Jeffrey Epstein’s satirical "President of the Motion Picture Academy" mocks Hollywood’s woke rewrites—like a transgender 007 apologizing for misogyny—while Andrew Clavin slams a $320B bipartisan spending bill as "financial slavery," exposing both parties’ entitlement reform failures. K.S. Heimowitz links the loneliness epidemic to divorce, alienated boomers, and opioid crises, tracing it back to post-WWII affluence dismantling family structures. Meanwhile, Tim Cook’s Apple speech banning "hateful people" sparks fears of corporate censorship, with Clavin warning free speech now faces Victorian-style suppression as elites silence dissent—even as outrage mobs and Twitter bias escalate. The episode exposes how cultural decay, fiscal corruption, and ideological extremism collide to erode both freedom and community. [Automatically generated summary]
Hollywood has announced plans to deepen our moral understanding by ruining all our favorite film franchises through identity politics, then daring us to protest so they can call us small-minded bigots.
The industry that brought us the casting couch, the normalization of pedophilia, MeToo, U2, Tutu, and Harvey Weinstein2 says it will use its famous compassion-powered moral compass to ensure that from now on, not a moment of entertainment will go by that is not chock full of mind-expanding diversity and tolerance for everything except differing opinions.
President of the Motion Picture Academy of Moral Rectitude, Jeffrey Epstein, made the announcement in an interview to a female reporter with the Hollywood Junior High School Daily, saying, quote, who does not feel a thrill of anticipation at seeing what we here in Hollywood are about to do to all your favorite movie heroes in order to ensure your moral betterment.
For instance, the new James Bond film, Thunderball Us, will feature a transgender 007 who spends the first 90 minutes of the two-hour flick apologizing to all the women he misused before he became one of them and thereby gathered a greater understanding of how horrifying it was for those poor females to be brought to orgasm after orgasm by such a cruelly uncaring, world-saving super spy.
Then, of course, the Marvel universe will be reconstituted into the moral universe as such toxic masculine heroes as Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man are transformed into homosexuals, women, and other whiny minorities who eschew spectacular city-destroying battles in order to lecture the audience about how racist they are for not paying 20 bucks to watch this costumed consciousness-raising session.
Boy, I say, pass the popcorn, unquote.
Epstein says he plans to oversee the new slate of morally perfect movies himself, assuming he's not convicted at his trial for luring underage girls into prostitution like everyone else in Hollywood.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Military Welfare Debate00:15:33
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
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And I know you're eagerly waiting to hear, how do you spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
They're no E's in Clavin.
I just make it look this easy.
You know, there's an old joke about Republicans.
It goes like this.
If the Democrats make a proposal to destroy the country within five years, the Republicans consider it a victory if they convince them to wait 10 years.
I couldn't help but think of that remark as President Trump announced bipartisan agreement yesterday on yet another massive spending bill.
The $320 billion deal would push off any fiscal crisis until after the election, giving Trump military spending he can brag about and handing the Democrats a win by canceling automatic spending cuts while driving up spending $50 billion for next fiscal year.
Now, to be fair to both Trump and the Democrats, neither have promised to save us from what is really the worst crisis currently facing the country.
In fact, both have promised to bury our posterity under unpaid bills.
The Democrats do it on purpose.
They intend to cripple the budget until there's no choice but to tax your grandchildren into socialist slavery.
Trump does it by accident.
He promised not to touch any of your entitlements so that there will eventually be no choice but to tax your grandchildren into socialist slavery.
And to be even more fair to Trump and the Democrats, guess who elected them on the strength of those strangely similar promises?
That's right, it was us.
And in fact, when poor Paul Ryan did his best to turn that ship around by reforming entitlements, he was not only crucified by the left, the right declared him a cuck and a weakling because he was soft on immigration.
In short, if they're scoundrels, we're idiots.
Now, the opinion that our favorite politicians are scoundrels and we who elected them are idiots is a strangely unpopular opinion with just about everybody.
The truth is like that sometimes.
The ugly fact is when you are immersed in a corrupt system, you are a victim of that system, and that goes for all of us.
People who live under apartheid were not necessarily bigots.
They may just have been victims of apartheid.
People born into a world with slaves are not necessarily evil for holding slaves.
They're just corrupted by the system.
People who live in a world of easy abortions might well commit abortion without understanding how evil it is.
They're victims of the system too.
But you can't use that excuse forever.
Somewhere along the line, you've got to change the system or it becomes your fault.
We spend too much money.
Our entitlement system was shaped for people who live to be 63.
We live to be 80.
It was shaped for a nation with more young people.
It was meant to be limited.
It's become a semi-socialist state.
While the left is complaining about transgender bathroom rights and the right is complaining about Betsy Ross sneakers, our children are being sold into financial slavery.
Why?
Because the politicians are scoundrels and we're idiots.
It's not a popular opinion, but the truth is like that.
Tomorrow, I should point out before we get and talk about this more, tomorrow you can ask me questions all day long.
All it takes is for you to be a subscriber, right?
Tomorrow's mailbag day.
So if you subscribe, if you go on dailywire.com, subscribe, hit the podcast button, hit the Andrew Clavin podcast, a little picture of a mailbag, hit that mailbag, you can pour your questions in there.
You can ask me about anything you want.
You can ask me about your personal life, religion, politics.
All my answers are guaranteed correct and will change your life on occasion for the better.
Then after that, tomorrow, 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, I will also be answering your questions in the conversation.
And as you know, these questions are just as guaranteed to be 100% correct.
As always, the episode is free to watch on Facebook and YouTube, but only subscribers can ask the questions.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by yours truly tomorrow at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.
Join the conversation.
I think Alfonso Rachel is doing it tomorrow, isn't he?
Yes, he's going to be asking the questions.
So it's like a double show.
It's two reasons to tune in.
Not only will I completely solve all your problems, but Alfonso Rachel will be there, which is even better than having all your problems solved.
You know, one of my biggest beefs with commentators on both the left and the right is they have this idea, they put forward this idea, that there's some system that somehow is going to fix everything, that humanity can be fixed.
On the left, it's like some big government idea is eventually going to suppress all evil.
You know, they're always talking about racism as if they want you to believe there's some kind of emergency of evil.
And all it takes is for like the wings of big government to come floating down on top of you, can take that evil in its talons and carry it away.
Just ain't so.
There's no government big enough to suppress the broken human heart.
It just can't be done.
So it's just a way of getting more and more government forever, which is their, that's their intention.
But we do it on the right too.
You know, we talk about capitalism, we talk about democracy, we talk about our constitution as if those things are complete systems that get that either get rid of human evil or somehow nullify it.
And nothing does.
Nothing does.
I mean, we all want businesses to thrive.
We all believe in a free market.
But things get out of hand, right?
You can't have corporations.
You know, it's funny, the left used to know this, but now they've forgotten it.
Everybody supports these corporations that are so huge, they take away your privacy, they take away your right to free speech.
They completely control people.
And the left used to say, oh, those corporations, we must bring them down.
Bernie Sanders still says it, but he doesn't mean it.
I mean, I happen to believe that those corporations are the things that, you know, but nobody really believes it.
We all want our Amazon.
We all want our Apple.
We want our iPods.
We want all this stuff.
And at some point, somebody has to say, you know, it's too much.
You have too much power.
You shouldn't be allowed to reach into my bedroom and find out what I'm doing or follow my searches and find out everything about me until you can control my life and control my speech.
You do not want that to happen.
We want free markets.
I want free markets.
We even want global markets.
Nobody, when we talk about globalization, that's kind of a, I don't know, it's just kind of a vague term.
It's a global world.
We're all on this one small planet floating in the vastness of space.
We're all going to be dealing with each other.
But there are different ways to do that.
Do we want to have separate markets?
Do we want to have an American idea that stays alive?
Or do we just want to open up our borders and let all these people pour in whatever their ideas are and completely change the nature of our country?
We know what one side thinks, we know what the other side thinks, but no idea, no idea covers everything, right?
Because even though we want free markets, free markets can destroy communities, and communities are important if you want to keep the values alive that preserve conservatism, preserve Americanism, and preserve free markets.
In fact, the underlying atmosphere for free markets, the underlying ground in which free markets grow are good communities, churches that people can go to, families that are kept together.
You can't just keep saying to people, oh, well, business has to be free.
So your community is gone, your church is gone, your family is gone, your wife has to work.
Too bad.
You know, too bad.
It doesn't work that way.
Everything needs a bookend.
Everything needs bookends.
No system can control all things.
It just doesn't work that way.
And so you have to feel your way.
You have to feel your way.
I mean, I don't like the idea of a welfare state.
In principle, I'm against it.
In principle, I'm against the idea that you take money away from one person and give it to another.
Without a welfare state, you can't keep freedom alive.
Even Hayek said this.
Friedrich Hayek said this.
I mean, he said, you have to have a welfare state or people will be too afraid to be free.
You don't want people so afraid of what's going to happen to their children if they lose their job or if they get sick that they will not be free.
You know, it's all well and good to go on the radio and sit in front of a microphone and slam your fist into your palm and say this welfare state is destroying everything.
Everything needs bookends.
Everything needs, no principle will keep you alive.
And I get in this conversation when I go to colleges and speak because young people obviously are idealistic.
They should be idealistic.
And they say to you, well, aren't you violating your principles?
I go, yeah, I am violating my principles.
I got to.
I got to violate my principles to keep the ground on which my principles stand alive.
If people are too afraid to be free, they won't be free.
So you need a bit of a welfare state.
There's no such thing as an aged republic or an aged democracy that doesn't have some kind of welfare state.
And the problem we always have, the problem we always have, well, we have a twofold problem.
One is that the left uses that fact to keep selling us a bigger and bigger welfare state.
It's always, you know, I believe that people shouldn't starve in the streets.
If it takes government action, I wish it could be done through our churches.
I wish it were done through churches and communities.
But if it takes government action, if it takes government action just to keep people from being too afraid to be free, I'll violate my principles and do it.
But what we know is the left is constantly adding things to the pile, right?
We got to pay for college.
You've got to pay for child care.
You've got to pay for this and that.
You know, you got to pay for choice.
We've got to pay for birth control, choices that people make that they don't have to make, that I shouldn't have to pay for.
And because of that, because they say black, we say white, because they say up, we say down, we start saying, well, there shouldn't be any welfare state.
It just doesn't work.
So we know that they're going to use these places where the free market, where freedom needs to be a little bit shored up by government systems, they're going to use those to try and expand and expand and expand government.
It's the thin end of the wedge.
It is the thin end of the wedge.
It is a slippery slope.
We have to stand on that slippery slope, plant our feet, and keep people from sliding down.
Those are the only choices we have.
We don't have a choice that we can keep people free.
I mean, like during the Depression, that's when things like communism and fascism became popular because when people panic and they become afraid, they buy into those systems.
That's why the left is always selling panic.
That's why they're telling you, oh, it's hot outside.
This is the end of the world.
Run for your life and get a bigger government.
I mean, that is why they do that all the time.
You know, I was talking to my pal Christian Toto, who talks about movies all the time.
And he's writing an article about why the left doesn't like movies in which racists are redeemed.
And I said, because if racists can be redeemed, then they have to admit that this country has redeemed itself from its racism and the panic and the emergency is over.
They always want there to be an emergency.
Paul Ryan, I know the right just hates Paul Ryan.
And I will admit that Paul Ryan was a bad Speaker of the House.
He didn't want to be Speaker of the House.
He knew himself well enough to know he wasn't going to be a good Speaker of the House.
But Ryan said we've got to reform our entitlements because they're driving us further and further into debt.
Not only was he 100% right, but that was always called the third rail of politics.
You had to be a brave right-winger to do that.
And everyone called him a cuck because he wasn't big on immigration, you know, on being tough on immigration.
And everyone called him names because he didn't get this done, he didn't get that done.
But that was a brave thing to do.
So let's go back a year, all right?
Let's go back a year.
Remember, Trump signed that big, what was it, 1.37?
I'm talking off the top of my head, but it's something like a trillion-dollar omnibus bill.
He said he did it to preserve the military because there have been all these military cutbacks under Obama, but he wasn't going to do it again.
Here he is a year ago.
As a matter of national security, I've signed this omnibus budget bill.
There are a lot of things that I'm unhappy about in this bill.
There are a lot of things that we shouldn't have had in this bill, but we were, in a sense, forced, if we want to build our military, we were forced to have.
There are some things that we should have in the bill.
But I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again.
I'm not going to do it again.
Nobody read it.
It's only hours old.
Some people don't even know what it is.
$1.3 trillion.
It's the second largest ever.
President Obama signed one that was actually larger, which I'm sure he wasn't too happy with either.
But in this case, it became so big because we need to take care of our military.
And because the Democrats, who don't believe in that, added things that they wanted in order to get their votes.
Okay, so that was then, right?
He said, I had to save the military, so I gave the Democrats what they wanted.
Now there's a new one of these things.
Comes down the pike, and he tweets minutes after they come to agreement.
Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, Stephen Mnuchin and Nancy Pelosi are negotiating this.
Minutes after this comes down the pike, he tweets, I'm pleased to announce that a deal has been struck with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, Speaker of the House Pelosi, and House Minority Leader McCarthy on a two-year budget and debt ceiling with no poison pills.
This was a real compromise in order to give another big victory to our great military and vets.
So the same excuse, same thing.
It means there's going to be, well, basically, I mean, I won't go into all the figures, but it means it's something like $50 billion in more spending.
It means that the rules that were put in place under Obama against Obama's will that he used to cut all the military, the sequester, I think they called it, that's going to be overridden.
And it's going to put all this stuff, all this debt ceiling stuff off until after the election, so nobody has to deal with it.
So it's good for all the politicians, but it ain't good for us.
And you know, the thing is, I keep saying this, that Trump was elected more than anything else to send a message to the elites.
And the message was, screw you, okay?
And they've done everything they can not to hear that message, right?
Russia, Russia, Russia, it was all, you know, racist, racist, racist, all that stuff.
It's like, you know, how kids put their fingers in their ears and shout when they don't want to hear what you're saying to them.
That's what the left has basically done.
But they don't have to hear the message as long as the money is pouring into the swamp.
You can't drain the swamp and fill the swamp at the same time.
It doesn't make any sense.
The swamp is money.
That's what the swamp is.
And this is just more money pouring into it.
And, you know, yes, we have to have a big military, but Ryan was right.
Ryan was right.
Money Pouring Into the Swamp00:10:55
Until we are willing to reform entitlements that were built.
They were built to kick in when we were 65, like Social Security, built to kick in when we were 65 at a time when people died at 63.
That made economic sense.
Now people live to be 80.
You can't make enough money to fund that Social Security in the time that you do the work.
If you retire at 65, you're not going to be able to fund that.
And there aren't enough young people left to be paying into the system for us old people.
So it's just not going to work.
Ryan had a good idea.
It didn't affect people who were, I think, under 50, I believe it was.
It wouldn't have affected me.
It just would have affected people coming up.
They could have made plans to work a little longer before they collected their Social Security.
Nope.
The left showed him pushing a wheelchair off a cliff and the right got tied up and all the emotional stuff.
You know, we always pride ourselves on not being emotional, but we got emotional about immigration and illegal immigration and Paul Ryan basically couldn't get it done.
And Trump said, I am not going to cut your entitlements.
I am not going to touch your entitlements.
You can't reform the budget without reforming entitlements.
It cannot be done.
That's where most of the money is going.
So I go after the left.
I oppose the left because it's their intention to lead us down that road.
But the right is not about to say, yes, cut my Social Security, reform my Social Security.
You just don't hear them doing it.
This is what I mean by a corrupt system.
It's like in California, we have all this unpaid pension debt.
Why does that happen?
Easy, because a guy, the police go on strike, say, and I want our police taken good care of, but the police go on strike or whatever.
They have a slowdown.
They have a blue slowdown.
And the mayor of the town, he realizes, oh, well, the pensions don't kick in for another 10, 15 years.
I'll be out of here by then.
So he gives them the pension that they want.
And that's how you get unpaid pension debt.
And when a guy comes along and says, listen, we can't pay that pension, he's the guy who gets crucified.
The system itself is corrupt.
And so we, we are the people, have to speak up.
And, you know, it is funny because Boris Johnson is now the prime minister of Britain.
He's now, you know, the conservative bourgeoisie.
He's kind of a Trumpian guy.
I remember Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a Sherlock Holmes story called The Red-Headed League.
So now he looks like Donald Trump.
He's got the same hair.
He's part of the redheaded league.
Now, Johnson is a character like Trump.
He's much more classically educated.
He's famous for kind of staying up late and reading ancient Greek and for getting into big arguments about whether Athens or Sparta really won the Peloponnesian War.
But he is a character and he's promised to pull them out of Brexit.
And he has promised what basically his pitch is, I'm such a wild man that the EU cannot trust that I won't walk away without any deal at all when the deadline comes on October 31st.
So he gave his victory speech, I guess it was last night.
I don't know what time it was here.
But you can just get a taste of what a, he's a charming guy.
I mean, this is the big thing.
I want to make sure we got the good one.
This is cut four.
And we know the mantra of the campaign that has just gone by.
In case you've forgotten it, you probably have.
It is deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn.
And that is what they're going to do.
And I know some waggles already pointed out that deliver, unite and defeat was not the perfect acronym for an election campaign, since unfortunately it spells dud.
But they forgot the final E, my friends.
E for energize.
And I say to all the doubters, dude, we are going to energize the country.
We're going to get Brexit done on October the 31st.
We're going to take advantage of all the opportunities that it will bring in a new spirit of can-do.
And we are once again going to believe in ourselves and what we can achieve.
And like some slumbering giant, we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self-doubt and negativity.
With better education, better infrastructure, more police, fantastic full-fibre broadband sprouting in every household.
We are going to unite this amazing country and we are going to take it forward.
So it's interesting.
The New York Times, a former newspaper, is predicting that he will destroy the United Kingdom, that this Brexit thing, this is, they have been, they have had their hair on fire about this.
The left in general has had their hair on fire on this, about this, because he is, it's really interesting about Boris Johnson.
A lot of stuff about him, a lot of scandals, screaming at his girlfriend, all these lies that he's told.
He's not a very straightforward guy.
But he does understand this.
He is a globalist in the sense that I was speaking about before, that this is a global world.
There's no getting around it.
A goat herder in Afghanistan can get on an iPhone and talk to me here.
You know, when I was in Afghanistan, I was getting calls from people in LA who didn't know I was over there.
It's a global world.
There's no changing that.
But that doesn't mean it can't be a global world with strong countries in it that are competing with one another, both on an economic level and on a philosophical level.
And he talked about this.
He makes an excellent point in the other Boris Johnson cut.
Today, at this pivotal moment in our history, we again have to reconcile two sets of instincts, two noble sets of instincts.
Between the deep desire for friendship and free trade and mutual support in security and defense between Britain and our European partners and the simultaneous desire, equally deep and heartfelt, for democratic self-government in this country.
And of course, there are some people who say that they're irreconcilable and it just can't be done.
And indeed, I read in my Financial Times this morning, devoted reader that I am.
Seriously, it's a great, great, great, great British, great British brand.
I read in my Financial Times this morning that no incoming leader, no incoming leader has ever faced such a daunting set of circumstances, it said.
Well, I look at you this morning and I ask myself, Do you look daunted?
Do you feel daunted?
I don't think we, I don't think you look remotely daunted.
So here's the thing.
In Britain, you know, Britain and America frequently echo each other.
I mean, sometimes we go first.
Sometimes they go first.
I'll elect Margaret Thatcher and then we'll elect Ronald Reagan.
Sometimes we go first.
I believe Clinton came before Blair.
He did come before Blair.
But they kind of were very similar partners.
They kind of echo these people.
And there is something about Boris Johnson that does echo Donald Trump.
And clearly in both cases, in both cases, these are nations saying we want, there's something about our nation that we like.
We would like it to remain this way.
If they actually pull out, if they actually manage to pull out of the EU, it may well destroy the EU because that will be the third time England has stopped Germany from taking over the continent.
Because that's essentially what's happening.
It's Germany, it's Angela Merkel, who opened the doors to a million refugees that swarmed villages, that swarmed countries.
Countries that have a right to say, you know, it's not nativism.
It's not xenophobia to say, you know, that's too many people.
That's going to transform the character of our country.
We like our country.
We want that character to stay the same.
And this is the thing.
The elites are not listening.
They are not listening.
Illegal immigration is unpopular.
Illegal immigration is unpopular.
They don't care.
The left wants the votes.
The right wants the cheap workers.
They don't care what we think.
And this is the way, this is the way of sending this message to them.
Screw you guys.
It's our country.
We want you to listen.
But that's why.
That is why we on the right have to start speaking up about the debt.
That's why we on the right have to go back to certain principles.
You know, Rush Limbaugh the other day said, well, nobody really believes in this economic conservatism.
I'm sorry, but eventually you've got to pay the debts, right?
Eventually you've got to pay, stop printing money, or you will have the kind of hyperinflation they had in Germany in the 30s.
You do not want that going on.
And let me just show you, if this is the right, and the right is very sending very offbeat people to lead countries by way of telling the elites, by way of telling the establishment to screw off.
This is what the voice of the right is saying.
I just want to show you what's going on on the left.
I mean, this is mean, but it's fair.
Here's Rashid Talib, a video that has resurfaced of her at a Trump rally a couple of years ago.
And this is cut number 10.
We'll say that the early scientists can't see it!
Nancy!
You guys are crazy!
You're an animal!
Get it up!
So they have to hurl her out.
She's out of her mind.
This is the woman who with Ilan Omer is traveling to the Middle East on a fact-finding mission.
So that should be a lot of fun.
But now I want to play Nancy Pelosi yesterday, I believe it was, at the NAACP, okay, because they keep saying Nancy Pelosi represents some kind of moderation, even though she is just as far left as the squad.
She at least knows about political reality.
So she's considered the moderate.
But listen to her at the NAACP.
And now it is a great pleasure to be with you here in New York and Detroit for the NAAC's 110th anniversary.
And to Mayor McDugan.
And in our new House, House, the House Congressional Black Caucus, we too must continue to stand firm for fairness, for genuine equality.
Once we restore the vote, once we break the grasp, the gas, the grasp of special interest, to do so, you must avoid the dazzling, blinding blindness, a pay raise that is so absurd.
In the workplace, we must achieve justice in health care.
In the dark days of the revolution, the Times have found all of us to achieve a future, to achieve a future full of justice.
Where do you think the energy in the party is, right?
Where do you think the energy of the party is?
Obviously, the energy is with the squad.
The future is with the squad.
If we don't stop them, if we don't have the responsibility to stand up for the things that actually work, not just whether you can put the Betsy Ross flag on your sneakers, but whether you're going to spend our children into socialism, into taxation and slavery.
Affluence and Loneliness Epidemic00:16:27
You know, if we don't stand up for that, there ain't nobody left.
There ain't nobody left.
One of the things the Never Trumpers worried about was that Trump would destroy that part of the party that speaks for responsibility.
I don't think he will.
I think actually Trump, underneath it all, I think he will get it in the long run.
But right this minute, he's signing bills to spend away your posterity, certainly mine.
And I think we're going to have to think about it because we're the people.
We're in charge.
And they're scoundrels, so we can't be idiots.
Tomorrow, no, not tomorrow, backstage live.
Me, Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire God King, Jeremy Boring, and what's his name, Michael Moltz.
We will be taking the backstage show live on the road.
That's August 21st.
We're going to the beautiful Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California.
There'll be politics, there'll be whiskey, there'll be pop culture, there'll be more whiskey, there'll be laughs, some whiskey, insights, whiskey, and we'll answer all your burning questions from the audience while drinking whiskey.
Tickets are available at dailywire.com slash backstage.
And there still are a few VIP ticket packages available.
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got K.S. Heimowitz coming up.
K.S. Heimowitz is my colleague at City Journal and really a terrific writer, one of the best writers there and one of the most interesting writers because she deals with a lot of social questions in a very insightful way.
She's got a book called Manning Up, How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys.
She's the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor like me at City Journal.
And her stuff is really good.
She also got a book called The New Brooklyn, What It Takes to Bring a City Back.
She just writes a lot of really insightful stuff.
And she has an article in City Journal.
You can go on City Journal online and see it called The Loneliness Epidemic.
And that's what I wanted to talk to her about.
Kay, you there?
I am.
Hi, True.
Hi, it's good to talk to you.
How you been?
Yeah.
Very good.
Thank you.
So let's talk about this.
I mean, first of all, let's begin with this.
Is there, in fact, a loneliness epidemic?
Well, it sure seems that way.
And it's an issue that's actually being discussed in all of the developed world, not just in the United States.
There are plenty of studies that have been done that point to more loneliness.
People have found connection between loneliness and opioid use, loneliness, and high suicide rates.
And I try to show in my article that those connections are pretty clear from the data.
So I think there is something going on.
The problem, of course, is defining loneliness and comparing it to earlier ages.
But given that the country in England has recently appointed a minister of loneliness, I think we can say that there's something happening here that we have to pay attention to.
Okay, so let's talk about the causes then.
What brought this on?
Well, there are probably a lot of reasons, but the one that I felt was not being discussed enough is the one that I write about here, and that has to do with family breakdown.
Because in the end, when you are getting older, when you are ill, it's family or kin, as the anthropologists call them, that you ultimately turn to.
And what's happened over the last 40, 50 years is that we've seen this enormous shift in the family.
And as boomers, and that's my generation, get older, we see more and more kinless aging people.
Now, kinless means they don't have anybody.
They don't have any brothers, sisters, parents who are alive.
They don't have spouses because they've been divorced and maybe divorced several times.
And maybe they're alienated from their children as some or a disproportionate number of divorced people, divorced men in particular, are.
So what I argue in the piece is that family breakdown has a close correlation to this loneliness epidemic and is certainly driving some of it.
Really interesting.
Guys in the back, I've got to ask you to turn up my monitor.
I'm having a hard time hearing.
So you're talking about family breakdown.
Can we go a little bit beyond that and talk about what causes the family breakdown in the first place?
I mean, you're talking about divorce and the incredible, I mean, this is, you know, it's biblical, the incredible cost of divorce to children, to people.
I mean, this is something that came up with my generation.
This is kind of what they called no-fault divorce, but of course it's not without fault and it's not without ramifications.
What do you think is causing that?
Well, let me just add one more thing to your question before I answer it.
And that is that there's also been a big decline in marriage.
So there are a lot of people having, they're having children, although those numbers are down too, but they're having children without being married.
And we just say, oh, well, but as long as they're coupled up.
But the problem is that cohabiting parents, and that's the term sociologists use for non-married parents, break up at a very high rate.
But to get to your question about why, again, very complicated question, but I'll give you one short answer that I talk about in the article.
And that is that there was a big shift that happened after World War II in people's expectations about life, about personal happiness.
The technical term is the second demographic transition.
And what it means basically is that people were affluent enough, societies were affluent enough to support people who on their own.
That is, instead of having to rely on family as people always had to at difficult times, they could go to the state and to a wealthy society.
And more and more women felt wealthy enough or at least comfortable enough to be able to raise children by themselves.
I don't think there's any question that the rise in single motherhood is in part related to not just the idea of feminism, but also the fact that women in the workplace were able to support, not always easily, but able to support a child on their own.
So affluence is sort of the one answer.
And the irony of that is that it's really the affluent who have weathered this the best.
I mean, but the society itself is affluent enough, like I said, to provide all sorts of welfare supports and various other kinds of things that allow people to have children outside of marriage and to divorce very easily.
You know, it's funny.
I mean, even in the 60s, I remember all these rebels came up who were telling people to tune out, drop out, and take drugs and all that.
Well, they went to law school or went into Wall Street.
And I mean, it's almost kind of the same thing.
It's like the Charles Murray book talks about the fact that elites preached divorce and preached free sex, but then caught on and basically started to get married.
I mean, it's very rare that people in the upper classes have children out of wedlock.
It's the people below them who have children out of wedlock, and they're the ones who suffer most.
It makes me wonder.
I mean, Murray says that these people are not preaching what they practice.
They're not spreading the word to the poor that marriage is a good thing, that family is important, and that out-of-wedlock births are dangerous.
And so the question that comes to my mind is, are there solutions for this problem that involve going back to the kind of society we knew, a family-friendly society, maybe societies that center around religious organizations?
Or are we looking into a world like the Japanese reportedly have where we wind up with make-believe robot wives instead of going backwards?
In other words, is the answer going to be found in technology or is it going to be found in tradition, if you had to guess?
Right.
You know, I try to address this question by considering, well, what is it that people have gained out of the new regime, that is, in this new post-family world?
And the fact is they have gained a lot.
You must know, I certainly do, people who were in very miserable marriages who are happier now as a result of getting divorced.
I know of some single mothers, not many actually, who are very happy that they went to single root.
You know, there are all kinds of choices that people have, and some people have been able to weather it fairly well.
But as you point out, one big problem with it is that the people who have weathered it the best are those with the most resources.
And the less educated, lower income people are the ones who are really flailing.
Can we go back?
I think it's a tough call for people to say, I'm willing to give up some of these freedoms because my life is miserable, because they probably don't see a cause and effect there anyway.
However, I do think, and this is consistent with some of what Charles Murray talks about in Coming Apart, I do think there's more that elites can do who, elites who are living much more traditional lives, to revive a sense that this is just a good thing.
I'm still reading articles occasionally.
There was one in The Atlantic fairly recently about how marriage really isn't necessary and we can just do without it.
We can make our own relationships, make our own contracts or not.
And so I see very little social learning from our educated class, even though they themselves continue to behave in traditional ways.
That is amazing.
I got to stop there, Kay, but go on City Journal and read Kay Heimowitz's article, The Loneliness Epidemic.
Her books are Manning Up, How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys, The New Brooklyn, What It Takes to Bring a City Back.
Kay, it's good talking to you.
I hope you'll come back and talk again.
That would be great.
Thanks.
Thanks very much.
Bye-bye.
A final reflection.
A year ago, Tim Cook, the head of Apple, made a speech that absolutely infuriated me about how people, hateful people, were going to be banned from his platforms, which of course are these massive iTunes and podcast platforms.
Here's just a little excerpt of that speech.
We only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence.
You have no place on our platforms.
You have no home here.
From the earliest days of iTunes to Apple Music today, we have always prohibited music with a message of white supremacy.
Why?
Because it's the right thing to do.
And as we showed this year, we won't give a platform to violent conspiracy theorists on the App Store.
Why?
Because it's the right thing to do.
My friends, if we can't be clear on moral questions like these, then we've got big problems.
At Apple, we are not afraid to say that our values drive our curation decisions.
And why should we be?
Well, the answer to that question is because who makes those decisions?
When you say you ban white supremacy, do you also ban rap music that recommends killing police officers or recommends forcing women to have sex with you while your friends look at her and laugh, which I have actually heard in rap lyrics, do you ban those lyrics?
Who makes those decisions?
And his answer in the speech basically is we who run these billion-dollar corporations, these monopolistic corporations, will make those decisions.
It is an incredible attack on the what can I call the culture of free speech.
Not on the First Amendment.
He has the right to do it, but it's an attack on the culture of free speech.
And the guys who are hitting back, interestingly, a lot of times, are comedians because the left has murdered comedy.
They have murdered laughs.
And I just want to play this little bit.
Ricky Gervais and Jerry Seinfeld.
Seinfeld has that driving in cars with comedians show, and he had Ricky Gervais on, who is a big crusader against political correctness, even though he is on the left.
And while they're driving around in their cars, Seinfeld makes what I thought was an absolutely hilarious joke.
I love New York.
I love Manhattan.
Why?
It's vibrant.
Yeah.
You can do what you want.
There's no two people the same.
I just peeked.
That's true everywhere.
Where are people the same?
Or not the same?
China, maybe?
I knew you were going to say that.
I knew you were there.
I knew you were going to say that.
I knew you were going to say that.
And I just.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're going to leave that in?
Are you going to leave that in?
Look at that nice little mini.
Where is it?
What's that?
China, maybe.
They're just.
That's.
I don't know what to do.
That's one of the.
I'm just kidding.
One of the best and worst things you've ever said.
One of the best and worst things you've ever said.
So then they actually have a scene where they discuss the issue.
And now the big question I think the last couple of years, I mean, it's always been around, but the last couple of years is, you know, the fight for freedom of speech.
I joke about really terrible things.
Yeah.
And I know they're terrible.
Of course, of course.
And whenever a new thing comes out that's raw and sensitive, people say, you don't understand.
No, I do understand.
I know this is bad.
I know the Holocaust was bad.
I know AIDS is bad.
It's the joking about it that you don't like because it's your thing.
I was saying about freedom of speech.
Everyone should joke about anything.
And they say things like, oh, you agreed with Hitler then?
I go, well, no, it wasn't so much what he said as what he did.
The Fight for Joke Freedom00:02:36
If he'd just said shitty things, it would have been a lot better for all of us.
Our fight for the right to joke about anything.
Do you think it's ebbing away in this culture?
This thing about freedom of speech.
Everyone agrees with it until they hear something they don't like.
So do we leave the China joke in or not?
What will they do?
So, you know, here's the thing.
The left used to understand that corporations are power centers and all power centers threaten freedom.
It's not just government that threatens freedom.
The Constitution is meant to limit government, but these major, major corporations also are a threat to freedom.
All power centers are a threat to freedom and need to be balanced by other power centers.
When a guy like Tim Cook thinks that he has the right to silence speech on platforms that are essentially a monopoly, essentially monopolistic, something has to be done.
We have to talk back.
I'm glad that guys like Seinfeld are standing up and Gervais are standing up for free speech.
We've got to do it a lot more because the movement is toward a Victorian style mental slavery that I don't think is the way we want to go into this new Victorian age that's coming on us anyway.
Mailbag tomorrow and the conversation tomorrow.
You can ask me so many questions.
If you have any problems left after tomorrow, we still won't give you your money back, but we'll be sorry.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
And our supervising producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
Edited by Adam Sayovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show, we're going to talk about the impotence of the outrage mob.
What's the best way to deal with outraged masses?
I think it's just to ignore them.
And I'll explain why.
Also, we will discuss the most egregious thing Twitter has ever done.
I think this is the most egregious example of bias.
And it's one that I think many of us are missing.
Finally, Corey Booker fantasizes publicly about punching Donald Trump in the face.
Just more loving and more tolerance from the loving and tolerant left.