Matt (00:01.272)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. I'm your host Matt with your favorite host Sean. And we didn't even invite anybody else to come this week because the two of us need to kiss and make up a little bit because I made Sean mad at me last week and apparently some of you sensed this. And so Sean and I are gonna just, the two of us show you that we can do it. We can be nice to each other even in difficult times.

Shawn (00:20.163)
You

Shawn (00:28.515)
There's a really, really easy explanation for last week. Really simple. One of us, I think, let's just assume here, one of us maybe didn't get enough sleep the night before and gets a little bit grumpy when he doesn't get enough sleep.

Matt (00:32.995)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (00:43.566)
I didn't feel like I was being grumpy, but what? it was you. OK, I was going to say I have learned from my family that the times when I think I'm not grumpy is actually the times when I'm the most grumpy. When like when like everyone in the family is like, raise your hand if dad is grumpy and everyone raises their hand and I'm like, stop it. You're all grounded now because I'm not grumpy and you said that I'm grumpy. Well, anyhow, we're going to try and make it all better.

Shawn (00:47.555)
No, not you! I didn't get enough sleep.

Shawn (00:57.952)
You

Shawn (01:12.119)
Well, hey, look, the latter day lens isn't... Look, the gospel lens doesn't say, everyone's perfect, and until you reach perfection and obey every commandment all the time, then everything's going to be okay. It doesn't say that. It says, we strive and we believe and we repent. That's all. Okay.

Matt (01:29.176)
Yeah, that's fine. To those listeners whose feelings we hurt, we apologize. I'll tell you though, Sean, it really did fill up the mail bag with a lot of stuff. We got a lot of comments on various things. A lot of them saying be nice to each other. So we'll take that to heart. We'll be nice to each other. Hey, real quick, I wanted to plug this other thing I did, I host this other podcast called This Week in Mormons and my sister and I do interviews on there. And we interviewed a guy, it dropped this week.

Shawn (01:39.648)
Sure did.

Shawn (01:44.739)
Okay, do it.

Matt (01:58.956)
His name is Ben Shalati. Have you ever heard of him? He wrote a book that was published by Deseret Book. He is openly gay and he's an active member of the church and he currently serves on the high council in his stake. And he's written some things. He's been in the news, but it was super fun. Like Melissa and I sat down and talked with him about just kind of everything. And so I was able to ask him all of the questions I want to ask.

All the questions I have about like what is it like to be gay and try to be active in the church? I asked him all of my questions and he answered all of those questions. So just I'll point listeners in that direction. If you want to hear a fascinating conversation with an openly gay active member of the church, you should check that out.

Shawn (02:42.295)
That's amazing. In fact, I'll plug it. haven't heard that one, but I've heard there's been maybe a dozen interviews. I mean, you've done a bunch of interviews over on that one, but there's been a dozen that were like, wow, that's crazy. And almost life changing. Like you did one with a member of the church, a woman who's from, she was from Gaza, I think, right? She was from Palestine. And that was so amazing. that was amazing. Yeah. You guys have done, you and your sister have done some really cool things over there.

Matt (03:02.274)
Yeah, yeah, she's a Palestinian. Yes, Sahar. Yeah. Yeah, that was a good one.

Yeah, so if you guys want to check it out, Ben Shalati is his name. Okay, so let's get to the mailbag. So there's, I'm just dividing it up into two kind of themes. The first one is people who love Melanie as a host. Did you, you wrote in and said, so one of them said, isn't Matt giving Melanie all the points because he doesn't want to seem sexist, actually sexist? Come on, Matt. Melanie gets all the points because she's awesome, has great insights and knows how to call you out.

Shawn (03:15.533)
That's awesome.

Shawn (03:25.229)
Yep, did. I wrote into that.

Shawn (03:35.619)
What?

Shawn (03:41.207)
Done.

Matt (03:41.388)
It is true that it would be sexist to just give her the points for being a female. no, I said that I do that because I don't want to. Yeah, I said that in the episode, not when Melanie was on.

Shawn (03:46.167)
Why would you do that? You didn't do that.

Shawn (03:50.449)
you did?

just, I'll just, you said just so you don't want to see.

Matt (03:56.96)
Yeah, and this listener picked up on that. True, that was a sexist thing for me to do. And I agree, Melanie gets the points because she's awesome. Another listener wrote, bravo Melanie, you're a wonderful mediating influence, almost guaranteeing the podcast and on a conciliatory note. By getting those two big boys to find something to agree on, you're preparing yourself to be a great mom when the kids fight in the back seat. Yeah, well that's really, that's a nice compliment.

I'm not sure that Melanie is excited about motherhood at the moment. And comments like that will make her less excited about motherhood. But it is true. If you go on long road trips with your kids, they are gonna fight in the backseat of the car.

Shawn (04:31.395)
You

Shawn (04:38.541)
You know what I'm most impressed with? I've known you for a very long time and I've known your wife for a long time. And if I were literally able to somehow magically take all the best attributes of both of you, it's Melanie. Like I had no idea, cause I didn't get to know Melanie very well before she left on her mission and then she's BYU. She is all of the best stuff from both of you. It's incredible. Like it's like, if I could magically take all the garbage that you are Matt and put it aside, you'd be the perfect person. And Melanie kind of is that.

Matt (04:50.188)
I know.

Matt (04:57.046)
Yeah.

Matt (05:06.03)
Yeah, it's actually kind of funny because sometimes my wife and I will talk and we don't see eye to eye and Melanie would act as a translator. She'd be like, okay, mom, this is what dad is trying to say to you. And she'd be like, okay, dad, this is what mom's trying to say to you. And sometimes it's hard that she doesn't live with us because it's like, we need our translator to help us understand what we're saying.

Shawn (05:08.781)
you

Shawn (05:15.715)
you

Shawn (05:27.235)
I can't wait to see what Melanie does in this world. She's so awesome.

Matt (05:32.95)
Yeah, she's fun. Okay, listeners were also fired up about our immigration discussion. It feels like hardly at all. Okay, so I'm just summarizing like a whole lot of comments into one little paragraph. They basically pointed out that under pressure from Republicans who demanded border security before considering immigration reform, the Obama administration implemented deportation policies.

Shawn (05:37.611)
What? Did we talk about immigration last week?

Matt (06:00.61)
that effectively brought net immigration from Mexico to zero. Despite fulfilling this prerequisite, Republicans failed to uphold their promise to negotiate sensible immigration reform and even blocked the DREAM Act, revealing their unwillingness to engage in good faith, bipartisan solutions.

Alright, thank you listeners. That was a part of our immigration discussion, I guess. We talked about if Obama was racist for a while.

Shawn (06:23.245)
Yeah, thank you very much.

Shawn (06:28.835)
Yeah, was for, yeah, that went on for a little bit. Yeah. I don't know. I, I, I reject the idea that you, there's the, that it's a truism that you can just take one of these dumb parties and just blame them for everything. Come on, man. Like, like I liked, in fact, I asked a bunch of people after that episode, I was like, okay, what do you think of Matt's stance about it's just all from racism? And I was surprised half of them are like, yeah, I think there's probably truth to that. Now.

Matt (06:31.458)
Yeah.

Shawn (06:54.367)
Now, when we talked about Obama, they had to retract that a little bit. They went back on it a little bit because I don't think it logically falls. But I was surprised that a lot of people take your stance. And I was like, okay, then I'll be more open-minded about this. But instead of just saying, it's all the Republicans' fault, like this listener says, or it's all the Democrats' fault. I think it's all politics. It's probably racism. There's a lot in there. There's probably...

I don't know, a competence failure sometimes. Sometimes it's incompetence. But.

Matt (07:25.196)
Yeah, or unwillingness to do something about it. Yeah, I'll just go with that, Sean. I'm fine with that. So we've had enough, I would say, people, co-hosts, enough people have commented that they don't think the points thing makes sense, that I think that we won't do points this week, Sean, if that's okay, especially because when it's just the two of us, it seems weird to be like, I'm giving you the points, I'm giving me the points.

Shawn (07:32.503)
Yeah.

Shawn (07:42.627)
Today?

Matt (07:52.268)
So I'll just introduce the topics and we'll just talk about them. And we don't need to give each other points for what we say.

Shawn (07:58.945)
Unless there's a clear winner. Just kidding, just kidding.

Matt (08:00.886)
Okay, you don't have to do points, you could just say you win. Okay, so first topic, Sean. So there's recent research out that was published recently that shows that among Republican men and women, there is increasing support for the idea that women should return to their traditional gender roles in society. The authors of the study reject the idea that Republicans have been having these views for a long time and are now just more comfortable expressing them for some reason.

Shawn (08:05.143)
That's right.

Matt (08:30.518)
Instead, argue that Republicans are shifting their views about traditional gender roles. So my question, Sean, is, are traditional gender roles in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Shawn (08:42.179)
You're so good at this, You're so good at this. You ask questions that require a lot of deep thinking. I mean, you're gonna be surprised at my answer. And I've got three scriptures to back it up.

Matt (08:53.303)
Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, real fast though, because I'm just looking at the article right now to like see what these questions are, what they say traditional gender roles are.

Shawn (09:04.77)
Okay. Yeah, good point. Define traditional gender roles real quick.

Matt (09:09.9)
So it's an increase in people saying a woman's place is in the home and women should have an equal role with men in running business, industry and government. no, they stopped asking that question. So that's not what I'm okay. So a woman's place is in the home. Women should return to their traditional role in society. And I think those are the two big questions. wait. Okay.

Society is too accepting of men who take on roles typically associated with women. So those are their questions for gender roles.

Shawn (09:46.453)
So basically, so basically mom should stay home, dad should go to work. That's the trad gender role is what it's basically saying, correct?

Matt (09:54.838)
Yeah, and men shouldn't be doing that kind of stuff.

Shawn (09:59.329)
The mom stuff, the parenting, the parenting, shouldn't parent. So men shouldn't parent, women shouldn't have professions basically, right?

Matt (10:00.46)
Yeah, yeah. Society is too accepting of men who take on roles typically associated with women.

Shawn (10:13.451)
It's too accepting. Like this is easy. This is easy to find scriptural evidence that that no, of course that a traditional, whatever traditional gender role that's been defined by a Republican Party or a Democrat Party. Now, I don't think it lines up with the gospel at all. I don't think so. Because look, look, scripture number one, DNC. No, no, not DNC. Matthew 19. God made male and female. OK, let's go with that. Start with that.

Matt (10:15.214)
I don't know. Yeah.

Matt (10:33.676)
Okay.

Shawn (10:41.953)
and they were commanded to cleave unto each other and twain be one flesh. When we covenant in the temple with each other, we are covenanting to do it together, to do everything together, to be equal, help meet partners, suited exactly against each other, side by side, working eternally for our family. So there's no, okay, there's one little scripture in D &C 83 that says women have claim upon their husbands for their maintenance.

Matt (11:00.983)
Okay.

Shawn (11:09.825)
and all children have claim upon their parents. But the context of that chapter is talking about basically when in the situation, like what's the hierarchy of maintenance of how we should take care of everybody. And the hierarchy being, if there's a widow, they can claim their maintenance to the church and the church should take care of that person.

Matt (11:09.942)
Yes. Yes.

Matt (11:31.906)
because they don't have a husband to take care of them.

Shawn (11:34.559)
Yeah, but I don't know that that's, yeah, I mean, but that's the only reference to it that I can find.

Matt (11:39.454)
And that's in the Doctrine and Covenants, right? That's like a really specific context of like when they're gathering in a

Shawn (11:44.403)
of if your husband dies, yeah, if your husband is dead, then you have claim upon the church for maintenance. Yeah, that's what it says.

Matt (11:52.686)
But what about the proclamation to the world on the family? I can only think of the song, right? A father's place is to preside, provide, and take care of his family. A mother's place is to prepare, to share, to care.

Shawn (12:02.517)
Okay, just conflated two things, that dumb song with the proclamation of the family, which again, as we've discussed in the past, that's not scripture yet. Proclamation of the family is not yet scripture. And.

Matt (12:14.898)
No, but it's, but it's the quorum of the 12 apostles and first presidency all agreed on the language in that.

Shawn (12:21.633)
Okay, but that dumb song aside, what language are you specifically referring to?

Matt (12:28.686)
So the proclamation on the family says that a father is to preside over his home and love and righteousness and to provide for his family. And a mother is primarily responsible for the nurture and care of the children. And then it says in these duties, the husband and wife should serve as equal partners.

Shawn (12:38.403)
Okay.

Shawn (12:49.357)
There we go, period, done. That cleans it all up, that's scriptural based, that you should cleave to your spouse and twain, she'll no more be twain but one flesh. Look at the covenants we enter into all through our journey, through salvation to exaltation. Every covenant that I enter into separately with my God, my wife entered into separately with her God, equally through that line. And then we go to the pinnacle of our marriage and we are entering into a three-way covenant.

And the main thing that we covenant with each other is that we will work and labor together in order to fulfill God's laws. There's no way scripture says that I have to do this and you have to do that. It doesn't say that. It says we're together equal partners.

Matt (13:33.834)
Okay. So, so then what you're saying is that parents have obligations to their children, parents have obligations to each other, and what those exact things look like is between husband and wife, but the gospel principle is do it as equal partners.

Shawn (13:51.267)
100%, absolutely 100%. So if you and your wife decide that, you're more suited for raising little kids and your wife is more suited to make some money, then that's fine. Because you are equally entering the labor for your children. That's fine. There's no way you can find scriptures that would really cut out of that. then, uh-huh.

Matt (14:08.503)
Yeah.

Matt (14:13.432)
Well, yeah, and some women find more satisfaction in the labor market than they do in maybe domestic chores at home, right? And some men prefer to do domestic chores at home or whatever.

Shawn (14:26.327)
Yes, how can you possibly find scripture that would say that, no, no, you're not allowed to stay home and work on that kind of labor? But the second element to me is this. I've always been fascinated in the scriptures with the words commune, where God would commune with Abraham. And there's lots and lots of instances where God would commune with someone. I loved it because what that shows me is, and what happens in my own life is God spends time with me.

Matt (14:36.227)
Yeah.

Shawn (14:55.619)
through the Holy Spirit and it's a little abstract and it does require faith, but I do believe that I have spent much, much, much time through the Atonement of Christ in the presence of my father and those are the times that I'm learning and growing in wisdom. So to me, there's this other principle of, and I looked up a bunch of research on this, the key to happy, healthy, successful children isn't necessarily this traditional definition of marriage or mom staying at home and father out there.

Every instance where the mom and dad were engaged with, spending a lot of time with their children, those were the successful outcomes. In other words, sure, if there's a mom at home and there's a dad at work, there's statistics that show that, yeah, because those kids are going to be a little more successful or a little less bad behavior, but that's because there's someone available at all time to be engaged with them. Because a study equally showed that when both parents worked, but also were extremely and heavily engaged in their kids' lives,

Those kids had just as good of a.

Matt (15:56.812)
Yeah. Yeah. So I think, as society changes, then who's filling what role is going to change because there are more opportunities for women in the workplace and there are more opportunities for stay at home dads to do stay at home dad kinds of things. And so I don't think that there is a right or wrong about those choices. I was, we interviewed Marion D. Hanks, his son, and his dad was called as a general authority, like in his early thirties and

He had just finished law school and had no job and then got called to be a general authority and spent his whole life serving in the church. And he talks about how he never saw his dad and how his mom basically ran everything in the household. And I don't think that it's like, I don't think that that was the Lord saying like, this is the way it ought to be. I do know people who choose that, right? Who choose to say the father's gonna work, he's gonna work so much that the kids are never gonna see him and the mom's gonna run everything in the house.

Shawn (16:33.571)
serving.

Shawn (16:53.751)
Yeah, that's pretty common,

Matt (16:54.562)
That's fine if that's what works for a couple or a family, like go ahead. But it doesn't mean that that's the way it ought to be. Like couples and families ought to choose whatever works for them. So I think we agree on this.

Shawn (17:05.313)
Now, okay, but here's the hard question to maybe disagree a little bit. Do you think that certain genders are more suited to certain things? For example, have you not witnessed in your life that when it comes to rearing young children and engaging with them and teaching them and loving them and raising them, that maybe women are better than that, at that than men?

Matt (17:29.632)
No, don't. So again, you're going to make me argue with the proclamation to the world and the family. then, but no, do. I just think that there, I think that there's, would say if we're going to say, you, what I'm saying is you said the word gender, but what I think you mean is biological sex and

Shawn (17:35.543)
Ha ha ha!

Shawn (17:39.659)
Anecdotally, not scientifically, not your

Shawn (17:48.525)
I mean what the church means in the family proclamation. Correct. That's what I

Matt (17:52.428)
So if you're asking me if there's people of one biological sex that are more nurturing, generally, I don't know. Yeah, women, I guess, seem to be that way. But I would say that's very far from universally true. There are some very nurturing biological males. Very, very nurturing. Yeah.

Shawn (17:58.092)
Yes.

Shawn (18:08.643)
Yeah, of course. Yeah, but anecdotally in your own life, not scientifically, do you see that or not see that?

Matt (18:14.264)
Well, I I specifically made a choice to marry somebody that was that way because I know that I'm not at all nurturing. If I knew if I didn't want a dysfunctional family, I needed to be married to somebody who was particularly nurturing. So 100 % in my family, my wife is the most nurturing of the two of us.

Shawn (18:32.643)
So if statistically maybe more women are so much better at that nurturing side and that nurturing and time spent side means so much for the outcomes of kids, then maybe is the proclamation of the family simply saying, look, nature would allow for better outcomes for kids if you take who is, whichever of the two is more naturally good at something to do that.

Matt (18:57.538)
Yeah, but I'm just saying it's not always going to match biological sex. And the reason I don't like talking about the averages in that way is because if it happens that there's a couple that the woman is more inclined to presiding and providing and the husband in that relationship is better at nurturing, I don't want them to feel like they're unusual or against the God's plan or something like that. Like people are just how they are. Yeah. And so we should just embrace letting couples do what works for them.

Shawn (19:20.609)
Yeah, I agree

Shawn (19:27.619)
So my last real quick scripture is D &C 83 again, which talks about, and I talked about this last week, God's house is a house of order, not confusion or chaos. So it doesn't surprise me, you smiling? It doesn't surprise me that in scripture, there's an, God sets up an order of things. The more and more I study, the more and more I live, I'm realizing God sets up an order in things. That doesn't mean it universally applies. That just means there's gotta be a set kind of system and set of rules to start from.

That doesn't mean it's perfect and applies in every situation, but it does seem like maybe that answers the proclamation of the family. He's just setting up, there's an order to be set up. It doesn't mean that it's the universal way. It doesn't mean that it's the perfect way in every case, no?

Matt (20:11.598)
You know, Sean, oftentimes when we think about the word preside, I say, OK, if I were to just decide what does it mean to preside based on what I see in church, the person who presides is the person who sits on the stand and does nothing at all. And the people who are conducting do all of the work. And so it seems so when it says a father's place is to preside, it maybe means the father's job is just sit around and do nothing and watch everybody and watch everybody else work.

Shawn (20:25.037)
Yeah.

That's right.

Shawn (20:34.595)
I like it when you take words that we all can assume have some meaning and then you correct it. I like that. I like that.

Matt (20:41.102)
I'm not sure.

But that's why it says provide, right? Cause it's like you're supposed preside, but don't think that means you sit around and do nothing. You have to provide. All right, our next topic is there's a woman named Riley Cooper. She lives in Michigan. Yeah.

Shawn (20:59.393)
Hang on, hang on, hang on. Because you changed the definition of a word, have to do the same real quick. Because, and I was gonna ask you to read this quote in the voice of L. Tom Perry. Do remember L. Tom Perry? Can you read it? Can you give me his voice real quick? you failed. Anyway, he made it very clear in a bunch of conference talks to take that scripture, help meet, right? Adam was given a help meet, and he made real clear to say, look, I'm gonna change the definition, actually give you the correct one.

Matt (21:08.53)
Mm Yeah. I cannot.

Shawn (21:27.821)
He says, there's not a vice president or a president in the family. The couple works together eternally for the good of the family. They are on equal footing. And help meet means help equal to or opposite to. And so that means, yeah.

Matt (21:41.026)
Meat. Meat. Where does the word meat fit in there?

Shawn (21:45.155)
So in every instance, I think in the original languages, either Hebrew or Greek, meet means equal or opposite to, equal to or opposite to. So the help meet is literally someone who is equal to and opposite of Adam to perform the labors. So it doesn't mean, oh, you got a helper there. Anyway, I just wanted to throw that in. All right, next topic.

Matt (22:06.904)
I see. Okay.

Okay, thanks, Sean. That was great. Okay, so.

Shawn (22:14.019)
Shut up.

Matt (22:16.96)
All right, Riley Cooper voted for Trump because he promised to make in vitro fertilization free. And she believed him when she, when he said that he had never heard of project 25, 2025, and that it was not part of his platform. She and her husband had been trying to have children for a while and it seemed like IVF was their only option to become parents. Now she's been fired from her job with the U S forest service and she feels lied to. So the question Sean is,

Who should she blame for this awful situation?

Shawn (22:48.195)
This is one of those questions where the answer is so, so, it's one answer, there's one true answer, and it's the easiest answer.

Matt (22:55.864)
Well, okay, I don't think there's one answer. Okay.

Shawn (22:58.241)
there is. there is. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm going to give you the answer though that I think is really, really true. Yeah, it's easy. You who's to blame? She's to blame. no, listen, listen, she's to blame, but hopefully she learns a really, really valuable life lesson here because it's not a great idea to put your trust in a politician into for them to be your parent or your savior or your God or your caretaker. What a stupid idea. I'm sorry. That's really, really bad idea.

Matt (23:05.006)
Who? Stop!

Matt (23:26.658)
She just wanted free in vitro fertilization. There's nothing wrong with that.

Shawn (23:29.399)
Yeah, no, I know. But when you put your trust in your hope, in the, I mean, the scripturally second, if I for in the arm of the flesh, you're always going to be laid out and be disappointed. Like she's, I hope the lesson she learns here is.

Matt (23:37.614)
You

Matt (23:42.156)
It's her fault to trust a politician.

Shawn (23:45.449)
Yes, absolutely. Tell me one politician that you have, that is trustworthy and has delivered on everything they've ever promised, name me one. And is he a politician?

Matt (23:54.028)
Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney. Jeff, Jeff Flake. He, well, he had to, he's not anymore. Jeff Flake.

Shawn (24:00.925)
Did he accomplish much because of the way he was because he wasn't playing the game?

Matt (24:03.914)
I really like I really like Barack Obama. I feel like he was an honest and trustworthy person. I like George W Bush. OK, but listen, flip flopping is very different. It's very different than saying I have no no idea what project 2025 is. I'm not going to do any of those things that they say and then doing it the very first thing you do when you come into office like those are not equivalent things, right?

Shawn (24:08.769)
He flip-flopped so many times. We raised taxes.

Shawn (24:25.293)
Well, but that's a dumb example because it doesn't, just because he happened to do something that, like, you either believe him or you don't believe him that he said, I haven't read it, I don't know what it is. Just because he does something in there that happens to be in there doesn't mean, I was lying and I'm sick of it. That's a dumb thing. That's just dumb. That's just dumb.

Matt (24:40.334)
He didn't do he he didn't. Sean, he didn't do one thing in Project 2025. He filled the federal government with people who authored Project 2025. So what? So when he's saying I don't know what this is, I don't know who these people are. I've never heard of those people. I don't work with those people. Obviously he was lying about that, right? Because that's OK.

Shawn (24:49.847)
So what? doesn't...

Shawn (24:58.061)
That's a dumb example. No, that's a dumb biased example. Who cares, first of all, if, like, okay, to Matt, if you're go that line, did he read every word? How many pages did read, Matt? When did he read it? Where was he when he read it? Like, that's stupid. You're trying to prove that he did read it or didn't read it just because.

Matt (25:12.333)
Okay.

No, I don't need to. don't need. He just said that it's not part of his platform. He has no idea what it is. He has no idea who these people are and then he did say they will have no influence in my next administration. He did say that.

Shawn (25:21.769)
Right, so these.

Shawn (25:26.307)
Right. Yeah. But so if those people happen to write all their principles based on their Lord and savior, Donald Trump, then naturally some of the things he's going to implement are going to be some of the things they wrote in their, in their stupid plan. My point is

Matt (25:34.338)
Wow.

Matt (25:39.5)
The person she should blame, Sean, is the Republican Party and the news media that didn't tell her the truth. I understand why a person, if you listen to her story, she's like, my grandparents told me that I should trust him, my parents told me that I should trust him. And so it's like, okay, she's like the people she knows and loves tell her, you can trust Donald Trump, he's a good person. But there should have been other voices out there telling her he's not trustworthy.

Shawn (25:42.455)
Yeah, go ahead. my.

Shawn (26:08.045)
This goes. This goes.

Matt (26:08.078)
He's a dishonest person and that's their job as news. You can't call yourself Fox News if you're not going to actually report on the news. You can't call yourself the Republican Party if you're just going to not take your role seriously in making sure that candidates are vetted and that the party members like the people who support the party understand what's really happening. You can't lie to your voters.

Shawn (26:35.779)
Here's you know who Bill Maher is Very liberal left-leaning talk show host atheist No, hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hey, okay. Okay, and then you know, Stephen Smith is the the NBA commentator the sports commentator Yeah, pretty pretty left-leaning has always been a Democrat Both of those guys have come out pretty regularly in the last six months and basically are saying actually Bill Maher much longer than six months

Matt (26:38.157)
Yeah, of course.

I would call him libertarian.

Matt (26:48.846)
yeah!

Shawn (27:03.181)
And they're basically saying everything you just described about the Republican Party. And they're saying about the Democrat Party. They're saying they need to be more honest. The media is lying about everything that they're doing. They're abandoning principles. They're not being honest. So for you to say someone is disappointed in their life outcome.

because they put too much trust in the Democrat party or the Republican party. And sounds like what you're saying Matt is they should have put trust in the Democrat party. Well, the truth is they shouldn't put, well, your answer was she should blame the Republican party. Why didn't you say they should, she should blame all politicians and every party? Because that's the nature of it.

Matt (27:31.96)
No, no, I'm not saying that.

Matt (27:43.278)
because they're not all the same, Sean. That's why, because they're not all the same. Now, if Joe Biden, listen, if you're talking about MSNBC, sure, MSNBC is not honest with their base about everything that happens, but you can't just lump all news media in, right? You say, I blame the people who call themselves news, but don't actually report on the truth. And the reason I blame the Republican party is,

Shawn (27:50.253)
Bill Maher disagrees with you on that and so does Steven Swigert.

Matt (28:13.346)
They had all of these presidential debates, right? Donald Trump participated in none of the presidential debates. The whole purpose of the debate is to vet candidates, to have the candidates stand before the voters and answer questions. So the Republican Party should have said, you don't get to be the nominee for our party unless you participate in the debates. But the Republican Party was so interested in winning the election that they said, we don't care.

If people are going to vote for you and you don't participate in the debates, we don't care. We just want to win the election. So that's why I blame the Republican Party. If the Democrats were to do something, the Democrats have never done anything where they say you don't have to participate in the debate and you can still be our nominee.

Shawn (28:45.475)
But they both do that.

Shawn (28:51.997)
What are you talking about? ever heard of a person named Kamala Harris who never even who never debated any Democrat who was just given the nomination? What are you talking about?

Matt (28:57.314)
Sure.

Matt (29:04.446)
okay. Well, that's fine. I don't have any problem with people that complain about the Democrats choosing Kamala Harris the way that they did. I agree. And I would, I would say the Democrats I hope learned from that mistake. And I hope the Republican party learns from this particular mistake, right? That there are voters out there who thought that they could trust that party to, to vet the candidates and to be honest with them about what was actually happening. And in the end, the party and some news organizations let them down. That's who they should blame though.

Shawn (29:31.171)
I just think this goes back to kind of your overall stance where, you know, I don't really think that people are able to take control of their lives and make good decisions. We need trustworthy leaders to make good decisions for us. That's why I think it's she's the one to blame. Come on, Riley. Riley, take control of your life.

Matt (29:50.967)
I'm going with the...

Shawn (29:53.813)
Stop putting your trust in the arm of the flesh and in the arm of the political party, in this party, in that party, that, because she's always going to flip-flop because now she's really disappointed with Republican party. Well, now she's going to go to the Democrat party and they're going to let her down because they're just like Republicans, they're politicians who lie and are seeking for power and will bend the truth. And then she's going to flip back.

Matt (30:11.808)
It hasn't always been that way and it doesn't have to be that way, which is why I say assign blame where it should be. It's not her fault. Again, she has a busy life. She has things she's worried about, things that are going on. Just like we talked about last week with the COVID-19 pandemic, when there's low information environments and it's not always easy to make really good choices about these things. So you rely on the people you trust and sometimes the people you trust let you down.

And those people have an obligation to change their behavior and be honest. That's what I said.

Shawn (30:45.293)
But I thought everyone meets once a week on a podcast and discusses these things in detail so that they do have all the information and they can do their due diligence to make an opinion on it now.

Matt (30:56.462)
There you go, Riley. Start listening to us. We will never lead you astray. Okay, so there was big news about Zelensky's visit to the White House this week. And I intentionally don't wanna talk about those kinds of things on this podcast for one reason only. In political science, there's something that we call displacing conflict, or basically you deflect attention away from like,

Shawn (31:00.483)
You

Matt (31:25.368)
big issues that are going on and get people to pay attention to like things that are nonsensical and don't matter that much. And it's a way to give a person political power because you can be very powerful if you can direct people's attention away from things or you decide what people are focusing on. And it might.

Shawn (31:40.771)
Hmm. Trump seems to be a master at that nasty tactic.

Matt (31:46.638)
Trump's very, very good at that. And Zelensky's visit to the White House was completely staged. Now I'm not gonna say everything in it was scripted, but the setup was staged. The whole situation was orchestrated. And if you listen closely to what Trump was saying in that, at one point he says, this is gonna make great television. And that's because in Trump's mind, like getting everybody to talk about these things is more important than the issues themselves. And so,

Shawn (31:56.771)
Yeah, that was all.

Matt (32:14.988)
On this podcast, I try really hard to never focus on the things that Trump wants us to look at, right? Or the things that the media is trying to point us to. So this topic that I wanna talk about next, it's related to the big picture question that is sort of related to what happened at the White House. But the White House visit with Zelensky, what Zelensky's visit to the White House is just a small piece of this bigger thing that's happening. And so I wanna talk about the bigger thing that's happening rather than just the little thing that everybody's talking about today.

Shawn (32:21.195)
Nice, love it. Well done, well done.

Shawn (32:44.715)
Nice setup, Matt, that was powerful, dude. That was good. I like it.

Matt (32:46.286)
Thanks, Sean. Okay, so last week, the Germans held elections. had, okay, Sean, in our best election, our voter turnout is 60%. We're among the lower voter turnout countries in the world. What do you think Germany's voter turnout was in the last election? If you had to guess, it was high.

Shawn (33:04.887)
Gosh, I don't know. Must've been high. It must've been high the way you're setting it up. 80, 70, 90?

Matt (33:10.936)
higher. It was, it was between 83 and 87 % of the German population turned out to vote. Yeah. And, the conservatives won in a landslide. Now there's, there are a number of parties in Germany, so there's different kinds of conservative parties.

Shawn (33:16.907)
wow.

Shawn (33:27.063)
This. Yeah, I was going to ask you, does conservative in Germany mean the same thing as it does in America? It does.

Matt (33:33.452)
Yes, yeah, by and large. But you know how in the United States there's conservatives that would say, okay, these are the business fiscal conservatives and these are the xenophobe, like keep out immigrant kind of conservatives. So in Germany you have different parties that reflect those views. So we talked before about the AFD, which is like basically the modern Nazi party. They came in second place in the German election.

Shawn (33:58.861)
They have they have 13 principles, 10 of which are really awesome, three of which are really bad.

Matt (34:10.796)
Okay, I'm back. Sorry, Sean. Say that again. They have 13? Yeah, they have 13.

Shawn (34:13.891)
You're better. They have 13 principles that I've studied, 10 which are pretty awesome and three of which are extremely bad. So yeah, yeah. But I would never say that those principles are conservative principles. So that's why I asked, is there a difference between they're conservative and are conservative?

Matt (34:21.548)
OK, so because

Matt (34:27.457)
No, no.

Matt (34:31.31)
So that party came in second place and because of those three that you would say are really, really bad, all of the parties in Germany have said, we will not form a coalition government with them. So that party, even though they came in second place, they're not gonna be in control in Germany. So the party that came in first place is what we would call a typical conservative party. They call themselves the Christian Democratic Union. Okay, so that's all just a setup to be like, okay, conservatives won in Germany.

Shawn (34:41.376)
Nice.

Shawn (34:45.953)
Okay, good move.

Shawn (34:51.462)
okay.

Matt (35:00.98)
And Friedrich Merz is going to be the new prime minister after all of the dust settles and they figure out which party they're gonna work with. In comments shortly after the election, he said that the Trump administration does not care about Europe and is aligning with Russia. The continent he warned must urgently strengthen its defenses and potentially even find a replacement for NATO within months. He said that his absolute priority is going to be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible.

so that step by step they can achieve independence from the United States. So the question is, should we be concerned that conservative world leaders no longer trust the United States leadership in global affairs?

Shawn (35:42.441)
Absolutely 100%. Trump is signaling this for sure. Now here's my, one of my biggest complaints about Trump. Trump is a non-religious capitalist. And even though I'm a capitalist and I love that system, I think it is a very good system. You can absolutely abuse it without religion. So he takes that to an extreme. His life is transactional. All the relationships in his life are transactional and that's a huge flaw.

Right? As opposed to being, for example, a transformational type of relationship or a collaborative type of relationship, or even a communal type of relationship. He views the world as transactional relationships. How can I profit? Yeah, I want you to profit too, but how can I profit out of this? And because of this, absolutely we should be concerned because Matt.

Haven't we traditionally looked at or haven't we seen that the best results are to look at our international relationships as collaborative? Isn't that the best way to do that? Like we find common grounds. We find what is in our interest and their interest. We build collaborative relationships and we move forward and we succeed that way. Like Ukraine is the most perfect example that you could possibly find as a strategic collaborative relationship, right? One of the biggest.

Matt (36:45.762)
Yeah, for sure.

Shawn (37:06.093)
threats, Mitt Romney would say it all the time, is Russia. It's a dictatorship. There's no human rights there. There's no freedom of speech there. it is so common sense that we should not have a transactional relationship with them like Trump is doing, but a collaborative one, because they are doing what we don't have to do, which is fight against this great enemy and polling in Europe to do that. So absolutely we should be concerned.

Matt (37:29.826)
Yeah, well, and again, I'm not gonna pretend like Ukraine isn't always on my mind in these kinds of questions, but I do worry that Americans, because we don't necessarily love the politics of every European country, right? We'll say, they're a bunch of socialists, they're a bunch of communists, or we don't like their stand on social issues, that we sometimes forget how much the United States benefits from the relationship that we have with Europe, right?

Shawn (37:58.072)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (37:58.804)
If the European nations decide to distance themselves from the United States and we decide as a country that we're better off aligning ourselves with people like Russia or people like China, we find ourselves in a much weaker global position because so much of the industry, so much of the financial development, so much, Germany is the richest country in Europe in terms of GDP. So if we close those markets off to us, then we,

create a bad financial situation for ourselves. And then I said this last week, we also raise the threat of nuclear proliferation around the globe. So why does Germany not have nuclear weapons right now? Why does Great Britain not have nuclear weapons right now? Because we have an arrangement with them that says we will protect you from the threats that have nuclear weapons because we think it's not in the best interest of the world for every country to stockpile nuclear weapons.

So the only countries with nuclear weapons are the ones that are kind of like on the fringe, right? The ones that are not a part of that global arrangement. So if you think about just Ukraine, if I was President Zelensky and President Trump said to me, we are no longer going to help you defend ourselves, do you know what I would do? I would start developing nuclear weapons today. Why would Ukraine not want to have nuclear weapons? Because the only deterrent that we see, the only reason that the United States doesn't attack Russia,

Shawn (39:17.699)
Mmm.

Shawn (39:21.955)
Mmm.

Matt (39:26.242)
is because we're afraid of their nuclear weapons and we think that they're going to use them. So why would you not as Ukraine start developing nuclear weapons and say, we're going to have nuclear weapons of our own. Russia's not going to use them against us because they know we'll hit them with our nuclear weapons. The United States doesn't want to defend us? Fine, we'll have our own nuclear weapons. Just like North Korea decided to do, just like China decided to do and Pakistan and India. And that's the natural consequence of us removing ourselves from these continents of where we've had influence for all of these years.

Shawn (39:29.506)
Mmm.

Shawn (39:55.671)
Yeah, well said. Yeah, well said. I mean, it's still early. We have yet to see how all this plays out, right? But yeah, but I think everything used to.

Matt (40:00.502)
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, I think like to some extent, I think the world. Yeah, okay. Alright, here's the big question, Sean. Do you know who David Brooks is? It's okay if you don't if you don't like hang out with David Brooks. David Brooks actually gets quoted in general conference quite regularly because older yeah older conservatives have been reading him for years and years and years anyhow.

Shawn (40:15.243)
Hmm. Well, I do now. Well, I do now. No, I don't. But I do now.

Shawn (40:27.186)
He does?

Matt (40:34.092)
He's got a piece out in, I think it's the New York Times. And in that article, he argues that the post 1960 shift towards decentralization, which was initially intended to check power abuses has gone too far, creating regulatory barriers that make it nearly impossible to build infrastructure, housing and other large projects efficiently. In this article, he talks specifically about how if you look at rich liberal communities,

they use zoning laws to make sure that people don't build in their communities and that you don't get like factories and things like that in their communities, which increases their property values. But it decreases the supply of affordable housing in many, many places in the United States, particularly big cities. And he talks about how it's a big problem that like a lot of the jobs today are in big cities, but nobody can afford to move to those cities to take those jobs. And that this creates

it makes it hard for people to move, right? There's less economic mobility, social mobility, things like that. So he talks about how regulation, when taken to its extremes is bad because it hurts our economy and it hurts society broadly. So he says there's this new abundance movement emerging across the political system. There's these books he mentions by Derek Thompson, Ezra Klein, Yoni Applebaum, Mark Dunkelman, and others.

I haven't heard of the abundance movement before, but he argues that this movement is advocating for a different approach to authority and government action in order to address the current challenges, particularly as an alternative to the authoritarian models represented by Trump. So the big question is this. by the way, the abundance movement says we want regulatory reform.

that will enable more building, but will maintain necessary protections. So the question is, Sean, what is the appropriate balance of regulation and protection of individual rights? Because I think generally, Sean, I come down on the side of, I like regulation because it protects people from bad actors. And you come down on the side of, I hate regulation because it stops people from being able to do things that they wanna do.

Shawn (42:43.651)
That's a big question.

Matt (42:59.498)
as cost-effectively as they might or as efficiently as they might want to. So then,

Shawn (43:03.587)
I wouldn't say I hate it, but I definitely very much so lean on side of individual rights over regulations. Yeah, for sure.

Matt (43:10.68)
So then what's the right balance? If we could decide like, what's the right balance of regulation, how would we figure that out? Because personally, I think the local control is not good. think that having these, I think these zoning laws makes it too easy for people to prevent people from coming into those neighborhoods, to inflate property values.

Shawn (43:30.243)
But here's the flaw in this movement. When you decentralize and you give more power to local governments or local communities to make these decisions, what you have is more good and more bad. I live in very progressive, liberal California, and it's impossible to build here. It's impossible. The regulations and the

Matt (43:34.318)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (43:56.823)
The processes we go through are just absolutely insane. So yeah, it's very anti-community, anti-building, anti-affordable living, all of that. But it's not in Idaho and it's not, you know what I mean? It's real easy. So when you decentralize and you allow communities to make their own decisions on how they want to do things, it really does benefit some communities and it hurts other communities. So I don't understand his premise of decentralization leads to more regulation.

Matt (44:05.548)
No. Right.

Matt (44:22.348)
He's saying it's gone too far. cause it leads to more regulation because I'm like, if you think of like Beverly Hills or something like that, right? They're going to create local regulations that keep everybody out of Beverly Hills.

Shawn (44:35.991)
Yeah, but I guarantee you if you have a stronger central government, you're going to have more regulations across the board. Whereas at least now, yes, Beverly Hills has a lot of regulations, but Idaho doesn't. The local communities are going to be able to decide how much regulation they want or not want. And I think you're going to tend more towards freedom in most of those.

Matt (44:50.445)
Yeah.

Matt (44:58.924)
I'm going to say a phrase that'll make you scared. Central planning and a five year plan that everybody tries to meet the goals of the five year plan. no, like, like it makes a lot of sense in Beverly. So I was in Los Angeles. the last time I was there was like maybe in September or October of last year. And I was downtown, near Hollywood and right now it's like vacant down there.

Shawn (45:03.361)
hahahaha

Matt (45:26.382)
You can see these used to be beautiful malls, used to be like all this really high-end shopping and the restaurants are going out of business, like all that high-end shopping is out of business. So now I look at that and I say, look at all this space, why don't we tear down the mall, tear down all those other things and build some high-rise condominiums or some high-rise apartment complex? maybe, I mean, maybe California is worried about earthquakes or something like that, but yeah.

Shawn (45:49.847)
Salt Lake's doing that, right?

Matt (45:55.17)
Why is there not high density housing right next to Beverly Hills? Why isn't there high density housing right in these really nice areas? Why?

Shawn (46:01.303)
Tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because California is a very liberal left leaning state. And in fact, I read a study it says, in California, we found that as the share of liberal votes rises by 10 points in any given city, the number of housing permits issued declines by 30%.

Matt (46:22.702)
So what you do is you take that power away from California. If California as a state isn't gonna do it, central planning says make it the federal government. The federal government, why?

Shawn (46:31.253)
No, I don't think so. No, because the federal government will inevitably have the exact same effect. They will do the exact thing. More centralized power emboldens politicians to take more control and traditionally build more regulation in. Whereas in the current situation, the answer is no, just leave California. Let California do what we want, leave and go to Utah where they're doing the exact thing that you're talking about. The downtown areas where there are high rises that are not occupied, they're turning them into housing.

It's amazing. that's the again back to federalism.

Matt (47:05.797)
huh. That's federalism.

Shawn (47:07.363)
That's why I love federalism, because you get the opportunity to local, at a local level, decide how you want society to be. And if I don't like it, I have 300 other choices. So it's.

Matt (47:18.382)
But the problem is Sean, the history of local level politics is it, I know you hate it when I say this, it's racist, right? If you look at where racism stems from in American society, it stems from not the entire country being racist, but specific pockets. Right. No, Jim Crow laws were, no, Jim Crow laws were in the South. The separation of white people and black people, that was a Southern States thing.

Shawn (47:24.375)
my gosh.

Shawn (47:34.047)
Really? Weren't Jim Crow laws applied nationally? Yes, they were too.

Matt (47:46.988)
Right? And so, and again, in the constitution, the racist elements you have in the constitution are compromises that the broader government has to make, the rest of the country has to make to accommodate some of these local racist policies. So what happens is when you talk about individual liberties, the place where individual liberties are most likely to be trampled on is local government. If you even just forget about racism, because that always triggers people. If you just talk about, if you just talk about abortion, right?

Shawn (48:13.187)
hahahaha

Matt (48:16.448)
If a woman has some medical condition and she needs to have an abortion, she's more likely to be protected in liberal states than in conservative states, right? Because conservative states have passed, and so what happens is that some people, Sean, would say that that is violating a woman's right to choose, or it's violating a woman's right to her own choice about healthcare. Those are more likely to be violated when you say make everything local.

Shawn (48:26.595)
Yeah, of course, because that's of value. That's right.

Matt (48:44.194)
because unless you have a majority in a certain region, they can trample on your rights, just like they did with members of the church in Missouri back in the day, right? There weren't enough of us to protect our land and to protect our people, and so our rights were trampled on by the state government of Missouri. So since...

Shawn (48:49.389)
But that's.

Shawn (49:00.407)
But then our people just went to a different location and they established how they wanted to do it. Same for, I mean, this is why federalism is perfect. It's perfect, absolutely perfect. If you give the select few a centralized government, if you happen to have the type that really do want to take away more freedom and tend towards more regulation, then you're gonna apply that across the board, right? Yeah, Jim Crow laws are in the South, but segregation was applied nationally.

Matt (49:04.078)
But I should.

Shawn (49:28.887)
And if you gave the federal government a power to apply Jim Crow laws, we'd be in huge problem. It'd be a problem.

Matt (49:34.712)
Well, but the idea is that in order to get a majority on the national level, you're going to only be able to pass laws and regulations that have broad consensus. It's a tyranny of the majority of the minority does not happen on the federal level as often as it does on the local level.

Shawn (49:51.651)
The tyranny of the majority happens at the federal level more powerfully than it would at a local level. No, no, we don't. live in a republic. live in a representative republic.

Matt (49:57.976)
but that's okay because we live in a democracy. I'm much more, I mean in the broad sense of democracy. We live in a government governed by the people. And if the people feel like they have power, then that's a good thing.

Shawn (50:11.009)
Yep, but.

but we live in a representative, what is it called? It's called a federalist. What's it called? A represent, no, there's something else. It's a.

Matt (50:19.538)
representative democracy a representative a republic we live in a republic yeah

Shawn (50:25.749)
Republic. you. A republic because for the very reason that we don't want the majority to rule. That is the exact reason why it's a republic. We don't want the bullies and the the misinformed.

Matt (50:37.216)
I feel like we would be better off if we had majority rule. I feel like it would make us better as a country if we let the majority rule from time to time.

Shawn (50:44.279)
I didn't know. I didn't know you thought that. You think it should be a pure democracy, not a republic.

Matt (50:50.212)
not a pure democracy. I think we could still have a republic, but we should set it up in such a way so that the person who gets the most votes wins the election rather than some of the other things we put in from time to time that you don't have to get the most votes to actually win.

Shawn (50:57.42)
I

Shawn (51:00.609)
Well, I know you hate the electoral college, but I didn't know you think that majority should rule. Matt, when has majority ever chosen the right thing? Whatever.

Matt (51:11.557)
This is the gospel principle, Sean, that this is King Mosiah. When they're moving from a king to the system of judges, he says we ought to make the people responsible. And if the time comes that the majority chooses that which is wrong, then the judgments of God will be just. And so you have to have a system of government where if you're going to do a democracy, again, I like kings better, but if you're going to go democracy, you have to do it in such a way so that the majority feels responsible.

Shawn (51:13.762)
Okay.

Matt (51:39.096)
for the outcomes of the decisions of elections. But when you set it up the way we do, the majority doesn't feel responsible, right? Like take the present moment in the United States. The majority of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump. Therefore, the majority of Americans feel no responsibility for what happened because they say, well, we didn't vote for that guy. We don't like that guy. And we do that like in the way we set the system up, like.

the majority doesn't necessarily get what they want in outcomes of elections, so they don't necessarily support or feel responsible for the bad things that happen as a result of those choices.

Shawn (52:17.323)
Interesting. Well, I just texted Melanie and she has agreed that we will for this episode implement points and I get them because it took me the whole episode, but I was able to get you to bring in a scripture.

Matt (52:20.664)
Yeah.

Matt (52:30.264)
Hey, I like that, Sean. I'll give you the points too. And on that note, Sean, we're gonna end the podcast for this week. Hey, listener, thanks for joining us. We hope that we had a more conciliatory, happy, joyful tone. If we didn't, feel free to let us know like you did last week and I'll try even harder to bring in a scripture and a conciliatory happy tone. Anyhow, we'll talk to you guys next week.