Andrew Clavin’s Dems Would Leave No Child Alive skewers Hillary Clinton’s 2016 blame game while slamming New York and Virginia’s abortion laws—like the Virginia Repeal Act—as infanticide-enabling, comparing them to Kermit Gosnell’s crimes. He ties leftist materialism (à la Peter Singer) to utilitarian depravity, framing it as a rejection of Judeo-Christian morality, then pivots to listener Q&A: marriage advice for divorce-anxious Christians, character-writing tips from Dickens to Shakespeare, and warnings that Harris/Ocasio-Cortez socialism would take 70 years to collapse America. Clavin also debunks the Jesse Smollett hoax’s inconsistencies while praising Eastern philosophy—until Christianity’s life-affirming contrast shines through. The episode ends with a scathing indictment of leftist ideology as a self-destructive, amoral force. [Automatically generated summary]
Hillary Clinton is reportedly thinking of running for president again.
The former incompetent Secretary of State has told people pretending to still be her friends that while the Democrat field is getting very crowded with candidates ranging from socialists to lunatics, there may still be an opening niche for a corrupt old drunk who falls down a lot and then hacks like a cat about to spit up a hairball.
In a recent speech to the underside of the dining room table, Mrs. Clinton said, quote, The only reason I lost last time was because of Russian interference.
James Comey's investigation, the Electoral College, the ignorance of Midwesterners, the toxic sexism of America, the racism of deplorables, widespread voter fraud.
My car broke down on the way to the polls, the dog ate my homework, and I thought someone said the election was Wednesday instead of Tuesday.
This time, nothing can stop me, unquote.
After completing her speech, Mrs. Clinton woke up in the trunk of a car parked on a side street in Singapore and had to be flown back to the United States at a cost of $700 in mixed drinks.
In a statement later issued to some guy sitting next to her at the bar, Mrs. Clinton said that while it had been humiliating to lose a primary to an incompetent phony like Barack Obama, and while it had been even more humiliating to lose an election to a divisive blowhard like Donald Trump, she had not yet experienced the supreme humiliation of losing to the obscure homosexual mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who has a name that sounds like an anti-gay slur.
So she's planning either to do that or to simply pass out naked in the shop window of Bloomingdale's, which could accomplish the same thing.
Mrs. Clinton said she compares favorably to other Democrat candidates because, quote, I may be a criminal, but I'm no damn communist, unquote.
Trick warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boom.
Birds are winging, all so singing, hunky-dunky-dee-dee.
Ship-shaped, ipsy-topsy, the world is zippity-zing.
It's a wonderful day, hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing!
Oh, hoorah, hooray!
You know, we here at the Andrew Clavin Show take a very hard line on some issues, and among those issues are killing babies and killing Jews.
Valentine's Day and Deadly Issues00:03:01
We're against both.
Call me crazy, but it's part of my general antipathy to killing innocent people in general.
And yet, increasingly, killing babies and killing Jews is beginning to seem an actual platform of the left.
Why not?
It's in keeping with their philosophy.
Philosophy is a funny thing.
Since at least the days of ancient Greece, philosophers have been figures of fun.
They've been depicted as being unattached to real life and wandering about with their heads in the clouds.
Aristophanes even wrote a comedy called The Clouds in 423 BC, in which he made fun of Socrates and other philosophers.
And yet, ideas, philosophy, are powerful things.
They're far more important to who a person ultimately is than his skin color and even his or her sex.
As my brilliant friend Myron Magnet once said, people act out of the ideas in their heads.
Philosophy leads to action.
More and more, our friends on the left are acting out on the idea of materialism, the idea that equality between men and women can be measured in money, or that it's more important to spread the wealth than to ensure something immaterial like freedom and its key support private property.
But the idea of materialism has far-reaching ramifications, and among those ramifications, as we'll discuss, are killing babies and killing Jews.
And as I say, I just can't get comfortable somehow with either.
We'll talk more about this, but first, let us talk about something a little more pleasant, like Valentine's Day, which is coming like a steam train out of the darkness for guys.
For guys, I mean, women, you know, know Valentine's Day is coming about six months in advance, but guys, it just suddenly is there, and so you've got to be ready with 1-800 flowers.
1-800flowers.com will let you order now.
And if you order early, they have amazing deals on vibrant and romantic Valentine rose bouquets, arrangements, and more starting at just $29.99.
And if you're like me, you're thinking, Valentine's Day?
What?
Huh?
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And if you act now, you get great deals.
Roses from 1-800 Flowers are picked at their peak and shipped overnight to ensure freshness.
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Don't settle for anything less than the Rose Authority Collection, 1-800Flowers.com.
To order Valentine bouquets, arrangements, and more starting at $29.99, go to 1-800Flowers.com, click the radio icon, and enter code Clavin.
Order today and save at 1-800Flowers.com.
Code Clavin.
You will see the look in her eyes when she gets those flowers and says to you, how do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
You know, we have got a new date and time.
I should also mention for our next episode of Daily Wire Backstage.
It was rescheduled like the State of the Union for February 5th.
We were going to do it, what was it, today and tomorrow, something like that.
We were going to do it yesterday, when the original State of the Union was.
Moral World Existence00:16:09
And then it thought, how can we talk about the State of the Union if no one is giving the actual State of the Union?
So now, Daily Wire God King, Jeremy Boring, our own Ben Shapiro, and somebody else's, Michael Knowles, and myself, will be there taking on all the pressing issues of the day.
And as always, the lovely Alicia Krauss will be there classing up the joint and taking your questions as they roll in.
We will finally see Trump deliver the State of the Union.
So find out what that's all about.
Only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask the questions.
So go to dailywire.com and subscribe today.
And that means you could be in the mailbag because remember, today is mailbag day.
Oh my God!
Oh, we heard from Lindsay.
She says the beard is really handsome.
So the beard stays.
That's it.
Lindsay is the only person who gets to decide these things.
The beard is staying because she said Claven, she had hashtag ClavinAin't Shaven.
While we're unplugging things, let me plug the book Another Kingdom.
The novel is coming out in March.
And I would love it if you go on and pre-order it.
It's so helpful to the book's success.
And I would love it if the book were a success.
So please go on Amazon and pre-order Another Kingdom.
And I'll tell you later how to get some free stuff if you save the receipt for that.
So we already saw that New York State celebrated a new pro-abortion law, which was passed.
They passed this new law because they're afraid that the new conservative-leaning Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade.
That's their excuse, at least.
I'm not sure that is anywhere in the cards.
But if it does, it will fall, abortion law will fall back to the states.
And New York State, where they abort more black babies than are actually born, wanted to make sure that none of them escaped.
They don't want those black babies running around free, so they wanted to make sure that they could kill as many as possible.
So they passed a law that basically says that you can abort a child as it's being born, essentially.
They have this very, very mealy mouth language.
If it endangers the health of the woman, it used to be if it endangers the life of a woman, but that never happens.
So they said if it endangers the health of a woman, you can abort the child, which, and who knows what that means.
That's such an amorphous thing to say.
It basically just makes abortion, you know, it makes infanticide legal.
I mean, that's basically what it does.
It also repeals a law mandating that you give health care to a baby who survives a botched abortion.
So, in other words, before, if you had an abortion but the baby lived, you had to give it health care.
Now you don't.
Now, that was in New York State.
Now the Democrats in Virginia's House of Delegates have introduced a bill that is called the Repeal Act because it would remove all existing restrictions on abortion in Virginia.
And that includes permitting abortion in the last three months of pregnancy, eliminating informed consent so even young people can get abortions and clinic safety requirements.
I mean basically, as a lot of the people who are involved in the movie Gosnell, to which I supplied the screenplay, a lot of people are saying, Gosnell, who was convicted as a serial killer, could basically now be Surgeon General of these states because everything he did turns out to now will now be legal in New York, and now they're trying to make it legal in Virginia.
So here is a Democrat delegate.
It's called the House of Delegates in Virginia.
And this permits late-term abortions to be performed in outpatient clinics and removes pro-life initiatives such as ultrasound requirements because you wouldn't want to look at the baby before you exterminate it.
And this has got the support of Virginia's Democratic governor, Ralph Northam.
So here is Democrat delegate Kathy Tran being questioned about the bill.
You've got to listen to this.
I mean, listen to every word of this as she kind of dodges and ducks, but ultimately has to admit the truth.
So how late in the third trimester would you be able to do that?
You know, it's very unfortunate that our physicians, witnesses, were not able to attend today to speak specifically about the public.
No, I'm talking about your bill.
How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?
Or physical health.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm talking about the mental health.
So, I mean, through the third trimester.
The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.
Okay.
But to the end of the third trimester.
Yep, I don't think we have a limit in the bill.
So where it's obvious that a woman is about to give birth, she has physical signs that she is about to give a birth.
Would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified?
She's dilating.
Mr. Chairman, that would be a decision that the doctor, the physician, and the woman.
I understand that.
I'm asking if your bill allows that.
My bill would allow that, yes.
So that's infanticide, right?
That's killing.
I mean, there's no difference between a baby during labor and a baby after labor, after it's been born.
There's no difference there whatsoever.
And that's in keeping with the left's underlying philosophy.
I've always said this, that underlying philosophies eventually come out and they eventually hold sway, that every philosophy basically takes itself to its ultimate conclusion.
And that's why it's very important that your ideas, that you vet your own ideas and that the political parties vet their ideas and that you vet your political party's ideas because they may sound good in that moment, but actually it is the underlying idea that will always hold sway and always win out.
And the underlying idea of leftism and of Marxism has always been materialism.
Karl Marx said that in writing his philosophy that he was turning Hegel on his head.
Now Hegel wrote a book which is, I read it, I read it in English, but I might as well have read it in the original German.
That's how complex the book is.
But the book is called The Phenomenology of Spirit.
And it basically studies how spirit, how the human spirit develops through history, through thesis and antithesis, right?
And that became the Marxist historical progress of thesis and antithesis from which Mark removed all trace of spirit.
It was all about just stuff.
It was all about material, right?
Who gave the value to material?
In Marx, the worker gives the value to material, because if you have a hunk of metal here and it becomes a car over here, it must have been the guy who put the car together.
He doesn't take into account that somebody had to have the idea that somebody had to supply the capital.
That's why you call it capitalism.
Somebody had to supply the capital to make that happen.
It was just the worker who gave it that value, and therefore the worker should own the means of production.
Everything Marx said just didn't happen to be true, and that's why it is such a disaster.
But the underlying idea, the underlying idea is materialism.
And if you are a materialist, all week long I've been talking about this, and I hope I haven't made it sound too woo-woo, too out there, like it's some kind of meaningless philosophy.
It really is everything.
It's everything we're arguing about, about whether there is another level of meaning.
Let me put this in the simplest terms I can.
This is the difference between materialism and non-materialism.
I'm not even talking about Christianity.
I'm talking about some kind of idea of spiritual truth, some kind of idea of moral truth, right?
If I strangle a child, an innocent child, or if I give a beggar bread, do those acts have different qualities?
Do they have different moral qualities?
And if they do, where does that morality exist?
Is there some place that is not this place, that is not made of flesh, that is not made of clay or wood or material, where that goodness or badness exists?
Or the only other option, because this is the only other option, is that it's just kind of an opinion that we have, a feeling that we have, that strangling an innocent child, not so good, giving a beggar bread, kind of nice.
If we lived on a planet, which we soon will if the Democrats continue on this path, if we lived in a planet where strangling an innocent child was a sport and everybody loved it and it was really fun, would it then be okay?
Because there was no one there to say it wasn't, right?
If everybody just said this is great, you know, or maybe the child who gets strangled didn't think so, but he was outvoted, would it be okay?
Or do we believe, and I believe all of us actually believe this, that it is inherently bad?
And if it's bad, where does that badness exist, okay?
And what I say is that there is an immaterial realm.
This is not supernatural.
It is not supernatural to say that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is true whether you say it or not.
It is instantiated.
It becomes real when you take two pennies and two pennies and put them together and they're four.
But somewhere, perhaps in the mind of God, two plus two equals four, whether you have those two pennies or not.
The same thing is true about morality, right?
The moral world exists, and it must exist in some kind of consciousness.
I think you can't get away from God.
This is one of the reasons, this is the central reason I converted.
You cannot get away from the concept of God once you believe that there is a moral universe only, in my opinion, only the Marquis de Saud, who said, basically, since there is no God, there is no morality, why don't we just torture each other for pleasure?
Only he made sense as an atheist as far as I'm concerned.
So let's look for a minute at some of these underlying ideas that really are the underlying ideas of the left.
For instance, I mean, you know, I'm always getting hit for attacking feminism.
It's not women's rights that I hit.
It's feminism, this idea that somehow women are not succeeding if they're not succeeding in the realm of men, that men set the standards of success, hierarchy being at the top of the hierarchy, yet making a lot of money, building businesses.
And a woman's success in raising a child and making a home is somehow inferior, is somehow enslavement.
other day on, I think it was on CNN, I believe it was Karen Tamulti from the Washington Post was saying it was offensive that Donald Trump should talk about Melania Trump making a salad.
Women have something more to do than make food for men.
But that's only true if making a salad is just making a salad.
As every person who's had a home made for him knows making food is love.
You know, you are loved and you're taken care of and somebody's doing something that matters to you spiritually and that is why people, if you don't think people love their mothers, go up to somebody who's bigger than you and insult his, right, and see how far you get.
People love, adore their mothers because they know that food, that home, that cleaning up after them sometimes, that even yelling at them is love.
And that's a spiritual thing.
If you're a materialist, though, you just say, well, wait, there's a disparity between how much a housewife is paid and how much a businessman is paid, so she is actually inferior.
That's materialism.
So let's take a look.
I want to take a look at two of the biggest philosophers in this realm.
I've talked a lot about Peter Singer, who's a bioethicist at Princeton.
I'm sure you all know Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist.
And, you know, I hit Singer because Singer has talked about infanticide for babies who are terribly suffering.
It's a debate you can have whether if you're going to let a child die, should you just kill the child?
You know, I'm not going to call him out on that, but my problem with it, and I read one of his central essays on this, it's actually kind of a funny story.
I read it because I was volunteering in one of those places where you read books for the for the hear for the hearing impairment, the reading impairment, people who can't read and they want to hear the book.
So I would read books.
I would volunteer to read books because I have a good voice.
And so I would read these books.
And his essay was one of the books that I read.
So I'm locked in the studio and I'm reading this and I'm getting sick to my stomach because the guy is basically saying, well, you shoot horses, don't you?
So why wouldn't you shoot infants if they're in pain?
And I'm getting more and more nauseous.
I'm asking myself, should I be reading this?
And then I thought, yes, I should be reading this because the people who can't see the book have every right to see these ideas.
And so I'm just, I'm not taking an issue on it.
But I came bursting out of the studio feeling sick.
And the guy who ran the place, who was kind of a big left-winger, said to me, what's the matter?
And I said, I was just reading this book where this guy's basically consenting to infanticide.
And he said, well, you're in favor of killing, of executing criminals, aren't you?
And I thought, yeah, that's the whole problem there.
Like, he can't tell the difference between a baby and a mass murderer because he's a materialist.
If you are in favor of killing one kind of person, then why not another kind of person who hasn't done anything?
That's materialism at work.
So let's take a look at Dawkins and Singer discussing what makes human beings human beings.
This is cut number 14.
We recognize that we are animals.
And of course, once we recognize that, then we have to ask the question, well, what's so different about us?
I mean, admittedly, we have capacities to reason and to use language that exceed any non-human animals, although I do think some non-human animals can reason to some degree and can communicate in various ways.
But, I mean, that's not enough.
For me, what's crucial is that we share with them the capacity to suffer.
What's that famous quote from Bentham?
Right, yes.
He says, he asks, what can trace what he calls the insuperable line between humans or beings that matter, that can't morally, and beings that don't?
And he says, you know, well, suppose it was reason or something.
He says, a horse is more reasonable than a human infant.
And then he says, but suppose it were otherwise, why would it matter?
The question is not whether they can talk nor whether they can reason, but can they suffer?
Yeah, I think that that's crucial.
Jeremy Bentham, who Jonathan Haight takes down in his book, was a utilitarian.
believed that good and bad could be measured by whether it did the most good for the most number of people.
He was a loon, and Jonathan Haight points out that he was probably on the spectrum of autism and was not able to feel, I believe it's autism, where he wasn't able to feel compassion for other people.
So they're saying that suffering is what makes us people.
But that, of course, is absurd.
I mean, if you can't tell the difference between a person and a dog, and I say dog because I love dogs.
If you can't tell the difference between a person and a dog, you're thinking in such materialist terms because suffering is a material thing.
But surely, surely the Sistine Chapel and a dog chasing a bone are different orders of being.
They are hints that we are living in different orders of being, even though we are indeed animals.
So what is the conclusion they come to when they just define morality in terms of suffering?
Because after all, you might be a person who doesn't suffer.
You might be like the villain in that book, the girl with the tattoo, who doesn't feel pain.
Would it then be all right to kill you?
So what's their conclusion then?
And all these guys love animals more than they love people.
Let's cut 13.
In the abortion debate, people sometimes say it's absolutely crucial when the embryo can first feel pain.
And they look at things like the development of the nervous system.
What I've always felt about that is, no doubt it's true that we should worry about that, but a human embryo, when its nervous system is just developed, could almost certainly feel far less pain than an adult non-human animal.
And therefore there is a massive inconsistency between people who place great weight upon the exact moment when the human embryo starts to feel pain.
Well indeed, that's absolutely right.
I think that certainly a pig or a sensitive animal like that would be much more aware of its circumstances and capable of feeling pain than a human embryo.
Abortion and Moral Stakes00:07:04
And the other thing that's relevant to the abortion issue is that I think for any woman, having an abortion is a serious decision that she will only do if she has something quite important at stake.
Whereas, I mean, people who are prepared to just go into the supermarket and buy some ham don't need to do that at all.
They could easily eat something else.
It's amazing how irrational that is.
This guy's a Princeton bioethic.
Amazing how irrational that is because why, first of all, it's just not true.
I mean, researching the movie Gosnell, I found that there are plenty of women who have casual abortions, and so he's just not representing human beings accurately.
But why is it an important issue?
Why is it an important issue to have an abortion?
What's important about it?
If it's just a question of whether there's pain or not, why would a woman care?
I mean, I don't understand.
Why wouldn't the question of whether to eat ham be more important?
It seems to be to Peter Singer.
Nothing they say makes sense because, of course, it doesn't represent real life.
It doesn't represent the way any of us live.
Jeremy Benton's philosophy was a kind of madness.
We all know, we all know that there is a difference between strangling a child and giving a beggar bread.
We know that.
We simply don't want to face the ramifications of it because it means we can't do all the things that we want to do, all the things that are important to us.
What does that have to do with the Jews?
Why is there so much anti-Semitism on the left?
Well, I think the answer is obvious.
But before I get to that, speaking of Jews, Ben Shapiro has a new book out, The Right Side of History.
I read it.
You should read it too.
It comes out March 19th.
But if you head over to rightsideofhistorybook.com, rightsideofhistorybook.com, you can get your own copy this very moment.
It's a great read.
Really, it is, and you'll be glad you did.
And it's really Ben's kind of magnum opus, his take on all of Western history.
So very, very interesting.
But what does it have to do with Jews?
Well, of course, of course, the Jews are the people who undergirded Western civilization with this philosophy, with this idea that there was another level of meaning, that it was in the mind of our Creator, that our Creator was the source of all good and all life.
And we have been yelling at them about it ever since.
Even the idea, even the idea that the Jews killed Christ is a projection of our own guilt of what we're trying to get away from.
We all know that it's not the Jews who killed Christ, it's humankind that killed Christ and kills him all the time, kills the idea of him all the time, that idea, that insistence that we live at that other level of meaning because it means you've got to have the baby you accidentally got pregnant with.
It means you've got to maybe not take the expensive job that's wrong where you're going to be doing something wrong, but take a little less pay to do something right.
It means you've got to turn away from some of the things you really, really want because they would hurt other people.
And those things are just annoying.
And that's why we hate the Jews.
And it has become so widespread on the left, the Women's March just completely collapsed over the rampant spread of anti-Semitism.
Brett Baer had the DNC chair Tom Perez on and asked him about this last night.
You have this?
We had a host of concerns and we wanted to make sure that we were clear in our values and the Democratic Party, our platform has been very clear about Israel.
It's been very clear about dignity for both Israel and the Palestinian people.
A two-state solution is the way to go.
A two-state solution negotiated directly by the parties.
That is what we have to do.
And frankly, I think this administration, through their wedge actions, their divide and conquer actions, has made that reality or that possibility of a two-state solution that much more remote.
Yeah, so we want to have, you know, we want to have dignity both for the Jews and the people who want to wipe them into the sea.
And by the way, speaking of wiping the Jews into the sea, this is the platform, basically, of Alexandria Occasional Cortex's party, the Democratic Socialists of America, who had a vote to boycott Israel.
And listen to the, this was 2017, I think.
Anyway, listen to the chant that they have when they take this vote.
All those in favor of the resolution, raise your voice cards.
Thank you.
All those opposed?
The motion carries.
Palestine will be free.
From the river to the sea.
Palestine will be free.
From the river to the sea.
Palestine will be free.
From the river to the sea.
Palestine will be free.
From the river to the sea.
Palestine will be free.
So from the river to the sea, that means wiping Israel off the face of the earth.
I believe there were, what, 5 million, maybe 6 million?
When Israel finally gets to 6 million, then the socialists of America will be linking up to the old National Socialists who have the same program of wiping out that many Jews.
You know, and Rashid Talib, who everybody's celebrating as the new Muslim congresswoman, she now, the Daily Caller has linked her.
She, again, has called for boycotting Israel and called for not sending them any aid in an absurd and absurd comment that we can't send them aid because they are not nice to Muslims.
They don't give equal rights to Muslims, which isn't true.
They don't give equal rights to Muslims in occupied territories, but they give equal rights to Muslim citizens.
But if that were true, what about all, all, almost all, of the Muslim countries where if you build a church, you get killed, or if you certainly, if you build a synagogue, you're done for.
Are we going to take aid away from them?
The Daily Caller ran a piece examining Talib's ties.
They say she's a member of a Facebook group, Palestinian American Congress, where members often demonize Jews.
The group's founder, Palestinian activist Mar Abdel Qadr, was a key fundraiser for Tlaib and organized campaigns for her events around the country.
In January 2018, Abdel Qadr shared an anti-Semitic video that claimed Jews aren't actually Jewish and invented their historical claim to Israel and secretly control the media and so on.
This is rampant and it's all, I'm sorry, but it is all connected by these ideas.
I don't want to sound like I'm being lunatic about it, but it's all one idea.
It's all the idea of materialism.
It's behind relativism.
It's behind multiculturalism.
It's behind transgenderism, the idea that if you change your body, you have changed whether you are in fact a man or a woman.
Even if you just put on a dress, that's how materialist that is.
You have suddenly become a woman.
This is the issue of our day.
This is the thing we are fighting against.
And that's why, if you are an atheist conservative, you might examine your ideas.
I'm not telling you to believe what you can't believe, but I am saying that your ideas should make sense and you should take a look at where you think this goodness or badness comes from, where it exists in the world or outside the world or above the world, if you are going to maintain that there is a moral universe.
Desires and Drama00:11:21
All right, I want to get to the mailbag, so I will say goodbye to another car runs off the road in terror.
I'll say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come to dailywire.com and subscribe because you're going to want to ask questions in next week's mailbag and in the backstage show and of everything.
You're just going to want to ask all the questions so you get all the answers.
Come on over.
Mailbag!
See, now they're prepared for it.
Now their trucks aren't driving off the road.
It's no fun anymore.
From Kaylee, dear over Lord K-L-V-N, I'm late to the Another Kingdom party.
I want to jump in now that the second season is finished and the book is coming out.
However, all the options are confusing.
How would you suggest enjoying Another Kingdom best?
Well, you know, at this point, I would get the book.
You know, I would read the book because that's what I love more than anything is writing books.
The book has been changed somewhat from the first season.
And, you know, I just think you can look at the pros more and enjoy the pros.
That's what I like doing.
I like reading books, but you can also get the audio book, which will be voiced by none other than Michael Knowles.
You can get that as well.
From Dave, Dear Clavin Supreme Leader of the Multiverse, thank you for getting my title correct.
I come from an extended family with many, many broken marriages.
Several aunts and uncles have been married many times, in a few cases, up to five times.
Their children, my cousins, have almost all already been married and divorced.
On top of that, a few years ago, my own parents divorced after having been married for over 30 years.
Currently, I'm planning to propose to my absolutely wonderful girlfriend.
We're both committed Christians and work incredibly, almost unbelievably well together.
But I find myself more frightened than excited.
I'm in my mid-30s, and after all this time, I'd like to enjoy this moment and the thought of entering marriage and living life together with this lovely lady.
However, I can't shake the feeling that I may be no different than my other family members and make the mistakes they did.
I have no reason to believe that my lady and I will encounter problems we can't work through, yet I still spend more time worrying about the future and enjoying than enjoying the moment.
Is there anything I can do to shake the anxiety and enjoy preparing for the next chapter of my life?
Love the show and thanks for all you do.
Yeah, listen, lots of people, lots of people come from broken homes and broken and cultures, family cultures of broken homes who commit themselves to their marriage more strongly because of that and succeed because of that, because they know what's at stake.
So you're actually not in, I don't know whether you're statistically in greater danger, but you've waited.
You're in your 30s, so you're not a kid.
You're a Christian, so you have a philosophy that's going to support you, and you're seriously committed to a woman you love to keep this thing together.
So the odds are good.
You're actually in a good position, not a bad position.
Let yourself go.
Let yourself free from the worry.
That's all I can tell you.
Don't think so much of like, oh, I want this to be a perfect moment.
I want this to be a precious, wonderful time.
You know, you got worries.
You're a human being.
You have anxieties.
Don't think of it as, oh, my perfect life is being spoiled.
It's a false way of thinking.
It's like people who say, oh, Christmas is ruined because grandma can't come.
You know, that kind of thing.
You know, it's just enjoy it.
Even enjoy your anxieties.
Your anxieties are part of the experience.
Go forward with it.
The odds are good.
You're going to be fine.
I really do believe that.
I think you're going to be fine.
Marriage is, you know, I'm like the greatest advertisement for marriage on earth.
And it's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
And the fact that you have seen so much pain and so much suffering should give you that extra steel that you're going to need to get through some of the times that you will have of difficulty.
So, you know, set yourself free.
Let yourself go to enjoy yourself.
Don't worry so much about, don't add to your anxiety by worrying about the anxiety.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Don't add to your anxiety by having anxiety about the anxiety.
Just live the moment and enjoy your wife.
And God bless you.
I hope it goes great.
From Christopher, dear Supreme Overlord of the Multiverse.
Getting some quality letters here.
Dear Supreme Overlord of the Multiverse, I'm writing a novel.
And while I have the entire plot ironed out, I'm finding it difficult establishing my characters' personalities when they're first introduced.
Can you give me some pointers on how to do it?
No, but what I can tell you is this is something that it's one of the hardest things to do to bring characters to life.
And it's something you have to do almost by feel.
Your characters have to come to life.
The way, what I would suggest is you read some of the great writers and watch how they do it.
That is the best way to learn to write anyway.
So I would do that.
Guys like Trollope, the Victorian novelist, he was the, they call him the adult Dickens because he was kind of a conservative version of Charles Dickens.
He was wonderful.
I stole all his techniques when I wrote my novel, True Crime.
Charles Dickens writes brilliant characters.
Shakespeare, obviously, writes great characters.
See what they did to make their characters come to life and read modern novels that you like and see what they do to make characters come to life.
And you can steal, you can steal techniques that will help bring your characters to life.
When I started out, I will tell you, I did massive, massive prep on characters.
I wrote their life histories down.
I once wrote over 100 pages on a single character until I knew him backwards and forwards.
That helped me a lot.
So those are tips that might work for you.
They worked for me.
And ultimately, I got good at it.
I got good at doing it, so I kind of knew where the characters lie.
I still do character prep work, but not to that extent anymore because I don't have to anymore.
But those are the things you can do.
Evan, if you were just, from Evan, if you were to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?
Funky love machine.
From Robert, Andrew, I'm an old white guy who listened to your show, all but for the opening song.
Oh, you are an old white guy.
Come on, man.
Get some soul.
If you had soul, you would be getting down to my opening song.
You must wear a MAGA hat.
That's right.
What do you suppose would happen to the country if someone like Kamala Harris or Alexandria, occasionally Coheren Cortex, were ever to be president?
In other words, how long would it take to self-destruct, in your opinion?
Well, look, you know, we still have a lot of, you know, checks and balances if they were elected president.
There's nothing to say that they would succeed that far.
Socialism takes 70 years.
It takes a lifetime to destroy a nation utterly.
Once it destroys the nation, the nation is left in ashes.
The thing is, 70 years is kind of diabolical because it means that the people who live through the destruction are not the people who put the destruction in place.
So nobody ever learns the lesson.
Nobody ever learns the lesson of socialism because it always sounds so good and it always destroys the country, but it takes 70 years.
So basically the people who put it in place are dead, and the people who are living through the experience don't even know what's wrong.
And they're addicted to their national health care.
They're addicted to all the goodies they get.
And so they don't know how to fix it anymore.
It is the devil's politics, socialism.
So after we just impose socialism through national health, which would be the best way for them to do it, it would take about 70 years to destroy the country.
Luckily, the good news is I'll be gone.
The bad news is a lot of you will still be here.
From David, Drew, love the show and how thought-provoking your segment always is.
I've been on a C.S. Lewis kick recently, and between the two of you, I'm determined to start reading some of Aristotle sometime soon.
You've talked a lot about how the decline of an art form leads to a shift in its appreciation and it divides into flashy superhero movies and flaccid attempts at meaning applauded by the intelligentsia.
Well put.
I'm curious of your read on that in mediums other than film and what you think the current medium is that may be rising to take the place of film.
I think it's obvious it's TV.
I think some of TV has just become great.
It's still a writer's medium.
You know, it's changing because it's basically becoming the movie.
So much money is being poured into it.
But still, there's still some great filmed drama on television.
So much leads to that.
The fact that writers have a lot more say and it's writers who bring the depth and understanding to all film.
It's the directors who give the visual beauty to it, the visual vision of the film.
And it also is kind of because a lot of TV is cheaper than movies, you don't spend $100 million necessarily on a TV show.
It means it depends on dialogue, on character, on two shots, on two individuals talking.
It just all leads to better drama.
From Austin, I hear you and the other guys talk about Western philosophy a lot.
Do you think Eastern philosophy has any merit or is it not even worth discussing?
No, it's great.
I was a practitioner of Zen for a long time.
I loved it.
It's really interesting to me.
You know, one of the things about Eastern philosophy, especially through Buddhism, is its emphasis on rising above.
First of all, there's a lot of great wisdom in it.
The Tao Dejing is one of the great pieces of wisdom literature on earth and sounds very much like the Gospels.
The Tao Dejing is a brilliant, brilliant book.
It takes an hour to read and it's very much worthwhile, full of wisdom.
But, you know, there is a strain of quietism in Eastern philosophy, a strain of rising above the suffering of life.
In Buddhism, a lot of times what they do is they tell you that you have to get rid of your desires.
You suffer because of your desires.
The Christian way forward is actually to plunge into life and suffering.
Jesus' suffering becomes our suffering.
We take up our cross and follow him.
We are embracing life and embracing our desires as the salience of our God-given personality.
Desires, when I say the salience, that means the outsticking points of our God-given personalities.
Our desires may be broken, but still, when we get to our real desires, we find out who we are.
And so in Christianity, your desires are not necessarily a bad thing.
Your corrupt desires are, but not your natural desires.
But in Buddhism, you're trying to rise above it.
So you have to decide what kind of life you want to live, what you think the good life is.
I stopped practicing Zen because I felt it was anti-life-like eventually, even though I had some wonderful, wonderful Zen experiences.
And you can read about this in my book, The Great Good Thing.
But I had wonderful Zen experiences, but ultimately I felt it was kind of bringing death on too soon that I wanted to be in life and experience life to the fullest and even with its suffering.
So it really is depending on how you want to approach life.
But Eastern philosophy has plenty of, pardon me, plenty of wisdom in it.
All right, let me do one more.
From two, the great bald beacon of hope, please keep this anonymous.
I've been dating a woman for about a year now, and I'm really starting to love her.
However, I still have one hang-up in a previous relationship.
She cheated on her then partner in order to get revenge on him for cheating on her.
All right, so it was revenge adultery.
I understand people make mistakes, but I've always heard that once a cheater, always a cheater.
Should I look past this, or am I setting myself up for failure by dating her?
Personal Reaction Matters00:05:11
I love the show, and I respect and appreciate your advice.
Listen, I can't really tell you this because I don't know her.
I can't look in her face and tell you whether she's lying or whether she's telling the truth.
You know, if she was young, you know, people make terrible mistakes.
They do stupid, stupid things when they're young.
If she's matured since then, if it was just this moment, if it's like she said, it was just a moment of revenge.
It's a stupid way to take revenge, but it's not quite the same as going out and cheating on people.
You have got to make this call.
You have got to look at her and know her and understand her and understand whether or not she is a cheater or she was just in a bad place in a bad relationship at a bad time and she has moved past that.
You have to make that decision because you're right.
It's not a good sign.
It's not a good sign, but there was a context and you have to decide for yourself about that context.
I have to move on to talk about this story.
And this is, what I'm about to do is not commentary.
It is simply a personal reaction to something.
And we will see where that personal reaction goes.
It'll be interesting just to see.
The actor from Empire, Jesse Smollett, who is a gay guy who plays a gay guy on this TV show that is about a black mogul in the music industry.
And Jesse Smollett plays one of his sons.
I have to tell you, when this show came out, my wife was out of town.
I never, never binge shows because I don't have time.
Binging a television show to me means watching a show every day, watching it once every day.
That's a binge for me.
My wife was out of town when this came out, and I got so addicted to the first season.
I think I watched five shows in one night.
I don't think I've ever done it.
I was just wrapped up in the soap opera of it.
And I loved this guy.
I liked his storyline.
Very hard to get me involved in a gay storyline because basically the reason I watch TV is to wait until the actress takes her clothes off.
But this was, I thought, a wonderful story about a gay young man in a black music world where there was a lot of homophobia.
It was very compelling.
And the guy is massively, massively talented.
I just brought one song that I must have played a million times after I heard it on the show.
Here is Jussie Smollett singing on Empire.
So this thing builds.
It's a great...
It's a great number.
You can find it.
Conqueror, I think is the name of the song.
So anyway, I really like this guy.
He claims that he was attacked on a Chicago street at 2 in the morning by two men who wrapped a rope around his neck, threw a bleach on him, called him racial and homophobic slurs.
They were wearing masks, but he says he thought they were white.
He told the police that they said something about this is MAGA country, which is absurd in Chicago.
Listen, if this story is true, if these trogloditic, if there are troglodytic thugs who laid their hands on this guy because he's gay or black, you throw the book at him.
I'll sign the book, The Oubliet in Silence of the Lambs is too good for them, no question about it.
But I got to tell you, the minute I heard this story, I thought, really, really?
You know, and I just, this story has changed several times.
The cops are looking for video evidence.
Apparently, he was caught on videotape.
Smallett was caught on videotape security cameras, but they can't see any sign of the attack.
It's like 20, pardon me, it's like 20 degrees below zero in Chicago.
So I don't know if these guys are out prowling the street.
Why would they recognize these guys if they're MAGA hat wearing maniacs?
Why are they watching Empire?
Why would they even know he exists?
At first, they said that these were white men, but then the police came out later and said, no, you know, they were wearing gloves and masks, so he couldn't tell the gender or the color of them.
I'm not saying it's untrue.
I'm not saying it's untrue.
I'm simply reporting that when I heard it, something went through my head.
And if it's untrue, that's another story.
And I think then we should deal with that story.
I notice they're not driving this home the way the left usually does.
They're not, you know, interviewing Donald Trump and asking him if he was in Chicago at the time, which is what you'd expect from like CNN or something like this.
They'll try to blame it on him if it turns out to be true.
Again, if it turns out to be true, these guys should be punished to the full extent of the law.
It's a horrible, disgusting crime.
I shouldn't have to say that.
But something strikes me about this story.
And I just want to put it on record that it bugs me.
And as much as I like this guy and admire his talent and as much as I enjoyed his performances and think he's a wonderful entertainer, I will be really interested to follow this story because it just has been bugging me since I heard it.
So that is not commentary.
It's just a personal reaction.
And we'll see because I'll come back to it.
If it turns out, if they prove it, then I'll come back and I'll talk about that and why I may have had this personal reaction.
I got to go.
But I will be back here tomorrow.
You'll want to be here because the Clavenless weekend begins after that.
You want to suck up all that Claviny goodness to keep you going through the weekend.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
Audio Mixed By Mike00:00:49
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
see you tomorrow.
The Andrew Klavan Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Adam Sajovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
Hair and makeup is by Jessua Alvera.
And our animations are by Cynthia Angulo.
Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Democrats panic over independent candidates, Venezuela approaches chaos, and Virginia is now pushing a hard-left abortion policy.