Andrew Klavan satirizes the Save America Act's voter ID laws and critiques modern Oscar films for reflecting post-modern "visceral unbelief." He connects Western paralysis to Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa, citing CNN's alleged misreporting of New York bomb attacks and British schools restricting religious imagery. Klavan argues that replacing Hamlet's doubt with Islamic certainty drives intolerance, urging the younger generation to cure the Western mind of madness by clinging to Jesus Christ rather than adopting hatred or superstition. [Automatically generated summary]
Welcome to this week's episode of What is John Thune Dune?
This is the show where we try to answer the questions, who is John Thune and what is he doing?
To answer the first question first, John Thune, a Republican senator, is the Senate majority leader.
Now, those of you who aren't familiar with how our government works may want to know, what does the American Senate do exactly?
And the answer is, the American Senate does exactly nothing.
And you may say, well, if John Thune is the Senate majority leader and the Senate does nothing, then what is John Thune doing?
Good question.
That's why we're here.
To get to the bottom of this, our reporters met with John Thune for an hour-long interview.
Unfortunately, shortly after the interview ended, they realized they hadn't actually been talking to John Thune, but had instead interviewed the statue of Senator John Clayton in the Capitol Rotunda.
In their defense, the statue just stands around all day, so it was an easy mistake to make.
Undeterred, our reporters proceeded to go to John Thune's office, but accidentally ended up in a dark broom closet.
There, they began to interview a mop until they realized that couldn't be John Thune because a mob is actually good for something.
Like, if your kid spills his juice on the floor, you can clean it up with a mop, which is actually pretty useful.
So, definitely not John Thune.
But here at the Daily Wire, we don't stop searching just because we can't find the answers.
In fact, we don't even stop talking when we can't find the answers.
In spite of all our setbacks, we were determined to learn what is Jon Thune doing.
To help us in our search, we developed this handy QA.
Q. What is John Thune doing?
A. Well, that's what we're trying to find out.
Q. But hasn't President Trump asked John Thune to pass the Save America Act, which requires voters to have picture ID?
A. Yes, he has.
Q. And doesn't the Save America Act have the support of like a million percent of Americans?
A. Give or take a few percentage points?
Yes, it does.
Q. So what does Jon Thune doing?
A. You keep asking me that.
Look, to be fair, there are some controversial parts of the Save Act.
For instance, it bans transgender surgery on minors.
This is a very divisive issue because while 100% of Americans understand that sexually mutilating children is a Nazi-level atrocity, as many as 37% believe that pretending it's okay makes them seem nice.
Likewise, while 71% of Democrat voters support requiring voter ID, 98% of Democrat politicians oppose it.
Because as Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer has said, quote, the Democrat Party is a criminal organization in which all the criminals are obviously crazy.
So if we can't cheat at the polls, we'll never win another election, unquote.
Q. Wait, Chuck Schumer actually said that?
A. Maybe that was a dream I had.
I'm not sure.
Q. So if the Save Act is so popular, why can't Jon Thune get it passed?
A. Because under the filibuster rule, he needs 60 votes and the Democrats won't budge because of what Chuck Schumer said in my dream.
Q. So why doesn't John Thune get rid of the filibuster?
A. Ah, because without the filibuster, when the Democrats win back power, they'll pack the Supreme Court and steal elections by making Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico into states.
Q. What will the Democrats do if they win back power with the filibuster in place?
A. Then they'll get rid of the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, and steal elections by making Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico into states.
Q. So what is John Thune even doing?
A. All right, this Q ⁇ A isn't getting us anywhere.
To get at the essential nature of John Thune, we're just going to have to interview another statue.
Really, any random piece of marble will do.
Just a rock lying around somewhere.
Even an empty space.
Personally, I'd be happy to interview an empty space if only I could find Jon Thune.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Klavan, and this is The Andrew Klavan Show.
All right, we are back laughing our way through the bombing of Iran, which we'd probably be doing anyway.
Let me thank you all for going to the New English Review to read my story, Jesus the Movie.
I really appreciate that.
And it was very gratifying because people really seemed to love the story, which I was, I thought there'd be a lot more of disgruntlement, but there was not.
People were really inspired by it, and I really like that.
And now that I have the New English review and think that maybe I can get my stories published, I'll probably try and write more short stories.
A lot of more stuff coming up.
Spencer Clavin, No Relation, and I are going to test out a new show on the culture.
We'll talk about that more next week.
This week, I received Werewolf Cop.
We're making that into a graphic novel, what we used to call a comic book, my novel Werewolf Cop.
And I got the illustrations by Jesse White, and they were just amazing.
They were absolutely great.
I also got the cover to the next Cameron Winter novel called Find Me Nowhere.
It comes out in October, but don't be afraid.
You can pre-order it right this minute on Amazon.
Find Me Nowhere.
I think it's the sixth Cameron Winter novel, and that's great cover from Mysterious Press.
They did a great job, very romantic cover.
So that's a lot of my news.
If you have comments on the show, wherever you are, if you are watching this at home on YouTube or Daily Wire Plus, or you're watching it in the hospital in your imagination where the voices come from, just leave a comment anywhere you are, and we will come and pick it up, especially in your imagination, which we're already haunting as it is.
This week's comment is from Jonathan Bachelor7699.
He says, I've always said if any of these Jewish conspiracies were true, like space lasers, weather control, or that they control XYZ, I'd convert to Judaism tomorrow because they clearly have something about human nature and reality figured out that no one else does.
Jewish Conspiracies Explained00:13:11
And I want in.
You know, there's an old joke like that about a Jewish guy in Nazi Germany in the 30s reading a Nazi paper, sitting on a bench reading a Nazi paper.
And somebody says, why are you reading a Nazi paper when you're Jewish?
He says, because in real life, I'm spit on.
They break my business.
They kick me in the street.
They shout insults on me.
But in the Nazi papers, I run everything.
So yes, you're quite right.
The Jews have got it all figured out in the minds of anti-Semites.
All right, let's get to today's episode.
When will it ever end?
You know, bed sheets are different than a bridal gown on wedding night.
They don't get ripped apart all at once.
I didn't write that, folks.
Trust me.
Instead, they deteriorate over time.
The corners won't stay tucked.
The fabric feels a little scratchier than you remember.
You wake up warmer than you should be, and you just don't feel as comfortable as you used to.
Here's the thing.
You don't always realize how bad your sheets have become until you finally replace them.
That's why you need to upgrade to our sponsor, Bowl and Branch.
If your sheets are piling, thinning, slipping off the mattress, or making you overheat at night, that's your sign.
Bowl and branch are comfortable, cool sheets.
I know this because I stay awake all night enjoying them.
You guys will get it.
You know, you'll use the sheets.
You'll fall asleep.
You'll miss the whole experience, but I'm always awake.
And so I'm thinking, gee, these bowl and branches' signature sheets, they must be made from 100% organic cotton.
They're actually designed to hold their shape, stay breathable, feel luxuriously soft night after night.
You will fall asleep faster, stay comfortable all night long.
And honestly, you'll notice the difference the moment you get into bed.
And the best part, they don't wear out like box store sheets.
Actually, it's softer with every wash.
I can personally attest to it because I lie awake all night.
Upgrade your sleep during Bolin Branch's annual spring event.
Take off 20% site-wide, plus free shipping at Bolinbranch.com/slash Claven with code Claven.
That's Bolin Branch.
B-O-L-L-A-N-D Branch.com/slash Clavin, code Claven to unlock 20% off exclusion supply.
See site for details and also learn how to spell Clavin.
Here's a little tune to help you out.
Chapter one, A Nation of Pansies.
So we're all hearing from the media that the price of gas is skyrocketing because of the Strait of Hormuz is being blocked by Iranian mines and the MAGA base hates Trump now and everything is going to destroy the Republicans' chances in the midterms and all this.
And then there's Donald Trump talking about the state of the war in Iran.
This is cut two.
They are pretty much at the end of the line.
Doesn't mean we're going to end it immediately, but they are.
They've got no Navy.
They've got no Air Force.
They've got no anti-air traffic, anything.
They have no systems of control.
We're just riding free range over that country.
And now we're going to look very strongly at the Straits.
The Straits are in great shape.
We've knocked out all of their boats.
They have some missiles, but not very many.
I think we're in very good shape.
The main thing is we have to win this.
They win it quickly, but win it.
And there are many people.
I'm just watching some of the news.
Most people say it's already been won.
It's just a question of when.
When do we stop?
We don't want to let it regrow.
And ideally, we would like to see somebody in there that knows what they're doing.
In other words, it could build a country.
So obviously, Trump is always very upbeat about what he's doing.
But the New York Times just attacks him relentlessly.
And Brett Stevens over there.
Now, Brett Stevens is one of their putative conservatives, but he hated Trump so much that he had to leave the Wall Street Journal and go to the New York Times, where he's become like every Times writer who becomes a little bit more liberalized.
But he said this.
He said, I'm flabbergasted by the relentless pessimism I'm seeing in much of the commentariat.
We are less than two weeks into a war that will almost surely be over by the end of the month.
And already there are predictions that it's another Iraq.
American casualties, heartbreaking as they are, have been minor for a conflict of the scale.
Iran's ability to threaten its neighbors diminishes by the day.
We've seen this in the sharp decline in its ballistic missile and drone attacks.
I have to assume that before this war is over, we will find a way to remove Iran's remaining stores of highly enriched uranium.
And Iran's leaders, for all their swagger, now know they're not immune from reprisal, which will make them think a lot more carefully as they plot their retaliation.
So, you know, I said before, war is bad.
Nobody wants a war.
You don't fight wars for fun.
It's not a game.
You fight them because your leaders think that you have to.
But when you're in a war, you should be in it to win it.
And this is something that Trump has been talking about even before when he was just running for office.
Here's just an example of this is cut three.
We must ensure that our courageous service men and women have the tools they need to deter war.
And when called upon to fight in our name, only do one thing, win.
We have to win.
We have to start winning wars again.
I have to say, when I was young in high school and college, everybody used to say, we never lost a war.
We never lost a war.
You remember?
Some of you are right there with me.
And you remember, we never lost a war.
America never lost.
And now we never win a war.
We never win.
And we don't fight to win.
We don't fight to win.
So we either got to win or don't fight it at all.
You know, this is Trump.
Remember in his first term, he was surrounded by people who were, what can I say, establishment Republicans, who were put in place to keep him from accomplishing the things he wanted to do.
This time he came back prepared, and now he's got Pete Hegseth, who is obviously at the Department of War.
He's god of war, and he says this: I see only what I have come to destroy.
Okay, that was a wrong god of war.
That was Kratos.
But here's Pete Hegseth giving a talk.
This is a while back, just as the Iran war was beginning, talking to the joint forces who were going to go fight it.
This is Cut Five.
This is your moment.
This is the generational turning point America has waited for since 1979.
And since the rudderless wars of Hubris, my generation, our generation, endured.
Don't listen to the noise.
Just stay focused.
Our commander-in-chief is steady at the wheel.
We face a determined enemy, but you are better.
But we must prove it every single day.
History doesn't care if we're tired, if we're scared, or if the fight feels big.
It demands warriors who rise anyway.
Peace through strength, the warrior ethos, lethality, unity of purpose, those are not slogans.
They're the beating heart of what it means to wear the uniform, that uniform.
You think clearly under fire.
You act decisively in chaos.
You uphold the Constitution and you uphold our country without hesitation.
We are not defenders anymore.
We are warriors.
So he says this is a generational shift.
Why does he say that?
And why is it so easy for the left to make fun of him as a make-believe guy who is obviously inspiring people to join up in the military again?
And how did we get from, say, World War II when everybody talked like Pete Hegseth, which lasted four years and cost about 100,000 American lives each of those years?
It was like almost half a million servicemen and women died.
Service men mostly died in World War II.
And now every little fluctuation in the situation here at home is supposed to be a reason for retreat.
Here's Joe Rogan talking about losing the MA base, Cut 6.
But just seems so insane based on what he ran on.
I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?
He ran on no more wars and these stupid, senseless wars.
And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it.
So the polls of MAGA people, people who identify as MAGA, which is a large section of his base, show them they're 90% in favor of what he's doing.
5% are against.
I think there's probably some truth among the young who thought these, you know, they're sick and tired of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and not winning, dragging on.
But how could anyone think we're never going to go to war again in any place?
You know, you go to war out of necessity.
Again, it's not something we do.
Oh, you know, it's a nice day today.
I think I'll go to war.
We go to war out of necessity.
And obviously, Trump, as he has kind of poorly explained, but he has explained, they were building nuclear weapons and they were using their regular weapons, their missiles, to enforce their will and enforce chaos and bullying in the Middle East.
And then, you know, also you have, of course, the wicked Jew haters like Tucker Carlson after Trump said he wanted unconditional surrender.
I'm just trying to get a kind of tone here on the people who are saying the war is lost.
I'm not trying to establish you should support the war.
That's up to you.
But here's Tucker Carlson after Trump said he wanted unconditional surrender, Cut 7.
Unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter if they want.
And everyone knows that.
And that has been, if there's one consistent lesson of history, it means unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter.
Everyone can feel that.
That's like the most atavistic instinct there is.
So it's always a tell with Carlson when he says everyone knows that, or obviously it means he's distorting something entirely.
But the idea that this guy who wraps himself in the flag when Ambassador Huckabee says, makes a numerical judgment saying that the Israelis handled protected civilians better than Americans did in wartime.
And Tucker said, oh, well, I'm an American.
I'm outraged that you would say something about America.
Suddenly is saying that Americans are going to go over and rape women if we win the war.
I mean, which is disgusting because American soldiers have actually never behaved like that en masse.
I mean, there may be incidents, but that used to be the norm after a battle.
That's why where the phrase scum of the earth comes from, because Wellington called his troops scum of the earth, because that's what they would do.
But that's never been the American way.
So, you know, shame on Carlson for talking about American troops.
So where does all this come from?
How did we get here, the sense that defending ourselves against an oppressive evil, a power like Iran, that's been our enemy for 50 years?
Where do we get the sense that we're not justified in doing that?
Or, you know, after 13, 15 days, we're supposed to panic because it's a forever war, or but gas prices are temporarily back to where they were three years ago when it wasn't a crisis then.
I mean, I just, I filled up before the war started at 280 a gallon.
Now it's maybe 340, 350 a gallon, which is, you know, what it was three years ago.
Seven service people have died, of course, a tragedy, but it's a war and it's not that many.
It was all at the beginning when Iran still had weapons.
So again, I'm not trying to make an argument in favor of the war.
You can make up your own minds.
I told you what I thought last week.
I trust Trump's judgment because I believe he doesn't like war and I think that's good.
But since this is our country, right, America, you don't have to be America first.
You just have to be an American.
And our country is at war.
Shouldn't we be rooting for us to win?
I mean, Nick Fuente said today, no, he doesn't want us.
He wants Iran to win.
Why do the media and the Democrats and the Tucker Carlson Jew haters, why are they so eager to turn us against ourselves and each other?
I mean, it just seems a basic thing.
When this war started, my immediate thought was, well, I hope we win now that we're in a war.
I hope we win because I'm an American.
Why are they trying to teach us to behave like a bunch of candy ass pansies?
That's what I'm saying.
Obviously, not our troops.
I'm not talking about that.
They want the public to panic, to run around, oh, gas is costing, you know, it'll probably go back down the minute the fighting stops.
Oh, we've been in this 15 days.
It's a forever war.
You know, they want us to act with this kind of nervous, you know, cowardice that would really be despicable in anybody.
So this is what I want to talk about today.
I don't want to talk about this detail or that detail or this story or that story.
I want to talk about where we lost.
How did we lose our sense that war sometimes happens?
You got to fight it to win it.
And if it's our country and we're in it, we ought to win it.
We ought to root for us to win it.
So how did we get to this point where it's like, okay, let's go to war against evil unless gas, if a gas goes up 350, I'm out.
You know, so how did we turn into these pansies that the press, the media obviously want us to be?
Does anyone else feel like nutrition is getting way too complicated?
It was complicated the minute they brought up the word nutrition.
That was always beyond what I could think about.
I just wanted to eat.
I mean, we used to just do that, eat food.
Now you need a PhD to read the back of a cereal box.
But here's the reality.
We've all been told since we were kids, eat your fruits and vegetables, but nobody really explained in detail why we should.
Here's why we should.
The Lie of Modern Films00:15:37
Phytonutrients.
We need them.
They are natural compounds that your body uses to adjust, repair, and respond every single day.
The more we've used factories to improve our food, the further we've drifted away from what the body actually recognizes as food.
That's why I like balance of nature.
They take real produce and run it through a tailored vacuum-cold process that stabilizes its phytonutrition instead of nuking it with heat and chemicals.
Their whole health system bundle includes their fruits and veggies and fiber and spice supplements, giving you 47 ingredients of whole food and their phytonutrients in a simple, consistent routine.
They've even rolled out brand new freeze-dried snacks that go through a similar process.
So you're not trading convenience for quality.
I haven't tasted these snacks yet, but I love them.
It sounds really good.
I have to say, I like those freeze-dried things and that balance of nature is really convenient.
So go to balanceofnature.com to subscribe and save today.
join hundreds of thousands of customers in one simple routine that is changing the world.
Chapter two, what I learned at the Oscars.
Now, when I'm trying to find out what's going on in the soul of my country, I turn to the arts because the arts are the expression of the soul in the country.
And even bad art can be an expression of the soul of the country.
And of course, the Oscars are Sunday, and this is very important to me because I'm not going to watch them.
And I never watch them anymore.
In fact, it's kind of one of the highlights of my entertainment years not watching the Oscars.
So whatever else I'm doing has a special like sort of zing to it because I'm not watching the Oscars.
And, you know, one of my entertainment low points of every year is listening to conservatives whine about what some lefty said when he picked up his statuette for his crappy leftist movie at the Oscars.
I mean, after a while, it just becomes so predictable.
It's kind of like going to a communist cell meeting and then coming out and complaining that everybody there sounded like a communist.
But I don't, this is not what I'm about when it comes to the arts.
I want to see things that I love.
I want to find things that I love.
I want to love things and things that I hate.
I want to find great performances, great moments of writing, great directing.
You know, in novels too, I just want to find great scenes.
And even if I think this guy is a jerk, I want to at least experience this guy's mind through his art because it tells me something about the country I'm living in.
The movies now are bad.
I mean, I looked at the nominees, you know, it's like Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, Sinners, One Battle After, all mediocre films.
I mean, Frankenstein is downright bad once it gets going.
But the rest of them are mediocre films.
And you remember how you used to say to your significant other, you would say, you know, hey, let's go to the movies this weekend.
And you take out the newspaper or whatever you were using for the listing and look at the listings and you pick a movie, right?
And you'd argue she wanted to see, you know, a love story and you wanted to see an action movie.
So you found something in between that you could both go watch.
That doesn't happen anymore.
Now, at least it's like a ritual in my house.
I turn to my wife and say, let's go to the movies.
And we pick out the listings and go like, never mind, let's do something else, you know, because the movies all suck.
And this is a cultural sterility that I've been covering from the minute it started.
I sensed it.
I sniffed it the minute it started.
And it's affected all of the American arts.
I kind of assumed that the reason is the left's monopoly on our cultural outlets, which is why, you know, late night is now unfunny.
It's why novels are now kind of boring.
You know, it's like some novel by somebody with a name like Shamali Gabongo, you know, is writing about being black and lesbian.
You go like, yeah, I think I'll, you know, read Anna Karenina for the fourth time or something like that.
So, you know, we're in this, we've been in this paw.
I think it may be breaking a little, but we've been in this really dry season.
So the other day, I made, you know, I make these bonus videos, which come out midweek, and I made one.
And these are producer Tom's idea most of the time, and I say yes or no.
And he wanted me to do one rating Oscar-winning movies.
Now, we'd done one before on Oscar-winning movies from the golden age.
And I found most of the winners deserving.
They were really great movies, most of them.
So, you know, there's a 40s, 50s, and so on.
But this was about films, modern films made from 1981 to the present day.
And the way it works is Tom picks the movies.
I don't see them until the camera rolls and then I kind of react to them.
And I've usually seen every one of them.
I think there was one this time I hadn't seen, but mostly, mostly I've seen all the movies.
So I'm rating these movies.
And through the 80s, the films were more or less okay.
They weren't great, but they were okay.
But then we reached the 90s and something really odd happened.
It was very revelatory to me.
You'll see me, if you watch the video, you'll see it start to dawn on me as I'm watching it.
And I started to see the films that had won Oscars.
Exceptionally made.
People in Hollywood, enormously talented.
You know, they're all incredibly talented.
The actors are talented.
The writers are talented.
Directors are talented.
And some of these films were really good.
Some of them were actually good films.
Some of them were delightful to watch.
But every single one of them, a great cluster of them in the 90s, had this essential element of dishonesty at the core of them.
And it was an element I remembered picking out when I was watching the film.
It was just seeing them all together like that.
So you had Dances with Wolves, right?
This is obviously Dances with Wolves is Pocahontas, which is also Avatar.
It's the same story of a civilized man who finds himself among the primitives and finds that the primitives are better than the civilized people.
The civilized people are really evil.
And this is a Rousseauian fallacy that there's something innocent and benevolent about the lives of primitives, which is just not true.
The people who killed the Native Americans and the Native Americans who were killed were exactly the same kinds of people, except one of them had better weapons than the other.
And then there's Schindler's List, which is a fantastically well-made film, wonderful production, wonderful acting and all of this.
But it presents itself, and I noticed this the minute I saw it, it's a very affecting film.
Again, I'm not saying these films are bad, but it presents itself as the authoritative movie about the Holocaust.
If I asked you to name a movie about the Holocaust, Schindler's List would come into your mind like that, is Steven Spielberg.
So it's got that imprimatur on it.
And yet it centers on, the center of the story is an act of heroism and decency that in the real Holocaust was so rare that it was basically non-existent.
There were, I mean, I could count on my hands the number of heroes who did the kinds of things that Schindler did.
So it's essentially making the authoritative movie about the Holocaust, about an event that almost didn't happen.
I mean, it was, you know, he saved, I think, was it 1,200 people, something like that.
I'm saying that off my head.
I may have that wrong.
But the movie was a lie in a central way, had a lie at its core.
Really good movie.
I'm not knocking it.
If we could have taken out its sort of self-importance, its tone of self-importance.
And also Spielberg has these childish theories about why the Nazis hated the Jews that are just straight out of some LA therapist's handbook and they have nothing to do with the truth.
Then there was American Beauty, which is a film that does not have a single honest frame in it.
It's supposed to be about a straight man falling in love with young girls.
It's obviously really about a gay person and it's not, it's a very, very dishonest film.
And then most importantly, one of my least favorite films ever made is The English Patient.
Everybody said, what a great romance.
I just found it a dead fish of a movie.
And the reason was it has a central lie about it.
Let's compare it.
Since we're talking about what happened between World War II and now in our attitudes toward war, here is a film from World War II, the greatest American film ever made, Casablanca, and see if you can see the theme in this final scene from Casablanca Cut 8.
I said I would never leave you.
And you never will.
I've got a job to do too.
Where I'm going, you can't follow.
What I've got to do, you can't be any part of.
I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Okay, so he's giving up the woman he loves more than anything in life because the problems of three little people don't amount to much when you're fighting the Nazis for civilization, for Western civilization.
You got to go fight the Nazis for Western civilization.
That means you're going to have to sacrifice something.
He sacrifices his heart.
It's a very, very moving scene.
You can barely watch that scene even today without bawling.
Now you have The English Patient, and it is a dishonorable film, in my view.
It is a subtly anti-Semitic movie in which the Nazis sort of are reluctant to torture Jews, which they seem to be having a good time when I look at the pictures.
But the primary act of love in this movie is when the star gives the Nazis maps that they need so he can get through their lines to get to his girlfriend.
That's it.
And when he gets to his girlfriend, this is what she is saying, cut nine.
I want all this marked on my body.
We're the real countries.
But the boundary is drawn on maps.
The names of powerful men.
So what she's saying there is, we're the ones that matter.
You can be a traitor and help the Nazis because what really matters is us.
We are the countries.
The problems of the world don't amount to a hill of beans next to us getting laid, basically.
That's basically what they're saying.
It is a tremendously selfish film.
And again, some people like that film.
I didn't even like that film, but still.
So I'm watching this as I'm doing this video, and I'm thinking, why am I seeing this?
Why is this suddenly this collection of dishonest films?
And look, my first instinct, I'll be honest with you, was to say, well, leftism, they're all leftists, and leftism is a dishonest philosophy, and it requires dishonesty of its followers, which is true.
And art, no matter how fantastic it is, whether it's Star Wars or whatever, Lord of the Rings, it has to express something real about the human condition.
And that's also true.
So that's why these movies jangle on me.
But, you know, and this is why, because of the falseness of leftism and the dishonesty of leftism, this is why they have to protect their philosophy from the truth by censoring dissent, right?
And in Hollywood, they just kick you right out of, you know, they just make sure that you have to leave.
So they never have to hear that it's untrue that the government taking over the economy will make things more fair.
It's untrue that people fall behind because of bigotry when maybe they fall behind because of talent or skill, meritocracy, somebody's going to fall behind.
But as I was thinking about these lies, they're not really political lies.
They're values lies, right?
The effect of them is political, but their lies are about values.
So I had to think, well, then the dishonesty is at a deeper level than the leftism.
The dishonesty is the cause of the leftism, not the leftism, the cause of dishonesty.
And so I started to think about one of my favorite scenes in all literature that I've talked about a million times here, I think, is the mad scene in Hamlet.
And you all know what Hamlet is about.
I'm sure Hamlet is supposed to avenge his father's death, but he can't bring himself to do it and he doesn't know why.
He can't find a way to act.
He can't be sure what's real and not and what's not real.
And while he is trying to figure all this stuff out, he pretends to be mad to throw off the king.
And while he's mad, he says all these things that in my reading of the play are predictions of what happens to an atheist world.
Because my reading of the play is the play is about the Reformation.
It's about the shattering of Catholicism's monopoly on theological truth in Europe, which is a disaster because Catholicism was Europe.
It was the frame, the moral framework of Europe.
And so what Shakespeare is saying is if we lose Catholicism, and Shakespeare, many believe he was a Catholic or even a secret Catholic, but what Shakespeare is saying, if we lose those things, here is what's going to happen.
And Hamlet, in pretending to be mad, speaks all these lines that you will recognize from today.
So for instance, as he's pretending to be mad, he talks about moral relativism.
The line is, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
So there's nothing really good or bad.
It's just how you think about it.
We know all of this, right?
This multiculturalism.
Islam is the same as Christianity.
Iran and America both have the equal right to exist.
I even have a friend, a liberal friend from Europe who said to me, well, you know, you have an atom bomb.
Why can't Iran have an atom bomb?
Like as if that were the same thing.
So there's moral relativism.
Hamlet says that.
There is a rejection of the reality of the human experience in a speech that's usually called What a Piece of Work is a Man, where Hamlet says, my emotions cause me to see the world entirely differently.
So you can't rely on what we feel.
So what we feel is just random.
It doesn't mean anything.
And then because of that, words have no meaning, right?
Because if words come from us and there's no inner world that is true and real to describe and to argue about and to use reason on, then all our words are just kind of make-believe, right?
So when Hamlet is asked what he's reading during the mad scene, he says, I'm reading words, words, words.
They are things without meaning.
And the thing that is most perceptive, an act of genius on Shakespeare's part, about this scene is that Hamlet is only pretending to be mad, but in pretending to be mad, he is expressing a madness that is real, his madness that is real.
So let me see if I can just unpack that a little bit, that the words he's saying, he doesn't believe any of these things.
They're his imitation of madness, right?
I mean, now a college professor will say, nothing's good or bad, but think he makes it so, and he'll mean it, but Hamlet is just pretending.
But that make-believe expresses something that's going on in his heart that's against his will, because this is not about religious belief.
It's about the spirit of the times.
It's about zeitgeist.
And the spirit of the times in the West has been for the past 400 years increasingly a materialist, atheist spirit, right?
We're seeing it as the churches bleed dry, as the churches become empty, emptier and emptier.
We see it played out.
But it doesn't matter what you believe or what I believe or what the directors of these movies believe.
We are all of us poisoned by the spirit of the times.
And the spirit of the times is a visceral unbelief.
In other words, even if you go to church and you say, oh, I believe in God, and even if you pray and you have a relationship with God, there is a part of you that is affected by the spirit of the time and doesn't believe whether you want to or not.
And that's why most of the movies I watch these days, I've told you this, they start out and then they're great and they're beautiful and they're interesting, they're fun.
And about 20 minutes in, 30 minutes in, I say, oh, this is going to go off the rails because they don't know anything about human nature.
They don't know what a human being is.
And that's one of the results of having Hamlet's madness is if you don't believe in the human experience, if you don't believe in words, if you don't believe that there's such a thing as morality, you have no idea what a human being is.
And as long as that madness is in the atmosphere, we're all breathing it in.
And we don't know what human beings are.
We don't know what they're for.
We especially don't understand what women are for.
This is really important.
And obviously I talk about this all the time because motherhood has lost the value that it has from being sacred.
And you can't be sacred if nothing is sacred.
You can't be sacred with no God.
In our religion, that sacredness is represented by the Virgin Mary.
And once the Virgin Mary falls out of, once we have no reverence for the Virgin Mary, we have lost our understanding of the holy office of motherhood.
And that's why we're suffering under the curse of transgender madness.
Sacred Motherhood Lost00:15:42
That's why that guy, what's his name, Talico, I can't remember his name, the Texas guy, was recently saying, oh, well, the Virgin Mary had to agree to carry Jesus, and that's a good argument for abortion.
You know, as you can say, crazy stuff like that.
And because we have lost the meaning of what it is to be a woman, what is a woman is a metaphysical question.
And as you lose belief in God, the godly value of giving birth, of adding to God's creation with your own body has lost its meaning.
So just as Hamlet has this visceral unbelief, he doesn't mean to not believe, but he has a visceral unbelief that is the infection of the zeitgeist.
That kept him from doing what he was supposed to do.
It paralyzed him when he tried to avenge his father's death.
I would like to make the argument how our lack of belief paralyzes us from doing the thing we have to do when we confront evil like the evil in Iran.
When you reach a certain point in your life, you realize there are bigger things you've been putting off, like actually protecting the life you've built for the people you love.
Life insurance and financial planning sound like they were designed to be confusing, so you kick the can down the road and hope for the best.
Who wants to think about that stuff?
But that's where policy genius comes in handy.
Policy Genius is an online insurance marketplace that lets you compare quotes from some of America's top insurers side by side for free with real coverage, amounts, prices, and terms in plain English.
No guesswork, just clarity.
Life insurance is a big deal.
And especially when you're younger, you don't want to think about why you need it, but you need it.
And the license team at Policy Genius works for you.
It helps you find your most affordable policy that still meets your needs and handles questions and paperwork so you can get back to your life.
Protect the life you've built.
With Policy Genius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage.
Head to policygenius.com slash Clavin to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save.
That's policygenius.com slash, how do you spell it?
K-L-A-V-A-N.
Chapter 3, Fighting to Lose.
So Jonathan Rosen wrote an amazing article for the free press.
It's very long, but it's excellent.
It's called The World the Fatwa Made.
The Islamic Republic's Most Dangerous Weapon Isn't Missiles is the subheading.
It's a few sentences.
It will hang over us even if the regime falls.
So he's talking about the power of words spoken by the first Ayatollah who basically created this slave state of Iran.
So Rosen, I don't know if you remember, he wrote one of my favorite books of the last 10 or 20 years, one of my favorite nonfiction books for sure, called The Best Minds.
And it was a, I interviewed him here about it, and I was just bowled over by that book.
It was about a schizophrenic friend of his, his true story about a schizophrenic friend of his.
And it systematically dismantled the post-modern logic that said, a la Foucault, that madness is not a real thing.
It's just a designation of power.
This is Hamlet's madness.
Again, the human experience isn't real.
Remember, this is part of Hamlet's madness.
And therefore, words are detached from meaning and morality is a matter of opinion.
And somebody, when we say somebody's mad, all we mean is he's not what the elites want.
He's not what the powerful want.
We have designated him mad.
And in confronting in real life his friend's illness, Rosen said, whoa, no, no, no.
This is actual madness.
And, you know, we know this because we are made to know things, right?
We're not, our inner experience is not just random.
We are made to know things if we learn to be objective and reasonable and all those things.
It's not like we can't be deceived in what we think, but the very fact that we can be deceived in what we think means that we could not be deceived, right?
It means we can get it right because there's a reality there that we perceive.
So this attitude that Rosen had toward his friend, it depends on a kind of faith, a faith in an intentionally created reality, right?
That sane people are not sane because they're powerful or because they're nice or because they conform.
We perceive creation as it is and we understand that it is a made thing and it has an intention behind it.
So when we see a woman's body, we don't just think, oh, it just happens to, you know, baby, you want to have sex with it and then babies just happen to come out.
You understand that this is a sacred thing that is happening, an intentionally made thing.
So I don't just feel something's wrong.
I am made to recognize right or wrong.
And like I said, I can be deceived.
You know, I can be raised in Gaza and taught that I should blow up Jews and Jews are evil.
And then I'm deceived in what I know, but the very fact that I can be deceived means I can get it right.
So what Rosen is talking about when he talks about a fatwa is in 1989, the original Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in order to murder a novelist named Salman Rushdie.
You've probably heard of him.
He had written a novel called The Satanic Verses, which the Ayatollah felt was an insult to Islam.
And Rosen tells the story of this, but I have my own story about it because it happened when my first pseudonymous mystery was coming out.
It was either my first or one of my first mysteries that I wrote under the pseudonym Keith Peterson, and it was in Barnes and Noble.
And I was very excited about this, right?
This was a book that might sell and might sell some copies, and that was very exciting.
And I wanted Barnes and Noble to like me.
But Barnes and Noble pulled Salman Rushdie's book from the shelf, citing security.
Oh, it's dangerous when the Ayatollah wants to kill us.
You know, we can't keep this book on the shelf.
And so I went to protest against that.
And I considered that to be the honorable thing to do because I didn't want to alienate Barnes and Noble.
But I did want to say that, no, you can't pull a guy's book from a shelf.
Now, my father-in-law, with whom for a while I was quite close, was a brilliant man.
And he was himself a famous novelist.
And he was also a left-wing academic.
And he said, why are you doing this?
And I said, because we can't allow this clown in Iran to just declare that he's going to kill somebody for writing a novel.
And my father-in-law said to me, well, he did insult Islam.
I thought, what?
I mean, this is 1979, 1980, something like this.
So in other words, we were suffering already in the academic left.
We were suffering from Hamless madness.
He didn't believe.
My father-in-law didn't believe that.
He didn't care about Islam.
He thought that, you know, he thought he should be allowed to write novels and the Salman Rushdie should be allowed to write novels.
But he had to say these things because they were the zeitgeist and they had gotten into his soul.
And so he was expressing something he didn't believe, but he actually did believe it at some visceral level.
And the difference was the Ayatollah did believe in his God.
He believed in his God and his words carried the power of life and death.
Rosen writes about this.
It wasn't just Rushdie who was under this fatwa.
Rosen writes, Rushdie's Japanese translator was stabbed to death.
His Italian translator was stabbed but survived.
His Norwegian publisher was shot in Oslo and gravely wounded.
Asa Nessen, a Turkish editor and intellectual who had announced his intention to translate the satanic verses, narrowly escaped being burned alive.
Muslims who defended the book or failed to attack it were also targeted.
It goes on and on.
The words of the Ayatollah were not just words, words, words.
They had meaning because they came from an inner world.
They expressed an inner world in which he wholly believed.
So he was not polluted with the doubts that Christians were having.
He was not polluted with the doubt of our, basically, of our generations.
This is so what's happening now?
What's happening today?
In England's schools, in British schools, local school councils are warning schools that children's drawings could be considered blasphemous.
This is in England, while music and dance lessons could contravene the teachings of Islam.
I think this is the Daily Mail.
Sharing the journey is the name of this document.
It's been designed to help schools demonstrate a sensitive and positive approach to religious and cultural diversity, right?
It says a three-dimensional imagery of humans is considered idolatrous.
It's very important that the school understands this and it's also careful not to ask its students to reproduce images of Jesus, Prophet Muhammad, or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam.
Now, the historian Tom Holland, who wrote the wonderful book, Dominion, about the effect of Christianity, how it changed everything in our lives, says, well, if it's a Muslim tradition, not to illustrate the biblical figures appropriated by Islam as prophets, there's also a quite a strong Christian tradition of portraying biblical scenes in art, as will be more than clear to students when they go on trips to art galleries.
So basically, the doubt that is now the standard British policy about Christianity is being supplanted by the certainty of Islam.
In other words, the doubt, Hamlet's doubt, Hamlet's madness has overwhelmed Britain and left them paralyzed before the faith of Islamic murderers, right?
In a similar vein, right, the other day in New York City, there was a protest against Zoram Mamdani by people who said, don't let Islam take over America.
I can't remember exactly what their signs were.
And while they were protesting, you know, two Islamists from Pennsylvania threw a couple of bombs at the protesters, right?
They were angry because these people were protesting against Islam.
And immediately, news agencies from CNN and others and other outlets, they lied and basically phrased the report, trying to make it seem like the bomb was thrown to hurt Mamdani, that the right-wing protesters who were against Mamdani's being Muslim, a Muslim mayor of New York, were the same as the Islamists who were throwing the bombs.
They were not.
The Islamists were throwing the bombs at the right-wing protesters because, of course, the left is far more violent than the right.
CNN briefly put out a post that I just have to, this was kind of my favorite story of the week, so I just have to read this post.
They put out briefly and pulled it down.
Here's how they reported the story, right?
These are two guys, Allahu Akbar, the whole thing, saying the only reason this was not a mass killing was because the bombs didn't go off, so they were a little bit incompetent.
They said two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.
But in less than an hour, their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Meir Zoran Momdani's home.
So they make it sound like they're anti-Muslims throwing bombs, but they also tell the story from their point of view.
How is it that they went in to enjoy the city, you know, throw a couple of bombs, kill a group of people?
That's all they were there for, just enjoy the city with mass murder.
But in less than an hour, their lives would change.
They tell it from their point of view.
Why?
Because they have a point of view.
That's why.
They have a point of view.
And CNN is only doubt.
And they're just waiting to be replaced.
They're just waiting to be replaced.
They're like, you know, abused women who become addicted to the abuse.
You know, that's what they're like, because the abuser has a point of view and the woman just wants to love him, wants to love somebody.
And that's, you know, so she takes on his point of view.
So why should a free and successful society like the United States never been a stronger, never been a richer, never been a freer country than the United States of America, a great, great country?
Why should it suddenly kowtow Britain, one of the greatest countries that ever existed?
Their British Empire made the world a better place.
The world is better for having been dominated and colonized by the British.
Why should these free, successful Western societies kowtow to a slavish, backward Islamism that even many of the Islamic countries don't uphold, right?
Iran is stuck in this primitive Islamism that is hateful and sexist.
And, you know, why are people saying, oh, we're queers for Palestine when the people in Palestine would kill them or feminists for Palestine when the feminists would be put in burqas?
Why is that happening?
Well, it's Hamlet's madness.
Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
So their good is as good as our good, and our bad is as bad as our bad.
It's just as good, just as good to let a woman make her own decisions in life as it is to wrap her and like the dress her up like the ghost of Christmas yet to come and force her to do whatever her, you know, when she's married at 15 years old, whatever her 80-year-old husband wants her to do.
The human experience is no guide to reality.
So that thing in the human heart that leaps up at the idea of freedom, that makes people swim through shark-infested waters from Cuba to Miami, that makes people pour across our borders the minute some clown like Joe Biden just opens them up to anyone who wants to come, that thing that leaps up in the human heart has no authority.
Freedom is good.
Slavery is good.
What's the difference?
What's the difference?
And words mean nothing.
Our words supporting freedom, our words supporting women, our words supporting gay rights.
Those words don't mean anything compared to the fatwa who reaches out and says, we will kill you if you don't agree with what we're saying.
And again, this is Hamlet's madness.
Remember, CNN is only pretending to think this is good.
The people at Martha Vineyard who threw the illegals out of their, off their island, they were only pretending when they were confronted with the reality of it.
They said, no, no, no, please go to Texas where all the bad people are.
Don't come here where Martha Vineyard, where the real people are.
So they're only pretending.
And yet that pretense is expressing something real within them, this visceral unbelief that they can't get away from.
In World War II, when we fought World War II, the people were tired of war.
That's why we didn't get into World War II for a long time until they bombed Pearl Harbor, because of World War I. They'd been through World War I.
A generation of men had been wiped out for no reason.
We never should have been in that war, I believe.
But at the same time, we too are tired of war because of the poor execution of the wars on terror, which you should note couldn't be called that they were the wars on Islamism or the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They couldn't be called that because we didn't have the, you know, because nothing's good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
We didn't have the certainty in our faith to oppose their faith.
So the same way, the people who fought World War II were at this moment of doubt.
And remember, the Europeans kept giving Hitler what he wanted because they thought they could avoid war until they got to Winston Churchill, because Churchill was essentially a Victorian.
So even though his faith was kind of, you know, not orthodox, let's put it that way, but he did have faith, but it wasn't orthodox.
Truth About Iran00:05:12
His values were there.
His soul had not been conformed to the modern doubts.
And his values informed his language, right?
The language is not what AI does.
It's only human beings have language.
It's an expression of our inner world.
And our inner world has authority because we were made by God to perceive the world that he made.
We are made in the image of God.
So we see, we can see, we're capable of seeing the world rightly.
And so when we speak, we can say things that are true about the world.
And Churchill could still say things that were true.
And he was always said he mobilized the English language and sent it into war.
He could do that because he was not hampered by Hamlet's madness.
Barton Swain, who is now my favorite columnist at the Wall Street Journal, he says Donald Trump is similarly old-fashioned.
He says that's why he complains about never winning.
His sense, he says, that we never win wars develops from the Vietnam War.
But Trump was like this too from the moment the Iranian tyranny began in the late 1970s when the Iranians, if you remember, after they took power, they took our people hostage and held them for 444 days while Jimmy Carter sat there frozen like Hamlet.
Argos, another Oscar-winning picture that's completely dishonest, that blames us for the Iranian uprising.
It blames us for having our hostages and it makes Jimmy Carter look like a good guy instead of Hamlet, which is what he was.
He was frozen and could not act to free those hostages.
Here's what Trump said back then.
This is cut 10.
The Iranian situation is a case in point.
That they hold our hostages is just absolutely and totally ridiculous.
That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror.
And I don't think they'll do it with other countries.
I honestly don't think they'll do it with other countries.
Obviously, you're advocating that we should have gone in there with troops, et cetera, and brought our boys out.
I absolutely feel that, yes.
I don't think there's any question and there's no question in my mind.
So Trump is not betraying his principles.
He's not betraying MAGA.
He's carrying them out in the situation that he's in, that he wasn't in before, but now is in.
And Barton Swain writes of him, his view of the world is thoroughly mid-century in its outlines.
Hence, and, you know, he must mean mid the last century when we were fighting World War II.
He says, hence his repeated use of the term unconditional surrender as if we're fighting the Germans and Japanese.
That's why he used those terms because his value system is back then from back then.
And that's why Tucker can only think that means that American soldiers, this is just disgusting, but this is what he said.
I'm just quoting him.
He says that American soldiers are going to go in and rape Iranian women because that's what unconditional surrender means.
I mean, shame on the guy, really.
But that's because in spite of all his God talk, which let's face it, folks, is just convenience for him.
He has a visceral unbelief.
He is suffering from Hamlet's madness, as I think so are all our elites and so is all our media.
And look, please don't misunderstand and think I'm saying God wants us to make war on Iranian non-believers or on Iran at all.
I'm saying that a faithful nation approaches the complexities of reality with faith in the reality of reality.
It believes that there is a moral reality, something that we can reason about and talk to one another about and get to before we go to war and then go to war with a full sense of, look, this is what has to happen.
People are going to die to do it, but it has to be done.
And Trump says Iran can't have nuds.
This is what he says.
He says Iran can't have nuds.
Why?
Because Iran's leadership is evil and they want to kill us.
And we're better than they are.
We're not evil and we shouldn't be killed.
That's what he's basically saying.
And therefore, we have the moral right to strike first.
That they say death to America and they mean it.
So we mean it when we say unconditional surrender from these clowns.
Donald Trump says we are a free people and that is better than being a slave state where the leaders feel justified in murdering tens of thousands of their own.
And you can say, like Tucker Carlson is saying, that he's wrong, that we would better off align with Russia, or you can say that he's right, and then you have to start to argue about the moral terms about a real situation and support him in the thing that he's doing.
And at least until things, until you have a better sense of it than he does, or at least a better sense than you have of it now, I think you have to basically say, I hope America wins.
I hope America wins because it is America and because Iran is Iran.
We can't just fold because our culture has become too weak to embrace the fact that there is such a thing as truth.
Abortion happens fast right now in towns and cities across the country.
Women are being pushed to make life-changing decisions in moments of fear and confusion.
They're told you've got to decide now as if love, hope, or motherhood can be rushed.
Many of them feel trapped like there's no real choice at all.
But because of people like you, there is a choice.
Reclaiming Catholic Doctrine00:10:20
At our sponsor, Pre-Born Network Clinics, a woman is met not with pressure or judgment, but with compassion, the kind that gives her room to breathe and think.
She's offered a free ultrasound, the chance to see the little life growing inside her and real support to help her say yes to that life.
This is one of the most important things that can happen.
It has a real effect on people.
If you've ever seen an ultrasound of your own baby, you will know that it changes everything.
It makes the game real.
It makes everything very real.
When a mom sees her baby on that screen, more than 80% of the time she chooses life, not out of guilt, not out of fear, but out of love.
This March, Pre-Born is hoping to help save 6,800 babies, 6,800 babies.
And to do that, they need 124 people like you and me each day to say, yes, I'm in.
Just 28 bucks provides one ultrasound.
$140 helps five moms.
Every bit counts.
Every dollar is a way to love both mother and child.
So maybe hit pause on your day for a second and consider being one of those 124.
To give, just dial pound 250 and say the keyword baby or visit preborn.com slash clavin.
That's preborn.com slash K-L-A-V-A-N to make an impact on generations to come.
Final chapter, Can This Madness Be Cured?
The thing about Hamlet, the reason I cite Hamlet all the time is because it comes along at the great crisis of the West, which is the Reformation.
That's why Hamlet goes to college in Wittenberg, where Martin Luther posted his theses and the Reformation began.
And Shakespeare understood, as I said before, that Catholicism and Europe are almost synonyms.
They're almost the same.
Europe was called Christendom.
The Christendom that it represented was Roman Catholic Christendom.
It formed the life of the mind and soul of Europe.
And that's not saying that Catholicism, Roman Catholicism is all right.
That's not saying that I believe in it.
As you know, I'm an Anglican Catholic, but still, I think there are other ways to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, which is why I think the religion is all about.
But Shakespeare understood that if you take away that scaffolding on which Europe hung, it was inevitable what would happen.
That's why his writing is so incredibly foreseen, why he foresees 400 years into the future to what is going to happen to us now.
So the fact that this is the crisis and this is where everything leads talks to what's happening now in the world of religion and in the world of politics too.
The Reformation loosed the human mind.
The Catholic Church had become corrupt.
It had become small and it was holding things back.
When the Reformation happened, suddenly science exploded.
The framework for science was created by the Roman Catholic Church.
The ideas that went into science, the people who did it from Galileo to Newton, they were all believers.
They were all believers.
And the Catholic doctrine, the Roman Catholic doctrine that God was free to do as he pleased, but we were made in his image and he was rational God as we were rational people and we could understand what he's doing.
That's why people started to study creation, right?
They started to say, oh, things are understandable because of Catholic doctrine in many ways.
But at the same time, the science seemed to negate things that the Catholic Church was saying and that religious people were saying.
The example I like to give is lightning.
They used to go up to the top of church and ring the bell to ward off the demons who were sending the lightning, right?
And then the monks who were doing this would get hit because the bell would attract the lightning and they were up in a high tower and they'd get killed.
And that's when Benjamin Franklin doing science put the lightning rod on top of the church.
And that was kind of a symbol that science had triumphed over not religion, but over the superstitions that had attached themselves like barnacle to religion as it was passing through time.
So that's why you get a lot of people, for instance, the Catholic integralists.
They think, oh, this is where we went wrong.
Freedom, liberty is a bad thing.
What they call liberalism is a bad thing.
We should go back to before the Reformation.
This is guys like Patrick Ledine.
Michael Knowles is a little bit like this.
They think the old church should be reconstituted.
And I respect that impulse.
I just disagree with it.
I don't think it's possible and I don't think it's good.
And then you have the evil version of this, which is the Candace Owens, Carrie Prigon Baller, who is attacking me this week, and Tucker Carlson, even though he's not Catholic, their Christianity is mostly just old hatreds packaged in sanctimony.
They hate Jews.
Some of them hate gays.
They hate mankind.
They hate America, I think.
But whenever you criticize them, they're like, how dare you?
That's what's her name, Carrie Prigon Bowler said to me, because I had said the Pope was talking girly nonsense when he said you can't get peace through war, which is not true.
It's just not the case.
And I said it was girly nonsense.
She said, how dare you attack the Holy Father?
And I thought, like, hey, you know, I'm in danger.
She did that.
I was in danger of turning into a giant eye-rolling emoji because I'm not a Roman Catholic.
I have no responsibility to agree with the Pope.
I am deeply respectful of Roman Catholic theology.
Most of that theology is my own.
I accept it.
But I don't have to say that the Pope is as infallible.
He's not infallible when he says things like that.
And even Catholics don't believe that those are infallible things that he says.
And so, you know, that's how I dare.
That's how I dare.
So attempts to go back in time fail, whether it's to go back to the old superstitions and the old hatreds, or it's to go back to the old model of how the society has run.
But at the same time, so I don't think we can do that, but at the same time, we can't, you know, the world has really changed in its understanding of scientific reality and in our love of freedom and in our rejection of imposed religion and ancient prejudices.
But at the same time, we can't rewrite our sacred books to say what we wanted to say in this moment.
And that's what I was talking about, James Tallarico, who's saying, oh, yes, Mary had to say yes to God, and that's true.
And therefore, you have to say yes to creation and therefore women have the right to have an abortion.
That's a ridiculous, it's ridiculous.
And then you get, you know, oh, he said all kinds of other things like, you know, we have to, and abortion rights have to be given to transgender people and all this crazy stuff.
But, you know, it's funny, David French, who is also, God loved the guy, you know, he used to be a much saner guy, but he's also powered by hatred.
You know, Tucker Carlson is powered by hatred of the Jews, but David French is powered by hatred of Trump.
And he has some reason for that.
Trump's followers attacked him viciously, attacked his daughters who are black.
I believe they're, I can't remember where exactly they're from.
not so much um but anyway they're um they're from africa and the things they said were disgusting uh shameful you know absolutely And they just drove David crazy.
And he's just been supporting stuff that I know he doesn't believe in his heart.
But he says, oh, Tolerico doesn't just root his policies and ideology and his Christian beliefs.
He's a seminarian willing to dive deep into theology.
He twists theology to say the progressive things that he wants it to say because it doesn't say those things.
So we can't go back, but we can't go forward without clinging to the truth because we've changed.
Our knowledge of the world has changed, but God hasn't changed at all.
Now, that doesn't mean that we can't sometimes say, oh, you know, we misunderstood God's word because God is infinite and we're not.
So Jesus, you know, included all truth in that moment, but we never do.
We always have to learn the truth step by step by step.
And even the Roman Catholic church would agree on that, that they go forward and they find things that they didn't know about before.
So this is what I believe.
And this is just, like I said, I'm not a theologian, but this is what I think.
I believe, well, first of all, I believe that still Jesus Christ is our guide to God.
That's what I believe.
And I believe a relationship with Jesus Christ is the way to have a relationship with God.
And my personal beliefs are that one day all the churches, for all their different theologies, will come together in a way that we don't really understand as yet, but they will become one.
Some of them will drop some, but there will be a Catholic, truly Catholic in the small C sense of the word.
There'll be a Catholic church.
Again, I believe that church will have both the authority of a priest class, but also the individual independence of Protestantism that allows believers to step up and say, no, the priest is wrong in this case.
I believe the church will ultimately include Jews as Isaiah predicted.
I believe that a remnant of the Jews will be included in the church, even if they represent a kind of doubt that strengthens faith.
And I believe that all the scientific discoveries, the scientific discoveries that are real, that are honest, that are true, I think they will be part of our theology in a way they just couldn't be before because they didn't exist.
And they are part of the way we understand creation.
And they also fulfill Jesus' prediction that we will do miracles greater even than his miracles.
I think that that happens through our science, which we got because of the way our minds were formed by the church.
And look, like I said, I believe some old doctrines and prejudices will be discarded, and we shouldn't be afraid of that as long as we cling to Jesus' preaching and our relationship to him.
I don't think we all have to be Tallarico just making stuff up.
I think we can build a future in keeping with the word.
And look, all of the stuff, it's going to be up to you guys, you younger people.
This is not going to happen while I'm around.
But I think that it is up to you.
It is your mission.
It is your mission.
This is what your mission is in this world, is to cure the human mind, the Western mind, of Hamlet's madness.
Miracles Through Science00:02:46
That's your mission.
And, you know, like I said, it's going to be things that I won't see, but you're going to do it.
And you should be doing it with your life.
It is your life.
Life's work.
It is about the way you live your life.
Live your life and love your wife.
Whether you're a great thinker or whether you do a manual labor or whether you have some smaller job, it doesn't matter.
It is the mission of this generation that they have to do.
And if you want a word of advice from someone who is rooting for you, who will be rooting from you from a higher place, here's my advice.
Don't be afraid.
Don't be manipulated by Tucker's hatred or David French's hatred or any hatred.
That is why God wants us to love even our enemies is because hatred makes you stupid.
And he wants us to remain wise and joyful.
And that's the path of love.
Don't be afraid to believe in the living truth of God.
The future is ahead.
It's always ahead of you.
It's never behind you.
So start with Jesus Christ and move forward from there.
And good luck.
I just got a new box of wild Alaskan fish.
And I have to say, I said, hooray.
You could have heard me probably down the block because buying seafood can feel like a gamble.
You know, you want to know, is it sustainable or will it taste amazing?
For most of us, it's hard to know what we're really getting at the grocery store.
And for my Catholic friends with Lent here, it's the perfect time to give really good fish a try, whether you're observing the season or just looking for a delicious Friday dinner idea.
That's why I want to tell you about Wild Alaskan Company.
It's the easiest way to get wild-caught, perfectly portioned seafood delivered straight to your door.
And I'm talking about fish that actually tastes incredible.
As you know, I've talked about this before.
I've been a fisherman most of my life, and there's no better fish than the fish you get in Alaska.
The water is so clear.
The fish are so fresh.
And that's what makes Wild Alaskan Company different.
It's 100% wild-caught, never farmed.
That means no antibiotics, no GMOs, no weird additives, just clean, real fish.
They've got everything from sockeye salmon and coho salmon to Pacific halibut.
Love halibut, Pacific cod and Pacific rockfish.
And it's all frozen right off the boat to lock in that amazing flavor and texture.
Plus, every order supports sustainable fishing practices in Alaska so you can feel great about what you're eating.
Plus, there's zero risk.
Wild Alaskan Company offers a 100% money-back guarantee on your first box.
If you're not satisfied, they'll refund you.
No questions asked.
Not all fish are the same.
Get seafood you can trust.
Go to wildalaskan.com slash clavin for $35 off your first box of premium wild-caught seafood.
That's wildalaskan.com slash clavin for 35 bucks off your first order.
Thank you to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring the Andrew Clavin Show.
Being a Faithful Man00:10:20
How do you spell that?
That's K-L-A-V-A-N.
No Ease.
In Clavin, we just make it look this easy.
Today, join me, Ben Shapiro, and Michael Knowles for a live afternoon edition of Friendly Fire.
Conversations about the biggest stories in the headlines, the media narrative surrounding them, and of course, our Oscars preview.
Watch Friendly Fire live today at 2 p.m. Eastern on DailyWire.com and the Dailywire Plus app.
All right, I goofed.
I talked a little bit too long.
And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the Clavin clapbacks in the member block, and I'm going to open up the member block to everybody.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't become a member.
You should become a member.
We have so much good stuff coming down the pike that you will want to be a part of.
So become a member anyway.
But this time, you're off the hook.
You will not be plunged into clavinlessness, though I'm itching to do it, I got to tell you.
But we'll go right into Clavin clapbacks.
How can they close me up on what ground?
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.
You're winning, sir.
Oh, thank you very much.
Yeah!
One of the great lines in American films.
All right.
Even though we're not going into member block, we're letting you stay.
Become a member today.
This is, in fact, a good reason to become a member today.
Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and use code Clavin at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
All right.
This first letter is from Anonymous, who says, she says, dearest Mr. Clavin, thank you very much for your wonderful show.
I've loved it for years.
I'm the mother of a precocious five-year-old and a sweet six-week-old baby and wife of a great man.
We're very conservative, very Christian, and have been happily married for seven years.
Last night, my husband confessed that he has been secretly trying on my lingerie, a habit he picked up as a very young man.
He has also been secretly watching pornography.
He told me he'd like to stop all this and ask for my help.
He has been praying for years to overcome this desire.
He and I have a very healthy sex life three to four times a week, even through the end of pregnancy.
I always assumed that everything was perfectly fine.
He supposedly is not experiencing same-sex attraction, loves me, and just wants his private problem gone.
I can't help but fear the worst, that this will evolve into a trans nightmare and that I have lost the life I dreamed of having.
I'm feeling crushed and frightened.
I'm afraid of what you may say.
Well, let me just caution you before I begin.
I'm not a therapist.
I don't know you or your husband.
I'm going totally off this letter on my things I've seen in life and things I've read about, so I could be wrong.
But actually, I feel that there's a lot to be encouraged about, even though no one on earth could blame you for being incredibly upset.
This is a shock.
It's like being hit by a boulder.
You probably should get some help, and I'll talk about that in a minute.
But I can offer you some things that I think may well be true, and you'll have to find out as you go along.
You know, these fetishes, these weird little fetishes that people have, are usually the result of a trauma in early life.
And you somehow get caught into this loop, and they're very hard to get out of.
They don't just go away, though.
They can be tamed somewhat.
And cross-dressing, you know, what they used to call transvestism is not, is often not attached to homosexuality and not attached to transgenderism, which I think is a vanishingly small thing that they've just made a big deal out of.
It doesn't mean that he wants to be a woman, doesn't mean anything.
It just means that somehow in his life, something set this as a sexual object in his mind, and he has a hard time getting rid of it.
The pornography is really bad because it reinforces the fetish.
So he really should try and get away from that.
He should not try.
He should do it.
He should stop watching the pornography.
He should stop doing, obviously, the fetish because that also reinforces the fetish.
But if you're having sex three and four times a week, he's probably really into you.
You know, I mean, I'm just saying that, you know, he's probably wants to express his love in the simplest and most natural way possible.
And this thing is really tormenting him.
And you're not going to be able to pray it away.
And he's not going to be able to pray it away.
It's going to be a problem he has all of his life, probably, but that doesn't mean he has to conform to it or fall in with it.
It can just be something that gets dimmer and dimmer as he gets healthier and healthier.
The thing that you should do is you probably should get some counseling, marriage counseling, and independent counseling if you can afford it.
But what you should do is you should find a Christian counselor.
And by that, I don't mean a Christian who counsels.
I mean a therapist who is also a Christian.
There is, I believe, an organization, and I'm sorry, I don't know the name of it, but I'm sure you can Google it and find it, of Christian therapists.
And that will keep them from saying stupid stuff like, oh, it's all fine, you know, and understand the torment that this is.
But I think that there's a very good chance that your marriage can go on.
I think that you're going to have to get over your shock and your unhappiness about it.
It's a real thing.
And I think he is going to have to learn how to handle this thing that he may be stuck with all his life, but it doesn't have to be the primary motivation.
And as I say, your sex life is so healthy, as I think it should, a married sex life should be, that there's a good reason to think that it can just become a shadow inside his head and he can continue to love you as you deserve to be loved.
So I think there's hope.
That's what I think.
But I do think you should probably get a Christian therapist.
From Wyatt, says Mr. DW Bald guy, my bride and I were wedded last May.
Our marriage has been going well, but I've noticed that since we got married, I notice every attractive woman in view and my subconscious says, you could have married her.
She's hotter than your wife.
I know all the correct Christian answers, but I find your talk about giving up sexual variety when we get married and that that's a sacrifice that men particularly make.
It's true and it's something that I mourn.
Is there a way you have found that it's best to deal with this or should I just continue to deny myself and seek first the kingdom?
Here's what I find helpful.
This is a, I believe, an almost universal male problem.
And remember, this is the difference between body and spirit.
This doesn't make you a bad person.
Your body is made to impregnate women.
The best way that it can spread its genes is by impregnating a lot of different women.
So men have this desire, this bodily desire for variety in sex, which is what they give up in marriage.
What they gain in marriage is a lifelong sexual relationship with another human being whom they love.
And that is something that is actually much more valuable and over time will show itself in its value.
Here is a thing that I found helpful because when I was young and was struggling with this, I always knew, I was pretty sure I wasn't ever going to cheat on my wife because I adore her and I wouldn't want to hurt her.
But I also knew that if there were a magic room, a magic black box that I could go into and sleep with another woman where there would be no consequences, I knew I would do it.
Okay.
So I knew that I was fighting something, but if I just, if there were just a perfect situation, I wouldn't have to fight it because what I was afraid of was the consequences.
I was afraid of, you know, catching a disease or being caught out by my wife or losing my marriage, all those things.
And that was a bad situation to be in.
That was basically trying to not do something for my wife and for my own selfish reasons.
Then, for reasons that I won't go into, I had a change of mind.
And I suddenly thought, no, I'm going to do this because I want to be a faithful man.
Because being a faithful man is something that I think is at the very heart of manhood.
I think at the heart of manhood is the integrity to do what you say you will do and to be who you seem to be, right?
I think that you're not pretending to be something else.
You don't give your word and then go back on it.
That is, to me, one of the central things about being a man.
And so I wanted to be that man.
And when I realized, when I stopped trying to not do something, which was not, you know, be attracted to other women or not, you know, cheat on my wife, I started to become something.
It all got much more easy because I realized then that if there were a magic room in which there were no consequences, I still wouldn't do it because I was a faithful man.
I was a man who embodied fidelity.
And that changed everything for me.
And so maybe if you think about it that way, that will help.
I think that you want to be a faithful man because that's the only kind of man there is.
A man who is not a faithful man is not a man at all.
And so that's what you're trying to build.
You're trying to build something of your, make something of yourself, not keep away from doing something.
Greg says, I read your short story, Jesus the Movie, thoroughly enjoyed it.
In fact, it's the first work of fiction of yours that I have read.
I found it sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving.
And as a Catholic, I found nothing in it offensive.
To me, it is about a man who realizes that he is not as secular as he thinks he is.
The story reminded me of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.
was Notes from Underground inspiration for Jesus the movie.
I know you love Dostoevsky, so I thought I would ask.
Well, yeah, I do love Dostoevsky.
He changed my life.
I still read him often, and so I'm sure he has an effect on me.
But no, the story is actually based very, very, very loosely on a true story, something that happened to a friend of mine.
It was hilariously funny when he told me about it.
And so I reinvented it for fiction.
And that was where the story came from.
Again, it's at New English Review.
If you haven't gone and looked at it yet, I hope you will.
People seem to really be loving it.
And I think it's one of my best stories.
And Jesus the Movie at New England Review.
All right.
I've got to stop there.
I gave you an extra 10 minutes.
I hope you're grateful.
I hope you're sitting there going, wow, 10 extra minutes without being plunged into that clavenless darkness, which we can't even describe to one another, even in the darkness, because the words just vanish into the darkness.
We can't even communicate.
That's how bad it is in the clavenless darkness.
But if you should survive through another week, not likely, but it might happen.
We'll be back on Friday with the Andrew Clavin Show.