Pints With Aquinas - 198: Matt Walsh on Trump, The Democrats, and Transgenderism & MORE!

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

I sit down with Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire to discuss his new book, Church of Cowards. We also talk about the 2020 election; transgenderism (if Trump sincerely decided he was a woman would he be our first female president?) and a whole lot more! Help Matt out by getting his excellent new book here: https://www.amazon.com/Wide-Road-Matt... SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

G'day, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Actually having a pint today. My name is Matt Fradd. Today I'll be joined around the bar table by Matt Walsh, who is a political commentator at the Daily Wire. He just wrote a book called Church of Cowards. We're at his house here in an unspecified location, can't tell you. This was a fantastic conversation I just had with Matt. We talk about politics, we talk about religion. We asked the question, what would happen if Donald Trump tomorrow actually said that he was a woman? Would he be the first female president? We talk about transgenderism, homosexual marriage, how to raise Christians in an increasingly secular culture,

and much else besides. I'm really excited about this new book. My wife and I just started reading it and it was really awesome. And so we have a special promotion going on for the next couple of weeks. If you want to get a free signed copy of this book, here's what we're going to do. We're going to give away 10 copies of Matt Walsh's new book and we'll get them signed for you. All you got to do is subscribe to this channel and then comment below about why you think the church is or isn't cowardly in the West today. So do that and you'll be in the chance to win.

And we'll let you know in an upcoming video about that. I want to say thanks to a couple of our sponsors. The first is Truly Kindred. My friend, Elisa McLaughlin, runs a fantastic little business out of her home. She homeschools five beautiful children. She creates these beautiful candles. They're absolutely amazing. They don't smell kind of plasticky or fake.

They're really, really lovely stuff. Go to trulykindred.com and use Matt Fradd in the promo code and you'll get 10% off and you'll also be supporting an incredible family. I swear you'll love it. I'd be saying this even if she wasn't supporting me. It's the best candles I've ever smelled. The second group I want to say thanks to is Covenant Eyes.

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covenanteyes.com, type in Matt Fred, one word in the promo code, and you'll get a month for free. All right, here's the responsible thing to do. Go to covenanteyes.com, type in Matt Fradd, one word in the promo code, and you'll get a month for free. All right, here's the show. Matthew Walsh, how are you? Doing well, doing great. Thank you for inviting us to your compound. Yeah, yeah, thanks for being here. This is a, we don't have very many visitors and inviting us to your compound. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for being here. This is a...

We don't have very many visitors and are out in the boondocks, so I'm excited. Yeah, it's good to be with you. I think the first time I came across your work was several years ago. Something provocative about transgenderism or something. And then you kind of remained in the periphery of my thoughts

and then increasingly more and more I saw more of the stuff that you were doing and some of it were like wow that's very jarring the way he put that was super aggressive and then i'm like he's saying what i'm thinking he's saying the things that me and my mates say over a beer but too afraid to say in public yeah i guess i that's uh i like to do that i like to stay out on the periphery and harass people. If I can just be in your general, you know, if I can stay in the general thought process, I'm fine with that. And then you did more political or religious commentary when you started out? Because I kind of feel like you're a bit of a blend of the two.

Yeah, I've kind of been back and forth. I guess when I started my website, the matt walsh blog oh yeah that's right yeah creatively titled yes very good and uh when i when i started that i was doing a lot of a lot of uh parenting and family type of stuff okay and for a while i was getting labeled a daddy blogger which which i wasn't a fan of that i didn didn't really... Change a... Turn a violent course after you heard that. Yeah, exactly. Plus, now I look back at some of that stuff now, and I agree with it, but I was writing... You know, I just had started...

I just had kids, you know, and I was writing about my insights on parenting after I had kids about eight seconds ago. So it's a little embarrassing now, but I've always focused on at least culture and things that affect the family and affect kids. And I think that's what's important. That's what drives politics. That's the more fundamental issue. How did you, for those, I mean, there's probably lists, I'm sure we have a

lot of listeners and viewers who aren't familiar with you. So maybe it would be helpful to kind of give us a bit of an introduction to you. I know faith is really important to you. I really don't even know your story of when you began to take it seriously, if you've always taken it seriously. And then maybe tell us a bit about that and the daily wire. Yeah, well, as far as faith, I was raised Catholic, devout Catholic by a devout Catholic family, you know, five brothers and sisters.

And I have one sister who's a cloistered nun now so that's gives you an idea of the way we were raised uh so in a lot of ways i i think i had it easy um in that if you're raised in the in the truth then you don't really have to go and and struggle to define it the way that some people do which is why i have so much respect for, for converts. Um, but I had a period like a lot of people do when I was in my, when I was in my late teens and early twenties where I sort of, uh, I always believed I didn't, I didn't leave the faith per se, but I wasn't, I certainly wasn't living according to it. Um, but then I get married and start having a family. That's when I started to realize that I need to take this stuff actually seriously.

It becomes real for you in a way that maybe it's not when you're just a single guy in your early 20s living in your one-bedroom apartment. You say you're from a really prominent or a strong Catholic family. Were you homeschooled or something like that? No, we actually weren't,

which people are always surprised because I guess I come off like a homeschooled person. I don't know if that's a... That's a good thing. I think it's I don't know if that's a good thing. I think it's a compliment. I take it as a good thing. But no, we went to public school. So I went to public school for K through 12.

And I don't recommend it. I'm not sending my kids to public school. But the way I figured, because I had to be there, the one positive is that you have to learn from early age to defend your faith. Yeah. Because, you know, you're going to be assaulted from all sides, sometimes literally physically, but most of the time just spiritually. And so you have to learn best case scenario, you learn how to defend your beliefs. But I think for a lot of people, and I was, this is kind of the way it was for me for a time it's that you're you know you just get beaten down and broken by the time you graduate you know so that's the that's the for me I was in a catholic school which was I mean it was

probably a better school we probably had you know better teachers better education in general than the public school I'd say but it kind of felt like a public school with a religion class. So speaking of hokey Christianity, which we'll get into, which is the topic of your book, we were actually asked to choose the music for Mass. They were like, just give the kids something to do. And I chose a Metallica song that I played from a boombox for the recessional hymn, Mama Said. Did you actually play the Metallica song? Didn't play it played from a boom box for the recessional hymn. Mama said.

Did you actually play the Metallica song? Didn't play it, unfortunately. Okay. But just press play. Press play. Which makes it even more pathetic. Yeah. And we tried to say something like, Mama said.

It's kind of like Mary talking. And they're like, we don't care. Just frigging play it. Well, you know, I would take that over a lot of the faux folk songs that you hear in masses. I'd take that. If you're going gonna go that route that's what i always say about the good old way right if you're gonna do the secular music um yeah you might as well go all in and make it good good at least yeah quality in that sense

all right so then you so you started the matt walsh blog and you were kind of doing stuff like that you became pretty well known i mean i mean it's all relative i understand that but how did that happen were you just saying saying stuff that no one else was saying and that kind of developed until you got into the Daily Wire? Yeah, I think it was, it's not, I think I got lucky in some ways in the way, when I got into blogging and all that at the right time. I think what happened for me back,

whatever, six or seven years ago, I don't think it could happen now because of the way that social media has changed. But at the time, I started the website, I started a little Facebook group. And back in those days, six or seven years ago, Facebook actually would let you access all of your audience on Facebook. So it was, if you had 8,000 followers,

which I did kind of starting out, I was able to grow to like 8,000 or 9,000. But the thing is you could actually post things and all 8,000 of them would see it. And then so from there you could start building and that's what I was able to do. And it kind of took off like a rocket from there. But like I said, these days you couldn't do it because Facebook just doesn't.

I didn't feel that way about podcasting. Like I created a podcast, I'd say, four years ago, five years ago, which at the time, it felt like there were a lot of podcasts. But in retrospect, I don't think there were, especially in the kind of Catholic scene where I am. There was maybe three or four that I could name. And now everybody and their children all have podcasts yeah yeah that's that's that's exactly it and so there was a there was definitely a a time there on the

internet a sort of a sweet spot where if you got in early i guess you could there's a lot easier path to success than there is now and so who is what is daily wire for those who aren't aware uh yeah daily i was on the blaze for a while just glenn beck's oh yeah um so i i was worked for him for about three years and then i went over to the daily wire um and that's uh you know it's a conservative news site ben shapiro um i think most people know who he is uh he's he's the editor-in-chief and he started he's one of the people that started the site so um and uh. And we kind of engage on political and cultural issues. It's pretty cool that as a Jewish man,

he's totally open to getting Claven, who's a Protestant and two Catholics, you and Knowles. Yeah, well, he's got quite a few devout Catholics working for him. I don't live there. They're based out of L.A., so I don't live they're they're based out of la so i don't i don't live there but when i go into town for meetings and stuff like that or the christmas party that they have um we're sitting around having very catholic-y conversations and uh ben will sometimes take part in those he's a because i think if you're a conservative religious person of any religion um in our culture today then i think

we have a lot of a lot in common now maybe not theologically but um although of course with jews we do have you know quite a bit in common theologically uh but even so i mean no matter what your religion is if you're if you're conservative and you're religious you you recognize some reality outside of uh outside of the immediate physical world then i think that there's cause for some kind of unity there yeah i know next to nothing about politics um so help me with this because i know i guess people would say the daily wire is a what would they say a conservative outfit that talks about conservative politics yeah i guess that's what they would say, a conservative outfit that talks about conservative politics? Yeah, I guess that's what they would say.

What is conservatism? People talk about liberalism and conservative. I think I know what people usually mean when they talk about being liberal. What does it mean to be conservative? I think that's a good question. I think that's one thing that's happening in conservatism right now that's interesting is people trying to figure out what it is exactly

so there's a real debate that's huh that you find in conservative media circles about basically i think i think the fundamental question is what are we trying to conserve exactly yeah we kind of have to figure that out you know you don't want to just go out and start conserving stuff you want to conserve the right thing so yeah um and uh the way that it's broken down i think there are many different sort of factions but i think broadly it's kind of gone down into two camps which is um you've got one side that says that the the fundamental role of the government is to preserve liberty and so that's what we as conservatives are up to. We're trying to conserve liberty. And what does that mean?

Does that mean that free markets and things like that and the government not trying to control how your children are educated? I think wanting to know exactly what that means is part of my problem with that version of it, but I guess that someone who's in that camp would say that, yeah, it's free markets, it's our constitutional It's our constitutional liberties, the bill of rights, freedom of speech and all of that. But then on there's the other camp that says that, uh, that the government's role is to preserve the common good, uh,

which is where I, where I fall. And so we would say as conservatives, that's, that's our mission is we're, we're fighting for the common good in society. And that's... Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not pretending to not know nothing. I really know very little. It sounds like one's more kind of libertarian. Yeah.

Would that be a good distinction? Because I think a while back you had that big... You were talking about pornography and whether or not the government should ban it, or at least enforce the laws that are already on the books. I think that's kind of where that... Did you get to think a lot about it then yeah yeah that was a big discussion that was back towards the end of 2019 um and that's where the that's not where the battle lines first appeared i think that we knew that that's but that's they became very apparent there um where you had some conservatives who say that no this is the government has no

role in this some conservatives say the government shouldn't even regulate it just it's it's up to people to decide if they want to consume that or not yeah or maybe they do regulate it but not too much or whatever uh but because you don't want the government to be uh legislating morality that's the that's the line uh that's the line i just don't i don't buy that i think first of all every law legislates morale every single law that's on the books is on the books because we believe as a society that it's morally right you know um if something is illegal it's illegal at the end of the day because we've decided that it's wrong yeah morally wrong uh if something's not morally wrong it shouldn't be illegal so. So that is what laws are based on. Yeah, that's a good point.

Even things like road rules, you don't want people to drive recklessly and harm other people unnecessarily. So that would be a part of it. Exactly. I can't really think of a law. I can think of plenty of laws that are immoral, like the law that allows us to kill babies in the womb.

But the people defending that law will defend it on the basis, wrongly, that it's's moral so it is always going to be a moral discussion so i think this attempt to separate these two things just doesn't work and that's where you bring in something like pornography and i would say pornography is obviously uh deeply injurious to people and to the dignity of of of of everybody's harmful, especially to kids. And the government has a role in protecting, especially children from this great harm. It must be interesting putting out something like you did

and then having the whole world kind of jump on you about it and agree with you or hate you for it because it's almost like it's kind of forces you to look at that topic really intensely for several days and probably come out with a more kind of crystallized view. And that's the one, that's part of the job that I enjoy. I like it when that happens. I don't like, I don't as much like the rapid fire thing

in conservative media that I have to do, we all have to do of you hit a topic and then one day and the next day it's a different topic. Yeah, yeah. And everyone just forgets. I mean, like, you know, at the end of the hit a topic and then one day and the next day it's a different topic. Yeah, yeah. And everyone just forgets. At the end of the day, you can't remember what you were talking about on Tuesday. That's right.

I like it on the rare occasion when something like this comes up, banning pornography, and it becomes a week or two week long conversation and it develops and you're thinking about it. And yeah, by five days into it, you're thinking a little bit differently about it than you were at the beginning yeah that's how fruitful conversations happen i wish that that would happen more and and i did kind of as time went on i i think i refined my

defense of it a little bit um as i was thinking more about it and uh i thought that one of the strongest defenses of banning porn or at least heavily regulating it is its effect on children, but especially because of the issue of consent. You know, the defense of people that say we shouldn't regulate porn, we shouldn't ban it, is that people choose. And if people choose to access this then that's their choice well my point is children children cannot consent they don't have the emotional psychological capacity to consent so we would say they can't consent to participate in a sexual act if a if a if an eight-year-old has sex with an adult we say that's not having sex with that's rape right obviously because he can't consent so if an eight-year-old cannot consent as a participant has sex with an adult, we say that's not having sex with, that's rape, right? Obviously, because he can't consent. So if an eight-year-old cannot consent as a participant, then I would say he

cannot consent as a viewer, as a third-party participant. And so when you put this stuff in the public domain where children can access it, if they do access it, they didn't really consent to it because they don't know what they're doing. And so when they view it, you have violated their consent. You have violated their consent. You have violated them. And I don't think you should have the right to do that. I don't think you should have the right to put this stuff where kids can find it. And this is technically sexual abuse, correct?

If I were to show pornography to a child. Yeah, it's... If porn is speech, showing porn to a child would be starting a conversation. But it's not. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Or, you know, I i mean there are some differences but

but i mean having sex in public when there are kids around obviously that's illegal and you could say it's not exactly the same thing because of but it's not exactly the same thing but it's still um it's still in the same in the same vein so it's just somebody has a video, takes a video of themselves in a debased sexual act. Do they have some kind of innate human right to put that, upload it on the internet so a billion people can see it?

Where's that right come from? I don't see it. I don't see how they have that right. I just want to take a pause from this discussion and say thanks to our third sponsor hello hello h-a-l-l-o-w is a fantastic app that will teach you how to pray it's very well produced and it's a hundred percent catholic i use it my wife uses it it's really excellent hello offers a

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and create your account online before downloading the app. It really is a fantastic app. That's HALLOW, H-A-L-L-O-W. Go download it on your phone now. Back to the interview. You find it interesting in these debates, a lot of it gets down to terminology

when people throw words around like rights and you have to pause and ask them what they think that means. And nobody knows what it means. That's maybe not nobody, but the average person, and I'm big into that of when people are using words, stop and say, what do you mean by that?

Even if it's a basic word. I'm doing this all the time with the transgender thing. With the woman, tell us about that. How you say, tell us what a woman is, that kind of thing. Yeah, I think that shuts down. I think that's how you win that debate, the transgender debate. Tell us how.

Well, when somebody's saying something like, trans women are women, trans woman being a man identifying as a woman, and that's what the left would say, that's what the proponents of this leftist gender ideology would say, all you have to respond with is, what's a woman?

You know, trans women are women, what's that? What is the thing that they are? Yeah. Give me a definition. And I've been doing this for like eight months. I've been, I've been hammering this. Like someone, one of you people out there that are in this camp of believing in this, define the word woman for me without using the word woman in your definition, because

that's an invalid definition, circular. Tell me what it is. And they can't, they can't tell you what it is. And that's a problem. If you're telling me that X is Y and I say, what is Y? And he's like, I don't know. Well, you're telling me you don't know what X is. So your statement doesn't work because you don't even know what the thing is.

What's the most coherent response you get to that question? Does it amount to something like a feeling? Some kind of ethereal thing that you can't actually identify but you shouldn't have to no i'm not saying that's coherent but is that the main i i'm not even trying to make a straw man of it i i have not heard an even semi-coherent answer to it because i don't think there is one um the the answer i get that i've gotten if i ever get an answer, is a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman. That's the answer I've gotten that answer many times. And of course, it doesn't work because you're using the word woman.

It doesn't answer the question. It's like if I say, what's a tree? And you say, a tree is that which is a tree. I still have no idea what the hell a tree is. So same thing with woman um the problem of course is that in the the people in that are proponents of this trans ideology know this that if if you offer any kind of objective definition of woman it'll exclude some it's going to exclude people and they don't want to do that but they also know that they don't they also don't want to say well a woman is is is you know it's just it

doesn't really mean anything it's just a totally arbitrary term they don't want to say, well, a woman is, you know, it doesn't really mean anything. It's just a totally arbitrary term. They don't want to say that. That is actually their answer, but they know they can't say it because then, number one, it doesn't mean anything to say that a trans woman is a woman because you just said that word doesn't mean anything, so that means nothing. Also, then you can't go on about women's rights. You can't go on about attacks on women, and you can't use that whole

no uterus, no opinion when it comes to abortion all that's out the window and i know that so they're in a between a rock and a hard place i'm not trying to make light of gender dysphoria um but have you wondered what would happen if donald trump came out tomorrow and declared that he was a woman and identified as such and I wish he would, yeah. And from everyone's perspective, it seemed that he was being serious. Yeah. He would break that glass ceiling, perhaps. Yeah, maybe something like that needs to happen.

To show the ridiculousness of it. Yeah, to put it, because that would be great, but you would think, you know, there was the most recent, I forget the name of the person, but somebody, I think in New Zealand. Yeah, that that's right it was a race of some kind well there's they're the races but but uh in in new zealand it was a weightlifting okay this 40 year old dude the man um who's who's now just destroying the competition among female weightlifters and they

what do they do they have to go clap for him right Right. And you look at this guy, and he's a dude. He's a guy. He's a big, bulky guy with long hair. Yeah. And he's just out there. And the thing is, for his weight class and his age, he's actually not a very good weightlifter, if you were to be against. two guys, high school track runners, who are destroying the competition. They're boys, but they're destroying the competition among the females in the girls' track circuit.

And I think they run the 100-meter and a couple of... And I've looked at their times, because they're, like, setting records. And I've said, let me take their time, and let me compare that to the boys' class. And they wouldn't even be on the track. They'd be placed at the 50th or something crazy like that. But with that time, they can destroy the girls.

So if that's not enough, I mean, if that's not enough to show you the absurdity of this, then I don't even know if the Donald Trump thing would do it. Maybe Trump. Yeah. What's the feminine of Donald? I don't know. Donna? Donna. Donna Trump. Donna Trump. It. What's the feminine of Donald? I don't know. Donna. Donna.

Donna Trump. Donna Trump. Look at it happen. How did we descend into this craziness? And why are we so afraid to call it craziness? I think it was Joe Rogan who said, like, 10 years ago, he would have thought it would have been pretty safe to say a guy shouldn't cut his penis off and then beat the shit out of women in, like, a UFC fight or something. But apparently now, if he was to say that, he'd be a bigot. How did we arrive here, do you think?

Have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean, I've thought about it all the time. I think part of it is, I mean, you don't even know where to begin. Because when you try to, you take anything that's going on in the culture and you say, how did it start? Yeah. You know, you keep going further back and back until you get to the garden of eden i mean you could do that but um so there there's a few first of all relativism uh this is a logical conclusion of of relativism if all truth is

relative and even my identity is relative i can be whoever I want to be or whatever I want to be. So it's a logical conclusion. Also, I think, as is so often the case, it's the same story over and over again of conservatives being so late to the party on these battles, showing up after the battle's over sometimes. And I think that's what happened with this gender thing because I can think back to six or seven years ago, I was talking about this

and the response back then that I would get from many conservatives is, what are you even talking about this for? Absolutely. Right. I gave a keynote talk at a Catholic Answers Conference back in 2013 and it was all on transgenderism.

And I have to say, even myself as I got up, I'm like, I think this is relevant. Like I had a few anomalous cases that seemed nuts that i wanted to tell people about but i can't believe how quickly it's all gone downhill yeah that's um but that's that's what happens so often with conservatives in the culture that they we can be um unable see, you know, unable for some reason to see where things are and follow the rabbit hole.

I guess we've also been conditioned to believe that slippery slope arguments are invalid or are inherently fallacious. I mean, so often, you know, on the internet, people will, you'll make an argument and someone says, that's slippery slope. It's wrong. It doesn't mean it's wrong.

There are valid slippery slope arguments. And, you know. Like what? I guess one would be redefining marriage. Exactly. Yeah, that's a perfect example. Because for me, slippery slope argument is about showing how, okay, you've made an argument to justify X, Y, Z. Let me show you how

I can take that argument intact and bring it over to this other thing, ABC, that we both agree is horrific. And so if I can use your argument logically to justify this thing and you agree it's also bad, then there's either something wrong with your argument or there's something wrong with what you're justifying.

That to me is what a slippery slope argument is meant to do. And it's an important tool of logic, I think. And if we could have seen the slippery slope even 10 years ago, maybe we would have seen where this gender thing was going. Yeah, I mean, it seems to me like if atheism is true, this gender thing was going. Yeah. I mean, it seems to me like if atheism is true, um, all sorts of kind of dogmatic answers to our most important questions follow, you know, like questions about who am I and where did I come from and why am I here and where am I going and how should I live?

It seems to me like we have actual answers to those questions and they're pretty bleak, I think. Um, but it would also seem to me like if 70 years is the only life I've got, you know, and there's, and there's no such thing as natures, maybe nominalism is true. And so maybe I can't say what a tree is. And then, so I just decide to kind of invent my own reality since there's no sort of logical coherence to it ultimately. Yeah.

I think that's kind of a nihilistic view, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, and you can see nihilism all throughout the culture. I think that's why, you know, it's good. So what's your response to someone? I have people sometimes will come up to me at talks and they'll say, you know, look, my niece,

he identifies as a girl or she identifies as a boy. What's the kind of advice that you give to people in those situations? Well, as far as how to deal with it on a really super personal level, I get people asking those questions. I don't even know if I'm equipped to give great advice there

because that is a difficult situation to be in. It doesn't, obviously what I can say is at no point can you participate in this delusion that the person has or encourage it. That's certainly the wrong thing to do. All right. And then the pushback to that would be why not when there's a possibility that this person may end up harming themselves? Why not participate in the delusion, at least for a little bit? I could see someone. Well, I would say, first of all, their real issue, the despair they feel isn't really,

if a boy identifies as a girl and is in despair, seemingly because he's not a girl, well, that's not really why he's in despair. That's not really the issue. The issue is that he's in despair because he is not able to accept himself for who he is. He hates himself for some reason. And so that's what you have to address.

You have to get him to love and accept himself. And so anything you do that helps him reject himself and that feeds into that hatred that he has for himself and who he is, is only going to make the problem worse in the long run. So I think that's what we have to do. If someone comes to you and says, I don't want to be myself. I wish I was this thing over here. The last thing in the world we should say is, okay, well, yeah, you could be that. No, no, no. You're not that.

You're a boy who's an eight-year-old boy who's going to his parents and saying, I'm a girl. The message is, no, you're a boy. It's a wonderful thing to be a boy. It're a boy. A boy who's an eight-year-old boy who's going to his parents and saying, I'm a girl. The message is, no, you're a boy. It's a wonderful thing to be a boy. It's a great thing. And let me help you see that. Where do you think this thing ends? Because occasionally when I glance at your Twitter feed,

I'll see that you will kind of retweet absurd things that are taking place, like these drag queen shows in libraries or story time things they do. You posted about this the other day day about a group of degenerate parents who are all sitting around why that man who was dressed like a woman was kind of dancing in a sexually provocative way before, I think it was a girl.

Yeah. That's horrible. Yeah. Do people kind of gradually start waking up and being like, yeah, this is crap. Like maybe gay marriage and maybe all this stuff is awesome, but we've got to turn this back? Or it feels like people are just kind of running for the finish line at this point. There's going to be nothing that turns the tide.

Yeah, I don't know. I hope. I would hope that some. I think that you do see some of that. There are some people on the left, and you see relatively high profile examples of this online sometimes um of people on the left saying okay this is this is too much even for me we gotta we gotta we gotta step back from this uh there was even a video i don't know who it was but it was a a lesbian woman on internet who has some kind of following and she posted a video recently

about why she's basically leaving the left even though she agrees yeah so many of these issues but it's just too much like drag queens with kids no no come on so i think there's some of that but um i don't know if i have much optimism that it's really it's really going to catch on uh because one of the issues is that there's so much power, cultural power behind this. That's right. Yeah, sorry to cut you off. Well, no, it's just that the media, Hollywood,

is bought into it. That's why I always find it so silly when I hear about these billionaire or millionaire actors and actresses and musicians speaking truth to power when they're speaking to a room filled with people who all agree with their political position and the only consequence is going to be positive for them. We Ubered over here today with a bloke from Ghana and he said, like, in Ghana, like, the comedians are told

what they may not say, you know, what they may say, things like that. You think, we haven't arrived there. So this idea that the conservative movement is the one with all the power, I don't see that. I mean, I see Donald Trump in the Oval Office, but the universities, the Hollywood music industry, this all seems to be far left. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I wouldn't say conservatives have much cultural power at all. In in government now maybe in the white house and you know the republicans had the house and senate for two years but that only shows to me yet again proving that politics is downstream of culture that actually the government

is not what drives the culture because you could put republicans in there and it doesn't really make much of a difference as far as far as the culture goes uh it's it really comes down to yeah hollywood media um and when i say media it's not even people get so focused on uh bias in the news media as if that's the big problem that's not that it's it's it's really you know that's who cares about that because you know when you watch the news that there's bias and everyone knows to look out for it but it's in the it's in the shows that people watch and the music the messages that are there that's what can really affect you and even more than that it's also in the school system academia uh they're getting to kids at a young age um and they're indoctrinating kids at a certain point it's like it doesn't even matter as adults we know

that this gender stuff is crazy but the left knows well it doesn't matter what they think we're going to get to the kids you know if we think it an orchestrated attempt like that, or is it just sort of happening like that? Relatively orchestrated. I don't think that there's any group meeting in a smoky room to hatch their plan for domination of the culture, but I think it's just understood that we're all on the same page. And if you got to convert the kids, everybody understand, we understand that we want to convert. We want to bring our kids up in our faith. They want to bring our kids up in their faith. And the thing about kids is that if you tell a six-year-old

that a boy with a penis can be a girl if he wants to be, six-year-old has no frame of reference. He's going to think, okay, well, that makes a lot of sense. And then he's going to continue believing that into adulthood unless somebody unless someone wakes him up to the reality of it um and it's very hard to overcome childhood indoctrination that's the problem um back to donald trump and politics for a little bit uh i was speaking with a man recently i told him i was gonna be doing this interview with you. He's somewhat familiar with you. And he was just sort of bemoaning the fact that we have a man in the Oval Office who has lived a very immoral life.

And there are a lot of people who kind of say this and they'll say, well, therefore, I can't vote for Donald Trump because of the man he is, the man he shows himself to be. the man he is, the man he shows himself to be. So I'm going to either abstain from voting altogether, or they might even go and vote for whoever's going to be the next kind of candidate, whether that be probably Biden or Sanders. What's your kind of response to that? What was your opinion in the beginning when you could have voted for Trump? You know what I mean?

I guess you don't mind me asking, did you vote for Trump in the first place? I didn't, no. And can I ask you, will you vote for him this time? I will. When I say I didn't vote for him in 2016, I didn't vote for the Democrat. I just didn't vote at all, at the top of the ticket.

I was not a Trump fan. I'm still not. I wouldn't call myself a Trump fan. I don't think we should be fans of politicians in general. Good point. So, but I have a Trump fan. No, I don't think we should be fans of politicians in general. Good point. So, but I have a lot of issues with Donald Trump. I think my main, policy-wise, I think he's been pretty good.

He hasn't been as bad as I thought he would be. One of the things I was afraid of is that he's a New York Democrat, has been his whole life. Now he's saying he's a conservative or republican is he going to get in there and do a 180 and that's what i was thinking yeah right and he hasn't really done that okay so that's good um and he's surrounded himself by with uh some some real conservatives especially on the pro-life issue i think there's been some some good stuff there um so that's all good and that's why i would vote for him again is for that reason you would vote for him for a first time if yeah yeah yeah yeah i would vote for him because i've seen i've seen that and i've seen that he's not going to

get in there and start you know passing or trying to push through pro-abortion legislation or whatever uh but my my other concern with trump was was the long-term effect on the conservative movement of having it led by this guy. Is that going to, you know, years and 10 years down the line, 15 years down the line, are we still going to be paying for that? Because we have forfeited our credibility in so many ways in order to defend every last thing that comes out of this guy's mouth and you think that is the case like that people are doing that i think a lot of people have done that yeah and that's what i was afraid it was going to happen i knew it was going to happen because that's that's just how it works and um so i don't know i i think some people are going to say that the never Trumpers who oppose Trump have been proven wrong. Maybe they have been, but I think it's too early to tell. I think let's check back in 20 years, honestly. We always want to come to these conclusions so quickly, but you have to take this historical view. I think that years down the line, we'll look back.

years down the line we'll look back how does history remember donald trump what happens after him where do we go from here um and does he have the effect of essentially ending the conservative movement because it became all about defending everything he says whether it was completely opposed to conservatism or not and then he's off he's he's out of the picture and uh what happens then i don't know is the question is the? I don't know, is the answer. I don't know what happens, but I'm afraid that maybe. So if you had a friend who said to you, I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump. I just can't in good conscience.

I also can't vote for the other person on the ticket. Would you try to talk them into voting for the lesser of two evils? Is that a legitimate thing that you think people should consider doing? Or do you think, no, that's a respectable choice don't don't don't vote for anyone uh first of all anytime someone says they don't want to vote i always respect that i'm not one of these people that says oh you have to vote no matter what just get out there and vote it's your it's your civic duty do you know in australia you get fined if you don't vote i think that's crazy yeah i did too that's nuts i actually think we would benefit if there was a much lower voter turnout everyone wants to get the voter turnout up but uh most people

don't pay attention don't know what the hell is going on and uh that's that's just the reality and and a lot of people that are voting have no real stake in the game either because they don't pay taxes or whatever so um i don't know what how we really benefit from having those kinds of people vote um but anyway so if somebody says, I just don't want to vote, fine. That's your choice. I'm perfectly fine with that. I think if you're a Christian or a conservative, you absolutely cannot vote for a Democrat under any circumstance. I never would. That's crazy. All right. Now, I agree with you, but kind of lay that out for us. Why can you never under any circumstance vote for a Democrat? Well, if this was 50 years ago, then I wouldn't be saying that.

But it's not 50 years ago, it's now. And now the Democratic Party has positioned itself to be totally fundamentally opposed to everything that we stand for. Let's just say, narrow it down to Christians. Everything we stand for in our faith,

the Democratic Party is opposed to. And I don't think we have to go further than just pointing out that in the Democratic Party, their position, their platform is that it is okay to kill babies through every stage of pregnancy right up until the moment of birth.

Like if that were the only thing, that would be a good reason not to vote. Yeah. I've heard someone say this about these one-issue voters. Why would you not vote based on one issue? And I often think, well, suppose there was a candidate who was against black and white people marrying, but you agreed with them on every other issue.

You would rightfully not vote for that person. I mean, I would love to be, I would love the luxury of not being a one-issue voter. If we were living in a culture where everybody agreed you shouldn't kill babies. Yeah. And so that's,

we don't have to talk about that. And then we're having an election between people and their disagreements on other issues. That'd be great. Now we can really, now maybe you could really justify

voting for either one, but you can't. So Donald Trump, whatever he really believes in his heart or or has believed in the past i don't know nobody knows yeah i'm i'm i'm less interested in what he actually believes i kind of don't care right it doesn't as long as he's um yeah it doesn't doesn't actually matter really um because that's that's up for to god to to judge so and that's why i'm saying yeah i didn't vote for him in 2016 i would vote for him in 2020 because uh i would i would too just to lay my cards on the table i

mean i can't vote because i am not a citizen actually but if i were i would you foreign alien yeah and i'm not afraid you have no idea what i've been through as an alien it's uh an immigrant well donald trump know, the immigrants, you guys are bringing drugs. You're bringing all kinds of crime. No, I would. I think we've seen what he would do with policies. That's why. But also this other issue, this other concern that I'm talking about of his effect on conservatism.

As far as I'm concerned, that damage is done already anyway. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. So I'm not factoring that in. That makes sense. And that's why I would vote for him. All right, well, let's get onto this book of yours, Church of Cowards. Great title, great face on the front cover there.

If you had no glasses and a longer beard and long hair, you might look like Jesus. Well, thank you very much. I mean, we don't really know what Jesus looked for, but I'll take it. Pictures of Jesus that I see. So how did you get to writing this book? I have read almost all of it, you'll be pleased to hear.

I know as an author myself, there's nothing more infuriating with people interviewing you, and you can tell they've not read the book at all. I've been reading bits of it to my wife, and I found it really enjoyable and edifying, I have to say. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think 90% of the interviews I i've done they haven't read it so it's fine church of cowards uh so what do you mean by a wake-up call to yeah exactly that's always uh yeah i think this the book is um my attempt to address what i think is the great problem in the church in the west anyways that we're, we are so comfortable and complacent. We're sort of floating

on the tide of the culture and going wherever the culture takes us. And we dress that up. We dress up our complacency and apathy and cowardice in, in words like tolerance and acceptance. Um, which makes it, you know, so that we can not only be lazy and cowardly, but we can feel virtuous in our laziness and cowardice. And I think that's the problem. And I think in one of the early chapters, I draw the comparison between what we go through in the West and if you look at Christians other places in the world

where they face violent persecution. It's worse than it's ever been in history, in fact, although the media doesn't talk about it, so you would never know. And for them, if they stand up for their faith, they face machetes and knives and guns and rocks and everything. Yet what you find there is that the faith is still vibrant and alive, and we know that because these are people willing to die for it, for what they believe.

And it's just interesting that here we have faced really nothing even close to that, anywhere in that ballpark. The most we will face, persecution-wise, most of us, is just insults, awkward looks, frowny face emojis someone might throw at us on Facebook, which could be very devastating.

Yet that has seemingly been enough to bring us to our knees and for many people to send them hiding under their bed or at least to stuff their faith under the bed so nobody sees it. Yeah. We've talked a little bit about it already, but in what ways do you see Christians being cowardly either on social media or in public life, just in every day-to-day kind of things? media or in public life just in every day-to-day kind of things uh i think uh the the most basic thing is and i i lump myself in in with this that i think if you were to look at the average christian um and follow him around for a day and see what he does and listen how he speaks and what he talks about and how he dresses, just everything about him, and then you were to compare him to the average atheist walking around out there, you would see no real difference.

They'd be interchangeable. I think for most Christians in the culture today, their faith just has almost no bearing on what they do at all. We just live our lives. The media we consume, what we do for entertainment, and we've set up, in some of these cases, we've set up little fortresses where we believe that these things should be impervious to faith, that faith is irrelevant to them.

And so I think that's where, it's not just cowardice. I think there's a lot of things lumped in with it, but I think that's where you see the cowardice manifest itself. Yeah, when I started reading this book, I was feeling a kind of, being quite judgmental, maybe in a proper way, I suppose, towards the culture and Christians within it. But it wasn't long until I'm like,

I had the terrifying realization that you were talking about me. And me too. I know, and you made that clear in the book, which I really liked. Yeah, you're not pointing your finger at everyone saying, look at you bunch of cowards. You give examples. Yeah, and I think that's an important point

because maybe as you know, when you try to talk about these issues on a public stage, you talk about morality and faith. It's inevitable you're going to be accused of being self-righteous and holier than thou. It's just for some people, it's a reflex. The moment you talk about morality, there's, oh, you're self-righteous. And of course, it's inevitable. You're going to be accused of being self-righteous and holier than thou. It's just for some people, it's a reflex. The moment you talk about morality, there's, oh, you're self-righteous.

And of course, it's hard to defend yourself against the claim of self-righteousness without sounding self-righteous. That's part of the problem. But I think that being self-righteous and holier than thou is somebody who puts themselves forward as the moral example and says, do what I do, everybody. That is self-righteous and um i really try not to do that and the reason is that i i honestly it's not about being humble or something it's just i don't i i don't have that i have an opinion of myself i don't i don't i know that i'm not an example to follow i don't want i don't want people to follow my example. I wish I was a better example to follow.

So whatever insights I can hopefully maybe bring to bear in the book about what it's like to be a lazy Christian struggling, it's because I've been down in the muck with everybody else, and so I'm making observations down here with everybody else about what it's like. One of the examples you gave, which I liked because it applied to me too. You said you were somewhere on vacation, you were at a church and the priest started educating people about how they ought to dress. Tell us about that because I have to say, I often fall into that category as well and maybe why it's important to dress well. Yeah, he was, we were,

I forget where we were on vacation but we um went yeah we went to a church and in my experience first of all on vacation going to church is always always an interesting you never know what you're going to get exactly it's like a box of chocolates and uh but in this case it was a really good church and the priest was really firm and and he got up there and he gave a sermon about it touched on a bunch of different things but um he was especially talking about the reverence that we bring to to to god to faith to the church uh and how it reflects on on on you know the seriousness of our faith and he called people out for wearing shorts and flip-flops and jeans and that sort of thing and then of course i look down

and i'm dressed exactly as he's describing and i just looking at you describing every like red shorts for example right birkenstocks paul tall lanky guy right there um and and you know so i'm feeling and i did at first i had this reaction of reaction of feeling personally attacked. Who is this guy? What are you doing? I showed up here. Isn't that good enough for you? I came.

I'm on vacation. I didn't bring formal clothes. It's not my fault. So I had that feeling at first. And I was mad at him. But then I had to stop myself and realize that, no, what he's saying is exactly correct. And if I happened to be one of the lucky ones sitting there in my formal attire, I'd be, I would be nodding and saying, yes, exactly. Yes. See, look at all these heathens in there. Uh, so I just, I knew that. And then

of course it was, it was awkward going up for communion and I tried very much to not be in his line. Um, but, uh, so that's just, that's just one example. It's a small, it's a small thing. It's very easy for us to say, who cares how you dress at church? Because God will take you any which way, which is true. But, and listen, if you're dirt poor and all you have are tattered rags

that you can wear, then wear them and come to church. But most of us, that's not the case. Most of us, we've got iPhones and we've got three TVs in the house. We've got all this stuff. Like you can afford to get at least a pair of khakis and a button-down shirt or something and uh you just don't care to it's not important to you it's interesting how um yeah and then you mentioned another time in the book how you you and i guess this has got to be a true story you you stumbled across a megachurch, which you and your family went into legitimately thinking it was a mall.

It's 100% true. And I've told this story in the past, and I have had people tell me they just don't believe that it's true. It is 100% true. And it was with my wife. It was before we had kids. We were in Kentucky. And they were not far from us, down the street.

They were building. For a while, they had been building this structure. And we really didn't know what it was. We were taking guesses for months. Like, what the hell is this thing they're building? And finally, when it was all built, it was one day we decided to stop in. Because it looked like a mall. And there was nowhere did it say church a mall. And there was nothing on.

There was nowhere did it say church. There was no cross, nothing. It didn't even say the word church anywhere in the building. And by the looks of it. Influencers. Yeah, something like that. Some such. Yeah.

And from the looks of it, we really thought it was a mall. It just, everything about it. And so we went in. I think I needed to get some pants or something. so i didn't get yelled at again by a priest and we went in and it really took me a couple of minutes even once we got inside to realize what was going on my wife caught on a little bit quicker because she's a former protestant and uh yeah after a couple minutes of course i realized but when you i went in there was a it was like a coffee shop there people sitting around having coffee and um and then

yeah you realize the people were very friendly and and everybody was nice it wasn't like it was i'm sure yeah um but it just it didn't at all look like a church or have the experience of a church and i i think that uh when you go into this is another thing it's very easy for people to say it doesn't matter as long as you're there to worship what does it matter what it looks like whether you've got a coffee right exactly but it does matter now once again if you have no other choice if you're if you're living in a in a persecuted land or if you're like the christians in the catacombs or something and and you have no other choice and you gotta well in that case you're probably not going to a huge fancy you know multi-million dollar building but uh if you have no choice you got to meet in a

cave then meet in a cave but um if you have a choice and you and you can make your church look any which way and do whatever you want with it then why make the choice, first of all, of hiding the fact that it is a church? What are you ashamed of? And why try to make it look like every other building in the culture? What's the point of that? It looks like anything else. I think when you go into a church, it should have the experience of elevating you. It should be something that's distinct and set apart. It brings you up into something.

you it should be something that's distinct and set apart it brings you up into something so you you have this real feeling of you're entering into something elevated and and mystical um and that's how it should feel and that's what the experience should be not just in the architecture but in everything the music the everything i i don't want to i don't want to crap on the priests from my hometown in australia because i'd only had good experiences with these men. But the mass is not celebrated in a beautiful way. I mean, there's like synthesizer drum kits and the local pub band playing and things like that. And yeah, it's just, there's a part of me, I can understand why some of my family members don't go.

I'm not saying they shouldn't go. I can understand why they don't go because there's nothing masculine or even feminine about it. It's just sort of trite and ugly. And I want to take my hunger for the divine somewhere where it'll be taken seriously, not where the priest says, why don't we just say hello to everybody?

And growing up, the priest would say, we'll get you out early tonight because I know the football game's on. I'm like, why are we here then if this isn't important? Right. And if we don't take it seriously, then why should – I mean, if there's someone coming into that church who's discerning and thinking about faith and all of that. And they look and they say,

well, these people don't really take this. They don't care. So why should I? Because obviously they've got nothing real important to say or to offer me. And I think young people are desperate for tradition. It's like we were raised, many of us, but it doesn't sound like you're in this situation. We were raised without it.

And so we're kind of like stumbling around being like okay so what does it mean to be catholic it's all kind of the same okay so what yeah i didn't know what a rosary was until after my conversion when i was 17 because no one had told me about it and yeah i think uh desperate for tradition desperate for meaning desperate for um you know a reason to live, something to fight for. And also, the other thing about young people is that young people, they have very good bullshit detectors. And it's all about authenticity. And if you're not authentic, they're going to sniff that out. And they're not going to take you seriously. And that's one of the problems of these churches that try to ape secular culture.

It's just not authentic. It's not real. It's fake. And I think some young people rightly say, this is lame. Why am I even here? It's weird moving to America and encountering the kind of crossover

between kind of American patriotism and Christianity. And I'm not sure if I can, I feel a little nervous sharing it because I'm not sure who I'm going to offend here. But it's just a weird experience for me. I was driving down the road the other day in Georgia. There's this big billboard, and I guess it was advertising a Christian rock show, and there was the cross,

and it was draped in the American flag. And I'm not sure. As an Australian, it just seems very bizarre. And I guess that's because for many Americans, and maybe this isn't wrong, maybe this is the case, their politics and their religion is kind of bound up together. Yeah, I think that's right. I think what troubles me, to be patriotic is great.

I consider myself to be a patriot. I consider myself to be a patriot. But sometimes I think we make the mistake of equating, you know, patriotism almost becomes its own religion. Yeah. And there's this idol worship that can sometimes happen, even with something like the flag. And, you know, you do have to be, I feel even the need to be delicate in the way that I address this because.

Especially given your audience. Right. But honestly, it just... Even all the controversy in the NFL about people kneeling during the anthem and so on and how upset people got about that. My thing was, it's not a big deal. It's the flag. I respect the flag, but it's not a big deal. It's the flag. I respect the flag, but it's not a sacred symbol.

You're not committing blasphemy. You know, it's cloth, right? It stands for something. Of course, that's very deep and important. But it's not, I don't know, just the fervor people have. And I guess that wouldn't bother me so much if not for the fact that I don't see quite the same fervor from Christians about Christian symbols and about respect for the cross. I just don't see it the same. There seems to be more sometimes for the flag and for our patriotic symbols. And so sometimes I think that stuff has supplanted Christianity.

And we've come up with a sort of Americanism religion that troubles me a little bit. In fact, you hear from a lot of Christians that sometimes they're a little worried about the reverence people have for the cross because it could be idol worship, you know, that kind of thing. Or you don't want to have statues, you know, kneel in front of a statue is idol worship.

Yet these are the same people who say, you have to have the correct stance, you stand in front of the flag. How is that not idol worship then? I don't think either one is idol worship, don't get me wrong. But it seems like it can become idol worship when you're placing reverence for the flag over reverence for sacred christian symbols the other weird thing i've found is just this mass produced christian entertainment which i wasn't i didn't see in australia i moved here i remember being in walmart and seeing like t-shirts

talking about christianity and yeah Christianity and then Christian bookstores everywhere and at first I thought this is really great and I suppose in a sense it could be great but there's something about it I find troubling you talk about that in the book you have this very funny line I laughed out loud where you talked about God's not dead being the most torturous invention since the Inquisition

come up with by a Christian or something? Did I say that? You did. It was very good. You probably worded it better, but yeah. Yeah, I'm not a fan of a lot. I agree with you. I'm not a fan of, which anyone who's read the book can tell, that I'm not a fan of a lot of the Christian entertainment.

I don't like that Christianity has become a brand. I think that has a debasing effect. And it reduces it into this, you know, it's like, it's like its own genre now, which I don't, I don't think it should be.

And it bothers me. And this isn't the case. There are good, there are good Christian bands out there. There are a few good Christian movies, a few. And when I say Christian movies, I mean the Christian TM trademark like in that genre of Christian film.

A few of them are decent. Most of them are utter trash. It's funny because I almost wouldn't want to put The Passion of the Christ in there because it's so good. I almost don't want to call it a Christian film. That I don't actually put in that category because it was made by a legitimate film director, Mel Gibson,

one of our great directors we have in Hollywood. Real actors, a real script, and it was just a very well-made movie. And yes, it was telling us the story of Christ, of his passion, but it's a real film um there's i think it's that's sort of separate from some of these other christian movies where it seems like these production companies they don't really care about the quality they're just they're just throwing this stuff out there because they know that the audience is going to eat it up it doesn't matter if it's good or not and so they don't put any effort into it and it's just in a lot of these movies horrible acting the script effort into it. And it's just, in a lot of these movies, horrible acting, the script is ridiculous.

It's just, it's a bad quality product. And it seems to me very cynical because these production companies, they don't care about the quality. I would think if you're telling a story, you're making a Christian movie, a Christian song, you're talking about God,

you're talking about faith, you should put even more effort into the quality, given the subject. You should want to honor God. But that's not what I see. And sometimes the quality increases in one aspect of a movie, like the film aspect or even the acting, but then the script's terrible.

So like God's Not Dead would be a good example of that. I love what you said. You talked about, you said, I'm not going to call the characters by name since the film creators or the script writer didn't bother giving them a personality. Yeah.

Maybe I, I think I went on pretty long. You did. It was fantastic. Cause I mean, we all agree it's a bad movie. It's, if you meet a real life atheist,

he's not going to yell, I hate God because my mother died of cancer. And that's, that's the other problem I had with that book, with that movie and the book, I guess I didn't read the book. Aside from all everything I've already said is that, yeah, I think it really does the opposite

of what it should do. With a story like that, where it's all about defending the faith against an atheist, that's what the story is. The service that that movie should provide for the viewer as a christian is to equip you um to go out into the real world and actually have these debates and conversations but i think it does the exact opposite because if somebody gets their ideas

of what an atheist is and what atheist arguments are like based on that movie uh they're going to go out there and get slaughtered because this is you know this is supposedly that this is a a professor i think he's like this is a a professor i think he's like what is a philosophy professor um and he's supposed to be this you know a very very menacing figure intellectual giant and uh his his arguments are are absurd easily batted down and yeah it takes just a couple of go rounds before he's screaming i know i just hate god no atheist is ever going to say that in an argument Of course they're not going to say that

And then even The caricatures like there was the one character The atheist boyfriend Of the And he's at dinner With his girlfriend And his girlfriend tells him that she has cancer And he says some his answer

is something like why are you bothering me with this or something like yeah and he dumps her there on the spot dumps her on the spot because she because all atheists are horrible human beings clearly he dumped her for having cancer yeah over dinner now i get the point you're trying to say that atheism can cause selfishness because you know there's it's not atheists aren't all a bunch of psychopaths this guy's a psychopath but in this movie all the atheists are psychopaths or morons and that's the only kind and again if you go out into the culture to defend the faith thinking that's what you're going to run into you're going to get eaten alive and you're going to embarrass yourself and the faith um because you know just try it try going out equip with

those arguments and engage an atheist a smart one and and he will he's it's it's gonna not go well for you yeah um i want to talk about kind of raising our kids in a secular culture i speak to a lot of people every year i i think i speak to more people about pornography than any other human like in live settings which is a weird thing if aliens ever came to earth and you're getting the guinness for that i could i should write to them but i see like the destruction that goes on in these these young people and it's leading me to become more vocal about the fact that i think many parents should face the fact that homeschooling might just be their best option. And I want to get your take on this and your honest take on this.

So feel free to push back because this is something I'm trying to think through and I don't want to lay a burden on parents that's unnecessary. But it seems to me that if you're a good parent who doesn't give their child a smartphone because you love them, if you then send them to a school they'll be ostracized by the time they're like nine eight or nine there'll be something like a social leper where they won't be engaged in the conversation that everybody's having and they're going to feel completely and utterly like an outcast and i'm not saying maybe that's possible but um i'm of the opinion no parent should be buying their children a smartphone i think if porn didn't exist then i still wouldn't buy my child a smartphone because i'd like her to

learn how to journal not figure out which filter makes her skin look good or something like that like i want to raise substantive children and so i'm finding it increasingly difficult to defend even catholic schools like typical run-of-the-mill Catholic schools. Again, push back on me. I want to learn from you here. I don't know what your opinion is on this. I haven't heard you talk about it much. I think that's a completely stupid point of view. How dare you? No, I agree. Well, a lot of, so many Catholic schools are, of course, Catholic in name only. And that's the case. You know, I grew up in the Baltimore area. There were a lot of, quite a few,

really expensive, prestigious, quote-unquote, Catholic schools. Most of them culturally. It's kind of what you're talking about. It's the same exact culture as a public school. Really no difference. And so if you're a devout Christian family, to spend all your money to send your kid to that just doesn't make any sense.

My fear, though, is that the phone is inculturating children. Yeah. Whether or not the families are good and the school is a good Catholic school. My fear is you're still sending your child into an environment like that. No, I think it's a really, yeah, I agree. I think it's a good point. I think the defense that people offer for giving their kids smartphones, the defenses are all pitiful.

In my opinion, I've never heard a good one because one of the, one of the first ones you always hear is, well, I need to be able to get ahold of them and safety reasons or whatever. Well, okay. First of all,

you can give them a flip phone. I have no problem. You know, you want to give your nine year old a flip phone. Fine. Because that's all they can do is make a phone call. It's like having a pay phone around in their pocket. Who cares?

No problem there. And that solves the problem. They can get a hold of you anytime. And now, of course, there was the dark old ages where all you had was pay phones and kids went out and we survived. So I don't think it's even necessary. But if you want to do that, fine. There's no reason why your kid has to have internet access carried around in his pocket at all hours of the day. But you're right.

It's completely changed the culture for children. And it does make them an outcast if they don't have it because they can't participate in the culture. It also means that when they come home from school, they don't escape that culture. It used to be that you go home from school and you're done with that and now you're with your family. And if you were being bullied, you had some way

to kind of be loved, some safe haven, yeah. But now you bring your friends and you bring all of that trash and garbage with you in your pocket, home, and you can't get away from it. And I know the standard complaint, cliched complaint, is that people say, well, back in my day, we used to go and run out in the woods and kids don't do that anymore. My kids do.

Right. And so do my kids. But it's true, though, that a lot of kids don't. And that is a big problem because that's so essential. Yeah. Play, you know, going and and figuring out how to entertain yourself my you know my kids will go run outside in our house here and uh you know they're running around and they're using their imagination and playing games and stuff um

and the fact that so many kids don't do that i think is is really disturbing yeah yeah the freedom to be bored to develop an interior life. I had someone once say that the interior life is that inner conversation that goes on within us when we're alone. But if we're constantly plugged into the internet, we're never alone. We have other people's voices and opinions being pumped into ours and we don't develop to be like a solid, interesting human being. I don't think that's my fear. Yeah. I agree with you. I think that that's, that's actually one of the big, uh, I've come to believe that's one of the big dangers of the internet is how it deprives you of having an interior life, an inner life, because the internet does

all your thinking for you. And I know I can fall into this, especially because what I do for a living, I have to be on the internet but you know you have a thought you think about something and then you say I want to go look that up I'm gonna google it and and all of a sudden now you've you've given over your thought process to google or wikipedia or youtube or something and you're just going to follow it around it's going to just give you a bunch of facts and information and everything and then eventually you're going to forget about that and now you're just entertaining yourself uh soaking in all of these images and everything when And then eventually you're going to forget about that. And now you're just entertaining yourself, uh, soaking in all of these images and everything. When, if you hadn't done that, you would have had that thought and you're thinking about it and you're dwelling on

it and you're developing ideas and everything. And, um, you are, you're becoming an interesting person who has a, who has a perspective, has a point of view. What I've noticed with a lot of people these days, they don't really have their own perspective or point of view. What I've noticed with a lot of people these days, they don't really have their own perspective or point of view. They just inherit it from cable news or from the internet. If you ask them what they think about something, they'll give you the standard, depending on where they are. If they're Republican, they'll give you that.

And you kind of know exactly what they're going to say. But if you were then to dig into that, as you said earlier, well, what do you mean by that? They have nothing. You might have nothing there, yeah. There's nothing under that. It's just that they have that response, that script that they follow. And it can be kind of disturbing sometimes when you get used to it because you almost know exact phrases that are going to come out

depending on what the script is. Yeah, do you experience this on your speaking tours when you encounter people who are kind of big Ben Shapiro fans and they start giving you their thoughts? Or do you find that they tend to be typically more well-informed than the regular crowd? Well, of course, Daily Wire fans are some of the most interesting. I wanted to give you that opportunity, yeah.

Some of the most interesting, intelligent people in the world. Aside from them, though. Yeah, those other idiots. Yeah, aside from that, I that i think yeah generally you find um as the way it should be as people you know we shouldn't fall so neatly all the time into these two separate camps and there are two opinions on this subject and i believe that or i believe that if you're a real person you should have all kinds of different views and your views change over time because you're thinking about it and you're back and forth on some things and that's okay

and you don't really fit neatly into into into boxes quite so much i think that's the way it is if you're a real person who's actually thought about these things i think that's why people in the conservative camp have a lot of respect for people like uh dave rubin you know he doesn't fall neatly into one side or the other. He's living in a homosexual marriage, but he also believes in things that people on the left wouldn't believe. Yeah, and there are a few people, at least in new media on the internet, that have a reputation that way, which I do have a lot of respect for. At least that you're just thinking about it.

What's the most controversial view you hold as a conservative that people who are Daily Wire subscribers the most controversial view you hold as a conservative that people who are Daily Wire subscribers wouldn't necessarily agree with? Let me think about that. Well, I don't like dogs. That's a big one. Are you allergic?

Or you just don't like them in general? I think people are way too obsessed with their pets so i'm very agreed yeah i'm anti-pet and that gets me into trouble but maybe that doesn't really count um you know i i think uh uh things like student loans you know issues like that um i guess the the standard thing for conservatives is to say, well, the government has no role in it, and you're deep in student loan debt, it's your fault, pay it off kind of thing. I've come to believe that maybe government does have a role in addressing this issue, which that doesn't quite fit neatly into the box.

So that's kind of what we were talking about before of the common good conservatism versus libertarian thing. Does government have a role in some of these issues actually? And I think that it does. So yeah, and I've been back and forth on different issues, things like capital punishment and that sort of thing. And with the way it works these days, if you find yourself wavering,

you don't know exactly how you feel about something, I know for me it can make you almost uncomfortable. You feel like there's something wrong, like you have to pick a side. But maybe it's okay not to pick a side. I like that, yeah. Maybe it's okay to, like, you know, I don't really know. Something like capital punishment, I'm kind of, I'll be back and forth on it, and I think I'm this way, and then someone presents an argument.

I'm like that too right now, yeah. Yeah, you think, well, maybe there's just good arguments on both sides and that's okay. So you're just not sure. It's okay to be not sure on some of these things. Well, in the final chapter, you say something to the effect of people might blame me for this being a very pessimistic book or accuse me of writing a very pessimistic book.

And then you go on to talk about the virtue of hope and things like this. What would your advice be? And again, you'll probably be humble here and say you're not qualified, about the virtue of hope and things like this. What would your advice be? And again, you'll probably be humble here and say you're not qualified, but since you wrote the bloody book, you've got to give us something. What would your advice be to single men and women and families in the world who are trying to be courageous Christians? Before we get to that, though, before I forget this, I have to say this.

One of the things you said there is you're pretty sure that most Christians have sacrificed nothing. That's one of the things you said. Maybe I'm not sure that most christians have sacrificed nothing that's one of the things you said maybe i'm not quoting that directly yeah i think that's pretty much a direct and i'm like that's totally me i'll chat with another person in ministry and they'll say if that's what i'm in i don't know and they'll say to me something like you know matt if you weren't in ministry you could be making a lot more money and i'm like i don't think i could like this is so i'm very aware that money and my religion now is tied up together yeah right that if i choose to apostatize tomorrow that i would lose a lot of people who are supporting me to do this work

i worry about how biased that makes me and assessing different truth claims and things like that yeah um yeah and maybe you've dealt with that too with realizing that like you and i do similar work you have a much larger audience of course but like you could kind of sit in your underwear and talk about things and people like yeah great and that's how you get paid yeah yeah but where am i really sacrificing and where am i even willing to sacrifice sometimes i wonder if it's having conversations like this where we speak openly against certain lifestyles and sins that may have google shut us down for yeah i think yeah that's people will say to me often especially when i go out and speak and things will say you know how do you have so much courage and your convictions and

deal with all the hate and everything. And I admire that so much. And it always makes me uncomfortable because I think honestly, it really takes no courage at all because, um, I, I know whatever I say. Yeah. Some people are going to be angry,

but there's also going to be a big audience of people applauding me. And, um, I'll go out and do an event and there's a whole bunch of people supporting me and saying very nice things. I'm making money. So it doesn't really take courage at all, honestly. And I also worry about,

I want to make sure that I'm not saying things just for the applause, because that could be a real temptation as well. I think that to just have a normal job, you know, working somewhere in that scenario to stand up for your faith and to say some of the things that I say, that takes a lot more guts because you're not going to have the whole chorus of people applauding you necessarily. You could lose your job. I'm not going to lose my job for saying controversial things. That is my job. So I think... Has there been a temptation, though,

for you to kind of tone down some of the things that you think Google and Facebook could shut you down for or not? Yeah. Yeah, there is that temptation. I would like to say that I haven't actually,

I haven't succumbed to it. I still... But even that, I can't say that that's courage. I think I also have the advantage of being uh naturally antagonistic and and just sort of a contrarian and and and just kind of a bastard in some ways so when i when i start to feel like i don't know if i should say this it's going to upset the wrong people then the other side of me says that i should say even more because

of that i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna say it louder and i'm gonna dwell on it for 10 days now just just because of that and so that's kind of you know what, I'm going to say it louder and I'm going to dwell on it for 10 days now, but just, just because of that. And so that's kind of my instinct. I don't consider that courage. It's just a person might even be a personality defect. I don't know,

but it's worked out for me. Um, so yeah, but there is, there is that temptation, especially on the social media sites and Twitter, a lot of this gender stuff. Um,

people are getting kicked off of, uh, off the platform, uh, for saying, for saying a lot of stuff that i say all the time and uh and that's uh you know when you're when you're in the do what we do if you get kicked off a social media platform some people think it sounds like not a big deal

but that could be the end of your career if i got if i got kicked off facebook and twitter i'm done that's it for me i gotta go do you and your wife talk about that sometimes yeah we talk about it i mean i i it's a it's just a worry you have but there's nothing you can do about it you're kind of at their mercy and they can shut you down they've done it you know they've picked out they haven't picked me out yet but they picked out some conservatives and said we're gonna finish you and they do and those people disappear and you never hear from them again it's kind of creepy yeah i mean this is my fear of being on patreon like that's how i'm able to afford to fly up here and do all this stuff and do these shows. It's because I've got awesome supporters who are supporting me.

But Patreon has been known, right, in the past to – I don't know if you know this or not because I know you're not on it. But they've canceled certain people and have just kicked them off. And that's when Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson decided to quit Patreon. And I hope that maybe Patreon learned their lesson that they can't just kick people off for no good reason. Yeah, I would hope so. But I also think that these sites, I don't know, they've had success in doing it.

I mean, you look at someone like, I don't know, someone like Milo Yiannopoulos. Now I have a lot of differences with him and his ideologically and in other ways. But he was like the biggest star in conservative media for about a year and all over the place. And then all the platforms said, no, you're done. And he was done.

And you never hear from, you know, I don't know. What is he doing now? I have no idea. I don't know. But that could happen to any one of us. And if it happened to me, I'd be going to Walmart or something like that. I'll be working at Stock and Shelves. I don't know what I would do.

And if it happens, it happens. I also just told myself. That's good. Well, I think that is a way that you can choose to follow Christ and speak truth. Because you were honest there. I've been the same where you kind of experience that tension within you think well maybe i should like steer away from these topics about how like sodomy is clearly a violent act or something like that um that that gay marriage

isn't actually marriage things like this um but then you think well i'm just gonna bloody well say it because i don't want to be cowed into silence. Yeah. And what I know about myself is if I get to the point where I start making all these compromises and not saying what I actually think just so that I can maintain the platform, I just won't be able to live with myself.

I'm going to be depressed and I'm going to feel like there's no point in what I'm doing. And it's just going to feel hollow. So I don't want i can't you know if i if i knew that i could tone down this that and this and if i did that i would skyrocket in success and i'd be all over fox news and all this stuff um i would certainly feel tempted in that direction but i also just think about what that life would be and it would just feel so pointless um yeah that's a good way to put it. I changed questions.

They're on the spot there. Sorry. The question I want to kind of begin to close with was your advice for families in the world who are trying to follow Christ, trying to be faithful to the church's teaching in a culture that's very confusing and in a church that's increasingly confusing. I think, yeah, this is always always it's always hard because I get these questions a lot about practical advice

and like I'm just good at pointing out the things that are going bad I'm just here to tell you that everything's screwed up it's up to you to figure out what to do about it

no I think so with stuff like this I don't think that there is a practical one two three four five step plan type of thing. There's certainly no switch that can be flipped. But so it has to be a little bit broader and more abstract in some ways.

But I do think that we have to start by doing an internal assessment. Think about all of the claims that we make as Christians. A lot of startling and extraordinary claims, let's be honest. And so start by thinking, okay, do I actually believe this stuff? And that's not a perfunctory automatic thing. I mean, really think, do you actually believe this? Yeah, it's a scary question. Right.

Actually think about it. And you might find, man, not really. I don't. Okay. Then you don't. You're not really a Christian then. And now I guess go forward with that reality. See how that feels. Live that truth as the kids like to say these days. And I think it's an important step because if you live the emptiness of that reality, you know, and you've confronted who you actually are, I think that's going to be helpful in the end and it might steer you back towards the truth. But if you discover, no, no, I really do believe this. I really do. Okay, well, that truth, these things that you say, should have implications in every aspect of your life.

It should infiltrate everything that you do. There's nothing that could be impervious to it. There's nothing that we can keep in a box in the corner and say, well, that's irrelevant to this. Because we're talking about a lot of things. We're talking about eternity. We're talking about what happens after you die, heaven and hell, all these things. We're talking about eternity. We're talking about what happens after you die, heaven and hell, all these things. And so I think then it's just a matter of trying to live as if you believe these things, which you do believe, right?

And then how is you and your wife choosing to raise your children that maybe you look at other Christian families in the world and you're glad that you're doing it differently? Well, I think we're not sending them into public school. That's a big thing. We're homeschooling them. That's one choice that I think is a very important part of this. I know some people can't homeschool. Some people really can't.

Yes. So I understand that. But if it's a choice that you can feasibly make even if it takes a sacrifice which it does for all of us to do it wrestle with it at least that's what i like to say to parents like maybe i'm crazy maybe you're right maybe i'm just a bunker mentality over the top you know okay that's possible but it's also possible that i'm not overreacting and i'm not being hyperbolic and you should seriously wrestle with this before right coming to a conclusion exactly and so so wrestle with it I think if you do as a Christian

I think you'll come to the conclusion that it's um something that you should do if you can and so that's that's you know of course one thing that we're doing and um trying to you know they say you shouldn't keep your kid in a bubble. I kind of disagree with that. I think that actually you should, especially at young ages. You know, I can't, my kids are, my oldest kids are six. So it's hard for me. I can't speak as much to people that have kids that are 15 and 16. But I know it's a little bit different.

But especially at the younger ages, I think you do as much as you can. You wrap them in a protective bubble, for lack of a better term. Well, if there's a storm outside, you're right to shelter your kids. That might be another way of thinking of it. Yeah, and there's a cultural storm in many ways. So our job right now is to shelter them,

to provide them that safe place where they're, where they're loved. And you know, because we, you know, we love them. We care about their, their fate, their eternal fate, as well as their physical safety. And there aren't many people in the world who do, you know, that's our job as parents, you know? And we're going to equip them, put them in the armor of God. But they have to grow into that armor.

It's not going to fit them right away. And that's a process that's going to take time. And then once they've been formed in the faith, in that safe environment, then you send them out into the world. Right. I've heard some people say, well, I should send my kids to public or even this Catholic school that's not very Catholic because they ought to be salt and light. Yeah. I've heard some people say, well, I should send my kids to public or even this Catholic school that's not very Catholic

because they ought to be salt and light. I hate that mentality. I think it's totally wrong. I do too. I guess if you're in the position where you have to send your kid to public school because you're a single parent and you can't afford a Christian school,

you can't homeschool, that kind of thing, maybe this is something that you say to yourself, like, okay, it's silver lining maybe. Okay maybe okay fine if you're looking for a silver lining but but the reality is unfortunately um most kids are not going to be salt and light to anybody um they're going to just they're not going to go out and convert the heathen masses they're going to be converted by the heathen masses because most kids do not have the moral fortitude to stand up against that to be in an environment where their faith is attacked implicitly and explicitly constantly you know eight hours a day and then beyond because the phones like we've been talking about and to withstand all that most kids don't have that fortitude most adults don't have that fortitude

absolutely so it's just we're asking so much of our kids and i think it's it's simply unfair to i agree i just interviewed dr andrew swafford the interview will come out after this one We're asking so much of our kids, and I think it's simply unfair to them. I agree. I just interviewed Dr. Andrew Swofford. The interview will come out after this one. And he teaches a doctor of theology at Benedictine College, and he said that from his experience as a teacher seeing different children, he said there's a night and day difference between those who've been kind of homeschooled and those who go to school. He said he thinks that your children would fare much better if you just took them out this is his words and i think i

agree with him if you just took them out of school and again of course there are exceptions nor neither of us are saying that if you took them out of school and um just read good books to them on the couch they'd be in a far better place yeah i think that i think there's well if it's if it's between this and public school, they'd be better off just sending them into the woods to be raised by squirrels. They'd be better off the public school than that. But, yeah, I think so. As someone who went to public school for, as I said, my whole childhood,

I honestly think I learned almost nothing in that environment. I mean, even aside from the cultural issues and spiritual and moral, there's also just the way that, which is a whole different thing, but the way that they educate kids, the way they go about doing it, I think is simply ineffective for so many of those kids,

which is why they put them on drugs and everything because it's the only way to make it work. And if you're not the kind of kid who can sit there for six hours and just memorize and regurgitate information, which I'm not. I'm still not that kind of person. You're really just not going to learn much. And that was my experience.

Well, thanks very much for letting us interview you. Tell our listeners and viewers where they can find more about you and where they can get your book, Church of Cowards. Well, Church of Cowards, you can find wherever books are sold. Amazon, go to Barnes & Noble if they still have it out there. But yeah, I would go to Amazon for that. And Daily Wire, that's where I am active there. You can find my podcast, The Matt Walsh Show there as well. Cool. Thanks so much. Hey, thanks a lot.