Andrew Clavin critiques the SPLC’s selective labeling of conservatives as "hateful" while framing fatherhood as a blend of nurturing and guiding children toward independence, tying it to patriotism over partisan loyalty. He defends Trump’s pragmatic leadership—like his North Korea approach—but warns of its lack of long-term strategy, contrasting it with critics’ emotional projections. Listener questions reveal tensions between faith, systemic justice, and personal growth, while political trends show Seattle’s tax repeal and primary wins for Trump-aligned candidates like Heidi Heitkamp, signaling a potential GOP shift. Clavin ultimately argues that unconditional love—whether for family or country—demands letting go of grievances to focus on progress. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, I like to think I'm not the sort of person who becomes bitter at the success of my friends.
But when I've suffered an injustice, I feel compelled to speak out.
The other day, my Daily Wire colleagues Ben Shapiro and Michael Knowles were both called hateful by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
For some reason, I was overlooked.
Now, again, it's not jealousy that motivates me here.
It's a simple sense of fair play.
I think anyone who has listened to this podcast without prejudice will agree that I am every bit as hateful to the Southern Poverty Law Center as Shapiro or Knowles.
After all, I support freedom in the Constitution as much as they do.
I reject intersectionality and racial victim-mongering as much as they do.
And I believe in God and country every bit as much as they do.
I am hateful, damn it.
And I deserve to be recognized for my hatefulness by the Southern Poverty Law Center just as much as any other God-loving, freedom-loving patriot.
I'm not trying to take anything away from Ben and Michael, but I'm asking you today to contact the Southern Poverty Law Center through their hate report hotline at splcenter.org slash report hate and demand that I be given my fair due.
As a non-racist, freedom-loving, God-fearing American, I am as hateful to the Southern Poverty Law Center as anyone alive, and I deserve that recognition.
Again, that's splcenter.org slash report hate right today.
Hashtag call Clavin hateful.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey.
Life is tickety boo.
Birds are wingy, also singing hunky-dunky.
Shipshape tipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, it is mailbag day, and yesterday was our Father's Day special.
50 Bucks Off Survival Tools00:03:10
I hope he's got it.
I'm going to talk some more about it because I thought some really interesting issues came up.
Next week, we have the conversation.
That's Tuesday, June 19th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific.
Ben Shapiro will be answering all your questions in that diffident, shy, bashful way he has, moderated by our lovely hostess, Alicia Krauss.
The Q ⁇ A will stream live on YouTube and Facebook for everyone to watch, but only Daily Wire subscribers can ask Ben the questions.
To submit your questions, log into DailyWire.com, head over to the conversation page to watch the live stream.
Type your question into the Daily Wire chat box to have it read and answered on the air.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by Ben on Tuesday, June 19th at 5.30 p.m. Eastern, 2.30 p.m. Pacific, and join the conversation.
While we're talking about it, I am not a survivalist, but I do live in California where any minute now we're going to break.
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I just can't stop playing that.
You know, after this conversation, I really love just sitting with the guys talking about the things that men actually talk about.
I Love My Country More Than Being Right00:15:22
That conversation was more real than most of the things I hear people say about men.
The reason being that most of the things you hear said about men are said by women who know nothing about the subject whatsoever, except from their point of view.
And so I really thought that was great.
But, you know, there are things that only fathers know.
And as we approach Father's Day, this is worth talking about.
It's worth talking about more than politics, but it does relate to politics because there are things only fathers find out.
You know, I've written about this in my memoir, The Great Good Thing.
I did not have a good relationship with my father, which is painful because he wasn't a bad person.
He had a lot of integrity.
He was good to my mother.
He supported us and gave us a good life.
But he and I just did not get along.
And I remember when my daughter was born, my first child, my daughter Faith, bringing her home and I was terrified that I would not be as, that I wouldn't be a better father to her than my father was to me.
And I remember the minute I brought her home, I thought, that's too low a bar.
I can do that.
And the reason I felt that way, the reason I felt that way is not because, like I said, my father wasn't a bad guy.
It was because my father was a performer and he had that, and a comedian, which is a particular kind of performer, and he had that element of narcissism that a lot of performers, a lot of artists have.
And when I say narcissism, what I don't mean is he thought he was so great.
What I mean is that he didn't understand that other people truly existed outside of his imagination.
I remember several times he said to me that when he was on a train or traveling through somewhere and he saw other people on the street, he found it very difficult to imagine they went on living after he was gone.
And I think that made it impossible for him to separate from his sons and realize that we were different people and we might want different things.
And that was the thing that it just happens to be weirdly true of me, even though like all artists, I have a very strong ego.
I mean, an artist needs a strong ego because he spends a lot of time looking at himself and exploring himself and feeling that what he has to say is worthwhile, which takes a certain amount of ego.
But I'm not a narcissist.
I'm very much aware that other people exist.
And in fact, I think that fatherhood done right is the process of shining the light so that your kids can become themselves, which sometimes can be uncomfortable.
There may be things about your kids that God made them that you are uncomfortable with.
There may be things that they think intellectually.
Maybe they'll come back later on to things you like, but they may distance themselves from ideas that you hold very dear.
But as long as your children are honest and steadfast and true in the world and faithful to have integrity and faithful to good values, they are going to be different people.
And your job is to let them become that and lead them to themselves.
I mean, that is your job as a dad.
And I think that that act of letting go of yourself, of not making it about yourself, of not making your kids imitate you, and yet being yourself so that they can see what that's like.
You know, I liken, it's kind of a corny metaphor, but it's a good one, that a mother is kind of, if a child is like a plant, a mother is like the earth that feeds them, nurtures them, they come out of her.
But a father is like the son in that they grow toward him and they can see by who he is, you know, what they are supposed to be like.
That's especially important for sons, but obviously important for daughters as well, so they know what a good man looks like.
And I think, you know, I used to say to my wife, you know, it's not enough for us to do right.
We have to love doing right.
We have to be joyful in the right so they don't think like, well, you know, I have to do these things because mom and dad want me to.
No, I wanted them to say, this is the joyful way of life because it is.
And, you know, this thing about letting yourself go, letting other people become themselves, it works in friendship.
It works in being a husband as well.
It's part of the whole, you know, it's part of the whole thing.
It feeds into the love of country, which is letting yourself, putting the country before your personal welfare or the things you like.
If Barack Obama does something right, you may dislike Barack Obama.
I mean, that never was a problem.
But if he does something right, you say, okay, he got it right.
Why?
Because you love the country more than you love yourself.
You love the country more than you love your political party.
You love the things, the principles for which your country stands, the freedom, even more than you love your country.
And so, you know, when I see, when I've seen, for instance, I didn't like Donald Trump, but when I see that he's doing a good job, I let go of it.
I let go of the fact, you know, I was wrong.
Hey, that's going to happen.
That happened once in 1962, I think.
I was also wrong.
You know, it doesn't matter to me.
I'd so much rather be wrong about Donald Trump and have my country thrive, so much rather, than be right about Donald Trump and say, see, he did destroy things, just like I thought he was.
On the show yesterday, we had a question.
I don't think, well, I got to answer it a little bit, but I didn't get to fully answer, put in my thing, the conversation just kind of went on its way.
Somebody asked, why is God a father in the Bible?
And of course, God is not gendered the way we are gendered, but we think of him as a father, and we have the father and his son.
And why is that?
And one of the reasons I think it is, is because like fathers, God makes us, but we are not part of him.
We're not deists.
We believe that God, that this is creation.
This is something God made.
You're always sort of part of your mother.
You came out of your mother.
You're always connected to her in some essential way.
But a father is really leading you to yourself so that you can be free.
And God is doing the same thing.
And he does it in this invisible manner.
One of the things about being a father is you're not looking to be thanked.
You're not looking, you know, obviously you want to be appreciated, but you understand that when it rains and your kids don't get wet, they don't look around and say, dad, that dad, I like him.
He put a roof over my head.
You understand that that's not what's happening.
On a kind of a side note, a lot of times it's hard for people to define the good.
I write about this in my novel, Werewolf Cop, where one of the guys says, you know, bad things are active.
Rape, murder, killing, bad things.
But when you think about good things, you often think about people who are stopping bad things.
So you think about the doctor who heals diseases.
You think about the cop who stops crime.
You think about the fireman who puts out a fire.
It's almost as if that evil is essential and good is contingent.
And it only looks that way because being itself is good, because the life itself is good.
The creation of God itself is good.
So it's really the evil that's contingent.
The evil is contingent on life and the people who are doing good to stop the evil are in fact in support of life.
It is the being that is good, and that's God's invisible goodness.
And God operates, you know, Aristotle said this, that God, you know, people talk about God as the prime mover, the mover who is not moved.
And people think of that as him pushing the rock uphill or, you know, turning the machinery.
But in fact, he operates by drawing us invisibly to himself, and that is what makes us move his love.
So here's the thing.
People look for fathers in the world, and especially if they didn't have a father, they look for other fathers.
And I had a mentor, a shrink, who saved my life, and he was a mentor to me, the only mentor I've ever had.
But politicians are not your father.
The president is not your father.
The president is much more like a boss.
He's doing something.
He's not your dad.
And I've been watching the left over these days of this summit with Kim Jong-un, the summit, the G7 summit in Canada.
And the rage that they're expressing, a rage at a time of prosperity, a time of more freedom than we had under Obama, a time of finding our way back to constitutional living and constitutional law, a time when ISIS has been destroyed.
And the rage they're expressing is it's not political anymore.
It is psychological.
And it is a rage that Trump is not acting the role of their father because they think the government is their dad.
And that is the whole thing.
If you have a king, maybe, maybe then.
But in our way of government, this freedom-oriented way of government, the president is just the CEO.
He's just running the company.
And he may not be.
You know, people pick on me that I say I talk about how rude he is or all his personal flaws.
But that's because I want to remind you, he's there to do a job.
He's there to do a job.
We are here to talk about whether the job is being done well or not.
And we're talking about it over time.
You know, we're talking about is he doing it well over time, not how is he doing at every single moment.
The rage, this rage that is coming out of Hollywood, that is coming out of the news media, this absolute, I mean, it's not, like I said, it's not political.
When you say I disagree with this man, I never went after Obama like this.
I remember people attacking me on the right because I wouldn't say that Obama was evil.
I thought, if you think Obama is evil, you do not know what evil looks like.
We are so spoiled in America that even when we have a bad president and Obama is the worst president of my lifetime, he's still not evil.
He's just wrong.
He's just mistaken.
He's got all kinds of flaws, but the thing that got me back, you know, Robert De Niro, we saw him spewing, you know, curses.
He went to Canada and he's apologizing to Canada for our president.
I mean, and it would be amazing if John McCain weren't doing the same thing.
But just listen to De Niro.
I just want to make a note of apology for the idiotic behavior of my president.
It's a disgrace.
And I apologize to Justin Trudeau, to the other people, the G7.
It's disgusting.
He's apologizing on behalf of rage-filled, twisted, irrelevant people, because that's who he represents at this point.
People who are psychologically disjointed because Donald Trump will not play dad but will simply do the job that he was hired to do.
And listen, I prefer Donald Trump had a better character as a person, but he is doing a really, really good job.
By the way, his response to De Niro, absolutely hilarious.
He said, he tweeted out, Robert De Niro, a very low IQ individual.
You got to love him, has received too many shots to the head by real boxers and movies.
I watched him last night and truly believe he may be punch drunk.
I guess he doesn't realize the economy is the best it's ever been with employment being at an all-time high and many companies pouring back into our country.
Wake up, Punchy.
I think that that, I have that put up in a plaque over the wall, wake up, country.
Wake up punchy.
But all this inability to see what's happening is this inability to put yourself aside, that you're not being fathered, you're not being, dad is not in the house, but a guy is doing a job for your country.
Put that aside and celebrate it.
And the news media, of course, I mean, all week long I've been busting our guys' chops, making them put these montages together, but I don't want to go through every news guy.
I mean, here is the absurd reactions.
Again, I want to say, and I was really happy that a lot of smart commentators like Byron York and people like that said the same thing I said yesterday.
We don't know how this is going to work out, but he tried something new when we know what was happening was leading in a slow, steady way to complete nuclear armament of North Korea.
We know that.
So we don't know if this change of pace, if this new Trumpian way of doing things, is going to work.
And if it works, great.
And if it doesn't work, we can discuss why it didn't work.
But we don't have to hate on them now when we have no answers yet.
So here's just a quick montage of our lovely news media reacting.
I'm wondering here, did you need to have this summit in order to get what these two people got, this short little letter?
A lot of the reason why we were on the brink of nuclear war last year, I mean, part of it, to be sure, was because of the North Korean nuclear test and their missile test, but also because of the reckless and irresponsible rhetoric from Donald Trump ratcheting up the tensions.
And so now this is kind of the arsonist getting credit for putting out the fire.
But what's striking to me about the summit is how little Donald Trump got in return for legitimating Kim Jong-un on the world stage.
He's coming out like a kiss button.
It's outrageous.
It's outrageous the way he talks about it.
This guy's a killer.
I want to bring it back to the menu for a second, not just because I'm hungry, but because typically the White House releases these kinds of details after, for example, the French president comes to the White House or another head of state comes for a state visit.
So by releasing the details of the menu, this is again legitimizing Kim Jong-un.
They're talking about nuclear weapons and she's criticizing the menu?
She's talking about the menu?
Listen, you know, here's the thing about Donald Trump.
I've talked about this before and I'll talk about it more another day.
Donald Trump is in motion.
He's always, you know, I can't remember if I said this yesterday, but you remember when Barack Obama said, you know, I don't support gay marriage and the left didn't say a word why?
Because they knew he was lying.
They knew he wasn't telling the truth.
So they didn't care whether he said, I don't support.
They knew it was political.
When Trump says Kim Jong-un is a good person, he's not saying Kim Jong-un is a good person.
He's saying, hey, Fatty, I'm going to flatter you up, fat man, and then get rid of your nukes or we'll blow you to the kingdom.
Come.
That's what he's doing.
He's in a process all the time.
And so when you're judging Trump, because he acts like this, and I can say good things and bad things about him, but things are going so well.
Here's the thing.
The general picture is good.
Why is that important?
Because, you know, William James, great philosopher, William James, he was the brother of Henry James, one of my absolute favorite novelists.
William James said, wisdom is largely a matter of knowing what to overlook.
And with Trump, you've got to overlook a lot.
You do.
That's not giving him a pass for things.
That's simply saying this is the guy he is.
This is what he's doing.
And overall, things are going well.
So let's overlook some things.
That is not a terrible, terrible thing to say.
And it's not compromising, certainly not compromising my values, which are very practical.
I love my country.
I love my country more than being right.
I love my country more than picking on people.
I love my country more than party.
I love my country because it represents a kind of freedom that never existed on earth before my country existed.
And I hope it continues to do that.
And Trump is helping that.
And that seems to me to be what matters.
But, however, I have to say this.
There are some ways that Trump is like a father.
There are some ways that Trump is like a father.
If you take the kind of dysfunctional father who still gives guys something that they can hang on to, you know, the guy who maybe drinks too much, maybe cheats on mom, but he's a terrible, terrible guy.
But every now and again, he does something where you go, like, yes, that is something a man should do.
First of all, I've been concerned.
I am really happy with the things Trump dislikes.
And I've said this all week.
I'm happy with the things Trump dislikes.
I'm happy that he dislikes a global world that is not keyed into American values.
I'm happy that he understands that national borders mean something, that national might mean something, especially for America, which is going to be taxed with controlling this global world, this world that is inevitably becoming global.
But I worry that he doesn't have a plan.
When he talked the other day about how the real estate in North Korea was great, I thought that's Trump.
Trump thinks, you know, black people are going to love me because they're going to have jobs.
Church Concerns00:15:17
He thinks, you know, why would you blow up, why would you build nuclear weapons when you could build a condo on the beach and make a lot of money?
That is Donald Trump to me.
That is the best thing about him.
And it really is a good thing about him that he's a practical guy.
He's not expressing, he's not giving the Gettysburg address.
He's not re-expressing the founding ideals.
He's talking about practical knowledge and practical wisdom and capitalist wisdom above all.
The thing is, though, he has been saying the same thing for a long time.
CNN Wolf Blitzer played a cut of an interview with him about North Korea from 1999.
So it's almost 20 years ago now.
And he's saying the same thing then.
He's saying now, listen to this.
North Korea is totally out of control.
And would you rather have a very, very serious chat with them now?
And if necessary, you might have to do something fairly drastic.
Or would you rather have to go after them in five years when they have more nuclear warheads and missiles than we do?
What if the North Koreans don't play ball, develop a nuclear capability, go forward with their missile development?
Does the United States act unilaterally?
Excuse me.
If spoken to correctly, correctly, they will play ball.
Look on another front, what happened recently where Clinton has asked our trade, our so-called trade partners, to come so we can renegotiate some fairness into trade, right?
They don't show up.
They say we're not coming.
Why would Germany show up?
Why would France show up?
Why would Japan show up?
They've been ripping this off for years.
So why would they come here?
It's ridiculous.
So he's saying the same thing then that he's saying now, and he's talking about the way he talks, right?
So remember, he brought Kim Jong-un to this negotiation by calling him Little Rocket Man, threatening, saying, my button is bigger than your button.
Hannity talks to him about this.
And it's really wonderful.
This is kind of dad because he's very honest about the fact that he's not very honest.
So this is cut number 11.
A lot of people, critics, quickly saying, when you said little rocket man or fire and fury or, you know, when he said, oh, I've got a red button on my desk, he said, well, mine's bigger and it works better than yours.
How did it evolve from that to this?
Because he did say at the very beginning, we're going to basically start over.
And what that has been building behind the scenes.
Well, I think without the rhetoric, we wouldn't have been here.
I really believe that, you know, we did sanctions and all of the things that you would do.
But I think without the rhetoric, you know, other administrations, I don't want to get specific on that, but they had a policy of silence.
If they said something very bad, very threatening and horrible, just don't answer.
That's not the answer.
That's not what you have to do.
So I think the rhetoric, I hated to do it.
Sometimes I felt foolish doing it.
But we had no choice.
Yeah, you know, as a guy who has, in my far youth, was in a lot of fist fights, a lot of times you get out of fist fights, you avoid fist fights by just being as mean and nasty and loud as you can possibly be.
And so that's a perfectly good ploy.
And I love the fact that he admits it.
I also love that he admitted this, where he talked about, he says, look, I'm trying this.
It might not work.
This is cut number seven.
I think he's going to do these things.
I may be wrong.
I mean, I may stand before you in six months and say, hey, I was wrong.
I don't know that I'll ever admit that, but I'll find some kind of an excuse.
That's very bad.
See, that's very manly, very, you know, like, yeah, I'll never admit I'm wrong.
It's not going to happen, but at least I'll admit that I'll never admit I'm wrong.
Listen to Joy Behar, the voice of screechy, angry, haggy, you know, miserable feminism.
Listen to her react to that.
Donald Trump said, if I'm wrong, I will admit it.
Yeah, right.
When pigs fly.
Donald Trump is a vulgar, demented pig demon.
That's what they can't.
He's a pig demon.
But Joy Behar, she didn't even listen to what he said.
She said, he'll never admit he's wrong.
He said that.
He admitted it, but she can't hear it.
Anyway, I just think that Trump so far is doing a terrific job.
He really is.
And we're just going to have to live with the fact that he's not daddy.
He's the president of the United States.
Listen, if you haven't already found this out, the Andrew Clavin show is now available on Amazon, Alexa, and the Google Home Device.
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Is that so much to ask for solving all your problems?
Come on.
All right, come on over to thedailywire.com.
Mailbag right away.
All right, the mailbag.
All right.
One of these days I'm just going to collapse after that.
All right.
This is a person who asked to be anonymous, which you're perfectly welcome to do.
Dear Andrew, this is the first time that I've written.
I want to share with you somewhat of a Gary Carter moment I had with you on yesterday's show.
It's a reference to my memoir, The Great Good Thing.
At my lowest point in life, a great baseball player made a comment that really helped me out over the radio.
Gary Carter, great catcher for the New York Mets.
My teenage daughter has been depressed lately, and it's been a total shock to us.
She started cutting, which is a really difficult thing.
It's kids cutting themselves with knives just to feel something, just to wake themselves up.
That scared me, and so we sought therapy.
She's also expressed suicidal ideation, which led us to place her on medications.
All of this literally happened at the time of your crappy culture segment when you said essentially drugs are not enough, but it takes Christian love.
And that discussion seemed more than just serendipity to me.
I do believe that is how God actually talks to people through others at the right time.
I want to show my daughter that Christian love.
And currently she won't open up to me.
I do think I might have some anger issues, which are causing a block, but what else can I help?
What else can I identify to help her with?
I've tried a lot of things, and maybe it's because I don't listen enough.
Any thoughts can help.
If you do read this, please don't use my name.
I wouldn't even have written, but a strong will came over me and I felt I needed to.
All right, I can answer this question.
You know, when, first of all, you're right.
If you have anger issues, you're going to have to overcome them.
And I talked about this yesterday on the Father's Day show.
Kids play every note on your piano.
They press every key on your piano.
If you've got a problem, you've got to fix it because they are going to hit that broken place and bring it to light.
So you have got to work on that in yourself.
That is something that she needs.
I mean, she is in bad shape.
If she's cutting, she is in bad shape.
She needs your help.
She needs everybody help and she needs your love.
I've often talked to conservatives who talk about the culture and they want conservative culture.
And what they think they mean is they want culture that looks conservative.
And I always say to them, conservative culture doesn't look conservative.
The Sopranos is conservative.
It's just not, because it's not an old thing like King Lear, you don't recognize that the violence is speaking through conservative values.
The same thing is true of Christian love.
Christian love does not always look Christian.
And that is shocking to some people.
But it is the truth.
When you think about the way God handles you, does he come down and say, do this, do that?
You've got to do this now, do this.
No, he is really there listening to you.
And if you follow him, you can find your way.
But he doesn't come and tell you at every moment what to do.
I have worked on these hotlines.
And sometimes people call up these hotlines.
I've worked with a lot of kids on hotlines who are cutting themselves.
I've worked with a lot of people who are doing stupid, stupid things.
And what they don't need is for me to tell them they are doing something stupid or wrong.
I had a conversation once with a kid who had joined, was worshiping Satan.
Okay.
Now, you don't have to ask how I feel about that.
But did I say to him, that's evil?
Stop.
No, stop doing that.
Had I done that, it's handing him over to the devil.
It's handing him over to the devil.
I listened to him with love.
I listened to him with acceptance.
I tried to find out what was hurting in him.
I tried to find out what I played, as they say in these businesses, they say steer toward the pain.
I tried to find out what it's because the thing is, pal, it's not about you.
It's about her.
It's about her.
It's about your daughter.
You've got to love your daughter enough to leave your anger behind.
You've got to love your daughter enough to leave your righteousness behind.
You've got to leave your daughter.
You've got to love your daughter enough to leave behind things that you may think are important and listen to her because that love will be like the light and will guide her to the light, right?
Whereas if you're just screaming at her and you're just telling her and you're explaining to her, you're not giving her any chance to grow into herself.
She's in big trouble.
I'm glad you got her therapy.
But I think she needs you to listen to her without judgment and to steer toward the pain and find out what's hurting her and to show her that you love her no matter who she is or what she's doing.
And that is the best thing you can do for her because that will give her the light she needs to grow into.
From Jacob, Heydrew, I've got to admit you give the most fair shake on the Trump presidency I've heard.
Do you think anyone on the left poses a serious threat to President Trump's re-election campaign?
Personally, I think most of them have lost all touch with reality and we're just enjoying the comedy show of Kefefe.
Thank you for your daily 45 minutes of sheer insight.
Well, thank you very much for that.
You know, it's too early to tell and I'm not in the business of guessing who people are going to elect.
You know, I've heard it said that Joe Biden has a lot of appeal among the same working class blue collar people who voted for Trump.
I don't think Joe Biden is going anywhere personally.
You know, right this minute, if the election were right this minute, I think he would win 40 states.
I think that he is on track to score a tremendous reelection victory.
But nobody knows the future.
The future is not ours to see and it's way, way too far away.
He is doing a great job.
And the thing is, that talks to people, that speaks to people, the fact that he is doing a great job.
And all the news in the world, all the spin in the world is not going to erase that.
From Spencer, hi, Mr. Clayman, I listened to both your interview on the Bad Christian podcast and to the subsequent follow-up by the podcast with Propaganda, who I guess is a rap star or something.
Yeah, I don't know.
But do you have any thoughts on the things they took issue with?
They attacked me on the show.
You know, I didn't hear this until I got your letter, and then I started listening to it, and then I was called in to do the Father's Day show, so I didn't hear enough of it.
The part that I heard, I thought was ridiculous.
They were kind of attacking.
They were, you know, whenever I talk about Christian non-judgment, judge not lest you be judged, it drives people crazy.
The one thing Christians and everybody else don't want to let go of is their right to condemn and judge other people as if they were God.
They do not want to let it go.
And I say, you know, Jesus said, judge not lest you be judged.
That's not what it means.
It's like, well, why did he say it then?
You know, why did he say it?
The other thing that people don't want to let go of is their sense of victimhood.
And what I heard them, the part that I heard on the Bad Christian podcast reacting to me was that nasty Andrew Clavin, he's going to take away our sense of victimhood.
And they were talking about the fact that black people do, in fact, suffer in America.
And I never said they don't.
What I said was, you can't solve the past and wallowing in your victimhood is not going to help you.
And that is just true.
You have to let it go.
And it's easy for me to say, this is one of the things that's so painful for them, is it's easy for me to say because I'm not going through it.
But, you know, just to give an example, you know, I think it is different for a black person to deal with a cop in America than it is for a white person to deal with a cop.
I don't think that's the cop's fault.
I think that's the fault of the criminals who are black, who have taught that cop that he's got to take a little extra care with black people.
That is who you blame.
But the thing about it is, is if you are going to wallow in that, if that's what your life is going to be about, you're going to have a crappy life.
If your life is going to be waiting for history to come back and say it's sorry for slavery or waiting for some kind of monetary recompense for something that didn't happen to you, taking money away from somebody who didn't do anything to you, you are going to have a crappy life.
That is going to be a bad life.
If your life is about excellence, what you are made, what God has made you, that is going to be a good life.
And that's what I said.
And they don't want to give it up in the same way a lot of Christians don't want to give up the right to judge people's sins.
They didn't want to give up their right to victimhood.
That was the part I heard.
Maybe they said other things.
I'm not always right.
Well, yes, I am.
Come on.
I could pretend to be modest, but that would be ridiculous.
From Kyle to the all-knowing Titan Clavin, keeper of the infinity stones.
I am a Catholic, baptized and raised in the Catholic Church during college.
I fell away, but I eventually found my way back and then realized that the Catholic Church wasn't working for me.
I couldn't get that strong sense of God in my life that I used to have.
So I tried going to a Baptist church and it was incredible.
I truly felt God in that church for the first time in years, so I think I'm going to continue attending.
How do I tell my all-Catholic family and how do I know this is the right decision for me?
In my mind, I know the Catholic Church to be the true church, but in my heart, I feel this new church provides me a much stronger connection to my faith and to God.
Well, that's the problem you have to solve.
If your mind is telling you that the Catholic Church is the true church, you've got to figure out whether it's your heart or mind that is wrong.
I mean, the whole trick to life in a lot of ways is making sure that your feelings are in line with reality.
So if you're having feelings about the Baptist Church, but your mind is saying, no, you know, reasonably, I can see the Catholic Church as the true faith, that's the problem you've got to solve.
It's not how you break it to people.
You break it to people by telling them the truth in as gentle a way as possible.
That's not your problem.
Your problem is solving that division, which I can't solve for you.
I mean, why?
What is the Baptist Church giving you that the Catholic Church is not giving you?
And if the Catholic Church is not giving it to you, is it the true faith?
And if the Baptist Church is giving it to you, is there something that you want that is not the true faith?
It can only be one of those two possibilities.
I put that in a complicated way, but the point is, either the Catholic Church is the true faith or it's not.
It can't be both.
So that's the problem you got to solve.
But you have to break it to people.
You break it to people with all the courage you can muster.
From Andrew, dear divine master of both what can and cannot be.
I like that.
It's not on my business card yet, but it will be now.
I've been with my girlfriend for over five years, and all I hear from other people is when are you two getting married?
My typical answer is that it isn't worth getting the government in the mix when I already have everything I need.
We don't have kids yet, but are planning to start late next year.
We both share almost identical values, respect the importance of family, and are still very much in love.
We're also not very religious, so the idea of a ceremony would mostly be for show.
Also, we both get along great with the in-laws, so there's no family drama.
Other than a tax break and shared health insurance, what could be a good reason to be recognized as a married couple by the state?
Love the show.
We watch you guys every day.
All right, you asked, so I'm going to answer, get married, okay?
And it has nothing to do with the government.
All that stuff, all that like hyper-rational stuff is missing the point.
That, you know, you can rationalize actual life away.
Not all of life is rational.
Some of life is inexpressible, right?
Ceremony vs. Commitment00:06:08
That's why we have art to express the things that are inexpressible.
That is also why we have ceremonies to express the things that are inexpressible.
I know this because I made the same mistake.
When I got married, I was living with my girlfriend who has now been my wife for 38 years as of May 31st.
And I was living with her.
I thought, why should I get married?
But, you know, I thought, well, we want to have kids and I want the kids to have my name and we want to be a family and all.
So I'll get married.
The minute the ceremony was over, I thought, ah, I have just accidentally done the smartest thing in my life.
Years later, when I was baptized, I made the same stupid mistake because I am nothing if not stubborn in my stupidity.
It's like when you have stupidity, you want to hold on to it with everything you've got.
And when I was baptized, I thought, I'm already a Christian.
Why do I need to be baptized?
But it's a ceremony.
I'll go do the ceremony.
The minute I stood up from the font, I thought, oh my God, I did this.
I made the same stupid mistake.
Thank God he dragged me over the finish line and got me to do this thing.
The thing that marriage expresses is inexpressible.
The thing the ceremony expresses is inexpressible.
Do it any way you want.
Do it with anybody you want.
It's not about the state.
It's not about the tax break.
It is going through that ceremony that expresses with your, that physically expresses the inexpressible, that binds you to your bride and makes you a family and makes you a man.
You will find it out two seconds after the ceremony is over.
Do it, especially if you're going to have kids.
You asked, I'm telling you.
All right.
From Samuel, Dear Claven the Wise, I really hope you read this as I cannot imagine getting a brighter mind to lead my heart to safety.
I'm a 17-year-old high school junior getting ready for senior year.
Over the past couple of months, as the horizon of adulthood comes nearer to me, I found myself dealing with an enormous amount of anxiety.
I have no idea what to do after school.
I have no idea what I want to be or even what I can be.
I know that maybe I should have learned all this by now from my parents and even from programs like your own where you discuss the importance of manhood, fatherhood, humanity, et cetera.
But what is all of this to me now?
I don't know how to apply all of this information.
And so I'm now faced with the most frightening possibility.
I could be a failure.
I could fail to live up to that divine intention, if you will.
And to be honest, I don't know how to cope.
I know this is a long message, but I really appreciate a response if you could.
I cannot possibly imagine living a life so empty and without direction.
Love the show.
First of all, Samuel, relax, okay?
This is not on you.
This is on God.
God will take care of you on this.
Here is what I think you should do.
Okay.
You're 17 years old.
At 17, not a lot of people know where they're going.
Some people have the benefit of a vocation.
Some people have the benefit of good parenting that taught them things that they need to know, good teaching.
You're feeling lost.
That is completely normal.
What you need is you need more time and you need to be doing something that organizes your life for you.
The military, volunteering for AmeriCorps, going overseas, something like that after you get out of school.
Right now, the smartest thing you could do, I would do something like take karate.
Seriously, I would go and start a karate class.
You're a 17-year-old guy.
You got a lot of energy.
You got to be doing something really physical.
I don't know what your abilities are.
Even running would be okay, but I would do something with other people.
Karate is great because it's not necessarily competitive, but you get to learn the values of sports.
If you want to play a sport, do that.
I would do that now in your last, in your senior year, just to start organizing your mind, to start getting some values inculcated into your body.
After that, listen, college, the military, AmeriCorps, something that gives you a mission, something that gives you a mission with other people, something that gives you a sense of discipline.
You will find your way.
And also, trust to God.
He's got you.
He has got your back on this.
He will lead you to your best self.
You cannot fail if you follow God.
You cannot.
You cannot.
He will not let you.
You will fail on a day, on a given day, but you will not fail altogether.
Relax.
You're exactly where you're supposed to be.
You know, don't panic, because you're just panicking.
Don't panic.
It will be okay.
But do take the actions.
Take the actions that you need to get organized, to get your mind organized, to give yourself over to a sense of values, a community sense of values.
I'm going to take one more of these.
These are really good questions.
I hate to stop, but I really have to.
From Levi, first I would like to thank you for your role in my young middle school adolescent self because you wrote one missed call, a horror movie, and that got me to hold hands with the cute girl in my school.
That's what horror movies are for, getting the girl to jump into your lap.
All right.
I have a question about liberal art degrees in college.
I love the arts and at a time majored in music.
I think that the arts from painting to literature to music all play a special role in our culture.
I also recognize that these degrees end up being overpriced and not efficient as a path for a career other than teaching music.
I was wondering your thoughts on this situation.
I was an English major.
I used to joke that it was a pre-short order chef degree.
It was completely useless.
You know, I was sorry I did it.
I wish I had taken something more rock solid like history or something like that.
I knew I wanted to be a writer.
I was very committed to being a writer.
The problem now is you got to get away.
The liberal arts have been taken over by the left.
They don't teach you the real stuff.
You should learn about art.
You are a person who should learn about art and culture.
You should read the great books, get a list of the 100 great books, read them.
You should go to the opera.
You should study painting.
You should do all those things.
Whether you need to do it in college is just a different question.
I'm not totally against it, but you should kind of take stock.
What are you going to college for?
What do you want to do afterwards?
What is your degree going to help you do?
And then do that.
Because college is right now a utilitarian thing.
It is not what it used to be because the liberal arts have been taken over by the left and destroyed.
So study the arts.
Use your time.
Do it.
You know, find that stuff out.
But whether you have to do it in college is something you have to figure out according to what you want to be.
If you want to be a teacher, that would be a good thing to do.
If you want to be a writer, maybe that's the right thing to do.
But if you want to be an engineer, study engineering and learn the arts on the side.
You should because you obviously love them.
College As A Utilitarian Choice00:04:08
All right, we're going to go to tickety-boo news.
A couple of really great stories that illustrate, and here's what they illustrate.
They illustrate that the right, we have a tendency on the right to be a little bit pessimistic.
Okay, one of the reasons we're conservatives is we can see how any change could lead to disaster.
And that's just not true, right?
And it's also not true that everything is indelible and nothing can be taken back.
Seattle, they passed this stupid law where they were going to tax every full-time employee over a certain number of employees was going to be a tax on the company, $275.
Why?
Because they've screwed up with their homelessness policy.
People are living on the streets.
So this was going to make affordable housing.
Well, the homeless policy is not going to be solved by affordable housing.
It should be solved by shelters and mental health care.
But you cannot say to businesses, come to Seattle and we'll tax you to death.
So that tax has now been already repealed because reality stepped in and reality, as we always say here, has a voice.
The other news that was really interesting is there have been more primaries, and Trump is having an effect.
Trump is having an effect on the primaries, which may speak to what the midterms are going to look like.
Congressman Mark Sanford in Catten, South Carolina, he was a guy that Trump was tweeting about him, saying this guy has been nothing but trouble.
He was tossed out.
Heidi Heitkamp, who has actually been, who's in Nevada, right?
She's, yeah, Senator Nevada.
No, I'm sorry, North Carolina, North Carolina.
She put out this ad, basically saying, I'm with Trump.
Don't throw me out.
I'm with Trump.
I'm Heidi Heitkamp.
And when I ran for the Senate six years ago, I said I wouldn't vote the party line because I don't think either party has all the right answers.
That's why I voted over half the time with President Trump.
And that made a lot of people in Washington mad.
But when I agree with him, I vote with him.
And if his policies hurt North Dakota, he knows I'll speak up.
I approve this message because I'm not going to be a rubber stamp for anybody.
I only answer to you.
There you go, Heidi.
And let's compare that to Richard Maddaleno, who was running in a primary for governor of Maryland and put out what has got to be, and this is a hard contest to win, has got to be the stupidest campaign ad I have ever seen.
Watch this.
Here are a few of the things I've done that already infuriate him.
I protected Planned Parenthood from the Republicans in Congress.
Take that, Trump.
I helped ban assault weapons in Maryland.
Take that, LRA.
I believe in public schools, not vouchers.
Take that, Trump, and bet you to lost yes!
And what's the number one way I piss off Donald Trump and the Republicans?
Take that, Trump.
Oh, my God.
If you're not watching, he kisses his husband, boyfriend.
I have no idea.
He kisses his lover, his male lover, and that's going to really bother Donald Trump.
That's what Donald Trump goes to bed worrying about, whether people are gay.
You know, they say like this is a guy, the most pro-gay president we have ever elected, and that's what he thinks.
And I love the other things.
I love the other things.
It's like, yes, I'm for killing babies in the womb.
And yes, I'm for destroying the Second Amendment.
And by golly, your kids are going to have to go to public school.
And those poor little munchkins are going, yay, take that.
Wait a minute.
We're screwed.
So we're going to see this guy is running in fourth place.
So we're going to see which of these two people, Heidi Heitkamp or this clown, have got it right.
Because I sincerely believe that if Trump continues to do the good job that he is doing, reality has a voice.
People are going to support him.
And the Trumpian candidates, the people who support his agenda, are going to go to Congress.
If that happens, I got to tell you, if we do not, if the Republicans do not lose the House in the midterms, it is going to be a bombshell.
That is something that is going to change the landscape entirely.
Hey, is Larry Elder coming in tomorrow?
Larry Elder, the sage of South Central, will be in the studio with us tomorrow.
Be there.
I will be there too.
Supervising Producer's Insights00:00:35
I'm Andrew Clavin.
is The Andrew Klavan Show.
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Emily Jai.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.