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Dec. 4, 2018 - The Michael Knowles Show
02:13:27
The Daily Wire Backstage: Putting the “X” Back in Xmas
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Hey everybody, this is Michael.
You're about to listen to our latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage, where I join Ben Shapiro, Andrew Plavin, and the man who will one day fire me for real, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, for a great conversation on politics and culture, and where we answer questions from Daily Wire subscribers.
Without further ado, here is Backstage.
Fake laugh in 3, 2, 1...
Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage, the only conservative media podcast television show not owned by Glenn Beck.
I'm Jeremy Boring, known round these parts as the Daily Wire God King.
That's lowercase g, lowercase k.
Okay, tonight we're going to do our best to kill two hours before our viewers kill themselves.
Joining me around the Yule Log as usual are the three wise men, Benjamin Birchgold Shapiro, Andrew Frankly Makes No Sense Claven, and Michael Merr.
I don't know last name.
And what nativity would be complete without a non-binary, gluten-free baby Jesus?
Also to be played by Michael Knowles.
As always, we're graced by the lovely and talented Alicia Krause, who not only brings the only semblance of professionalism to the show, but she also brings your burning questions to us, hot off the internet.
Alicia, say hi.
Absolutely, everyone, and Merry, Merry Christmas to you.
I'm rocking my Mrs.
Claus outfit today down to the hair.
Apparently it looks silver, so hope that's okay.
And don't forget that everyone can watch backstage.
Why they would, I do not know.
But only subscribers get to submit the questions.
How do you submit those questions you ask?
Well, one, you have to become a Daily Wire subscriber.
Two, go over to dailywire.com and log in to the Daily Wire backstage page and just type those questions away in the Daily Wire chat box and I will read it on air, ask the guys those questions, and you can have them answered.
And also during this episode of Backstage, please remember that Daily Wire merch is 20% off.
It's a flash sale kind of thing.
It expires at the end of the show, so make sure to click on the link in the description to check out our delightful Daily Wire merch store and take advantage of this sale.
It really feels like you're getting in the spirit of Christmas when you hawk like wanton materialism.
Your money.
How much of your money are you willing to do?
You guys only do this one month a year.
Yeah.
Come on.
So we're glad that you're with us.
And as always, we're going to talk about all the things that matter, which mostly means things that are amusing.
To us.
To the four of us.
And we're also going to be taking your questions throughout the evening.
As Alicia already said, but we're always very grateful to our subscribers over at DailyWire.com.
You can become a subscriber for...
Something like a measly $10 a month where you get your Leftist Tears hot and cold Tumblr if you pay the annual subscription membership fee.
And we're making some changes in the new year to what lives behind the paywall.
We've been getting some great feedback from our subscribers and we're going to do our best to enhance that experience here over the next...
Over the next couple of months.
It's a great deal now.
It really is a good deal.
It is a great deal.
I know.
I agree, guys.
I mean, come on.
How could it get any better?
But it will.
There's more.
There's more of me.
We're just going to be hiding behind the haywall.
It's actually part of what I want to talk about throughout the night, and we're going to talk about putting the X back in X-mas as the evening goes.
We're also going to learn something about whatever the Jews celebrate this time of year.
Kwanzaa.
Kwanzaa, yeah.
Kwanzaa, that's right.
But it is funny how around this time of year, you hear from a lot of typically conservative Christians about how commercial Christmas is becoming.
And I always think that's funny because...
Really, Christmas, for being such an American holiday in the 20th century, was not an American holiday until the 20th century.
It didn't become a national holiday until 1870, and that was really as part of Reconstruction, of trying to bring the South better into the fold.
Up until that time, it had been illegal in many parts of America.
The pilgrims made Christmas illegal from the very beginning.
It was illegal in Boston.
You had to work on Christmas.
You couldn't get out of working on it.
And when you read back things that they would say in the early days, like the mayor of Jamestown would write in his diary something like, Christmas passed without incident.
Because Christmas was such a body, such a time of basically drinking and haymaking.
We couldn't make it a national holiday until Chinese restaurants opened.
But the truth is, Christmas, as we understand it, the American Christmas actually started because of Coca-Cola.
They wanted to sell more sugar water.
And so to sell more sugar water, they hired a great artist To create these beautiful images of Santa Claus.
And they put incredible amounts of marketing money into getting Americans to celebrate a holiday that, up until that time, they had thought was decidedly unchristian and pagan in nature.
And so when we say, ah, Christmas is becoming so commercial, it was started by a corporation to hawk sugar water.
Of course it's...
We have to put in a good word for Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens really did invent Christmas as...
That's what he needs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I mean, he did.
And, you know, here's something really interesting.
It very rarely snows in London, but for the first eight years of Dickens' life, which is the time that he looked back on with nostalgia, it actually snowed for every winter.
And so he puts the snow into Christmas because he loved it so much, and that's how he got Bing Crosby.
Tell me more about Santa.
Basically, Charles Dickens invented Bing Crosby.
Not many people know that.
This will be a great conversation for us to have throughout the night because I know few men alive today who love Christmas as much as you do.
It's true.
But in the true spirit of the season, before we can do that...
We have to talk about stamps.com.
Oh, of course.
Which actually comes in very handy at Christmas.com.
It does.
I mean, around this time of year, you're sending a lot of packages to a lot of different people.
And hopefully, you're sending them presents and not something else terrible.
But whatever you're sending them, what you really should be using is stamps.com.
Because the fact is, post office is great.
You don't want to schlep all your stuff down to the post office.
Instead, what you want to do is have the post office's services come to you.
You can get all the great services of the post office right there at your desktop at stamps.com.
We use stamps.com here at the Daily Wire offices.
You can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail using your own computer and printer.
And then the mail carrier just picks it up.
You click, you print, you mail, and you are done.
You can print it right onto the package.
You can print it onto a piece of paper and tape it to the package.
You can print it onto a sticker.
And right now, they have a very special deal.
Stamps.com is giving you the special offer, four-week trial, plus postage and a digital scale.
Without long-term commitments, that digital scale means you're not overpaying for your postage.
Go to stamps.com.
Just click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in promo code Shapiro.
That is stamps.com, promo code Shapiro.
It saves you time, saves you money.
And most of all, you're not going to have to wait in line at the post office.
Everybody else has the same idea that you do.
They're going to bring all their packages with them to the post office.
I'm probably the only person who uses this because you don't have to lick the stamps.
I'm like...
Look, Ma, the computer just puts the stamp right on the envelope.
It is terrific.
I mean, it is much more convenient than going over to the post office.
As great as the post office is, this is more convenient.
Because last year, when you gave me my present, you know, you mailed me that future diamond.
It was a big lump of future diamond.
Has it turned into a diamond yet?
Well, I'm waiting.
You've got to grip it really hard.
I need to put more pressure on you.
So, we're going to talk about Christmas a lot.
We're going to talk about what Christmas means, what it doesn't mean.
We're going to talk about our favorite Christmas movies.
We're going to talk about George H.W. Bush dying.
Not really.
Not as jolly as Christmas.
Nothing more is Christmas.
Nothing says Christmas like Moscow in the snow.
But before we get to Christmas, which is actually 22 days away, there is currently a holiday taking place that one of the members of our panel actually does recognize.
Another one used to recognize it, but now, I mean, he's left the fold.
Well, let me light up a cigar here.
Gee, I remember those.
Those were good.
Those are delicious.
The memory is better than the reality.
Now I need a napkin.
You can put it into the attic.
You've got to spit right in there.
Louder with Crowder.
I can't really actually chew my way through that story.
The Louder with Crowder mug has found yet another break.
Like, who's born for this?
I feel like this should be a Crowder ad.
The Louder with Crowder mug club.
It's not just for ashing cigars.
For spitting out baggage picture gum.
That's exactly right.
We can tell that sucker on eBay.
Okay, so here's the deal with Hanukkah.
First of all, it is not just Jewish Christmas.
So all the secular Jews in America...
What's funny is that if you ask the Jews in Israel which are the biggest holidays, the biggest holidays are Passover and Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.
And Sukkot, probably.
In terms of the rankings of the Jewish holidays...
For religious holidays.
For religious holidays, Hanukkah does not rank high just because it's not an actual full what they call Yom Tov, meaning we don't actually take off work.
I'm here on Hanukkah because we don't take off work during Hanukkah, whereas...
September, I take off like every other day.
You wondered what happened to you, actually.
Exactly.
But all the secular Jews in America, because Hanukkah happens around the same time as Christmas, and Christmas is so attractive with all the pretty lights and the twinklies and everything, and the beautiful music.
I mean, it's wonderful.
It's wonderful.
But all the secular Jews in America, they're like, we need something.
To make sure our kids don't celebrate Christmas.
When they're not busy writing the Christmas songs.
That's right.
Exactly.
When Irving Berlin isn't writing the Christmas songs, then we have to have our kids celebrate Hanukkah.
So we will just make it into a big thing.
Now, Hanukkah was at one point a big thing.
It's still in Israel.
It's very widely practiced.
But what's hilarious about this is that the secular Jewish community has taken up Hanukkah as this special holiday because of the time of year.
Hanukkah is the most anti-secular holiday there is on the Jewish calendar, probably.
The entire story of Hanukkah is taking place during the Seleucid Empire.
So you're talking about hundreds of years before Christ.
And the Greek Empire basically is presiding over the area of Israel.
And there's a civil war essentially breaks out in Israel between a Hellenistic Jewish community and the non-Hellenistic Jewish community.
And the Seleucid Empire is sort of playing off one side against the other in an attempt to keep control.
And at a certain point, the leader of the Seleucid Empire, at that time Antiochus IV, he decides that he has had enough of these Jews and their Jewish ways and he bans Jewish practice.
And he takes over the temple, and he installs pagan gods in the temple, and then he bars any sort of Jewish practice in the temple.
And this leads to the Great Maccabee Revolt, in which Judah Maccabee and Matasiahu and Matthias, the entire Maccabee family basically rises up, and they throw out the Maccabees.
Now, there's a great debate inside the Jewish community.
I mean, they throw out the Seleucids.
Now, there's a great debate.
And they were fighting, by the way, a bunch of Hellenized Jews as well, because the Hellenized Jews were fighting on the side of the Greeks.
So it was an actual civil war.
A great debate has broken out over the years as to what exactly is being celebrated on the eight days of Hanukkah, because the story that you typically hear is that then the Jews went into the temple and everything is a mess.
And so they clean the place up, and they find one vial of oil, and then they proceed to pour that into the menorah, which is supposed to never go out.
And they pour it in, and somehow this lasts for eight days, which seems like kind of a cheap miracle to last for eight days.
I always considered it to be the miracle of finding oil in the Middle East.
LAUGHTER I mean, try to imagine that your iPhone is on like 10% and just stays on.
It's pretty much like that.
A blessing from the Lord.
Exactly.
And so there's this great debate in sort of Jewish philosophical circles about what the actual miracle is.
Is it miraculous?
So it comes down to, for Baimonides, is it miraculous when something happens that happens inside the balance of nature but is in and of itself unexpected or Or does it have to be like an actual violation of the physical laws of nature?
So the oil thing is a violation of the laws of nature, but the Jews winning the war is a miracle of a different sort.
Maimonides comes down on the side that what you're actually celebrating is the rebellion.
And there's some sort of revisionist history that suggests that the reason that the oil stuff was written in, the reason that they celebrated that later, is because the Maccabean Empire ended up becoming pretty corrupt near the end.
And so there was sort of a retaliation by the time of the Talmud saying, okay, well, the Maccabees weren't that great, so we can celebrate that they won, but the real celebration is God's providence in the menorah.
So that's kind of the story, but it's an anti-Hellenistic story.
It's about how secular Jewry was not tolerated by non-secular Jewry, and yet the people who celebrated the hardest in the United States are the secular Jews.
And because of that...
I don't mean to be pessimistic about this, but secular Jews who celebrate Hanukkah to prevent their kids from celebrating Christmas, their grandchildren will not be celebrating Hanukkah.
I mean, the reality is that the people who take Hanukkah seriously are also the people who take all the other Jewish holidays seriously and know something about the other Jewish holidays.
It's like the people who celebrate Christmas as sort of a cultural totem.
Yeah.
And you know that they're not going to church.
And at a certain point, when Christmas becomes outclassed in terms of fun by something else, which will be harder because Christmas is inherently a lot of fun.
But when it becomes outclassed by, you know, LSD, then at that point, all those kids will will abandon.
And it's the problem with secular religion generally.
People who hold on to all these cultural hallmarks of religion say, well, we don't really care about Judaism.
In fact, we're uncomfortable with Judaism, but we're still uncomfortable with the whole Christmas thing, so we don't want our kids doing that.
So we'll do something fun and tell them we have eight days of presents and it'll be sort of like Adam's down.
There's Hanukkah song.
We have all these secular Jews who identify as Jewish and that means that Judaism is really cool.
Not a single person has stayed Jewish over history because Judaism isn't the cool place to be.
That's not why people stay Jewish.
It's an interesting thing.
You see it across our culture right now where there are all these sort of vestigial remnants of past religious practices.
And you see people taking part in all of these symbolic gestures.
But they're not actually symbolizing anything.
And so there's this sort of superficial beauty to it.
There's a real sense of tragedy, I think, to people going through these symbolic motions where they're not actually...
But you can see why you do that, right?
I mean, you think that that's the good stuff.
You think that the surface, the icing is the good part, but it's really not the meat.
It's not the actual food.
This is why people have a terrible time at the holidays.
I put icing on my meat, yeah.
I was hoping you wouldn't catch that.
This is why people have a terrible time at the holidays, because all they think about with Christmas or Reformed secular Jewish Hanukkah or whatever is, I'm supposed to be happy.
With my family, I'm supposed to be happy.
And if you ever try to be happy, you won't be.
You can't do that.
You have to be celebrating something.
You need to be feeling a joy that is outside of you.
And also, you have to be ensconced in the lifestyle the rest of the year in order for you to really say, okay, now here's when I really get to let loose because I've been celebrating this lifestyle the entire year long.
To me, it's the difference between going to Disneyland once a year and having a season pass.
When you have a season pass, you can go anytime you want, and so you spend a lot of time there.
And then when you go for a long day, it's really just a joy.
When you go once, there's a lot of pressure because you just spent a ton of money on this one And you can see it.
You can see it, Disneyland.
People walking around.
I am going to enjoy myself.
This is going to be funny.
And you get that feeling from a lot of people at Christmas, too.
It's like, I'm going to blow it out and have a huge meal and invite over all these people.
Hanukkah, too.
It's like, we'll invite over all these people.
We don't see them the rest of the year.
And then they get together like, we're supposed to be having fun.
Now is the fun time.
I love my family.
It is a little telling that the Christians at Christmas time, they celebrate the birth of God, that everything is forgiven, that you're going to heaven for all eternity.
And the Jews are celebrating Hanukkah, which is...
But that's every Jewish holiday in summation, right?
Every Jewish holiday basically is, they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.
Except for Yom Kippur, which is, God is after us, fast.
In our pessimism lies our optimism.
It's true, that is true, actually.
But it's also a very aggressive holiday, meaning that one of the commandments is that when you light the menorah, you're not supposed to just light it on the interior of your home.
You're actually supposed to light it in the window of your home to let everybody know we're still here.
And so there's this very famous picture from 1932 of a menorah in the window of...
It's probably Berlin.
And you can see out the window all of the Nazi flags flying, and here's this menorah in the window.
And that's really the Jewish experience in a nutshell.
And, you know, everybody's been trying to kill us.
They're not here.
We're still here.
We will remain here.
We're not going anywhere.
We're actually glad you're still here.
What?
When Christians say that, we're so happy.
For so long, that was not the case.
These are the three people who are still glad.
Yeah.
We don't speak for Christianity.
So, I do want to talk about Christmas, and because this is a political show of sorts, I think that we should, we'd be doing ourselves a disservice, by which I mean our audience might not give us all their we'd be doing ourselves a disservice, by which I mean our audience might not And we want to talk about the war on Christmas, and the fact that Christmas is certainly under siege in our culture.
To me, you can't really do that in a spirit of honesty if you don't also talk about sort of how Christmas became Christmas in our culture in the first place.
But before we get into the kind of esoteric and historic, Michael, you've put some thought into...
Oh, I've been a general.
I've been a four-star general.
Christmas is winning, baby.
Oh, yeah.
You know, so obviously, the first celebration of Christmas in America was an illegal celebration by these Anglican-type people, Church of England-type people, who the Puritans tolerated taking the day off of work.
But if they weren't actually praying and celebrating, then they had to go back out and work again.
There's long been a war on Christmas.
You know, a lot of conservatives...
Say that there isn't a war on Christmas.
The majority of Republicans, 56%, say there's no such thing as a war on Christmas.
We know that there is.
The Obama administration, in their White House Christmas cards, took the word Christmas out.
This was breaking a holiday tradition.
Donald Trump, in his Trumpian way, has now made a much larger, golder, redder, Merry Christmas.
Jim Cooper, a Democrat representative, said it was the gaudiest Christmas card he's ever seen.
Wait, it's Trump's It's shocking.
It's a model of subtlety.
You know, Barack Obama made those nuns pay for abortion drugs.
Donald Trump invited nuns in full habit to sing at the White House Christmas tree.
I'm sure he just called up these, I need the most Christian people you can possibly find.
Give me some nuns.
Little sisters of the poor and slightly off-key.
Yeah.
So we have all of that.
Is Vuntrap family still available?
Yeah.
We'll find them.
We'll find them.
But, you know, to your point, if you're not living it throughout the year, the celebration isn't as fun.
And this is why I think, having been a four-star general in the war on Christmas, Christmas is winning, Starbucks has the cups again, everything's going great, nuns are at the White House.
You have to look at the war on Advent, and this cuts both ways.
The real war on Advent is, if you start playing Mariah Carey on November 1st, and you're sipping peppermint lattes and whatever, then there's no build-up.
You're not waiting for anything.
This is the thing that really annoys me about it.
I'm an Episcopalian, which is Catholic lights, right?
We have the same thing.
Twice the liturgy, half the guilt.
Yeah, exactly.
But this thing that you are not allowed to celebrate Christmas.
No.
During Advent, because it's a penitential time.
I'm like, good idea.
Take all the joy.
Suck all the joy out of religion.
That'll bring them in.
That'll stack them in.
My view is that you should never play Mariah Carey.
It's always too soon.
It does offend God.
We do know that.
But it is clearly moving in that direction.
And so, who knows, though, what happens after Donald Trump makes it a major campaign promise to say Merry Christmas.
I mean, corporations are changing this.
They really are reacting to it.
But what happens next?
Is it taking the Lord's name in vain in a strange way for Donald Trump to say Merry Christmas?
LAUGHTER We're gonna say Merry Christmas.
Don't!
So I think because we live in a predominantly Protestant nation, I think that we should actually not just assume that everyone in the audience even knows what Advent is.
So I want to talk about what is Advent.
First I want to talk about where Santa Claus gets his suits.
I think there could be very little question, as form-fitting as they are, that it's Indochina.
I mean, how else could he fit down the chimney?
I mean, those things had better be tailored.
And that's why you need an Indochino suit.
We've got a huge variety of fabrics, colors, and patterns.
It makes Indochino incredibly stylish.
You want to look like James Bond this holiday season?
Well, you can when you go to Indochino.
They're North America's leading made-to-measure menswear company.
Indochino suits are just fantastic.
Not only that, they allow you to personalize pretty much everything.
The lapel, the lining, the pockets, the buttons.
You can write in your own monogram.
I went to an Indochino headquarters over here in Santa Monica, and you really walk in and it's like, it's a tailor who works with you.
Did you throw in that monogram thing just to see if you can get Michael Knowles to buy an Indochino suit?
100%.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And it is really great.
And not only that, these things are really stylish.
It's a lot of fun.
And you can do it from home also.
You don't actually have to go over to one of their headquarters.
You can take your measurements at home.
Then they send you a tailored made-to-measure suit.
This week, my listeners get any premium Indochino suit for just $359 at Indochino.com when you enter backstage.
That is 50% off the regular price for a made-to-measure premium suit.
Plus, shipping is free.
Indochino.com.
Again, promo code BACKSTAGE for any premium suit for just $359 and free shipping.
It's better than anything you can get off the rack, and it's less expensive than anything you can get off the rack, and it fits you better than any of those things.
It's an incredible deal for a premium made-to-measure suit.
Again, go check it out right now.
Indochino.com.
Promo code BACKSTAGE to make that happen.
Look your best for the holidays and humiliate all of your family members who have not bought a suit from Indochino.
This is what Christmas is all about.
I'm not going to tell you.
So we're going to talk Advent, but they're telling me in my ear, and they're right to do so, that we owe our members a question first.
Far be it from us to not talk about Advent.
Riveting Michael Knowles' commentary on Advent.
I say we owe our members because they give us their money.
I know.
It's amazing.
I'm listening to Michael Knowles talk about Advent.
That's what they're paying for.
Maybe they're paying to get you to stop.
Yeah, they want to hear about death, judgment, heaven, and hell, but only after the questions.
Elisha, what do you got for us?
We have lots of great questions, and don't forget, I mean, in the season of giving, go over to the Daily Wire store, and the Four Wise Men shirt is one of my faves.
You know, don't, what's the other one?
The snowflake one is hilarious and amazing.
But first, we have subscriber questions from our very awesome subscribers who are the only ones who get to ask the questions, by the way, in case you didn't know that.
Dana asks a very important question in all caps.
Why isn't Ben in the bunny suit?
So this was discussed and it turned out that the general consensus was that I say enough serious things that ought to be taken seriously that them coming out of me while I wore the bunny suit for two hours.
Would be amazing.
Elisha, I know.
Shh!
Quiet you.
Okay, but...
By consensus, Ben thought, means that just he thought.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm not wearing a bunny suit.
I've been here with a bunch of people who are breathing smoke into my lungs.
I'm not doing that and wearing a bunny suit for two hours.
Are you freaking kidding me?
There's only so much I'm willing to do.
Ben, you're so cute in the bunny suit.
Elisha, what's next?
All right, Joel J says, what was the best Christmas or Hanukkah gift you guys ever got?
Oof.
Hmm.
No one?
No one?
All I wanted for Christmas was you.
I thought you didn't like Mariah Carey.
That's an actual burn.
Alicia just actually got in a burn.
That doesn't mean I don't know what Mariah Carey does.
Why do you think I don't like Mariah Carey?
In any case, okay, so, who has a...
The best Christmas gift I ever gave was probably Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a Comprehensive Guide, now available for sale, $9.99 on Amazon.com.
What was the question?
I'm sorry, I didn't.
I have one, actually.
So, I don't know how everybody's parents do these things differently, but my parents, we had Santa Claus, you know?
And so, there'd be gifts under the tree all the month of December, and those were from Mom and Dad, and you knew who paid for those.
But then, when you woke up on Christmas morning and came in the room, there'd be a few gifts that were not wrapped that had been made by Santa Claus and his indentured servants, the little small people that he didn't pay a living wage.
And so...
I remember very clearly being a little boy and walking in to see what Santa Claus had brought me.
And there was a giant red telescope on my parents' sofa.
And I was so excited.
So excited because I was kind of a little nerdy kid, you know.
And I thought I liked space and was a Trekkie and was finally going to get to see the stars, you know.
And then I took my telescope out that very night.
And have you ever tried to use a telescope?
Yeah.
It's hard.
It's hard.
And the problem is, if you don't have anybody to tell you these things, like, you look at a star through a telescope, and when you finally get the star into the lens, you realize that it's, like, if you look up with the naked eye, a star is just a white dot in the sky.
Once you get it into the telescope, it is a slightly larger white dot in the sky.
And I didn't have anyone to tell me, like, there's only, like, eight things you can see.
Teach me how to point it.
And so literally the most excited I've ever been to receive a present.
And after one single night of futzing with it, I was like, I hate you!
You know, I think this would be an excellent time for me to give you the greatest Christmas presents you will ever get.
Oh, wow.
You will never beat this Christmas present.
I swear to God if this is the New Testament trip.
It's better.
John MacArthur already tried that earlier this week.
This is something you'll remember possibly for the next ten minutes.
That's the spirit of the season.
Promoting myself.
So we've had him self-promote and you self-promote and I'm the only Jew in the world.
The Lefty's Dictionary.
I can't believe it.
But you don't look like him.
Where's the beard?
I know.
You were so much younger.
It was so many years ago.
It was so many years ago.
You look back in the rear view and you thought, what did I do with my leg?
Where did I go wrong?
It's just this afternoon.
I know.
So this has all the same art as the beard?
It is brilliantly done by Rebecca Shapiro, I think.
Is there, Drew, did you find any single person you couldn't offend just on the cover, actually?
No.
I think that I have managed now.
My wife has said that the mission of my life is to offend every single human being.
I've now done it.
Well, she knows you better than anyone.
Yeah, exactly.
I think she may be the only person I haven't quite offended yet.
Maybe the whole marriage is just...
Well, while I think of something that I can promote myself by talking on our Christmas special, Alicia, do you have another question from a subscriber?
Sure do.
And I have to say, I'm a fan of the Clavin beard.
I mean, I've been telling him.
And I actually think it makes him look young and hip and cool.
So keep that beard, Drew.
See, the babes get five votes to your ones.
Yeah.
I also like the beard, but I disagree with almost everything she said.
I like it because all I can think is, you know, that'll probably keep growing after he dies.
I think it probably is growing now after I thought of it.
Oh, Lord have mercy.
They say that you're the cruelest to those that you love, so take that as a compliment.
This question comes from Christopher.
He says, hey, how does Ben feel being surrounded by all these Christians and Christmas apparel?
I mean, mostly that's called living in America.
But also, who cares?
The truth is, I love the Christmas season.
I've always loved the Christmas season.
I think that it's fantastic that people are celebrating God.
I love the beauty of the season.
The songs of the season are just fantastic.
Everybody's in a good mood, which in LA is a big thing, because everybody's usually grumpy and nasty.
And so now everybody's in a very good mood because we're nearing the end of the year, and so that's a lot of fun.
I've always said that I think that the best hope for the country is going to be a religious revival.
So every time there's even a sign of a religious revival in the country, it puts me in a better mood.
And not only have I never been offended by Christian observance, I've been very happy with Christian observance, particularly American Christian observance, which has not been associated historically with anti-Semitism, which is very different from European Christian observance, which for 1500 years was heavily associated with anti-Semitism.
American Christianity is a unique brand that has been uniquely philo-Semitic for essentially its entire history.
And so when the Christmas season rolls around, it puts me in a really good mood.
I'm really happy with it, and I've never felt like I have to protect my kids from it.
I'll say to them, like, we'll drive around, I'll say, look at the pretty Christmas lights.
And then we go home and we celebrate something different.
And that's great.
And it's a different thing.
And that's why, as I say about the Hanukkah stuff, like, if you are trying to dissuade your kids from liking Christmas by liking Hanukkah, you're totally doing it wrong.
That's just something that Jews don't do, but it's a beautiful thing that other people do, and that's a great thing.
I think you lose the Jewish kids to Christmas when you don't have God.
If you were celebrating Judaism with God...
Yeah, then it's like, wow, look at all this pretty stuff.
It's cool.
Everybody's in a good mood.
Awesome.
And they have God, too.
Yeah, exactly.
And they're great shopping deals.
So, I mean...
What's there to complain about?
Part of the question, though, wasn't just how do you feel being surrounded by Christmas.
It's how do you feel being surrounded by Christians.
And I think, you know, someone asked me on Twitter this week something similar, which was like, I mean, they were kindly pointing me to a resource for someone who could help me learn how to better convert you.
And they said, you know, Jeremy and Michael, I think you were on this.
I was on this.
It was supposed to be the fire and sword.
I wanted to do that.
When you try to convert Ben, maybe use this.
And they meant well, of course, because as we've all talked about before, there's a kind of...
It's a kindness when people want to share their religious faith with you, right?
I totally agree with this.
If somebody cares enough about my soul that they want to spend time trying to save me, great.
As long as they're not coming at me with a sword, and they take the fact that I'm an independent human being with independent judgment, then...
Sure, go at it.
I mean, that's totally fine.
And that's why when we had on John MacArthur, and he did a 15-minute segment on Isaiah 53, and I didn't bother to get into the Jewish disagreements about Isaiah 53.
It's like, listen, go for it.
Enjoy.
Not only does it not matter to me, I'm flattered by it.
Again, these are people who care about me, and that's great.
I also think there's another aspect to it, which is you're interested in it.
I think that part of the...
Unique culture that we have here because we have four very disparate religious points of view.
Our CEO, Caleb Robinson, I think represents a fifth really unique religious point of view that's always a part of our conversation.
This is because conservatives are so contrarian.
Even if we were both Catholic, we'd find out how to even disagree with each other on that.
You know, it is very nice.
It's very different.
Yeah.
We're all interested in each other's points of view.
We're all flattered that we care enough about each other to share our points of view.
And we have really free-range conversations.
And the nice thing is also that when Christians talk to me about my own faith, what's nice about that is that it forces me to become a stronger defender of my faith if it's something that I believe.
And I think the same thing is true for you guys.
When I talk about Judaism and our take on Christianity...
It sometimes makes you think, okay, well, what should I do to dig down into my own faith and respond to that?
And I think that it makes the conversation much more interesting.
I mean, sure, being in heaven while you're in hell will be nice.
But is there a way that I could be in heaven and be gooder?
And it's funny, because people always ask me, doesn't it bother you when you know that all your friends think you're going to hell?
It's like, no, because when I die, we'll find out.
Until then...
What do I care?
We're smuggling you in.
And the same thing when people say things like, well, you know, there are Christians who only care about Israel because they think that in the end times, Jesus is going to come back and then the rapture is going to happen and all the Jews are going to be left.
And it's like, okay, so when Jesus comes back, we'll talk.
It is amazing, though, that we have a lot of religious conversations around here.
A lot.
And one of the things that is just amazing to me, and the Bible talks about this a lot, is it really doesn't matter where people are coming from, what their IQ is.
I mean, we could have a brilliant guy like Ben and Knowles, you know, and yet these insights come pouring out of them that actually change your point of view.
And you talk to people with really, as long as you're actually focused on God, You say things that you just wouldn't believe would come out of people's mouths, and you think, like, wow, I never thought of that, and that's a new thing.
And I think that there's a lot of wisdom about God from people of various perspectives, which is why it's the same thing Maimonides thought, who's trying to learn about God by looking at Aristotle and Plato.
I mean, I think that when I read the writings of Pope Benedict, I'm thinking, this is pretty amazing stuff.
There's a lot here that's terrific.
When I read Augustine, I'm thinking, there's a lot here that's really fascinating, and here's where I agree, and here's where I disagree.
The fact that we're all working within the same Judeo-Christian universe obviously matters a whole hell of a lot.
There are certain common preconceptions that we're taking.
But it has not only never bothered me an iota to be surrounded by Christians, I think that it's made me a better Jew to be surrounded by Christians as well.
Well, this is what you find from the militant atheist set that is pretty funny.
I mean, there's the line, an atheist, a crossfitter, walk into a bar.
How do you know?
They tell you within five seconds.
And with that militant aid, they'll bring up objections because they've never engaged with people of faith, with people of any faith.
They've never thought, hmm, maybe some church fathers have asked the questions that you seem to...
Nobody's ever thought about the problem of people before.
That's right.
That's the part that...
And it really is astonishing.
When you talk to people who are militantly anti-religious, and they just start quoting you Bible verses out of context.
Like, can you give me the verse before and after, and then maybe I'll take you seriously enough that I know what you're saying, but...
But it's also, contemplation of God leads to humility.
This is why Adam hid his nakedness from God, because actually coming face-to-face with God illuminates our insufficiency.
And so people who actually believe in God, not people who are...
even religiously, culturally religious, which is a slightly different category, they can be filled with an enormous amount of hubris.
People who actually contemplate God are filled with humility, which is why we can have religious conversations with one another, and once you get past all those sort of faux hubris, you get down to the actual humility that allows us to engage with these ideas.
The way that you know atheism is true to its name, that they actually reject God, is that there's so much hubris.
I mean, there's nothing worse than atheists in social media or in the comment sections condescending constantly in every single thing.
You and your sky, God.
You and your sky, God.
That's right.
Why don't you make a contention that no one in the history of religion has ever made and then pretend that that's my contention?
Yeah, that's my contention.
I was always moved by Sam Harris's, I think it was his first book, The End of Toleration.
He talks about his Buddhist practice, and he quotes one of the typically kind of mysterious, complex phrases from one of the Buddhist texts.
And he says, where in Christianity do you find anything that complex?
And I just thought, you're kind of missing the point, pal, because the complexity flatters your intellect, but the simplicity cuts through your intellect to the heart of things.
Well, I mean, also, this is the conversation that I had with Sam on stage when I did his podcast, is we were talking about the fact that he and I shared 95% of our values.
And I said, where did you get your values?
And he said, well, you know, I've studied Buddhism, and I've studied Eastern religion, and I've studied all this stuff.
He said, right, but I didn't study any of that, and you and I have 95% of our values in common, so where do you think you're getting those values?
And the answer, of course, is 3,000 years of common history springing from Sinai and moving forward through the Sermon on the Mount.
I mean, that is where your common culture came from, and that's the culture we all grew up in.
And if you don't appreciate that culture, then you are failing to recognize what it is that has shaped the world around you.
And that's the part where we all agree.
The doctrinal differences between Catholicism and Protestantism and Judaism, when you pull back from the Surratt painting a little bit.
And you see what is the broad river of Western history?
What you see is that those differences are minute compared to the vast number of things that we have in common.
And the things we have in common are, in my view, significantly more important for the preservation of Western civilization than the things that divide us, which is sort of the Peace of Westphalia agreement, right?
Is that we have a lot more in common if we all hold hands going forward into the future.
That's going to be a lot stronger than if we spend a lot of time trying to beat each other up.
But the question you asked, Harris, though, is an important one because people are always saying to me, do you think people can be good if they're atheists?
And I think, yes, they can, but actually they're not making sense.
I'm kind of obsessed with that, that you should make sense.
No, this is exactly right.
It's people who say that you are a wandering ball of meat, sort of just moving through the universe without any will of your own, but you should try to make the world a better place and you should try to create human flourishing and you should try to create happiness and minimize sadness and minimize suffering and all this stuff.
It's like, How can you hold these things in common?
When you say that you can look at science and then derive morality from science, all I can think is how could you possibly make that argument?
How could you possibly make that argument?
You have to at least start from the idea that you're going to submit to some authority greater than yourself.
And for them, I think the authority is a kind of collectivism.
They're basically saying you can look at the world through strictly scientific terms and see how it is better to be moral for the construction of a society.
But what they can't answer is why you should be moral for the advancement of the individual.
I understand that, yes, we need to, even in the absence of God, by treating each other well, we're going to have better collaboration, we're going to have better partnerships, it's going to be easier to keep the lions at the gates and it's going to be easier to raise children.
But what's in it for me?
Well, that's it.
That's a good argument for everybody else to behave.
That's not a great argument for me, the super-conscious man, to behave.
You know, I've been reading a lot of atheist science this year, and the key mistake in logic they almost all make is they talk about evolution, and they say, this is how the eye evolved, and that's why we can see light.
And this is how our moral sense evolved, and that's how we invented morality.
You think, we didn't invent light, you know?
LAUGHTER There has to be a source point outside of evolutionary biology for morality.
And the biggest problem with this is that it can't be something that's invented by humans.
This was the entire Enlightenment attempt.
I mean, Kant did the best of anybody, and Kant failed.
Kant basically tried to reverse engineer Judeo-Christian morality into morality without God.
He basically took all of the ends of Judeo-Christian morality and said, okay, let me see if I can come with an alternate explanation for why this should work in a sort of utilitarian or deontological sense.
And it doesn't work.
But he did at least say there is a world, which is so obviously true, there is a world of things as they are that we cannot know.
And in that world, all religious assumptions, the basic Christian religious assumptions may well be true.
And we have to believe in them in order for morality to exist.
He did make that stand.
They keep using him to attack it.
And this is where I think that there are certain atheists who are...
Honest enough to acknowledge that they have to make certain core assumptions about morality in order to build a system.
The people who say, I don't make any assumptions at all.
I'm a scientist all the way through.
You're not.
It's just not true.
It's just not true.
So, most of our core values we hold in common as the four of us.
One of the things that sort of separates some of us from others is the concept of eternal life.
Ben, as one who rejects the concept of eternal life, where do you get your life insurance?
Well, I don't actually reject the concept of eternal life.
I've worked so hard on my segues.
It's a great segue.
I'll explain why you're theologically incorrect after I tell you about what happens when you die.
When you die, a couple of things happen.
First of all, there's a bunch of stuff that may or may not happen after you die.
But the thing that certainly will happen...
The thing that certainly will happen is your family's not going to have as much money as when you were alive if you were an earner at all, unless you have life insurance.
And this is why you need to actually be a responsible human.
It's the holiday season.
That means a lot of drunk drivers on the road.
You don't want to be killed by one of those drunk drivers.
Or a reindeer.
That's correct.
And then they bury you in a pauper's grave.
Is that something that you really want in the middle of the holiday season?
A pauper's grave?
I don't think so.
I think you want something better.
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Okay, now...
Wait, wait.
I'm going to say about Policy Genius, and then you do your theology.
And that's that Policy Genius is one of our...
One of our most steadfast advertisers.
And one of the things that I tell people is if you want to support the content, supporting our sponsors really is the best way that you can do it, right?
You go support our sponsors.
I like Policy Genius in particular because since they're one of our biggest advertisers across a range of our shows, this show, your show, the other two shows, they put up with a lot of our crap.
Can you imagine being the advertiser?
Yeah.
Well, we just did that ad read.
And yet, Policy Genius does.
And they stick by us.
And they stick by us, and they provide a great service.
So it's good for you to go to Policy Genius, and it's good for us if you go to Policy Genius.
And it's maybe evidence that it's good for Policy Genius to keep putting up with us.
Right.
There are always questions with insurance policies over acts of God.
How does that relate to the rapture?
Because then, if my policy is with Policy Genius, we'll have to ask our That's the next poll with our advertisers.
Ben, I joked about Jews and eternal life.
Tell me the actual...
So, I mean, there's a long history of Jews believing in the afterlife.
I mean, the Talmud is full of statements about what happens in the afterlife.
There's pretty significant debate about what happens in the afterlife.
But the idea that you're guaranteed a portion in the afterlife if you fulfill certain basic commandments, particularly if you're not Jewish, it's actually easier to get into the afterlife, or at least into the good part of the afterlife, if you are...
Not Jewish, then, if you're Jewish.
If you're Jewish, you have the burden of the 613 commandments, which is why we actively discourage converts.
If you're not Jewish, then you basically only have seven, and those seven are pretty easy.
It's like, believe in God, don't commit adultery, don't kill anybody, no theft, don't eat the flesh of a living animal, set up courts of law.
These are very basic things.
Come in.
I love this religion.
You may not have it.
You may not be.
So Drew's got some problems where we come from, right?
Of the people in the room, so according to the Jews, the only people who got a problem, Drew, are the people who had an obligation to stay within the faith.
I knew there was something about you people I didn't like.
This is the revenge of the Jews, right?
We say everybody gets in but you.
But me.
But you.
You are in serious trouble.
I can buy into any religion that doesn't accept Andrew Clayton.
Yeah, shook an eye, oddly enough.
Even Abraham was laid with his father, or went to...
Yes.
What's the line from Genesis?
So it's that he sleeps in the dust with his father.
Yeah, that sort of language is used pretty frequently in the Old Testament.
And it seems to me that that language implies the possibility of...
Right, there's nothing explicitly in the five books of Moses about the afterlife.
It's a very this-place-driven...
But yeah, I mean, there's a lot more in the Prophets about the afterlife, and obviously there's certain, like, even in the stories with regard to Saul, their time, like, Saul confers with the witches of Endor who are dead.
He raises Samuel up from the grave.
There's an idea of an afterlife that's obviously present in the prophets as well.
So now that we've discussed all the meaningful religious concepts, tell us about Advent.
So Advent is very important.
It's very important.
I want to have the Catholic and Episcopalian putting a damper on all of the fun.
No more fun.
Only penitence.
Because what you do during Advent is you contemplate four mysteries.
Death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
And I actually think this is very important.
Not the national debt.
And a lot of debt for all the Christmas presents that you've got to buy.
It's actually very important because in our culture...
We don't confront any of these questions, religious or irreligious.
We don't confront death.
We're terrified of death.
We're getting all these cosmetic surgeries and doing everything we can not to die.
We're terrified of judgment.
It's so judgy.
You know, there's your truth, there's my truth.
Judgment is the judgiest.
Judgment, it's so judgy.
That's what I've always said.
And then we deny heaven.
We deny hope.
And there's huge despair spreading throughout the culture.
Suicide is way up, 70% among teenagers.
There's a lack of hope.
And then there's no fear of hell.
There's no fear.
But hell implies justice.
Hell implies that there is some justice.
There is mercy, but there is justice too.
And it also means that we have freedom.
It means that we have free will as people to God can come down the mountain, can give us all of this grace, but we still have the freedom to accept that or to turn away from that and to celebrate that freedom and how that freedom can be turned toward good and how our death, which comes through sin and our judgment, can be redeemed in Christmas.
It makes Christmas so much more beautiful and joyful and you wait for it.
So specifically, what is that...
Oh, I'm sorry.
In a very technical way.
What do you do for it?
How many presents do you get?
You open little boxes and there's chocolate inside, right?
You open little boxes, they're little chocolates, and you listen to O Come, O Come, Emmanuel on repeat.
So Advent is the period before Christmas.
It's celebrated four Sundays before Christmas.
And it's a period of ad venire, of the arrival, of what is to come.
And even, you know, the one, the major advent hymn is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
And it's actually an acrostic poem that says, Arrow Cross, I will be tomorrow in Latin.
And it's this waiting.
So it's this period of...
Did we not know that?
Yes.
That's the first time we've ever said anything.
It's the only insight I've ever had.
That's the only...
You are waiting.
And so it's this period of expectation.
You're not celebrating yet.
The incarnation hasn't happened yet.
But the flip side of this is Christmas is supposed to go on for 12 days.
On the 12th day of Christmas, now you have Christmas breakfast and then you just start ripping the tree down.
You throw it on...
People don't want to wait for that anymore.
But that's the period of celebrating Christmas.
And when you're expecting it, when you're waiting, when you're longing, when you're contemplating your own mortality...
I think it really helps us in our culture.
It reminds us that we're human.
We're going to die.
Memento mori.
We sin.
We need somebody to come and help us out.
And then when that does happen, it's such a joy.
So you're saying that the mystery is not like we all get together for dinner and one of us plays the murderer.
That's the great mystery.
And the murderer is always Ben.
The great mystery theater.
That's right.
And it's also because we just love instant gratification.
We love insta-everything, so we just can't wait.
I mean, look, I'm as guilty of this as anybody.
My spiffy little bow tie here, it was my Christmas present from sweet little Elisa.
And we woke up today, December 2nd, or whatever it is, and she said, Mac!
Mac!
I just gotta give it to you now!
Here you go, man!
So we all do this.
Why is she Southern?
Why has she become like Cartman?
I don't know.
There is a question about her voice.
But, you know, we get so much gratification.
But when you delay it a little bit, it's so much more enjoyable.
There you go.
How about that?
Did I make you all a bunch of Episcopalians and Catholics?
I can't help.
I go to church all through Advent.
I mean, I go to church a lot anyway, but I go to church all through Advent.
And they do kind of, it gets kind of solemn, and I'm always so, I always feel so great when I'm in church.
I always feel so great when I don't think it's rubbing off on me.
At your age, you feel great most places.
Just the fact that I'm here.
Every time you wake up.
It's great to be here.
It's great to be anywhere.
But yeah, I do love Advent.
And I love the Christmas season.
And I love the joy.
But I don't understand why the church wants to damp down the joy of the season.
Because it is a joyful season, even in the waiting.
But we just want...
That's true.
It is joyful in the way...
I mean, it's like waiting for a Christmas present, right?
It's waiting for the Christmas present.
So you're not upset.
I mean, you're upset that you can't open the new race car or whatever yet, but you are excited because you know you are going to get that gift.
It's those sermons about, like, you know, why do they put up the decorations so early?
Shut up!
I would live in one of those stores with the, like...
You know, this is where I want to talk a little bit about...
The history of Christmas and putting the X back in Xmas, which is my favorite thing to say at this time of year.
Because it's funny to me when religious people want to put Christ back into something that didn't involve him in the first place.
And when they want to have everybody stop having fun on a holiday that was basically just invented...
For the purpose of having fun.
So obviously, since the beginning of time, as long as there were agrarian societies, there were celebrations of the winter solstice.
And the winter solstice, as everyone knows, is the shortest day of the year.
And if you live in an agrarian society, in particular, if you live in an agrarian society in someplace like Europe, where it gets very, very cold in the winter, and you have to store up foodstuffs in order to make it through, your crops don't grow.
You are very happy when you're past, starting to move past winter.
And they would identify this by the winter solstice.
Now we're turning the corner and we're moving toward spring.
Every day now is a day that spring is getting closer, not a day that...
And every day before, the days are getting shorter and darker.
That's right.
And the more light creeps in every day after.
We're celebrating from darkness to light, from death to life, from cold to warm.
Yeah.
And they would celebrate this through all these things that have become part of our modern Christmas iconography, right?
Evergreen trees, for example.
Why would you have an evergreen tree in a celebration of the winter solstice?
Because it's the only thing that's alive.
And you're speaking to whatever gods you happen to believe in in your pagan civilization.
And hoping that they'll bring back the warm days and the long days and the light days so that you can have something to eat.
It's kind of a way of saying, in the middle of the darkest, most godless and lifeless part of the year, you're going, hey, whichever god it is I believe in, remember me?
Sure would be nice if you could send a little something to eat this way.
And so they would celebrate it by having these evergreen trees, for example, and they would celebrate it through a lot of drinking because it keeps you warm and because fermented drink survives for this winter period.
They would celebrate it through all kinds of revelry.
There'd be fistfights and all the things that go along with drunkenness and lots and lots of merrymaking.
You know, the kind of merrymaking that happens in the tent?
They go in the tent and do all kinds of merrymaking.
And even that is symbolic in a way because they're inviting life back.
So they would have all these pagan sex orgies and other things.
I went to college.
Christmas and the man from Yale.
And they would invite life back and then that life would come forth.
So it's not until like 500 years ago, 1500 years after Christ, that the Bishop of Rome decides, in his attempt to sort of co-opt what would be a very rowdy holiday that was sort of ubiquitous across all peoples.
Everybody everywhere on earth celebrated the winter solstice, and they all celebrated it in approximately the same way, which is getting drunk and rowdy and having lots and lots of sex.
And he, I think, identified in that certain things that actually did speak to the coming of Christ, that it's about moving from darkness to light.
It's about moving from sin and death into life and righteousness.
It's about the return of the provision of God.
And he wanted to sort of co-opt that, and so he identified it with the birth of Christ.
And he didn't get the date exactly right.
There's reasons that he did it A few days off of what the solstice actually is.
But he identified this day as the 25th.
The Catholics then have Christmas.
The Protestants, though, who came into existence around about that same time, didn't have Christmas because they hated the Pope.
So we reject the Pope.
We reject the pagan celebration as well.
In other words, we agreed with the Pope's motive.
The Protestants don't like that everyone's getting drunk, having fights, and having lots and lots of sex, and catching things on fire around the winter solstice.
But we can't acknowledge a good idea because the good idea came from the Pope, and no Pope can have a good idea.
And so, really, until...
As I said at the beginning of the show, really until the 20th century, Protestants, and once America gets here, especially Protestants in America, reject Christmas.
So you'll see some Christmas happening across Europe, especially Catholic Europe.
Cromwell, during his time in England, outlaws Christmas.
Even in England, the pilgrims, as I said, disliked Christmas.
It was illegal in many places in America because it was associated with either Catholicism, which was generally frowned upon in early America.
Or Anglicanism, which is Catholicism.
Or pagan rowdiness, because it was very religious people who came over.
It's kind of funny, one of the earliest depictions of Santa Claus in America.
It was a piece of Union propaganda during the Civil War because in the South, where it was much more agrarian, there was more of a love of Christmas than there was in the more industrial North.
And so Lincoln sort of co-opted Santa Claus.
He had this picture made of Santa Claus with Union troops as a way of ticking off the Confederates and saying, you think he's your state?
No, he's our state now.
And that's why in 1870, that's a big part of the reason why Christmas became a national holiday as part of That's part of Reconstruction.
But it's funny that we're trying to, since the beginning of the celebration of Christmas 500 years ago, when the Bishop of Rome determined that that's when it would be, we've been trying to insert Jesus into a pagan celebration of drunken revelry and merrymaking and So, that makes it funny to me when people say they want to put the Christ back in Christmas.
It's kind of a beautiful thing, though, that Christianity touches these things and turns them into celebrations.
Well, that's all of Rome.
When I visited Rome with my wife, I was just walking around like...
There is an interesting thing.
You walk around, there's like a giant Egyptian obelisk.
Yeah.
There's a little cross on top of it.
I know.
And you're like, that doesn't seem right.
It doesn't seem like that was there originally.
Did you see when you in Rome that rock that has Mithra on one side and you turn it over, it's got Christian iconography?
They just took over everything and made it Christian iconography.
I love it.
And I'm not against it.
Again, us using language like putting Christ back in Christmas in sort of disregard of the real history of how Christ came to be in Christmas.
And the big debate over spelling Christmas, X-M-A-S, is one of the great evidences of this because American Christians get outraged when you write, like, Merry X-mas on a card or something.
They get outraged because you're crossing out the name of Christ.
But the truth is, you're not crossing out the name of Christ at all.
500 years before the celebration of Christmas really became a Christian thing, before the Pope even decided that that would be the celebration of Christmas on the 25th.
And that makes it 400 years before we start celebrating Christmas in America.
In 1021, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles is the first place that we see this, that the Greek letter chi, which is an X, It's actually pronounced, when you use it in certain contexts, Christ.
And so when you would write Xmas, you were literally writing Christmas.
You were writing it in an abbreviated fashion, but not the way that we abbreviate things.
It wasn't...
It was like shorthand.
It was like shorthand, but it wasn't like writing Texas TX. The symbol itself is actually pronounced in that context, Christ.
It comes from Christus.
And so, from a thousand years ago, people were spelling Christmas X-M-A-S. And one of the jokes is, up until 50 years ago in America, people might use X-X. To be pronounced Christ even in names.
Like you might spell Christopher X-O-F-E-R. And that would be pronounced Christopher.
It's not an abbreviation of Christopher.
It would be the actual spelling of your name.
And it is a cross.
That's right.
So it's Christ.
Oh, first.
So, it's funny to me that in America, which is by and large a Protestant nation, Christians, who are by and large Protestant, are really angry that you're crossing Jesus out of Christmas.
But the joke is, Christmas means the Christ Mass.
That's right.
Which Protestants don't believe in Mass in the first place.
So, I want to actually pronounce it God.
I want to spell it Christ X, because I want to mark out the mass.
It's a funny thing to be angry about.
It does often seem to me that a lot of Christianity, and I say this as an outsider who joined, a lot of Christianity is based on eliminating the best parts of the Christian message.
A lot of Christianity seems to be like, you know, you're forgiven.
Not so fast.
Eternal life.
Love your neighbor.
Judge not.
My favorite is anytime I say this on my podcast, anytime I say, you know, Jesus says, judge not.
They say, that's not what he meant.
What the hell did he mean?
I'm not that.
That's what he meant.
No, but that person knows what the divine logic of the universe means.
I mean, he keeps saying it, and it's like, no, no, no.
But he means, when he said that, what he meant was you should judge your neighbor and hate him, you know?
And there just seems so much of this.
And the thing about Advent that bothers me, even though I celebrate Advent, the thing that bothers me is this kind of urge, like, are you singing Christmas carols?
Knock it off.
Yeah.
And what I'm telling you is that from the minute that Jesus became associated with Christmas, it was for the specific purpose of religious people driving the joy out of Christmas.
That was the mission.
There's too much drinking and too much merrymaking.
I do love this, though.
I do love the sort of baptizing pagan things and just making them better, because it does mean...
You'll hear this a lot from atheists.
They'll say, well, this culture does this, and this culture thinks this, and this culture does this, and, you know, how can they all be right?
And the fact is, we...
Broadly, cultures broadly recognize very similar symbols.
We have very similar conceptions of morality.
We have a human nature that is speaking with some sort of conscience and we have this in the myths.
All of these cultures make up all of these myths and the myths are very, very similar.
And then Christianity, for those of us who believe in it, Is the true myth.
It takes those myths and it is in real time.
And so then we can go back and go to all those fun little orgies and everything.
Baptize them a little bit.
I think I'm a little bit more wholesome.
That was a beautiful Christian orgy.
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Elisha!
We want to hear from some of our subscribers.
One of the things that we tend to do on our backstage episodes is get long-winded because we are four verbose students.
And I want to do a better job of hearing from our subscribers.
We're going to cut back to Elisha and her feet are just going to be swinging from the bottom of it.
Back here yawning, sipping my own whiskey.
I mean, and by the way, a little behind the scenes, this show is called Backstage.
It's not just on this show where you guys can be long-winded to bring it to the audience.
How dare you, Matt?
You know, that reminds me of a pretty funny story just this morning.
But, first to the subscribers, you know, who are putting covfefe in your cup, Michael, so shush it just for a moment, alright?
Dan says, do you guys think that given the outrage that some feel over a holiday that they don't even believe or partake in, should they have to pay full price at the Christmas sales and protests?
This is a government intervention that I support.
I think they should have to pay double.
That's a good market intervention.
Really encourages a good culture.
Alright, this question comes from Ben.
He says that this question is for the whole crew, all of you guys on the panel over there.
Could you offer any insight on the historical roots of Santa Claus?
Yes.
Yes.
So Santa Claus, this is one of the greatest stories of Christmas.
Other than the incarnation of our risen Lord, the second best one is when...
Our risen Lord.
The second best one is Saint Nicholas at the Council of Nicaea, from whom we get jolly old Saint Nick and Santa Claus.
He was having an argument with Arius.
Arius was an early Christian heretic.
Arius denied the divinity of Christ.
There were many heresies and there were many councils to figure out What was true and what was false.
And so Arius is up there spouting his ridiculous heresy.
And he's up there denying the divinity of Christ.
And then St.
Nicholas gets up there and punches him in the face.
Jolly old St.
Nick gets up.
And there are many memes about this.
It says, he sees you when you're sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've denied the divinity of Christ.
So if you're an Arian duck.
And there are many other songs that go along with this.
One of the great saints of history, St.
Nicholas.
Got a great left hook.
And the Dutch had their center claws, right?
As a self-respecting man, I can't speak Dutch.
What I like, though, is that some of these myths trace back that he would throw coins down the chimney so the kids would set up little stockings on the mantle in the hopes that they would catch some of the coins that fell down.
But do you know what he gave the bad little boys and girls?
This is true.
Do you know what he gave the bad little boys and girls, old Saint Nick?
Switches.
It's true.
Switches.
For them to beat themselves with?
So that their parents could better beat them.
So that maybe next year they could get a nice little present.
I like Santa Claus more and more.
Better than the Coca-Cola guy.
Pretty tough guy, this Santa Claus.
Drew's all spare the rod, spoil the child.
That's right.
I love the Finnish.
So I've been to the North Pole.
It's on the Arctic Circle in Finland.
And Finns are adamant that St.
Nicholas is indeed Finnish.
They even claim that they can trace his roots back to there.
So, you know, my oldest thinks that Santa is indeed in Finland.
So it helps me at Christmas time because I don't got to go to the Americana.
Our next question comes from Sally.
She says she's a Catholic and she celebrates Christmas, but she knows that not everyone does.
Should she say happy holidays to strangers during the holidays or Merry Christmas?
No, of course not.
What you should do...
So this is a good year, actually.
You should punch people in the face.
You should punch them right in the face.
In the traditional...
This is a great year for this because Hanukkah is so early this year.
So if I'm walking around on December 2nd, I don't tell somebody Merry Christmas.
It's a very long time until Christmas.
When I see Ben, I wish him a Happy Hanukkah because that's what Ben celebrates.
What is the other holiday?
The other holiday is Christmas, which in three weeks we can wish our Christian friends Merry Christmas.
There is another holiday which is a complete contrivance.
It was made up by a guy, Malana Karenga.
He was a Cal State professor in the 1960s.
He was a socialist atheist who created a holiday called Kwanzaa.
The word Kwanzaa is a Swahili word, and he wanted it to be a Pan-African holiday.
But the American Africans and people of African descent all come from West Africa.
He even got the damn coast of Africa wrong.
It is a contrivance.
He was arrested for viciously beating women.
Nobody, statistically zero people, celebrate this holiday.
There are two holidays that occur in December.
There is Hanukkah, which you can wish to your Jewish friends, and Christmas.
Everything made up in the 60s.
Kwanzaa, the moon landing.
Yeah, I did.
You've got to see, though, the first Kwanzaa celebration at Culver Studios.
It's a really beautiful shot.
But when you take the particularity out of the holidays, it becomes this bland, sad, nothing.
Celebrate the particularity.
It becomes pagan again.
It goes back to being pagan.
Which is what I think they're aiming for, actually.
I also think that any time that you...
That you try to browbeat someone into not expressing joy to their fellow man.
If I say Merry Christmas to Ben, that's not a loaded statement.
No.
It's that I'm living in a season of this certain celebration for myself.
I'm filled with a kind of joy, and that joy outpours in my interactions with other people during this time of year.
And I'm not checking myself every time that I almost express that joy and pulling it back.
It's my job to lighten the F up, right?
As a person who's not big into the preferred pronouns stuff, I don't get to date preferred greetings.
If you say Merry Christmas...
I don't take it as like, and you're going to hell.
There's no second half to that particular thing.
Ceremonially, maybe there is.
I'm not hearing it.
You just turn away very quickly.
But it is ridiculous.
And especially, as you say, I wish Merry Christmas to my Christian friends all the time.
That's right.
I would also say that Christmas is actually a national holiday in addition to being a religious holiday.
That's right.
So there is an American holiday even celebrated by you, at least in as much as that you don't send stuff through stamps.com through the postal service and you can't go to the DMV. There's a national holiday.
When I say Merry Christmas to somebody wearing my yarmulke, nobody's taking it that I'm suddenly converted and I'm going to church.
How few problems do you have to have to worry about this stuff?
This is exactly right.
Especially what I hate is secular Jews who legitimately spend no time at all being religious, engaging with religion, And suddenly they're deeply, deeply offended when someone says Merry Christmas to them.
It's like you don't care about anything having to do with your religion that has nothing to do with Christianity.
All you care about is that someone may have assumed your religion.
That somebody may have assumed that you wouldn't be upset by this.
I don't know, really, virtually any Orthodox Jew who would get offended by somebody saying Merry Christmas to them.
But that's why.
It's not a thing.
I mean, this seems to be a theme that we keep coming back to, and it's a really good theme.
If the God is there, you're solid.
You're angered.
You know what you think.
You know who you are.
It's like when people apologize to me because we'll go out to a restaurant and I can't eat the food.
It's like, why are you apologizing to me?
That's my thing.
It's not your thing.
It doesn't make any sense to me at all.
All right.
Do you have any more questions, Alicia?
Always.
We always have tons of questions here.
This question might be more geared towards Ben.
This comes from, I think, Justin.
And he talks about, you know, if you do not...
Oh, sorry.
I just lost the question there.
Actually, sorry.
The question from Justin comes from Knowles.
Will you challenge Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a debate?
Because he thinks that you might get more luck since your book is the only one that she could read.
Well, that's true.
You make a very good point.
It was a sort of portrait of her political ideology.
Well, I would, except Elisa's going to get very angry at me when I catcall other women.
Yeah, I can't be catcalling her at this time.
Once Elisa tunes out, ask me the question again.
Okay.
Alright, once SLA is not watching, we'll be sure to do that.
This question comes from Haley.
It says that this one is probably for Ben.
Why don't more Christians, even herself, celebrate Jewish holidays given that the first half of the book is the same?
Shouldn't we observe the same holidays except Christmas?
Well, this one actually is for you guys.
I do all those holidays.
I keep all the commandments.
You speak for yourself, folks.
I'll speak to this a little bit.
Caleb, our CEO, is a Christian but keeps most of the Jewish high holy days.
He keeps Yom Kippur, Passover, Rosh Hashanah.
Although there is a disagreement once every four years as to the calendar.
The Apostle Paul says in the New Testament, don't let anyone judge you in regard to a new moon or a Sabbath day or a festival or a holiday.
What he's basically speaking to is that in the middle of Acts, there's this divide that happens.
Acts is basically the story of the Christian church in the years following the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And for the first many years, 7, 8, 10, I don't know, for the first many years of the history of the church, every single Christian is a Jew.
Pentecost happens.
It happens in and around Jerusalem.
All the first people to receive the message, Paul says, Christ came first for the Jew, then for the Greek.
And so all of the Christians are Jews, and they don't identify as Christian.
The term hasn't come into use yet.
They're just Jews who believe that Jesus was the Messiah in fulfillment of certain Old Testament prophecies.
And all of their message in the early days, because you can read many of their sermons in early Acts, are about...
Jesus as the fulfillment of those prophecies, Jesus as the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies, and the fact that this Jesus whom you have crucified, God has raised up.
That's the recurring theme of Peter and the other advocates of Christ in the first days.
As you proceed through time, an interesting thing happens, which is that the message gets carried to the Gentiles.
When the message gets carried to the Gentiles, there's a lot of ramifications.
Ramification one is now we need a moniker by which to identify this thing, which is obviously not just Judaism anymore.
It's something out of but apart from Judaism.
And so the word Christian becomes a concept in Middle Acts.
Another thing that happens is conflict between the Jews who believe they have received their Messiah but who still see themselves as uniquely Jewish now confronting the idea that if Christ is also the Messiah and Savior of the Gentiles then what does it mean to be Jewish?
Obviously if you can have Jews and Gentiles on the team there are A hundred times, literally a hundred times more Gentiles than there are Jews, and this is going to have an eroding effect on what it means to be Jewish.
And so there's a lot of conflict that emerges in the early church trying to solve that question.
And the third thing that it means is that Christianity takes on theology.
Because really, in the early days of the church, there isn't uniquely Christian theology.
There's just Jewish fulfillment.
A view of Jewish fulfillment.
By the way, Jesus isn't the first person to come along who some Jews thought was the Messiah.
He's not the last guy to come along who some Jews believe is the Messiah.
In our lifetime, there's been a Jewish Messiah who a lot of Jews believed in.
But that is a uniquely Jewish Messiah.
And so, once the Gentiles get folded into Christianity, Christianity becomes something unique, and it takes on these theological ideas.
Well, as they explore the theology of this new religion, they come across this, and there's a chapter of Acts, Acts 15, where they have a council in Jerusalem, where they all get together, the church fathers, to talk about the question of Gentile inclusion.
And the question is, Must a Gentile, in order to become a Christian, first become a Jew?
That's the question.
And if so, then he must, in becoming a Jew, he must bring himself into conformity with the law, and he must be circumcised.
In bringing himself into conformity of the law, part of the law is the keeping of these high holy days.
The Passover, for example, is given by God in the Exodus, and God says to the Jews, you will do this Forever.
As long as there's a you, you will do this in remembrance of being led out of bondage in Egypt and brought into freedom in Israel.
That's, by the way, what Jesus is celebrating when he says, from now on when you do this, do it not in remembrance of that, but in remembrance of me.
That becomes the communion.
That becomes the Eucharist.
That concept.
And so they're debating, must a Greek become a Jew to then become a Christian?
They conclude that the answer to that is no.
Well, imagine the ramifications of the answer to that being no.
What it means is that now in order to be a Christian, it is not required that you keep Passover.
To be a Christian, it is not required that you keep the Sabbath.
To be a Christian, it's not required that you recognize Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and these other religious holidays.
Well, that only heightens the division in the early church because now you have Christians who do keep those holidays and you have Christians who do not keep those holidays.
The ones who do, by and large, are Jewish Christians.
The ones who do not are Gentile Christians.
Over time, the church becomes...
Very rapidly predominantly Gentile, which means the majority of Christians don't keep those holidays because the church fathers concluded that they weren't required to become Jewish in order to be Christian.
And that's the legacy that we, by and large, in the West experience.
We are Gentile Christians who were not required, according to Acts 15, to come into conformity with Jewish holidays.
And that's what Paul is speaking to when he says, don't let anyone judge you about this.
He's basically saying don't have division.
If you believe in Christ and you keep the Passover, don't be in conflict with someone who believes in Christ and does not keep the Passover and vice versa.
So he's not saying if you're a Christian, don't keep the Passover.
He's not saying if you're a Christian, don't keep the Sabbath.
He's saying if you're a Christian, Be true to your conscience and don't fight with other people who share the thing that we share.
What we share isn't Jewish identity, Gentile identity, Passover, not Passover, Sabbath, not Sabbath.
What we share, what unifies us, is that we put our faith in Christ and His supremacy.
Which is, again, one of the interesting things about this is a conversation we've all had in part in this office because we have a Christian in our community.
In our company, who keeps the holidays, who does not live in conflict with those of us who do not keep those holidays.
That's what Paul's speaking to.
And far from being in conflict, when it gives us the day off, we're celebrating.
We're thrilled.
All right, one more question, Alicia.
All right, and don't forget, only subscribers can ask the questions, and you're like, how do I do that?
Well, head over to dailywire.com and click to become a subscriber.
If you're already a subscriber, log in, go to the Daily Wire backstage page, and that's where you can enter all those little questions in the chat box.
This next one is a very good one from Alexandra.
She wants to know, if you could have a holiday miracle happen in the United States or even the world, what would it be?
True, that's you.
If I could have a holiday miracle happen in the world, you know, it would be a religious revival.
I think that this is the thing that has taken the heart out of our country.
And I don't mean to be grim about it, but I think that if there is a way forward, it is going to be through revival.
You said it earlier.
I couldn't agree with you more.
I think that every single argument we have and the way we have arguments...
It's because we have lost our faith.
And I think we've lost our faith.
Interestingly enough, I think we've lost our faith.
I'm a great believer in the power of narrative.
I think the left is right about this.
The left thinks that narrative changes actual reality.
They're completely wrong about that.
But they're right that narrative changes the way we see reality.
And I talk a lot about the fact that one of the greatest heroes of liberty, George Washington, it took him his lifetime to understand why slaves were unhappy being slaves.
Because the narrative didn't allow him to think outside that box and to see what was so obvious.
And I think that the narrative that I now call the Enlightenment narrative, this narrative that we broke free of religion in order to find science and all the blessings that science has bestowed on us, is just a false narrative.
It is not the truth.
It is a story that was told.
It was told as propaganda from its earliest days.
The whole idea that there was a Middle Ages.
There was the classical world.
The Dark Ages.
And then there was the Enlightenment.
The Renaissance.
The Renaissance.
It's a propaganda tool.
And it worked.
It really sold itself.
And if I could ask for anything, seriously, truly, what I would ask is for people to see through that narrative and to reestablish their faith.
Because I think that what is getting in the way of faith is narrative.
It's like a wall between people and the obvious presence of God in our lives.
This is totally right.
And the misread on the Enlightenment, I mean, not to pump a book that...
I have not yet brought out.
There will be a book in March that is coming out.
I think it may be available for pre-order even now on Amazon.
But that book is entirely about this, basically.
It's about how the history of the West is an organic growth that starts at Sinai and grows through Greece and moves through the Sermon on the Mount and moves through the Catholic Church and moves through Protestantism.
And then eventually emerges in this flower that is the Enlightenment.
But that has a stem.
The flower didn't just come out of nowhere.
And this bizarre idea that you can cut the stem and that the flower will live indefinitely is such absolute trite.
It's just nonsense.
And, you know, it's interesting because I have this argument with Jonah Goldberg all the time.
And I have it with him off screen most of the time.
But he was always attacking the Romantics.
And I love the Romantic poets, especially the British Romantics.
But one of the things that the Romantics noticed was that the Age of Reason, as it was invented by the French, failed.
It ended up with people lopping each other's heads off.
It ended up with World War.
Well, this is Steven Pinker's entire book called Enlightenment Now has not one mention of the French Revolution.
Not one.
I don't know how you can write a book called Enlightenment Now and never mention the French Revolution.
What they've done is they've decided there's a no-true-Scotsman fallacy that's applicable.
That basically, anybody who's bad isn't part of the Council.
That's right.
Everybody who's good is part of the Enlightenment, as though there was no interplay between Rousseau and Burke.
It's ridiculous.
Our old pal, Uncle Jesus, said, if you follow me, you will do more miracles than I did.
You will do greater miracles.
And I think that the scientific revolution is proof of that.
It took that idea of the world.
Jesus fed 5,000, and the people who followed him figured out how to feed literally everyone.
Yeah, that's right.
And make the poorest of them fat.
And this was part of the original mission, going all the way back to, again, Sinai and stretching forward through Greek teleology.
The idea that you had an affirmative obligation to seek beyond for the logic of God and then to apply that knowledge.
I mean, this is something Roger Bacon is talking about in the 13th century.
The idea that this is something that's brand new and that nobody's ever thought of science before 1700.
It's just sheer nonsense.
And the irony is in the so-called dark ages and late middle ages, that was a period of rigorous logic.
That was a period of scholasticism, right?
And actually in the Enlightenment you see a much more of a romantic sense of things.
It was also a period when the organizing civilization had collapsed and these savage tribes, I think we can call them savage tribes, were being civilized by this religion.
So it was really, when people say nothing was happening, they don't know how far they had to come.
The first universities were set up by the Catholic Church.
All of the great architecture.
It's so funny.
All these people who are like, wow, look at this beautiful architecture.
And then they assume that it was built in like 1600.
Right.
They know all this stuff was built in like 800.
Yes.
In the middle of the dark ages, they're building these gorgeous cathedrals that are spanning to the sky.
And it's like, well...
How did they move from the crap they were building 500 years before that to this?
The idea that history is not...
It's so funny.
They'll say that evolution is continuous and organic, but history itself, it just sort of comes into being.
There's a big bang of history in 1750, and suddenly people know things.
And not only do people know things, it's a universal thing.
It's not that it's unique to Western civilization.
It only happened in one place...
In one time with a common foundation, it's like, well, it could have happened anywhere.
It could have just happened in the middle of Africa, in the middle of Asia, in the middle of the Middle East.
And if you wonder how we know so many things, how we do so much smarts, because there's a lot of smarts.
It's mostly the three of you.
I'm always observing, man, those guys can smart.
I wondered what was the trick.
Is the trick the Enlightenment?
No, the trick is OMACs.
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And if you want to get in on the action of asking us questions here at the backstage, we're going to do at least one more round of questions before the end of the show.
Can we do Christmas movies or something?
We are going to.
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A question.
Yeah, let's do something fun.
You guys keep doing, like, the Acts and the...
There is one last theological point.
The Advent.
One last theological point.
I'm over here going, like, infleshment.
This is actually an Old Testament theological point.
Oh, good.
Yeah, I like that.
That's the book I like.
Yeah, that one's good.
You and I were talking, I think, on your Sunday show, and you mentioned, which I think is absolutely true, that one of the key moments in the Bible that has shaped Western civilization is the line that God made man in his image.
The single most important verse in human history.
Huge, huge, yeah.
But there's also this moment when Moses confronts the burning bush, which to me, just as a guy who loves literature, one of the great pieces of literature ever written, and the idea that this system, this earth that grows and destroys, that's fire and bush...
Speaks and says, I am.
I am.
That, to me, changes your entire perspective of nature and all of science as we know it comes out of it.
That idea that we are engaged in a conversation of intellect with intellect, I think, is what causes a Newton, and it's what causes a Galileo, and it's why so many of those guys were in the church, so many of the people who created the scientific revolution, which Pinker also never mentions, were in the church, were church deans, were church...
These folks who pretend that science began again in 1750 or 1760, it's like, where do you think all the science came from?
I mean, really, there's a long history of science, most of it within the Catholic Church, specifically between 1100 and 1600, and a lot of stuff is happening at that time.
This notion that history just sort of fits and starts and that it really only began at a certain point in time is just not true.
What the Enlightenment really did is the Enlightenment...
with human virtue, right?
That's what the good part of the Enlightenment was.
And this is what you see in all the American founders.
And this is what differentiates the American founding, specifically from the French founding, right?
As you're fond of saying, it's the French Enlightenment that's saying that we have to strangle the last priest with the, what is it, the strangled last king with the guts of the last priest.
But that's not the American Enlightenment, The American Enlightenment and the British Enlightenment, they're saying we require freedom because we have rights, but we also have to exercise virtue because if we don't have those virtues, then these rights are going to fall about us like tenpins.
This is the Edmund Burke point, that without the social fabric, liberty turns into libertinism almost immediately.
Isn't it kind of a rebuke of the Enlightenment to say that the rights come from God?
Yeah, I mean...
It's a rebuke of the worst excesses of the Enlightenment.
And this is what Burke is arguing with, right?
Burke doesn't believe that the rights just are self-perpetuating.
He believes that the rights come from, at the very least, a fabric of time that unifies the past, the present, and the future.
Which is why he thinks, unlike Jefferson, that you're not allowed to just override the Constitution every 20 years.
This is why I'm a big Wordsworth fan is because Wordsworth, living to 80, as most of the romantic poets died when they were 30.
But Wordsworth lives into the Victorian era.
And he starts out as a radical, loving the French Revolution.
He says bliss was it in that time to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.
And then he sees it all goes wrong.
And he writes this long poem called The Prelude, which he doesn't publish in his lifetime.
He writes this long poem, the history of his thought.
And it's a history that ends with him becoming a Christian because he realizes that in this logic, in taking out everything but logic, you have destroyed the human soul.
The human soul is not just logic.
This is what Chesterton said, is the madman is not the man who's lost his reason, he's the man who's lost everything about his reason.
Yes, that's right.
And this is just basic neuroscience, right?
I mean, people who are sociopathic very often are people who are the most reasonable in the world, right?
They're people who just don't have any moral preconceptions or rules that bind them.
Jonathan Haidt specifically talks about it.
It is true that this picture of the Enlightenment as disconnected from its Christian roots is simple nonsense.
The fact is that even the very idea of natural rights as opposed to natural law, that starts with Hugo Grotius.
It's Grotius who really starts talking about that, particularly in the middle of these religious wars.
He's saying, well, we have a right to practice our religion.
The church didn't like Grotius very much at the time.
I mean, it's that logic that leads to the peace of Westphalia and the idea all these religions have to tolerate each other within the common framework of we keep essential values the same, but you can practice basically however you want and the religious minority must be protected.
And it's from that religious schism that emerges the idea of these natural rights that span religions and extend to beyond what the church may want to give you.
It's this constant interplay in the West between religion and reason and their intention, but they're also a mutual support system.
You can't have reason without the religion that undergirds it.
Reason is based on certain fundamental premises, freedom of the will, the ability to think beyond your biology.
The capacity to be convinced by somebody else's argument, not by mere self-interest.
These are based in an idea of a discoverable, logical universe that has certain rules and you being endowed with the creative capacity of God.
When God says you're made in his image, that's what he means.
Because so far in the Bible, when it says God is going to make man in his image, God's only done one thing, and that's create.
And so when it says that you're going to be now made in God's image, it doesn't mean that you're going to be able to make your own morality.
It means that you're going to be able to create.
You're going to be able to choose in the same way that God creates and chooses.
You're a fundamental factor in the forwarding of creation itself.
This is why I think the scientific revolution begins with the burning bush because it's that moment when basically man says, oh, I get it.
I'm in an interplay.
I'm in a dialogue with something that is like me in the fact that it has reason and it actually makes sense.
It actually matters and it's alive like me.
And I just think that there is no scientific revolution without that moment.
I really do.
There's not enough OMAX for me to be able to...
In all the world, there's not enough OMAX for me to participate in this conversation.
You've got to hit it before you can walk in.
That's the trick.
Unbelievable, unbelievable.
I want to talk, though, Ben, what's your favorite Christmas movie?
Yeah.
Die Hard.
Die Hard.
He took the best one.
We all knew it.
And it's a Christmas movie.
Come on.
It is a Christmas movie.
We all agree with that.
Don't we?
Anybody who argues it's not a Christmas movie is just an ignorant.
He doesn't understand basic New Testament theology.
This is nothing of inflation.
Nothing of inflation.
That's right.
I mean, obviously, the best Christmas movie, aside from Die Hard, is It's a Wonderful Life, and there's not really any sort of close second.
I have to disagree.
I disagree.
Oh, here we go.
No, I think it's the Alistair Christmas Carol.
Okay, original Christmas Carol.
Yeah, no, and I actually think...
I've often talked about the fact that they're the mirror image of each other.
One is about a totally generous man who learns about what the world would be like without him.
And one is about a totally stingy man who learns what he has done in his life that has ruined everything.
And they're really mirror images.
They're the same story.
And they're the only great Christmas stories besides the gospel.
This is also how I know that you guys haven't seen Jingle All the Way.
Yeah.
Is Sinbad in A Christmas Carol?
Wait, is Jingle All the Way the Schwarzenegger one?
Yes.
I laughed at the last scene of that.
I embarrassed myself laughing.
I really like it.
It's a hilarious movie.
But yeah...
Now, I wonder, do you think A Christmas Carol, the movie, is actually a better movie than It's a Wonderful Life, or do you just love A Christmas Carol so much that it's biasing your case?
Because I know you think that A Christmas Carol is legitimately the best novella ever written.
It is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever.
And it's the best thing Dickens ever wrote.
Also, the only time he ever stuck to a word count.
But I think that the thing that I love about it is that the performance of Alistair Sims is the only person who plays Scrooge as if he thinks he's right.
He doesn't play like a cranky old man.
No, no, no, no.
Westward Elementary School in Slate, Texas.
Your God King, lowercase g, lowercase k, played Ebenezer Scrooge in the third grade play.
Was it the greatest performance of Dickens?
Yes.
It was certainly the cutest.
It was certainly the cutest.
Out comes your God King with a little cane and a little beard and little stockings.
And the entire class is standing behind him and they sing, Mr.
Scrooge, Mr.
Scrooge, you got your smile on upside down.
Mr.
Scrooge, Mr.
Scrooge, bah humbug!
You got your smile on upside down.
Did you do this like six months ago?
This is my debut as an actor.
It worked out great.
Frankly though, compared to most people in Hollywood, that is a great career.
So is A Christmas Carol a rejection of Ayn Rand?
Oh, absolutely.
Ayn Rand is nuts.
Ayn Rand read this one, I feel like she read that one book whose name I always forget, the French economist.
He wrote The Laws, I think it's called.
Frederic Bastien.
Yes, thank you.
And that's the one book she read.
He wrote in 70 pages, which she writes in 5,000 pages.
And then she writes a lot of bad characters that don't make any sense and throws those in.
And we're all her.
And we're all her.
And have these weird Germanic names.
You know, if you were sort of traumatized by communism, I see how you become Ayn Rand.
Also because of how sexy Alan Greenspan is.
How could you resist that relationship?
But yeah, she was crazy.
She got most things wrong.
So, I've come up with an answer.
Your idea of the perfect gift for the holidays is reasons to vote for Democrats.
Obviously, yeah.
Your idea of the perfect gift for the holidays is the Lefty's Dictionary, available now on Amazon.com.
Your idea of the perfect gift for Christmas is apparently a book that isn't even published yet, but also because he's awaiting the Messiah.
We think we got him, you know.
And the cover of which we'll be revealing soon.
Yeah, that's true.
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That's the greatest fear.
Here's something I would like to bring up.
We know what the great Christmas movies are.
What's the second tier Christmas movie that you really like?
Mine, I will tell you, is The Bishop's Wife with David Niven and Cary Grant about an angel who comes down to help a bishop who's lost his way and starts to fall for his wife.
What a great idea.
This is a great idea.
And it's got Cary Grant and David Niven.
It couldn't be any more charming.
It's a really lovely film.
How about Home Alone?
Home Alone actually might even bump into it.
Home Alone 2.
It has the President of the United States in the film.
The man who saved Christmas is in Home Alone 2.
That's how you know it's the greatest.
It's the greatest, best movie.
It's the best Christmas ever.
Home Alone may have been the last great Christmas movie.
I don't know that there's been that kind of great, everyone goes out to see it movie, makes you feel warm and nice inside since then.
Have we made any movies that make people feel warm and nice inside in 20 years?
You know, you recommended that Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
I love that.
You have very deep reads on Christianity in which you watch these deeply nihilistic films and you're like, you know what?
It's actually Christian.
The Coen brothers are not nihilistic.
They're Christians.
They're becoming Christian or something.
I'm pretty sure they're Jews.
I don't think they are.
Oh, I think they are.
No, I'm pretty sure not.
They're not Jewish?
I'm pretty sure not.
I'm not.
Ethnically Jewish.
No, I don't think they're ethnically Jewish.
I'll check it, but I'm fairly certain not.
It turns out they're Muslims.
Who saw that one coming?
Because they're really, really good at arts.
But I will tell you that I watched this show, and I thought, I really enjoyed that, but I have no idea what it's about.
And then I went to bed, and I woke up just incredibly energized, and I realized, oh, I didn't know what it was about because it was so obvious.
It was right there.
I mean, it's all about salvation, and it starts with a hymn to water, and baptism.
It's just a wonderful show.
Yeah, no, you're correct.
They are of a Jewish family, but of course have not practiced them.
But yeah, the movie itself...
I can't understand why you...
See, you think they're nihilist because secretly, down deep, you think there's such a thing as karma.
There's no such thing.
No, I think because they're cynics who are using the trappings of Christianity in order to...
But I think they're mocking it.
I think that the entire first segment of that film is mocking religious pretensions, and the final segment is basically their cheap takeoff on a Twilight Zone film.
But There are parts of it that I think are just brilliant.
I really appreciated a lot of it.
The last one is too long.
I liked every one except the second one.
The guy gets hanged.
Those were the two that didn't make sense to me.
The last one and that one.
Of course you did.
It's super talky.
It takes forever to guess the point.
It's called The Great Good Thing.
It's improperly titled.
You've got a good lawsuit on your hands there.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I mean, A Christmas Story is still a classic.
A Christmas Story is still a classic.
It's a wonderful film.
Dabney Coleman is wildly underappreciated.
Darren McGavin.
Jeremy Gavin.
Yeah, no, that is a great performance.
Jeremy Gavin is wildly underappreciated as an actor.
And I loved him because he was the tough guy detective on TV all the time.
He was in a show called The Outsider and he played Mike Hammer, I think.
And he was just a great actor.
But he's so funny in that thing with the...
constant grumbling.
It's great.
It's a great show.
I like the Charlie Brown Christmas movie.
It's great.
It's so fantastic.
It's so full of heart and throws back to a time when the country wasn't awful.
It's from the 60s, but it's from an earlier part of the 60s before they started making stuff up and just telling lies.
The moon landing.
That's right.
Here's a great story for you.
Second wave feminism.
You mentioned earlier.
That Christmas is just a part of being an American.
And I totally agree with this as a cultural matter, and there is a reason why Jews write all the best Christmas music.
And that is specifically because there's a sense, and you've talked about this, I'm cribbing from you here, but the sense of nostalgia that is existent in Jewish Christmas music, which is sort of the outsider feel, but there's a nostalgia for the Christmas season.
In all of Urban Berlin's Christmas music, it's obviously present.
So there's a very famous story about these two incredibly famous rabbis.
I believe one was Moshe Feinstein for people who are watching and care about this sort of thing.
And so these two rabbis get in the back of a cabinet in the Christmas season.
And they start talking and they're asking each other where they went to school.
And one of them says, well, I went to public school here.
Like, I grew up in public school.
And everyone says, I went to public school here too.
And he said, I don't believe you went to public school.
These guys have spent their entire life in yeshiva, right?
I mean, these are the great scholars of the Jewish people.
And they say, well, really?
You don't believe that?
Okay, well, on three.
Oh, come all ye faithful.
Yeah.
And so they start singing Christmas carols in the back of the cab because that is the reality.
I mean, this is a thing my family used to do to prank all the Jewish families on Christmas.
We actually used to go and carol at people's houses on Christmas.
We'd go to Jewish families' houses, knock on the door, and in four-part harmony, start singing a Christmas tree.
That is such a superhero move.
It's pretty spectacular.
I mean, I still know all of those.
They're great.
Christmas music is spectacularly good.
I mean, Silent Night may be the most beautiful song ever written.
Silent Night is just...
It is amazing.
This is the other thing.
The art that came out of Christianity, when you compare it to the empty, kind of, you know, happy talk movies that the Christians make, you know, where everything turns out all right.
When you compare that to Bach and the Sistine Chapel and the art that Christianity...
Well, even in the films, I mean, the fact is that people treat Christmas as treacle.
It's all saccharine treacle.
And now all of the films that come out are the Hallmark movie.
Everything's great because we celebrate Christmas together.
And we lit a thousand candles randomly in the five minutes in this room.
We somehow were able to light all 5,000 of these candles for the first time since that love scene in that other weird movie three months ago.
Have you ever gotten that?
You watch these movies and suddenly people are about to have sex and suddenly there's 1,000 candles lit in the room.
When did that happen?
You know how long it takes to light one candle?
I do it every time.
I burn my fingers.
And it takes me like 15 minutes.
What are you even doing?
Do they have like a blowtorch?
How does this work in any case?
But if you look at A Christmas Carol, or if you look at It's a Wonderful Life, these are dark.
They're dark.
They really are.
It's a Wonderful Life is the meanest performance Jimmy Stewart gives outside of Once Upon a Time in the West.
I agree with you.
It's him playing a bastard.
When he loses it with his family and starts shouting at them, And he's drunk and he's screaming at his kids.
You're like, wow.
Everybody has the picture of It's a Wonderful Life as the final scene.
The final scene is the last five minutes of the movie.
The rest of it is so dark.
And the bad guy doesn't get punished, right?
And it doesn't change his life.
The thing that I love about it, this is true in Christmas Carol 2, that finding religion, essentially, finding God, doesn't change everything that's happened before.
Exactly.
He's never going to go around the world and become an architect.
He is who he is.
But he just sees it all differently.
And that is the beautiful thing.
And it's a wonderful life.
I mean, the amazing thing in It's a Wonderful Life is that in the Hays Code, the basic rule was if you commit a crime, you don't get away with it.
In that movie, the criminal gets away with it.
That's true.
Lionel Barrymore stiffs him and commits bank fraud and gets away with it.
And my favorite line, by the way, in the Alistair Sim Christmas Carol, which I've quoted so much that if I do it again, my wife is actually going to knock me unconscious.
Just like St.
Nick?
Because it's not from Dickens.
He says, I don't deserve to be so happy, but I can't help it.
And that to me is my whole life.
Right.
And I think that is Christmas right there.
This brings us to this whole war on Christmas concept, because one of the things that I've observed over the last few weeks is how there's now a kind of Victorian puritanicalism on the left where they can't even handle a moral tale, because in order to set up the moral payoff at the end, they have to first demonstrate things that the left finds anathema.
The Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer thing is unbelievable.
What is this?
I keep seeing the headline.
He's gay.
Spoiler alert.
He's gay.
He's a gay reindeer.
He has a girlfriend in the thing.
He does have a girlfriend.
The left is angry about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer because before it gets to the part where it teaches you that you should tolerate people who are different than you, it first has to show people who are not tolerating people who are different than you.
Really?
Yeah.
They're like, can you believe that we still show this to kids?
It has bullying.
It has bigotry.
These are the exact same people who are saying about religious people who are upset that during the Thanksgiving Day parade that they showed lesbians kissing on TV. And they're like, well, those are those people.
So intolerant.
Why can't they just deal with the fact that their six-year-old watched lesbians kissing on TV? They're like, but they can't watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ranger.
It will scar them for life if they watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ranger.
And the whole point of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is to include people.
They don't even kill the abominable snow monster.
That's how tolerant that movie is.
That's a spoiler if you haven't seen it, but they let the snow monster live.
But what I do like about religion generally is that, and it's something that atheists don't seem to understand or forcibly fail to understand, Religion is dark.
Religion is not sweetness and light.
Religion is not about all of the wonderful things that happen to you because you decide to believe in God and now there will be no more tragedy and no child will die of cancer and nothing terrible will ever happen the rest of your life and everything will be hunky-dory.
And that's what I dislike about It's less so in Judaism, but I see it a lot in the Christian world.
I don't want to rip on people who are your folks, but I'm not sure they're your folks, honestly.
Folks who are preaching the prosperity gospel.
This idea that if you believe...
That God wants you to have your best life now.
You've obviously never read what happened to any person in the Bible.
Including Jesus.
No, I mean, I had this conversation with Dennis Prager once that there is no happiness without a tragic sense, without the sense that life as we know it, from cradle to grave, is tragic.
That there's no joy, you know, because you have to understand how incredibly great this moment is to feel the joy.
And if you don't know what life actually is, what it can be, how bad it can be, and what happens to you in the end of it, how can you enjoy this moment?
I think this is one of the things that's happening.
We talked about the suicide epidemic and the heroin epidemic.
I think people have been told, because they were born in America and were prosperous and were free, that their life is just going to be awesome.
From beginning to end, it's just going to be terrific.
And then, it turns out that no one's life is It's fully terrific.
Even the most successful people you know, all the people you watch on TV, all the people who are successful and famous, all of them, every single one of them has had some tragedy that you did not know anything about.
And you're sitting there judging them, thinking they had happiness, why can't I have happiness?
Just like that.
And the world is unfair and the world is a terrible place.
Religion teaches you that the best of us...
I mean, you guys have Jesus, but for us, Moses spends his entire life trying to bring the stiff-necked, annoying people...
He liberates them from slavery with God and then takes them all the way across the desert for 40 years.
He watches his brother die.
He watches his sister die.
He watches every member of his generation die.
And then he finally gets to the end and God says, you can't go in.
You have to die on top of this mountain.
And you have to have your deputy, who is not your kid, by the way.
Moses has a whole discussion in the Bible about, can it be my son, basically?
And God says, no, it can't be your son.
It's got to be Joshua.
It's got to be this guy who's going to take them across the river.
All you can do is you can be on top of this mountain.
You can see it.
That's all that you can do.
And that is the religious sensibility.
You're never going to enter the promised land, maybe after you die, but certainly not in this life.
There is no promised land to enter because the fact is the best that you can do is see dimly across the horizon a better world in which people accept God more freely.
And part of this is because we live in a culture.
We talked about this at our home church last night, Jay Hay and I, that we live in this anomalous moment in history where we have created a system that does seem to guarantee that things generally improve over time.
So only in the last 200 years, we've essentially gotten all of technology, all of medicine, all of the great growth in economy, lifespan.
And so we're left with this false sense that we can expect constant improvement.
But God never promised constant improvement.
And the constant improvement that the world offers, that our modern society offers...
Modern society can't keep its promises.
There's no guarantee that those systems can deliver.
It can't even keep life expectancy.
This year for the second year in a row, first time in 50 years.
And those three for the first time in 50 years, life expectancy in America has declined.
The terrible thing is that intellectuals and elite people come up with these theories about how life would be better if we didn't have marriage, how life would be better if we didn't have God, oh God is ridiculous, and then the rich people think like, nah, that was untrue.
And it's the poor people who die, it's the middle class people die.
Charles Murray has an entire book about this, about white folks, right?
Because he did the bell curve.
Because he was so afraid.
And then he was like, I can't talk about race anymore, so I'm just going to do differences in the white community.
liberals who don't pay attention to any of the crap that they spout.
And then there are a bunch of poor people who pay attention to what they spout and follow those rules out because the marriage rates in rich white liberal areas are still very high.
The childbearing rate in rich white liberal areas before marriage is still extraordinarily low.
And people get jobs and they finish high school.
Right.
But then they're told, no, let your children run free.
You don't need to get married.
A powerful woman is a woman who doesn't need a man.
And they don't live those lives.
Of course not.
And then the consequences are felt by everybody else.
But I think that there is...
Back to the religion point, because that's really what the show is about.
And we've all said this, and it really is true.
There is a God-shaped hole...
- Right, it's so true. - With political rage, and we've decided to fill it with hedonism and entertainment, and we've decided to fill it with political partisanship, and we've decided to fill it with fake social media, which isn't real social fabric.
Social fabric requires you to actually care enough about someone to do something for them, not to virtue signal about a third party so that someone pats you on the back who you don't even know.
It's just that none of this creates any semblance of a community or a society, All it creates is atomization.
And an atomization is normally, in the past, when you would have turned to God, you would have said, there's nobody else to help me.
I need you, God.
It's you and me, and we're in this together.
But instead, because God has been thrown out, it's like, okay, it's just me.
There's nobody.
And that loneliness.
The religious man...
By nature.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitch calls it the lonely man of faith.
But the lonely man of faith is inherently not as lonely as the lonely man of no faith.
The lonely man of faith has to walk his own path in the pursuit of God.
But the lonely man of no faith is walking a path that has no pursuit.
And that's not even walking a path.
You find yourself in the middle of the moors, and if you take a false step, you're going down.
He has the illusion of not being lonely because the world is with him.
The only man of faith is lonely because he believes.
He's the guy who's lonely in the crowded room.
That's right.
Because, again, the collective can't keep its promises.
Absolutely.
You know, and that was the thing...
Nobody collectively loves you.
People only individually love you.
There's no such thing as a collective that loves you.
To go back to Buster Scruggs, the speech that I loved, and the speech that seemed to come out of the heart of the movie, is one speech where the guy says, you know, in this world...
He almost says, in the flesh.
He says, in this world of things and flesh, there's no certainty.
You have to wait for the certainty.
The certainty is at the spiritual level.
And I think that this is what we're dealing with.
We're dealing with these people who put certainty in that God-shaped hole and the certainty just collapses because there is no certainty in this life.
The certainty is beyond.
The certainty is in that spiritual level.
It would be unbecoming of us, I think, not to...
I'll pay a little tribute to our 41st president who died this weekend, George Herbert Walker Bush, who it occurs to me, as I'm sure we've all kind of reflected on his presidency and on what we know of his life over the weekend, and it's pretty in vogue in conservatism, movement conservatism, and in Trumpism, in the Trump revolution.
Both sides of that tend to agree That George Herbert Walker Bush wasn't a great president.
One of the things though that I think really stands out about George Herbert Walker Bush in retrospect is that he was a great example of how to live a joyous and purposeful life.
He was a great man.
He wasn't a great president.
He was a great man.
I would offer as an argument, perhaps an unpopular argument, that we actually need more leadership on how to be good than on how to be ideologically pure.
When George H.W. Bush was president, there was a point in his presidency where he had a 90% approval rating.
Nothing like that will ever happen again until we fix the problem that you described moments ago, that we've replaced the pursuits of the inner man with these exterior battles that get us accolades from the collective, and political rage is one of them.
The era of political rage breeds unhappiness, but the era of, and I'm not defending his political ideology, which of course I disagree with, but we were a better country When he was president, even though we didn't have some of the policy gains that we've had.
I'm going to disagree with this slightly, actually.
Not with your points about George A. Shelby, but the point about us being a better country, then.
Because the fact is that by the time he left office, he had a 33% approval rating, and then we elected a guy who schtucked everything he could possibly find.
And the media, I do find it absolutely appalling that the media that ripped this man down his entire life, called him a wimp after he volunteered for the military, was the youngest...
Shot out of the sky.
He was a wimp.
And called him every name they could think of.
A racist because of Willie Horton.
A guy who was not in touch with a common man because they lied about him not being able to use a grocery scanner and all this nonsense.
And all of a sudden, just like every other Republican who dies, suddenly that person becomes...
That's what they like about it.
Now they're dead so we can talk about how great they were.
And also, there's no question they're doing this because President Trump is president, right?
If Hillary Clinton were president, it would be like, we bid a fond farewell to George H.W. Bush, but because Trump is president, look at the America we've lost.
Look at the Republican Party we've lost.
They're doing this routine now.
They did it about McCain.
They'll do it about George W. Bush when, God forbid, his time comes sometime in the future.
This is just the nonsense that they peddle.
But I do agree that one of the things that both right and left have fallen into is the belief that the community, that virtue can be had in politics.
And the reality is that George H.W. Bush was not a great president because he was a president out of time.
I was talking about this with my father.
If George H.W. Bush had been president from 1924 to 1928, he would have been one of the best presidents in American history.
Because this was a guy who was not there to do stuff.
This was a technocrat.
His job was basically to stay out of people's business and then do the things that had to be done.
Manage things well.
He was a manager.
And that's what a good president was up until the time we decided that the presidency and the federal government ought to be our moral leadership, at which point we decided that we were going to But it was a kind of moral leadership.
Great point.
Being a president and not a...
Strong man is a kind of moral leader.
No, I totally agree with that.
But he wasn't appreciated at the time, is I guess the point that I make.
So when it comes to Americans being better or being worse, I think this is a problem that we've been experiencing.
The great man problem, which I do think is a...
I do think that the great man problem is an outgrowth Of the death of religion itself.
Because it used to be that every year we have these polls from Time Magazine, who's the most admired person in America?
If you ask me who's the person I admire the most, it's my dad.
If you ask people who are good, they're going to say someone they know personally who they think of as a moral model.
It's your priest, it's your rabbi, it's your mom, it's your wife.
It's somebody who you admire the most.
It's a person who has a personal impact on you.
But we as a society have built around, since the death of God, we've built around who is the most powerful figure we can think of, who channels The ideas that are closest to my own.
And that person, if you're a Christian, used to be Jesus.
And if you're a Jew, it used to be Moses.
And if you are neither of those two things, then it was somebody who I guess was a political leader.
But now that's why people on the right now see President Trump not just as a guy who's the president and fulfilling some of their political purposes, but as the leader of a movement.
As daddy.
That comes along with some financial side effects.
I have to say that one of the things that I really disliked about both the Bushes One was their idea that the things that they said that implied that conservatism was inherently not compassionate.
The idea that we're going to be a kinder, gentler nation, and Nancy Reagan is supposed to have said, kinder and gentler than whom.
But I have to say that looking back, Conservatism does have a reluctance, a very masculine reluctance, to communicate that compassion.
Mia Love said this the other day when she lost.
She said, you know, it's one thing to give stuff.
It's one thing to be transactional.
You've got to come over.
You've got to come over the house.
You've got to come into the neighborhood.
You've got to say, we love you, and this is why conservatism works.
And what do you want?
What makes you happy?
You've got to listen, too.
And I think we do have this problem, and I think it is a problem that Trump has in spades that, you know, I love some of the stuff that he's doing, but he alienates people because he's a bore.
I will say that this also is a difference between, I think, President Trump and some other Republicans.
I think that the generic Republican...
So in Judaism, the highest form of charity is the charity you give anonymously.
You're not going out and tooting your own horn.
And I agree with that as a general rule.
But the reality is in politics, if you're not tooting your own horn, you're not showing you care.
And so this is a real problem for a lot of conservatives because you'll reach out and you'll do nice things for people.
And I know it ruins my image to say that I do nice things for people on a really regular basis.
We never tell.
But, you know, to blow the image apart right now, I actually do nice things for people with whom I disagree on an extraordinarily regular basis, including people who I disagree with on the most basic levels.
And, you know, the fact that that happens, because I don't want to talk about it, I see it's a mark of lack of character.
To talk about the good things that you do.
It makes you seem uncaring.
But if you're in this world, unfortunately, if you want to convince people that religious people do the right thing, you actually have to talk about the right things religious people do.
And there's also this thing that conservatives have, which I kind of love about them on the one hand, which will say, what do you mean conservatism isn't good for black people?
Look at the statistics.
But what Mia Love was saying is, yeah, the statistics are good, but you've got to show up.
It's got to be a face thing.
You've got to be there in those neighborhoods and say, this is why.
You know, when we did that thing at Loyola Marymount, somebody says, what have the conservatives done?
What have the Republicans done for black people?
What we should have said, and neither of us said is...
We don't want to do anything for black people.
We want to do things for everybody, all together.
But you've got to say that.
You've got to be there and you've got to be in that neighborhood and say, you are Americans, we are Americans, we want you.
But this is the thing.
George H.W. Bush, this demonstrates the lie of the media, George H.W. Bush was the kinder, gentler version.
He was perceived as aloof.
Yeah.
He was perceived as a guy who had no connection.
Patrician.
Patrician.
A man who doesn't have any contact with a common man.
I mean, it really is gross to see the 180 that's been done by the media about HW. And that is incredible.
And it will also be going when they...
I have to say this.
I'm going to say this prospectively and disrespectfully.
When Jimmy Carter passes, which he will when his time comes, because we all will.
Long after we're all dead.
He's going to live at least until 250.
When Jimmy Carter passes, there will be this...
The outpouring that you're seeing about George H. W., you'll be dwarfed by the outpouring that you see about Jimmy Carter.
A man with, in my view, significant anti-Semitic connections and real problems with his moral character.
And he's a bitter, nasty man.
I've always thought so.
Right, exactly.
But once he dies...
This is something else that I hate, is that when people die, all of a sudden we have to not discuss anything about the actual human...
For a day.
I think for a day it's kind of nice.
No, for a day it's fine.
But the kind of glow, the sepia glow that we put around people, I don't think it's good when they're alive.
And we do it when they're alive.
It's like he's either the greatest or the worst.
They're not an individual human being.
Which, by the way, is an irreligious view.
I agree.
Hagiography is evil.
Age geography is bad, but the only thing I do think is when somebody dies, it reminds you that in the fight and the screaming and the yelling, you forget that we all have this common fate.
We all are common human beings.
It would be nice if we remembered that while people were alive and just said, you know, when you go on Twitter and you say, like, you're an idiot, you know, you stink, you forget that these are people of flesh and blood with terrible problems.
No, not on Twitter.
No.
They're not real.
I'm just talking to bots anyways.
The other thing, too, is that with George Bush, conservatives knock him for all the many things he got wrong.
He wasn't a conservative.
He invented the term voodoo economics.
He rates taxes.
It could go on for another hour.
He was a very loyal vice president during the Reagan revolution.
He was loyal in many ways.
He didn't undercut Reagan once he was running with him.
He didn't undercut him as vice president.
When Reagan was shot, he didn't take Reagan's seat at meetings.
He played it so straight.
Because he was a I think that in the end results, the message of religion is that it is harder to be a good man than to be a great man.
It is harder to be a good man who just does the right thing than to be a great man.
I was reading a lecture.
There are a lot of rabbis who actually do not transcribe their lectures and don't write things down because their idea is that their name is less important.
They don't want their name to live on because that's not actually important to them because that's actually just a message of ego is to have your name live on.
Look, we all want to be remembered after we're gone.
Like the gold letters on the sides of the many, many buildings?
A hundred percent.
And if I could get away with it, I would do it too.
Like we all would, right?
But the fact is that to be a good person, which means to be doing all the things people will forget about, right?
To do all the good things, taking your kids to school, to take care of your kids, to take care of your wife.
And we all pretend, well, you know, those are the things that matter.
Really, do you remember what your grandfather did when he took your pirates to school?
The answer is no.
We're great-grandparents.
You don't remember that.
You remember what Churchill did.
He lived at the same time.
We remember great men.
We don't remember good men.
And that's the challenge of being a good person, is knowing that you're doing the hard work of not being remembered so that civilization can preserve.
This is one of my key arguments with feminism, is that people don't celebrate motherhood and they don't celebrate homemaking, which to me is one of the most beautiful things that people can do.
The fact that they don't celebrate it tells you about the world.
It doesn't tell you about motherhood.
It tells you about what the world values and how trashy its values are and have always been.
The world's values are trashy.
The world values the flesh.
So I want to grab three more questions from our Daily Wire subscribers.
They give us their alms and we give them our wisdom.
By which I mean the stuff we make up.
Alicia, join us with some questions.
If I may, I have to say H.W. gave us Clarence Thomas, so God bless him for that.
And I'm really disappointed in all of y'all, and some people on Twitter agree with me, that no one mentioned White Christmas as a favorite Christmas movie.
Come on, guys.
We're afraid of the old white connections.
It's a great, fun, mediocre movie.
Wow.
No.
Patriotism.
Sorry.
Happily ever after.
Ridiculous.
Anyway.
And you say you raise chickens.
Yes.
And give you good eggs.
So be thankful.
Joshua says, in Ben's conversation with Pastor MacArthur, MacArthur mentioned why he thinks the American Revolution and violent revolutions in general was not in keeping with Christian values.
What are y'all's thoughts on this?
Well, I'm a Jacobite, so I'm all for it.
Restore James II. I think his line is the Duke of Bavaria at this point.
There's something to be said for this.
Christians are the ones who are dancing while they're being fed to lions, right?
Christians are the ones who are, you know, we were talking about the prosperity gospel, your best life now.
The apostles say to Christ, we want to follow you.
And he says, are you crazy?
Really?
Do you know what that means?
He says to Peter, you're going to follow me and you're going to be crucified upside down.
I think there's quite a lot to this.
The argument for the American Revolution is that it was a conservative revolution, that it was conserving things and recognizing a nation that already existed, that was separated.
But I'm quite empathetic to Carter's view.
I understand the point he's making.
I understand where, in Scripture, he's getting to that point.
But I actually don't agree with him.
I think that what the Christian has to do is be a Christian in his time.
He has to be a Christian no matter what the moment is.
And that may be the moment when you take up arms, because it has to be done.
And I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with Christians taking up arms in a great cause.
I might have a slightly different point of view, although I'm very sympathetic to your point of view.
Mine is that I don't think that the purpose of Christianity is to be a great Christian.
And that in the gospel is the freedom to be wrong and that God wields people who are wrong because those are the only people that he has to wield.
And so, I'm not a fan of the Catholic Church.
I don't hide it.
And yet, I recognize the many great contributions of the Catholic Church to Western civilization.
My argument is that's a recommendation of God, not a recommendation of the Catholic Church.
And while that's, from my point of view, an extreme example, I would use the same example even for things that we think are good or that we all collectively agreed were good.
That we make the mistake of attributing kind of godliness to things that we agree with only when the reality is that God is unfolding history.
He's moving the...
Absolutely.
And so maybe it is the case that on some theological level, the founders were mistaken in...
I can grant that that premise might be accurate, but it's neither here nor there, because certainly what they did was bent by God for some of the greatest good that the world has known in terms of the building of God.
This nation, and when they face their creator, the fundamental question is not going to be, did you get all the theology right?
Were all of your actions perfectly rooted in scripture?
Was all of your logic perfectly sound?
No.
The question that we're going to, I would say, that we're going to face when we stand before God is, what did you do with me?
What did you do with God?
Not, what did you...
Figure out.
God's not sitting around waiting for us to figure it all out.
Here's the power.
I'm happy to be a Jew.
I don't really have to worry about all this stuff about like, well, you know, leave it to the princes get to rule and all this stuff.
No, I mean, we're celebrating a holiday right now where we overthrow an actual regime.
None of this exists in Judaism.
The basic standard of Judaism is constitutional monarchy, by which it says in the Old Testament that every Jew is supposed to write a Torah.
The king is supposed to write two, because the idea is that he has to be constantly reminded of his biblical obligations, and that when he surpasses his biblical obligations, then he has to be chided.
This is the story of Nathan and King David.
It's the story of Saul having his kingship taken away by Samuel.
The idea that people in authority cannot have their authority removed by people who are faithful is I agree with this, and I think that to be a Christian in your moment may be to pick up a musket.
I mean, I think that each person is...
I mean, this is why I asked Pastor MacArthur specifically about, okay, so you're a Christian living in Nazi Germany.
Do you have the moral obligation, if you can, to resist the Germans insofar as overthrowing them, for example?
And he kind of said no, which surprised me.
And I don't want to mischaracterize.
You can go back and watch the exchange.
But to me, the idea of...
The authority, trying to create a full dichotomy between city of God and city of man is mistaken.
And not only mistaken, in the Jewish view at least, it's anti-biblical.
That's actually not what God says.
It does say in the Old Testament that the Torah, it's not out there in the heavens, it's here for you now.
The things of God are God.
I also think that the particular verses that we're all referring to from Paul about submitting to governing authorities...
I think it's important to contextualize them, that Paul is speaking against the notion that Christianity is a revolutionary force.
First, that the Christ, the Jewish notion that the Christ would be a political figure, he's speaking against that notion.
Second, the idea that might be emerging in the Roman world that Christianity is going to present some sort of revolutionary zeal against Rome.
And within that context, he's saying the purpose of the gospel is not Political change.
And that's true.
The purpose of the gospel is not political change.
But the purpose of the believer on earth is put one foot in front of the other.
That's right.
Elisha?
Yeah, we got more.
This is for everyone.
They want to know, Anthony wants to know, I'm sorry, Angela wants to know, what are some of the most memorable or fun traditions that you personally have during the Christmas season?
It's arguing with my wife about how many presents we're going to give people.
Because I would give people presents until they were just buried.
You would just see this wrapping and a hand coming out of the top.
And my wife just thinks, you know, one present for you.
Are all of them your books?
Yes, of course.
I mean, it does seem a lot less generous when you really focus on the specifics.
Michael, what are your...
I've got one.
We've talked about all the religious stuff.
You can all guess what all of those traditions are.
All the good Italian ones.
That's fine.
I have one very particular tradition.
Pugrums.
Pugrums.
We go out at midnight on Christmas Eve.
One of my favorite ones, I was one time, we'd had some family tragedies, it was a really tough Christmas, and I'm there with my stepbrother.
And we didn't know what, it's Christmas Eve, we weren't going to Midnight Mass, and we didn't know what to do.
And we decided to create the Frasier drinking game.
And we would watch episodes of Frasier.
Whenever your character said or did anything pretentious, you would have a drink.
So you were speaking in cursive within about three seconds.
You were Brett Kavanaugh by the end of the episode.
And this is an example of an entirely irreligious Christmas tradition that I cherish in my heart.
Irreligious?
You didn't wear your juridic robes?
That's right, yeah.
Alicia, we've got time for at least one more.
Alright, this last question comes from Brittany who says that she's a third grade teacher in a public school and she has a Jewish girl in her class and the rest of the kids celebrate Christmas.
She's wondering how she can honor Judaism and also bring Christmas activities to all of her students.
So, I mean, as a Jewish student who went to a public school, it never bothered me that people were celebrating Christmas.
I mean, I always assumed that this is a Christian country, overwhelmingly, that the foundations of the country are based on Christian...
So, I mean, really it depends on how the parents of the kid take it, because some parents are very uptight about things for reasons that I can't really explain.
Honestly, I think the best way to do it is to treat Hanukkah with respect when Hanukkah comes up.
And then when it's time for Christmas, treat Christmas with respect.
And you don't have to make specific provision for the girl, although you can say to the girl, listen, if you don't want to participate in any of this, you don't have to participate in any of this.
If you want to participate, ask your parents, see if your parents are cool with it.
I think that's a sign of respect because you don't want to force anybody into participating in a religious ritual or something they perceive as religious without any sort of, you know, upfront statement.
But, you know, again, I don't think it's disrespectful to the Jewish girl to do something for the Christian students any more than I think it's disrespectful to the Christian students to do something for the Jewish girl.
It is a nice idea to celebrate the Hanukkah for the one kid, though.
I like that.
It's a very American idea.
It is.
Yeah.
You know, have you ever seen, I mean, I'm sure Drew's seen it, the Frank Sinatra, he cut this song in the middle of World War II. That's correct.
The House I Live In.
The House I Live In, exactly.
And that's sort of the basic concept.
While the house we live in has been built by Christian hands, because it has, this is a house that we all live in together.
And acknowledging that is part of living in the house, but also the house filling with all of these people is part of what makes America, America.
Yep.
So I want to close with this final thought about Christmas.
All right.
And that's that.
If we look to the biblical account of the birth of Christ.
In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
That's how Luke's narrative about the birth of Christ begins, with a demagogue politician scheme to more effectively tax his subjects.
Right?
It's the reason that they have a census, so he can find out just how many people owe him a nickel.
Caesar Augustus, Gaius Octavius, the first emperor of the Roman Empire.
He was the most powerful man in the world, and he was known as both a god and as the adopted son of Julius Caesar, as the son of a god.
He ushered in the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, and was known as the Prince of Peace.
From his throne in the most glorious city on earth, this god king of the lowercase g, lowercase k variety, would have been wholly unaware that in distant and backward Palestine, the god of the uppercase G was tenting himself in human form, condescending to be born into the world as the only begotten of the father, through whom he would adopt condescending to be born into the world as the only begotten of the father, through whom he would adopt unto himself many sons and daughters,
The Prince of Peace between God and man had no throne, but instead slept in a feeding trough for beasts of burden who were his roommates, there being no room for him in the familial home, probably because his parents were being shunned by their kin for the stigma of carrying him in contribution of religious ideals in the first place.
Prophecy had declared centuries earlier that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, but without the machinations of the lowercase g god king in Rome to make himself even richer, the prophecy would not have been fulfilled.
Just as without the roads that that same lowercase god king built to more effectively gather his taxes, Christ's gospel would not have spread after his death.
None of this, of course, happened in December.
That was the affect of yet another lowercase g, lowercase k, muckety-muck sometime about 1500 years later.
The Bishop of Rome, in an effort to co-opt one of the most popular and universal holidays of the pagan world, the winter solstice, saw a correlation between the celebration of life from death that agrarian societies marked on the shortest day of the year in the dead of winter with evergreen trees and mistletoe and merrymaking of the in-the-tent kind.
And the concept of eternal life, being literally born into a world of sin and death to rescue us from darkness to light.
So while we're all busy trying to get Christ back into Christmas, it's worth remembering that he was never actually there at all.
But so what?
The uppercase G, uppercase K God King has been making good use of us scheming, conniving, self-surfing...
Self-serving lowercase g, lowercase k's since way back in the beginning.
Revealing his truth and his grace and his life through many a flawed vessel.
And that's a truth worth celebrating in December and every other month.
So, Merry Christmas to all of you from us here at the Daily Wire.
He's not here, of course.
He's risen.
But now's as good a time as any to think about him.
Good night.
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