Andrew Clavin frames the 2017 tax bill as humanity’s final collapse, dismissing 55% CNN poll opposition as media manipulation while praising Reagan-era growth. He mocks critics like Chuck Schumer and media fabrications (e.g., Trump’s "borderline treason" claims), then pivots to callers: a masochistic cheater, an atheist urged to pray daily, a Jewish-Christian couple warned against forced conversion, and a Christian told to love LGBTQ+ family while rejecting transgender identity. Closing with scientific breakthroughs—blindness cures, metallic hydrogen—he contrasts progress with media doom-mongering, framing faith and tech as the future’s salvation. [Automatically generated summary]
The new Republican tax bill will lower taxes for most individuals and for corporations.
No, it is the end of the world.
This healthcare, the debate on health care is life-death.
This is Armageddon.
After the universal devastation brought on by our leaving the Paris Accord and the end of net neutrality, only the smoking ruins of a once bright and beautiful earth remained.
But now with the tax bill, those smoking ruins have now been reduced to the smoking ruins of smoking ruins, in which even the dead have died and also will be paying lower taxes.
But wait, out of the silent wreckage of humanity's self-destructive madness, a distant sound is heard as of one rising from the post-apocalyptic deeps of unimaginable blackness.
As the sound grows louder, a thrill of hope runs through the shattered remnants of what once was life on Earth.
We're going to win with military.
We're going to win with health care and for our veterans.
We're going to win with every single facet.
We're going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.
Yay!
You say, please, please, it's too much winning.
We can't take it anymore.
I feel pretty.
Oh, so pretty.
I feel pretty and witty and gay.
We have to keep winning.
We have to win more.
We're going to win more.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety boo.
There's a weanie also singing.
Hunky-dunky-dee-dee.
Ship-shaped-topsy.
No round of zippity-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray.
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
This is so much fun.
That's the end of the year.
It has been so much fun.
It's the final mailbag day today.
What Obamacare Means for Americans00:15:26
Those of you who got your questions in, and if I can answer, I'll answer as many as I can.
Your New Year's is made.
I mean, you can throw away your resolutions because I will have solved all your problems.
My answers to your questions are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life.
I hate to say this, but sometimes, sometimes, every now and again, for the better.
Meanwhile, just to remind you, Another Kingdom, we're suspending it for the holidays, so it won't be on this Friday and won't be on next Friday.
We will put up a little talk that Knowles and I did as a book marker to keep your place.
But catch up.
If you haven't been listening to Another Kingdom, catch up.
Listen to the first 10 episodes.
The next three will be there as the new year begins.
So the House, as I was driving in, the House passed this bill.
It's now heading toward the president's desk.
This is, I mean, they had this kind of thing where the Senate, the House passed it, and then they found a glitch so it couldn't be passed through reconciliation.
So the Senate passed it and then the House had to pass it again.
And now the House has passed it again.
And they did it.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, it really is.
I mean, they said, you know, it's like after they told us Trump couldn't get elected, they told us, you know, he was going to be a terrible president.
He was going to just be a total lib.
They told us all these things that just haven't happened.
And that's what we're going to talk about a lot of this today.
Just all the stuff, all the stuff that they've been saying.
Chuck Schumer, in the Senate, he said, you are going to rue the day.
There's Chuck Schumer.
He's crying Chuck.
He's crying now, but he's got a lot to cry about.
Here he is for real.
They will rue the day they did it.
Given the bill's substance, it's no surprise they're in such a rush.
11th hour backroom deals have managed to only make their bill even worse.
They don't want people.
Folks, they don't want to discuss it.
They don't want to have it have sunlight shed on it.
They don't want anyone to know what's in it.
No one is listening to me.
They won't listen to me.
You know what is, I mean, this has been since the Democrat Party and CNN and NBC and ABC and CBS are all basically one entity.
Now the mainstream news media, we played this stuff yesterday.
You could see it.
The mainstream news media is simply an arm of the Democratic Party.
They have put out this disinformation campaign so that most people think that their taxes are either going to go up or won't be affected.
Everybody, and so everybody hates this bill.
So CNN first creates this situation and then they celebrate it.
Here's their reporting on the bill.
I'm sorry.
Here's the real CNN.
This thing is just before the bill passed.
They are warning that they're gloating.
They're gloating.
This is going to be the worst thing that ever happened to Republicans.
This isn't what America had on its Christmas list after all.
New this morning, signs that the Christmas present that the president promised the country a tax bill is not what the country actually wants.
The House is expected to pass the bill this afternoon, but it is a bill that is getting less popular, it seems, by the day.
That's right.
A brand new CNN poll this morning shows 55% of you out there oppose it.
That is an increase of 10 points of negativity from just last month.
We are not done talking about this, not even close.
Joining us now, CNN's politics reporter and editor-at-large, Chris Salizza.
Chris, 55% of Americans say they oppose this tax bill in our latest polling.
That is greater opposition than it was just a month ago.
And as Poppy was noting before, that opposition growing across all groups.
What does that tell you?
Oh, it tells you you're making a gigantic gamble if you're the Republican Party.
We begin with what President Trump calls a big, beautiful Christmas present for America.
The tax cut bill that most Americans don't approve of.
So first they spread the disinformation, and then they're so thrilled that people are believing them.
And this is the power of the media.
There's no question about it, because people do not know what's in this bill because these guys have been purposely misleading them.
But there is another power.
It is called the power of reality.
Remember, when Obamacare was passed, about 60% of the people opposed that.
So many people opposed it, in fact, that the Democrats lost.
Remember, Scott Brown won in Massachusetts, which had never happened.
I don't think a Democrat has won in Massachusetts basically since the Revolutionary War.
So that was a big shock, and it just got worse and worse.
Remember the disastrous unrolling of Obamacare?
They were destroyed in the midterm elections.
The Democrats were destroyed in the midterm elections.
And right now it looks bad for the Republicans in the midterm elections.
But as it became clear that Obamacare was an incredible boondoggle that Obama had lied about, it got worse and worse.
But even so, even so, Obama won re-election.
And it was, and Ted Cruz, remember Ted Cruz?
That was the other thing that happened where people were predicting, according to the polls at the time, Ted Cruz shut down the government in 2013 because he didn't want to fund Obamacare.
He was trying to stop Obamacare and he shut down the government.
The poll said, oh, this is a disaster.
And they were telling, oh, the Republicans are going to be swept out of office.
And that was a tsunami for the Republicans.
So the thing is, the thing is, reality is going to be very different for this tax bill, I believe, than for Obamacare.
Obamacare forced people.
This is the other thing.
It takes away the Obamacare mandate.
That's probably one of the big, I keep forgetting that.
I keep forgetting to mention that.
That is a huge deal.
It gives Americans, it takes away the evil of taxing Americans for not doing something.
That was a tax on Americans for not obeying what the government wanted you to do.
I mean, it was so wrong.
It was so wrong.
The Supreme Court should have struck it down.
They really should have.
There was no way that was a constitutional provision.
They kept saying it's a tax.
It's not a tax.
And, you know, they just gave, John Roberts gave them any interpretation they wanted.
It was so wrong.
This gets rid of it.
I mean, this is a huge, as Joe Biden might have said, this is a big freaking deal.
And so, and just to remember that when the Republicans then went to try and repeal Obamacare, there were a lot of people in their districts who didn't want them to do it because they'd gotten used to the free candy or what they, you know, those few people who were getting free candy out of it.
And so, you know, once the economy takes off, as I believe it will, it already has, I think they already have upgraded the last quarter to 4%.
Once that happens, I think this is just going to change.
I think this scenario is going to change.
And here's what I want to know.
Here is really the telling.
I became a conservative almost entirely because everything Reagan said would happen happened, and everything the media said about Reagan turned out to be untrue.
That is almost entirely why I changed parties.
When the Berlin Wall fell down, there was simply no doubt in my mind that it was Ronald Reagan, the dumb actor who I, you know, I just believed that.
I believed he was a dumb actor, a warmonger.
He was destroying the world.
Same kind of panic was being sold both by the left and by the right.
Even the people on the right were making fun of Reagan for his stupidity and his simplicity and his optimism and his sunny, all that stuff came under attack from the guys at National Review and it came under attack by conservatives.
Ronald Reagan said to his Secretary of State, he said, we're going to win the Cold War.
And he said, what does that even mean?
And he said, it means we win and they lose.
And when the wall came down, I thought, son of a gun, that stupid warmongering actor was exactly right.
And the same kind of thing happened to the economy.
We had been through the Jimmy Carter economy.
We were waiting online for gas.
You know, you forget that.
We were waiting online for gas.
People were so depressed.
Jimmy Carter was making speeches like say something nice about America.
That's how depressed people were.
He talked about the national malaise because Democrats don't understand where this stuff is coming from.
You know, it just kind of droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven.
They just think, oh, why is everybody so depressed?
Just because I've sat on the economy.
They keep telling you, you know, it's the new normal.
You always hear this from the Democrats.
It's the new normal.
It's 1%, 2% growth that we got under Obama.
It's the new normal.
It's not the new normal.
It had to do with the fact that he chased all this money out of the country, that the regulations, businesses couldn't depend on the regulations.
So when reality happens, people notice.
People notice.
They read the book of nature just like they read the news, you know.
And so I just believe that this is going to be an absolute bombshell of an economy.
I think it's going to go off.
It's already gone off like crazy.
Just really on the strength of Trump's optimism, just on his promises to deregulate.
And now the deregulation has come true.
Now the tax, corporate tax rate is coming down.
So what I want to know is, are people paying enough attention?
Did they hear Nancy Pelosi say what she said?
And are they going to look out the window and say, huh, the world is still here.
And in fact, I'm making a fortune.
And my kid has a job, and he's not living in my basement anymore.
And suddenly, you know, the world is a lot nicer than it used to be.
And that's going to change everything.
So let's take a look back.
You know, part of this, you know, let's just remember all the stuff that the news media got wrong, first of all, starting with the Martin Luther King bust that was removed from the Oval Office, but it wasn't removed from the Oval Office.
And some guy, I think it was from Time magazine, tweets out that, oh, the evil racist Donald Trump has removed the Martin Luther King bust from the Oval Office and then said, oh, it was just an error.
I didn't see it there, so I assumed it was gone.
Well, none of this is just an error.
It's what they call too anti-Trump.
I think Byron York said this.
It's too anti-Trump to check.
Sometimes there are stories in the news media.
They say that story is too good to check.
Well, if it's too anti-Trump, they don't check it.
The AP in the New York Times said 17 intelligence agencies said that Russia interfered in our election.
It was four.
They never mentioned the fact that they never looked at, they never got to examine the intelligence agencies and law agencies, not got to examine Hillary Clinton's computer, that that was done by their own people.
The EPA director Scott Pruitt, these are just off the top of my head.
The EPA Scott Director Scott Pruitt never met with the CEO of Dow Chemical, that they reported that, and then he decided not to ban or lift a ban on a pesticide.
James Comey did tell Trump he wasn't under investigation.
Three times, Anthony Scaramucci wasn't under investigation for dealings with the Russian bank.
Mike Flynn, Michael Flynn, was not going to testify that the candidate Donald Trump is mistake after mistake.
But Grabian, which is a wonderful website, I'm glad to get the chance to mention them because one of the several, several websites I visit every morning to gather sound for the show is Grabian.
They do a wonderful job of compiling stuff.
They compiled a look back of 10 moments in the news media, not of mistakes, not of mistakes, because mistakes, they can always make an excuse for the mistakes, even though the mistakes are always on one side.
But they compiled just an embarrassing collection of attitude, ways that they're manipulating you, ways that they're manipulating the public, so that to create this atmosphere of hysteria when, as I said yesterday, nothing is happening except Republican governance.
Trump is not doing anything radical.
You know, he's not.
He's just, he is doing what Republicans are supposed to have stood for all this time.
So let's begin.
I want to begin with this, not because it's such a big, a big gaff, but just because it actually does reveal what the mainstream media thinks.
This is Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe.
And listen carefully to what she says.
This is cut number 10.
He could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think.
And that is our job.
It's our job to control what people think.
So let's take a look at some of the ways they control what people think.
Let's go first of all to these are some of the most embarrassing moments of the year on the media.
Let us go first to cut number eight, which we will put under the heading emotionalism.
This is just Jimmy Kimmel coming out and attacking the Republicans for wanting to repeal the boondoggle and the anvil that has been tied to the foot of the economy for all these years, Obamacare.
No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child's life.
It just shouldn't happen.
Not here.
But the comedy never ends on that show, does it?
It's like, that's great.
Let's look at, let us look at after the election, here is a collection.
Again, this is from Grabian, a collection of questions that were asked to Hillary Clinton, asking her the tough questions about her email, about her mistake in Libya, about her bad term as Secretary of State, about her corruption with the Russians who are dealing with the Russians.
They're really hammering her with tough questions.
Here they are.
Alternate nostril breathing.
Yes.
What is that?
And dare you give me a demonstration?
Well, at this stage in your life, does even having to ask yourself the question of why hurt?
Do you give absolution to those who didn't vote, to women who didn't vote?
No.
Welcome back.
My interview with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now subject to a brief interruption because of this important video of a sneezing panda.
All right, so then, Mom, Madam Secretary, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Oh, the hard questions.
How did you get out of bed in the morning?
Because I did not run for president and I could barely do it.
Well, cheers.
It's unbelievable.
It is unbelievable.
And the whole thing about Donald Trump, their attacks on him as a moral person, which I think a lot of, which I think are actually legitimate, they keep leaving out, blanking out the fact that they were voting for Hillary Clinton.
That was the choice we had.
And there's just no taking that out of the equation.
There was no taking it out of the equation that when you're talking about who we voted for, we were voting, choosing between Donald Trump, who has done a lot of things that are questionable, his treatment of women and so on, the way he has lowered the tone of conversation, all of that.
I'll accept all of those charges.
But he was running against a crook.
He was running against an incompetent.
He was running against a woman who stood in front of the bodies of dead Americans and lied to the American public about how they got that way after Benghazi.
She's an absolute gangster.
And there he is, Stephen Colbert toasting her away.
I mean, you can never forget that.
Whenever my liberal friends come after me about who Donald Trump is, I acknowledge a lot of it.
I think he's rude.
I think he has brought down the conversation.
I think he does things that he hasn't got a feel sometimes for what a president should say, but he's doing a great job.
He has done a great job at the presidency.
And if he is not the highlight of, if he's not Abraham Lincoln, listen, I wish Abraham Lincoln were running against George Washington.
Treason And Impeachment Talk00:08:45
That's what I wish.
I wish that I had been able to say, wow, I don't know which of these guys is greater.
You know, this is a, I got to really work on this, which of these guys are greater.
We're not living in that time anymore.
Them days is gone.
And am I sad about it?
Yeah, but come on.
This is it.
This is the only life you got.
I'm not going to sit around and stab myself over the fact that the president is rude, especially when he's doing these terrific, terrific jobs he's doing.
Let's look a little bit more of these Grabian clips.
This is a great one.
This is cut number six.
This is the absolute craziness of the Trump hate in the media.
When you have a president with absolutely no morals, who's a bully, who acts like a bigot and a racist, and is a sexist and a sexual harasser.
Donald Trump staged a hostile takeover of the Republican Party on the right, and now we are where we are.
Outside of the Civil War, World War II, and including 9-11, this may be the most cataclysmic event the country's ever seen.
I'm having hysterics.
I'm hysterical.
I can't stop when I get like this.
I can't stop.
I'm hysterical.
I'm a Donald.
I'm a Dylan.
Okay.
I may have added that last one, but the rest of them, that was Mark Helper, serial sexual abuser, alleged sexual abuser, Mark Helper, saying that, you know, with World War II, he did say that, right?
I did hear him say that.
With World War II, that Trump was one of the great cataclysms, the election of a Republican president, which is all he's turned out to be.
I mean, he, you know, Ann Coulter is angry at him because not a foot of the wall has been built.
The influx of illegal immigrants has virtually stopped.
So, you know, we don't even, the wall as a symbol, I guess it remains.
He promised a wall.
I guess he has to build something that looks like a wall at some point.
But, you know, you're still complaining about that when all these victories, and I'm not even going to go through them again, all these victories for conservatives, it has been an amazing year.
I was on the radio in Chicago yesterday.
This is kind of funny.
I go on this wonderful show, and I think it's Dan and Amy.
And I talk to them every couple of weeks.
They call me up.
It's a morning radio show in Chicago.
And it's usually kind of a love fest because we kind of agree on virtually everything.
And they've read my book, The Great Good Thing, and they really like it.
But the mail host was out, and this guy, Sean, was stepped in for him just before I went in.
The producer said, so it's Sean today.
You want to say Sean and Amy?
So I said, fine.
And I went on the air and they asked me about this article I had written about how Trump had made the government more moral.
I've talked about that on the show.
And Sean just went off on me and started yelling at me about all the things he hasn't done.
And I said, Sean, you know, it's been a year of the presidency.
You could take any president from George Washington on and talk about the things that he hasn't done, but the things that he has done have been amazing.
All right, so let's move on to, this is another favorite of mine.
This is number five from Grabian.
This is the media begging, begging for Trump to be impeached.
That this could lead down the road to impeachment, but we weren't anywhere near that yet.
Does this breaking news tonight change your view on that?
Are true.
Are we getting closer and closer to the possibility of yet another impeachment process?
So in terms of impeachment, are you taking action, working with Republicans, or doing anything that would actually move that agenda forward?
Do you harbor any hopes that you will find a conservative legal mind to match your desire to proceed with impeachment on the- Are you suggesting that President Trump should face impeachment?
No, I'm not suggesting that.
Congressman, what is your case for impeachment?
Explain.
What do you think of this impeachment possibility?
What's more needed to prove obstruction of justice than the president fires the guy coming after him after asking him to drop the case?
What more do you need?
Is that impeachment is the remedy?
I mean, the president can't the only remedy.
Please, please impeach him.
And the reason they want to impeach him is because Donald Trump Jr. has committed treason.
I mean, this is the hyperbole.
I mean, we've dealt with emotionalism, hysteria.
Now, hyperbole.
This is cut number three.
Does that mean that Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner are bordering on treason as well, along with Don Jr.?
And then also that Michael Flynn is bordering on treason and that the president himself is bordering on treason because all of them have sought out damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russians.
Certainly, there's outright treason.
I mean, there is no question that what he is doing is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Donald Trump Jr., what he did was a threat to our democracy and borderline treason.
As the Fox reported in the New York Times article, come very close if they're crossing the line with respect to treason, if those facts are true.
It's treason.
It's treason.
None dare call it treason.
I mean, so this is the news that people are getting, right?
It's treason.
It's Russia.
Russia's taking over.
You know, Jimmy Kimmel's kid is dying because of the Republicans.
And, you know, it goes on and on and on.
And I just want to close with what is in this Grabian list as their top thing.
I want to remind you of the way that Obama was recovered.
Obama, who did smush the economy, Obama, who abandoned the Iraqis, Obama, who wouldn't go into Syria, who let ISIS spread like a wildfire, Obama, who wanted to Used the IRS to silence his enemies.
Truly, what should have been one of the biggest scandals in this country ever that he used the IRS to do that?
Obama, whose Justice Department we now know was so corrupt that they were actually turning a blind eye to the drug dealing, the influx of cocaine coming in from Hezbollah.
We now know this through this political article, Politico article.
They were turning a blind eye to the drug influx of cocaine from Hezbollah, a terrorist group, in order to make a deal with Iran, an even larger terrorist group, to let them, what is ultimately going to allow them to get nuclear weapons.
This is the way the reporters treated Obama.
I've seen a lot of achievements over the past eight years, including signing hate crime protection legislation, Joanna Stonel repeal, marriage equality nationwide, and ensuring transfer people feel physical and expected.
How do you think LGBT rights will rank in terms of your accomplishments in your life?
Thank you, Mr. President.
Long before today, you've been considered a rights president.
Under your watch, people have said that you have expanded the rubber band of inclusion.
And with the election and the incoming administration, people are saying that rubber band has recoiled and maybe is even broken.
And I'm taking back to a time when Air Force One going to sell Alabama when you said your job was to close the gaps that remain.
With that, what gaps still remain when it comes to rights issues on the table?
And also, what part will you play in fixing those gaps after in your new life?
And lastly.
Oh, the least I can.
So the last question is, we cut it off because it just goes on for a long time, but the last question is just a woman saying, it's been an honor.
It has been an honor to cover this delightful, delightful president.
But you know what is interesting, again, just talking about the difference between the book of the news and the book of nature, the book of reality, is that the Democratic Party was destroyed by Barack Obama.
He's now left this leftist party, which may or may not regain strength.
But of course, as Ronald Reagan told us, you know, they can't help themselves.
They govern like leftists, and so they always get thrown out of office.
So even while they created this saint in Barack Obama, and even while the racial pathology that they have sold to America meant people weren't allowed to dislike him and he's very popular, his programs were not popular.
If they had been, Democrats would have been elected with the same enthusiasm that he himself was.
He was an excellent politician.
He did a great job.
But even the news media doing what they were doing there and doing what they're doing to Trump cannot override reality.
So we'll see.
We'll see what happens.
The 2018 midterms look dangerous right now, but we'll see what happens if the economy takes off.
We've got the mailbag coming up, the last mailbag of the year.
So last chance to solve all your problems.
But first, we've got to break away from Facebook and YouTube.
Words of Wisdom00:15:16
Come on over to thedailywire.com.
You can listen to the rest.
You could have watched the whole thing on thedailywire.com if you'd only subscribed for a lousy 10 bucks a month.
For $100, you get a subscription for a full year and the leftist tears mug, which is going to be filled magically all year long.
Come on over and listen to the mailbag.
All right, the mailbag.
Oh, yeah!
All right.
All right, from Illusion.
I'm an aspiring writer of fiction, and I'm just wondering what your best advice would be for someone who is fully Christian but wants to write well.
Good point.
I keep writing the God ending or that theme, and I'm wondering how to write as a Christian, but not just for Christians without being preachy.
It's a really good question.
I talk about in my book of my conversion, The Great Good Thing, that one of my prayers as I realized that I was becoming a Christian is, please, Lord, don't make me a Christian novelist, because I just hate that stuff.
I hate that happy talk stuff.
I even hate when one of my favorite writers, C.S. Lewis, does it.
many of his Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, his Narnia books, basically set up this beautiful fairy tale, and then the lion who represents Christ comes on and solves the whole problem.
And I think that that is the way that Lewis saw the world, and those are very popular.
And so the question Lucian is asking is twofold.
First of all, there is a huge audience for sappy Christian fiction.
There's a huge audience for sappy Christian fiction and there's a huge contingent of people who complain when their Christian fiction isn't sappy enough, when it contains real words that people use, when it contains real evil, when people get away with evil as they do in real life, when bad things happen to good people, all those things that are part of the world as God as God governs it, the real world that God governs.
But if you want to be a good writer, that's where you have to go.
You have to go against the audience that's demanding sappiness and let them look for other writers.
The way to do this is twofold.
In fact, it's in keeping with the theme we've been talking about all day.
You've got to read the book of nature.
You've got to observe how life actually works and observe the fact that God doesn't always come to people, that people, or that is, that God doesn't always save people from the pains of life.
People die young.
Children die, which is one of the great evils that you have to wrestle with when you're trying to have faith in the goodness of God.
People are in grief.
God is comforting.
God will make you whole.
God will heal you.
He will give you joy even in grief.
But that's a different thing than saying that he makes everything work out.
You don't have to have, you know, I sort of became, as a thriller writer, I tried to become a master of the happy, sad ending, where the crime would get solved, but you would still see that it was a sad world.
So you just have to pay attention.
And the other thing to do is to read books that aren't necessarily Christian books, because there are many, many, many great novels and great movies and great plays that are written and performed by people who aren't Christian at all and who in some time see the world in a very clear way.
So for instance, there's a movie called Open Water.
It's not a great movie, but it's a good little thriller about people being lost at sea and attacked by sharks.
And I always really like this movie because it's a nihilistic movie.
It's a movie about how there's no meaning in life at all, except maybe the fact that we love one another.
And because of that, it doesn't let gooey Christian thoughts get in the way and it actually observes the things that happen in life very accurately.
And frequently, nihilists are able to do that where Christian writers get lost in this misty glow of trying to project their inner life, the inner beauty of Christian living, onto the outer world, which is full of brokenness, sin, and tragedy.
So pay attention to life and pay attention and read.
That's the best advice for any fiction writer is read, read, read.
And don't just read the stuff you like that was written yesterday.
Read the stuff throughout history that's been deemed great.
It will be an education.
From Kyle, I am a dear bastion of conservative morality.
Oh boy, I hate to get that tag.
I'm not sure I'm putting that on my business card.
I'm a 21-year-old male that many people say acts much older than I am.
I hold myself to a high moral standard.
I have two college degrees, a career as a paramedic.
My question is something I've been grappling with for a while now.
I'm in love with a lady that I've been with for almost two years throughout that relationship.
She cheated on me, lied to me several times, broke up with me.
After nearly six months of being apart, I started seeing her again.
But since then, she has still held on to the belief of wanting to remain single and act her age.
I've tried to help her through her issues, including recent criminal drug charges, and explain to her that there's no value in acting like a kid.
She does not take this advice or like the advice.
She wants to experience things so she can grow up at her own pace.
It's been very painful to me, and though I am able to be faithful to her, because I've always been monogamous, I still can't help but feel that I'm being taken advantage of and maybe missing more promising opportunities in attempts to help her and be with her.
I ask you for your advice as I do love her, but being with her is more painful than I think love should be.
Here's my advice, dump her.
You know, be a man.
This is a masochistic relationship you're in.
This is a woman who's never going to be anything but a liar.
If you dump her, she's going to come back and beg to be taken back.
I'll bet.
Don't take her back.
This is time for you to move on.
Put your big boy pants on.
Get rid of her.
She's just trouble.
She's a self-destructive person.
And you are being self-destructive by being with her.
There are plenty of good women out there who will help you in your life and help you move forward.
They will have troubles.
You'll have to help them through, but they won't be the troubles of cheating on you and lying to you and taking drugs.
That's never going to work.
That is never going to work.
She may reform.
She may pretend to reform.
You haven't got time.
You've only got your life.
Go get yourself another girlfriend.
I'm telling you, this is manhood time.
This is what a man has to do sometimes.
We all fall in love with people who are bad for us.
You'll fall in love with somebody else who's good for you.
Do it.
That's my advice.
All right.
From Tiffany, what advice would you give to an atheist who honestly wants to find God if he's there?
I was raised Christian, but never really believed in any of it.
However, I've recently been drawn to conservative views and the idea of a higher power.
I saw a few minutes of an interview you did on the Rubin Report and thought you might have some words of wisdom to shine a light on my situation.
I do have some words of wisdom.
First of all, let me sell you my book because I think I'd be a fool not to.
But also, a lot of people have found it helpful.
It's called The Great Good Thing, A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ.
And it charts my conversion, which is not a conversion through some kind of miraculous light, but is a conversion through reason, essentially, and through beauty, through truth and beauty.
And so I think that's why it helps a lot of people who aren't helped by more preachy books.
But there are other great books too, of course, like Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.
And those are all things that you should be reading if you want to get in touch with God.
But the most important thing to do with God, to get in touch with God, is get in touch with God.
You know, his lines are open.
He will answer your call.
Pray to him.
You know, I have a video somewhere that I think you can still find on YouTube called Find God in 60 Days.
And it talks about how to pray.
And it's a jokey video, but it's serious too, which is that I talk about every day, every single day, get yourself alone so you can speak out loud and pray to God for 10 minutes if you've got the time, 10, 15 minutes.
Talk to him out loud.
And the reason I say out loud is when you speak out loud, you finish your sentences and your ideas don't trail off and you don't go off into some kind of fantasy world of your own.
You are directed to be in conversation.
God will answer you.
This is the Andrew Clavin guarantee.
If God doesn't answer you, I will give you your afterlife back.
You know, I will give you your meaningless life back.
He will answer you.
And do that.
You know, I recommend doing it for 60 days, but do it for as long as it works for you.
He will talk to you.
And I think you should be reading the Bible, especially the Gospels.
I think you should be reading books like C.S. Lewis' book, and I do recommend mine with a whole heart.
I don't feel bad about doing that.
But while you're doing that, you should also be talking to God.
I mean, the Bible is a way of knowing God so you don't follow, you don't mistake God for your father who might not have been that nice to you, and you start to think, well, God's going to be like that.
The gospel is a good way of finding out who God really is through Christ.
And while you're doing it, talk to him, and you will see.
He will answer you.
You will find amazing things happen.
Truly amazing things.
You will go to bed with a question and wake up with an answer.
All kinds of things will happen to you, and it will be a worthwhile experience.
Try it.
All right.
Let's see.
I have time for a couple more.
From Anthony, my girlfriend and I have been dating for three years now and are getting to the part of our relationship where we're discussing marriage.
The one big thing is in the back of our minds, that is, I'm Christian and she's Jewish.
I've studied the faith and I'm a firm believer in the Bible.
She, however, knows very little about Judaism but keeps it as a heritage thing rather than a religion.
I've tried to open up to her about Christ and she seems interested but also hesitant due to her heritage and the pressure from her family.
Any advice on how to go further would greatly be appreciated.
Well, first of all, you have to ask yourself if it's a deal-breaker for you if she remains not a Christian.
And I think that's important for a couple of reasons.
It's not a good reason to convert because she wants to be married to you.
That's not a good reason to convert.
The only reason to become a Christian is if you believe that it's true.
That's the only reason.
The only reason to become a Christian is if you think it's true, because why should you believe in a fantasy?
That's a silly way to live.
So if it's a deal-breaker for you, then you've got to deal with that.
If it's not, you know, you don't have to convince her, live as a Christian, act as a Christian.
That will be more preaching than she needs.
You do have to discuss before you get married the children, because that will be a big deal.
You're going to want to raise those children Christian.
You're going to want to know that she is on board with that.
And don't, by the way, sell the heritage point short.
I write about this in the great good thing too, about being a Jew, because I'm a Jew who converted.
And I write about the fact that Christianity has a 2,000-year history of oppressing Jews, and that Jews feel that Christians are the enemy, and that is written into the blood of Jews, and there's a point to it.
Obviously, in America, the Christian church is one of the best friends the Jews have ever had anywhere, but it takes a long time for those thousands of years of accrued history and accrued oppression to be washed away by the good behavior of most Christians in America today.
So, you know, you can't really take that away.
I mean, like, people, you know, when I converted, I converted and I told a Jewish friend that I'd been baptized, and his first words to me were, they'll still kill you.
They'll still kill you.
That was the first words out of his mouth.
Not congratulations, not, oh, that's interesting, but they'll still kill you.
So that goes very deep.
But discuss the children and discuss with yourself whether that's a deal-breaker, because you shouldn't be converting her in order to marry her.
She should only convert if she's convinced, and you shouldn't spend a lot of time berating her and preaching to her about this.
I want to find the one that I said I was going to deal with.
Let me just see if I've got it here.
Yes, here it is.
From Dylan, dear all-knowing Claven, love your show.
I've been happily married for about a year and a half to my amazing and loving wife.
Good on you, pal.
However, in regards to my in-laws, there's a lot of conflict.
My wife has confessed to me while we were dating that her brother is gay and recently that her younger sister is following transgenderism and now identifies as a boy.
As a Christian, I continue to treat both of them with the utmost respect and love and love them as Christ has called us all to love.
The problem, however, is I'm afraid of exposing my future children and trying to explain what it means.
I don't want them to choose that lifestyle at a young age.
My wife and I have established wanting to raise our children based on Christian principles, yet I don't know how to one day talk to my future kids about my in-laws being gay and transgender.
It's been an issue I've been praying about and I don't know how to go about it.
What should I do?
Well, first of all, Dylan, I'm really glad that you're treating them with love and respect.
It is what I believe Christ would want you to do.
It is not for you to judge where they stand with God at all.
But I do understand where you're coming from.
The other thing about this is they're going to meet in their lives gay people and transgender people.
And so this is your opportunity to help them to meet those people with love and understanding, but not necessarily to find it seductive or appealing.
I mean, look, if you raise them in a happy home where you treat your wife with respect and she treats you with respect and you treat God with respect, and they are going to take your principles seriously.
Now, you know, I don't know.
I believe that most gay people are gay genetically.
I believe that that's true.
The transgender thing seems to me a little bit more of a, you know, a girl who thinks she's a boy, a boy who thinks she's a girl, is by definition deluded because she's not a girl.
So that, to me, seems to me more of a delusion.
But the point is, you want them to come to the place that you're at, which is that you treat these people with love and respect, but you feel that the Christian path leads another way.
And I think that this is your opportunity to teach them that in close quarters.
I mean, of course you're worried about it, but they're going to meet much worse things than that.
They're going to find much more evil in the world than that, certainly.
And they're going to meet more gay people, and you're just going to want to teach them your approach to this, which seems to me, you know, a really good approach.
It's not mine.
I don't necessarily share your attitude about this, but at least you're treating them with love and respect, and that's all anybody can ask of anybody.
You have the right to your opinions, as I do to mine.
Fair enough?
Yes?
Yeah.
Let me do one more here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Here's a good one from Yago.
Hey, Andrew, I'd make a comical title for your name, but it doesn't feel appropriate given the nature of my question.
My dad, actually my stepfather, but he is and always will be my dad, is going through a difficult emotional period.
I've seen him drinking and smoking a lot, and he's recently been subtly mentioning contemplating suicide.
I've confronted him, told him to seek therapy or marriage counseling with my mom, but either he is too proud and stubborn or has given up entirely and refuses to take my advice or even acknowledges he needs help from a therapist.
I can only have so many emotional and hard conversations with him that don't solve or change anything because no matter what I say, nothing gets through.
I don't know what to do.
There's a lot more I could say, but I need some advice.
And if you could maybe give a few words for my dad, I think he could benefit from hearing what you went through during your darkest hour.
Okay, well, first let me say this to your dad, okay?
To your dad, I would say this.
When I went through my darkest hour, I was absolutely convinced that I was in the pit of hell.
I was in the pit of deepest darkness.
There was no way out.
I was contemplating suicide.
I was thinking of killing myself.
I was inches away from the daylight.
I was steps, steps away from the daylight.
Everything was about to change.
Everything was about to turn around.
In Control or Desperate?00:05:36
My entire life since that moment has been a life of increasing joyfulness, even in grief, even in sometimes sorrow.
You do not know where you are.
Only God knows where you're standing.
So if you're in despair, you might want to think about that.
The other thing is, in your letter, this is to you, Yago, in your letter, you keep talking about what you're telling your father, but you never talk about what he is telling you or whether you're listening to him.
And I wonder whether you're listening enough.
I wonder whether you're just letting him talk.
Really, the most important thing you can do for someone who is suicidal is listen to them.
It's not tell them, give them advice.
Advice can always be gotten around.
In fact, it gets to be almost a game that people in despair play with you.
They play this game of soliciting advice from you so they can tell you why it won't work.
And that makes them feel in control and that makes them feel powerful.
Instead of doing that, why not just listen to him?
Why not just hear what's hurting him and be there for him and tell him you love him and listen some more?
The more you listen, the more you'll know, the more he'll have an outlet for it, and maybe he'll start to see where the trouble lies in ways that he doesn't see now.
I mean, I feel that there's a lot of stuff you're not saying.
Maybe you are listening, but if you're not, it's something that you should consider.
That really, just having someone there to be with you and love you and accept you and listen to you is the most important thing that anybody who is near despair can have.
All right, we'll end it there.
We're losing time.
You know, I don't know about you guys.
I'm already on vacation.
I mean, like, am I the only person who feels like this?
Like, I realized at midnight last night, oh, wait, you know, I still have to come in.
So let's go to tickety-boo news.
I just wanted to point out: oh, there it is.
I want one of those flags.
You know, Austin just draws the, he doesn't give me the flag.
You know, I noticed this little story.
The Food and Drug Administration, it's really hard to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
It always bugs me, for instance, when they have something that treats a fatal disease and they say it may be unsafe.
And I think, you're already dying.
Try the thing.
So they're very obsessive about not giving approval, but they have approved a groundbreaking gene therapy that treats a rare form of blindness.
Now, there's all kinds of troubles with this.
It's very rare.
There's only a couple of thousand people in the United States who have this form of blindness.
And the treatment itself, they're talking about charging a million dollars for it.
And part of their logic is that sight is so valuable that we should be able to charge you for giving you your sight back.
And that has a conversation for another day.
The drug companies are really out of control and needs to be the way that drugs are licensed and the way they're sold around the world, all of that needs to be looked at.
But, but this is an amazing thing.
This is a genetic disease that destroys, and they inject this into your eye, and your eyesight comes back.
You know, Jesus said that if you believe in me, you will do miracles even greater than mine.
And a lot of people look at that and they say, you know, that really means that the world that is transformed by the presence of Christ is going to do these miracles.
And those things are starting.
Just looking very quickly, because I'm out of time, but looking very quickly at some of the news this year that doesn't get reported.
Researchers at MIT and UC Berkeley have figured out how to pull water out of the air.
And this is water that has humidity as low as 20%.
I mean, this is an amazing, that's a revolutionary thing in the same way that the food, the green revolution of the 60s and 70s, made it possible for our population to grow and keep feeding people.
This means that people in places where there's not enough water will have enough water.
Harvard University Scientists have figured out how to turn hydrogen, the lightest of all elements, into a metal.
This is a feat that has been studied by researchers for nearly 100 years.
It could revolutionize the world because the properties of metallic hydrogen could lead to faster supercomputers, levitating railways, and advances in energy that could literally power rocket ships deep into our solar system.
This is amazing stuff.
They've made huge steps in growing human organs in pigs and regenerating human organs, programming your body to regenerate human organs.
Think of all our veterans who have lost limbs, who might help by that.
It's an amazing world.
And of course, this one thing that keeps that I keep thinking about is they've got a smartphone heart monitor.
I went, I had to go and get scans the other day, which all turned out to be great, thank God.
But, you know, it was amazing.
It was amazing.
I lay down on a table for a minute.
A thing passed over me.
It wasn't that thing where they stick your head in an oven, you know, so you feel like you're suffocating.
You know, it's like this thing passed over me and they said, yep, you're okay.
You know, you just think, wow, I'm glad I live in this world instead of the world where they say, oh, by the way, you're dead.
We didn't know anything was wrong with you, but now you're dead.
Sorry.
So, remember all this as they're peddling all the hysteria and all the craziness and all the sadness and sorrow, and the world is ending because they cut your taxes, and the world is ending because of net neutrality, and the world is ending because we're out of the Paris Accord.
The world's not ending, and it's actually getting a lot better.
Tomorrow, the last show before the new year, and prepare for the Clavenless holidays, they are coming.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
see you tomorrow.
World Not Ending00:00:21
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, technical producer Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina, hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera, and our animations are by Cynthia Angulo and Jacob Jackson.