Andrew Clavin’s Ep. 273 skewers Congress as a ghost town while Trump’s agenda faces media backlash, framing political correctness as "mental slavery" that fuels bigotry—yet he condemns Milo Yiannopoulos’ trollish apologies as hollow. His novel Werewolf Cop mirrors his legal leanings, exploring monstrous duality, while he pivots to pastors’ roles and modern love’s chaos, arguing Austen’s courtship was simpler than today’s distractions. Clavin champions The Red Badge of Courage as a unifying myth, urging reconciliation over division in a fractured America. [Automatically generated summary]
Some of you may remember a popular series of books from the 80s and 90s called Where's Waldo.
Where's Waldo was a charming game for children starring a nerdy fellow named Waldo who wore a red striped t-shirt and hat, a pair of glasses, and an idiotic smile.
Each page would feature various crowd scenes filled with hundreds of people with Waldo hidden in the mob.
Your child would try to find Waldo in the picture while you sat quietly drinking yourself into a stupor and muttering about how your dreams for an exciting and accomplished life had devolved into this moment of meaningless boredom after which you finally lapsed into unconsciousness.
Maybe that was just at my house.
Anyway, today, Where's Waldo may be just a fond memory that your child likes to share with his psychiatrist.
But there's a new game that's been charming children and adults alike in Washington, D.C.
It's called Where's Congress?
In Where's Congress?
You look at a bustling American capital full of busy people.
The White House is jam-packed with new appointees drafting orders to cut back on regulations and limit the power of bureaucracies, as well as advisors and diplomats reasserting America's presence in the world.
The press room is filled with hard-working journalists, busy, busy, busy, making up lies about people they don't agree with and interviewing each other as anonymous sources in order to spread stories about Russian conspiracies while simultaneously acting shocked when they're called biased, dishonest, and corrupt.
But where's Congress?
Whatever happened to those lovable nerds with their striped ties and glasses and idiotic smiles who promised they were going to do all sorts of wonderful things just as soon as they got a Republican president to sign their bills for them.
Remember how they said they were going to cut taxes?
Where's Congress?
I can't find them anywhere in the Washington crowd.
Breaking Free of Political Correctness00:15:38
Remember how they passed all those fabulous bills repealing Obamacare during the Obama administration when they knew the bills would be vetoed so they had no responsibility for any actual results.
Where's Congress now?
As hard as I look, I don't see them.
Every so often, if you stand very still and listen very hard, you can hear a tiny, tiny voice that sounds a little like Paul Ryan saying, Obamacare is collapsing.
Obamacare is a disaster.
Obamacare is going to be repealed.
But where's Congress to actually pass the bill to repeal it?
I bet you could stare at the picture of Washington, D.C. for hours and hours and still not come up with an answer.
Boy, this is a fun game, isn't it?
Don't get me wrong.
The problem is not that gutless Republicans cowed by years of being brutalized by the media are now afraid to attach themselves to Donald Trump's agenda for fear the media will take him down and they'll go down with him.
No, if that were true, Congress would be hiding under a table, trembling in yellow terror.
Hey, wait, that's where they are.
I guess I win the game.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
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Life is tickety-boo.
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Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
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Yes, it's the Andrew Clavin Show where democracy dies in darkness.
Have you heard this?
This is the Washington Post's new slogan.
Democracy dies in darkness.
They say it has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
They just happen to want to have democracy.
I think that's almost right.
I think it should be the Washington Post, Journalism Dies in Self-Important Stupidity.
I think that would be a better slogan right under the masthead.
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All right.
So a lot of stuff happened yesterday.
And I kind of had a theme.
I think there was an actual theme to events.
The theme was political correctness versus evil.
You know, it's like the evil of political correctness.
Nobody hates political correctness more than me.
I've said this a million times, but political correctness is mental slavery.
It was intended to be mental slavery.
It was intended to make it impossible for you to criticize the crappy policies of the left.
So, you know, they do it all the time.
They impose these policies that make black people dependent on government handouts.
And then you say, hey, you've made black people dependent.
That's racist.
That's a racist thing to say.
You know, Obama becomes president and you say, oh, there's a black cloud moving over Washington.
You said black and cloud and you were a race.
You know, it's meant to make you think everything, think through everything you say until you feel like you're stepping on eggshells.
And it has created one of its worst aspects.
It has created this apology culture where every time, look, if you talk even as much as I do, if you're part of the media, you're going to be talking a lot.
It's a 24-7 news cycle.
You're going to say a lot of things.
Sometimes you're going to get things wrong.
You're going to say something you didn't quite mean.
You want to take it back later.
You want to adjust it or whatever.
But this constant shaming of people like the Stalinist show trials where you're supposed to stand in front of a microphone and hold your head down.
It's disgusting.
And we're all sick and tired of it.
And we all want to break free of this thing.
I wrote, I think it's in 2009, I wrote a review in the new criterion of John Darbyshire's book, The Derb, they used to call him.
Now, Darbyshire was really interesting because Darbyshire was an open racist.
He would say, you know, I believe that I believe that the science just shows basically that black people were inferior or whatever it was he believed.
And he would always say this.
He said there was no hatred attached to it.
He didn't think there should be any policies about it.
But he was just saying that that's what he thought.
He constantly said it.
And he was working at National Review.
And then one day he came out and for some reason it got some news and National Review fired him.
And I love the people at National Review.
I'm friendly with many of them.
I think it's a great, great magazine.
I think everybody should read it, but I thought they were wrong.
I thought they already had him.
He was saying what he was saying.
He was openly saying it.
There's no reason to suddenly get caught and then have to push him under the bus.
I reviewed his book, which was very funny.
I think it was called We're Doomed.
And let me just read you, because sometimes you say something and it's as well as you're going to say it, so there's no reason repeating it.
Let me just read you the first, the opening of my review.
I said, like many leftist nostrums, the doctrine sometimes known as political correctness accomplishes almost exactly the opposite of what it intends.
The general PC idea is that there is some effective virtue in believing that what is fair is also true.
If it seems good to us that all races should be of equal gifts and capabilities, or that any disparity and competencies between the sexes is the result of societal influences rather than genetics, well then we have only to close our lying eyes and think it so, and so it will someday be.
Anyone who allows any expression of doubt or disagreement to cross his mind or pass his lips must be shamed into silence.
The shame and silence themselves become instruments of the social change that will ultimately make the wished-for truth the truth indeed.
Yet rather than make the world less racist or sexist, political correctness only really serves to lend to both racism and sexism a glamour of individualism and honesty.
So thrilled are we when PC's tyrannical authority over our consciences is challenged by some direct expression of observation, common sense, or just good old-fashioned prejudice that we are startled into laughter.
It's as delightful as watching a nun sit on a fifth grader's tack.
So you can see immediately the moral hazard that occurs when people suppress something.
I think it was Coleridge said of Hamlet that what's suppressed comes back double.
It's also Freudian, the idea that the suppressed comes back with a vengeance.
Anything that's suppressed comes back with a vengeance.
And that is part of the problem, the moral hazard that we're facing now.
The thing about the left is the left sometimes seeds the field, but they also always leave landmines in the ground for you to blow yourself up on, right?
And they have this valley of lies that they live in, and then when they are chased off the valley of lies, they leave little landmines so that you blow yourself up.
Look, I've said this repeatedly.
I will say it again.
Bigotry is evil.
I think racism is evil.
Doesn't mean there's no difference between the races.
It doesn't matter.
This is God's world.
He made it.
We are instructed to love one another.
But it's not racist, for instance.
It's not racist to say there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood any more than it's racist to say a lot of blacks play basketball.
Good for them.
There's an old joke in, how does it go?
In heaven, the Germans are the philosophers, the French are the lovers, and the British are the police.
In hell, the British are the lovers, the French are the philosophers, and the Germans are the police.
There's a lot of different versions of that.
But different cultures create different levels of expertise.
Possibly there's a genetic component in there too.
I don't know.
And it means that when criminals turn up, because they will turn up in every race, they turn up in those areas.
You're going to find, you'll probably find a Jewish criminal being like Bernie Madoff before you find one mugging you on a dark street.
It's just where the cultures have led people to go.
But they're going to be good people and bad people, and they will partake of that culture and that narrative.
That's the way it goes.
That's not bigoted to say those things.
But the problem is the moral hazard, right?
The problem is that if you are suppressed in these honest expressions of observation, like there are a lot of Jews in Hollywood, that ultimately it becomes glamorous to attack people for being Jewish.
It becomes glamorous just to say, to dislike people, you know, which is insane.
First, just as a side note, it makes you unhappy.
I know people who are racist think they're gaining some kind of power, but it really makes you miserable over time because it's a horrible way to live.
I mean, really, it is a horrible way to live.
And if you can't tell the difference between making an occasional funny racial joke or making observations, racial observations, and really unleashing hate on people and hurting people, then it's easy.
Simply walk into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and slap yourself in the face because you're an idiot.
And I mean, you need to teach yourself the difference between being hateful and being honest.
But the thing is, the moral hazards that we're facing now are twofold.
One is this idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Ben wrote a really great piece for National Review.
I think it's also on our The Daily Wire thing.
He wrote a really good piece about that.
Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent piece about it in the LA Times.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a utilitarian statement.
It is true as a utilitarian statement.
If you have to defeat the Nazis, nothing wrong with teaming up with the Soviet Union.
It is, you know, to defeat the Nazis, of course.
It is not a moral statement.
That doesn't make the Soviet Union good people.
It doesn't make the Soviet Union philosophy good.
Soviet Union was one of the great cancers on the 20th century, a century riddled with cancers.
And we had to team up with them to defeat the Nazis, but that didn't mean they were right.
It had nothing to do with that utilitarian wisdom, had nothing to do with morality.
And that is true now.
The people who are dogging the left, we love them for dogging the left.
They may be right, they may be wrong, but we have to be able to tell the difference.
The other thing is this argument about the argument from hypocrisy.
The argument that the left, I mean, the left, they are hypocrites at a level I do not think the right even dreamed.
I don't even think we can aspire to the hypocrisy of the left.
I mean, they're racists who denounce racism.
You know, they're people who decide that if you are Clarence Thomas, you're not a good enough black person to go into the African American Museum.
I mean, it's insane racism.
They divide us by race.
And we who believe in the e pluribus unum, that we're all linked together by the great American idea, you know, they attack us for not dividing it.
They are racists who denounce racism.
They glamorize and forgive child molestation all the time.
You know, Roman Polanski, they make movies glamorizing child molestation.
The Reader the Woodman, I mentioned these the other day.
And then, you know, when somebody says something on the right, if they can shoot them down, suddenly they're all shocked.
Most of all, they have this thing about inclusion, which includes only those people who agree with them.
They are the most exclusionary people.
But, but, this is why I despise them, right?
So the argument that, well, they do it so we can do it, not so much.
You know, it has a little bit of validity.
I'll grant us a little bit of validity.
I'm not going to apologize for every piece of hypocrisy on the right or every piece of everything that they condemn.
I'm not going to apologize for anything, basically.
But I'm not going to use that as an argument to defend my positions.
My positions, we have to know what we believe.
We have to defend our positions from that.
So let's look at all of this at work.
I mean, it was really brilliantly illustrated in the news yesterday.
Should I pause here and say goodbye?
I think I must.
I'm going to pause here and say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but you can hear the rest of this, and it's going to be great at thedailywire.com, and that's where you can find the mailbag.
So yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security released details of how it's going to prosecute criminal and undocumented immigrants under Trump.
And basically, they're getting rid of Obama's immigration guidelines, and except for the ones that protect what I hate this term, the dreamers, the dreamers.
Kids who were brought over here, no fault of their own.
Everybody's got a little sympathy for them, so they're not going to be after them.
But the point is, they basically said, enforce the law.
This is enforcing the law.
So here is, I think we should, do you remember the Spice Girls?
And they had Scary Spice.
I think we should call Sean Spicer Scary Spicer.
It's not as cute as Scary Spice.
So here is, so immediately, immediately, the press is, oh, and the ACLU and all the Democrats, this is mass deportations.
So they ask Spicer, does this mean mass deportations?
Here's his response.
What we have to get back to is understanding a couple things.
There's a law in place that says, you know, if you're in this country illegally, that we have an obligation to make sure that the people who are in our country are here legally.
What the order sets out today is ensures that the million or so people that have been adjudicated already, that there's a, that ICE prioritizes, creates a system of prioritization, and makes sure that we walk through that system in a way that protects this country.
This is consistent with everything the president has talked about, which is prioritizing the people who are here, who represent a threat to public safety or have a criminal record.
And all this does is lay out the exact procedures to make sure that that subgroup of people who pose a threat to our nation because of a conviction or a violation of public safety or have a criminal record are adjudicated first and foremost.
That's it, plain and simple.
Okay, and just to be fair, here's the left's response.
Very succinctly, Boga.
The Left's Response00:13:55
I mean, you know, the ACLU is going, oh, this is un-American and the Statue of Liberty is crying and all this stuff.
But here's the thing.
It has nothing to do with race.
It has nothing to do with anything.
It has to do with the law.
It has to do with enforcing the law.
This has never been, immigration has never been one of my big issues.
I have sympathy for it and all this.
But if you're not going to enforce the law, if you're not going to enforce the law that are passed by our representatives, who decides which laws get enforced?
Okay?
If we want to open up our borders through the law, we can do that.
If we want to close them, make different rules, let more people in, let fewer people in, we can do all those things.
But if the law is in place and we're not going to enforce it, who decides?
If the president can simply decide we're not going to enforce the law as Barack Obama did, what is the difference between having a president and having a king?
I do not understand that.
If the law is just what he says it is, what's the difference?
Everybody, everybody's screaming about what an authoritarian Donald Trump is, and he's telling people to enforce the law.
This is a nation of laws.
The rule of law supersedes the rule of individuals.
That's the issue.
Nothing to do with race, nothing to do with kindness or loving compassion or any of those things.
If we think the laws are not compassionate, we should change the laws.
Again, Trump is reissuing his executive order about the travel ban.
It's a little different in that it exempts, it exempts green card holders, of course, as it should.
It also allows, the first executive order allowed refugees being persecuted on the basis of religion to receive special consideration for entry, and that doesn't do that.
And let's hear the Democrat reaction again to this.
Again, again, you know, it's about security.
It has nothing to do with race.
It has nothing, you know, it does have to do with philosophy.
There are bad philosophies, and certainly radical Islam is a bad philosophy.
It is bad from the beginning to the end.
Sharia law is bad.
It's all that this stuff is bad.
You know, it is bad, and we have to be careful about how much of it we let into our country because Trump is right.
They're having a tremendous problem.
You know, if people come in and they are not assimilated, if people come in and they are not Americanized, who was it who used to say?
Teddy Roosevelt used to say, Americanized.
If they're not Americanized, it ain't immigration, it's an invasion, right?
That's the difference.
That's how you can tell.
Okay, so now, you know, the reporters are going out.
So now, Donald Trump is at the African, every African-American except Clarence Thomas Museum.
Okay, this is the African-American accomplishment, except Clarence Thomas.
It comes with a little asterisk.
It was like Roger Maris's home run record has a little asterisk.
African-American achievement, ding, except for Clarence Thomas, because he's a conservative.
And Trump, it was kind of touching.
Trump was actually moved by it.
You could sort of see he really liked the museum and all this stuff.
And they asked him about anti-Semitism.
And the reason this has become an issue, there's several reasons this has become an issue.
The David Duke thing during the campaign where he didn't condemn the Ku Kux Klan fast enough.
The thing that happened at the press conference where the Jewish guy asked him a question.
I personally, I'm not making excuses for Donald Trump or for anybody, but I personally think Trump didn't understand the question he was being asked from the Jewish guy, and he got very, he thought he was being attacked and maybe he wasn't.
And just the sense, oh, and on the Holocaust memorial, his statement didn't include the word Jews.
And when they were asked about it, I think Scary Spicer said, you know, it's because other people were killed or something like this.
And the sense that has been created, whether it's true or not, the sense that has been created is that Trump is afraid to alienate those people on the right who are anti-Semites, especially on this alt, the alt-right.
And so he was finally asked directly about the increase in anti-Semitic crime that's been going on that's always going on.
There's always more anti-Semitic crime than any other religion, especially in this country.
And here was Trump's response.
Man, I think it's terrible.
I think it's horrible.
Whether it's anti-Semitism or racism or anything you want to think about having to do with the divide, anti-Semitism is likewise.
It's just terrible.
And you don't know where it's coming from, but I certainly hope they catch the people.
I think you maybe have had it for longer than people think, and maybe it gets brought up a little bit more, but I will tell you that anti-Semitism is horrible and it's going to stop and it has to stop.
Okay, that's pretty clear, but here was the left's response.
Am I being unkind to the left, maybe?
I don't know.
So, oh, it's too little too late.
The Anne Frank Center says it's too little too late.
No, no, no.
You know, he still said the wrong thing to this guy.
And my feeling about the left on all of this stuff is shut up.
You know, kiss off, pal, because here's the thing.
We don't know that Trump was playing to these evildoers on the alt-right.
We don't know that he was.
But let's say he was, and now he's figured that out, that that's not a good thing, and he's changed.
First of all, there can be no question about Trump's anti-Semitism.
His kids are Jewish.
He was just standing there with the head of the Jewish state, and Netanyahu's got this big wreath.
His face is wreathed in smiles because he's not dealing with Barack Obama anymore.
He's trying to kill him.
Now he's standing next.
He says there's no greater friend to the Jewish people.
Netanyahu should know, and he's not afraid to say when that's not true.
Nobody accuses Trump of genuine anti-Semitism.
So maybe he was fumbling the ball on this.
Let's say he was.
So now he's changed.
Now he figured it out.
The answer to that is hooray.
Congratulations.
Good for you.
Welcome to the, you know, welcome to the real world.
We're happy to have a president who denounces all kinds of racism.
I'm happy to have a president who denounces all kinds of racism.
He doesn't have to apologize.
He doesn't have to sit there like it's a show trial.
And these are good things.
These are good things.
Trump has had a great week.
He's made a great appointment.
He's doing the things he promised he would do.
I'd like to go back to my opening and ask, where's Congress?
Where's the tax cut?
Where's the Obamacare repeal?
They really are dropping the ball on this.
But this apology culture is despicable.
We don't want to see it from Trump.
You know, he has to make corrections when he's wrong.
We all have to make corrections when he's wrong.
But he doesn't have to shame himself and he doesn't have to go out and whip himself for things that he might have done.
Now, let's compare this once again.
We have to go back to Milo.
We're going to talk to Nolte probably tomorrow about Milo.
But I do have to go back to this because now Milo, the story has advanced.
And I think it's an important story because I think Milo is an important figure because of this political correct slavery that he's trying to break through and that he's stumbled on.
So now Milo has quit Breitbart.
And basically what he says is he apologizes, he explains his remarks.
The point was that he was raped at 13 and he was kind of talking about what that meant to him.
But he realizes that he said it in such a way that seemed to condone, you know, child molestation, pedophilia.
And he apologizes and he says he's going to continue to be the major cultural figure he is.
I regret the things that I said.
I don't think I've been as sorry about anything my whole life.
And this isn't how I wanted my parents to find out about this either.
But let's be clear about what's happening here.
This is a cynical media witch hunt from people who do not care about children.
They care about destroying me and my career and by extension, my allies.
They know that although I made some outrageous statements, I've never actually done anything wrong.
They held this story back.
They held the footage back.
Footage has been out there in the wild for over a year because they don't care about victims.
They don't care about children.
They only care about bringing me down.
They will fail.
I will, in the next couple of weeks, be announcing a new independently funded media venture of my own and a live tour in the coming weeks and new campus tour dates, part of my new Troll Academy tour.
I started my career as a technology reporter who wrote about politics, but I have since mutated and grown into something quite different and much bigger.
I'm now a performer with millions of fans in America and beyond.
I'm grateful for the tens of thousands of messages that I have received.
And I look forward to making you all laugh, cry, and think for many, many decades to come.
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Good luck with that.
Here is my problem with this.
You know, this thing with the child sex, which is, you know, the problem with child sex is that a child can't give consent.
Okay, that is the problem with underage sex.
Obviously, I'm not talking about real children.
There's a whole different problem there.
But I'm talking about people who are sexually developed, but not mentally developed.
I mean, every parent knows this.
Your child develops physically before they develop mentally.
And if you are an adult toying with a child, you are essentially raping them.
And that's why they have those laws.
And he says this.
Milo says it.
This is not my problem.
This is not my problem with him.
You know, I may disagree with him.
I may think he accidentally or purposely said something reprehensible.
My problem with him is he has given shelter to, in the name of fighting political correctness, he has given shelter to evil.
And I've said this repeatedly.
I said this before this happened.
I'm saying it now.
His trolls, his trolls went out and did things to Ben Shapiro that are not conscionable.
They did them to David French do about his kid.
I think one or two of his children are black.
David French is how they did these.
And Milo went in and said, well, this is just the youth being rebellious, you know?
Like as if they were stuffing themselves in a phone booth or eating goldfish.
I mean, even the rebellion of like Woodstock, where you're sitting around naked and smoking drugs, is not the same thing.
You know, people who are young don't remember.
They do not remember that this stuff is real.
You know, the Holocaust was real.
Segregation was real.
Stop for a minute if you're so certain of yourself on this issue.
Stop for a minute and think, imagine, use your imagination what it would be like to explain to your child that he can't use a bathroom because of the color of his skin, that he can't go someplace because of the color of his skin.
Imagine as a father or a mother explaining that to your five-year-old son or daughter, okay?
This is a problem.
These things really happened.
Imagine watching your children, your family destroyed because their name ends with one vowel and with one consonant instead of another vowel, whatever it is.
You know, imagine those things, and then you understand that, you know, sending pictures to Ben of gas chambers or to David French of their kids and gas, it's not on.
It's not on, okay?
It's not just not PC.
It's not just rebellion.
It's wrong.
And this is the problem with Milo.
Listen, I have sympathy with Milo because I can see he's a damaged guy.
I can see he's hurting.
I think he is a guy that I think is probably at risk in a lot of different ways.
And I can see that he's essentially got the heart of an artist and he's trying to find some kind of artistic personality.
But it is not the public who forced him to go talk at CPAC, which essentially makes him a political figure.
It is not the public who agreed to do that.
He agreed to do it, and he stepped out of that artist role and he got nailed for it.
Now, look, if he comes back and he recreates himself and he says, you know, I have to make an adjustment, I'll be there, okay?
You know, I hope he's that good a guy.
We will find out.
Just remember what your mom said, right?
Your mom said, if we tell you two wrongs don't make her right.
Listen to your mom.
That's the answer.
Two wrongs don't make her right.
All right, the mailbag.
My God.
We're driving people off the road and people are killing us.
All right, from Richard O'Grand Buba Claven.
Oh, that's my secret title.
I didn't know anyone knew that one.
How I love the show.
I've been reading your books for years and just finished Werewolf Cop.
Really good book.
Really lousy title, but good book.
Werewolf cop.
Where did you get your inspiration to write a werewolf story?
I really enjoyed it.
I will tell you where I got it.
I've always loved monsters.
I was that kid.
If you ever read Salem's Lot with the monster models on his shelves, that was me.
I always loved the universal stories.
And I was always taken with the fact that the horror of the wolfman, remember the old universal story of the wolfman, the horror was not the horror of the victim so much as it was the horror of the monster.
That the real horror is not like you're walking through the woods and a wolf jumps out and rips you to pieces.
The real horror is you wake up with blood on your hands and you've done something you cannot take back.
You know, it's this horrible thing.
You have killed somebody from really through no fault of your own.
And so I wanted to write a story.
It occurred to me to write a story that seemed to me to have, you know, what I always try to do is find stories that have resonance, that have a deeper meaning, so I can just tell the story and let the resonance speak for itself.
So I don't have to, you know, write all this explanation, just let the story tell itself.
And it seemed to me a resonant story.
What if you took like a great guy, you know, not a great man, but a terrific person, and turned him into this werewolf.
And that was why I called it werewolf cop.
I was trying to capture in a funny way, I was trying to capture both sides of this guy's personality.
This is the cop that you want to show up when you're in trouble, except if he shows up and it's the full moon, he rips your head off.
And what is it like to be that guy?
And that's where the story came from.
And I really, I'm really fond of the book.
Question, if you hadn't become a writer, what line of work do you think you would have gone into?
Andy, wow, it's hard to imagine now.
I will tell you the honest truth, though.
When I was a kid, I took one of those aptitude tests.
Beauty and the Beast Werewolf Cop00:09:26
I don't know if they still give those.
It was to tell you.
And it came back and, you know, I already knew I wanted to be a writer and I considered myself sort of arty and intellectual and all this stuff.
And it came back and said I should be in the military or law enforcement.
I laughed.
I said, you've got to be kidding me.
But as I look back on it, if I had not been a writer, and I have to say, no one should be a writer unless he has to be.
You know, you write because you must.
That is the only reason to do it, because it's a difficult profession, and it's a profession that requires you to keep a lot of emotional wounds open, which is why I have sympathy for guys like Milo.
You know, the artists have to keep a lot of their old wounds open in ways that other people don't.
But if I hadn't done it, I think I would have become a DA.
I toyed with the idea of becoming a cop, but I wanted to be a detective, and I didn't have the patience to be a beat cop, basically.
And I think I would have been a DA.
I would have liked putting bad guys away.
I would have liked the back and forth of trials.
And that's the closest I can come to an answer because there is no what-if life.
There's only this life.
All right.
Most excellent Theophilus Philias.
I think lover of God, right?
Clavin, you often say it is not your place to say what another person should do.
I do often say that.
I agree with you, and I feel the same way.
But what about pastors?
What is their role in the lives of their congregation?
This is from Jeroen, who's written before, and I can never pronounce his name properly.
Jeroen, John.
Anyway.
What is the life of Peter?
Pastors have, well, they have different roles, but just taking two of their roles, they have a public role, the pulpit role, where they stand up and speak about the gospel, and they have a private role of counseling.
The public role is obviously to find out what is in the gospel, what is in the Bible.
You know, it is to explain what is in the Bible using their knowledge and their study.
It is not, in my opinion, it is not to tell us what they think is right and wrong, that they happen to think is right and wrong.
I mean, it is their job to explain what we're seeing in the gospel.
Happened to me last week in the, I go to different churches, but I was in an Episcopal church, and the guy delivered a spectacular sermon on what it meant when Jesus meant when he said, be perfect.
You know, that's a very difficult text.
And he explained it in the Greek and what the Greek meant, and I went like, ah, you know, that is actually right.
I know that Greek word.
He is absolutely telling the truth, and it was very illuminating.
So that's one thing he does.
The other is counseling people.
Now, when you talk, you know, I've done a lot of counseling.
I've done a lot of hotline work, suicide hotlines of various different kinds.
And when you counsel somebody, especially somebody you know, what you're looking for is where they want to go, because frequently they know the answer.
You know, they know the answer.
They just don't want to engage with the answer.
Because a lot of times the answer to what you should do is simple but not easy, okay?
You know, so if the answer is, you know, should I sleep with the girl at work and not tell my wife?
You already know the answer.
You know the answer.
It's simple, but it's not easy because she's a cutie pie.
You know, that's the thing.
So a lot of times I think when you counsel people, it's not a question of telling them what to do.
It's a question of helping them discover what they already know they should do.
I found in my personal experience on hotlines was that you could divide people into two different kinds, people who want you to do that and people who don't want you to do that.
They want to stop you from doing it.
And they just kind of wrong foot you.
They try to get you to give them advice and then they tell you why the advice is not wrong.
And what you have to do is draw out from themselves.
Just say, you know, I frequently would do that with people.
I'd say, what do you want?
What's the end here?
What do you want to do?
And almost 100 times out of 100, they know.
They know what the right thing is.
All right.
The great and honorable Clavin.
What does it mean to be Ms. Wright?
Not Ms. Wright, Miss Wright.
Come on.
Ms. That's the first thing.
Drop the Ms. In books like Pride and Prejudice, after only seeing Elizabeth a few times, how does Darcy know he loves her?
That's an interesting question.
How does modern dating compare to these classic love stories?
Thanks, Ashley, or Ms. Ashley.
Ms. Ashley, sorry, I shouldn't make fun of it.
Ashley.
Yes.
You know, one of the things about Jane Austen, who is one of the great writers about love, is that The society those people were in was very different.
A woman in a romantic relationship in Regency, England, was basically dealing with her entire future, her economic future, her social standing, and not just love.
It was all, it was really her, that was her career.
Her career was going to be as a wife and mother and homemaker.
And so everything about the guy was, you know, she had to choose all those things in each guy that she was with.
And you wanted it to be a love match, but it was nice if it was a love match with somebody you weren't going to starve with.
That in some ways made things easier because even if you conceived of a passion for a guy who couldn't support you or wasn't going to do well by you, you could weed out people like that.
Now things are more complicated because women have more choices.
More choices make things more complicated.
I'm always for choices.
I'm always for freedom, but they make things more complicated.
How do you know you love somebody?
It's really hard to tell for the simple reason that sex complicates everything.
I mean, if you do have sex with somebody, that complicates things.
And if you don't have sex with somebody, it complicates things.
You have to ask yourself, even if you have the feeling of love, even if you have the feeling of love, you have to hold it up to reason.
That's kind of the way we live life.
I mean, that is kind of the wisest way to live life, is to experience your feelings and then hold them up to the light of reason.
You know, am I just going after this girl because she's hot?
Or am I just going after this guy because he's rich?
Or am I, you know, even though I have these feelings, what do I do?
You really have to ask yourself those questions.
I knew the second I met my wife that I was in love with her, but it took a long time before we got married.
And I really did put myself, as I always do, with every decision, I put myself through the ringer.
And so that's the thing.
It's a combination of what they used to call sensibility, sense and sensibility.
Let's go back to Jane Austen.
It's a combination of sense and sensibility.
Oh, great Overlord.
Here's another Miss Wright question because I made the joke last week, I think, that people are always saying, why can't I find Mr. Wright?
And I said, well, are you Miss Wright?
I say, here are people asking.
Oh, great Overlord Clavin.
I want to push back on your comments regarding becoming Mr. or Miss Wright to find your future partner.
I think your explanation may be the chicken or egg category, all right?
I'll call my theory the beauty and the beast hypothesis.
Prince Charming realizes his full beauty and potential after Belle and he get together after they meet.
Since none of us is perfect, do we have to strive to become Prince Charming before being able to find our princess and vice versa?
Well, this is from Patrick, and Patrick, you are in luck.
And I'll tell you why.
I read a lot of fairy tales.
And I read a lot of fairy tales because I feel that they are connected to genre writing, which is what I do.
I read a lot of crime stories.
A lot of my crime stories are based on fairy tales or have fairy tale elements in them.
I read a lot at night because I don't sleep.
Last night, I was reading a fairy tale, and so help me, it just happened to be Beauty and the Beast.
I did not know this question was in here, but I just happened to be reading Beauty and the Beast.
It is one of my favorites.
It is a beautiful, beautiful story.
Most fairy tales are not that interesting.
And I read the original.
I didn't know this.
I read the original Red Riding Hood the other day, and it just ends with Red Riding Hood getting eaten.
The last night, yeah, what big teeth you have?
They're better to eat you with, my dear.
And he devoured her.
The end.
I'm like, what?
That's the end?
You know, yes, it is.
So the wolf wins.
Let me read to you a passage in Beauty and the Beast.
In Beauty and the Beast, Belle is stuck in this castle with the beast, but she keeps dreaming of a handsome prince.
The beast keeps coming to her in his prince form in her dreams.
And he says to her, find me out, no matter how I may be disguised, as I love you dearly.
And in making me happy, you will find your own happiness.
Be as true-hearted as you are beautiful, and we shall have nothing left to wish for.
And Beauty responds, what can I do, Prince, to make you happy?
And he says, only be grateful and do not trust too much to your eyes.
I will tell you that every husband and wife on earth would be happier and better off if they would only be grateful and do not trust too much to your eyes.
Okay, that is great advice.
So the point is, yes, yes, you're right.
When we find the person who completes us, as the old saying goes, when you find the person who completes us, you will become better.
You will become better through that person and through the love of that person.
But you have to get to a place where you know how to be grateful and to not trust too much to your eyes before you can see the person that you were meant to have.
And that goes back to the question we had before.
So there are things, there are requirements before you find someone that will lead you to the completion of finding someone.
Fairy tales.
All your questions answered, right?
All right, that's the mailbag.
And your lives are now changed, right?
Some of them for the better.
Yes.
All right, stuff I like.
We've been looking at American mythology, American stories that are maybe a little sentimental but tell us something essential about America.
And this is one of my favorites, and it is not sentimental.
The Red Badge of Courage00:03:37
It is really brilliant in two of its forms.
The Red Badge of Courage.
Here is a book they used to assign in high school.
I don't think they do anymore.
They should.
It's by Stephen Crane.
It was written in the 1890s.
It's a precursor to Hemingway.
Brilliant, realistic writing.
He wrote two brilliant books.
One was called Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, which was very shocking because it was about a prostitute.
And the Red Badge of Courage, which is about a young man in the Civil War who basically reacts to his first battle with cowardice and what happens after that.
It is a brilliant and beautifully, beautifully written book.
Takes about an hour and a half to read.
It's really short.
It's a novella.
It's interesting.
Stephen Crane was never in battle, but when he wrote it.
And later, he, this may be an apocryphal story.
I'm telling this story from memory, but it's a great story that he did become a foreign war correspondent, and he was in wars in Cuba and elsewhere.
And the story is that after he had written the Red Badge of Courage, which has these amazing battle sequences in it, he was in a trench covering a war and he stood up to let the bullets fly around him so he could find out if he had been right.
And he sat down and he said, yeah, I got it pretty close.
I got it pretty right.
Anyway, anyway, a great, great book.
But unlike most great books, it was also turned into a fantastic movie.
John Houston, the great John Houston, directed it in 1951 with Audi Murphy, who plays the man.
And the funny thing about Audi Murphy is Audi Murphy was one of the most decorated soldiers in World War II.
He captured like an entire battalion of Germans on his own.
I mean, his heroism, I don't know the exact story, but his heroism was unbelievable when you see it.
They actually made a movie in which Audi Murphy played himself, you know, doing this fantastic thing that he did.
So it was funny to put him in as a guy who was a coward in war.
The battle scenes in this are fantastic, fantastic.
And one of them ends with this beautiful, beautiful image of the flag bearer bearing the flag of the Union, what we now know as the American flag, coming up to the guy carrying the Confederate flag as he falls and dies and catching the Confederate flag before it falls and holding it up with respect and folding it up like with respect for the flag.
A very beautiful moment, speaking about the fact that we are all one country despite our differences.
It is a sentiment that we should remember now.
It would be a nice thing if we remembered now that we are all one country.
As Abraham Lincoln said, we are not enemies, but friends, friends who obviously disagree very deeply.
But it's a beautiful, beautiful scene in the movie, followed by, well, let's play it.
We got a minute left.
Let's play the scene where the northern soldiers talk to the southern soldiers.
Don't take it too hard, old boy.
I wish I was dead.
I just wish I was dead, that's all.
I'd heap rather be dead.
I run out of powder.
I'd have killed another Yankee when I'd had powder.