Trump was impeached but nobody will care come election time. Also, a comedian brags about her abortion, claiming it made her feel "powerful." We'll talk about how we know she's lying. And is it finally time to stop making Star Wars movies? (Yes.)
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Welcome to the show, everybody, on this historic and somber day.
Somber and historic.
Historic and somber.
Somstoric day.
A day that is so somber and so historic that I decided to wear my more muted and restrained and mature reindeer cardigan.
I had flashier options I could have chosen, but I decided on a day such as this.
I should wear this cardigan.
A cardigan that also looks a little bit like something that a 76-year-old man would wear to the Christmas party at the Elk Lodge.
And I even decided to place my Santa hat tastefully off to the side rather than wearing it on my head, which was my first option.
And this again is just to note, to pay respects to the historic and somber nature of what has happened.
Absolutely historic.
So historic.
Historic, historic, historic.
Did I mention that this is historic?
That's what the media says, anyway.
And they're right.
You know, it is.
It was.
A president is impeached.
It's only happened a few times.
It's happened four times in American history.
And so it is historic, and we're all going to remember where we were and what we were doing when this vote was made, when this happened.
And I know that I can tell you exactly what I was doing.
I was on my couch, drinking a beer.
Watching the Celtics play the Mavericks on ESPN.
Good game, by the way.
The Celtics won 109-103.
But that's what I was doing.
Because, honestly, I just don't care that much about the impeachment thing.
I didn't watch one second of coverage.
I'm being honest with you.
I didn't watch one second.
I don't think through this entire thing I've watched one second of media coverage.
Of any of it.
And it's been great.
It's been very liberating.
And here's the dirty little secret.
Here's the reality.
That you won't hear people in the media acknowledge because it undermines the effort to get clicks and hits and views and everything, because you always want to pretend in media that everything is earth-shattering, that everything is amazing and incredible and unprecedented, and everything is a game-changer.
So they're not going to admit this, but the truth is that this whole impeachment thing will not matter come election time.
It actually won't matter.
That's my prediction right now.
Come election time, Nobody's going to care about this on either side.
I know there are conservatives who are saying, well, this just sealed the election for Trump because there's going to be a backlash of voters and people are so mad about the impeachment.
It's not going to matter on that.
It's not going to matter either way come election time.
I guarantee you.
Why?
Because the election is a year away.
It's almost a year, 11 months.
And a year in modern American culture, a year in our information-saturated, news-saturated, overstimulated culture, might as well be a decade.
It might as well be a century.
Honestly, it might as well, by the time we get to the election, everything that happened right now, today, and last night, and that's happened over the last month or two, may as well have happened in the 18th century.
That's how far in the distance it will feel.
All that matters in politics anymore is what happened, like, in the 12 hours leading up to people going to the polls.
If people are swayed by news events at all anymore, they have to be news events from that day, or the previous day.
If it was a week ago, it's already a fading memory.
If it was a month ago, it's teetering on irrelevance.
If it was a year ago, Then the event has essentially fossilized and been buried under six miles of sediment.
It doesn't matter.
Now, I'm not saying that things should be like this.
They shouldn't be.
We should be able to care about things for more than 35 minutes.
We should be able to care about something that happened a year ago, but we don't.
We just don't.
So I guarantee you, 11 months from now, nobody's going to care about this.
No one's going to be talking about it.
The exit polls will show that nobody on either side was voting based on impeachment.
They're going to be voting based on something that happened that week.
Or, more likely, they're just going to vote based on the decision they made that they've been committed to all along, based on their party affiliation and the tribe they belong to.
That's what most people vote based on.
So, people who talk about impeachment 11 months from now, they're going to sound like your grandfather in his rocking chair, smoking a pipe on the porch, reminiscing about stories from his childhood.
It will sound distant, irrelevant, and we'll all go, oh yeah, yeah, okay, I kind of remember that.
But I do have to say, if there's any big news to come out of this impeachment, it's that we need to start teaching civics in school again.
I think that's the main thing we learned from this.
Which isn't really news, because I think we already knew that, but I saw a lot of people on social media last night, a lot of people, who seem to be under the impression that Trump is now kicked out of office just because he was impeached.
There was a lot of, yay, we're free of Trump football spiking going on, which is kind of like a receiver breaking free on a long pass, but then stopping at the 25-yard line and spiking the football in celebration.
You know, you're not there yet, you're not in the end zone yet.
And in this case, there's a big wall in front of the end zone, and you're never going to get in.
Trump is not going to get kicked out of office.
It ain't going to happen.
He's not going to get convicted in the Senate.
That's just simply not going to happen.
Which is another reason, yet again, why this story is not going to matter 11 months from now.
As soon as the trial ends up happening in the Senate, as soon as that happens, no one's going to care anymore about this.
We are all going to move on from this so quickly.
All right, and so I'm going to as well.
And let's move on.
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All right.
Comedian Michelle Wolfe.
You may remember her.
Well, probably you don't, actually.
I'll refresh your memory.
She was that lady at the...
White House Correspondents Dinner a year ago gave a super cringy, unbearably unfunny performance, and everyone on the left pretended it was funny, like they do a lot, especially with liberal female comedians like Samantha Bee and this woman and so many others.
We have to deal with people on the left pretending that these people are funny and have wit when they're not funny and they have no wit whatsoever.
She's one of those comedians who tries to compensate for the lack of wit by going for the shock factor, which is, yet again, a common flaw among liberal female comedians, where they have no punchlines, they have no jokes, so they just try to shock you.
And the whole joke is, well, did you hear the inappropriate thing that lady said?
That's the whole joke.
That's their whole act.
Case in point, in her recent Netflix comedy special, she goes into a rant about her abortion.
A rant that is pathetic, gross, sad, but completely forgets to check the funny box.
Watch for yourself.
And we don't talk about abortion in a real way.
We talk about it in a very legislative way, but not in a real way.
So I think a lot of women have a lot of apprehension surrounding it.
You know, we talk about it so negatively that you feel like you should have this sense of shame after you get an abortion.
Well, you can feel any way you want after you get an abortion.
Get one!
See how you feel!
You know how my abortion made me feel?
Very powerful.
You know how people say you can't play God?
I walked out of there being like, move over Morgan Freeman, I am God!
And then I crossed the street very carefully.
First of all, can you imagine sitting in an auditorium for an hour and listening to that?
My God, the voice, the delivery.
It's grading.
It's leaving aside the content for a moment.
Everything else is torturous.
It is, I mean, you look up shrill in a dictionary, and you find that, what I just played for you.
My God, Michelle Wolf is, I will tell you this, she's not doing female comedians any favors, I can tell you that.
She certainly isn't breaking down or dispelling the stereotype about women not being funny.
And when you think about it, Netflix comedy specials, if you think about Netflix comedy specials this year, you had Bill Burr and Dave Chappelle, which were brilliant, a lot of really funny, smart material.
Actual jokes, if you can imagine, in the comedy special, things to laugh about.
And then you have this.
Ouch.
Female comedians, when they go to Netflix, they're not sending their best, I guess, as Trump might say.
At any rate, as for the joke itself, if that's what it is, I want to be clear about something.
My reaction to this, and I think the reaction of every pro-lifer, any pro-lifer I've seen so far reacting to it, It's not a reaction of outrage.
I'm not mad about this.
We're not foaming at the mouth in anger.
The way some leftists on Twitter were when Neil Gorsuch said Merry Christmas on Fox & Friends.
There was some foaming at the mouth anger going on there.
That's not what we're doing.
Our overwhelming feeling with this kind of thing is one of sadness.
It's sad to see a woman who murdered her child tries so desperately to rationalize and justify it that way.
She's lying to herself, and she's lying to us, and we all know it.
I can guarantee you she did not come out of that abortion.
She didn't leave that facility feeling like a god, feeling powerful.
That's not how she felt.
Because here's the thing.
Here's the really important point.
If a woman feels powerful Maybe not like a god, we'll get to that in a minute, but if a woman feels powerful, confident, in charge, that woman is not going to get an abortion.
She's not going to have her child killed.
Because that woman is going to be excited about her baby and about the future.
And confident in her ability to have a baby and still pursue her dreams and have a career.
That's what a confident, powerful woman, that's how she's going to approach a pregnancy.
No, what drives women to the abortion clinic and the feeling that the clinic tries to inculcate, the feeling they go out of their way to create and stir up within the women who come, is one of fear and helplessness and desperation.
Now you go to a pregnancy center, a pro-life pregnancy center, and the message there is going to be, you can do this, you got this, we'll help you, we're here for you, don't be afraid.
That's the message from the pro-life pregnancy center.
The message from the clinic is, Be afraid.
Be very afraid.
Your life is over unless you kill the child.
It's a choice between your life or your child's.
You can't do both.
You just can't.
You don't have it in you.
You gotta kill the child.
You have to choose, but you really have no choice.
You gotta kill the child.
So, a woman leaves that feeling empowered?
I mean, this is how confident, okay?
This is how much confidence, really, the clinic wants the women to have.
When the women are walking into the clinic, if a sidewalk counselor tries to approach them and just hand them literature, the clinic sends people out, often men, as like bodyguards.
Not because the women, their safety is being threatened in any way.
Not at all.
No.
It's just to protect them from being given literature.
To protect them from being spoken to and told about their other options.
Is that confidence?
Is that power?
Do you have to protect a powerful and confident woman from being handed a brochure with information on it?
Information about her own pregnancy and what's going on biologically?
No.
There's no power and it's all about breaking the woman down and she leaves broken.
She's broken and now she's guilt-ridden and that's how she leaves.
That's the state the clinic leaves her in.
And leaves her to it.
Leaves her to a life of brokenness and guilt.
Doesn't care.
Once they get what they want out of you, which is the $400 for killing the baby, that's it.
They're done with you.
It's transactional.
They don't care.
That's the other thing, by the way.
Speaking of paying $400 or whatever the price is going to be, what's empowering about a woman paying a man $400 to go inside her body and kill her baby?
What's empowering about that?
Keep in mind, very often these abortion quote-unquote doctors are men.
Yet, Michelle Wolf says she felt like a god.
She was playing god.
Well, that part is true.
As to that part, I believe her.
And there's a paradox here, though, isn't there?
Because I'm saying she was playing god, yeah, but I don't think she really felt powerful.
That only seems like a paradox.
That may seem like a paradox, but really it makes a lot of sense.
Because we are not gods.
We cannot be gods.
So our attempt to play god will fail.
And we'll be left feeling even more powerless than we did before.
So to be more specific, Michelle Wolf felt like a failed god.
A god who in the end actually forfeited the most profound power that she had.
Because think about that.
Killing someone.
You say you felt powerful because you killed someone.
Anyone can kill somebody.
Especially a baby.
What's powerful about killing a baby?
The most helpless, innocent, defenseless being on the planet.
And you kill them.
Power?
That doesn't take any power.
Anyone can do that.
Now, when I say it's easy, it's not easy to do morally or emotionally if you're a decent human being.
In fact, if you're a decent human being, it's impossible to do.
But if you're a morally bankrupt, self-absorbed, cold-blooded narcissist like Michelle Wolf, then sure, yeah, murder is easy.
No problem.
There's no power in it, though.
Creating life.
Bringing life into the world.
Now, I mean, that is power.
There is, in fact, almost something like a god-like power in it.
A god-like power that God gives to us.
The power to make life.
Think about that.
What is more powerful than that?
To create life, to harbor that life in your body, and then bring that life out into the open wide world.
Now that's power.
And what women are told is, by rejecting that profound, amazing power, a power that only women have, Now, men do, of course, help in creating the life.
They have a 50-50 role there, but in terms of... Women have, obviously, a unique and powerful role in that process that men don't have.
And so, the left says, by rejecting that power, a woman is powerful.
By doing the thing that anyone can do, By doing the thing that any murderous, selfish person can do, which is kill somebody?
A baby?
That's what makes you powerful?
No.
Not at all.
Alright, um...
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By the way, wanted to get into emails here in a second, but the reviews for this new Star Wars movie Have come out, and right now, last I checked on Rotten Tomatoes, I think it's got like a 58%, which is bad.
Rotten.
According to Rotten Tomatoes.
And so it's just being abysmally rated.
I think it's gonna end up being perhaps the worst rated, reviewed Star Wars movie yet.
Even worse than Phantom Menace, which was an abomination in so many ways, as most people know.
But this should not be surprising.
I think what we're learning here is that There's only so much story to be told.
So this is, what, the ninth Star Wars movie?
And I'm not even counting all the other peripheral things and the offshoots and the other spin-offs and the TV shows.
So there's even more than that.
But just in the primary film franchise, we're now on the ninth movie, right?
And if they're each about two hours long on average, let's say... So you're talking about 18 hours.
18 hours.
Is there really 18 hours worth of story to be told based on this?
You think about that first Star Wars movie.
Which I have to tell you, and look this is not me, I'm not, I'm honestly not trying to be contrarian when I say this.
I am guilty sometimes of being contrarian.
I admit.
But this is not an attempt at a contrarian take.
I'm telling you, if you watch that first Star Wars movie, New Hope, I mean, chronologically, at least in terms of when they were produced, the first one.
Although I know it's really episode four in the storyline.
But if you watch that one, and without the nostalgic attachment... Now, I know that if you saw it first when you were a kid, and you've grown up with Star Wars, then you're not capable of looking at these things objectively because of your nostalgic attachment to them.
And I understand that.
I don't begrudge you that.
But I had, I guess, a strange childhood because I never saw Star Wars growing up as a kid.
I just never, I had no interest in it.
I could have watched it, but I didn't, I wasn't interested in it.
So I watched, when I was adult, an adult, I watched Star Wars for the first time.
Starting with New Hope, the first one made.
And it is really not a good movie.
It honestly isn't.
If you go in, if you go in cold, you have no attachment to the movie, You're not rooting against it.
You don't dislike it.
You're just like, okay, let me turn on this movie.
If you look at it like that, it's really not that good.
The acting is bad.
Mark Hamill is not a good actor.
Especially in that movie.
Maybe he gets a little better as the series goes on, but he is not good in that movie.
So it is like D-list level acting.
The script is not good, the dialogue is clunky, and it's kind of campy and kind of fun, I guess, but it's not.
My point is, it's really not a great film.
And then you have to look at that and ask yourself, so based on that first movie, is there 18 hours worth of material to be mined from that?
It's not that inventive.
George Lucas didn't invent this idea of a space opera.
It's actually pretty derivative in parts.
So, I don't know.
I think that's what we learned.
You see all these movie franchises that go on forever and ever and ever.
Even a great film, Even a really, really great film, that is complex and dense and with great characters and everything, you're probably not going to find 18 hours worth of material from it.
But the first Star Wars movie isn't even that great.
And it just goes on and on and on.
Which is why each new Star Wars movie, it just repeats, just over and over gets the same story repeated over and over and over and over and over again.
Yeah, the special effects get a little better each time, but that's it.
How many times do we have to see the same story?
And what annoys me about it is that while the Star Wars universe, I don't think It has enough in it to justify 18 hours of story.
The Star Wars universe doesn't, but the actual universe does.
What I mean is, look, if you want to make a movie, a sci-fi movie about things happening in space where it involves aliens and spaceships and adventures, I say great, do that.
That's fantastic.
There's literally endless possibilities for telling stories set in space.
But all of the resources in Hollywood and everything is focused on, well, if we're going to tell a space story, it has to be Star Wars.
That's what annoys me.
It's like, can we get away from the Star Wars thing?
And if we have filmmakers and scriptwriters and actors, Who want to do a movie about space.
Just let them do that.
It doesn't need to be Star Wars.
Can we just put that aside?
Fine.
We've done Star Wars.
We get it.
And let's just move on.
There's a lot of space left in space for other stories.
It's the same thing with all these Marvel movies and Avengers.
It's like, if you want to tell a story about someone with supernatural powers, There's a lot you could do with that.
There's a lot of really interesting stories you could tell.
It doesn't have to be... It doesn't have to involve Spider-Man or Iron Man.
Like, we understand.
We've seen those stories.
We've seen everything those guys can do.
We get it.
Create a new character with supernatural abilities.
Have him do something completely different.
Alright.
But I know the movie will make a billion dollars on its first weekend for some reason.
At this point, At this point, you've seen 16 hours of Star Wars.
People are just itching.
I gotta go.
I gotta go see it again.
I've seen this same movie eight times already, and now I gotta go.
I gotta go on opening weekend to watch it again.
One more time.
I'm gonna hand my money over to Disney.
They have no respect for me as a fan, as a viewer, because they're just shoving tripe into my mouth.
Just garbage.
No respect for me.
They're not even trying to make an original story.
It's just reheated.
It's leftovers.
It's like going to a restaurant and you know that they're serving you the leftovers from the previous night.
Microwaved.
And you go and you give them their money.
And they literally shovel it into your mouth.
I mean, who would do that?
This is what we do with Hollywood.
I don't understand it.
All right, let's go to emails.
mattwalshow at gmail.com.
mattwalshow at gmail.com.
It's from Patrick, says, hello Matt, I was having a conversation with a friend and I was wondering where you stood on a particular issue.
Do you think gambling is a sin?
Obviously people can become addicted to gambling, it can ruin lives, but that is also true with alcohol and in moderation.
There's nothing wrong with a couple beers.
Do you have any further opinion on the matter?
Is playing poker every couple of weeks totally acceptable?
Yeah, it's totally acceptable, as long as you aren't wagering your life savings or something.
I can't see how putting down a little bit of money in a poker game every once in a while, could it all be considered an act of evil?
Provided, again, that it's your money and it's not too much of it.
Now, certainly, anyone who takes the position, and I know that some people do take the position that all gambling is sinful, but if you take that position, you must realize that rules out the lottery, obviously, bingo night, okay, the stock market, and many other things.
Many things fall into the realm of gambling.
Gambling is a game of chance where you could win money.
And that encompasses a lot of stuff.
I don't see how it could be considered intrinsically immoral to do it.
Why would it be?
Who cares?
Now, maybe you could argue that it's a waste of money.
It's a frivolous use of money.
But so is going to the movies.
So is buying tickets to Disney World.
So is many other things.
Many things.
It's a form of entertainment.
So, if you've spent money on entertainment, it might not count as gambling, but I don't see the difference.
So, I say don't worry about it.
Gamble away.
Well, don't gamble away.
I mean, you get my point.
Gamble away would be the opposite of the point I was trying to make.
Moving on.
You get it.
This is from Bev.
Says, Matt, I agree with your stance on pornography, but how can you fail to see how it applies to alcohol and tobacco?
Those things are just as bad as porn.
You defend alcohol and tobacco constantly on your show, especially on Wednesday's show, which I found very disappointing.
Bev, I don't know if it's true that I defend alcohol and tobacco constantly on my show.
I am fans of both, I admit, so maybe I do.
I don't know.
You say they're as bad as porn.
Do you really think that, though?
Is that really... So, let me ask you.
A married man... Imagine a married man who drinks a bottle of beer every night.
Just one bottle.
With dinner.
Very normal.
A lot of people do.
Now imagine a man who watches hardcore porn every night.
You're telling me that those are morally equal?
That those two guys are in the same moral state?
And that if you were the wife, if you're the wife in that scenario, you would have no preference between the two?
You would be just as offended and upset and troubled if your husband had a glass of beer with dinner as you would be if he, after dinner every night, went up to his room on his laptop and watched porn?
It's hard for me to believe you really see it that way.
Maybe you do.
Now, I'm not going to take this in a theological direction, but if you're a Christian, I should mention, and I don't know if you are or not, but that, if you are, your view on this, I have to say, is totally untenable, theologically.
Jesus Christ drank alcohol.
He provided alcohol to a party as his first miracle on earth.
Please don't give me any stuff about how it was non-alcoholic.
That is nonsense.
I'm sorry.
That is total nonsense.
There is no interpretation or translation of that story that at all supports that assumption.
It was alcoholic wine.
It even says so in the passage.
It says so.
In effect.
Where the partygoers, the attendees of the wedding, remark on how this was the finest wine they'd had so far.
Now, they say, usually you serve the good stuff first, and then you serve the bad stuff.
Well, why do you serve the bad stuff later?
Because people have already had the good stuff, and they're feeling good.
I eat a little tipsy, and then that's when you throw the bad stuff.
What the people were remarking on is, well, now you've just served the finest wine later.
Clearly indicating that this is alcoholic wine.
When you talk about the finest or best wine, you're not talking about grape juice.
Now, this is really important.
This actually, this is why, you know, Christians who If you're uncomfortable with alcohol, if you don't want to be around it, as a personal preference, totally fine.
I understand.
I have no issue with that.
But to take the position that it's intrinsically immoral or evil in any dosage, similar to pornography or as badass or worse, how could you possibly take that view if you are in fact a Christian?
It makes no sense.
Because then you're accusing Jesus of engaging in intrinsically moral activity, and you're also accusing him of the sin of scandal for providing it.
So what you're saying is that Jesus, in providing wine, it would be the same as if he provided pornography to the wedding guests?
Okay, but putting that to the side, because I don't even know if you're a Christian.
I just wanted to say that for the record.
What makes alcohol immoral in and of itself?
I say porn is immoral in any dose, in any amount, and harmful in any amount.
And I say this because it is, by definition, the commodification of sex.
It is sex reduced to spectacle.
It is the degradation of women for the pleasure of men, and sometimes the degradation of men for the pleasure of women.
It is debased and perverse, again, by its very nature, by definition.
Studies show that any amount of exposure, any amount, has a traumatic effect on children.
And psychologically damages them.
And all porn, again in any amount, has a profoundly negative effect on everybody.
On families, on men, on women, on marriages.
Porn has no positive application.
No neutral application.
It is only harmful.
And that's what pornography is.
Now, let's talk about alcohol.
Let's take a very common scenario.
The one that I just mentioned.
Very common.
This is not some far-fetched thing.
Someone who has a glass of beer once a night or a few times a week or whatever.
Most people who drink, that's how they drink.
Most people aren't binge drinkers.
So, what about a guy in that situation?
He's having the beer.
It's not damaging him physically.
It's not.
The amount of alcohol, that amount of alcohol for a grown man who is in good health is not damaging.
He could do that his whole life and suffer no serious side effects at all.
Now, most research suggests that two drinks a night for a man, two drinks, is moderate.
That's what most of the medical advice now is.
That's what most doctors will tell you.
That if you drink, if you're a man, grown man, healthy, you have two drinks a night, that's considered moderate and there's not going to be any significant harm done to you.
I'm not aware of any research that suggests that one or two drinks a night for a man would have significant damaging effects on his health.
I'm not aware of any study that says that.
So, in moderate consumption, it isn't harmful.
It may actually carry some benefits.
Now, that's controversial, but it's sort of beside the point.
But the fact is, it could possibly have some positive benefit.
We don't even need to talk about, though.
The fact is, it has no negative side effect, in moderation.
It also isn't intoxicating.
So, your health is not impaired.
Your mind is not impaired.
Your judgment is not impaired.
What's the problem?
I mean, what's the argument exactly in this scenario?
How is it evil?
Why?
Because it could be harmful if you drank it too much?
Well, yeah, but anything can be harmful if you consume too much of it.
Water can kill you if you drink too much of it.
So that can't possibly be the reason.
Just because something can be harmful in moderate dosages doesn't mean that it's automatically wrong in moderate dosages.
Right?
Obviously.
So, then what is it?
You could say, well, a lot of people do struggle with alcoholism.
Yeah, that's an argument for not drinking around people who struggle with alcoholism.
But if you're by yourself, and there's no one around who struggles with alcoholism, and it's not hurting you, and it's not intoxicating you, and it has no significant health drawbacks, what does it matter?
Who cares?
I have explained now multiple times why porn in any dosage is harmful.
No one has so far explained why that should apply to alcohol.
A lot of people have said, oh, it's the same as alcohol.
I mean, you can assert that, but no one's explained how it is.
I think I've now multiple times explained how it definitely is not the same.
You may personally dislike it, that's fine, but you need to give me an argument for why A man drinking one beer at night by himself is doing something wrong.
That's the argument I want to hear.
Okay.
Let's see what else.
This is from Griffin, says, Hello, Matt.
My fiancé, 25, and I, 21, are getting married in January.
She has an eight-year-old son.
We're also in the process of buying a house together.
We're thrilled, but also apprehensive because it's a bit of a leap of faith financially.
I have one year of school left before I get an engineering degree from a respected and demanding school.
My fiancé makes a good hourly wage, but for the first year of our marriage, she will have to be the provider financially.
As I won't be able to contribute a whole lot because of the commitment that my school will require.
My question to you is this.
Would it be morally wrong for us to apply to receive food stamps while I'm finishing school?
With the new mortgage utilities and the like, we will be under a lot of stress, money-wise, until I'm done with school and can enter the working world.
That's not to say that we won't be able to feed ourselves and my soon-to-be stepson, but there's no doubt that monthly food stamps would ease the burden and allow us a bit more freedom to save for the future and pay off minor outstanding debts that we have.
Can I, in good conscience, call myself a conservative if I'm getting food stamps?
Well, Griffin, you asked for my opinion, so I'll give it.
Whether you can call yourself a conservative or not, who cares?
I don't even know what that word means anymore.
Nobody does, so who cares about that?
But is it the right thing to do?
Well, I would say... I would say, in your case, no.
Now, I can only go based on the description of the situation that you provided.
And you say you can afford food.
You seem to indicate you can afford it rather easily.
But using food stamps would give you more financial freedom and it would allow you to save some money and also pay off your debts.
I mean, the problem is anyone could justify food stamps on that basis.
It would give anyone financial freedom.
It would allow anyone more, more of an ability to pay off debts and save some money.
Um, I just think that food stamps is supposed to be for people who can't afford food.
That's my, now I know that's not how it's used, but you asked for my opinion.
And so I'm giving you my, my opinion is that if you can afford food, you shouldn't be on food stamps.
If you can't, then that's, it's there for you.
Um, that's how it should be used, but you have to follow your own conscience and perhaps it's quite possible your actual situation is more dire than it comes across in your email.
Maybe you were being more reserved and describing.
So I don't know.
So, so who really cares what I have to say?
You have to do what you think is right.
I think the fact that you're questioning it like this and you feel the need to ask the question might again be an indication that You know, you know it's a little iffy.
So I don't know, but that's, that's just, that's my, that's my own personal feeling about it.
Let's see, from Lucas says, hi Matt, philosophical question for you.
Is morality innate or is it the result of cultural conditioning?
If so, why do we see differences in moral systems across the world?
Yeah, I think it's innate.
There's, there's, there's a lot of evidence for that.
But let me just mention, let me mention just one piece of evidence that I think is pretty interesting.
And that is that people, we talk about morality being innate.
Well, we know that in part because people are able to make instant and intricate moral distinctions without even thinking about it.
Okay, so one example, the writer Jonathan Haidt talks about this in one of his books, and I was reading another book recently that mentions this example.
I can't remember the name of the book, but if I think of it, I'll say it.
Anyway, the example touches on the trolley problem, which I've mentioned before on this show.
And the trolley problem asks what you would do if you saw a trolley headed towards a group of five people on the tracks, and there's a switch you can flip.
If you flip it, the trolley will change tracks, but there's one guy walking on the other track, so if you flip the switch, the trolley will go that way and hit the one guy rather than the five.
And so the thought experiment is, would you flip the switch?
Now, most people you ask, and they've done surveys and studies with this, and most people say, yeah, I'd flip the switch, because, you know, better to save the five.
Now, here's another scenario.
Trolley on the tracks, five people on the tracks, but there's no switch.
Instead, you're standing on a bridge, overlooking the scene, and that guy who was on the track, well, now he's actually up standing next to you.
And so, you could push him onto the tracks, and thereby stop the trolley, but kill him in the process.
Now, in that case, would you push him?
Most people say no.
Now, the effect is the same.
In both cases, one man dies instead of five.
So you could say, for all intents and purposes, when it comes down to it, it's the same thing.
The guy's dead either way.
Yet most people you talk to say, I would flip the switch.
I wouldn't push the man.
Why is that?
Well, I think the difference is so innately obvious to us that we don't appreciate how interesting it is that people can make that distinction so easily.
A computer program couldn't make it.
If you fed that problem into a computer program, the computer program is going to tell you it's the same.
Because a computer isn't going to recognize any moral distinction between those two things.
All the computer is looking at is the result.
And the computer is going to say, well, you know, push him or pull the switch.
He's dead either way.
You save the five.
Who cares?
So you could ask someone that question.
You could try this yourself.
Ask someone about those scenarios.
Get their answer.
And then ask them why they answered that way.
And they probably can't tell you why.
Even though they answer confidently and they answer almost automatically.
And I think they answer correctly.
A lot of people, when you ask them why, they'd struggle to explain, even though they're right.
So what's happening here?
Well, the philosophical distinction has to do with the principle of double effect, which states that you can do a good act with a good effect intended, even if a bad thing will also happen as a result, as long as that bad thing is not being done as a means to the good.
So it's a difference between double effect and ends justify the means.
Double effect, you can do it.
Ends justify the means, you can't, morally.
Pulling the lever is double effect.
Good act, pulling the lever.
Good intent, saving the five people.
Killing the man is not the means to that effect.
It's just, it's a, it's a sort of a side effect.
It's a, it's, it's a, it's an unintended and tragic, unfortunate, although foreseen result.
But pushing the man onto the track is a bad act, because you pushed the man, you murdered him, and it is the means by which you save the five.
So that's wrong.
Now here's my point, and this is fascinating when you think about it.
Most people can automatically, without even thinking, and without knowing that they're doing it, And without being able to explain it after the fact, most people can identify, even like a 10-year-old, can identify this very fine, delicate, philosophical distinction between double effect and ends justify the means.
That is really fascinating when you think about it.
Because when you really stop and consider it and contemplate it, it's a difficult thought experiment.
Now, how is it?
How are we able to reflexively and instantaneously make correct and profound moral distinctions that we can't even explain?
I would say it's because it's innate.
It's almost for the same reason that Our livers can function even if we can't explain how our liver functions, and if we're not conscious of it functioning, it still does.
Now, it's not exactly the same thing, but a similar sort of, you know, the way that we morally recognize these distinctions is almost instinctive in that kind of way.
Which tells me, I don't think something like cultural conditioning can explain that.
Because I actually don't think the culture does condition us.
To recognize the difference between double effect and ends justify the means.
In fact, the culture even, I think, the culture, especially these days, militates against this innate moral understanding.
So if you answer correctly on that thought experiment, identifying, even if you don't know it, the difference between ends justify the means and double effect, you are doing it Despite, actually, I would say, your cultural conditioning.
Not because of it.
So, that's one of the reasons why I think morality is innate, but we could talk about it for three more hours, which I won't do, because we're going to leave it there.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening on this historic and somber day.
Godspeed.
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Democrats impeach President Trump as Alyssa Milano leads a rally chant that this is what democracy looks like.
We examine what happens now.
We remember what the founders thought about democracy because if this is what democracy looks like, I'm out.
