Matt (00:00.834)
Hi everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. I am your host, Matt, with me as always is Sean and no third guest this week. We do not have a third guest. We had somebody lined up and I think as a special birthday gift to me, they said, I'm not joining you. And so it's all right.

Shawn (00:18.003)
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is today your birthday? gosh, shouldn't I know that? You're like one of my best friends. Shouldn't I know that yesterday was your birthday? I guess you've given me two clues by now. Dang, I was slow to pick up on it.

Matt (00:20.17)
Now, yesterday was my birthday.

Matt (00:27.608)
with the

Yeah. And, and I was going to go for my discovery flight for my birthday yesterday, but it was too windy. And so I have to wait until next week. I'm going to fly.

Shawn (00:35.943)
You

Shawn (00:41.593)
postponed, that's okay. You okay with that?

Matt (00:44.13)
Yeah, I actually didn't know this. One of our listeners was talking to me and they're like, you're going to fly. Don't you know that that's dangerous? And that's like people die from flying. And so I had a nice conversation with artificial intelligence about the risks of flying as a hobby.

Shawn (00:58.599)
Well, it took one person mentioning that to you that would get you concerned a little bit, because that's common sense.

Matt (01:03.682)
They told me that they had a friend that had died as a private pilot. so I was trying to weigh that and I decided I'm okay. don't care if I die. In my conversation, in my conversation.

Shawn (01:08.848)
Jeez, man.

Shawn (01:14.361)
I'd rather have a birthday experience where I get to kind of fly for a day. That's worth dying.

Matt (01:21.87)
I know that like when I'm learning to be a pilot, I'm not worried about dying then. It's just that it's a dangerous hobby. And you know, when you're in these like personal aircrafts, these smaller older planes, then they're really subject to like the weather conditions. And so if it's not good weather and you're flying, you're taking terrible risks going up in the air. But what I did, what I learned from artificial intelligence is you're more likely to die if your hobby is flying a plane.

but you're more likely to get injured if skiing or snowboarding is your hobby. so, so I decided I'm going to choose the one word or death, right? Cause I don't like injuries. Those like ruin my day or right. It's no fun to get injured. And so if I do something wrong in a plane, I die. If I do something wrong skiing, like tear my ACL or something like that. And so I'd rather I'll take flying is more to my, to my taste than skiing and snowboarding.

Shawn (01:55.23)
that's...

Shawn (02:15.453)
Jeez, man.

Okay. Look at that common sense that AI is helping you with Matt. You'll get, you're likely to get hurt if you ski or snowboard. You're likely, more likely to die if you fly. What genius, genius. Well, all I can say, Matt, is this, Patsy Klein, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, the whole band of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Randy Rhodes, Ricky Nelson, John Denver, and on and on and on. These are all, they all died in small planes. Yes. Yes, he did.

Matt (02:40.152)
They all died in a plane?

Matt (02:45.048)
John Denver died in a small plane? man.

Shawn (02:48.773)
So did the entire Lunar Skinner band, or like half of them. And notice reading!

Matt (02:51.67)
I had no idea. Is that what? I've never heard of Otis Redding. Is that Sweet Home Alabama? Otis Redding?

Shawn (02:56.081)
Ow.

Shawn (02:59.555)
No, shut up.

Matt (03:03.66)
Well, you know, there's, listen, what I'm afraid of is not death. I'm ready to go to the celestial kingdom whenever they will have me. What, what I'm afraid of is injury and like living a long time and not being able to live like a full, happy, productive life.

Shawn (03:10.396)
I love that faith.

Shawn (03:19.483)
How much does it take Matt to sit in a chair and watch court TV? What does it take? What kind of injury would prevent you from doing that?

Matt (03:23.374)
That's not satisfying. That's like how I kill time, right? Like if I go out and write, right, I don't need a lot of percent each day, but I do need some percent each day where I go out and I get my heart rate into like the 150, 160 range. I need to do that for about 30 minutes every day to like feel good.

Shawn (03:31.427)
80 % of each day.

Shawn (03:42.835)
That's cool. Okay, so if you couldn't do that you'd be unhappy and if you're dead it wouldn't matter. Okay, I get it. So go on your plane. I get it.

Matt (03:50.784)
Is everybody the same? Don't you think everyone's that same way, Sean? You gotta like go do something. No, you're different. You have to do something active all the time. You're always like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. I can do it in short spurts. I can like get my heart rate going, feel good. I'm like, I exercise today. Okay, let's settle in and watch court TV.

Shawn (04:00.595)
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Shawn (04:11.059)
But Matt, on the mission, you were out all day long pounding the pavement, running from person to person trying to save souls. So maybe you learned it from that a little bit.

Matt (04:14.263)
Yeah, yeah,

Matt (04:20.0)
No, it's actually, lie. I don't spend that much time watching court TV. I spend most of my time writing books and writing research papers and doing research.

Shawn (04:28.467)
Okay, so speaking of different ways or various ways to die, have you heard of or seen this movie called Eternity? You've seen it? Okay, so the scene where they've all died and they're in the afterlife and there's this whatever, they're shown how various people died. mean, couple were plane crashes, just that's how triggered this thought. But at some point here in the latter day lens, we ought to talk about this concept of eternal.

Matt (04:35.542)
Yes! I hated that show. Hated it.

Matt (04:50.37)
You

Matt (04:56.429)
Yeah.

Shawn (04:56.989)
companions like that. That's a fascinating concept of, you know, if we are presented with a choice, right? What if someone's spouse dies and now you're presented with a choice? That was a fascinating.

Matt (05:07.022)
We'll talk about that right now. We'll just skip the mail bag and we'll talk about that real fast. Cause you brought it up. What I, what I hated about the movie eternity is not the choice of who to spend eternity with. It's that the idea of heaven is a place right where you're picking, I want to be in Paris forever, or I want to be in the beach forever. And I want to be in the mountains forever. Like, because no matter what place you put me now, you're different than me, Sean, whatever place you put me in.

Shawn (05:10.726)
Okay. Okay.

Matt (05:32.886)
I will get tired of it forever because I need variety in like where I go. What I don't need variety in is who I'm with. That, I can stay constant with the same people forever and be totally happy, but I can't be in the same place forever, right? So for me, the premise of the movie is backwards because they're like, well, you can choose this place, but it's the person, right? You got to make the right choice about which person you're with. And I'm like, no.

Shawn (05:57.935)
interesting.

Matt (06:00.718)
Like no matter what place you put me in I would end up for those who've seen the movie I would end up at the bar at the place where everybody dies Because at least I get some variety there and who the people are that come in right and I and I'm not stuck in some choice of a place to be forever But you've put me in some life situation forever No matter what it is. I would get tired of that but put me with people I love forever and that's heaven that's the people and the relationships that matter not the

Like, Sean, in that movie you can't even be with your parents. You can't even see your kids. You don't even know where they are. That's not heaven.

Shawn (06:34.695)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because everyone chooses their own space, their own place to be as opposed to who they're with. Right? So you're saying that if you had me, Sandra, your kids, and that's it, that's really all you need, that's really all you need. Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm talking about what you need though. It would definitely be your family and probably, most likely me, of course. Of not your friends, me.

Matt (06:41.698)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (06:48.716)
my kids, your kids. Well, no, need your, I mean, you're going to be really sad if your family's not there. Yeah.

My friends. Of course, Sean, of course. You're a friend of mine.

Shawn (07:04.317)
Yeah, I know, but you said friends plural. You don't need the other friends. You need me, though. You're saying that that would not be enough for you if you were stuck in the armpit of Utah Ogden.

Matt (07:06.487)
No. I need- I do need Sean. Yeah.

Matt (07:17.196)
No, no, I'm fine. That's what I'm saying. I don't care what the place is. I need the people there. but the idea that I would be stuck in a single place like that's that would be hell. That would be hell, right? But but Sean, even if it was even if it was Oceanside, California, which I love going to Oceanside, sometimes I want to go to the mountains. I don't want to sit on the beach forever.

Shawn (07:20.659)
that's right. Okay.

Shawn (07:26.663)
That's right. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. saying I don't think you...

Shawn (07:38.183)
Did you just compare Oceanside to Ogden?

Matt (07:41.004)
No, well like Carlsbad, I don't know. Like there's places I love, right? Hawaii, right?

Shawn (07:43.603)
Yeah. So, so in your mind, the celestial kingdom is all about accessing the, mean, we talk about like, like even the creation process. God says, I, it doesn't say I created from nothing. He says, I took the existing materials that were in chaos and I organized them. You, in your mind, God will be teaching you to do that. So you can organize the materials to live in whatever situation you want to be in. Isn't that the concept for you in the celestial kingdom?

Matt (08:08.078)
No, for me the concept is who I'm with. Who I'm with is all that matters.

Shawn (08:11.775)
yeah, gotcha. Well, and not being stuck in one constant environment.

Matt (08:16.942)
Oh yeah, and one place. Yeah. Yeah, I think that by nature we want to create. And so if we want to create, we're going to want to like, we're going to want to improve whatever place we're in. That's the other thing about that movie that drives me crazy, right? Nobody works in the movie. The whole, all they do all the time is like play or watch movies or go skiing or go hiking. That's, that's hell for people too. Like I've been on cruises, Sean. I've been on vacation places with people.

People who do that all the time are not happy people.

Shawn (08:48.743)
The concept of the movie that I thought you'd have an opinion on is this idea that I'm married to someone and then they die. And then I marry someone else and live with them for 70 years and then I die. And in the afterlife, I'm choosing between those two. You don't care about that part of it?

Matt (09:03.331)
Yeah.

You shouldn't have to choose, you get to be with both of them.

Shawn (09:09.873)
What?

Matt (09:11.253)
Shouldn't you get to be with both of them?

Shawn (09:12.711)
Well, how can the other person be with... What?

Matt (09:15.01)
Well, like, I don't care. Like, I want to be with the people I love, right?

Shawn (09:19.357)
Yeah, but you're sealed to one person.

Matt (09:22.834)
you said I was married. Okay, wait, so I'm married. There's one I didn't get sealed, so I married two people but only got sealed to one of them.

Shawn (09:30.04)
Let's say, that's right, you couldn't get Silt

Matt (09:33.442)
I guess that I guess because that's a woman right in the movie it's a woman so she can't get sealed to both of them or something. Well I don't know.

Shawn (09:36.548)
no. Yeah, but let's say God gives her a... Well, you just made it complicated.

Matt (09:43.414)
Yeah, I don't know. The whole thing, the whole premise of the movie doesn't make any sense to me. God's not going to make you choose between two people you're sealed to or two people you've

Shawn (09:51.291)
Why not? Yes, why not? Of course. Let's say God gives us the choice, we are still the two people, let's say, and gives us the choice to choose between the two.

Matt (09:55.125)
Matt (10:01.474)
huh. For eternity, only one of them? I would choose... man.

Shawn (10:05.352)
Yeah.

Shawn (10:10.035)
You were about to choose. Anyway, that was the-

Matt (10:12.864)
No, I was actually going to say I would choose, I would make them choose. If they didn't choose me forever, I wouldn't want to be with them. So I'd say, okay, you guys pick whichever one of you picks. But if they both picked me, then I'd say, well then, yeah, I don't know. There's a lot about that movie that's just weird, right? That doesn't make any sense.

Shawn (10:29.363)
Okay, okay. I was just curious about your opinion. You gave it. That's good. You didn't love it. Okay. Oh, yeah, that's that's one of the toughest things I could possibly think of right like you go your whole life searching for a paradise on this earth through the gospel of Jesus Christ and through a spouse and so just it's it was really I mean, I think they did an okay job in the movie, but I'd be curious what other LDS members of the church think of this concept of if I married once and then they died and I married again, you know, I've got friends like that.

Matt (10:33.068)
Okay, now what's your opinion, Sean?

Shawn (10:59.015)
Yeah, who do you choose to be with in eternity? And what happens to the other person?

Matt (11:02.99)
Well, this is the President Nelson dilemma, Or the President Oaks dilemma. They were both sealed to two women. The way we resolve it is we say, plural marriage exists in the eternities. That's the way we resolve it.

Shawn (11:07.325)
That's right. That's right. Exactly. That's right.

Shawn (11:16.983)
Is it that clear that that exists and that is a bummer for the women? To me, I don't like that.

Matt (11:24.45)
Yeah. Well, I don't know. think, yeah, I think that there's no way for us to really know what that world is like, what eternity is like.

Shawn (11:32.485)
Okay, I like that. You can just say, don't know, God will make it okay. God will fix it. That's all I've had to sit on because I don't know the answer and it stresses me out.

Matt (11:36.941)
Yeah.

Matt (11:41.112)
Does it work? No, you're just gonna be happy with Kristen. If, by the way, if

Shawn (11:43.847)
Yeah, I will be, but what if I died? What if I died and she gets so lonely that she marries someone else? Yeah, but then she's gonna choose between the two of us. Now that is the most stressful, unhappy thing I can possibly think of outside of being in the presence of God.

Matt (11:49.624)
She should. Yeah, she definitely should.

Matt (11:59.63)
Well, she'll either choose you or she won't choose you. And if she doesn't choose you, then there's somebody that's better for you. There'll be like a better eternal companion.

Shawn (12:04.605)
thanks.

Shawn (12:08.571)
Wow. Yeah, easier said than considered. So you'd be fine if you died, Sandra marries someone else and chooses someone else. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly, dude. Now you understand why I'm stressed. So don't try it. Yeah, there you go.

Matt (12:15.63)
Sandra chooses someone else? No, I would just like, I would spend eternity curled up in a ball, like just crying. I'd say at least I can go to Ogden. At least I can visit other places. All right.

Shawn (12:30.675)
That was the response I was looking for. response I was looking for is the movie made me consider like spending eternity curled up crying in a ball. That's exactly what I was looking for.

Matt (12:39.267)
Ha

Matt (12:42.604)
I just spent the whole movie being like, that's such a stupid movie. But anyhow, it was fun movie, but it was, I love, who's the guy who plays Rooster in Top Gun? He's in that movie. I forget his name. I don't know the guy's name, but anyhow, I love that actor so much. It's like, yeah.

Shawn (12:45.82)
Okay, that's good.

Shawn (12:57.427)
Because he was in Top Gun. Well, for our listeners out there who are considering end of life fantasy scenarios, instead of going to watch that one, go watch Defending Your Life from the 90s. That was a great show.

Matt (13:11.67)
Okay, and also everybody, Sean has weird movie recommendations. so, like this isn't letter box, but if it was, I would tell you this right now, stay away from Project Hail Mary. I went and watched that movie. my goodness, I was... Okay, well stay away from it everybody.

Shawn (13:23.365)
I didn't recommend that for you. recommended you one of the top ten movies of all time, Doubt. Go, listeners, we'll watch Doubt. And you didn't get it, which makes me judge you.

Matt (13:29.605)
jeez.

No, I love the movie Doubt. I hate the movie, is it Doubt that I hate? Is that the one about the priest that may or may not have molested somebody? That's Doubt? Okay, yeah, that's a stupid movie. That's right up there with like Project Hail Mary. Don't go watch those kinds of, those shows where they like, if you're really looking for a movie where like, what happens is there's two people sitting in a room staring at each other, thinking about things. Like that would be a great movie. You'd really love that movie and Project Hail Mary.

Shawn (13:35.347)
They didn't.

Shawn (13:40.603)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Shawn (13:47.769)
I don't-

Shawn (14:02.502)
Alright, before we move on to the next topic, let's both unanimously, since this is the lottery lens, we're looking for common ground, on the count of three, let's both proclaim to our listeners which movie probably is one of the top of all time that they should watch. And I know we'll get this right. One, two, three, Joe versus the volcano. Dang it! Okay, alright.

Matt (14:16.438)
My blue heaven. yeah, Joe versus the volcano. No, that's a good one too. That's a good one. All right, let's move to the thought provoker. We kept that mailbag open a long time. All right, so first up, bots are evolving into powerful tools for shaping both cultural influence and market behavior by artificially inflating engagement, manufacturing consensus, and manipulating how algorithms amplify content.

Shawn (14:26.737)
Sorry.

Matt (14:42.498)
So you guys might have heard about this. Nicki Minaj suddenly got a huge boost in followers when she started endorsing Trump. the accusation is, or the analysis suggests that thousands of coordinated accounts boosted her visibility and perceived support using bots. There's a JP Morgan situation that did a similar kind of thing to reframe financial analysis. So anyhow, the question is,

So in both of these cases, bots blurred the line between authentic and engineered popularity, allowing narratives to spread, not because they're widely believed, but because they were strategically amplified. So my question is, are bots a useful technological advancement, or are they more pernicious? Is this use of bots immoral because it's a form of lying?

Shawn (15:30.791)
mean, since this is the latter-day lens, listen, if the intent is to deceive, there's so many scriptures about it, right? Thou shalt not bear false witness. That's pretty clear, isn't that one of the Ten Commandments? Right?

Matt (15:41.198)
Yeah, but you're in this world. This is why I want to talk to you about this Sean, because you're in the world of marketing, right? A lot of what you do with branding is try to help people boost their visibility. And one way you boost visibility is like, I don't know, having good positive reviews or having people out there saying this is a really good product. So if I can lie to people by creating a bot that says, oh, thousands of people love this. Thousands of people like this. Is that immoral or is that just like good marketing?

Shawn (16:08.979)
It's immoral and it should probably also be illegal, right? Because you're deceiving. Deception in a capitalist marketplace is always bad, always has negative effects. So deception and is immoral. It's against clearly Exodus 20, 16, thou shalt not bear false witness. In Alma 1, it talks about the reason priest crafts and exploiting beliefs are bad is because people use that for influence or profit.

Matt (16:21.806)
I

Matt (16:35.512)
So like, have you heard of these, I have a friend that he gets like stuff in the mail from Amazon and they ask him to do a review on Amazon and they don't tell him he should do a good or a bad review, then he just has to agree to do a review and then he gets a whole bunch of free stuff. Is that a similar kind of immoral or is that different? Because if you're giving me something for free, don't I feel some kind of reciprocity like I should say good things about your product? Like I see this, like if I'm on Amazon trying to decide should I buy a product.

I'll see all of these videos of people who are like, they sent me this in the mail and I'm creating a video for this.

Shawn (17:11.603)
I mean, if you can discover deception in that process, then I think it's immoral. If there's no deception in the process, and I think your scenario, I don't think there's deception there, right? I have accountability to my society to give an honest review. But I mean, guess we've all done it, right? If you've been to restaurant and said, hey, if you give me 10 % off, I'll yelp something nice for you, is that, why wouldn't you do that?

Matt (17:26.296)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (17:34.816)
No, I just do that for free. do that like every place I go that I like. just do a free Google review. People are getting like asking for money to do that. No way. I always see it as like. Wow. OK, so there's this restaurant in town that I love. It's called Curry Pizza and whenever I'm there they will give me like a free dessert or something and say hey, will you give us a review and I'm like.

Shawn (17:44.625)
Yeah, yeah, why not? A lot of restaurants offer that. That's a great marketing tactic, right? I'll give you 10 % off your bill if you yelp about us.

Shawn (18:01.651)
That's right.

Matt (18:02.55)
I'm the most looked at review of your place. I'm your biggest fan in the whole wide world. Like how do you not know that I would know and there was a Thai place I went to once I was like nobody's here. They need to have better reviews. Let me write a really good review and take pictures like I've always just done that stuff because I like a business. I've never thought about doing it.

Shawn (18:06.845)
You didn't need to buy it. Yeah.

Shawn (18:17.629)
So do you?

Right. Do you think that's deception then? If I'm offering you money in exchange for a positive review, do think that crosses the line? Similar to what I think your opinion is about these bots, that it is deception and intent to deceive is there.

Matt (18:31.724)
Yeah.

Matt (18:36.078)
Okay, what I would say about the bots is that is 100 % deceptive. There's no way in which creating a bot to like go and amplify your content is anything other than deception, right? Because there's no possibility for that to, unless you're some stupid person that's like, yeah, let me create bots that'll like tear down my image and say terrible things about me. So that one is 100 % deception. Hmm.

Shawn (18:48.317)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (19:04.856)
That's interesting. I've never, this is the world I live in. I live in this world of academia, Sean, right? So like everything we do is like, if I say I like your article, it's because I like it. I've never thought of it being like, hey, I'll give you like a little prize in the mail if you'll tell people how much you love my research. Like to me, that's just so foreign. So I can't like this world of marketing. I have to think about this a lot because if you give, okay.

Shawn (19:31.133)
Well, let me give you a case for it being moral, the Yelp situation. I agree with you that.

Matt (19:34.818)
Well, because Sean, if you give me something, if you I know that that's already going to create a positive bias because you gave me something. So now I like you and so that's going to make.

Shawn (19:41.767)
Yeah, so you might as well. Yeah, but that's part of the whole brand offering experiences. Well, these guys really value my opinion or they value my patronage. And so they give me things or they offer me things. That's part of the reason why I like the establishment. So why isn't that an authentic? That's a whole part of the brand experience.

Matt (19:59.822)
Wow. By the way, like when they offered me a free dessert, I was like, what's wrong with you? I'm not gonna pay you for that dessert. And they're like, we don't expect you to. And I'm like, this is a weird situation. Why are you giving me, I live in the coupon world. You give me a coupon and I go in and I get something like less money with the coupon.

Shawn (20:18.477)
You want things for free without anything in exchange. right. That's right.

Matt (20:20.942)
Well, so that to me, so then if I give them a review and I'm like Walmart has the lowest prices and their rollback prices are amazing, like that feels authentic to me because everyone gets the same benefit. man.

Shawn (20:33.811)
The reason I think it's okay is because it doesn't there's there's no deception in the process. You're not deceiving You're giving someone a better brand experience or company experience and you're asking them an exchange to give you a positive review Well, if I had a good time and your food is decent, but you give me a free soda or something. That's a positive thing I'm going to give you a positive review. There's no deception there. I think that's a free exchange I think the bots and and any deception like the scriptures are clear

In Alma or second EFI 226, it talks about how we are given agency and we should act in knowledge rather than under deception. So to me, that's a clear principle.

Matt (21:11.97)
Yeah. Hmm. Okay. But what if I offer you money to vote for me? Like in an election, we would say that's immoral and wrong. That's like, that's immoral, right? Like you shouldn't do that. We're not supposed. Okay. Okay. So then what's the purpose of the incentive? Like, okay. If I say, Hey, I'm going to write a review. Will you give me a discount? What's the incentive for them to give me the discount? Because it's because they're getting something of value from me.

Shawn (21:18.503)
that happens. Doesn't that happen pretty often? Like,

Shawn (21:25.201)
I do think that's immoral, yeah.

Shawn (21:42.579)
Yeah. If I have on Yelp 300 reviews, that's going to start popping up to people. People are going to make decisions to come and try me out. So of course, it's benefiting the company to earn. And that's what I'll say. They're earning those reviews. They're not deceiving for those reviews. They're earning them.

Matt (22:02.766)
And then the money is just a way to ask for it or a way to incentivize somebody to do something otherwise might not do.

Shawn (22:08.733)
To earn it, yes. That's part of the brand experience to earn it.

Matt (22:13.144)
There was this company that would like build homes in Utah and they did, they were shady. I didn't like them at all. They did some like some shady stuff. And so I wrote this really negative review about like the shady business practices they had. And then I noticed what they did is everybody who would build a home with them, they would offer them this huge discount. it's like, we'll take $500 off your closing costs or whatever. If you'll give us a five-star review on Yelp or whatever.

And so then I noticed like you have this bad review from me. You have this bad review from this other person and then suddenly hundreds of five star reviews and they're the most amazing people ever. That's deception, right? $500 for a positive review. That's deception.

Shawn (22:55.603)
Here's the thing. I don't think it's deception because the person that got the $500 got that as part of the offering of their experience with that home builder. It's part of the offering that the home builder gives.

Matt (23:09.432)
Ha ha ha.

Matt (23:14.478)
so I can pay an extra $500 if I want and give them a bad review. Well, that would be part of my bad review. And then how do I, as a consumer, how do I trust anything out there? If I know that they paid you $500 or whatever, gave you a discount or whatever to give them a review, how do I trust that at all?

Shawn (23:19.975)
Yes.

Shawn (23:34.867)
My, my strong opinion there is like take a restaurant that has a thousand reviews. And if you can sniff out that maybe these were purchased reviews or, or earned reviews as opposed to authentic reviews, I'm going to try that place once and I'll sniff it out. And if it's not good that I know they were inauthentic and just purchased, but that's okay. Like, that's okay. Sure. Well, if it's a bad experience, yeah, of course.

Matt (23:49.358)
Matt (23:54.03)
Will you give them a bad review to let people know? Okay. I had these people come do concrete work for me last year. They were phenomenal and their price was amazing. like I could tell nobody had ever heard of them. They're kind of like a startup or something like that. And so, right, they did a great job. And so I gave them an amazing review and then they didn't know that I gave them a review and then they were like, Hey, will you give us a review for money? And I was like,

I already did that and they're like, well, guess we won't give you the money. But then that makes me think then they're kind of shady too, right? Like they felt like they had to pay me money to get a review that I would have already done it for them. Like. Yeah.

Shawn (24:27.635)
Yes.

Shawn (24:35.539)
I mean, you're judging it to be shady and deceptive. I'm not. I think that it's a decent tactic, Most people, Matt, don't think to give a review. So I'm just incentivizing you to give a review. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to incentivize you to lie. I'm saying if you'd be willing to give us a positive review, if you had a positive experience, I'll give you some cheesecake,

Matt (24:58.99)
I have one of my sons is so caught up because I'm just like this where I do reviews for places. I and this son is just caught up. He's like, I'm going to give them a bad review. And I'm like, okay, fine. Give him a bad review. But this one time there was this place we were staying in. He like just for fun, gave this horrible review to them. I'm like, stop it. Why would you do that? And he's like, because there was like a stain on the sheet or something like that. And so I gave him a horrible review and I'm like, so then I felt this obligation to give them a really positive review to make up for my son. I don't know. He's in this world where he

Shawn (25:28.067)
So isn't that just as potentially deceptive Matt? Like his real true opinion and experience was a negative review.

Matt (25:35.85)
overly negative, overly critical, nobody should care about what his opinion was of that. He was wrong.

Shawn (25:42.291)
That was his experience and you tried to influence or deceive to not you know for people not to hear that is that justice?

Matt (25:48.942)
I think I made him take it down. was like, get rid of that. like that's his, that's his thing, right? If he, if he's displeased, he'll tell them, I'm going to give you a terrible review as if anyone would care. But I guess maybe they do care. Huh? That's, that's because I'm in higher education. If my students give me bad course evaluations, I'm like, what do I care? Who do you think reads your stupid course evaluations? Why would anybody care what you think about me as a professor?

Shawn (25:59.635)
They do care, it matters, That seems honest.

Shawn (26:10.961)
Wow. Wow.

Matt (26:16.27)
Okay, next. Hey Sean, I'm giving you the points for that. You really really think about that.

Shawn (26:23.069)
thanks man all all give you the points because you did think deeply about that

Matt (26:27.306)
In talking to you, it helps me to see what a wide gap there is between the world of people who are in business and marketing and have to earn money for a living and academia where students just pay whatever tuition we decide to charge them and they like it and don't like it. judge them. We don't care what they think about us. Like there's a real big gap between your world and my world.

Shawn (26:56.392)
I think you fit into the category of maybe government and higher education and yes, not.

Matt (26:59.982)
My I am a church employee. It's not government

Shawn (27:06.737)
no i know the default that the government was i think for missing category and attitude

Matt (27:10.894)
Uhhh... Okay.

Shawn (27:12.647)
disconnected from the real world where you actually have to make real life exchanges with people. You have to offer value to people in exchange for value.

Matt (27:15.063)
No!

Matt (27:22.465)
All right, here's the next topic. So I put a link in, there's a really neat video. Steve Ballmer, who owns the LA Clippers, and he's like a billionaire from Microsoft. He started this channel where he tries to just give facts about what's like, what the actual facts are. So he has this YouTube video that talks about the current state of the US economy. So there's a link to that in the show notes. In 2025, the federal government collected about $5 trillion in revenue.

Shawn (27:24.583)
Ha ha ha.

Shawn (27:29.435)
Yeah.

Matt (27:48.046)
but they spent about $7 trillion resulting in a large deficit. There'll be a deficit of about $2 trillion just for last year. And our total national debt right now is above $38 trillion with interest payments being a significant share of the spending. So Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address compared the US economy to that of a family. He said that it's dangerous for a government to spend money beyond its means.

just like a family shouldn't spend beyond its means, government shouldn't spend beyond its means. But Keynes argued that government debt can be useful for economic growth. At the same time church, yeah, yeah, all of macroeconomics is based on his idea that like when times get tough, the government should spend into debt in order to boost aggregate demand and then that's gonna make the economy grow. So church leaders have repeatedly warned individuals and families about going into debt.

Shawn (28:19.655)
Mmm.

Shawn (28:25.351)
Very influential economist,

Matt (28:44.494)
My question is, does that apply to governments? Should we really be concerned about $38 trillion in debt?

Shawn (28:50.739)
Okay, I think I know your opinion on this, so this will be fun. I have two questions for you that'll help clarify this. Question number one, is it wrong to consume today, at the expense of people who didn't consent in the future?

Matt (29:06.734)
is it wrong to consume something today and make people in the future pay for it? Yes, that's wrong. That is wrong.

Shawn (29:11.665)
Yes. Okay, so if that's wrong, then that's probably answer number one to your question. But that is ex-

Matt (29:18.67)
Nobody in the future is gonna, I'm not gonna make anybody in the future pay for the debt that I incur today. Nobody.

Shawn (29:26.435)
Yes. What? Who's paying for who's paying for Medicare right now? Who's paying for all those who are taking?

Matt (29:31.022)
Medicare right now is paid for by the current taxpayers or the people that are buying the government debt, the bonds and things that we issue.

Shawn (29:34.739)
Exactly, Exactly, exactly. In 30 years, who's going to be paying for the people's, who's going be paying for your Medicare? Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (29:44.012)
that I use today, 30 years from now, it'll all be, it's all paid for. There's no debt. No, no, like this debt that we have, the debt that a government has is not the same as the debt that you and I have. That's what I'm trying to say. That's the point. John Maynard Keynes would tell us that government debt is not the same as individual debt, and it's not the same as like a business's debt, because every

Shawn (29:51.076)
magic! it's magic!

Matt (30:13.794)
debt that a business incurs or an individual incurs, they have to pay back. But governments never have to pay back the debt that they incur.

Shawn (30:21.277)
Yeah, but the people in the future, look, if, if

Matt (30:24.622)
If the government wanted to today to say all of that $38 trillion in debt, we're not paying it back, then they could do that and never pay it back.

Shawn (30:35.603)
Okay, but if I'm making, if I'm earning $10 a month, but I've committed to social programs or to retirement programs to the cost of $100 a month, I'm gonna borrow that from myself, or who am I borrowing that from?

Matt (30:41.217)
huh.

Matt (30:52.14)
No, so what we do is like what you can't do, Sean, that the government can do is you can issue a bond and you can say, here is a promise to pay that back.

Shawn (30:53.491)
No.

Shawn (30:59.059)
Right, I'm borrowing that from myself and then when I die, I won't pay that back but my kids will pay that.

Matt (31:07.148)
Your kids won't pay back. Your kids don't have to pay that back because our bond is only in the United States government debt is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. And if.

Shawn (31:18.749)
Yeah, but the taxes that my kids will have to pay will go towards paying for your Medicare. Yes.

Matt (31:25.206)
Now, in fact, Sean, all of the debt that people incurred 20 years ago, we're not paying for that right now. We're not even paying for all of the stuff we're doing right now. Like our taxes right now go to Social Security, right, which pays out Social Security payments. It goes to the Medicare stuff, but that's only the people currently using Medicare. And it doesn't even cover all of the bills, right? These billions of dollars a week that we're like spending dropping bombs in Iran, we're not paying for that.

We're just issuing bonds to pay for that. We're not actually paying for that. And the taxpayers don't really pay for that. That's why we have a $38 trillion debt. It's all just fake debt. It's not real debt. Nobody actually has to pay that back.

Shawn (31:59.549)
Okay, I didn't hear it.

Shawn (32:07.153)
the future has to pay that back because the government doesn't have money unless people are investing the bonds or paying their taxes so so fun so if i'm not taking enough why would it mean

Matt (32:15.052)
Not true. Where does our government get money from? They print dollars. If the US Treasury wants to, they could give you a billion dollars right now, right? They just credit your bank account with a billion dollars. And that's what we did in our last financial crisis. They called it quantitative easing, but they just put billions of dollars in the bank accounts from the Federal Reserve. So they just make more money.

Shawn (32:19.389)
Yeah.

Matt (32:37.74)
and then they have more money. that's the thing that's different, Sean, is if you want money, you have to earn money, you get a paycheck, and you gotta hold onto that money. If the government wants money, it just creates money by printing dollars. That's it.

Shawn (32:51.111)
And by printing it, you just destroy, don't you, mean, you tell me, printing money, what kind of effect does that have on the hard earned money that I've worked for?

Matt (33:00.446)
In theory, and if Levi were here, he would say, no, if you do that, that's going to create inflation because there's going to be too many dollars out there and that's going to make it so that you're done.

Shawn (33:07.795)
That's right. it devalues the money that I have so that I can't afford to pay for my healthcare.

Matt (33:13.752)
But the reason it doesn't do that is because we have a flexible exchange rate, which means that you can buy and sell US dollars as a currency, as like a stock, right? It's like Bitcoin, right? If suddenly somebody issued a whole bunch more Bitcoin, would Bitcoin be worth less? It all depends on the demand for Bitcoin, right? So if somebody said, whoa, I just found like a thousand Bitcoin, Bitcoin's not gonna drop a ton in price because

people value Bitcoin at whatever they value Bitcoin at. And so the dollar becomes the same thing. You could suddenly say, we are crediting all of these people with this $38 trillion in debt, and now it's all paid off, and here's all the dollars you need to pay off that debt. And as long as people still want dollars, then it's not gonna affect the value of the dollar.

Shawn (34:02.419)
but you lived in Ukraine, Matt. Your favorite experience, I remember seeing your face light up when you'd go to the Abmin Valyutti, the money exchange, and you'd be like, I've got 10,000 hryvnia, and then you get all this American money. No, you got money. You've got $5, and you get 20,000 hryvnia. You're like, look, I'm rich. I'm rich. Look at this. Now, that didn't serve the Ukrainians. That served you.

Matt (34:21.367)
Yeah.

Matt (34:27.576)
Well, their problem was in Ukraine is they had a exchange rate and they, wasn't, it wasn't a tradable asset. The currency wasn't right. There was the Soviet union kept everything all locked in tight and they controlled the currency, but a dollar, anybody can buy a dollar. And since oils traded in dollars and all these other things are traded, I'm just saying governments live by different sets of rules.

Shawn (34:50.535)
Yeah, no, but wasn't the main issue that the value of a grieven, that was called a grieven, is that singular? The value of grieveny was so much lower because people, the demand, because the produce, the output, no one wanted it. So the value of it was so much lower than the dollar because people wanted the dollar. There's no guarantee that if I just print, otherwise why wouldn't the government, if what you're saying is true, why wouldn't the government just print trillions more dollars every single year to pay off the debt?

Matt (34:56.076)
Yeah, Grivnia. Uh-huh.

Nobody wanted it.

Matt (35:19.736)
Because there's no-

Shawn (35:19.763)
Well, here's why, because then it would devalue the dollar and nothing would be worth anything. My money would be worth nothing.

Matt (35:24.416)
No, it's because they know that the debt doesn't matter at all. And so nobody cares. It's like fake debt out there. Nobody cares. Yeah.

Shawn (35:31.505)
Okay. So I didn't convince you the first, I didn't convince you on the first moral, moral one. Here's the second one. It's all about stewardship. Our church, Jesus Christ clearly teaches us about stewardship. And let's just take the parable of the talents. didn't matter how much the richest one had or was given in the beginning. It didn't matter how little the first guy was given. All that matters was did they work and produce an increase? Were they good stewards over what they returned? Because the guy that was given 10 and then returned 10,

He got the kingdom. The guy that was only given two but returned two, he was given everything in the same kingdom. He was given the same reward. The guy that hit it and produced nothing or was negative, he got no reward. So the question is, stewardship is an eternal principle. Those in power should manage resources wisely. This is not wise resource management.

Matt (36:09.006)
Yeah.

Matt (36:21.11)
Alright, that one persuades me, Sean. You get the points for that. That actually is, yeah, yeah, I do believe that governments should be good stewards. And okay. So yeah, for all of the economic reasons, then I disagree with you. But for the stewardship reason, I agree with you.

Shawn (36:23.795)
Really?

Shawn (36:29.011)
Okay, can I give you a story? Let me give you a

Good, let me just double down on that. So my wife, for various reasons, just decided I'm going to study and become a life insurance agent for various reasons. She's super smart. She just immediately starts studying. And what she finds out is the government, in order to be a life insurance agent, the government requires that you pass a test and that you take a certain amount of hours of courses. Now the courses, this 18 hours of courses,

goes towards taking the test. So Kristen reads it and goes, I've got this. Let me just take the test. So after two hours of study, she takes the test, gets like a 90. So she goes, sweet, I've done it. Let's go. The government says, no, no, no, no, no. You have to spend, she literally spent the next 18 hours taking these courses, even though the courses were just teaching her what she needed to learn in the test. That is a perfect example of stewardship.

Matt (37:16.334)
You have to do the courses.

Matt (37:25.964)
Yeah, that's them.

Shawn (37:29.819)
and the wasted resources that something like a government puts on the put that that's the burden they put on us

Matt (37:36.782)
Yeah, there's a lot of stories like that. Okay, so then, okay, I'll give you the points for that, Sean. The government doesn't have the same kind of debt worries that people do, but they should be good stewards of their money and spending beyond their means. No, it's not our money. Sean, when they collect $5 trillion and they spend $7 trillion, they collected $5 trillion from me and you.

Shawn (37:44.004)
dang.

Shawn (37:53.041)
of our money, spending our money beyond their means.

Shawn (38:02.643)
from me and you. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Matt (38:06.104)
but they spent more than that. Right? So that means that other money came from, it's just magic. It just came from nowhere. Right? They just printed the money. Right? So in some ways you could say that's being good stewards because you're only paying five trillion and you're getting seven trillion in value from the government, but they're not being wise, right? When you just spend willy-nilly, that's not being wise stewards. It's so, all right. Yeah. Points to you, Sean. Good job. Okay. There's a guy named Chris.

Shawn (38:11.532)
I see. I see.

Shawn (38:24.484)
Or it's...

Shawn (38:28.253)
Thank you. Yeah, okay. Points to me then. thanks. Thanks.

Matt (38:35.148)
Truax, I don't know how to pronounce his name. He was a lawyer in the McCain campaign. So he's a John McCain Republican kind of guy. All right, so he argues that the Trump administration's immigration enforcement is violating core constitutional protections by wrongly claiming that undocumented immigrants lack rights. He points to alleged Fourth Amendment violations like unreasonable searches, warrantless raids, and demands for identification.

Shawn (38:42.777)
Okay.

Matt (39:03.278)
due process violations like detaining or punishing individuals, including US citizens without proper legal procedures and defiance of court orders. He also raised his first amendment concerns related to the suppression of protests and broader government overreach, emphasizing that constitutional rights are designed to protect everyone from abuse. His central argument is that undermining these protections for one group ultimately threats the rights of all Americans. So President Oaks has asked us to defend

the divinely inspired Constitution. So do church members have a moral obligation to speak out against the Trump administration's immigration enforcement?

Shawn (39:44.115)
I don't know if you're just good question. Well done, Matt. I don't know if you're looking for like a debate here or if we're both going to agree, but the real question is based in does the Constitution apply to all persons in the US, not just citizens? What am I supposed to answer? I was just getting clarity if that's the question.

Matt (39:56.578)
Yes, of course. The Supreme Court has.

No, the question is that, okay, so the Trump administration, I don't know where they find the constitutional authority to do what they're doing. I don't think it's anywhere. And so when you see, even if you like the Trump administration, even if you like the idea of let's get all of these undocumented people out of our country, if they choose to do it in a way that violates the constitution,

Shawn (40:25.181)
But that's why I'm saying the crux of your question is, does the Constitution apply to all persons in the US, not just citizens? That's the most important question. No, I don't answer yet. I'm asking it rhetorically because I'm to ask you follow-up questions because I think for our listeners and for many, many members of the church who are especially Republican, I think their gut reaction is no, of course not. Of course not. Like that's the right of be... I'm not saying that. Hang on. I'm not saying that. But don't you think that the average LDS Republican is going to say...

Matt (40:31.97)
Yes!

Matt (40:45.272)
What? There's nothing in the... okay. okay.

Shawn (40:55.131)
No, that's the point of being a citizen. The Constitution doesn't apply to me if I'm not a citizen. Don't you think that's what...

Matt (41:00.334)
That's a radically, that's a crazy idea. No, I didn't think anybody thought that. I thought everybody knew that the US Constitution applies to everybody in the United States.

Shawn (41:06.488)
I think most-

Shawn (41:11.635)
But that's why this is a wonderful question to cover and I hope it reaches a lot of people because so you're saying that the Fourth Amendment, protects against the search and seizure amendment, right, you need a warrant. You're saying that should apply to citizens as well as anyone who is in the country, whether you're a citizen or not. And you're saying the constant, where, I mean, okay, then there's the Fifth Amendment, the due process one, which clearly isn't being really, I mean, it's kind of being applied, but not really, right? And then there's 14th, equal protection and due process.

Matt (41:15.448)
Got it.

Matt (41:20.492)
Yeah.

Matt (41:27.81)
That's right. Like, let's take the...

Matt (41:34.616)
Okay.

Shawn (41:41.945)
Matt, teach our listeners, where in the Constitution does it say that non-citizens enjoy those as well? Those rights.

Matt (41:49.752)
Well, it's the US Supreme Court that says that those, so when the, first of all, when the constitution is written, there's no such thing as citizenship, right? There's no obligation that you be a citizen or non-citizen. The constitution is written saying what the government can and cannot do. And the idea that the government would treat citizens differently from non-citizens, that would have been laughable to them at the time because,

Shawn (41:59.023)
OOOOH!

Shawn (42:03.475)
DUDE!

Shawn (42:14.759)
Hang on, so just let's get clarity. You're political scientist. Let's talk in dumb, dumb layman terms so the guys like me can understand it. You're saying that there is no language in the Constitution, not the Bill of Rights, not nowhere, that says in order to be an American, there's a process of becoming a citizen. Back then, if you were here in America, you're American. Is that correct?

Matt (42:33.187)
No.

Matt (42:38.062)
And the only kind of restriction that they put on anything is they said that in order to be president of the United States, you have to have been, it's called the natural born clause. You have to have been born over here in the United States to be president of the United States. But they did that's in the constitution only to be president, right? So you can't be a naturalized American. If you're not born in the US, you can't be president of the United States. That's the only thing.

Shawn (42:55.197)
That's in the Constitution.

Shawn (42:59.42)
Okay.

Shawn (43:07.507)
And is it true that it wasn't until many, many years later they started to explore, well, a lot of people are getting off, you know, getting on boats and coming over here. We better set up some places to kind of process these people, to scam for diseases, to start to organize our census. But it wasn't really a technical process of like, you a citizen or United States? Everyone could come, right? Anyone could come.

Matt (43:07.648)
even remotely close to that.

Matt (43:25.954)
Yeah, listen.

The census starts in 1790, right? The constitution.

Shawn (43:35.121)
Why do you know that? What's so nerdy that you know that?

Matt (43:38.456)
The US Constitution is ratified in 1787 and the first census is in 1790 because in order to figure out representation for the House of Representatives, you have to know how many people live in which area.

Shawn (43:51.619)
Right, but my point in saying this is there's no like, like if, if today I get on a boat and I reach Ellis Island and I get off, I'm here. So I'm American citizen. may be have a disease, so I'm put over here in quarantine for a little bit. I'm still here, right? I'm still in the citizen right away.

Matt (44:07.256)
There was there was right. There was no such thing as citizen non-citizen. That doesn't happen until the late 1800s when Americans start getting mad about the migrants coming here and mostly it's the Chinese Exclusion Act and mostly.

Shawn (44:17.843)
So, Matt, so why isn't it clear to everyone in the United States, if that's the history, that the Constitution does apply to non-citizens?

Matt (44:27.352)
I have no idea why people don't know that. That's why I thought it was a silly question you were asking. Let's just like, for listeners, just think about it this way, okay? Imagine that somebody from Japan, he's not a US citizen, he's from Japan and he's visiting Disneyland. And let's imagine that somebody at Disneyland gets stabbed and killed. Would anybody say, the man who was in that area from Japan,

doesn't get the same rights as all of the other Americans that were in the vicinity. If we want to, we can plant evidence on the person from Japan. If we want to, we can violate all of the civil liberties of the person. If we want to, can put the man from Japan in jail and never tell them what they're charged with.

Shawn (45:07.475)
Can I improve upon your well-intended example? Okay, for you listeners out there who think that the Constitution only covers citizens, let's apply that to say you're visiting Russia or China. Let's say you, the listener, is visiting China. And one day, and you're...

law-abiding, you do nothing wrong and one day they knock on your door and then they kick it down and then they grab you and they put you in jail and they don't tell you why and there's no due process. You certainly would be like, look I'm a guest here maybe but are there not some rights? Are there not rights that I have protect? Of course you would want these rights. So why wouldn't you all, why wouldn't we as a country offer those to everybody? Right?

Matt (45:52.14)
Right. Well, and the reality is we do. So maybe China doesn't, maybe Russia doesn't, right? And there was that case where there was a woman in Italy where she was accused of murder and she felt like they were treating her unjustly. But in the United States, because I watch so much court TV, it's unthinkable that somebody would come to court and then they would say, I would like a trial by jury. And the judge would say, sorry, you're Japanese. You don't get a trial by jury. Or somebody would say, I've been sitting in prison for three months and I don't even know what I'm charged with. And they'd say,

sorry, you're not a US citizen, you don't get due process. Everybody in the United States gets all of the same legal protections because that's how you, the purpose of the Constitution is to protect the people in America from tyranny of the government. And so if you say the government can terrorize non-citizens, then somehow you're saying that the government has a license to treat some people differently than others, and that's the beginning of tyranny.

Shawn (46:48.931)
And in my research, Matt, what I found is even though the executive branch has broad power in this category, it's mostly a gray area. And there are so many, so many lawsuits, there are so many court cases that step in to draw the limits. And they really do limit the powers, right? It's constant and ongoing. And so often, so often the result is, yeah, you're not a citizen, but it doesn't matter, you have constitutional rights.

Matt (47:18.904)
Yeah, so this is what I want to say about this because what most people say when you when you look at what the Trump administration is doing and they say we need to find a historical parallel. We need to talk about how terrible this is and how awful this is then what they go to is Hitler and they go to what the Nazis did to Jewish people and they say do you want the Holocaust to happen again in the United States and I'm saying that's the wrong comparison in my opinion.

One of the greatest presidents of the United States is FDR because what he did for the American public with social security and all, people might not like it, but FDR created the modern government that we have today. Not only did he help rebuild like the international order we have that exists as post-World War II, but a lot of the social safety net we have today comes from FDR. But FDR will always be on my worst list of worst presidents ever because of the internment camps in World War II.

when we as a government said everybody of Japanese descent is gonna go live in an internment camp for all of World War II because we're not sure we can trust you and we're not sure if you're safe, right? To me, that's unforgivable. And to me, that puts him always on the list of worst presence. So what we need to worry about in the United States is not Hitler and not Nazism. We need to worry about us and the things that we've done in the past and make sure that we don't do them again. And so when...

Whenever the government says we have the right to identify threats in America and put them into detention centers without due process, every American should worry because that's the government saying we're going to ignore the Constitution for a time. And if you support that, then it's only a matter of time before you're the next group that they come after.

Shawn (49:06.509)
the of Matt, preach it. And what is the phrase, where does it come from, that we have inalienable rights? Where is that?

Matt (49:15.041)
That's in the Declaration of Independence.

Shawn (49:17.299)
Okay, is that like an official established canon doctrine for us in the United States? No?

Matt (49:24.046)
I mean, I do think we have inalienable rights, but we certainly haven't always protected those rights, right?

Shawn (49:30.929)
no but the but but if the principle that we believe in america is that human beings have inalienable rights including

the constitutional protections against search and seizure and due process, then if it's inalienable, then it doesn't apply to what you someone out, some of you out there would call it alien, right? In other words, they're God given. These are God given rights that we in America value. So we have to, we have to respect those laws. And in my opinion, Matt is look, if we failed and we let trillions of people in millions of people in, we failed they're here.

Matt (49:45.613)
Yeah.

Shawn (50:09.581)
We let them in. They shouldn't be punished for that, in my opinion. Let's definitely strengthen our borders, have a clean and fair process. Let's definitely get criminals out, right? But to me, yeah, I think that it's been a big mistake how the Trump administration has executed this.

Matt (50:26.828)
Alright, points to you, Sean.

Shawn (50:28.357)
No, points to you. You gave us a very heartfelt sermon on it. It awesome.

Matt (50:32.726)
Okay, so here's the big question. The Pew Research Center did a survey of Americans asking them what's immoral, what's moral, and I have to be honest, as I read the list, I'm like, Americans have lost their way. They don't seem to understand. They really don't seem to understand basic morality. But for the sake of conversation, for the sake of discussion, it seems like at a high level, our church's moral framework overlaps with Republicans on several issues like

Shawn (50:45.862)
no! Don't be a pessimist!

Matt (51:01.738)
sexual ethics such as opposition to abortion, pornography, same-sex marriage, where Democrats are generally more permissive about that stuff. They tend not to think it's as wrong. But the church also shares areas of alignment with Democrats on issues like greater concern about the morality of the death penalty and maybe sensitivity about issues about excessive wealth or maybe spanking children or something like that. Some people think that spanking kids is one of the most immoral things you could do.

But generally, the church does not fully align with either party. We think that drinking alcohol and gambling and using marijuana are wrong, where members of both parties think that that's okay. So the question is this, many church members identify with a political party because they believe that the party supports their moral views, but at best, that's only partially true. So if no party is gonna completely represent my views,

How do I choose which party to join?

Shawn (52:07.111)
To me, I'm just going to preach from scripture. There's some really good, like I think the core principle here is agency. The core principle isn't let's analyze the current Democrat party and try to find scripture that proves whether they're more righteous or more fully righteous. That's not the principle is agency. This is a key doctrinal foundation, moral agency. So I love Revelation 3.15 that says, I the Lord know thy works, that they are neither

hot nor cold, but lukewarm. And because they're neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, I spew thee out of my mouth." And then early in the Old Testament, Elijah in 1 Kings 18, 21, I think it is, he goes to the children of Israel who are worshiping nobody. They weren't worshiping God, and they weren't worshiping the popular religion of the day under the god Baal. And so Elijah comes and says, how long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, then follow him. But if Baal, then follow him, essentially reiterating the Lord does not want us to be passive decision makers.

The Lord does not want us to allow others to send the winds of doctrine this way, and I'm blown that way. And then it blows over this way, and I'm blown that way. Like it is such an important principle that God wants us to choose. And some of us, if we choose right, and some of us choose left, he prefers that over what I think so many of us today do and go, well, I think I'm a Republican traditionally, so I'm just gonna form all my opinions based on what the Republicans.

That is the most lukewarm, spit-you-the-out-of-my-mouth attitude. And so I think this is a moral, it is, moral agency is the principle here. How do you decide? It's up to you, Matt. How do you decide? It's completely up to you. Use your moral agency, make a decision, commit to it, stop being lukewarm, Matt.

Matt (53:48.312)
Well that's good, Sean.

Matt (53:54.67)
So President Oaks would say we should switch back and forth. If there's a Republican that meets my views, I should support that Republican. And if there's a Democrat that meets my views, I should vote for that Democrat and I should go just back and forth. But President Oaks' training is in the legal profession. President Oaks is trained as a lawyer and a judge. And my training is more on like the political parties, elections side of things. And to me,

Shawn (54:16.275)
Okay.

Shawn (54:22.737)
OK.

Matt (54:23.564)
The idea that I switch back and forth who I vote for is a losing proposition. Because switching back and forth and vote, what I'm saying is voting is not where your power is. Your power is getting in the party and changing the political party to match your views. So for example, if I live in Idaho, which I do, and the Democratic Party is advancing like,

Shawn (54:29.437)
Yeah, that makes sense.

Matt (54:51.092)
ideas about moral issues that differ from me. And I say, I don't like what all those liberals in San Francisco are doing. It doesn't matter because the Democrats in Idaho get to be whatever I decide the Democrats in Idaho stand for. And the way that I make them my party is I go organize people and I get them to vote as Democrats. And then they're my party. And then the Democrats in Idaho support whatever issues I decide that they support.

Same thing with the Republicans in Idaho, by the way. If the Republicans in Idaho are doing things that I don't like, then I don't have to say, I'm a Republican, I guess I'll go along with them, even though I disagree with them. You say, I'm a Republican, and I'm gonna mobilize people who agree with me, and we're gonna take over that party, and we're gonna make it what we want it to be. So when you say lukewarm, what I say the answer is you have to choose. You're either in it or you're out of it.

And if you're in it, you gotta get all the way in it and you choose your party based on the strategic advantage you will have with one party versus the other party. And if you're out of it, then get out of it and stop formulating all of your opinions based on what the parties tell you they think or you should think. That's what I'm saying. You're either in or you're out.

Shawn (56:05.733)
Woo! that's a lot to think about. That's heavy, dude.

Matt (56:09.838)
So I can think about this, Sean. What was the Republican party before Trump became the nominee? Something totally different than it is now, right? And what is...

Shawn (56:17.085)
Totally, completely different. Okay, so you, so you, your theory is you think Donald Trump did the right thing. He's the perfect example of what to do in politics.

Matt (56:25.57)
Yes, Trump made the Republican Party his. And by the way, he didn't just choose it willy nilly. He looked at the Reform Party in the year 2000. He was registered as a Democrat. He used to give money to Democrat candidates and to Republican candidates. And he said, here is an opportunity for me to go all in on the Republican Party and to take it over and to make it mine. And he saw an opening with evangelicals like Trump in terms of abortion doesn't care, but he saw that these people care about abortion.

If I give them what they want on abortion, I get everything else I want. And he made that choice and he took the party and he made his own.

Shawn (57:00.753)
Yeah. So you think, even though you disagree with lot of what Trump does, his administration does, you think that his execution of political science has been probably the best in the last hundred years.

Matt (57:13.018)
I would say Obama did the same thing in the Democratic party. So I would say it's not like Trump, what Trump did, what Obama did, by the way, Biden did not do that, right? What Reagan did, Reagan took the Republicans and made it his own. Nixon took the Republicans, made it his own. Jimmy Carter for a time, made the Democrats his own, but they didn't like it. So they chose Bill Clinton later on. So, and I'm just choosing presidents, but the same thing happens on the local level. So what I'm saying is this idea that we say,

I've got to decide between these two groups. Who agrees with me the most? No, you either get in or you're out.

Shawn (57:46.087)
Okay, so you're saying in that scripture, since you're failing to bring in any latter-day lens here, I'm just kidding, Matt. I'll bring it in for you. You're saying the scripture that says there are two types of beings, there's those that act and those that are acted upon. You're saying let's stop being, so the acted upon being says, I better pick one of those parties so that they can define for me what my political beliefs are. Instead, be the acting and say,

Matt (58:02.082)
Yes.

Shawn (58:14.853)
I've got my set of values that I'm informed either from my religion or just my experiences. And I need to go, since these parties have all the power, I need to go infiltrate a party and I need to act upon it and form it in my own image.

Matt (58:27.308)
Yes.

Yeah, and that's what they all do. By the way, I had somebody in my office two days ago talking about how they wanted my help recruiting conservative Republicans to be in these various positions in the political party. And I'm like, everybody I know is a conservative Republican. They're like, well, not the right kind of conservative Republican. I'm like, right, that's the fight you want to have with people. And so if I care, then I'm going to find my kind of conservative Republican and we're going to go in and we're going to fight with you in elections. We're going to fight with you at party meetings.

and we're gonna decide what it means to be a Republican in my community and in my state and then in the nation. And the way you decide, the way you win, the way you decide what it means to be a Republican is you win elections. And when you win elections, then everybody conforms their views to match your own, right? So Republicans are Trump right now because Trump wins elections. And so far, Mitt Romney doesn't win, Jeff Flake doesn't win, the woman from Wyoming, right, Cheney doesn't win.

Shawn (58:59.315)
I like it.

Matt (59:28.962)
That brand doesn't win. So if you want to change the Republican party, you either need to get voters in that'll help you win, or you need to go to the Democrats. Maybe the Democrats will let you in, change the Democratic party. But don't just sit there and let the other parties tell you what you believe. And don't do what most people do when they say, well, I am a Republican and this is what they say and that seems to match what the church says, so I'm gonna decide what I believe based on what all of my Republican friends tell me I ought to believe, or Democrat friends.

Shawn (59:58.205)
preach it. Matt, there's my political scientist, my Christian political scientist. is, that's wise, dude. I love that message. Definitely points to you, not that we get points for this one, but well said, man. I love it. We got to end on that because that's just powerful.

Matt (01:00:14.356)
Awesome. Hey everybody, thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you again next week.