Ep. 1125 – Winning Through Realism mocks Trump’s indictment as a politically weaponized farce—Alvin Bragg’s "moral crusade" against hush money while ignoring New York’s crime wave—while critiquing the GOP’s electoral losses in Wisconsin (abortion bans) and Kentucky (anti-abortion amendments) as failures of pragmatism over purity. Mary Harrington’s Feminism Against Progress rejects liberal feminism’s rejection of motherhood, framing abortion as part of a "cyborg-era" transhumanist agenda, while the host contrasts Christian realism—faith thriving in flawed humanity—with secular cynicism in films like Cool Hand Luke. The episode ends with tactical advice: abandon moral absolutism for winnable battles, even if it means supporting "partially immoral" policies to survive. [Automatically generated summary]
Every American, whether he's a conservative or a buffoon, must surely agree that we would not want to break all historical precedent and possibly endanger our republic by indicting a former President of the United States unless his crime was truly egregious.
But when an anonymous clerk in a man's multi-billion dollar organization makes a vague bookkeeping entry in order to do something or other having to do with a crime no one can specifically name, it's clearly time to act.
As you may not have heard if you were hiding in a closet, sticking your fingers in your ears and imitating a kazoo playing the battle hymn of the republic at full volume, Donald Trump was indicted this week for not wanting his wife to find out he committed adultery, a crime normally punishable by having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to your mistress who ends up telling your wife anyway.
In a remarkable performance before the media, New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg explained his actions without George Soros once moving his lips.
In fact, several times during Bragg's statement, Soros actually drank a glass of water and then lit a cigarette with the free hand that wasn't shoved up Bragg's ass in order to manipulate his face.
In his statement, Bragg argued that his indictment of Donald Trump on incomprehensible made-up charges was wholly in keeping with the traditions of America, if you include Central America and other places ruled by communist despots that happen to be named America for some ridiculous reason.
Bragg said, quote, We in New York City cannot normalize serious crimes on the first Tuesday in April at 2.30 in the afternoon.
It's not as if Donald Trump murdered or raped someone.
If it was just that, I would happily release him on no bail so he could escape forever into the lawless depths of the savage jungle or Chicago.
But a male politician who would have sex with shapely women and then pay them to keep their mouths shut has done something no male politician in the history of the world has ever done since last night.
It is vitally important we act now to destroy the Republic before men getting stupid in the presence of a really spectacular pair of breasts become standard behavior.
Unquote.
Although the reading of the Trump indictment made it absolutely clear that Trump was specifically being charged with some damn thing or other, questions still remained.
For instance, what is it about the term hush money some women don't understand?
I mean, it's right there in the word, hush.
It's even right there in the last two letters of the word, shh, which means after you take the money, you're supposed to keep quiet about it instead of going on television to discuss the whole thing.
Psychiatric experts are currently trying to determine why a man who is married to a supermodel who speaks five languages would cheat with a big-breasted bimbo who does not even have this rudimentary understanding of English.
And while they're not yet sure, they think it may have something to do with the size of her breast.
As Donald Trump arrived at the Manhattan courthouse to plead not guilty to whatever the hell he was being charged with, pro- and anti-demonstrators took to the streets, trying to send a message to Washington that they were physically unattractive and personally unhappy and had nothing better to do with their time than take to the streets.
Other reactions were more restrained.
At the New York Times, a former newspaper, the entire staff solemnly gathered in the city room to smear each other's naked bodies with honey and then lick it off as an expression of their mindless, orgiastic pleasure at having finally triumphed over the dark forces of decency and common sense.
Meanwhile, Republican voters across the nation vowed that they would strike back against the unfair indictment by acting stupidly out of blind anger in order to ensure that Democrats win every elected office until they learn their lesson.
At the White House, President and venal houseplant Joe Biden made no statement at all on the indictment because sadly, he had passed away six months ago and was now preparing to run for re-election.
On the positive side, in a country stumbling toward World War III while beset by historic inflation, unsustainable debt, and an oncoming banking crisis, at least we know that there is one crime that will never be tolerated in the city of New York.
We just don't know which crime it is.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm the hunky donkey.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunky-dunky.
Ship-shaped hipsy-topsy, the world is a bibbyzing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
All right, we are back laughing our way through the absolute collapse of our republic.
We're going to take a look at the political news of the week and talk about how we are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and how we might want to turn that around a little bit.
We'll also talk about feminism with the brilliant reactionary feminist Mary Harrington.
I'm reading her book.
It's really terrific.
And we'll see, we'll look at the best Jesus movies that don't have Jesus in them.
I'll tell you why.
This is a great time to subscribe to my personal YouTube channel, the Andrew Clavin YouTube channel.
You'll get exclusive content.
We have one up there about Trump dissing the media, which is really funny.
You want to watch that.
And if you leave a comment and the comment is reactionary, racist, sexist, any kind of hateful, we'll take any kind of hatefulness because that will just fit right in with the rest of the program.
Today's comment is from Hack Britton, who says, I've spent my whole life making a living, surviving just like 90% of all of us.
Browsing Data Revealed00:02:42
I want to learn and I have, but I can't understand Shakespeare.
Is there something that I can read that will help?
Or should I just keep plotting on?
I took that question because I get asked it a lot.
How do you read Shakespeare?
What I like to do myself is I'll go on, I usually go on Amazon Prime and they have the entire BBC canon.
They've filmed all the Shakespeare plays with terrific actors, Anthony Hopkins, all kinds of Michael Hodern, all kinds of great, great actors reading Shakespeare.
And when you see the plays, it's much easier to get the gist of what he's saying.
And so you watch the play first and then you read.
I like to read the Folger one because it has good notes right next to the page.
And then you can actually learn the play.
And then it takes about six hours over the course of a week, so maybe an hour a day to do it.
And then you've got the play.
And then anytime you go back and look at it, you'll understand it much better.
It's just because the language is so out of date.
That's all.
Right this minute, as we sit here, your browsing data is being tracked and monitored.
Have you ever stopped to think about who has access to this information and what they might be doing with it?
If you're like most people, you probably haven't given it much thought, but the truth is your browsing data can reveal a lot about you, your interests, habits, location, even your identity.
Every time you visit a website, click on a link, or make a purchase online, you're leaving a digital trail that can be monetized by advertisers and data brokers.
They use this information to target you with ads and promotions that are tailored specifically to you.
And the more data they have, the more accurately they can target you.
With ExpressVPN, you can encrypt your internet traffic and hide your browsing data from prying eyes.
This makes it much more difficult for anyone to intercept your data or track your online activity.
With lightning fast speeds, unlimited bandwidth, and easy to use software, ExpressVPN is the perfect choice for anyone looking to protect their online privacy and security.
I love ExpressVPN.
It's incredibly easy to use.
Just fire up the app, click one button.
Even I can do that.
It works on all my devices, my phone, my laptop, even my Wi-Fi router.
Sign up today and start browsing the internet with confidence at expressvpn.com slash clavin.
Use my link at expressvpn.com slash clavin to get three extra months free.
That's expresvpn.com slash clavin.
I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, that sounds great, but how do I spell VPN?
No, you're not.
You're saying, how do I spell Clavin?
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
K-L-A-V-A-N, there are no easing.
So the theme of today's show is fearless realism, the power of facing reality without fear, which by an amazing coincidence that no one could have foreseen is also the theme of today, which is Good Friday.
Fearless Realism00:03:42
Now, a lot of non-Christians ask if Good Friday is the day when Jesus was crucified, why is it called Good Friday?
And the reason is because Crap Friday doesn't sound good and won't bring people into church.
But at the time, obviously, it probably was pretty crappy.
Here's the guy who was the days before he was cheered as the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world.
Suddenly, he's judiciously murdered in the most humiliating way possible.
You know, if you read this passage, if you read this part of the four Gospels, there's a good piece about this by Ross Dalthatt just this morning in the New York Times.
I feel sorry for Ross Dalthat in the New York Times.
It's like watching the lone survivor of an apocalypse walking through the ruins.
It's like Will Smith and I Am Legend.
But anyway, he writes, he's the last good columnist there.
And he writes about how you put aside all the Christian doctrine, all the Protestant doctrine about the Bible being absolutely, literally inerrant, all the Catholic doctrine about whatever they've deduced from this, and now you have to absolutely believe to be a good Christian.
But all that aside, just read it as if it's a text.
Just read it as a text.
This is what I did just before I was baptized when I wanted to find out if I was actually a Christian.
You will see that it reads exactly like what it obviously is.
It's the passing down of eyewitness reports from fallible witnesses with different points of view and different purposes in writing it, but they're describing real and yet impossible events.
And the crucifixion itself is obviously a true story because everyone in it acts terribly just the way people do in real life.
Jesus' friends desert him.
The local church condemns him.
The people turn on him.
The government gauge the mood of the people and then sort of let him die without taking any responsibility for it.
They said it was all Donald Trump's fault.
Just like in real life, some individuals acted as well as they could, but every sector of society acted badly.
And after Jesus was dead, all the people who had deserted and betrayed, abandoned, and slaughtered him took to social media to discuss how all their opponents had deserted, betrayed, abandoned, and slaughtered him, but it wasn't their fault.
Conservatives, for instance, they had the typical conservative reaction on Twitter.
They said, it's over, it's done.
I give up.
I surrender.
We're finished.
We're through.
And then because they had the Second Amendment, they took their tiny little daggers and they took on the armies of Rome and were wiped off the face of the earth.
Leftists and their all-powerful government, they had a different reaction.
They said, hooray, God is finally dead.
Now we don't have to bother with God anymore.
We can do anything we want and we can force other people to do everything that we want because freedom doesn't matter because there's no God and we'll make a world more perfect than God has ever made it.
And they had a pretty good run that worked.
They used kind of welfare and entertainment.
They called it bread and circuses to enslave people and conquer people and kill people.
And then they were wiped off the face of the earth by barbarians, or as they called them at the time.
They called them indigenous people, but they were what we would call today barbarians.
But there was also this third group, right?
There was this third group that didn't rebel against the society and it didn't try to conquer anybody.
It just lived in the faith that this man who had been murdered had come back to life bodily, body and soul.
He had returned and that he was not merely the king of the Jews, but he was actually the Lord of all reality.
And because they believed that, they were now fearless, right?
They understood that death was less than death and life was more than life.
And so they weren't afraid of anything.
And because they were fearless, they were happy.
And because they were happy and free, you know, when you're fearless, you're free.
They didn't rebel against the system.
They let the system go even if they were slaves.
They just went on being slaves.
They didn't hate anybody because they weren't afraid of anybody and they were joyful.
And here's the weird thing, because they were joyful.
They were joyful because they were free.
They were free because they were fearless.
Fearless Freedom00:02:25
And that just infuriated the authorities.
So the authorities would go out hunting anyone who was joyful and imprison and torture and murder them.
And when the authorities were finished imprisoning and torturing and murdering all the joyful people, the authorities were gone and only the joyful people remained.
Very strange, strange result of that.
The real reason they call it Good Friday is it's because the day, it's the day when smart people despair and fools rejoice.
And they rejoice because they're fearless.
And because they're fearless, they're free.
Now, obviously, none of that is relevant to our time, because in our time, the most important thing is we have to be terrified and despair and be angry and treat everybody, especially if we disagree with them, like garbage.
Otherwise, they win.
They win if we don't become creeps.
But I just thought I'd bring that up for no reason as we take a look at our political reality this week.
Most important thing, you've got to stay healthy and living a healthy lifestyle can be challenging when you're always running around and doing stuff.
You need simple, manageable routines to make sure you're getting the proper nutrition every day, which is why you will love Balance of Nature.
Balance of Nature, fruits and veggies, are a great way to make sure you're getting essential nutritional ingredients every single day.
Their capsules are packed with 100% whole food that you can take any time.
Balance of Nature uses a cold vacuum process that preserves the natural antioxidants in 16 whole fruits and 15 whole vegetables and encapsulates them for easy consumption.
They sent a bunch of these fruits and veggies capsules down to the studio.
My team tried them.
I can't get them down off the ceiling.
It's embarrassing.
When you're disciplined enough to take care of your health, you reap all kinds of benefits.
Make fruits and vegetables a part of your daily diet.
Your body will thank you.
Right now, Balance of Nature is offering 35% off with your first preferred order.
Go to balanceofnature.com.
Use promo code Clavin for 35% off.
That's balanceofnature.com.
Promo code Clavin.
Take these pills.
You'll instantly know how to spell Clavin.
But just in case, it's K-L-A-V-A-N or no E's in Clavin.
So reality, facing reality fearlessly.
There are a couple of big political stories this week that really teach us something about reality and about us because it's so much easier to live in your own head.
Furious Moments in Politics00:15:46
And one of the things that our opponents do so well is they make us angry.
They make us angry because they own so much of the communications territory.
And when you get angry, you know this from your own life.
You know, people get most of the time get angry because they're afraid, or very often get angry because they're afraid.
And so you get afraid, you're going to lose, you get angry, and then, and you know this again from your own life, when you get angry, you do stupid stuff.
So let's begin with Trump's indictment, all right?
Everything about it was geared to make you furious, every single thing.
And I have to say, I was expecting this guy, this Soros marionette, Alvin Bragg, in New York, the New York County DA, I was expecting him to bring an indictment that even I would have to say, well, he's kind of got a point, or just to use enough legal trickery.
I mean, I knew that the fact that Trump paid off his mistresses, maybe he says he didn't, but maybe he did, to keep their mouths shut.
I knew that wasn't really enough to indict an ex-president.
It was just such a foolish, reckless, anti-American, un-American thing to do that I thought it was going to be disguised.
But then they unleashed.
They brought him into court and they read the indictment.
And I'm looking at the indictment.
I thought like, this is utter garbage.
It's just totally empty.
It was way more cynical and openly fraudulent than I thought it was going to be.
So that's the first thing that was there to make you angry.
And we know, to begin with, we know that Bragg was already bragging, as it were, when he was running for the office, was already bragging that he was going to get Trump and that this was something that he was poised to do.
Here's clip one from that point in time.
I believe we have to hold him accountable.
I haven't seen all the facts beyond the public, but I've litigated with him, and so I'm prepared to go where the facts take me once I see them and hold him accountable.
So that's the first thing.
That was he was on target.
He was like a guided missile.
And then the next thing is, on the day of the indictment, he did come out and make this statement to the press, and it was clearly fraudulent.
And it was geared to make anybody who was actually paying attention, who was honest, furious.
This is cut two.
These are felony crimes in New York State.
No matter who you are, we cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct.
The defendant repeatedly made false statements on New York business records.
He also caused others to make false statements.
You're thinking, by this time, if you're a knowledgeable conservative, you're on the ceiling.
You're thinking, what?
That's a felony in New York where you let people who commit rape and murder go free with no bail.
This is a guy who downgraded 52% of felony charges to misdemeanors in a city where crime has risen, depending on what sector you're dealing with, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent in the last year.
And so, you know, already you're furious because it's so so no one's above the law except the people that I say are above the law, right?
That's basically what he's saying.
What he's talking about is record keeping.
He's talking about false statements.
He's like writing on the check.
Yeah, I didn't pay this woman to keep her mouth shut about our affair.
Then finally, Trump came out and he is always defiant and he's not going to buckle under to this stuff.
And his response, he put the thing in context.
I wanted to play this part.
He obviously went after Bragg.
He said, this is nonsense.
This guy's a terrible guy.
All the stuff that Trump usually says.
But this was the important part of his speech to me.
He put it in context of all the things that have happened to him.
It's cut five.
From the beginning, the Democrats spied on my campaign.
Remember that?
They attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations.
The illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago right here.
The lying to the Pfizer courts, the FBI and DOJ relentlessly pursuing Republicans.
The unconstitutional changes to election laws by not getting approvals from state legislators.
The millions of votes illegally stuffed into ballot boxes and all caught on government cameras.
And just recently, the FBI and DOJ in collusion with Twitter and Facebook in order not to say anything bad about the Hunter Biden laptop from hell.
All of that stuff is true.
I mean, all of it, I don't know if there's millions of votes cast illegally, but it was, you know, we could see it's happening and we could see the fact that at the same time, the New York Times, a former newspaper, was saying this is the most honest election in history.
The lies, the lies make you even crazier.
So then when you watched the media, so you've got this history of, you know, Trump has been treated more unfairly than any politician in my lifetime.
And Reagan was treated genuinely unfairly.
And it was not, it was only anomalous in the degree.
Remember, they called George W. Bush Hitler.
You know, they called Mitt Romney Hitler.
They call everybody Hitler.
Anyone I don't like is Hitler.
But really, the treatment of him, the mobilization of the deep state against him and the mobilization, the media joining the deep state was enough to drive anyone crazy.
And driving you crazy is part of the point, because when you're crazy, when you're scared, when you get angry, you don't act wisely.
You don't deal with reality fearlessly, right?
So here's the media response.
I mean, the media response was also just the absolute hypocrisy was enough to make you Nazis cut three.
It's a sad day for America.
Hard stop.
This is no time for celebration.
You know, I think it's sad.
I have fought Trump for a long time, but I'm sad that this has happened.
How are you feeling about a historic day?
You know, it's sad.
And this is a day of profound sadness that an ex-president is indicted, but it's also a time to celebrate.
Because it's a sad moment to see a former president have to do this, even though we feel it could lead to justice.
If you don't see this, it's a sad day for America.
It's a sad day for America.
It's a sad day.
Well, I don't think anybody can consider it a good day.
Regardless of anything, it's just really sad.
It's a sadness.
I think that we got to this point.
I just want to remain measured.
The left full of somber support.
I think really this should be a somber moment.
It is a serious, somber, solemn moment.
It's obviously a somber moment, and it's a sad moment.
It's really a sad day when we get to this point.
See, so they're sad.
They're somber.
They're sad and somber.
They're somber.
Also sad and also somber.
But the Daily Wire had some cameras behind the scenes, and we got a very different reaction behind the scenes like this.
Happy days are here again.
The skies above are clear again.
Let us sing the song of cheer again.
Happy days are here again.
All right, so it's a little different, a little different reaction behind the scenes.
Obviously, they've been trying to get this guy forever.
This guy was elected Bragg on the promise that he would get him, and he's indicted him.
Anybody can see, any honest person is going to see that this is fraudulent.
There is no excuse for indicting a former president of the United States after Hillary, who was banging her phones, stealing documents or banging her phones with a hammer and bleaching them and all this stuff.
You know, after all of that stuff, there's absolutely no excuse.
There's no excuse.
So now you're furious, right?
And you're afraid that the country is falling apart.
And when you're afraid, you get furious.
And when you're furious, you get afraid.
And you know, right, that's when you start to act foolishly.
Now, here is, you know, people are angry.
Money is pouring in to the Trump campaign.
Now, I want to say, first of all, that because of the fact that I have been really annoyed with Donald Trump and the way he's behaved, and I think he's behaved badly.
I told you after the election that if he kept complaining about the election being stolen without being able to mobilize people to do anything about it, and he wasn't able, and it was not because of the courts.
I read the things that he sent to the court.
I would not have accepted his cases.
He had nothing to bring to the courts because his law team was so bad that they didn't do a good job in getting anything.
And they should have done, as Jenna Ellis said herself, they should have gotten some of the stuff stopped beforehand.
I said he was going to lose Georgia.
He lost Georgia.
That's why we're having this run on our country.
That's why we're so, the Biden years have been so bad because we had no way of stopping them in the Senate.
I've been really annoyed with him.
So people have been saying, oh, I'm now never Trump.
And that's absurd.
I voted for him twice.
If I have to, I'll vote for him again.
I don't want to vote for him again, only for one reason, for one reason only.
He's going to lose.
Skincare.
I know what you're thinking.
you're thinking that's just for women, but it's not.
If you're tired of dealing with puffy eye bags, dry skin, and wrinkles, and want to look and feel your best every day, it's time to start taking your skincare routine seriously and check out our friends at Genucelle Skincare.
My assistant's favorite product is the Genucell Dark Spot Corrector.
It's formulated with revolutionary ingredients that effectively diminish the appearance of unsightly dark spots, acne scarring, and any other patches of discoloration.
The Genucell Dark Spot Corrector leaves you with a bright, even complexion that will have you looking younger, healthier, and more vibrant.
Say goodbye to fine lines, wrinkles, and even those annoying under-eye bags.
Genucelle will have you looking five, 10, or even 15 years younger, just in time for warmer weather.
Best of all, Genucell guarantees results in as little as 12 hours or your money back.
Don't wait.
Visit genucelle.com slash clavin to save over 70% off their most popular package.
This package includes the dark spot corrector as well as their ultra-retinal and under-eye treatment.
Every order subscription includes a luxury gift box with these three free springtime essentials just in time for warmer weather and free shipping as well.
Go to genucelle.com slash clavin, genucelle.com slash clavin.
I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, that sounds great.
How do you spell clavin?
K-L-A-V-A-N.
Maybe you're not thinking that.
I don't know.
Now, I can't promise you he's going to lose, right?
Nobody knows the future, but I'm just looking at things straight.
I'm getting, I'm angry too.
And I like Trump.
You know, I mean, if you go and watch that video, what's it called?
Something like Trump's, Trump's funniest media clapbacks.
Okay, that's the video we put out, the bonus video we put out on the Andrew Clavin YouTube channel this week.
You can tell, you can tell just looking at me.
I really enjoy some of the things that Trump did and always did, always did while he was in office.
However, however, just looking at reality, I think Trump can win the primary.
I think he will almost certainly, and no one can predict the future, but I think he will almost certainly lose the election.
And the reason is very simple.
Independents hate this guy.
Independents who decide elections in this country, the middle decides the election in this country, they hate him and they're not going to stop.
They are not going to stop hating him.
They hate him because of the way he behaved.
I told you, even while I was celebrating his victories when he was president, I told you that he was going to lose because of the way he behaved.
He alienated these people, the people in the middle.
They're not going to come back.
They're not going to come back and he's going to lose.
That's it.
That's my objection.
We have to win.
Reality says we have to win in order to achieve anything.
So here's my question.
My question is not.
My question is not, do you believe the last election was stolen?
I've always said I could be convinced, but I haven't been convinced.
But it doesn't matter.
It's not whether you believe the last election was stolen.
My question is, do you believe an election can be won?
Have you given up?
That's what I want to know.
That's what you have to ask yourself.
Because if you've given up, if you've given up, give up.
Go away.
Get out of the game.
You've given up.
You've folded your cards.
You're done.
You are done.
Just stop.
Just don't ruin it for everybody else because we need to win.
These people are out of their minds.
They are destroying the country.
The left is destroying the country.
It's not even the Democrats.
This is not a Democrat Party.
Most people who are just following along because it says D, and that's where their parents voted for.
So they're voting with the D, but they don't haven't noticed that this is a radical leftist Marxist party that has gone beyond even Marxism and its attack on people's sex lives and attack on people's children, their desire to control and pollute and corrupt people's children.
Their attack the other day on Riley Gaines, who just says, I want to be able to play women's sports as a top women's athlete and not have to compete with men.
All of this stuff.
So if you believe that the elections are over, just go away.
Watch TV.
Do something else.
If you believe that the country's over, despair is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Despair is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you've despaired, you've already lost.
But if an election can be won, it's got to be won by somebody.
The independents will go for it.
It doesn't have to be a moderate person.
I believe a conservative can win.
But remember, a lot of the independents who voted for Trump voted for Obama the time before, right?
About 10% of them, somewhere between 5% and 15% of them, voted for Obama.
So people can be convinced it is not that.
It is personal about Trump.
There's something about him that we know what it is.
He's borish and he's overbearing.
And he is a character, which is one of the things we like about him, but it's also one of the things that people in the middle are put off by.
And especially, well, it's not just especially women.
He lost men in the last election.
Fearless realism tells you that being right, being right, doesn't exempt you from playing politics.
It doesn't exempt you from strategy.
Being virtuous doesn't exempt you from the need to win, right?
And so let me give you an example.
This election in Wisconsin, this judge, left-wing judge who has tipped the Wisconsin Supreme Court now 4-3 to the left, all right?
Kim Strassel, great columnist.
She made this point this way.
I actually was going to make this point anyway, but she made it in her column this morning.
They had a vote in Wisconsin, right?
Now, in that vote, some 67% of voters approved tough-on-crime measures, giving judges greater power to keep criminals in prison and set higher bail.
80% of Wisconsin voters, this was on a non-binding question, but still 80% said, yes, able-bodied childless adults should be required to work before they receive any taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.
These are not left-wing voters.
They are not left-wing voters, right?
But by a thundering vote of 55% to 45%, they elected this screamingly left-wing judge to the Supreme Court who's going to tip the court to the left.
And they did it really for one big reason, right?
She's going to do things.
She's going to do terrible things.
He's going to overturn the great union reforms that they had there, all of that stuff.
But they did it for one reason.
They want her to overturn an 1849 state statute that became law after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and it bans abortion in nearly all cases.
They have brought her in to overturn that law.
Why We Lost Wisconsin00:15:02
We lost Wisconsin.
We lost the Supreme Court in Wisconsin because they want to overturn a law that bans all abortions.
Now, here's what the GOP did that gave them the loss.
This is why they lost.
First, they refused to adapt the law to allow some abortions, to allow abortions in the first 12 weeks or 15 weeks or whatever it is that people want in Wisconsin, right?
This is what we're talking about.
And second, they put in a Trump guy, Dan Kelly, who had already lost a previous election.
And the reason they put him in was because the Democrats spent a million dollars in Wisconsin to defeat the more moderate candidate, the more moderate right-wing candidate.
So they got another one of these Trump candidates that people in Wisconsin don't want.
So we lost this because of abortion, right?
Now, here's what Kim Strossel says.
She says, the economy is teetering on the verge of a recession, wracked by a banking crisis, regulatory disarray.
Inflation rages on.
Gasoline prices are again on the rise.
Crime is upending cities.
The border is a tragedy.
China and Russia are feeding a new global disorder.
President Biden's approval rating is underwater.
Water Democrats trail in the generic ballot.
Republicans should be on the march.
But in fact, in November, a majority of voters in bright red Kentucky rejected an amendment that would have made it easier to restrict abortion.
Democrats hammered the GOP, Senate, and gubertorial candidates on abortion.
Abortion, an absolute ban on abortion, is a loser.
It's a loser.
And I'm bringing this up for a very specific reason.
No one can say, no one who listens to this show will say or could say that I'm not passionate about ending abortion.
You know, it's infanticide.
It's baby killing.
It's just like slavery.
It's a moral fog that has descended on our country and clouded the minds of even good women so that even good women do terrible, terrible things.
I hate this thing.
But being virtuous, being right, being good does not exempt you from the strategy it requires to win.
And, you know, because reality is limited.
That's the reason we all like to have fantasies, because reality is limited and there are only so many moves you can make.
It's a checkerboard.
It's not just a free space where you can float around.
You have to make your move and slowly make your way downfield like in a football game as well.
Another good metaphor.
I am not afraid to face my God and say I supported a partially immoral bill that could win and save some babies' lives.
And I didn't support a moral bill that would lose and save no lives.
I can say that.
I think God is complex enough in his mind to understand that that's what you do when you live in reality.
This is the reason I'm not supporting Trump.
I have problems with Trump, but I would vote for him if I thought he could win.
I would vote for him.
If I thought he was the best candidate, I'd vote for him twice.
Seriously, I mean, if I thought he was the best candidate, I would be marching behind him.
You can't say I'm never Trump.
You can't say I'm soft on abortion.
I just want to win because winning is the only way.
We're not, you know, we hear these talkers on the radio using this big, we got to blow the place up.
We got to take a flamethrower to it.
We got to throw in a grenade.
No, we don't.
No, we don't.
We have to win.
We have to use the process to win.
And in order to do that, we have to be fearless about the situation we are.
You know, I'm going to read in just a minute.
I'm going to read this absolutely brilliant article by a guy I'd never read before.
He named Richard Hananiah.
He's a Columbia University conservative.
Mostly deals with foreign policy.
But in this case, he's dealing with ways that conservatives can win.
It's a wonderful, wonderful substack column.
But he points out that we're winning on abortion.
We're just not always winning in the polls, right?
We're winning.
66 clinics across 15 states stopped offering abortion services after Dobbs.
The number of abortions in the U.S. peaked at 1.6 million in 1990, and it's declined to fewer than 1 million in recent years.
13 states have enacted full bans on abortion.
Those states where we can win, we should win, right?
But those states where we have to compromise, we should compromise to get the win we can get.
We are winning on this issue, but we have to do some of it through culture and some of it through the electoral process.
It's reality.
It's reality.
It's complicated.
It's difficult.
It's like disarming a bomb.
You got to get the right wires and pull the right wires in the right places.
So don't let them make you afraid.
Don't let them make you angry.
Don't let TV hosts and radio talkers get your juices flowing so that you do something stupid.
You got to stay cool.
You got to stay joyful.
You got to stay fearless because we can win and I'll tell you how.
Our YouTube comment this week was about how do you learn stuff when you're so busy, when you got to earn a living?
If you're struggling to fit traditional classes into your busy schedule, Grand Canyon University's online programs are designed to make earning your degree easy and accessible no matter your age or stage in life.
Whether you're a busy professional looking to advance your career or a stay-at-home parent juggling family responsibilities, their online courses give you the flexibility you need to learn on your own terms.
Grand Canyon University specializes in helping you fit your bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree into your busy day.
From scholarships to customized scheduling, your graduation team, led by your own GCU counselor, provides you with the personal support you need to succeed.
Why wait?
If you're ready to take your education to the next level, you need Grand Canyon University.
Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University.
Visit gcu.edu.
That's G-C-U dot E-D-U.
All right, winning in reality.
This is a...
This is the big deal.
Excellent, excellent article by a guy named Richard Hananiah.
Like I said, he mostly writes about foreign policy as a substack, Richard Hananiah substack.
He wrote an article called Conservatives Win All the Time.
And he says, on the right, there is a self-pitying narrative that's taken hold in which democracy and conventional political activism are hopeless, and the conservative movement has been doing nothing but losing for decades.
And he talks about this narrative, and you've heard it.
You've heard me kind of make fun of it a little bit, that we need to, you know, we've got to be more manly.
We got to fight tougher.
We're afraid to use our power.
We're afraid to mobilize.
And this is, you know, this is this thing called the new right, where they're saying, you know, we're not using the levers of power like they use the levers of power and all this stuff.
However, however, Hananiah points out that there are some things we're winning about and some things we're losing about.
And maybe we should pay attention to the way we win so that we can focus those methods on the way we lose, on the things we lose.
Such a simple idea, instead of complaining and despairing and pounding our fists and all this stuff.
Such a simple idea to say, well, are we winning anywhere?
Are we actually losing everywhere?
Or are we winning some places and losing other places?
And he makes a point that we are winning in many, many important places.
Guns.
The right to bear arms has become a reality over the last several decades.
In 1988, Vermont was the only state in the country that had an unrestricted right to carry a firearm, meaning without a permit, and 16 states had no right to carry at all.
Today, every state has at least some right to concealed carry, thanks in no small part to the Supreme Court.
But most states have gone even further than judicial decisions have required.
Fully half the states now have unrestricted concealed carry.
I believe it's now one more than half the state after Florida.
And most of the rest require a license, but grant one to almost everyone who applies.
Big win on gun rights.
It's very, very much has spread.
Abortion, I already covered this, and this is partly because of science, partly because of the Supreme Court.
But, you know, in the states where people don't want abortion, we're getting rid of abortion.
In the states where people are not going to vote for a complete ban on abortion, we should back off.
We should back off.
Do what you can do.
I mean, how hard is that to do?
But socially, culturally, and you all know that culture comes first.
So often culture comes first.
Culturally, we are winning on abortion because we're right.
I mean, it's just true.
You can look at a screen and see a little baby inside a mother's stomach that is not a parasite, that is not a growth, that is a child, right?
So that's a big one.
But the number of abortions is going down.
Schooling and parental rights.
Now, this one, you know, who was it?
Bill McGurn wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal that this is the thing that Milton Friedman, the great Reagan-era economist, said was the most important thing is that parents have to, the public school system is a disaster.
Parents have to take back the right to educate their kids.
Now, in 1960s and 70s, parents who wanted to homeschool their children ran into legal difficulties.
Starting in 1982, 34 states passed laws allowing homeschooling, finally making the practice legal in all 50 states only as of 1993.
Thanks to the conservative movement, the U.S. really has become an outlying liar in the world in how little the government cares about what you do with your own kids.
And one reason only a limited number of children have left traditional public schools is that it's expensive to do that.
But Republican states are making it more.
I'm reading again, Richard Hananiah.
Republican states are making it more financially feasible to do so.
Even a year ago, not a single state had universal school choice, meaning that parents get money directly from the state to spend on the education of their kids, which takes resources away from public schools and gives them to families.
DeSantis is about to sign a bill making Florida the fourth state to adopt this kind of program, and a handful of others look like they may soon follow.
Again, this is the teachers' union, the most corrupt union in the country, the worst union in the country, the most destructive union in the country, hates this stuff because it takes their power away, and yet it is spreading.
Taxes, another big win for conservatives.
When Reagan came into office, the top marginal tax rate was 69%.
It's now 37%.
It's not just the rich as the overall individual federal tax burden decreased throughout the 1980s and has since stayed steady.
So why, if we're winning so much, are conservatives so angry?
All right.
So he says, first of all, there's a minority, a minority of the right, which are who are actual white nationalists.
They actually don't want to lose the white majority.
I'm not one of these people.
I love living in a multi-ethnic country.
And I love the fact that I know they don't know this, but actually what's happening is British American values, which are, I think, the best political values, are spreading to all these different people as they come in.
They think that they're complaining, but in fact, they're being infected by the virus of freedom.
And so I think that's a good thing.
And I'm just, you know, I'm happy.
I don't care what people look like.
I seriously don't.
I don't care what hat they wear.
I don't care what their culture is, if they will embrace freedom and the systems that elevate freedom, they're my pal.
They're Americans for me.
All right, so that's only a minority of the new right.
So affirmative action has been with us for decades, but only recently.
Here's the thing.
On cultural issues, there are several issues on which the right is steadily losing.
Affirmative action has been with us for decades, but only recently have major institutions become openly anti-white and anti-male.
Gay propaganda in schools has exploded, as has the percentage of young people identifying as LGBT.
School libraries basically now carry porn, and since it's LGBT porn instead of heterosexual, the media considers any attempts to keep it away from minors to be fascism.
There are now fat women and underwear ads and so on.
So these are things on which we lose.
You know, we are falling back.
And I think they can be complicated issues, but why are we losing on these issues?
This is what Hananiah says.
He says, if you look at the gun and abortion issues, what conservatives have done goes beyond simply appointing their own judges and passing new laws at the state level.
Rather, the entire movement from top to bottom prioritizes preventing the government from engaging in left-wing activism in these areas.
To take one minor but telling example, congressional Republicans have for decades stopped the CDC from looking into gun violence as a public health issue.
They know what that's about, right?
They understand what liberals are doing.
Any attempt to study gun violence easily shades into gun control activism, and so they nip it in the bud.
That's basic, basic politics.
But contrast this to race and gender issues.
Wokeness can clearly be traced to left-wing government policy that the right has provided virtually no pushback against.
Much of it could have been undone through the executive branch alone had the last few Republican presidents not been asleep at the wheel.
Every part of our government discriminates against whites and men, and the private sector is forced to do the same.
Even the LGBT explosion is likely more related to policy than one would think.
Leo Sapier has written about how the obsession with minority sexual preferences and identities in public schools is to a large extent rooted in anti-bullying and the Title IX initiatives.
I hate Title IX.
So I think this is all important stuff.
So why don't we fight about this?
And some people, Hanan and I say some people say, well, the right is afraid of the media, but that's no longer true.
The right is no longer afraid of the media.
If not just Donald Trump, but Donald Trump is one of the reasons they have learned that taking on the media is a winning issue.
So they're not afraid of the media anymore.
But he says that right-wing resistance to the left on identity issues tends to be dominated by talk show hosts and online influencers rather than people who think seriously about policy and how to change it.
Now, this is something I've talked about, and I think Ben has kind of come along on this issue too.
We're not policy people.
We don't have to come up with policy answers.
We're people who are here to point things out, to make things public, to get you interested in these things.
But you have got to be the people who go out and organize.
You're the people who've got to win elections.
You're the people who've got to participate in organized drives to get these things stopped.
You know, a lot of people write to me.
I get a lot of this.
A lot of people write to me and they say, can you connect me to Jeremy?
Because I have a project.
Well, you know what?
Jeremy has his own projects.
I have my own projects.
Everybody has his own projects.
And we get them done.
We get them done.
It's not, can I connect you with anybody?
It's how do you get started?
How do you get the funds?
How do you build the organization?
How do you do it?
If you believe you can win, then you have to start thinking about winning in reality, which means going into the process.
As the process is, going up against people sometimes who are powerful and are against you, facing down the slurs and the attacks and all that stuff, and building, quietly building an organization that will pull the rug out from these buffoons.
It is doable.
We've done it on taxes.
Patriots Survival Strategy00:02:46
We've done it on guns.
We've done it on education.
We've done it on abortion.
But we can't do it if we're not in power.
And we can't do it if we don't play the political game and strategize living fearlessly in reality.
Fearless reality, we can win.
Some of you already know this, but according to leading industry sources, grocery stores across the United States are worried about food shortages.
Having a food storage supply is just a smart decision that can provide you with peace of mind and security in times of uncertainty like these.
Natural disasters, power outages, and other emergencies can strike at any time.
Having a food storage supply ensures that you and your family will have enough food to eat, even if grocery stores close or food supplies are disrupted.
That's why you need 4 Patriots Survival Food.
They offer breakfasts, lunches, and dinners that are good for up to 25 years.
Their dinner options include chicken or beef, which is the perfect protein boost for your stockpile.
While you browse their meal options, you have to check out the 4 Patriots survival sweets kit, which adds a tasty boost to your stockpile and helps keep spirits high, even in emergency situations.
All their kits are packed with real family favorite recipes you can prepare in a few simple steps.
Just check out all their five-star reviews that are raving about the flavor and the taste.
Right now, you can get 10% off your first purchase with 4 Patriots survival food.
When you use the code Clavin, just head over to 4, that's the number 4, patriots.com, and use code Clavin at checkout.
That's for patriots.com, promo code Clavin.
That's the number Clavin, which is spelled K-L-A-V-A-N.
There are no easy family.
So we're talking about reality and facing reality, which is a very difficult thing to do when all the powers that be are trying to sell you a fantasy version of your life, which is one of the reasons I have just been thrilled to be reading this new book by Mary Harrington.
I talked about Mary a couple weeks ago, and I'm now almost done.
I'm more than halfway through her book, which is called Feminism Against Progress.
Mary is a reactionary feminist, the only kind of feminist we talk to on the show.
And her book is Feminism Against Progress. is really terrific, just a riveting work of intellectual incisiveness.
She is also a contributing editor at Unheard.
Mary, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for having me.
So I'm just enjoying this book so much, but to begin with, can you explain to the audience, you come from a very, very odd history to get to where you are, to become a reactionary.
Reacting To Life Changes00:13:54
You're actually reacting to your own life in some ways.
Can you explain a little bit of your journey here?
Yes, I'm a progress apostate.
I'm a progress atheist, but I'm also an apostate from a great deal of the stuff that you talk about on this show and you talk about on the Daily Wire generally.
I guess I was born in the late 1970s and grew up in the 1990s at peak progress, when we all believed that progress, never-ending progress could go on forever before 9-11 and before the great crash and everything which has happened since.
And I was an early adopter, I guess, of all of the woke world views and all the progressive beliefs, which have since come to eat pretty much everything you care to name.
I leaned into all of that stuff and took it very seriously.
And it was just part of how I wanted to approach life.
And I genuinely thought that this was the only ethical and authentic way to be in the world.
I guess I fell off the wagon, to cut a very long story short, very short.
Yeah, to cut a long story short, I fell off the wagon.
A number of personal events just lifted the scales from my eyes in a very painful way.
A whole set of things which I was working on fell apart.
And I came out the other end of that, having realized that everything, well, having discovered that nothing that I thought I could rely on, I really could rely on, and that nothing I really believed seemed very true or very stable or really very, very like it offered any hope for a way out of where I'd found myself.
And the recovery from that personal disaster took a number of years.
And by the time I came out the other end, I was, well, there wasn't really anywhere else to go from radical on every front you can imagine, apart from the advice my grandmother gave me when I was in my late 20s.
And she put it in a very, very grandmarish way.
You know, she was the wartime generation.
She said, you know, Mary, you should, I think you should grow your hair and get married.
And because at the time, I really was really not doing that.
I think I couldn't have been further from that if I'd tried.
But what she meant and the way I took it and on reflection was, Mary, have you considered being normal?
And actually, it was very good advice for somebody who's I'd had a go at pretty much everything except being normal.
And I thought, well, you know, there's sort of nothing left.
You know, where else is there to go apart from having making a sincere, having a sincere go at being normal?
And so I tried it.
And actually, as it turned out, you know, a lot of the things which I'd believed about being normal just turned out to be, well, it's kind of propaganda.
And it turned out that actually there's a lot to be said for being normal.
And there are some bits of it which I found a bit uncomfortable, but on the whole, embracing beneficial limits turned out to be much more liberating, paradoxically, than the supposedly much more liberated life that I'd been inhabiting before, which was as it, as I'd discovered the hard way, riddled with covert power dynamics and in hot to exactly the same set of exploitative tendencies as it was supposedly fighting against and really didn't offer much of a way out at all.
And as it turned out, being normal offers much more of an opportunity to be free and much more of an opportunity, or at least I can say for myself, to be happy.
So by the time I'd figured all of that out, it was about seven years hence and I'd rethought at least half of my beliefs and decided which of my old beliefs I wanted to keep and which I didn't.
And I guess ever since then, my writing career has been about trying to thread that needle, trying to explain why I kept the bits I did, which included to some extent some of the takeaways I took from the postmodernism I injected into my eyeballs and which scrambled my brain for a solid 10 years.
And to an extent, those things which I've brought with me from the feminism, which has been a part of how I approach the world since I was a teenager, again, for personal reasons.
And the life lessons which all of us bring with us.
You know, some of which my concern for exploitation, my concern for overweening governance, you know, a great deal of the anti-capitalist commitments which I had as a young radical, I still have.
It's just that, broadly speaking, those tend to be embraced by the new right rather than the left, or such as it is these days.
Most of the critiques which now emerge against techno-capital and the biopolitical, the tyrannical biopolitical state now come out of the right, whereas in my 20s, they would have come out of the left.
And so a huge amount has shifted.
And to a great extent, my political priors are still more or less the same.
But if there's one governing theme which has changed, it's that I don't believe in progress.
And if you take those political priors, you know, the critique of techno-capital, you know, a recognition of the importance of material reality and of sex reality and of the grand sweep of human culture and human history, and you just take off the progress theology goggles, you know, you still have some of the same themes.
You're playing some of the same tunes, but you're playing them in a slightly different key.
And although I've never really thought of myself as a conservative, I tend to be published by conservative magazines because I'm simply not legible anywhere else.
It just doesn't make sense for me to be able to.
So people call me a conservative, but I prefer the term reactionary because it just leaves me a lot freer to do and think as I think is appropriate.
Well, it is interesting how simple it is to become a conservative nowadays when the left has gone so far into its own weird fantasy world.
One of the things you talk about in the book is you had a baby and you kind of liked your baby, which right.
Well, I mean, this throws up all sorts of very fundamental conceptual problems from the point of view of liberal feminism.
Because if you think about the structural, the underlying preconceptions of liberal feminism, somewhere pretty near the root of that is the idea that more freedom, conceived of as freedom from, is by definition always better.
But the problem with, I mean, which is fine if you're, I don't know, 22 and you don't really have any commitments or obligations or anywhere pressing to be.
That's kind of sort of all right.
I say that in a qualified way, but it's sort of all right.
But if you're, I mean, if you've got a screaming six-week old baby and it's 4am and that baby needs feeding, you can't very well just lie there and say, no, I don't want to.
It just doesn't work like that.
You know, there's a visceral set of instincts which, you know, in all but the most unfortunate and exceptional circumstances are going to kick in.
And it's like you've grown an extra body, as I've described it in the book, it's like you've grown another organ.
And it's existentially dependent on you, but also your existence is dependent on sustaining this extra bodily organ that you've grown, actually in your own viscera.
But it just happens to be separate from you physically, and yet you have to care for it as though it were your own kidney or your lungs or your heart.
It feels that immediate and that brain scrambling.
Literally, the only time in 20 years of driving that I've ever damaged the car was when I was trying to go around a tight corner with my hungry baby screaming in the back, his fat brain scrambling.
And it just left me rethinking everything which I'd believed about the separate autonomous individual subject.
And I was thinking, well, no, this, hang on a minute.
If in order to be a functioning participant in the liberal world, you know, as an autonomous subject, I have to erase this entire facet of my physiological self, my reproductive role, and also my loves and my priorities, then either there's a problem with women being functioning members of a liberal polity, or there's a problem with liberalism.
And, you know, and I just reject out of hand the idea that women can't be functioning members of the polity.
That seems absurd to me.
There's nothing wrong with my brain.
And so I concluded that this is clearly a liberalism problem rather than a mother's problem.
And whereas liberal feminism has chosen to junk mothers, I prefer to junk liberalism.
So as I was reading, you give a very concise history of some of the feminist thought that goes on and some of the concerns that you have as a feminist.
And one of the things that just struck me repeatedly was how flimsy the framework is on which critical theory and postmodernism is built.
They've taken a few observations that people have made since at least ancient Greece and the old Hebrews, you know, that language segments reality and that culture is different in different places.
They've taken a few kind of minor observations and they've built on it an entire vast structure that cannot be supported on those ideas that make human reality disappear.
And so one of the questions I have is how do you conceive when you say I loved my baby, I wanted to be with my baby, who is the I in that sentence?
Because this is the thing, I haven't finished the book yet and I'm not sure, and I'm not sure where you're going with it entirely, but it seems to me that the postmodernism that you followed, the critical theory that you followed, kind of erased that person in some very important way.
Well, yes, absolutely.
It does erase that person.
And I remember really grappling with that in my 20s.
And eventually, I went through some very long, dark, long, dark nights of the soul trying to make sense of all of this in my 20s.
What is this I that exists?
And I don't think I really stopped.
I don't think I really exited the kind of the full-on, I mean, I won't call it a full-on psychotic break, but it was definitely sort of, it was a very deranging experience and it went on for quite some years, really, really some years.
And I don't think I exited that until I was able to formulate what the I was that was observing.
And I mean, this is very metaphysical territory to get into, but I mean, I'll just say in this context, that I had a direct personal experience of just being me, which I felt that I could trust in.
And I was able to begin building back from there.
But yes, I mean, in as much as this is a set of, really, I would call them theologies, which set about stripping away and dismantling and disaggregating and deconstructing all the way down to the grand level and then telling people that there's really nothing left there at all, which to me, in my view, is just not true.
It's not true that there's nothing left there.
And all I can really offer is, I mean, they're all very, very keen on lived experience.
And I would just like politely to offer my lived experience to say, no, no, you're wrong.
You're wrong.
There isn't nothing there.
I mean, there is, not only is there not nothing there, we are all making decisions about what is good and what is bad.
When you say that you love your baby, you're not just saying that you love your baby.
You're also saying it is a good thing that you do and that you are siding with that love over the ideas.
I mean, some of the feminists you quote sounded like they needed to be put into padded cells to me.
I mean, people who were talking about babies as parasites, people who were talking about how horrible it was that this should happen, these things should occur to a person in a free society.
It sounded like they had left the reservation in some way.
Where did you get?
I mean, having gone through a huge transition in my life, it takes a certain amount of guts.
Where did you find, where did that particular courage come from?
Is that something that everybody needs to have?
Or is that something that can be taught?
You mean the courage to have a baby or the courage to?
The courage to change your mind.
It.
I don't even know that I set out to change.
I was just left with no other option.
And I, you know, for better or for worse, I've always I've always been stuck with the kind of mind that follows arguments to their conclusion.
And I guess that's it.
Yeah, no, that doesn't explain it.
It's a personality thing.
And I'm thinking, well, if this, then that, then it follows that, oh, crap.
I mean, I never expected, honestly, until I was, I never expected until I was halfway through writing the proposal for the book that I would end up arguing for a feminism against progress.
And I typed it out and I was like, no, no, no, this is actually, this is where this is going.
You know, feminism has to be against progress.
There's no other way for it.
And then I was well into writing, into working out the book itself when I realized that the metaphysical place that abortion and birth control occupy within this, the long arc of the contest between the feminisms of freedom and of care.
And really, and it's subsequently, having reflected on those and laid out those arguments, I've come to see that as just one cut at a very much larger problem, which I've described in the book as our entry into the cyborg era, or rather the transhumanist era.
And in a sense, feminism has been a vector for the delivery of that entry into the cyborg era, to the extent that women believe ourselves to be persons by virtue of having this technology, which undergirds our freedom, which is to say we can access personhood to the extent that it's underwritten by the technology, which flattens our reproductive difference from men.
To that extent, every woman who's on the pill is a cyborg.
You know, I'm out of time.
I'm really sorry to be out of time because I'd like to talk to you more about the specifics of this.
Where can people find your writing besides reading your book, Feminism Against Progress?
So Feminism Against Progress is published on the 25th of April, Regnary Books.
Why Helix Matches You00:02:32
My weekly column is at Unheard, U-N-H-E-R-D, which is published in the United Kingdom.
My substack is reactionaryfeminist.com at Substack.
And you can find me on Twitter at Move in Circles.
Mary, I hope you'll come back.
I'd like to talk to you more about more specifics.
I'm sorry.
I would love that.
This has been great and it's a pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's nice meeting you.
Thanks very much.
Now, the ad copy here says getting a good night's sleep is essential for your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
I'm sorry to hear that because I never sleep, but that's why I love my Helix mattress.
You may love it because it helps you get a good night's sleep.
Helix is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your unique sleep preferences or my unique staying awake preferences.
If you're a hot sleeper, a side sleeper, or a non-sleeper like me, this is the right mattress for you.
The Helix lineup includes 14 unique mattresses, including a collection for your kids.
I've had my Helix for a few years now.
And while I still am not the best sleeper, I love how my Helix is customized to fit my needs perfectly, which really matters a lot when you're awake.
Nervous about buying a mattress online?
You do not have to be.
Helix has a sleep quiz that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress, because why would you buy a mattress made for someone else?
Go to helixsleep.com slash Claven, take their two-minute sleep quiz and find the perfect mattress for your body and sleep type.
Your mattress will come right to your door for free.
Plus, Helix has a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for 100 nights, risk-free.
They'll pick it up for you.
If you don't love it, you'll love it.
Don't worry about it.
For a limited time, Helix is offering up to 20% off all mattress orders and two free pillows for my listeners.
This is their best offer yet.
So hurry over to helixleep.com slash Claven with Helix.
Better Sleep starts now, so does Better Lying Awake.
But you got to know how to spell Claven.
It's K-L-A-V-A-N.
All right, we are coming up on nine months since the release of Matt Walsh's groundbreaking documentary, What is a Woman? which exposed radical gender ideology for what it is.
Terrific, terrific documentary.
You'd think this would be ample enough time for people to come up with an actual answer to that question.
It's a simple question, but you'd be wrong.
As Matt discovered in the Young America Foundation Q ⁇ A in New Mexico just a few nights ago, their answers to the question are still just as confusing and nonsensical.
I'm sure you all have seen this clip going viral from after Matt's speech when a self-identified trans woman, a male, a guy, attempted to answer a simple, very predictable question, what is a woman?
Here's how that person responded.
Cool Hand's Insane Asylum00:14:56
A woman is, this is a quote, a woman is somebody who is included and respected and seen and participates in society recognized by other women.
I'm going to tell my wife that question, but I'm going to tell it from a distance so when she throws a bunch at me, I won't go flying out the door.
If you haven't yet seen What is a woman, or if you're on the left and still somehow find yourself confused at basic biology, here's some good news.
You can now get 30% off your Daily Wire Plus membership when you use the code WOMAN.
I don't know what it means, but it's spelled W-O-M-A-N.
If you're already seen the film, then you understand how important it is.
If you haven't or know someone who hasn't seen it, tell them to watch it.
We need to start recruiting more people back to the side of truth and basic reality to watch What is a Woman?
Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe and use the code WOMAN to save 30% off your membership.
It's a mysterious word, but it will get you 30% off.
So on the cultural section, I want to bring together two themes of the show, reality and Easter, because Good Friday is the prelude, the tragic prelude to the joy of Easter.
And I was thinking about, you know, when I was talking to Greg Laurie last week about his film Jesus Revolution, which I really liked, but I was still thinking about why in general Christian movies don't move me all that much.
And I was thinking it's because they do not show reality.
They don't show the way people really are.
They'll show people who have a flaw or some or do a bad thing, but they don't show how inherently flawed we are.
I was comparing them in my mind to romantic comedies.
Romantic comedies are not the most realistic stories in the world.
They're kind of happily ever after stories.
But at the same time, if you look at the great romantic comedies, look at Philadelphia's story, Harry Met Sally, the first few seasons of Cheers, one of the really great romantic narratives with Sam and Diane.
If you look at those, the people in them are not, they're not just flawed.
They're us.
They're small.
They're stupid.
They're governed by sex and greed and personal ambition and neurosis.
They have their neurotics.
And yet, love flourishes in the midst of those things.
And when I was talking about King Lear and The Tempest, I was showing how Shakespeare pours Christian truths into tragedies and to things with terrible appeal.
But guys' eyes are being put out.
And you think, well, where's the Christian?
Hey, where's the happy Christian talk here?
Nowhere.
There's nowhere.
And yet Christ is there.
So I wanted to take a look at some movies for the Easter season that weren't religious movies and yet were filled with Jesus.
They were movies about Jesus and yet movies about Jesus that include all the flaws and even evil of human beings and aren't squeaky clean and aren't G-rated or anything like that.
So the first one I thought of is a movie that many people don't know about, which I just think is absolutely wonderful.
It's a small movie, but it's a wonderful film.
If you've never seen it, 1961 is called Whistle Down the Wind.
I think at one point Andrew Lloyd Weber made a musical out of it, but I don't know if I don't think it ever went anywhere.
But it is a wonderful little film.
It's based on a novel by a lady named Mary Haley Bell.
And Mary Haley Bell was married for like 60 years, one of the great showbiz marriages to an excellent British actor named John Mills, a very famous British actor in his day.
And Mary Haley Bell and John Mills had two daughters.
One was an actress named Juliet Mills, who was in a TV show for a while here called Nanny and the Professor.
But the other was Haley Mills, right?
Putting the two names together.
Haley Mills, and she was a big Disney child star.
She was in a film called Pollyanna, which is still a good film.
If you haven't seen it, your kids would love that film if they're younger.
And Haley Mills, very beautiful young girl, and she plays a little girl in this film, Whistle Down the Wind.
It also has Alan Bates, a great, great actor in his first starring role.
And it's about a bunch of local school children in the Lancaster villages around a farm.
And one day there's a fugitive hiding in the barn of one of these kids.
It's Alan Bates.
And he's wounded.
He's got a knock on his head.
And one day, Haley Mills walks into the barn and she hears somebody in the barn.
She's scared, right?
And she says, who is it?
And just as she says, who is it?
The fugitive passes out.
And as he passes out, he says, Jesus Christ, and he collapses.
And Haley Mills, being a little child, she thinks Jesus Christ is hiding in the barn.
And that's the story.
The story is this fugitive is hiding in the barn and the word spreads throughout all the little children of the neighborhood that Jesus Christ is hiding in the barn.
And the conflict is between the realism, but also the cynicism of the adults, and the falsehood, but also the faith of the children.
And you can see the children's kind of rudimentary faith in this sign here, in this scene here.
It's cut eight.
Who's got to look after them then?
Jesus.
Don't talk wet.
Yes, he will then, because that woman told me.
What woman?
The woman in the Sally Harvey.
That woman.
I asked her to look after it, and she said, Jesus will look after it for me.
But what's she know about it?
She does because she lives in his house.
How can she when he's dead?
Oh, I'm Kathy.
Well, what's up?
He is, isn't he?
Well, fancy saying, he'll have something terrible happening now.
Yes, you just wait till Jesus comes and gets you.
I'm not bothered.
It's only talk.
She got us worried.
Look up at the sky where Jesus is going to come and get her.
And the thing is, obviously their faith is, as I say, simple and misguided, but still their faith finds a truth that is higher than the truth of the world that they're living in.
The world is still the world, but there is a truth higher than that, and the children see it when the adults can't.
It's a beautiful movie, Whistle Down the Wind.
Another one is one of a personal favorite movie of mine, Cool Hand Luke.
If you've never seen this picture, especially if you're a guy, it's a great guy's movie, 1967, starring the terrific Paul Newman, one of the great stars of that era.
Cool Hand Luke is just a terrific, terrific picture.
And it's got beautiful, beautiful music.
And Whistle Down the Wind has a beautiful theme in it, too.
The music in Cool Hand Luke is by Laylo Schifrin, who you know from Mission Impossible.
He was a very prolific, terrific writer.
And the theme is down here on the ground.
If you can find a good version of it, the jazz in that time was too overdone.
But if you can find a good simple version of someone singing Down Here on the Ground, it's a very, very lovely song.
And it had a famous line in it.
Struther Martin plays the leader, the head of a chain gang.
And he beats up the prisoners savagely and says, what we have here is a failure to communicate.
And that became a very famous line.
So Kool-Aid Luke is about a guy who commits a minor crime.
He's drunk and he starts wrenching the tops, the heads off parking meters.
He gets arrested and he's sentenced to two years on a chain gang in a prison camp run by this sadist.
And the guy just decides to break this guy.
And Kool-Aid Luke is just a guy.
He's just trying to get through his thing.
But he just starts to beat him up no matter what he says.
If he's a smart aleck, he beats him up.
He puts him in a hole in a box, this horrible punishment.
And Luke has nothing to fight back with.
He has no power.
And yet, he will not be broken.
Or at least he stands up to this guy.
And it starts out with this guy, Dragline, who is the guy won a, George Kennedy won an Oscar for that.
Dragline is the tough guy.
He's the bull goose loony, they call, you know, he's the bull of the alpha male of the yard.
And he beats the living hell out of Luke, too.
But Luke will not surrender.
He just never surrenders.
That's the only thing about him.
And so they're playing cards one day and Luke bluffs.
And this is how he gets his nickname.
Here's that clip.
The man's got kings, get your tail out.
You want to see him?
Yeah, right there.
One, two, three, four, five.
Light stuff, right?
Hand on nothing.
He beats you with nothing.
Just like today when he kept coming back at me with nothing.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.
I'm gonna sit in here next to my boy.
Cool hand Luke.
But cool hand means he's got nothing, but he's going to play nothing.
And it's a beautiful film, very moving.
And the idea that this alpha male understands that this guy is unbeatable.
He's undefeatable.
And that inspires the other people.
He's still just a drunk and a petty criminal, but he has freedom.
He's free because he's willing to take the pain.
And this is the thing.
This is what freedom is, right?
Freedom is not being afraid.
If you're not afraid, then you're free.
The deaths of saints tell us why saints are free.
This is as opposed to what was sold to us by the news media during COVID, right?
When Donald Trump, remember Donald Trump came out and said, don't be afraid of COVID.
Don't let it dominate your life.
And this was the reaction of the press.
Don't tell your supporters, don't be afraid of COVID.
Everyone should be afraid of COVID.
It's okay to be afraid of COVID.
And it's okay that it's dominating your life because it has dominated your life.
So if you want, you know, they say that men can't become women, but Jake Tapper did a good job there.
You should be afraid.
Well, why do they want you to be afraid?
Because then you have to tune in next week.
Then you're a slave.
If you're afraid, you're a slave.
If you're afraid, you're angry.
If you're angry, you're a slave.
Only when you're fearless, only courage, only courage makes you free.
Because life is hard, and there's a lot of pain in it.
And sometimes to be free, you've got to take the punch.
You've got to stand up to people.
And that is the thing that Jesus gives people because he says to you, as I said before, that death is less than death and life is more than life.
And so you don't have to be afraid.
Be not afraid.
Jesus says this all the time.
Be not afraid.
And that's where freedom comes from.
Because you know what?
There's always going to be somebody who wants to take your freedom.
And the bigger they are, the more they want it.
The more power they have, the more they want to keep that power in play.
And the more they know that your individuality and your freedom threatens their power.
The only way to be free is to be free.
The only way to be free is not to be afraid.
And that is the thing that Christ gives you on this Easter when you suddenly realize, oh, yeah, they crucified this guy, yet there he is, right?
That is where that courage comes from.
And it is beautifully, beautifully shown in Cool Hand Luke.
Terrific movie, terrific movie.
The other is an Oscar winner.
Maybe you've seen this one.
This is probably the most famous of them.
Is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975?
It won the Oscar, I believe.
And obviously, Jack Nicholson won as Randall Patrick McMurphy.
I've sometimes compared Donald Trump to Randall Patrick McMurphy.
I like the book better by Ken Kesey.
The novel is absolutely wonderful, and I like it because it uses this kind of trick, literary trick, where the whole thing is told from the position of a crazy person as he slowly becomes sane because of Randall Patrick McMurphy.
And the thing is, McMurphy is a petty criminal, gambler, or brawler who is sentenced to prison.
And to get out of prison, he pretends to be insane.
So he's sent to an insane asylum.
Ken Kese worked in an insane asylum.
This is based on this.
And it reflects, the film reflects this kind of growing idea in philosophy.
Foucault, Michelle Foucault, was saying this at the same time.
He was saying, people aren't crazy.
It's just a definition of society.
It's a power.
You know, Foucault thought everything was a power structure, and the power structure defined where madness is.
Now, that's false.
That's foolishness.
Some people are mentally ill.
But what Kesey is saying here is that it can be done that way.
Some things that are considered crazy are just normal.
At one point, Randall Patrick McMurphy says to these guys, you're no crazier than everybody else.
And that, I think, is the point.
This also is about manhood.
The place is dominated by Nurse Ratchet.
She hates their manhood.
She uses every trick she can psychologically to confuse them out of their manhood, out of their convictions, out of their anger.
There's a wonderful scene where they have a group therapy thing where everything devolves into babbling and craziness and screaming.
And through it all, Randall Patrick McMurphy just stands up to her.
And the great scene, the best scene I think, where he stands up to her is when he wants to see the World Series.
She manipulates the people so that they won't vote to have the World Series and she won't let them watch it.
So McMurphy sits down in front of a blank screen and starts to dictate, you know, announce the World Series as if it's there until all the crazy people gather around him and they can see it too.
And here's that clip.
All right, here we come for the next pit.
Press swings.
It's a lot of good!
Cleaner before I die!
I got it.
We're with you.
All right.
He's the great Mickey Mantle now.
Pick up the pitch.
Metal swings!
It's a- It's great Louise Fletcher.
As Nurse Ratchet, she also won an Oscar for this.
And why is she so angry?
She's angry because they're free.
Why are they free?
They're free because their minds are free.
They're in asylum.
They can't get out.
They're locked up.
They can't break out.
But they're free because their minds are free.
And their minds are free because Murphy is unafraid.
And Mick Murphy is unafraid.
And he teaches them to be unafraid as well.
Each one of these stories, I say these are Christian stories because each one of them follows the pattern of a Christian story.
Only the first one, Whistledown the Wind, involves Jesus directly in the sense that this guy, they think this guy is Jesus, but all of them follow the pattern of the passion story and the resurrection story.
And you'll see when you watch them that that story is embedded in these stories.
And the reason I love to see it is Christian truth embedded in evil, selfish, unrighteous reality is because Christian truth is embedded in evil, selfish, unrighteous reality.
It does not transform the world into a happy place.
It does not transform you into a righteous person.
You will still be the person that you are, but you will grow into something new with Christ.
Overcoming Life's Priorities00:11:03
You really will.
I've never experienced anything like the personal growth that I have simply in having a relationship with the living God.
It's just an amazing thing, but it takes place in reality.
It doesn't stop me from having an ego.
It doesn't stop me from being annoyed.
It doesn't stop me from sometimes being afraid and angry, all of those things.
But it's a light.
You know, it's like the difference between being lost in a storm and being lost in a storm and being able to see the North Star so you know what direction you're traveling in.
When you leave the truth of reality behind, when you leave the truth of reality behind, you leave the Christian truth behind because that's where the Christian truth lives.
It's not a fantasy.
It's not a fantasy.
It is the hidden truth of life.
It is the uber truth of life, the life, the truth of life that is above life.
And these films, Whistledown the Wind, Kool Hand Luke, and whatchamacallit, the Kenkeesi novel of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Great examples of how to tell stories about Jesus without getting involved with religion.
All right, we are approaching, for those of you who are non-members, non-subscribers to the Daily Wire, we are approaching the Clavenless weekend, but I have to be the Clavenless Week, but I have to be honest and say that Easter is coming.
So you may get some compensation for my absence by the resurrection of the Lord of the universe.
You know, I mean, some people think that's even better than the Andrew Clavin show.
I can't, I couldn't possibly judge.
But it still would be a good idea for you to subscribe.
You can go to dailywire.com slash subscribe, use code Clavin at checkout.
And I don't know what that, oh, it'll get you two months free on all annual plans.
But it'll also teach you how to spell Clavin.
It's K-L A-V-A-N.
You probably don't know that.
But you know that I still get emails addressed to K-L-A-V-E-N.
But become a member because it supports us, it helps us.
It makes us free to deal with reality because we don't necessarily have to kowtow to other people besides you who we like kowtowing to because you're our audience.
But still, we will still plunge you into the Easter.
We'll plunge you into Easter.
We'll plunge you into the joy of Easter after we solve all your problems with the mailbag.
Did nothing wrong.
It was all bullshit.
That's the way I feel about myself.
I've done nothing wrong.
Matthew, you've made Lindsay immortal.
Lindsay's shout is immortal.
From Matthew, my wife and I have been married for nearly five years.
We have no kids together, but she has two kids from a previous marriage that I proudly raise and love as if they're my own.
Our marriage, though not without moments of disagreement or tension, has been extremely happy.
Both of us show our love and gratitude to each other, and we have approached any issue as a team.
Last week, during a conversation about our family summer plan, she told me, it's over.
I don't want to be married to you anymore.
Blindsided would be an understatement.
I've tried to ask why.
She says she is miserable and is tired of it, tired of what I'm not sure.
She refuses counseling and therapy, saying her mind will not be changed.
I'm confused, devastated.
The kids are too.
I love my wife and stepkids.
I do not want my marriage to end.
She's content with divorce and even says, you'll thank me later.
Do I go along with her unilateral decision to end our marriage or do I fight for it?
And what would fighting even look like?
Thank you for everything you do.
Confused in Texas.
You know, it's interesting how often this happens to men specifically.
They think they're in a great marriage and suddenly the wife says, I'm tired of this.
It's over.
Normally, I can't say that this happened to you because I wasn't there, but normally when you look back over time, you find that your wife has actually been trying to tell you that something was wrong for a long time and you haven't been listening to her or taking her seriously.
This is a very common phenomenon.
So I don't know if that's the case, but it's more likely the case than that she didn't say anything and then suddenly wanted to leave.
If her mind is made up, tragically, because you're right, it's horrible.
It's horrible for her kids.
There's nothing you can do.
I mean, and so your first responsibility here is to your stepkids.
That's your first responsibility.
And what you have to do is make sure that this is not going to be a bitter, angry clash, a fight, you know, there's not going to be any violence, either emotional violence or physical violence, obviously.
And that's the best you can do.
And that's really sad.
And I'm sorry for you.
That really is a terrible thing.
But if she won't even talk to you about it, and if she's not going to be swayed, you don't have any choice.
And that's just a terrible thing, terrible for the kids.
But that should be your direction.
If you are convinced, and it sounds like it, she's not going to be swayed, then your whole point now should be make sure these stepkids have access to you.
Make sure that you're not in any kind of a horrendous custody fight.
Make sure that you're not screaming at each other and that this is done in the most friendly, loving way it's possible to do it.
I wish I could offer you better advice than that.
I wish I could offer you more hope.
But if she won't go into therapy with you, couples therapy with you, if she won't talk to you, if she won't be moved, there's nothing you can do about it.
And so the kids should be your first or your first responsibility.
From Brayden, thank you for your wisdom.
I've listened to you since Michael Knowles was your cultural correspondent.
Your thoughts about living and understanding life, art, and the world have deeply impacted me.
I'm blessed to split my time between pastoring a small but growing church, working a full-time job with growing opportunities, and loving the family, which includes a beautiful wife and three kids, five and under.
That's a lot of work.
I'm blessed beyond measure, but I'm very busy.
I wonder if you have any advice for being effective in every area of life when my personal inner resources seem limited, but I still have responsibilities that deserve the best of what I have to give.
Thank you again.
I appreciate your wisdom.
God bless you and your family.
Well, thank you for that.
And yeah, I know what you're talking about.
I mean, I have lived a very busy life.
I'm insanely busy now.
And it can be, you can overdo it.
I mean, I remember when I wrote Another Kingdom and I was doing this show four days a week and I was writing four openings a week, which is the single hardest creative thing I've ever done.
Just difficult in terms of energy and time.
And I wrote one of the volumes of Another Kingdom.
I think it was the second one, but it may have been the first.
And I actually reached a point where I had hit empty.
It had never happened to me before.
My mind went blank.
I couldn't do anything but sit and stare.
And I just thought, that's not good.
You shouldn't actually be depleted to the point where you can't move or think.
And I just had to start to marshal my energies and take breaks and make sure that I'm very fanatical about deadlines.
So I would make sure that the deadlines I set were realistic deadlines and do less.
I just had to do less.
And now I work incredibly hard.
And all this week, I've actually gotten sleep this week.
I was so exhausted.
And it's just a question of being realistic and dialing back and setting priorities.
Setting priorities is the first thing.
If you're dealing with a church and children, obviously your children are your priority.
Your church may be your priority over your job.
You may not be able to do the church.
And as the church grows, you may not be able to do the church and your job.
You might want to think about that and think about other ways to fund your life.
So, you know, I cut back the show from four days a week to one for one reason only, which was that I couldn't do it at the level of quality that I insist on for myself and do it four days a week.
I could do it.
I could do it in terms of energy, but I had to do it worse.
And I wasn't going to do that.
It just seemed unfair to you guys, but it also seemed unfair to me, who just expects very high quality from the things I put my hand to.
So you've got to prioritize and make your commitments and cut back commitments where you can't do it.
It's the only answer, unfortunately, because you can't make more time in the day and make sure on top of it you have time to do the things that make life worthwhile.
Making love to your wife, thinking, sitting alone and watching the sunset, and all those things.
Those things have to be factored in to a full life.
Your life cannot be spent in front of a screen.
It cannot be spent just putting out.
You've got to put in, too.
That's why I include in my work that I include reading, because if there's not something coming in, there's nothing to go out.
And it seems tiring at the time.
I've read books when I've gotten three hours of sleep with my tears pouring down my eyes, but in fact, it keeps me from getting exhausted because there's stuff coming in.
All right, let's do one more.
Let's see.
From Ethan, it says, I love the Cameron Winter series.
Cannot wait for the third one.
It comes out October 31st, the House of Love and Death.
You can pre-order it if you want to, but I will advertise that more.
I'll plug that more as we get closer to the day.
He says, you've got me reading again for the first time since high school.
He says, I'm 22.
I work for my dad's resale business.
Recently, my dad, a pro-Trump Christian conservative, hired someone for our business who he thought was a man.
It wasn't until after she was hired that he discovered that she's really a woman who thinks she's a man.
My dad says, as long as she's a good worker and keeps the politics and activism out of the company, then he has no problem with it.
I, on the other hand, do have a problem with it because I'm not going to conform to her delusions and address her as he, if I ever do have to address her.
What do you think I should do or even say?
I don't want to be in Jack Phillips' situation and lose the business and get into a legal dispute off of even false accusations of transphobia.
Yeah, you know, this is your father's business, first of all.
You say you're working for your dad's retail business, so he should set the rules about the business, and you should basically be a good employee, even though you're the son of the boss.
You should be a good employee and handle it the way he wants you to handle it.
I don't want you to violate your deepest principles, but there's no reason you have to refer to this person, this woman, this confused woman in the third person, probably.
But, you know, I would just be polite and be a good co-worker and do what you have to do.
You know, I want people to live, people should live by their lights.
You should live by your principles.
But one of your principles here should be to serve your father, whose business it is.
He built this business.
He's brought you into it generously.
And so you should work, be in that business as much as you can the way he wants you to be.
He hired this lady and is taking it, I think, very well.
So that's what you do.
You're not going to solve the problem.
This problem is not her problem.
This is a problem we have in the country.
It's a political problem we have.
People pushing a lie on our children, on ourselves, on businesses.
This is a lie, transgenderism, and it has to be overcome, but you're not going to overcome it by picking on this person.
So just do your job and be as kind to your fellow employees as you can.
All right, that is it for non-subscribers.
Become a subscriber.
Come on, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
Use code Claven at checkout for two months, free on all annual plans.