Andrew Clavin’s 2019: Why We Fight mocks media hysteria equating Trump to Hitler, from "Merry Christmas" propaganda claims to death tolls tied to policies like net neutrality repeal. The shutdown over $5B for border walls exposes Democratic hypocrisy—Schumer once supported barriers but now blocks them—while Officer Ronald Singh’s murder by a criminal illegal immigrant highlights sanctuary laws’ deadly consequences. Clavin defends Trump’s troop visits and Syria withdrawals, framing freedom as under siege by media bias, corporate censorship (Google/Twitter), and political theater, before pivoting to moral boundaries: excusing friends’ flaws unless they violate conscience, and advising a falsely accused adoptee to consult lawyers and write a civil rebuttal. The episode ends with a defense of Blade Runner’s prescient warnings about transhumanism and modern censorship, urging resistance against "monsters" like social media mobs silencing dissent. [Automatically generated summary]
The Democrats have now taken over the House of Representatives, and you know what that means.
That's right.
It's time to play the 2019 drinking game.
Sounds fun, doesn't it?
Or at least it sounds better than trying to get through the year sober.
So how does it work?
To begin with, for the rest of the year, every time a leftist or a journalist, but I repeat myself, compares Donald Trump to Hitler, take a drink.
For instance, here's a real-life article from Newsweek magazine headlined, How Trump and the Nazis Stole Christmas to Promote White Nationalism.
So help me, I'm not making this up.
The article compares Trump to Hitler because by saying Merry Christmas, quote, Trump is promoting a version of the holidays that excludes members of other religions.
And his crusade to bring back Christmas is part of a larger attempt by the president to define America as a country for white Christians alone, unquote.
Now, I know last year you might have said, why, comparing Merry Christmas to murderous Hitlerian rhetoric is less an act of journalism than the raving of a lunatic like that guy in Dracula who eats flies while waiting for his vampire master to speak.
But in 2019 instead, just take a drink.
Next, take a drink every time some chucklehead says a Trump policy means that people will die.
So in previous years when Democrats claimed that net neutrality, leaving the Paris Accord, scuttling Obamacare, ditching the Iran deal, or enforcing security at the border would lead to the deaths of thousands, you probably just snorted so hard that a mixture of coffee and snot shot out of your nose and dampened the crotch of your pants in an embarrassing manner.
In 2019, just take a drink.
And finally, since whatever Trump does, people actually will die, take a drink every time someone in America dies.
That means you'll take two drinks every second.
Believe me, in 2019, you're going to need it.
Trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped ipsy-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.
Okay, we begin 2019 with our government partially shut down over border security, our troops pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan, and Donald Trump still the subject of relentless attacks from both the news media and the Justice Department.
So, this might be a good time to remind ourselves not what we're against, we know what we're against, but what are we fighting for?
Here on the Andrew Clavin Show, it's pretty basic.
We are for freedom.
I want each person to say, think, do, and spend his own damn money just as he pleases, no matter what the powerful believe is best for him.
The Bill of Rights may protect our freedoms from government, but those freedoms come from our old friend Uncle God, and they are not to be interfered with by anyone that includes Google or Twitter or ABC or CNN or any other power center.
So, whatever's going on in the news, I'm for solving the problem while keeping our freedom, and we're going to take a look at how that works.
But first, we have to talk about the fact that if you, like me, are up all night, you want to get Bull and Branch sheets.
Even if you sleep from time to time, you might want to get Bowl and Branch sheets because they not only look great, they are incredibly comfortable, and the right sheets can take your sleep and your style to the next level.
With Bowl and Branch, that upgrade has never been more affordable.
You want comfort, and science tells us that there are five stages of sleep, but you got to get to the sleep first.
So you need bowl and branch.
For people like me, there's only one stage of sleep.
It's not sleeping.
So I like to lie on comfortable sheets.
I really do because it makes a difference.
I'm awake.
I'm aware of the sheets that I'm on.
I'm up reading.
I'm up thinking.
I'm up pondering the universe.
I want my bowl and branch sheets because they are comfortable and because they look good.
If you're not sleeping, you want the sheets.
If you are sleeping, you need the sheets.
You'll be so comfortable that you'll fall asleep faster, sleep deeper, and wake up ready to go.
Here's what you do.
Go to bullandbranch.com today, and you will get 50 bucks off your first set of sheets plus free shipping in the U.S. when you use the promo code Clavin.
That's 50 bucks off plus free U.S. shipping right now at bullandbranch.com.
And since this is a new year, we're going to be asking new questions like, how do you spell Clavin?
Well, it's K-L-A, V-A-N.
There are no E's in Clavin.
We only make it look easy.
Plus, remember, we've got the, this is Mailbag Day.
I know it just suddenly came upon us out of nowhere.
That's why we have people shrieking, just to startle you into realizing that this is already Wednesday, and so all your questions will be answered.
The answer is guaranteed 100% correct.
You will start the year without any problems.
Government Shutdown Drama00:15:24
So the government is shut down because Trump wants some dough, about $5 billion for funding a border wall, and the Democrats are saying no.
So it's only part of the government because they've already voted to keep a lot of the government funded.
So nine of the 15 federal agencies are affected by the shutdown.
This is from the Wall Street Journal.
About 420,000 employees that these agencies deemed essential are working without, they won't get paid, but 380,000 federal employees who are essential have been placed on baked leave or furlough.
I just want to think for a moment what would happen if you went into your boss, if you don't work for the government, and he said, what do you do?
Well, my job is inessential.
I mean, the next thing you do, you'd be on the bus going home.
The Environmental Protection Agency ran out of money over the weekend.
That's why Life in America improved and the Federal Trade Commission has closed.
The shutdown hasn't affected the mail or the delivery of social security checks.
Museums, national zoos, stuff like that are having problems.
And of course, they need to, the city of Washington, I guess the District of Columbia is picking up the garbage in that place.
So what are the two sides?
Well, we have Trump obviously wants border security and he has some fierce defenders like for instance Chuck Schumer.
We know that keeping our borders safe from dangerous gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers is critical.
We let cross the border millions who take jobs away from American workers.
I want to make it extremely clear that first and foremost, we are committed to ending the waves of illegal immigration that we've seen in the last 30 years.
Crossing the border without permission from the government is a crime.
When we catch someone crossing the border, prosecute them and deport them, we are solving the crime and punishing the criminal.
So, but he has many, many opponents too, like for instance, Chuck Schumer.
President Trump, you will not get your wall.
Abandon your shutdown strategy.
You're not getting the wall today, next week, or on January 3rd when Democrats take control of the House.
Now, I don't want to say Chuck Schumer is a two-faced louse who'll just do anything that his donors want him to do.
Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I want to say.
Sorry, that's exactly what I want to say.
So we're looking at this, and we're thinking, what does freedom demand?
It doesn't demand that we have fewer Mexicans in the country.
I don't care what color Americans are, as long as they believe in freedom.
As long as they believe in the basic principles of America, you are welcome here as far as I'm concerned.
But we do need the rule of law.
Why?
Why is it important that they don't pass laws and then just decree that, oh, a baby died, or somebody has a sad face or someone, oh, Don Lemon is looking sincerely into the camera.
We have to disobey that law.
Why don't we want that?
Because it's just, that means you can't be equal.
can't be treated equally because it's just random who feels for whom, who gets the feels over your plight in the next day or so.
If you have a law, if you obey the law with compassion, but if you obey the law, then everybody gets treated fairly.
The guy who's been talking sense on this during the shutdown is Lindsey Graham 2.0, who basically said they should make a deal giving something, the Republicans should give something on DACA, maybe extend the leave for those people so they can stay and they should get some funding for the wall or border security in between.
And here he points out the hypocrisy on the left.
Democrats have voted for 700 miles of the Secure Fence Act that had double-layered fencing.
Call that whatever you'd like.
In the Gang of 8 bill, we had $42 billion for border security, including $9 billion for physical barriers.
The wall has become a metaphor for border security.
And what we're talking about is a physical barrier where it makes sense.
In the past, every Democrat has voted for these physical barriers.
It can't be just about because Trump wants it, we no longer agree with it.
There's nothing immoral about a physical barrier along the border in places that make sense.
So there'll never be a deal at the end of this year, the beginning of the next, that doesn't have money for the physical barriers that we all have in the past agreed we need.
So that's it.
You know, he's talking complete sense.
We don't have to be absolute about this.
We will maintain our freedoms.
It's not going to change everything if we have a generous policy of immigration, as we always have had.
The country will change as people come in and as different cultures come in and we culturally appropriate their food and toss out their lousy habits of oppression and starvation and stupidity that other countries have that we don't always have, that we historically haven't had.
So again, let him make a deal.
Make a deal.
Give Trump his wall.
He's promised the wall.
He's been keeping his promises.
Give him something for the wall and get something in return.
That's the way the government's supposed to work.
It can't all be resist, resist, resist.
If that's all Nancy Pelosi has got to offer, she is not going to get very far.
Although I was not encouraged by a comment by Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Alexandra, who is a political journalist and documentarian.
Here's her description of her mom.
She'll cut your head off and you won't even know you're bleeding.
That's all you need to know about her.
No one ever won betting against Nancy Pelosi.
She's persevered.
You got to give her credit.
No matter what you think of her, you have to give her credit because think about it.
Think about all those presidents she's endured, right?
She was the Bush, the Bush, the Clinton.
You know, she's been through it all.
So she's been around.
This is not her first rodeo, as your friend George Bush would say.
So she knows what she's doing.
And that should make you sleep at night, knowing that at least somebody in this town knows what they're doing.
What really bothers me about the left is on the left to have your daughter say, mom will cut your head off and you won't even know you're bleeding.
That's a compliment.
It's like you're on the right.
If your daughter is saying that about you, you like have this look of absolute horror on your face, but on the left, they're going, yeah, we love that.
We love a mom who will cut your head off.
Bleed to that.
But as always, as always, we're trying to talk sense.
We're willing to compromise.
We're willing to get to anything where we can have a law that can be obeyed.
But everything is made worse by our friends in the news media.
And we'll look at that in just a second.
But first, I want to talk about Express VPN.
This is an app that I use every single day, all the time.
What it does, you get all this news about how your security online.
You have no security online.
People are looking at it.
The advertisers are getting the information.
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But if you make an online purchase or simply access your email, you're putting your private information at risk.
We all know this.
Express VPN, it takes about 90 seconds to load this thing, and then it has easy-to-use apps that run seamlessly in the background of your computer, your phone, your tablet.
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Like, how do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So, so what the what the left wants to do, and by the left, I mean the news media, because the news media is the paid informant, the paid PR system of the left.
What they want to do is they want to give you the SADs for the federal workers who are out of work, right?
Now, I don't really have the SADS for the federal workers who are out of work because, you know, I make the money that pays them.
I'm paying them.
If they're not doing anything that I'm interested in, I don't really care if they're out of work.
But they want, but CNN, this is what they think the story is.
They think the story is federal workers are sad.
So they go and they read tweets.
Listen to this.
They read tweets from federal workers trying to make you tear up over their plight.
This shutdown is affecting thousands of federal workers who aren't going to be getting a paycheck this pay cycle.
And they're taking to social media to talk about what they're worried about, how they're going to pay their bills.
And we want to read some of those to you.
Yeah, this federal worker tweets that's put up on the screen.
We are both veterans.
Husband has 20 years of service with four combat tours.
We will not be able to pay our mortgage if this persists.
For this federal worker, paying medical expenses is a worry.
Saying my insurance premium is $600 per month.
My son's insulin and pump supplies are an additional $600 per quarter, barely making it.
Now I'll be going to work paid in the future.
And from another federal worker, I am a furloughed Fed.
I spent today calling the banks for the mortgage and the car loan, the electric company, the gas company, the credit card company.
I have some savings, so I'll be okay for a bit.
Won't be buying the new car to replace the 17-year-old Toyota now.
And one more here.
Got some things for Christmas that I'm not unpacking.
And receipts are in my purse so I can return if needed for grocery money.
Well, well, well, boohoo.
Now let me ask you a question.
Here's a journalist question, a journalism question.
You think they called any of those people and checked on their stories?
You think they sent a reporter to any of those people to check on their stories?
They're reading tweets on the air.
They're reading tweets on the air in a highly divisive political subject.
People have absolute motive to go on and tell you sad stories about their plight.
I mean, first of all, the pay doesn't even stop until I think January 11th.
So I don't think any of those stories, none of those stories may be true, but did they check them?
No.
They are serving a political purpose, serving the Democrats because they think people are going to blame Trump for the shutdown.
Every time a Democrat goes on TV, he says the Trump shutdown.
You want to cry about this story?
You want to get some tears about this story?
Let's talk about the cop, the police officer, Ronald Sing, who stopped a guy for a DUI and was shot dead by the driver who was a gang member who had outstanding warrants for him.
He was a criminal, illegal alien.
The cop, this small-town cop, was a legal immigrant.
He was the American dream.
He'd come to America.
He'd become a cop.
He was doing great.
He had a family.
He's a little baby, and this guy, this human, blows him away.
You know, Michelle Malkin wrote this piece, and she starts out.
She says, Border wall opponent Senator Kamala Harris tweeted three times between Christmas and New Year's Eve, bemoaning the plight of illegal immigrants and their children, but not a peep was heard from Harris about the brutal shooting death of Ronald Singh.
Border wall opponent Representative Nancy Pelosi decried the deaths of two illegal immigrant children on the same day Singh was murdered, but not a peep about Singh.
Border wall opponent Senator Dianne Feinstein released a public letter to the Customs and Border Patrol Agency on the day of Singh's murder to voice her strong concern about the recent deaths and illnesses of children, but not a peep about Singh.
Let's let Singh's brother tell his story.
This is after the arrest of the perpetrator.
Please bear with me.
This is not easy for me.
Ronald Singh was my older brother.
Yes, he's not coming back.
But there's a lot of people out there that misses him.
And a lot of law enforcement people that I don't know to work days and nights to make this happen.
I'd like to thank you from the bottom of my heart to make this happen.
I wish I could thank all the law enforcement agencies, Homeland Security in San Francisco, everyone.
They can't feel cute.
I was waiting for this to happen.
I'd like to thank you working day and night to make this happen.
Thank you.
You know, you go on CNN where they're worried about the federal workers, and they're always talking about this.
They're always accusing people who want border security of being racist.
This is about the Browning of America, they say.
They have no proof of that either.
Have they checked that?
Have they got a survey?
Have they got an interview?
No, but they say it.
It's always so fascinating to me when you look in the small California town, the law enforcement there.
They're standing there.
They're every color.
They're gripping the guy's shoulder.
They're all of them linked together.
They're cop-colored.
They're cop-colored.
They're American colored.
And they're all linked together by this tragedy.
And the county sheriff, Stanislaus County Sheriff, his name is Adam Christensen.
He went off on the sanctuary laws in this state that prevent them from contacting ICE when they know they've got a bad guy.
Listen to this.
We can't ignore the fact that this could have been preventable.
And under SB 54 in California, based on two arrests for DUI and some other active warrants that this criminal has out there, law enforcement would have been prevented, prohibited from sharing any information with ICE about this criminal gang member.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not how you protect a community.
This is not how you assure the people who live in our community, regardless of their ethnicity, their culture, their race, any of that, that they live in a safe community because there are people who want to exploit and victimize others.
And in this case, Officer Singh sacrificed everything.
He paid the ultimate price trying to protect and serve the people of Newman.
We need to have a conversation about that.
So, you know, all I'm saying is this is the issue that makes me choke up about the government being closed.
It's not the government being closed.
It's that we do need border security.
We do need the rule of law.
Chuck Schumer has said it.
Nancy Pelosi has said it.
Barack Obama has said it.
It's all about hating Trump.
And if you don't think it's all about hating Trump, I don't know if you were watching.
I hope some of you took some time off from paying attention to the news over the holidays.
But if you were watching on Christmas, they went into the news media as one, because they're all speaking for the same people, the corporations and the Democrats, they're all speaking for them.
Then as one, they started riding Trump for not visiting the troops on Christmas.
Little did they know that Trump had a plan to surprise the troops in Iraq and visit them for Christmas.
Now, these things are planned weeks in advance.
To get the president into a war zone, you got to plan the security weeks in advance.
So it's not like he was reacting to criticism.
The Witch Hunt Continues00:04:17
Some people on CNN said that.
Some people tweeted that out.
That Soledad O'Brien, I mean, you know, I mean, she's obviously handicapped by low intelligence, but like still, you know, she tweeted out that, you know, he was responding to being shamed.
Absolute nonsense.
This was planned in advance.
And the other thing was the troops loved him.
They loved him.
They were cheering for him.
They were cheering USA.
And here's a little bit of the speech he gave to him.
Well, first of all, at ease, at ease.
Let's have a good time.
Let's have a good time.
The other reason I'm here today is to personally thank you and every service member throughout this region for the near elimination of the ISIS territorial caliphate in Iraq and in Syria.
Two years ago, when I became president, they were a very dominant group.
They were very dominant.
Today, they're not so dominant anymore.
So they're cheering for him and they're bringing them their MAGA hats that they have for him to sign.
And CNN runs a story saying, well, that may be against military regulations because it's all about getting Trump.
Everything, everything, everything is about getting Trump.
You don't think so?
Here's my favorite one.
Here's my favorite CNN story.
You know, Trump keeps calling the Russia witch hunt.
He keeps calling it a witch hunt because it's a witch hunt.
And here is, so CNN went out and interviewed witches who are offended by Trump using that phrase.
There's a lot to be offended by by Donald Trump.
And I think his use of the term witch hunt is very low on that list of priorities for most witches.
But nevertheless, it does demonstrate his ignorance, as usual.
The entire thing has been a witch hunt.
But if the president stopped saying witch hunt, he'd have to hunt for a new term, tweeted someone.
I guess he will have to start referring to it as a wild goose chase, but then that might offend geese.
And you know, you know that if he did, it would be CNN that would be out there chasing the geese across the lawn with a microphone.
Come back, come back, come back.
Trying to get that interview of the geese who are afraid.
You know, the other thing that, of course, is happening that we should be looking at is the withdrawal from Syria and partly from Afghanistan, which is really interesting because even Lindsey Graham, who lambasted Trump about this, had a lunch with him and came back reassured saying that it's not going to be as fast as he thought it was, that there'll still be troops in Iraq who can get to Syria.
So we'll see.
I mean, this is something that, you know, once you're in these boondoggles, it can be as dangerous to pull out as it was to go in.
But this is Trump's view that we are not the policemen of the world, that if the world wants peace, let them fight for peace in their own areas.
He wants to draw back, as I said before the holiday.
America hasn't really decided yet who we are, what role we play, what it means to be the strongest free nation on earth.
Does that mean that we support freedom everywhere?
Does that mean that we defend everybody?
If not, you know, we'll see what happens because if Trump pulls out and the worst naysayers are right, then we'll have something to complain about.
For now, we're just going to have to wait and see if Trump does it in such a way that he can keep enough of the peace where we have to keep the peace to keep the terrorists from coming back.
These are the issues that every issue that we look at should be looked at, as far as I'm concerned, should be looked at on whether it damages our freedom.
It damages our freedom not to have the rule and law at the border.
It damages our freedom to be misinformed by the press because they hate Donald Trump.
It damages our freedom to have everything be a source of hysteria because Donald Trump did it.
Hey, we have the mailbag coming up.
But first, tomorrow, don't miss the next episode of Daily Wire Backstage.
Monsieur Ben Shapiro, Sir Michael Knowles, the Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, we all have titles here.
And of course, me, who is just me, will be ringing in the new year and talking about how the left will try to ruin it.
So be sure to tune in.
And as always, the lovely and also talented Alicia Krauss will be classing up the joint and taking your questions as they roll in.
Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions.
So make sure to subscribe today.
Video Games and Emotional Bonds00:12:50
So I don't even know anymore.
Are we taking a break?
I guess we're taking a break now from YouTube, but you can listen to the rest of the show or come over to the Daily Wire and subscribe.
Oh, we're back on Facebook.
See, nobody tells me anything.
We're back on Facebook.
So we're saying goodbye to everybody.
And come on over to dailywire.com and subscribe so you can just watch the whole thing right there.
You can be in the mailbag.
You can ask questions at the backstage show.
It's the best deal out there.
Just 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks, you get the whole year and the leftist tears tumbler.
come on over to dailywire.com.
All right, the mailbag.
That sounded very different.
I don't know.
Maybe I went deaf over the holidays.
It sounded very distant.
I just heard a distant lin.
There it is now.
From Braden.
Hold on, I'm going to reset here.
From Braden, dear Mr. No Ian Clavin, I'm in a long-distance relationship with a girl from a traditional Chinese family, and she seems to have a personal vendetta against my hobby of playing video games.
It has never interfered with me and her communicating.
In fact, I drop at the moment.
I get a message from her.
When I bring up the plan I would like to implement for when she and I finally live together, being me only playing a couple hours, then devoting the rest of my free time to her or something for her, she becomes irritated and moody.
We're both still young, and yet I'm bold enough to want to marry her and work through our issues.
Sometimes I feel like just not bringing video games up at all is what's best, but I want this issue resolved to some degree where we're both happy with the outcome.
Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
All right, here's my advice.
What I would do in this case is first I would take what they call a searching moral inventory.
I would ask myself if in fact there's a problem.
Do I play video games too much?
When you say two hours, is that two hours a day?
That's a lot of video games because it's not just if it's interfering with your relationship with her, it's whether it's interfering with your life.
I mean, are there other things you could be doing?
You know, a hobby, it's great to have a hobby.
Video games are fun.
I play video games.
I love video games.
But are you getting your work done?
Are you working as hard as you should be?
Are you advancing in life?
Are you doing all the things that you should be doing?
That's for you to decide, not for her to decide.
That is for you to take a look at it.
Is your girlfriend telling you something that you should be aware of?
And that's just for you to do that without any reference to her.
If that's a problem, then you've got to fix it for your own sake, not for her.
If it's not a problem, or even if it is a problem, you have got to lay down the law.
You're not here to be lectured to by your girlfriend or your wife about what you're doing unless it is truly, unless she is coming to you in love and telling you you are doing something truly destructive.
If this is your hobby, if it's a harmless, as I say, if it's a harmless pursuit, it is better that you have a harmless pursuit rather than a harmful pursuit.
I mean, and that is basically the choice that we have.
We all do things.
We all have little fun things that we do that take up some time, that take us away into ourselves and by which we relax.
I play video games.
I also like to do word puzzles.
You know, those are things that I do to relax.
It's nobody's business.
You can't be in a relationship with a woman who's going to be bullying you, whether it's by being grim and untalkative or lecturing you.
If you can lay down the law saying this is the way it's going to be, if you can't live with it, blow.
And if you can live with it, let's not hear about it anymore.
If you can do that, do it.
If you can't do it, get another girlfriend.
Okay, that's what I would do.
You asked.
This one has no name.
How do you handle friends who do things you don't approve of?
I've seen personally in my life that you are the company you keep.
However, I don't want to dismiss or judge these good friends.
How do you deal with people you like but who do things against your conscience?
For what it's worth, I joined the Daily Wire for Ben.
I stayed for you.
Well, of course, I mean, I think that's part for the course.
Well, listen, I don't know if you are the company you keep.
I don't know if that phrase actually, that doesn't resonate with me right away.
I'd have to give it some more thought.
Certainly, your friends have the right to do things that are not things that you would do.
They have a right to disagree with you.
They have a right to live the way they want to live.
So the only question is not for them.
The question is for you.
Are they doing things that so violate your conscience that you find so horrific?
I mean, that's what it is.
It's a matter of degree, that you can't be friendly with them.
So, for instance, if I had a friend and I was friends with both him and his wife and I knew he was cheating on his wife, you know, I might say something to him, but ultimately I don't have the power to stop him.
I might be unable to be in that relationship because I was also friends with the wife.
I have had friends who have committed adultery.
I remained their friends so they could have somewhere to go.
They knew how I felt.
It's pretty hard not to know how I feel about certain things.
I have a big mouth.
So, you know, I will tell them, they will know, but I'm not here to run my friend's life.
And I don't think you're here to run your friends' lives.
So if they're not killing people, they're not robbing banks, they're not doing things that truly are evil and wicked, in which case you shouldn't be hanging out with them in general principles for your own sake and for your own good.
But if they do things that sort of bother you, like voting Democrat or something like that, listen, that's part of friendship.
Part of friendship is accepting that you're going to have differences on those.
So it's a question of degree.
There's no solid answer.
There's no black line that you can't cross.
But, you know, it's a question of whether they're doing things that so hurt your conscience that you can't in good conscience be friends with them anymore because it's somehow condoning what they do.
I mean, it's the question of their freedom and your conscience.
From Peter, I proposed to my girlfriend last night.
She said, yes, we both watch your show daily, and I'm hoping you will give us a woo-yeah as a congratulations.
I will not give you a woo-yeah, but I will give you congratulations.
That's great.
Marriage is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Take care of her.
Be good to her.
Yeah, there you go.
There's a woo-yeah.
I have too much dignity.
I think that's the problem.
But yeah, marriage is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
And, you know, be nice to each other.
Be excellent to each other.
This one we're going to keep anonymous.
I write to you in the hopes you can help me move forward.
I'm 66 years old.
And up till 16 months ago, I was a happy, proud father of an adopted 29-year-old daughter.
My beautiful relationship with her ended abruptly the day she called to accuse me of having sexually abused her as a child, and she wanted nothing to do with me.
I've not spoken to nor seen her since.
I've gone through almost all the phases of grief, but I'm stuck between anger and depression.
I'm saddened and disheartened thinking that my child will go through life believing her father committed this heinous act of betrayal, guaranteeing her a life without trust, particularly against men.
She stopped communicating with the rest of her family.
I vacillate on how to reach out.
I want to reassure her.
She was never betrayed, but I've been reluctant to do so since any attempt would seem self-serving.
I feel I've been accused, tried, convicted, and banished for life from half of my existence for a crime antithetical to who I am.
I know her beliefs are either delusional, a conflation of life events, or a false memory.
This does not bring any solace.
I also have concerns.
I'm afraid to stir up the dust since I fear professional or family backlash if I begin the seemingly unsurmountable trek of proving my innocence.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts that may help me find the first step.
Well, first of all, I'm going to assume that you're telling the truth, that you are completely innocent in this case.
Because if there is anything that you are justifying or rationalizing in your mind that was in fact a sexual transgression against a child, screw you.
Okay?
So if you're lying and if you're lying to yourself and if you're rationalizing and you're justifying something you should not have done, that is one thing.
But if you are wholly innocent in this matter, what I would do is I would gather some very, very trusted people around me.
Your wife if she's still around, a pastor if she's still around, certainly a lawyer, I would be one of the people that I would talk to.
I'd get a lawyer.
I would sit down and consult with them and strategize with them about how to go forward.
If you did not harm this child, if you did nothing to harm this child, that she could, you know, anything that she could have taken as a sexual advance.
And I'm not talking about some cloudy thing that, you know, that this nonsense.
I'm talking about if you didn't do anything to her really to hurt or sexually abuse her, then I think you should approach her possibly by mail, possibly by an intermediary, and lay out that this is the case.
Lay it out clearly.
I did not ever do anything that could be construed as sexual assault to you.
You got one shot.
Put it forward.
Tell her you think she has been victimized by somebody.
This does happen.
This is a real thing.
People do have false memories.
They do get victimized by false, by fake psychotherapists.
Write her a letter.
Consult with people, especially a lawyer, but all kinds of people who are your friends and how to go about it and how to word it and what to say.
And then leave her alone.
It's her life.
It's very, very sad, and I feel for you, but it's her life.
But once you put forward your case as clearly and in as civilized and loving a manner as you can, it's up to her.
The ball is in her court.
From Cooper, I am having a crisis of faith.
Throughout my life, I have always felt a close connection with God, even while suffering through depression and anxiety.
God has always been there to pull me through.
Now, for the first time ever, I'm truly feeling his absence with my parents' divorce over the summer, my failing academics and a lost sense of purpose.
I feel farther away from God than I ever have before to the point where I'm questioning the whole thing.
I try talking to pastors and other spiritual leaders about it.
And while they sympathize with my predicament, they offer no real solutions.
I understand that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but how can I keep my faith when it seems he's not there at all?
Well, first of all, nothing that you're saying has any effect on God.
God is there.
He was there yesterday.
He's there today.
He's going to be there tomorrow.
This has nothing to do with God.
This has to do with you.
Nothing has happened to God.
God has not changed at all.
You have changed.
You have been through an experience that has depressed you, that has fed into depression and anxiety.
You seem to have already had the experience of your parents getting divorced.
That's a philosophical problem, and it's an emotional experience, but it's a philosophical problem.
Because even before, when you had faith and God was there, people were getting divorced.
When you had faith and God was there, it was a sad world.
People died.
People got sick unfairly.
Children got sick unfairly.
All that was true before when you had faith and God was there.
Now God's there and you don't have faith and all those things are true.
The only thing that's changed is that something has happened to you that you don't like.
Some of the unfairness, the sadness of life has come to you directly and affected you personally.
And that has affected your emotional sense that God is there.
Nothing's happened to God.
You have lost your emotional sense that God is there because something sad has now happened to you and you weren't philosophically prepared for that eventuality.
The God you believe in has to be a God of the sad world because this is a sad, sad world, okay?
And so now this is really sad when your parents get divorced, tremendously sad.
So the question is not whether you should have faith.
Of course you should have faith because God's there.
That hasn't changed.
That was true yesterday.
It's true today.
It's going to be true tomorrow.
The question is, how do you restore your emotional sense of his presence?
You know, what I would do is I would immerse myself in conversation with him about the things that are bothering you.
The thing that is bothering you is your depression, your anxiety, and this divorce.
Talk to him about it.
He will talk back.
Pray to him about this.
Go off by yourself.
Speak aloud so that you can form full sentences and pray to the God who is there yesterday, he's there today, he's there tomorrow, so you can restore, so he will help you restore and ask him to restore the emotional sense of his presence, which is a comfort to us all.
You have lost something comforting, which is the emotional sense of his presence, but nothing has happened to God.
And you should deal with this because, and, you know, you might need therapy to deal with your parents' divorce, too.
That's a very, very shocking and sad and traumatic thing.
But again, remember, this is about you.
It's about your emotional sense of something.
You know, if you suddenly lost your emotional sense that Brazil was there, Brazil would still be there.
Same is true of God.
From Jacob, Overlord Clavin, my family and I were talking about the line between government and personal values.
Where do you feel this line falls, if it even exists at all?
Do you struggle with balancing your presupposed moral values and political philosophy?
You know, I don't because, I mean, obviously it's something you sometimes have to work out, and sometimes it can be more complicated than other times.
But your moral philosophy has to be a moral philosophy about what you're doing.
Character Counts in Politics00:02:54
This is why I don't understand some of the never-Trumpers, even never-Trumpers that I like, like David French, a guy I like and admire and I respect his mind.
I think he's not thinking clearly when he attacks, when he talks about character counts.
Character counts, your character counts, my character counts to me, but the character of a politician only counts insofar as it affects politics.
You know, character is fate for a person.
My character will decide what I do and where I go.
Donald Trump's character will decide what happens to him and where he goes.
But in politics, policy is what matters.
Policy is fate.
So if Donald Trump is, if Donald Trump's character, and his character doesn't seem to me all that sound, if his character, if his unsound character affects policy, governance, you know, the way this country is perceived in the world, the way this country behaves, then I have to have a problem with his moral character.
If it doesn't, if he's cheating on his wife, but his policies are sound, I don't care.
I didn't care when Clinton did it.
I didn't care when Clinton did it.
I cared that he suborned perjury.
I cared that he dragged everybody around him into the cesspit of his character.
I care about that with Trump.
I've talked about it with Trump.
I hate the way he treats people that he hires.
I hate the way he humiliates good people like Jeff Sessions in Twitter and in public.
I despise it.
I hate the fact that the way he has treated his wife now bleeds into the White House.
All those things are a problem, but it's not my problem.
It's not my morals.
What I'm worried about is our freedom.
As I said before, that's what I'm worried about.
And so as long as he is governing within the Constitution, as long as he is governing for freedom, you know, I'll support his policies and I'll support his administration and I'll vote for him if there's no one I think better on offer.
I'm not going to cede the government to people who no longer believe in the Constitution because Donald Trump is a doofus.
It's just not going to happen.
So that's the way I look at it.
I think each realm has its own ethics.
Politics has a certain kind of ethic to it.
There's a certain kind of corruption.
I will not abide in politics and a certain kind of, you know, like plain little dicey at the edges that I'm just going to shrug because that is politics.
That's the way politics works.
I'm not going to do it, but I'm not always going to condemn everybody who does do it because I know that politics is not beanbag.
So that's the way I look at it.
From David, I've been reading articles about Planned Parenthood funding, and all of those which were from mainstream media sources referred to discredited videos as beginning the defunding attempts.
Do you agree that the Center for Medical Progress videos have been discredited?
These, I believe, if I've got this right, these are the videos that showed that they were selling body parts.
They were not only killing the babies in the womb, they were also selling their parts for cash.
They were never discredited.
That is a lie.
That is a mainstream media lie.
Why Mainstream Media Lies00:09:20
They were edited for time and space, but when you saw the whole thing and I watched the whole thing, they said exactly the same thing.
Planned Parenthood is a savage operation doing savage work for savage reasons.
And these videos reveal that they were savages.
You know, when they prosecute the video maker, you know that they got something good on these guys.
Those videos are sound.
If you want to go back, the first video I ever did for the folks here at The Daily Wire was about abortion.
I can't remember offhand what it was, but it was about these videos.
And I made fun of the fact that they kept saying they were discredited and edited because the editing did not change the meaning of those videos.
They were absolutely disgusting.
They were terrifying.
I want to end today talking about some movies because it occurred to me as it, you know, I can see the fireworks over the city from my house and it occurred to me as the year turned, was it yesterday?
The day before, the night before, as the year turned to 2019, that it was 2019 in Los Angeles, which is exactly the first words you see on the screen in the original movie of Blade Runner from 1982.
Here's just the opening little trailer, I guess, from Blade Runner from 1982.
I need you, Dick.
This is a bad one.
Worst yet.
There was an escape from the Off-World colonies two weeks ago.
Six replicants.
Three male, three female.
They slaughtered 20.
A Blade Runner's job is to hunt down replicants.
So in 1982, they thought it was a reasonable projection into the future to look at 2019, which is right now in Los Angeles.
There were going to be flying cars.
There were going to be those crushed skyscrapers with the videos playing, the gigantic videos playing as the cars flew by.
And we were going to be hunting down rogue replicants with Blade Runners.
That was the vision of what's happening now.
I am tremendously disappointed that it doesn't look like that at all.
But it is typical of science fiction that looks into the future.
In the original story, I always remember the Philip K. Dick story that Blade Runner is based on.
It's called Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep.
I always remember he has a flying car, but when he wants information, he has to look at his mimeographed pages of reports.
Now, a lot of you probably don't even know what a mimeograph was, but before there were Xerox machines, when I was a little kid, before there were Xerox machines, you got these two pieces of paper with a kind of ink pad in between them so that when you typed with your typewriter on one page, it made a copy on the other page.
That was a mimeograph, a copy, and you could have a mimeograph machine that would do it automatically.
That was before Xerox machines were inventing, before copiers were inventing.
So Philip K. Dick could imagine, he could imagine flying cars, but he couldn't imagine Xerox machines or computers.
He couldn't imagine a computerized world.
And so what's so interesting about this, you know, Ursula K. Leguan, I think I've got this right.
She was a famous, she just died last year.
I think she was a famous fantasy and science fiction writer.
She said, when you write about the future, you're not writing about the future.
You're writing about the present.
You are extrapolating some things from the present into the future to talk about what's going on right now.
So Blade Runner, which has now become a kind of a genre into itself, the genre of a detective, a tough guy detective who has to determine an issue of what a human being is, is really talking about the coming transhumanism that I think we all see coming, that once they can put something in your head that makes you smarter, or once they can mess with your genes and make you healthier, nobody is going to turn that down.
And that's going to change the way humans perceive themselves and what the definition of a human being is.
And as robots become more complex, that is also going to become, may become an ethical issue.
I don't actually think that is going to become an ethical issue, but it might.
But anyway, so we're talking about our anxieties now.
That's what those are about.
And I started to think, well, what stories now reflect where we are, even though they don't show the world as realistically as we think.
So right now, because the movies are kind of aging, the movies have become this place that all aging art forms, I've talked about this I know a dozen times, but all aging art forms divide.
They divide into things that the people like and things that the intellectuals like.
And both of those things have flaws because they're missing what an art form has at its absolute, in its absolute prime, is it has movies, say, or plays or novels that not only do the readers like, that not only do the average public like, but that excite the intellectuals.
Shakespeare, you can read Shakespeare till you die.
You can read nothing but Shakespeare.
It will always supply you with intellectual fodder, but the people loved Shakespeare in his time.
They would come to see him because he was so entertaining.
That's an art form in its prime.
Casablanca is an art form in its prime.
Now you have these superhero movies that are largely empty calories, and then you have these little slice of life movies that excite the leftist intellectuals, but nobody goes to see them.
That's why nobody watches the Oscars anymore because they're giving awards to movies nobody cares about except this little elite shape.
But now and then, the movies still produce a film that speaks to a lot of people and has a lot of depth.
And last year, I think the movie that did that was A Quiet Place.
That was that John Krushinsky, Emily Blunt film that John Krasinski directed, his wife Emily Blunt, and the story was it was post-apocalyptic.
You know, you can just play the trailer, but turn the sound off and let me just keep talking.
You can play the trailer, because there is no talking in the trailer, but it says, if they hear you, they hunt you.
And the thing is, this hopes apocalyptic world, these monsters who rip you to pieces and devour you, but they can't see you.
They can only hear you.
Each one of them is just a gigantic ear and they hunt you down.
And I was thinking, why was that both so popular and yet so engaging?
It really did stick in my mind, even though it had logical problems.
At the end, there were some silly logical problems.
But the thing about it is, is that we are living in a quiet place.
We go on, you go on social media, you said something a little untoward five years ago, you lose your job.
You go on and you express an opinion that Twitter doesn't like, they deplatform you.
You go on and say something, and the monsters are Google.
The monsters are YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and all these huge corporations and the mobs who congregate on these to silence anybody they dislike.
Louis C.K. was the last version of this in 2018.
Remember, Louis C.K. was kind of banished, Banished, because he would ask women if they minded if he masturbated in front of them and if he could talk them into it.
I guess he did, and that became part of the Me Too movement.
I don't see why.
He wasn't assaulting anybody.
He was asking for permission.
Is it disgusting?
Yeah, it is.
But I mean, you know, that's on him.
I never saw why we should lose Louis C.K. because he has a problem.
He has a sexual problem.
It's not the same as raping somebody.
It's not the same as doing what Harvey Weinstein did.
So now he's trying to make a comeback and he did a routine and some of it leaked.
And here's like a little bit.
He was making fun of the Parkland students.
Remember, after the shooting, CNN abused these children by making them spokesmen for anti-gun legislation.
And so he goes on and talks about the fact that they went to Congress and then he goes on, well, let's just play it.
They testified in front of Congress, these kids?
What the f?
What are you doing?
You're young.
You should be crazy.
You should be unhinged.
Not in a suit saying, I'm here to tell you.
You're not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot.
Why does that mean I have to listen to you?
Why does that make you interesting?
You didn't get shot.
You pushed some fat kid in the way.
Now I got to listen to you talking.
His very funny stuff is exactly the same material he was doing before he left, but now he gets Twitter mobbed.
We're living in a quiet place.
If you make a noise, if you break the rules, if you violate the leftist sanctity of ideas, the ideas that they consider sacred, the monsters show up.
The monsters of the Twitter mob and the Twitter editors.
The monsters of Google with too much power over the flow of information.
The monsters of Facebook.
We are living in a quiet place.
You know, if you want to turn this off, I'm going to give us a slight, a small spoiler.
Here it comes: a small spoiler.
At the end of a quiet place, one of the things they learn is they can fight back against the monster by making a lot of noise.
We should do the same thing.
That is how you win that fight.
All right, we'll be back tomorrow.
We got one more day before the Clavenless weekend begins again.
Savor it, suck all the clavin-y goodness you can before you go into that darkness.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
Fighting Back Against the Monsters00:00:52
This 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.
Technical producer, Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And their animations are by Cynthia Angulo and Jacob Jackson.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire forward publishing production, copyright forward publishing 2018.
Coming up on a brand new year of the Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump has himself a Merry Little Christmas.
Elizabeth Warren sends up smoke signals on a presidential run.
And Louis C.K. gets clobbered by the Social Justice Warriors.