The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 135 - What Else Are We Supposed To Do With The Migrant Caravan?

Episode Date: November 2, 2018

The Left criticizes Trump's plan for how to deal with the illegal immigrant caravan but hasn't suggested a better alternative. Also, I'll answer an email about the problem of pettiness in the Christian church. Finally, Ben Shapiro said something that was massively wrong and obscenely offensive. It needs to be addressed. Date: 11-02-2018 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 left doesn't like Trump's plan for dealing with the migrant caravan, but what's their plan? They have criticisms. They don't have answers, as always. We'll talk about that. Also, I'll reach you to the mailbag, answer a few interesting emails that were sent to me. And finally, Ben Shapiro said something that was massively wrong, horribly offensive and obscene. And I'm going to address that today as well. That's all coming up today on the Matt Wall Show. There was an article in BuzzFeed asking today whether Joe Biden is too old to run for president. and I think he'll be 77 years old in 2020. I think, listen, of course at 77, you're too old to run for president. The life expectancy for men is, I think, what, 84 or something like that? So you're not too far from that. If there's a lower age limit for president, like you can't run for president before you're 35,

well, then shouldn't there be an upper limit as well? I mean, can we cut it off at some point, maybe 75 or something like that? To be for your first term, you can't run for a first term after 75. I think we should at least think about that. Would you feel more comfortable having, say, a 32-year-old in the White House or an 82-year-old? Like, who do you think would be more physically and mentally capable of handling the most high pressure and important job in America? Someone who's 82 or someone who's 32. I mean, I just think we should think about whether or not there should be a limit, which of course would require an amendment to the Constitution, which will never happen.

But it's a thought anyway. All right, so we know that the media and the left are very upset about Trump's plan for dealing with the illegal immigrant caravan, and they call it callous and heartless and racist, and so on and so forth. But I would like to turn this question around for a minute, because we've heard liberals criticize Trump's plan for dealing with the caravan. We haven't really heard their plan. So you know what you think we know what you think we shouldn't do. What do you think we should do? 5,000 people show up at the border all at once. You don't like Trump's plan. Fine. But what's your plan? I mean, it's kind of amazing that so few Democrats are prominent liberals, even as they, as they blast Trump for his way of addressing the problem, they haven't given us an alternative. What would they have us do? Would they have us just unfurl the red carpet and and, and, and, and, you know,

let this unchecked horde of unknown people into the country just because they showed up. Now, yeah, I know that that's what they would like to do, but we should at least require them to come out and say it. If that's actually what they want us to do, then come out and say it. Come out and say that you think that if a whole group of people, 5,000 people show up, we should just let them in. Or maybe you'll say, no, well, well, they should be able to claim asylum. Well, there are problems with that. For one thing, if 5,000, people from Central America can claim asylum, then we've really expanded the idea of asylum to the point where it just is meaningless. These are people looking for better jobs and better

living conditions, which I totally understand. I would want that too if I was in their position, but that's not what asylum is for. Also, they were offered asylum in Mexico and they turned it down. So why should we give them asylum? If they didn't take asylum when it was offered, then that would seem to mean that they don't really want asylum. It seems like what they really are looking for it. Because what I'm saying is in their country of origin, if their lives were threatened, which is really what asylum is supposed to be for, then they should take asylum from any other country that would offer it to them. If they don't want asylum in Mexico, then that shows that what they really are after is just kind of a better way of life, which again,

in principle, I understand that, but that's not asylum. That's just immigration. But more to the point, so fine, they apply for asylum, they put in their asylum applications, well, those applications have to be processed. If we're not going to process the applications, if all they have to do is just fill it in and then they're good to go, then there's no reason to even have the application in the first place than you really are unfurling the red carpet. But so, okay, so they're applying for asylum. They have to have an application.

the application has to be processed, that takes time. What do we do with them in the meantime? We've been told that detaining them is some great evil. We can't lock them in cages. That's what we were told. Well, which they were never locked in cages. That was not the policy under, the policy under Trump was not to, quote, lock them in cages. But the policy has been that we have to detain them in some way,

while the application is processed, what other option is there? Do we just take their application and then let them go into the interior of the country on a kind of honor system and say, hey, check back. Check back in six weeks and we'll let you know what's going on. Well, that's stupid, obviously. Because again, you might as well just open up the gates, let them in and not even worry about it if that's what you're going to do. So we do have to detain them. You don't like the way we attain them? Well, so how do we detain them?

You want better detainment facilities. You want whole families together. So you want us to house, feed, shelter these people in nice facilities. Facilities equipped to take care of and protect whole families, which is an issue, by the way, because when you've got, you know, it's one thing if you're going to put all the grown men together, and that has been the policy in the past, where you've got all the grown men, you're detaining them, and then you've got the children separate. but now if you're putting families together, that means you're going to have these facilities where you've got children and grown men and adults all mixed together, which could be a dangerous situation. So now you've got to protect and separate and provide for. How are we doing all this? And then what happens when the next caravan comes in? And the next after that and the next after that, where are we getting the money and resources and space and facility to offer this nice, temporary safe housing to entire families for, you know,

indefinite periods of time. Have you thought about that? It seems like most liberals have not thought about this. All they've thought about is how terrible and evil Trump's policy is. All right. Because it's Friday, I'd like to go to the mailbag. I had some, some, a few interesting questions that were emailed to me that I wanted to answer. And all right, so here we go. This first one is from Nick. it says, Matt, I've often heard you say that it's okay for Christians to be judgmental because we are judging sin, not sinners. But what about the petty judgments of Christians? Like the people who are criticizing that Christian singer you link to on Facebook, don't you think people are driven away from the church by petty judgmental Christians who just want to show off their theological

knowledge and appear pious all the time? All right. I think I need to, I think this requires explanation. I linked a few days ago to a performance from a Christian artist named Lauren Daigle, and she performed on the Ellen show. And I thought that her performance was, she did a nice job. I'm not really into that kind of music, pop music, not my thing. But I thought it was a nice song. She's a talented artist, great singer. And she had a relevant sound, actually relevant music, which is often a struggle for Christian music. It just doesn't sound like the kind of stuff people listen to. It doesn't sound relevant. Oftentimes, Christian music just sounds outdated and corny and all that.

But this didn't. I mean, so it's a relevant, nice sound, and the lyrics were a beautiful expression of face. So I shared it. But as Nick is alluding to here, there were a number of people who left comments about the song, just tearing it apart and tearing the woman apart. they had their theological critiques of her of her lyrics they said that well she's not really preaching the gospel because she's forgotten to mention this or that theological point this is actually not the first time that's happened where I've some Christian performers performed a song that you know is getting attention and I think it's a nice song and then and then it's very common for Christians to respond by saying well this isn't preaching the gospel it doesn't mention anything about atonement it it it did it did it do it do it do it do it do it do it do it

It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't quote the Bible. It starts going, you know, offering this kind of theological critique of a Christian pop song. As if every Christian statement or song or anything, as if all of that must always mention every essential theological point. It's just ridiculous. They couldn't just enjoy a nice song about faith. like they had to find a reason to complain. You've got this woman singing just a nice song about her Christian faith, and that's it. And people couldn't just enjoy it.

They had to find a reason to critique that. And these are the petty judgments that I think Nick is talking about. And I agree with them. I think as Christians, we're called to stand up to evil. We're called to speak truth. And I think that many times Christians are labeled as judgmental when, in fact, they're just trying to defend. the faith and defend biblical values. But there is also a tendency among certain Christians, and probably among all of us, to one degree or another, to be petty and pompous. And to try to show off

our theological knowledge. Like we think it makes me seem like better Christians if we can find some theological or exegetical reason to criticize something that, to tell you. everyone else appears to be perfectly fine. And I just, I think what happens is that outsiders see that. Like they'll look at, for instance, the thread under the song that I post on Facebook, and they'll say to themselves, I want nothing to do with these insufferable, boring, petty people. Another example from this past week would be Halloween. Now, some Christians celebrate Halloween.

okay some Christians don't celebrate Halloween and that's fine everyone makes their own decisions and and I respect it either way it's perfectly fine now me and my family we went trick or treating we had a great time my son dressed up as St. Michael the Archangel that was his that was the costume he wanted um so it's not you know we're not one of those families and said well no if you're going to go trick-or-treating you have to dress up as something Christian it'd be perfectly fine if you wanted to be Spider-Man he could have been Spider-Man but he but he wanted to be uh wanted to be the Archangel Michael and and it was a It was a nice costume. And it was a fun family time. But some Christian families don't like Halloween, and they don't celebrate it, which again, is totally fine. I respect them. But there are also Christians who don't celebrate Halloween, and they like to announce it to the world. They like to put on, they like to trumpet their own piety and make sure that everybody knows that they don't celebrate, which is kind of in the same vein as the people who, you know, are giving up something for.

for Lent and they make sure that everybody knows that they're giving up something and what that thing is. So it's sort of in the same vein, but I think this is even worse. So there are Christians that they announce, they make sure that they announce that Halloween is the devil's holiday. It's a pagan holiday, a celebration of evil. And they make a big show of their heroic refusal to allow their kids to knock on doors for candy. Now, leaving aside the fact

that Halloween has Christian origins, not pagan, And leaving aside the absolutely absurd idea that families are out trick-or-treating because they want to celebrate evil. Like, do you really think, you see all these families out and these kids dress up in superhero costumes and little girls and princess costumes and they're going around with their buckets of the little pumpkin buckets and they're getting candy and they're having a great? You think that these families are looking to celebrate evil and gore? That's what someone told me. It's a celebration of gore and blood and violence. Really? Is that what you think that's what these families are intending to do is celebrate gore, blood, and violence?

I can tell you, I don't think there's, there are not very many people who on Halloween say to themselves, let's go out and celebrate gore and blood and violence. I think they just think of it as an excuse to have a good time. But again, it's fine. It doesn't bother me that some people feel that way. We could have that discussion. And that's fine. But the issue is pettiness. The issue is the insistence upon trying to make other people feel bad for not coming to the same conclusion as you on this small and irrelevant issue. Another example, tattoos. I have tattoos myself, so you know how I feel about the subject. But again, it doesn't bother me that someone would disagree. There are plenty of Christians who are people in general who don't like tattoos. Perfectly fine. It doesn't offend me, doesn't hurt my feelings. completely fine. And I can even have a discussion, a debate about tattoos or, you know,

the prudence of getting tattoos. And I can listen to both sides of it. It doesn't hurt my feelings. Perfectly fine. But still, on a semi-regular basis, I'll get emails from Christians telling me what a sinful, worldly, fraudulent Christian I am because of tattoos. And then they proceed to quote Old Testament verses to try to prove why my tattoos are sending me to hell. And of course, they take the Old Testament verses out of context, and they take them in a context that if they're being consistent, then they would, then they themselves would have to make sure to never cut their beards, they'd have to eat kosher, don't wear mixed fibers because the tattoos, tattoo regulations are in that same vein. So they themselves are completely cherry-picking.

And so it's, and any tattooed Christian knows this. They, because we all deal with this on occasion. It's petty, it's silly. It makes the church look ridiculous and small. And there are so many examples. Alcohol is another example. On a few occasions. In fact, we're going to talk about this later on in this very show.

But, you know, I enjoy bourbon. And when I say enjoy it, I'm not going to call myself a connoisseur. I'm not nearly at that level. But that's sort of where I'm heading. I enjoy the taste of it. I enjoy the different kinds of bourbons and trying them and everything like that. And so on occasion, because it's an interest that I have, I'll mention it on Twitter or something. And you can always count on having the Christians come in and not just share their opinion about it,

but again, just in this petty kind of way announcing that any Christian who would dare to drink alcohol is not a real Christian and is in danger of the fires of hell. and then they'll proceed to explain how they know with absolute certainty that the wine that is mentioned all throughout scripture, especially in the New Testament, the wine that was part of Jesus' very first public miracle, they know for a fact that it was non-alcoholic. They absolute fact, they're 100% sure. And so with that certainty, they can declare that any Christian who would drink alcohol, even though Jesus himself, his first miracle was to make alcohol. and at the last supper, he shared alcohol, you know, with his, with his apostles. But they know they're a certain, absolutely, it could not have been alcoholic. And they know that because that is their personal preference.

And so they take their own personal preference, and they try to declare that anyone who does not share that preference is not a real question. That's something we have to look out for. I know I've been guilty of it. we've probably all be guilty of it at certain points. And it's something we really need to watch out for because that is when, as much as I really don't like the term judgmental because it is so overused, that is when we earn the term judgmental.

Because judgmental in the sense that we look like people who are just searching for a chance to cast judgment. And we also look like people who are going out of our way to able to able to, alienate others and make sure they know that they aren't welcome for the dumbest reasons. All right. Let's see what time. Okay. I had a few questions about the Kanye thing.

People were asking me, what's my opinion on? Now that Kanye has his love affair with the right appears to have ended and he said on Twitter this week that he's been used by people for their political agendas and then he proceeded to lay out his own political opinions, most of them very liberal. And then he donated to an extremely liberal socialist candidate in Chicago, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to that campaign this week. So my take on that, I'm not going to harp on this. I've already made my opinion clear. I said from the very beginning with this kind of, look, I'm not going to get into, I told you so, is because I just said we're not supposed to be petty. So I'm not going to do that. But just as a

matter of historical accuracy, I did say from the very beginning, that I really think this Kanye thing is a publicity stunt on his part, and we as conservatives have a tendency, although usually we try to be rational. And not only that, but usually we, we, we, we're the ones going around announcing that the opinion, the political opinions of celebrities don't matter, and they need to shut up and stick to the music, stick to the shows, whatever they do, right? we're the ones usually saying that but then a celebrity comes along and says one thing that appears to be even slightly conservative and we trip all over ourselves in admiration we fall at the person's feet kissing their feet because they said one conservative thing because it appears that

some of us really are you know as much as we say we don't care about the opinions of celebrities I think it's actually envy. We're jealous that the cool celebrities aren't on our side. That appears to be the case for some of us, because if any celebrity says something, then we're, you know, we fall over ourselves. So I just think we need to, we probably need to slow our role a little bit with that.

And this is a good case study. There was reason to be skeptical of Kanye's conservative conversion in the first place. And even if it was a sincere conversion and now he's just changed his mind, it's still, he's just, he's just, I've got nothing. I have no problem with him personally, but I don't think he ever was a very effective spokesman for conservative values in the first place. He's free to say what he wants. It's fine. But it never made sense to take this guy and put him on a pedestal and say, yeah, see, listen to him. He's explaining it. All right. One more mailbag question. This is from Lindsay. She says, hi, Matt.

you often criticize atheists and atheism, but have you ever actually researched and listened to their arguments? How can you claim to be some sort of apologist if you won't even listen to the other side? Are you willing to admit that atheists have any good arguments at all? I think you're a smart guy, but the dismissive way that you handle atheism really detracts from your credibility. First of all, I don't claim to be an apologist. I don't claim to be anything. But I have listened to atheist arguments.

I have researched them quite a bit. In fact, I think Christopher Hitchens was a brilliant man. Extremely quick-witted and clever. So if you watch any debates with him on YouTube, even though I disagree with everything you're saying, it's just kind of a joy to watch and to listen to him because the guy was an artist with the way that he used words and framed arguments and everything.

And so those are arguments that we should take seriously. Not just him, but Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Michael Shermer, Dawkins, Dan Barker, Sean Carroll, Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, Robert Price. I've listened or read quite a bit from all these guys. And I fully believe, and I agree, that we need to engage with the other side. We have to take their positions seriously. I don't believe in staying in a bubble and hiding. I don't think we should do that.

Because how strong can our faith be? how truly can we really believe if we're too afraid to listen to the very best arguments from the very smartest most gifted people on the other side. And we certainly are not going to be effective defenders of the faith if we don't even know what the detractors are actually saying. If our impression of the atheist position is just what we've gathered from YouTube comments and just maybe a few people we know around us who are atheists and the discussions we have, if that's all we know about the atheist perspective, then we really don't know anything about it. And so, therefore, we cannot be effective defenders of the faith. So, again, I fully believe we need to go and seek out the smartest atheists.

There are plenty of very smart ones, very insightful ones. Listen to what they're saying so that we can engage. and we can think and think for ourselves as well. Now, as for good atheist arguments, I've already, and when I say think for ourselves, you know, the point here is, it's important as Christians. Obviously, we want to read and listen to Christian apologists, legitimate ones, real ones, not me, but, you know,

listen to and read Christian apologists, defenders of the faith. So we need to equip ourselves in that way, strengthen ourselves in that way. But I don't think that can't be the only way that we encounter the atheist arguments. Because you can encounter them that way. You can go and read a William Lane Craig book and you can encounter the atheist arguments and see how he deals with them, which is good. But then you're not really thinking through the atheist objections on your own. then you're you're he Craig or whoever is giving you the response and so which is which again is fine but then

we also have to go and listen to what they say listen to how they frame it so that we can also think through it ourselves as well now as far as good atheist arguments I've already done a show where I engaged with what I think is the best atheist argument because it's the it's the simplest and that is the hiddenness of God I think this is if not the best one of the best atheist arguments And the reason why it's a good argument is because it kind of says the very fact that we need to have an argument about the existence of God seems to indicate that there is no God. That's their position. If there was a God, they would say, why doesn't he make himself more plainly apparent to us? That is a formidable objection. And I think that, in fact, when I did that show, on this, and I explained how I think through the hiddeness of God, there were, you know, quite a few people who responded and said, well, that's not even a problem. God isn't hidden.

What are you talking about? I hear him in my heart. I can pray. I have the Bible. He's not hidden at all. You know, again, when we respond to objections that way as Christians, then atheists just, they're going to shut us out because they're going to say, you know, you're not taking this seriously.

Yeah, you can pray and all that. But he is obviously in a very real sense hidden as well. You can't look and see him. You can't hear, you know, you pray. You don't, you don't literally hear his voice in your head. At least I don't. I've never met a Christian who did. So to act like this is not a problem at all.

And it's just not even a, you can't even understand why anyone would even bring it up. Well, then, again, we're just turning people away when we do that. It is a formidable objection. Another one is the problem of suffering. Any Christian who scoffs at the problem of suffering as if it presents no challenge is not a serious person and not a serious person. and not a serious Christian. And I think probably has a pretty weak faith, because if they've never actually even thought about this,

then how strong can their faith be? The best theologians in the history of Christianity, all of them, all the best ones, every single one you can think of. They have all taken this objection seriously and tried to deal with it. And you could spend your whole life reading Christian apologetics

about the problem of suffering, the problem of God's hiddenness. These are big serious, issues. Now, the problem of suffering is only really a problem. It's only a theological difficulty when it comes to non-human-caused suffering, because as for man-on-man, evil and suffering, the theist response is, I think, obvious and logical, which is free will. God gives us the ability to choose because only in choice, only in free will, can we really have love and joy? Compelled love, compelled joy, is impossible. Or at least it wouldn't really be love if you

had no choice but to love, no choice but to have joy, then, then, you know, in what sense can we say that it's real? So that deals with, I think, a lot of the suffering we see in the world, but it doesn't do much to explain why children die of cancer and why people drown in tsunamis. And the Christian, there isn't going to be an answer to these objections in the sense that we're not going to be able to present some neat little response that settles the question once and for all, and then we can all go home happy and not think about it anymore. There is a mystery here. We have to accept that.

But I think we can get ourselves on the road to understanding. We can at least partially faintly understand these problems. So for the hiddenness of God, as I said before, you can go and watch that show where I talk about this. But I think that part of the answer, possibly, is that God remains for us behind the veil out of view, as it were, because this is our time of choosing. If he were to burst through that veil and appear before us in the sky or something, whatever atheists say they would want him to do

so that he could prove his existence, if he would be perfectly capable of putting on some awesome celestial performance that would make it almost impossible to disbelieve. But if he were to do that, then I think it would remove or seriously hinder our ability to choose

because very few mortal people except the absolute most prideful would be able to look upon God or look upon whatever he would do to demonstrate himself undeniably to us very few could look upon that, witness that, and do anything but fall down in fear and awe and worship

which is an appropriate response, don't get me wrong. But then there's not, the possibility of choosing at that point is basically gone. Because we will be so overcome with fear and awe and just indescribable feelings that we can't even imagine, that we would not have the sort of calm, reasoned mindset that we need to actually choose. whether we want to love God or not, whether we want to follow and obey and listen or not and serve. So for lack of a better term, I think that he gives us space in this life

to actually choose so that we're not just cowed and stupefied before him, but able to make a decision. As for the problem of suffering that's caused by a disease and natural disaster, what we know is that God has set up the laws of nature and he allows those laws to work mostly on their own,

on their own in the sense that he's not intervening constantly to circumvent them, though he can and does intervene sometimes, but he's not constantly always doing it. He mostly allows them to work on their own. That's how he set up the system. And I suspect that that has something to do with what I just said a moment ago. These two issues, I think, are linked. That if he was constantly running in and putting up his hands to stop the tsunami from coming or doing all these various things, then again, I think it creates,

an almost pointless world because now we don't have that ability to choose and decide for ourselves. So I could spend another five hours on these questions. The answers that I just provided obviously aren't sufficient. And even if I had five hours, they still wouldn't be sufficient. But it's just a few ideas I wanted to give you in terms of how we might think through these things. But the point is, I do think we need to think through them. And that means engaging with atheist ideas and objections. And I encourage everyone to do that.

Okay, there are more mailbag questions I could talk about, but I'm going to have to do those later because there's one other thing I wanted to mention. And this is difficult, difficult for me to say. But yesterday, Ben Shapiro sent out a tweet that has made me reconsider my affiliation with the Daily Wire and my affiliation with the planet Earth in general. this is what he said he said get ready for my hottest take of the evening whiskey tastes like turpentine all who pretend pretend otherwise may be safely categorized with those who say they just love salad then later he said here for the ratio and you all know i'm right no sane person prefers whiskey to a strawberry daquery i am literally shaking right now i am actually shaking these look see i'm i'm literally shaking you think you know someone and then they they say something

like this. First, let me just say that I really think it's time to rethink the First Amendment because I'm a fan of free speech generally, but this is not what the founders had in mind. They never imagined that somebody would use and abuse their free speech rights to disseminate this sort of obscenity. I agree about the salad, but the idea that strawberry dapperies are better than whiskey is just, it's bigoted. You know, it's actually bigoted. It's, it's, it's racist against the Irish, for one thing. Ben is coming out as anti-Irish. And it's factually incorrect. Sugary, sweet, alcoholic drinks are repulsive. They taste like a drunk unicorns vomit is what they taste like. Okay. Whiskey, especially bourbon, on the other hand, is, I think, not only

delicious, but it's one of the best theological cases we can make for the existence of God, which is what Benjamin Franklin said about wine, but I think it applies even more to whiskey. Now here's the thing that Ben Shapiro doesn't understand, I think, apparently. Almost every good thing in life as an adult is something that you have to learn to like, something that children won't like. So I hated beer, I hated wine, coffee, whiskey, the first time that I had them. But as I matured, I learned to love them. Just like I remember being four or five years old and watching football with my dad and being bored to tears,

thinking like, what's the point of this? But now I realize that football is man's greatest invention. When I was a child, I hated sleeping. Going to bed was a travesty. Now I just, all I want to do is go to bed all day. I live each moment longing for the dark embrace of a long and dreamless sleep. When I was a child, I didn't like going to church. Now I do. When I was a child, I would rather watch cartoons than the old westerns that my dad would bring home from Blockbuster. Now I love old Westerns. I could watch Shane beat up the bad guys with a broken beer bottle and ride off into the sun. sunset every single day, I never get tired of it. When I was a child, I hated olives. I hated Brussels sprouts. I hated gravy. Now I love olives and Brussels sprouts, and gravy to me is its own food group. I could have it with every meal. And on and on and on. One must earn the joys of adulthood. One must work for them. And whiskey is is one of the greatest rewards of adulthood.

And frankly, through his attack on whiskey, Ben Shapiro has come out as anti-adult, anti-man, anti-Irish, anti-human, anti-truth, anti-taste buds, anti-joy, anti-life. And I will have to seriously consider resigning my position at the Daily Wire, though I expect, even if I do that, that I'll still be paid regardless because I am the aggrieved party here and the victim. Never forget that. All right, have a great weekend, everybody, and have some whiskey and have a whiskey in Bencher's name this evening.

I'll talk to you on Monday. Got to be.