All Episodes
Feb. 7, 2018 - Andrew Klavan Show
45:45
Ep. 458 - The Battle for your Brain

Andrew Clavin critiques modern politics from D.C., contrasting Trump’s bluntness with Obama’s perceived corruption, exposing the FBI’s 2016 Strzok-Page memos as proof of partisan bias. He dismisses gender ideology as "child abuse," mocks leftist doomsday narratives on climate and birth rates, and defends SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch as private innovation over government stagnation. Clavin’s episode blends cultural warfare—from Valentine’s Day ads to suicide prevention—with a core message: unfiltered truth clashes with progressive orthodoxy, reshaping discourse for better or worse. [Automatically generated summary]

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Impressive Washington, D.C. 00:03:08
All right, I think everything's working.
So we're broadcasting to you semi-live from Washington, D.C., just a five-mile walk from the embassy to Uzbekistan.
So if things go pear-shaped, we can always get to Uzbekistan.
It was interesting coming into this city last night.
You know, if you've never been to Washington, it's an impressive place.
You know, it really is.
You drive in and you see the beautiful mall.
You see the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and the Capitol kind of stretched out across the city.
It really is a nice place.
And you sort of have that sense, especially if you live in California where nothing seems real.
You think like, oh, yeah, all this really happened.
There actually was a Lincoln and there actually was a Washington.
All this stuff that we're yelling and arguing about actually had a source and people who took it seriously.
It reminded me of the, I mean, it's just a beautiful view.
And it reminded me of an old 19th century hymn that has the line, every prospect pleases and only man is vile.
In other words, the view is great, but people stink, you know, and it, which in turn reminded me, that line reminded me of the opening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
If you remember, Jimmy Stewart is this kind of yokel, a kind of Boy Scout who gets through a series of ridiculous events, gets swept up into becoming a senator.
And he's a real believer in all the American ideals.
And he goes to Washington.
There's this long montage of him looking at all the monuments, just so inspired by the words there and by the face of Abraham Lincoln and the people coming to visit the monuments.
And then, of course, with the rest of the picture, he discovers that Washington is a sewer of corruption and thieves and criminals.
And so, you know, every prospect pleases and only man is vile.
And that's kind of, it's kind of like represents the both of those works of art kind of represent the distance between principle and humanity.
The monuments kind of represent the principles that we stand for.
And the people here, as we know, sock and are a swamp.
But, you know, I always think when I'm talking about the government, we shouldn't judge people in government too harshly because when you judge people for abandoning their principles too harshly, what you really are is you're judging yourself too well.
Because it's easy to have principles sitting here behind a microphone.
It's easy to have principles on your couch.
It's not easy when your career depends on it, when your job depends on it, when your love life or your family depends on it.
And that's what you're watching with these guys.
These guys are fighting, these political guys are fighting for their lives every day.
And one of the things that always is so shocking about Donald Trump is that he's obviously not a man of principle, aside from the principle of winning, and he doesn't pretend to be.
And that's the real question with Donald Trump: not whether, if not pretending to have principles, does that make him worse than everybody else in Washington?
Or does it actually make him more honest than everybody else in Washington?
As we're watching this FBI scandal unfold and it's getting worse by the day, it really is, and watching the Democrats scramble to cover it up, the press scramble to cover it up.
I really think that maybe Donald Trump is just kind of doesn't wear the mask of Washington.
And I don't know if that makes him better or worse or just scary.
Trump's Maskless Game 00:14:38
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey.
Life is ticky boom.
Birds are ringing, also singing hunky-dunky-dee-dee.
Ship-shaped tipsy-topsy, the world is it bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, it's mailbag day.
That means all your questions will be answered.
Answers are guaranteed 100% correct and will change your life on occasion for the better.
Got some really good questions in there.
You have to subscribe to be in the mailbag.
Go to the dailywire.com and subscribe.
Otherwise, otherwise, you won't even be able to watch the mailbag.
God, it's a visual spectacular, as you know.
You won't be able to see it if you're on Facebook and YouTube.
You'll have to come over to thedailywire.com and hear the rest.
I think you can hear the rest on YouTube as well, but you won't be able to watch it unless you subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month or 100 bucks for the year.
And then you get the leftist tears tumbler.
I wish I had it with me.
All I have is this poor cup of coffee to get me through the day.
But I look forward to returning to my leftist tears.
Valentine's Day is coming.
And I know for many of you guys, that's just a nightmare because you thought Valentine's Day is coming.
But women know it's coming.
You know it's coming.
And maybe you're thinking, oh, I'll get my boyfriend something sweet, like a box of chocolates or a teddy bear or something like that.
He's going to hate that.
Let me just be blunt.
He'll hate it.
Go to mancrates.com, get him a man crate.
It comes, here's the thing.
It comes in a big wooden box that you have to tear apart with a, you know, like a crowbar.
So it doesn't matter what's inside it.
I mean, that's the whole thing.
The whole thing is the crate and the crowbar.
And if you want to get it wrapped, you can get it wrapped with duct tape.
And he'll love it already.
And then when he opens it up, there's all kinds of things curated, especially for the kind of guy you happen to have in your home.
You might want to check to see what kind of guy you have in your home, but you can get some, you know, NFL barware crate, the whiskey appreciation crate.
That's the one I got.
I love my whiskey appreciation crate.
I actually have asked for another one.
I liked it so much.
I've asked for a puzzle one because I'm a big puzzle fan.
And that hasn't arrived yet, but I'm looking forward to ripping it open.
I may just rip this one open with my teeth.
I mean, that's how much fun these things are.
And if you go to mancrates.com/slash clavin, you can get 5% off.
And I know what you're thinking.
Give me that box because my guy is going to love tearing this thing apart.
But how do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N at mancrates.com slash Clavin.
You get 5% off.
They do not offer a discount anywhere else.
So you get 5% off right now at mancrates.com slash Claven, Mancrates.com/slash Clavin.
Tell them I sent you so we can continue to keep this show on the air.
And I love doing Mancrates ads anyway.
So that'll be fun as well.
All right.
So, you know, last year I was here, and I'm here for the prayer breakfast, which is a really, last year was a really nice occasion.
Senators, congressmen, and the president and vice president get together and discuss God.
And last year, there was kind of this really funny thing that happened.
It was Trump's first prayer breakfast.
And this Senate chaplain, this very impressive Navy admiral named Barry Black, got up and gave this beautiful stem winding speech that had everybody on their hand on their feet shouting hallelujah, their hands in the air.
And then Trump got up and he just hadn't learned yet.
It was like a guy who didn't know which fork to use.
He hadn't learned yet the tone of the event.
And he came out and he said, prayer, I know who they should pray for.
They should pray for Arnold Schwarzenegger because he took over the apprentice and his ratings are tanking.
It was just like, you just wanted to put your hands over your face because you just realized the guy just hadn't caught the tone of it.
Now, I keep saying Trump is a guy who learns stuff.
And I'm sure this year that's not going to happen.
I'm sure he will capture the tone perfectly.
I bet he does.
But, you know, does that mean that he has now learned to take things seriously that he didn't take seriously before?
That's kind of hard to believe.
I mean, what he has learned is how to be president a little bit.
He has learned that there are certain things you don't say.
You don't make fun of God.
You don't make jokes.
People are serious about their God in America.
We are serious about our Constitution.
We're serious about our traditions.
And Trump just hadn't captured that.
It just wasn't something that he's learned.
And like, you know, this is the thing that the left is selling as a catastrophe for our country.
Remember, yesterday we played Chuck Schumer.
Oh my gosh, that's the worst man ever to ever be president.
But he's not, you know, he's not.
He's not the worst man ever to ever be president.
He's just a guy who doesn't pretend to be a better man than he is.
And that is unnerving even to me.
I mean, this is something that I think everybody finds a little unnerving to have a president who doesn't really follow the script for what he's supposed to take seriously, what he's supposed to be solemn about.
But, you know, it's hard for me to really wail.
I think it's hard for a lot of us to wail about this when we see that our last president who did have that mastered, who did know what to say, he did know the tone to take and how to talk and all this, was actually a deeply corrupt guy.
It was running a government that was deeply corrupt.
And as I keep saying, it wasn't corrupt in the Clinton way where he was running it for money and trying to rip people off or anything like that.
He had principles.
We were talking about principles.
Barack Obama had principles.
They happened to be terrible principles, but he was so sure of the rightness of his principles, he was willing to abuse the levers of power to make sure that nobody got in his way.
So yesterday, with all the, just among the scandals that were taking place, there were more memos from Romeo Strzzok and Juliet Page, the lover, the FBI, those star-crossed FBI lovers whose way just never, you know, they never saw the way forward.
But they were sending all these memos back and forth, and they hated Trump and they wanted to stop him.
And at one point, about two months before the presidential election, Lisa Page, who was sleeping with Strzok, she wrote to him and said she was working on a memo for then FBI Director James Comey about everything that was happening in the Hillary Clinton email investigation because, quote, Obama wants to know everything that we're doing.
So why is that important?
That is important because a few months before that, Obama was on TV and he said this.
This is cut number 16.
Can you guarantee to the American people, can you direct the Justice Department to say Hillary Clinton will be treated as the evidence goes, she will not be in any way protected?
I can guarantee that.
And I can guarantee that not because I give Attorney General Lynch a directive.
That is institutionally how we have always operated.
I do not talk to the Attorney General about pending investigations.
I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations.
We have a strict line and always have maintained it for presidents.
Just to button this up.
I guarantee it.
I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case, but in any case.
And she will be.
Full stop, period.
And she will be treated no differently.
Guaranteed, full stop.
Nobody gets treated differently when it comes to the Justice Department.
He lied.
Lied.
He sat there lying like a dog.
And the thing is, while he was lying like a dog, he sounded very presidential.
He sounded a lot more presidential than Trump has ever learned to sound.
And that really does make a difference.
You know, I don't know what Obama, I can't look into Obama's soul.
I can't know what he believed in, but he professed Christianity.
And I almost never heard him say anything positive about Christianity.
Whereas Donald Trump has said things that to any Christian just sound ridiculous.
Like at one point during the campaign, he said he didn't need God's forgiveness.
He just tried to live so that he didn't need forgiveness.
And of course, we all know that that's just not Christian doctrine.
So it's weird.
It is weird to have a president who's standing up for religious rights, who's defending religious rights, and who's speaking, now learning to speak these words, but who obviously doesn't believe in things.
But it's no weirder than it was before with Barack Obama.
And so what you're really seeing, what you're really seeing is a battle for your mind, for your imagination.
You're seeing one side, the left, trying to implant in your mind that this is a break with what has happened before, because it sounds like a break sometimes, the way Trump talks.
It's a break and it's a catastrophe.
And they want you to be thinking in catastrophic terms.
They want you to be thinking in terms of crisis.
They want you to be thinking that everything that happens is a break from the past.
So, I mean, for instance, yesterday there was this story.
You know, and I feel two ways about the story.
There's a story that Trump was asking the military to prepare a big military parade in Washington.
And, you know, it goes right up my spine.
As an American, I do not want a big military.
I love the military.
I'm so appreciative of what they do.
I talk about it all the time.
I'm glad they pay tribute to them at the Super Bowl.
I'm glad they pay tribute to them on TV.
I'm glad there are commercials about them.
I don't want to see like big trucks driving tanks driving down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Although it would be funny if somebody, like a mascot, dressed up in the big red button that Trump was going to press to blow up North Korea.
That would be kind of funny if there may be a couple of girls, you know, dressed in tights and with a big red button on their head.
That might be really interesting.
But no, you know, I actually don't think that's a good idea.
I don't even know.
I think maybe Trump is trolling people because he must have known the way they were going to react.
I was in a bar here last night and I got stuck watching CNN, which really is an experience.
They are amazing.
So here is CNN talking about this idea of having a military parade.
And just listen to the way they are trying to instill panic in your mind.
We're getting more North Korean every day in this country.
I mean, you know, yesterday the president says people who don't cheer are un-American and treasonous.
And today we're going to start having big parades with tanks and missiles.
And, you know, people have to decide whether they want to have that kind of country.
I mean, we have a country where we celebrate our troops, as Barbara said, when they come home from battle in lower Manhattan and we throw ticker tape.
But the idea in peacetime, simply to have tanks roll through the streets of Washington, that's to use a phrase that the president likes to use.
In my experience, that's un-American.
So it's un-American.
It's North Korean.
We're turning into North Korean.
Like I said, I don't like the idea that much either, but the idea that this is authoritarian, you know, where is the beef on this authoritarian thing?
Where is the panic coming from for a guy who's cutting the government who's actually dialed back executive power, even his own power?
He's dialed it back.
So you heard the crack he made about Trump talking about treason.
If you didn't see this clip, I always like Trump's antic humor.
You know, he has this antic New York sense of humor that I can kind of identify with.
So he was talking about, he was playing up the fact that the Democrats made fools of themselves during the State of the Union address and that they sat on their hands for the flag and for God and for better wages and better jobs and all this stuff.
So he was making fun of that and somebody called out and said it was treason.
He picked up on that.
Here's that quote.
Here's that cut.
They would rather see Trump do badly, okay, than our country do well.
That's what it means.
It's very selfish.
And it got to a point where I really didn't even want to look too much during the speech over to that side because honestly, it was bad energy.
No, it was bad energy.
You're up there.
You've got half the room going totally crazy wild.
They loved everything.
They want to do something great for our country.
And you have the other side, even on positive news, really positive news like that, they were like death and un-American.
Un-American.
Somebody said treasonous.
I mean, yeah, I guess why not?
Can we call that treason?
Why not?
I love it.
Later, the White House did say they were joking, but that was not enough to stop the panic.
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Republicans' Alternative Argument 00:07:30
All right.
So he calls, he says that's thing treason.
He slipped into it while they were calling out him.
It's a terrible thing to say.
But of course, the press goes insane.
The New York Times, it must have filled up their pages yesterday and today.
Oh my gosh, the president is calling us treason just for disagreeing.
Now it's treason just for disagreeing.
Jeff Flake, who I swear, I swear Senator Jeff Flake is auditioning for a CNN job.
I swear he is.
Why he is standing up in the Senate, like making these speeches against the president and against his own party.
He's got to be what he wants to be one of those.
He's a Republican and he's hating Republicans too.
So he got up and said this about Trump's remarks.
I have seen the president's most ardent defenders use the now weary argument that the president's comments were meant as a joke.
Just sarcasm.
Only tongue in cheek.
But treason is not a punchline, Mr. President.
Oh, I don't know.
It depends on the joke, right?
Like, what has branches and calls you dad?
A treason?
Never mind.
But you know, the Democrats and the press have been using this forever.
When Donald Trump Jr., when it was revealed he took that meeting, all we heard was treason.
We actually put together a treason montage.
It's Cut 14.
Listen to this.
You said earlier that this borders on treason.
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.
But raising the question of possible treason.
I haven't talked about treason before, but we're getting close to that.
And we can also say that Donald Trump Jr., what he did was a threat to our democracy and borderline treason.
There's outright treason.
I mean, there is no question that what he is doing is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
You told the Washington Post last week that, quote, there's a smell of treason in the air.
Well, you know, a lot of people are afraid to use the T-word treason, but in the end, that's what people are investigating.
That is potentially a violation of the espionage act.
Yes, treason.
So again and again, we get the double standard when Trump is, you know, and the question is, look, after a year in which Trump has delivered on a lot of really good conservative agenda items, the really question is, is Trump really different?
Or is it just they're selling him to us as a catastrophe?
I mean, why isn't it a catastrophe when they do it?
And it is a catastrophe when he does it.
And some Republicans on the other side, they have another argument, which is really interesting.
Jeremy Boring made it at our State of the Union, the God King of the Daily Wire, made kind of this argument at our State of the Union jamboree that we were doing.
And I've heard others make this among the kind of what used to be called the never Trump, now they bridle when you call them never Trump, but the anti-Trump Republicans.
Their argument is that, yes, Democrats do do this stuff, but we're the good guys and we're supposed to do better stuff and we're not doing it.
And of course, the argument against that is yes, but you got to fight in the playing field that you're in.
My own feeling, I've said this before, is that Trump's rudeness, his insensibility, his lack of a solemnity about American principle have actually been useful in breaking the mind prison, breaking out of the mind prison of political correctness and putting the press on the defensive, which really the Republicans have needed to do for a long time.
But like everything, everything comes with a price.
Nothing is free.
And Trump is, this administration is bringing everybody down to that same level.
There's now nobody speaking at the level of the people I saw in those monuments of Lincoln and Washington.
You know, that's not happening anymore.
But this set this, and look, this is the culture.
This is the culture the left helped to create.
You know, the culture that made Trump and the Trump helped make is a culture the left was almost entirely in control of.
And so it's almost as if they set off a nuclear bomb and then this Godzilla of a president came and started tearing apart their city.
And they really did create the thing that they hate so much.
And they're still doing it.
They're still fighting for your imagination.
They do this every day and they do it better than we do it.
You know, this was on MRC, this site I love, the Media Research Council.
Or is it Center?
I always get it wrong.
But there's a show on television that was just showing some of the shows that are on television.
And one that just caught my eye is a show that is called The Mick.
And it's about these Irish guys, I guess in Boston, I think.
And they're just showing you how they're selling you godlessness.
They're telling you it's smart and progressive not to believe in God.
Listen closely to this dialogue.
This is a comedy show, and it's about, they take their little kid to church, cut three, and just listen to what they're selling you.
And they're doing this all the time.
I don't get it.
The show's over.
Where's God?
He's everywhere.
Why can't we see him?
I just wanted to say hi.
Well, you can.
Yeah?
He's in that candle right there.
So God lives inside the candle?
Well, he's not literally inside of it.
I mean, the candle represents God's presence in the church.
So they built this whole house for a candle to live in.
No, I mean, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.
Has anybody even seen God?
Okay, Ben, you're seeing God.
All right, he's in the candle.
I don't think I believe in God.
Psycho.
Yeah.
Does it feel right?
No.
Sounds smart and progressive when we say it, but we're adults.
He's a kid.
He's not ready for that yet.
At that age, you got to be terrified of something to keep you from becoming a jackass.
We've got to nip this in the bud.
You know, people who make jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger at prayer breakfast are created by culture like that.
And the reason they want your imagination is because your imagination is where your life begins.
The things that you become begin in your imagination.
The things that you imagine that are happening are the way you behave.
You remember yesterday we played that hilarious cut, and it really was hilarious of Hillary Clinton saying that climate change was going to affect women more than men.
She had this picture of women, like, you know, in this desert wilderness gathering grass for people to eat and doing all these chores of like finding the, you know, extracting the food out of the ground.
I don't remember what she was saying, but it was just hilarious.
It was like this Mad Max world that the left imagines is coming if it's coming if we don't do everything they say and essentially turn over our energy supplies and all that power over to the left.
The New York Times, see, just to show you how that imagination affects people, the New York Times, which is a former newspaper, you may have heard of it, they wrote an article the other day saying that people are not having children, that the birth rate has gone down because of fears of global warming.
And they had these quotes in it.
I know that humans are hardwired to procreate, said one woman, but my instinct now is to shield my children from the horrors of the future by not bringing them into the world.
Maternal protectiveness war.
I'm going to shield my children by not having any children.
Here's another one.
I've seen how Syrian refugees who are running from a devastating war are being treated.
Imagine how my children will be treated if they have to flee their country due to extreme weather, drought, lack of resources, flooding.
This imagination, this is the imagination of the left, and it has an effect.
Enchanted Mother's Dilemma 00:14:51
And they're selling it to you every day.
They're selling it to you with every little panicky report from CNN, with every television show that tells you there's no God.
It's hip and cool to not believe.
Everything they sell you is selling you this disaster scenario you have no control over and there's nobody there to help.
Don't even have kids.
Don't even, you know, just get rid of the human race altogether.
It matters what's in your imagination and they know it.
I wish we did too.
Speaking of the imagination, you may imagine how terrified you're going to be when you wake up one day and find out it's Valentine's Day.
There's your girlfriend or your wife sitting there with that expectant little smile, her lips trembling, a little tear on the side of it, just waiting for you to deliver it.
And you think like, Valentine's Day, I didn't know it was Valentine's Day.
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The mailbag is coming up.
It is here, in fact.
But, but if you're on YouTube or Facebook, we got to say goodbye.
Come on over to the dailywire.com.
You can listen to the rest of the show.
I think you can listen to the rest of it on YouTube as well.
But if you subscribe, if you subscribe, not only can you watch the whole show at the dailywire.com, but you can also be in the mailbag.
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Mailbag.
I just wanted to see how long have I just shouted it out.
It was going to take you to hit that button.
I just like to do this to Austin because I'm trying to kill him.
One of these days.
I'm going to say mailbag real quick and you're just going to hear a thunk in the blue.
There it is.
All right.
So I'm laughing, but our first one, I have this really serious.
We got one that was from someone who wanted to remain anonymous, who was talking about the fact that she had wrestled with depression all her life, that she was having suicidal thoughts.
I'm not going to read the email because we've gotten a few like this, and I'm always very wary of bringing them on the air.
You know, I don't want anybody to think that I'm a doctor or psychologist or any of those things.
I'm none of those things.
And these are problems that you can't solve alone.
I always, I try not to make a recommendation of getting help, the last recommendation I make, because I know sometimes it's difficult.
But the thing about suicide is I have worked for several hotlines, and there are a lot of resources for people who are feeling suicidal or depressed.
You don't have to just go into therapy.
You can also call the National Suicide Hotline.
There's a text crisis text line.
You can do it by text if you want.
If you feel more comfortable doing that, that's the Samaritans.
There's a lot of different places that handle suicidal ideas.
And it's a good place to go.
I can tell you as a person who had a troubled early life, I mean, I've always said I've lived two lives.
I feel at this point I've lived almost in a third life at this point, but the first part of my life was really difficult.
I did have suicidal thoughts.
I can tell you that I felt like I was in the blackest place imaginable.
And it turned out I was not.
I was actually very close to breaking out and having a much, much better life, the beginning of an actual new life.
So you should never, ever give up if you're worried.
One thing this person said in her email was that she was worried about the mess she would leave behind.
Suicide leaves a terrible mess.
Your family will never get over it.
Your friends will never get over it.
It breaks everything.
Don't do it.
It is like what they, you know, what they say.
It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
And look, if you're permanently depressed, that may take some medication too.
I mean, I'm a big fan of therapy instead of medication, but sometimes I've heard that people use the medication so they can get enough energy to get the therapy and that can work too.
From Aubrey, oh, magnificent.
And good luck, by the way.
You know, there's only hope while there's life.
So stay around.
From Aubrey, oh, Magnificent Clavin, I'm a new subscriber and incredibly excited to drink the tears of my enemies, the leftists.
Absolutely.
Yours and Ben's podcasts have quite literally changed the way I think about just about everything.
And to that end, I have a problem I never thought I'd face.
My son is six and, quote, wants to be a girl.
I'm in Canada.
And of course, our government is all for taking our kids away if we don't jump on the transgender train.
How do I help him understand his identity and biology without schools and other institutions reporting me to our near fascist regime?
Well, you're right.
That is fascist.
It's child abuse.
Kids say all kinds of things.
They go through all kinds of stages.
A six-year-old doesn't know what he is or what he wants to be.
That is not when you decide or really fully understand your gender.
You know, you might say, you might hear something and repeat it.
You might just realize you're getting a rise out of your parents and repeat it.
And look, I don't know what your kid, you know, maybe your kid is going to have gender dysphoria.
Maybe he's going to be gay.
I don't know any of those things.
But I'm just telling you at six years old, there's a very high possibility that this is going to pass.
And you do not want some fascist government moron imprinting this idea on his head while it just happens to be flying through.
That is child abuse.
It is wrong.
It is wicked.
And it shouldn't be done.
And what you can do instead is, first of all, you want it Aubrey.
I'm assuming Aubrey is a man's name.
Yeah.
And, you know, what you want to do is you want to spend some time with your kid.
You know, kids don't learn by lecturing, especially at that age.
They don't learn by you telling him that he's a boy.
Don't say, I want to be a girl.
Don't say, don't do that.
Just involve him in the manliness of your life.
Involve him in sports.
Play catch with him.
Take him out in the rough house with him.
Be around.
Be a dad.
You know, I mean, that is the most important thing you can do.
You know, show him that you like being a guy.
Show him what guys do and what they enjoy.
And, you know, the odds are really high that this is just a phase that he's going through.
They really are high, that that's all it is, a passing fad.
If you don't get hysterical about it, if you don't lecture him about it, if you don't, you know, forbid him and wag your finger at him, you're going to be a lot better off.
Just be a dad, be there for him, show him what a man is.
Show him you enjoy it.
Show him he can enjoy it too.
And have fun with him.
And keep him away from these child-abusing leftist social justice warriors.
They should be put in prison for this.
It is just utterly wrong.
From Jeffrey, oh, shiny dome, master of words, and also worlds, by the way.
Since we have discovered that you have written a large number of books, we scoured our library system to find audio versions.
In my lap currently, we have Dynamite Road, Shotgun Alley, Damnation Street, and the last thing I remember.
I have the titles in chronological order, but we wanted to know which is your favorite and which one should we listen to first in order to properly initiate ourselves into the masterful mind of Clavin.
Before you say another kingdom, we've already used our two-week Christmas vacation listening to all 13 episodes while driving from Illinois to Colorado and back.
An excellent, excellent use of your Christmas vacation.
You know, I never can say what a favorite book is.
Your books are like children.
They really are.
You like them all in a different way.
And the thing is, you've got three that are actually in a trilogy.
And so they actually do have an order.
Dynamite Road comes first, Shotgun Alley comes second, and Damnation Street come third.
They are a trilogy of detective stories.
I'm very proud of them.
I think you'll really enjoy them and they'll be a lot of fun.
The last thing I remember is the start of a young adult tech trilogy, four books called the Homelender series.
And those were very, you know, they were bestsellers.
They really did well.
And young adults like them.
But they also do appeal to adults.
But you've only got the first in a four-book series.
So if you want to listen to the full trilogy, you've got it, Dynamite Road, Shotgun Alley, and Damnation Street.
And I think you'll like them.
Get back to me.
Let me know how you like them.
From Clay, dear Godfather of Bald.
I grew up in church and regarding money was taught that scripture speaks mostly negatively about it.
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of big name successful people speaking about how the market is about to correct and hurt unprepared people, the importance of entrepreneurship, investing in assets, and the work displacement that's coming in the not-too-distant future due to advancements in tech.
Is it possible for someone who's been taught all their life that money is evil and to be satisfied just working to make others rich to become successful and make a good amount of money?
Is this a goal that someone can aspire to while also honoring God?
Absolutely.
I mean, this is, I will tell you how I read the gospels on this and the Bible on this.
You know, they always quote this line, that money is the root of all evil.
But what it really says is the love of money is the root of all evil.
And when Jesus talks about money, he gives it far, far, far less importance than the spiritual things that you do.
So in other words, if you are working for money, you're probably going to miss the mark if you're working just to make money.
But if you're working to do something with your life that you love, even if it's investing, I mean, some people love investing.
If you're working to do something with your life that you love and do something that maybe is going to help other people because of what you do and you make money, of course you should take care of it.
Of course, you should, you know, tend to your money and tend to what makes your family thrive and what will give your family the good things in life.
The point about money is that it's not the target.
It's always, you know, Aristotle said this too.
He said that when people want money, they really want the things that money can buy.
So you want good things from your family.
You want good things for the world.
You want to be able to give money away.
You know, there's nothing, there is nothing wrong with money unless it becomes the center of your life.
When I see these guys who have billions of dollars and they worry about whether they're going to fall in the Forbes 500 richest people list, then I see people wasting their lives.
The other thing Jesus did say is don't worry about money, that God will take care of you if you, but that doesn't mean that you just sit there and wait for money, gold to fall out of the sky, like in a Greek myth.
It means that you shouldn't be afraid.
You should do the things that you want to do and work in a way, in a calm way, in a way that goes forward, trusting in what God made you to do.
It's not hating money.
It's that if what you love is the money rather than the fact that it rewards your work and the fact that it can bring good things to your family, that's where you start to go wrong, when the money becomes the target.
I think that that's where you start to go wrong.
But you should take care of yourself and take care of your family.
Dear Supreme Commander Clavin, knower of all things, that is, at least somebody got my titles right today.
I believe you are right when you say anger is the devil's cocaine.
My problem is that whenever my mother-in-law is around, I want to run to the bathroom and snort a couple of lines of metaphorical cocaine.
She, my mother-in-law, is a truly damaged person.
This is from Laura, truly damaged person without joy or hope and makes herself difficult to be around.
Her interaction with us is always negative.
She ridicules our Christian faith, criticizes our parenting, and is jealous of the life we've made in another state away from her.
I know I should be forgiving and patient with someone so joyless, but I find myself angered now just at the sound of her name.
How do I let go of my anger and treat her as Christ would?
Thank you for your amazing show.
I listen to every day.
Well, thank you for that.
First of all, Laura, you know, one of the names of Satan is the accuser.
They call him the accuser.
And one of the things he does is he makes you feel shame about things that you don't have to feel shamed about.
Annoying people are annoying, and you're going to be annoyed by them.
That is just the natural fact of things.
If you sit down to have a picnic and a bunch of bees, a swarm of bees come by, you're going to be put out.
You're going to be annoyed.
If your mother-in-law is coming over and criticizing you and attacking you and hating on you and making you feel bad, you're going to be annoyed.
You can't help being annoyed.
So get rid of the part of the chain here where you bother yourself for being annoyed.
You really only have to take care of two things.
One is that you have to treat her kindly.
You have to treat her with respect.
Look, as you say, this is a person who is really damaged, who has really damaged her own life, it sounds like, by her philosophy, she's cut herself off from God.
She's cut herself off from faith.
And she's obviously quite angry.
It seems to me, this is a guess.
I don't know you guys, but a guess, a good guess, I think that she's quite angry that you have become the chief female figure in her son's life and have essentially replaced her.
That is the natural way of things.
That's the way things are supposed to be.
William Faulkner said, a woman and her mother-in-law are natural enemies.
That's why.
So, you know, you want to treat her with kindness and patience and respect, even though she's being critical and ticks you off.
And the way you do that is try and, you know, and listen.
And when you fail because she annoys you so much, just move on and try again.
Go back to the beginning and try again.
Don't sit around beating up on yourself.
She's annoying.
You got annoyed.
That's okay.
But just try and treat her with kindness and respect because she has really not got a very good life.
And she's angry and jealous at you.
She's angry you took her son away and moved away, and that she feels that your better way of living is rejecting her, which in a sense it is.
That's the first thing.
So you want to treat her with kindness and respect.
The way you do this, try to maintain a sense of humor, try to tease her out of it a little bit, try to talk to her about what's on her mind, try to divert her from her criticism of you, to talk to her about what's in her life, what she's thinking about, listen to her, talk about her life and her concerns, and maybe you can get her off of the sort of anger train that she's obviously on herself.
The other thing, though, is that the anger feels bad.
If you're angry when you just hear the sound of her voice, just hear her name, that's anger that is going past what she's doing to you.
Rocket Launch Viewing 00:04:46
That's something that's happening inside yourself.
My guess on this is that people get angry like that when they feel threatened.
Your husband probably doesn't see all the stuff you see in his mother.
He probably has some more affection for her than you do.
He probably is more patient with her than you are.
Maybe he's used to her.
He maybe doesn't see that she does this.
Remember, she does this to everybody.
It's not just you.
You're a special target because you took her son, but she's like this with everybody.
But he may not see it.
So maybe you feel that she's edging in, trying to get some power in your household, that she has a previous claim on your husband.
So maybe you're afraid that that's going to come back again.
It sounds to me like your husband and you are pretty solid, that you've got it figured out, that you know where you're going.
Don't be afraid to talk to him about this, about your fears, about what makes you unhappy.
Don't be afraid to talk to him, not in an accusing way, but in a collaborative way about things that he can do to help you out here and take some of the pressure off, because I'm sure a lot of it is coming down on you.
Make sure he understands how bad you feel about it and try and work through what is making you angry.
Where do you feel threatened?
Where do you feel like she's got some power over you?
Because in real life, she doesn't have any power over you.
She hasn't got anything.
You don't need anything from her.
You guys have established a good life, a better life than she has had or will ever have, and you should have some pity on her.
But she's going to be annoying.
But just try and get rid of that anger that's inside you, that's eating you up when she's not around.
Try to figure out why it's threatening to you and try to collaborate with your husband on ways to deal with her.
And that should do it.
I got to stop the mailbag.
I've got a million more questions, but I can't.
time for tickety boo news.
So I love this.
I mean, this is, you know, I'll read this from the New York Times because it used to be a newspaper and they covered this fairly clearly from the same pad where NASA launched rockets that carried astronauts to the moon.
A big new American rocket arced into space on Tuesday, but this time NASA was not involved.
The rocket, the Falcon Heavy, was built by SpaceX, the company founded and run by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
And this is so exciting to me because I think we need to go into space.
And I think that private enterprise is the way to get there.
There's going to be some government collaboration, but private enterprise is the way to go.
One of the reasons we went to the moon and then never did anything else again is because the government sucked all the talent into NASA.
They all concentrated and focused on going to the moon, and then it became a government boondoggle.
And we did nothing but go up and down to this useless, semi-useless space station for all this time.
And it's time to go back to the moon.
It's time to get to Mars.
Trump is absolutely right about this.
Let's watch a little bit of this rocket launch by Elon Musk.
30 seconds, if you can hear me with a cheering space on our test flight, building on the history of Saturn V Apollo, returning pan 3980.
And then, you know, he put a car in there or something like that.
Something just for fun that he put in.
And then when they got to their destination, they actually took some pictures that were absolutely astounding.
Here they are.
I'm a Martian.
I hope for you no ill will.
A Martian.
Does someone need a chill pill?
My name's Marvin.
I'm a Martian.
La You never know what you're going to find.
You know, the reason this is so exciting to me is this is the opposite of people not having children because of climate change.
The opposite of fear, the opposite of don't touch anything.
This is the left's, the left is always telling us, don't touch anything, you'll break it.
The earth is more important than you are.
The only thing that's important about the earth, the only thing that's important about the earth is humankind.
And the only reason humankind is important is because we are the ones who perceive what God perceives, the beauty, the good, the morality.
Everything else is there for us to perceive.
And we've always thrived by spreading out.
You know, when Rome fell, first, before Rome fell, first it had laid the seeds for a Roman Europe.
And when Europe destroyed itself in the two world wars, before it did that, it had colonized America and India and other parts of the world.
You know, so if Hillary Clinton is going to be crawling around eating grass, the rest of us want to move on and head into the solar system and populate it.
The Opposite of Fear 00:00:48
This is not the time, not the time to be afraid.
This is the time to go forward.
All right.
I will go to the prayer breakfast.
I won't be back tomorrow.
I will be back on Friday to report on the entire thing.
And I will talk to you then.
This is Andrew Klavan, and this is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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.
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