Ep. 749 dissects Chris Cuomo’s violent rant apology amid Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, where demonstrators wave the U.S. flag despite China’s crackdowns—contrasting it with domestic flag disrespect and Trump’s perceived inaction. The episode pivots to civil discourse, marriage as a moral commitment (not financial escape), and Christian influences in art, while fielding listener dilemmas: a 29-year-old avoiding fatherhood accountability, a "toxic masculinity" critiquee redefining integrity, and how to silence family Trump-blamers without conflict. The core tension? Hypocrisy—between global freedom fighters and domestic chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
CNN anchorman Chris Cuomo apparently doesn't like being called Fredo.
Cuomo says the phrase is an insult meant to imply that he's the dumbest member of a powerful Italian family with a father who raised them from poverty to the heights of influence and a brother who inherited that mantle and became a representative of evil.
And therefore Fredo is a racial slur.
When Cuomo was recently approached by a right-wing troll who called him Fredo, he lost his temper and launched into a foul-mouthed rant, threatening the troll with violence and saying he would ensure that the troll and all his friends were massacred in a groundbreaking cinematic montage during the baptism of his nephew.
After the incident, Cuomo released a statement through family lawyer Tom Hagen saying, quote, calling me Fredo is an insult.
Unlike Fredo, I can handle things and I'm smart.
Not like everybody says like dumb.
I'm smart and I want some respect, unquote.
A spokesman for CNN defended Cuomo's outburst saying, quote, normally, when a newsman unleashes denigrating invective at a person simply because that person disagrees with him politically, the newsmen would be fired.
But here at CNN, that's our entire business model, unquote.
Conservative commentator Sean Hannity also defended Cuomo, saying, quote, Chris was with his wife and nine-year-old daughter when the troll approached him, so obscenity-laced threats of physical violence in response to mild mockery were entirely appropriate, unquote.
President Trump, however, took issue with Cuomo, saying, quote, he completely lost control and said idiotic stuff that could compromise his popularity with anyone who doesn't already agree with him, and you'd never see me doing something like that, unquote.
CNN said it would continue to support Cuomo completely, but that the anchorman was not available for comment because he had gone fishing on the lake with Al Neary.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
Caring About Stupid Crap00:04:24
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
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, hurrah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hurrah!
You know, back in the days before the Babylon Bee became the funniest satire venue that was not the show, The Onion was the funniest satire venue before this show.
And back then, in the dark and terrible days after the Islamist terrorist attack of 9-11, when the nation was looking into the face of evil and contemplating war, The Onion ran a hilarious headline saying, America yearns to care about stupid crap again.
Because the fact was, since Ronald Reagan had brought down the Soviet Union and restored our economy, things had been pretty tickety-boo around these parts, and we were busy with stupid crap, like building the internet to the level where it could distribute porn to 13-year-olds and arguing about who was blowing Bill Clinton in the Oval Office.
Good times.
The fact is, caring about stupid crap is one of the joys of prosperity and freedom.
Worrying about movie star divorces, debating Anthony Wiener's sex life, and calling one another Nazis and communists is a lot more fun than actually living under Nazis and communists, which can really ruin your day.
When a CNN commentator is calling the president Hitler because she knows he's not Hitler, because if he were Hitler, she wouldn't be calling him Hitler because he'd be Hitler and she'd be dead, you know things are basically all right.
But while caring about stupid crap is one of the pleasures of freedom, it's not the purpose of freedom.
And every now and then, it's good to remember that you're given a very limited lifespan in which to accomplish that purpose, and part of that time has to be spent taking freedom seriously enough to understand it, defend it, and preserve it for the next generation so they, our children, can accomplish that purpose and preserve that freedom in turn.
In Hong Kong, where freedom is under attack, the pro-democracy protesters are waving our flag, the American flag, the one millionaire athletes disrespect, the one CNN complains about.
And the fact that Hong Kongers under the gun are waving the stars and stripes ought to be a reminder to us Americans to stop caring about stupid crap so damn much and start waving that flag ourselves on our way to returning our attention to the purpose of freedom, which is wait for it, fulfilling God's plan for your individual life.
It's not making money.
It's not getting on TV.
It's not using your body for demeaning and self-destructive pleasures.
It is doing the work of service your maker made you specifically to do.
Now you know.
So get your flag and get busy.
First, before we go on to talk about this, we've got to talk about Hong Kong a little bit.
Yes, we have to talk about the mailbag.
You're screaming before I even said anything.
The mailbag is coming up.
It will be here.
We just do this the whole show.
Just spend the entire show screaming about the mailbag.
Oh, stop.
Also, we want to scream about Vistaprint.
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What's Happening in Hong Kong?00:05:18
So what is happening in Hong Kong?
First of all, you know, we should talk about this.
We never talk about these things that are far away.
We're much rather talk about Chris Cuomo and his problem.
But this is really important and it's really important what it says about us.
Hong Kong used to belong, used to be a colony of the United Kingdom, of Britain.
Britain won it in the opium war or the first opium war, which was a kind of disgraceful incident on the British's part and the Chinese's part.
It took Hong Kong from China.
However, however, like everything that the British touched, it became better.
Hong Kong became one of the wealthiest places in the world.
It became a bastion of freedom and economic success in Asia.
And that was because of the Brits.
The Brits, like the Americans, did all kinds of bad things, like everybody, Brits and Americans.
But like great free countries, it made everything it touched better.
And the British Empire actually did improve the world overall and actually cost the Brits money.
So, you know, the Brits have nothing to be ashamed of with Hong Kong, but in 1997, they said we're turning the sovereignty over to China.
But China said they were going to have this policy called one country, two systems.
Now, I was living in the UK when this happened, and I remember saying to whoever would listen to me, that's never going to work.
Now, how did I know it was never going to work?
Well, because I read our old friend Abe Lincoln, who said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
I, said Abe, I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
Now, that's the problem.
China is not a free country.
China is an ex-communist country, still under tyranny.
And Hong Kong, because it was run by the Brits, was a free country.
That's why it's so rich.
That's why it's so successful.
That's why it's so trusted as a banking center.
You know, it's a place where people know that the rule of law is in place or knew that the rule of law was in place.
Why can't that hold?
Well, it can't.
Why can't people be half free and half slave?
It's simple.
Because freedom is a good and having power over people feels good, right?
So that is going to be a conflict.
The people in power like having power.
They're not doing anybody any good.
They're not doing anything for anybody.
They are doing stuff for themselves.
They want power.
They tell you it's for them.
They tell you it's for the people.
Maybe they even believe it's for the people.
Maybe the Democrats, when they tell us, oh, everything is going to be paid for by the government, maybe they think they're doing us a favor, taking our freedom and our money and our right to spend our money the way we want.
Maybe they think they're doing us a favor, but ultimately it becomes about the power.
And once that's what happened in the Soviet Union, once they realized the system didn't work, they still didn't want to let go of that power.
But people who have freedom don't want to let go of their freedom.
They like their freedom.
They have to be lulled into it.
That's what's been happening in this country.
We're being lulled into giving up our freedom with offers of things that we like in the moment, like free health care.
Oh, those guns are evil guns.
Maybe we should get rid of our guns.
That's how you lose your freedom bit by bit, because nobody wants to give it up altogether.
And that has been what's happening, has been happening in Hong Kong, but it's been happening not with the seductive touch of the Democrats who have the Constitution to deal with and our history of being free.
It's happening with the heavy hand of the Chinese.
So what's been happening?
Booksellers have been kidnapped.
You know, booksellers who would sell books about the Chinese and the fact that the Chinese aren't so great and what's going on with the Chinese.
Suddenly they would disappear and they'd come back months later after having been in a Chinese prison.
A billionaire.
You know, the idea was that the Hong Kongers are supposed to have their own kind of form of government.
A Chinese-born billionaire, Zhao Zhenhua, his name was, who was one of the wealthiest and most politically connected people in Hong Kong.
And he was a financier, but he knew too much about the dealings of the powerful in China.
And he disappeared.
And a lot of the people he worked with, he was shuttled out of a hotel in a wheelchair with a pillow over his head.
And he vanished.
And 30 of his employees were stopped from leaving the mainland.
They were arrested.
So, I mean, this stuff has been going on and getting worse and worse and worse.
And then finally, now you have to understand that the government that is in place in Hong Kong has been placed there by pro-Chinese forces, okay?
So in February, the local government, which is pro-Chinese, introduced a bill that would allow people accused of crimes to be sent to places in which Hong Kong had no extradition treaty, including mainland China, right?
So that meant that if you did something that the Chinese didn't like or you were accused of something, you could vanish.
You could disappear to China.
And so these protests started.
And once the protests had got started, the people got angry at the police.
They wanted investigations into the police.
They wanted to say, hey, our civil liberties are disappearing one by one.
And so these protests have now become kind of general the way these protests do.
And, you know, they don't have a leader.
There's no leader to these protests, but they have been extremely peaceful.
Now, some people have said the reason they're extremely peaceful so far is because while Hong Kong is not a Christian country, I think only about 10% of Hong Kongers identify as Christian, a lot of their educational systems are built by the Catholics mostly and have a faith element.
Protests Against Disappearance00:17:55
So there's a lot of good moral teaching going into these people, and they're decent people, and they don't want to have violence.
But recently, that has been coming apart.
I will talk about that in a moment.
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All right.
So now there has been violence and the rioters don't like this.
They're holding up signs.
We're sorry about the violence.
They took over the airport.
And of course, the airport is a major, major transportation hub, right?
Because there's a little island of freedom in the middle of Asia.
So there's a great airport and everybody loves it.
They take over the airport.
Their complaint is that pro-China infiltrators have come into their group and are causing trouble and are spying on them for the police.
So two of them got beaten up by the protesters.
Now, listen, I have no information about this, but it would not surprise me at all if China is trying to make these protests violent.
And President Trump said yesterday that the army is lining up right outside Hong Kong, ready to go in there.
We don't know.
That hasn't been confirmed, but he says that's what intelligence services say.
It would not surprise me at all if China wants trouble there so they can go in and stomp on people and take the place over.
That's not going to look very good, but ultimately China has all the power and we don't.
So the thing that really is poignant to me and the thing that I want to get to is the fact that the Chinese, the Hong Kongers, desperate to preserve their freedom under the gun with people being kidnapped and disappearing and laws creeping in there that are meant to erode their freedoms are waving the American flag and they're singing our Star-Spangled Banner.
They are waving the American flag.
And this is, I mean, this should move all of us.
This should touch every single one of us and remind us that when people look for freedom, when they are afraid of oppression, when they strive to become the one thing that all great people have to be, which is free, and all individuals want to be, which is free.
And the only thing that gives nobility to charity, the only thing that gives nobility to faith in God, the only thing that gives nobility to a person is if he chooses those things freely, right?
If you choose to believe, you don't believe at the edge of a sword because that has no legitimacy.
If you choose to give charity, you don't give charity because the government comes and takes your money and gives it to someone else.
That ennobles both the giver and the person who receives the charity.
Freedom ennobles everything.
Freedom gives everything legitimacy.
And when people are looking for freedom, whose flag do they wave?
Our flag.
And that's why, and this is the thing that is so poignant about this, is that here in America, we're not respecting that flag.
There's just no question about it.
When you have people burning the flag, which we have now, when you have people kneeling during the national anthem and saying, oh, this is my protest, which is ridiculous because the thing you're protesting is essentially that you're not getting the rights of an American, whether that's true or not.
That's what you're saying.
you're saying we want the rights of an American and you are our fellow Americans and therefore you should help us get those rights.
So why would you diss the flag that is the one thing that links me and Colin Kaepernick together?
If Kaepernick wants to say to me, hey, you know, we're both Americans and I'm not getting my American rights, he can say that to me and I'll listen.
I may disagree with him, but I will listen to that.
But once he says, and screw the flag, I'm saying, why do I care?
Why do I care about you?
What connects you to me?
Your humanity?
There are plenty of people all over the world who are having a much worse time than a millionaire quarterback, a millionaire NFL football player.
Plenty of people who are truly, truly oppressed in this world.
If it's common humanity, we're looking about.
I'm going to be thinking about people in Somalia, not you in your millionaire limousine.
That's not who I'm going to be worried about.
But if what you're saying is, my fellow American, I'm not getting the fair American shake that you're getting.
I will listen to that, but not if you're telling me that you don't care about America.
Not if you're telling me America is a bad country.
So it really does, it really is a disgrace to all of us.
And you know, Donald Trump is falling short on this.
There is just no question about this.
Look, it's obvious if we had to choose between the left and Donald Trump on patriotism, I would choose Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has made some beautiful speeches, the speech he made in Poland about Western freedom, about the glory of freedom.
He's made plenty of speeches about the glory of America and American freedom and our Constitution.
He's made good speeches about those.
But this is the moment when some of that has to be acted out, has to be held up in respect.
Trump is in the middle of these trade, this trade war, this very ferocious trade war with China, where it seems like he's getting some movement.
The other day, he said he's not going to put some tariffs on China.
He's going to withhold tariffs on China because he doesn't want, he's admitting, by the way, the tariffs cost us money.
He doesn't want our consumers to get hit at Christmastime.
But that also suggests that maybe there's been some movement with the Chinese.
We don't know.
But the thing is, he's in these negotiations.
He's all about the art of the deal.
He says stupid stuff about, you know, Kim in North Korea, says he has a beautiful vision for his country, this murderous tyrant, because that's the way he does business.
But at some point, you know, at some point, you have to say something.
So this is what he said about China and the developing situation with this violence and maybe the Chinese moving in.
Well, the Hong Kong thing is very tough situation.
Very tough.
We'll see what happens.
But I'm sure it'll work out.
I hope it works out for everybody.
It's good in China, by the way.
I hope it worked out for everybody.
So, you know, I'm sorry, but no, you know, I mean, this is what Obama did.
This is how Obama screwed up when he didn't stand up for the Iranian protesters, when he didn't stand up for the Syrian protesters.
And we all said, hey, you know, you've got to be the voice of freedom.
You can't just do your Iran deal and throw freedom under the table.
The Iran deal was garbage anyway.
But, you know, this is what we said.
And Trump, it's the same way.
And I know it's different with him in that he, this is how he thinks negotiations go on.
You flatter the guy across the table.
You say, oh, that can be, you know, he's got a vision for his country.
But, you know, there are people out there under the gun, real people who are waving our flag, yearning to have the freedom that we have while we're sitting around worrying about whether Miley Cyrus got divorced.
They're worried about just having the basic freedom, preserving the basic freedom that we have, and they're waving our flag, and that matters.
And listen, I don't want to hear a word about it from the press, certainly, or from the Democrats at all, because they are the ones who have been stomping on the flag, disrespecting the flag, saying America is a bad place.
You know, here's a panel, and I take this from CNN.
I know nobody's watching CNN.
The only time you ever see CNN is when you're watching this show and listening to this show, and I play this stuff from CNN.
But it is representative.
It is representative of a leftist point of view.
This is just a morning show where they're having a discussion about evil Donald Trump, evil Donald Trump.
You know, that's what they talk about over on CNN.
That's in the in the fantasy world where Donald Trump is an evil white nationalist.
And listen to what they have to say.
I think that we all agree.
I mean, this is a campaign of pure terror.
This is a campaign of pure fear.
This isn't what, and I hate to go back to this because it doesn't, I mean, it rings hollow now because Donald Trump is the president, but we've all been raised to believe that this is not what our country was built upon, that we're better than this.
That is not true.
And we're, well, we are, it definitely ain't true now.
I mean, I think that when you talk about young people, even in El Paso, we did a story that people were afraid to go and identify.
When were we, well, let me say, I don't know who we is.
When was this country made?
That's what we were taught.
Yes, that's what I was saying.
That's what we were taught.
Well, I agree with that part.
So can I give people something aspirational in the morning before they go to home?
Well, then we could be better than this.
We never have been.
Yeah, we never have been.
We've never been better.
Ask this lady, Angela Rai, I think her name is.
Ask this lady where she would rather be.
Ask her why she's still here.
Ask her what country she'd rather be.
Ask her what country she would have, her parents had rather been in.
What country does she wish her parents had been in besides this one?
You know, a little bit of gratitude.
I understand the injustices.
I'm not taking away from any of that.
But at what point do you put it aside and start to say, hey, at least there were also people with all the injustices, there were people who fought to make sure the American ideal applied to me so I could be on CNN dissing the country.
It's embarrassing.
It's embarrassing to have people sitting in that free country, in that free city, with all the money that you get for being on television and dissing this country while people in Hong Kong with the police surrounding them, with the Chinese army sitting off the coast, you know, off the off the border, it's waving our flag.
It's embarrassing.
It's a disgrace.
It's a disgrace to have that lady come on and say those things, and she is representative of the left.
So it is wrong for Donald Trump not to stand up and support the values that those Hong Kongers are fighting for.
The deal of the moment, you know, is not all important.
You've got to stand up for those values in the moment.
It's not good enough to just do it while you're making speeches.
You've got to stand up for it in the moment.
But it is doubly wrong.
It is doubly wrong for this ceaseless drumbeat of hatred against America that comes from the left and comes from the mainstream of the Democrats as well.
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I'll never stop.
I'm never going to stop.
So what are we talking about?
What are we talking about while they're waving our flag?
We're talking about Chris Cuomo.
I just have to bring up Chris Cuomo for one more minute.
First of all, a lot of people, I think our own Matt Walsh, a lot of people have been defending his tirade against this guy.
And no, I can't defend it.
I do give him props for knowing, because he said he did the wrong thing.
And that's important.
He did say he did the wrong thing.
He said he shouldn't have gone off on this guy.
This guy called him Fredo.
However, however, it is truly, truly representative of the press.
So I'm not going off too much on Cuomo.
I respect the fact that he said he did the wrong thing, even while people were saying, no, you shouldn't bother celebrities in public.
You shouldn't attack people right or left.
That, of course, is true.
The troll is a jackass.
The guy who comes up to him while he's out with his family is a jackass, just like the people who come after Mitch McConnell in restaurants, just like the people who came after Sarah Saunders in restaurants.
Those people are jackasses.
They're the bad guys, no question about it.
But Sarah Sanders and Mitch McConnell didn't turn around and threaten to throw the guys down a flight of stairs.
That's wrong.
That is also wrong.
Just because somebody does something wrong doesn't mean there's not an appropriate response, which is, hey, back off.
I'm with my kids.
Please leave me alone.
Which then that just makes the troll look like the little person that he is.
It makes him look like the punk he is.
But responding to a mild troll by threatening to throw a guy down a flight of stairs and going off with the cursing is wrong.
Cuomo said it was wrong.
Good for him.
That's fine.
The only reason I want to bring it up is it is representative of CNN and the press in general that he turned it into a race thing.
He said Fredo is a racial slur.
A lot of people are putting out montages of all the time someone on CNN has said Fredo.
Chris Cuomo himself has called himself Fredo on a radio program.
So all of that is untrue.
And the second thing is, is the double standard, the double standard by which the press simply judges us, meaning conservative Americans, meaning pro-American Americans, mean pro-Constitution Americans, the way they treat us and the way they treat Donald Trump compared to the way they treat Obama and the way they treat the left.
Okay, that double standard.
And you can see it here in this moment when Chris Cuomo is talking about, remember Nick Sandman, the Catholic school kid who had that drumming activist in his face and tried to smile at him and tried to make peace?
This is Chris Cuomo commenting on that moment.
Then we get to the heart of it.
The face-to-face encounter.
The man, Nathan Phillips, apparently wanted to defuse the tension and he walked up to do exactly that.
And surely the kid, Nick Sandman, he doesn't seem to be afraid, but he did make a choice and that was to make it into a standoff.
That was not a good choice.
Was it legal?
Sure.
That's not my test.
And it shouldn't be the test.
Here's mine.
If that were my son, who happens to go to a great Catholic school, would I like what he did?
If I were there, would I have allowed the kids to be in that situation?
No and no.
There was a disrespected play that doesn't work for me in these circumstances.
So you're being an example to your kid there, Chris.
You failed.
Like, again, Cuomo has said he failed, but the people who are supporting him, really, it's wrong.
It is wrong.
This is, you know, let me end with this and then I'll get to the mailbag.
Our conversation in this country has been corrupted.
It's been corrupted by TV and it's been corrupted by the growth of government so that we think our solutions always involve these tremendous plans where the tremendous plan is going to solve the problem in New York the same way it solves it in Arkansas.
That was what was so wrong with Obama talking about transgender people using bathrooms.
That's a local problem.
That's a local thing that each person deals with with his own conscience and with his own population and with his own standards in the area that he lives.
That's why the states are supposed to be separate from the federal government.
That is why there are limited powers that the federal government has and more powers that the states have because in your locality, you're supposed to be able to provide solutions.
But so often, so often, the solutions to problems are local.
And when I say local, I mean the way you treat people, the kind of language you use with people, the way you treat the other people in your office, the way you treat your wife, especially when other people can see you, like your children, but especially when even your wife or your husband can see, the way you talk about your wife or your husband.
These are the things that make for a civil society, and these are the things that are being thrown away.
And when you say this clown comes up and trolls him, and therefore he had a right to threaten to throw him down a flight of stairs, no, absolutely not.
This is important.
It is important the way we treat one another.
It's important the way famous people treat one another.
I know that any one of us can lose his temper.
Any one of us can be caught on camera doing something wrong.
But do what Cuomo did.
Back off and say, hey, that was wrong.
I made myself the bad guy there.
Cuomo did the right thing by apologizing, not by threatening the guy.
That's the thing that we should support.
And it really does matter because this idea that we're going to solve our problems with some big government program and then the right has to propose some other big government program just isn't true.
You're going to solve it in your church.
You're going to solve it in your school.
You're going to solve it at your place of business.
So much can be solved by simply treating one another with respect, treating women differently than men, treating men with respect as well for the things that they do.
That's where our problem is going to start to get solved because this kind of dialogue is the problem.
It is the problem.
We can't get anywhere as long as we're screaming at one another.
We truly can't.
All right, the mailbag coming up.
Just a minute.
Mailbag.
What?
Yeah.
These guys.
It's the drinking guy.
The guys in the other room, you know, there's not that much for them to do.
They don't really have jobs.
This is just a cinecure we give them so they can feed themselves.
And they sit in the back and they drink and they forget when they're supposed to press the screen button.
All right.
Mailbag: Marriage and Divorce00:06:44
From Jacob, dear supreme leader of the multiverse, about, and I really do appreciate, we're talking about respect.
I appreciate people using my proper titles.
About two months ago, you answered my question about marrying a rape victim.
Thank you.
I can't express the relief I felt when you said it was a legitimate concern, but the best advice you gave was not to let it become an obsessive anxiety.
I took your advice and talked to professionals and my fiancé at length.
Things are going better than I would have hoped as I write.
It is our one-month anniversary.
Thanks again.
Your last advice actually changed my life for the better.
I love getting letters like that.
If you feel this way, please let me know.
You know, what I love about this is the advice he really followed was to communicate, to talk to people.
So much of people feel, they see this in the movies, I think.
They feel that romance should be conducted at some level beyond speech.
Somehow, guys are just supposed to know what women want.
Women are just supposed to tell you what's going on in their heads.
You've got to talk to one another.
He did the right thing.
I'm glad it really worked out.
That's terrific.
And congratulations on your marriage.
From Mario, dear Lord Clavin of the Balding Multiverse.
I love your show and your insights.
I wanted to ask you about marriage.
I know you've said many times to get married.
Not in general.
I mean, I just said it to certain people.
I'm in a good relationship with a good woman.
I've been through a divorce in the past.
She has never been married.
I would prefer to not be married and still have children perhaps one day, mostly for financial reasons, in the sad but hopefully never to occur possibility of a divorce.
The divorce laws simply are not fair to men, on the average, generally speaking.
She is open to this arrangement and would rather be with me regardless of the legal status of our relationship.
Can you give me a solid argument or reasoning as to why I should reconsider my position on marriage?
What is the value of marriage?
We're monogamous.
We live together.
We've been together for many years, five years.
Kids are a possibility, and I would very likely enjoy having them, all things considered.
As long as I am loving and caring for my wife and family and she for me and our children, what is the value of marriage?
All right, that's a good question.
A lesser male bag guy, a lesser male bag guy, would go to the statistics and tell you that you are much more likely to stay together if you're married.
It's true.
I mean, most non-marriage couples, more non-marriage couples break up.
Most children who are had under a non-marriage situation are raised by a single parent.
Divorce is more painful because marriages last longer than non-marriages.
But that's for lesser people.
I'm going to tell you what I want to tell you, which is that your very letter speaks to the importance of marriage.
Your very letter speaks to the importance of marriage.
I would prefer to not be married for financial reasons in the sad but hopefully never to occur possibility of a divorce.
Marriage is a complete commitment.
What you're saying right in that sentence, in your sentence, is you're committing, but you're holding back because it might not go well.
If you're going to have a kid under those circumstances, you are doing that kid a disservice.
Marriage, whether you're religious or not, I take it you're not from the question itself, but whether you're religious or not, marriage remains a sacrament.
It remains the blending of two lives into one.
It remains two people becoming one flesh, like the Bible say, right?
They become one flesh, and you will know what that means the day you have a child when you realize that you have created someone who is both of you and that both of you have to be around to make sure that person has the chance in life and the full beauty of his own life that God means him to have.
So when you say, I just, you know, I want to be committed, but I just want to leave that door open in the back so I can sneak out.
That's the purpose of marriage.
That's the reason for marriage.
More than anything else I can tell you about religion, about statistics, in your life.
In your letter, you are expressing an escape route, the need for an escape route.
Once you have a child, that escape route doesn't exist.
It no longer has a moral existence.
Once you have a child, that escape route is morally closed.
Unless there's abuse or addiction or adultery, that escape route is morally closed.
So why not admit it?
Why not make the moral statement?
You make it through a ceremony.
When I got married, I thought to myself, oh, it's just a ceremony.
We've been living together.
I can't remember two, four years.
I can't even remember.
We've been living together a long time.
I thought it's, you know, marriage doesn't mean anything.
The minute that ceremony was over, I realized it was deeply, deeply important.
It had changed my life and had changed my life for the better.
So I recommend it.
And that's my answer.
The answer is in your letter, that you're leaving a door open.
Once you have a child, that door is closed.
It ought to be closed anyway.
From Joe.
Dear Andrew, in your opinion, who are the top two or three American artists of any type of art, be it visual, musical, cinematic, literary, or whatever, who also happens to be a Christian?
I'm writing an article about how Christians need to create art that doesn't necessarily preach truth, but that portrays truth with excellence.
I would greatly appreciate your input.
Well, plenty of American artists were Christians.
I mean, first of all, Walt Disney, who's probably one of the most important effects on the art, had one of the most important effects on American arts, was a Christian.
Frank Capra, I believe, who made all those great, you know, it's a Wonderful Life movies and things like that.
Walker Percy is a novelist, Flannery O'Connor.
But, you know, the thing about Christianity and the arts is Christianity pervades our arts.
All our arts are about Christianity because everything about us is about Christianity.
And so a guy like William Faulkner, I don't know exactly what his religion was.
He would say different things about it.
He was a very hard guy to pin down.
But if you read The Sound and the Fury, it is full of Christian imagery and full of a deep sense of how Christianity forms our conscience and forms our society.
So all art, all Western art is Christian at some level.
And what you're saying is, what about artists who are Christian but don't write Christian stuff?
You know, it's really hard to say because it's not the first thing.
I mean, guys like John Updike, for instance, if you read The Witches of Eastwick, it's a deeply Christian work.
He called himself a Christian, but he was not certainly any kind of a standard Christian.
The Witches of Eastwick is a wonderful, funny, deep and rich book.
Ernest Hemingway's novels are full of people looking for God and going back to the rituals of Christianity to see if they can find some kind of system that will help them rule, you know, help them understand the world.
So almost all Western art is Christian at some level.
And whether the people themselves are Christians is hard to know, because if it's not in the work, you know, most of the time I wouldn't go back and look it up.
But certainly Christianity has a huge effect on all of our arts.
Courage Before Need00:08:32
Yeah.
All right.
From Justin.
Dear Andrew, when I was 17, I fathered a child without knowing it.
I just turned 29 and have only known my son for about a year and a half.
He and I have a wonderful relationship, and I'm doing all I can to be a good father, not just for him, but also for his two half siblings.
This is not my qualm, however.
My issue comes from my mother, who I still unfortunately live with.
She's a very strong Christian, but has made multiple statements which lead me to believe that if she learned I am a father, she would not hesitate to put me on the street.
One, am I overreacting, or are my concerns about her justified?
How should I go about telling my mother about her grandson without risking my relationship with either?
You know, pal, there's just too much that's not in this letter.
So 17, you father, father child, 17, and now you're 29.
Why are you living with your mother?
I mean, it's one thing if you're handicapped or something like this, but if you're not handicapped, I have to know why the hell are you living with your mother?
I mean, before I can answer that question, I need to know why a 29-year-old man has to worry about what his mother thinks of him.
You know, that's a problem.
That is a problem.
Now, maybe, again, you don't tell me, so I don't know.
You know, maybe there's some reason, legitimate reason for that that I'm not seeing, but there's no way a 29-year-old should be worried about that unless there's some special circumstance.
Secondly, I'm getting the feeling here that you've restarted your relationship with this lady and that she has two kids.
Those two half-siblings, I'm guessing, are not yours, but hers.
So now you're back in the life of this lady and trying to be a good father to these two half-siblings, but you're living with your mother.
This is a screwed up situation, and I don't know why it's screwed up, so I don't know if there's a good reason for it.
So all your questions are sort of not addressing the problem at hand.
The problem at hand is that you're a 29-year-old living with your mother and going out with this woman who has children and trying to be a father to them, but not in a position to support them or be with them or live with them or commit to them.
So all that stuff is a real serious problem that you have, and you're asking me about your mother, you know, and I don't even know why you're worried about it.
So I just don't have enough information to answer that question, but you're in a bad situation.
And unless there's some reason for it that I don't understand, that's what you should be looking at.
From Hugh, hey, Andrew, big fan of the show and Daily Wire.
I'll be seeing you guys next week.
I'll be flying into Long Beach from Hawaii.
It is my first time attending a political discussion.
What should I be expecting at your guy's show?
This is the Daily Wire Backstage Live that is coming up next week.
You should expect a cesspool of hatred and bigotry.
I mean, that's what the media matters, except that we will be doing the entire show in the nude.
And so that'll be good.
And then there'll be just a drunken riot and hopefully a fist fight.
No, we'll talk about politics and we'll talk about life in America.
And if you've seen the Daily Wire Backstage Live Show, which I'm sure you can go on, especially if you're a subscriber, I'm sure you can go on and find copies of it.
That's what we will be doing live.
And it is, we hope, a cesspool of hatred and bigotry.
And if it's not, I will want to know the reason why.
From Samuel, hi, Andrew.
I'm currently a 20-year-old college student entering my sophomore year of college.
As someone with a workaholic father who wasn't always present, I'm finding that I lack any understanding of masculinity.
Because of this, I often find myself trying to embody a stereotypical and skewed understanding of masculinity in which I try to be a tough guy or show little to no emotion in many situations.
I live in a far-left area, and the only guidance I find is that masculinity is toxic and wrong without any explanation.
In your opinion, what is masculinity, and where can one learn to distinguish between genuine masculinity and the machismo or violent masculinity that many without guidance seem to turn to?
Well, if I have to define masculinity, I always go to two words, integrity and courage.
Courage is the quality without which no other virtue can be held, right?
Because virtue attracts evil, and virtue attracts people who want to take virtue away, and virtue attracts people who want to seduce you away from virtue, and it attracts people who want to control you.
So you have to have courage to have virtue.
And by integrity, what I mean is that you are what you seem to be.
That there is not, obviously everybody has a private life.
Everybody has things they choose not to discuss.
But you should be in public what you feel.
You should act out your values in public and in private.
You should be, when you're alone, you should be acting out your values.
So having integrity and being who you seem to be and having the courage to maintain that integrity, I think are the essentials of masculinity.
Now, one of the things about masculine courage is it has a physical element because men are more likely to be called upon to defend themselves physically and to defend others physically.
And I highly recommend, look, there's always somebody who can beat you up and there's always more people can beat you up, but you want to be able to stand.
You want to be able to make a stand if you have to.
There's no shame in losing a fight.
There can be shame in running away from a fight.
So it's a good thing to get some training about that.
It gives you confidence.
It gives you self-possession.
It means if you are trained to fight, if you get some martial arts training or something like that, you are less likely to get into a fight.
Because the one thing I haven't lifted a hand in anger since I was 16 years old.
I hope I never do it again.
I mean, I raised two kids without ever, I never even swatted them on the backside.
Nothing.
I am a guy who does not like violence and does not think it's an appropriate response to anything but violence, to anything but the threat of violence.
So violence is not a part of manhood, but self-confidence is.
The confidence that you will stand when the going gets rough is important.
And that's the thing.
You have to decide to have courage before it's needed.
You have to inculcate it in yourself.
And you should work every day.
Nobody does this perfectly.
Nobody does it perfectly.
But you should work every day to be who you seem to be, right?
And that to me is what manhood entails.
And the reason that it sometimes looks like manhood and sometimes doesn't is you're not always challenged.
Your integrity is not always challenged.
There's lots of compromises you can make in life.
There's lots of ways you can work with people.
There's lots of things you can give up without hurting your integrity.
But there will be times, I guarantee you, when that integrity will be under the gun, will be challenged.
And those are the times when suddenly you have to become a wall.
Suddenly you have to become a brick wall.
I mean, my wife always laughs because I try to be really nice to people.
She always laughs when they come after my integrity and they find like, no, that's not going to work.
They're always incredibly disappointed.
They always say the same thing to me.
They always say, you're not as nice as I thought you were.
But yes, I am.
It's just you can't challenge my integrity because that's where I stand.
So that's what manhood is.
The rest of it is a lot of show, the bluster, the threats of violence, telling people you're going to knock them down.
All that stuff is show.
If you are who you seem to be and you stand for that, when the going gets tough, you'll be man enough for anybody.
And believe me, that doesn't take being big.
It doesn't take being muscular.
It does take confidence and it does take courage.
All right.
From let's try another one.
From Jacob.
I'm a 23-year-old white Christian male.
I've been conservative as long as I can remember.
I've only recently really started to dig into the why I believe what I believe.
Thanks to the Daily Wire crew.
I not only have my thoughts provoked, I also don't feel as alone as the mainstream media wants me to feel.
My question is this.
I'm going to Southern California this week to visit family.
My grandma and aunt are both very vocal about their hatred for our president.
My grandma has also recently vocalized her agreement with the left that anyone who doesn't denounce Trump is responsible for mass shootings.
What should I do if she brings up the conversation?
Should I just try to avoid the conflict to enjoy the week with family?
Or should I say something?
I don't want to be rude, but I also don't want to let her views be shaped only by the left.
Well, it's not your job to shape your grandmother's views.
You know, leave your grandmother alone.
You don't have to tell her what to think.
I don't know how old she is, but like you don't have to tell her what you think.
You don't have to shape her views at all.
Let her have her own views.
That's part of life.
And certainly you want to preserve peace in your family.
What you don't want is you don't want to be bullied.
You know, you don't want people saying nasty things about you while you're sitting there.
Just be polite, be loving, tell people you may disagree, but you don't want to get involved in a political conversation.
You know, just if you don't have to say anything with family, don't say anything.
If they put you in a position where to maintain your integrity, to maintain your peace of mind and not feel bullied, say it in the politest, sweetest way possible and try to stay out of a fight.
The family and the love and the peace is far, far more important than any argument you're going to get into about politics.
Donald Trump does not matter as much as your grandmother.
All right.
That is the truth.
Preserve Peace in Your Family00:01:39
And so, like, you're not going to change your mind.
You're not going to win any fights.
You're not going to shape her opinions.
All you want is to feel that you're not going over there and being abused.
And if you're not being abused, let it go.
You know, that's my advice.
I'm out of time, unfortunately.
There's some more good questions, but we'll have another mailbag next week.
And next week, we will also be doing the Daily Wire Live and we'll answer questions there.
So your problems may yet be solved.
We'll be back tomorrow.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
is The Andrew Klavan Show.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Austin Stevens and directed by Mike Joyner.
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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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Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
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