Pints With Aquinas - Wokeness and Catholicism w/ Seamus Coughlin

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

In this episode of Pints w/ Aquinas, I talk with Seamus Caoughlin, a political cartoon animator, about the Catholic Church and cultural “wokeness”, and how this seeps into different aspects of life. We also discuss:  - Catholicism and politics  - Abortion  - Seamus Coughlin’s political cartoons  - Family and Economics   Get my NEW book "How To Be Happy: Saint Thomas' Secret To A Good Life," out now!   SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Homeschool Connections: https://homeschoolconnections.com/matt/   GIVING Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/  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 co-producer of the show.   LINKS 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 Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas   MY BOOKS Get my NEW book "How To Be Happy: Saint Thomas' Secret To A Good Life," out now! 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

I'd like to announce my new book, How to Be Happy, St. Thomas' Secret to a Good Life. Although just about every marketing firm, self-help guru, and man on the street has an answer, very few, if any, understand true happiness. It doesn't come from power, pleasure, popularity, or possessions. So what is happiness happiness and how do we find it? In How to be Happy, I rely on the help of St Thomas Aquinas to show what will and won't bring us happiness in this life. My hope is that by making the thought of Aquinas accessible for today, my new book will be a helpful guide to a good life.

Check the link in the description of this video to get your copy today. if it was everyone's going to the party, I hope they'll have a great time. You're wishing that upon them. If it was having a real good time, it would make more sense. Or if you were noticing something, everybody's going to the party, and they seem to be... Having a good time. And good for them. Yeah, and I hope they're really...

They work hard. Having wholesome times. Seamus, it's bloody great to have you on the show. Yeah, yeah, it's great to be here. How, well, how long have you been on YouTube? That's a good question. So I've been on YouTube for about seven years now producing political animated content. I tried a little bit earlier when I was young. I was in high school. I produced cartoons that weren't really overtly political. And then when I was about 18, 19, I think I started to become more interested in openly

expressing my views on political matters. And so I just started putting them into cartoons and uploading them to my channel. It actually started because I began a small business in animation production when I was 18. I'd been teaching myself to animate since I was about 13. And I was working for different clients. I knew I wanted to target a more conservative marketplace because it's painfully underserved. And so I was working with a small conservative marketplace because it's painfully underserved. And so I was working with a small conservative news aggregate and they were having me produce comedy for them, but I would just get these notes and I wasn't happy with them. So I thought I'll just post

stuff on my own channel and take that risk. And I did, and it ended up blowing up by the grace of God and a lot of hard work. That is, that's awesome. And then I met you, I think it was about a year and a half ago, I was giving a talk in Savannah. Yes, Savannah, Georgia. And I was aware of the cartoons that you had made and thought they were really funny. Oh, thank you. And I had no idea that you were Catholic.

So I was shocked when, maybe you came up to me and you were chatting with me and you're like, hey, I have a YouTube channel as well. And everybody says that, right? So that's great. Good for you. I'm sure, you know, it might become something one day. And you're like, oh my God, you're the Freedom Tunes guys.

Just so everybody knows who's watching the live chat, we're going to play. Let's play. Let's play. Can I speak to that for a moment? It's interesting because this is a time, and we'll get into this a bit on the show, where I was sort of wrestling with my values and how many of them could really be preserved. As many know, the channel started out as being very hardcore in terms of its libertarianism. And as I've come to learn more about the Catholic faith,

I've moved to probably a more religious conservative position, but with a heavy emphasis placed on subsidiarity. So I do generally favor small government solutions, but I don't have the same underlying view of what human rights are or necessarily the role of the state that I had prior. And part of that was just discussions with other Catholics, learning more about church teaching. But I remember you and I having a fantastic conversation about that when we first met.

We spent pretty much the whole day together the next day just kind of shooting it and having a really interesting dialogue, and I hope we can replicate some of that. It's always difficult when there are cameras and you know people are watching. Conversations just don't flow as naturally, but I hope that we can sort of scratch the surface and get into some of those topics a little bit. Yeah. And just so everybody in the live stream and who's watching knows that we plan on, we plan on, I don't know, the goal would be to beat the episode I did with Trent Horn, which was three hours and 58 minutes. Well, the challenge is Trent Horn has at least three hours and 58 minutes of valuable things to say. And I just don't. That's why I make two minute

cartoons. So what we'll do is we'll just play all of your cartoons. Exactly. There's probably several hours worth of content at this point. Yeah, yeah. No, but I'm glad you pointed that out. And we'll have, of course, a chance to talk about that, about your views, libertarianism, how it's changed. Because it is interesting. When I posted this video, a bunch of people were like, you can't be a libertarian.

Libertarian isn't Catholic. I don't know if they were yelling like that. No, they were probably screaming. Most people in the comments are, especially when I'm present. You said something funny to me last night over a drink about how everyone on YouTube talks to you like... Yes.

So this is a fantastic tweet I saw and I wish I could credit the account, but they said, Twitter is my favorite website where strangers talk to you like they're your boss. And that is entirely true of the YouTube comment section as well.

Yeah. And they don't just limit their criticism to your opinions. No, believe it or not. It's even like, why would you wear that shirt? You look like an idiot. That's why I'm a behind-the-camera guy. That's why I make cartoons.

Well, are you okay? Just because I know there's probably going to be some people here, and they're like, who is this shameless guy, and what videos are they talking about? What if we play one of your videos for people to watch, and then we'll come back and get people's take on it. Yeah. then we'll come back and get people's take on it yeah well well well if it wasn't captain america all caught up in my trap what kind of of sick, sick plot are you hatching?

I'm going to tell kids to clean their rooms and make five-year plans. Just like Hitler. I've already brainwashed my first subject. I've cleaned my room and repaired my relationship with my father. Ha ha ha ha ha Ah ha ha ha ha ha! No! You're... actually kind of helping people. Huh. Clean your room! Accept your responsibilities! Stop blaming everyone else for your problems! You're right! I'm gonna clean my room and repair my relationship with my

father. Yeah. Hello? Dad? Not so fast. We're here to stop you, Red Skull. Guys, wait. Red Skull's lectures are actually really interesting. You should listen to this. It's like you have all these people who think existence is corrupt and that

the West is a tyrannical patriarchy. It's absurd. Hulk smash patriarchy. It's absurd. Hulk smash patriarchy! Ah, no. Hulk no smash patriarchy. Hulk smash own character flaws and set life in order if Hulk want to make anything of Hulk's self. Hulk have own preconceptions smashed. Hulk call dad.

Uh, where can we see your lectures? And you think you understand yourself, but you can't. It's like you're far too complex for that. What are you? You're a chimpanzee full of snakes. Chimpanzee full of snakes. Hey, folks. So that was really funny. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope your audience did. Hey, folks. Thank you.

So that was really funny. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope your audience did. Yeah, yeah. Well, someone says, I don't understand what is the importance of what he does? There is none.

Absolutely none. I'm useless. No, it's actually extremely important for conservatives to engage with the culture and for Catholics to do so as well.

The political cartoons I make are not explicitly Catholic and I don't make them with any particular agenda in mind. I'm not sitting there going, how can I convince people to be conservative with this cartoon? I'm just making things that I think are not explicitly Catholic, and I don't make them with any particular agenda in mind. I'm not sitting there going, how can I convince people to be conservative with this cartoon?

I'm just making things that I think are entertaining, and because I'm conservative, a conservative worldview comes out in them. That's extremely important, and people often complain about how the left pretty much dominates the media, not just in terms of the news, but entertainment. And if we want to change that, we have to accept and embrace conservative content creators who are making things that other people can enjoy without necessarily wanting to sit through a two-hour-long podcast on the matter. And speaking of Jordan Peterson, I think part of his appeal to conservatives is he doesn't come off as someone who's just whining about everything going wrong. And I think sometimes conservatives do have that about them, you know, like, look at the kids today and this kind of thing.

So doing something that's actually funny and engaging like that is cool. Yeah, I think it's really important. There is a time and place for these sort of long form discussions, such as the one that we're having right now and the discussions that you have with other people. But sometimes audiences just want something really short and funny. And it's good to make people feel validated and help them understand that they're not insane for having a certain perspective. And this happens to a lot of people on the conservative side of the aisle, where everyone in the media who talks about any

given issue is telling them that they're crazy for even considering another perspective. And so part of what I do is, yeah, I try to make these funny cartoons because I think those are more likely to rope people in and make them curious about your views to some extent. But also it's because I want conservatives to feel less alone. Let's talk about left and right for a second. Sometimes people will say, like, why are we even using these categories? Of course.

Be Catholic. And goodness gracious, if you're telling me that in order to be a good Catholic, I have to like align with all these Trump people. I know I'm not sure if I'm into that. And so speak to that. Yeah, it's complicated. So it's true that it's not as if the Catholic Church has just issued this specific list of all of its platforms, and they line up perfectly with what the Republican Party wants or what the Republican Party does, even more importantly. But the most important issue is abortion, and the Republican Party is the only viable pro-life option. So even if there's things that we disagree with that the Republican Party says or does, they're pretty much the only choice if you want to vote in really vote in good conscience as well

because roughly 3,000 children are slaughtered in our country every single day and there's no issue that even comes close to being as important as that and I know that a lot of Catholics will sort of do their best and and there are people who I think are even well-meaning who reject the Republican Party for reasons which may be legitimate or non-legitimate, and they try to take other issues and make them seem as if they're as important as abortion, or they balance out the abortion issue. Nothing does, but even so, it's not obvious that those other issues are ones where a Catholic would need to side with Democrats. What are some issues that you think Democrats are addressing that you would like to see

Republicans addressing, or is there any? That's a good question. I think one thing that Trump did very well was he made the working class feel like he had their best interest in mind, regardless of whether you agree with all of his policy prescriptions and everything he did while he was in office. It was obvious that this was not the kind of Republican we had seen over the past several decades. This is somebody who was really interested specifically in looking at the working class and saying, here's how we're going to protect you with various economic sanctions. Now, I don't agree with all of those policies. I don't agree with

everything he implemented, but there was something about the way he approached working people that the Republican Party needs to do a lot better at. Yeah. So what about left and right? Where do these terms come from? Yeah, so the terms left and right actually come from the French Revolution, and this is part of why I try to tell Catholics, there are certain things on the left which can line up with Catholic principles, at least in a very vague sense. But ultimately, the left was founded with the express purpose of countering the Catholic Church and its values. So the left is an enemy of the church. We saw this during the French Revolution. This is where we get the term. And what were they doing? They were beheading priests and nuns, and they were killing the monarchs, and they were unbelievably brutal

and violent. And modern day leftists are their ideological descendants. How did left come from for the French Revolution, these left and right? I believe it's if you were on the left or right side of the hall that actually meant you were interested in conserving the old French values or forwarding the revolution. Okay, now already someone's going to object to this and say, for goodness sake, I'm interested in things that the left are interested in. The idea that you're going to lump me in with people who are beheading priests is absurd. Yeah, sure. So as I said, there are certain parts that the left, there are certain tenants of left-wing thought that do sort of vaguely line up

with Catholic thinking. I mentioned that earlier, but the left as a whole has not existed as a force for the positive historically. Okay. Okay. And what do you say to people when they say, like, stop making the church political? Like, you're using these terms, and maybe they work well in political discussion, but as Catholics, why can't I just be a Catholic? Why do I have to be left or right or liberal or conservative?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know that I necessarily make the church political. I certainly talk about politics, and I certainly talk about my faith, and there has to be an intersection between those two because your morality needs to be informed by something. Ideally, your political views are informed by your morality, and if your morality is informed by Catholicism, then your politics are going to be informed by Catholicism. In one way, that manifests, of course, in the pro-life issue. There are other areas where

somebody can agree or disagree with any particular stance that I might espouse, while still, of course, being a Catholic in good standing. Some of this is up for the individual's conscience, I think, when you look at something like immigration. The Catechism says that Catholics should believe that nations which are more prosperous have an obligation to help people who are from nations which are less prosperous. But it also says that this needs to be balanced against a need for public officials to preserve the well-being of their own citizens. And so you can pull quite a few policy prescriptions for immigration out of that. There's clearly no one set policy there. And I think ultimately it draws boundaries. It says, all right, well,

you can't be completely open borders and you cannot be completely closed in terms of your borders unless there's, I suppose, some grave circumstance that would necessitate that. But there are some people who will try to take that issue on which a diversity of perspectives is allowed and say there's one Catholic perspective, you have to agree with this. I think that's wrong. But when it comes to abortion, there really is only one set perspective. So I'm not politicizing abortion. They're slaughtering unborn children and as Catholics, we have to be against that. I think it's kind of silly to say that that's politicizing something. I mean, you wouldn't say that the Catholics who spoke out against the Holocaust were politicizing Catholicism or that Fulton Sheen was politicizing Catholicism when he spoke out

against communism. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, I think a lot of people are kind of getting exhausted by everything political. Of course. Be that political in the secular realm or the ecclesiastical realm. And I think there's this temptation to be like, okay, well, I'm only going to say the gospel. And I've thought that myself. I just want to stay away from these issues. I don't want to do clickbait things. I don't want to talk about Trump. Let's just get back to the gospel.

But then you realize, okay, but the gospel includes like refuting falsehoods. And as you say, you know, Fulton Sheen spoke compellingly and vigorously against things like communism and critiqued sort of different modern theories. And so you don't get out of it that easy. You've got to address these things, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting because people have traditionally have thought that in good company, and maybe this is just sort of a waspy thing, but it was considered that there were three things you never discussed in polite company, and that was sex, politics, and religion. And part of that is because in order to have a productive discussion

on any of those matters, you kind of have to say things that would challenge somebody else's worldview and ultimately hurt their feelings. So I suppose that is a bit impolite. But we've almost, as a result of that, put these truth claims in their own separate categories. So we neglect to see that if an unborn child is an unborn child and worthy of rights, that's true in a theological sense,

that's true in a moral sense, that's true in a political sense, and you can't separate one out from the other. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about what's going on with Biden right now. Because I saw an article that came up, I want to throw this out, from the National Catholic Reporter.

Ooh boy, National Catholic Distorter, as I like to say. As you call it. Yeah. Yeah, and what bugged me, of course, is when they quoted somebody who was misquoting Aquinas. That must have really cheesed you. Oh, that gets me upset. Yeah.

Especially if I know what I'm talking about. Not in front of Matt Frack. No, sir. Don't misquote Aquinas in front of Matt Frack. Not today. No. You just made the worst mistake of your life. So there's this one article.

It's called Bishops Denying Communion to Catholic Politicians, a Distinctively American Approach. First thought is, who cares? And isn't that a rather disparaging way to talk about America? Maybe America could get this right and the rest of the world could follow. Yeah, it's possible. Also, distinctly American approach. You want to talk about distinctly American approaches.

We have some of the most liberal abortion laws on the entire planet. There are only seven other countries that have abortion laws as lenient as ours are. So they're clearly okay with a distinctly American approach when it results in unborn children being slaughtered, but apparently not when it comes to admonishing people who support the slaughter of unborn children, which is unfortunate. Something terrible just happened there. Can I touch on something you said a moment ago?

Yeah. Just about Catholics saying, I just want to focus on the gospel. I don't want to focus on politics. I understand that, and I'm sort of you said a moment ago? Yeah. Just about Catholic saying, I just want to focus on the gospel. I don't want to focus on politics. I understand that. And I'm sort of dug in here, right? What I do for a living is political cartoons and political commentary. And I also run a small business where we create educational content for different political organizations.

And so it is a duty of my state in life to pay attention to these things. But your average person does not need to be consuming this stuff all day long. Yeah. And so if you think it's gotten to be too much for you, and you don't think that there's much you can realistically do beyond voting right now, or beyond praying at your local abortion clinic, trying to evangelize your friends and families to see your perspective, then yeah, you don't have to pay attention to the news all the time. Of course not. And I completely understand why people are exhausted by this stuff, probably more than anyone else, because I'm forced to pay attention

to it all the time Yeah, I often think that people like Ben Shapiro his life must be exhausting. Yeah, how he does it All right. So let me just read this this from this Particular article he's talking from this one guy. I'm not sure how to say his last name Rocco Let's see, but igloo. Ne maybe he's the author of Carol Voitie were and they quote him as saying He's the author of Carol Voitiva, and they quote him as saying, while this individual, Battiglione, does not doubt that abortion is a grave sin, he also believes that bishops and priests must remember the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century Dominican friar, whose moral teachings still shape the church practice today. When someone presents themselves for Holy Communion without having received absolution for a mortal sin, quote, St. Thomas says that the priest has the duty of giving the communion in such cases. So here's why that frustrated me.

Because if you go to the Tertia Pars of the Summa Theologiae, question, let's see, question 80, article 6, Aquinas makes a clear distinction between somebody who's in private sin and public sin. He says, the distinction must be made among sinners. Some are secret, others are notorious, either from evident of the fact as public usurers or public robbers or from being denounced as evil men by some ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Therefore, Holy Communion ought not to be given to open sinners when they ask for it. And he goes on. But, you know, you talked about this on whose show?

I was talking about this on Tim Pool's show. I thought you did a great job. Thank you. So help us, you know, give us your thoughts on this. Yeah, so I have a few thoughts on that particular article. I'd be curious to hear what this particular author has to think about Aquinas generally speaking. Again, he took him out of context here, and I know this is the National Catholic Reporter, which tends to have more left-wing perspectives and would probably disregard Aquinas on a number of other issues, though I suppose that doesn't necessarily make or

break his argument here. You just did that for me. But there is also a huge difference between being a weak person who falls, as we all do, and repenting and receiving the Eucharist, and not only being publicly in sin, but declaring that your sin is in fact not truly a sin, that the church is wrong on one of its fundamental teachings, and that you intend to act in the public sphere politically against the Catholic church's interests. That's entirely different from a private sinner who's struggling and trying to repair their lives. So how is Biden a public sinneronym? Yeah, sure. So he not only supports legal abortion, he wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which means he believes that abortion

should be funded with federal tax dollars. That includes your money and my money as Catholics going towards abortion, the dismemberment of completely innocent, faultless, and defenseless human beings. He's also, of course, needless to say in the current political climate on board with the entire LGBTQIAP agenda. And he's also in favor of the transgender agenda, everything that comes along with that. He was asked a question during the debates in the lead up to the election between Trump and him. Somebody asked him whether he would be okay with children having surgery. And he essentially said yes. Yes.

It's remarkable. If that doesn't make you recoil as a Catholic, it should just make you recoil as a thinking human being. I mean, that's absolutely horrific. And even beyond that, I think Obama, I think the Obama administration was an absolute disaster for this country. And not just in the ways that conservatives typically do.

I think Obama was an absolute war hawk. He completely destabilized Libya. What was done to Gaddafi was absolutely horrific. We funded a rebel group, which ultimately became ISIS. And this man was tortured to death by his own people. Wasn't a great guy, no doubt about that. But now that the country is destabilized, the slave trade has returned to that region. So when you look at the foreign policy failures of the Obama administration, it becomes clear

that Biden, who had great influence in making many of these decisions, is not the kind of person who's going to have the United States behave morally on the world stage. And that's not some curmudgeonly conservative critique. That's something that I think any person who's even remotely anti-war wants to hold to Catholic social teaching on just war theory should subscribe to. But you think the primary reason priests should deny Biden holy communion? It's abortion, yeah, of course. I think with the situation with Libya, again, so the situation with Libya is me veering into a territory where I'm more or less discussing why you probably shouldn't vote for Joe Biden when he's up for reelection, but that's a that's probably more morally complicated than abortion I mean abortion is extremely straight straightforward in every single situation

The person being killed is innocent and defenseless and innocent. It's an unjust action Whereas with warfare that can be a little bit more complicated. I think that we just don't care about abortion anymore. I think that includes a lot of conservative Christians. It's like, we're just sick of talking about it. Too bad. Babies are sick of being ripped to shreds in their mother's womb. So if you're sick talking about it, too bad. We have to. And sometimes there are groups of people who we have to advocate for who it isn't really socially popular to advocate for. I understand you're probably going to get more accolades and pats on the back for saying, like, I'm a Catholic and I'm against racism, which, of course, you should be. Or I'm a Catholic and I'm against poverty, which, of course, you should be.

Then you will get for saying I'm a Catholic who's against abortion or I'm a Catholic who's against homosexuality. It just happens to be the case that there are certain issues that our society has determined Catholics are basically evil for having their stance on. And those are the ones we need to talk about most loudly right now, especially because with abortion, the stakes are higher than they are with any other political issue. Completely faultless, completely defenseless human beings are being dismembered by the thousands every single day. And we're not talking about it. Why? Well, because we don't want to get in trouble on Twitter. We don't want to lose the respect of our peers.

We don't want to risk our position at whatever company we're at. And we're just bored of the issue. I think that's obviously another big part of it. I think that's it too. We've heard about it quite a lot. And for good reason. Maybe we need to find different ways to articulate it.

Maybe it's also because the people, the people most passionately forwarding the pro-life cause, or at least who seem to be politically, haven't really gotten as much done as you'd hope. This is an issue that's been locked up for a very long time. We haven't seen a whole lot of progress until recently, though. Now we're seeing some heartbeat bills being passed. The one was passed in Georgia very recently, thank goodness. Who knows how many unborn children were saved by that, but it was certainly something of a victory.

So talking about it, you know, it might be exhausting. And it might be exhausting for the people who go out in front of the abortion clinic and protest every single time they have the opportunity. But guess what? There are human beings alive today because of the work that those people do. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's not a zero-sum game. It's not. We have to either end abortion entirely or else we're not doing anything worthwhile exactly

and christ was probably pretty tired while carrying his cross simon was probably pretty tired helping christ carry his cross but sometimes you have to carry unbelievably mundane seemingly banal crosses for completely innocent people and And even if that's not the most interesting thing for you to be doing, it is absolutely the best. And we have to operate on the basis of what the best thing to do is, not what the most interesting thing to do is, not what the thing that we're not bored with to do is. Yeah, yeah. Somebody in the live chat said, I'm kind of getting tired of people weaponizing the Eucharist in reference to denying Joe Biden and other public sinners communion?

What do you say to that? So what I say to that is we're not weaponizing the Eucharist, we're protecting it. And if you want to use the Eucharist to attempt to commune Catholics who support abortion, what you're using the Eucharist for is to normalize the slaughter of unborn children. So you are in fact the one weaponizing it because you're actually using it with the end goal of having more unborn children killed. Where are we in this? And even, again, let me be very specific here. Maybe a little more charitable. Even if it's not the end goal, it will be the end result.

If this is no longer an issue that the Catholic Church cares about, if they start communing people who are pro-choice and give Catholics the idea that we're allowed to support abortion, then more Catholics will support abortion, the pro-life movement will lose a lot of steam, and more unborn children will die. So my understanding right now is that there is a letter in progress, right, being written, and several, maybe 50-plus bishops have said, no, we shouldn't deny Joe Biden communion. I believe that they voted no on going forward with the document. I have to look at this story again. But I know that a majority of bishops have decided that they do want to go forward with this letter. And I think as Catholics, and especially as more conservative Catholics and traditionalist Catholics,

we have this habit of criticizing bishops when they do things that are wrong. And sometimes that's necessary. But I just want to applaud all the bishops who are bravely standing up for human life and saying, you know what, just because you're a political leader and just because this is going to cause a ruckus doesn't mean we're going to allow you to desecrate the body of our Lord. Yeah, how important is it that we do that? Because we do complain a lot about bishops today, and I get it. People are really tired and frustrated, and I'm sympathetic to that.

I also think you can fall into the trap of only criticizing the bishops and the Pope and actually not be frequenting the sacraments, praying with your family, loving your children, anticipating your bride's needs, and instead you're just refreshing Catholic political websites because it gives you some sort of rush. And we don't want to fall into that, but I also understand the frustration. So yeah, talk to that a bit, because I want to be a humble son of the church. And maybe it is doing both. It's criticizing those bishops openly, which, by the way, Thomas Aquinas says what we can do. We can criticize a prelate openly.

He has some caveats. Of course. But how important is it that we affirm and celebrate those bishops who are standing up, as you say? Yeah, I believe there's a quote, and I can't remember if it's from St. Teresa of Avila or St. Teresa of Lisieux, but if we have the words to criticize a priest, we have to have twice as many words to pray for him. I think that's also true of criticism and praise.

We really need to have some positive reinforcement for the priests on the public stage who are doing things that are extremely difficult and standing up for positions that are really hard to hold in the modern culture. And when I, I talked about this a little bit earlier, I had this sort of transformative moment in my faith probably about two years ago, maybe a year and a half, where I mentioned, years ago, maybe a year and a half, where I mentioned I realized that many of the political views I held with respect to libertarianism were not in line with what I believe as a Catholic, and so I had to adjust some of those. This was also coming at a time where I had pretty recently begun attending the Latin Mass, and part of me believes maybe it was the graces from habitually attending that liturgy, which helped open my eyes. But I would also say that at that time, there were some pitfalls. It became very tempting to become obsessed with all the controversies in the church and to speak ill of the priests and bishops who were failing. And again,

we have to criticize them. But you also have to keep in mind that if you're Catholic, you believe that this person is your spiritual father. So the way you criticize them has to be in line with the way that you would criticize your father if he was doing something wrong in public. And I'll say this, and I'm really criticizing my former self here more than anything else, as well as the temptations I face now.

I'm not trying to single anyone out, but if you and your faith community are spending more time complaining about James Martin than you are praising Jesus Christ, you've got very serious problems and you're not going to advance spiritually. And I'm not saying we shouldn't criticize priests who are obfuscating church teaching

and ultimately leading souls to hell, whether intentional or otherwise, but ultimately the center of our faith is Christ and it's the Eucharist. And it's not everyone in the world who's doing something bad that needs to be criticized. And again, we do need to criticize those people, but there's a time and place, and it has to be moderated.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's really good advice. And this, by the way, let me point at the elephant in the room. Like, I make political cartoons where I make fun of people all the time, but I try to keep this contextualized. I mean, I'm releasing cartoons cartoons and it's like 30 seconds to sometimes four minutes of animated content on Freedom Tunes per week. And I'm just kind of trying to make something silly and funny. But in terms of your actual fellowship, in terms of your

faith life, I think you should spend most of your time trying to figure out how to advance spiritually and not paying as much attention to these controversies. Yeah. And I like what you said earlier too, that a lot of this kind of conservative commentary can help people feel less alone and less crazy. That's sometimes what Ben Shapiro does for me when you're like, wait, did he just say that a child can mutilate their genitalia? And you're looking around like, please, somebody back me up. This is nuts, right? And so it does have that blessing, I think. But I also in my own life have realized, gosh, I don't want to spend more time listening to political commentary than I'm reading the scriptures. How have you grown in that area yeah that's a really good question the the blunt

answer is not as much as I would like to have I do these cartoons and part of the reason I try to make them silly and upbeat is because I know this stuff is really difficult to pay attention to so I know that people like Shapiro who by the way I think does great work in in many avenues don't agree with him on everything of course can make people feel left left excuse me less alone and good. And it's healthy. And you can also help people to be more informed, which is also fantastic. But it can get to the point where you're consuming so much of the stuff that it's actually very negative for your spiritual health. And so that's why I try to approach this stuff in a really sort of light, funny way. In terms of how this has helped with my

faith life, what I try to do is I spend the beginning of the week, maybe Monday and Tuesday, listening to a lot of political podcasts, doing reading on politics so I can get an idea for what I'm going to comment on that week or do a cartoon about. And then as I'm working, I'll just be listening to Catholic podcasts in the background that sort of talk about scripture. So when I'm coming up with ideas for my stuff at the beginning of the week, it's all political. And then towards the end of the week and throughout the week as i'm working i try to make my focus on catholic material because we i've encountered people and they're like yeah the doctor says she needs to stop watching fox news you're like yeah yeah probably should yeah she

might need a break maybe have a lay down or something and i hope she wasn't watching cnn in the first place yeah yeah okay this guy in the chat zach Zachary, says, Trump is trash, Biden is trash, the GOP is trash, the Dems are trash. Fact is, Catholics have little to no power to govern in modern society, specifically in a democracy, scare quotes, built on sand. What do you say to people who have that kind of view? Yeah, I mean, I definitely understand where you're coming from. The political establishment has absolutely fouled us, and it's never been more apparent than now.

When you look at how they handled this pandemic over the last year this is one of the largest public crisis or crises that we have faced in my lifetime and the response was to engage in the largest redistribution of wealth that has ever happened in all of human history and for almost all of that money to go to the wealthiest people in the nation and beyond that the lockdowns have been horrible for the economy and there's actually no evidence that lockdowns in the united states have at all correlated with a decrease in infections with covid or death rates so we've not only been utterly failed in terms of their approach but also the degree to which they were being transparent with us with these Fauci leaks. And I won't get too much into this COVID stuff because I don't want your channel to get deleted, Matt. But you guys can feel free to look into all of this yourself. But I mean, trust in the governing establishment has been totally

eroded. And it's true on both sides of the political aisle. I would still say that when we have the opportunity, Catholics should engage in civic life and do everything we can to advocate for the unborn. I know I'm starting to sound single issue here, but you know what? If you're living in Nazi Germany, for example, and they're murdering people in concentration camps, you're probably going to be a single issue voter too. And people consider that to be hyperbole, but again, 3,000 completely innocent, faultless people every single day. I'm going to try to talk about that as often as I can. So the political establishment's broken. I totally agree. This is also why I favor subsidiarity. And I also think that in the long term, the most realistic solution,

whether this is actually going to happen, is to just massively break up the United States of America. I don't think it's really possible to have one monolithic government looking over 330 million people's interests, unless it's extremely limited in terms of what they're doing so for example maybe some kind of um you know a martial state where the federal government and by that i don't mean a military state i mean the the federal government basically existing in order to protect us from foreign invaders but i think almost everything has to be left up to the states because then catholic communities actually are able to make significant differences within their own communities which they're currently not because everything has been federalized over the past 100 years.

I mean, just think about Roe v. Wade and what a massive, like even if, whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, it's obvious that Roe v. Wade is a massive overstepping of state power to say that every single state in the country has to have legal abortion. They don't get to decide against that. I mean, over the past 100 years, everything has moved away from subsidiarity, and that's a very serious issue. And this is another thing that people get a little bit annoyed about. And I understand that there isn't like one specific set Catholic teaching with respect to how big a government should be, for example, because that's kind of a vague idea. What is big government?

What does that really mean? But as Catholics, we are supposed to believe in subsidiarity, and everything has moved in the direction of power being taken away from local communities and being given to the federal government. And that just makes it so much more difficult to affect change. Tell us about how your views on libertarianism kind of evolved. You referenced it, but I think people are really interested in that because I can see why it's appealing. When you have a government that you do not trust and do not want in your business, it's easy to say, just go away. Yeah. Well, and I was also, this is why I said earlier, like at the federal level, I think that one of the best realistic long-term solutions is for the federal government to be ridiculously scaled back or outright abolished and returning to a system of state rule.

I think that sounds strange to people. But imagine if 100 years from now, the EU was just one monolithic government ruling over all of Europe, and every European state was treated the way our states are. We would see that as totalitarian. But the United States, which is a continent-sized country, has essentially the same system, and it was never intended to be that way. There were different schools of thought among the founders, but generally speaking, they wanted to have 13 states that were operating independently under a sort of loose association with the federal

government holding them together it wasn't supposed to be the case that the federal government was operating everybody's daily affairs the way they are now and so i think that we recognize that a one world government would be a disaster and then it becomes a question of well how much do you scale that back what about a one- world government that's what china has their government is roughly one seventh of the entire world population and then behind them is india and then behind us behind them is us as the united states 330 million people i just don't think that's possible i don't think it's possible to effectively govern 330 million people from washington dc um and but but i'm sorry that you made a point about catholic teaching, and I sort of veered off

as I went off on that tangent. So let me return here. Catholics believe that that which can be governed by the most local possible authority must be governed by the most local possible authority. Subsidiarity isn't something we can just pay lip service to and say it's nice for things to be done at the local level. We actually are called to believe that if it can be done at the local level it is an injustice for a higher structure to come take it from the local level so for example if a family is capable of doing something it's wrong for the state government to come in and do that thing for the family not give them the opportunity and similarly it's wrong for the federal government to come in and take responsibilities from state governments and we kind of try to do this middle of the road thing where we say we have

to have some allegiance towards the government, but we also believe in subsidiarity. So let's meet somewhere in the middle. But the problem is over the past 100 years, everything has gone to the federal government. So in order to really embody the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, I believe we very much need to radically decentralize. It's the only way we can ever even hope to meeting in the middle man you speak really quickly oh no my goodness it's uh it must be the bourbon yeah or how many years have you been doing ben shapiro honestly gang so when i do the ben shapiro voice it actually starts to manifest in my body and he takes me over so i'm actually just talking as ben shapiro from a catholic perspective with a

slightly deeper voice king all right now did you you know what it is you know why i talk quickly it's because i had older siblings and my family interrupted quite a bit, a loud Irish bunch. And so if I wanted to get my point in, I had to say it more quickly than someone could interrupt me. All right, fair enough. Hey, what's the answer? I mean, as somebody who used to be a card-carrying libertarian, to big tech. That's a really good question.

What are libertarians saying? I don't follow this sort of thing, but I'd be interested to get their views on this, because it seems like they have more power than the American government. Yeah, so that's complicated. I know many libertarians have different perspectives on this. I know some libertarians who say that these companies should be broken up by the federal government, and I

know other libertarians who say you're a dirty statist and portraying your libertarian values for saying that. I'll just say this in terms of what the libertarian perspective, at least in theory, could be. F.A. Hayek put the Austrian School of Economics on the map, and he believes in antitrust laws. So it's not as if these things are totally incompatible. If you're a completely dogmatic libertarian, you're going to say, well, the state stepping in and breaking these powers up is an act of aggression on the part of the

state against a private enterprise. But if you're willing to take a little bit more of a nuanced look and say, well, a lot of these companies are only able to exist in their present form because of state intervention in the first place, you could say maybe the government has some role in telling them what they are and aren't allowed to do. I think that this actually could probably be solved. I think there are solutions we can attempt at the local level. I know Texas was, or some activists from Texas were talking about passing a law that would import the First Amendment into the policies of any social media company that wanted to act in Texas as a state. So that would mean

that if you were a social media company, you'd have to be very careful about banning someone, because if you ban someone from Texas, then Texas could sue or fine you. And if that were the case, it would be, it would almost be untenable for a social media company to only have one set of rules for a particular state so even just one state passing a law like that could do massive damage right and then what would happen is texas would become a gigantic hub for online content creators and other states would probably follow suit so again i'm not i'd really ideologically opposed to a solution at the federal level.

I think it could be possible just given the nature of the beast. Maybe the local level can't take care of this. I still think there are some reasonable solutions that could be implemented at the state level. Taylor Barrett says, Matt, have on a theologically conservative Catholic who is politically centrist,

that is pro-life, anti-abortion, and yet never Trump, not ideologically partisan. But being never Trump is not centrist. Being pro-life anti-abortion and yet never trump not ideological ideologically partisan so but being but being never trump is not centrist being never trump is saying i'm never going to support this person no matter what he does maybe he does some centrist things and he did that's that's a really good that's a really good response yeah like like being being completely anti-trump like never trump nothing he ever does what about when he legalized experimenting on unborn children who had been killed never trump

trump did some good things i don't agree with him on everything i think i think the moderate perspective is uh to borrow from ben shapiro sometimes trump no i think it's a great point yeah here he is this bloke saying we need someone who's politically centrist who is never trump that's that's so funny yeah that's a great point and yet it's not as if you don't criticize trump do you mind if we play oh i make fun of trump all the time he's a great. That's a great point. And yet it's not as if you don't criticize Trump. Do you mind if we play? Oh, I make fun of Trump all the time. He's a great target. Let's play this second video, if that's okay. Yeah, absolutely.

That you put together that's fascinating where you make fun of both Trump and Biden. Okay, so who can tell me about the War Production Board? Joe? Okay, so who can tell me about the War Production Board? Joe? You know, there's a, during World War II, you know, Roosevelt came up with a thing that, you know, was totally different than a, than the, he called it the, you know, the World War II, he had the War Production Board.

Yes, okay, Joe, can you tell me what it did? Help solve the problem. And make the situation better. Okay, Joe, how did it do that? Can you answer the question? I'm not going to answer the question. Why wouldn't you answer that question? Because the question is...

Will you shut up, man? Okay, then you know what? You can answer it, Donald. No. It's a very simple question. We just studied this. No. What was the World War II Production Board?

See, he said he was going to ask a very simple, easy question. And it's not. It really is. Not a simple question. We just studied this. Okay, sit down. I understand the rest of the question. Excuse me?

In 1917, they say, right? No. Correct. The great pandemic certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people. Completely wrong. Probably ended the Second World War. All the soldiers the soldiers were sick i mean that is completely incorrect well i don't know i was given that information i was given i've actually i've seen that information well it was nowhere in our text quiet quiet quiet you cannot talk to me that way you go to go to the

principal's office you can't let that happen to me jo Joe, stop sniffing your classmates hair! It's a right! Okay, you go to the office too. Thank you, thank you. Very, very, very good. So I can see when people live in this kind of dichotomous political system that they think, well, I'm either 100% in on this guy or 100% in on that guy. There's no real kind of nuance to it. And I do think that's what turns some people off. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I definitely think there are things that Trump made mistakes on. He could have

done better. The reason I voted for Trump is because he was running against Hillary Clinton, and she was the most radically pro-choice candidate in all of history up until that point. And Donald Trump had the potential to nominate some bad people to the Supreme Court, from my perspective, at that point in time. But Hillary Clinton was guaranteed to. So of course, I picked Donald Trump. And he's made some solid picks. Look at what the Supreme Court has decided recently. Now, again, this isn't necessarily just because of Trump's picks. But going forward, I think we're going to see some decisions. And we will be very thankful that Trump was able to appoint justices. I'll leave it at that. But in terms of his actual policies, I mean, yeah, he continued a quasi-genocide that the United

States government has been funding the Saudi Arabians to commit in Yemen. And Biden pulled us out of that, to be fair. Granted, it was started under the Obama administration. And I don't think Biden said he would pull us out and nothing's actually been done. Biden has also extended the amount of time we're going to stay in Afghanistan for. So this is not at all a defense of his foreign policy. It's definitely worse than Trump's but yeah Trump's mistakes in my mind were on foreign policy He also didn't pardon Snowden, which was very upsetting and I think he arguably could have done more for the pro-life cause I was I was speaking with a friend who I won't out because maybe I shouldn't be giving other people's political opinions when they're not here But who's very big in the pro-life movement and was explaining explaining to me that Trump really didn't do everything he could have done.

Yeah. So I'm completely willing to criticize Trump when I think he's wrong. Also, yeah. I mean, having Soleimani assassinated, that was horrible. Escalating tensions with Iran. That was a mistake. Fortunately, nothing came of it, but no, I don't like agree with everything Trump has done. Absolutely not. And I'm also, even if I did, like, I'm still going to make fun of him, you know? Yeah. Yeah. As you say, easy target. Let's talk about, even if I did, like I'm still gonna make fun of him, you know? Yeah, yeah, as you say, easy target. Let's talk about wokeism, because this is a term I've been really trying to understand for a while. Maybe the fact that I can't really seem to grasp it

might say more about it than not, the fact that it feels like nailing jelly to a wall. What is, I'm not asking for the etymology of wokeism, I'm asking what is it that people mean when they say that they are woke or speak about it in a positive sense? That's really interesting. I think most people don't say they're woke.

They used to, but now that's sort of a conservative pejorative that's used to describe anything that they view as being in the arena of the far left or maybe just the mainstream left at this point. So a few years ago, we would have called it political correct political correctness probably we might have called those people social justice warriors the term that's in vogue right now is woke but it's pretty much the same thing though i will say i think wokeness is usually more related to racial politics whereas phrases like sjw are probably more describing people's view on sexual politics this is just a rule of thumb because both describe both but i remember when the term sjw is being thrown a lot out a lot it was mostly with respect to like

feminism and transgenderism and wokeness is usually used to uh refer to like black lives matter and antifa which have been much more like intimately tied to racial politics in this country though again there's an overlap obviously the wokeness is very much in favor of the lgbtq agenda um so i would say that while the terms are kind of vague in some sense wokeness is probably anything that a conservative would describe as falling under the umbrella of virtue signaling, right? So when somebody comes out and says, I'm in favor of all the things that are popular, and then probably takes it even a step further. Yeah.

Okay, that's good. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're asking about like CRT or something, or feminism, we can get more specific definitions there. Wokeness is more or less just a pejorative. But I think it... There are people online saying why we all should be woke, though, and these are recent videos. Yeah, I think they're trying to reclaim the term.

But okay, fair enough. So what would... Like a woke... It has more to do with racial stuff. So what would they say if someone was trying to defend wokeism? Yeah, well, and also I'm saying, I don't know that it necessarily has more to do with racial stuff. I've just heard it referred to more to describe racial things. George Floyd incident kind of cleared that up. Yeah. So it's a difficult question.

I think the hallmarks, if we're talking about like CRT is probably easier to find. Wokeness is maybe a little more vague. But I think obviously CRT falls under the umbrella of wokeness. I want to get to that in a minute because I've got a video of yours to play about that. It is interesting that a lot of these causes that are touted by big tech, this is the other thing that I think. I think it's not epistemologically disreputable to go, hey, big tech, universities, Hollywood, and the Democratic Party are all pushing this one thing.

Therefore, I'm going to be really hesitant to adopt that thing. Because it would actually be within my interest, as far as my job's concerned, to adopt some of these views. I'm really not opposed to adopting them. It would make me a hero online if I became a BLM Catholic. Yeah, can you imagine? Yeah, I just, but I think it's, I think, I don't think a good, I don't

think a Catholic can support BLM. Yeah, I would agree. No, absolutely not. But they're really good at the packaging. Like Black Lives Matter and abortion is health care. And so then to deny that position is apparently to be a racist or someone thinks that, you know, women don't matter and you shouldn't be helping them. Yeah, I think part of the reason we call it wokeness and part of the reason this is like the perfect word to use as a pejorative is it sort of implies that you are awake and everyone else is asleep. Like I see that this culture is actually white supremacist, sexist, racist, homophobic.

Everyone else is just asleep and they need me to educate them. There's an arrogance that comes along with it. Yeah. Yeah. When you're referring to like Black Lives Matter, obviously from a Catholic perspective, that's a bit more morally complicated than something like abortion. Ultimately, I don't believe Catholics can support Black Lives Matter

because it's inherently and fundamentally Marxist and positioned against the family. We saw this on the BLM website where they were saying that they need to abolish the nuclear family and the traditional family structure. Did they say traditional family structure or just nuclear family? I don't remember. Okay. Well, either way, they were talking about Marxist theory. And these are things which Catholics are called to and required to reject. But often what they do is they engage in this Mott and Bailey fallacy, which is where you offer up a very benign

understanding of your perspective that no one could possibly disagree with. So, for example, you might say Black Lives Matter, which of course they do. Who could possibly disagree with that? But you've tied it up with Marxist theory and anti-family rhetoric and a belief that the United States of America

is fundamentally white supremacist and so when people criticize those claims which are much more controversial they fall back on oh whoa i'm just saying black lives matter right so that's the montan bailey fallacy right and they really employ that with basically and everyone everyone in politics does this because the idea is i want to get people to buy into what i'm selling and the way to do that is to make it sound as palatable as possible but with blm no it does not literally just mean black lives matter if it did it wouldn't be even remotely controversial i mean honestly have you met a single person who disagrees with black lives matter and their rationale is like i just don't

like black people i know never i mean i'm not saying they don't exist. But since moving to America, I haven't encountered anybody that wouldn't obviously say that that's true. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But what I do encounter now all over the place is people saying, because you're white, there is something intrinsically wrong with you that you can't fix. Namely, you are a racist. And if you say you're not, that's just proof that you are. That's just proof that you're racist. Yeah. So this is a huge part of critical theory in the left-wing analysis.

Anytime there's a disparity between two groups of people, the assumption has to be that that is due to some societal injustice. There cannot be any other factor besides oppression contributing to that. And Thomas Sowell speaks beautifully on this. If any of you aren't familiar with him, I would really recommend his work if you're interested in political thought and political theory we don't see equality between groups anywhere in history or nature for basically any reason it is it is unbelievably rare what you actually have to justify and explain is when groups of people are treated equally that's extremely abnormal and so

to say well this group is treated poorly and i know it's because of racism when there could be a million other factors contributing to it. This has been debunked 800 million times, and I'm almost embarrassed to bring it up because of how banal it's become. But the prime example of this is the wage gap. Women make less than men. That must be because women are oppressed. Well, everybody recognizes that it's not because women are oppressed.

But look at this. We also have a racial gap in earnings. And this is something they'll tout out. Different ethnic groups earn less than other ethnic groups and that seems like that must be due to oppression because we can understand why women might make less they work fewer hours than men they're less interested in spending time at work according to the data more likely to have to raise their children and stay at home with them what could be the excuse for different ethnic groups to make less that has to be oppression as it turns out, when you examine the data, different ethnic groups,

because of their population sizes and the rate at which they have children, have different median ages. And the higher the median age of your ethnic group, the higher your earnings are. Because one of the primary driving factors of income inequality is age. And so it's really just people's age. And also, another example which knocks this whole narrative over is that Asians make more than white people, which seems pretty strange for a white supremacist country. So the entire thing falls apart once you examine other factors,

but when somebody presents you with the statistic that black people or Asians earn less than white people on an hourly basis, if you say any of that, if your response is anything other than this is white supremacy and we have to rectify this by fundamentally restructuring our society, then you're a bigot. Have there been times where you've been thinking about this, talking to other people about this, and have tried to question your assumptions? Like we all should do, right? You know, I know some people who are sort of Catholics and posting BLM stuff all the time. And it makes me go, okay, what am I missing?

Because if I'm missing something, I really want to try to understand it. No, that's a really, really good question. So yeah, of course, I mentioned this earlier. I was a hardcore libertarian. I was basically an anarcho-capitalist. And then I just realized that my Catholic faith wasn't consistent with those things.

So I'm a big fan of questioning my view and modifying it on the basis of what happens to be true. I think when it comes to Black Lives Matter, when I first heard of it, I was sympathetic. Now, granted, this was also during my libertarian phase, and I was probably even more of a left-wing libertarian earlier on. I was left-wing libertarian in the sense that I would have agreed more with left-wing social causes, not that I was a syndicalist or a socialist or anything like that. I want to clear that up.

But yeah, I remember thinking that it probably is just racial injustice that is leading police officers to kill unarmed black men. And by the way, like it's true that there is some racism in policing. I'm from the Chicago area. And being a person of Irish descent from the Chicago area, that means I have multiple uncles who are police officers. That's just how it works. And yeah, they've explained to me that there are people on the force who are racist and

they're serious problems and they do what they can and did what they could to rectify that when they were in but ultimately while you can look at a cause like blm and you can say i'm rejecting this because of its really unsavory connection to marxism there are also other reasons we should reject it as well which is that even the part of the movement completely disconnected from any of that far-left socialist baggage any of the anti-family stuff is fundamentally based in untruth so they lie constantly to promote their narrative anytime you hear somebody cheering hands up or chanting hands up don't shoot they are lying it was said that george floyd i'm sorry not george floyd uh that's a completely different scenario and i actually believe that chauvin should have been convicted but michael brown michael brown took

a police officer's gun discharged it in the officer's car and then the police officer killed him in self-defense the media portrayed the entire story as this mean bad racist police officer who killed somebody just for being black and the narrative was he had his hands up he said don't shoot but guess what happened under the obama administration eric holder's justice department all right this is on the left and these are both african-american men obama and eric holder and they found that the hands up don't shoot narrative was completely fabricated not a bit of it was true michael brown reached for the police officer's gun he basically committed suicide by cop and we're constantly told that michael brown's death was the result of police brutality so black lives matter will just brazenly and openly lie and we see activists doing this in other areas.

When BLM really first began to exist, it was probably after Trayvon Martin was killed. And that situation is certainly more complicated than the Michael Brown situation. But they even lied about that. NBC intentionally edited the 911 call that George Zimmerman made to make him sound racist. the 911 call that George Zimmerman made to make him sound racist. They completely, so he called the police and they asked him to describe the suspect. And he said, he looks like he's up to no good. And they said, what is he wearing?

And he said, he looks like he's wearing a black hoodie. They edited it so that he says, 911, he looks like he's up to no good. He looks black. No way. Yes. NBC literally did this. I mean, this is a trusted global media company. And both tracks have been revealed.

So you can actually go online and see this disparity here. So even when BLM is disconnected from Marxism, and they're just talking about something which virtually anyone could agree with, which is that police brutality is wrong, which is that discriminating against people on the basis of their race is wrong. They still lie about the situation to make it seem as if people are being discriminated on the basis of their race when they're not, or discriminated against on the basis of their race when they're not. Talk about the George Floyd event, because when that first happened, I saw it and like everyone

else is like, from the little I saw, it's like, this is absolutely awful. But I remember being afraid to ask, how do we know that this guy's a racist? Because it's possible for somebody to treat somebody else poorly and then not be a racist, presumably. Or is that never possible? Okay, no, it's sometimes possible. Okay, well, if it's sometimes possible, I'm just wondering how you know that this is an act of violent racism. It might be. I'm totally open to that.

Yeah, sure. You know, maybe he said something that got caught on camera or we have other evidence of things that he said or held. But this rush to this is clearly a racist act. Yeah, exactly. What did you think of that? Yeah, I mean, I'm certainly not one to defend Chauvin. Again, this is something that came from my uncles who are police officers who I trust, who are by no means bleeding heart left-wingers who saw that footage and were like, he didn't need to do that i mean that was unnecessary and so i believe he was in the wrong but isn't it strange that it has to be about racism because it's not bad enough to just kill somebody right you have to be racist because being racist is really bad it's like well like just killing someone is a horrible thing to do if he's guilty of killing this person unjustly yeah if he's guilty of unjustly killing this person

and like yeah racism does add something to it but i think it's bad enough uh and we also don't know if he had said something to him about his skin color there was something to indicate that it was motivated by racism other than the person's skin color that we could condemn that as well yeah then we would condemn that as well because that's horrible but he he i mean if you kill someone, again, it's horrible to be motivated racially, but I think any motivation for unjustly killing someone is deplorable. It's difficult not to see the narratives at play and become skeptical of whatever a certain side is saying, or even both sides. I mean, you've got to be careful.

But, I mean, one example I can think of is Joe Biden's son recently, I believe, in a text message thread with his lawyer, used the N-word. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. And did CNN address this? Was it even brought up or was it brought up and dismissed very quickly? Because I can't help but think if one of Trump's children was found doing this, this would be an absolute top story. Yeah, absolutely. If one of Trump's kids was caught like saying the N-word. First of all, If one of Trump's kids was caught like saying the end, first of all, if one of Trump's kids was caught smoking crack, that would probably be a story. If one of his kids was caught saying the N word, that would also probably be a story. And what would we be hearing? Well, he must have heard this from his father. No one says that about Joe Biden.

And it tells you everything you need to know. I'm not sure how much CNN has given to this particular topic with respect to their airtime. I know that the media has habitually underreported certain stories and overreported others. So they spent far more time talking about Stormy Daniels than they did talking about the fact that the United States government was funding the Saudi Arabian government and carrying out a quasi-genocide in Yemen because one fit their political agenda and one didn't. Right. And they're activists more so than journalists. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Ah, glory, glory, glory. agenda and one didn't right and they're activists more so than journalists you and i were talking about this earlier with joe biden and trump's kids i mean trump's kids are in many ways hated for their success and part of that is because people

recognize they are coming from a place of privilege. They had an extremely wealthy father, and they had a lot of doors open for them because of that. So people don't see their success as very impressive. Yet on the other hand, you have Hunter Biden, who I'm sorry, has not come anywhere near the success of Donald Trump's kids. He's failed in many horrible ways. I'm not here to judge him. But I just think it's interesting that this is this is somebody with a crack problem who uses the N-word on the phone with his lawyer. This is not someone you view as successful. And yet for his failures,

nobody says you had everything handed to you by this father. And I'm not saying he hasn't gone through any hardship, but I just find it interesting that with Trump kids, it's like you're rich. So any achievement you have is illegitimate. It was all just handed to you. Well, if it's all just handed to them, then how do you explain

Hunter Biden not having any of it? Did he get it all handed to him and then lose it? And then why isn't that being discussed? Why is it that you can talk all day and night about Donald Trump's parenting and his family and say that he's the worst father in the world and his family is horrible, but when Joe Biden's son does these really horrible things like dates his brother's widow and does hard drugs, it's just off the table for any kind of discussion. Well, back to what's his name, using the N-word, Hunter Biden. What bothers me is you've got people like Sargon of Akkad, who was deplatformed from Patreon, which was his primary means of funding, because he used the N-word in a way to demonize white

supremacists. And his whole livelihood was taken away. And then you have Hunter Biden say this, and absolutely nothing happens. Nothing happens. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and this is a huge part of wokeness in woke culture, selective prosecution. We're going to hold everyone to these standards but we're going to very selectively enforce them so we're not really going to hold everyone to these standards we're going to hold people to these standards when we want to get rid of them when they're inconvenient for us and when it gives us an excuse to silence them otherwise we're just not even going to talk about it right but this is like i think here's the thing i think the president of the united states son is probably more important

public figure than sargana vakad no offense and there should probably be more concern about what the child who the leader of the free world raised is saying then there should be about what sargana vakad is saying if we're supposed to care about either my fear is that when people trivialize a great evil like racism they make a meme out of it. And it actually ends up being taken less seriously than it ought to be taken. And that's the thing. I think a lot of people don't take it seriously. They just take it seriously when one of their political opponents espouses something that could allow for them to say that that person is racist.

Even if they haven't said anything racist, they'll say, you're dog whistling. Right. They'll try to connect your perspective to something racist, even if you're nowhere near it. So a famous example of this is the left-wing idea that promoting the West and saying that Western civilization is the greatest civilization that's ever existed is fundamentally a white supremacist position to take. Now, that's ridiculous. Why do they argue this? Well, because supposedly, you know, the West is a white culture created by white people. It's not entirely true.

There have been contributions of other people from other cultures who weren't white that have done incredible things for our culture. You look at Arabic numbers, it just helps you do math unbelievably efficiently. And who knows how much further along our society is because we're using those instead of Roman numerals. So it's by no means racist to say the West is fantastic, but they'll say because, yes, actual white supremacists will say the West is the best, that anyone who says the West is the best is a white supremacist. So they'll find these really tenuous links between your positions and something that could possibly be construed as racist and say that you're a racist.

But when someone on the left does something overtly racist, it doesn't matter. I used to think that racism meant looking down on another race. Which it does, yeah. But apparently, I'm told that it doesn't mean that anymore because I always found it interesting that these people I know and who I know are not racist are being accused of being a racist, right?

And I'm like, but this guy would like literally kill to have an African Pope right now. Yes. Oh my gosh, Carlos Serra, please. And then I said that and someone responded, well, that's just clear. Well, that just shows that you do not know what racism means.

I'm like, okay, well, can you tell me? So how is racism defined today, do you think? Oh, yeah. So we did a video on this a while ago, but basically what the left says is racism is power plus prejudice this is blatantly not true it doesn't hold any water because you completely lose the ability to analyze racism at the individual level if it's all about systems and structures but also it's clear that

systemic racism is power plus prejudice right racism is just hating a person on the basis of their race or viewing them as lesser on the basis of their race. And all they're doing is playing word games. This is one thing the left loves to do, and they're very successful at it. It's just deceptive linguistics. You find a way to scramble the language and have people accept certain terms into the public vernacular or reject others, and then you can frame any debate that you want. So if I say only white people can be racist and I start talking about racism, usually when people hear racism, what they think is hating someone

on the basis of their skin color. And so you call someone racist and they have the emotional reaction they would do a person hating someone on the basis of their skin color. But you're actually calling them racist for completely different reasons. You're calling them racist for something

that you're calling them racist because they said they like the West, right? Now, if you just said this person likes the west no one would clutch their pearls but yeah we live in the west maybe maybe it's normal so like the civilization you live in i don't know maybe that's not white supremacist but people would recognize it was reasonable if you just said that so you have to take everything that you dislike and place it under one of these labels which indicate bigotry it's it's just and part of what we do in the cartoon this was the wonderful eric july and voicing himself but the whole joke is i

come into the room and i'm like eric you haven't cleaned this and eric's black so he goes i'm like eric that's very rude he goes black people can't be rude because rudeness is impoliteness plus institutional power black people can display a lack of manners but black people can't be rude and that was like the whole bit is you're just playing with the words. That doesn't actually mean anything ultimately. And it's unhelpful because if I'm trying to describe the behavior of someone who hates someone on the basis of their race, like I'm not paying attention to power structures in that moment. Like if I see a white, a black person go up and let's just pick a crazy example.

They just punch a white person in the head and they go, it's because they're white. I hate white people. I'm supposed to be like, well you lack the institutional power for that to have been racist but you do have prejudices against white people you need to work there's like no that was just racist that was a racist thing to do and oh can i mention this too it allows this is this is a point that that tim pool makes but you don't have to change laws if you just change language so if if like racist discrimination isn't allowed under the law and the definition of what racism is changes someone

just point to the law and say well look see this person's being racist based on our modern definition and the courts have to enforce that so this is what has happened with discrimination against people on the basis of their identity right like if discriminating against somebody on the basis of their sex is illegal well well, what does it mean if I say, well, this person's transgender, they're clearly not a woman, this is a man in a dress and a wig who demands that I call them women, and so I'm not going to treat them like women? Well, if you've changed the language enough,

you can actually get people to say, oh, no, that's discrimination against women, which in a specific context is illegal. What I find fascinating, fascinating too is that these debates seem to have far less to do or almost nothing to do with skin color and all to do with politics. Entirely. I was at a cigar bar back in Atlanta and there's a bunch of folks there with their MAGA hats on and this is right before the election.

And this African-American man walked in and my friend said to me, like, if he was wearing a Trump hat, these white dudes over here would fall over themselves to welcome him. It would be embarrassing how quickly they would be to welcome him. Likewise, if I think Candace Owens has something interesting to say and I share that, well, I'm somehow racist for sharing what a black person has to say. So it doesn't seem like we're that interested in color on either side sometimes. It's got a lot more to do with the politics. Well, the left sees the color of a person's skin as a useful tool for promoting a particular message. That's it. If the person is saying something they agree with, then that person is a person of color and you have to listen to them. And as a white person, you know, shut up

and trust their lived experiences. And if they're saying something that the left disagrees with, well, they're just a token. You don't have to listen to them. They're being used by white supremacists. It's funny. This is funny. I was with a friend and a friend of a friend, and we were in an Uber car. We were in an Uber, and my buddy's friend was just, like, ripping on us. So we were arguing with him about something, and it was friendly. But the Uber driver was black.

And so at some point, the Uber driver is making fun of him with us. And so at some point, he gets really mad at all this making fun of him. And he goes, yeah, well, those two guys in the back are Trump supporters. And it's really quiet for a couple seconds. And the Uber driver goes, you know, black people supported Trump, too. Like, you just assume that I didn't support Trump because I was black. And it was just like, oh, man, he got you. He didn't say it was because the guy was black and it was just like oh man he got you it's like you he didn't always say it was because the guy was black but it's like oh he knew what he was doing you know and there's this weird thing where people

assume that because someone has a particular skin color that they have to support a particular candidate or reject one and it's it's it's it's really um it's unfair i mean it really is unfair imagine being told that you have to subscribe to the left-wing position on X, Y, and Z because of your skin color, because you're black. Well, I think this leads us nicely in, as someone just wrote, they're like, dude, don't give Seamus coffee, give him whiskey.

He talks too fast. Hey, look at this, I've had some. Very good whiskey, by the way. I'll try to slow down. No, you're good. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna play this third video on wokeism and because it gets to what we're talking about right now. So I hope everybody enjoys this fantastic cartoon.

I nearly spat out my coffee when I was watching this. Really? I'm glad you liked it. Here it is. Welcome to Ben & Jerry's. I hate black people. Excuse me? Oh, all of the white employees are required to admit to our internalized racism store policy. Would you like some ice cream created from ingredients the West procured through violent colonization? I guess?

Yeah, I bet you would, you piece of s***. We have chocolate ally and vanilla guilt. Look, I just want some ice cream. Can we leave the politics out of this? Well, when politics is a matter of life and death for millions of marginalized people, we as the privileged kind of have an obligation not to ignore it, don't we? Ugh, I'll take vanilla guilt. Of course you want the white flavor. I knew it.

Chocolate. I'll take chocolate. Because when you see anything brown, your first instinct is to exploit and consume it. Excellent choice. I'm leaving. Did I mention that as a socialist franchise, we've made all of our ice cream free? I will stay. All of the world's cocoa beans were obtained by exploiting the Native Americans who we killed. All right, here is your ice cream cone. You've got to be kidding me. Look, we just want our product to match our ideology. Well, it's empty.

So is our worldview. Hey, folks. All right, tell us about that one. How did it come about? That's a good question. So we actually released three cartoons within three days, which was an unbelievable strain, but I was glad we did it. And so this came from just seeing how Ben and Jerry operates.

And I've been more and more irritated, but also entertained by corporate virtue signaling recently. That's also why I did my most recent video on the topic again. There's something you get with these activists where they will say things like, I'm racist. I like, I'm racist. I know that I'm racist. I've internalized it in some way. And so now I have to fight that battle. And there's an irony to it. I know that there are like left-wing authors who have said things, white left-wing authors who've said things like, yeah, I was at, I can't remember the name of this author and I wish I could. But I said, look, when I was, I was at a party and there were black people

there and I was just like scared of the black people it's like what and i think maybe part of it is people assume everyone else has the same outlook they do but just won't admit it and they assume that their silent thoughts are also other people's unspoken perspectives so i think there are i think there are some like left-wing people who are just not comfortable with black people and so they assume that other white people are the same way and that's sort of where that gag came from that's and i think i think that video is probably a bit edgier than we usually get there was even a bleeped out cuss which i usually don't do and i was scrupulous about that i was like messaging my other catholic

friends i was like do you guys think like it's acceptable and they're like it's fine it's fine um so i was happy to leave it in but i think that the point of that cartoon was just that people are coming to you for a particular good or service you don't have to make it political it's very weird and i think there's also something to be said about the fact that all the perspectives that they're holding to don't require that much of an actual commitment to change anything on their part they can say something like this is very this is a great point yeah we have more people of color on our board now we have more transgender people we have gender neutral

bathrooms it's like okay how are you treating your workers that's way more important and the current state of affairs has perfectly embodied what people said the left would do years ago and what has clearly happened and that is uh the total abandonment of the working class they had the option they could choose which mattered more to them this woke ism this progressive social agenda or workers rights and pride month shows very clearly that they have chosen the progressive agenda this was epitomized in a tweet from burger king that i saw recently they were trashing chick fil a and it wasn't just pride month i actually i want to scale back for a moment the left's This was epitomized in a tweet from Burger King that I saw recently. They were trashing Chick-fil-A. And it wasn't just Pride Month.

I actually, I want to scale back for a moment. The left's attitude towards Chick-fil-A proves, as silly as an issue as it might seem, the left's attitude towards Chick-fil-A proves that they care more about wokeism and being progressive socially and promoting the LGBTQ agenda than they do about workers' rights. Because Chick-fil-A is better to its workers than any other fast food chain. They're also the most profitable because, as it turns out, being good to your workers is good for business.

But the left doesn't care. They hate them. And so Burger King tweeted recently that they were making their own chicken sandwich called the Chick-King. Very clever. And they're clearly mocking Chick-fil-A. They say the Chick-King supports LGBTQ rights, you know, owned Chick-fil-a they say the chick king supports lgbtq rights you know owned chick-fil-a and then they say and don't worry you can get it on sundays so here's the thing you have just promoted the lgbtq agenda because you're a good progressive company while in the same breath boasting about the fact that you force your employees to work sunday yeah they do not care

about workers rights i just i want the audience to let that sink in isn't it so silly and quirky that those backwards Christians at Chick-fil-A give their employees one day off to be with their families we support gay rights instead keep going I think that's pretty much what I have to say my brain doesn't work as quickly as yours

so when you finish speaking you've got to give me a 10 second lag window to catch up. Oh, my goodness. I apologize. No, no, no. You're good. I told you the whiskey actually speeds me up. Do me a favor.

Define leftism first, and then I want to ask you to define what it is we mean by conservatism. That's a great question. Let me take a shot first. Is that okay? I want to slow down here. That is really good, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

Show the people at home what we're drinking is like some of the nice things you've ever had yeah widow jane only the best for my guests man thank you man i really appreciate it so it's it can be difficult to define these things because they restructure a lot over time but there are certain traits specific to the left and specific to the right that i would say have lasted i would say it's more true of the left actually i think the left the left has has been a force for social change and people hear that and they think like that's a charitable description it's not social change isn't a good thing or a bad thing it tends to be a bad thing with the left

but they tend to want to shake things up and change them, and they adopt new theories. And at the root of it is almost always a desire to rebel against the natural order and to rebel against church teaching. Again, as I described, we get the term left wing from the French Revolution. From their very inception, they were killing priests and nuns and bishops and rebelling against the Catholic Church and spewing vitriolic hatred towards Catholics. And it's not as if that stopped in the 20th century. You know, we see that move way out into the present day. I mean, who's more friendly to Catholics?

The conservatives absolutely don't perfectly embody Catholic principles by any means. But they don't hate us. They don't absolutely hate us. And I'm sorry, but the left does. And you see a lot of takes, especially as the church has had the audacity to uphold its own teachings and not allow the Eucharist to be desecrated,

or at least as the church has discussed upholding its own teachings. It's been, well, we need to remove their tax exemption, which is, of course, a punishment for not bending the rules of your religious organizations to accommodate members of the state, which, as far as I understand, should be a violation of the principle of separation of church and state, but evidently isn't to them.

Because often when they say separation of church and state, what they really mean is the state should get to bully the church around as much as it wants, and the church just has to shut up and take it. So sort of a roundabout way of saying, in general, the left opposes the Catholic Church and its values, and the right today, we want to describe what the right is today—unfortunately, not much. It is a loose affiliation of people with vaguely similar views about the economy. Say that again. I would say today the right is a loose association of people with vaguely similar views about the economy.

Interesting. And even that is changing, because more right-wingers are becoming populist. Sexual views as well? Would that have something to do with it? Abortion? No, no, no, no. I don't think so. Ideally, that's what the right would be. We'd be more firmly rooted in the natural law. But that's just not the case. So many people on the right are okay with the LGBTQ agenda.

In fact, they'll promote it. We see this quite a lot. I mean, people like Dave Rubin are considered conservative. And this isn't me throwing shade Dave Rubin's way, but the man is pro-choice. He's in favor, obviously, of the LGBTQ, excuse me, agenda. He's by no means a conservative person, but he's sort of considered one because the tent has gotten unbelievably large. It's basically just anyone who's fighting the left right now because the left has moved into excess. It's gotten large maybe because the leftist tent has become increasingly small and people keep

falling out of it and they necessarily end up in the other tent maybe. Yeah, I think the left has very much overplayed its hand. What should conservatism mean? Yeah, that's a great question. I think these are really good things that you're saying here because, again, I'm always, it's hard for me to accept somebody's critique of one side who isn't willing to critique their own. Yeah. And just what you said there helped me. Yeah. So, okay.

So, yeah, what should conservatism mean? And maybe you want to circle around back again what it does mean because I suppose there are many different views on conservatism among conservatives. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are so many different schools of conservative political thought. But I would say that conservatism should be firmly rooted in Catholic thought and Catholic teaching. And when I say this on Tim Pool's podcast, I will sometimes get comments from people calling me a theocrat. My point with this is that you can't just reject one person's framing without offering anything up to take its place. You're just going to fail. This is what the left

does very often. They tear down other people's institutions. They tear down our age-old social institutions. They don't always talk a whole lot about what to replace it with. So, for example, they will nuance to death any definition of woman you give them, but then they literally can't tell you what a woman is. They have no definition. You can ask them.

It's going to be something like anyone who identifies as a woman. It's like, that's not a definition. No, you've used the term in your definition. Yeah, exactly. So what conservatives need to be is firmly rooted in Catholicism. And part of what I mean by that is we have to recognize the natural law for what it is. And unfortunately, people in our present culture view any desire to enforce the natural law legislatively as fundamentally theocratic. This is just a specifically Catholic thing. And

I know I said we should be rooted in Catholicism, but really, non-Catholics absolutely can and should appreciate the natural law. We've seen this throughout history. I think there's a good argument to be made, as Timothy Gordon does, by the way, that the Catholics have the best set of assumptions for reaching the moral law. So one thing he says is that in order to reason to the moral law, you have to believe man is free, you have to believe that nature is capable of being understood, and you have to believe that nature has a purpose or teleology, has a purpose and to varying degrees different prominent groups reject this so he would say that the secularists don't believe we're free right because i am just a collection of cells that have produced some wet stuff in my skull and

that which ironically it's hard to derive moral outrage from. If you're just a walking bag of cells. Yes, yes. And then secondly, nature is understandable. Well, it's not really the case. We can't, how can we depend upon our understanding of nature if I'm just like this bag of meat that happens to have consciousness mapped onto it? And then thirdly, that nature has a purpose or life has a purpose.

You can't put that on there either. And then he makes some arguments, which I think are a little more ambitious, but interesting just about how in Protestantism, there generally is not the view of man being free. This is true under Calvinism. And even under the Lutheran schools of thought, man is much less free than he is in Catholic thought. So Catholics are most predisposed to understand and reach natural law, but everybody can. I mean, moral precepts like only men and their wives should be having sex and people shouldn't kill each other and people shouldn't steal and sodomy is wrong these are

are viewed some of them at least as being uniquely specifically catholic and when you say they should be enshrined in law people say you're trying to force your religion onto them. But really, these are just common sense rules that anybody could reason to without any kind of divine or supernatural revelation or the aid of the Catholic Church. I think with what I was saying earlier about them being easier to reason to, they're easiest to justify from a Catholic framework, but you don't have to be Catholic to believe in them, is sort of my point with that. And so I understand there's been a very windy response, but ultimately what I would say is we have to be Catholic to believe in them, is sort of my point with that. And so I understand there's been a very windy response, but ultimately what I would say is we have to be rooted in something. We believe in natural rights. We believe in the natural law. The Catholic faith has the best

understanding and the best way of approaching it, so we should be rooted in Catholicism. Did that make sense as an explanation or was I too winding? No, I'd have to give it some more thought. But I think that's good. Do us a favor and critique the Republican Party. There's just nothing wrong with it. Okay. No, no, no, no, no. Next question. No, no, no. We got your answer. I was kidding. Next question. No. Oh, man. I mean, there are so many problems with the Republican Party. I did a cartoon about this. And the words of Michael Malice, the conservatives are just liberals driving the speed limit. They adopt basically any and every left-wing position after just a few years and i would say beyond that when you look at at how republicans have operated uh on the global stage with respect to the warfare state i would say it's been abysmal

unfortunately that this is also a critique you can make of democrats as well which is why it's hard to launch that as a unique complaint against the Republican Party, but they don't stand up for life enough. They do not stand up for the sanctity of marriage and family life enough. They're not really rooted in any sound epistemology. I think when a lot of conservatives are asked what they believe because they more or less just exist in the political sphere to oppose the left, they have difficulty explaining it. I've seen this quite a bit. It's actually very disappointing. So conservatism needs a sound epistemology and philosophy behind it. And that's just lacking. So that's one huge problem with conservatism. In terms of the Republican Party, I mean, man, where do I start? Again, the wars, the fact that they support the bailouts, the fact that they're constantly ceding social and cultural

territory to the left. They care almost nothing about instilling virtue in people. All that really matters to them is the economy, and even then, they don't want the kind of radical change that would be necessary to improve people's lives through the economy, like they want to talk about marginally cutting tax rates and such. So that's one explanation I can give for some of the flaws with the republic. I mean, there are certainly more that I could launch into. And as you've kind of grown in your faith...

Is there water I can... Oh, I'm very dry. There might be a bottle out there. If you run and run back... Dude, this is fantastic. We have 1,068 people hanging out. To all of you guys watching, please do us a favor and click subscribe.

I just realized my mouth was getting very dry and I could hear it. And I was like, I know this is gonna be driving this audience crazy if I just don't get a drink right now. No, but seriously guys, watch it live, do us a favor, click subscribe, click that bell button.

That forces big tech to let you know whenever we put out a new video, which kind of amounts to making them evangelize you. I'm just it's an option for you you could do that yeah so yeah i mean the camera is blurry let's see if you oh my camera right now yeah yeah well that's because i stepped out isn't it i think i apologize no no that's right you keep talking and i'll see if i can make it work all right so yeah i would say that those are some of the flaws with the republican party i can get into more specifics there when you look at the the warfare state you look at uh i referenced earlier what had been taking place in yemen at the best of the saudi arabian government we were basically funding the

saudis and making it possible for them to wage war on yemen and in that war they were bombing civilians they were bombing fishing boats and farms. People were starving to death. There are many children actually at risk for starvation in Yemen as a result of this. And Boeing got a contract for I think something like $500 billion servicing the F-12s that the Saudi Arabian government was using to bomb civilians. And granted, this was started by the Obama administration, right? But Trump continued it. Trump never ended that the entire time he was in office. That is a criticism I would have of the Republican Party.

That's deeply horrible. All right. I've got to say, just because that kind of threw me off there, that this is why people should support us on Patreon. Yes. Because we are trying to get a full-time Catholic Jamie. That's right. Full-time Catholic Jamie who can fix crap when it goes wrong.

Because right now, I'm doing the cameras, and, you know, things go wrong, man. So please, seriously, support us. Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, where you can give directly by going to pintswithaquinas.com slash give. You get free things in return, like beer steins and books and access to courses.

He wouldn't even give me one of these. Yeah, not even not even shameless until he becomes a patron it's true man this is fun i'm really enjoying this yeah i mean so there are so many different directions we can go and last night we talked i mean so we sort of touched on this earlier but when matt and i first met it was at a talk he was giving and the next day we ran into each other after church and like went to grab lunch and literally spent the whole day until dinner just talking it was such a such an interesting dialogue and so i know there's plenty of material to dive into it's almost difficult deciding which direction we want to go well one of the things we've said in the past is like i've begun just

sort of commenting on faith and wanting to grow within relationship with christ and wanting to help other people do that correct me if i'm, but it seems like you come from more the political sphere, but now you are coming out as a Catholic. And even as you say, having some of your, what would you say, libertarian views or Republican views maybe called into question and you're willing to change them, which I think shows a lot of courage. But I'd love to hear more about your faith, honestly. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to mention this on my political views. There are certain things that I'm open to being persuaded on. I'm not dogmatic in some of these political positions. So for example, you might, I am very skeptical. None of the data I suggest or none of the data I've seen suggests that this would be a

good idea, but you could maybe even convince me that like at the state level, a single payer thing for healthcare could work or single payer system in a country as massive as the United States. I don't think it's possible. Even most of the universal healthcare systems in Europe aren't single payer. But I just want to point that out that like, I am open to changing some of my views on these things. And I know there are Catholics who disagree with me on these, who are fully free to. And I just, I want to issue that caveat because when I mentioned that I no longer hold my former political views because I've become more familiar with Catholic teaching, people hear that as this guy thinks he's going to tell me what Catholics have to believe. That's not what I'm saying. My views are now all within the boundary of church teaching, but some of those views are certainly up to the prudential judgment

of the individual. Now, with respect to talking about faith, this is something that I started doing several months to a year ago were you nervous about coming out oh yeah yeah so i was always i never didn't say that i was catholic i would talk about my faith uh but not often i mean there's a reason that when you post this a lot of people would say like oh i didn't know he was catholic and it was just because i wasn't discussing it very often and my cartoons are overtly political. I mean, I'm there to talk about culture, and I'm there to satirize current political events more than I am talk about Catholicism, though I have been working with EWTN on some Catholic cartoons, so that's very exciting.

What basically happened was, as I was changing my perspective on some of these issues, I realized that I had to say something. And as I would do podcasts, people would ask about my political views. Well, you're known as the libertarian, right? And I'd go, not quite anymore. I'm a fellow traveler in some areas. I'm sympathetic to certain libertarian positions. That's just not where I am. Well, why not? And then I would sort of launch into Catholic teaching and started talking about it more at that point. And I have to say, when I was first wrestling with these things, when I was first asking myself, is this view that I have compatible with my Catholic faith and sort of figuring out how I would need to work it, if at all, there was this nervousness in the back of my mind.

How is this going to affect me? Are people going to hate me? Is everyone going to reject me because of this? So it was really, really frightening. I'm not going to lie. And it turns out it's probably the best thing I've ever done in my life. For what reason? Why was it? Because I used to get comments from people saying, I laughed at this cartoon. And that's great. I'm so fine with that. If I can brighten someone's day, fantastic. But recently, after I've done Timcast and talked about the faith, almost every time I'm there, I will get tweets from people saying, you helped convince me to come back to the Catholic faith. You convinced me to stop taking the Lord's name in vain. One guy sent in a super chat, like I was a lapsed Catholic, but like now

my wife and I have, I've decided to get married. We're having kids. And it's like, I could have just continued making cartoons. Sure. But now there could be a human being in this world because i was willing to speak the truth and that is why i was so afraid because the devil was using fear to prevent me from talking about these things but ultimately this is the most important thing a catholic can discuss and while it's true that i'm primarily a cartoonist and political commentator and i'm not from the catholic realm the same you are. I'm not a formal apologist. I believe that it is the responsibility of every Catholic in public life to speak about their faith and help people understand it,

because it's one thing to try to save the country by telling people what your political policies for it might be. It's another thing to actually take a crack at saving a human being's soul, and I promise you one is more worthwhile, and it's the latter. And I would also say that it's astounding to me how speaking about something I was so afraid to speak on has done so much good, not only for other people, but in my own life. It's helped keep me going. You don't mind sharing that story you shared with me last night about the novena you prayed to St. Joseph, who, by the way, you could play in a movie. As people told you that, you look

like a young St. Joseph. Oh my goodness. Well, that is flattery. I mean, sheer flattery. So this is, yeah, this is something that happened to me back in about, let's say, December of last year, is um something that happened to me back in about let's say december of last year right around the time i met matt fratt interestingly enough um my channel had been tanking and anyone who wants to look at social blade and see what my statistics were will have this entire story validated my my metrics were all taking my channel had maybe 330 000 subscribers at this point i had painstakingly built that up over years And it was agonizing to see that my channel was starting to fail. And on some months, we would accumulate less than 1,000 subscribers, which for a channel that's 300,000 people large, that's pretty bad.

And on some months, we actually started losing subscribers. It would be like we lost 1,000 a month. That's incredible. Could you tell to a particular video you put out that was offensive? No idea. No idea. But what I do know is I started praying about it and I said, well, I don't know if I've discerned my vocation as faithfully as I should have. I felt a call to the priesthood, but I didn't examine it as thoroughly as I could have because I did not want to be a priest. And I thought maybe this is God telling me that that's what he wants for me. And one of my excuses was, I think I'm doing good work. I think I could promote a solid message. I'm

in a position where I can do something a lot of people can't. Maybe I should just keep doing that. And I'm pretty sure I'm called to marriage, so I won't think about it that much. And as the channel started crashing, I thought, maybe this is God telling me he wants me for something else. And so I prayed and I said to him, this has been my dream my whole life to do this kind of work. I had it for a little while. It's falling apart. If you don't want me to have it anymore, I don't want it anymore. And I just need to know what it is you want from me. And so I started praying and fasting more. And it happened that around June, a friend of mine sends me, a friend of mine sends me this novena to St. Joseph.

And it's funny because I had been planning that June on taking July off. I was like, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep working June. I'm going to have a last hurrah where I spend July and possibly part of august just working on getting a bunch of new cartoons together that are really good and then i'm going to come back maybe mid-august launch these cartoons try to do a couple talk shows to promote it really see if i can get the channel reinvigorated and if that doesn't work i'll continue to spiritual direction and drop the channel and enter seminary if that's what god calls me to so my friend mentions pray this novena i'm like okay she said i've seen miracles she says i have seen miracles from this novena it's very powerful and i go like what do i want uh you know my life's

pretty good i don't even i literally didn't even think about asking for him to help my business do better i just said i want to know what god wants for me. I want to know what I'm called to, because I will not be happy unless I find that. And so I began praying, and I did this novena, and I prayed and fasted throughout the novena, and in my intention, I just asked, St. Joseph, at the end of this novena, which I'm told is very powerful, I just want to know what my vocation is. And if I am called to marriage and to have a family, just help my business do

better so that I can support one. And so as the novena comes to an end, I'm starting to feel a bit more peace about things. And i noticed like the channel's just done a little bit better over the past month we gained a thousand subs that month we'd been losing a thousand a month prior to that i'm like oh interesting maybe instead of taking this next month off i should just try to post one more video this week so the first video i post after saying that no vina just goes mega viral um i accumulate 20 000 subscribers that month i start getting i start and we've accumulated between 10 and 30, between 10 and 50,000 subscribers every month since then.

I start getting emails from people who don't even know about Freedom Chains, didn't even know about the channel, but just heard me through the grapevine, asking me to do more work for them. Tim Pool reaches out to me and asked me to start doing his podcast. Like everything fell together and my business started exploding immediately after praying this novena where I asked St. Joseph to help my business do better if I'm called to marriage. And so ultimately, I want people to take this away. You shouldn't just operate based on signs. I think that was

a very clear sign, but even so, there was a peace I felt internally about like, yes, I am called to fatherhood, but I needed to be willing to tell God that I didn't have to do this, that I didn't have to have this, that I didn't have to have this career, and to mean it, and to really mean it. And after that, it's not to say I don't stress about work anymore. I still absolutely do. But there is a piece about what I do that is more common to me now than it was prior. And it was just such an unbelievable gift from God.

And I'm saying this is almost the exact one-year mark of that. And here I am doing Pints with Aquinas. And right after this happened, I started speaking about my Catholic faith. And it's incredible what an adventure you will have in life if you just say the things that you're afraid to say, but which you need to. Because like I've said, there are people who have told me, someone stopped me outside a church a couple of weeks ago and said, I saw you on Tim Pool actually defending the Catholic faith. Why aren't Catholics doing this? And it was so unbelievably humbling to be this guy who started his career basically shit posting making these silly cartoons

to become someone who's actually promoting something in public that's helping people come to jesus christ and i thank god for giving me the opportunity. I do. It has been so unbelievable. Were you raised Catholic? Yes, I was raised Catholic, but I was not a very good one in my teens. I'll put it that way. I was a mess. Me too.

Yeah. And I had an experience right around the time when I turned 20. I won't get into too much detail about what that particular experience was. And to some people, it might not even seem like that big of a deal, but it genuinely left me traumatized. Yeah, my brother was there with me when it happened. It actually left him traumatized as well.

We spoke about it a few years after. I had just turned 20 a couple days earlier. And this was after years, like my entire teens, like the entirety of my teens, I just, like when I was Catholic, I was Catholic in the sense that like,

I'm just going to do this thing and go to confession. I was just abusing the sacraments. And then at worst it was like, I don't even know if I believe in all this. Like I remember telling my brother at one point that I was basically an atheist. And so I turned 20. This thing happens to me.

This event, which will remain undescribed and i realize i'm in like a literal funk for for months after and like i realize like bad things can happen to me and there's this idea of coming to terms with your mortality but not just in the sense that you realize you're going to die someday everyone realizes that but like people don't understand that they're made of the same stuff that others are made of and really horrible things happen to other people all the time we just don't think they will happen to us and i started to really think about this and i thought well if bad things can happen to me the worst thing can happen to me i could end up in hell for all of eternity and prior to that my vision was usually well you know you know, God's merciful. I'll get to confession or I'll just spend a lot of time in purgatory.

I just constantly wanted to believe that there were going to be exceptions made for me. And so I came back to the faith. I started praying much more often, praying the rosary more frequently. And prior to this, you know, I had still gone to mass. I think I only skipped one Sunday in my life. But again, for a period of time, I just, I wasn't in it and quite literally did not believe at some points. And so, and around the same time, I went down to college in Savannah and I've stayed there ever since. I'm, I'm, excuse me, I'm 26 now. And I started, I would say attending a Latin mass probably about three, four years ago,

and it's just been incredible what the journey has been. When I look at who I am now compared to who I was when I was 20, it is obvious that the cross is not the only thing that Christ carried. I mean, he picked me up and brought me along that whole way. I would not be where I am. There's a beautiful line I've heard. It says, I'm not who I want to be, but I'm not who I used to be. Thank God. Yes, that's way. I would not be where I am. There's a beautiful line I've heard. It says, I'm not who I want to be, but I'm not who I used to be. Thank God. Yes, that's exactly how I feel. It's so easy to look at our lives and we go, I'm going back to confession for the same old thing.

It feels like I'm not really growing, but it's like, yeah, you're not who you want to be. But when you think about who you were like 10, 20 years ago, when you weren't engaging the sacraments, praying the Holy Rosary and things like that, it's like we have a very patient God who wants the good for us and in the right way. And we often want what's good for us, sanctification, but in the wrong way. Yes. We get all stressed out and anxious and upset and angry about it, as opposed to submitting to it. So that's really beautiful.

Thank you so much for sharing that, man. It's funny because I got to this point where I was praying a lot. And the only reason I'm saying this is because it's going to become very obvious that this isn't a boast in a few moments. I got to the point where I was praying like three rosaries a day. I was going to daily mass, but something happened spiritually where I just experienced this dryness. And what you're supposed to do is plow through that. And like, I just didn't. And it took a lot of difficulty to get back into praying again. And I'm still not quite there. I'll, I mean, I shoot for a rosary a day and

like sometimes i don't even do that so if you're watching this pray for me please to to to get back to somewhere close to where i was but i've also found too that just paying attention to god and having those silent moments with him is so unbelievably important it's funny i was praying i was at like the height of this spiritual dryness. This was a couple, this is a while ago. My prayer life was really bad. And part of the reason my prayer life was really bad was because I was just bored. Like I was just bored with prayer. Yeah.

And the theologians say, if that is from God and it's dryness and he's testing you, you'll still turn to God. And even if the prayer is boring you, even if it's hard, you'll still try to pray to pray but if it's from you you're just going to seek pleasure in the world and that's what i did i just sought pleasure in the world so it was from me but i remember praying and just meditating on like people i know and people i've dealt with and i just remember thinking about about one person like hey like this this person's kind of boring. And then God said, well, like, you find me boring. So I was like, all right. Maybe that would be.

And so like every once in a while in prayer, you'll have something revealed to you that's really painful and embarrassing. And to be honest, that's almost still better than dryness. It's like, I got something out of this. The trick, and this is sort of what I was talking about when I was discussing the pro-life movement, is to keep doing something, even when it's just really mundane for you. I got to share this because there's so many

lovely comments streaming in. We got well over a thousand people watching right now. And this guy called Censored Hermit says, your agony over your spiritual dryness is inspiring me to pray more again. I'll pray for you. Thank you, please. Oh my goodness. Thank you. I did this podcast because I was soliciting prayers, to be honest. I was like, I need to get as many as possible. Seriously, though. No, but it's so important that we learn to just sit with our Lord in prayer. And I do think as beautiful as the rosary is, and I try to pray the Holy Rosary every day. And you were there with us last night yeah beautiful man that's really great I think it's beautiful because it's not it's not pious is it we just got kids falling off

couches and doing handstands it's tough with kids yeah I get it's tough with kids but see there was a perfectionist like I can in me that probably went after I got married that wouldn't permit me to sit through that kind of chaos mmm I needed everything to be in order and right. And the Lord's really kind of loosening me up here where I'm just like, yeah, they're kids and we're gonna do our best here. But we're gonna make sure

this isn't an agonizing experience for everybody. And I still gotta fight against that. But it's like, what would I rather? Would I rather my kids kind of distracted and playful or would I rather them like dread the rosary because dad's always angry at them because they're not levitating yet? That's a really really tough one i don't have an answer to that one that's probably something i'm sure you have a spiritual director who could shed better light into that

than i can but it's funny because i know when i was a kid when we said night prayers we were very reverent but we wouldn't say a whole rosary it would just be a couple prayers and i think there's an argument to be made for the whole rosary i think that's what i'd like to do with my family but no there was by no means any judgment man like i can't get myself to the whole rosary. I think that's what I'd like to do with my family. But no, there was by no means any judgment, man. Like I can't get myself to pray the rosary some days and you got four kids to pray the rosary with you and your wife. So I'm impressed.

My point in bringing that up though is just to say as much as I love the rosary, I think sometimes we can use it to kind of distract ourselves and that kind of interiority. My goodness. Like the Lord wants to commune with us. Yes.

He wants to reveal something that's going on within us, reveal his love to us. But it's like, well, I'm going to get this thing done. Yeah. And it becomes like a chore. Yes. And we can treat the rosary almost like a cosmic vending machine. You know, I give you a rosary today and so you have to do this for me. So none of that is to disparage the Holy Rosary.

It's just to say that sometimes the Lord is just calling us to sit and be with him. Like you're saying, finding those quiet moments with the Lord. And one thing I want to say is for people to not be discouraged, some of the best advice I've gotten just from reading little blurbs from the saints is that if you're distracted in prayer, the only solution is to just keep praying. I mean, you can't just pull away and be like, I have to do something else where I'll be less distracted or try to focus on God in another way.

You just have to keep praying and you have to get better at it. But I had this revelation when I was at Mass a couple months ago. I was sort of sitting there and it's during this beautiful Latin liturgy. And as it often does, my mind is just wandering and it's going in a million different directions. And I realize that I'm just LARPing. Like, I'm at Mass like, oh, I'm going to be a trad today and dress up like a trad and go to the traditional Mass, but I'm just thinking about other stuff the entire time. I'm not actually participating prayerfully. It's like I'm just LARPing. It's like I've put on this costume and I'm going here, but I'm not actually trying.

And I felt the same way very often while praying the rosary. And I think the trick is you just got to keep doing it. You got to try to force yourself to pay attention, but you got to keep doing it. There is something about faking it till you make it too. Yes, 100%. And I think we have an idea of how prayer ought to feel. And so when we pray and do not experience that feeling, we feel like we're failing. And since we do not wish to fail, we cease praying.

I think there's truth in that. But also at the same time, you have to be careful about not being too concerned with those feelings, because then often God will take those feelings from you and give you spiritual dryness, and it's because he wants you to keep coming back to him. Yeah, 100%. 100%, yeah. Man, this is good fun. Yeah, and we also have to be very careful, because this is another thing I found myself doing. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I think I'm in the presence of fellow Christians watching. No atheists are going to see this. They're already in the chat, but continue. No, yeah, man, there have been times where I'm at Mass, like at the Latin Mass, thinking about how beautiful this is, and then my mind will go to some of the horrible liturgies I used to attend,

and there's this temptation to be like, thank you, God, for not making me like those Novus Ordo Catholics. It's like, that is exactly the wrong attitude to have, but it becomes really easy to get caught up in it, and we have to constantly guard against this. And that's one thing Father Ripperger writes about, is that the traditionalist movement, in order to be successful, has to ditch this horrible strain of pride running through it, and particularly intellectual pride, but pride in general. And I found myself very susceptible to that. It's difficult. It's a profound point. I think we always, we're looking for a litmus test we have to reach to convince ourselves that we're in. We're in God's graces. We're in a state of grace. We're doing the right thing. And it is tempting to separate and run between the good guys and the bad guys, and the holy guys and the

ragamuffins. But as you say, that's a that that parable of uh of that one who's like i pray five times a day and i fast and look at this but i'm so glad i'm not like him it's like are you kidding me like that's it's precise you're you're falling into that exact trap what are you doing but i get it and then my dumb self is reading that going he didn't pray those five times in latin what an idiot yeah it's like i'm the third guy on the hill judging both of them. I'm judging him for being a schmuck, and I'm judging him for judging him. This guy's a sinner, and this guy doesn't pray in Latin. Look at him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's true. It's difficult, and this is one huge problem that I have found in myself and also in many other, not only

traditionalists, but conservative Catholics. We often let the perfect become the enemy of the good. This is true in terms of our own prayer lives. It's also true in terms of the way that we view other Christians. I can't tell you how many people there are in public life who are good Catholics, but who I've heard disparaging things about from other Catholics because they're just not Catholic enough for them. And it's one thing if that person is explicitly rejecting church teaching, or they're a heretic, but that's usually not the case in the situations that I'm referencing.

Well, my kind of tagline for this whole podcast, something I try to live by and kind of guide pints with Aquinas by, is the idea that a faithful Catholic is not only one who submits to what the church teaches authoritatively, but he is also one who does not demand uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom. 100% agree. 100% agree. 100% agree. And this is why I'm so careful whenever I talk about politics to issue these caveats. These are my political views.

They are within the boundary of church teaching. Nothing I'm going to tell you is unsafe to believe as a Catholic. And if some of it is, please, my goodness, bring that to my attention. But I'm not telling you that you have to believe in all of the things I believe in as a matter of the Catholic faith. You know, I would just say right now, I just want to be a little vulnerable here and just invite people in this chat. What if we did this? We have 1,065 people watching right now.

That doesn't include all the people, thousands who watch after this. What if today we all prayed a rosary for each other? Let's do it. So like you'll pray a rosary and you'll include me and all of these 1,067 viewers. I'll pray it for them. And just to ask you guys in the live chat, like, would you pray a rosary and you'll include me and all of these 1,060 something viewers. I'll pray it for them. And just to ask you guys in the live chat, like, would you pray a rosary for us? Yeah. And if you don't want to, you don't have to, obviously.

But if you would, would you find some way to let us know? Either give us a thumbs up or leave a comment saying that you would. It'd be really cool that like we all as brothers and sisters who are falling down and getting up again and trying to do our best. And sometimes not trying to do our best, but wanting to want to do our best to kind of moving forward um that'd be a beautiful thing i think yeah absolutely please honestly i'll pray we'll pray it after the show and if we don't have enough time because we go for four hours uh because i because i somehow have something more interesting to say than trent horn uh then i will uh just have to pray on the a car ride to the airport yeah you know you know you you mentioned kind of creating these silly cartoons.

I don't think they're silly, of course. I think they're hilarious and important. No, thank you. But we said at the start of this show that there can be a temptation for us in a politically charged environment to kind of stay away from those topics that cause people to get angry. I'd rather just say things where everyone congratulates me for saying vanilla things. But just like Fulton Sheen, right? And those who lived during the time of the Nazis spoke out against political things that were taking place. We have to as well. So I

wanted to ask you in all seriousness, you know, what it is, and again, we've touched on this in the beginning, but why it is you do what you do and why you feel it is a calling? That's a really good question. So I believe that there are some people significantly more intelligent than I am who are called to be apologists. And I think maybe at some point in the future, that could be something that God wants me to do. But it just seems as if where I am very well suited is making people laugh with these short cartoons

and trying to take a little bit of the edge off of an extremely intense and heated discussion. And I would also say that part of why I do what I do is just because, frankly, I wanted to. I mean, that can be part of discerning God's will. You need to figure out if what you're doing is in line with church teaching. But if there's something you really want to do, you're in a position to do it, you could do a good job and it could have a positive effect. Like, knowing that you want to do it is a big part of it. And again, that's not saying do what you want to do and don't do what you don't want to do it, you could do a good job and it could have a positive effect. Like knowing that you want to do it as a big part of it. And again, I want to be, that's not saying do what you want to do and don't do what you don't want to do. It's much more complicated than that.

But something I wanted to do since day one, my parents talked about this ever since I was a little, little kid. I was like, I'm going to be an animator someday. I'm going to make cartoons. And as my enterprise has grown, and I would say a lot of that is due to St. Joseph and the blessings he's given me, I have sort of branched out into working with other organizations. So, for example, and actually I had contact with EWTN prior to the Novena, but we're going to be moving forward with some stuff now. And I just think it's really important for Catholics to be creating things in the culture that are Catholic, of course, but also some things that aren't specifically Catholic. I think that's really important for Catholics to be creating things in the culture that are Catholic, of course, but also some things that aren't specifically Catholic. I think that's really important. So I love what you do. I love what Trent Horn does. I love what Jimmy Akin does. I love what

Timothy Gordon does. I think it's all fantastic. But sometimes people need to see someone who's just in the culture, who isn't a particularly Catholic figure, but who is Catholic and who will say that they're Catholic. In some ways, I almost feel like the phrase Catholic apologists should be a redundancy. We should all just be spreading the message of Jesus Christ whenever we have the opportunity as Catholics. And this is why when I'm on Tim Pool's podcast, which is not an overtly religious podcast, it's really just political. I almost always try to find a way to bring my faith up. And it's not that I'm like looking for an area to insert it in. It just, it comes to mind because I think America is lost without Jesus Christ. I believe we all are and i can't not apply

the fundamental truths of reality as they see them to the world just because i've put it in this box of faith and that's a separate set of truth claims from this box of politics or this box of culture and you were touching on this catholics who say i don't want to get political look you don't have to be political in the sense that i am you have to be a freak to want to be fully admitted it's it's stressful you have to pay attention to this stuff pretty often and there's almost never enough or i should say yeah you're you're almost just never going to have access to everything you have access to you're just constantly trying to get caught up on everything and the new cycle moves so quickly but you know in the the early church the bishops weren't saying well here's the thing I will promote the

teachings of the Catholic faith but I'm not gonna like say Gnosticism is bad because like that's negative and I just want to stay positive and I don't want to get political it's like there was this understanding that when something bad comes up you have to knock it down as a Catholic you don't just want to stay positive and I don't want to get political. It's like there was this understanding that when something bad comes up, you have to knock it down as a Catholic. You don't just get to say, well, I'm going to talk about the truths of the faith, and those claims are somehow separate from the truths by which we should live our lives. Amen.

And so I'm not going to allow the two to interfere with each other. I mean, it's a Venn diagram, right? Yep. There's specifically political issues, there's religious issues, and they sort of come together. And when I say it's a Venn diagram, right? Yep. There's specifically political issues, there's religious issues, and then they sort of come together. And, and when I say it's a Venn diagram, I mean,

specifically with issues that are non-negotiable, homosexuality, transgenderism, um, pornography, abortion, these kinds of things. And this is also why I really admire that.

And I think I probably pay the most attention to like, in terms of apologists, you and Trent Horn, but I admire, at least these, you're the two that I'm seeing this from the most where you both are not overtly political, but you've been willing to talk about politics when it's necessary. And I think that's huge in the same way that, you know, as Catholics, we can't complain that our political leaders aren't Catholic enough if, like, we're not engaging in politics enough. It sort of goes both ways. Yeah. And if you're not voting based on your principles, you're never going to get the system that you want.

Yeah. I think also there's this strange idea that many Catholics in America have internalized that your morality, and I touched on this, has to be completely separate from your faith, which is a bizarre claim. That is a standard no one has ever been held to at any point through history, unless they were being asked to just completely renounce their faith. This is my private faith, but the way I conduct myself is completely different. And I don't think other people should conduct themselves that way. I don't want to persuade them to. And I don't think we should be governed based on things that I think are fundamental truths about reality, to and i don't think we should be governed based on things that i think are fundamental truths about reality but it's totally untenable so i think that you should understand without becoming

too political that your faith is in some sense political for reasons for for reasons of its hand being forced i mean for reasons of politics, just dealing with morality, generally speaking, in your faith, kind of having something to say about morality. And so I think the idea, as we understand it, of separation of church and state, and I know I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this. This is why I get called a bigot and a theocrat. But the way separation of church and state is often articulated makes zero sense. And it's totally untenable. It's totally untenable it's totally untenable like it's not even a position a person can hold especially not in a pluralized democracy whether you even value that this idea that the way i vote should have nothing to do with my

religious morals oh okay so they should have something to do with your religious morals of course you know your communistic or atheistic or naturalistic religion is what should inform my voting not my religion i mentioned this. People view a desire to enforce the natural law as fundamentally theocratic. You don't, look, I'm telling people don't kill babies. I'm not saying you have to eat meat on, or you can't eat meat on Fridays, right? I don't protest the steakhouse on Fridays, all right?

Catholics are protesting outside abortion clinics and praying that people don't have abortions. Like this is very clearly not an example of Catholics trying to impose divine revelation and specific tenets of Catholic morality onto people.

It's just common sense moral claims that only Catholics seem to be defending anymore. Yeah, yeah. And so I would ask people, if only the Catholic Church, let's say in a couple years,

just imagine, a few decades from now, infanticide has been openly embraced by some political faction. And let's just imagine catholics were the only ones who still were willing to say that that was wrong would it be like political to say don't kill babies because that's what people are basically

suggesting about abortion yeah and when i say there is no issue more important people will say i'm politicizing things look when you take immigration this is something i've seen a lot of people do they'll say things like well yes you know joe biden is pro-choice but trump his most recent opponent the presidential election is racist sexist homophobic anti-immigrant or xenophobic these are all very important issues they'll take a bunch of things which are very vague and they won't point to a specific policy then it's like and i'm not saying trump does not have problems right and i'm not saying he doesn't have problems with from a catholic perspective but none of them outweigh slaughtering infants by a long shot so one thing people i've heard people do this yeah

well trump is is pro-life but you, but Biden is pro-immigrant, so it kind of evens out. It's like, well, not only would that not be true if it was the case, but that's not the case from a Catholic perspective. There's a wide range of positions a Catholic is able to hold and be in good standing with the church with respect to immigration. And Trump actually holds one of them. You might be able to argue, you couldn't necessarily say this for Biden based on what he said, though based on what he's done, you could argue that he's pretty much just an open borders guy, which as far as I understand isn't really a Catholic position,

because the church does say civil authority should do something to prevent people from entering. Though to be fair to Biden, it's weird because he's paid lip service to having the borders closed. He's told people that they're not welcome here. But also the way Democrats frame the discussion is if you're against illegal immigration, you're anti-immigrant. So in other words, if you believe that there should be an immigration system which vets people and that the United States government has to keep track of who's entering and exiting the nation so that we can preserve the quality of life and the interests of citizens, then

you're like anti-illegal immigrant somehow it's a very strange framing if they would just put it honestly and say well no actually i just don't think anyone should be held to any standard when entering this country people would say that's insane right but if they just say well i'm in favor of legal illegal immigration and if you're against it then you're against immigration generally and they can make you sort of seem like a bad person so well again i i'll walk back a little bit of what i said about biden you can't it's tricky because he hasn't said specifically we should have open borders but like when you look at the way his side of the political aisle frames the discussion it's hard to come away from it with anything else and but even that is kind of a relative relevant to my original point which is like abortion is just more important yeah um where do you think uh how do you think the next

election will go oh boy oh boy oh boy so it's tough to make predictions here if you had asked me in 2018 2019 i would have been like there's no way trump doesn't get reelected. In 2016, I was actually skeptical. In 2016, I'm thinking, I think Trump will get one term because people probably just voted for him because they hated Hillary. And as soon as he's against anyone but Hillary, he'll lose. But then everything really hit the fan. It was horribly mismanaged and not necessarily attributing that to Trump, but he was the guy in charge.

So people did attribute it to him. He was voted out of office. Medical experts are even now admitting that they were unwilling to admit that the lab leak hypothesis was potentially true because they didn't want to side with trump so for those factors and many others he was voted out and now biden is the president and i don't know who's going to run against kamala is the short answer and i don't know who's going to run against Kamala is the short answer. And I don't know who's going to win. I really don't.

I think the Biden administration will probably just have one term. I mean, I was being a bit facetious, but it probably would be Kamala at that point. He is getting older. He'll probably step down. I think they're going to wait until he's been president for at least two years before he steps down because then Kamala can run twice. So in the United States law, you can only run twice, right? Or you can run twice, but you can only be the president for a maximum of 10 years.

People think it's eight years. It's actually 10. If you're the vice president for the tail end of someone else's administration and you were the vice president for two years or less, you can run twice. But if you're the vice president for three years, you can only run once. Otherwise, you would risk being reelected and having 11 years as president, which is illegal. So I think they're going to wait at least two years before they have Biden step down, if he does. But I have no idea. I hope DeSantis runs. I think it'll be interesting if him and Trump are in the same primary. I'm fascinated to see how that would go. Do you think Trump will definitely run again? I don't know.

I really don't know. again i don't know i really don't know i really don't know i'd be surprised for all his talk i'd be very surprised if he did it would really he doesn't even have a social media platform man i'd be surprised by anything like i just have nothing i have nothing here yeah it's so difficult to make predictions nowadays especially over the past couple years things have gotten so insane yeah if you ask me to make predictions about if you ask me to make predictions about, if you asked me to make predictions about June back in March, I wouldn't have been able to make them with any degree of accuracy.

So it's like the presidential election, man, this is a tough one. All right, so what we're going to do is we're just going to take a quick break and come back. So you and I can stretch, get a coffee, come back, and then we're going to take some questions from those in the live chat. If you want to make sure we see your question,

please send a super chat. We'll be taking super chats and patron questions. And that's going to be super fun. That'll be coming up. All right. I want to say thank you to two of our sponsors. The first being homeschool connections. If you are a parent who is homeschooling

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hello.com slash Matt Fradd. That's H-A-L-L-O-W dot com slash Matt Fradd. They are the number one app on iTunes as far as Catholic apps are concerned. You know, there's a lot of these apps that help you to meditate and things like this, but they're new agey, They just teach false things or they just lead you into that kind of way of thinking. This isn't like that. 100% Catholic, really well produced. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. And then finally, I would just like to ask you if you would consider supporting us at pintswithaquinas.com

slash give. You can give directly or you can, you know, go to Patreon and give there. We're trying to raise money for a full-time video guy. We're also trying to launch our Pints with Aquinas Español channel, which will be called Tequila Con Aquino. So if you're enjoying this work and you want to throw us a few bucks every month, that really adds up and we really appreciate it. All right, back to the interview go back and forth all right and we are back we are back all right tell them what we just did for the last three minutes uh well we ran i'm far too modest man uh we we just ran over to the bathroom we filled our water uh there is another reason i need a camera guy it's slanting so you need to move my camera now because i should i should be jamie move my camera could you pull that up please

unbelievable so uh welcome to the shameless coglan show i'm sitting in for matt frad today who has to adjust our camera oh and he is back let's see it doesn't feel like it did a good job. I don't know what's... Yeah. All right. Doesn't matter. Anyway, good to see you. Good to see you. Are you going to have a cigar or no?

Yeah, I might light up. I'll give it a couple minutes though. I wasn't sure if I could light it up or if it'd be too distracting, but now that I have permission... It might be too distracting, but I feel like we've given the people two hours. We've given them two hours. You guys can be distracted by a little bit of cigar smoke. Come on.

All right. All right. All right. Well, I'm going to light this up while you talk. Yes, and where should we be ashing them? You got an ashtray over there? I got an ashtray. All right.

So, yeah, I guess we were just on a little bathroom break. Is there any particular topic you want me to dive into here? Yeah, it's your show. Let's see. What is your favorite band from high school? My favorite band from high school? Like my favorite high school band? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you were in high school, who was your favorite band? Oh, that's tough. What is your favorite band from high school? My favorite band from high school, like my favorite high school band? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you were in high school, who was your favorite band?

Oh, that's tough. Probably the Beatles. Probably the Beatles. I didn't know as much about music back then. I became a huge Kansas fan in college. And the thing about Kansas is they were always... Yes, so Wayward Son is a good song. It's a great song.

Here's the thing. But here's the thing. Wayward Song and Dust in the Wind are both good songs, but neither of them are even the best song in the albums that they're on. Kansas, they're criminally underrated. I'm going to fix that camera. I'm going to fix that camera. One thing I loved about Kansas is the fact that

they were always singing about something very eternal and deep, for the most part. There's like one or two songs that kind of lose me. But in a way that is usually tried and failed at, so oftentimes musicians will kind of try to say or do something deep with their lyrics, and it just comes off as really trite, like, oh, this is just a popular morality everyone else already agrees with. But Kansas would say some interesting things,

and they would, again, sing about something deep and eternal. And the lead singer later basically said, and the lyricist came out, and he converted to Christianity and said that he was writing about Jesus Christ the whole time. No. Yes, yeah. Didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, good band.

Alice Cooper, too, is not someone I would have thought who would have come to Christianity. I wasn't really into him. My dad was. In high school, when I was in grade 8, the Beatles were my all-time favorite band. I started playing acoustic guitar because of them, learned a ton of their songs.

Grade nine, well, no, I would say grade, yeah, somewhere in the middle of grade eight was Metallica. And then it became Metallica for the next three years, pretty hardcore, and then Pantera, Machine Head. When did System of a Down come in here? System of a Down. But see, I'm older than you, so I was about in my senior year, I think, maybe, of high school when System of a Down came in.

But man, they've got a great sound, don't they? This is funny because when I was, and I hope you don't take offense to this, because System of a Down has grown on me. But when I was about 10 years old, my oldest brother would listen to them. And I just remember thinking, like, you are such a stereotype. You're like this teenager listening to this loud edgy rock music but it grew on me over the years i'm actually it's weird what nostalgia does to you it really is so i'll go on i'll go on spotify and i'll look up just 90s rock music yeah you ever

yeah just like listening to this is called evanescence kids shut up gosh yeah i just someone needs to wake you up inside every now and again. Talk about a beautiful Christian song. Is it? I don't know. How could it not be? How do you see into my soul? Like open doors? That's fair.

Could only be written in a Christian culture, I suppose. There could be something to be made for that argument. Something to be said for that argument. I apologize. All right. Well, here we are. We're taking questions. We've got our espresso.

We've got some whiskey. We'll take some questions as i say if you want to get your question asked to seamus maybe send us a super chat so we see it it needs to really be brutal but you don't have to we might be able to yeah we will believe me we could sit here and talk another two straight hours without without questions we're happy to take the questions and answer them but we do have a lot of material. We'll start with patrons because I love you. I love you guys too.

There's something great about supporting the creators who you watch. Dan Kinsley says, when are you going to have Matt voice a character? Thanks and God bless. Whenever he is willing

and or able, yes. When will you need an Australian? You probably won't need an Australian doing American political content. If I did an Australian accent, I would just do an over-the-top insulting Australian accent. Do it now, and then I'll do an American one. When I'm Matt Friot, I'm here on my Matt Friot show. We're going to be talking about points for the coin today. Am I in the ballpark there?

Yeah, you're in the ballpark, for sure. What would I have to change about this to be more Australian? Because I find, here's the thing, every time I try to do a British like slips into australian um how different does it sound for you when you hear british accent oh uh very very okay yeah not to you so they sound no i can tell them apart but it's it's it's actually this weird thing where i'm normally good at telling why different voices work differently that's part of why i do impressions but it's hard for me to tell british apart from Australian. So, like, I think British is a little bit softer like this, is it?

No, that was even Australian. Well, I don't know. It depends. I mean, you've got British. Like this kind of British accent where you're up here and very snobby is much more British. But, like, a more real British accent, that's. Yeah, it's hard to do. So, yeah, what are the big differences between British and Australian?

This is actually the reason I came on the show. First of all, I just realized that I have Super Chats turned off, so bugger. But it doesn't matter. I'll just take anyone's questions. We'll take patrons first, and then we'll take y'all. Sorry, guys. Sorry, guys.

Sorry, guys. Sorry, guys. No, it's all right. It's good. No, let's see. English accent. Well, it depends. You've got the Cockney kind of thing. Like a Cockney accent.

Thomas the Chunk. Chim-chim-a-nee,'ve got the Cockney kind of thing. Like a Cockney accent. Thomas the Chang. Chim-chim-a-nee, chim-chim-a-nee. The fuck controller. But see, my accent has diluted a lot since being here. Yes. Because it gets annoying to have people misunderstand you. Yeah. And so you begin to enunciate.

So this is really funny. When I was a young warthog, my family lived on the south side of Chicago. We moved out when I was pretty little. But my entire family had spent their entire lives in the city up until that point. We went back into the city a lot to see my cousins. So there were just certain parts of the Chicago accent that I had adopted as a young child. And I didn't realize it until I was like 12 and kids would just make fun of me at school. And so I ended up mostly working the accent out, but I used to just like really, like I had a very nasally letter A and a very over the top letter R. Like, are we going to go to the car and like drive to this place over there?

And then fortunately, I was even, it's funny because I've lived in Georgia the past six years and I was going through and listening to some, I was listening to some audio files that I had recorded back when I was 19 and was still like living in the Chicago suburbs. And I was like, oh my gosh, the way I pronounced the letter A was still really wonky until I spent some time out like far from the city out I was like talking about political theory and I said like democracy instead of democracy yeah that's why it gives us the loot give me a sentence to try and say an American and by the way just heads up to everybody watching it will be terrible yeah so so is your Australian accent so so shut up. Yeah, exactly. Not mine. Yours is perfect.

How about just welcome to Pints with Aquinas. It's going to be really challenging to say something you always say. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. I'm Matt Fradd. Okay. Welcome to... I feel so bad. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd.

All right. That's a little bit... All right. Try this. Try this. Do you want to go to the supermarket today? Do you want to go to the supermarket today? Do you want to go to the supermarket today? It almost sounds a little Irish.

It's the R. I've never. The R? Growing up, we don't have an R. You don't have an R. We have R sometimes. When the word needs the R, we have it. Like growing needs the R.

Because you can't say going. Going. Yeah. But other words don't need the R like words. It's interesting how certain accents will just omit the R. Like there's eroticism there. Done. In Australia and in Boston, khakis instead of khakis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's funny about Australians is we call our khaki pants. Khakis. You got khakis. Get the khakis. But we call them khakis. Really? That's hilarious.

So we literally put khakis in our car keys and there's no distinction. Ethnically speaking, we're probably related if you're from Australia because that's where they sent all the Irish prisoners, no? Just so you know, if I had a dollar for everyone currently telling me the Super Chat is off, I would have a million dollars. Oh my goodness. Well, to get the Super Chat out, it's like a million dollars. If I had a Catholic Jamie, I wouldn't need

to think about this stuff before a live stream. So a massive thanks to everybody who's supporting us on Patreon. I'm thinking by the way we're going going we'll probably be able to get a catholic jamie in august that'd be fantastic so thank you guys yeah so are we not going to be able to take super chats that are we no i'll take everybody i mean i would just oh were you able to turn it on well i got people chatting they're just not paying to ask questions i'm sorry buddy yeah that's all right oh man and after we drank this very expensive whiskey, you could have used those super chats, bro. That would have been nice.

Right. Okay. Oh, you know what? Since we're doing accents, do Jordan Peterson for us, if you don't mind. It's like, if you're going to ask me to do Jordan Peterson, you have to be more specific than that, because he is the archetypal hero. Like, if you were to take 100 heroes and take the best hero of all of them, and then do that a thousand more times, something approximating that, you would end up with the most archetypal hero possibly that is what an archetype is that

is what a hero is that is who jordan peterson is and if you're not willing to wrestle the snakes in the underworld and slay the dragon to rescue your father then you're gonna get us all thrown in a gulag for having a dirty room. That's Jordan Peterson. That was absolutely outstanding. Thank you. You're a very gifted person. Oh, you're kind. Let's see.

We've done... I'm just going to make you be my monkey now and perform for me. Do you want a string on my back? Yeah. You've done Ben Shapiro. There must be ones who are difficult. Like Michael Knowles sounds a middle-of-the-road kind of accent. Who would ever want to impersonate anything Michael Knowles has said?

What about Matt Walsh? I don't think I can. I don't think I can about Matt Walsh? I don't think I can. I don't think I can do Matt Walsh. I can do, like, I don't know. So I feel bad about that. I've talked about this. I feel bad about the Rubin video because when I initially wrote that, it was just a writing exercise,

and I wanted to pull a bunch of people together who I could do impressions of, and I thought, where do I put them? The Rubin Report. That's where all those people go. But I didn't really have a Rubin impression. i just noticed that he said the letter g kind of funny like i agree and i've realized that that's just kind of how californians talk too and i i remember not knowing what to put for his responses that would sound rubin like so i just did the most absurd caricature i possibly could and i sent it to a friend and i was like i'm thinking of

animating this and he's like dude i'm like crying at the Dave Rubin part. I'm like, that's the stupidest part. It's just him saying, I agree over and over. And he's like, just record it. And then I did.

And I was like, do it for us because that means it's become iconic. Or don't. Or don't. We love you, Dave. We love, we do.

He's been very kind to me. And actually, Dave had such a good sense of humor. Just in a platonic way. He has been very nice. And he did a cartoon. Well, he recorded a voice with me to do another cartoon making fun of him.

So he was very cool about it. We just haven't animated it yet. So Ruben was a great sport. No, I think he's... I enjoy him. Okay, we've got people in the chat asking for a Tim Gordon. We've got like 10 people saying do a Tim... A Tim Gordon impression?

Timothy Gordon impression. So here's the thing. Do you listen to him enough to know that? This is what it's like. So actually, Tim and I, you like how I just dropped the first name there? It makes me sound much cooler. We're on a first name basis.

Tim and I. Timmy boy? No, I spoke to him for the first time in my life two Sundays ago and we talked for like three and a half hours.

It was great. But I don't think I have an impression. Here's how I develop impressions. I will listen to a lot of what the person says and then I will start to realize that I have inadvertently adopted some of their speech patterns and characteristics and i'll recognize

that and then just put that in the box of this person and bring that up whenever i have to do an impression of them and i just don't know that i've i've developed that for timothy gordon he's just like he's hey guys that's good i want to i want to try it here's the thing i'm going to try it it's going to be bad. You have to be okay with it being bad, because he's not a fleshed-out president. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, part of why, look, I believe in Vatican II now. Like, he bounces a little bit as he talks. He's like, look, and I said, we, as Catholics, have to believe that.

Like, he kind of looks up a little bit, too. That's my Tim Gordon. All right, what about Taylor Marshall? Taylor Marshall? Oh, my gosh. Actually, so a couple years ago, I drew like, two years ago when they first started,

I drew this really funny caricature of both of them and I don't remember where it's at, but I'll have to send it to you. But Taylor Marshall, it's like, yeah. Like, I don't know. He has kind of small eyes.

They almost look like they're close. Oh, Tim Gordon's in this chat. Is he in the chat? Yes, Tim. I'm sorry. Tim, don't rewind about 30 seconds. He just wrote back and said, spot on. That's fantastic.

Thank you. Yeah, I don't think I have a Taylor Marshall. I don't think I have a Taylor Marshall. I don't have too many like, and I don't think I have too many Catholic figures impressions down. There might be some, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

If you want to throw names at me, I can think of. Who do you think you do the best impression of? That's a good question. Joe Biden, because I just use his audio clips. Do it. No, I'm kidding. Well, Joe Biden,

I just kind of do a generic old man voice where I'm like, I got hairy legs. The kids rub them. And then, like, Trump is much more... I feel like I don't like

doing the Trump one as much because everyone kind of has a Trump, but he's like, look, okay, we have to do. Joe Biden doesn't know what day of the week it is. They're calling it. They're calling this show. Have you heard of this show?

It's called Pints with Aquinas. They're calling it. They have Matt Fradd. Matt Fradd, the very horrible, awful Matt Fradd, who told people he wouldn't vote for me because he's from Australia. Very much a failure. We got Michael Voris. Oh, okay. I think I might be able to do Michael Voris.

Get in the zone. Get in the zone. Take your time. Take your time. Welcome to the Vortex, where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed. I'm Michael Voris. Why did this cardinal do this thing? Many faithful Catholics think he shouldn't have done that thing. Like my Voris, I used to have, I used to have, no, no, you think, oh man, I don't know if I could do it. Because there was, it's coming back to me. And years and years ago, I did have like a very funny Michael Voris. And I can't remember what I said.

I can't remember what in particular I would have him say. Yeah. Hey, Timothy Gordon just said Steph, his wife, just asked if I was on Matt Fradd today. That impression was immaculate. Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad. Yeah, my Voris is not as good, but I used to be able to do a Voris impression a long time ago, and I just remember me and my friends like cracking up over it but i can't remember what i said and it's gonna

kind of bother me fulton sheen can you do fulton sheen i don't think so i don't think i could do fulton sheen i don't think i've heard it but that's a problem that means i haven't been listening to enough of him did you answer my question who was the best one you think you can do oh the best yeah it's tough i don't know um people really like the ben shapiro impression it's a lot and since you did that two hours ago maybe honestly gang so if you're gonna ask me to do the bench bureau impression again when i've already had some whiskey in my system so it's gonna be more difficult for me to articulate myself very quickly and clearly that's absolutely insane and it's unfair look how much whiskey i've had and you're asking me to talk this quickly without

stumbling over my words it's absolutely asinine okay so no one's ever gonna do your podcast again if this is the way you treat your guests and you should know that oh joe rogan uh joe rogan's really hard because his voice so i can kind of do his maybe mannerisms and speech patterns but i can't do his voice joe rogan joe rogan is kind of like he does this and like when he taught when he talks he goes like do you think if you took a chimp and if you put a bunch of chimps in bumper cars would they like learn to drive them? Would they hit each other?

Would they just like throw poo at each other? Like that's kind of his voice is really hard. I'll promise I'll stop soon. No, no. You can keep throwing them at me. I just want everyone to know that like these are not my best impressions.

These are very on the fly. I'm just enjoying this way too much. Trent Horn. Trent Horn. I can't. I don't think I can. I don't think I have a Trent Horn. My favorite American accent is the Southern accent.

You like the Southern accent? Oh, I used to do. The first impression I ever did was W when I was 14. My film Eric Hans. We will. I tell you, we are going to punch with Aquinas. It's one of the best podcasts you should watch it

if you love America if you don't love America don't even bother I remember that one that was actually the first impression I did that got me so my best bud

growing up he and I would always try to do voices together yeah we would always make weird noises just cartoon voices

and then my cousin Dane who spent basically he was he lived on the south side but he came out to stay with us to go to school would always make weird noises just cartoon voices and then my cousin dane who spent basically he he was he lived on the south side but he he came out to stay with us to go to school and he was really funny i love my cousins and he would do this impression of george w and that was the first time i heard it and people who do impressions will tell you once you hear someone else do an impression it becomes a lot easier you're like oh they pick that thing out it kind of takes a lot of you're doing this in suck of air when you were doing trump and i was like what was

that yes he goes he he'll do that sometimes when he gets close to the mic yeah stephen hawking is like that reminds me someone once showed me you can do a stephen hawking impression but like you have to suck you have to talk backwards by taking air in i don't know if i could do it i can try it's like i'm probably gonna botch this one, but hello, I am Stephen Hawking. Like that. It's actually really good. Oh, thank you.

Yeah. The trick is to talk in, like to suck air in as you're speaking. I cannot keep up with how many people are begging you to do all these different ones. Okay. Father Mike Schmitz. Oh, come on. Come on.

No, I love Father Mike Schmitz, but I can't, like I haven't heard enough of him and he's also, he's very, I can't Mike Schmitz, but I can't, like I haven't heard enough of him. And he's also, he's very, I can't think of anything particular he does that sets, like, this is not insulting at all. Like he's brilliant, he's fantastic.

But in terms of like the things I think of that he does, just like smile and like be an upbeat, happy person. It's like, that's hard to do an impression of, you know? It's just me being happy. Just give me some more of this and I'll be doing my Father Mike Schmitz. No, but Father Mike Schmitz is incredible. I love the work he does.

Love the work he does. So I don't know if you can do this impression or not, but I'm going to ask you to do it. And I want you to do the absolute best you can do. Oh, no. Kamala Harris. Oh. Kamala. Man.

Just ask me a question. Why haven't you been down to the borders? Ha ha. Stupid question. That's my Kamala Harris. That was so dumb that down to the borders? Ha ha. Stupid question. That's my comment. That was so dumb that you asked me that. I'm comely haired. Well, I didn't go to Europe either.

I don't know. She's tough. She's really tough. She's really tough. And I'm actually kicking myself now because I know there are some impressions of Catholic figures that I can do that I just haven't because Bishop Barron. I don't think I can either. There's a few that I have and it drives me crazy because I haven't been able to do them

on my YouTube channel because no one knows who they are, but I can't remember them. I can't remember the ones I can do impressions of. Scott Hahn. I can't. I can't remember. I don't remember Scott Hahn. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I feel, I couldn't even tell you what he sounds like right now. Do you ever watch Father Gregory Pine on my channel? A little bit. You do him? Yeah. It has to be. We're getting down to the bottom of the bucket here. Yeah, I'm so sorry, you guys.

No, are you kidding? You've got to travel. My impressions aren't good enough for you guys. I get it. None of you love me. No, no. They all love you. What about Tim Paul?

So it's hard to do Tim Paul. And you're not allowed to pretend to wear a beanie. Yeah, I did an impression on his podcast of him once. But he's just like, Tim talks. He articulates every single consonant and he sort of speaks a little bit like this democrats are saying and he actually has a little bit of the chicago thing too his a's are kind of flat like democrats are saying that x y and z that's sort of but again admittedly that is not the best impression of him he but he also has like a

very normal sounding voice so he's hard to do an impression of i think tim pool interesting enough he and i are actually from the same neighborhood originally oh cool yeah i moved out when i was very little but it was just cool to learn that after i met him so you'd think i'd be able to impersonate him a little bit better but no all right uh patron sean hurley says shamus i see you often on the tim cast and you often slip a bit of Catholic ideas theology. I remember you mentioning Russia spreading its errors, for example. How do you view that platform you have through this and your cartoons, of course, to influence a diverse audience? We've touched upon this, but it might be good to take another kick at it. Yeah, that's a really good question. So I just feel if I have the opportunity to speak on any given platform and it's not too out of place,

it actually makes sense to invoke Catholic teaching and discuss it, which is much more often than people are willing to admit, then I do so, because I think it's important. There's nothing more important than saving people's souls. And I've said this earlier, but while it might be the case that once I'm more lettered in this and have had more experience studying theology, I could be interested in doing more apologetics in a formal sense. I just think what I'm doing is the obligation of any Catholic in any kind of public life. I'm just bringing my faith into things when it's necessary,

helping clear up misconceptions about it, helping people to understand what we believe in and promoting it, and hopefully that brings some people to Jesus Christ. And I would also say this. Not everything we do has to be explicitly catholic we can't contradict our own values but this is a huge part of it for me i intend in the future to do much more catholic based content but i don't think it has to be i think you can you can fight the culture by just making content that's decent and that doesn't cede any territory to the left here's

how the left has basically won the culture war. Here's one of the many ways. In their media, they don't really hit you over the head with their political views. Like they don't really, it's very rare. Sometimes they do. There are very evangelical left-wing films in television programs. So one example might be the newsroom, just very blatantly left-wing. The whole point, the West Wing was kind of this way. It's just a left-wing fantasy

i just wish the president would do this you could tell but for the most part what they'll do is they will have characters say and do things that are against the natural law that are horrible that society used to recognize are bad and they'll just sort of portray it as normal and that's kind of how we have to fight back i mean of course we should fight back by criticizing their material and deconstructing it but catholics need to make content that just shows a Catholic lifestyle in a positive light. And so in the future, that's what I'd like to do if I have the opportunity to create films or television shows. I don't think there could be room to do something overtly religious, but I think it would more or less just be something that I think is a good story

that incorporates Catholic values in some ways and normalizes living by the natural law, being Catholic, trying to abstain from sin, that kind of thing. Because that's, again, that's basically what they do. Like you, for example, in film and television, you almost never have an example of a character going, you know what, I'm gonna have sex with whoever I want because I'm liberated and I don't like your conservative archaic morals and monogamy is just a trap that we're forced into

by a patriarchal society that wants to oppress women. Like, that happens sometimes, but they'll usually just have two characters have sex and not talk about it. Right, right. I see what you mean.

Yeah. But conservatives do the opposite, and this is probably like a lot of evangelical filmmaking. This is what I've talked with the guys

at the Babylon Bee about when I did their podcast. Conservatives do try to be too heavy-handed with their messages, And this is how I was earlier on. Now, I'm just trying to make something funny, and because I think it's funny, it's probably going to have a conservative slant

to it, because I'm conservative, and I'm doing political comedy. But I don't come at it from like, how do I get someone to walk away from this video understanding this particular perspective? I just kind of take for granted that people will understand and find it funny. So I want to read an article that came out of the Babylon Bee today. And I'm going to put the camera on your lovely face. And I just get your reaction to this if you want. Yeah. And see,

show us how you're feeling as we read it. So it's called Controversy. By the way, for those who don't know. Tucker Carlson. I just remember looking at the camera. That's another one. Right now. Do it. This is the most AD it this is the most add part of the show i'm so sorry you guys but no it's great i didn't want as soon as i looked at the camera they're on youtube they all have add i looked at the camera and made a face and i was like oh tucker carlson hold on the radical left wants you to think you have to eat the bugs you don't actually it's not illegal he's like take something the elite don't want you to know this but it's actually not illegal to drink whiskey on matt frad's show the constitution doesn't prohibit it so why did matt kick me off after having too much that's that's my job and

then he goes when you say something that confuses him i love it that's so good all right here's the article and for those who don't know babylon b of course is a sat. All right, here's the article. For those who don't know, Babylon Bee, of course, is a satirical site. So here's the article. It says, Controversy as Catholic Church decides to deny communion to satanic goat worshipers. U.S. There are many Catholics in the world with many beliefs, but a number of U.S. bishops have decided... This is the Australian... Is this the Australian trying to do an American voice?

No, this is the Australian... It's offensive to me, Matt. I want you to know... Stop appropriating my accent. I'm extremely offended. This is the Australian news anchor voice, right? Is that how Australian news anchors talk? Yeah, it is.

You're kidding me. There are many Catholics in the world with many beliefs, but a number of U.S. bishops have decided to take a political stand. Hold on. Wait, you're telling me Australian media pundits and journalists and news anchors actually talk this way? Well, I mean. And you guys trust your media, huh? We don't. No.

Well, we do. All right, let me get through this. Many see this as a targeted at President Biden, who is deeply Catholic, but also likes to engage in satanic goat worship. It is simply our opinion that you can't be Catholic in good standing and also pledge allegiance to satan while bowing down before a goat said one bishop who wished to remain anonymous so satanic goat worshipers don't put a hex on him as for biden while he says satan is a bad dude much like corn pop bad dude had me dude that's perfect he still plans to bad dude you his power while bowing down before a sinister-looking goat he named Black Phillip. And Biden sees no conflict between this and his faith.

A number of bishops do oppose denying communion to satanic goat worshipers, though. They worry that this could put the church in direct conflict with Democrats, huge supporters of satanic goat worship, making it harder for the church to work with them on issues such as poverty, racism, and the environment. Still, they admit...

This is like every National Catholic Distorter article on giving people... Have they been reading Catholic literature? One last line and then get into it. Still they admit, even if they were to be able to get past the Satanism, there was still no getting past the baby murder. Oh, well, that's kind of nice.

It's a nice... At least it's painting the Catholic Church in a nice light. We'll see if it's warranted. They stopped just short of misquoting Thomas Aquinas. I think it's hilarious. Yeah, those guys are great. I might be hanging out with them and doing their podcast again in July. And I'll tell them that you stole their content and read it on Instagram.

That's right. They're going to be very disappointed in you. No, yeah. I mean, they hit the nail on the head. It's really not that different. It's not different at all, actually. I mean, they hit the nail on the head. It's really not that different. It's not different at all, actually. I mean, slaughtering children is... Both are really bad, but you shouldn't slaughter children.

Actually, maybe that's theologically complicated because a violation... So the commandments are roughly in order. Right. Correct? Yeah, I would say. So Satan worshiping actually probably is worse, but... I mean, abortion is very satanic in its own way, so... Indeed.

Meredith Woodard says, Not a a question just fangirling hugely over this awesome crossover oh thank you huge huge the best crossover in the world sergio felon thanks for being a patron says so pumped for this what advice do you have aspiring entrepreneurs more specifically how do you maintain your moral standards but still build a successful company? That's a really good question. And it depends on the field that you're entering. So I can only speak specifically to building a business in the particular sphere I built one in,

and that is animation production, sort of creating political content and educational cartoons for my own channel and also organizations that I agree with and who have messages I find valuable and in need of promotion on top of that just don't take work from people uh who you don't want to create any kind of message promoting now again this is why i'm saying i have to be very specific to my world but i can sort of get into other businesses because there's some overlap here and also say that when i work with organizations for example like the the foundation for economic education which they've been very good to me they've given me pretty much unlimited

artistic freedom i don't agree with them on everything i don't agree with other economic takes and again part of that has just been me developing in my understanding of catholic thought but they don't make me do anything that violates church teaching or say anything that violates church teaching and i don't so that's kind of how you have to do it you can i think you can work with people who don't agree with you on any everything as long as you're not promoting the things that are wrong uh when it comes and this is something we know and this is like by the way i've had discussions with my my spiritual advisor and a priest who i very much trust actually he was a priest i very much trusted then he became my spiritual director but i've had

like many discussions about this exact question how do i operate ethically in business and also how do i operate ethically publicly and you know who am i able to make fun of like is it against charity to make fun of some of these people and these are questions you have to wrestle with now it's funny because when i had this conversation with him we were talking about catholics in public life we would know we were actually talking about yeah catholics in public life and what we can say about other people when it becomes uncharitable. And I'm thinking my cartoons are like kind of goofy and silly, but maybe some of this could be considered scathing.

Where should I draw the lines? And he said, well, I know that there are really good Catholic political cartoonists who do make fun of people who have good prayer lives and their cartoons, they're making fun of priests and bishops and et cetera. I'm like, oh, no, no, I'm not they're making fun of priests and bishops and et cetera. I'm like, oh no, no, I'm not talking about making fun of priests and bishops. I'm talking about like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He's like, oh, that's fine. Almost immediately. But yeah, just consult with the spiritual director you genuinely trust and be really honest with yourself about what your goals are, what you want to do in business, and just make

sure you literally never do any of that. And sometimes, yeah, you're going to work with people who don't agree with everything that you believe. And as long as you don't participate in spreading the messages that are antithetical to our worldview as Catholics, then you're golden. And as long as you make it really clear in your public life that you support church teaching and will not side with anyone who disagrees with it, then yeah, you're golden. So that's the only advice I can really give. If you're getting into,

oh, and also this goes without saying, right? But be good to your workers. So I never allow, it's not even that I ask them not to, like I won't let people who work for me work on Sunday. I just tell them like, don't, this is your day off. I give everyone two days off at least. They can pick the other one if they want Saturday,

it can be Saturday, but like they have to take Sunday off. So I'm a little nicer to my employees than Burger King, I guess. And then, yeah, just negotiate wages with them, figure out something that works. But you try to be generous in the same way that if you saw a poor person on the streets who is begging for money, of course, as a Catholic, you're going to want to give them money.

It's like, well, what about the people who are helping you build your business? So just be good to them. And we were talking to Dr. Mike Welker last night, who teaches economics here at Francis in University of Steubenville. And one of the things he was saying is, of course, and it sounds obvious perhaps, is that the number one thing to do to get your workers working well is, well, apart from their natural skills, is relationships. And we all know that. If I work for somebody who I think has my best interest in mind and is concerned about me, I'm a lot more committed to him. If I'm working for a faceless,

nameless, faceless corporation, I don't really feel like I need to. Maybe I will, but I don't have that kind of sense of commitment. And part of it is also that it's a small business. And so the private contractors who I'm working with, who I'm actually moving towards making full-time employees, are on board with basically everything that I'm saying or quite a lot of it. So they're happy to do this work. And some of them, it's their first job. Some of them, they're industry animators who just really like what I'm doing. So they're willing to work for a bit less than they would in the industry,

given their experience level. But I still always try to work something out that I'm sure they're comfortable with. And I always want to make sure that they're happy with their payment and the way that they're being treated. That me too, man. Absolutely. I want people happy. I've got a couple of people who work for me.

As I say, we're trying to bring a video of Jamie, Catholic Jamie on full time but that's interesting to me because you said you want to make them full time and not just contractors. Have you looked into health insurance? Yeah, so if you're a small business which is I believe a business with less than 50 employees

then you don't have to provide those kinds of benefits right off the bat. Again, if we become financially viable to the point where we're capable of doing that, of course. But I know that that's not a legal obligation at this point. And for a business as small as mine, it wouldn't be prudent to expect something like that. But yes, of course, as soon as the business has grown to the point where we have the means for something like that, I would absolutely love to do that. Let's see here.

Philip Lamb, thanks for being a patron philip says here's one first off huge fan i watch freedom tunes every time a new one comes out i appreciate you my question is when youtube inevitably cancels or demonetized you dude that's just a bit negative you don't know that what i mean youtube loves me me and susan we chat all the time she's in my dm she's, great cartoon this week. I'm like, thank you, Susan. Actually, hold on. I don't want to be sued by Susan for suggesting that she supports the horrible evil freedom tunes. My question is, when YouTube inevitably cancels or demonetizes you, what's your backup? And he says, Odyssey or something similar. I don't know what that is. You can help me understand

that. I'm not hoping this happens. I just think it's an unfortunate reality possibility. Thanks, Philip. No, Philip, I really appreciate that. So that is something I've thought about. I actually have a friend who's basically built me a website. It's not completely ready. And I'm trying to get a donation portal set up. And we're also trying to find a platform besides YouTube to just throw all the videos on so that people can just go directly to my website and if youtube shuts us down the

content will still be there very cool um i mean there's a lot of discussion here that we had isn't there about cancel culture and what you think of it in general 100 and also the other thing is like cancel culture would be relatively powerless if it were not for these gigantic corporations siding with the people who want to cancel everybody else they have a clear political motive and it's actually enshrined in many of their policies so at twitter if you say that somebody is a man when they are in fact a man but they happen to subjectively experience themselves as being women and um you know demand to be called a woman, you can be, like, booted from their platform. So there's an innate conservative bias

actually written into the terms of service at many of these websites. So it's discriminatory flat on its face. But if these businesses didn't have these policies, yeah, cancel culture would not be nearly as effective. Not nearly as effective. I mean, it would be one thing if cancel culture really was just what the left describes it as as which is keeping people accountable and making sure no

one says horrible things or hurts those beneath them but the problem is they end up involving these gigantic multinational corporations to shut people down for political speech that they don't like that's not the same as holding somebody accountable that's just bullying them yeah um drew lowen thanks for being a patron says what does seamus think of distributism that's a good question um so i'm not a distributivist i still consider myself in the the free market school here um i and it's also in part because i'm just not really like familiar with distributivism i've heard a bit about it i'm open-minded send any material you want my way i think that while i don't agree with it on everything the austrian

school offers a fantastic descriptive model of how economies work even though i wouldn't agree with all the prescriptions you'd derive from that but even that said i mentioned f.a hayek earlier he's an austrian who believed in antitrust laws so i think like you can support the appropriate amount of regulation that a Catholic would support and still consider yourself an Austrian, probably. But yeah, again, I don't... That's why I'm reluctant to say I'm totally Austrian.

I align... They're probably the closest I align with, though not quite. And I do find their descriptions very convincing. But again, I'm not dogmatic on any of this stuff anymore. As soon as I moved to like um out of this sort of like almost anarcho-capitalist hard minarchist across the board position i just realized like i i can i should be open to changing my mind about any of this stuff so if i'm wrong about the market and you could give me some good

distributivist literature then like by all means well it's actually one thing i actually appreciate about you i mean we got mark barnes who works at New Polity, and he works down in the same hallway. Yeah, sharp guy. He came over, and I just love the sorts of questions you were asking him. You could tell that you were just curious, in the positive sense, or at least wanting to understand what it is he means by things. I thought that was really cool.

So maybe we could have... Would you ever be open to a discussion, say, with Jacob, your mom? Oh, 100%. On my show, I mean. Because what's cool about that is... No, no would you ever be open to a discussion, say with Jacob, your mom? Oh, 100%. On my show, I mean. Because what's cool about that is- No, no, nevermind. Not on your show, Matt. Okay.

You bring some more of this, I'll talk to whoever you want, buddy. What would be cool about it is you guys aren't debating. You're just asking questions. Yeah, I would love to do that. You know a ton more about economics than I do. So it'd be cool for you guys to- Well, and I just think that that's-

It's not necessarily a compliment. I know nothing. Well, Matt, you could have just let it be a compliment if you didn't say that last part. Like, I am an expert and Seamus is a genius. But I would love to do that. And I think that's really lacking in our discourse right now. I think it's extremely valuable to just have conversations with people

without going in it thinking, I have to own them. Part of what happens when you talk politics, especially online, is you just know that there are these cameras watching you. And people don't act the same when they're being observed. No, it's totally true. You and I swear a lot less when the camera's on. That's true. And honestly, I thought our conversation off camera, both of the conversations were really

good and productive and enjoyable. But this is different. Like, this is not the same thing as it was. And that's not to say it's bad, but people are just different. And that's heightened when it's, I have to win. I have to be the one who comes out here looking smart. The other person has to look dumb. It's not, and it has its value.

I'm not against debates by any means, gang. Okay, on them with facts and logic, if you can. All right, folks. But I think it's great to just have discussions with people too. So yeah, totally open to that. Totally open to that. Yeah, that's awesome, man. All right, Let's see.

Dominic, thanks for being a patron, says, what are Seamus's favorite cartoons? Now, he might mean on your channel, and he might mean in general. So why don't we take them like that? Yeah, I've been asked this question before. And people will ask me, like, which of your videos is your favorite?

And that's like asking a parent which child is their favorite. It's obviously John. No, it's the one that's making the most money. And so my favorite... No, I kid. in terms of my favorite cartoons ah that i've done that's tough i kind of like the ones where i'm just being really goofy those are a lot of fun there there are some that like are really poignant and get a message across that i find valuable and i like those but i'm not sure it's actually really hard because i have a couple categories of video too and

like some of them here's the thing some of them a couple categories of video too. And like some of them, here's the thing. Some of them are more fun for me to work on and some of them are more fun for me to watch in an interesting way. And they usually align. So, but not always. So one that was really funny that at least like to work on that I enjoyed,

I did this really goofy video about getting the vaccine. And it's clear, like if you watch, it's clear that I'm being way over the top and it's supposed to be ridiculous. But it was so so like that one was a lot of fun to make like doing stuff like that is is very enjoyable for me i'm not sure which videos i know i am really great at just saying a lot without answering the question that's why it was made for politics so i'll put it to you this way in terms of cartoons aside from my own in terms of what inspired me, The Simpsons, for sure, early on. I was not allowed to watch it as a kid.

But once I started, it was brilliant. And you can kind of see some of that influence on my work. Like, I do draw these gigantic Simpsons-like eyes that are sort of pressed together usually. And I also just, i loved the humor and the first i want to say i'll be extremely generous and say like up to season 12 of the simpsons so again that's very generous um because it does it does start to go downhill before then but like it's it's some of the best television writing ever it's hysterical it's hysterical so the simpsons was a huge inspiration um and then in terms of other cartoons i really

like there are some shows that i really appreciate political commentary from but and every time i say this in public i have to be the square catholic who's like but it does go too far so like i just south park it's so vulgar and sexual and it is disappointing because trey parker and matt stone like are actually brilliant they they create such a poignant show and when they're running they do an episode every week and you know they don't do it all year round like i do but they they're doing 22 minute long episodes and they're just extremely talented and they've they've made some hilarious tricks but then there's some stuff it's like absolutely horrible and disgusting and i can't promote it yeah so that's why i'm like reluctant but if this isn't so much me promoting it's just like if

you're honestly asking what i saw when i was younger and thought this is interesting that would be one of the examples and it's funny because when i first like when i first saw it as a little kid and i didn't watch this through my childhood by any means it was just when i was at a friend's house who had cable and it was on i would like see it for a minute and be like i'm not supposed to watch this and walk away but it it was just like, oh, it's funny. These little kids are swearing. And then when I watched a couple episodes as I was older, I was shocked to hear that they were saying things

that were out of step with left-wing orthodoxy. Because I saw it as this edgy show that was trying to be real punk rock and stick it to the old fuddy-duddy conservatives. And then I saw a few episodes and I was like, wait a minute. I actually kind of admire the fact that they're willing to attack the people who they were seen as being in league with initially. And I certainly wouldn't encourage people to watch South Park either.

But that episode on Warcraft, the world of Warcraft, did you ever watch that? Where Cartman says to the guys who give up because their lives falling to pieces as they just spend hours and hours playing video games. They're playing basketball and maybe you can do this impersonation. I'm sure you can. Way better than me. Where Cartman comes up and he's like,

come on, guys. What does he say? When things get tough, this is his line, when things get tough, just give up on the world of Warcraft. That's right. Yes.

And I do really want to reaffirm like so there's just been stuff in the show that's awful it's like i i can't watch it anymore i don't watch it anymore and i don't recommend people watch it but if you are honestly asking me what inspired me earlier on as i was getting into animation that like that is one of them tell us tell us your process like how how do you do the animation how does that all work so there's there's a team in korea that i pay peanuts to no i'm I'm kidding. Actually, I shouldn't joke about it. It is really evil. Some studios do that.

I started teaching myself when I was like 13, 12, 13. And as the years went on and I started doing YouTube, it became about making these videos really quickly. And I just was able to develop methods for making a short cartoon very swiftly and the process for that is kind of complicated i wonder if i if i could actually say much that would mean show your audience here yeah um so generally you know write the cartoon um and so every cartoon takes like i would say two days to a week two three days to a week and and there's some people hearing that like that's a long time for two minutes and then

there's some animators hearing that like how do you do it in two days to a week that's insane and first of all it's because i i developed some strategies for getting things done quickly but also i have the best team in the world the best for me what is it that you do and what is it that they do because i'll be honest up until this point i thought you just came up with the ideas for the cartoons and did the voices. I didn't know you actually did the animation as well. I'm sorry. So how do you spread that out with your team and what does that look like? So the way we spread it out is they animate and I yell at them.

Nice. No, no. So the way it starts, it depends. Some videos I'm extremely involved in. Come on, you fools. There are some videos that I still animate all by myself, but it's more rare. It's very rare. So like the wokest Oscars video I did, that was just me.

While they were working on a different video for that week. So when we release two videos in a week, sometimes that's like they were working on one video and I was working on one by myself. How do you get the animation looking so kind of similar? It looks like it's all done by one person. I'm glad. I'm glad you think so. It's been a struggle.

And earlier on, there were some people who I'd worked with who struggled with that more than others and so we had to get a consistent style sheet together to sort of show people this is how you have to draw the characters in order to make them work with the style and there are videos you can watch where if you've been watching freedom tunes for long enough you can go back to some videos earlier on and be like that does not fit like this is clearly a different style but for the most part i've got um i've got a couple artists working and there's different strengths and weaknesses among the animators that i'm working with and and some of them do a great job emulating the style some of them not so much but like it doesn't matter

because that's not their strength as much like they're much better at at um messing around with the facial expressions that have been pre-created to sort of make a believable emotion from it and then some people uh which are just really really good at doing the backgrounds and capturing those perfectly so what i do is i just i take whoever is the best at matching my style in a particular task and i just give that task to them and i gotta say i mean it's not like it's not just me we were doing these videos really quickly when it was just me on my own but now that i have this team i am like i'm unbelievably impressed with them and the fact that they were able to keep up the pace that we have all kept up together they're really good like i really think i have the best team of animators i know that sounds crazy because

i'm just doing this YouTube cartoon and there are television shows like in terms of the resources that we have and the kind of content that we're pumping out we're running yeah I mean I remember being blown away when I first saw it I thought this is like this is Simpsons quality thank you better than then South Park for sure I mean they have their own animation style but I remember being thoroughly impressed how how you must have been doing this for a long time before you hit youtube yeah so i like i said i started teaching myself to animate when i was 12

i started uploading political content to youtube when i was 19 years old and it's really been in like the last one or two years that i have uh it's really been like the last year it was in january that i finally got to the point where I had people who were working with me routinely who could take a lot of the pressure off me to the point where I just didn't have to do as much on every video. And like I said, they have just they're fantastic. They're great.

That's awesome. Are they in America? Do you mind me asking? Yes. Yes. Tommy Lee says Seamus, Tommy Lee here. We met when you opened for an unnamed notorious comedian about two years ago how who's that unnamed notorious comedian he's an unnamed notorious comedian we can't name him yeah all right um how how do we help our pro-american but anti-catholic come to the full truth and beauty of our faith. Also, well,

next question. Also, where do I submit my application to become your full-time chauffeur? Maybe I'll say that. Oh, my goodness. That's very kind of you. So, yeah. Can you repeat the question? Yeah. He wants to know how do we help our pro-American but anti-Catholic friends come to the fullness of the truth. Pro-American, anti-Catholic friends come to the fullness of the truth. Pro-American, anti-Galilean. Well, again, it's important that you don't put too much emphasis on that you don't put too much emphasis on politics.

Faith is extremely important. Faith is extremely important, and you have to make it clear that Christ is first and foremost, and that we should care about our country patriotism is a virtue but that can't be the whole thing like there has to be something

undergirding that yeah yeah all right so to those whoopsie daisy yep i did just say whoopsie i can't believe that yep owning it for those who are watching in the live stream please feel free to send your questions over and we will throw them at Seamus. Not literally, but possibly. In the meantime. Yeah, what are we on? Let's see, man.

We're at two hours and 53 minutes. We can do another hour. Yeah, we got this. Dude, we can do another hour. Absolutely. Are we going to beat you and Trent Horn? I don't know, man.

Let's see. You going to light that cigar up or what? Oh, yeah, I'll light the cigar up. Give me some matches, baby. Everybody going to the party. Have a real good time.

Ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. La-la-la-la-la. I mean, what do you think of that guy's political views? He is incredibly talented. I don't, yeah, I'm not too familiar. I know his songs were political. Very anti-war. Mm-hmm.

Fantastic. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.. It's very anti-war. Fantastic. Yeah, I know super chats aren't working, but just feel free to send them here in the live chat. We'll do what we can. Someone just comes in. He's like, I just came on.

What happened? I don't know, dude. It's too much to say. All right, here we go. Not So Roasted says, for Seamus, how would you explain Catholicism is not a polytheistic religion when it is encouraged to pray to specific saints for certain things?

That is a really great question. I have an answer to this, though Matt probably has a better one, and I'll turn it over to him after I'm done in case he can correct me here. So as Catholics, we believe that we can pray for the dead. This is also scriptural. And it's also believed, and this is also scriptural, that the holier a person is, the more efficacious their prayers are. Well, who's holier than the people in heaven?

Nobody. So you can ask them to pray for you, and God will be more likely to hear your requests because they're much more holy than you, and therefore more likely to be listened to by God. Is that fair? Yeah, I think it's fine. I think it's important to understand that over 500 years,

Protestants and Catholics use terminology different, so it's important to say what is it that you mean when you use this word. Because I think for many Protestants, prayer is synonymous with worship. And so when they hear us saying that we pray to Mary, they hear you worship Mary. But we use pray in the sort of old English sense, you know, I pray thee, close the door, I pray thee, pass me the matches, you know. And so if I can ask earthly Christians to pray for me, why shouldn't I be able to ask heavenly Christians to pray for me, especially when, A, it's not forbidden by Scripture, it's not forbidden by Scripture it's not prohibited by Scripture to we have

examples from Revelation where the Saints not only well not only pray for us but offer our prayers to the Lord so yeah without a scriptural injunction not to do it it seems the most natural thing especially when you have I mean there it certainly was a development in the early church there's very quickly you have people asking the Saints to pray for us. That's what I would say. And it's also interesting, too, the way we use words differently. So when we talk about worship, we're talking about something very different

than Protestants are talking about. Worship is not simply praise. I mean, we eat Christ's flesh and drink his blood. We don't do that for the Blessed Virgin. We don't do that for any saint. Yeah, we don't offer sacrifices to the saints. Exactly, exactly. Now, that isn't to say that Catholics can have

an unhealthy sort of view or, you know, relationship with the saints. I can imagine somebody who's like way into, I don't know, I mean, this might sound like a straw man. I'm not saying it's the majority of people, but someone could be super into, say, St. Faustina's Divine Mercy Diary, but doesn't read the Bible.

Yeah, yeah, that's the problem. Or is super into the rosary, but doesn't go to Holy Mass. I don't know anyone who does that. And I'm just saying it's a possibility. So corrections can occur. In theory, it can occur. All right, got a ton of questions now. Let's see here.

Beautiful. Let's launch into them. But there's also a ton of trolls. So it's kind of... Here we go. John, not real name, says, what a weird name. I like that, though. I like it.

What is Seamus' response to pornography? Of course, the obvious one is execute. Wow. Wow. Execute smut peddlers and rehabilitate the addicts. Same with drugs. Is that the obvious? Is that the obvious answer?

I mean, well, the catechism says that the production and distribution of pornography should be prevented by civil authorities. There you go. That's the obvious answer? I mean, well, the Catechism says that the production and distribution of pornography should be prevented by civil authorities. There you go. That's the obvious answer. Now, is that an example of how your sort of libertarian views had to change as you started to become more serious in your Catholicism? Yes, that is one prime example. Actually, when I met you, I was talking with you about this.

I'm not sure if you remember back in December of 2019 when we first met, I was saying that I was sort of reevaluating some of my views i wasn't sure where i stood i thought i was still libertarian but maybe not and i wanted to be very careful about the way that i approached it because i needed to be sort of certain about what i was questioning and you uh you mentioned that i brought up libertarianism you literally mentioned that part of the catechism to me you're like oh well the catholic church says this about pornography i was like oh that's very not libertarian yeah and so yeah that was one of the factors like that's just that's i don't see how you square that with libertarian thought and i think the idea that porn is free

speech is ridiculous by the way i mean it's clearly not it affects your brain in a very different way um so one little analogy here that might be instructive for some people is first and foremost this is a this is a post-war value this is something people didn't really start to believe until the 1950s prior to the 1950s it was understood that porn wasn't free speech in fact many of the colonies had obscenity laws many of the states had obscenity laws yeah and so regardless of what you think of those laws it's clear that the the interpretation of porn was not that it was free speech and also it kind of patently absurd on its face it's it's a product that people are marketing and selling that falls outside of the purview of

pure political expression and the reason i say that is because if you say porn is free speech you can say literally anything that anyone considers to be art is freedom of speech which gets you close to the anarcho-capitalist position and if that's your position then you're being at least you're being consistent with it but we would not say that because the culinary arts are an art that they are protected under the first amendment and you can sell any food to anyone no matter how destructive it is to their body if there was a food that was causing erectile dysfunction as often as pornography was we would look into regulating that or banning that we wouldn't say well the culinary arts are free speech and we can't infringe upon somebody's right

to cook whatever they want and sell it to people there'd be a little more nuance to it than that. But unfortunately, that's not the case with pornography because we've unsold this meme that it's free speech, pure and simple. Good answer. Thanks. Thank you. If people are interested, I actually did a debate on a Christian show in London called Unbelievable. I debated a sex worker, quote, unquote, and a libertarian.

Also, in terms of execution, what does the church say about the death penalty now in the new catechism? Well, Pope Francis has edited it. Yeah, and I'm actually very confused about this. Could you explain this to me? Because this has been a point of confusion for me. Or is this too much to get into? It might be a little too much for me to get into. All I would say is that I think that I'm going to go ahead and accept what Pope Francis says.

say is that I think that I'm going to go ahead and accept what Pope Francis says. So as a humble son of the church, I want to say that capital punishment is clearly not intrinsically evil. Exactly. Yes. If it were, then God shouldn't have commanded human beings to do it, perhaps, or at least for, you know, and then also the church shouldn't have permitted it for how long it did. Now, there are people who disagree with that, such as, what's his name? Ed Fazer.

But, you know. Yeah, I was having a discussion with some friends about that, and I basically took the position you did. But some people who I really trust are saying other things, and my default is like, well, I'm going to submit to what I believe the church is teaching in its ordinary magisterium. But then it's like, maybe I'm wrong about that being the ordinary magisterium. Maybe I'm incorrect. Well, no, I think when the Pope changes in the catechium, but then it's like, maybe I'm wrong about that being the ordinary magisterium. Maybe I'm incorrect. So that's...

Well, no, I think when the Pope changes in the catechism, we should probably go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We might quibble with it, but it seems to me if I'm going to be... If it means anything to be... I mean, at least in part, what it means to be Catholic is to take seriously what the CDF is saying, what the Pope Francis is saying, unless you've got a really good reason to reject it. All right. Now, I think it's possible that Pope Francis made an. Unless you've got a really good reason to reject it. All right. Now, I think it's possible that Pope Francis made an error and there's just an error in the catechism,

and that's okay in the grand scheme of things. But Patrick M. says, Seamus, when you get a chance to do outdoor activities, what do you do? That's a good question. I just like to walk a lot, like to hike. It's always fun. You a sports guy?

No. Come on. Do I look like a sports guy? I make cartoons. Yeah. No, I'm not very much a sports guy, but I like walking. I like going on hikes. I like being out in nature when I can.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you do for fun as far as, well, indoor activities? You read, you watch certain things? I just don't have fun. Yeah, I like to read and I like to watch things. Reading is great because it's enjoyable and you also feel like you're being productive in some ways, but it's not always my pastime.

I sort of go back and forth between like reading, you know, watching YouTube, watching TV. Of course, this is when I'm doing things inside in terms of outdoor activities. That's a bit different. Like practice instruments, that kind of thing. Yeah, what do you play? So I play harmonica. I've been playing harmonica for a while. I play a little bit of sax.

Not as good. Probably more rusty on it. But yeah, stuff like that. It's fun. Emily Ann Lucy. Shoot before ammo is ridiculously expensive. I like to go shooting. Yeah, that's fun.

Emily Ann Lucy says, thoughts on online dating sites? We should also point out that Seamus is not dating and is very much open to dating. So send your applications to jobs at TimCast. We had a joke on Tim's show about that. Yes, no, I am currently single. My thoughts on online dating? I'm not sure.

I've done long distance before. Obviously hasn't worked. I'm not in a relationship now. Not married. But I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't be so close. You're not opposed to it in principle yeah yeah i don't think so i just i don't know i guess i haven't made a clear decision on it if i met someone who was just like unbelievably fantastic i don't think i'd be like there's no way um that it could ever possibly work but for the most part i have been hesitant with it that's for sure um so i've i've talked to some like great people i was like ah but this is really kind of a distance here,

so maybe this wouldn't work. So yeah, yeah. I tend to lean away from it. I don't know. My thoughts, which nobody's asked for, are that long-distance relationships can work if they're progressing. Interesting. Because I dated my wife when she lived in Texas,

and I lived in Queensland, Australia. And I always thought, you know, golly, if we just sort of settle here and just say, yeah, we'll see what happens. Maybe something will come of this. Then it would not work. Bingo. We had to both be kind of aggressive in pursuing this relationship. Yes. And more intentional. But then you risk moving too quickly

and it can be complicated. But I hear you. I think that's the way you probably do. Especially when you're doing international travel. She came and visited me. Yeah, that's tough. And then I went and visited her and we prayed about it. And then I quit my job, sold my car, shipped a bunch of books over to Texas. Good for you. It was awesome. Good for you. How long had you guys been dating at that point? We had been dating

oh golly a few months. A few months? So we had known each other quite well serving with Net Ministries together. So we were really good friends first. Oh, okay, cool. And we kissed and we kind of knew we liked each other. And then she came to visit me and we were like well you know if this

we'll see if this our fear was that we just were good friends and we wished it were more but it wasn't does that make sense like it would be great if we were attracted to each other

but we're not but if we were how cool would that be because we get along so well and it turned out we were super attracted to each other and man she was worth it

she's beautiful we've been married 15 years yeah good for you guys good for you yeah maybe I should be more open to it maybe I'm a little too closed off here maybe my my stone-cold frozen heart needs to thaw here Matt let's see here Brendan you're she and I got no idea was gonna say here but let's see he says hey guys Seamus is a smart guy. Curious. But he looks like shit.

No, I'm joking. Yeah, but he looks horrible. He doesn't say that. What is he wearing? It's hilarious because when I was on- You look great. I went to Tim Poole's house for like three weeks to work on projects with him and to do the podcast, and I only brought like three button-ups, so I was like wearing one of the

same shirts every night. People were like, what are you doing? One of the shirts didn't have a button on it. It was brutal. He says, Seamus is a smart guy. Curious if he has dug into the Thomists and general Catholic philosophy. And if so, have you checked out Pat Flynn?

Guy's got great takes. I would agree. Pat's a great guy. He's been on the show before. I'll look into him. I mean, I'm definitely, every single thing I've read from Aquinas has been fascinating.

I do like his work. I've certainly not done a deep dive on him. I like to listen to Father Ripperger, who I think breaks down Aquinas pretty well. Listen to some of Matt Fradd's stuff. But yeah, I would like to start independently studying him. So thank you for encouraging me. Here's what we'll do. If people sign up to Patreon today,

you'll get a chance to date Seamus. No, I'm just kidding. What? Matt! That's why you brought the whiskey, isn't it? Here's the thing. I would... Maybe this could be a podcast. Maybe we just have a little Seamus Gets Schooled podcast, and it's just me talking to these Thomists who are explaining it to me.

And then I can ask questions for the audience because I'm not, I know a bit about him, but not as well studied as I'd like to be. Thomas is just fabulous. I love him so much. Yeah, absolutely. Seethi says, when even a Catholic celebrity is single,

gives perspective how hard it is for average guys. There you go, you're a Catholic celebrity is single, gives perspective how hard it is for average guys. There you go, you're a Catholic celebrity. But you're assuming I'm not incredibly difficult to deal with here. There are other factors. The fame's all gone in my head. You know, anytime any girl I date asks me to listen to them, I'm like, I have 600,000 subscribers,

I can do whatever I want. No, I'm kidding, of course. Look, I'm not, I just, I guess I haven't met the right person yet. There are some people. Sure. And I don't know that I'd go as far as to call myself a celebrity, but there are some people who have smaller audiences than me, or no audience, who have, like, gotten married and moved on.

So it's all about when God wants to put the right person in your life, do not despair. Seamus, animation question. Yeah. Are you a fan of anime? Asks Nicholas Adams. Not really. I just, I've watched almost none of it. That's fair enough. I'm sorry if that was

a disappointing answer. No, it wasn't. It's funny because you don't want to upset viewers, but you also don't want to be dishonest, and I just don't watch anime. It is interesting to me why people are attracted to certain art forms. Yeah, there was a whole long... There's a real cult following around anime.

Well, and I think part of it is just because... Part of it could just because of how ideologically charged all the art being produced in the West has become. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a bad point. And this was a discussion they had on Timcast for like the last half hour of one of the shows. And I just had nothing to say because I don't know anything about anime,

but they were sort of getting into why they think people watch anime and why they love it yeah uh this person albie says i wish he lived in dallas i would i would love to have him i don't know why i'm doing that lisp there i would love to have him meet my 24 year old daughter yeah it's nice we can get away from we can get away from these no no keep reading these guys you know i like to boost the ego up a little bit more with this haircut like i didn't even get a chance to clean up before doing this podcast because you guys are all very kind very kind but also notice it was someone else saying they wanted to set me up with someone it wasn't like a person who's like i wasn't the daughter exactly

she's like you'll learn to love him you'll learn to love him you don't understand he's a youtuber you do you have any idea how popular he is think about your future oh man youtube might be where it's at where do you see this going i mean i mean that guy earlier was saying when youtube inevitably inevitably bans they're gonna be youtube's gonna be nice to me forever i'm not worried yeah no youtube is weird and it's there's even things that aren't necessarily political, just restructuring of their algorithm, which occurs from time to time.

That ends up hurting creators. So the two groups of people who are the most negatively affected by YouTube's decisions with respect to their monetization policies are basically cartoonists and people who are into political commentary. And I do both. So we're doing decently right now with ad revenue,

but it's very up and down. I mean, I'll give you an example. This is not the norm, but like, so I did a video that got like 1.2 million views within a month and made like $100 in ad revenue off it, $200 in ad revenue off of it. Yeah, so like very short videos are just not monetized very well at all.

Do you find some people being dis, because I've seen some of your cartoons and some of them are a lot longer than others. Yeah, yes. Do people do they express their frustration if it's too short or is there a sweet spot? Sometimes but I need to have a balance because here's the thing if they're too short then I sort of say first of all here's the thing it's it's easier to animate short ideas it's really hard to think of shorter ideas. It's more, you don't

always get an idea that's just going to be set up punchline really funny. It's difficult to come up with something like that. It just doesn't come to you quite as often as I would like. But also, there needs to be a very healthy balance because most of the ad revenue we get probably comes from the longer videos and people do watch them. We get decent numbers on them, but we get really, really good numbers on the short videos and they usually boost more subscribers so there has to be this healthy balance of short videos to pull people in and really give the audience sort of a break and just something silly to laugh at and then longer videos that get into it with maybe a little bit more complexity in the satire or more dialogue or just more going on generally over a

longer period of time but i do have to do both. Now, for a while, especially during the election season, I was just doing really short stuff all the time. And now it's gotten longer and longer. We're kind of doing longer stuff all the time. And I want to get back to doing some more short stuff. So I'll try to find a balance. But like I said, it's difficult.

You don't have control over which ideas come to you and which don't often. It's there or it isn't. Siti asks can you ask Seamus if he thinks the non-aggression principle is compatible with Catholicism? Yeah so it's the non-aggression principle sounds really great right but it bars you from doing things with the Catholic social teaching. Can you explain what that is for those who don't know? Yeah so the non-aggression principle is that if someone isn't using force against you you cannot use force against them but that's not catholic because the non-aggression principle gets applied to the state level and what you end up saying is the government can't do anything that i as an individual wouldn't use violence for and

here's the thing even that's complicated because what i as an individual might use violence for is different than what someone else is an individual would use violence for but if somebody is like i said creating you know pornography or treating their workers horribly or i'm trying to think of something else that the catholic teaching would say the government might need to step in to prevent from occurring or would need to step in to prevent from occurring certainly those are not always direct acts of aggression but they still and here's the thing for those who are a little confused by what i'm saying here he was talking about aggression why are you bringing the government into it well the government is the apparatus within society to which we delegate the use of force so whenever the government enforces a law it has to be enforced aggressively and so the nap

gets you to a position where you either say there should be no government at all, or the government should only ever interfere in anything if violence is directly occurring, if a direct violation of property rights or autonomy is occurring against a particular person. And I just don't see that as being consistent with what the Catholic Church has said are non-negotiables for Catholic thought with respect to the role of the government. Thank you. Thomas Ganley wants to know, what's your opinion on critical race theory? And if you disagree with it, how would you explain? I love it. Explain that. No, I'm kidding. So yeah, no, it's a good question. Critical race theory is notoriously vaguely defined, and you'll find different definitions in different places. So Wikipedia

really vaguely defines it as basically examining the intersection between like race and economics and and politics and other social structures class when you look at the encyclopedia britannica definition it's much more honest and it actually acknowledges the vagueness it sort of says it's a a vague or loose connection i don't remember the exact verbiage of um of ideas revolving around examining race and generally it is believed by critical theorists or critical race theorists that race is a social construct i think this is really how we could define it get if you want to get to the bedrock it's the belief that race is completely entirely socially constructed by the dominant racial groups to oppress others. And generally speaking, I mean, that's just going to give you a paranoid view of race relationships in general, so I'm against it.

And it leads to the kind of thinking we discussed earlier, where anytime there's any kind of disparity between two groups of people, you have to assume that it is the result of one group being oppressed by the other. All right. This is a great question here. Who is your, not so roasted again, says, who is your favorite politician and why is it Emperor Palpatine? Well, because he is the Senate. That's a very easy question. So my favorite politician, I mean, again, people might be surprised to hear this for as much as I've strayed from my libertarian roots, but Ron Paul, 100%,

love Ron Paul. And it's not just his views I think he did a fantastic job articulating them in his worldview was sound he'd clearly thought about it and created a structure of thought that mapped onto the world in a meaningful way and was consistent within itself which is much more difficult than many people might anticipate but I don't agree with him on everything but and then at the same time while I don't agree with him on everything, but then at the same time, while I don't agree with him on everything, anything, or I'm sorry, everything anymore, he was absolutely correct about,

I would say quite a lot, if not most of what he talked about, especially with respect to the federal government's role. And he's also like the only honest politician that I can think of, really. We were talking about this the other day, Matt, with AOC and Bernie Sanders. And if these people like if aoc just said something like you know what this is the the median or average american wage

i'm going to refuse to take any more than that from this job and i'm going to introduce uh you know legislation or call for lawmakers to introduce legislation that would prohibit other people uh working in government to take more than the average person until we get income inequality evened out something like that i'd be like all right you you have my respect i disagree with you but but i i can respect that but you know you've got like socialists who own three houses people act like that's just some silly conservative banality and we shouldn't even bother addressing it but it's kind of important and you know some dead horses need to get their butt kicked so i have no problem beating them and bernie sanders having three houses is a little ridiculous and

also the fact that he's a millionaire and justifies it by saying he wrote a best-selling book. When prior he was saying no one, millionaires and billionaires are hoarding all of the wealth from everybody. But once he's a millionaire, it's just billionaires. The man has no, I'm sorry, he has no principles. And I also find it funny. This isn't a direct criticism of Bernie Sanders. It's just an observation I've made. Socialists will say things like, not all of them, to be fair,

but many of them will argue that landlords are evil. It's wrong to own property that you rent out to other people. And some of these same people support Bernie Sanders. And it's like, okay, it's okay for him to have three houses and leave two of them empty. But someone who has three houses and allows other people to use those two empty houses so that they're actually being occupied and used productively is an evil bad person silliness matt that's what it is yeah that's a good answer thank you sheamus do you think people will grow out of wokeism as they grow older that's a good question so they may not There's a number of reasons for it. I have said this in the past. I believe that fundamentally leftism is social decay,

and we've just given a political label to it. And so conservatives will say, how on earth is it the case that they're beating us all the time? And the answer is because it's a lot easier to destroy things than it is to build them. I was talking about this with respect to gender. You can nuance to death the definition of gender that we've put forward and that we understand the definition of biological sex but they've offered nothing in return they're just destroying and pulling down and so while the left is basically trying to do what they can to destroy our social structures and we on the right want to do what we can to maintain the ones that that are effective and work i want to you know what i've strayed so far from the question i want to make sure i'm answering it properly i have a tendency to do this yeah let me see if i can find it again

so yeah yeah no i'm sorry so yeah i don't know that wokeism can really be outgrown just because we're it just seems as if we're on the trajectory towards social decay and wokeism and progressivism are just words that we use to describe it um some people might individually outgrow wokeism but we said the same thing about like you know five years ago about being politically correct or being an sjw and now there's sort of a new generation of people and we're calling them woke or we're describing the same phenomenon differently so i think maybe just devolves into something else. Hopefully there's a backlash. I think there's real potential for that. But it just seems to me as if it's going downhill and wokeism is how we describe that. At least some of it. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but...

We're all going to hell. Well, yeah, some... I mean, and... I don't mean to be too pessimistic. Yeah, not to be too pessimistic. But where are we going and why are we in this handbasket? This stuff literally is dragging millions of souls into hell. Seethi says,

and this is a good question. I keep picking on Seethi here. We're picking his questions. How dare you, Seethi. He says, does Seamus have a favorite liberal commentator? Mine is David Pakman. You like David Pakman?

So here's the thing. I've seen some things from David Pakman and I like David Pakman? So here's the thing. I've seen some things from David Pakman, and I've actually liked what I've seen. I find him informative. I don't agree with him on everything, and I haven't seen much of his stuff since the Trump era. I've heard a lot of left-wing commentators who used to be more reasonable

became kind of TDS-ridden. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure about David Pakman, but I know when I saw his stuff years ago, he seemed really reasonable. In terms of left-wing commentators dave rubin obviously no um yeah left-wing commentators who i actually watch um i'm trying to think if i'm honest like a left-wing commentator who i disagree with but i think is really intelligent and knows their stuff is probably destiny he's a streamer i don't agree with that i think he said some things that i

actually think are horrible but he's he's he's just a very good debater and so when i want to hear a left-wing perspective from somebody who i don't think is i don't know um some like completely off the deep end sjw woke type i go to him even though he very much is like on gender he's totally wrong on race stuff he's totally wrong but he also like debates communists a lot and he's seems to be in favor of people he's like defended kyle rittenhouse so i just i think there's some consistency and value there so that that is one left-wing commentator who i will actually listen to okay uh we're gonna go here where is he where is he where is i i can't find it he there's so many questions dude dude. He said, Catholic animation studio. When's it happening?

Right now? I mean, like I said, we're working on some stuff with EWTN. I'm trying to expand and work with other Catholic and pro-life organizations. If I can get... The biggest problem right now is just I need more animators. So if you're an animator interested in doing this kind of work, shoot an email to me. That's what I was going to say. Can you want to throw your email out, or is that too scary?

Yeah, I wonder if that's too scary. It's probably too scary, but someone just said I would date him. That's – Melissa Backer. Melissa, thank you. You're very sweet. You're very kind. So if you threw out your email, you could get married and name your first child Matthew

But then I'm just going to get catfished by someone saying there, Melissa, you know, it's a real serious problem. Here's what I would do. My Twitter DMs are open. So at Seamus underscore Coghlan, or just look up Seamus Freedom Tunes on Twitter. And if you are interested in doing animation, just please send me your stuff there. Here's an interesting question. All right.

So, that's good. I cut you off. Did you have something? You did. I'm very hurt. And I'm not doing this podcast. Actually, I'm going to leave right now, Matt. I know we wanted to try for four hours, but this is unacceptable.

Let's see. This is a really good question from Max Elaine. He says, easiest issue for conservatives to win? What would that be? Dependent what you meant by easy. The things that we're most obviously right about? I think he means to win in the culture, right? So not just a win in an argument. Yeah, that's tough. I mean, there are a few things that I'm coming up with off the top of my head, but I also want to be really careful because this stuff is much more complicated than we might think.

You know, when I was a kid, the pro-life issue was, as it still is, the most important issue to me. And I knew I wanted to grow up and do something with politics. And my thinking was, you know, the world will probably be a little more advanced by this point. Ideally, more advanced morally and ethically. We'll be able to have these discussions

about abortion in hopefully a calm manner. And here I am today, and I'm like explaining the differences between boys and girls to people. We've sort of only gone backwards. So things that you might take for granted fall apart right in front of your face. I think the only way conservatives win is being extremely honest about where our values come from. So I believe marriage is between a man and a

woman. I believe the purpose of sex is unity and procreation. So when people come to me with all this made up gender nonsense, I have a very easy answer to it, which is that sex has a very clear and specific purpose. And we divide people up on the basis of the role they play in the sexual act, because that's going to inform the role in society, generally speaking, because the family is built on sex and society is built atop the family. If your view of sexuality, which is the view that many conservatives have adopted, is that it's more or less just for pleasure, artificial birth control is ethically permissible, and what matters most is that two people are consenting of course it's true you need consent but there's more to sexual morality than that

but if you don't recognize that then all of this gender expression stuff becomes a bit less difficult to argue against i think most people saw it and in the first place they just thought this is gross this is weird they didn't actually have an undergirding system of thought for why it doesn't map onto the world but with catholic morality you can say well we know that sex has a purpose and what you're doing here is distorting its purpose and beyond that because there are only two potential roles one can play in the sexual act you are either the man or the woman you are either capable of impregnating or capable of being pregnant with rare exceptions When you have someone whose sex might seem ambiguous for genetic reasons, or a person who doesn't identify with a particular gender, it doesn't matter,

because they are in no way changing the sexual act or what it is. And this is true of infertile people too. When you point out the characteristics that make male and female difference sometimes left-wing deconstructionists will say oh well there are some men who are infertile and you're saying the man is the person who plays the role in the sexual act of insemination so how can that be the case it's like okay but an infertile man doesn't become fertile as a woman like these are distinct things and there are sometimes exceptions to the rule but that doesn't fundamentally change anyone's role in what we're describing when we talk about sex. So it doesn't make sense to divide people up based on these subjective identifications that they place upon themselves. The reason we've taken to doing that, the far left has taken to doing that, and the right is probably going to

cave in and start doing it, is because once you remove an understanding of sex from the culture that it's fundamentally geared towards procreation, then it no longer matters what particular role someone plays. It's about self-gratification, self-actualization, whatever, your pleasure, whatever value they want to apply to it. And it becomes a subjective method of expressing one's sense of identity. And once that's what sex is, of course you can have 100 million different genders. But I don't think most conservatives think about that, and it's because they're not willing to put away the other things

that they would have to in order to have a sound philosophy of sex, which is porn and artificial contraceptives and sex outside of marriage hmm so that's a very long answer but my point is conservatives the the issue on sex and gender could be the easiest to win if we just spoke honestly about the purpose of sex instead of feeling this need to say well sex can mean anything to anyone and it's totally subjective because the left-wing modern gender theory nonsense falls flat on its face once you're when you're rooted in a understanding of what secular human sexuality is good answer sheehan poucher says can you ask seamus what are his favorite catholic books

other than the bible the The Catechism. Next question. No, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. There's others. So right now, I'm reading Fulton Sheen's. I've been reading this on and off as I've been picking through a couple other books. I'm the kind of person who'll just have a bunch of books and pick at them, one at 20

pages at a time, then go back to the other book. So I've been reading a really good Fulton Sheen book, Three to Get Married. Many of you are familiar with it. Fantastic quote from that book that has stuck with me. Freudians understand man in terms of sex. Christians understand sex in terms of man. Beautiful. Which is what I just described a moment ago, right?

Yeah, yeah. Understanding sex in terms of man. I would also say there's a book I'm reading, and I actually don't know the name of the author. My father just dropped off a bunch of really old crusty literature like old catholic books that are like dusty and like honestly giving me allergies when i read them but they're fascinating and he's like look i've got a million books because my father reads constantly he's got a million books i'm not going to finish all these i'm dropping some of them off with you and so i've got this massive collection of old Catholic books. And one I'm reading right now is Theology on Angels.

And it's two books bound into one. It's called What Are Angels and Who Is the Devil? It's really fascinating. Dude, you would love Aquinas. Aquinas, yeah. He's called the angelic doctor, not without reason. Yeah, yeah, I believe it. I've got a great work of his called De Marlo on Evil, where he addresses a ton of questions on the angels.

Yeah, there's that. I've also been reading The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott, which has been great. Very informative. I didn't know that that was supposed to be something you consulted as a textbook rather than something you read through. And so I tried reading through it, and I got kind of far. But then I talked to the priest who recommended it. I was like, how long did it take you? He's like, oh, I didn't sit down and read it, dude.

I consulted it when I needed to. I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm to the priest who recommended it. I was like, how long did it take you? He's like, oh, I didn't like sit down and read it, dude. I like consulted it when I needed to. I was like, oh my goodness, I'm off the hook. I've also been trying to read work from Catholic apologists. There are things that are very basic that we as Catholics tend to think we understand or do understand. But I still think it's really valuable to go back to basics and read arguments from professionals who are really good at convincing other people. So two books I'm reading. I'm reading Why the Bible is a Catholic Book by Jimmy Akin. I'm reading Why We're Catholic by Trent Horn. Oh, I'm reading, here's another one, give him another shout out. I'm reading Tim Gordon's Catholic Republic. Fantastic. I'm about halfway through that. Great read. So yeah, there's a few Catholic books that I'm alternating between

right now. Those are the main ones. I would say those are the main ones. To your point earlier about a man who is in, you know, can't inseminate, doesn't suddenly become a woman. Someone said this, they said, an infertile man does not stop being a man. A clogged toilet doesn't... I love that. I haven't heard that. Well, here, they haven't finished it. A clogged toilet doesn't become a sink i love that that's beautiful that's beautiful that's exactly it and part of it i mean it's just we have a culture which has widely adopted nominalism as its philosophical roots nothing actually exists in the real world we as humans just assign language to describe things and so if that's your worldview

first of all you cannot reason to the natural law because you don't have a vision of nature as being capable of understanding from a human or being understood from a human perspective it's only something we can put labels on and so then hey we can just put whatever label we want on anything but as it turns out while many people who have this more nominalist worldview and they don't call it nominalism because they just they just see it as straightforward they don't think about the underlying philosophy as conservatives don't either um they'll say well we should just we since we're applying labels to everything in a arbitrary fashion we should just call anything anything and as long as it works and then it's like well okay what label are we applying to

what works how do we decide what works because that's also something like works is not an actual concept that's something you're trying to determine once again arbitrarily but beyond that as it turns out having a sound understanding that like nature does exist and that these labels aren't totally arbitrary works better as well does that you know i'm sorry was that there was there something there that was unclear right it was excellent no it was very clear i just you you you do an excellent job articulating your position and you go 100 miles an hour then you just stop i'm like i don't know what to do at this point i'm sorry i apologize no no it's good this is great right we've been together here for 3 hours and 29 minutes. We're going to start getting upset with each other. I'm like, why the hell do you do that anyway?

Why are you doing that? Stop it. It's really annoying, and I'd like you to stop it. Well, I didn't feel that way about you, Matt, but I'm just going to sit here and be hurt. What about a book that's not explicitly Catholic? I'm reading Lord of the Rings right now with my good friend Mike Welker, and we're going through Fellowship in June, and then what is it, Two Towers? Yeah.

Yeah. And The Journey of the King in August. So I'm absolutely loving it. Do you have a favorite fiction work or something you're reading right now? So I mostly read nonfiction. In terms of, can I name a fictional book and then also a nonfiction book that's not Catholic? I just read a really good book back in January called Kinsey and Sax, I believe. Oh, yeah.

Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic. Oh, that's Judith Reism Sex, I believe. Oh yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic. Oh, that's a Ru, Judith Reisman? I believe so. Yeah. I knew her before she passed away. Really? Yeah, her and I spoke to her at some conferences together. She was a lovely, sassy Jewish woman. She's brilliant. I mean, I didn't realize that. Yeah. Well, she does a fantastic job deconstructing him, explaining the problems with his views. I knew, I'd known some of the problems with Kinsey because I was taught about him as a, like a horrible human being, just a monster. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know, like he was such a monster that we might get demonetized for getting into some of the things that he did. Yeah. Maybe we shouldn't. He had,

you know, we're thinking of the same thing. He had grafts. How long does it take to make this baby? Yes. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. He was abusing. absolutely yeah so he was either and and he claimed as if this makes it at all better like oh i was just taking data from people who had done those things i wasn't doing them what what's wrong with you that's like you're encouraging that behavior uh so it's horrible he was horrible and many of our foundations many of the foundations of the modern attitudes towards sex that were popularized during the sexual revolution come from him. The repealing of many anti-adultery and anti-sodomy laws are attributed to his work. So he had quite an influence on our cultural understanding

and approach towards sexuality. And he was, like, genuinely a horrible person who... Who was totally talented and held up as a hero. Held up as a hero. They made a movie about him where liam neeson plays him and he's super cool and he's just showing all those funny duddies that sex is legit here's what's really funny he had this horrible sampling error first of all in the 1950s if you're conducting a survey on human sexuality

who's going to answer those questions like this is not a culture which was very open about sex um at least not describing your own personal sexual behavior trashy people so people who are more likely yeah and so he would he would go out and have people self-report their sexual behavior okay well modest people aren't going to be walking up to him telling him well i waited till i was married they're going to say no it's not your business what my sex life has been i don't want that out there and he also oversampled prisoners like some of the surveys there's a male survey did which was also oversampled prisoners like some of the surveys there's a mail survey did which pretty much like oversampled prisoners and they ended up writing a letter after it was done

asking for the repeal of certain uh laws relating to sex crimes because they said like well every man is doing these things it's like because you were interviewing prisoners but also other respected psychologists did not like him. I know he had a feud with Maslow. Maybe it's a step too far to say he didn't like him, but Maslow questioned his methodology for the reasons I expounded upon, and Kinsley never really rectified any of that. Maslow's interesting.

Who? Maslow, Abraham Maslow. I haven't gotten too deep into his philosophy. I had to do a project on him for school when I was taking a psychology class as an elective. And it's curious because we don't have to agree with him on everything obviously i'm sure he has many positions which are not catholic but what he said was that psychology shouldn't just view people as a series of chemicals like he talked about people having spiritual needs which i think is pretty profound because that's that's generally i mean that's certainly not the freudian view which was dominant at his time.

So he stumbled upon some truths. And then hearing that combined with the fact that he was very critical of Kinsey's work kind of gave me respect for him. A. Boethius says, Protestant here, which Aquinas books do you gentlemen enjoy most or would recommend to someone new to his teaching? That's great. That's a great question. You have to answer this one.

No, you have to answer this one. Well, if you go to pintswithaquinas.com and in the search bar type in, well, books. I actually did a podcast where I spoke about 10 different books you might read on Aquinas. The best book I would recommend is a book by Joseph Pieper called,

I want to say Aquinas. It really gives you an understanding of the milieu into which he was born and lived. We have this kind of thing, idealized view of the 13th century Europe, that it was an idyllic time, essentially. But it had the threat of Islam. There was the universities. There was Aristotle being, well, most of his work.

And Boethius translated some of his works. But these Arabic translations were coming into the West. And yeah, so I mean, it was a turbulent time in many ways. That would be a book I'd recommend. Also, G.K. Chesterton's book, The Dumb Ox, is an excellent book on Aquinas, if you're just getting started. I'd highly recommend him.

I never answered what novel. Oh yeah, what novel did you answer? I'm just remembering this now. So, and also, yes, in terms of Aquinas, like i said i've consulted some of his writings like i've looked in the suma but i have not read through it i read back and uh so i got a i got a kindle for christmas and they had free books and one of them was uncle tom's cabin which i'd never read and i figured well this is considered foundational to

american thought and like anti-racism so So why not read this? It's actually, it's weird. It's like, it's a good, so George Orwell described it as a good, bad book. I enjoyed reading it thoroughly. I got through it really quickly just because I was very engaged with it. And I'm not like, I'm not a particularly quick reader, but I found it really captivating. And some of it, and this is what, this was Orwell's critique, which, which I found interesting. And I, as I was reading it, this is something I noted, and I think any modern reader would, which is that some of it is just like really melodramatic and over the top. So at the very beginning of the book, they're describing this evil slave owner, and they describe that this evil slave owner like kills a puppy. It's like we got that he was evil.

He's buying and selling human beings. Like maybe him killing the puppy was over the top. He forces one of his slaves to kill a puppy which is horrible and evil but there are just things like that in the book and there are these melodramatic moments that hit you out of absolutely nowhere and are completely unearned and somehow when you're done reading it you walk away from it like this is a really good book yeah and i really enjoyed it are you a dostoevsky fan i have not read dostoevsky i would encourage you to read at least one of one of these short stories i read recently it's called a gentle creature give it read in two or three hours and it's absolutely brilliant yeah i'll I would encourage you to read at least one of these short stories I read recently. It's called A Gentle Creature.

It could be read in two or three hours. And it's absolutely brilliant. Yeah, I'll have to check it out. I often think when people feel themselves intimidated to engage with a particular author, it's understandable. You pick up War and Peace and that's your first encounter with Tolstoy. It's terrifying. But you could read a short story like The Death of Ivan Ilyich and kind of get your feet wet and realize, okay, I understand this. This is great.

Okay, here's a great question here from Julia Colby. She says, what is your creative process with your cartoons? Anytime I create something, I criticize it until I hate it. Can you suggest how to get over this toxic perfectionism? And then she has a followup. She says, it's such a struggle. I've always wanted to start a YouTube channel, but will always delete whatever I post.

Not very helpful to growing a YouTube channel, ha ha. Yeah whatever I post. Not very helpful to growing a YouTube channel. Ha ha. Yeah, no, that's very good. I love how vulnerable that was. That's a really great, that's a great question. The simple answer is you have to be okay with uploading things that you're not perfectly happy with and you gotta leave them there.

That's it. I mean, I've uploaded things that I wasn't particularly happy with, but I was like, I have to churn this out. I have to make this video. That's part of the process. And people might see that in some way is bad for the creative process because you're forcing yourself to make something

and maybe it's not your best work but it's actually liberating in a sense to say i have to make a video every single week or every or twice a week because you end up experimenting more than you would otherwise and it's like well i uploaded four to eight videos already this month if this one misses the mark it's not the end of the world whereas if you're only uploading once every couple months not only is your channel just not going to grow but there's this pressure for everything you upload to have to be some of the best of your material that your audience has ever engaged with and that's really tough so yeah i mean criticize your work but it's okay to criticize something after it's already up.

Because finished is better than perfect. And if you have to go back, thank you. Yeah, I can't. That's not my original phrasing. I just finished a book with St. Paul Center, Emmaus Road Publishing. It's now just been published. It's out on Amazon and stuff. And, you know, I'm reading through it.

I'm like, ah. It's once been said that a book is never completed. It's abandoned. And you probably feel like that about cartoons as well. It's like, you're just like, this is going to have to do. It's a harsh... But I really agree with what you're saying.

Two quotes come to mind. At least one of them is by Chesterton. I forget which, but don't let the great be the enemy of the good. Yes. And then also, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. I love that. Because that's kind of the only way things can be done, at least for mere mortals. Yeah, no, that's absolutely true.

And also, you've got to leave stuff up, even if your audience doesn't like it, because people need to be able to trust that they can come to your channel, watch something, and it's not going to be gone when they come back to it. Because somebody maybe liked that video. Maybe everyone else hated that video. one person liked it and you and guess what those people who hated the video they're going to go away and stop caring about you especially if you're not a large figure who's controversial but the person who happened to like that video they're just not going to know where to come back to and you're never going to amass

an audience so i would say just keep cranking stuff out be okay with every not not having every video be your best work or the most well-received video you've ever done. Keep your head up, man. Yeah, well, that's lovely. She says, ah, no way. Thank you, Matt and Seamus. I'm literally shaking. I'm so excited you still take questions. That's very sweet.

That's very sweet. Yeah. Well, God bless you. This is great. Mike Welker, who we were having drinks with last night. Good to see you, Mike. Fantastic. He says, Dune, a very good science fiction novel,

but I am ambivalent on some items in it. Interesting. Okay. We got a question here about monarchy. Monarchy. Uh-oh. Chris Cole says, Seamus, any thoughts on monarchy? Yeah.

So it's an interesting concept. I know that from day one, we are told in the public education system, of course, under democratic government, that monarchy bad, democracy good. And that's as simple as that. There are are no benefits to monarchy it's just an evil tyrannical system and yet at the same time these same people tend to want to centralize power amongst a small handful of people in washington but i i have um read and i'm sympathetic though i wouldn't wholesale agree to it again because he's anarcho-capitalist i'm not anymore but hans herman hoppa's position on this i find really interesting. So he wrote a book

called Democracy, the God That Failed. And it's very insightful and interesting. It's just not the kind of thing you would expect to read from anyone. It's very, how do I put this? It's just, it's very original in terms of its thought i mean this guy's an anarchist but he he defends monarchy over democracy and he has a lot of really compelling arguments so well i don't like i don't consider myself a monarchist i i think there's an interesting discussion to be had about monarchy especially the small i mean i favor having republics but like at a small local level democracy or monarchy can work. It has worked. The thing about democracy is it certainly can't work the way that we're doing it now. So people will say that monarchy can't work, and it's truly like a bad—

was it Aquinas who said this? You will tell me if it wasn't because you know a lot about him. Well, I don't know about that. If I pull a National Catholic reporter and misquote Aquinas, you'll let me know. But something like—I think he said something like, monarchy is the best system when it's done well, but it is the most often system done poorly. There's a great work of Aquinas' called De Ragnarok on kingship,

which just so everyone knows, if you are a patron of mine, we also have these free audio books that I pay people to professionally record. And so if you want to listen to Dei Regno, become a patron. It's right there. But oh, look at this. Welker just said, over 80 monarchs are Catholic saints. Interesting. Yeah. No. So obviously, look, as Catholics, we cannot as Catholics be like opposed to monarchy at a fundamental level or say monarchy is evil or bad. We can say as Catholics that maybe, I think there are, Timothy Gordon sort of talks about the three systems of government which are acceptable. And Catholics don't have to be monarchists.

And again, I don't consider myself to be one. But we obviously can't be against monarchy because Christ is our king. I mean, the universe is literally a monarchy, right? And so, no, in principle, it's not evil. Yeah, many monarchs have been kings. I'm certainly not of the view that monarchy is yeah and so like it no in principle it's not evil yeah many monarchs have been kings i'm certainly not of the view that monarchy is some fundamentally evil system absolutely not uh julia says where should i start if i'm considering which denomination i want to be part of currently evangelical free i can i can tell you where you should end catholic church no yeah exactly yeah why should she be

a catholic oh man i was hoping you could handle that one i just wanted to make the clip and let you do the apology look i think it's really i think it's really important that we no i have an answer no i'm gonna do it um and then you can okay it's gonna be the question ought to be and this this sounds so trite that it's gonna be hard to hear but where is the fullness of the truth that god wants for Christians? Because the thing is, you might say, well, I prefer to go to this church because the preaching is really powerful. I prefer to go to this church because the music is really powerful.

But it could be the case that in your area, the Mormon group church has the most powerful preaching, has the most powerful music. It might be significantly better than the local Catholic parish, but that's not a good reason to become a Mormon, and I'm not equating Protestants with Mormons. Mormons aren't Christian. That's true.

Protestants are, generally speaking. So I would say the question ought to be, where's the truth lie? And both Seamus and myself think that Catholicism is the fullness of the truth that Christ wants for Christians, right? Yeah. So, again, I would recommend Trent Horn's book, Why We Are Catholic. I would also say that you should definitely just be open-minded. Look into the Catholic Church.

I mean, again, I'm a biased source here. I really, I mean, but I believe I have the truth. I almost hate saying I believe. It's almost like I just, I have the truth. It almost weakens it to say, like, this is just my opinion. I believe it. I know, but I don't have the truth. I almost hate saying I believe. It's almost like I just, I have the truth. It almost weakens it to say like, this is just my opinion. I believe it. I know, but I don't think belief means that.

You know what I mean? Again, we're getting down to terms. No, no, no, I want to hear this. What do we mean by believe? And I think believe means to kind of, I don't know, we can rationally assent to something that we think we have got good reasons for. Yeah, that's fair.

But I know what you mean. When people say believe, they usually just mean I have a hunch or I feel strongly inclined to this position. And often when someone wants to dismiss you, they'll go, that's your opinion. That's your belief. Right.

And in reality, faith is more certain than scientific truth, right? Aquinas is very clear about this. I mean, we believe Christianity because God has revealed it. And either truth speaks truly or there is no truth at all. I'll say this too, in terms of where you should start. I mentioned that book by Trent Horn. In terms of like non-Catholic resources, I'm not sure. I would just recommend you really look into the church fathers.

That might be a little bit cerebral, but also Aquinas. Early church thinkers. The earlier, honestly, the earlier back you go, the safer you are, because the more you're going to learn about what every Christian believed until more recently. The water is clearest close to the spring. And speaking of which, there is someone I was going to recommend who breaks down Aquinas, and I realize there's one more Catholic. I think that's right. The water is clearest close to the spring. And speaking of which, there is someone I was gonna recommend who breaks down Aquinas, and I realized there's one more Catholic impression I can do. It's the one that was bothering me earlier that I couldn't think of. Who is it? You know who Father Ripperger is?

Oh yeah, do Father Ripperger. What it is is, is that actually there's a similarity between what Aquinas says about this and what Catholics quite frankly are not giving assent to it's a problem that's my what about Raymond Arroyo I don't know hmm he WTN comment oh I appreciate him well now they're not gonna want to work with me anymore Matt look what you did never heard of him EW what no idea no idea we a lot of him. EW what? No idea. No idea. EWT? We get a lot of people saying, wow, I just came back from lunch and you guys are still

talking. That's right. It's been three hours and 44 minutes, baby. Trent, we're giving you a run for your money. We just have to beat Trent. How much time? Can you set a timer on your phone so we make sure that we beat him? Well, if we pass four hours and two minutes, we'll beat him.

Okay. How much? What time is it, by the way? Because I know my ride. 502. When do you need to go? Oh, my ride's here at around five. minutes. We'll beat him. Okay. How much, what time is it, by the way? Because I know my ride. 502. When do you need to go? Oh, my ride's here at around five. Are you kidding?

Text him. Well, let me just text him. Let's keep this discussion going. Text him and tell him to wait. Yeah, I will. No, let's keep it going. Well, tell him to come up. He might want to chat.

Yeah. No, don't do that. Okay. I won't tell him to come up, but keep sending questions my way. I want to keep. Who's your favorite? Oh, well, we've already asked that. I was going to say, who's your favorite politician?

Let's see. Well, do you want to write write to him and here i'll talk for a bit hey how's it going guys it's really great to have you here at pints with aquinas thank you for being here i hope you appreciate all that we're doing um subscribe to the channel if you want because that's makes me feel good and i enjoy feeling good personally i'm glad that's me though that's just me i like to feel good some people don't did you text him i'm still my phone's still booting. That's just me. I like to feel good. Some people don't. Did you text him? I'm still, my phone's still booting up. I turned it off for this interview. No, that's all right, man.

It's a good thing that we know it's 502. Could have ended up missing my flight just talking here. This could have been an eight-hour podcast. That would be fun, dude. Thank you again for coming out. Yeah, of course. I'm not leaving yet. Dyson Talks says, that's a good question.

Would Seamus rather live in a culturally Christian and right society with a far left economy? Dude, you need to text that. This is a really good question. I know. All right. Ask him if you can be there at 530. All right. I was surprised to hear you jam out System of a Down yesterday.

I was like, this is what I probably... Would Seamus... Sorry. Would Seamus rather live in a culturally Christian and right society with a far left economy or a culturally liberal society with right-wing economics? That is a fantastic question. And then he says, I'd rather be poor and have less baby killings. Yeah, 100%.

Easy to say, but... Yeah, so here's where it gets complicated, though. There's nothing complicated about wanting to be poor and having less babies die. I think we would all agree with that. I'll say this, though. How are we defining a far left economy? Because if you're going all the way towards full-on

socialism, government ownership over the means of production, I actually don't think it's possible to have a virtuous right-wing society because you've broken up the family by taking responsibility away from the individual family unit and from the father to provide for his family. So I actually don't know that the two things are even compatible. But of course I would rather have a society which was more Christian than anything else.

I just don't know that that's possible. I don't know that I can accept the premise that that's actually possible. But if it was, yeah. And if by far left you're not talking about full-blown communism but some kind of social democracy i believe it has the same flaws but to a lesser extent and i would accept that over um over a completely hedonistic society but again i i really i do think i reject the framing i don't i just don't believe that that's possible, given what I know about how economics intersects with human behavior and how property rights are unbelievably important

in ensuring that the head of the household is left in charge of it. Evodio Tovar, forgive me if I got that name wrong, says Seamus convinced Tim Paul to come back to the church. Was he a Catholic? Was he or is he a Catholic? He was, yeah. He was a baptized Catholic. Yeah, I loved him, and he's a really good guy. We've become pretty decent friends. I don't just go there to do the show.

Now we're working on stuff and we like to hang out and we've talked about this stuff before. He's definitely open to religion and he just, you know, he asks honest questions and I give honest answers and I pray for him and that's pretty much all we can do. Yeah. No one likes feeling like a project. Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly how I don't want to like Tim. Yeah, exactly. Like Tim is not like a product. He's my friend. Yeah. I have people like this as well. And the other thing I don't like, and we've, no one likes is to feel like someone is trying to convert you without you knowing that they're trying to get, they're all

sly about it. I find it more important. Like, yeah, I want you to be a Catholic. If I ever get too annoying as I tell you this, you you're welcome to tell me to shut up. Yeah, of course. But here's why I want you to become a Catholic, because I care about you. I think that sort of in your face, not in your face, that's the wrong way of putting it, but just straightforward approach is often more effective. Yeah, no, I would absolutely agree. You don't want people to feel like you're trying to smuggle your Catholicism into the discussion.

You have to be open and honest about what it is you're promoting. And I tell people, I believe heaven and hell are realities. I believe that it is much easier to go to hell than it is to go to heaven, as Scripture states, seeks to enter by the narrow gate. Wide is the road that leads to perdition, and many there are that find it. Narrow is the gate that leads to life, and few there are that find it. So I tell people that. I'm very clear that I'm concerned about their eternal soul.

It doesn't mean I think they're a bad person, because I would go to hell if it wasn't for the Catholic Church and Christ dying for me on the cross and accepting that death. So it's never placing yourself above the other person or seeing yourself as superior. It's just saying, Hey, these are realities.

I want you to be prepared for them because you're my friend, but it's not, you're this like person who I need to fix in some way or change. Tony Spurgeon says, I believe the problem of evil is insurmountable. You simply cannot convince me a loving God would allow evil things to happen if he could do something about it. Any response? Yeah, I mean, if God does not exist, you can't convince me that evil exists.

I mean, I agree with you, but why? Yeah, because who decides? Who decides what's good and what's evil? It's just a matter of subjective perspective. So what you would ultimately be saying is there are things that happen in the world that I don't like. And if you don't believe in God, you can't really be a moral realist. And so you're left saying that there aren't right things and wrong things.

There are things which I prefer and things which I do not prefer. And all of the horrible atrocities that have existed throughout all of history simply belong in the I do not prefer category. You can't really call them evil because the concept doesn't exist so the problem of evil and i i don't want to just dismiss this person well i don't want to just dismiss this person because it's a powerful argument it's a very powerful argument life is extremely difficult and it's far more difficult for some people than it is for others absolutely if you believe that eternal life exists and that people, no matter how much they suffer on earth, can turn to Jesus Christ, can submit to his church, can be happy in heaven for all of eternity,

then those things fall away. But it's hard to hear that and really internalize it emotionally. So I totally get it. And I get that the problem of evil is probably the best argument that atheists have. I don't believe it's a rational argument. I don't believe it works. But it's probably the best argument that atheists have. I don't believe it's a rational argument. I don't believe it works, but it's probably the best argument atheists have. What's interesting in the Super Theologiae, when Aquinas talks about the existence of God,

he comes up with two objections against God's existence. The first is the problem of evil. The second isn't really a good argument against God's existence. He simply says that positing God is superfluous because we can appeal to other natural things. So it's evil and science, right? That's basically it summed up. And it's interesting that those are the two that are still put forth today. So what I would say to Tony, though, is the onus of the burden of proof, I think, lies on the atheist. Like if you want to show that God and evil are irreconcilable, you have to put forth an argument, not just a question. And I think often atheists will do that. They'll say, if God exists, why is there evil? So what's the argument, right? And it's generally understood in sort of philosophical

circles that the at least logical problem of evil has been abandoned. And that essentially formulated by Mackey and others is if God is omnipotent, he could do away with all evil. If he's all good, he would want to. If he's all knowing, he would know about all evil. Therefore, God doesn't exist. Or if he does, he's impotent or wicked or something like that, ignorant. But what Alvin Plantinga proposes a fourth premise, and that fourth premise is God may have morally sufficient reasons to permit evil and suffering in the world. You don't have to like that premise. You don't even have to think that it's likely, but so long as it's plausible, so long as it's possible that God would have morally sufficient reasons to permit evil and suffering, then the argument that God doesn't exist doesn't follow. So I would agree with you and I think Tony that absolutely the problem of evil is the greatest emotional obstacle to belief in God that there is.

When I think about sex trafficking, when I think about school shootings, when I think about all the awful... Or even what people in the church are doing to children. Yeah, I agree. I hear that. I feel the weight of it. And sometimes it seems like God, yeah, maybe God doesn't exist. But what I would say is that's a big jump to say that there's evil, therefore God doesn't exist. It's like, well, hang on, slow down a bit and maybe think that through. Because as you say, what do we mean by evil? Natural evil or human evil? Right.

But more just generally, what is evil? I don't think we mean things I don't like. I think we mean it's the way things shouldn't be. Exactly. And there's only a should and shouldn't if there's a God. I think that's pretty convincing to me. Yeah. The other thing I would say, and this isn't a compelling argument for God's existence,

but it's just to say, okay, if you're wrestling with this problem of evil and then you say, well, therefore God doesn't exist, you haven't done anything with the problem of evil. It's still there. You're just now, I mean, just from an emotional perspective, you're just now in a godless universe. Yeah. And I would also say this, I'm sorry, you were- No, you're fine. No, I mean, there's that old quote, right um if you exclude the impossible no matter what is left no matter how improbable must be the answer and so it's difficult for people to accept that god could have morally sufficient reasons to accept evil but it's either that or evil doesn't exist those are your picks right and aquinas and then you have no reason to be upset about it like it's just a subjective thing that you but people

realize it's not. Nobody thinks, even if they're a nominalist, even if they're not a moral realist, they understand innately that what happened in Soviet Russia or in Nazi Germany or under Jim Crow in the South was evil. They don't ever say, this is just something I don't prefer. They know it's evil. Why?

There's no objective moral framework unless you have... What's interesting too is as we sort of throw out God, it seems like people are becoming pretty dogmatic about certain things. I mean, I don't think there'd be that many people on the left today who would deny God's existence and say that racism is okay or the only reason we think racism is bad is because we've evolved to think that it's bad because it's not conducive to the flourishing of mankind. Yeah, exactly. Hmm. That was good. We got, that was good.

I like it. Yeah. And thank you for the question, by the way. And then Peter says, Seamus needs another Guinness. That's right. Well, listen, I've got whiskey right here. All right. What do listen, I've got whiskey right here. All right. What do you think about this?

M.R. Waka... Forgive me if I got that wrong. The morality of capitalism is its strength. What do you think of the religious attempt to put down capitalism? I would have to know what you meant by the morality of capitalism

or the religious attempt to put it down. I just... I'm sorry. I know that seems like a cop-out, but I'm actually not sure what he means. It down. I just, I'm sorry. I hate, I know that seems like a cop-out, but I'm actually not sure what he means. It's a, it's a, it's a...

And if, yeah, I hope maybe we can keep our eye out for another, another answer from him. Or like him, a clarification from him. But who knows? He could have asked this

an hour ago or something and we're just seeing it now. What if we were just silent for the next second? We were just silent, but we still beat Trent Horn. We still won. We're just going to have a moment of silence.

For Trent losing? That's right. And you know what? Sometimes, I'm sorry to beat your record, Trent, but it just happens sometimes. And saying nothing at all can be better than saying the wrong thing. So we're just going to sit here. We're just doing it. Someone in response to what we had to say about evil says, this sounds like advanced

mental gymnastics. And the problem I have with that is it doesn't actually show why it went wrong. If you're going to ask a difficult, complicated question, like the problem of evil being reconciled with all loving God, you should expect a difficult answer. Did you want like a yes, no answer to that? You know what I mean? That's complicated. It's like, would you rather a simple answer that doesn't satisfy? answer to that you know what i mean it's complicated it's like what would you like would you rather a simple answer that doesn't satisfy yeah yeah so here's here's um another thing with that like again they didn't explain why it doesn't work i'm not sure what's mental gymnastics about saying if there's no god there's no such thing as good or evil how is it mental

gymnastics to say that god i could have reasons for permitting i just don't understand how either of those premises fail i can understand why you wouldn't want to accept those in a subjective sense because you're uncomfortable with them i get that i really do and i. And I'm not saying that in a condescending way. Like, you only have subjective reasons. I get it. Like, I empathize with that. The problem of evil is really difficult. But there's no real intellectual basis for leading that to become a denial of God or evidence for God not existing. Tommy Lee says, what are your thoughts on Stephen Crowder? My thoughts on Crowder? Yeah. I mean, I've seen a lot of his stuff. I haven't caught up.

I'm not really caught up on it. I know that he's gotten in a lot of trouble and YouTube has really been going after him. I think they want to take him off. Look, once they take Crowder off, they're just opening the floodgates. First, they went for Alex Jones and everyone was willing to say,

well, Alex Jones is crazy, who cares? But at least many people were willing to say well I don't know Alex Jones is crazy who cares but at least many people were willing to say that but the point is you want to start taking you just want to start shifting the Overton window on these platforms at least that's what they're trying and so Crowder really seems to be the guy they've been gunning for for the past I want to say two years now at this point so yeah I mean I pray for him in his his battle against youtube how irish are you somebody wants to know oh and this is from someone from ireland john how irish is seamus oh boy so here's a good question hello from ireland and i i know that's people from ireland don't like it when i know people from ireland don't like when americans call themselves

irish i generally don't i know ethnically i'm i'm'm Irish. So my ancestors came to the United States roughly 100 years ago and all just stayed. Were they persecuted for being Irish? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I have stories. I have stories. Maybe I could share those on another episode. You don't want to go for another four hours?

I would like to go for another four hours, but I want to make sure I'm getting all of the details proper about them. I don't want someone to go in and be like, actually, we found this thing about your family history isn't accurate, as happened with Tom, who is that? Bombadil. No. I'm right in the middle of the ranks. No, there was a politician, I'm blanking on his name, but he told part of his family history about how, like, he's a black politician who mentioned that his grandfather had to pick cotton, and now he's here in what an incredible country. And fact checkers came in, like, this part of his family history is wrong and it wasn't even technically wrong but there's this part of me that's like i want to really have the family history squared away but yeah so

basically all of my family lived on the south side of chicago until the late 90s and that is why my parents felt it socially acceptable to name me shamamus in the United States because that is basically, I guess, a little Ireland in some sense. And so, yeah, that's how Irish we are. I have some German from my mom's side, but mostly entirely Irish. We got a question here from Egypt. Yeah. So you've got to take that. I was thinking recently of doing some kind of animated comedy YouTube series. Any advice writing for comedy love from egypt that's a great question so my best advice when it comes to writing for comedy is to just do it and you're gonna have some days where you're sitting there and you go like i can't think

of anything funny this is really tough and what you have to do in those moments is just write garbage and then upload it to youtube no just write garbage and eventually you'll be able to suss through it and have some ideas inspired. Something funny will come out. I've heard it said that you need at least 15 minutes free from distraction to come up with something really interesting or be creative. I think that's generally true. Most of the time when I have writer's block, it's because I'm not focusing for like a full 15 minutes on something. I'm allowing myself to be distracted usually because I'm discouraged by not having ideas already. minutes on something, I'm allowing myself to be distracted, usually because I'm discouraged by not having ideas already. I would say, just start writing, start putting this stuff up online,

do it as consistently as you can and hope for the best. Really. I mean, give it your best and I'll pray for you. I hope it works out. All right. Maybe this can be our final question. What do you think? It's up to you. What time is it? We have been going for four hours and 30 seconds, baby. How much more time? Okay, well, so we got them beat. Do you write your back?

No, I turn my phone off because my battery's on 10%. It's how ratchet I am, Matt. Barely even charged it. Man, are you tired? I'm tired. No. Yeah, I'm a little bit tired, but I'm glad we did it. I haven't felt tired of the discussion at all, but physically my body has felt tired. No. Yeah, I'm a little bit tired. But I'm glad we did it. I haven't felt tired of the discussion at all,

but physically my body has felt tired for sure. I know you're probably sick of dealing with me by this point. No, I'm not. I find you fascinating. Thank you. Likewise. Well, my brother, this has been wonderful. Is this it?

No more questions? Well, I couldn't find it. One more? Oh, no. That's it. Are we still going to beat Trent Horn? We are. Are we? We've beat him already. Oh, man. I'm sorry. One more? Oh, no, that's it. Are we still going to beat Trent Horn? We are. Are we?

We've beat him already. Oh, man, I'm sorry, Trent Horn. Oh, yeah. I suck to be you. Oh, that stinks. Well, good luck. Your work is fantastic. What I would like to know is if people would let us know in the comment section if you watched all of this.

And here's how I will know. You will say, The green fangs are eating the soup again. That's what you'll say in the comment section below. The green fangs are eating the soup again. If you say that in the- And you'll add okay gang to the end of it. Okay gang.

That would have been better. The green fangs are eating the soup again. If you say that in the comment section below, Seamus will buy you a Ferrari. What, excuse me, I don't even own a Ferrari. The green fans eating the soup again. You can tell I write horror because that's a weird thing to say.

That is terrifying. Glory, glory, glory. I want to say thank you to our moderator, Halleluja. She is a wonderful human being who moderates all of our shows. Thank you so much. And yeah, look, thanks guys for being here, for watching this. As you've seen throughout today's discussion,

we really need a full-time Catholic, Jamie. And so we need to raise money for that. I believe we're at 93%. If you would go over to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, give us 10 bucks a month, five bucks a month, 20 bucks a month. We give you free things in return. Like this absolutely gorgeous beer, Stein. I'm sorry.

I know that different places have their own things. Like, you know, Daily Wire has that little tumbler. Isn't that cute? You know? I like the pint better. But this is the greatest. This is beautiful. This is the Catholic one.

This is the Catholic. If you're Catholic and you have a Daily Wire tumbler or a Mug Club mug and you don't have this, what are you doing? Submit to rome get a client yeah so do us a favor click subscribe thank you so much for being here guys it's been absolutely a pleasure seamus it's lovely to have you on the show man yes people can we'll put freedom tunes up the very top of the description so people can go check it out please be sure to if you enjoy what seamus is doing if you think it's important to support him on patreon as well yeah patreon.com freedom tunes go subscribe at youtube.com freedom tunes love y'all thank you សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបាូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្� ༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱� សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្� Bye. you