Pints With Aquinas - Rejecting Secular Dogma w/ (Best Selling LGBTQ Author) Matt Walsh

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

I chat with Matt Walsh (from the Daily Wire) about wokeism, leftism, his interview with Dr. Phil, Twitter banning him, his thoughts on the Pope's crackdown on the Latin Mass, and when he'll convert Ben Shapiro. Join our Locals community for daily morning podcasts: https://mattfradd.locals.com/ Get Matt's new book, Johnny the Walrus: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1956007059/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_TSZA9TAC9AEK1KJE96AN Subscribe to Matt's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/c/MattWalsh 

Hey, Matt Fradd here, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pintswithaquinas.com slash give or at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you so much for considering. Matt, g'day. How's it going? Good. Good. How are you? Doing well. Sorry about the technical difficulties. It's nice to have you back on the show. Yeah, yeah. Great to be here. Thanks for what a sweet baby gang mean. Everybody's talking about it and I'm out of the loop. Well, people on the baby gang know the first rule of the sweet baby gangs. We don't we don't we don't talk about it. Well, we talk about it. I just can't we can't explain where it came from.

It's a it's a movement that just formed. And there's a lot of mythology behind it. But best to where it came from. It's a movement that just formed, and there's a lot of mythology behind it. Best to keep it cryptic. Yeah, historians disagree about its actual origins, I suppose. Congrats on being on Dr. Phil. I was so shocked to see that you were on there, watched all the clips that you had put out,

and was just so grateful that someone was calling a spade a spade or a woman a woman. How did you feel going into that? Were you nervous? Yeah, it was, I thought it was a lot of fun doing it. I wouldn't say that I was nervous going into it. I was, you know, it's kind of an unknown. I knew that I'd be walking into a hostile environment, at least in terms of the other panelists that are on the stage with me. And I knew that I'd be in

front of a literal physical audience that was not receptive to what I was saying. And I was right about all of that. The unknown was I wasn't really sure, you know, Dr. Phil himself and his people behind the scenes, how would that all play out? And actually, I found that as far as that goes, they were very fair. And so I was impressed with that. And I thought he kind of played referee and was just kind of fielding the questions back and forth.

I thought he did a pretty good job of that. But the thing is, our position on this topic is so basic and so simple and so obviously right that there's really no reason to be nervous. You could walk into a debate with anybody because your point of view is so simple. I mean, if it was a more complex topic that required me to actually be smart to address it, then I think I would have been, that would have given me some pause before walking into an environment like that.

Did they cut out much of what you had to say? Did you kind of watch it when it released and thought, goodness, they cut out that excellent point I made? Yeah, unfortunately they did. Well, there was, I would say, they cut a lot of stuff for time, so there's probably at least 20 minutes of conversation that didn't make it onto air. And they cut points that everybody made. The one thing that didn't make it onto air. And they cut it to points that everybody made.

The one thing that didn't make it in that really was a gut punch is that at the end of the show, they brought in this woman who I think identifies as non-binary, but she's a woman, and she has a child who she's raising genderless. And so she got a chance to talk about raising her genderless child. And at the very end, I had a chance to jump in there and address some points that she made, including, you know, for much of the show, they kept saying that, you know,

there's a difference between sex and gender, these are two different things, which, of course, and I addressed that during the show, but the whole claim is it's nonsensical, number one. And number two, they always contradict themselves as far as that goes because then she comes along and says, oh, well, my child's birth certificate, there's an X. There's no sex listed. Well, hold on a second.

But I thought you said gender is what's fluid. Sex on the birth certificate is your biological sex. So now he gets to determine that too. So I was able to call her on that. And then I also asked her, if your child was able to choose his gender, then have you also given him the option to choose his race? And if not, then why not?

And she said she wouldn't dignify that question with an answer. But it was unfortunate that didn't make it in there. But most of it was- This didn't make it in there but most of it this is a difficult topic right because I mean you saw that magazine a New York magazine article of that Sheila who cut a chunk out of her leg and fashioned something resembling a penis and was talking about her surgery I know you spoke about that but I mean you hear about that I just I honestly want to

give that woman a hug and be like what the bloody hell has led you to this point you know so it's like it's a difficult thing because you want to give that woman a hug and be like, what the bloody hell has led you to this point? So it's a difficult thing because you want to have compassion on those who are mentally ill, while at the same time really going after with I think great passion and ferocity, those who are perpetuating this BS lie that's really putting a lot of,

just messing up a lot of kids. How do you find walk in that line? Yeah, I think that there are certainly people who have mental problems, and the woman that you mentioned, I mean, you could even tell, if I remember her story correctly, I mean, going back years,

even before the trans stuff was introduced, there were indications that this is a very troubled person. But that's kind of a small portion of this overall conversation. And the people who are pushing this stuff, the portion who are actually confused about it, I think, is pretty small. I think most of it is just it's ideological.

It's a whole lot of narcissism. I mean, the people now that are claiming to be non-binary and say, well, I don't identify with any label at all. I wouldn't even call that mental illness. I don't think they're really confused. I think they're just so high on their own fumes, and they're so narcissistic that they just think that their inner life is so complex and interesting and fascinating that it can't be contained by any one label.

And so that's really what they're trying to say. And so when it comes to that, I think we go after it hard. And then also the people who are just pushing this on kids, pushing it on society, a mom who is imposing this on her child, as far as that goes, I have absolutely no mercy at all. And I don't think we should. Did you notice that look that the university professor,

God have mercy, may my children never go to university. Do you remember that look that the university professor gave you when you said you care about kids? It was like something vicious flashed in her eyes for a second. Yeah, yeah. I don't mean to psychologize, but here we go. She did, and I also thought it was interesting, because I didn't notice to psychologize, but here we go. She did. And I also thought I was intrigued,

because I didn't notice that at the time, but watching the clip back, because she challenged me on the typical thing of, why do you care so much? And I tell you, one thing about that that I wish I had a chance to say, but you can only say so much, is that the first point to that, when they give you the, why do you care so much routine, is, well, you want me to care. What are you talking about?

I care so much because you want me to. You're the one out here talking about it all the time. This is your job to talk about this. You came on Dr. Phil to talk about it also. So you obviously also care about it. It's just that you want me to care about it in a certain way and arrive at certain conclusions that I failed to arrive at.

And that's what you're really upset about. But I thought it was interesting when I gave her the three reasons why I care. Because first of all, it's truth, which I care about. And I care about kids who are having this imposed on them. And I also care about the women who are being, you know, in the way they're being treated with it. But when I said, when I said, well, truth, you know,

she didn't, she didn't say anything. And then, and then when I said, well, I care about women, that's when she said, oh, I care about women too. So that was the one where she said she cared about it. But the other two sort of conspicuous, she didn't even claim to care about those things. Do you think that using terms like biological male and biological female concede linguistically

that there are such things as non-biological males and females? Sort of like we call gay marriage, gay marriage, even though it doesn't exist, it's not a thing. It's two men together pretending to be married. And I don't think we address that anymore because one, we're not allowed to. And two, it feels like the ship sailed on that one. But I wonder if we should just be saying instead, this is a man who thinks that she's a woman instead of saying biological males and biological females.

What do you think? Yeah, I know. I think that's a good point. I have made the same point myself. I think it's similar to, in fact, I would equate the term biological male to traditional marriage, where you're putting that qualifier on it, like there's any other kind of marriage. And yet, yeah, I still use the term. And some of that is just kind of a reflex, and you kind of lapse into it. And also, sometimes it's a way of sort of emphasis.

It's like saying that you're standing on solid ground. I mean, what other kind of ground could there be but it's all especially if you're standing on it. So biological is just a way of like emphasizing, no, this is biology. But I do think that overall as just a strategy and a way of being clear in our language, we should probably try to move away from that

and stop putting a qualifier on it. My fear is that YouTube are telling us what we can and can't discuss and that our sort of vacuum when it comes to this topic, even from conservative commentators, Christian commentators is going to lead Christians to gradually accept the transgender myth the way in which they've accepted the gay marriage myth. So now that because it's the only place they're kind of chatting about these things is on YouTube and online Unfortunately, the priest or the pastor isn't addressing this very often And so, you know today if I come out and say, you know, sodomy is a sin People are outraged and cannot believe that the church would still teach that and my fear is you've got all these up-and-coming

YouTubers who were just terrified of saying things that will get them banned and I get that that the church would still teach that. And my fear is you've got all these up and coming YouTubers who are just terrified of saying things that will get them banned. And I get that, but I also don't want to kind of fall into that trap, you know what I'm saying? What do you think the balance is? Because you recently got banned off Twitter for saying some things that we're unhappy with.

Yeah, I'm concerned about it as well. And that's why on one hand it's encouraging when I went on Dr. Phil and the reaction was so overwhelmingly positive. And almost everyone I've talked to about it is, I totally agree with you, and so on and so forth. And yet, everyone apparently knows how crazy all this stuff is, and yet it's still happening. And if you listen to kind of the national conversation in media and on the internet, you wouldn't know that like 90% of people are against it.

And so that it does, you know, on one hand it's encouraging, on the other hand it worries me a little bit because I'm thinking, well, hold on a second, if we all know this, then what's going on exactly? And I think people have been kind of beaten metaphorically into silence, eventually maybe not so metaphorically. And that's why it also troubles me when I see, and I saw someone, Ali Stuckey made this point on Twitter today that I agree with, which is even things that seem small

but really are not small at all, when you have conservative, allegedly conservative media outlets who are reporting on, let's say, the trans swimmer at UPenn, Leah Thomas, who's competing against women, and they're obviously against it, and they'll talk about how we don't want men to take over women's sports, but in the articles that they publish, they're still using the preferred pronoun for the man. It's calling him a she. So it's things like that where we're kind of buying into the language and compromising on this and that point until

eventually you look around and we've given up the whole field. When did you discover that you'd been suspended from Twitter? Walk us through that. How did you hear about it, and what was that like? Yeah, I guess it was a couple Friday nights ago, and I was at the studio. I was just about to go on with Tucker Carlson

and talk about something else, some other subject. And I just happened to, I think actually I went, I was going to Twitter to like tweet and say, hey, check me, I'll be on Tucker Carlson. And then I got the message that came up saying that I had been engaged in hate speech speech and then provided me the two examples of the alleged hate speech. And that's how I found out about it.

And then after the fact, we did try to get more of an explanation, as futile as I know that is. But it's like, can you explain to me how exactly this qualifies as hate speech? And they were never able to do that. Because the way that they define hate speech. And they were never able to do that, because the way that they define hate speech, and they tell you this when they let you know about your suspension,

is if you engage in harassment or make threats against somebody, that's hate speech. But in the tweets in question, I, of course, did neither of those things. I certainly didn't threaten anybody. And I wasn't even speaking to any individual directly. So how could I possibly have been harassing someone? I didn't mention any names, you know, and yet that's

still that's still counts as harassment in their book. Yeah, I was flown out by a group at Google to speak on pornography from a secular angle. And when I arrived, I got a phone call saying that I had been banned because I was an Islamophobe and a homophobe I'm not particularly scared of either of those things nor am I hateful towards those groups. It's It's really a pain But I guess we shouldn't complain. This is just this is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah and We should maybe just take it in stride, huh? and we should maybe just take it and destroy it, huh? Some have said you're a bit of a coward

for taking down those tweets, because my understanding was that Twitter said to you, once you take down these offensive tweets, we'll let you back on. And I wasn't actually sure what you'd do about that, whether you would just be like, you know, give them the finger and say, I refuse to, but you did take them down.

Have you received much criticism for what some have kind of maybe not many perhaps But phrased as you kind of bowing to Twitter a Little bit. I find the criticism be a little bit silly Maybe some people don't understand the behind-the-scenes but one one thing you have to understand here and I didn't actually know this myself until it happened to me is that They they censor the tweets before they tell you to take them down. They've already done it themselves. They've already censored them. And then they say, kind of as just this ritual act

that you have to delete them, it's sort of a moot point for all practical reasons at that point. And then the other question is just, all right, well, if Twitter was telling me I have to issue an apology and renounce what I've said, well, that's a totally different situation. Of course, I would never do that.

I would literally rather be dead than come out and renounce my belief in biological science or any kind of truth. But in this case, you're not required to make any kind of statement, to admit anything. They're just saying, we've already censored it. We just need you to hit that button there. And so you can take a stand and, as you say, raise your finger to Twitter. But is that really raising a finger to Twitter?

Because then your stand is, OK, I'm just not going to Twitter anymore. You're erased from the platform. They've gotten rid of your voice, which is what they want. So you can raise the finger all you want, but you're giving them exactly what they want, which is you gone. They don't want you on the platform.

And so I guess you could storm out, and then people will be kind of impressed. And they'll, people will be impressed for a minute and will say, oh, he's stuck by his principles. But then your voice is just off of that platform, and it's a powerful platform that can be used. So you could do that, or you can just say, all right, I'll click the button,

and then I'll go back to Twitter, and I'll just keep saying exactly what I said before, which is what I did. Eventually, they might not give me a choice anymore and say, well, you're done, you're banned permanently. If they do that, they do it. I'm not going to stop speaking the truth, but if they need me to jump through what I think are

kind of meaningless hoops so that I can continue using their platform to undermine their own ideological position, then sure, I'll do that. I mean, if I had been, the Dr. Phil thing happened a week later, and probably a lot of those clips would have gotten out there even if I wasn't on the platform. But being on the platform, I was able to push those clips out and lots of people were able to see them.

That's the kind of thing you can do on Twitter. That's why I use it. And why I'm not, I think it's fine, these the kind of thing you can do on Twitter. That's why I use it. And why I'm not, I think it's fine, these other kind of alternative platforms that some conservatives have come up with and they're using. But this idea of we're gonna leave Twitter completely, I don't think that's the right strategy. I think it's a powerful way to get the message out

for as long as we can, and that's what I plan on doing. Yeah, and I think I heard you say you're using a leftist platform against itself, whereas if you just kind of abandon YouTube and Twitter and go over to these other platforms, which as you say are great, but if you were to abandon these most public ones, you're doing exactly what they want. Yeah, right, exactly.

But if you're going to be on the platform, again, there's no scenario where it's OK to start saying things that you know aren't true or to denounce or renounce your belief in what is true. So that's never going to be OK. But anyone who's using any of these platforms, there are certain hoops that you are jumping through in order to use them. That goes for everybody. There's a certain game that you've agreed to play, and the question becomes, you can go on a suicide mission

and just get yourself banned on purpose. I don't know what that achieves. Or you could try to play the game in a smart way and kind of game the system. And I think that's the better approach for now. What is leftism? What is wokeism? You've once said that the left is a religious cult.

I'm sympathetic to that. It sometimes seems to me that? What is wokeism? You've once said that the left is a religious cult. I'm sympathetic to that. It sometimes seems to me that CNN is to wokeism, what EWTN is to Catholicism. But what does the left mean? That's obviously a good question. Sometimes it seems even more complicated to answer a question of what is conservatism or what is the right? I think with the left, with the left, there's, from what I would say, the simplest answer is that the leftism is the worship of the self. It's the elevation of the self. That's the only coherent kind of thread that I think connects all of what we call leftism and wokeism and everything. And there are a lot of other people talk about whether they're socialist or this and that, and I think those labels play into it sometimes. But at bottom, at the root of all of this, it is a worship of the self. And it is like a religious worship because they believe that

the self, sort of the ego, transcends all boundaries and should submit to no control at all, including their own biological identity. They should be able to rewrite by force of their own will, right? And now you might point out that, well, the worship of the self, that's also the definition of Satanism, and to which I would respond, I mean, yes, exactly. So maybe that's just an easier way of putting it. Hmm, yeah, it is true. I mean, they have their own creed that kind of gets placarded out the front of their houses. They have their little tokens

that symbolize they're part of the group, just like I as a Catholic do. I wear a miraculous metal around my neck. I go to Holy Mass and things like this. And I suppose having your pronouns displayed in your Instagram profile or something like that is sort of like that. And you also have these excommunications. I mean, the Catholic Church is far more merciful to those who have been excommunicated, it

seems to me, than the woke mob when they cancel you. Yeah, I would agree. My only hesitation, although I say that it's a religious cult and it is, sometimes I worry a little bit about putting it that way because when you're using religious as a pejorative, or it sounds like you're using it as a pejorative, that's my only hesitation because it's not like there's anything wrong in and of itself, obviously,

with being religious. There are plenty of religions though that are wrong and the religion of leftism is the wrongest of them all. But I think calling it a religious cult is just, it's important because it helps us to understand what it is exactly we're dealing with here. And it also can be kind of illuminating because when you hear some of the claims that are made,

especially about something like gender, and you hear about women trapped in men's bodies and all these kinds of things, it just doesn't, it doesn't make any sense using any framework, but at least when you understand that they're really grasping for something sort of spiritual when they say that, it at least helps you understand a little bit like what they're even trying to say.

There's a line in the, one of the documents of the Second Vatican Council that says, when God is forgotten, the creature itself becomes unintelligible. And that sort of seems to me to be the root of a lot of this. If you start denying objective reality and then imposing the subjective upon objective reality, that's what a lot of this seems like to me. Yeah. upon objective reality. That's what a lot of this seems like to me. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think also that this obsession,

this obsession with labels that we, that people have now, where they identify, you know, it's not just, oh, I identify as gay or identify as trans, especially if you go to TikTok and you see what the kind of Gen Z and the younger generations, how they're, how this is filtering through for them. It's like they've got, no, I'm trans, genderqueer,

I'm also non-binary, and demisexual, and pansexual, all these different labels. And it kind of is, in a way, you can kind of see them in real time trying to make themselves coherent, trying to make sense of their own, of themselves. But in the process, they just confuse themselves even more, it seems like. How's your new book doing? Johnny the Walrus. We've got a link in the description below to those who want to get it. And I saw today that you are the number one bestseller in,

I forget what it was, humor or something? Or no longer LGBT books? Yeah, that's unfortunate. They've, I think- They eat their own, man. Yeah, I've been marginalized as the number one bestselling LGBT author in the world, but I think once I was given that title, once a bestselling LGBT author,

always a bestselling LGBT author, so I will be able to claim that for the rest of my life, and I will. But yeah, the book is the the book is still doing well and I think you know it's we were really expecting and this is one of the just weird things about big tech it's always hard to know exactly how they're gonna respond because we were really expecting that Amazon would ban the book but but they haven't in fact I guess guess they issued a statement to some LGBT news

organization that got in touch with them and said, hey, why don't you ban this thing? And they said, well, it doesn't technically violate our paid speech rules. Which it doesn't, because it's just a book about a boy who pretends to be a walrus. What's the big deal? Well, I mean, the book seems to be doing bloody well.

Did you expect it to do that well? It's hard to say that I expected to do as well as it did, mainly because I don't ever expect anything to go well. So yeah, it's done. It's done. I'd say it's probably exceeded my expectations. And I mean, it does in all seriousness. It does show.

It shows a lot of things. But I think it shows also that people are, especially when it comes to children's books and everything, parents, I mean it does in all seriousness it does show it shows a lot of things but I think it shows also that people are especially when it comes to children's books and everything parents I mean this is your parent any parent who goes to a bookstore these days especially Barnes & Noble you know you walk into the children's section it's just nothing but it's it's not just that it's skewed or biased this is extreme far-left propaganda all over the bookshelves and people are fed up with that and tired of it, looking for an alternative.

One of my supporters says, the people want to know when will we see a sequel to your groundbreaking book, Johnny the Walrus, anxiously awaiting the news? I mean, you're on a roll, you can't stop now, can you? We will definitely have to do more children's books. I don't know if it's going to be, I don't know if it'll be another adventure of Johnny or not,

or I have some ideas in the works, but we're kind of, I'm workshopping them right now. But we do, I do have a couple of projects that I'm working on that I'm pretty excited. I can't say anything about them, so it's not much of a tease, but I'm pretty excited about it. I'm sure it was in part this book

that got you onto Dr. Phil. And again, I don't want to speak for him, but I don't think, I got to think he's sympathetic to the reasonable position in having you on because he could have easily had on somebody that those three would have trounced. I mean, it's pretty remarkable that in that panel, they had three against one for one thing.

But I mean, did you get any threats after that show? And how do you know which threats to take seriously, if any? Yeah, well, that's always the $10 million question with threats. That's sort of the odd thing about it is, like I said, the reaction was really overwhelmingly positive. So maybe that kind of skewed it in my mind. It just kind of drowned out a lot of the negative.

There's plenty of negative stuff. And of course, those messages were right in line, kind of on par with the stuff that I get every single day. And my general rule of thumb with threats is, you know, you kind of have to draw a line between someone saying, oh, I hope that you die. I hope your family dies in a fire kind of thing. Those are horrible things to read and hear all the time.

But I mean, you get that all the time and you can't report all that to the police because it's not even technically a threat. It's only when someone specifically says like I'm going to come and kill you, which I've gotten those kinds of things as well, when that happens that's when you have to take it a little bit more seriously and get the law enforcement involved even though you know that you know 999 times out of a thousand these are just cowards hiding behind a screen and trying to upset you.

Obviously, your job is political commentary. There's a link below to the Matt Walsh show podcast, which everybody I'm sure already knows about. But as a Catholic, when does talking badly about politicians and celebrities like you do on your show venture into gossip? When would this be considered morally wrong, do you think? And if it's not morally wrong, how do you defend it? Well, I think with politicians,

it's hard for me to see when it would ever, I suppose it could, but with politicians, there's a lot more leeway because these are people that are, they're elected representatives of the people and they are leaders of the country. So certainly anything they do in the capacity as leaders of the country is fair game for discussion and criticism.

And I think oftentimes quite harsh criticism, but even the things that happen in their private lives. I mean, just taking one example at random, Eric Swalwell gets involved in a sexual relationship with a Chinese spy. I mean, that's, that, that, if it was your neighbor who was doing that, like maybe it wouldn't have as much relevance to your life, but this is a representative of the United States government involved in something like that, and so it becomes relevant. I think you can talk about it. With celebrities, yeah, I think there's a whole lot that happens there that just doesn't interest me.

But where it does interest me, if we're talking specifically, especially about their sexual escapades and that sort of thing, when they're taking this stuff and they're presenting it to the public, along with a message of, oh, hey, we should celebrate this, when Demi Lovato, for example, Demi Lovato comes out and she identifies as a new label every six months. But when she comes out and says, I'm pansexual and it's a great thing.

Now that becomes a topic for conversation that she has presented to us. And it's a relevant topic because this is someone influential in the culture who's promoting this sort of thing. And so I think we have reason to talk about it and be critical. How do you unplug from the 24 hour news cycle and keep your faith and family first? I think I would hate your job having to be up to date on all of these things.

It's a real luxury of mine that I get to just not care at all. Yeah, how do you unplug? How do you unwind? How do you keep sane? Unfortunately, oftentimes my answer is I just don't. So that's a really hard, I get that question all the time and I can't say that I'm very good,

especially during the week, at striking that balance. Because it's the kind of job where it doesn't, you know, it's not like a nine to five where there's an exact cutoff date and okay, I'm done with this now, especially when part of your job is to be aware of the news and everything that's happening. And then social media and the internet, just they make all this stuff bleed into every aspect of your life.

But what I will say is, certainly, weekends and that sort of thing, I'm pretty good at just putting this stuff aside. That's why it maybe sounds like a cop-up, but one thing I know for sure is that if I didn't do this for a living, I would have almost no problem just putting the phone away and never looking at it. And I know that because I'll go on vacation, for example, I just put the phone down, I don't even look at it. I don't

experience even the desire to look at it. There's nothing there at all. I can put it away easily because I know that I don't need it for my job because I'm off for a few days. So for me, it's less the compulsion to the internet for itself and more just, you know, kind of the compulsion to do my job and professional, you know. This might be an unfair question, so no need to answer it.

But I mean, you having a large platform on Twitter obviously benefits DailyWire greatly. Do you ever get pressure from daily wire to say or not say, well, to not say particular things lest you get banned? No, actually. That's the honest to God truth. It might be the case that if the answer was yes, I get that kind of pressure, I wouldn't be able to talk about

it. But it just so happens, fortunately, have the co-incidence, no, they never come along and tell me what to say. I mean, of course, we get accused of that sometimes by trolls on Twitter, where I say something, and, oh, you're only saying that because Ben Shapiro told you to, as if Ben Shapiro is texting me, I

need you to say this on your podcast. It doesn't happen that way at all, ever. So we have a leeway to just speak our mind. Now, we do have a social media team here, and part of their job is to know, you know, what the rules are, because they're always changing, and to know what kind of things are gonna get you banned. And so they'll chime in and say, sometimes,

and say like, okay, if you approach this topic and you say it this way, you'll probably get banned. Prudent, yeah. Right, so it's just, yeah, I think prudence is the way to put it. We got a couple of super chats here, one from Jacob Carter who says, "'The cult of politics has taken over modern day culture,

"'both the cult of right or of the left, "'though the cult of the left has many more members "'and views forgiveness as a sin.'" So feel free to comment or not. I've got a ton of these here. Wait, can you repeat that again? His point was the cult of politics has taken over both the left and the right.

What do you think about this? I once heard somebody say, when you no longer have metaphysics, all you're left with is politics. That is to say, perhaps we're giving way too much attention to the political, we're giving way too much attention to the political, emphasizing it too much. I think that's absolutely correct, especially it's even worse than that because it's not,

it's the emphasis isn't just on politics per se, it's on specifically on national politics. And I think it's been a problem among conservatives for a long time is that intense focus on politics, less on culture, less on family and those sorts of things. And even there it's what's everything happening in DC when really a lot of the most relevant political things that are going to affect your life directly are happening locally. But I do think that recently there's been a little bit of change with that. I mean the kind of movement with people getting involved with school boards and that sort of thing. I guess you could say that's still political to a certain extent, but that is people focusing more on what is local and what's most directly

affecting their lives and their family. And so maybe there's a shift happening there. Jesse Weyer paid $5 to say Sweet Baby Gang. Not even a question, just wanted to say sweet baby gang. That's the, I have my own cult that we're building, the SCG cult. I appreciate their commitment. Yeah. So you're a Catholic. Do you mind me asking, do you attend a Latin mass parish there in Nashville? You have to answer that. You probably don't want people to know exactly where you are, but. Yeah, I guess we have attended both as well. Okay. Would you have any opinions on Pope Francis's supposed crackdown on the Latin Mass? I think my opinions are really in line with much of the commentary that you've gotten from right-leaning Catholics on that. I think I take solace in the fact that this comes as a surprise, I think, to a lot of people who aren't Catholics,

because you probably get questions like this all the time, which is, are we allowed to disagree with the Pope when we're Catholic and that sort of thing? You know, is there is everything he says is it infallible and I take a lot of solace in the fact that that's not the case And that I am free to disagree Yeah, I do with this one quite a bit GB says Matt your show helped me to convert. So thank you very much. I don't know if he's talking about you or me I'm just gonna say me because it feels good. Could you have John Doyle come on? Possibly I don't know who that is. Somebody else just paid five dollars to say sweet baby gang. What I'd like Matt

is you just stay on for the next few hours so I can keep racking up these five dollar bills because it adds up you know. Just split it with me. Give me 250. Well look hey thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. What do you want to point people to? We got like 1,500 people watching live right now, which is pretty impressive for old pints with Aquinas. As I say, I got a link to your book below, but.

Yeah, well, johnnythewalbriss.com is where you can get that book. And you can find me on Twitter, tell your band there, at Matt Walsh blog on Twitter. And you can go to, you know, and if you want to download the podcast, best place to go is to Apple Podcasts and download it there. I just was speaking to a friend of mine the other day.

I was commenting on something Ben Shapiro said. He's like, Ben Shapiro? Dude, I'm listening to Matt Walsh. Come over here, it's way worse. So I don't know if that's a compliment or what. What are you doing to convert Ben Shapiro and Andrew Clavin? Anything? Well Michael and I both, we're constantly trying to indoctrinate and we have our own.

But it's tough with Ben especially because he's a tough guy to meet in general. Just start placing miraculous medals around his office. Yeah we sprinkle him with holy water and that sort of thing. Good. Matt, God bless you. Thank you kindly for being on the show. Have a good one. Appreciate it.

Thank you.