Walmart has caved to the left and will stop selling ammunition for semi-automatic firearms. It is also asking customers not to open carry in their stores. Both of these measures are absurd and pointless. I'll explain why. Also, a woman brings an emotional support horse on a flight and Calvin Klein competes with Gillette for the most insufferably stupid ad campaign. Finally I respond to the very colorful emails from our Harry Potter discussion yesterday. Date: 09-04-2019
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Okay, so this picture has been floating around Twitter.
I don't know if you've seen this.
Let me just show it to you.
Take a look at this.
It's from a reporter in Texas.
And it shows a man, Billy is his name apparently, Billy is voluntarily turning in his gun to police.
Turning in his AK-47.
And of course the left Applauds this kind of thing and says, well done.
Well done, my child.
Well done.
Pats him on his head.
Very good, Billy.
Very good.
But I really don't get it.
I mean, was the guy planning a mass shooting?
If he was planning a mass shooting, then yeah, it's good that he turned in his gun.
But in that case, he shouldn't just turn in his gun and say, you don't want a guy to come up and say, here's my gun, officer.
I was going to do a mass shooting.
I've changed my mind.
Here's the gun.
See you later.
No, there needs to be a follow-up, right?
Like maybe send him to a mental health institution at a minimum or something.
But if he wasn't planning a mass shooting, which I assume that he was not, then what's the point of...
Turning in the gun.
The gun wasn't going to hurt anybody.
It was only going to hurt somebody if you were going to hurt them with it.
If you weren't planning on that, then the gun poses really zero risk to anyone.
I can say that I know for a fact that I am not going to commit a mass shooting.
I can say that about myself.
I can't say it about anybody else for a fact, but I can say it about myself.
Therefore, there is pretty much a 0% chance that my gun will be used for a mass shooting.
It's pretty much zero.
There's always, I guess, the possibility that it could be stolen or something by someone who then carries out the mass shooting, but if I'm practicing safe and responsible gun ownership, the chances of that are very, very small.
So it's effectively a 0% chance that my gun will be used in a mass shooting.
Which means that I'm not going to give up my gun in response to a mass shooting.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Why would I?
This is like, it's like, I don't know, if someone cut off their right leg, amputated their healthy right leg because they heard of a case somewhere else of a guy getting gangrene in his right leg and then dying.
So it's like, it's sort of like that.
It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
If you know that you're a responsible gun owner, you're not going to hurt anybody, then keep your gun.
There's no reason to get rid of it.
Speaking of things I don't get, Walmart is the latest company to surrender to the left on the gun issue, which, if I could just say from the outset, before we even look at the specifics of this case, it makes no sense in general.
For Walmart to cave on anything.
This is Walmart we're talking about, okay?
This is Walmart.
They've got 90 million stores across the world.
They're worth $65 trillion.
These numbers are rough estimates, but you get the idea.
This is a very big company with lots of money and lots of power, and there is really nothing the left can do to it.
Especially in Walmart's case, when you consider that the primary customer base for Walmart is not gonna be wealthy urbanites.
Okay, it's not going to be liberals from, you know, in New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco.
The primary customer base for Walmart is middle-class blue-collar Americans.
And so if every liberal in the country boycotted Walmart, which they've already done on a hundred different occasions, it would amount to what, maybe 60 bucks of lost profit?
I'm making up a lot of figures to start the show, but I've made up like 800 figures probably.
But you understand my point.
There's just no reason for Walmart to cave, yet it did.
And we'll talk about that in just a minute.
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All right, back to Walmart.
Reading now from the Daily Wire, it says, on Tuesday, Walmart announced
that after its current inventory is depleted, it will cave to the demands of far-left activists
and stop selling handgun ammunition and ammunition commonly used
and other popular semi-automatic firearms.
Walmart also stated that it was requesting that customers eschew carrying guns openly in their roughly 47... I know I pronounced that word wrong, but that's how I pronounce it, eschew.
Roughly 4,700 stores as well as its Sam's Club stores in states that permit open carry.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillan issued a memo to employees on Tuesday in which he started by citing the mass shooting in El Paso and in Dayton in August as well as further mass shootings.
And he said, we've also been listening to a lot of people inside and outside our company as we think about the role we can play in helping to make the country safer.
It's clear to us that the status quo is unacceptable.
Macmillan noted that Walmart had already ceased selling AR-15s, raised the age limit to purchase a firearm or ammunition to 21, required a green light on a background check for purchase instead of the absence of a red light, which is required by federal law, among other steps.
So they've already done all this stuff, but now they're going to take it even further and stop selling the ammunition for semi-automatic weapons, and they're asking customers not to open carry in the store.
So we've got two different things.
We've got the discontinuation of the sale of ammo for semi-automatic firearms.
And then Walmart not exactly banning people from open carrying in their stores but requesting that they don't.
A request that, by the way, No matter how I feel about it, I will still say that all gun owners should respectfully follow a request like that.
That's definitely my view.
I think part of being a responsible gun owner is that if someone asks you not to bring your gun into their home or into their business, you respect those wishes.
And either don't bring it in or don't bring yourself in if you really can't part with it for a few minutes.
You know, I think as gun owners, it's very important, and there are gun owners who make this mistake, where they try to make a statement with their gun or make a spectacle of themselves with it.
And I don't think we should do that.
I think that's a mistake.
There was, this was a few years ago, but just one case I remember, I think it was at Chipotle.
Chipotle, a few years ago, announced that you can't open carry in their stores anymore because there had been a group, I think it was in Texas, of gun rights activists who were sort of making a point of carrying AR-15s and so on into Chipotle so they could eat their burritos.
Not doing, just for the spectacle, just to make a point.
And so Chipotle said, no, you can't do that, people are uncomfortable, and so no, you can't bring it in.
And they had every right to say that.
I think actually that was a reasonable response.
When you have customers that are disrupting things and making people uncomfortable for no reason, not because they're exercising their rights, but just because they're trying to make a spectacle of themselves, then I think the company not only has every right to respond, but is reasonable in responding.
And so it really annoys me, as a lawful gun owner myself, when I do see gun owners making spectacles of themselves on purpose and treating their guns like toys, which does happen, it's not common, but it happens, that really, really annoys me.
Because you're making it worse for the rest of us.
The ammo thing, on the other hand, is just silliness.
It's absolute silliness.
There are many things in a Walmart store that could kill you or kill someone else if you abuse them.
Okay, if you're...
Walking into a Walmart and thinking to yourself, I want to buy something that's going to hurt somebody or hurt myself.
I mean, there are a lot more people abusing some of those things, especially pills, than there are people abusing guns.
In fact, here's the real comparison we need to do.
And I don't know the exact answer, but I have an educated guess.
Here's what we need to compare.
Compare the people who purchase prescription pills legally and then abuse them to the people who purchase guns and bullets legally and then abuse them.
My educated guess is that there are a lot more people in the former category with the pills than there are in the latter category.
Because the vast, vast, vast majority of legal, lawful gun owners are not hurting anybody.
Yes, Walmart has the right to make this decision, but it's a dumb decision with no practical benefit in terms of reducing gun violence.
And not to mention, you know, You could say that, well, some customers are uncomfortable now being in a Walmart store when there are guns and so on around, but I think there are a lot of other customers who are uncomfortable with the idea of being in a Walmart store and being disarmed and unable to defend themselves, considering what just happened at a Walmart.
But the worst thing about it is that it represents A cave to the left, as I said at the top, which is symbolically very damaging.
Especially when Walmart is so uniquely positioned to flip the bird to the left and say, we don't care what you guys think.
It doesn't matter to us.
You can't touch us.
You can't do anything to us.
You have no power over us.
That's what we all need to start saying and Walmart is able to say it, but they didn't here.
On the issue of open carrying in the stores, and Kroger, the grocery store, also just announced this as well, that they don't want you to open carry in the store.
And this, again, is stupid on a number of levels.
First of all, and this is the main thing, the shooting in El Paso was not carried out by a Walmart customer open carrying in the store.
Yes, there was a shooting involving a man with a gun in a Walmart.
But he was not a Walmart customer who was open-carrying.
That's not what that was.
It wasn't like, you know, someone who open-carried in the store, then got into an argument in the self-checkout line and pulled out the gun and went on a massacre.
Okay?
If that's what had happened, then at least the open-carrying policies would be relevant to the situation.
But that's not what happened.
This is someone who walked into the store with the intention of killing people, not shopping.
And then he proceeded to do it.
So once again, stopping people from open carrying in the store, that's not going to prevent that.
You're not going to stop some- just because there's a sign saying don't open carry in the store, it's just like the gun-free zone thing, it's a cliche to point it out, but it's true.
That the gun-free zone, don't open carry, all you're doing is you're stopping the people who are the sorts of people who would respect rules like that.
And those are all the good, decent people.
But if you're a psychotic killer and you want to kill people, you're not going to care about the policy politely asking you not to open carry.
In fact, if anything, you are more likely to target a place like that because you know that it's unlikely anyone's going to shoot back.
This is really basic logic.
The left, they claim that this is an unconvincing argument, but where's the flaw in it?
If someone is a potential mass shooter and they're looking to carry this out and they want to maximize casualties, are they going to choose a place where there is likely to be other gun owners there who can return fire?
Or are they going to choose a place where it's likely people are disarmed?
It's really obvious they're going to choose the latter in that case.
All right, moving on.
I wanted to talk briefly about this.
First, Take a look at this image.
There you go.
That's the picture there.
That is a horse, a miniature horse named Flirty.
And you guessed it, yes, that is someone's emotional support animal.
A woman brought a horse on a flight.
She brought a horse on a flight, on an American Airlines flight out of Chicago, because it's a service animal, she claims.
This really is, I say it all the time, slippery slope arguments are constantly vindicated in our culture, which is itself slipping down a very, very big and steep slide.
And so this is one of those, you know, five years ago, people like myself were saying, hey, with these emotional, next thing you know, people are gonna be bringing horses on planes.
And of course, a lot of people say, I'm not gonna do that.
Well, here we are, they're bringing a horse on a plane.
She has depression and anxiety and this is her service animal for those conditions.
The woman, Abrea Hensley is her name, says that she brings her emotional support horse everywhere to restaurants, grocery stores, movies.
Only a couple of times has she encountered an establishment owned by someone with the audacity to say, hey, would you mind not bringing your horse inside?
Can your horse wait outside?
Do you have to bring it inside?
And, of course, this person, Abrea, just a wonderful person, is looking at suing those places.
She says that almost everywhere she goes, with her horse, she's able to walk around inside and nobody complains and everyone's fine.
A few places in her life she's encountered where they say, we'd prefer if you don't, and so she's going to sue them, of course, right?
She's going to sue them.
Um, a wonderful person, obviously, right?
Not at all an egomaniac with no regard for anyone else who expects everyone around her to accommodate the utter absurdity of a horse walking around inside.
Oh wait, yeah, that's exactly what she is, right?
That's what the emotional support animal stuff really is much of the time.
That's the real condition these people have.
That's what they suffer from.
I know she says, oh, I have anxiety, depression, PTSD, panic attacks, so on.
She might have all that.
I'm not her therapist.
But even though I'm not her therapist or her doctor, I can still diagnose her with this.
Egomania.
She is a narcissist.
She is an egomaniac.
Now, I don't deny that service animals are a real and necessary thing for some people.
There are people with real conditions who really do need a dog with them.
I think dogs are the only legitimate service animals and they perform specific functions for people who have real conditions.
And that's fine.
A blind person, for example, needs a seeing eye dog.
Obviously the dog performs a specific function and it's necessary for the person who suffers from this disability to have the dog so they can participate in society.
And the animal helps facilitate that.
So that's great.
That's fine.
And I think it's wonderful that... I think it's amazing, actually, that dogs are able to do that for people.
But the idea that you need your favorite animal with you at all times, just emotionally, even if the animal is a horse or an iguana or a three-toed sloth or an ostrich, the idea that you need that medically, For emotional reasons is absurd.
I'm sorry.
It just is.
If you can't emotionally deal with being separated from your pet for a few hours, you need to grow up.
Okay, that's what that's the real problem here.
You need to be an adult.
I mean, I had to go through this with my children.
And a lot of kids go through this where they have their favorite stuffed animal, their favorite toy or whatever, and it's sort of a security blank, and they like to bring it everywhere.
But at a certain point as a kid gets older, you know, if a kid's two years old and he likes to drag his teddy bear around everywhere, for the most part that's fine.
But when a kid is six or seven, They need to be able to go out in public and go to school and do whatever else without having that with them.
And it can be a difficult adjustment, but you need to teach them that.
So that they can grow up and mature.
And it's difficult, but kids can learn it.
If kids can learn it, then so can an adult.
So can Abrea or Adreia, whatever her name is.
She can learn it too.
She really can.
You know what this is?
This is like emotional blackmail.
And I'm really sick of it.
I'm really sick of the emotional blackmail.
Where you have someone like this saying, well, if you don't like let me have my horse with me, I'm going to freak out and panic and sob and scream and cry on the plane.
And so what would you rather have?
Well, here's an option.
Just don't act like that.
Control yourself.
I know you can.
Just don't.
How about a third option?
It's not, let me bring my horse or I'm gonna freak out and be a maniac.
No, there's a third option, which is that you just function like a normal, like every other adult.
Everyone else in the world, we can somehow manage to walk around and board planes and do things without a horse.
You can too.
You really can.
I know you can.
You can do it.
I believe in you.
Look, mental illness is a real thing, obviously.
It's a real thing people deal with and suffer from.
But I don't like how, in so many cases these days, it's become a cover to just be a self-absorbed jerk.
Now, I know I say that and it's going to be misconstrued a million different ways.
But, if you're listening to me, honestly, you understand what I'm saying.
Mental illness is a real thing.
But, also, there are people Who use the claims of mental illness as emotional blackmail and as an excuse to just act however they want, and we're not allowed to question it.
That also does happen, and it's a problem.
And I think a prime example of that are these people who say, I'm gonna take this animal and bring it with me everywhere, and you're not allowed to say anything.
Even if it's your business and you own it, you can't tell me I can't bring it with me.
Now, I did see on Twitter, in fairness, how this woman claims that the horse is not an emotional support animal, actually.
It's a service horse.
Okay?
It's a service miniature horse.
And the main service it provides is mobility assistance.
I'm not kidding.
Okay?
This is what she claims.
That that miniature horse... In fact, let's put the picture up again.
That miniature horse...
Is mobility assistance for her?
You know, I don't think I need to explain why that is ridiculous.
Have you heard of a cane or a walker or crutches?
I was on crutches for two months.
I had a real condition and I needed mobility assistance, so I used crutches.
Or I had one of those knee scooters, okay?
It never occurred to me to bring a horse around.
Or a camel.
As much as I would like to.
Maybe now I would.
Next time I have an Achilles injury, I'm just going to get a camel and ride my camel everywhere and you're not allowed to say anything.
I will bring my camel into your home and you cannot stop me.
Or I'll sue you.
How exactly is a miniature horse going to stop you from falling down?
What is it going to do?
Pad your fall?
Really?
What is it going to do for you?
There are dozens of other things that would be much better suited for mobility assistance than a miniature horse.
Than a three foot tall horse.
Um, but, you know, we're all supposed to just go along with it because, uh, the moment someone claims disability or emotional distress, we all have to shut up and nod our heads and say, okay, you do whatever you want.
No, no, you know, no, I'm not, I'm not going to play that game.
We need, we need to stop playing this game.
At a certain point, we can draw a line and just call BS and say, no, you don't need that horse.
But I do, I have, no, you don't.
You really don't.
I don't care what you say.
You don't need it.
You just don't.
Stop.
Grow up.
Stop.
All right.
Here's one other thing before we get to emails, and I want to leave time for the emails because I got about 30 different emails on one particular subject, which if you listened to the show yesterday, maybe you can guess what the subject is, but we'll do that in a second.
Here's one other thing before we talk about that.
Another picture I want to show you.
This has been the day of pictures rather than video clips.
This is a new Calvin Klein marketing campaign.
It's a billboard.
If you're listening on iTunes, I'll just tell you.
I'm not trying to be rude.
Well, it's a large woman, apparently named Chika.
C-H-I-K-A.
An indie rapper, it seems.
And she's sitting there in her underpants, and the message says, on the billboard, it says, I speak my truth in my Calvins.
I speak my truth in my Calvins.
Which, first of all, if you are going to speak your truth, do you need to do it in your Calvins?
It's okay to have your Calvins on, but can you also wear pants?
I mean, do you need to speak your truth in your underwear?
I don't understand that.
Why do you need to have your underwear on?
It's okay to have it on.
That's good.
But you could also have clothes over top, is what I'm trying to say.
And all I'm going to say here, I could go in the direction of how this is the normalization of morbid obesity, which is a continued problem in our society.
And it is dangerous because morbid obesity will kill you.
And it's not a good or healthy thing.
It doesn't mean that if you're morbidly obese, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person or anything like that.
It's just an unhealthy physical condition.
And so we shouldn't go out of our way to normalize it or to celebrate it.
I think that's a very reasonable point of view that some of us have been trying to express for a while now.
But I'm going to leave that aside.
What I just want to say briefly is that the phrase, speak my truth, is terribly, terribly stupid.
And if I could ban one phrase from being spoken.
That would probably be it.
It would either be that or the term clap back.
Which you see even in headlines now.
So and so claps back at critics.
Really terrible.
But speak my truth is even worse.
For a number of reasons.
First of all, it's just it's cliched and nonsensical and vapid and shallow and dumb.
Secondarily, There is no such thing as my truth.
So, if you're speaking, if you're saying something, you're either saying something that is true, or it isn't.
I think every thought expressed in the human language, in any human language, is either true or not.
There is no my in front of it.
It is either the truth, Or even a truth, or it's not.
Or you could be lying, you could be mistaken, you could be deluded, whatever.
You could be wrong for any number of reasons.
But it's either wrong or it's right.
You don't own the truth.
So there could never be a scenario where you say, okay, well that's not the truth, but it is my truth.
See, that's just another way of saying, I'm wrong.
If you're drawing a distinction between the truth and your truth, and you're noticing that your truth is in opposition with the truth, then that's just, you're wrong.
That is a very convoluted and long and confusing way of saying, I'm wrong.
So there is no my truth.
That's all.
Not gonna linger on it.
Just wanted to establish that.
All right.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com is the email address.
As we get to emails, yesterday, if you listened to the show, I spoke for maybe five, six minutes or so about Harry Potter.
Harry Potter books had been banned from a Catholic school and I said that, look, I'm not a Harry Potter fan at all.
I don't really care about the books.
But I don't think they're spiritually dangerous.
I don't think that they need to be banned from Christian schools.
I don't think they're going to cause kids to be possessed or anything.
I don't think they're going to cause kids to, you know, become Wiccans or witches or warlocks or wizards.
I think they are fantasy stories for kids, like Lord of the Rings, but skewing younger and not nearly as well written.
That's what I think of Harry Potter.
So I was not approaching this as some rabid Harry Potter fan being very passionate and defensive, defending Harry Potter.
No, I think I took a pretty moderate view, which is, I don't really care about the books.
I don't think that they're terribly well-written or anything, but I don't think they're going to cause your kid to start getting into the occult or anything like that.
That was kind of my position.
In response, I received dozens of emails about Harry Potter.
Dozens.
And those are just my emails, not counting Facebook messages and Twitter messages, because then it would be triple that.
And most of the messages from people who strongly disagree with me and strongly, strongly, strongly believe that kids should not read the books because of the spiritual dangers.
And I can't read all those emails.
I just kind of selected two at random and I'll read those and then I'll respond.
Okay, this is from Nikki, says, Matt, your discussion of Harry Potter was very disappointing.
I thought you were a Christian?
Harry Potter influences children towards the occult.
The spells in Harry Potter are real Wiccan spells that the author learned.
It is demonic.
That's why the school banned the books.
Do your research.
This is from Cheryl, says Matt.
Sorry, but totally disagree with your take on Harry Potter.
A well-known exorcist priest, Father Ripperger, spoke about it.
It's on YouTube.
How a house was set fire after reading the HP books and declared that they have real spells in them.
Beyond that, if you don't believe those words, she went to school and studied witchcraft in preparation for writing the books and described her experience as receiving the story plot, i.e.
it just came to her.
So now I have to ask, from whom?
Who inspired her writings?
As with many modern-day portrayals of human adults in TV and fiction, they, muggles, aka non-magical people, are portrayed as bumbling, blundering, stupid, and incapable of understanding their child.
Only the magic people have any redeemable characteristics.
I also have a real problem with HP as a hero in literature.
He is an anti-hero.
He lies.
He puts his life and the lives of his friends repeatedly at risk.
He disobeys authority.
And although the threat is there, he is never punished for his lack of virtue.
In fact, it is contrary.
His lack of virtue is rewarded in his books.
So I ask you, what message is that sending to our young reader?
Are we not to encourage the true, the good, and the beautiful in the formation of a children's character?
Lastly, the devil does not knock at your door looking like Krampus.
He takes on many disguises, so why invite the father of lies into your home?
If there is even a might of truth to these books being tainted, why would you allow them past your threshold?
Why, when there are so many virtuous alternatives, like George MacDonald?
Have you read to your children The Princess and the Goblin and my favorite,
The Princess and the Curdy? Okay. So, and those were two, you know,
relatively reasonable emails, especially the second one.
The first one questioning my faith and so on, not very reasonable.
The second one was reasonable.
So there's a few different things going on here.
First of all, if you make the argument that Harry Potter doesn't belong in schools because it's bad literature, Totally apart from the morality and spirituality, it's just not very well written and it's sort of vapid and shallow and all of that.
And Harry Potter is not a worthy hero of literature.
If that's your argument, then I say fine.
I haven't really read the books myself.
My impression of the books is that they're not terribly well written.
Certainly not at the level of something like Lord of the Rings.
And so if that's your criticism, great.
I'm on board with that.
That's fine.
It's similar to, you know, I would say that I don't think there should be comic books in schools, in the school library or whatever.
I don't know if schools have comic books, but if they do, I would say no, not because I think that there's anything wrong with them, not because I think kids shouldn't be reading them.
My kids love, my son loves superheroes.
But just, I don't think they're good enough literature to be in schools.
I think schools should be a place for better literature than that.
And when the kids are at home, if they want to spend their time reading a comic book or reading Harry Potter, that's fine.
That's my impression.
So I'm going to put those criticisms to the side, because I agree with those, and that's a totally different conversation.
The claims, though, about the spiritual aspects, Um, that's where I just, I don't buy it.
First of all, a house was set fire after reading the Harry Potter books.
What does that mean?
Was it, did it just burst into flames on its own?
Or was the child inspired to set the house on fire?
Um, I haven't heard of this case.
You know, what I do know is, and I did look it up.
I didn't, I didn't see any support for that other than the fact that this one guy claimed it.
Look, if you're going to claim that a house spontaneously burst into flames because someone read Harry Potter, I need a lot of evidence for that.
I'm not going to just believe it because somebody said it.
Mainly because, first of all, I don't see the connection.
How reading a book could make a house be set on fire.
So there appears to be a, just sort of metaphysically here, there's a disconnect.
But secondly, billions of these books have been sold.
And so if they had that effect, shouldn't we see houses bursting into flames all over the place?
Yet that's not what we observe.
In fact, what we observe in almost every case is that people read Harry Potter and they go and live their lives and nothing happens.
And so that would seem to indicate that there's probably not much of a problem here.
At the very least, if you're going to claim that it has this magical power to it and it can cause things like that to happen, again, I'm going to need real evidence of that.
And the claim of one person is not, to me, evidence.
Just isn't.
Because that person could be wrong, they could be exaggerating, they could be lying.
I mean, any number of things.
They could be believing a rumor they heard.
A lot of different ways a person could be wrong.
So, we have to ask ourselves, what's more likely?
That this Father Ripperger is just mistaken about the house being set on fire because of Harry Potter, or that it actually happened.
I don't know.
So, there's that.
The idea that there are real magical spells in Harry Potter.
I did look that up also.
I found no support for that claim, other than the fact that this particular priest and a couple other people have asserted it.
So I saw the assertion that these are real magical spells.
I didn't find any other support for that.
Anywhere.
Maybe it's there, I didn't find it.
All I found is this assertion repeated, and there's a difference between an assertion being repeated and actual evidence of it. Now in what I would consider to
be slightly more objective sources, what I found is that the spells in Harry Potter consist of
faux Latin and gibberish and then also magic wands being waved around. Isn't it? Don't you need
the wand for the magic in Harry Potter?
That's what I saw. And that is not what you find among Wiccans.
And I don't pretend to be an expert I don't want to be an expert, but that's that's it's not these are not actually Wiccan spells.
That's what I saw.
I saw no evidence to the contrary.
In fact, I did read a couple things from actual Wiccans saying that's not true.
That's not what we do.
I don't like citing Wiccans as experts, but if we're looking for an expert on Wiccanism, then probably they're the place to go.
They'll probably tell us, and they're saying that's not what we do.
That's not how spells work with Wiccans.
The other thing is, you know, the very idea of a real magical spell.
Now, I believe that there are actual evil forces at work in the universe, and that they do exist.
But that's quite apart from claiming that a magical spell is real.
The idea that certain syllables just have this power that if you put them together, things are going to happen physically in the world.
I'm not sure that I believe that.
In fact, I don't believe that.
I think that something like prayer, okay, obviously you can pray and that can have a
real physical effect, but that's not a magical spell.
And And even someone who is trying to conjure, you know, get in touch with demons and so on, and that's a real thing, I wouldn't call that a magical spell either.
So, when we talk about magical spells, I think we're specifically talking about, you know, like in a movie or a book where someone reads certain syllables, and it doesn't matter the intent, it doesn't matter anything.
If you read those words, this happens.
I don't think that exists.
Period.
Doesn't exist.
And if it does exist, then again, I would need real evidence of that, and I'm not aware of any evidence.
So my main contention with Harry Potter that I don't think, and I didn't read every email, I read a lot of them, but...
My main contention with Harry Potter was that I don't see it as that much different from Lord of the Rings.
I think it's the same kind of thing.
Except for it's not as well written and it's just not as good of a story.
So there's that difference.
But in both cases, you have good and evil forces.
You have magical spells.
You have witches and warlocks and wizards.
It's the same kind of thing.
And as I said yesterday, what would make for me Harry Potter morally troubling Is if the evil spirits were portrayed as good or if it was a nihilistic kind of situation where there was no difference between the evil and good.
Then I would say, yeah, that's a problem.
And I wouldn't want my kids reading that.
So that's the difference.
But I don't think that's what you find in Harry Potter.
Now the other attempt at a response that I saw from some people is they said, well, the difference is in Lord of the Rings, the magical people are wizards, not humans.
And so it's less of a problem because if kids are reading Lord of the Rings, then they understand that these are wizards, not human beings.
And so real humans can't do that.
And so, but again, I just don't, that's a distinction.
I don't understand the significance of that distinction.
Harry Potter is a book where, in the world of that fantasy book, some human beings can do these things.
I think children, if they're old enough to read Harry Potter, they're old enough to understand that it's a fantasy, it's not real, and in the real world, people can't do that.
It's just like with superheroes.
In a superhero story, some human beings have the power to do To do, you know, magical things.
I think children are capable of understanding that that's not real.
It's not the reality.
It's just a story.
So, I just... I'm going to have to maintain... It's weird that I'm here defending Harry Potter because, as I said, I'm not even a fan of it, but... I don't see the... I just don't see the significant moral difference between Harry Potter and other fantasy stories.
All right, let's see.
What else?
Is there anything else?
Anything not Harry Potter related?
Um...
...
...
No, not really.
Everything's Harry Potter.
So I think I've kind of addressed that.
Well, here's one agreeing with me.
Is there at least one person who agrees?
Yes.
This is from Melissa.
It says, Hello, Matt.
Just wanted to say I totally agree with your take on Harry Potter.
We have two sons, 23 and 19.
We are devout Christians, and when our older son was of the age where he became interested in reading the Harry Potter series, I was leery because of the bad press the series had received in Christian circles.
I decided to read them myself first in order to formulate an opinion based on firsthand knowledge and not hearsay.
I enjoyed the books and really didn't understand what all the hubbub was about.
My husband and I did make sure they understood that the magic wasn't real and that books are fantasy, but they knew that already.
If kids can understand the difference between fact and fiction, the school and parents have more to worry about than Harry Potter.
Enjoy your show.
Appreciate your voice for conservative principles.
Yeah, that's it.
That's the whole thing about, well, in Lord of the Rings, In Harry Potter, the problem is it's real people doing this, and so kids are going to think... I think your kid can understand that it's just a story.
You can't really do that.
So if you teach your kid that, it's not a problem.
And I don't think it's a significant problem where kids are going to read Harry Potter and then say, oh gee, I want to go become a Wiccan, or I want to get into occult things.
Now that, I'm sure you could find me examples.
I'm sure you could find me anecdotal examples of people who read Harry Potter and then became Wiccans.
I absolutely expect that you can find those examples and I'm sure that now people will send them to me.
But I'm sure you'd also find examples of people who read Lord of the Rings and then went off and said, I want to be a real warlock or witch or wizard or whatever.
I'm sure that also has happened.
Are we sure that Harry Potter more often has had that effect than has, say, Lord of the Rings?
It seems to me, with most of the criticisms of Harry Potter, even if the people making the criticisms try to draw a distinction, it seems to me that most of these criticisms are really just criticisms against the entire fantasy genre.
Where you're saying, look, I don't think there should be any stories that deal with evil spirits and conjuring black magic and all that.
I don't think there should be any of that.
Now, if that's your argument, I think it's a very puritanical and frankly kind of silly argument, but then at least make it consistent.
I think when you make the argument on those broad terms of saying, well, it's just better not to mess with this stuff, it's evil spirits and so on.
If you say that, but then say, oh, but Lord of the Rings, sure, that's fine.
Now, to me, it appears to be kind of special pleading, and it's not consistent.
I think to be consistent, you have to make that argument and rule out all of those kinds of books, which there are some Christians who feel that way, and especially historically, there have been a significant number of Christians historically who have felt that way and have said that there shouldn't be any of that kind of stuff.
So, if that's your argument, then make that your argument.
Alright, so much for Harry Potter.
We'll leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Godspeed.
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