, if you are going to get into a line of work where a four year degree is actually necessary, and those kinds of jobs do exist, obviously, if you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect, you know, I could go on and on.
Those kinds of jobs exist.
And so if you're going to get a job like that, if that's the plan, then yeah, going and getting a four year degree makes sense.
And you should do that.
And the good news there is that a lot of those are high paying jobs, so you'll be able to pay off the debt.
If you don't know what you want to do with your life, if you have no idea what your skills are, what your interests are, what your abilities are, what your plan is five years down the road, if you have no clue, and that is the situation that most high school graduates are in at the age of 18 years old, then of course you shouldn't go right to college!
There's no reason to!
There is no good argument at all that anyone can make to explain why an 18-year-old kid who doesn't know what he wants to do with his life should go right to college.
What would be... Explain this to me.
What would be the downside of an 18-year-old kid who doesn't know what he wants to do going and getting a job somewhere for a few years first?
You can still go when you're 20.
It's not a race.
It'll be fine.
It's not a competition.
I mean, there is a competition for jobs out there, but it's not like you have to get to the finish line before the other person.
So, the point is, If there was a simple societal change that is perfectly feasible, that the message we send the kids is, if you know exactly what you want to do with your life, and you know you need the four-year degree, then maybe you could think about going there right after high school.
But even in that case, I mean, even if you want to be a doctor, I don't see any downside to going and getting a job for a few years, saving up some money, getting some experience, and then going.
But at least in that case, I could see the argument maybe for going right there.
But everybody else, just go get a job, okay?
It doesn't matter what you're doing.
Even if you're going to work at McDonald's, or you're working at Walmart, or you're moving across the country for a few years, getting a job somewhere.
Whatever you're doing, just do something, get a job.
In the meantime, you're making money, you're saving, you're putting yourself in a better position to afford college, and most importantly, You're figuring yourself out.
You're figuring out what you actually are good at and what you want to do.
Because there is a huge difference between an 18-year-old kid who's never had a job and is just getting out of high school and a 20 or 21-year-old adult who's been in the workforce for a few years.
There's a huge difference in maturity, in self-understanding, in so many areas.
So I don't—I mean, until someone can explain what's wrong with what I'm saying here, until someone can explain why we need every 18-year-old to just go right to college without any interim—until someone can explain that to me, then I'm going to say that my solution is the solution, and that's what we should do.
And if you do that, then I think a lot of these problems start to go away.
Ultimately, you're going to have fewer people going to college because there are a lot of
people who, if they take that interim period, they're going to discover in the meantime
that, oh, you know what?
I don't really need to go to college.
I figured out that I want to be a mechanic or I want to be an electrician or something
like that.
So, there are going to be a lot of people who don't end up going.
And the people who do go are going to be a little bit more mature and wise about it.
And, um, I think colleges are going to have to compete a little more for, to get students in, in the doors because it's not going to be an automatic kind of conveyor belt system where the kids go right from high school to college and that's going to drive costs down.
I just think this is the solution.
Um, and we, so we don't need to do any of this other stuff.
All right.
Um, Bernie Sanders wants the Boston Marathon bomber and convicted rapists and other assorted ne'er-do-wells in jail to vote.
Watch this.
...that people with felony records should be allowed to vote while in prison.
Does this mean that you would support enfranchising people like the Boston Marathon bomber, a convicted terrorist and murderer?
Do you think that those convicted of sexual assault should have the opportunity to vote for politicians who could have a direct impact on women's rights?
Okay, thank you for the question, Anne.
And let me just say this.
What our campaign is about, and what I believe, is creating a vibrant democracy.
Today, as you may know, we have one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country on earth.
I want to see us have one of the highest voter turnouts.
And by the way, what we're seeing is more young people getting involved in the political process, but not enough.
And in my view, If young people voted at the same percentage that older people voted in this country, we would transform this nation.
But to get to your point, we live in a moment where cowardly Republican governors are trying to suppress the vote.
And in fact, right here, as you may know, in New Hampshire, the legislature and the governor are working hard to make it more difficult for young people to vote.
And to me, that is an incredibly undemocratic, un-American process.
And I say to those people, by the way, if you don't have the guts to participate in free and fair elections, you should get another job and get out of politics.
All right?
So here is, and to answer your question, as it happens in my own state of Vermont, from the very first days of our state's history, what our Constitution says is that everybody can vote.
That is true.
So people in jail can vote.
Now here is my view.
If somebody commits a serious crime, sexual assault, murder, they're going to be punished.
They may be Jail for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, their whole lives.
That's what happens when you commit a serious crime.
But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy.
Yes, even for terrible people.
Because once you start chipping away and you say, well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote.
Or that person did that, not going to let that person vote.
You're running down a slippery slope.
So I believe that people who commit crimes, they pay the price.
When they get out of jail, I believe they certainly should have the right to vote.
But I do believe that even if they are in jail, they're paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.
Okay, a few things here.
First of all, Democrats are super excited about voter turnout among certain demographics, right?
You don't see them down in the trailer parks in Alabama trying to try to rustle up some votes.
Um, and I'm, I'm willing to bet the trailer parks probably have a low voter turnout also, but you don't see that they're not down there.
Not trying to get those folks out.
Why is that?
Well, because those people are less likely to vote Democrat.
So that's what this is about.
Sanders pretends to care about participation in our democracy, but he only wants certain people to participate.
Uh, so he's no better than the quote cowardly Republican governors that he's railing against.
Second, I'm doing everything in list format today if you hadn't noticed.
Participating in our democracy by voting is not an inherent right.
It is not a God-given right.
It is not something that we necessarily want everyone to do.
It is not something that our country benefits from.
Our country does not automatically become more vibrant just because everyone is voting.
Voting should be seen as much more of a responsibility than a right.
And in fact, in general, I think that we should be using the R-word, responsibility,
more often than we use the R-word, rights.
We should be talking about our responsibilities more than our rights.
And every right is accompanied by a responsibility.
And I think we should start looking at it more in those terms.
So when you frame it that way, instead of saying, oh, we all have a right to vote.
No, voting is a responsibility.
And if it's a responsibility, that means that You should only do it if you are a contributing, informed, knowledgeable member of society.
Those are the people who we want voting.
And that is how our democracy and our country becomes more vibrant, when you have contributing, informed, knowledgeable members of society voting.
But when you've got just a bunch of ignorant, when you've got a bunch of ignoramuses who you manage to shuffle into the, to herd into the polls on election day, like cattle, and they just go in there and start pressing buttons randomly, or, you know, based on the letter next to the name, or based on whose name is prettier, or based on whatever poster they happen to see when they were stumbling half drunk into the polls that morning, that does not make Our democracy more vibrant.
That doesn't help our system at all.
All you're doing in that case is you are canceling out the informed votes with all of these ignorant people.
And that doesn't help us.
So really, what we want in this country are fewer voters, not more.
There should be fewer.
Whatever the voter turnout is, it should be like half of that or a tenth of that.
And and that's how that is how we make a more powerful and vibrant democracy.
But the whole idea is, as far as prisoners go, the whole idea is absurd, because they're in prison, okay?
We already take away their fundamental right to, like, walk outside and look at the clouds, right?
I mean, all of their rights, really, or most of them, are suspended in prison.
Your First Amendment right is curtailed severely.
You can't say whatever you want.
Your Second Amendment right, obviously, is gone.
You're not carrying guns.
Fourth Amendment is basically gone.
Prisoners have some basic rights, very basic, but by necessity, and also for punitive reasons, many of their essential rights are either gone or severely limited.
And we already know that.
That's the nature of prison.
So voting is just one of them.
It's not even the most important one.
So this idea that there's some extra injustice in not allowing them to vote, I mean, we keep them locked in a cage, right, for 20 hours a day.
Like, what do you, I mean, and you're worried that they're not voting?
It seems to me that if we're saying, oh, well, they have an inherent right to vote, well, then I guess they have an inherent right not to be locked in the cage in the first place, too.
But then, of course, at that point, now we have no more prisons and we have anarchy.
So it doesn't make any sense.
And the last thing is, I agree, actually, with those who say that felons who get out of prison should be able to vote.
Now, I do think it's an injustice that someone who's paid their debt to society and, you know, has gone through the punishment and has reformed themselves, the idea that they can never vote again.
Like, if you commit a, you know, let's say you're someone Rob's a liquor store when they're 19 years old and they go to prison.
They do their time.
They get out.
They get a job.
They start a family.
And now they're 50 years old.
It's been over 30 years since they committed the crime.
They have long since paid their debt to society.
And at the age of 50, they still can't vote.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
And so, yeah, I think those people should be able to vote.
And in fact, those people could be very valuable voters.
I mean, these are people who they've been in the system.
They've seen the government from sort of a different angle than a lot of us have.
They've got an experience.
They have a sort of life experience that I think makes their perspective interesting and valuable.
And so, yeah, I think those people should.
But those who are in prison are still in the process of paying their debt to society.
And what's more, and this is the important fact, they are not contributing members of society.
Okay.
These are people who have, because of their own actions, we have had to segregate them from society and keep them locked away and take care of them, you know, pay for them to pay to house them and feed them and everything else, pay for medical care, everything else.
So these are in prison.
I mean, these people are, are strains on society.
They're not contributing.
And that should be that, that is the that should be the litmus test.
Is it should be contributing members of society and that's that is how our system was originally set up Now, obviously, back in the early part of our country's existence, when, well, you could only vote if you were a landowner, well, the problem there is that you couldn't be a landowner if you were a woman or if you were a black person.
So, obviously, that was unjust because you're disenfranchising people then based on gender and race.
Clearly, we can't do that.
But these days, that's not the case anymore.
It doesn't matter your gender, your race, you can be, legally, and in every other sense, a contributing member of society.
And so that's how I think we should decide who can vote.
Let's go to, yeah, we'll do emails now.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com says, this is from Carrie, says, Matt, seriously, what's up with the bee thing?
I don't understand it.
So Kerry is referring, I guess, to my flurry of posts this weekend talking about the arrival of my bees, who I'm going to pick up an order of bees today, actually.
I'm starting a beehive.
I'm becoming a beekeeper, as I mentioned before.
I think I tweeted about it this weekend, just out of excitement to begin my journey as a beekeeper.
The funny thing is that my wife, she agreed to this arrangement.
I mean, she's known for like two years that I wanted to start being a beekeeper.
And so now it's finally happening.
Then I was talking to her this weekend, saying, oh yeah, I'm going to pick up the bees this week.
And she said, oh, so how many bees is it going to be?
It's going to be like 200, 300 bees, right?
And I said, no, the original package will be about 10,000 bees.
And then it will, the hive will grow to 70 or 80,000 bees.
And then I'll probably get more hives.
And she was Not pleased to learn that fact, but I mean, it's too late now.
It's happening.
We're going to have 70,000 bees in our backyard with our kids running around and playing.
It is happening.
And then she said to me, she said, she said, well, but my mom is allergic to bees and now she's not going to be able to come over.
And I said, oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that.
I mean, that's not like that was the whole point here.
Now, why do I want to be a beekeeper?
Well, because for one thing, why not, Kerry?
I mean, why not be a beekeeper?
Okay?
Give me one good reason to not be a beekeeper, and then maybe I won't be.
And also, I think that it's... Well, secondly, I think bees are fascinating creatures.
And third, I think that... I believe that it's important for a man to have hobbies.
And if that hobby is one that scares your mother-in-law away, well, that's just a win-win, folks.
That's all that is.
All right, this is from Steven, says, Hey Matt, I've been a reader even before you started at The Blaze, so I'm happy to see your success so far and hope God continues to bless you as you continue to share your viewpoint.
Regarding speaking in tongues, I am 100% on board with you.
I've been in multiple churches where speaking in tongues was widely accepted.
In most churches where this is accepted, speaking in tongues is equated with praying in the spirit.
Despite absolutely ignoring Paul's admonition that if someone speaks in tongues, there should be an interpreter, I've seen multiple people spew out nonsense gibberish on a regular basis.
In my opinion, it's a show purely for self-aggrandizement to put themselves on a pedestal as being the holiest of the congregation.
Every time that tongues are mentioned in the New Testament, it is of the effect of preaching the Word to someone that does not know of Jesus, not just a bizarre prayer language.
Paul also said in Philippians, Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
This idea of speaking in tongues, as I've seen it in multiple churches, does nothing more than elevate certain people as being more holy than others.
So, in every sense, the way that speaking in tongues is practiced in the vast majority of churches directly contradicts what the Bible tells us.
I believe that God can cause us to speak in tongues to spread his word, but the way I see it in our modern churches is it is nothing short of blasphemy.
Sorry to write such a long screed, but having seen this in practice in so many places, I feel very strongly about it.
And I will let that stand on its own, because you put it very well.
So, thank you for that, Stephen.
This is from Redacted.
Great theocratic dictator, Matt.
I am a recent seminary grad with quite a bit of debt to pay off.
You said you don't want to hear a recent grad with debt to advocate for it because they are biased, so I will offer the complete opposite.
I find this student loan forgiveness by warrant to be absurd.
Though I stand to gain a lot financially from it, it is complete exploitation of those that gave me a loan, and it is immoral to expect the American people's tax dollars to pay for something I contractually agreed to pay.
Long story short, I do not want my student loans forgiven.
I have my pride and my dignity.
Uh, that is a wonderful attitude.
It grieves me that your attitude is so rare, right?
I mean, but that is, that's an American attitude, right?
That's how Americans should be.
That I don't want you to.
I would turn it down if you offered it.
I don't want you to just take care of my responsibilities for me.
They are mine.
And it means something, like dignity and just being a self-sufficient person and manning up and taking care of your own business.
I mean, that means something.
I want to do that.
I don't want you to take that away from me.
I especially don't want you to do it by taking from someone else.
I don't want some millionaire to be my sugar daddy and come in and do that.
I'm a man.
I've got dignity.
That appears to be your attitude and I think it's great.
I just wish that you weren't such a rarity.
I mean, I wish that you weren't one out of a hundred.
I wish that you were, you know, 90 out of 100 had that attitude.
And I think there was a time in this country when most people had a similar attitude to yours.
But these days people, they just, they have no, they certainly have no dignity.
They have no desire to be self-sufficient.
They just are looking for the easiest way.
And so for them, There's a total disconnect.
Because they can't offer any arguments.
They don't even understand why they need to offer arguments.
Because for them, they say, well, what do you mean?
I mean, I have these loans.
It's hard to pay them off.
I don't like them.
So someone else should pay them.
Of course they should.
And if you ask, well, why should they?
Well, because it's because it's hard for me and I don't want to have to do it.
And that's their whole argument.
It's not even an argument.
It's it's it's the argument of a two year old.
But you hear this from grown adults.
All right, let's see from from Sam says, Hello, Matt.
I recently joined a church.
This is a first and a big first for me.
Before this, I was religious, but not in a good way, so I'll just leave that there.
I have no education on church or the teaching and have never read the Bible, honestly, so do bear with me if anything I say sounds wrong, since it probably is.
And I'm new, as new can be, but learning.
My fiancé got me to go and join.
I'm 21.
I never thought I would do this, so I've been going for something like six weeks now.
I'm enjoying it, and the lead pastor I feel is good.
My issue is thinking about everything I'm being told here.
They talk a lot about feeling the Holy Spirit and hearing Jesus and the Word of God in one's life.
Does feeling this or the ability to recognize what God slash Jesus slash the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me or lead me to get easier or more obvious?
I feel like I'm being told about a brand new color on the color wheel and people will point to it and saying that it is the color, but I'm having a hard time seeing this color.
Also, talking about how God has given me a purpose and a gift to fulfill that purpose.
How do you know the purpose given, and how do I know the gift-slash-talent given to fulfill that promise?
If I find the purpose, I will chase it and build it.
I remember something about three people going to Jesus with gifts, two showing that they had taken the gifts and created more gifts, and the last one didn't, and he was slothful and wicked.
So, how do I figure all this out?
Any help with any of this is greatly appreciated.
Well, great question, Sam, and congratulations on making a positive change in your life.
It takes guts to make changes.
I mean, it takes guts to make changes, to realize that changes need to be made, and humility to realize that, okay, this is something that I don't have in my life.
I want to have it, and so I'm going to take that step.
So that's awesome.
We've got two emails in a row here from people with an attitude that I wish everyone had.
And our country would be so much better if everyone was like Sam in the last email.
We'd be in a much better country.
Now, as to your question, it is an excellent question and an important one.
I think it brings up an interesting point.
You talk about feeling the Holy Spirit and hearing God in your life, and you're basically saying, okay, well, when does that happen?
Because I'm going to church, I don't really feel it, I don't hear it.
The comparison you made about a new color on the color wheel is very apt and insightful.
So, I think this is part of the problem with the kind of charismatic movement in the church in America in modern times.
And I don't know if this is a charismatic church you're going to, but there is a charismatic vein that you can find in almost any church in America where there is this incredible emphasis that is put on feeling.
So much so that you begin to think that religion really is supposed to be like a drug, like opium, like Karl Marx famously said, that religion is the opiate of the masses.
And you start to feel defective if you don't have that feeling, if you don't get that high, that rush, if your experience is more dry, more sometimes lonely, sometimes confused, even desolate at times.
And what I would say is don't worry about that.
Don't worry about the feelings, because they'll come, they'll go, they'll come back again.
It's not about that.
Feelings are notoriously difficult to conjure up, and once you do, they're notoriously difficult to retain and hold on to, and you can't.
It slips out of your hands like water, right?
And the people who claim to always be moved by the Spirit, To always be overcome with these feelings of joy and peace and so on.
Maybe some of them are.
I mean, maybe some of them really, that's how it is.
But there are also people who are moved, I think, they think that they're moved by the Spirit or by God, but often I think they're moved by the experience or by the music or just by the sort of power of suggestion from the people around them.
It's not necessarily the Holy Spirit all the time.
It could be, you know, but it's not always.
And there are people who are just more susceptible to getting caught up in the moment in an environment in a crowd where everyone is sort of feeling a certain way.
And there are people who are more likely to kind of share that feeling because they're in the crowd.
And it's not necessarily because they're more spiritually in tune than you are.
It's just they're a different kind of person.
And especially if you're a more kind of independently minded person, a little bit less susceptible to suggestion and all of that, then you're not going to be As caught up, and that's okay.
I was talking to someone recently who told me that they are overcome with a feeling of peace and comfort every time they go to church.
And I said, every time, really?
Every time you go to church your whole life, you're overcome with peace and comfort?
And they said, yeah, every single time.
And now I very rarely feel that when I go to church, I'll be honest.
Sometimes on rare occasion, but most of the time I am not overcome by peace and comfort And I'm not saying that this person is lying.
I believe that they really are and I think that's great That's a grace that was given to them.
It's good for them Wonderful for me though.
It's a struggle and I think for most people it is and that's also okay And it's it's not because I'm spiritually defective or or you are we're just different sorts of people.
I I think the point here is that there is too much emphasis put on the emotional experience, and faith is portrayed too much as a sort of joyride, a source of constant comfort or whatever, and so it ends up with this kind of gloss to it, this air of unreality, when the reality is, for many Christians, that faith is going to often be a struggle.
And it's going to sometimes be painful and it's going to sometimes be dry and difficult and a lot of other things.
And the church doesn't want to deal with that much of the time.
We don't want to confront it.
We don't want to talk about it.
We don't want to look at it or acknowledge it.
And that makes it all the harder for those of us who are not blessed with that charismatic gene.
So, that's something to know going in.
And once you know it, put it to the side.
Don't worry about it.
And if you're at church, it's good that you're there.
You're doing what you should be doing.
What I would recommend is don't stand there or sit there trying to get yourself to feel a certain way.
Don't worry about that.
Just be there.
Listen to the To the word that's being spoken and, um, and that will come and go and don't, don't focus on too much as for figuring out your purpose.
Well, the good news is you're 21.
You've got plenty of time to do that.
Uh, the fact that you're thinking about it and that you're searching is a great start.
It's, it already sets you apart from a lot of people who are in your position at your age, um, who aren't even thinking about it or worrying about what they're going to do or what their ultimate purpose is.
So the fact that you, want to know and are searching is good.
And I would say, so that would be my answers.
Right now, it seems to me, knowing almost nothing about you, it seems to me that you're right now, your purpose is to seek and to search.
And so that's what you're doing and do that.
And I think over time, the picture will get clearer for you.
So.
All right.
Thanks for that.
Thanks for that email.
We will leave it there.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Thanks for watching.
Godspeed.
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