Today on the show, Democrats rush to the defense of Al Sharpton just a day after insisting that Baltimore is a wonderful and safe city. We’ll talk about how the Democrats are managing to lose every argument with Trump by insisting on taking the extreme opposite position in every case. Also, should cops be pulling people over to give out prizes for following the law? And a student is accused of sexual assault because he "cajoled" a woman into sex with "flattery." Date: 07-30-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Democrats rush to the defense of Al Sharpton just a day after insisting that Baltimore is a wonderful and safe city.
We'll talk about how the Democrats are managing to lose every argument with Trump because they insist on taking the extreme opposite position from whatever position he just took.
Also, should cops be pulling people over to give out prizes for following the law?
And a student is accused of sexual assault because he cajoled, quote-unquote, a woman into sex with flattery.
We'll talk about that madness today on The Matt Wall Show.
Well, this is pretty good news, I think.
I don't know if you guys heard about this, but actually, violence is ended.
I'm not sure if you heard about that, but we ended violence.
There is no more violence.
Violence is done.
So that's it.
The hashtag, hashtag end violence, trended on Twitter last night.
People were, it's a whole hashtag, a bunch of people were tweeting end violence.
And I think the point these people were making is essentially what they were saying is, look, let's just, let's just end violence.
You know, people were basically arguing that, to sum up their position, maybe we could just not have violence.
You know, maybe we could explore alternatives to violence.
And that did it.
I mean, all the violent people in the world, everyone who was engaging in violence or planning to engage in violence, they all stopped.
They saw this hashtag and they stopped and they said, oh, wait a second.
You're saying I should not be violent?
And then they slapped their heads, and they kind of laughed, and they said, wow, duh.
And they threw down their guns, and they took off their suicide vest, and they went home to play Parcheesi.
And that was really the end of it.
It was as simple as that.
I myself had always been on, really, to be honest, I was more on the keep violence end of the debate.
Until this hashtag, and I read some of the tweets, and I thought, wow, these people really make an interesting point.
And so even I changed my own position.
My only thing is, if only someone had thought of this sooner, if only someone had thought to end violence sooner, I think we could have avoided, honestly, a lot of heartache in our society.
But anyway, at least we finally, after all these years, you know, we finally have Have made the change.
So I think that's a really wonderful thing.
Okay, speaking of violence, Al Sharpton.
Well, he doesn't seem to be much of an end violence kind of guy.
He has throughout his illustrious, is that the word for it?
I'm not sure.
Maybe I'll check my thesaurus.
Some kind of career.
He has stoked tension and violence and riots.
He's promoted false rape claims.
He's engaged in vicious antisemitism.
He has been generally a grifter and a hack who does nothing but exploit and lie and pander in the basest ways.
Sharpton is kind of a fascinating character in a way because he's so straightforwardly vile and evil.
There appear to be very few layers to this guy.
This is just what he is to his core.
And most people know it.
He's kind of known for that.
I'm not sure if you could find anyone of any race or ideological persuasion who would say something positive about him.
This isn't just a typical partisan thing where people on one side say he's awful and then people on the other side like him.
I've never heard anyone, any person who isn't on TV, I've never heard an average person in a discussion sing his praises.
I've never heard that.
You're around any group of people, and if for some reason Al Sharpton's name comes up, it doesn't matter what the racial or ideological makeup of the crowd is.
Everyone, there's kind of that groan and the rolling of the eyes.
And that makes sense, because he's transparently fraudulent.
And that's why everyone detests him.
Until this week, that is.
And there's been a sudden shift on Sharpton this week, and we'll talk about that in just a second.
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So, one day we had leftists pretending to love the city of Baltimore because Trump criticized it.
And next we have Democrats rushing to the defense of Al Sharpton because Trump criticized Al Sharpton.
You know, Trump sent out a bunch of tweets about Sharpton.
Well, you know that part of the story.
I don't need to read the tweets.
I'm sure you've heard about that.
And ever since then, over the past day or so, Democrat candidates like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and others have come out to say what a wonderful guy Al Sharpton is.
And they know better, of course.
And they would never be so public and explicit in endorsing Al Sharpton, who has more baggage than, you know, one of those luggage carousels at the airport, except that Trump came out against him.
That's why they're doing this.
And here's the amazing thing.
As many people have observed, The job for Democrats in 2020, their path to victory, is really objectively easy, extremely easy, and straightforward.
They could do nothing.
They could say nothing.
They could hold no campaign events, even, and just sit there, and probably the Democrat candidate would cruise to victory fairly easily.
Because that's just how unpopular and divisive of a character Trump is, like it or not.
I mean, he just is.
You look at the poll numbers, and it's pretty clear.
If they're going to say anything, If they're going to say stuff and they're going to do stuff, all they really have to do is limit the stuff they say and the stuff they do to anything in the not crazy column.
That's really pretty much anything, as long as it's not totally crazy and insane, they would be fine.
But they can't manage to do even that.
This, this, the bar they have to get over is so low they can't even get over it.
They can't even exercise that minimal self-control.
Because Trump has this sort of reverse magnetism that causes them to, whatever he says, his ideological opponents will immediately rush to the exact opposite position from whatever he said.
Doesn't matter what he says.
They're going to take the opposite position.
So Democrats, when it comes to Trump, are incapable of taking a moderated stance on anything.
They can't counter or they won't counter Trump's, shall we say, eccentricities with something measured and calm and reasonable.
They can't do that.
Instead, they go to the other extreme end.
So to the point where I think it'd be interesting to see Trump come out against, let's say, eating garbage out of a dumpster.
He should send some tweets saying, you know what folks, we shouldn't eat garbage out of dumpsters.
You're a loser if you eat garbage out of dumpster.
It's the stupidest thing in the world to eat garbage.
He should just say that because then you're gonna have Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden all coming out and saying, eating garbage out of the dumpster is the most American thing.
It's wonderful.
It's healthy.
It's tasty.
This is what true Americans do.
Um, any position he takes, they're going to take the opposite.
So these past few days have been a perfect example, perfect illustration of the, uh, the, the problem for Democrats.
Trump, um, lashes out about Baltimore saying that no human would want to live there and it's rat infested and so on.
And, uh, they could have responded by saying something like, look, He's basically right about Baltimore.
Baltimore's got serious problems.
It's a city with tough challenges.
But Trump doesn't really care about this.
He's just using the issue to divide us and to cause, you know, to turn us against each other, et cetera, and so forth.
Yada, yada, yada.
I mean, they could have gone that route.
Where it's not like they are explicitly denying the problems in this city that we all know is a hellhole.
But at the same time, they're not going to come to Trump's defense, of course.
I'm not expecting that.
They're Democrats.
They are his ideological enemies, after all.
But they could have taken that route.
But instead, they didn't do that.
Instead, they take the diametric extreme opposite position and say, no, in fact, Baltimore is great.
There's nothing wrong with it.
And then they lose.
They lose that news cycle.
They lose that battle.
And then the Sharpton thing.
Well, Trump comes out and, you know, insults Al Sharpton.
Fine.
And says things about Al Sharpton that probably Easily 95% of all the people in the country agree with when it comes to Al Sharpton.
So how do the Democrats win that?
Well, they could win it just by saying nothing.
Let Sharpton and Trump go back and forth.
Let them argue.
And that ends up being a win for Democrats, I think.
Or at least it's a not loss.
It's not a loss for them in that case.
Or even better yet, they could come out and say, Hey, I don't like Trump for X, Y, Z reason, but Sharpton is a con man too.
And so I have no dog in this fight.
I'm not getting involved.
Now that might be more difficult for a white Democrat to say that, but someone like Kamala Harris, if she were to come out with something like that, come out against Al Sharpton, I think that would be an absolute winner for her.
But instead, no, they come out and they heartily endorse the anti-Semite bigot fraud and they lose.
Now, of course, there's an element of this on the right too, and I don't mean to deny that.
This is something, this is not just something that Democrats do.
This is how our Debates, if you want to call them that, work in this country these days, where there's this tendency to define yourself based on taking the complete opposite position from your opponent, whatever that happens to be.
So an example of this on the right would be something like, I run into this sometimes, for instance, with right-wingers who respond to guys like Kaepernick and those who talk about police brutality.
By insisting, essentially, that it isn't a problem at all.
It just doesn't happen.
And, hey, if you don't want to get beat by the cops, then just follow orders and do whatever they say.
I mean, you know, taking this absolute bootlicking, anti-American, legitimately fascist line.
Now, I use that word I'm very hesitating in using that word, because, of course, it's an abused word.
But when you say, look, if you don't want to get beat, just do what you're told, that really is basically a fascist line.
And there are some right-wingers, you talk to them, and that's what they'll say.
You know, hey, you don't want to get beat, do what you're told.
Because they're countering the excesses of the left when it comes to the police brutality issue.
Excesses which are considerable.
Where you've got leftists running around saying that all the cops are racist and they're on a mission to murder black people and that kind of thing.
Rather than come out with a nuanced and measured opposition, you see the opposite extreme. So it happens on
both sides. But I think it's worse on the left because of the effect that Trump has on them,
where they can't, they just, it's, as I said, it's like, it's a reverse magnetism thing.
It's something where they can't, it's like they can't physically help themselves.
Whatever he says, they're on the opposite.
And so these are, these are two very winnable news cycles for the Democrats that they lost.
And so they could very easily lose the election if they continue down this.
There's no sign of them changing or figuring out how to respond to Trump in a more measured way.
There's no sign of that happening.
So, amazingly, they're on the way to losing.
Well, we got more to talk about.
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All right, before we Before we move to the next topic, there's a trend online.
You see a lot of these kinds of videos.
But I have to play this one for you.
I don't need to set it up anymore.
Watch this.
Yeah.
Trump is a mighty man, running this country the best that he can.
The media swarms and the networks lie, but he doesn't flinch, he's a fearless guy.
Get out the way, old man Schumer, get out the way, stubborn Nancy, get out the way,
all you haters, Trump's on a roll and it's gonna get greater.
Yeah. Okay.
All right.
I'm just going to move on.
So here's an interesting little thing.
A news report out of Phoenix, Arizona, went viral yesterday.
It was a story about a—speaking of policing, actually—it was a story about a positive ticketing campaign by cops in Tempe, Arizona.
The plan, well, the original story from the local media, or at least the original impression that was given, was that the cops in Tempe, Arizona would be pulling over good drivers, pulling over people who are obeying traffic laws, because they're obeying traffic laws, in order to give them coupons for a free Slurpee from the local gas station to reward them for They're good driving.
Well, not just a Slurpee, in fairness.
It could have been.
It would be a coupon for any drink you want.
Really, any drink you want at the Gaza.
You could get Diet Coke, Mountain Dew.
So, but that's the idea.
They'd pull you over, or at least that was the impression people had based on the story.
They'd pull you over and give you a coupon to reward you for obeying the speed limit.
This idea was met with backlash, I think, understandably.
And a few hours later, the police department clarified, saying, no, we're not going to pull you over, OK, but if we happen to see you walking by or something, we might try to engage you in a conversation and then give you the coupon as a reward.
Now, I'm not sure that I believe this clarification.
If the whole idea is to reward good drivers, How could you do that unless you see them driving first?
It just doesn't make any sense.
If the idea is to reward good drivers, it would seem like you'd have to pull them over because that's the only way that you would... What are cops going to do?
Walk up to you and say, hey, are you a good driver?
Well, yes, I am.
Here's a coupon.
That seems rather ridiculous.
Well, anyway, now they're not gonna pull people over.
It seems likely to me that maybe that was the original plan, and then they changed it when they got such a, with the backlash, when the feedback was so terrible.
I don't know.
And there is precedent for cops pulling people over to pat them on the head for being good little boys and girls.
You may remember this from a few years ago.
Watch this.
Hey, good afternoon ma'am.
My name is Officer Warner with Halifax Police Department.
Are you aware of why I pulled you over today?
Are you familiar with vehicle code 1739?
Well, it's actually against the law to drive on a hot day without an ice cream cone.
On behalf of the Halifax Police Department, we're just making sure that everybody's following all the laws today and are driving with Ice cream folks.
Like I said, I'm Officer Warner.
This is Chief of Police Lance here in Halifax.
We just wanted to make sure you guys were in compliance.
You all have a wonderful day.
Are you okay?
Okay, so there they were pulling people over to give out ice cream.
In Arizona, they claimed they were never intending to do anything like that, which, okay, fine.
But it raises a question about this whole idea of cops going around, handing out little prizes
and commendations for people who are following the law.
And I've heard of other things like this in other places.
I don't know if it doesn't always involve pulling people over, but the whole concept, I'm not a big fan of.
As far as pulling people over to give them a coupon or an ice cream, that is clearly a terrible idea on a number of levels.
You're interrupting the flow of traffic.
You're pulling somebody off the road when they could be in a hurry.
I mean, you don't know what... They could be late for work, could be late for an important appointment.
You don't know what's going on with them.
Yeah, you're doing that and you're causing a lot of stress as well.
You're making people think that they're in trouble.
It's a very stressful thing when you see those sirens go off and so you're doing all of that just so you can give them a little prize worth $1.25.
That's not what police are supposed to be doing.
And it's not fair to citizens who are forced to take part in this stunt because the moment you see the sirens go off behind you, you are essentially being detained, at least temporarily.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, you're being detained because you have to pull over.
You don't have a choice.
And you have to comply with whatever they're saying.
So to use that power and authority for something like this is obviously an abuse.
To detain people even for five minutes so that you can play a little prank or give out coupons or do a little publicity stunt, a little PR thing, is completely wrong.
Not to mention, what if the cop comes up with the coupon or the ice cream or whatever and they smell weed in the car or they see contraband of some kind?
What do they do?
Because they pulled you over under false pretenses.
They pulled you over with no reasonable suspicion of illegal activity.
And let's say they come up with the ice cream or the coupon and then they see illegal activity going on.
Can they even make an arrest in a situation like that?
I'm not sure, but it opens up a whole can of legal worms here that just renders the whole thing completely absurd and not worth it at all.
But really, the main thing is this.
If I'm obeying the law, leave me alone.
Just leave me alone.
Let me be.
That's the best reward for me.
I think for most people.
Let me go about my day.
That's all.
If I'm obeying the law, my reward is that I don't have to deal with cops, to be detained.
I don't have to do any of that.
I don't have to have that stress.
I have my freedom and my liberty.
I can go about my day.
And I have my time to myself, and that's what I want.
That's the best reward.
So let me have that.
Which is why even the idea of giving out coupons to people on foot I don't like that idea either.
I'm not into that, for the same reason.
That I don't need... Just let me be, please.
Now, if the point here is to improve the relationship between cops and citizens, then I think that's a worthy goal.
It's a nice idea.
I mean, if it's the thought that counts, and in fact, a lot more than the thought counts, but if that's all that counted, then it would be fine, because it's a nice thought.
But let me suggest a better method.
You don't need a promotional stunt.
You don't need ice cream.
You don't need coupons.
I think instead what you could do is simply train police officers to be generally friendly.
To the community, to law-abiding members of the community especially, friendly and helpful in general.
They don't need to give out free stuff, but just be friendly and welcoming to people and approachable.
And you could train them even when they're pulling someone over for a minor traffic violation.
And they're giving the person a ticket.
You could train them to not be jerks about it.
Train them to treat their fellow citizens as fellow citizens, not serfs, not subjects.
And a lot of cops already do this.
The majority of cops already do this.
So they don't need to train them.
That's what they already do, and that's great.
And those are police officers who are very much helping with the relationship between the community and law enforcement.
And to give those cops coupons to give out or something is, it's not just demeaning and patronizing for the citizens, it is for them too.
I feel bad for the cops in this situation because I'm sure they don't have a choice, they have to do it.
I would certainly hate it if I was a police officer and you were wasting my time with stuff like this and I have to do it, I don't have a choice.
So I feel bad for them as well.
My point is simply that all the coupons in the world aren't going to compensate for cops who struggle in this area of simply being nice and friendly to the community, especially to law-abiding members of the community.
Any police officer who struggles in that area, you're not going to compensate for that with coupons.
And if they don't struggle in that area, then the coupons are unnecessary.
It's an added thing that just makes it weird and awkward and there's no reason for it.
So that's what I would say.
And you know, the last thing too is I don't like, I think like most people these days, I'm not a fan of participation trophies.
The idea that anyone should be given any kind of prize at all simply for obeying the law Um, I don't like that because obeying the law is our, right?
It's our civic duty.
It's like, it's like, it's a, it's a bare minimum.
It's just, it's what we're supposed to do.
That's why if you don't obey the law, you get in trouble.
You get fined or you go to jail.
Um, because it's expected that you could at least do this as a citizen.
So we talked about the responsibility of police officers.
Well, the responsibility for us is, you know, obeying the law is bare minimum stuff.
So to give us essentially a civic participation trophy and saying, congrats for not breaking the law.
Uh, no, no, we don't, we don't, uh, not only are you wasting our time, but it's also, we don't deserve that.
Even something like a coupon.
We don't deserve that simply for breaking for, for obeying the law.
It's so the whole idea is, is awful.
Um, Let's see, there was one other story in the Daily Wire about
Maybe we'll save this for tomorrow.
I'll read a little bit from this story in the Daily Wire, a report a few days ago that went viral for good reason.
Reading a bit from the report, it says, John Doe, as he is referred to in court documents reviewed by the Daily Wire, was accused of sexually assaulting a student referred to as Jane Roe at the end of January 2018.
And this is at Pennsylvania State University. The two had met the previous spring since
they were both part of the Shriers Honors College. January 26, 2018, the two met up again in a
computer lab and started talking.
They then started flirting, and Jane put her number into John's phone, according to the lawsuit,
and texted herself, I love you from John's phone as a means of giving herself John's number and they continued to flirt and We're walking through how their relationship progressed because it's important for the for what happened next.
So Okay, so it's a flirtatious relationship Eventually they end up in They end up in Jane's room, which she invited John to her room, and they engage in sexual activity.
The lawsuit claims that Jane later... it was a totally consensual act.
The lawsuit claims that Jane later changed her account of the sexual encounter to claim that John physically forced her into sex and that she tried to get away from him, which, according to the lawsuit, was not the case at all.
So far, it's a story that, unfortunately, we've heard many times.
According to the lawsuit anyway, you have a consensual encounter that, after the fact, Turns non-consensual because the woman changed her mind and decided she regretted it and so on.
Which, of course, you never hear the reverse of that.
Despite what some people may think, there have been occasions in the history of mankind, even in recent American history, there are probably frequently occasions where there's a sexual encounter between a guy and a girl, and the guy later regrets it and wishes he hadn't done that.
But you never hear about the guy coming back and saying, you know what, actually, I wasn't into that.
I was raped.
You never hear that.
And if a guy did do that, I think he'd probably be laughed out of the room.
Nobody would take him seriously.
So this is something that only women are able to do.
It's a kind of female privilege.
Well, the hearings panel chair told... Okay, they said that the panel felt... This is the panel that was...
Looking into these allegations at the school, they felt that the respondents' continual flattery constitutes cajoling, which they gave several examples.
They gave several examples of what they felt the guy was cajoling, cajoling the girl into sex by flattering her.
And some of the examples they gave, these are all just constitute text messages that he sent, flirty sort of text messages.
So when they say cajoling, it's not like he was trying to blackmail her or intimidate her, but no, he called her beautiful, stuff like that.
Complimented her.
Normal things that guys say to girls, especially if they're in a relationship of some kind with them.
And so the school decided that the flattery is a cajoling into sexual intercourse and therefore it's a form of sexual assault.
That's all according to the lawsuit.
I mean, this is, you want to talk about the slippery slope, this is where we are now.
And it yet again underscores how dangerous it is And I think maybe this is the takeaway for people that are in, if you're in college, if you're a guy or a woman, either way, to engage in the hookup culture and everything.
It's a dangerous game to play.
Dangerous on a number of levels.
I mean, aside from the diseases and everything that are possible, there's also this element of it now.
Just completely insane.
All right, we'll go to emails.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
This is from Dave, says, hey Matt, I've been navigating my own beliefs on the death penalty
as a Catholic. Francis recently scrubbed a bunch of latitude and personal interpretation from the
catechism. I naturally resonate with the thoughts you presented in a recent podcast. I'd love to
hear your thoughts on squaring Catholic faith in this belief, as most of the Catholic talkers are
militantly anti-death penalty. Yeah, we talked about the death penalty and I shared that I am
in favor of the death penalty.
Although, as I've talked about over the course of the last couple of years, I've kind of flip-flopped on this issue, but I'm now pretty firmly in favor of it, for reasons that I outlined.
I'm not going to get into it again.
But I have gotten several emails like this from people saying, well, I thought as a Catholic, don't you have to be against the death penalty?
Because the Pope came out and said that the death penalty is impermissible.
Or, I forget the phrase he used.
I think that was the exact word.
Something like impermissible.
Inadmissible, maybe.
In typical Pope Francis fashion, there was a little bit of vagueness and ambiguity in the way that it was phrased.
But it is true that they made this change to the Catechism.
What I'll say though, Dave, is that Catholic teaching, as you probably are aware, Catholic teaching on the death penalty, for 2,000 years, the Church taught that the death penalty is at least in principle acceptable.
Not just acceptable, actually, but could be the morally right thing to do.
It could be necessary for justice.
That's what the Catholic Church taught for 2,000 years.
Importantly, that is also clearly what Scripture teaches.
I mean, you have God, in his own words, in the Old Testament, on numerous occasions, commanding the death penalty.
Not simply saying, oh yeah, you can do that if you want, but saying, you must do it.
For crimes like murder, for instance.
So, that's what I know, as a Catholic.
And I know that the Pope does not have the authority to, on his own, simply overturn that.
The Pope can't overturn what God said.
He can't.
And the Pope also can't get up there and say, oh, you know what?
The Church was actually wrong about this for 2,000 years.
Because I say so.
In my opinion, they were wrong, so they were.
The Pope can't do that.
So I guess my answer is, I'm not in disagreement with the Church.
I'm not in disagreement with Scripture.
I am in disagreement with Pope Francis himself, personally.
And I'm perfectly free to disagree with him.
All right, this is from Taylor, says, In high school, I came across one of your blogs, and I've been following your work ever since.
I admire your intellectual honesty and wit, and you seem like a good person in general.
Well, I don't know about any of that, but thank you, Taylor.
I especially like the episode of your show in which you discuss philosophy.
You mentioned a few episodes ago that you're naturally interested in philosophical questions.
We have this in common.
I'm a graduate student in philosophy now, and I was wondering if you had any favorite non-theological philosophical arguments.
It doesn't have to be an explicitly deductive argument.
Perhaps there's a thought experiment or analogy that you find particularly interesting.
If so, could you explain the argument and what you like about it?
Okay, so you're asking for a favorite philosophical question or argument that doesn't explicitly deal with God or anything theological.
It's an interesting question.
Of course, at the end of the day, everything goes back to these theological questions, as I'm sure you probably agree, so you can't really separate it completely.
But in terms of philosophical questions that aren't explicitly theological, Well, I would say—and this relates to the philosophical question we were discussing when I made the comment that you're referring to about philosophy—I am very interested in the nature of consciousness.
And, again, that has a lot of theological implications, of course, but still it's something that I find fairly fascinating—the nature of the self, of consciousness, and so on.
I think it's a very interesting field, philosophical field.
Not just philosophical, but as I said, also theological, scientific.
There's a thought experiment that touches on the nature of self and consciousness.
A couple actually.
The philosopher Thomas Nagel, which you probably, if you're going to school for philosophy,
you've probably heard about this, but he wrote a famous essay called, What is it Like to
Be a Bat?
And it deals with the question of consciousness and conscious experience.
And he asks the question, is there an experience of batness, for lack of a better term?
Do bats really experience being bats the way that you experience being a human?
Do they think anything at all about themselves?
About what they're experiencing?
Is it like something to be a bat?
Or to be a squid, or to be a sloth, or to be a dog, or whatever.
And I think that is an interesting question.
Another thought experiment that I think we've talked about before on this show was first proposed by a philosopher in the 80s, I think, maybe 70s or 80s.
And the thought experiment is this.
Imagine we live in a future where it's possible to transplant a brain into a new body which probably eventually scientists will be able to doctors will be able to do that they're not close right now but let's just imagine that was possible now suppose because remember it is possible to live with half a brain so suppose that your brain is cut in two and then one half of the brain is transplanted into one body and the other half is transplanted into another body where did you go what happened to you
Your brain's got to transplant different bodies.
What happened to you?
I think that's an interesting question.
Which one is you?
Are you both now?
Well, that seems impossible.
Are you neither?
Did you simply disappear?
And if so, then who replaced you?
Are you one and not the other?
And then if that's the case, who's the other guy?
I mean, it's an interesting question, I think.
Of course, purely hypothetical.
That's what a thought experiment is.
Even if they get to the point where they can transplant brains, and even though we can survive with half a brain, I don't think there'll ever be a situation where they would actually transplant half a brain into someone's head.
This is from Samuel says...
Hello Matt, I listen to your show fairly regularly and I very much enjoy it.
I agree with you for the most part, but there are a few things that I don't.
The reason I'm writing today is to challenge your idea that as adults, we should not hang on to our childhood enjoyments, stories slash movies in particular.
As an adult, I have grown to really appreciate a lot of children's stories and movies, much more than when I was younger.
Even C.S.
Lewis said that he enjoyed children's stories more as an adult.
Thank you for the work you do and I look forward to getting my point of view roasted on your show.
I'm not going to roast your point of view.
I think it is possible to appreciate children's stories as an adult.
I'll read stories to my kids and I can appreciate those stories.
I'm not saying we don't appreciate them.
But I do think that, look, the Bible says, I became a man and put away childish things.
I think to a certain extent, and people always counter that, I don't remember the exact quote, but the C.S.
Lewis quote you're referring to, people always counter that scripture quote with the C.S.
Lewis thing.
Even though C.S.
Lewis was not, he wasn't trying to disagree with St.
Paul when he said what you're referring to.
So I think that my point is simply, as we grow older, our tastes should mature to some extent.
So while we can still appreciate childish things, childlike things, we can appreciate them to some extent in a certain way, we appreciate them as adults.
And I think we also have mature tastes as well.
That's why I was saying the interesting thing about being a parent is that you go back and you kind of relive your childhood in many ways.
You're experiencing all the things you experienced as a child again, but now you're experiencing it as an adult, as a parent, from a different perspective.
I think the problem is when you have adults that are clinging onto their childhood and still experiencing those childlike things almost like children themselves.
Not from a new perspective, not, you know, reliving it as a parent or something, but refusing to leave childhood to begin with.
And also, I would say, I think there's a difference between, you know, when someone like C.S.
Lewis talks about fairy tales for children.
Well, you got to keep in mind, C.S.
Lewis, I mean, he was writing back in the early to mid 20th century.
Mid 20th century anyway, and still even back then for the most part, you know the fairy tales that He was talking about.
They're not the same as the kind of as comic book movies today.
I think fairy tales back in those days Were often you know often did have very mature themes and they were for children, but they also They also had a certain depth to them and I guess is the point, that I think a lot of the stuff for kids these days just has no depth.
And that's one of the reasons why, usually, as you grow older and you become an adult, these days, I think, at least for me, as I've grown older, I can't enjoy some of those childlike things the same way, because it just has no depth, there's nothing to it.
And as you get older, you start to see that.
Um, all right.
This is from Paul says, have you seen this video regarding your minimum wage discussion?
And then there's a link to the video.
Uh, and this is a video from someone named Sam Cedar, uh, titled is Matt Walsh, the laziest right winger in media.
Apparently it's a response to what I said about minimum wage.
The email goes on, although I'm a free market capitalist and opposed to minimum wage, they do make an interesting point about when people provide more work than they're being paid.
I certainly understand that it's very difficult to really measure the value of someone's work.
And I think that we need to be grateful for the opportunity to work and should always try to do the best job possible out of gratitude, if nothing else.
But I'm very interested to hear your rebuttal to this video.
Keep up the good work.
Yeah, Paul, I hadn't seen this video.
But I will watch it.
It's, okay, it's 17 minutes long rebuttal to what I said about.
I'll watch it and I'll, if there's anything interesting there, I will provide a response on the show.
But thank you for bringing it to my attention.
We'll leave it there, everybody.
Thanks for watching.
Godspeed.
Politics corrupts, but identity politics corrupts absolutely.
Trump has broken through that evil racist system.
Not politely, I admit.
More like the Incredible Hulk walking through a wall.
The question is, now that the wall is down, will the rest of us have the courage to run free?
