Andrew Klavan dismisses Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign as a potential Clinton conspiracy, arguing he’s "doing a great job" at self-sabotage—citing his flip-flops on healthcare, gun control, and even praising Hillary, plus foreign policy gaffes like confusing the nuclear triad. He slams evangelicals like Jerry Falwell Jr. for blindly comparing Trump to Reagan while ignoring his lack of conservative values, and condemns intra-GOP infighting, including Trump’s attacks on Fox News. Concluding Trump is unqualified and divisive, Klavan urges conservatives to reject him, framing the election as a test of principle over chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
Donald Trump has decided to skip the last Fox News debate, and the reaction from the other candidates has been immediate.
Jeb Bush immediately burst into tears, saying, quote, this isn't fair.
The nomination was supposed to be mine.
I was next, and everyone was supposed to support me.
I had it all planned.
I was going to run against Hillary and lose because I'm boring and out of touch.
And then I was going to blame the electorate for not showing up and then spend the rest of my life giving advice to other Republican candidates on how they could lose, just like John McCain and Mitt Romney, unquote.
Governor Bush was later arrested lurking outside Marco Rubio's campaign bus with a butcher knife.
He was carted away screaming, I hate that lousy Cuban.
He took my soul.
He took my life.
Daddy, Daddy, I'm sorry I disappointed you.
Actually, I'm not sure there was a reaction to Donald Trump, but it's probably a reaction to something, possibly medication.
On hearing the news about the debate, Senator Ted Cruz said that he and Trump should settle the matter directly by going off together behind Pa's barn and measuring their IQs to see whose was bigger.
And Marco Rubio asked for increased security in case there were more crazy guys lurking outside his bus with knives.
All in all, Donald Trump found the reactions of the other candidates satisfactory and told reporters, quote, frankly, I am the Lord of chaos, the maker of darkness, and the master of the evil powers.
Earth is my domain, mankind is my plaything, and God himself will regret expelling me from my seat in heaven when I have laid waste to his creation.
After his statement, Trump's poll numbers immediately went up 10%.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Klavan, and this is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Who knew the fall of the republic was going to be this much fun?
You know, I was worried.
I was worried like a Caesar would get assassinated outside the Senate, you know, and there'd be Mark Antney making, there'd be riots in the street and this big civil war.
I thought, you know, I thought I'd end up like, you know, cutting my wrists like Cato, you know, and people would all have to die and all that.
No, no, no.
It's a reality TV show.
It's hilarious.
You know, it's great.
It's like, I'm going to binge watch the end of democracy.
It's going to be like Netflix and chill.
The country goes down, but at least I got my baby with me, you know?
It's great.
All right.
So there's been some hilarious, nutty stuff going on in the culture with political correctness.
And I hope I've been trying to get to it all week, and there's just been so much stuff going on.
May not get to it today, but I'll try to.
But first, let me talk about the Donald Trump thing, because whether or not, whether or not he ends up doing this debate, and he's bluffed about this before, but whether or not he does it, I feel I want to give my take on what he has already accomplished, because he really has accomplished something.
If Donald Trump is, as some people have, you know, suggested in a paranoid way, if he is a Bill and Hillary plant set to destroy the Republican Party and the conservative movement, he is doing a great, great job.
I mean, if Bill and Hillary, you know, just kind of together, like rubbing their hands together, I have an idea.
We'll send Donald Trump like a bowling ball down the alley to knock down all these Republicans and conservatives.
I think he is doing great.
I think Trump has done really, he really has.
He's done a great job.
I'm going to parse it.
Fox's Press Release Tease00:05:02
I'm just going to take it apart and show you why I feel that Trump, his major success, and probably his only success, because the numbers sort of show that he couldn't win the presidency if he got nominated.
But I think his major success has been real damage, real damage to both the Republican Party and the conservative movement that lives inside the Republican Party and that I feel that I'm a small part of.
So the final debate is coming up.
I think it's going to be Thursday, right?
And Trump is complaining about Megan Kelly.
And Megan Kelly gets in his craw because she asked him some tough questions about his treatment of women, and she didn't back down, and he's been saying these horrible things about her.
He's made all these borish, terrible remarks about her.
Everything's personal with Trump.
You know, he was treated this way, and therefore you stink.
You know, that's basically the Trump script.
You know, you did this to me, or you're threatening me, and I hate you, and you stink.
And so he calls her a third-rate reporter, says she's not very good at her job.
She really does an excellent job, Megan Kelly.
And Megan Kelly has not backed down, and she's obviously a very beautiful woman, and she's kind of mocked him.
No man likes being mocked by a beautiful woman.
That's Ann Coulter's entire career.
It's like why the left hates her so much.
She makes fun of them, and she's good looking.
And so she really sticks in Trump's crawl.
And so he's complained about her and he wanted her to be gone.
Fox News said there's no way she's showing up for the debate.
Then, then Fox put out a press release in which they tease Donald Trump about the sensitivity of the way he's being treated because he's always saying, I want to be treated fairly, fairly.
So Fox News puts out a press release.
Let me see if I can find what it says.
It says, we learned from a secret back channel, this is the press release, that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president.
A nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.
Okay, so they're teasing him on the way he's running his campaign and on his sensitivity.
So Trump reacts exactly like you'd expect him to react.
We have a cut of Trump reacting to that press release.
No.
With me.
That's lying.
They're dealing with somebody that's a little bit different.
They can't toy with me like they toy with everybody else.
So let them have their debate and let's see how they do with the ratings.
And I told them, I said, give money to the wounded warriors, give money to the veterans.
They're going to make a fortune with the debate.
Now let's see how many people watch.
We'll have our own event.
We'll raise some money for the wounded warriors.
We'll raise money for the events.
But when they sent out the wise guy press releases a little while ago, I was all set to do the debate.
I came here to do the debate.
When they sent out the wise guy press releases a little while ago, done by some PR person along with Roger Ailes, I said, bye-bye, okay?
Bye-bye, okay?
So let's just look.
I mean, first of all, there were a bunch of reactions.
Ted Cruz did react by saying, I'll just debate Donald personally one-on-one.
My favorite reaction, though, came from Chris Matthews, because one of Trump's threats is if he doesn't show up for the debate, Fox won't have any ratings.
He feels he's the motor, the engine of the ratings.
So here's Chris Matthews from MSNBC.
This was his reaction.
Who's going to watch a debate between the two Cuban guys?
Who's going to watch a debate between Rubio, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz?
Who cares?
Because, you know, they've been sort of fighting it in this little interleague fight.
There's the hawkish guy or whatever.
Who's going to watch that Thursday night?
Maybe I'm building it up too much.
You know, first of all, if a right-wing reporter said that, he'd be out of our job.
Who cares about these two Cuban guys?
You know, it's two United States senators.
One of them has been to every Ivy League school in the country.
He's a genius, Ted Cruz.
And Rubio is like, you know, a very powerful, intelligent figure.
The Cubans, hooray, the Cubans.
That was his reaction.
I like this.
But as a strategy, what Cruz is doing, what Trump is doing, Trump is a good strategist.
He has a good visceral feel for the political landscape.
And what he's doing is not, it's not that strange.
Frontrunners, people who feel that they're the frontrunners, and Trump has every reason to feel that he's the frontrunner, they a lot of times don't want to debate.
You have nothing to win.
If you're the frontrunner, you have nothing to win in a debate, and you only can lose.
You can only lose ground because you're already ahead, and you might slip.
The other guy might take you apart.
Why put yourself up to that attack?
The reason frontrunners usually show up at the debate is because they have a respect for the democratic process.
They don't want to seem to be dissing the process where we have open, free debates, and the people can see them and choose.
They don't want to look like that.
And they don't want to be embarrassed.
They don't want to be embarrassed to look like cowards.
When would anyone think that Trump would ever be embarrassed by anything at all, especially on principle?
Believe in Limited Government00:15:31
And when would anybody think that the principles of the Democratic Republic mean anything to him?
So what he's doing strategically, okay, is perfectly intelligent.
Drudge is running a story saying that Reagan skipped the last debate before Iowa, so there's a precedent and all this stuff.
And it's just something that candidates do when they feel they're ahead.
But let's just stop for just a moment and look at the reactions and look at a lot of the reactions going around around Trump before this, whether he shows up at the debate or not.
And before I look at that, I just want to reiterate why I oppose Donald Trump.
I don't just oppose Donald Trump.
I despise Donald Trump, and I really dislike him.
And I just want to put it all together.
And I know you've heard some of this stuff before, but I just want to say it clearly so you understand what it is I'm talking about.
Three reasons I oppose Donald Trump.
One, he's not a conservative.
I believe, I don't believe in small government because this is a huge country.
We need a big government.
That's fine.
I believe in limited government.
I believe in government that only has the powers enumerated in the Constitution and all other powers belong to the states and all other powers belong to the people.
You know, that's what I believe in because it makes individuals free.
And I believe that living free is the only reason to live.
That if you're not a free man, I mean, look, you can be a free man even under tyranny, but it means you have to face death.
It means you have to face imprisonment.
To be free and not have to do that is a wonderful thing, a beautiful thing, and I think that's the best thing about our country.
It is what defines our country.
And so I want the Constitution to be in place.
I'm a libertarian on most social issues for the very same reason, the very same reason.
I don't think the government should have the power to tell you who to love, who to marry, what to do.
You know, whether you think it's right or wrong, it's not the question.
It's not the question.
It's who decides whether it's right or wrong.
If I want to try and convince you not to do something, that's fine.
But I don't believe the government should have the power to stop you.
And the only exception to this is abortion because it involves a third party, a life who's helpless and may need the government's protection.
I don't believe that actually is a social issue.
I believe abortion is a legal issue.
Okay, so that's where I stand.
And I don't think Trump supports any of those things.
Let's take a look.
I'm sorry for the danger music on this.
Somebody compiled this video of several things that Trump has said before the campaign began, over the years.
Everybody's got to be covered.
This is an un-Republican thing for me to say.
Universal health care.
I am going to take care of everybody.
Who pays for it?
The government's going to pay for it.
The government's going to pay for it.
This tax would raise approximately $5.7 trillion.
In many cases, I probably identify more as a Democrat.
I hate the concept of guns.
I'm not in favor of it.
Why are you joining the Reform Party?
I really believe the Republicans are just too crazy right.
I mean, hey, I lived in New York City or Manhattan all my life, okay?
So, you know, my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa.
Perhaps.
Partial birth abortion.
Would President Trump ban partial birth abortion?
Well, look, I'm very pro-choice.
But you would not ban it?
No.
Or ban partial birth abortion?
No, I would.
I am pro-choice in every respect.
This is an un-Republican thing for me to say.
Who do you think would be the best qualified to make a deal with Iran?
Hillary's always surrounded herself with very good people.
I think Hillary would do a good job.
Make a deal with Iran.
Well, I think Hillary would do a good job.
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker.
And I'm very impressed by her.
I think she's a very impressive person.
I like her a lot.
Okay.
So, you know, and you can say, well, he said those things because he needed to make peace with the Democrats because he was a developer in New York.
But if he would say anything and support anything to make his business go well, why wouldn't he say anything to get elected president?
So why is what he's saying now any different than what he was saying then?
All right, that's number one.
He's not a conservative.
Number two, he's not a knowledgeable person in important ways, okay?
You know, he doesn't know about the nuclear triad of the linchpin of our defense.
was confused about who's fighting in Iran and Iraq.
And people say, well, you know, I don't know those things either.
He talks like me.
He talks like me, you know?
That's a bad argument.
It's a bad argument.
Let's say you were falsely accused of murder.
Let's say you're on trial for your life.
And your lawyer comes in and he says, look, I don't know much about the law, but you look like a good guy.
The judge is a loser.
I'm going to make you a great deal.
Just trust me, I'm going to make you a great deal.
You wouldn't say, well, gee, I don't know much about the law either.
So, you know, he talks like me.
He's one of us.
He's one of us.
You know, the president's not supposed to be one of us.
The president is supposed to know his job.
He's not supposed to know your job better than you know your job.
He's supposed to know his job better than you know his job, okay?
The president has to know this stuff.
He doesn't, you know, I'm not into this kind of gotcha stuff where you ask him, you know, the president of Timbuktu, and he doesn't know who the Secretary of State in, you know, Gowalla Land is.
You know, that's ridiculous.
But Trump does not know basic stuff, basic stuff that the president has to know.
I mean, he may be a good businessman.
There's a real question about that.
When you look at how many of his business dealings have failed, there's a real question about whether he's a good businessman.
When you look at how much money he inherited and how much money he has now, there's a question about whether he's as good a businessman as he says he is.
But let's say he is.
Let's say he's a good businessman.
Let's say he's a good politician.
He's still, when it comes to his political IQ, he's an idiot.
And those things matter when you're the president of the United States.
So that's number two.
He doesn't know stuff.
He's not a conservative.
He doesn't know what a president needs to know.
And number three, he's a bore.
And when I say this, I don't mean that he doesn't know which fork to use.
I mean, I'm a person, I will tell you straight out, I'm a person who has literally dined with lords and ladies and has dined with ordinary folks.
I love them both.
I have no problem with either of them.
I don't care whether you know what fork to use.
He's a bore in the way that he treats people.
He's a bore in the things that, the way he attacks people.
You know, a lot of people are saying, well, he attacks the right people.
That's only half true.
He attacks everyone who offends or threatens Donald Trump, including the right people.
Okay?
And so we conservatives who have felt dissed for so long by the media and have felt excluded by the sophisticates and the people in New York and the people in LA who make fun of us and make movies about what idiots we are and write books about what terrible things our heroes did and all this stuff.
We're so angry that when he unleashes this cruelty on people, we think, yeah, yeah, that's what he fights for.
Listen, the president has to go and be a statesman.
He has to go and talk to the country and he presents the country.
He presents the country to the rest of the world.
I don't want a president who's a bore, who takes everything personally, who takes everything about whether it's about Donald Trump or not and how Donald Trump is treated.
This is a great country, still a great country.
It's in trouble.
There's no question about that.
Still a great country.
He's supposed to represent the best of us.
And let me tell you something.
I have made a very good living in very tough business all my life.
I've negotiated with people who, so help me, if they could climb in my window and cut my throat for a dollar, would have done it, okay?
You don't have to raise your voice.
A couple of years ago, I was on the phone with a friend of mine, a guy I love like a brother, and he was just being such a pain in the neck that I finally got angry at him and I raised my voice.
And when I hung up the phone and walked into the bedroom, my wife, who can be a very funny person, had the covers over her head.
I said, what's that about?
She said, you raised your voice, you know?
Like, I lived with this woman 40 years.
She's never heard me raise my voice.
He literally has never heard me raise my voice.
You do not have to do that.
All you have to do is stand your ground.
And you can win every fight that matters.
And you can compromise when you have to compromise.
You can stand on principle.
You do not have to treat people the way this guy treats people.
And that is not the country you want this to be.
You may want it to be when you're looking in the bathroom mirror and screaming about Obama, but that's not the country you want it to be when he goes out in front of the world.
So those are my three reasons why I not only oppose this guy, but despise him.
I think he's detestable.
I don't think he is somebody that we should even be thinking about as the president of this country, of the country that Washington was president in, the country that Lincoln was president of, the country that Reagan was president of.
This is not his office.
It does not belong to him, and we shouldn't even be thinking about it.
So now I look around.
I look around at the people that I know and love and respect so much who work in this business and who make and provide and write about conservative opinion.
And some of them, and some of them are seriously people, I would give them the shirt off my back.
Some of them have fallen into this Donald Trump cult.
And it really is painful.
And some of them I've told them to their face.
And some of them, I just can't bring myself to do it because I know they'll never speak to me again.
I want to have their friendship.
And I know it wouldn't change them.
Some of them say, well, he's just the news.
He's what people want to hear about.
So we're talking about him.
We're covering him.
And they give this thing about how he attacks the right people.
He attacks Hillary.
He's not afraid.
And I just think they're going down the wrong road.
They are going down.
They have made a serious mistake.
But also, they have started, and a lot of us have started, to turn on each other.
National Review the other day put out an issue.
National Review, one of the kind of cornerstones of intellectual conservatism, put out a review, put out an issue against Trump.
And it was all these different voices from Glenn Beck to Mona Charon to Kevin Williams.
Jonah Goldberg ranging the spectrum of intellect and of appeal and of different parts of conservatism stating their reasons why they were against Donald Trump.
And all I've heard from conservatives is, oh, you know, they were contradictory and National Review has made mistakes and their National Review is outdated and they were intellectual snobs.
And let me tell you, I know a lot of the people at National Review and really like them a lot.
And they are intellectual snobs.
I'm still picking up.
Kevin Williamson once talked me into reading this book, Infinite Jest, which is a book that all these intellectuals love, a thousand pages.
It took me months to read this book.
I said to him, you know, one day I'm going to get you back for this.
But that's who he is.
He is an intellectual guy.
He's also a brilliant guy.
And if sometimes intellectuals tend to be a little snooty, I know that.
We all have our flaws.
But the point is, they're right.
They're right.
And that's the only thing that matters.
Will that issue help or hurt?
I don't know.
I think it's a drop in the bucket.
It'll do some good.
It'll send some ideas out there that we need to hear.
But, you know, sometimes when every husband knows that sometimes when he gets in a discussion with his wife, she's going to say to him, well, you may be right, but I don't like the way you said it.
Who cares how I said it?
I'm right.
I'm right back.
People who are 80% your friend, as Reagan used to say, are not 20% your enemies, okay?
National Review did what they could do to stand against a guy who is undermining the principles that they stand for.
We should be supporting them.
And then there's this stuff that's happening in the evangelical community, which is a deeply, deeply important part of the conservative movement.
I don't agree with everything the evangelicals say, but that doesn't matter.
They're certainly part of this tent.
They belong in this tent.
Jerry Falwell Jr., son of Jerry Falwell Sr., came out and compared his support of Donald Trump, which has been tacit because he's part of a school and he can't support Trump outright without losing his tax deductions.
But he said he compared his tacit support for Trump to his father's support for Ronald Reagan.
Listen to what he said.
My father was criticized for supporting Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter because Ronald Reagan was a Hollywood actor who had been divorced and remarried.
Jimmy Carter was a Sunday school teacher.
And my father said, he said proudly that Jesus said, render unto Caesar, and that means be good citizens, be voting citizens.
And he said, when I go into voting booth, I'm not electing a Sunday school teacher or a theologian or somebody who agrees with my theological views.
I'm voting for the person who is most qualified to be the president of the United States.
And the qualities that are required to be the president are not always the same ones that make a good Sunday school teacher.
Prime example of that is Jimmy Carter.
He was a great Sunday school teacher, but look what he did to our country as president.
Now, that comparison is completely spurious, completely ridiculous.
Ronald Reagan was a principled and educated conservative.
He had gone around making speeches for General Electric.
He'd been governor of California.
He had a governing philosophy that was in relation to great writers, the Constitution, ideas that had been around for hundreds of years that he represented in his personable, actorly way.
Trump has no relationship to the Constitution.
He's never read the writers that Reagan read.
I don't know what it is, some personality thing that seems to appeal to these guys.
But then Sarah Palin went down that rabbit hole and endorsed him.
And Ralph Reed points out that she is another character who influences the evangelicals.
Play him.
Where Palin can be a validating voice, particularly, well, really for anybody.
You look at her endorsements in 2010 and 12 and 14, whether it was Ted Cruz in Texas or Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Rand Paul in Kentucky or Marco Rubio in Florida.
She clearly was a factor in every one of their victories.
For Trump in particularly, she helps validate him with evangelicals and Tea Party activists.
Now, here's the thing about this.
What to me violates the evangelical creed here is the Bible verse, put not your trust in princes, neither in any human being who can save you.
Human beings can't save you.
Put not your trust in princes.
You don't follow Sarah Palin.
You don't follow Trump's personality.
You follow the principles.
And, you know, Falwell Jr. is right.
It's not about following a guy who reads the Bible.
It's not about following a guy as a Christian.
It's about a guy who's going to be a good president of this country.
And I don't understand what policy Trump supports, what policy we can trust him to support.
And what about his behavior as a human being in public causes them to think that this guy could be a good president?
You know, saying that he's a generous man and that he gives money away, I'm sure he does.
But I do not understand what the evangelicals are talking about.
I think that they are turning away from their principles to follow this man like a lot of the writers that I'm talking about.
And finally, there's the establishment.
You know, we on the right complain about the establishment.
We complain that they are empty of principle and that they betray our principles all the time.
And their answer has been traditionally, we have to compromise because it's a big party and most of the party is not on the far right.
Most of the party is on the center right and we have to compromise to win.
The last two elections, presidential elections, they put up their candidate and they lost.
And if they had had their way and put up Jeb Bush and Jeb Bush had had a successful campaign, which right now it doesn't look like he's had, they would have lost again.
Okay, so they don't have a magic formula for winning, and that has made us distrust them.
It's made us distrust them that they have gotten up, said they were going to do things, kind of done this kampuki theater of right-wing posing and then caved to everything that Obama does.
Now they're saying, well, we'd rather have Trump than Cruz.
We'd rather have Trump than a principled conservative in Cruz.
And nobody can say that Cruz is afraid.
Nobody can say he's not tough.
He's just not a boar.
Why We Prefer Trump00:02:46
He just stands up for what he stands up for without raising his voice and without yelling at people and insulting them personally.
That kind of proves that the establishment is as empty as we said it was.
If they had said we don't like Trump or Cruz, we're sticking with Bush, we're sticking with Rubio, I'd have said, okay, at least they're sticking by their guns.
But to get on the Trump bandwagon, this guy who has nothing of our principles, nothing of our principles, he's a Democrat.
He's a Democrat.
So you've got evangelicals divided.
You've got kind of rank and file writers fighting the intellectuals in the movement.
Now, finally, you've got Trump turning on Fox News, making Fox News the enemy.
And let me say this about Fox News.
You can criticize Fox News.
I criticize Fox News.
This stuff on Fox News drives me crazy.
Before Fox News, there was nothing.
Before Rush and Fox News, there was nothing.
Walter Cronkite used to get on the air every morning, every evening.
This left-wing one-worlder used to get on the air every evening and tell us the news and say, that's the way it is.
He was the most trusted man in America.
That's the way it is.
And people believed him because there was no Fox News.
People believed him because there was no, what they thought was the default news was left-wing news, okay?
So now Trump has got us divided against Fox News.
So he's got the evangelicals turning away from their principles to follow a person.
He's got the intellectuals in the rank and file on the right fighting with each other over how they speak and what they say rather than on principle.
He's got us turned against Fox News and people are saying, oh, he's outflanked Fox News.
Ha ha ha.
This bastion of right-wing popular news, which is not to be taken lightly, because remember, it wasn't there before and it could go away tomorrow.
If Donald Trump had been invented in a lab by Bill and Hillary Clinton, if he were a golem called up from the deep by Bill and Hillary Clinton and set out like a wrecking ball to destroy the conservative movement and the Republican Party in which the conservative movement lives, he could not be doing any better.
He could not be doing any better.
And shame on us.
Shame on us when we let the differences between us, and there are legitimate differences, but when we let those trump our principles, when we let our anger trump our patriotism, when we let Trump trump the people that we're supposed to be and the things we stand for, you know, I really think this guy is doing a great job at this, and we ought to stop.
We ought to think.
And those of us who have gotten on his bandwagon, really who are smarter than that, there's nothing wrong with saying, oops, you know, I made a mistake and turning away from it and going back the other way.
Why We Should Support Him00:03:19
This guy is not our guy.
He is not our guy.
He's not anybody's guy.
He's not America's guy.
And I don't think he could win a general election.
And if he did, I think it would be a disaster.
So, all right.
I just wanted to state that as clearly as I possibly could.
I don't want to hammer on Trump forever, but I did think as I was watching him, as I was watching the reactions to this debate thing, it really did make me feel like, wow, this guy is really doing a good job at what Bill and Hillary would want him to be doing.
All right, I had more to say about political correctness.
I hope I'll get to it tomorrow.
I want to end with stuff I like.
And, you know, I keep thinking about it.
Yesterday I talked about the Revenant.
And I keep thinking about this picture, and the more I think about it, the more I like it, the more I see that what it is, is it's a great work of Christian art.
I'm almost certain the director is a Catholic.
I'm certain that Catholicism informs the movie and is deeply invested in the movie.
It's a movie about the elemental reasons why we do things.
Everybody in it is doing this terrible violence for elemental reasons.
Even the bear acts for elemental reasons about the bear's family and the children and the little cubs and all this stuff.
Everybody is acting for elemental reasons.
And above all this is a God who's saying, stop paying attention to the elemental stuff and start paying attention to the love that is involved in these family relationships.
And that is a brilliant work of Christian art.
And one of the things that gets me is all great art used to be Christian.
When Milton was writing Paradise Lost, when Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel, when Bach was writing his music, that was the greatest art that has ever existed on earth.
I argue that Shakespeare himself was writing Christian art, but a lot of people think the opposite is true, so whatever.
But still, Christianity once inspired some of the greatest art ever.
And this is how it's done, not by preaching.
It's nothing wrong with the kind of rom-com Christianity movies like God is Not Dead and all that stuff.
I understand that's simple entertainment and gives people kind of reassurance and all that stuff.
But if you're talking about great art, this is the way it's done.
So I started to think, well, what else is out there?
And I couldn't think of anything else.
Maybe given a little bit more time, I will.
But I just wanted to recommend a book that I think is one of the best books I've ever read.
And a lot of people, you know, C.S. Lewis is just a great Christian writer.
And if you haven't read Mere Christianity and all the other stuff, the screw tape letters, then you should start with that.
But if you've read that stuff, and maybe you haven't looked at him in a while, this guy was a genius.
He wrote a book called The Weight of Glory, which he didn't even want to publish.
It's just all his speeches and some of his essays kind of strung together.
And it's not a long book.
I mean, it's under 200 pages, but it's just these speeches strung together.
I read it maybe last year or the year before, and every essay, I would think, that's the best essay I've ever read.
And then I read the next one and go like, actually, that's the best essay I've ever read.
And if you want to see the kind of thinking that can go into the Christian faith, that doesn't have to be what the philosopher Schopenhauer said Christianity had become banal optimism, banal optimism.
You know, just kind of this stupid, like, everything's going to be great.
You know, God works in mysterious ways.
You know, you want to see what real Christian thinking is.
You should read The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis's Work of Genius00:00:35
It is a work of genius.
That's one work of genius after another.
And, you know, that's the kind of thinking that I think informs this movie, The Revenant, which if you haven't seen it, you really should.
A beautiful film.
All right.
Well, I didn't get to everything, but I got to enough.
And at least I said what I had to say about this, because I wanted to get it all on one podcast so you could at least listen from beginning to end and hear what I'm saying, that I'm not just throwing sticks at this guy.
You know, there's something I'm really trying to say.