Ep. 575 dissects 2018’s media distortions—Washington Post’s Joe Scarborough equating Trump to terrorism, The New Yorker framing abortion debates as dystopian—while exposing leftist narrative flips like V for Vendetta’s fascist-to-revolutionary rewrite. Economic data reveals Trump’s 2018 rebound (3% GDP) crushed Obama’s stagnation (2%), yet media ignored Kudlow’s manufacturing revival, prioritizing Russian election interference hysteria over real threats like Islamist extremism. Double standards emerge: left-wing violence (e.g., Republican event stabbings) goes unnoticed, while Trump’s rhetoric faces relentless scrutiny. Philosophically, Romanticism’s emotional depth is defended against Vulcan logic’s failures, with Goya’s Sleep of Reason as a warning. The episode ends with unapologetic defiance—calling out "anti-Constitution socialists" and rejecting apologies for satire, from Norm Macdonald’s Me Too critique to Serena Williams’ mocked behavior. [Automatically generated summary]
Some of you may think that America is doing great.
You tell yourself the economy is booming and we're largely at peace.
But if that's your stupid opinion, it's only because you've been paying attention to real life instead of reading the news.
In the news, things are absolutely awful.
For instance, here's a 9-11 article written by Joe Scarborough in the Washington Post, in which Joe says, Donald Trump is harming the dream of America more than any terrorist attack ever has.
Now, you may say, that's ridiculous.
Joe Scarborough would never sink to commentary so disgustingly low, it constitutes a slap in the face of every American who's lost his life or a loved one to the evil of Islamist murder.
But boy, oh boy, would you be wrong.
Sure, Joe writes, the terrorists want to kill us and everything we stand for, but Trump has damaged the country's image.
And that's even worse because of some reason that I'm sure makes total sense.
Another headline in the same paper says, it's not wrong to compare Trump's America to the Holocaust.
And you might think an editor with integrity would cut his own heart out with a penknife before he'd allow someone to write a column in his paper comparing this free and compassionate nation to a country that attempted to systematically slaughter an entire race of people.
But if you think that, you must have let your subscription to WAPO lapse.
And in case you're wondering, the article says Trump is like Hitler because he says mean things and stuff.
And finally, there's this headline from The New Yorker.
We live in the reproductive dystopia of The Handmaid's Tale, in which it turns out the spoiled rich women who read The New Yorker are actually oppressed, like the women in the TV show, The Handmaid's Tale, who are actually spoiled rich actresses pretending to be oppressed women.
So maybe it all makes a kind of sense.
Anyway, it's sad that life in America is so terrible in the news, but you've got to face it.
There's no sense burying your head in reality.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Everything Becomes Literature Eventually00:02:34
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also sing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped tipsy topsy, the world is a bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, it is mailbag day.
Oh, God, my.
Stop doing that.
Yes, it's mailbag day.
We're going to answer all your questions.
We've got some really good ones.
They're very hard questions that we have to tackle, but we will.
And the answers are guaranteed 100% correct.
So there's no suspense.
So you will get the right answers and they will change your life, maybe even for the better.
So I guess there's a little suspense there.
I had a great time at the Reagan Rant Center.
I want to say thank you to them for hosting me yesterday.
It was really a moving experience and an uplifting experience in a lot of ways to see.
It's always wonderful to see people dedicated to working to spreading the information about how great this country is and what it needs to preserve it and preserving free speech on campus, all of which they're doing.
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So one of the things I talked about yesterday was the fact that everything becomes literature eventually.
All history becomes literature.
The Power of Storytelling00:03:03
Everything becomes story.
And what I mean by that is as the people who experienced something died or and as the pain of an experience and the actual experience of an experience fades away, we tell the story over time and we get meaning out of it.
We either remember that there are enemies in the world like 9-11.
We remember there are enemies in the world.
We remember we're defending something here.
That multiculturalism is a mistake.
It's nonsense.
It's not true that all cultures are the same, that some cultures are based on better ideas and make better cultures and better cultures make better people.
Even though all people are sinful and problematic, better cultures, better ideas make better people.
And I think that that was one of the lessons we got out of 9-11.
But the telling of stories starts in the moment.
And this is something I well know.
I've been telling stories all my life.
And, you know, it matters how they're told, and it matters what meanings are plugged into the places where, to the characters in the story.
So for instance, I never liked the movie Schindler's List.
And this is not an attack on Steven Spielberg.
It's a beautifully made movie.
It's a spectacularly made movie.
It's very touching.
It's very warm.
But Schindler's List, because Steven Spielberg is Spielberg, it became the Holocaust movie.
It was the American movie about the Holocaust.
And the Holocaust was not about people who saved other people's lives.
The Holocaust was about evil.
It was about death.
It was about suffering in despair and terror and torment.
And to make it this uplifting story is to tell a lie about it.
But that's part of history fading away.
History fades away and we look for hope and we look for inspiration.
And so a story can be true and not true at the same time.
One of the things the left has mastered, because the left have taken up all the storytelling positions in Hollywood, in publishing.
The left dominates the storytelling scene.
And one of the things they have mastered is how to tell a story that feels true, that is filled with untrue values.
And my favorite example is V is for Vendetta.
Watch V is for Vendetta very carefully.
It's actually a fascist film, but it feels like a film about revolting for freedom.
And people watch it.
And every time I say it's a fascist film, people say, no, no, no.
The individuals rise up and they revolt.
But who are the powers that oppress them in the film?
Because what the left does with these stories is they replace the true oppressor with a false oppressor.
So in the V is for Vendetta, they replace the true oppressor that was threatening us at the time and still is threatening us to some degree, Islam, Islamist radicalism.
And they replace that with Christianity.
The oppressors are Christian.
The oppressor is parliament, the mother of all freedoms that we have, political freedoms that we have today.
And the whole story is people overturning in the name of Islam and protecting Islam, overturning the Christian oppressor and overturning parliament so that the people can rule and they're all masked and anonymous.
It's a fascist film.
And they make you feel that it's a film about freedom by replacing the values of the actors in it.
So in other words, the people who are acting to oppress are people who in real life want you to be free.
The people who are oppressed are people in real life are oppressive.
The New Normal Rises00:15:38
And that's a good trick that they use.
And they're using it now in the news.
They're using the same technique in the news because it wasn't, you know, just as they were celebrating 9-11, it wasn't just Joe Scarborough who made that incredibly stupid, low, disgusting point that somehow Trump could be compared to a terrorist in what sense.
He dialed it back a little bit.
He said, oh, I misspoke or I tweeted it out in the wrong way.
But no, I mean, that was just a bad thing to do.
And what he should say is, oh my goodness, I got over excited and I made a mistake, but he doesn't do that.
It wasn't just him.
Senator Angus King was out there trying to sell the narrative that somehow the Russian attempt to affect our election, which was a couple of guys spending a few hundred thousand dollars on Facebook and hacking into things, was somehow related to 9-11.
Listen to this.
That was, I would argue, the beginning of an attack that's continuing today.
They used airplanes into towers.
Now people can use the click of a computer key in St. Petersburg, Russia, to attack.
It's an attack that continues, and it's the same kind of attack today that occurred in 2001.
No, it's not.
He says it's a little hard to hear because of the echo, but he's the same kind of attack today with Russians in St. Petersburg clicking on their computers as it is when you murder 3,000 people who will never come home to their families.
And that's just absurd and insane, but it is a way of telling stories that the left does.
And here is the thing.
It's working.
It is working to some degree.
It's an article in Bloomberg.
Here's the headline.
There's never been a president this unpopular with an economy this good.
It says, there's little doubt the economy is on a roll.
Gross domestic product expanded at its fastest clip in four years in the second quarter.
Unemployment is near the lowest since the 1960s, and wages look to be finally on the rise, which is a big deal.
While consumer sentiment on the economy is currently higher than the average of any president since the poll started in the 1980s, Trump's approval rating, as measured by a separate poll, is the lowest of the lot.
And the circus in Washington, it says, is seen drowning out good economic news.
So think about it.
What's the circus in Washington?
What is the circus in Washington?
Trump is an obstreperous, loudmouth.
He treats people badly, the people around him badly, his employees.
How does that affect you?
That's just a story.
It is a story you are being told.
Oh, my goodness, John Kelly says it's Crazy Town, or whoever said it was supposed to have said it was Crazy Town.
Even though they deny it, even though the people deny it, the rumor goes around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
And you are being told the story, oh my goodness gracious, what a terrible thing.
And one day, Donald Trump may just pick up a phone and bomb North Korea and nobody will be able to do a thing about it, which is utter nonsense.
And that's the story that's being told instead of the real story.
You know, we keep hearing about civility.
Now, let me talk about this in a minute.
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So this other story that they use the McCain funeral memorial to put forward, oh, civility, civility, wither the civility, wither the civility.
Republican congressional candidate Rudy Peters, who's running against Democratic incumbent Eric Swalwell in California, was attacked by an assailant wielding a switchblade while campaigning at the Castro Valley Falls Festival on Sunday.
This nutcase started shouting about Donald Trump and then rushed at him with a switchblade.
And luckily, he was able, the candidate Rudy Peters was able to grab his campaign sign and fend off the switchblade.
Now, I just want to say, since we're talking about this civility and who causes violence and who's inciting violence, we're always told any minute now, any minute now, Donald Trump's rhetoric is going to incite violence.
We're constantly being told that on the news.
Let's listen to the way the networks covered this story last night.
All right.
Yeah, all right.
So that's not much coverage there.
Nothing, nothing.
We're constantly hearing, we are constantly hearing that Donald Trump's rhetoric is going, is, oh, the chaos, oh, the horror, oh, he calls them this.
They say, well, when he calls the press enemies of the people, that's what Stalin said.
Yeah, but there's a big difference.
Trump's not Stalin, so it doesn't matter if he's using the same language.
You know, a week, a week ago, just a week before the stabbing happened, there was another story.
A Republican Party office in Wyoming was set on fire.
It was set on fire just two days after it's opened.
Local authorities say the fire was arson.
Here's how this was covered in the news.
Hey, gee, that sounds almost the same as the other story.
It's like, it's almost as if they're not covering this stuff at all.
Let me mention another one, just to give you the idea of the civility on the left.
PJ Media, Denise McAllister, who is a pal, she's been on the show.
She's an absolutely delightful, wonderful mom.
And she put out a tweet the other day saying, at the root of abortion hysteria is women's unhinged desire for irresponsible sex.
Sex is their God.
Abortion is their sacrament.
It's abhorrent as women have flung themselves from the heights of being the world's civilizing force to the muck and mire of dehumanizing depravity.
She is now in hiding.
I think she may have just come out.
She went off.
No, she's still hiding away.
She is in hiding because they're calling her up and threatening to rape her and kill her.
I mean, this is how the left operates.
And it is how the left operates and not how the right operates.
In the right, we have extremists, it's true, but this is mainstream stuff on the right.
Now, it's not just happening here.
It's happening in England.
The conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, brought his children outside his home and he was surrounded by leftist demonstrators.
Listen for a minute.
Yeah, we do.
We have a clip of this.
Listen to what this guy is shouting to the guy's kids.
Lots of people don't like your daddy.
You know that.
No, this.
He's probably not told you about that.
Lots of people hate him.
Because he won't pay how much he pays his money.
He doesn't look after you.
Daddy doesn't pay for very much.
Daddy says the minimum wage doesn't count for anything.
All the London living wage.
Daddy doesn't pay the living wage.
So poor nanny crooked who looks after you and wants your bottom.
She doesn't get enough money every week.
But Daddy doesn't care because he treats us he poses a Latin Eating orientation top, which he does pretty well.
How much do you pay your nanny?
How much you pay it?
How much?
One fundamental question.
How much do you pay your nanny?
This basically is the guy screaming at his children, if you can't understand the British accent, screaming at the MP's children.
Your daddy is a bad guy.
Everybody hates your daddy.
Your daddy doesn't pay your nanny enough and all this stuff because when you are a leftist, you see, you're elevated to such a high moral plane that you're allowed to do this.
You're allowed to chase, you know, Sarah Sanders out of restaurants.
You're allowed to torment Mitch McConnell as he walks down the street.
In Brazil, the right-wing candidate, Yer Sonaro, 63, was stabbed by a leftist religious fanatic in a knife attack that almost killed him.
He is campaigning from a hospital bed.
So, this is the thing.
It's not just the stories they tell, it's the stories they don't tell.
So, you're worrying about Trump.
Apparently, voters are worried about Trump being rude.
Trump is rude.
I've hit him on this a million times.
I don't think he should treat people like that.
They hit him on the chaos in his administration.
I'm sure he is a chaotic manager.
I doubt some of these stories.
Already, some of the people are saying these stories of people taking off important papers off his desk.
They're denying that.
I told you when I heard that that I didn't believe that story.
It's not that there are not staffers who will remove something saying the president doesn't need to say that, but I really do not believe that anybody took an actual executive order off the president's desk.
I just don't believe that story.
So, these are the stories you're supposed to care about.
You're supposed to wake up in the middle of the night and say, oh man, John Kelly is really, he's really got it tough.
John Kelly has faced bullets for this country.
I'm sure he can face an obstreperous Donald Trump and give as good as he gets.
John Kelly is not, I'm not worried about John Kelly.
He looks like a fellow who can take care of himself.
So does Jim Mattis.
I'm not worried about those guys at all, at all.
They do not worry about me.
I worry about my family.
I worry about the things that are happening in my life because that's the story I'm telling.
That's the story my life tells.
And I don't care what story they're trying to force down my throat.
The economy is really the big one.
The economy is the one that really gets me because this is the untold story.
This is the story that we are not hearing.
If Obama were still president, this would be the lead story every single day.
If Obama could have done what Trump has done with the economy, lead story every day.
Obama's taking credit for it.
Listen to this speech he gave.
It's cut number one.
And by the time I left office, household income was near its all-time high, and the uninsured rate had hit an all-time low, and wages were rising, and poverty rates were falling.
I mention all this just so when you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let's just remember when this recovery started.
I mean, I'm glad it's continued.
But when you hear about this economic miracle that's been going on, when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers.
suddenly Republicans are saying it's America.
I have to kind of remind them: actually, those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015.
I have been waiting for days to take this apart because this is such garbage.
It is such garbage, and I haven't had time to get to it, but I want to get to it now because it is the story that the left is trying to sell.
Milton Friedman, the great American economist, said that there's a pattern to the American economy.
The deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery.
Somebody was writing about this on the Wall Street Journal yesterday, but I know this for myself.
The economy has to grow even faster than normal to catch up to where it would have been without the recession.
And this was true until Obama.
It was true until Obama, except for one other time, the Great Depression, when FDR did a lot of the same stuff.
And at least FDR said, I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm just experimenting because I'm panicked.
He said that.
He actually said, we don't know what we're doing.
We're just experimenting.
But Obama always knew what he was doing, okay?
And so there was a recovery under Obama.
There was going to be a recovery, as Milton Friedman always predicted.
But in the 11 previous recessions since the Depression, okay, in the 11 previous recessions, the economy recovered all jobs lost during the recession, an average of 27 months after the recession began, a little over two years, right?
In Mr. Obama's recovery, dating from the summer of 2009, the recession's job losses were not recovered until after 76 months.
That's more than six years, more than six years where people didn't have a job.
And by the way, a lot of the jobs that were created during the Obama administration, unlike the jobs being created now, were part-time jobs and self-help jobs, like Uber jobs and things like that.
Nothing wrong with them, dignified jobs, but just not the same as bringing back manufacturing.
Now, he was talking about, you heard Obama talking about what things were like by the time his administration was over.
2016, right?
That's the end of his administration.
Listen to what they were saying then, okay?
As late as 2016, Team Obama, here's from AEI, Team Obama, sorry, America, the new normal may be here to say, stay.
They were talking about 2% growth, 2% GDP growth.
And this is what they said.
The good times may be over for good.
In a speech to the Economic Club of New York yesterday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Liu said the U.S. GDP growth rate adjusted for inflation is now projected to run a little above 2% a year.
That would be a significant downshift from the 3.4% average growth rate from the end of World War II until 2007.
It's the end of 2016.
They were telling us 2% growth was the new normal.
Here's from the AP, same time.
2016, end of Obama, right?
Eight years of Obama.
Americans should get used to a new normal of slow economic growth, business economists say.
The median estimates from economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics calls for the American economy to grow 2.2% in 2017.
And by the way, we used to have discussions here at the Daily Wire because I'm like the oldest person.
You have to add Ben and Knowles together to get halfway to my age.
And I said to them, you guys do not know what it's like when a crappy economy like I lived through under Carter gives way to the economy that Reagan creates.
It's like laughing gas.
It is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
And during the Carter economy, I will tell you from personal experience, they said the same thing.
America is ungovernable.
The growth rate is now going.
This is the new normal.
This inflation, this stagflation, this is the way it's going to be.
Nobody can do anything about it.
Reagan took office, bang.
Two years later, it's gone.
That is the thing.
They sell you that you can't do better.
Let's listen to the great Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, who took off his tinfoil hat just long enough to be in this interview with this guy.
Listen to the question.
A little hard to hear.
The guy has a thick Indian accent.
A little hard to hear, but he's saying, is this 2% growth the new normal?
Many countries are flirting with deflation.
Their inflation is below target.
World trade is shrinking.
And this is despite extraordinary policy measures such as low interest rates, expansion of central bank balance sheets, increase in public spending.
So what went wrong means why has the world, even eight years after this recession or after this financial crisis, not recovered fully?
And do you think that this is the new normal in a way?
Okay, I am mostly convinced that it is the new normal.
Is 2% Growth the New Normal?00:02:43
Hank.
Wrong, Paul.
Wrong.
And the thing is, Obama sat on the recovery by anti-business regulations and by that incredible, whining, solemn, America-blaming idea.
And because for all his posters saying hope, the guy didn't have much hope for the future of America.
Listen to this.
Some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back.
And when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned, who I'm not going to advertise for, that he's going to bring all these jobs back.
Well, how exactly are you going to do that?
What are you going to do?
There's no answer to it.
He just says, well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal.
Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that?
What magic wand do you have?
And usually the answer is he doesn't have an answer.
All right.
And I just want to play this little segment of David Asmond's show on Fox Business.
He's interviewing Trump's new economic advisor, Larry Kudlow.
Just listen to the difference.
This is now two years, only two years later, folks.
It's only two years later.
Listen to this.
Well, more really good news for the U.S. economy with employers adding a better than expected 201,000 jobs in August.
This is yearly wage growth hits a nine-year high.
Let's bring in White House chief economic advisor and good friend Larry Cuddler.
Larry, congratulations.
What would you say the headline of this story is today?
You know, I think here's the broader headline.
The single biggest news story in 2018, by far, is an economic boom that almost everyone believed to be impossible.
That to me is the story.
Not all this other stuff that pops up periodically.
The economy is booming on all cylinders.
There's been a big change in policy and attitude and confidence.
And let me add to that, this is middle-class working folks, fatter paychecks kind of stuff.
And it's not over.
This is not one quarter or two quarters.
Every reading I have, I used to do it for a living.
Is this going to go on for quite some time?
That's the story, David.
An economic boom folks said couldn't happen.
So Donald Trump is doing such a bad job that Barack Obama is trying to take credit for it.
But Barack Obama in his day, at the end of his administration, was asking, how is this going to happen?
Relating To Others As Humans00:16:04
What magic wand does he have?
Well, Abracadabra knucklehead.
And this is the story.
This is the big story of 2018.
Kudlow is absolutely right.
It's the story that's not being told.
But the shenanigans in the White House, whether it's true or not, whether it's true or not, is not the story of your life.
This is.
All right, we got the mailbag coming up.
I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come on over to thedailywire.com and you can listen to the rest of the show.
But while you're there, hey, subscribe.
Why?
Because we want your money.
You know, what are you doing with it?
It's allows you 10 bucks a month for $100 you get the whole year.
You get the leftist tears tumbler and you get all your problems solved because you can then ask questions in the mailbag and get the answers that are 100% correct that is coming right up.
All right, these are some tough ones.
Oh my God, the mailbag.
Would somebody just go back and just, you know, Austin is back there?
Just kill him, please.
That's all I ask.
I've said this before, but there's this guy who wrote in and said every time that happens, he wants to drive his truck off the road.
So we're just trying to kill people here.
From the mailbag, as I say, from Ashley.
From Ashley.
Hi, Andrew.
I'm in my 20s, but I recently learned that the reason my parents divorced was because my father had an affair while my mom was pregnant with me.
I'm an only child.
He's always been an amazing father and strong Christian, but he acted extremely callously toward my mother during my infancy.
I'm not sure how to reconcile these two things, and I'm not sure whether I should approach the topic with my father, whom I now view very differently.
Any advice?
Thank you and love the show.
Actually, first of all, this is something happened.
You're in your 20s.
This is something happened a long time ago.
You don't know the whole story.
You don't know what was going on.
Obviously, bad things.
Bad things happened.
The divorce, really sad.
An affair, always, always a big problem and always a wrong thing.
Myself, I would go to your father.
If it were me, I would sit down with your father, not in an accusatory way, but tell him you know and tell him you'd like to hear his side of the story and what it means and what it means to him.
You know, this is something that he lives with too.
If you say he's a strong Christian, then this is something that haunts him as well and that he has had to deal with.
And, you know, your parents are human beings.
They obviously did bad things.
They obviously made mistakes.
Those mistakes affect you.
It's not really, you don't have a right to know, but I think it might help you to know.
And if you can do it in a loving way, not accusatory way, it may teach you a little bit about life, that people do, even good people do terrible, terrible things, and we have to find ways to forgive them, especially the people we love who are trying to do the best they can.
So it would be worth talking to him.
From someone who wishes to remain anonymous, I have just finished Jonah Goldberg's fine book, Suicide of the West.
Well, obviously, it's from Jonah, right?
No, I also have read Suicide of the West, and Jonah is one of my favorite political writers, even when I disagree with him, which I do sometimes.
In your interview with Jonah Goldberg, you did not challenge him on his claim that the Romantics are a key reason we're discussing the suicide of the West.
You have been a defender of those romantics in the past.
Do you agree with Jonah or disagree with him on this point?
I actually did challenge him before the cameras were rolling, but the guy was here to sell his book.
I thought the book was worth reading, and I didn't want to get in that argument at that particular time.
He knows that I disagree with him very, very strongly on the Romantics, and here's why.
The age of reason, the age of reason ended with the reign of terror.
It ended with World War as Napoleon tried to take over Europe and beyond.
And Jonah ascribes that to the Romantic thinking of Rousseau.
But the Romantic movement was a huge, huge, and various movement that was not defined by the things that each person said.
It was defined by the problems they were trying to solve, which was that the old world and the old religion had been wiped away and nobody quite knew where to go.
And they knew after the Revolution, especially after the French Revolution especially, they knew that pure reason was not a way forward.
And Jonah and other writers as well say that the Romantics wanted to replace reason with feeling.
And that is to sell them incredibly short.
When John Keats said, oh, for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts, what he was talking about was living not just in the physical, reasonable moment.
He was talking about living in the world of meaning, living in the world where things actually mean something to the human heart.
And because they had lost the old religion, they had lost the connection to that, and they were trying to bring it together.
And all of Keats' writing, all of his great odes, are about trying to connect, become one with the experience of the world.
And that is a very important thing for humans to do.
Otherwise, you get this kind of Vulcan reasoning, like the quote I read yesterday about, we don't have human rights.
If you open up somebody, all you see are viscera and blood.
Where are the human rights?
Well, that is a kind of Vulcan, what Jonah himself calls a Vulcan way of, after Mr. Spock, it's a Vulcan way of reasoning that leaves out the true experience of being human.
And that's what the Romantics were trying to recover.
And it's often said the Romantics failed.
I think they failed because they didn't want to embrace God.
It was really Coleridge, the brightest of them, the smartest of them, probably the last man on earth who ever knew everything there was to know at that moment, because after that there was just too much to know.
He was the one who retained his Christianity, even though I think he was a Unitarian, but he retained his Christianity.
He retained his faith and his theism.
These guys were looking for a way back from the age of pure reason.
They were looking away back from Mr. Spock back to Captain Kirk.
That's what they were looking for.
And so I think that they are undersold and attacked as being for feelings as opposed to reason.
And that's just selling them short.
I'm not a big Rousseau fan.
I do think Rousseau is misunderstood frequently.
And Jonah has come around on that.
He actually is nicer to Rousseau in his new book than he was before.
And I think there's much better stuff to say about Rousseau.
But I think it's the path through what you think is pure reason that actually leads you to bloodshed and disaster.
It really does.
There's a painting by Goya where he says the sleep of reason breeds nightmares, something like that.
But I always say that the sleep of the heart also bleeds terrible nightmares as well in the world.
All right, from another one from Anonymous, what is this?
It's like just Jonah asking a lot of questions.
Dear oh, hater of all superhero movies except Logan.
Hello there.
I'd love to remain anonymous, but I did want to send in a question.
I'm a 19-year-old college student and I'm a massive fan of the show.
Thank you so much for everything you do and the support you give.
Anyways, I am absolutely terrified of females.
I can't ever figure out how to talk to them and I always feel like I'm doing something wrong during the rare interactions I do have with the mysterious womankind.
Was just wondering if you had any advice on this matter.
Yeah, some.
I mean, first of all, I think you have to, you're going to have to get over it.
At some point, you're just going to have to be brave enough to go forward.
But try this.
Try this.
Try not wanting anything from them.
Try just treating them like another human being.
Try not thinking about whether you're going to go out on a date with them, whether they will marry you, whether they'll sleep with you, whatever it is you're thinking about.
Try not wondering about whether they'll like you.
Just try relating to them as actual other human beings.
And maybe they're going to be different kinds of human beings because they're female than you are because you're male.
But that's okay.
They're still human beings.
If you just go into conversations with women, not trying to get anything out of them or from them, just trying to get to know them and listen to what they say and talk to them about what you think, as you would with a male.
You will get to know them and you will ultimately overcome your fear.
The first steps are going to have to be yours.
If you want to join a club where you have to interact with women, that's a good thing to do.
If you want to, anything that will get you into a situation that is not necessarily a dating situation, but just a situation where you get to know people as people.
And I think that that's the best advice I can give you, because at some point when you're shy, you've got to overcome it.
You just got to face it down.
But good luck.
Let us know how it goes.
From Augustine, I recently attended a Republican fundraiser and the whole crowd was basically all white and male.
How can we show minorities that conservatism is best for them?
How do we get more diversity in the Republican Party?
I think the answer to that is you have to go to the people that you're trying to attract and make the argument about what you're for.
It's one thing to attack the left on the stupid stuff they say, okay?
But you have to be for something.
And this is just so important because the question I get is, how can we convince?
How can we appeal?
How can we do this?
You know, maybe you can't.
Maybe you can't.
Maybe they don't want what you're selling, but at least sell them what you're selling.
Don't tell them about how the left is bad.
Go into their neighborhoods, go into their places, go into the places where you can reach them and say, here's what we are for.
Okay.
And then you can make fun of the left.
No question about it.
You can attack the left.
But tell them we are not for the special treatment of black people, for instance.
We're not for special treatment.
It doesn't work out well.
It doesn't work out when it's negative.
It doesn't work out when it's positive.
We are for treating black people the same as everybody else.
But you've got to remember, too, they may have a point of view, and you've got to listen to that as well.
You've got to listen when somebody says to you, you know, the police don't treat a black guy the same way they treat a white guy.
I am sure that's true.
My answer to that is why not?
Why don't the police treat black people the same?
Is it because of the police or is it because of the criminality in black neighborhoods and how can you deal with that?
How can you address that?
So the thing is, you can't convince people if you're not talking to them.
You can't convince people if you're not listening to them.
The same thing with women.
You know, a lot of people mistake my opinions about women because I dislike the philosophy of feminism so much.
And people think I think women should stay home and take care of their kids.
Blah, blah, blah.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
What I'm saying is feminism degrades feminine concerns.
It tells you that if your concerns aren't work, if your concerns aren't earning money, if your concerns aren't the concerns of men, strength, power, then you are somehow second rate.
If your concern is building a home, if your concern is nurturing children, if your concern is loving and being in a loving relationship and building that relationship and making a place for that relationship in the world, you are less than a man.
And I am saying, no, you are not.
You are equal to a man, but you are different.
And that's what I think.
So you've got to start to talk to people where they are and listen to what they want as well and not dictate to them.
All right.
From Dan, Lord Clavin, a good friend of mine, just moved into town and we've hung out a lot and had many deep conversations.
Over the course of our time together, I started to develop romantic feelings for them.
Unfortunately, they are in a relationship with someone who admittedly hasn't been there for them.
Should I tell my friend how I feel and possibly ruin our friendship or just stick with the status quo, love the show?
Well, Dan, first of all, you got to stop using crap pronouns.
The individual pronoun for a person is either, in this case, him or her.
But since you use them throughout, I have no idea what you're talking about.
You're talking about romance, right?
There are different kinds of romances.
If everybody in this story is gay, that's fine.
If everybody in the story is heterosexual, and so you're talking about men and women, those two things give me one answer to give you.
But if what you're talking about is this them that you're in love with is a guy, but is in a relationship with a girl, that's a very different story.
So first of all, get the pronouns straight, okay?
So here are my two answers for the two situations I can imagine.
If this person is a man, your name is Dan, so you're a man, and he is in a relationship with a woman who is not there for him, and you are falling in love with this guy, keep it to yourself and get over it because he's straight.
He's straight.
He's not going to suddenly become gay because you love him.
You're only going to break your heart and make him feel bad.
Just keep it to yourself.
I mean, you're just going to have to live with this broken heart because the guy is straight.
Okay, so that's the first thing.
If, if these are all heterosexual or all gay relationships, right?
If this, whatever it is, if it's all, if everybody's on the same page and wanting the same thing, then I think you go to your friend and you say, look, I am not going to have an affair and cheat on anybody.
I'm not going to lie to anybody.
I'm not going to sneak around to anybody because if he or she will do that with you, he or she will do it with anybody, right?
He will do it to you as well.
But then you express your feelings.
You know, I think you're in a relationship that's not working.
I think I can do better.
I have feelings for you.
Just so you know, here's my number.
Call me maybe.
You know, I mean, that's basically all you can do.
You know, it's all fair and love and war.
He's not married.
I'm taking it.
You didn't say he's married.
So, or she's married or whatever the hell I'm talking about.
But you don't break up a marriage.
You don't cheat in a relationship, but you can express yourself and say what you have to say.
Again, very hard to tell if you don't use the proper pronouns.
From Melissa, Dear Mr. Clavin, or as my kids call you, the hooray hurrah guy.
I love that.
Rob, I want you to refer.
That's how I want you to refer to me.
Good morning, hooray, hurrah.
My eight-year-old daughter is interested in writing stories, and she has decided that for her first big undertaking, she would like to write a mystery chapter book.
She's very excited about the whole idea, so I told her I'd reach out to the expert, the Andrew Clavin Show.
How do you get started when you are writing a new story?
What is your process?
Any pointers for my aspiring author.
At eight years old, my advice to you is write the story.
Sit down and write the story, have a good time, make it as much fun as you can possibly make it, and have a great time.
It is a wonderful way to spend your time.
Writing stories is about as much fun as you can have.
As you get older, I like to outline things and know where the story is going, but I wouldn't do it.
If I were eight years old, I wouldn't be outlining stuff.
I would just be writing away.
And I was just get started and stick with it till the story is over and make it as long as you want or as short as you want until you're done.
From Stephen, dear Supreme Overlord Clavin, recently I received news that my estranged father had passed away.
It has been a very long time since I knew him as we parted ways when I was a teenager.
But I knew he had always been a heavy drinker.
The police officers that discovered him noted that he was found with many empty liquor bottles.
My question is, how do you interpret a death like this when someone succumbs to their vices?
Can this be interpreted as a form of suicide?
Thanks, and I love the show.
No, that's not suicide.
That is not suicide.
People are not smart enough to really take into account the fact that they're going to die in the distant future because of their habits now.
In fact, EMT workers have a name for this.
They call it death by lifestyle, death by lifestyle.
No, he was an addict.
He was addicted to alcohol and the alcohol killed him.
I mean, that's what happened.
That's a very sad story.
It's a tragic story.
It's terrible.
Alcohol, when you abuse it like that, sucks the soul right out of you even before it takes your life.
And it's a terrible way to go.
But it's not an intentional, it's not like I want to kill myself.
It's simply an addiction to something.
When you get addicted to something, you lose all other sense of all other values.
It's really terrible.
I've seen it too many times, but it really is tough.
All right.
Gee, we're kind of running out of time, but I want to do, I'll do one more from Samuel.
Dear King Clavin the Wise, for the past few months, I have found it extremely difficult to pray.
I've gone into my room in silence to be alone with myself and my thoughts on multiple occasions, but I always seems like it's for nothing.
I think I've forgotten how to pray.
I don't feel comforted or enlightened when I pray.
In fact, I don't feel much of anything except the inescapable feeling that maybe I simply am not being heard.
I feel like I'm simply praying to silence what is wrong with me.
There's also one right after that from Richard where he says that he was raised Catholic, but became a militant atheist.
But he married his longtime high school sweetheart.
They had a first child, a beautiful little girl.
And he says, along with these monumental life events, reading The Great Good Thing, my memoir, C.S. Lewis, Jordan Peterson, listening to your show, and Ben's, I've slowly but surely come back to faith in God.
Every day I feel more and more that someone is listening.
Here's where my question comes in.
The more I feel the presence of God, the more ambivalent I am about speaking to him and praying.
Any advice for someone who by no means wants to feign devotion or prayer, but still feels the draw and desire to pray help many, many thanks to you.
So two people having trouble with prayer.
Speaking to God Loudly00:05:33
My advice on prayer is always the same.
Find a place alone, find time to be alone, and pray out loud.
It's important to speak your prayers out loud.
You can speak them under your breath, so I'm afraid somebody else is going to be listening in other than God.
But when you speak your prayers out loud, it forces you to form real sentences and not just present feelings and amorphous ideas to God.
It is like you are in a conversation.
Somebody is listening.
God is listening.
And in that conversation, you will find, really find pathways open up to you.
There are times when you feel separated from God.
A lot of times, that's because of focus or you're focused on something inside you like grief or some other form of unhappiness or confusion and it's hard for you to turn outward.
Speaking out loud also helps with that.
It brings you out of yourself and causes you to speak into the other person in the relationship who is God.
Try it.
I mean, there are times when you feel a little more distant from God than others, but I have always found, I have always found, I have incredible confidence in this.
I mean, anytime I'm having a problem, I know there will come a point in my day, usually early in the day, when I can go before God and speak and things will work themselves out.
Sometimes it takes more than one prayer, but things will work themselves out if I pray out loud and know what I'm saying and listen to the response.
Today, in fact, by the way, they had a picture of Mark Wahlberg, you know, the action star on the Daily Wire, and it said, true masculinity.
That was the headline on the Daily Wire, and it said he prays 30 minutes a day every day.
And I thought, I pray 30 minutes a day every day.
They've never, ever run a headline over my face saying true masculinity.
What is going on, Daily Wire?
Let's get to the bottom of this.
All right, tickety-boo news.
So since I'm constantly complaining about the constant cowardice of everybody who gets criticized for anything, I am so sick of people apologizing because somebody was offended, especially businesses.
I mean, even with Nike, when I thought they did something that was terribly wrong by elevating Colin Kaepernick to the level of a hero, he's not a hero.
He's a schmo, you know, but I thought they were wrong.
But I don't think they have to apologize.
Do it.
Do it and take the hit.
Stand up for yourself.
Stand up for your beliefs.
It just drives me crazy.
There was a story today that the funniest comedian in America, Norm McDonald, was booted from the Tonight Show because he criticized Me Too.
And listen to what he said.
He said, it used to be 100 women can't be lying.
Then it became one woman can't lie.
And then became, I believe all women.
And then you're like, what?
And so they canceled his appearance on the Tonight Show.
And he said of the Me Too movement, the model used to be admit wrongdoing, show complete contrition, and then we give you a second chance.
Now it's admit wrongdoing and you're finished.
And so the only way to survive is to deny, deny, deny.
And he's absolutely right.
But the thing is, don't apologize for it.
So here is a story from Australia, The Herald Sun.
They ran a cartoon by Mark Knight, cartoonist Mark Knight, of Serena Williams' despicable tantrum on the court when she lost at the U.S. Open.
It was bad sportsmanship.
It was ridiculous.
And then to attribute it to some kind of heroic feminism or speaking out or something was absolute nonsense.
So they ran a funny cartoon of her jumping up and down on her racket.
The left has this trick that they always pull.
It's two-pronged.
They take your comedy seriously, right?
So you say something comic, you make a joke.
I make a joke about women not having the capacity for reason.
Okay, and they say, you think women have, you said, oh, my, oh, Lord, you know, and by the time you say, hey, it's a joke, you know, chill.
It's supposed to be funny.
It's making as much fun of me as of women.
You know, by the time you say that, you've killed the joke.
So you start to be careful.
You start to watch what you say.
And of course, of course, whenever, whenever the person is of another race, specifically black people, it's, oh, you made her look like a black person.
Well, you know, she looks like a black person.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's a cartoon.
It is satire.
What I love about this is the paper, The Herald Sun, came back with a front page in which they put all their cartoons, all of this guy's cartoons, making fun of everybody with a headline, welcome to PC World.
This is a satire-free zone.
What does it say?
If the self-appointed censors of Mark Knight get their way on his Serena Williams cartoon, our new politically correct life will be very dull indeed.
Good for them for standing up for themselves.
I hope we start doing it here.
Like, I don't think we should ever apologize for anything.
We are dealing with socialists.
We're dealing with people who don't love the Constitution.
We're dealing with people who attack, physically attack our congressmen who call out our people in restaurants and chase them down the street.
If we make fun of you, you're going to take it and like it, pal.
We are not apologizing for anything.
All right.
Tomorrow we will be back.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Be there then.
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.
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And our animations are by Cynthia Angulo and Jacob Jackson.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.