The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 130 - Should Christians Support Open Borders?

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

There is a caravan of 7,000 migrants headed for the United States. Today we'll tackle two questions related to this issue: 1) As many of these migrants appear to be grown men, wouldn't it be better if they stayed home and helped to rebuild their own countries? 2) The Left claims that Christians are required to support open borders. Is that true? (Hint: no, it's not). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Matt Wall Show, the migrant caravan makes its way to the border, but if you look at the footage, it seems like a great number of the migrants are grown men. So should these men possibly be staying in their own countries and fighting to rebuild their own countries? We'll talk about that. Also, what position should a Christian take on all of this? Finally, why is it offensive for a white person to dress as another race or culture for Halloween, but it's not offensive for non-Irish people to dress as leprechauns on St. Patrick's Day? That seems like a bit of a double standard. We'll talk about that as well.

All of that coming up. You know, I have to tell you, I realized yesterday that my Jewish friends are absolutely right. Absolutely right when it comes to shellfish. I had a fried oyster for the first time. And it's clear to me that these vile creatures were not meant for human consumption. And that's probably why God buried them at the bottom of the sea. I mean, I think that was probably a hint. you've got these you've got these mucousy slimy gelatinous salty slugs covered in a hard shell

buried in the sand covered in hundreds of feet of shark infested waters maybe that's a sign that we're not supposed to be eating these things and i really do wonder who was the first person who dove to the bottom of the ocean and found this brown rock and brought it to the surface cracked it open and saw all that salty snot and said, oh, maybe I'll, maybe I'll try that. And then how did that ever catch on? I don't understand. Now, look, cows on the other hand, cows live on the land. They're dumb. They're slow. They're delicious. Plus, they come with their own beverage. So they come with a side beverage. So it's like, obviously God has practically put a neon sign on cows saying, eat me, but shellfish, not so much. So I think I'm going to go kosher.

kosher except for the not eating bacon part. I'll still do that. But as far as shellfish goes, I'm on board. All right. The so-called migrant caravan containing about 7,000 or so Central Americans, is continuing. It's March north, the United States, still many hundreds of miles away. I don't think there's any official demographic count for the caravan, but just looking at the footage, there appear to be quite a quite a few grown men in the crowd.

This does not seem to be a caravan of women and children, despite how the media may portray it. This would seem to be predominantly a caravan of physically capable adult males. And that's the first point I want to focus on here, okay? This is the kind of thing people get offended or whatever when you say this, but then people get offended by everything, so who cares? these people are leaving their homelands because their homelands are dysfunctional and destitute. Okay. But as much as, and you see some of this footage, they're waving their national flag. Their flags of origin, they're waving as they march.

But they're marching away from their country. So how proud of your country can you really be if you're abandoning it? How patriotic can you really be if you're leaving your country? And I think that's a big part of the problem. And this is a part of the discussion that people don't really want to have. But maybe we should consider the possibility that these countries are destitute and dysfunctional because, or in large part because, significantly because they're physically capable adult males keep leaving. You know, you can't, how are you going to have a country of your own if all of your guys keep leaving you? maybe if those men were to stay behind in their own countries and work to rebuild their country and rebuild the way of life, maybe then there wouldn't be a reason to come here.

You see, it seems like the pro-illegal immigration side, they kind of lose either way because, you know, we know they got very upset when Trump infamously said that these countries aren't sending their best. the other side says, well, yes, they are. Okay, but either way, it doesn't work. You see, because if these aren't their best, if these really are criminals and so forth, if these are the dregs of their society, then obviously we don't want them here. But if they are the best,

if they are hardworking and competent and capable people, that's all the more reason for them not to come here and stay and fight for and rebuild their own countries. We don't want a country sending us their worst, but it's madness for a country to send their best. Your worst, you shouldn't be allowed to dump on another country. Your best, you shouldn't want to dump on another country. You know, I made this point yesterday,

and some people told me that, well, well, the only reason they're coming here is because we ruin their country. Their countries are destitute and dysfunctional because of us. It's our fault. our government's policies cause these problems. Now, I think that's a weird kind of paternalism. Here again, you see this sort of white savior bigotry that's so common among white liberals. You're suggesting that these people have no say over their own lives,

that the fate of their country has nothing to do with them whatsoever. They have no control, no say at all. That's what you're saying. you are relieving them of blame, which is what you want to do, but you're also relieving them of agency. They have no agency over themselves, over their countries, over their lives. It's all the fault of the white man. The white man in America caused the problem, and the white man in America is the only one

who can solve it. That's what you're saying. I find that extremely, extraordinarily racist. and besides, even if that were true, which it isn't, but even if it were true that this is all America's fault, and we destroyed the entire hemisphere, all the countries, we destroyed all, well, then that would mean that these men are fleeing their homelands and coming to the country that destroyed their homeland. I mean, how do you, that's what you're saying.

You're saying that it's our fault. We did this. We're the big, bad, evil villains. And so they're coming to us? Wouldn't that be an act of enormous cowardice in that case? I mean, wouldn't that be traitorous to your country? If a foreign country destroyed America and left it destitute, would you leave here and go to that country that did this thing? Or would you stay and fight for your home? Now, you know, I don't think that the United States is responsible for destroying Central America. though I agree that some of our policies dealing with the war on drugs and the cartels and so forth have been terrible. But to put the blame entirely on us is simplistic and absurd. And it doesn't undermine the point that I'm making here. In fact, it strengthens the point that many of these men

should be staying in their own countries. Either way, no matter how you slice it, right? I just think this is a really important point to emphasize because if we're looking for long-term solutions to the immigration problem, well, then I think those long-term solutions have to involve these countries keeping their own labor forces rather than sending them all to us. I just think that if we want these countries to get on their own feet, as it were, then it has to involve that. Second thing about this, anytime immigration's in the news, you always have people claiming that Christians are compelled by the Bible, by Jesus, by our teachings to support

unfettered immigration. this is one of the only subjects where the left suddenly likes to talk about the Bible. Usually they hate the Bible, they hate Christianity. They think the Bible is a book of fairy tales. But when it comes to immigration and a few other issues like gun rights or the welfare state, then all of a sudden they're opening that book of fairy tales and insisting that clearly we must hold their position if we want to be Christian. Well, that's obviously not the case. Christianity is not a political platform. It does not give us policy proposals. It's not like the Republican or Democrat platform where you can go and they've got a position on every single, you know, social, cultural, political issue. That's not the way Christianity works. And in fact, the faith allows, I think, for quite a bit of intellectual diversity. It is. if you like, an open-minded faith.

We're supposed to be open-minded. Well, Christianity is very open-minded. Now, obviously, the fundamental doctrines of the faith are not negotiable. We're not open-minded about that. But as for political and cultural issues, all we can do is apply Christian principles to the issue and see where it lands us. That's what we can do. On something like abortion or gay marriage, these principles will unavoidably land us. completely on one side every time. So if you're applying Christian principles, obviously you're

going to be against killing babies. There's just no way to get to the pro baby killing side. If you're starting with Christian principles, you just can't get there. If you want to get there, you're going to have to throw the Christian principles aside or it's not going to work. But on issues like immigration, taxes, gun rights, foreign policy, economic policy, health care, et cetera. Faithful and devout Christians can come to a variety of different conclusions. Choice Hotels gets you more of what you value. Comfort in.

It's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at storesholtails.com. It's possible to hold many different positions on those kinds of issues. On immigration, as far as I can see it, the only completely unacceptable view for Christians is the one that supports all forms of illegal immigration without restriction. The one that says, well, open up the borders, let everyone in, forget about the law,

forget about borders, forget about all that. That's not a Christian, you know, that's not a Christian perspective. That is a Marxist utopian perspective. A Christian with that view is supporting criminality, illegality. He's undermining the authority of the state. An authority that we're told is given to the state by God. So that's not an acceptable view for Christians. But aside from that, there is a spectrum of positions a Christian can hold.

One of those positions, which happens to be mine, is that rampant immigration, legal or illegal, is bad for almost everyone. It's bad for America. It's bad for the countries that are being abandoned, as we've talked about. The only person who might benefit is the individual immigrant. But I don't think it's, in this situation, I don't think it's ethical or moral or logical or prudent to put one person on a pedestal above everyone else. I don't think you can put the interests of this one person above everyone else, above the law itself. I don't think we can do that. Now, clearly, when you're weighing the individual, versus the collective, you're not always going to come on the side of the collective. If this is a life or death issue, if, for instance, directly and intentionally murdering an

innocent person might benefit the collective, well, then that still is not okay. It's not okay to murder the person. This is an argument that people make for abortion all the time. They say, well, you know, these babies are unwanted. They're just going to be poor. They're going to end up in jail. They're going to commit crimes. It's already, the world is overpopulated. No, it's not. That's a myth, but the world's overpopulated. So for the sake of the collective, we should have abortion. Well, that is a morally unacceptable position. We can't go kill an innocent person for the sake of the collective. But we're not talking about murdering immigrants here. This is not life or death. We're talking about simply not allowing them to come here. And in that situation, I do think we have

away everyone's interest and go with the strategy, go with the policy that benefits the most people. I just want to emphasize this for a moment, because this is important. The options, when it comes to immigration, the options are not let them in or kill them. Okay. Now, the way people talk about this issue, you would think those are the options. Like, if you don't let them in, then we're, we are rejecting their very lives. This is, you hear people say that, well, if you're really pro-life, you would be pro-immigration. What? What does that have to do with anything?

What does pro-life have to do with this? If the other option was killing them, then yes, this would be a pro-life issue. But that's not it. We're simply saying that we should enforce our laws and not let them in. They can go back and live in their own countries. They can go to any country that will accept them. This is, this is, that's all. as for us, we have laws, we have a border, and it should be enforced.

There is nothing in the pro-life platform that should make us opposed to law and order. In fact, we should be in favor of law and order because the whole reason why we have laws and why we have order is for the sake of us, for the sake of human beings. Because we recognize that human life is sacred and precious, and so we need laws to protect those lives and to establish order. siding with law and order on the immigration debate is not the same as siding against the very existence, the very lives of these people. We are not denying the sacredness, the sanctity, the preciousness, the value of their lives when we simply say we have laws and we're going to enforce them. All right. One other thing I want to talk about on a different note, Megan Kelly had a conversation on her show yesterday. where they were talking about offensive Halloween costumes.

And she remarked that, in her opinion, she doesn't see why it's offensive for a white person to dress as a black person. If they're dressing as a black person they admire in order to pay tribute. And she gave the example of a white woman dressing as Diana Ross. Well, of course, this sparked outrage and people were offended and hurt and traumatized. And it made their tummies hurt that she would dare to utter this opinion about costumes. And then later on in the day, she issued an apology.

I don't think she owed an apology for two reasons. Number one, and I feel like a broken record here, I'm saying this all the time, but I think I just, I feel like it needs to be said over and over again, that you cannot ignore a person's intent when they say something. So if somebody says something and you know that their intent was perfectly innocent, that they were not trying to be offensive, they were not trying to say anything hurtful. If you know that, then there's no reason to be offended. Even if what they said was clumsy, in artful, whatever, if you know that they weren't trying to be offensive, if you know

what they meant, then there's no reason to be offended. And if you get offended anyway, it's because you wanted to be offended. It's because you are a cynical, opportunistic jerk looking for a to be offended. That is the only excuse to be offended by something. That's the only reason why a person can be offended by something that they know was not intended to be offensive. Megan Kelly is just another example. You can disagree with her position about costumes, whatever. She clearly was not trying to be racist, that she did not consider this to be a racist comment. There was no racism underneath it. So if you say, well, I know you didn't mean it as racist, but I'm going to take it as racist, well, then you are a liar and a fraud if that's what you do. Well, I know you didn't

mean it that way, but this is how I'm going to take it. Well, you know what, then you should apologize to her. If you're doing that, you should be the one apologizing. In fact, you should, you should be, she should be saying you're welcome because you should be thanking her. You know, when you get offended by something because you wanted to be offended, then you should be saying thank you to whoever offended you because you wanted to be offended. You were desperate to be offended. You wanted nothing more than to be offended. You're so excited to be offended. So you should say thank you to the person who offended you. You were obviously looking for an excuse. You got it. Well, say thank you. Be polite. Where are your manners? I just, I hate this so much. I mean, of all the things in modern

society that I can't say, this might be the thing. This might be above everything else. This propensity that people have to get to be offended, to choose to be offended when they know that the intent behind the remark or the comment or the action was totally innocent. And we act like intent is irrelevant. It's not irrelevant. Intent is the whole point. That's all that really matters in communication. All that matters is what do I mean when I say it? And if you know what I mean, then that should be it. We can't have communication. All human communication breaks down this way. if you are going to refuse to receive what a person tells you in the spirit and with the intent that they clearly meant it. Now, on the issue of Halloween costumes in general, look, I don't dress in costumes myself.

I don't find it especially appealing to dress in a costume. I haven't had the desire to dress in a costume since I was about five years old. But I do know that the point of Halloween costumes is to have fun. Most costumes are in good fun. I think you rarely see a mean-spirited costume every once in a while you do. Okay, so you see some idiot dressed in a, you know, you'll see stories of some moron dressed in a Holocaust costume or something. Well, that obviously is mean-spirited. That's not in good fun.

You're not having good fun with the murder of 6 million people. But most costumes aren't like that. Most costumes are, even if they're tacky, even if they're outrageous, even if they're inappropriate, they're still not mean-spirited. So, should a white person be able to dress as someone of a different race or of a different culture? Of course they should, obviously. I mean, don't be ridiculous. Why are we even talking about this? Clearly they can.

clearly there's nothing wrong with it. Now, I know that when I say they can, I know that if they do, they're going to be, you know, people won't tolerate it in this irrational age that we're living in. But in an ideal situation, if everyone was rational and we were all mature adults, there would be nothing wrong with it. If it's, if it's meant in good fun, if it's meant to be a tribute, if you're just, there's nothing wrong. It's, it's, just like non-Irish people on St. Patrick's Day, they'll dress in, in really, really, ridiculous, exaggerated, Irish-themed costumes. I mean, people dress as lepracons, for goodness sakes. People dress as lepracons. And by the way, St. Patrick's Day is a religious holiday on top of that. So you're coming in on this religious holiday and making a mockery of the Irish dressing as a lepracons. Well, you know what? No Irish person gets offended by that.

I think that actual Irish people in Ireland, I've never heard of any of them being offended. I think they just laugh about it and they roll their eyes and they kind of laugh at us. People of Irish descent in America, we don't start crying about it. We're not offended. We laugh. We have a good time. In fact, we're flattered. On St. Patrick's Day, everybody wants to pretend that they have Irish ancestry.

And so those of us who do, we feel kind of, you know, we feel kind of good about ourselves. We feel kind of cool that everybody wishes they had the same ancestry that we do. So you should be flattered by that. So it's the same thing with Native Americans. I mean, for, you know, a lot of white people in, look at Elizabeth Warren, she's not the only one. A lot of white people in America wish that they had Native American ancestry, even if they don't. And so if they dress up as a Native American, they're paying tribute. This is meant to be flattering.

You should be flattered by it. It's, you know, for whatever reason, there are white, there are two things, it seems, that every white person in America wants to be. They want to be Irish and they also want to be Native American. Okay. So whatever. There's no reason to be offended by that. You could laugh at it. You could say that's silly. It is. But why be offended? And look, it's not like, I know you might say, well, well, it's different because black people, Native Americans, they've been oppressed, they've been persecuted. This is a persecuted group of people. So to dress up as them is, well, I don't deny that they've been oppressed and persecuted. But what, do you think the Irish haven't? Have you read any, do you know anything about Ireland? Are you kidding? me, the Irish people have not been some dominant, powerful force in the world. We're talking about a culture that has suffered terribly, been persecuted terribly in their own country and in the United States. It's been, it's been the history of the Irish people. It's been misery after misery.

Yet, yet, they take this all in stride. So, you know what? And on St. Patrick's Day, nobody is talking about the plight of the Irish people. No one's having this conversation. Nobody's wondering whether or not Irish people are offended by this. Nobody does. So you know what? I have no interest in double standards. I just don't. If it's okay to dress Irish, if it's okay for non-white people to dress as white people on Halloween, then white folks can dress in whatever costume they want. I'm sorry. The double standard is not working for me. I'm not going to go along with it. I don't think anyone should. If you have a double standard, then why should, why should I care what your opinion is if you clearly have a double standard? Why should I respect that? If you're going to go and celebrate

St. Patrick's Day and get drunk in your lepracon costume, making a mockery of the Irish, you know, associating them only with leprechauns and being drunk, if you're going to do that, then don't pretend you're a, well, that, well, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, a costume offends my cultural heritage. Well, you can't do that. Why should I take that seriously? And by the way, I also don't agree that the offended person is always right and should always get his way. Well, if someone's offended by that costume, that's reason enough not to wear it. No, it's not.

It's not reason enough because people get offended by everything. So it's not reason enough to stop doing something. Well, if someone's offended, you shouldn't do it. You shouldn't say it. Well, that means I'm not going to do or say anything ever again because somebody's always offended. maybe the offended person should stop looking for a reason to be offended. Maybe the offended person should say to themselves, oh, it's just a costume on Halloween. It doesn't matter.

Someone is just having fun. Maybe I'll just be cool about it for once in my life and calm down and just let people have fun without looking for a reason to rain all over the parade. Maybe we should expect the offended person to do that. You know, what about that? in the case of an intentionally mean-spirited costume, well, that's different. But even then, if it's intentionally mean-spirited, it means that the person's pitiful and they're looking,

they're desperate for attention. So the last thing you should do is give them attention, just ignore them. But if it's meant as a tribute, if it's in good fun, if it's the same jokey kind of spirit as the St. Patrick's Day stuff, then, well, maybe you should just laugh and move on with your life. Just a thought. All right, we'll leave it there.

said I don't dress in any costumes for Halloween but I don't begrudge those who do. Have a great day everyone I'll talk to you tomorrow. Godspeed.