Andrew Clavin dissects Gretchen Whitmer’s leaked, discarded speech mocking Trump supporters’ fears—unemployment, terrorism, corruption—while Trump’s State of the Union touted 7M new jobs and historic poverty drops. He frames Trump’s policies as reversing "deaths by despair" in Rust Belt regions, dismissing leftist welfare proposals as "infantilizing paternalism." The episode mocks AOC’s reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s Medal of Freedom, critiques Buttigieg’s voter backlash, and warns socialism faces broad opposition. Mailbag debates Jesus’ cosmic teachings vs. human limitations, abortion laws’ impracticality, and marriage dynamics, ending with a clash between Trump’s America and Democratic socialist visions. [Automatically generated summary]
Some people who watched the Democrat response to the President's State of the Union address last night said it was a ridiculous attempt to reinvigorate failed policies with empty rhetoric.
Other people said it was powerful and intelligent because they didn't want anyone to find out they were actually watching the Fantastic Four on AMC when they're clearly too old to enjoy movies with characters named Mr. Fantastic and Victor Von Doom.
But what you may not realize and wouldn't care about if you did is that the speech that was delivered was actually a second draft that was hurriedly assembled after a first version was thrown away.
The Daily Wire has exclusively plucked that first version from a flaming dumpster.
It reads in part, quote, Hi, everyone.
Many of you are probably looking at me right now and thinking, wow, she's pretty hot for a governor of Michigan, and I agree.
But you might still wonder, what can she have to say in defense of Democrat policies when President Trump has restored the job market, boosted the stock market, killed some major terrorists, and signed some new trade deals just since January.
Well, it's a good question, and the truth is, I really got screwed when they gave me this thankless task.
But is having a good job anywhere near as important as ensuring that a transgender woman can be called by the right pronoun in the few years he has left before he kills himself?
And sure, before Donald Trump took office, some of you may have been unemployed to the point of despair and addiction, but could you really understand your white privilege without a Democrat president constantly explaining it to you?
And yes, Trump has restored the military and shored up our borders, but does that make up for the fact that he wanted Ukraine to investigate the unbridled corruption of one of our incredibly boring candidates?
It was at this point apparently the speechwriter was fired for some reason.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky-dunky, life is tickety boo.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunky-dee-doo.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hoorah!
Well, that was an amazing State of the Union speech, mostly because the State of the Union is amazing.
Just this January, Trump and America have had more major triumphs economically, militarily, and politically than I can remember ever being packed into a single month before.
And there was lots of Trumpian showmanship and weepy drama, all of which was great.
But buried deep in the speech was one upbeat statistic that maybe moved me more than anything else.
That's the fact that American deaths by despair, by drugs, and alcohol and suicide have dropped for the first time in three years.
The fall in American life expectancy due to those deaths by despair was for me an inarguable rebuke to the leaders and elites of the Obama years.
The drop in life expectancy was peculiar to America among the first-tier countries, and it was centered in the industrial Midwest, central Appalachia, and northern New England, all the places where jobs were disappearing due to globalization.
Those were the jobs President Obama told us were not coming back, the ones he said Trump would need a magic wand to resurrect, which tells us several things.
Our elites were so trapped in their self-serving theories, they forgot to look at the actual results of their actions.
No one knew this epidemic of despair was going on until researchers stumbled on it.
They were so confident they were the best and the brightest, they forgot to question themselves, and they were so enamored of their own elitism, they turned their backs on ordinary people whom they find deplorable, let's face it.
But even more important is this.
All these leftists, Bernie and Warren and Biden, all of them, every one of them, they talk endlessly about giving people health care, giving them welfare, giving them guaranteed incomes, but they don't understand the things that matter.
Meaning, purpose, the dignity of work and self-reliance, things the government can't give but can only protect.
The left's infantilizing paternalism is bad for our health, both physical and mental.
Why Elitism Fails00:14:54
It's founded on a misguided idea of life that elevates material goods and material pleasures, sex and money basically, above the true goods and true pleasures, love and meaningful work that make life worth living.
It's not up to them to take care of us.
It's up to them to stop taxing and demonizing and destroying the means and methods by which we take care of ourselves.
Governments are instituted among men to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That's in our Declaration of Independence.
Those three rights depend on one another.
Without life, our other rights are worthless.
And without liberty and happiness, we will end our lives.
The politicians forgot to take care of basic business.
It's the businessman who is teaching them what politics is all about.
And we'll talk about the State of the Union and other stuff in just a sec.
But first, let's talk about teeth.
Because I know you look at me, you think, God, that guy, what is it about that guy?
It's my smile.
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You keep saying clavin, but how do you spell clavin?
There are no.
It's k-l-a-b-n-you know, everybody's talking about Nancy Pelosi tearing up the speech.
When Trump finished the speech, she angrily tore it up and, you know, because she looked disgusted the whole time.
She looked like she was sitting on something uncomfortable the entire time.
And then she tore it up and she told reporters, well, that was the politest thing I could do, making me wonder.
But, you know, this is a good Trumpian move.
This is a brilliant move.
This is what everybody's talking about because people are dopey.
You know, they get angry and then they start talking about the thing and they don't realize that's why she did it.
She did it to take attention away from the fact that Trump was delivering this incredible victory speech, the speech while the Democrats were messing up their caucus in Iowa, while the impeachment thing was swirling down the drain.
Trump didn't even mention, he didn't even mention impeachment.
He just made them look teeny tiny.
But even though it was a good move for drawing attention away, what did it draw attention to?
It drew attention to just how teensy tiny the Democrats have become.
I'm tearing up your speech.
I'm tearing it up.
I'm going to tear it up.
I know it said that people were doing well, but I'm tearing it up.
And meanwhile, Trump was actually delivering a true vision for the country.
Let's start.
Let's start with the end of the speech where he talked about what this nation is.
Let's talk about cut.
Gee, that's a long.
Let's try cut 21.
This nation is our canvas, and this country is our masterpiece.
We look at tomorrow and see unlimited frontiers just waiting to be explored.
Our brightest discoveries are not yet known.
Our most thrilling stories are not yet told.
Our grandest journeys are not yet made.
The American age, the American epic, the American adventure has only just begun.
Our spirit is still young.
The sun is still rising.
God's grace is still shining.
And my fellow Americans, the best is yet to come.
Now that was the end of the speech where he was giving you a vision of America.
And this is where it blows after he says that, well, he tears up the speech.
I don't care if the best is yet to come.
But you can't miss, you cannot miss the fact that he was delivering a vision of America, talking about all the great men and women who have made this country what it is.
Talking about Thomas Edison, talking about Martin Luther King, talking about all the people who made this country what it is, because the country is in motion.
The way the Democrats work is they remove the element of time, the dimension of time, from everything they say.
So any sin that was ever committed is still there.
And they don't talk about the movement into our great idea, what Martin Luther King said, living out the meaning of our creed.
And that was what Donald Trump was talking about.
And when he talked about that, he never mentioned impeachment.
And I thought that was brilliant.
The New York Times, see, they're smart, the New York Times.
They know what's going on.
Their headline said, he never mentioned impeachment, but it was all about impeachment.
He never mentioned it because it's teeny, tiny little Democrats going, you called the Ukraine threat.
It's like Gulliver in Lilliput, you know, throwing things at his ankles.
You know, there's a pebble on your ankle.
I don't care if you fix the economy.
I'm hitting you in the ankle with this pebble as hard as I can.
He just turned them into midgets.
How dare you?
You know, he turned them into midgets.
He didn't even mention it.
And this vision of America as being in motion into the heart of its great idea, in living out the meaning of its creed, moving from the places where everybody was imperialist to where we're not imperialist, where everybody was racist to where we Americans are a multicultural, multi-ethnic country.
All of that, showing us that that movement is still going on and he has become part of it.
That's a rebuke to the New York Times and their 1619 project.
That makes them look like, you used to hold slaves 200 years ago and we're going to hit you in the ankle.
That is a rebuke to Bernie Sanders and his everything is unfair and all these people are rich and I'm not.
And he is, but you're not.
You know, the politics of envy.
This is a rebuke to all the Democrat vision, the Democrat vision of this country as a bad, bad thing.
And some of the Democrats are beginning to catch on.
And we're going to talk about that too coming up because that is an important aspect of what Trump was doing.
So let's take a little bit and get into this.
As I was watching this, because you know me, I'm always thinking about romantic poetry, I was thinking about a letter that John Keats, the great poet John Keats, wrote to his fellow great poet, who he didn't like very much, Percy Shelley.
And he was criticizing some of Shelley's writing, and he told him to load every rift of your subject with ore.
In other words, don't just say pretty things.
Don't just use rhetoric.
Don't just be flowery.
Every word should describe something, should be real.
This is advice.
I read that when I was a kid, and it's advice I've always followed in my writing.
Make sure that you are just packed with action.
Make sure you're describing something happening, something with meaning.
Even your descriptions of things should have meaning.
They should be packed with meaning.
That's what Trump did.
The first, I don't know, maybe 40 minutes of a very long speech was just all, all facts.
So let's talk about that.
Let's play cut number three.
This is just devastating to the Democrats.
Since my election, we have created 7 million new jobs, 5 million more than government experts projected during the previous administration.
The unemployment rate is the lowest in over half a century.
And very incredibly, the average unemployment rate under my administration is lower than any administration in the history of our country.
If we hadn't reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success.
The unemployment rate for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans has reached the lowest levels in history.
African American youth unemployment has reached an all-time low.
African American poverty has declined to the lowest rate ever recorded.
That's what Nancy Pelosi is tearing up.
See, you can't make that speech until you've done that stuff.
This is the thing.
That's not a speech you can just make.
You can use all kinds of rhetoric, all kinds of flowery statements.
I don't know if you remember what Obama would make, a State of the Union.
They used to cut them together.
Conservatives would cut all his State of the Union speeches together because they were all the same.
They were all rhetoric.
They were all rhetoric because the things that he was doing weren't working and he wouldn't change.
But that was as if, I mean, there was like an invisible man standing behind Trump hitting Nancy Pelosi over the head with a mallet every time he's deliberately.
He's become a crazed lunatic.
Well, no wonder.
No wonder she became a crazed lunatic.
Every time he was like, another fact, another thing I've done.
You can't make that speech until you've done it.
So everybody talks about his showmanship, and his showmanship is great.
The wife reunited with her military husband, Jody Jones, the guy whose brother was murdered by an illegal alien in a sanctuary state in California.
It was here.
Trump's going to back a bill allowing people to sue sanctuary states and the little girl who survived a premature birth, just talking about the fact that life is viable so much earlier now.
A rebuke about, there's a wonderful line where he said, Democrats and Republicans all agree that life is an important magical thing.
Yeah, not so much, not so much.
But it was always, always to me the facts that got, that really reached me and the fact that those things were in the context of the failure of Obama.
Let's play cut number two.
In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline and we have rejected the downsizing of Americans' destiny.
We have totally rejected the downsizing.
We're moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago and we are never ever going back.
I am thrilled to report to you tonight that our economy is the best it has ever been.
Our military is completely rebuilt with its power being unmatched anywhere in the world and it's not even close.
Our borders are secure.
Our families are flourishing.
Our values are renewed.
Our pride is restored.
And for all of these reasons, I say to the people of our great country and to the members of Congress, the state of our union is stronger than ever before.
That is just brilliant stuff.
I mean, again, you can't make that speech until you've done that stuff.
And he puts it in the context of the fact that Obama and his experts and his wise leftists left this country in the lurch.
You remember when he made his inaugural address and he talked about American carnage?
Everybody said, oh, that's very, that's very dark.
That is very, oh my, that's dark.
Well, it was true.
It was true.
The suicides, the deaths by despair were proof that he was right.
They didn't care about those people because they deplore them.
And they didn't care about the facts because they had their theories.
You know, that is classic leftism.
Yes, you know, it works in fact, but will it work in theory?
That's the important thing.
And their theories were just no good.
Great moment and a really important moment going back to this idea of vision was the moment when he introduced the little boy who wants to be in Space Force.
This was great.
And then introduced his great-grandfather, who was one of the Tuskegee airmen.
And we had one of the Tuskegee airmen on the show.
You know, they're heroes of mine because I learned to fly and I followed the history of flight.
And it was just a very moving story of these black guys fighting for a country that was still quite racist, that still had embedded institutional racism, and yet they went out and fought for it.
And in doing so, they not only took out the Nazis, they also made our country better.
It's just an incredibly moving experience.
And he drew the right message from that introduction.
Obviously, the great stuff was the visuals and the showmanship, but I got to play the part where he then reacted to this as cut number six.
From the Pilgrims to the founders, from the soldiers at Valley Forge to the marchers at Selma, and from President Lincoln to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Americans have always rejected limits on our children's future.
Members of Congress, we must never forget that the only victories that matter in Washington are victories that deliver for the American people.
The people are the heart of our country.
Their dreams are the soul of our country.
And their love is what powers and sustains our country.
We must always remember that our job is to put America first.
And that is for that's, see, that is a beautiful passage because it's got two things going on there.
One is he's just introduced this great-grandson of one of the African-American Tuskegee airmen.
And so he's showing you that we live in time, we live in this movement into the heart of our idea.
We don't live in slavery days.
We don't live in the things that the sins that not just we committed, but all the world committed.
We don't live in that.
We live in the fact that we move forward according to our ideas, right?
So when he talks about the, he's talking about the movement, he's talking about all the great people who have moved things forward because they cared about the people.
And who is he talking to?
When he says that, he is talking to the guys in the Senate, impeaching him.
You know, he's talking to them, wasting their time on this stuff.
And again, it makes them look like Liliputians.
It makes them look like little tiny people running around doing little tiny stuff while he is moving the country forward.
And, you know, I'm going to get into not just the Democrat reaction and the press reaction, which is the same thing, but also what they think the people are thinking.
What do they think the people think?
You know, yeah, but yeah, I do have a job and I do have my dignity and I'm not addicted to opioids anymore and my kids aren't killing themselves.
But the Ukraine, you know, it's that Ukraine.
I'm really worried about Ukraine.
Finally, I got to mention the Rush Lindbaugh thing.
He introduced Rush and he gave him, had Melania put the Medal of Freedom on the highest civilian honor you can get.
And this was incredibly moving to me personally.
And what I thought of there was a quote that moved me as a little kid by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
If the single man plants himself indomitably on his instincts and there abides, this huge world will come around to him.
And that's what Trump, Trump, that's what Rush represents to me.
I think it's what he represents to a lot of people.
Rush Limbaugh's Influence00:10:48
This is a guy who was just, they laughed at him, they attacked him, they demonized him.
They're still demonizing him, still laughing at him, still attacking him.
But the great world has moved around to him.
And in the same way, William F. Buckley paved the way for Ronald Reagan.
I think Rush paved the way for Donald Trump and has a lot to do with this administration and this success.
A lot of it, a lot of it can be traced right back to him and his ideas, the ideas that were demonized.
It was a beautiful, beautiful moment.
I was really thrilled to see it.
So let's take a look at our friends, pardon me, our friends, the Democrats.
I couldn't even find an interesting cut from the response, the Democrat response from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
That's always a thankless task, but she started out.
She said, I'm not going to address what he said.
And I thought, well, then what are you going to address?
And then she was literally talking about potholes.
She was talking about the fact that she has filled up some of the potholes in her state.
They were so bad before.
And I just thought like, yeah, I don't think so.
She was trying to make a point about infrastructure, but that's the whole thing.
Trump has done the things that he said he was going to do, and that is it.
And then you had the Democrats, these tiny, teensy, tiny little Democrats, throwing their little pebbles at Trump's ankles as he went thundering by.
Chief among them was Alexandria Casional Cortex, who made such a powerful statement by not showing up.
Meanwhile, Ilan Omar and Rashida Talib are texting and giggling like a pair of little girls.
They're texting and giggling during the whole thing.
And that was genuinely rude.
I mean, that was genuinely rude.
made and grown right here in the USA.
At least AOC had the, at least.
Yeah, at least AOC had the good sense not to show up.
But then she put out on, I guess it was Instagram, she put out one of her little videos.
And let's play the one of her reacting to Rush getting the medal.
13.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an extraordinarily sacred award.
We're talking about putting someone on the same level as Rosa Parks, you know, for example, in terms of their contributions to American progress.
Rush Limbaugh is a violent racist.
But even just on top of that, to do it in the middle of a state of the union and not even dignify it with its own ceremony as it has, there's all sorts of norms that are being violated, not just for people's humanity, but also it truly just cheapens the value of it.
Also, him pretending to be surprised was such a joke.
This has been news all day.
There have been multiple reports from multiple news outlets saying that Rush Limbaugh was going to receive the Medal of Freedom.
And then Trump announced it and he had to like, you know, pretend that this was some kind of Oprah moment was so disingenuous.
you?
What's wrong?
What's wrong with you?
I mean, you want to talk about teensy tiny.
This This is a guy, obviously, he's got stage four lung cancer.
So, you know, doing it in the union was good showmanship, doing it during the State of the Union was good showmanship, but also you want to use the time.
You've got also Rush is deaf.
He has got one of those implants, probably couldn't hear a lot of what was going on.
You know, this is what she's worried about.
And finally, this thing about Rush being a racist.
AOC, I will bet every penny I have that AOC has never listened to Rush Limbaugh's show.
Rush Limbaugh is not a racist.
They always have this one joke that he made to an African-American caller a long time ago.
It was a joke that he made.
It was a little rough joke.
But joking with people is not racism.
And that's the only thing they've got after all this time because they never listened to him.
Let's listen to James Carville, right?
Because the old Democrat political hands are looking at Iowa.
The results are coming in from Iowa, and Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders are in the lead.
And probably that probably has to do with why the results are coming in so slowly.
Like they got something like 62%.
I still don't think they've got them all in.
So they're kind of holding back the news that Bernie Sanders really won this thing and Pete Buttigieg.
Here's James Carville reacting to that.
The press corps went AOC crazy.
We got to decide what we want to be.
Do we want to be an ideological cult or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party?
The urban core is not going to get it done.
What we need is power.
You understand?
That's what this is about.
Without power, you have nothing.
You just have talking points.
We've got to get serious here.
And, you know, a lot of Democrats around the country are concerned.
I know these donors are not.
They're not going to give a popsicle to the DNC right now.
I can promise you that.
This is Carville, right?
The guy who worked for Clinton, silencing women who were being abused and insulting women who Clinton was abusing.
That was what he used to do.
So he knows a little bit about power.
So that's talking about AOC and Bernie Sanders and that group.
But let's also talk about Pete Buttigieg.
Here is a voter in Iowa discovering, talking to Pete Buttigieg's workers and discovering that Pete Buttigieg is gay.
Okay.
Here's just an ordinary voter finding this out for the first time after voting for him.
You're saying that he has a same-sex partner?
Yes.
Are you kidding?
He's married to him, yeah.
We need to find out what serious is.
Well, then I don't want anybody that exactly is.
So can I have my card back?
And he's still there.
I don't know.
Yeah, signed it.
We could go ask.
I never knew that.
The whole point of it is, though, is he's a human being, right?
Just like you and me.
And should it really matter?
That's what, well, he better read the Bible.
He does.
And he says that God doesn't choose a political party.
Because why does it say in the Bible that a man should marry a woman then?
Well, I totally respect your viewpoint on this.
I so totally do.
But I think that we were not around.
How come this has never been brought out before?
See, that was the line in there.
And you guys know that I'm not doing this to attack gay people.
It has nothing to do with that.
It is the fact that these are deeply held convictions that people have, deeply held religious convictions.
And the idea on the left, and you see this in the news, nobody ever talks about it.
They don't even talk about the fact that Pete Buttigieg is gay and married to a man.
They do not talk about that even on Fox News.
They don't discuss it.
How can they not discuss it as if it's not going to matter?
They think they're going to bully people into not caring.
They think they're going to keep it secret.
I mean, that is that woman's reaction that she didn't know about this.
Butigej was doing well with older voters in Iowa because they thought he was a nice young man.
And a lot of them probably weren't paying attention to this.
But ultimately, over time, this is something that comes out.
Again, not attacking Budige for his homosexuality, just saying these are convictions that people have.
They're religious convictions.
They're not going to turn up and vote for him.
He's not going to become president of the United States.
He is not going to become president of the United States, at least not now, not in this election.
It's just not going to happen.
I can tell you that flat out.
And so that's the guy is in the lead.
And I think because a lot of the unreported districts are from Des Moines, I think it's Bernie really is going to come up from behind by the time it's all over.
And that's the other thing.
People are largely, largely against socialism in this country.
They're trying to tell us that Bernie is not, he's the nice socialism, the socialism that just turns countries into Norway, where they invented the paperclip.
I mean, listen, capitalism is rough and tumble.
Capitalism takes a rough and tumble people.
Capitalism attracts people like Donald Trump who are rough and tumble, but they're also successful and they also make stuff other people don't make.
The other thing, and AOC noticed this too, but I think Van Jones said it better.
Van Jones is sitting on TV with everybody attacking Donald Trump and oh, how divisive it was.
And Van Jones let him know what was really going on.
Think about it is, and I think that we got to wake up, folks.
There's a whole bubble thing that goes on where we say, well, he said S-hold nations, therefore all black people are going to hate him forever.
That ain't necessarily so.
And I think what you're going to see him do is say, you may not like my rhetoric, but look at my results.
Look at my record to black people.
If he narrow casts that, it's going to be effective, which means as we move through this primary process, we've got to pay a lot more attention both to what's going on with the Latino vote.
Are we going to get a benefit in terms of having them respond?
And with the black vote.
Is there going to be a split-off, especially for black male voters?
We've got to be clinical about this stuff.
We get so emotional about it.
That was a warning to us, a warning shot across the Boward Democrats that he's going after enough black folks to cause us problems.
It's not just the white suburban voters.
He's going to have the black votes.
You see, this is what they can't stand.
They lose even 10, 20% of the black vote.
They're done.
They are done.
And he knows it.
And by the way, by the way, Latinos don't like illegals either.
You know, this is the thing.
He's not attacking Latino people.
He's attacking illegals.
I got to end with this CNN outside the chamber trying to interview senators.
This is cut number 18.
Hi there, I Anderson.
I just want to let you know that the senators are coming down.
They're going to pass us momentarily, led by the President of the Senate, the Vice President of the United States.
Mr. Vice President, how are you feeling?
Is it awkward to be there with the President almost acquitted or maybe.
Okay.
We tried.
How are you feeling, Senator?
Feeling good.
Senator Shelby, can you stop for one second?
Okay, you can't stop.
We're trying here.
The senators, I would just tell you one of the reasons why they're not stopping.
Nobody will stop to talk to CNN.
And that is another Trump triumph.
And this is the thing.
It's not just the fact that he's talking to minorities.
It's not just the fact that he's so incredibly successful.
It is the fact that he has exposed the press for what they are, a Democrat organization.
He has exposed them and he's made them irrelevant.
And that, too, is a tremendous triumph.
And it's a triumph the other Republicans could not accomplish.
And that's why Trump got elected and that's why he's so successful.
All right, it is 2020.
And it's not just an election year.
It is the election year.
Will Democrats reclaim the presidency like they promised four years ago?
Will climate change destroy the planet before election day?
I think maybe another 10, 20 minutes.
Will climate change.
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Feeling a New Person00:14:56
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Mailbag.
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All I ask is that we get that scream in before I do the mailbag.
All right, from Patrick, I've been attending a Q ⁇ A discussion event at my local Anglican church called the Alpha Series.
Yeah, I've heard of this for the last couple of weeks.
One question that resonated with me that I'd like to hear your response to was, what are the most compelling and frustrating things about Jesus and why?
Yeah, well, this goes back to what I was saying about the element of time.
Jesus says things that make it sound like he does not know how tragic life is.
He doesn't understand what it is to be a human being when he first starts talking.
This is something that I believe when I read the Gospels, I think one of the things that Jesus does is he tells, he informs God, because he is, in fact, one of the persons of God.
He informs God the one thing that an omniscient God can't know, what it's like not to be omniscient, what it's like to be us, to live in the fear of death, to live in this, you know, in not seeing the whole world as God does.
Now, of course, God doesn't exist in time.
He exists above time, so there's never a point when he doesn't know that.
But still, this is the point in time in where we live where he learns that.
Okay?
And so Jesus says things like, when Peter walks on water and then loses, gets afraid and he starts to sink into the water, Jesus says, oh, ye of little faith.
And you think like, how much faith, if you can even take one step on water, how much faith are you supposed to have?
I mean, that's not little faith.
That's a lot of faith.
But to Jesus, it looks easy, right?
He says, when somebody comes to him and says, my son is dying, could you heal him?
He says, oh, how long will I have to suffer this generation?
Is if he doesn't know that we don't know that life doesn't end when life ends.
He doesn't see life the way we see it.
And so he's talking from a position of, I don't want to use the word perfection, but maybe a position of cosmic understanding that we don't have.
He's talking into our tragic lives, our small lives, our little knowing lives.
And there's a lot of things that when you try to apply them, when you try to love your enemies, when you try to do these things, you don't know how to fit those things in to the real world.
I have a lot of ideas about how that can be done, but I still think it's very frustrating that sometimes you feel that Christ is asking too much of us.
And I find that both compelling because I can see that he sees things that I don't see, but I also find it frustrating because I don't see those things.
And I think that that is the amazing thing.
And that's what I think Paul's writings are all about.
Paul is trying to figure out how to apply this timeless vision of Christ in time.
And that's why I don't agree with a lot of evangelicals when they quote Paul's letters and they say, well, God said this.
No, that's Paul talking in the scripture.
It is incredibly important.
It's not to be tossed away.
But Paul speaks in time.
Jesus doesn't.
Jesus speaks in a lot of ways through all time and seeing all time.
And I find that it's challenging.
It's supposed to be challenging.
It's supposed to give you a cosmic vision, but it ain't easy.
All right.
I have been reading your book, The Art of Making Sense.
Yes, you should all be reading my book.
It's just a pamphlet.
It's very inexpensive.
It's on Amazon.com.
The art of making sense.
It's some articles and speeches I made last year that I thought were actually worth publishing, and I did.
But he says, I have a question regarding abortion, because the speech in it about the art of making sense is about abortion.
He says, I agree with you on everything, but admittedly, there are gray areas I would appreciate your opinion on.
These questions come from friendly debates with friends and more importantly, my wife.
First, so he has two questions.
One is, when does life begin?
And the other is, how can we legislate against abortion?
The second question to me is much more interesting.
I think life begins.
Look, you know, in the Catholic Church, they say you shouldn't even use birth control because that's interrupting life.
But I think for the purposes of legality, we have to say that life begins when an egg is inseminated, when the sperm and the egg come together.
That is when life begins.
And he talks about the fact that you can take drugs that keep that fertilized egg from adhering to the walls of the womb, and so it can't grow.
And so is that really life beginning?
You know, that's getting very legalistic for me, for me.
When the egg is fertilized, that's a life.
You have now got all the elements that you need.
Again, talking about time, right?
It exists in time.
Everything that is needed to make the person that is going to become is there.
That's the reason I don't agree with the Catholic Church.
I think it is that moment when the egg is fertilized, every single thing that you need to make that individual life, that individual life, the DNA, is there.
And that's when I think, you know, that's now a new person that has to be respected as a life.
The question about legislation is a really important one because I think this is one of those things where you ask yourself the question, well, what are you going to do?
You're going to arrest a woman who has an abortion.
You're going to arrest the doctors.
Now they have pills that do this stuff that are easy to get.
What are you going to do?
You're going to stop people from going to Canada, driving to Canada and taking the pills or, you know, bringing them down from Canada.
You know, it's just, it really is impossible to legislate.
And I think that's true.
I think it is impossible.
I still think they should legislate it.
I think it's an important thing.
When you make a law, it talks about to some degree what the values of the society are.
And I think our values, if our values are not, that we protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have no values.
Those are American values.
The idea that this is somehow a woman's choice is just, it's just a nonsense.
It's a moral nonsense.
I am.
I have great libertarian leanings.
I really want people to do whatever they want to do.
I have deep, deep sympathy for women who are in a troubled spot when they get pregnant.
Maybe they can't afford it.
Maybe it's happened through a terrible way.
This is very rare.
It is very rare that women get abortions because of incest and rape.
But it only has to be one to set the tone.
All of those things are difficult.
I think we should outlaw to say that this is something that we feel is murder, basically, and murder.
It's homicide.
This is something that we feel is homicide.
And I think that that's an important thing.
It's an important value statement.
But I think that when you pass a law, when you pass a law, there's just no point in saying we're going to arrest women for this because I don't think a woman who has an abortion is a murderer.
I don't think that that's true.
I think we should shut down the clinics.
I think we should shut down the places.
But there are going to be people who get away with it because they're going to get the drugs.
The drugs are easy to get now.
And I think that at some point, what do you do?
Do you fine them?
Do you give them a ticket like you do for dope and then basically negate the law itself?
It's a very, very difficult, difficult question.
The bigger question, the more important question is how do we create a society that holds those values?
That is the thing.
And I think passing a law about it is part of creating that society.
But I think it's so much more important.
It is so much more important that the pro-life movement concentrate on creating the institutions that will take care of these children, that will say, if you can't handle this baby, we will take this baby in.
If you can't handle the pregnancy, we'll take you in.
Those are the things that I think people can do, churches can do, and should be doing that will answer these, that makes these questions irrelevant, right?
I mean, you're getting, I understand, I think they're good questions, I really do, and I don't have all the answers for them, but I think that the legalism is not the point.
The point is the value of life.
The point is saying once you're pregnant, you've got a life inside you.
It's no longer your choice.
It's no longer your body.
And so we have to deal with this.
And I think if we do that, we have to do that as a society.
There's just no other way to do it.
And that's, you know, maybe that's a good thing that can come out of Roe v. Wade in these dark years when so many millions of lives have been ended.
Maybe a good thing can come out of it instead of just saying, you know, you're pregnant, therefore you're stuck with this baby.
Maybe we can create a society that says, okay, if you can't do it, we will all do this together.
And that's the only answer I can give you because I don't think we're going to pass laws that penalize women at the level of the event.
In other words, the level of the event is a life is being exterminated.
I don't think we're going to pass laws that take women who are in trouble and put them in prison, for instance.
I don't think that that's just.
I don't think it's right.
I don't think it's what we want to do.
I don't think that's the society we're moving toward.
The society we want to move toward is a society that says, baby, keep the baby alive.
And if you can't do it, we'll do it with you.
From John, thank you for your deep thoughts and hilarious commentary.
My question is, do you think that any two people who share similar values can have a lasting marriage?
I was raised in a community where you got married and stay married, but once I left to begin to see more of the world, that that's not always the case.
My parents and others in my family keep telling me they met the person God wanted them to marry.
I want to believe that, but will I know?
Do I need to go off a gut feeling and just ask this woman to marry me or will God just turn on some neon sign to show me who is right?
I do not want to rush.
But I also feel like there is no reason to hold off and spend years dating.
It almost sounds, you don't mention this, but it sounds like you're talking about somebody specific, in which case, you know, what you have to say is like, no, no, there's not going to be a neon light that goes on.
But no, it's not true that if you share values, everything is going to be fine.
You really have to like somebody you're going to live with.
Marriage is a long-term deal.
You've got to like somebody you're going to live with.
You've got to feel that you have some kind of chemistry between you, that there is something between you that binds you and that will continue to bind you.
The way you talk, the way you discuss things, the way you work out problems between each other, the way you pay each other respect.
Do you laugh a lot?
Do you have respect when you disagree?
Those are the things that you can look for, and some of it's got to be gut.
It's a marriage.
There ain't no guarantee.
I know it would be nice if women and men came with a little guarantee that the marriage will work out, but they don't.
So you're going to have to take your chances.
All right, moving on from Ador.
Hello, Lord Clavin, the ruler of everything, the light touches.
I have found myself unable to convince someone to vote for Trump.
My friend doesn't agree with Medicare.
It's a unique situation.
My friend doesn't agree with Medicare for all.
She thinks tuition should not be free.
Generally, she has a conservative understanding.
However, she has friends who tell her that Trump makes them feel unsafe.
I tried to argue that their feelings are subjective and they're created by a lying media, but nevertheless, she says that even if everything I say is right, she's not going to try to convince them that Trump is okay.
And because she cares for them and their feelings, she can't vote for Trump.
You know, here's the thing.
I get a lot of questions saying, how can I convince somebody that?
And the answer is almost always the same.
You can't.
You know, you don't have that power.
And so I think that you should put that away.
If they're bringing this to you and they're arguing with you about it or they want to discuss it with you or they enjoy having that political discussion, it is fine to have that political discussion and make all the arguments that you're making.
But this person seems very swayed by her peer group.
She seems to be someone who doesn't want to offend her peer group.
She doesn't want to tell them.
She doesn't want to come out of the voting booth and say, yeah, well, I voted for Trump.
She feels they'll reject her.
You know, you have no power over that.
And knowing what you have no power over is a huge, huge gift in life.
It is so important.
It is important not to give up when you can change things.
You know, it's that wisdom prayer, right?
The power to change the things I can change and the power to know the difference between those and the things I can't change.
You can't always change people's minds.
You've got to love them as they are.
You've got to love them for who they are.
And I just think like, you know, you can make your arguments if you make them with kindness and simplicity and if you make them when this person wants to bring them up.
But if you think that you have the power to do this, then you're going to basically lead yourself and your friend into this kind of circle where you're just running around doing the same, having the same conversations over and over again.
And I think this is a good thing to know about in marriage.
There are some points where, you know, you're not going to convince your wife or husband to believe the things that you believe.
And you've got to be able to live with that.
That's the whole world.
You know, I really do believe in that song, that old rock song, you know, there ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys, there's only you and me and we just disagree.
And I think in America, 90 times out of 100, that's the truth.
In America, we're always saying you're Hitler, you're Stalin, you're a racist, you're that.
You know, 90% of the time, it ain't so.
90% of the time, you just disagree.
You see things differently.
You have to be able to live with that.
That is the world.
All right, from Alan.
I am a married man with no children.
Recently, my wife has been struck with a hard case of baby fever.
A lot of our relatives are having babies, and now she wants to have one, too.
Me and her are the only couple in her family or mine that doesn't currently have children.
Deep down inside, she knows that now is not a good time for us to have children, but the baby fever has really taken a toll on her.
I've done my best to support and comfort her, but many times I feel helpless since I'm not a woman and can't fully understand what she's going through.
Do you have any advice on how to handle this?
Thank you for all you do and keep up the good work.
Here's my advice.
If you're in college, if you're still in college, tell her you got to wait till you get out of college.
If you're not out of college, give her a baby, have a baby.
And then when you have that baby, have another baby.
Babies are great.
Babies bring their own reason for being into the world.
My father used to say, every baby is born with a loaf of bread in his mouth.
I think his father used to tell him that.
That means you will find a way to take care of them.
Maybe she's telling you something, you know?
Maybe this is the meaning of her life.
And you say that deep down she knows that this is not the right time.
I don't know what that means.
I don't know what the facts are, but I am very much in favor of babies.
And I think people are having them too late.
I think it's silly to have them to wait until your 30s before you begin.
Listen, if you have to, if you do, you know, I'm not telling you that that's a terrible thing.
I just think that, like, have the babies.
The babies will increase your life.
Having a baby, having a baby is like suddenly you understand that you were seeing the world in two dimensions and now you see it in three.
You'll be happier and sadder than you've ever been, but you will be more alive.
And life is the point.
The point is always life.
And so I think, you know, I can't tell you not to have a baby.
I can't tell you to convince your wife not to have a baby.
Babies are good.
They are all positive things.
So there it is.
That'll change your life.
I always say, my advice will change your life.
That advice will definitely change your life.
And you will be sounding like that when you're awake at two in the morning because the baby is crying.
I got to stop.
Stop here.
But I'll be back.
I'll be back with more advice and more insights tomorrow.
Andrew Klavan Show00:01:29
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President Trump delivers the greatest State of the Union address in American history.
That's no exaggeration.
It presented one clear vision of America.
We're now seeing an opposite vision of America cropping up in the radical socialist view of the Democratic presidential field.
We will examine the difference between those visions and how to argue for one over the other, plus a whole lot more.