Andrew Klavan dissects Roe v. Wade’s 1973 legacy, arguing it centralized federal abortion control, stifled state-level debate, and deepened political divisions—mirroring the left’s past anti-smoking campaigns. He praises Justice Thomas’s dissent in Franciscan Alliance v. Comptroller as a harbinger of Roe’s likely reversal by the conservative Supreme Court, mocking liberal hypocrisy in selectively applying stare decisis. Meanwhile, he pivots to media trends, declaring TV the dominant art form (citing Game of Thrones) but warning left-wing dominance risks alienating audiences. A mailbag reveals personal triumphs—his son’s Oxford doctorate—and raw listener struggles, from a violent roommate to a father’s fear of repeating his own emotional failures, all framed through his signature blend of sharp critique and paternal advice. [Automatically generated summary]
According to MRC newsbusters, there are now more prostitutes, witches, and people who keep chickens as pets than there are viewers of CNN.
Fred Darnley, who keeps a pet chicken named Feathers, says he prefers his chicken to CNN because, quote, a chicken won't just sit there and lie to you all the time, and if it really gets on your nerves, you can fry the damn thing up and eat it, whereas most of those CNN anchormen are dishonest and taste like crap, unquote.
Prostitute Marva Wodolinski, also known as Crystal, Candy, Brandy, Amber, or whatever hell else you want to call her, says she prefers being a streetwalker to watching CNN because, quote, I perform a service for people, I make them happy for a few minutes before leaving them feeling empty and degraded, and they get to choose which lie I tell them instead of listening to this Trump-Russia nonsense all the time.
I mean, face it, oh, baby, you're the best I've ever had is just a lot more plausible than the stuff Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo says.
Plus, my job takes more brains than those guys have put together, unquote.
And finally, practicing witch Tiffany Bernstein says she prefers casting spells and performing Wicca ceremonies because, quote, they may be utterly useless, made-up garbage, but at least there are no cable fees, unquote.
CNN news director Dimley Gormliss in a statement delivered between heaving sobs told anyone who would listen, quote, I think we need a new business model.
We've tried calling Trump racist, fascist, a Russian spy, but the problem is the viewers can get that at all the other networks, plus they have situation comedies.
For the new raging season, we're going with Trump is an invading alien sent by Satan to destroy us.
That at least is original, unquote.
Gormless says CNN toyed with the idea of just reporting the news honestly, but it would have been too expensive to hire journalists.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped ipsy-topsy, the world is it bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Ring's Mission00:02:52
Okay, anti-abortion forces are on the march, and there can be no doubt this is heading for the Supreme Court, where Roe v. Wade may well be overturned.
And that would be a good thing for both sides, both the left and the right.
It has long been my opinion that the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision is at the heart of our current divisions.
States were legalizing abortion when the decision came down in 1973, and all the Supreme Court really accomplished was to take the rightful power and process out of the hands of the people where they belonged and demonstrate that those powers could be seized by seven guys who had no right to seize it.
The opinion woke up evangelicals and other normal people and let them know that the left was serious about taking away their right to self-government and imposing their values by any means necessary.
That raised the emotional tone of our political life.
Plus, the reasoning of the court was so bad that even a non-lawyer could see we'd been cheated and it undermined our faith in the court as an institution.
But maybe most importantly, besides, of course, all the dead babies, Roe v. Wade circumvented the process by which people in disagreement can feel they've been heard and seen, even if they lose.
That turned our political opponents into our political enemies.
The court did the same thing when it created the right to gay marriage in Obergfell, and Antonin Scalia in his genius dissent wrote, it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage.
It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me.
And today's decree says that my ruler and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast to coast is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court, unquote.
So it's not just the lives of children we're fighting for.
It's also a fight against, in the words of Scalia, the court's threat to American democracy.
It would be a good thing for both conservatives and leftists if we had to make arguments and win elections in our states again.
Never mind, make America great.
It would make America America.
All right, we'll talk about that more, but first let us talk about Ring.
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Ring's Smart Security Solutions00:15:12
So that'll just be a starter kit, but it's a good way to get started.
So just go to ring.com/slash clavin.
That's ring.com slash clavin.
No matter where you are, if someone comes to the door, you'll be able to say to him, How do you spell Clavin?
And then he'll just run away because he won't know.
You know, I want to say I'm still here in a San Francisco hotel airport because I gave a speech at Stanford last night.
I had a really good time.
The kids, as always, were just these conservative groups, they're so dedicated and they're so under the gun.
They're being persecuted by the administration.
I told you yesterday that these two women in the administration, I mean, this is incredible.
Normally, a lot of this start stuff starts with some activist group that starts protesting my appearance or the speaker's appearance, whoever it is.
But this time it was pretty quiet.
I don't usually attract that many people, you know, hysterics because I'm calm.
I listen to people.
I want to hear what other people have to say.
I don't hate the left.
I disagree with them.
It just makes me a harder target for them to hit.
But this time, the administration went out of the way.
Susie Brubaker Cole, the vice provost of student affairs, and Tiffany Steinworth, the Dean for Religious Life, put out this letter, as I told you yesterday, not a letter, yeah, I guess a newsletter, that said they were, oh, deeply disturbed that I was showing up and that it was unacceptable the way this had been advertised.
And I was an anti-they basically portrayed me as an anti-Muslim bigot.
And they use that satire video, J is for jihad, where I make fun of the idea that jihad is actually a spiritual thing, not a violent thing, where in the Quran, it actually is always about fighting the unbeliever.
So I made fun of that on that, and that's what they used to pin me as a Muslim hater, basically.
And so I stood up and I just said, screw you, ladies.
I mean, those were my words.
I said, screw you, because, you know, to paraphrase Elton John, you can call me an old crank, but you can't lie about me.
You know, I think when you call me a bigot, when you say I'm a bigot, you've lost all right to civility.
You've lost all right to conversation.
I didn't know the two ladies were actually in the audience.
I've now heard they were in the audience.
I wish I had known that because I would have happily said it directly to their face.
And I wish they'd stayed and spoken to me afterwards.
But I was just explaining that, you know, there's only free speech and speech allowed by power, right?
Because once you start defining speech as hateful or unacceptable, it's the powerful people who make those decisions.
And the powerful people are going to protect their point of view and their positions of power.
That's what they're going to do.
And that's what these ladies were doing.
And it's just wrong.
It is just wrong to deprive.
To me, it's like child abuse.
Obviously, college kids aren't children anymore.
They're young adults.
But it's still a kind of abuse of young people to teach them that conversation is off limits.
I mean, when you're in college, you should be talking till 3, 4 o'clock in the morning.
You should be arguing everything.
And that they are stripping them of this right is just shameful.
It is shameful.
I'm ashamed of these women.
I'm ashamed of them for them because I know they're not ashamed.
And there was some, they started this, they incited this.
There's no question about it.
The left, whenever you criticize the left, they're always saying, oh, you're inciting violence.
I don't mind being criticized.
I don't mind being argued with.
What I minded was the tone of this newsletter that said it was unacceptable.
They had a right to do it, but it wasn't right to do it.
And I was really ticked off about it.
I got to be honest with you.
I was really annoyed.
And I don't get annoyed, even annoyed all that often, but I really was.
And so anyway, I just want to repeat: screw you ladies, and that this administration should be cleaned out of people like that.
They should be all tossed out on their ear, and free speech should be allowed to thrive, especially at an institution like Stanford that is such a supposedly high-level institution.
So let's talk about this anti-abortion.
There's yet another.
The Alabama and the Senate passed the big anti-abortion bill.
It virtually eliminates abortion.
I think it's still a heartbeat bill, six weeks, but it's obviously going to be challenged.
The governor of the state, Kay Ivey, didn't say whether she was going to sign it yet.
She wants to see the final bill.
It would be the strictest in the U.S.
It makes it a felony for doctors to perform an abortion at any point during pregnancy, punishable up to 99 years in prison.
Doctors who attempt to perform an abortion could face up to 10 years in prison.
Women would not be liable.
The woman having the abortion would not be liable.
And their bill makes an exception for a mother who has a serious health risk.
Anyway, this goes on to the bills added onto the bills like in Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Mississippi, and obviously is a challenge to the court.
It's obviously saying to the court, to the Supreme Court, here it comes.
Jeffrey Toobin, who's the hysterical anti-Trump legal analyst at CNN, he points out that this is basically the result of Trump.
This is Trump, as he says, keeping his promises at cut number eight.
Candidate Donald Trump said repeatedly he was going to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will vote to overturn Roe versus Wade.
What he meant by that, I think, was he will appoint justices to the Supreme Court who will vote to overturn Roe versus Wade.
Sounds like it.
That's what he's done.
There have been two confirmations.
Anthony Kennedy, who was a vote for Roe versus Wade, has been replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, who will vote to overturn it.
There are now five votes on the court to overturn Roe versus Wade.
All Alabama is doing is following the news.
They have seen who was appointed to the Supreme Court, and elections have consequences, and this is one of them.
Well, you know, that's fair enough, and Trump is very dedicated to keeping his promises, good for him.
And the change in the court does give people hope.
But this is something that's been happening for quite some time.
You know, abortion is at its lowest rate ever.
It has been falling.
People seem to be having less promiscuous sex.
And you don't know why these things are happening all the time.
People put forward ideas that really are just prejudices that they have.
People on the left say that abortion is falling because there's more access to contraception.
Possible.
People on the right say it's because people have woken up to what abortion is and that the arguments can't stand.
The arguments for abortion can't stand.
And so in some sense, as I said to Knowles, I think earlier in the week, in some sense, what the right is doing, the anti-abortion forces are doing, is they're seizing hold of a zeitgeist as the left did with cigarettes.
The left created this incredible panic about cigarettes, probably justified, it seems to me.
Cigarettes do seem to be incredibly bad for you.
They created this incredible sense that it was dirty, it was ugly, it was not sexy to smoke.
When everybody knows it's incredibly sexy and cool to smoke, it's just not good for you, you know.
So that they created this kind of atmosphere and then started banning them from public places.
They couldn't quite get to the point where they were banning them inside your own home, but they tried.
They pushed it that far.
And that's where people said, no, that's too far.
But they did everything they could to basically take away the area, the living area in which you could smoke.
And that's what the right is now doing with abortion.
It's trying to take away the area in which you can have abortion.
But here is a really interesting thing that happened on MSNBC of all places.
I'll get to it in just a minute.
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The thing about Roe v. Wade that is so important is it's not just, it is not just a bad thing to take away from the people their right to make laws in their own states, which is what the federal system is supposed to be about.
The Constitution, I always have to emphasize this because people don't know it.
The Constitution is an enumeration of the government's powers.
If it's not listed in the Constitution, the government can't do it.
Many of the founding fathers didn't want there to be a First Amendment because they said there's nothing in the Constitution about regulating speech so the government can't do it.
Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed and they said if the government can seize power, it will.
Let's tell them explicitly they can't do it.
Does anyone think that the government wouldn't have taken away our guns or our free speech rights away before if they could have done it?
Okay, so that is what the Constitution is bad law.
And on MSNBC, they have a guy named Danny Savalos who's one of their legal analysts.
And he just points out it's bad law.
There's a very good chance if this makes it to the Supreme Court that Roe v. Wade will be overturned because we have known since the 70s that Roe v. Wade stands on a weak foundational basis.
Whatever, whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, Roe v. Wade is really about do we have an individual fundamental, do women have a privacy right in the Constitution that overrides state legislatures' abilities to make laws affecting abortion.
And it's interesting to note that in the year 1900, almost every state prohibited abortion.
By the time Roe v. Wade was decided, it was down to 30 states.
The trend was that abortion, illegalizing, prohibiting abortion was going away.
But now, by giving it to the Supreme Court, it creates a precedent that can be overturned.
And the bottom line is that even if you are pro-choice, the right to privacy does not exist either in the history or the text of the Constitution, which is why Roe has always been ripe to be overturned.
That's an amazing thing to listen to in MSNBC legal analyst sounding almost exactly like me.
He says almost exactly the same things that I've been saying for a long time.
And because it's bad law, because everybody knew it was bad law, everybody knew it was a power play, everybody could see it, it drove us apart.
And it taught the left that they didn't have to take other people's opinions into account if they could just override them by pure force.
And that's why we get things like these ladies at Stanford who think an opinion has to be silenced because they don't think they have to argue.
They don't think they have to debate.
They don't think they have to win the argument in local elections.
They just think they have to silence the opposition.
I truly believe that Roe v. Wade went a long way to training the left to not making arguments.
Just to show you what I mean, Linda Greenhouse.
Linda Greenhouse was the New York Times Supreme Court reporter for a thousand years.
They used to say that her liberal leaning and her badgering of justices to move left would move the justices left.
They called it the greenhouse effect.
And a couple of times she was even scolded by her own newspaper for being such a leftist activist.
But she gave an interview to the New Yorker, I believe it was, where she was talking about abortion.
And she said, I think laws, anti-abortion laws, have almost nothing to do with the fetus or the embryo or the fertilized egg, because she doesn't want to call it a baby.
She said they have everything to do with the role of women in society today.
It's all about the dignity and agency of the female half of the population, and that's what's at stake, frankly.
Frankly, crap.
That's bull.
And the idea that she, this woman who is a New York Times Supreme Court reporter, can't even imagine that people on the other side might be concerned for the life of the child, you know, and conceive of that life differently than she does.
You know, it's funny.
I admit, I say all the time that I understand why people want abortion rights.
I understand the problem they're trying to solve.
I just don't think you're allowed to solve it by taking an innocent life.
It's not like I think, oh, they're sitting there plotting to destroy America through abortion.
You know, maybe some of them are, but I don't think that's the main thrust of the argument on their side.
She can't even, this person who covers the Supreme Court, can't even acknowledge that there are people on the other side who have sincere feelings and sincere, passionate beliefs about the baby in the womb.
She can't even acknowledge it.
Why?
Because she doesn't even have to.
So, what about the court?
Would they do anything?
So far, I think only Clarence Thomas has ever made a comment casting suspicion on Roe v. Wade.
The rest of them have kept quiet, and they've even seemed a little shy to deal with any case that might bring Roe under review.
But recently, there was this really obscure case, the franchise tax board versus Hyatt, really obscure subject in which they were debating whether one state could sue, whether you could sue a state in another state's court, right?
And the Supreme Court had earlier said in Nevada versus Hall, they had said that, Hall, they said that you could do this, but now they reversed it.
They reversed it, and mostly the conservative, the conservative judges voted to reverse that case.
And Clarence Thomas, in saying this, said what is called sterecesis, which means let the decision stand, was not something that you could was not, he said it's not an inexorable command.
It's kind of a tradition that you leave precedent in place, especially if it's going to disrupt all of legal, all of our lives, disrupt the law and all this stuff.
You leave the precedent in place, and if the legislature wants to change it, or they want to change the Constitution, they can do that.
And Justice Thomas, in making this decision, reversing the fact that you can sue one state in another state's courts, said, you know, stereodesis is not an inexorable command, and it's at its weakest when we interpret the Constitution because our interpretation can be altered only by constitutional amendment, right?
So he says when we call something unconstitutional, we should be able to reverse it if it's wrong and not force the people to amend the Constitution in order to correct our mistake.
A perfectly reasonable argument.
But the left went crazy because stereodesis is the way they are protecting Roe v. Wade.
In other words, they know, even the MSNBC legal analyst knows, it's a weak, stupid case, right?
But they're defending it because it's there.
That's the argument.
It's already there.
You can't overturn it because of stereoteases.
And the idea that Thomas and the right undermined stereoties in this very obscure case is driving them a little crazy.
Toobin, again, going back to C.N.N.S.ToBIN, he makes the case.
It was about a really obscure issue, as you point out, of sovereign immunity.
Left's Defense of Roe v. Wade00:12:33
But Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, devoted his entire opinion, basically to describing the circumstances when the Supreme Court should overturn their own precedents.
And this precedent in that case was almost exactly the same age as Roe v. Wade.
And the language that Justice Thomas used was very similar to the language that has been used to urge the court to overturn Roe v. Wade.
And Stephen Breyer, in his dissent, he cited one of the big abortion cases as an example of the kind of case that would be overturned by this kind of language.
So all the forces are converging on this issue of whether Roe will be overturned and allowing states once again to ban abortion, which many, many states will.
You know, I have to say I would have a lot more sympathy for the stereo diseases argument if I thought that it applied in both directions, but of course it doesn't.
Hillary Clinton ran her whole campaign on overturning, not her whole campaign, but throughout her whole campaign, she ran a campaign that she would say appoint judges who would overturn Citizen United, which limited your freedom of speech rights.
We know that they are dying to overturn Heller, which gives you, secures your individual right to own firearms.
So we know that they're not going to let stereotyses get in the way of anything they want to overturn.
It's always one way.
It's always a ratchet with the left.
It always turns only in one direction.
And so that whole argument to me is nonsense.
Of course, if they've made a mistake in their ruling about the Constitution, it should be overturned.
Of course it should.
That's ridiculous.
And so, you know, I think, you know, will they do it?
I don't know.
But I think that I still don't know because of Kavanaugh and John Roberts have not been very reliable votes.
Kavanaugh, probably more reliable on abortion.
Roberts, I'm just not sure whether he has the nerve to do it, basically.
But the point I'm making is it would be good for everybody.
Everybody should want it overturned because everybody should want to get back to the idea of engaging with each other, with your fellow Americans, and having conversations and having arguments, passionate arguments, but polite arguments that are followed by a vote so that one side wins and another loses, but the issue can always be turned around by another vote.
The argument goes on forever, but at least the argument has a result because you have the power to make your own laws.
That's what the court took away from you with Roe v. Wade.
It wasn't giving you rights.
It was taking rights away from you.
Same with the gay rights amendment.
I think gay people should be, the gay rights decision.
I think gay people should be against Obergfell because I think they should want to make their arguments to their fellow Americans in their states and win the argument there.
I think they would have won it.
I think that the court just seizes power when it thinks it will get away with it.
I really do.
I think that that is what they do, the temptation to seize it when they feel the zeitgeist going their way.
And if the Democrats did this, they'd be better at politics.
I mean, if you were watching any of this kind of pre-election election stuff going on, they're not very good at politics.
Trump hilariously was making fun of them the other day.
Really, he made a speech to some company where he was touting the election.
It was really kind of touting his economy.
And it was really a kind of preview of what I think this election is going to look like.
He first started out talking about how good the economy was, but then after he was just giving the facts of what an incredible economy his policies have created, and it is his policies to a large extent.
He then went on, this is cut number two, to start going after the Democrats.
I'm looking at the competition.
You sort of dream about competition like that, but who knows?
Who knows?
I got boot edge edge.
I got them all.
I got Beto.
Beto, Beto's falling fast.
What the hell happened?
Remember about four weeks ago, he said, I was made for this.
He was made for it.
He was made to fall like a rock.
What happened to him?
But he's tried to restart his campaign.
That generally doesn't work out too well.
Political geniuses, when you have to restart your campaign, history has said that that does not work out well, right?
History has said that that's trouble.
But he's going to restart his campaign.
I just love Trump when he's like this boot edge.
I got them all.
I got them all.
So, you know, he's right about Beto.
I got to say, Beto was on the view.
Beto cannot stop apologizing.
And he has just disappeared.
He's one of these guys who's always failed upwards.
He's never succeeded, but the media loves him, looks like a Kennedy, you know, and he's like, and he drives like a Kennedy as well, apparently.
But he's on the view, and all he can do is apologize for his white maleness.
There are things that I have been privileged to do in my life that others cannot.
And I think the more that I travel and listen to people and learn from them, the clearer that becomes to me.
When women in this country are paid 80 cents on the dollar that a man makes, African American women 61 cents, Latinas, 53 cents.
When you have 10 times the wealth in white America than you do in black America, when you have the largest prison population on the face of the planet and it's disproportionately comprised of people of color, the systematic foundational discrimination that we have in this country in every aspect of life is something that I have not experienced in my lifetime.
And I've had advantages that others cannot enjoy.
I don't think you can apologize your way into the White House.
I think that the left has got itself so tied up with this identity politics stuff that it can't really do politics.
It can't do real politics, which is appealing to people and putting forward policies that are going to help them in their actual lives.
It can no longer do that.
It only can put out these videos, oh, here I am at the dentist and look how black I am.
Here I am at the dentist and look how female I am.
All these things of like, here I am drinking a beer, I'm just a regular guy like you.
I just don't think the American people are that stupid.
I really do not.
And I think that this kind of thing is going to fail.
I got to just play before we take the break and get to the mailbag.
I got to play the rest of that Trump cut because it was just hilarious.
He went after the rest of them too.
This is cut number three.
I don't know what the hell happened to Biden.
What happened to him?
I'm looking.
I said, that doesn't look like the guy I knew.
What happened to him?
And Bernie, you know, Bernie's crazy.
Bernie's crazy.
But Bernie's got a lot more energy than Biden, so you never know.
No, no, Bernie's got a lot of energy, but it's energy to get rid of your jobs.
He's got the opposite energy that you produce.
Not good energy.
You don't like his energy.
You know, so it's going to be one of these people.
Pocahontas, I think, is probably out.
Boy, you got some beauties here.
350 million people, and that's the best we can do.
I don't think so.
Even as Democrats, I could pick better than that.
I just love it.
And the thing is, he's right.
They look really bad.
You know, Obama was a good politician, but he was such a creation.
He was such a made thing, right?
Remember all those present votes where he didn't get himself on record as saying what he really believed and the hidden school records that got sealed up and all this stuff and the running as a centrist and hiding the 20 years in this anti-American, anti-Semitic church and the press covering up for him when he said, oh, you should spread the wealth around.
The press just rushed to cover up for him.
He was a hidden creation, right?
He was an illusion put forward.
It's hard to make a guy like that.
And I think that Trump is so out there and so authentic in who he is and what he is that it's just more appealing than that kind of thing.
And all the rest of these guys are like empty suits and empty skirts.
They're really like not very talented politicians.
And Trump is a really talented politician.
I think if Roe v. Wade were appealed, I think if they can stop relying on the Supreme Court and on the courts in general to take people's rights of self-decision and self-government away, the left would become better at politics.
I think it would be better for them to have to make their arguments and change their arguments when their arguments don't work.
All right, we're going to get to the mailbag.
Before I break away, I just have to say that yesterday, as I was doing the show, I was seeing these text messages coming in from England.
My son Spencer has earned his doctorate.
He's at Oxford and he had to take this long test.
I think they actually use ancient torture devices and bright lights and everything where they question you about your thesis, but he passed with flying colors.
So now when Ben says his wife is a doctor, I can counter that my son is actually a doctor as well.
Seriously, in all seriousness, obviously I'm a proud father.
I'm proud of the kid.
He's a great guy, a brilliant guy, but also more importantly to me, a man of real integrity and courage and honesty, which really moves me.
But I can honestly tell you, I think this is the beginning of a truly terrific career of a public intellectual who is going to be important in his time.
I hope I get to stay around and see some of it, but I think you will see some of it.
And I will tell you when he lands where he's going to start that career.
But I think whoever gets him first is going to be launching one of the great careers of a great public intellectual.
So congratulations to my son, Dr. Spencer, as we now call him.
And I will be calling on him for medical advice if I have any complaints that can be cured by Galen or whoever the ancient doctors were.
All right, mailbag coming up.
Come to thedailywire.com, to dailywire.com and subscribe.
It allows you 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks for the year.
That way you can be in next week's mailbag, all your problems solved.
All right, the mailbag.
How come when I'm randomly mentioning the mailbag?
The scream is always there, but when it's mailbag time, you guys are like, oh, where's the scream?
All right, never mind.
From Thomas, His Grace, King Drew of House Claven, first of his name, the non-triggered breaker of philosophical chains, protector of the light-hearted realm.
I am going to need a bigger business card.
You've often referenced the death of film as an art form.
I agree.
However, as best exemplified by epics such as Game of Thrones, Human Stories Brought to Life in The Night of, and True Detective.
Would you agree that his movies decrease as an art form?
We've reached the golden age of television, blossoming with originality and full scope storytelling.
Yeah, I've said this many times.
I think we've had a golden age of television.
I think it's tailed off a little bit, but that's okay.
I mean, I think that what happens is it's gotten so big that some of the shows, some of the shows get lost.
But I mean, we had The Sopranos, which was amazing.
We had Deadwood, which was fascinating.
Shows like The Shield and The Wire were great.
And now I think Game of Thrones is probably, I think it's the best television show I've ever seen.
Billions is a good show.
We've got a lot of good stuff.
And yeah, they'll always, look, you know, the arts, I don't think arts really die necessarily.
Sometimes they, some of them die.
Some of them become so old-fashioned that they fall out.
But I think that arts go through this period of being moribund and sometimes they come back to life when they're refreshed for some reason.
But clearly, the movies have played out their string as the central American art form.
And just as clearly, television is now in that position.
You know, television is the way we communicate a vision of the country to each other.
And if they strangle it by making it all left-wing, as we were hearing from Mike Loftus yesterday, as they're trying to do, that too will die because the country wants to hear all of its vision.
This is something that was very important to Andrew Breitbart, very important to me, that the right not just speak in political terms, not just speak in terms of commentary, not just speak on talk radio and on podcasts, but also speak in the arts and present a vision of the world that's not propaganda, that's not squeaky clean, that's not about how wonderful everything is when you love Jesus, but just is life as we see it.
And I think that if television allows that to happen, it will explode again because there's all these talent, all this talent that has been pushed out.
Meanwhile, you have got the podcast and the book of Another Kingdom.
I hope you bought the first book because if you haven't, don't talk to me about the arts, but I hope you bought the first novel of Another Kingdom.
Meanwhile, we are doing what we can in the places where we can get through and we'll continue to do that and we'll win too because we're right.
From Nicholas, Dear Supreme Overlord of the Multi-Universe, I recently discovered that I have a 17-year-old son.
Another Kingdom's Werewolf Cop00:12:08
I didn't even know of his existence.
The mother has not made any attempt to get support from me or anything.
My problem is it's my understanding that this kid has grown up believing his father died in Iraq.
Now after all this time, what right do I have to disrupt this idea?
How would you even go about handling this sensitive topic?
I'm beyond confused and any advice would be helpful.
He lives 600 miles away.
Hashtag came for Ben, stayed for Clavin.
That should be an official hashtag.
I think that's an important...
No, never mind.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think your first move should be to stay out of it, okay?
This kid has lived his whole life.
He hasn't asked to see you.
He hasn't asked to find you.
You can only be a disturbance to him, and you would only be doing it for your peace of mind.
It would be okay with me.
If I were in your position, what I might do is I might contact his mother and say, look, I'm not going to interfere with this kid's life.
You brought him up, you raised him.
I didn't even know he existed.
But if he wants to contact me, if that is something that would be good for him, I'm here and I'm willing to talk to him and then back out.
It's a tough one.
It really is a tough question.
Obviously, you're curious, obviously, you want to know, but you have not had an effect in this kid's life.
He doesn't know you're there.
There's no reason to think he needs to know you're there.
He hasn't asked to know it.
It would be one thing to contact his mother and let him know that you are willing to be contacted.
It's another thing to interfere.
And that's what I would do.
That's the tack I would take.
From Brian.
Hey, Andrew, I just finished reading Werewolf Cop on your recommendation and I couldn't put it down.
I absolutely loved it.
The villain Dominic Ebend was very fascinating.
And I thought the whole supernatural thriller mixed with crime thriller was excellent.
What inspired you to write that book?
And how do you come up with villains in your stories like Dominic Eben?
I love listening to your show daily.
Keep up the great work.
Well, thank you.
That's really nice.
Werewolf cop, as you know, is one of, you know, I don't have favorites, but I love Werewolf Cop.
I think it is not just one of my best books.
I think it's one of the best popular novels around.
And it came to me because as a kid, I was a big monster movie fan.
I had all the monster models like the kid.
I don't know if you've read Salem's Lot, but he has all the monster models on his shelf.
I was that kid.
I had, you know, Frankenstein, Dracula, and all of them.
I loved watching them on TV.
I bought all the magazines.
I was just fascinated, absolutely enamored of that gothic German romantic world that was brought over from overseas by the directors who then put it on film.
And I just loved it.
The Wolfman with Lon Cheney Jr. always held a special place in my heart because one of the things about these monsters that was different than monsters today is that they were human size.
They didn't have to be enormous.
They just came after you.
That's why I like the picture it follows because it was kind of an imitation of that.
The Wolfman always had a special place in my heart because he did not want to be the Wolfman.
He was a good person who became the Wolfman.
And, you know, the monster Frankenstein was kind of messed up because he had a criminal's brain and all this stuff.
Dracula, obviously, is evil and soulless.
You know, Creature of the Black Lagoon is a creature.
But the Wolfman was a good man.
He just got bit by a werewolf.
And that just struck me as a tragic, fascinating situation.
So what I did in Werewolf Cop is I took a terrific person, a terrific, flawed human being, but a really good person, a religious person, and then put him in this situation where everything he believed and everything that he loved, he was acting against when he was in this condition.
And of course, that sort of is a, I'm not saying it's a metaphor for original sin, but it's sort of the situation that you're in when you do what you don't want to do, when you do the things that you don't want to do.
And it's kind of a sequel to my book, The Uncanny.
It has some characters who come out of The Uncanny, but it's obviously a standalone book.
And that's where it came from.
It came from my love of that, Dominic Abend or Abend.
I can no longer remember how it's supposed to be pronounced.
But Dominic Abend, you know, I can't remember exactly how I created him, but he was, you know, a character that is a really good foil for the hero.
I was much more interested in the hero in that book than I was with the villain.
One of the cops in there who says a lot of politically incorrect things made it almost impossible for me to sell the book overseas.
They just wouldn't even let him.
He wasn't even supposed to be right all the time, but he's a little bit bigoted and a little, and he says things that you're not supposed to say.
And they made it impossible to sell the book in Europe, which is kind of interesting.
Anyway, Werewolf Cop, I really recommend it if you like thrillers.
It is both a crime thriller and a supernatural thriller, so it's interesting.
From Maxwell, hello, Sir Claven, one who knows all in the multiverse.
I am in seventh grade, and there is a girl that I have a crush on, and she wants me to kiss her.
I have no idea what to do.
I know that by asking you, I will get a 100% correct answer, so please answer.
My life depends on it.
Maxwell, that's a great question.
You know, the 100% correct answer to this is that you can only get the 100% correct answer from your father.
I mean, that is the actual answer.
If you're not in contact with your father from your mother, I mean, this is something you want to know what your values are supposed to be, what your situation is in school.
You want to talk about this with somebody who both respects you and knows what they want you to do, and it's not me.
Okay, so that's the 100% correct answer that I'm actually the wrong person to ask in this situation.
I think you should actually take this, if you can, you know, to your dad and have a conversation with him about it.
All right, where am I?
From Joe Lin, why does the media and Hollywood push for socialism?
Won't it hurt them also?
Of course, of course it will.
They don't know what they're talking about.
But there is this revolutionary chic where, first of all, nothing like socialism is going to happen that is going to take away their millions.
I mean, that's the first thing.
They know this in their heart of hearts.
Nothing like socialism is going to happen.
Some of these people are so rich that if their taxes went up a little bit, A, they wouldn't have to pay them because they would get out of them because rich people can get out of paying taxes.
B, they wouldn't really notice it.
But they don't think it's going to happen.
They don't really think this is going to, you know, if they're not paying the amount that they should be paying, because when you're that rich, there are all kinds of ways to get around it, which is fine with me.
I don't think you should be paying that much in taxes anyway.
I don't think government has a right to any more than 10% of your money anyway.
So it's just fantasy world.
These are people who live in a fantasy world.
They know that it's not going to really happen in any way that crushes them.
You know, if you watch Dr. Chivago, where, or the Batman movie with Bane in it, the Dark Knight movie with Bane in it, if you watch those movies where like the true socialist communist revolution comes where people come over and live in your apartment, if they thought that was going to happen, they'd all move to some other country, more capitalist country like Norway.
So it's just a fantasy.
It's a virtue signaling fantasy.
From Zach, dear cranky, bald old man, that is on my business card.
That actually is.
After many years of trying, my wife and I will be having our first child, a girl.
Congratulations.
I'm absolutely terrified.
My own father was an emotionally distant alcoholic.
He was openly dismissive of my pursuits and yelled at me when he thought I had no talent.
I'm afraid of replicating that.
What advice do you have to show her my never-ending love and support for all her pursuits?
I had exactly the same fear.
I had exactly the same fears.
I had a father who was very discouraging, insulted me a lot, was not very nice to me.
And I was terrified that I wouldn't be a better father.
The day I brought my daughter home, I realized that I shouldn't be worried about that because there was no way I was not going to be this kid's biggest fan and biggest support, as I have been for my daughter my whole life.
I mean, I just love her to death and I support all her decisions.
I'm always so amazed at how smart she is in making decisions for herself.
I'm thrilled how I am.
All those fears were ridiculous.
And I realized that the minute I saw her that they were ridiculous.
I couldn't help having them, but I realized the minute I saw her, they were ridiculous.
So look, I think it's a beautiful thing you're worried about it.
I think the fact that you're worried about it should tell you it's not going to happen.
The fact that you care and want her to have these things, you know, that part of it, I can almost guarantee you.
I don't know you, so I can't guarantee you, but I can tell you in my case, that when she arrives, you will not have a problem supporting her and loving her and giving her the father that you didn't have.
You will not have a problem with that.
Do more, do better, raise the bar, and really give her a wonderful life.
And I'm really sure you will.
Just the fact that you're worried about it tells me that you don't have to worry about it.
From Casey, I'm asking you because I don't know who else to turn to.
I'm really depressed lately because of the way my life has been going.
I failed to have a relationship with a woman and my friends and family continue to give me grief over it.
I say it like a, I take it like a joke, but it really hurts.
It's a long letter, so I'm kind of editing it as I go.
I'm barely staying in college.
I need to get a good job to leave, but I can barely afford it, which means I need to work full-time, which causes my grades to be lower.
I'm not super smart.
So some subjects I just need time.
I don't have the time to study them.
I live with someone who is constantly taking drugs and has violent outbursts.
He attacks me out of nowhere once every six months, and my mother does nothing.
So I assume this is her boyfriend or something.
I'm not sure.
No rehab, no treatment for his bipolar disorder, nothing.
I've been feeling suicidal because of this.
It feels like a go that the world won't really care.
How do I push through to at least have a dignified conclusion to my life without committing suicide, even if nothing works out?
All right.
So you're depressed, and you're also in an abusive situation.
That's your situation.
You're depressed, and you're in an abusive situation.
You are going to, you can't just wish for change, right?
And you certainly should not kill yourself because this is a solvable problem.
Your problem can be solved.
There's no reason you can't have a happy life.
There's no reason you can't get out of this situation.
Your family is working against you, not for you.
You need to get away from them.
You need to get out of that situation.
There are all kinds of different ways to do this, okay?
And you're going to have to figure out the way, and you're going to have to figure out the energy.
One way of doing it would be to join the military, which would solve a lot of your problems.
The one thing you should stop thinking about right now is the girlfriend situation.
Just stop thinking about it.
I know it's hard.
You're going to be thinking about girls, but I don't mean that.
But I mean, stop trying so hard.
Let that go.
Get away from the people who are mocking you.
Get away from the people who are abusing you.
Leave.
The military is a good solution.
It will give you a lot of confidence.
It will bolster you.
It will give you strength.
It will help you even afterwards to get through school.
It'll teach you how to solve some of these problems that you have.
It's not the only solution, but it is a good one.
You need to get into another situation.
You need to go out and get a job.
Get away from the people who are abusing you.
Get away from the people who are making fun of you.
And that will help you get over your depression.
If that doesn't help you get over your depression, then you should definitely see someone and a therapist and talk to someone about whether you need medication or whether you need treatment and deal with that.
But you shouldn't just stand there and have your head hammered every day until finally you take your own life.
That's not what you were made for.
You were made with a purpose.
You have a purpose.
It is inside you.
You have to summon the energy and start to find it.
And a good way to start is to change your situation, change the abusive situation you're in, and get away from these people who are not on your side.
You can't just sit there and let that happen to you.
Don't worry about the girl.
Worry about you and get out and do something else.
And like I said, military is a good suggestion, but not the only suggestion.
Figure it out.
I got to stop.
I'm out of time.
I will be leaving here and getting on a plane.
I'll be back in the studio tomorrow and I will talk to you then.
Summon The Energy00:00:44
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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, Alabama fights abortion and AOC fights Joe Biden.