Ep. 764 – Bolton Bolts pits John Bolton’s hawkish militarism—proposing Taliban assassinations and Kim Jong-un’s helicopter execution—against Trump’s deal-first diplomacy, culminating in Bolton’s resignation over a potential Iran summit. Critics blame Trump’s abrasiveness for alienating allies, while supporters defend his unorthodox engagement with adversaries like North Korea. The episode ties this to broader conservative critiques: 9/11’s forgotten lessons on Western superiority and traditional values, dismissed as irrelevant amid debates on perfectionism, gendered storytelling, and estranged fathers. A listener’s claim linking Trump to the El Paso shooting is shot down, but the show doubles down on cultural backlash against progressive norms, framing redemption through faith over guilt. [Automatically generated summary]
John Bolton has either quit or been fired as national security advisor, depending on whether you believe Bolton, who tells the truth about everything even when it costs him his job, or Trump, who just makes stuff up all the time.
Bolton and Trump had long been known to have serious policy differences.
Trump, for instance, wanted to invite Taliban negotiators to Camp David for peace talks, whereas Bolton wanted to invite Taliban negotiators to Camp David for peace talks, then drop out of the rafters with a K-bar combat knife, slit their throats, and urinate on their writhing bodies as they died.
In a similar way, the president wanted to go on a joint club vacation to the Grand Bahamas with Kim Jong-un so that the two leaders could drink My Ties on the Beach, enjoy the musical stylings of a local Gumbai band, and dance the night away until Kim agreed to get rid of his nuclear weapons.
John Bolton wanted to invite Kim on a joint helicopter ride, then dangle him out the open door until he agreed to shut down his missile program, then drop him anyway to see if he really made a sound like a watermelon when his fat little body hit the ground.
The policy differences apparently became too difficult to deal with after Trump requested a meeting with the president of Iran and Bolton called in a nuclear strike on the Oval Office.
Bolton then either tendered his resignation or was fired, depending on whether you believe Bolton or are a gullible fool.
Trump has begun making calls to possible Bolton replacements.
He asked retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg to come in for an interview.
Kellogg reportedly replied, Hino here, I know speak English.
General Kellogg move away long time.
Trump also called Mike Pompeo advisor Brian Hook, who said only, new phone, who dis.
Bolton's departure highlighted the excellent Trump economy as the only Americans now out of work are people who were actually fired by Donald Trump.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boom.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Cultures And Words00:04:17
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.
One of my least favorite movies of all time is Schindler's List.
In Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg uses his amazing talents for filmmaking to dramatize his essentially shallow worldview.
The film is shallow because it centers an epic about the Holocaust on a story of courage and hope.
The Holocaust is not centered on courage and hope.
It's centered on evil and fear and death.
If you want to know the truth about the Holocaust, watch the long documentary Shoah by Claude Lonsman or read the short book Night by Eli Wesel.
Schindler's List is what the Holocaust looks like in a Hollywood movie.
It's an act of denial and forgetting.
It's like grass growing over a grave.
I bring this up because it's the 18th anniversary of 9-11, and every 9-11 someone says, we will never forget.
These words, like the words unicorn or free health care or Islamophobia, are nonsense words, words that describe things or states that simply don't exist.
We always forget.
We have to forget.
It's the way societies move forward and it's the way they die, and these things have to be.
It's God's will.
Here are some of the things we learned on 9-11 that we've forgotten.
Multiculturalism is crap.
There are better cultures and bad cultures and even worse cultures.
Ours is better, not because we're better people, but because we've inherited better ideas like individual freedom and equality before the law.
Those are better ideas than government by Allah and dressing up women like the spirit of Christmas yet to come so they can't fully participate in life.
Better ideas make better cultures and better cultures must be defended by both wisdom and force of arms, or worse cultures will conquer and destroy them.
On 9-11, we also remembered briefly that men must be men.
The police men and firemen who charged into the burning buildings to try to save people were essential men, necessary men, men worthy of our honor and respect because they lived up to the responsibility of their manhood.
Which reminds us of another inescapable truth.
There is only one necessary task of human life, and that is to make and nurture more human life.
And this is a task that nature has assigned to women.
It is in order to protect and preserve that task and the women who do it that men must be men.
brave, protective, supportive, and dispassionately wise.
When societies feel rich and safe and prosperous, they put such truths out of their minds and they turn to fluffy nonsense like irony or pumpkin latte or redefining marriage or letting boys dress up as girls or promising everybody everything for free.
The essential divide between conservatives and leftists is that conservatives want society to always live under the restraints of the essential truths and leftists want to take advantage of history's little holidays when some nation like ours becomes strong enough and rich enough to make everyone feel like it's safe to forget the rules and party.
There's some wisdom on both sides.
If your society is so powerful it can spare a few men to do inessential tasks like writing books or musical comedies, that's better than everyone having to man the front lines.
If you can allow some women to leave off baby making and child rearing, maybe some of them will enjoy doing something else more.
That's fine.
It's tolerant and kind to accept gay relationships if you're living in inessential times, so why not do it?
But the gods of the copybook headings, the gods of the essential truths, are always waiting to return with terror and slaughter, as they did this day 18 years ago.
And when you denounce motherhood or manhood, when you squander your resources and disrespect your traditions, those gods start sharpening their swords.
This is a very sad world.
And one of the saddest things about this world is also one of the most comical.
People lie.
Everyone lies.
Everyone lies to himself and to everyone else.
We say things that are absurd and ridiculous, and then we insist that they're true.
People lie when they can and only face the truth when they must.
On 9-11, we were forced to face the truth, a lot of truths.
And now, by the necessity of human nature, we have forgotten.
People Lie00:15:14
We always do.
Enjoy your pumpkin latte.
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All right.
A lot to say about John Bolton quitting.
I have a lot to say about John Bolton quitting.
He was National Security Advisor.
Obviously, a big hawk, a guy who liked to, oh boy, they're putting up this thing to remind me to see the mailbag is coming up.
They only do it.
They don't do it to help me.
They do it because they love to press that stupid button.
But that mailbag is coming up, so enjoy your problems while you've got them.
They'll all be solved by the end of the show.
If you're a subscriber, there's a lot to say about John Bolton quitting.
Obviously, he's the guy with the big brush mustache, and he's the national security advisor.
And a lot of this has to do with 9-11.
It has to do with 9-11.
Bolton is a brilliant guy.
He's a guy who sees the threats.
He wants to respond aggressively to the threats.
He reads a million pages of intelligence a day, and he remembers what he reads, and he always speaks up.
He always says what's on his mind.
Everybody kind of said, how is he going to get along with Donald Trump?
Because Donald Trump doesn't always like to be contradicted, but Bolton is always going to speak his mind.
So that was always a problem.
They were always sending him out of the country somewhere when they would have big meetings and everything like this.
But I think what happened, according to the best intelligence I've read, the best sources I've read, is that, you know, Trump was going to bring the Taliban to negotiate at Camp David.
He wants to make peace.
He wants to get out of Afghanistan if he can.
And the Taliban are the guy.
The Taliban are like the worst people, right?
They are the worst people on earth.
These are guys who kill little girls or throw acid in the face of little girls if they try to get an education.
Okay.
These guys are dirt.
These are like as if moral garbage had simply come to life and grown a pair of legs and arms.
That's the Taliban.
They stink.
And they had a big reason that the 9-11 Saudis who came over and destroyed the World Trade Center and murdered 3,000 people, a big reason they were able to do that is the Taliban allowed them to stage their operations in Afghanistan, in that territory.
And that's why we invaded Afghanistan afterwards, was to drive back the Taliban.
The problem with driving back the Taliban is you drive them back, they go into what's called the Fatah, the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan and Pakistan.
And they disappear and they wait for you to leave or you to draw back and then they come back again.
And of course, if you're a little Afghani guy just living in your village, what are you going to do?
You're going to support the Americans and then wait for the Taliban to come back and kill you?
Or are you going to just take bribes from the Americans and throw the money away and chew got and just hope the Taliban doesn't notice you're there at all?
I mean, that's the problem we're facing.
That's why it's so hard to make any headway in Afghanistan.
So Trump wants to pull out.
The defense industry says basically if we pull out, what happened there is what happened before, and they'll just start staging terrorist attacks again and they'll hit us here instead of us hitting them there.
The logic is as long as we're there, they're fighting us there instead of fighting us here.
So perfect, it's a big boy argument.
It's an argument that has to be had, it has to be discussed.
So when Trump, who will talk to anybody, Trump conceives of all problems in terms of personal negotiations.
That is how he conceives of all problems, right?
He doesn't think about national interests so much.
He doesn't think of making sure that the White House is a bastion of principle.
He doesn't think about making sure that the president only says things that we can respect.
He talks about what a lovely, creative guy Kim Jong-un is.
Kim Jong-un, a savage, insane murderer.
He talks him up because he's in this negotiation.
It's not that he's not trying to do a good thing.
He's trying to do a good thing, but he's willing to say anything to flatter the guy.
And that's the way he is.
And of course, for John Bolton, who's all about the principles and the theories, he looks at this and he says, you're going to invite the Taliban to Camp David on 9-11, which, by the way, was a major, major Trump error, right?
That was a major unforced error on Trump's part to bring them here at 9-11.
People would have gone nuts.
It would have looked terrible.
He may have woken up to that.
And it may be one of the reasons he now says those negotiations are dead.
They're not happening.
He blamed it on a terrorist attack that killed an American soldier.
But it may have also been that suddenly somebody smacked him upside the head and basically said, hey, remember, it's 9-11.
This isn't going to work.
Anyway, this apparently got so bad that Bolton, according to Bolton, said, offered his resignation.
Trump said, we'll talk about it in the morning.
Bolton woke up the next morning and resigned, and then Trump tweeted out that no, he hadn't resigned.
Trump had fired him.
And I want to talk about that for a minute, too, because that's an important part of this.
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Why does it matter?
You know, obviously the left is going to say all this stupid stuff.
The left is going to say, oh, it's chaos and this is terrible.
And I'll talk about that in a minute.
But the fact is, it's very obvious that Bolton is telling the truth.
One, because Bolton always tells the truth.
And two, because Trump always lies.
And three, because there was a meeting scheduled and Bolton was supposed to be at the meeting.
The meeting schedule, a briefing the next day, and on the sheet was Bolton will be at this thing.
So on the show Outnumbered, on Fox, Harris Faulkner is announcing the news, and Brian Kilmead is the guy outnumbered.
You know, by the way, let me just on a tangent for just a minute.
Have you never watched Outnumbered?
I think it's supposed to be Fox's answer to the View.
And the reason it's called Outnumbered, it's all women, and then there's a guy in there, and he's the one who's outnumbered.
I think that's why they call it that.
If you ever just want to see the difference between left and right, go and watch The View and then go watch Outnumbered.
It is a serious, intelligent discussion of the day's events, and none of the shrieking and screaming and broad generalizations that you get on the view.
It is exactly the same as reading the New York Times op-ed page, Knucklehead Row, and then going over to the adults on the Wall Street Journal and hearing them discuss things.
It is an amazing thing to see the difference between conservative ladies talking and left-wing women talking.
It's an amazing, amazing thing.
Anyway, here's the moment when Harris Faulkner, who hosts the show, announces Bolton leaving, and Kilmead gets a text from Bolton.
The president has just fired his national security advisor.
His tweet: I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House.
I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions.
So there's that list, Brian.
We don't know what's on it, but it's, you know, strong and long, as did others in the administration.
And therefore, I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning.
I thank John very much for his service.
I will be naming a new national security advisor.
And then, of course, we heard from the just fire John Bolton saying that, no, it didn't actually play out that way.
Tom John Bolton.
I offered to resign last night, and President Trump said, let's talk about it tomorrow.
John Bolton just texted me.
Oh.
Just now.
He's watching.
Can you read it?
Yeah, he said, let's be clear, I resigned.
And I said, do you mind if I say that while you were talking?
And he wrote, yes.
So John Bolton has just told me, texted me to said, I resigned.
The only reason this matters, I know the left makes a big, big fuss about Trump's chaotic style, but this is petty and it's no way to treat people.
It's no way to treat people like John Bolton who are serious men, who deserve respect.
They should be treated with respect.
He did this to Rex Tillerson.
He's done it to a number of people.
I mean, it's the reason Comey, who's a small, squirrely little man, went after him with such a vengeance because he humiliated Comey.
That is bad leadership.
It's bad leadership.
And I think it's important to say it that there is this point about Trump.
One of the reasons, I mean, they had a special election in North Carolina.
I think it was North.
Was it North Carolina?
What's that?
Yes, it was North Carolina.
And the Republican won, but he won by a very small margin because suburban women don't like Trump.
They look at Trump and they think like, this guy's a bore.
And it's a problem.
It's a serious problem because we want, because Trump is doing a good job.
As president, he is doing a good job.
And that's a really important thing.
Obviously, it's more important than anything else.
But this pettiness and this way he alienates people makes it hard to hire good people, hard to bring good people into the Oval Office.
And it means that people have to learn to live with him.
And that is what you see a lot of.
So you got Mike Pompeo.
He comes out.
He has to make this announcement.
And Pompeo looks like the happiest person on earth.
He looks so happy Bolton is gone.
Obviously, Bolton, a troublemaker, a guy who just can't keep his mouth shut.
And Bolton was just, Pompeo was just glowing.
It was hilarious.
But here is Pompeo's take.
He says, I'm not going to talk about the palace intrigue and who said what.
It's all about the policy.
It was cut for.
I think President Trump, I watched his campaign.
I've now worked with him first as CIA director and now as Secretary of State.
Someone asked, would the policy be different absent any individual being here?
These have been the president's policies.
We give him our best wisdom.
We share with him our understanding.
When I was intelligence director, we did our best to make sure he had the facts and data available so he could make good decisions.
But I don't think any leader around the world should make any assumption that because someone of us departs, that President Trump's foreign policy will change and materialize.
If you're listening and you're not watching, just the look on his face is hilarious.
He's flushed with pleasure to get rid of Bolton.
And the thing about Trump is, I think that Trump will tolerate disparate views.
I think he will have a meeting and each person should speak boldly and say what he has to say.
But once Trump makes a decision, he does not want people getting in his way.
He doesn't want people second-guessing him.
And the president has a right to that.
And Bolton just can't keep his mouth shut.
And I think that once this came out, that the Taliban had been invited to Camp David and it would have coincided with 9-11, I think Bolton must have just like hit the roof.
And I think he must have gotten in Trump's face a little bit.
And again, I don't think he was fired.
I think that Bolton resigned because it's just a very difficult thing.
Jim Mattis resigned.
And then Trump, in a petty way, forced Jim Mattis to leave early, like months before he said he was going to leave, his resignation would take place.
This pettiness, this pettiness in the Oval Office, it is a general problem because let's say you are the best at what you do and the president calls you and you know he's going to humiliate you and make you look bad and it's going to be 18 months Of just dealing with this guy, ranting and raving and wrong-footing you all the time.
You don't want to show up.
Now, people do it because these are patriots.
John Bolton is a patriot.
Mike Pompeo is a patriot.
These are guys who show up and do their job because they believe in the country and they believe in the presidency and they believe it's a good thing for the president to have their advice.
But it's harmful.
It is harmful to the state of the nation that Trump is such a petty guy.
You know, I don't like the rudeness and I don't like the pettiness.
And believe me, if they didn't matter, I wouldn't mention them.
You know, if they didn't matter, if I thought we could win, go on and have conservative governance and do the right thing, it wouldn't bother me.
So here is Lindsey Graham.
And Lindsey Graham is obviously like the Trump whisperer.
He's a guy, he said, he was on Fox News talking to Brett Baer, and he said, the president is a handful.
That's what he said.
But he has learned how to deal with the president he has.
Why?
Because he's the president.
He is the guy we've got.
And so this is Lindsey Graham reacting to what's going on in the Oval Office.
I think Bolton looked at Trump through the traditional foreign policy lens.
I've abandoned that.
You know, the conditionalism, you don't talk to bad guys, you elevate Kim Jong-um.
I don't care if President Trump and Kim Jong-um go on vacation.
If that's what it takes to give him up his, give up the nuclear weapons, I'm okay with personal diploma that's unconditional.
I'm okay with talking to the Iranians as long as we get a better deal.
What would a better deal be?
They can have nuclear power, but they can't enrich or reprocess uranium.
That would be a better deal.
So I'm not here to lecture the president.
You beat me, you beat 16 other Republicans, you beat Hillary Clinton.
Let's give your way a try, and I'm going to support him all I can.
But looking at North Korea as an example, as a blueprint, what do you see out of those negotiations and those two summits?
No worse than where I see better.
You see better?
No nuclear missile testing, no bombs being exploded, a personal relationship that may lead to something new and different.
Everybody before Trump, how well did it work out?
So to those who want to criticize the president, how well did you do in Iran?
How well did you do in North Korea?
You know, I'm a pretty hawkish guy, but after 18 years, it's okay to reevaluate our commitment in Afghanistan.
It makes perfect sense to me.
That to me is the voice of wisdom.
That to me, Lindsey Graham is the voice of wisdom.
He wants certain effects.
He wants certain results.
And so Trump is the guy in office, and he's doing things differently.
He's doing things differently.
He wants to negotiate with guys that Lindsey Graham would traditionally not want to negotiate with.
But he says, okay, if you get what we want, then fine.
That's the way it's going to be.
And there's no one else in the Oval Office.
There's no other president to be dealing with.
So he's dealing with the facts on the ground.
Differing Approaches00:14:49
Bolton, a little harder to do, but Bolton really is a hawk.
I mean, he really is.
And, you know, he's a guy.
You know, he got in an argument with Tucker Carlson a while back, and Carlson doesn't want to intervene in anything.
Carlson really is kind of an isolationist.
And Tucker would say, you know, you get rid of Saddam Hussein, you go in and you get rid of Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein is a bad guy, but now Iran, also a bad country, has all this power.
And Bolton would, you know, Bolton's like the old Beach Boy song.
Remember the Beach Boy song, Bomb, Iran?
That's like what Bolton's idea was.
He would just blow Iran out or send Israel in to blow Iran's nuclear facilities to pieces.
And that always resonates with people, especially conservatives.
They say, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the thing is, you know, there's wisdom on Tucker's side, too.
What he's saying is these are awful places where if there's a balance of power and one awful guy is balancing off another awful guy and Iran and Iraq are fighting, don't intervene.
If your enemies are killing each other, don't interrupt.
And that's the kind of wisdom that Bolton doesn't believe in.
Bolton believes that we have to go out and pre-handle the problems.
I got to say, so this is Rand Paul, Rand Paul, who is very much on the Tucker Carlson side.
He came out and he's thrilled that Bolton is gone.
You know, I think the threat of war around the world is greatly diminished with Bolton out of the White House.
I think he had a naive point of view for the world that we should topple regimes everywhere and institute democratic governments and we would make the world perfect or remake the world in our image.
And frankly, it just doesn't work that way.
There's a lot of history of getting rid of strong men in the Middle East and having them replaced by vacuums or chaos or actually making the place more hospitable for terrorist training.
So I think his idea that the way you deal with Iran is you just topple the government or the way you deal with North Korea is you topple the government really wasn't what the president's been talking about.
The president's actually talking about not having regime change and finding a diplomatic solution to some of these conflicts around the world.
And I think the president deserves to have somebody who's his national security advisor who actually will try to further his policy and not try to styme you.
Now, I just want to say that, again, these are big boy questions.
It's not like, oh, one guy knows the answer and the other guy doesn't know the answer.
They're dealing with what happens if I do this, right?
Which is always murky because you do not know which way the dominoes are going to fall.
You don't know what's going to happen and there's going to be chance and things that come in that you can't foresee.
And so nobody knows the answers to these.
And these are big boy questions that big boys have to sit down and talk about, right?
And that's why you have people, reasonable people, John Bolton, Mike Bompeo, Rand Paul, intelligent, reasonable people who care about the country disagreeing.
That's not a crime.
Compare it to the governance we had for eight years during the Obama administration when he is dealing with Iran as if Iran is suddenly going to start growing flowers instead of nuclear weapons because he treats them with respect.
I mean that is a kind of childish lack of knowledge of evil, a lack of knowledge of the world.
And you could see, you could see the Middle East catch fire under Obama.
If you just put a little flame on a map of the Middle East where there is trouble and violence during the Obama administration, that flame, the map would have been covered in flame.
Now, not so.
And so that's important.
It's important that big boys are having big boy conversations about this stuff, and that makes a big, big difference.
My personal feeling is that Lindsey Graham has got it just right.
I've always thought Rand Paul is a little too much of an isolationist.
Things do go wrong.
You do have to stop a Hitler before he spreads throughout Europe.
You do have to sometimes go into a country before trouble starts.
It's not pleasant.
It's unhappy.
You risk other people's sons, which is a terrible, terrible thing to do.
But sometimes you've got to do it.
It's just realistic.
But I think that Lindsey Graham, to me, is the voice of wisdom.
Trump is the guy in there.
Trump has a plan.
Trump believes in personal negotiation.
He does listen to the wisdom of other people.
It's not that he doesn't listen.
And so you just hope that Trump, while saying absurdly ridiculous things about Kim Jong-un and driving us crazy when he does that, maybe will actually be able to make the kind of deal that he talks about and get Kim Jong-un to close down his program.
That's what you're hoping for.
That's what Lindsey Graham is hoping for.
That's what we're all hoping for, except the press, who has just got his head up at Swazoo and is just hoping that Trump falls off of the edge of the world.
However, it's just important that people are having these kinds of conversations instead of the conversations they have on CNN, instead of the conversations they had in the Obama administration.
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All right, we're going to stop there because the mailbag is coming up.
But again, I think that, you know, these guys are going to come and go.
It's going to be this way in the Trump administration.
We all got to look at the results and we all got to judge Trump on the results because he's a hard guy to deal with in the day-to-day.
come over to dailywire.com and subscribe so next week you can have your question in the mailbag and have all your problems solved as well.
Mailbag.
Mailbag.
Yeah!
That's like, it's like the one.
It's the one thing they do all week.
They sit back there, Austin eastbag, you know, I don't know what else he's doing.
It's like this one thing.
At least he's being busy.
All right, from Brian.
Hi, Andrew.
I love your show and I'm a huge fan of your daily analysis and content.
My question is this.
I'm a youth leader at my church and I help lead a high school boys small group.
The other day I saw one of my students post on his Instagram a video made by the Young Turks and he wrote about how Trump is 100% responsible for the deaths of the immigrants killed in the El Paso Walmart shooting earlier in August.
As a Christian, how should I handle this?
Is this something that I should talk to the student about or should I just let it go?
You should just let it go.
It's none of your business.
The guy kid has a right to his political opinions.
He's a high school kid.
They're going to be stupid political opinions almost by definition.
You can preach your values and you can talk about the faith and hear and especially listen to people.
That's the most important thing you can do is listen to kids, hear what their problems are and what they're thinking about.
But no, you shouldn't interfere with his personal politics.
It may be the politics of his family.
And you shouldn't get in between that at all.
From McKenzie, dear Andrew, I'm 24 and am currently in a high-intensity academic program.
I feel that I'm struggling with perfectionism.
I feel lots of pressure to be the best performer no matter what and feel inexplicable and inordinate shame when I'm able to outperform everyone else.
It gets so bad that I find myself resenting the success of others when they beat me.
I know logically that this is not the correct response, but some deep down part of me drives this emotion and I'm having a lot of trouble coping with it and convincing myself that finishing anything less than first place is acceptable.
My life motto right now seems to be to quote Ricky Robbie, if you ain't first, you're last.
Thank you in advance for any advice on coping with this feeling.
I love your show and cannot get enough of your wonderful humor.
Okay, Mackenzie, I got a couple of things to say here.
First of all, obviously what you have is too much of a good thing.
It's fine to be competitive.
It's fine to want to be excellent.
It's fine to dedicate yourself to excellence.
But in fact, the top shelf is infinite.
As long as there are great people, there's always going to be a place for them on the top shelf so you're not actually in competition with other people.
I know it feels that way.
I know we all feel competitive.
We all have competitive feelings, but your drive toward excellence is fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.
You have too much of a good thing.
Now, there are philosophical ways to deal with this, okay?
Philosophically, the way you deal with this is you sit down and you ask yourself, maybe write down what it is you personally are trying to achieve so you have something to measure yourself against.
If you're trying to achieve, I'm just making this up, but if you're trying to get 100% on your test and somebody else gets 101%, you have achieved what you're trying to achieve.
You don't have to worry about that other person.
If you're being excellent, you don't have to worry that somebody else is excellent.
And when you're talking about academics, it's not going to be an exact judgment anyway.
So, you know, there's not, you can't exactly compare things.
A lot of people who got lesser grades do more great things out in the world.
So obviously you want to hone down your goals and focus on your goals, not focus on what other people are doing and who to compete with.
A lot of competition is, what's the word, random.
It just happens to be like you feel competitive with your siblings.
They just happen to be your siblings.
There's no reason to feel competitive with them.
Okay, that's the first thing.
But the other thing is, you said this is something deep down.
You said this yourself, and I'm sure that's true.
People have these kinds of problems when there's something that's gone wrong inside their psyche and it's buried there.
Maybe it's something your dad told you, your mom told you.
Maybe it's the way you grew up among your siblings.
I don't know what it is.
If you want to, you can try and deal with this through spiritual type methods like meditation, yoga, stuff that takes you away and helps you relax.
But you should also probably talk to a counselor because these things get wedged in.
They're like little knots in your system, you know, little knot.
And a good counselor, a trained therapist can just untie that knot and make it go away.
And then you can deal with it through breathing and through yoga and all the other things.
So don't be afraid to get some counseling on this.
It does sound to me like you have a problem.
The fact that you're writing to me tells me that you have a problem.
It's not just a drive toward excellence.
It's a, you know, even, look, even a coach, a football player, these guys who break their bodies trying to be excellent and trying to win, they know that sometimes you lose.
And they know that they got to deal with that and leave it behind and go on to the next game.
You see them after every game, they come on and say, I got to leave it behind and go to the next game.
That's something you have to learn to do.
The fact that you can't do that, that's a psychological problem.
And you should probably see if you can find out where that comes from with a counselor or through a spiritual practice or something like that.
Because like I said, the drive toward excellence isn't bad, but something has gone wrong in the machinery.
There's a glitch in the machinery and you need to fix it.
From Andrew, dearest sire of satire, do you think men and women relate to or interact with or interpret stories differently?
Oh boy, do they.
If so, why do you think that might be?
And how do you take that into account when writing?
A basic example would be the way I, a man, am salivating over the release of Rambo Last Blood while my wife is simultaneously in a state of euphoric anticipation over the new Downton Abbey movie.
I mean, that is very typical.
I also remember early in my teaching career, seventh and eighth graders, noticing that generally boys would only have interest in a story with a male protagonist, while girls would find interest in a story with either a male or female protagonist.
Thanks for your wisdom.
You are the veteran locker room presence that makes the Daily Wire the contender it is.
Yeah, I mean, I've been dealing with this all my life.
I'm a professional novelist, screenwriter, and you write stories.
And one of the problems I've had as a career problem is that I write stories that delve into things that women are interested in, namely character.
Women are interested in character, inner lives, emotions.
Men are interested in actions and objects.
It's just the way we're built.
That's what we're honed to do.
It's like I was talking at the opening about 9-11.
I was talking about the fact that women are built, made to nurture children, to understand emotions.
Men are made to build things and construct things.
And so we deal with different stories that help us, that enrich our lives.
I mean, men love stories that have all these facts in them.
I have to be honest, I can't stand them.
You'll read a thriller and it'll tell you how to take a Jeep apart and turn it into an airplane.
And guys like love that.
I don't want to know that.
I want to see people interact more in the female fashion, although women's stories drive me insane.
I got to tell you one hilarious story.
I've told this before, but it's worth telling.
I worked for Sally Field on a movie project once.
Lovely, lovely lady.
And we sat and had lunch and we talked about how the story should go.
And then I thought, well, she got a new movie out.
It was called Steel Magnolias.
And it was this weepy about a hair salon or something like this.
So I thought, I better go see, you know, Sally, I'm working for her.
I got to go see her new movie.
So I went and saw Steel Magnolias in a multiplex.
And next door, Glory, one of the really terrific war movies of that time, was playing on the other screen.
It was so painful to me to watch Steel Magnolia.
I actually ended up with my ear, so help me, pressed to the wall so I could listen to glory while I was doing my due diligence and watching steel magnolia.
Men and women are very different.
There are two different kinds of people, only two, men and women.
Those are the different kinds of people, and they relate to stories because stories teach us about our inner lives and about the way we experience in the world.
And so men want stories more that deal with their manhood and help them deal with the things that men like, and women want stories that help them deal and experience and learn about the things that they like.
It's perfectly natural.
Guys like me who are artists who have that creative thing, which is a little bit more, gives you kind of what they call an anima, a feminine side.
I like to hear stories that also deal with human nature because human nature fascinates me.
So that is it.
We are given stories to tell us how to do the thing that we are supposed to do in our gender.
From Caleb, dear wise sage and master of the known universe and the unknown universe.
I have been thinking more and more about reuniting with my biological father lately.
I haven't spoken with or seen him in over 20 years since the divorce as it has happened as a part being in the military.
I am now stationed in the same city as my biological father.
As a believer, I don't believe in coincidences.
I've talked with my mom and dad.
He's my stepdad, but I call my dad.
They have given me their support regardless of which way I decide.
I'm on the fence myself, but I'm starting to feel more and more like I should go meet him.
However, I don't want to come off on the wrong foot and drive a wedge between us even before I start.
I've forgiven him and left all that baggage at the throne of God.
Reuniting with My Father00:07:24
Is it even a good idea to do this?
And if so, what would be a good way to slowly reunite?
Yours in service, Caleb.
P.S.
To end on a lighter note, I've got to ask, what's your favorite whiskey?
Mine is Glenn Scotia.
Mine is McAllen 12.
I love the McAllen 12.
The older ones I know are supposed to be finer, but I love the smooth quality of McAllen 12.
I drink it all the time and probably should drink a lot less of it, but it is great.
All right.
So, you know, there's nothing wrong with your going to see your biological father.
And, you know, I think if you feel a pull to do it, you should do it.
I have to tell you that as I read your letter, certain things kind of lit up and gave me warning signs about what you're expecting from this.
You talk about reuniting with him.
You talk about not getting off on the wrong foot with him.
That tells me that you have expectations and daydreams about what's going to come from this.
You're not reuniting with the guy.
You're going to see him.
You're going to meet him.
It's a meeting.
You know, it's just a meeting between two men.
It's a man-to-man meeting.
He is not going to supply something that's missing from your life.
He's not going to give you the relationship with him you never had.
It's not going to be reuniting.
It's just going to be meeting.
Now, you may like the guy.
He may have, you know, every story has two sides.
He may tell you things about his breakup with your mom that make you see things in a different light that may be helpful to you.
He may be a jerk.
He may be a jerk and you may think, you know what?
I went, I saw him, I did it.
I'm not going to do it.
The most important thing here is you.
The most important thing is you being you.
I mean, you're obviously a great guy.
You're serving your country and we thank you for that.
That's a wonderful thing that you're doing.
I want to take care of you.
I want you to take care of you.
So go ahead and meet him, but just don't expect too much.
It's just a meeting with a guy who is of interest in your life.
I understand that.
But the most important thing is you.
Your stepdad obviously did a great job, and he is your dad, and he's always going to be your dad.
This is not going to supply you with something that you don't have.
But it might be interesting to you.
It might give you a good relationship with the guy you want to know, or it might not.
If it doesn't, get out.
Don't look for something you can't get.
If it's not going to be there, don't tell yourself it's going to be there.
A guy left once, he could leave again.
Don't expect too much.
That's the only thing I would say.
There's absolutely no reason not to do it.
But in that letter, I heard some warning signs that you might want to watch out for.
Don't expect too much.
From Adam, Senior Claven, I am 35 years old and can remember growing up in the 90s and early aughts before everything in pop culture and sports was overrun by politics and identity politics.
question.
Do you think there's any chance at all that the culture can return to normal in the next few decades?
Or will the patterns of the last decade or so continue with every TV show, movie, and sport becoming super political?
And just how bad can it get before it's untenable?
It can get bad, but yeah, it'll change.
Things always go back in different ways.
They don't go back to the way they were.
Nothing ever goes back.
That's why I always hate it when people say, well, the pendulum will swing back.
That's not the way it works.
Every change is a change, and you can't go back completely.
I've been saying for a long time, I think an era is coming that will be in some ways reminiscent of the Victorian era.
I think we will be sexually less free in good ways.
I think there'll be a lot more sexual morality.
I think that because the other way doesn't work, I think there'll be a revival.
I think God will become acceptable in polite society again.
I think that there'll be a lot of things that remind us of that.
And I think that's a good thing.
The Victorian age was a really interesting time for liberalizing time and a conservative time at the same time.
And it was a time when Britain expanded its empire, which was, I think, a good thing for the world overall.
So yeah, things change tremendously.
I mean, look at it this way.
The culture is so different now from the culture when I was a kid.
It's going to be so different when you're my age from the way it was when you were a kid.
It just, there's a lot of change, sometimes more change than you could possibly ever expect or imagine.
Those are my sense of where things are going.
And I have an amazing way of being right about these things.
But I may be wrong.
It may change in other ways and in far different ways.
Obviously, expect the unexpected because you can be sure that will happen.
From Brad, Sage of Dear Andrew, Sage of the Multiverse.
When Jesus said in Matthew, you have heard the commandment that says you must not commit adultery, but I say anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your eye, even your good eye, causes you to lust, gouge it out, and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown to hell.
Is this just about men's lustful thoughts?
Where do you see the line between the thought and the act?
Is there any credit for restraint from acting on the thought, after all, I didn't do anything to the woman, I didn't steal the car.
I have a lot of thoughts that would be a sin if I acted on them.
If the angel on my right shoulder sways me more than the devil on my left shoulder, is it still sinful?
Thanks for all you do.
Great question, but I think you've got to reread what Jesus is saying.
Jesus says essentially that, as you say, as you quote, that if you have lustful thoughts of a woman, about a woman, you have essentially committed adultery in your heart.
He says, if you're angry at a friend, if you're angry at another man, that's like murder.
Now, obviously, if you took that literally, it would be untrue.
That would be untrue.
It is not the same to have lustful thoughts as to have adultery.
And Jesus is speaking the truth, we know.
So what is he saying, right?
What he's telling you is that it's a good thing, obviously, that you are a trustworthy person, that you don't commit adultery.
But God knows what you really are.
And what you really are is a sinful, broken object, right?
You are a partaker of original sin.
You are a partaker of human sin.
That is what he's telling you.
And it's not that you shouldn't behave in the right way.
It's not that you shouldn't get rid of the things in your life, the eye that sees evil.
It's not that you shouldn't try and get that out of your life.
Of course you should, but you're still going to be this sinful person.
You are not saving yourself.
You are not purifying yourself.
You don't get the credit.
The credit goes to God.
The grace goes to God.
The action was taken by God on the cross.
That's what he's telling you.
He's telling you, I am here doing a thing.
Jesus is saying, quote, I am here doing a thing.
It is not about you.
It is about me.
And if you let me live in you, if you let me live in your life, you're going to have a better life than if you live in this life of brokenness and sin.
That's what he's telling you.
It's not like you're supposed to feel guilty every time you lust after a woman.
That's absurd.
I mean, all that Overdone guilt is from our other friend, the enemy, the guy on the other side who is called Satan.
He's called the accuser.
That voice that's accusing you in your head, that's the voice of the enemy.
The voice of your friend of Jesus is saying to you, you're forgiven.
I know what you are.
I know what you are.
I know, you know, you think you're not committing adultery, so now you're a good guy, but I know what you really are, and you're forgiven.
That's the guy who's forgiven.
The guy who's forgiven is not the guy you show out in public.
The guy who's forgiven is not the guy you show to your wife.
The guy who's forgiven is not the guy you show to your friends.
It's the guy you really know, that squirrely, messed up little guy.
That's the guy that's forgiven.
That's the guy that's washed clean.
And that's what he's telling you.
He's not telling you morally their equipment.
It's a lust is equivalent to adultery.
He's not telling you that.
He's telling you your nature remains what it is.
And that's what he's doing this for.
That's why he's here.
So it's actually supposed to be alleviating.
It's not supposed to make you feel worse.
It's supposed to make you feel better.
It's supposed to let you off the hook.
There's nothing for you to do.
It's been done for you.
All right.
From Luke.
App and Independence00:02:21
I am 18 years old and male.
I just started attending college in Florida.
All throughout high school, my parents kept an app on my phone that tracked my location and driving speed.
I assumed that when I went to college, they'd take it off.
That didn't happen.
My mother and I thought over whether or not I would delete the app.
I love my mother dearly and would like nothing more than to give her peace of mind, but this seems like going too far.
I don't want to disobey my parents, but I feel like I should draw the line.
If I do remove the tracker, I will have to start paying my own insurance, which is doable, but seems like an unnecessary expense.
What is your advice on how I should move forward?
Sincerely, Luke, hashtag came for Ben, stayed for Clavin.
All wise men came from.
No.
Okay.
You have a choice to make.
If it were I making this choice, I would pay the insurance and get rid of the app.
Your mom loves you.
Your mom is just trying to take care of you, watch out for you.
This is a transition period.
And when she lets you go a little bit and you go off to college, that's hard for moms.
That's a really hard thing.
So, you know, she's not being mean or terrible.
She's just making the adjustment too.
She's trying to let you go, but maybe holding on a little bit too because she's worried about you.
Okay.
I think I'm kind of naturally on your side, but think it through.
If you think it's worth it, pay the insurance, get rid of the app.
If it doesn't bother you that much, then let her have a little bit of peace of mind and just keep and just keep the app in there.
I, because I'm a very independent person, because it's very important to me to be free, I would take out the app and pay the insurance.
It's perfectly fine for her to make you pay the insurance.
I mean, she's making a requirement because she's paying the money.
You pay the piper, you get to call the tune.
But if you're willing to take on that insurance, take it on and take off the app.
If you're not, don't.
I mean, it's your call.
How much is your independence at this moment worth to you?
Because at some point, obviously, the app will go.
At some point, you'll pay all your own bills.
You'll make your own way, and then you'll be free.
But if you want that to happen today, then you got to pay the price.
It's that simple.
It's up to you how important that independence is.
I'm out of time.
All right.
I'm not on tomorrow, right?
No, I'm traveling tomorrow to New York, but I will be on Friday right after the Democratic debate.
So I'll be on Friday talking about the Democrat debate.
I'll be talking from New York, which will make me much smarter or just give me a funny accent, one or the other.
Friday Debate Insights00:01:06
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'll see you on Friday.
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