Today on the show, I’ve been called racist because I did a segment on the show yesterday discussing some very troubling allegations about Martin Luther King Jr. I want to address that accusation. Also, the HBO series Chernobyl is a searing indictment of socialism, but the Left says it’s about Donald Trump. And “Old Town Road” is the worst song ever recorded but it’s a huge hit. Is everyone just pretending to like it? Is this some kind of ironic joke? We’ll get to the bottom of that question today. Date: 05-31-19
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Today on The Matt Wall Show, I've been called racist because I did a segment on the show yesterday talking about some very troubling allegations about Martin Luther King Jr., so I want to address that accusation.
Also, the HBO series Chernobyl is a damning indictment of socialism, but the left says that it's actually more about Donald Trump, so we'll try to talk about that.
And also, Old Town Road is the worst song ever recorded, but it's a huge hit.
Is everyone just pretending to like it as some kind of joke?
We'll try to get to the bottom of that as well today on The Matt Wall Show.
Thanks for being here.
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All right.
To start with here, I want to follow up on something from yesterday.
I began yesterday the show talking about this Martin Luther King Jr.
story, a story that very few people in America have shown any interest in talking about, and I simply don't believe that this disinterest is due to any real belief that the story isn't newsworthy.
Okay?
I don't believe that.
I don't think that's why people are avoiding it.
I think people are avoiding it because, well, it's just cowardice.
People don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole because they're afraid.
Well, they're afraid that they'll get the kind of reaction that I have gotten for that segment that I did yesterday on the show and also the piece that I wrote, which you can find on TheDailyWire.com right now.
But you know, the thing about me as a stubborn SOB, the thing about me is when I get a really negative reaction to something that I talk about and people insist that I shouldn't be talking about it, then that's only going to ensure that I talk about it more.
That's the best way to make sure that I talk about it.
If I talk about something on the show and you don't like it, The best way to make sure that I talk about it again the next day is to send me an email saying, never talk about that again.
So here we are.
And that's just out of principle.
It's a principle to me.
So to review briefly, there's a new report published in a British publication because no American magazine or no American outlet would go near it.
The report is written by a respected Martin Luther King biographer by the name of David Garrow.
And it's based on FBI documents, which themselves are based on summaries of tapes, or the FBI documents are summaries of tapes of Martin Luther King, tapes that are under lock and key and won't be released to the public until 2027.
But these documents depict Martin Luther King, apparently, as a violent drunk, a serial adulterer, a man who abused women, exploited them, and on one occasion, Allegedly cheered on a rape of a woman.
He was in the room while a woman was being raped and he cheered and applauded and gave advice to the rapist as it was ongoing.
It's very upsetting stuff.
Now, not all of this stuff is from FBI documents.
It's, well, all of that is in there, but the FBI isn't the only source telling us For instance, that King abused and exploited women.
We kind of already knew that.
We've heard that from other sources, eyewitnesses, friends, acquaintances of King.
The FBI just corroborates that stuff.
It's the bit about the rape that's the new piece of information.
I don't think that existed anywhere outside of these documents.
And it's very striking information.
I suppose you could Assume it's not true.
You could assume it's just made up.
But there isn't much basis to assume that.
I mean, there's basis to suspect that that could be a possibility as one explanation of how that information ended up in the documents.
But the problem is that the tapes match up so much with what we already knew and what other people have said.
So that's the problem with the it's made up theory.
There's just not a lot of reason to think that it's made up.
And why do you think the tapes have been sealed by court order?
You know, if they were just tapes of King, you know, playing board games or something, then I don't think they'd be sealed for 60 years until 2027.
In any case, in terms of what we do know, this information, you know, or in terms of what we do with this information, I suggested that The option that I favor for what we do with this information is that we develop a single standard that can be equally applied to all historical figures.
That we don't try to recast Martin Luther King as a villain or start tearing down his statues, but that we also don't make him some sort of exception.
Um, where we demonize the other historical figures, you know, our other national heroes that we've been demonizing and tearing down their statues.
I don't think we can make King an exception to that.
I also don't think that we should canonize people, like Martin Luther King or other national heroes.
That doesn't make sense either.
So rather than canonize our heroes on one hand or demonize them on the other, I don't like either of those options.
I think what we should do with this information and with the difficult facts about our other national heroes is we should use that information to humanize them, to see them as human beings, to see them as real people, not caricatures.
And to strive to understand and appreciate them that way.
I think that's what we should do.
We shouldn't hide from the darker elements of their personalities.
We shouldn't try to justify their sins or rationalize them or assume that it's all made up.
We should discuss them openly and honestly.
And, uh, but we also don't want to turn them into cartoon villains, either, and say, oh, well, they did this and that bad thing, apparently they were just terrible people and nothing that they did was ever any good, and so we shouldn't honor them at all.
No, not that either.
We just see them as men.
Nothing more or less than that.
If they achieved great things, if they managed accomplishments that few people could do, if they altered the course of history as Martin Luther King did, then we honor those accomplishments.
And perhaps we even build statues to remember those accomplishments.
We don't erase anyone from the history books.
Instead, maybe what we do is we add a few extra pages to the history books to also include these other pieces of information.
So we keep the monuments because the monuments are part of our history and culture.
But we keep in mind that the person commemorated by the monument was just that, a person.
And that's how we think of them.
That's how we remember them.
If this is where our reassessment of our historical heroes ultimately leads, then I think it'll be a positive change, because we'll finally be remembering and studying history like adults rather than children.
And it's through that more nuanced lens that I think we can continue to honor Martin Luther King Jr.
and other heroes with flaws, even very terrible, serious, awful flaws.
It's through that lens, through that kind of nuanced, mature, grown-up lens of seeing these as people.
But the point is, with Martin Luther King, is that he's not a special case.
He's not an exception.
So we can't say, oh, well, yeah, let's do that with all the other historical figures, but not him.
He's an exception.
He's not.
And that's my thought about this.
You know, that's kind of what I think we should do with it.
But I've been told by a lot of people, That I'm racist just for having this conversation.
So let me give you just one example of an email expressing this point of view.
Many other people said similar things to me.
So here's one.
It says, Matt, your slanderous attack on Dr. King is beneath even you.
He was a hero and he achieved more than you will ever achieve in your miserable life.
Well, that's probably true.
I hope you get fired for this.
I'm completely disgusted.
You are a racist, but I never thought you'd be so blatant about it. The king of state should sue you for this
Seriously, you are a racist puke f you. I hope you get fired for this. I'm completely disgusted
It goes on from there First of all, there's there's I I am reporting what is has
been published. Um, Based on fbi documents
So there's no basis, of course.
What I'm doing is not slander.
There's nothing libelous about it.
I'm just telling you the information that's out there.
I'm not telling you that if it's true or not.
I don't know.
I'm just telling you what the information is, what the claims are.
But there's been a lot of feedback like this.
And you see, this is why I talk about it, because I believe a few things, fundamentally.
Number one, no subject is off-limits.
No subject.
Period.
So, the solemn pledge that I make to you is that I will never, ever avoid a subject simply because I'm afraid that it might upset the audience.
I never have done that.
I never will do that.
Because the way I see it is, if I'm going to start doing that, then what's the point?
If I'm just going to sit here and tell you things you already think, then what am I even doing?
It's a waste of time.
I'm wasting my life.
And I'm wasting your time.
And so there's no point to it.
Number two, I also believe that no human being is above criticism.
No human being.
Not me, not you, not Martin Luther King, not Mother Teresa, not Gandhi.
Now, we shouldn't look to tear people down just for the sake of it.
And if somebody is honored as a great person, we shouldn't go looking for reasons to hate them.
Which I think is an instinct some people have.
I don't think we should do that.
But if any person is guilty or possibly guilty of horrible acts of evil, they deserve for those acts to be discussed and condemned.
I don't care who they are.
I don't care.
I don't care if they're living, dead.
Because that doesn't change... If an evil act was committed, that doesn't change it.
It still happened.
And it's still evil.
Because the only other option is to treat them like gods.
Right?
To say they're above criticism.
To criticize them as blasphemy.
But once you start treating someone like that, you've deified.
You've made them into a god.
And there is only one god.
Martin Luther King is not God.
I'm not.
You're not.
Nobody is.
Except for God.
God is God.
And number three, I think the truth matters.
You know, I can't say that what's reported about King is true.
It's possible that it's not, but it's true that the reports are out there, and it's true that the reports are credible at least, and so it matters.
It matters because it's true.
But as I said, my goal is not to tear apart anyone's legacy or villainize anyone.
The goal is to start to actually study history.
And to see people for who they were.
You know, there are people who, with the Founding Fathers, there obviously has been a movement recently to villainize them and just see them as racist goons.
So that's happening.
But then there's a reaction to that on the other side, where there are people who do this with the Founding Fathers, with like Thomas Jefferson.
They say, basically, you can't criticize, this is a national hero, how dare you criticize him.
There are people who see our founding fathers that way.
There are people who have deified our founding fathers.
And I don't agree with that either.
Thomas Jefferson was a great man who did great things, like Martin Luther King.
But Jefferson was also deeply flawed.
I mean, he owned human beings, for one thing.
I don't think we need to go beyond that.
He owned people.
He wrote that beautiful document, the Declaration of Independence, and he excluded an entire race from it.
So all of that beautiful and profound Those beautiful and profound words that he put into the Declaration of Independence.
There is sort of an asterisk next to it.
Because he didn't mean for it to apply to non-white people.
Arguably, he didn't even mean for it to apply to, you know, non-white men.
I mean, that was just the mentality that he was coming from.
It's an evil mentality.
So, we should acknowledge that.
And we should talk about that.
And that's okay, because it's just true, is all.
Doesn't matter how you feel about it, it's just true.
All right, Stephen King sent out a tweet yesterday, going from one king to another.
Now we're going to a much less impressive king.
All right, so Stephen King sent out a tweet yesterday about the new miniseries Chernobyl.
I don't know if you've been watching this show, Chernobyl.
It is a masterpiece, by the way.
I really recommend it.
It's tense, it's terrifying, it's very insightful.
It really reminds me of something that Solzhenitsyn would have... If Solzhenitsyn was alive today and making Movies and TV shows.
I think this is the kind of story that he would have told.
But Stephen King, along with, I think, other people on the left, have missed the point of the story.
And so here's what he said.
He said, it's impossible to watch HBO's Chernobyl without thinking of Donald Trump, of course.
Like those in charge of the doomed Russian reactor, he's a man of mediocre intelligence in charge of great power, economic, global, that he does not understand.
It's been interesting to see the reaction to Chernobyl from liberals like Stephen King here.
Because in truth, of course, the show is a damning indictment of socialism.
The story is all about the incompetence of the socialist Soviet government and the ways that it was able to use its absolute power to instill fear and quiet dissent and prevent people from doing the right thing.
That's what the story is all about.
But I think this is how we end up with socialists in America.
Because, you know, on one hand it seems very odd.
Those of us who are not socialists, we look around and we see all these horrifying examples of socialism and what happens in socialist countries.
And so we say to the socialists in this country, we say, hey, just look.
Look at what this system does.
Look where it leads.
All you have to do is look.
It's right there.
I mean, pick any example that you want, currently or from history.
What's wrong?
Why can't you see this?
I'm not even saying that you have to think that capitalism is the best thing ever.
This isn't even about defending capitalism.
Maybe there's some other system you can come up with.
But as far as socialism goes, it's very clear that it just doesn't work.
It leads to horrifying results.
All you have to do is look.
So that's what we say, right?
But they have this defense mechanism because every failure of socialism, in their mind, is never a failure of socialism.
It's always about something else.
It's always, oh well that's not really socialism, or yeah it's socialism but it's got nothing to do with socialism.
So Chernobyl, and Stephen King is not the first person to say this, Chernobyl is somehow now about Donald Trump.
I mean, Donald Trump, when Chernobyl happened, he was still a real estate developer in Manhattan.
I don't think it's his fault.
But that's what they think.
It's about Donald Trump.
It's not about the socialist government.
It's not about that.
This is the cognitive dissonance that's required in order for someone to maintain their socialist convictions.
Those who want to preserve the good name of socialism have said that Chernobyl isn't so much about the political system that was in place, it's about the ineptitude and corruption of the individuals within that system.
Which, okay, fine, sure.
Yes, the system did not create the disaster.
The political system itself did not make it so that thousands of people would be exposed to lethal levels of radiation.
A system is just a system.
A system by itself, if you just put a system over there, it's not gonna do anything.
A political system needs people.
And so if you wanna deflect, you can.
You can always say, well, it's not the, the system didn't do it, the people did it.
Fine, sure.
But here's the question.
Which system exacerbates the problem?
Which system?
Now, we know that corrupt and incompetent people exist.
We know that.
And we know, unfortunately, that corrupt and incompetent people very often want to be in power.
That unfortunately, just human nature, often these are exactly the kinds of people who pursue power.
So then the question is, which system best enables those corrupt and incompetent people to inflict the most amount of damage?
And which system most shields those people from accountability?
And which system makes it most difficult for the average citizen To be heard.
And to have a voice and to have a say.
That's the question.
And see, that's the problem with socialism.
That's the problem with giving all the power to the state.
No, nobody thinks that socialism in and of itself makes people bad.
No, what we're saying is that human nature is flawed to begin with.
And so our founding fathers, who we just talked about, Though they did have these flaws, they were brilliant men.
And one of their fundamental insights was that, okay, human nature is very flawed, you can't trust people with power, and so we've got to figure out a system so that we can, as best we can, shield ourselves from those pitfalls.
And we need to come up with a system where if someone does get in there, and they become power-obsessed and corrupt, and they're going crazy, there are ways to get rid of them.
There are ways to hold them accountable.
That's the point.
And that's the problem with socialism.
And that's what you see when you watch Chernobyl, which, of course, it's a TV show, but I think from what I've read, it's pretty accurate.
It takes some liberties here and there, but as far as these sorts of shows go, it's pretty accurate.
And what you find is that the state was, among other things, was able to instill so much fear in the minds of people who knew better and who could have done something about it, but they were afraid.
Or even if they did try to speak up and say something, they could easily just be scooped up and thrown in prison, just like that, with no questions asked.
And that's what socialism brings.
All right, Meryl Streep was on a panel promoting her latest show or movie or whatever it was, and she said something.
I can't believe that I'm going to give her credit for something, but she said something that I thought was very good.
She was talking about toxic masculinity.
That came up in the conversation somehow.
And this is what she said.
I'll read it to you.
Sometimes I think we're hurt.
We hurt our boys by calling something toxic masculinity.
Because women can be pretty effing toxic.
So it's toxic people.
We have our good angles and we have our bad ones.
I think the labels are less helpful than what we're trying to get to, which is a communication direct between human beings.
We're all on the boat together.
We've got to make it work.
There's Meryl Streep.
Now Meryl Streep is about to be You know dethroned as the queen of Hollywood for these comments, unfortunately Because the left is not gonna they're not gonna tolerate that you're not you're not allowed to question something like toxic masculinity But of course what she's saying here is so obviously true Of course, we hurt our boys by calling something toxic masculinity.
And as I pointed out many times if you if you want to understand How that might be hurtful to especially to young boys Then just imagine Going around and telling young girls about toxic femininity.
We would never say that.
We would never ever say that.
That phrase never comes up.
We would never lecture girls for their toxic femininity.
We don't do it.
Why is that?
Because you don't want to attach those two concepts.
Because there's nothing toxic about being feminine.
Just like there's nothing toxic about being masculine.
No, the toxicity comes if this thing that we call toxic masculinity, the reason why it's toxic is because it's not masculinity.
It is a caricature of masculinity.
It's a parody of masculinity.
So if, you know, I think the people who propose this toxic masculinity thing One example of toxic masculinity that they might give is like the kind of, let's say, the frat boy culture in schools.
Where we're gonna go and just get drunk and we're gonna disrespect women and so on and so forth.
Okay, well that's... No, that's not toxic masculinity.
That's just not masculinity.
Because a masculine man doesn't behave that way.
So...
Those are men who are deficient in masculinity.
So I would propose, rather than talking about toxic masculinity, maybe a better term would be deficient masculinity.
Because every example of toxic masculinity is actually deficient masculinity.
The problem is they are deficient.
They don't have enough of it.
And it's the same thing with femininity.
Meryl Streep mentions that women can be pretty effing toxic.
Her words.
And that's true.
But when you think of stereotypically toxic female behavior, let's say when women gossip about each other in hurtful and destructive ways.
That's a stereotypical female behavior.
But that's not feminine.
When you're being callous and dishonest and cruel and trying to tear other people down, I don't think of that as femininity.
That's not what femininity is.
It's kind of the opposite.
So that is deficient femininity.
That's what I propose.
I think that's the term that we should start to use.
Alright, before we get to some emails, I have to talk about one other thing.
And...
This is an important conversation.
It's really more of a question, actually.
I guess I'm going to pose a question to you.
So this song, the song that's maybe the biggest song of the year, huge hit.
I mean, you hear it all over the place.
This Old Town Road by Lil Nas X.
Well, here's a clip of that song.
If somehow you need to be reminded of it, here's a quick clip.
Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road.
I'm gonna ride till I can't no more.
I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road.
I'm gonna ride till I can't no more.
I got the horses in the bag, horse tack is attached.
Hat is matted black, got the boots is black to match.
Riding on a horse, milk and whip your Porsche.
I've been in the valley, you ain't been up off that porch.
Now, can't nobody tell me nothing.
You can't tell me nothing.
Can't nobody tell me nothing.
You can't tell me nothing.
Okay.
Now, as I said, this is a huge hit, right?
And there was that controversy a few weeks ago about whether this counts as a country song or not.
Of course, it's not a country song.
I mean, it's not at all in the slightest bit a country song.
But I guess we're pretending that it is because apparently it's racist or something to say that it isn't.
I hope it's not also racist for me to then say this, which is that this song is the worst song ever recorded.
It is extremely, extremely bad.
There is nothing good about it.
It has no redeeming qualities.
None.
And that's why I say that it's, I mean, arguably the worst song ever recorded.
I know that there was a lot of competition for that title, but I think arguably because even in most bad songs, there's one or two things about it that you could say, okay, well, that's not so bad.
Everything about this song is terrible.
Everything.
If you like this song, then you're just wrong.
You're wrong for life.
You are factually wrong.
If you say, oh no, but I think it's good.
Well, okay, you think it's good, but you're wrong.
You're just wrong.
You're objectively wrong.
I mean, just listen to the lyrics.
I'm gonna read the lyrics to you.
Just so that we can all digest.
I think it helps to digest the awfulness.
If we hear the lyrics spoken.
So here's a little bit of spoken word poetry.
I'm going to take my horse to the old town road.
I'm going to ride till I can't no more.
I'm going to take my horse to the old town road.
I'm going to ride till I can't no more.
I got the horses in the back.
Horse tack is attached.
Hat is matte black.
Got the boots that's black to match.
Riding on a horse, ha.
You can whip your Porsche.
I've been in the valley.
You ain't been up off that porch now.
Can't nobody tell me nothing.
You can't tell me nothing.
Riding on a tractor.
Lean all in my bladder.
Cheated on my baby.
You can go and ask her.
My life is a movie.
Bull riding and boobies.
Cowboy hat from Gucci.
Wrangler on my booty.
Can't nobody tell me nothing.
You can't tell me nothing.
Can't nobody tell me nothing.
I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road.
I'm gonna ride till I can't no more.
So that's the song.
I think my beautiful rendition right there made it sound ten times better.
But it's still terrible, right?
You need to have the IQ of a sea sponge to think that these are good lyrics.
This is like something that I imagine... Imagine you took a six-year-old And you locked him in a room and you forced him to listen to bad hip-hop and pop country.
Imagine that you just, you force-fed him a diet for about five days of rap music and like, who's that?
Luke Bryan.
Okay, just one after another.
You're just, you're forcing this down this six-year-old's throat.
And then, and I think at the end of it, he would write that song.
That's what he would come up with.
And it's not like the musical accompaniment is good either.
I was talking about this yesterday, and people said, oh, it's got a good beat.
No, it doesn't.
The beat is something that I could have made on a Yamaha keyboard when I was in middle school.
It's terrible.
Everything, like I said, everything about it's terrible.
There's no good thing about this song.
So, I said I had a question.
Here's my question.
Are you all just pretending to like it?
It occurred to me yesterday, maybe, is this all ironic?
Is this all a big joke that we're all playing?
Is this kind of an inside joke that we're all sharing as a country, only I got left out?
Because if so, let me know.
Please let me know.
Because that's pretty funny in that case.
If we all know this is a terrible song and we're just pretending to like it ironically,
and we've gone along with this joke ironically for like three months now,
and we're so committed to this joke that we'll actually listen to the song, right?
Then, okay, that's pretty funny.
So I would give all of you credit for taking part in that joke together.
I just wish you would have told me because I would have liked to be,
I like ironic jokes too.
Why didn't you tell me?
So if that's the case, let me know.
I'll feel a lot better about that because if people actually like this song
and they really listen to it because they really like it, genuinely like it,
and sincerely like it, then it's going to make me concerned
that the average IQ in this country is now 25, which is barely living.
Thank you.
I mean, that means that we've gotten so stupid in this country that we're barely alive.
If we drop five more points collectively, we will all die.
I don't think you can live with a 20 IQ.
I think that you can.
Like, you don't have enough IQ to even run your bodily organs.
So... But I'm hope.
I hope and I pray.
I said a prayer last night.
I did.
I said, God, please, please tell me people don't really like this song.
Send me a message.
So now I ask you, if you are one of the people who has caused this song to be top of the Billboard charts for months now, Is it just a joke?
Please tell me it's... In fact, tell me it's a joke regardless, even if it's not.
Just tell me it is, so that I can sleep easy at night.
Oh, man.
Just awful.
I know, you know, it's such a cliché, right?
I sound like an old fogey when I say, you know, back in my day, people didn't listen to crap like this.
No, back in my day, there was a lot of really terrible music.
Definitely.
And there were a lot of... I'm sure this Lil Nas X is going to be a one-hit wonder.
I doubt he's going to... Because he's got no talent whatsoever, so I don't think he's going to be able to... I mean, he could make another bad song that turns out to be a hit, but I think you only get to go to that well once.
You could have zero musical talent and have one big hit if you end up being a one-hit wonder.
It's hard to do it again.
Yeah, so back in the 90s growing up, there were one-hit wonder songs that were really, really stupid and bad.
But even those, at least they were kind of catchy and there was a weird charm to them.
They were just, they didn't make any sense.
Think about, okay, like tub-thumping.
Chumbawamba.
Okay?
I get knocked down, I get up again.
It's a really stupid and bad song, right?
But it's catchy, it's weird, it's got that one hook, I get knocked down, I get up again, never gonna keep me down.
It's at least got some kind of strange charm to it.
The thing about this song, the thing about a lot of the really bad music today, is that it seems to me, I don't hold it against it that it's bad.
What I'm saying is there's no charm or anything to it.
It's just all around bad.
And that's the problem.
All right, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Chase.
It says, hello Matt, you asked yesterday about how many victim points you get as a cripple.
I'd like to throw in my two cents.
You clearly are of a mistaken mindset that you could ever cash in any kind of victim points.
As a straight white male trying to cash in your victim points in any circumstance is like trying to store coins in a broken piggy bank.
You are fundamentally seen by society as an apex oppressor on the victim hierarchy and therefore any misfortune you've received is deserved.
And any opinion you have is invalid.
Of course, being myself a straight white male, I cannot be certain that this is itself the correct opinion.
Not because it's not what the left believes, but because it was me who said it.
Hope this clears things up for you.
Yeah, I think you're basically right about that.
But, remember, Chase, uh, you were, this was Chase, right?
Everything's on a spectrum with the left.
Everything.
Nothing just exists on its own.
Everything is on a spectrum.
So even among the white male oppressors, I know that I'm always going to be a white male oppressor, no matter what I do.
Unless... Now, that's not exactly true, because I could come out as a woman.
And the really fascinating thing is that I could be straight white male, I could be straight white male.
I could be rich.
I could have everything going for me in the world.
And so I'm way at the bottom, right, of the hierarchy.
All I have to do is say, I'm a woman.
Three words.
And I rock it all the way to the top.
It's that easy.
It's pretty incredible.
But if I remain a self-professed male, then you're right.
I'm at the bottom.
But I think among the straight white male oppressors, We're not all equally as... We're all oppressive and evil and terrible.
And we're all scumbags.
I get that.
But some of us are more terrible and more worthless than others.
What I am suggesting is that due to my disability, which I remind you of, I am slightly less oppressive and less worthless than you.
So, that's all.
Which means...
that you can victimize me.
You know, I cannot be a victim of anyone else on the hierarchy, but I can be a victim of you because my disability, I think, gives me a few, just a few victim points, whereas you have none.
So, through that email, you have just, and through disagreeing with me, you have just victimized me.
Congratulations.
Now this is from Greg, says, responding to anyone who lobs the Hitchens razor, what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, at me during a debate, I'd say, with tongue firmly lodged in cheek, show me the evidence for Hitchens assertion.
Hitchens is actually correct, though, accidentally.
He stumbled upon a little something called deductive reasoning and related concepts of valid versus sound arguments.
So many materialist atheists fall victim to the assertion that a claim can only be proven true via evidence and science.
The simplistic thinking is part and parcel of scientism and positivism, something I'm writing about, and many from Aristotomist Catholic philosophers to Hayek have fought against it over the years.
Scientism still infects the brains of everyone from Neil deGrasse Tyson to economic planners to your garden variety undergrad atheist.
Yeah, I would agree with everything you said there.
Although, well, okay.
You're saying that it's a fallacious assertion.
That you can only prove something true with evidence and science.
So it sounds like that's what you're taking issue with.
Now, I would agree, when it comes to science, there are a great many discussions that we have.
Where science really settles it.
Like for instance, can a man be a woman?
Well, science settles that one.
No, that's a scientific question.
So a lot of our debates are scientific questions.
And therefore, science can settle the debate.
There are some debates that go beyond science.
And so I would agree with most theists who say that Well, there's a lot of science involved in this, and you can use science and find evidence of God, find sort of arrows that point towards a creator, God, through science.
But ultimately, fundamentally, it's not a scientific question, because it goes beyond that.
And science is all about sort of the rules of the road, right?
Science is about the way things work in our universe.
Well, God created the universe and he created those rules and decided how it would work.
So he is beyond those rules, which means you cannot use those rules.
Those rules cannot be the end of the discussion.
You can use them, can't be the end of the discussion.
So I agree with you there.
Evidence, though, I would say that, of course, to prove anything, it does require evidence by definition.
If you offer no evidence at all for your assertion, then there is no reason for anyone to believe your assertion.
Right?
It's just that what I would say is not all evidence is scientific evidence.
And there is evidence of God that is not scientific, or is, I would say, beyond scientific.
For instance, our internal experience Of God.
Of the Holy Spirit.
I think that is valid evidence.
It's not scientific evidence, but it is evidence.
So I would just be careful with that.
As theists, we don't want to come across like we think that we're above evidence, and we don't even have to give you evidence.
Because if we're going to say that, then the atheist is going to say, well then why am I even talking to you?
Why would I even discuss this with you?
Because then you're just making an assertion I'm supposed to believe it just because you said it?
No, I think we do present evidence.
It's just that not all evidence is scientific.
Finally, from Marcy, says, Hi Matt, I agree with what you said about Martin Luther King, but you forgot something.
He was also a plagiarist.
Then she claims that he plagiarized his doctoral thesis and then also the I Have a Dream speech.
I got this email, I also got this email from a lot of people as well.
This about Martin Luther King was a plagiarist and then other things also.
Well, he also did this, he did that, he did this terrible thing.
And I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to address it.
First of all, there is a claim that Martin Luther King plagiarized the I Have a Dream speech.
I'm not an expert on this, I didn't spend a lot of time researching it, but from what I looked at, that seems to be a very weak claim.
In fact, I just think it's not true.
He obviously was inspired in giving that speech by people that he knew and other figures in his life, other speeches he'd heard, which is fine.
You can be inspired.
Of course, we all have inspiration.
I mean, if you wanted to sit down and find Abraham Lincoln's inspiration for the Gettysburg Address, I'm sure you could find things.
Not a problem.
The doctoral thesis, I think, pretty well been established that he did plagiarize large parts of that.
I didn't bring that up.
Why didn't I bring it up?
Because I think this is a very good example of the kind of thing that, the kind of sort of detail, unflattering detail, of a historical person, a historical hero, that is not relevant.
I actually think that that's not a relevant detail.
And so it's important to, you know, I would present it now just as a way of contrast.
Because I don't think, this is my whole point here, when we're talking about our historical figures, historical icons, I don't think that we should just be pouring through every single thing they did and trying to bring out every skeleton out of the closet.
I don't think we should do that.
What's the point of that?
I mean, okay, he got a speeding ticket too, right?
What if you find something like that?
Who cares?
There has to be a cutoff.
There are certain things that really are just not relevant.
Same with Thomas Jefferson.
If you want to talk about Thomas Jefferson's sins, there's going to be relevant things to talk about and irrelevant things.
The fact that he was a slave owner, that's relevant because it's very serious, it's It's something that speaks to his character as a person, in unfortunately a bad way.
And because it does so seriously contradict so many of the things that he said.
So if we're going to talk about Thomas Jefferson's zeal for equal rights, You can't avoid bringing up that, yeah, but also, by the way, he didn't think that applied to, because it just, it puts it into context.
It puts into context what he actually believed.
So you can't get around it, right?
Martin Luther King.
If he was abusive of women, if he condoned rape, if he exploited women, that sort of thing.
Very serious.
Speaks to his character as a person.
It's relevant to a lot of the things he said.
A lot of very beautiful things.
Well, if these claims are true, then apparently he thought that a lot of this stuff doesn't apply to women because he had no problem exploiting them.
So that's relevant.
But if he didn't properly cite when he was doing a doctoral thesis, I just don't think that rises to that level.
So that's the kind of thing that, OK, it's all right.
Fine.
That happened.
Then you can move on.
And I just don't think it matches up in terms of severity.
So there is a balancing act that we have to strike.
And sometimes it can be difficult to find what the balance is.
And that's sort of why I'm talking about this, so we can figure out what is the balance.
We know we don't want extreme ends.
We don't want the one extreme end of, we're gonna ignore all the bad stuff and just treat them like gods.
Then we don't want the other extreme of, they're terrible and let's only talk about the bad stuff.
Somewhere in between.
And figuring out where that middle ground is, I think is sort of the point.
All right, we'll leave it there.
Thanks for watching everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
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