Andrew Clavin’s Ep. 420 dismisses media narratives as distorted, praising Trump’s unfiltered patriotism over Obama’s apologies and debunking claims he endorsed Roy Moore—highlighting his focus on defeating pro-abortion Democrat Doug Jones instead. He contrasts conservative candor with progressive "white lies," celebrating deregulation and ISIS’s defeat while acknowledging Trump’s policy flaws. The mailbag mocks liberal pundits as "knuckleheads," advises cutting social media to curb outrage, and tackles faith struggles—urging discipline over doubt—while linking Hallmark’s success to its celebration of traditional values over leftist critiques. Clavin concludes by framing personal dreams as valid despite political opposition, blending cultural critique with spiritual resilience. [Automatically generated summary]
Thanksgiving is here, but it's hard to be thankful when Russia has taken over our democracy, the White House is run by a lunatic fascist, and white supremacists are running rampant through our streets, carrying assault weapons with chainsaw bayonets, while women cower in fear that Republicans will grab their crotches if Democrats ever let go of them long enough for Republicans to get a hand in.
Fortunately, there's a solution.
Turn off CNN because in real life, things are actually pretty damn good.
Meanwhile, with Charlie Rose fired, Democrat John Conyers under attack, and one of the founders of Pixar stepping down as the sex scandal spread, the late Andrew Breitbart actually left conservative heaven and came back to earth to deliver this message to Hollywood, Congress, And the press.
Stop raping people!
Stop raping the people!
Breitbart was ahead of his time.
We have the mailbag coming up, so if you still have any problems left, prepare to have them solved.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky-dee-doo.
Ship shaped C-Topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoora.
All right.
Sorry, I cracked myself up there, which is a good thing because I'm the last person left in LA with people in this studio.
It's like, it's like one of those apocalyptic zombie movies.
Look at this.
If you're watching, you've got to look at this picture of the traffic leaving LA yesterday.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, that is what Los Angeles looks like.
The day, what is two days before Thanksgiving?
This is the other thing about Hollywood.
Nobody does any work here, so it's like basically as the weekend approaches, it's always two days before.
Look at that.
Look at that.
As Jess was saying, if we put some green in there, it'd be Christmas, right?
It really is.
That is really something else.
I didn't see any of it.
Did you guys get caught in this at all?
No.
It's a trick.
Just stay off the freeways and you'll be fine.
So we are here by ourselves in LA.
This is now a completely empty city, except for those guys shuffling around eating people's brains.
And it's Thanksgiving.
You know, there's not that much news going on.
I see people like reporting things like, you know, some guy hung up on Trump or something like this.
I just think like, please, there's no news.
So we're going to talk about, it really is true.
If you were, if you, all you did was listen to the media and get on social media and listen to the news, you would think this year had been one crisis after another.
But in fact, it's been really good.
It's not so much, you know?
So I thought I would talk about some of the things that I'm thankful for.
And I think, you know, listen, gratitude is the key to happiness.
I mean, everybody will tell you this.
This is not an original thought.
But, you know, the first prayer I ever said, the first serious prayer I ever said as I was converting was, thank you, God.
That was it.
That was the first prayer I ever said.
Transformed my life.
You know, it actually did.
Actually, the next day, I woke up and I felt so connected to the world.
Because, you know, I mean, if you're not dying, if you're not ill, which is a terrible thing, you know, and if you're not starving, which obviously is a terrible thing, and if you're, you know, you've got something in your life that you love or someone in your life that you love, you got to be, you have to be grateful to connect to it.
Otherwise, it just disappears.
It really is.
So I'm going to talk about some of the, obviously, the political things that I'm thankful about, but I do want to start out.
And I don't want to do this in a sentimental way, but I do want to start out by saying I am really thankful for all of you guys who are watching or listening to this.
Yesterday, I asked people if they would show up and give me a little hand with Another Kingdom, bolster it up a little bit, and they sent it up.
It's like number 14 on the arts list, and all these, you know, I'm really grateful.
I really am.
And I'm grateful for doing this.
I mean, I love doing that.
I did not know.
I did this as a flyer.
I did it because I really love Jeremy Boring.
Don't tell him I said this.
If you tell him I said this, I'm going to call you a liar.
But, you know, I just think Jeremy Boring, the God King of the Daily Wire, great guy, really, really fond of Shapiro.
I know, you know, I like Shapiro more than Shapiro likes Shapiro.
Shapiro's not allowed to like Shapiro, but I like Shapiro.
And, you know, they said, come on over.
We were doing this at Truth Revolt, and they said, come on over and do this.
And I just thought, you know, I'll take a crack at it.
You know, it's like I had plenty of work to do, so I wasn't really looking for it.
But I have been shocked at how much fun it is and how creative it is.
I mean, that's always the thing.
Like, my whole thing is making stuff.
I like to make stuff.
And I didn't think this was going to be like making stuff.
I was afraid it would just be blathering, but it really has.
Some of these shows have been, you know, really creative, really have informed what I'm writing about and thinking about.
And it's just, I don't know.
It just has been a terrific thing.
And you know, the other thing that I'm really, I was so afraid, this is really true.
When we lost Truth Revolt, I was so afraid that I wouldn't have a voice in the election, that the election would come and go and I wouldn't have anything to say.
Instead, we were in the thick of it.
And I was wrong about a lot of things, and everybody was wrong about a lot of things.
But still, I was really glad I had something to say because, you know, it is not enough.
We always talk about how we're this smash mouth site and we're fighting the left and we're you know melting the snowflakes, but it's not enough to fight the left.
You know, it's not enough to expose the left's lies.
You have to express your truth.
You have to say why you believe what you believe and what it is that we believe.
And I think that we all have a sort of place in this, the way the Daily Wire works.
We have Shapiro who kind of deconstructs the news and looks at each thing in a very insightful way.
And I kind of take a bigger cultural and spiritual look.
And I don't know what Knowles does.
They don't pay him, do they?
No, I don't know what.
He must be doing something, but I have no idea.
But anyway, I think it is, it's not just, it's not just saying they're wrong, they're wrong, they're wrong, because ultimately that's an empty way to fight because they'll win.
They will win if we don't say why, why the right is right.
And I just think I am genuinely, genuinely grateful for that.
I want to take just a quick look.
There's not a lot of news today.
I could talk about Germany, but I don't want to.
It's very interesting.
Everybody keeps talking here about how unpopular Trump is, but Trump is actually more popular than the guys and the people in Germany who kind of represent the establishment that he's replacing.
And the German coalition, Merkel's German coalition, is falling apart.
And they're afraid to have another election because the right wing is on the rise.
And in Germany, you know, the right wing is not like our right wing is going now, yeah, constitution, freedom.
Their right wing is like, kill everybody.
So they're a little bit more nervous about that.
The only thing that really did happen is Trump was on his way off to holiday, and they stopped him and they peppered him with questions about the Roy Moore thing.
And he had two things to say where he took a stand, but it's not the stand the press is saying he took.
He took a stand where first he said that, well, he said that Moore denies it.
So there's a play cut five first.
And this is, he says, you know, he doesn't know it's true.
Is an accused child molester better than a Democrat?
Is an accused of the freedom of the family?
Well, he denies it.
He denies it.
I mean, if you look at what is really going on and you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours, he totally denies it.
He says it didn't happen.
And, you know, you have to listen to him also.
You're talking about, he said 40 years ago this did not happen.
So, you know.
And then he said this about who he wants to see in the Senate is cut four.
I can tell you one thing for sure.
We don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat Jones.
I've looked at his record.
It's terrible on crime.
It's terrible on the border.
It's terrible in the military.
I can tell you for a fact, we do not need somebody that's going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad with the military, bad for the Second Amendment.
So then, so you heard what he said, right?
He said Moore denies it.
He's not saying the women are lying.
He's just saying Moore denies it, and he likes him better than the Democrat.
So here is Morning Joe, and this is typical.
I picked this out only because it's typical of the news reports.
Here is Willie Geist on Morning Joe, cut number seven, reporting what you just saw.
Talk about the politics of this.
Think about the morality of it.
Just put the race aside for a second.
You have the President of the United States now saying clearly and out loud that he takes the side of Roy Moore.
He takes the word of Roy Moore versus the word of the nine accusers.
He made that very clear yesterday.
So if your moral code doesn't dictate that you come out strongly against someone who's been accused of these things, maybe a political strategic argument would prevail on the president, which is that you win this seat, this Senate seat for Roy Moore.
It's a pyrrhic victory because you will be saddled, as you all have just said, as the party of a pedophile for the rest of Roy Moore's term.
And by the way, the president will be saddled with that.
It's a you stood up in this moment of truth.
You stood up and took the side of an accused pedophile.
So was that me?
I mean, I didn't see that happen.
You know, I mean, look, look, he's playing, look, Trump is being a politician.
He's playing this in a political way.
You know, he could take the high ground and say, we always are going to believe the women and all this stuff.
But he says, I don't know.
And as long as I don't know, I would prefer not to have a Democrat.
But he certainly didn't endorse Moore.
And he certainly didn't do what Geis.
You know, the other guy, John Heilman, he was Mark Halperin's partner, also on Morning Joe, but they did this thing together called the Circus or something for HBO where they followed the election.
And he goes on and he says, Trump identifies with Roy Moore.
I thought, how the hell do you know what Trump identifies with?
What are you reporting from inside his brain now?
It's like you're reporting ass.
I'm inside the president's brain and he identifies.
I thought, do you identify with Mark Halperin?
It's like it's utterly ridiculous.
But the only thing I just, the only other cut I want to play from yesterday was this, that Moore's opponent, Doug, what's name, Jones, he's on with Chuck Todd and talking about the fact that he is an abortion extremist.
I mean, he believes in abortion basically until the kid's like 18, I think.
You can just blow them away.
So this is the opponent.
See, this is the thing.
All year long, all year long, we've been listening to the left tell us how awful we are for endorsing Trump as if his opponent had been Abraham Lincoln.
You know, his opponent was this creepy little crook who has been lying to us for 30, 40 years.
And, you know, even if you hate Donald Trump, the choice was between those two people.
So here's the other guy in this story.
Listen to what he says.
What are the limitations that you believe should be in the law when it comes to an abortion?
Well, look, I am a firm believer that a woman should have the freedom to choose what happens to her own body.
And I'm going to stand up for that, and I'm going to make sure that that continues to happen.
I want to make sure that as we go forward, people have access to contraception.
They have access to the abortion that they might need if that's what they choose to do.
I think that that's going to be an issue that we can work with and talk to people about from both sides of the aisle.
It's one of those.
But you wouldn't legislate, so you wouldn't be in favor of legislation that said ban abortion after 20 weeks or something like that.
Now, I'm not in favor of anything that is going to infringe on a woman's right and her freedom to choose.
That's just the position that I've had for many years.
It's the position I continue to have.
But when those people, I want to make sure people understand that once a baby is born, I'm going to be there for that child.
That's where I become a right to lifer.
If you can live through the pregnancy, Doug is there for you.
Survive.
These people, you know, I once saw Michael Caine receive an award from critics.
Abortion Rights Debate00:03:33
I always remember this.
I was at the award ceremony and he received an award from critics.
It was the critics' word at the end of his career, basically.
He was, you know, already 80 or something like this.
And Kane said, this is like receiving an award from snipers for having survived the war.
That's like having Doug Jones on your side, as long as you don't get aborted 10 minutes.
You know, a baby was just born 21 weeks, 21 weeks, and it was viable.
It was kept alive and is now doing very well.
So what the hell is he talking about?
He's talking about killing babies.
So, you know, it's like a hard choice to make.
I have absolutely, I do believe some of the, many of the accusers of Roy Moore.
They seem really plausible to me.
But this guy, it's like, you know, they're calling him a pedophile.
Fair enough.
But this guy's a child killer.
I mean, why is that any different?
I don't understand exactly how that changes anything.
All right.
You know, I forgot to mention the mailbag.
The mailbags today.
I almost forgot.
Oh, no, I didn't.
I mentioned it before the song.
Now I remember.
Okay, sorry.
You know, when you're here by yourself and the entire city is empty, you just get a little confused.
All right, so let's talk about thing.
I am genuinely thankful for this year, and not just for the show, which I have loved.
I'm really thankful you guys showed up for Another Kingdom.
I'm glad it's doing so well.
It's been a wonderful, wonderful year, but politically, it's really interesting.
And the reason, you know, I was once, the reason I feel, I was saying how when I said a prayer of thanks, it connected me to the world.
And the reason I feel that that's true is that everything that matters in life comes from us, not from the world.
I was once on an elliptical machine next to some environmental guy at the gym, right?
And we're both on the machines.
We start talking.
And he was going on, giving me this elliptical, this environmental guff, you know, and he was talking about it.
So I said, you know, I would rather kill, he was talking about how beautiful the jaguars were or something like this.
I said, I would rather kill every jaguar than do harm to any human being.
And he said, oh, I'd get rid of all the human beings because the jaguars are so beautiful.
And I said, no, because if you get rid of the human beings, the jaguars aren't beautiful anymore.
Beautiful is a human category.
Beautiful is when a human being looks at a jaguar.
Then it's beautiful.
A jaguar isn't even swift if a human being is there because the concept of swift is in the mind of people.
And the question that is always out there, the question of faith, is whether what's in your mind is being sent into it from God.
Is there such a thing as an objective standard of beauty, an objective standard of morality, an objective standard of meaning?
This is the thing that the left has been constantly, and intellectuals have been constantly telling us now for about 500 years that no, no, no, there's no such thing as meaning.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Morality, your morality is different, my morality.
And what those of us who have faith say is, no, no, no, this is coming from somewhere.
This is also, you know, this is the mind of God coming through God's creation.
And gratitude is one of the things that connects you with that reality, and it makes the world real.
Gratitude is what makes the world real.
That's why people practice gratitude.
That's why they do it as a practice.
They say that, you know, wake up every morning and say, I'm thankful for this and for this and for this, because it connects you to the reality of those things.
It's what I called in my book, The Great Good Thing, the joy of my joy.
It connects you don't just have the joy, you can experience the joy through gratitude.
So here are some things I am grateful for.
Play cut eight.
In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.
Grateful For Imperfections00:15:53
There have been times where America has shown arrogance.
The struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life.
There is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.
And that's just a fact.
I realize that America's critics will be quick to point out that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals.
That America has plenty of problems within its own borders.
This is true.
So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.
Our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures in the immediate aftermath of 9-11.
We did some things that were wrong.
We tortured some folks.
We did some things that were contrary to our values.
I am so thankful that guy's not president anymore.
I cannot tell you that droning, apologetic, anti-American garbage that he spewed.
And a lot of those cuts were not from him sitting in the White House press room.
They were from him at the UN and from him at Cairo talking to tyrants and just people who destroy their own people, talking and apologizing for this country.
Are you kidding me?
I am so glad that weight is off the political mind.
People keep picking on Trump for the fact that he has this antic sense of humor.
The fact that he's willing to say, when he got those UCLA guys out of China, and then one of the fathers said it wasn't his fault.
And he said, I should have left him there.
And everybody said, that's a horrible thing.
I was in stitches.
I mean, the guy is funny.
He's light.
He's vibrant.
He's alive.
I got problems with him.
I've talked about my problems with him.
But at least he doesn't apologize for America.
I mean, at least he says this is a great country.
He obviously loves the country.
He's made millions here and billions.
You know, Obama was elevated from, with no experience whatsoever, to the highest office in the land.
And it never occurred to him to be grateful.
It never occurred because he thought it was his birthright.
He thought it was his birthright.
And with all those apologies, he was going to come down from Olympus and deliver these incredible enlightened policies and how wonderful, how wonderful they were all going to be.
And they all failed.
And it never once, not once, did it occur to him to say, hmm, you know, the Middle East wasn't on fire when I took office and now it's in flames.
Maybe it's me.
You know, the government, the economy has done so much better all through American history.
Maybe it's my stupid health care plan that's sitting on it like a weight.
It never occurred to him.
The arrogance and all this.
You know, Joe Hill, wonderful writer, the son of Stephen King.
And obviously King's a big liberal and I guess Joe Hill is too.
But Hill is, I love, he writes scary stories like his dad and really entertaining.
I really like his stuff.
But he tweeted today that like, wow, we'll never see such decency and such, you know, goodness again as we saw with the Obamas in the White House.
And I just feel, I don't feel, listen, I don't feel we're bad people or evil people.
I don't feel he was beating his wife.
I don't feel he was cheating on his wife.
You know, I don't feel he was bad to his kids, any of those things.
But he was corrupt and he was corrupt because he was arrogant.
And it's such a breath of fresh air to have him gone.
I mean, it is funny to me.
Part of the thing that has been hilarious to me with all of his attacks on Trump, they can't lay a glove on him because he just probably didn't do anything.
I mean, he's been very open about his wanting to have good relationships with Russia, but he obviously didn't sit around helping them skew the election in any illegal way where this guy did illegal stuff all the time.
And they never touched him.
And just the constant lies, the constant corruption, the constant arrogance, the constant superiority and the constant hatred of America, I am so thankful that's gone.
And you forget, you know, after 11 months, what a drag he was, you know.
I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube, but the mailbag is coming up.
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Here is another thing that I am thankful for.
Give me cut nine.
It will be next year.
Yeah, you know what I'm going to say.
I'm so thankful.
I don't have to listen to that voice for four years.
And you know, it never gets old to me.
It never gets old.
You really have to remember this is a woman who opposes the First Amendment.
They keep saying that Trump attacking the press is bad for the First Amendment.
I don't agree with that.
I think it actually may clean up and reform the press eventually if he does it right.
But this woman was against the First Amendment.
She was against Citizens United being able to release a video attacking her.
She thought that was the worst thing that the Supreme Court ever did, allowing them to actually let people oppose her.
She was against the Second Amendment.
She would have solidified so many of the regulations and the, you know, obviously the health care bill and all the things that Obama did would have been set there for life.
Whereas now, Obama's legacy, a smoking pile of ash as it deserves to be.
Not enough of it, but still a lot of it.
I am really grateful.
I'm grateful not to have to listen to her lies anymore, to listen to them and listen to the press lie.
I'm grateful that I don't have to listen to the press lie for another four years and cover up for this corrupt, for her corrupt administration, the way they covered up for Obama's administration.
Let them hurl themselves against Trump.
He is a big fellow who's well able to take care of himself.
I just think that the fact that this woman is not president should never get old.
We should never forget that she is not the president.
Every day you should wake up and think like, what's, you know, you know how when you wake up on Christmas morning, a kid, and for a moment you can't remember why you feel so happy, and then you think, oh yeah, it's Christmas, Santa Claus.
We should wake up every morning and think, why do I feel so good?
Oh yeah, Hillary is not the president of the United States.
Here is another thing I'm grateful for.
I'm grateful that I was wrong about Donald Trump.
You know, my observations, and I'm not making excuses.
I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong, especially if I'm wrong, especially if things are better than I thought they were going to be.
But my observations about Trump were right.
My observations about his character and the things that I don't like about him were right.
But my fears were wrong.
My fears were that those flaws were far worse and would lead to far worse than so far, at least, they have.
He's not an authoritarian.
I mean, that was my big fear.
I thought, like, you know, I thought I really did believe that Hillary Clinton would mark the election of Hillary Clinton would mark the beginning of the end of the American experiment.
I thought we would never get back, that she would appoint judges who would overrule the First Amendment, that she would appoint judges that would overrule the Second Amendment.
I thought we would never, ever get our country back if she actually had a chance to do the things that she wanted to do.
And I did not think, and I do not think, that a Republican Congress would have stopped her.
I don't think they had the nerve.
I don't think they, we can see that they don't have the nerve.
We can still see that they don't have the guts, that they are carried away.
that they are carried away by the news and by the media and they're afraid.
And I think that I was wrong that he was going to be an authoritarian, that he was going to govern outside of the rules of the Constitution.
He hasn't done that at all.
They keep calling him a Nazi and he keeps saying, I want the legislature to legislate.
They won't do it.
He's not good at wrangling the cats in Congress, which is an unfortunate thing.
But look, the economy outstanding, right?
The stock market hits a new record every day.
3% GDP.
I wish, you know, I'm going to collect all the articles saying that could never happen because it did happen.
ISIS defeated in 11 months after all that, you know, Barack Obama, what do we do here?
How do we do this?
You know, after Barack Obama let them, first of all, let them loose by getting out of Iraq too soon.
They're gone, basically.
Obviously, they're going to spread.
They're going to come back in another way.
Terrorism is going to be with us.
But ISIS is gone.
Great judges, around 60 terrific judges, and the Congress finding the guts to appoint those judges and confirm those judges in spite of the left's obstructionism.
The regulation rollback is massive.
I mean, it's massive.
And that, you know, that's something people like me don't feel so much because the First Amendment protects us from regulation.
But if you're living in a business where they can come in and tell you you can't wear, you know, what if they said you could come in?
And they do this to people.
You know, you can't wear that sweater because it might give people the impression that you support.
You know, they could do anything.
And they do this to people saying you can't have your cows drink out of your own lake.
You can't cut down your own trees.
You have to put a window in your business here instead of there.
You know, obviously some regulation is necessary, but it has gotten way, way out of control.
It is oppressive.
And people who work in businesses like mine that are protected don't feel it, but it really is bad for the country.
And one of the reasons the stock market is doing so well is because of the regulation rollback.
And I feel he's moving the ball forward with North Korea.
You know, the one thing I always hit Trump on is on the rudeness, the bullying, and stuff like this.
But a long time ago, I wrote an essay for City Journal called The Big White Lie.
And you can go on and just type in the Big White Lie, City Journal, the Big White Lie Clavin.
And I just want to read you just a couple of paragraphs about it, because this was way, way before any of this happened.
And I said, the thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie.
I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same.
I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine.
I don't have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God.
I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one and that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one.
I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.
Of course, like everything, this candor has a price.
A politics that depends on honesty will be by nature often impolite.
Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives with their gimlet-eyed view of the world are always susceptible to charges of incivility.
It's not really nice to describe things as they are.
This is leftism's great strength.
It's all white lies.
That's its only advantage as far as I can tell.
None of its programs actually works after all.
From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they're installed.
But because it depends on and is defined by describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite.
With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence.
He's not crippled dear.
He's handicapped.
It's not a slum.
It's an inner city.
It's not surrender.
It's redeployment.
Leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.
That's why we needed Trump.
Even though I don't like it, even though I don't like the rudeness, even though I don't like the pushingness, they have used our politeness.
They have misused our politeness to redefine the world.
And so many people, you hear them all the time saying, you know, how can we fight back?
What if I can't say this?
What if I can't say that?
Why are we letting the PC police ruin Columbus Day?
You don't have to let them ruin it.
You just have to ignore them.
You have to be rude enough to not accept their definition of politeness.
And Trump has done that.
I am thankful for that.
I think, guys, I think we dodged a bullet.
We really did.
And I think for all of, look, Trump is a character.
He's outlandish.
He does some things that I don't like.
He says some things that are dopey.
He is so much better than what we could have had, what everybody said we were going to have.
And it really is.
It's an amazing thing.
Let's do the mailbag.
I love it.
All right.
From Robert, Dear Andrew, why do some conservative pundits appear on the Meet the Press Roundtable where they usually deal with the likes of Ana Navarro, Joy Reid, or Thomas Friedman?
It seems that the lot of the token conservative is not a happy one.
I think it goes beyond that.
I think it is amazing.
Read, you know, just do this experiment one day.
Nowadays, it costs like $10 if you don't subscribe.
But go buy a copy of the New York Times and buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal and read the editorial page.
Absolutely, you know, I call the op-ed page on the Times Knucklehead Row.
Just read their normal columns.
Just pick out four columns.
Thomas Friedman, I don't know if he's still there, Bruni, all the people there.
And then go read the Wall Street Journal.
Forget about whether you agree with them or not.
The level of intelligence, with the exception of Ross Duthot, it's unbelievable.
They're idiots.
I don't care what their degrees say.
I don't care how they're close.
The guys are knuckleheads.
When I call them knucklehead row, I am being literal.
And they're hysterics and they act like little girls.
They act like little girls who've seen a mouse.
You know, it is not just enough that they disagree with Trump and all of a sudden they are hysterical.
And I just think the difference between the level of intelligence between our guys and commenting, even the people I disagree with, and I, you know, obviously sometimes I disagree with every one of them, but the level of their intelligence, their insight, their learning, their knowledge, their conception of reality, it's just incredible compared to the left.
They are, you know, a long time ago, someone famously said there is no intellectual life on the right.
I think that may have been true back then.
Now, there is no intellectual life on the left.
All the intellection is on the right.
From Derek, dear Mr. Claven, what is your favorite traditional Thanksgiving dish?
Ah, my friend, I love Thanksgiving.
I do love Thanksgiving.
I love the meal.
My mother made this candied yams, yams with marshmallows, and she passed the recipe on to my wife who now makes it every year.
And it's good because it tastes unbelievable, but it's only 16,000 calories a spoonful.
So you can just eat it until you blow it, you know, turn it into Job of the Hut, basically.
It just makes you enormous.
But I just love it.
I really love the traditional turkey stuffing and cranberry sauce, and I love it the next day.
I saw Patch Sajak tweeted that yesterday, that he likes the leftovers so much that he has the meal the day before Thanksgiving so he can have the leftovers on Thanksgiving.
I completely identify that with that.
If you have some homemade bread, some thick bread, and you put turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce on that the next day, greatest sandwich God ever made.
From Travis, and this came under the name of Travis, but it's probably from Mrs. Travis.
It's probably from his wife.
Heidrew, we actually subscribed so I could ask you this question.
Finding Forgiveness00:15:48
My husband and I are committed Christians, but over the last couple of years, I've grown to quite despise liberals and Democrats.
I know it's wrong, I really do.
I think it probably grieves God, and I try to see them through his eyes.
But my goodness, the ones I interact with, largely on Twitter, are just awful.
Do you ever feel the same way?
And if so, how did you fix it?
Thank you so much.
Well, first of all, key thing is the Twitter, the social media thing.
Social media is, it's very bad for people.
You know, it really is.
It's useful.
I can enjoy it, but I myself limit the time I spend on social media because A, it's addictive, and B, it brings out the worst in people.
And the reason it brings out the worst in people is you're not looking people in the eye and you're not seeing who you're hurting.
It's easy to remember that another person is on the other side of that.
And because it gives everybody a voice, it gives the worst people a voice.
And we have this natural tendency to look for outrage.
And social media is constructed by people.
It's constructed by social scientists who know what will keep you on.
Their motive is to keep you on there as long as possible.
And they know that outrage will keep you on.
They know that insult will keep you on.
Anger, those are the things that are like a drug.
And I always say anger is the devil's cocaine.
This is what I mean.
So that's the first thing.
Limit the kind of social media you do.
And you know, it really is important, I think, to know people who disagree with you.
It really is.
And sometimes we do it through our family, but sometimes you have to go to your, sometimes in your church.
It's important to meet people because there are people on the left.
I disagree with them.
Some of the people on the left I love.
I disagree with them.
Almost all of them I find don't know what they're talking about.
I mean, they actually don't know what the facts are.
And it was Ronald Reagan's great line.
It's not that they don't know anything.
It's that everything they know is wrong.
And I do find that.
But some of them, look, are so lovely and so caring and they want so much to change the world for the better.
And I just think that you really have to know them and look them in the eye when you will find that there are actually not, many of them are not as bad.
And look, some people are just rude, horrible people, and all you can do is forgive them and move on and try not to carry the hatred with you.
But don't, you shouldn't judge, you shouldn't judge people by the activists.
You know, you shouldn't judge gay people by the homo Nazi who goes in and sues a florist for not catering his wedding.
That guy is a bad guy, but you shouldn't judge the guy who does your interior design or whatever, who may be a lovely person.
It's really important to meet people face to face.
From Matthew, hey, Andrew, how do hominoids fit into creation?
If humans weren't always humans, when did we first receive a soul?
I get it.
So in other words, in the chain of evolution, when do we have a soul?
Well, one of the things you think about about this, and obviously, I can't speak to this with authority.
My answers are guaranteed 100% correct, but that's only through the inspiration of the Almighty, because this is obviously something nobody actually knows about.
But what really seems to be different about human beings is their self-awareness.
It's not just that we know, it's that we know we know and we can think about the fact that we know and we can think about who we are and what's happening to us and what will happen in the future.
And as much as I love animals and as much as I, you know, I had a dog who was one of the best friends I ever had, I did not feel that she was fully aware.
And the one thing about this is it doesn't seem to be a divisible thing.
It doesn't seem as possible that you can have self-consciousness and then have a little bit and then have a little bit less and then have a little bit less.
It seems you either are self-aware or you're not.
And I think that that's probably the dividing line.
There's some place where the spark of God comes in and you have this self-knowledge, which is different in kind, not just, It's different in kind, not just in degree.
The only thing I will say is, I do believe, and C.S. Lewis said something very similar, that in her ability to love, I think my dog was connected to me, and I actually have hopes that my dog and I will see each other again, but it may be that she will be part of me, you know, that like somehow my soul will be shared with her through love or something like that.
So, look, this is a question without an answer because we don't know, for all we know, ants are sitting around going, like, you know, how do we know that human beings are as self-aware as we are?
You know, that's for all we know.
But it seems to me that this is not, it's not a divisible thing.
Self-consciousness is not a divisible thing.
From Kyle, oh, Captain Mike Clavin, I am a Catholic who has had a very rocky journey of faith.
I have some periods of life where I pray frequently and go to Mass every week.
Sometimes on more days than just Sunday, then I'll have periods where I fall away from the religious parts of life, but I never lose faith or believe in God.
Recently, I have been in the latter situation for a longer amount of time than usual.
I don't pray enough, I don't go to Mass enough, and I have trouble bringing God into all aspects of my life as Christians should do.
This worries me.
These low points have always worried me.
Any advice on what I should do to stop the ebb and flow of my relationship with God and maintain a constant growing of my faith?
Well, yeah, first of all, you don't want to stop the ebb and flow of your every relationship ebbs and flows, and that can be the periods when it's deepening without your even knowing it.
You shouldn't worry about that.
I mean, I think that is true in relationships with other humans, and I think it's true in relationship with God.
Sometimes you feel like God is sitting right there in front of you, and sometimes you can't find him and you feel that he's not listening.
And that, you know, obviously, you know, that old, it's corny, but that whole thing about the footsteps in the sand, you know, your footsteps, you say to God, your footsteps vanished when I was in trouble.
And he says, no, it's your footsteps that vanished.
I was carrying you.
And I think that that's true.
You shouldn't worry about that.
What you should worry about, though, is what we'll call praxis, which is a fancy word for the things you do.
I think that when you drift away from church, when you drift away from the Bible, when you drift away from prayer, I think that that's not helpful.
And I think that this is not an emotional thing.
You don't want to just do it when you feel it.
You want to do it because the praxis is good to maintain the relationship.
In order to be in a relationship, you know, you can't just sort of not see your wife and wonder why you're distant from her.
You have to see your wife, and sometimes your relationship may be incredibly intense, and sometimes it may be less intense, but you got to see her to have that relationship.
And the same thing is true with God.
So you ought to just, that's just discipline.
That's just something you can actually do to make sure you don't lose touch and that you're always available to God when he comes near and that you're not drifting away.
From Raymond, all right, this is a tough one.
Clavin the wise and beneficent master of the universe and writer of Knowles' words.
By the way, a lot of these today, I'm sort of cutting out some of the compliments.
A lot of these have compliments about another kingdom, which I really appreciate, and I'm really thrilled that people are enjoying it.
I lost a dear friend to suicide about two months ago, and I'm very angry.
I understand that this Marine I respected and called companion lost his battle and was driven to this by circumstance, but every time I think about it, I begin to seethe.
While I have a background in psychology and have read case studies regarding survivors' anger, the anger detailed there is usually directed at the deceased for taking their life.
Mine, however, is directed at my friend's widow for her role in his end.
After less than a year of marriage, she cheated on him and was preparing for divorce, and he had always said he wouldn't let her get away.
I know the Christian thing to do is to forgive his widow, but I cannot find it in my heart to do so.
I fear that this will consume me and I will become a poor representative of all my closely held beliefs and that my own self-destructive streak will begin to appear.
Yeah, suicide is awful.
You know, I remember that song from MASH, Suicide is Painless.
Nothing could ever be further from the truth and the loose ends it leaves and the broken hearts and the anger and rage, all of them just very, very destructive.
And if you need therapy, you should see someone about it.
But here's the thing about the widow.
He didn't kill himself because she cheated on him.
That's not the way things work.
The guy had suicide in his heart.
He had death in his heart.
And you can be there for people like that.
But in the end, the choice is theirs.
You know this.
You've said you have a background in psychology.
You know that the choice is there.
She may have hurt him.
She may have set off, torched that fire inside him.
The suicide is his act.
It's his act.
The thing about forgiving somebody, you don't have to like her, first of all.
You don't have to like her.
She may not be a worthwhile person.
You can't blame her.
She didn't do it.
She didn't kill him.
He killed himself.
But the thing about forgiveness is that it is something that you do.
And it's not something that you feel.
You will feel it eventually, but it's something that you do.
So think of it like climbing a hill.
I don't know, I couldn't quite get from this whether you are also a Marine, but I'm sure you've done tough exercises.
You're climbing a hill.
Your mind is saying, I can't do it.
Your body has given up.
But your will carries you up the hill.
I can tell you, I've been in situations a dozen times where I just, my body had given up.
I wish I could quote the Kipling line: if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve their turn long after they are gone and so go on when there is nothing in you except the will that says to them, go on, right?
It's the will.
So you will forgiveness.
You will yourself to forgive even with the anger.
When the anger arises, you remind yourself that you will yourself to forgive.
You do it to God.
You say before God, I will this forgiveness.
And you stick to that even when the anger comes up.
When the anger comes up, you realize it's the enemy of your will and you will yourself to forgiveness.
To forgive, you will ultimately, this will work.
You will ultimately forgive her.
You may never like her.
You may never respect her.
You may never think much of her, but you won't let your anger consume you if you let go and forgive.
It's tough, but you can do it.
It is just a question of having the will and being a tough guy about it, which you're just going to have to do because, like you said, you don't want it to consume you.
I guess I'm running out of time.
Let me do one more from Cedric K. Andrew, my girlfriend, whom I love very much, recently broke up with me.
We have been together since both of us were 19, but she could not stand my jealousy anymore.
I was and am an obsessively jealous man, even though she never gave me even the slightest reason to be.
How can I fix this problem for any potential future relationship?
Thank you so much.
I love the show, and I'm sure I speak for everybody when I say I appreciate the charitable work you do by keeping Knowles off the street and letting him be part of another kingdom.
Listen, I wouldn't be doing you a service if I weren't honest with you.
You have a problem.
Obsessive jealousy is a serious, serious problem.
It's not something I think you can solve by yourself.
I'm very reluctant.
You know, I always recommend therapy as a sort of adjunct to anything else you're doing, but this is a case when you're going to have to get at the source of this.
People who are obsessively jealous, obsessively jealous, and you said you had no reason to be, so it was completely fantastic in this case, and you lost somebody you obviously loved.
Something has happened to them to make them this way.
Something that has damaged what psychologists call their sense of attachment happened to them in youth, and you have to go back and uncover it.
You may already know what it is.
You may already know what it is, but you can't get at the emotional ties and untie them without help.
It's something that you just have to get help to do.
And that's a serious problem.
It's not something like, you know, oh, I'm going to do it.
You can't do it by will necessarily.
You can't do it with practice.
I think you have to go and see somebody and find out.
Just find out where that straight, what you're tied to, what made you feel that way.
And lots of therapists can help with that.
It's a condition, you know, and you have to get rid of it.
All right, we're coming to the end.
Tickety-boo news.
Do we have this?
This is my favorite part of the show.
I just want to deal with one show that's all like just me running by in flags and dresses and things like that.
Here is a story I read, and I sent it to a pal of mine who is running a show at the Hallmark channel.
Now, I'm a little obsessed with the Hallmark channel.
A couple of, oh, it's got to be five to seven years ago.
I was sitting up at night channel surfing with a scotch in my hand, and I hit the Hallmark channel, and they were playing their Christmas thing, which is just one show after another with the exact same plot, a woman who works too hard finds love, or a woman who has some value, finds love, and she never thought she was going to find love, and her mother is complaining, why isn't she going to get married?
And she finds love.
And she finds love for Christmas.
And sometimes there's an angel, sometimes there's just some, you know, for some reason, women love stories.
Some woman is going to have to explain something, but women love stories that take place in little beach towns.
So they're always, a lot of these take place in little beach towns.
Beats me.
I have no idea.
But anyway, so there's a story.
So I started watching these things because it's like watching a woman's daydream.
It's like, that's what they are.
They're daydreams.
And they work like daydreams in that they don't even have any tension in them.
You know, stories have this tremendous tension.
Is the monster going to get me?
Sometimes you can't even stand the tension.
But daydreams aren't like that.
Daydreams, like you have the tension, you pose yourself the problem, you solve it right away.
I mean, it's just like a dopamine release, you know?
So that's what will happen.
Like the guy will do something like not show up at the wrong corner for a date, and she'll think, oh, he must not love me anymore.
And then she'll find, oh, he's at the next corner over.
It's just like these dopey stories.
But here is the thing.
In 2016, Hallmark saw a 10% increase in total viewership and a 26% increase among viewers 18 to 49.
During the 2016 election week, it ranked number four among prime time cable networks, even ranking above MSNBC.
People are watching this.
When I first thought it, I thought, who saw this?
I thought, is anybody watching this?
But people really are.
And these are all full of home values, old-fashioned values.
Love is placed above work.
Women are actually looking for love and not necessarily looking for big-time success.
They're not anti-feminist, but they're sort of absent feminism in some way.
And one of the things about reading the news is watch when the new, you should always watch when the facts stop and when the explanations begin.
And the explanations are always like an expert at Columbia, you know, who knows nothing.
Nobody knows anything.
So they try to explain this.
Oh, it's a terrible time and politics is so terrible that people are turning to Hallmark.
Like, how do they know?
Did they ask anybody?
No, it's just some expert.
This is what he says, you know.
So what I see here is that these values that the left has tried relentlessly to destroy are still alive in people's daydreams.
And the thing that I started out saying today is that it's not enough to attack the lies of the left because ultimately the lies get in your head anyway.
You have to remember what it is you believe.
And one of the wonderful ways of knowing what it is you believe is find out what you dream about.
What do you dream about wanting?
You know, are you a woman who works because you were told you should work, but what you dream about is having kids and staying home?
Are you a woman who wants to have some other job than you have?
A guy who wants to be doing something you're not doing.
Those dreams tell you what you want.
And no one, no one has the right to tell you that those dreams are politically incorrect and therefore you can't have them.
And one of the things that has really gotten me is the way political correctness has wrapped itself around people's minds so that they feel they have to drop their voice when they speak the truth.
They feel that, I cannot tell you how many women have said to me, what I really dream about is having a man come and rescue me, but I know I'm not supposed to dream that.
And I always thought, who told you, you know, who the hell?
What sheriff got the badge to tell you what you should dream?
And obviously this is true of men too.
If you want a certain kind of woman in your life, if you want a certain kind of life, a certain kind of job, job, don't let anybody, anybody tell you what you're supposed to want or why it is.
Dreams Define Desires00:02:04
And when you read the news, always remember that there is a point almost always very early on where the facts end and where the opinions begin.
And the facts will tell you more about your life and what you want and the world you are living in than all these experts put together.
Listen, have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Remember that if God had wanted you to drive drunk, he wouldn't have given you Uber.
Okay?
No, have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Friday, it will not be an utterly clavenless Thanksgiving.
On Friday, the next, I think it's episode seven of Another Kingdom will drop.
Please keep tuning in.
Please keep subscribing.
Please keep leaving ratings.
My meeting with that producer I talked about yesterday is set now for Thursday, so I won't be able to tell you about it next week, but I'll tell you about it the week after, whatever happens.
As I say, don't get, I don't have my hopes up, but there it is.
It's nice that somebody at least was interested.
Let us leave with Yale's whiff and poofs of 2013, singing one of my favorite gospel numbers, Operator.
Have a great Thanksgiving.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
We will see you on Monday.
Operator, operate information.
Information.
Give me Jesus.
Operator, operator.
Information.
Information.
Let me speak to this friend of mine What is the number of faith?
There's no stage Heaven is the street And Jesus is his name.
Operator.
Information.
Information.
Give me Jesus.
Operator.
Information.
Please shout me.
Operator.
Don't try to tell me somebody tell me.
My mother used to call him when I was very small.
Every time she dialed hate, she always got the corporator.
Operator information.
Please give me, give me Jesus on the lie, I operate.