What Matt Walsh Gets Wrong About Israel
Sorry this is coming to you on a Saturday. Next week we’ll be back on schedule.
Is it time to attack Iran? Trump thinks so.
It looks like President Trump is eyeing an attack on Iran. Iran, it seems, is unwilling to come to the negation table with America to discuss what it would take for them to dismantle their nuclear programs. This is a serious issue. President Trump said this on Friday,
“I may go in very willingly if we can't get a deal… If we don't make a deal, I'll be leading the pack.”
What does this have to do with Americans you may be asking. Why should we care if Iran has nuclear weapons? These are good questions and ones that we should be thinking about. There are varying opinion on the matter but I think the main consideration has to be this: do we want terrorists who hate America to be able to use nuclear weapons? I say no.
We also know that Iran has been fighting a proxy war with Israel for a year and a half now. Many on the right, including people that I respect like Tucker Carlson, don’t want America involved in these foreign affairs. Some, like Candace Owens, have even shown support for the terrorist group who started the conflict, Hamas. So, how should Christians think through this?
I think the answer is clear: nuclear weapons cannot be in the hands of terrorists and psychopaths. It’s that simple. How is it in America’s interest to allow for Iran to have a nuclear weapon? It isn’t—in fact, it would only further the possibility of widespread nuclear war. The other part of this specific issue is Iran’s bitter hatred for both Jews and Christians. Iran is dead set on attacking and eliminating the state of Israel through proxy terrorist organizations by giving them weapons, money, and resources. What happens if Hamas get’s ahold of a nuclear weapon? Nobody wants to think about that.
I do believe that it is the Christian’s job to bless Israel and to support them. Does this mean that we should give them endless amounts of money? No. Does it mean we support them in any and every military action? No. But it does mean that we try to prevent Islamic terrorists from maintaining nuclear weapons that could wipe out entire civilizations. At the end of the day, these wars are ideological wars. Some worldviews are right and some are dead wrong.
100 Days of President Donald Trump.
We’re 100 days into this new Administration and the White House has released a list of 100 hoaxes the mainstream media has intentionally pushed out to the American people on its website. I won’t go through the entire list (because that would be pointless) but I will point out a couple of the main hoaxes of the past 100 days.
First, CNN tried to “fact check” President Trump’s claim that the Biden Administration spent millions of dollars on transing mice. That’s right—go back and re-read that. Apparently Trump thinks that Democrats were trying to make mice transgender, and they cared so much about this endeavor that they spent millions of dollars on it! Theres no way this could be true… right? Right?? Nope. It’s true. In fact, CNN was so wrong that they had to fact check their own fact check—I call this “fact check inception” and I’m really hoping Christopher Nolan makes a movie about it.
Or how about his one; a Democrat from California, Rep. Eric Swalwell claimed “no president” presided over more plane crashes during their first month in office than President Trump. This sounds believable, right? It seemed that right after Trump took office, there were several plane and helicopter crashes that gained national attention—I didn’t hear about anything like this during the Biden Administration, did you?
Well, Fox News reported that Mr. Swalwell is a liar. In fact, the facts seem to say that under the Biden Administration there were 55 aviation accident between his inauguration day and Feb. 17, 2021 compared to 35 accidents in the same amount of time under the Trump Administration. This is a very weird thing to lie about—but the Democrats don’t seem to care.
Last one. The hispanic, native American, black, and white Elizabeth Warren made the claim that under Donald Trump’s leadership, nobody wants to invest into the American economy! Oh-no! Could it be true? You guessed it—no, it’s completely false.
The facts say that Trump has secured over $5 trillion in investments and has created over 400,000 jobs in his first 100 days. I know Elizabeth Warren is a self-proclaimed oppressed immigrant who has a measly net worth of $7.5 million so we need to cut her some slack, but this does seriously just sound like an emotional statement made by the Senator.
Why talk about this though? For a couple of reasons, one being that these 100 media hoaxes should be eye opening for any sane person—the reality is that the Democrats are willing to lie about literally anything to induce fear into the American people. They seem to have no conscience, they are lying about basically anything and everything for no apparent reason. Christians should hate lying, no matter where it’s coming from because lying is a sin.
Second, we should care about this because President Trump is actually doing some very good stuff so far in his Presidency. He’s not perfect, but he’s obviously better than the Dems. Getting rid of sending millions of dollars to trans a bunch of mice is a good thing. Transing mice is weird and probably immoral. So, we should be thankful to have a somewhat normal person in office instead of an almost dead person or a woman who can’t formulate a sentence.
Trump works a deal out with Ukraine.
Trump has finally done what he’s been trying to do since he took office—make a deal with Ukraine. In this deal, the United States will receive preferential access to Ukraine’s natural resources in exchange for establishing a reconstruction investment fund to help support Ukraine’s economy. The deal will aim to help build Ukraine’s economy amidst their ongoing war with Russia and allow for America to receive natural resources in return for the billions of dollars we have spent on this war and will continue to spend.
So, what should we think about this? It’s hard to say—it seems that Trump is aiming at ending this war and helping Ukraine build itself back into a sovereign nation. But at what cost? Will this mean that Ukraine loses territory that Russia has taken over the past several years? I’m not sure—last time I heard from Ukrainian President, Vladimir Zelenskyy, he was going on about how he would never surrender Ukrainian land. But this seems inevitable if we want to stop the killing. Russia is most likely going to get the land they believe belongs to them in Crimea and Ukraine is going to need to accept that.
If Trump can bring an end to this war, we’re going to have to see what NATO does next. It’s pretty clear that this war started because NATO was unwilling to back off of the Russian borders for decades. Ukraine and NATO needs to be careful going forward, especially since Europe as a whole is on the brink of total destruction at the hands of Islamic invaders. The world will continue to watch what happens in the West.
COMMENTARY: What Matt Walsh gets wrong about Israel.
On Wednesday Matt Walsh, from the Daily Wire, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on the Tucker Carlson Show. As some of you may know, I am a fan of Tucker, I think he’s a phenomenal interviewer and I agree with much of what he says. That said, both Tucker and Matt seem to have a massive blind spot in their political worldview, and that came into focus in this two hour interview.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Matt Walsh—I think he’s good in his documentaries, but other than that I think he’s reductionistic and too simplistic. He shows these cards when he talks about Israel. Matt’s entire ideology surrounding foreign affairs is very simple and very stupid; if it doesn’t affect America, it doesn’t matter. He’s a pure isolationist (in theory). Of course, Matt cannot define what would be within the confines of “affecting America”.
But this simplistic argument gives him the justification for being passive about massive world events and wars. It also, in a delusional way, allows for him to pretend that the world we live in is not interconnected in a multitude of ways that cannot be reduced to American soil. Trade, communications, borders, travel, resources, and many other areas of human politics are all interconnected in a geopolitical system. Actually, many of the luxuries you take for granted come from countries that are far away from America.
Now, Matt would probably say that, being an isolationist, he is ok with America benefiting through trade with other countries—obviously we want to take advantage of the goods of other countries with other resources, right? First, I’m not entirely sure that that view is truly isolationist in practice. If you want only what best benefits American people, you would have a difficult time convincing people that the vast majority of goods from other countries are actually beneficial to society. Why not just eat the foods in your own backyard and drive the cars produced within your own country? Why not only travel within the American border? Why not build your home with only wood and materials that come from America? Why not stop going to grocery stores and buying Mexican foods from Mexico and coffee from South America? If you’re a true isolationist you should probably practice what you preach, right?
Or maybe the wars in Israel and Ukraine do directly affect America and the rest of the world. Maybe, just maybe, if Iran produces a nuclear weapon, they will attack Christians and Jews because their satanic ideology has radicalized them. Has Matt Walsh looked at Europe? Has he noticed that the Muslims are essentially taking over the entirety of England? But maybe Matt would say that America is different because it’s surrounded by two oceans and two throw away countries—hmm. But then why does he care about who comes through the border? Or does he? Hasn’t he heard that terrorists have actually gotten on boats and come to Mexico just to cross the American southern border and wreak havoc on American soil?
So much for the isolationist. I would like isolationist solutions to all of these real geopolitical issues. The truth is that there are no isolationist answers to these problems. As John M. Owen (not the theologian, but the political scientist at the University of Virginia) says, geopolitics is more like the study of ecology—it’s about organisms interacting with one another and their surroundings.
Here’s the other truth: isolationism is actually passivity. Who would have thought? The millennial is passive about geopolitics? Yep. Sounds about right. I would bet you anything that if those Islamic terrorists being funded by Iran were able to take control of Israel and capture their nuclear weapons and then take control of Britain and all of Europe and take their nuclear weapon and then flood the American border and begin to attack the United States using nuclear weapons, Matt Walsh wouldn’t be such a coward.
In fact, I would bet that he would be screaming for help. Because isolationism is, at its core, selfishness and vanity. It’s a mindless rejection of reality and responsibility. The principle of subsidiarity does not claim that the institutions further out are simply out of your scope of responsibility—no, in fact it actually claims the opposite. It says that you must begin to take control of your life by first taking responsibility for yourself, then your family, then your church, then your community, and so on and so forth. It’s a logical progression, not an excuse to turn a blind eye.
This split within the Republican party between true Conservatives who aim at preserving what is true, good, and beautiful—that is, the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the liberal Republicans who aim to preserve their personal peace and affluence is turning into an ideological war at a very, very fast pace. This is the problem with the MAGA populist movement; you end up with no North Star. No direction. Many Conservatives (like myself) have said this on multiple occasions. The issue is that the plague of postmodernism and Marxism are so deeply embedded within the American social imaginary that most people have no idea what they actually believe in. So the horseshoe effect is in full swing now.
The liberal (Trump) Republicans claimed to be so far away from the progressives in political ideology. They claimed that transing kids, endless war, and fake science is evil, and I agreed with that. But why are these things evil? Seriously, ask yourself that question. Why is it bad to genitally mutilate a child? This is where Conservatives and Republicans differ. The Conservative says it’s evil because it is contradictory to God’s created order. The liberal Republican, along with the Progressives say it’s evil because it is contradictory to their own created order, that is, their own personal peace and affluence. It’s only a matter of time before the liberal Republicans and the Progressives unite once more to fulfill their sinful desires.
Though they may hide behind phrases like “Christ is king” they only truly have one king; their appetite. Good luck with isolationism, Matt—you’ll need it.
What to read…
This week we will stay on the C.S. Lewis bandwagon with the first book in his Space Trilogy, Out of Silent Planet. Growing up, my family and I were big C.S. Lewis fans. We read all of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and others. But I had never heard of Lewis’s sci-fi Space Trilogy until I was in my 20s. The series starts with a character names Ransom walking down a country road until he happens upon a home. In this home there is a mad scientist and his friends who have some sort of spaceship. They kidnap Ransom and take him to Mars where there lives an entire civilization. Now Ransom has to navigate this new world in which he does not speak the Martian language (but he’s a philologist, so he figures it out) and he knows that Weston, the mad scientist that brought him there, is aiming at colonizing Mars (Malacandra to the natives) and offering Ransom as a human sacrifice to the creatures of Mars. This book is full of deep theological and philosophical undertones and launches the series off in an exiting way. The Space Trilogy might just be one of the most important series for modern readers living in this fractured society.
