Andrew Clavin and Michael Knowles clash with progressive culture, framing Catholic marriage prep as a bulwark against "obscene" feminist ideology. Clavin mocks Democrats’ immigration "scam," defending Trump’s vetting while praising his populist edge, then contrasts the class’s practical advice—like sacramental marriage’s divine triangle—with hookup culture’s nihilism. Knowles echoes the critique, citing Peterson’s free-speech stance as proof the left’s offense culture stifles debate, all while Clavin plugs Another Kingdom and a Quip toothbrush, blending politics with personal dominance over his fiancée’s name. The episode pits eternal commitment against postmodern divorce rates and media hypocrisy. [Automatically generated summary]
We don't know how many days the government was shut down, because without the government, there was no way to keep track of time.
But the effects of the shutdown were felt everywhere, from Washington, D.C., all the way to, well, that was it, really.
But the effects were devastating and could be seen throughout the capital.
For instance, without reliable government sources, reporters were forced to pretend they had reliable sources while they were actually spreading complete fabrications created wholesale out of their own prejudices.
So, okay, that was pretty much as usual.
But without government funding, there was no one to defend the border from illegal immigration.
And that's pretty much as usual, too.
But not everyone was so lucky.
For instance, many federal workers were forced to stay home doing nothing instead of doing nothing at their offices as they usually do.
And in one empty lot off Pennsylvania Avenue, CNN's Jim Acosta was seen screaming at the sky, look at me, look at me, please look at me.
I'm Jim Acosta.
Which raised the existential question, if Jim Acosta is a rude, useless lout, but there's no one there to look at him, does he actually exist?
And is he still Jim Acosta?
In other devastated parts of the city, Democrats wept over the plight of tiny little 30-year-old illegal immigrant children with sad eyes who roamed the city begging for bread by sticking guns in the backs of passersby and saying, give me bread.
Now, however, Republicans and Democrats have come up with a compromise that will reopen the government.
I tried to stop them, but I got there too late.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Shipshaw, tipsy-topsy, go around to zippity-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, so the Democrats actually lost a government shutdown, which almost never happens, but we'll talk about why it happened this time.
And we'll talk about what the thing about the Democrats' approach to immigration is that it's wrong in every possible way.
Everything they're doing is essentially a scam.
We also, speaking of scams, we have Michael Knowles with us.
He spent, you know, there were these two women's marches.
I guess we'll call them women's marches.
One was the pro-life march, which is not necessarily a woman's march, but it's an anti-abortion march.
And then the next day there were the women's marches, which are protesting, I have no idea what, the fact that they're women, I have no idea.
But Knowles spent this time at a class.
He's engaged to be married to sweet little Alyssa, and he spent this time at a class on how to be a Catholic husband and how to have a Catholic marriage.
So we're going to talk to him about, he was actually doing something important while all these women were screaming in the streets.
Brush Your Teeth!00:02:47
And we finished Another Kingdom, which I have to say was a major, major achievement.
I mean, not just getting it recorded, getting it up there.
The sound guys, Mathis Glover, Mike Cormina, am I pronouncing that right?
Cormina, Mike, is that it, Mike?
Can you hear me?
It's Mike Cormina, Jonathan Hay.
I mean, we paid them a pittance because we only had a pittance to pay them.
And they did such an amazing job.
The thing sounds absolutely fantastic.
If you haven't listened to Another Kingdom, you can now binge the whole thing, all 13 episodes of the first season.
I have no idea how we're going to get a second season up.
I really don't, because we cannot allow people to work that hard again in their spare time without paying them better than that.
We haven't gotten anything better than that.
So one of the major emphases of the show is trying to get you people to stop acting like primitives and take care of yourself so you can go out in public and spread the word.
And you can't do that if you have no teeth.
And that's why that's why you should brush your teeth.
Now, I know this is my audience and they're sitting there going, what, what?
Brush your teeth, what?
I've never heard of that.
But not only do you want to brush your teeth, but you want to use an electric toothbrush.
I do.
They work so much better.
They really do.
And not only do they work better, they now have devices.
There's this new one, Quip.
Quip was called one of Time Magazine's best inventions of the year.
And what it is, is a much cheaper, much lighter, much more stylish version of the usual bulky, expensive, funky electric toothbrush.
And it also has things that will help you time how much you're brushing your teeth on each side because you're supposed to brush your teeth for two minutes, which means 30 seconds, four sides, 30 seconds.
So Quip will help you do that.
It also will help you keep your toothbrush clean because Quip's subscription plan refreshes your brush on the dentist recommended schedule, delivering new brush heads every three months for just five bucks, and that includes free shipping worldwide.
Quip also comes with a mount that suctions right to your mirror and unsticks to use as a cover for hygienic travel everywhere.
And Quip is a new electric toothbrush that packs just the right amount of vibrations into a slimmer design at a fraction of the cost.
It really is nice.
It just looks like something Steve Jobs might have invented or designed.
Quip starts at just $25, which really is good for an electric toothbrush.
And the way you do it is you go to get Quip, G-E-T-Q-U-I-P, getquip.com slash Clavin.
And I know what you say to yourself as you're brushing your teeth.
Well, it's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So it's getquip.com/slash Clavin.
And what you'll get is a free, your first refill pack will be free with a Quip electric toothbrush.
Getquip.com/slash Clavin.
Stop acting like a savage, except for listening to the show.
You can continue to listen to the show, but otherwise, be civilized and start to brush your teeth.
Chuck Schumer's Reaction00:15:03
You know what the difference?
Speaking of savages, you know what the difference between people and apes and our brand of people and the kinds of people who, like, you know, Cro-Magnon Man who died out?
This is absolutely true.
This is obviously a certain amount of conjecture on the part of scientists.
But what is it?
You know, you say it's the brain.
We were talking last week a little bit about the brain and how it changed the way men and women interact with each other because it means that women have to take care of babies more often, all this stuff.
But what is it about the brain that separates us from the apes?
And you would say, well, it's language.
But the fact is, a lot of apes, all animals have language.
And sometimes they say whales may have very complicated language, but they know that monkeys communicate and have different cries that mean different things.
The difference between the thing that makes humans different, and this is not romanticism, this is actual, just an actual thing that scientists believe in.
Things that make humans different are ideas.
Why?
Because ideas bring more people together than animals can ever do.
If you see an animal, you can see an animal tribe.
Say you see, I don't know what you call them, a tribe of apes.
They can gather about 150 of them to cooperate.
And they cooperate according to whether they're related, blood relations and things like that, right?
So, and that was true of all kinds of other brands of what would you call them, primates, throughout the world.
They can cooperate at levels of about 150 each.
But human beings unite through ideas.
So I say I'm a Christian, and you say you're a Christian, and you're a Christian from some African country, and I'm a Christian from New York.
And we can get together and believe in the same things.
We can pray together, we can work together for the faith, we have ideas that we share together.
And so we can cooperate.
Millions, billions of people can cooperate under the ages of our ideas.
Now, here's the thing.
A lot of people don't think that ideas can describe the truth, but nobody lives like that.
We know that there are good ideas and bad ideas.
There are ideas that describe the world and ideas that simply describe people's imaginations.
We know this because we know from math that we have ideas about numbers and those ideas can predict how light will shine from billions of miles away.
And of course, if a group of aliens came and wiped us out, they would have ideas about math.
They might not have the number two, but they'd still be able to describe the world in the same way.
So in other words, two plus two equals four may be a strictly human way of expressing something, but it expresses a truth about the world.
It is a language that actually is true.
And we have ideas in America that define who we are as Americans.
And those ideas have not only worked well, I believe that they're true.
Those are ideas of equality of rights.
They're not equality of ability, not equality of station, not equality of outcome.
The equality of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So saying that women and men have equal rights doesn't make women and men equal when it comes to throwing a ball or making a home.
They may have different capabilities according to their gender in general, but they have the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So it seems to me it is not asking too much when we let people into this country that we have a care that they share these ideas or are willing to share these ideas and are coming here for those ideas.
They're always talking about economics.
They always talk about the better life that you get here.
And you do have a better life, and that's because our ideas are good ideas and our ideas describe reality.
But the important thing is that they share and are capable of sharing these ideas.
So we should only let in people who are capable of agreeing with our ideas.
Secondly, we need to be willing to teach them our ideas boldly and confidently and say, you know, this is, we don't have to say every idea comes from Athens and Christianity, but they should know the history of freedom.
Freedom has a history.
It doesn't drop it like the general rain from heaven.
It was built on certain ideas.
Inch by inch, people fought and died and thought and spent their lives building the ideas that give us the freedoms we have.
And we should be willing to teach that to people at every step of the way, especially when they come from foreign lands.
And finally, we should have the boldness and confidence to enforce the laws, enforce the laws that are passed in accordance with our ideas, because our Constitution is a legal representation of our ideas brought into governmental life.
And we should be able to say, when we pass a law, it gets enforced.
If we don't want to enforce it, we get rid of the law.
We change the law, whatever we do.
Now, let me ask you something.
At what point, so we have three things.
Let in people who will agree with us, teach them about America and what it stands for, and enforce the laws that are created through the American system.
Which one of those do Democrats agree with?
Do liberals agree with?
Make it broader.
Do leftists agree with?
None, okay?
They're willing to just open the borders, so they're not obeying the law.
Suddenly the law disappears because they feel like, oh, you know, we feel so much.
We're so tenderhearted.
We have so much compassion that we're going to open the borders.
They don't want to do that.
In leftist schools, do they teach that America is a good thing, that our ideas should supersede the ideas of other people?
That our ideas are better than the ideas that created Kenya or the ideas that created China or Russia.
Do they talk about that?
I don't think so.
I don't think, I mean, in some schools they do, but there are a lot of schools where they're teaching you that you are oppressed, that these laws are bad things.
So at any point, at any point, are they willing to defend the ideas that make America such a draw to people from around the world and have done?
You know, we talk about Donald Trump talked about the fact that we should be careful who we let in from Muslim countries, especially Muslim countries that are dysfunctional.
Chuck Schumer reacted to this hilariously by bursting into tears.
I think we have this cut about.
Yeah, this is cut 12.
Now, here's the reaction.
So in other words, Donald Trump, no great intellectual genius, but simply said, you know, we should let in people who love this country.
Here's Chuck Schumer's reaction to that.
This executive order was mean-spirited and un-American.
It was implemented in a way that created chaos and confusion across the country, and it will only serve to embolden and inspire those around the globe who will do us harm.
It must be reversed immediately.
Senate Democrats are going to introduce legislation to overturn this and move it as quickly as we can.
And I, as your senator from New York, will claw, scrap, and fight with every fiber of my being until these orders are overturned.
And so he's surrounded by Muslim Americans, and it's all about the emotion.
It is always about the emotion.
But if you start to think about it, first of all, they will play your emotion any way they want.
So if the people come up and they say, you know what, we really should enforce the law.
I mean, it's the law, right?
Because the question is not who comes into the country first.
That's not the first question.
It's who decides who comes into the country.
And obviously, it should be us.
It should be Americans who decide who comes into our country, not whoever wants to come in.
Oh, I want to come in, so I get to come in.
Or I'm in trouble, so I get to come in.
There are all kinds of ways to solve the problems of people in trouble without letting them into the country.
All kinds of ways to do that.
But when the people, the public says, you know, we don't want to let more people into the country, suddenly Chuck Schumer becomes a tough guy.
Then once people are here, it's suddenly the emotional thing again.
Here is Chuck Schumer debating with Chuck Schumer on this issue.
And I mean, this is just a brief, brief thing.
I could do this forever.
I could do the entire show of Chuck Schumer, two-face Chuck Schumer.
But here he is talking at one point when he knows the public wants stronger borders, and at another point, when he's trying to keep the DREAMers, the people who've come in illegally, he's trying to keep them here.
People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens, and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who entered the U.S. legally.
The president's decision to end DACA was heartless and it was brainless.
When we use phrases like undocumented workers, we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration.
Hundreds, hundreds of thousands of families will be ripped apart.
If you don't think it's illegal, you're not going to say it.
I think it is illegal and wrong.
Tens of thousands of American businesses will lose hardworking employees.
A biometric-based employer verification system with tough enforcement and auditing is necessary to significantly diminish the job magnet that attracts illegal aliens to the United States.
They may have known no other country but ours and have voluntarily registered themselves.
And so the ratchet always only turns one way, okay?
The ratchet, you know what a ratchet is.
It's like you've seen ratchet wrenches.
That's where it turns in one direction and then it just crackles when it goes back the other way.
Clack.
And then it pushed it again.
It only turns one way.
The immigration ratchet for the Democrats only turns one way.
They talk tough, but they don't do anything.
They never implement these things.
It's always the same thing.
And they're doing it now with DACA.
They're saying, well, give us the DREAMers amnesty for the DREAMers now, and we'll give you border security later.
But when it comes time for border security, it comes out.
Remember, DACA, what it stands for is delayed action.
That's what the DA stands for, delayed action.
But it becomes permanent because once they're here, Chuck starts crying.
Chuck's eyes fill up.
Oh, this is the only country they've ever known.
And the problem with emotion always is that it's always targeted.
It's always targeted to guy.
If you don't have a philosophy, if you don't know what you think, if you don't know why you think what you think, let me ask you this question.
Here's a perfect way of looking at it.
What do they say?
They say there's 11 million illegals here, but it's probably a lot more than that.
But let's say for a minute it's 11 million people.
What if 11 million Americans tomorrow, tomorrow, 11 million Americans from, say, Texas, let's say they're white, let's just make it clear.
These are white Americans.
What if 11 million Americans just moved into Mexico tomorrow, armed, and said, now this piece of Mexico, we live here in this piece of Mexico.
And then when they tried to throw them out and say, here's our children, look, our children are so small.
Our children are the only country they've ever known is Mexico.
They've been here three days already and they just think this is home for them.
You know, suddenly crying and all this.
Of course, of course, the same people on the left would say, this is an invasion.
This is colonialism.
This is not right.
So they're always crying for these people.
They're crying for the Muslim who can't come in.
They're crying for the Mexican who can't come in.
But they're not crying for the people who are saying, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.
This is our country.
Our country is very successful.
Our country has done very well.
It has done well by letting in immigrants, but by letting them in legally, by checking through them, by limiting the number of immigrants.
The number of immigrants goes up and down.
There was a big push to have them come in at the turn of the century.
Then people start to say, no, you know, push back.
Let's stop.
Let's digest these people and make them Americans.
That's what I think is happening now.
What I think is the people have a very, very good sense of what's happening.
So they shut down the government over this, hoping, because they always know that the press, the press is going to side with the Democrats.
The press is going to say, oh, the Democrats, you know, remember in 2013, it was Ted Cruz shut down the government to try and get rid of Obamacare.
And, oh, it was terrible.
Oh, my gosh, they were going to lose the midterms.
Everything was going to go wrong.
Everything was terrible.
And Obama, if you will remember this, they wrote about this in the Wall Street Journal today, but I remembered it quite well.
The Obama administration went out of its way to make sure, knowing that the media would blame the Republicans, they went out of their way to make sure that it would hurt the public that the government was closed.
So for instance, they locked down parks and public lands.
And here I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal.
On the eve of the 2013 shutdown, Park Service spokeswoman Jennifer Momart emailed colleagues about a scheduled World War II memorial visit by aging or terminally ill veterans.
These were guys who fought in World War II, now getting to the end of their lives, right?
And they wanted to visit a World War II memorial.
And the Park Service spokeswoman asked whether we are physically preventing people through use of some barrier to gaining access.
Deputy Superintendent of Operations Karen Kukurillo replied, yes, signs and barricades.
This is the 2013 shutdown caused by Ted Cruz, right, to stop Obamacare.
The next day, Park Service spokeswoman Carol Johnson was at the memorial and ready to make a political point as the 91 veterans arrived and were turned away.
This is so meaningful to the vet, she told the press, the main thing is we'd like to get back to work and welcome visitors again.
The veterans were able to visit the memorial only after Mississippi Congressman Stephen Palazzo and others moved the barrier to find signs announcing the site's closure.
In contrast to this, the Trump administration went out of their way to make sure funds could be spent to keep as many parks open and as many services going as possible.
They did not play the public.
They did not harm the public to make their point.
And it started to look bad.
This is why the Democrats caved and they have caved.
They've essentially said, yeah, we'll fund the government, but we want to debate on immigration.
So they got nothing.
They got nothing.
They actually lost this fight.
And even when they came out and tried to make arguments, even CNN, their spokesperson, CNN, their outlet, was challenging them on their arguments.
Listen to this.
Let's take the facts, Wolf.
The Republicans are in control of both houses of Congress and the White House.
They're in charge.
Well, let me interrupt politely.
They're not completely in control of the U.S. Senate.
As you know, they only have 51 votes.
The Democrats are in the minority, but you need 60 votes in order.
You need 60 votes in order to break a filibuster.
So they're not in control of the Senate when it comes to this issue.
That's absolutely right.
States of America.
They're asking us to pass the fourth continuing resolution, which is a temporary measure, very costly to the agencies, doesn't leave us strong in terms of national defense.
They refuse to face some of the critical issues.
They haven't reauthorized the children's health insurance program.
They haven't reauthorized the community health care clinics.
They've refused to go to the city.
That's in the bill that was up last night.
Yes, the CHIP program is included in it.
Filibuster Facts00:06:54
But frankly, 40% of the services provided to these children come from community health clinics, which they refuse to authorize and fund.
Can I take issue with what you said about Democrats not having control?
So true, the White House, the House.
But in the Senate, where there is a filibuster-proof majority that is needed to pass, Democrats do have, albeit limited, but they do have power.
So that's what was happening on CNN, the Communist News Network.
And meanwhile, Trump came out, and Trump is tweeting the whole thing, and he's tweeting this is the Democrats' fault.
And so he's reaching people.
He's getting the news out.
And meanwhile, he came out with this two-fisted ad.
This is cut number nine.
This is an ad about an illegal immigrant who killed some police officers, was put on trial, and he said his only regret was that he didn't kill more of them.
And Trump turned that into an ad, and it is brutal.
That's illegal immigrant Luis Bracamatis, charged with murdering two police officers.
It's pure evil.
President Trump is right.
Build the wall.
Deport criminals.
Stop illegal immigration now.
Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants.
President Trump will fix our border and keep our families safe.
I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.
You know, the funny thing about Donald Trump is that I don't want to elevate him beyond what he is.
I mean, he's a political.
You know, you can say he's not a politician, but he's acting as a politician.
He knows his people.
He knows his base.
He speaks to them.
Sometimes I don't even know what he believes, but he has caught onto something that is simply true.
When he went after the NFL for not saluting the flag, when he said, let us say Merry Christmas, that may be cheap shots, but they're cheap shots of something that is essentially true, which is that we are bound together by ideas.
And these ideas express themselves in the little things we do every day, like pledging allegiance to the flag, like saying Merry Christmas to one another, an acknowledgement that our tradition comes through a certain path, that our ideas are based on other ideas, that we got here by a certain way.
And Donald Trump has caught on to that and has done it and has fearlessly defended that against cries of racism from the left, which is the only thing they can ever say because all they can see is race.
All they can see is the color of people's skin.
And the funny thing is, it has nothing to do with that.
It has to do with the ideas.
But he has also withstood the storm from the right, saying that he's a demagogue, saying that he's using these terrible issues, the intellectuals, the intellectuals who understand less than any other people alive.
The intellectuals saying, who cares about the, you know, why are you making a big fuss about the NFL?
Why are we, you know, we can say Merry Christmas.
But the fact is, the fact is the left has succeeded in making it seem wrong to criticize any protester who happens to be black, as the guys are in the NFL who are disrespecting the flag, and in making it seem that you're doing something wrong by simply celebrating the traditions that got us here.
But the traditions who got us here are an offer to anyone.
We do not say you cannot have a part of this tradition if your skin is the wrong color or you come from the wrong country.
But we do say, we do say you have to ascribe, you have to subscribe to the idea of America to get here.
And in what way, in what way does the left support that idea?
I would say in none.
I would say everything they do is to attack that idea, including letting in illegals against letting in illegals in a way that is illegal, letting them in against the law.
I have no real opinion on who should come here when.
I think there are people who know better than I what kind of people we need and where they should come from and what we should do.
But certainly, certainly, we should decide and we should decide it according to our ideas.
All right, I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
So you can come on over to thedailywire.com and hear the great and powerful Michael Knowles as he talks about Catholic marriage, which he's going to do.
And while you're there, don't be a fool, man.
Subscribe.
Subscribe for lousy 10 bucks a month, lousy 100 bucks for the entire year.
And you get the leftist tears mug.
You can be in the mailbag.
You can participate in the conversation.
And you can watch the whole show right there on the site.
It's a good deal.
Come on over.
So Amanda Presto, I always call her Amanda Presto because her name is Amanda Prestigiacomo.
Presto Giacomo.
I have to write it down to know it.
But Amanda Presto, I think that's her, I think her name on Twitter is Amanda Presto.
She's one of my favorite writers of the Daily Wire, a nice lady, but also just a really good writer, really good observer of things.
And she was at the pro-life march.
And she wrote this piece that was so true.
She says, the pro-life movement and the feminist movement could not be more different.
And this sharp contrast was on full display over the weekend.
For the very first time, I had the opportunity to attend the March for Life in Washington, D.C.
The crowds were massive.
It's the largest annual human rights march in the world.
And the people were cheerful, warm, and full of joy.
The theme of the event was fittingly, love saves lives.
Families proudly pushed their babies with Down syndrome and an abnormality we as a society are urgently told to dispose of in their strollers with smiles on their faces.
Former abortion clinic workers held signs proclaiming that life matters.
Teens chanted about their love for babies and held clever and playful signs.
Single mothers boasted of the children they chose to keep thanks to, chose to keep, thanks to pro-life pregnancy centers and religious organizations.
A congresswoman told the masses of the miracle birth of her daughter who was supposed to die upon delivery.
And the faithful said prayers aloud in unison and sang church hymns.
You can see, actually, we have a little cut.
Let's show the March for Lifers marching along, saying the Lord's Prayer as they go.
Cut eight.
Compare that, and I couldn't bring anything in to show because it's all so foul.
The women's marches were relentlessly obscene.
The language, the signs were relentlessly anatomical and obscene.
They were all filled with cursing out the opposition, cursing Donald Trump, all filled.
Obviously, they're wearing those hats that let you know that they have put their vaginas where their brains are supposed to be.
I mean, that's the meaning of that hat, as far as I can tell.
And just the rage.
And these people have, I'm sorry, but they have nothing.
Individually, they may have stuff to be angry about.
But I do seriously believe that the difference is God and the spirit, living a spiritual life versus living a life that puts your vagina on your head.
You know, I think that those are the differences.
Maybe It's Not About the Ceremony00:15:26
And to speak about that, we have the star of another kingdom, the heartthrob, a man who's become a heartthrob internationally around the world for his reading, his performance of Another Kingdom, Michael Knowles, who spent the weekend in a much, much different way.
How you doing?
I'm doing great.
And I can't believe it.
It's sort of a sad moment right now because the last acting job that I'll ever have has now come to a close on Another Kingdom.
It's true, it's true.
And you were great.
And everybody said, I mean, there are now 1,800 five-star ratings on the thing.
It gets incredible reviews.
And some of them actually mentioned that it was the only good thing you've ever done.
It is actually really nice as an actor because I have done like a million little projects on TV and indie films and stuff that nobody's ever going to see because we have no creative control over it.
A lot of these projects go through the Hollywood system.
So there are all this crazy leftism, these patina, this patina of leftism that goes over it.
And it just, I don't know, it doesn't make the projects as enjoyable.
This one, we said two words to Hollywood, which were not happy birthday, and we did it ourselves.
And you wrote it, and nobody was able to tell you, take this out.
That's not politically correct.
No, no, you can't do this.
We put it out there, and then it got a ton of attention.
And as you said, a lot of five-star reviews.
And I love it.
And I don't care if Hollywood doesn't want to take on conservatives and doesn't want to greenlight conservative projects, even if they're popular, because we can just keep doing it ourselves.
I know.
I mean, I start today thinking about how we can afford to bring a second season because the sound guys, Mathis and his team, were so great.
And they worked for so little and they worked so hard that I don't know how we can't ask them to do that again because first of all, they'll beat me up.
But we will figure it out and we'll try and bring a second season come the fall.
So talk about this.
You're getting married to sweet little Elisa.
Is it sweet?
You always change it.
Is it sweet little Elisa or sweet little Alyssa?
Well, you know, as I learned from Genesis 3, that's my dominion.
I can change her name at will.
This is my family, you know.
No, her name is Alyssa.
I exclusively refer to her as sweet little Elisa.
I see.
And, you know, so I...
Okay.
Well, very often I'll explain, you know, I'll wake up in the morning and she'll say, Mac, you should do your show like this today.
And she'll say, you know, I don't sound like that.
But look, this is my family.
I'm going to construct it how I want, darn it.
And yes, we went to marriage class this weekend.
And you went to marriage class.
Now, sweet little Elisa is, in fact, Jewish, or Jewish.
Jewish.
Jewish.
Not the whole thing, yeah.
But you are having a Catholic marriage, and you have to take a class to do this.
Is that right?
That's exactly right.
So you go, the Catholic Church is pretty open about this.
As long as you're going to raise the kids Catholic, you don't need to be baptized or anything for a wedding.
If you get baptized, you're supposed to do it for the Jesus, as a matter of fact.
So they're very open, but there are a few requirements that you have to do before you get married in a Catholic Church.
One of them is take a class called Pre-Cana.
And I was sort of dreading it.
I felt it would be probably cornball, and they would just tell you to never use condoms and have a million children as the Catholics are wont to do.
But it was wonderful.
It was a great experience.
The people who ran the show themselves had been married and had a ton of marital problems.
And they went to one of these, the Catholic version for already married couples, and it totally transformed their marriage.
And I think everybody, regardless of their faith, could benefit from this.
So these are the people teaching it had had problems in their marriage.
A lot of problems.
They were on the brink of divorce.
Wow.
And they weren't really going to church.
I think the wife herself wasn't Catholic.
And that's why I really, this could be quite an ecumenical experience because everything that's taught here is so common sense.
It's not like it comes out of some deep, you know, you need to have a PhD in Christology in order to understand it.
But it seems like common sense.
But these days, with the women's marches and the pink hats and the screaming, common sense isn't very common.
So I do think I learned much more about equality of the sexes and the relationship between the sexes at Catholic marriage class than I ever could have at the women's march.
And a lot of the Catholic marriage class is just scraping away the insidious ideology of feminism.
And it really makes you, especially when you look at the women's march, you see feminism as this totally perverse and self-defeating ideology that, you know, they say, people like Aziz Ansuri say, feminism just means you think men and women are equal.
You think, well, that's a funny name to pick then, isn't it?
It's a strange name.
There is an ideology for that.
It's called egalitarianism.
But what feminism does is it forces women, as you frequently say, to take on all of these male sensibilities and these masculine views of the world that they could never live up to.
So one great example, particularly pertaining to marriage, is the hookup culture.
The hookup culture says, and because feminism says this, that men and women view sex exactly the same way.
We're just all going out there to have fun.
Casual sex is great.
Men and women both love it.
And this is really awful on two counts, because it convinces women that they should want casual sex, and if they are unfulfilled by that, there's something wrong with them.
And it convinces men that women want casual sex, and so you can treat them as disposable.
And what does that leave you?
It leaves you women who delude themselves on the one hand and are utterly used by men who do have a rapacious appetite for sex in a way that women do not.
And the Catholic Church, to their credit, has been arguing this for many, many years.
And with birth control, they say it contributes to this.
And they predicted it was going to happen and their predictions came true.
That's exactly right.
And so there were some takeaways from this.
I thought they would talk about what's called natural family planning, which is colloquially referred to as pull and pray.
And it's a little more sophisticated than that.
It has something like a 98 to 99% working rate as long as you do it correctly.
But it wasn't really that.
The one thing they did say is that when you enter into marriage, for it to be sacramental, you can't close yourself off to the possibility of children.
You can say, maybe I don't want children right now.
Maybe I'd prefer to not have a dozen children.
But to close yourself off entirely stops that marriage from being a marriage.
It invalidates it.
And they drew this interesting dichotomy between civil marriage, which is a contract, it's what most people engage in, and sacramental marriage, which is a vow before God.
And one big difference here is that civil marriage, you don't need to be open to children.
You could say, I don't want to have any children.
You can dissolve it whenever you want because it's a contract and either party is perfectly free to dissolve it.
Sacramental marriage is not that way because you make a fool of God.
You make a promise to God that you will love and cherish this person until the end of time.
And an image that they drew, which I feared would be corny, but I think is quite illuminating, is that of an equilateral triangle with God at the top and the husband on one side and the wife on the other.
And their idea is that if your marriage is centered around something real and permanent and eternal and outside of time and space, such as, say, the creator of time and space, then if the husband gets closer to God, he will become closer to his wife and vice versa.
If the husband gets closer to his wife or vice versa, they will get closer to God because...
Because his triangle is always equal.
The triangle is always equilateral.
And to hear the testimony of even just the couple who ran it, that seems so clear.
And when one thinks about difficult marriages or failed marriages that you've seen on your own, there is always, there does seem to be that lack of grounding it in something outside of the two of you.
You wrote about it beautifully in The Great Good Thing, about there was you and there's your wife, and then there's this thing that's separate from you and your wife.
Not only separate, but somehow better.
You know, it's a very strange thing.
I mean, you know, I always, I mean, you know Ellen, my wife, she is a spectacular human being, and she's one of the nicest human beings I've ever met.
Knowing you, one would just know this intuitively.
But she is an angel walking in the face of the earth.
She is.
But we're all flawed people, and I'm flawed, and she's flawed.
And yet the marriage seems to be something that actually has the capability of healing us within itself, of making us better within itself.
And certainly my experience of the possibility of actual love in the world was part of what led me to God.
It was part of what led me to believe.
Well, I would start to think to myself, well, look, if I recognized love when I saw it and I was right and I see God, maybe I'm not crazy.
Maybe to just say to me, I'm having an illusion, I'm having a delusion doesn't make any sense because I've been crazy.
I know what that's like.
I've been sane.
And when you start to say that, when you start to realize that the internal experience of love can be real and lasting, then you start to realize that you are capable of perceiving things that are not visible to the naked eye.
That's right.
And the realness of that, the tangibility of that, seeing it so viscerally, feeling it so viscerally, I think that this gets to the difference between sacramental marriage and whatever passes for marriage today, I think gets to the essential criticism of the left, which is that the left wants the appearance of the thing without the essence of the thing.
So they want a university degree, but they don't want a liberal education.
They eat vegan bacon, you know, they want meatless hamburgers or whatever.
They drink decaffeinated coffee.
And they want what looks like a marriage on the outside without the thing that makes the marriage itself.
And you observe this all, especially now, planning out the wedding.
Everything is so, so expensive.
And over time, weddings seem to have become much more elaborate and much more expensive.
I've been to a number that have been absurdly extravagant.
And I wonder if the reason that the wedding ceremony itself is so extravagant is because the seriousness with which we view the marriage has become less important.
I think that is absolutely true.
My sister, Caitlin Flanagan, wrote about that at The Atlantic many, many years ago.
That when you start to propose and you have to have a plane going overhead and you're in a stadium and it's on the jumbotron and all this stuff, you start to think like, well, maybe this doesn't have a whole lot of meaning.
Maybe all I have to do is ask.
Maybe that's not what it's about.
Maybe it's not about the ceremony itself.
And these marriages, these weddings that cost, they bankrupt people.
They send you into debt.
Obviously, you want to have a nice party.
It's a big day and it means a lot, especially to the bride, I think.
But still, it gets so outlandish that you start to think there's an emptiness at the heart of it, no question about it.
I'm interested to hear that part of the sacrament is the willingness to have children.
did not know that.
Obviously, I know that the churches...
Were there things that they said where you thought, like, no, I can't go there?
Not at all.
There really wasn't at all.
I thought the whole thing would be some person hectoring us about how we need to start having children immediately and keep popping them out.
It wasn't that, but that focus on the openness to children is about saying yes to life.
It's about saying, yes, I accept you.
I don't merely want my own gratification, be it sexually or professionally or personally or whatever, emotionally, but I want to give life.
I want, you know, God says many things in an obscure fashion in scripture, but he says one thing at least very clearly, which is be fruitful and multiply.
Keep having children.
Go out and give yourselves to children.
And that openness makes perfect sense to me because there has to be a purpose to it.
So much of the prevailing postmodern culture is nihilistic.
It's just, well, we're just here and if it feels good, do it, man.
And we're going to have a nice sum of experiences and then we turn into worm food.
And so it's no surprise that in that culture, divorce would flourish.
But in a culture that believes that there is a purpose to marriage, a central purpose of which is the openness to creating life and giving love and life, it makes perfect sense to me that those couples would divorce at much lower rates.
I asked someone once who had a friend of mine who has had a long marriage.
I said, how have you had such a long marriage?
He said, well, the secret is don't get divorced.
Yeah, and in a civil marriage where the two parties enter into it without having a sense of what they're doing, what they're doing together, what they want to do together, what the purpose is of their bodies and of their love and of their minds, it's easier to just fall away when things go a little hard.
But if you preclude even the possibility of divorce because you don't want to make a fool of God, it seems much more reasonable that those couples would stay together and that their love would grow.
No, no question about, you know, hearing you talk, I almost want to stop writing to Alyssa, telling her to get out while there's still time.
But I'll think about it.
I was going to ask her what she felt about the pre-Canis ceremony, but obviously I had tape over her mouth and she was chained up because I didn't want him.
So I didn't want her to say some things.
Yeah, you don't want to listen to their opinions.
The Michael Moll Show is coming.
I'm out of time, but the Michael Moll Show is coming up next.
He'll be talking about the women's marches and why everything they say is wrong.
Everything is a lie, point by point.
All right, Noels.
Great to see you.
You know, I mean, the thing about the body, the thing about the flesh, is it's very there.
It is very there.
It is very easy to believe in.
But that's true of words, too.
But words refer to something that is not there, but is just as real.
And the flesh refers to something that is not there, that is just as real, which is the spirit.
And you have to focus on that to keep its reality in mind.
You have to have faith and you have to have focus to keep its reality in mind.
And that is what makes marriages better.
Let's talk about our crappy culture.
Every time I hear that music, I turn into Steve Crowder.
You know, Steve has this amazing physical ability to dance and move around.
Every time I hear that, that's what I want to do.
But I don't have that ability, so I don't.
There's a lot of talkmen going on.
Jordan Peterson's been on the show a couple times, just a terrific psychologist from Canada who's been fighting the good fight against speech imposed by the government, especially when it comes to transgender people.
He was on with the BBC's Kathy Newman, and they were arguing about the wage gap, which really doesn't exist between men and women.
I mean, there is a wage gap between men and women, but there's so many reasons for it that the idea that it is simply one reason for it, that just gender is absurd.
And there was this moment that really caught my eye for a very specific reason, which I'll tell you, in which Jordan and Kathy Newman were going at it about whether he should be forced to call transgender people by whatever pronoun they want by the government.
Risking Offense for Thought00:02:13
And here's Kathy Newman making the argument that he shouldn't have free speech if he offends people.
You cited freedom of speech in that.
Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a trans person's right not to be offended?
Because in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.
I mean, look at the conversation we're having right now.
You know, like you're certainly willing to risk offending me in the pursuit of truth.
Why should you have the right to do that?
It's been rather uncomfortable.
Well, I'm very glad I put you on this spot.
Well, I agree.
But you get my point.
You get my point.
It's like you're doing what you should do, which is digging a bit to see what the hell's going on.
And that is what you should do.
But you're exercising your freedom of speech to certainly risk offending me.
And that's fine.
I think more power to you as far as I'm concerned.
Except you haven't sat there and just try to work that out.
I mean.
Ha, gotcha.
You have caught me.
You have caught me.
What got me about this, and this is not taking anything away from Jordan.
He is a brilliant, brilliant man and a brave man.
And I'm not taking one thing away from him.
But that's not a brilliant point.
It's an obvious point.
And what struck me about this is how only a woman who has been enclosed in a cocoon of one opinion, enclosed in this bubble of leftism, could be caught so off guard by that simple, simple point that in order to think, in order to question, you have to be willing to offend.
And in order to be free and respect the person that you're talking to, you have to be willing to take some offense, to be offended, without constantly pulling the outrage card, without constantly declaring yourself a victim.
I mean, this is the amazing thing about the left is we talk here and we have arguments and we disagree and sometimes guys will come in.
Sometimes Ben will come in and we'll go back and forth.
They have to throw Ben out a lot of times because he'll keep my show off the air because we will get into an argument.
But we love arguing and we love discussing and we hear different opinions.
And of course we hear the left because they own the media.
So we hear their opinions all the time.
She never does.
That took her totally off guard because she'd never, ever heard it before.
All right.
It's the end of the show.
Jeremy Boring's Debate Show00:00:42
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