The ONLY meaningful dividing line in the culture war is this: those who defend morality, virtue, the family, and the sanctity of life on one side, and those who are hostile or indifferent on the other. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| Well, some folks on the right are ecstatic with glee today because Kanye West is saying some things that they agree with. | |
| Even Kim Kardashian has gotten favorable coverage from the right because of all this. | |
| Now, let's remember something about the right, the right, of which I am a member. | |
| Unless I'm imagining things, unless I've been hallucinating for the last 20 years or so, I'm pretty sure that the right has spent... | |
| A very long time insisting that celebrities are dumb and stupid and they're morons and their political opinions don't matter and they need to just shut up and sing and entertain us because we don't want to hear them injecting politics into everything. | |
| Just shut up, just shut up, just shut up. | |
| That's what we've been saying. | |
| We've said it a million times over and over and over again to these celebrities. | |
| No, it has not been as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise. | |
| Our message to celebrities and singers and pop stars, athletes, our message to them has not been, oh, I disagree with what you're saying. | |
| Let's engage. | |
| Let's have a discussion. No, that hasn't been our message. | |
| Our message has been very explicitly, you shouldn't be talking about this subject. | |
| You don't know anything about it. | |
| Your job is to entertain us, so just shut up. | |
| That's been our message. | |
| But then what happens? | |
| The moment one of these celebrities says something we agree with, while we're in the midst of shouting, shut up all you, just stop talking about this! | |
| And then one of them responds, oh, but wait a second, I actually agree with you on this one single point. | |
| Okay, well, hold on. | |
| No, okay, you come here. | |
| You can talk. You, yes, you, please stand up on this stage, this platform. | |
| Repeat it again so everyone can hear it. | |
| No, no, you guys over there, Meryl Streep and Colin Kaepernick, you still shut up. | |
| Nobody wants to hear you. But you, go ahead, please. | |
| Yes, please talk. Please, please. | |
| I mean, Kanye West, a few years ago when you were talking about how George Bush hates black people, you needed to shut up then because nobody cares about your political opinions. | |
| But now, oh yes, please share your political opinions with everyone. | |
| This is huge. Everyone, listen to this person. | |
| Listen to this celebrity. | |
| He's a celebrity. His opinion matters. | |
| And then two seconds later, you're a celebrity. | |
| Your opinion doesn't matter. Our perspective changes very quickly from shut up and sing to please be our president. | |
| And I know, listen, I know what I'm saying right now is not crowd pleasing. | |
| It's not crowd pleasing because I'm criticizing us. | |
| I mean, I'm criticizing you and me. | |
| And I know that when someone watches a video on Facebook or listens to a podcast, what they really want to hear is criticisms of everybody else. | |
| What they're really looking for is a moment where you and I are talking about how terrible everyone else is. | |
| I mean, you and I haven't figured out, but all those other people, let's talk about how terrible they are. | |
| What I've noticed is that the moment I turn the mirror around on us and say, oh, but look at this thing that we're doing. | |
| Maybe we have problems, too. | |
| That's when there's suddenly a revolt. | |
| And it's, oh, stop being negative. | |
| Stop judging. Now, I notice that. | |
| I'm only negative and judging and all these things when I'm criticizing us. | |
| But if I stick with criticizing everyone else, well, then there's no problem. | |
| But I don't care because this is just... | |
| I mean, we are on the right. | |
| We are blatantly contradicting ourselves, not just on this issue, but on so many issues, especially recently. | |
| We have just turned into utter and complete hypocrites. | |
| Just changing our tune on so many things all of a sudden, opportunistically, and forfeiting our integrity in the process. | |
| And I don't really care if pointing that out turns everyone against me. | |
| I don't really care because it's true. | |
| Now, in Kanye West's case, he's been tweeting a bunch of controversial things, and he does have... | |
| I think he has new music coming out soon, so I'm sure it's just a coincidence that he's... | |
| Saying all this controversial stuff and getting attention while he's got music to promote. | |
| I'm sure there's no connection there whatsoever, right? | |
| And he's tweeted some nice things about free expression, free speech, etc. | |
| But mainly the thing that has gotten him attention and has gotten him favorable, has made him a darling of the right, is that he's expressed support for Donald Trump. | |
| And Trump responded on Twitter and there was this little exchange, this back and forth between Kanye West and Donald Trump. | |
| And that is really what sent some folks on the right into rapturous seizures is when they saw that. | |
| And that's the only conservative thing he said, conservative thing as far as I can tell and I'm not an expert on his tweets I haven't read them very carefully. | |
| I only know what he's tweeting because a lot of conservatives in my Twitter feed have just been retweeting the heck out of them. | |
| They've just retweeted everything he said. | |
| And again, these are the same conservatives who have spent years, the exact same ones, who have spent years telling celebrities to shut up. | |
| Their political opinions don't matter. | |
| And now they're just all day retweeting Kanye West. | |
| And so I know that he's also, I mean, he's talked about how truth is subjective. | |
| He's talked a lot about how the key to happiness is self-love and, you know, it's within yourself, self-affirmation, you know, the self-affirmation type of typical Hollywood tripe. | |
| But with Kanye West's affinity for Trump, we're told that this is a sign that the right is winning the culture. | |
| And this is how we win the culture, I'm told. | |
| We win it through celebrities who like Donald Trump. | |
| It was the same thing with Roseanne. | |
| Roseanne, her show, whether we're talking about the new version or the old version, it promotes all kinds of far-left propaganda. | |
| It is a far-left show. | |
| Cross-dressing nine-year-olds, that is extreme left-wing degeneracy being promoted and mainstreamed. | |
| And somehow they've convinced conservatives to not only watch it, but to applaud it. | |
| Incredibly. The show in the past has also historically promoted abortion, gay marriage, on and on and on. | |
| And Roseanne herself is a far-left nutcase. | |
| She wished death on everyone who eats Chick-fil-A. She said she hopes they all get cancer because Chick-fil-A is anti-gay. | |
| She hasn't changed her tune. | |
| She's still a far-left nutcase. | |
| It just so happens that she also likes Donald Trump. | |
| And we've decided that none of that other stuff matters. | |
| The only thing that matters is that she likes Donald Trump. | |
| Now, this may surprise you, but I'm gonna be the odd man out here. | |
| I don't agree. This idea that Roseanne and Kanye West and all this stuff, they're the ones helping us win the culture, I don't agree. | |
| And in fact, I don't see the right winning the culture There's been a lot of talk on the right recently about, we're winning! | |
| Our message is winning! | |
| Yes! No, it's not. | |
| Look around you. | |
| What are you talking about? | |
| It's winning. I'll tell you what's actually happening. | |
| The right is not winning the culture. | |
| The right is becoming more like the left. | |
| The right is just fighting to be the new left. | |
| The right thinks that it's making the culture more conservative, but all it's really doing is becoming more liberal itself. | |
| Thus it sees itself more reflected in the culture because it has stooped down and rid itself of most everything that used to differentiate it from the culture. | |
| Let me try to explain my meaning a little more. | |
| And I think first we have to ask a very simple question. | |
| What is the culture war about? | |
| What does it mean to win the culture? | |
| What are we fighting for? What are we fighting against? | |
| How do we win? | |
| What is winning? | |
| As I see it, and as I think almost every conservative used to see it, the real problem with the culture and the central battle in the culture is spiritual and moral decay. | |
| That is the problem. | |
| And the collapse of the family is part of that. | |
| The loss of the sanctity of life is part of that. | |
| The destruction of marriage is part of that. | |
| The abandonment of religion is part of that. | |
| The proliferation of perversion and degeneracy, that's part of that. | |
| Pornography is part of that. Gender identity, that's part of that. | |
| All of this is part of the main battle. | |
| This thing, this spiritual moral decay which has emptied our civilization, hollowed it out, made it a shell of what it once was, this is what's killing our civilization. | |
| Other issues are important, but not as important. | |
| Gun rights, taxes, immigration, those are crucial topics. | |
| Yes. But even if we had all the gun rights and the border was closed and taxes were low, which would be great, believe me, it would mean nothing at all if the culture is still in a state of moral rot. | |
| Because then we would still just be wandering into the abyss, not sure of what sort of people we're supposed to be or what the point of life even is, and we're just wandering into destruction, only we happen to have a gun and more money in our wallet and fewer illegals walking next to us, which, fine, but it means nothing if we've given up on the one thing that means everything, which is truth. | |
| Yes, we need to have the right. | |
| It's important to fight for rights because we need to have, and why? | |
| Why is it important to fight for rights? | |
| Because we need to have the right to be the sort of people we should be. | |
| But then the next level, more fundamentally than that, we need to know what sort of people we should be. | |
| In other words, the fight for freedom is important Only because freedom gives a person the ability to realize their God-given potential. | |
| But if we take freedom and we do not pursue that potential, and indeed we reject that there is a potential, that there is a God or anything, that there is anything to strive for, then we're just going to end up even worse than we would have been without the freedom in the first place. | |
| This is why it's not enough. | |
| And as I've seen, this is something conservatives have been doing more and more. | |
| As you've noticed, conservatives, more and more, they're not fighting for what is right, they're just fighting for rights. | |
| I don't know if you've noticed that transition, because you're just getting rid of one little word there, is. | |
| But it's huge. | |
| Not fighting for what is right, we're just fighting for rights. | |
| An example of how this works is, you'll notice that pretty much any conservative, We'll get up and they'll fight for the right. | |
| They'll fight for people's right to be against gay marriage. | |
| They'll fight for the rights of bakers who don't want to bake gay wedding cakes. | |
| They'll fight for those rights on the basis of free speech and freedom of religion. | |
| Which is good because that's really important. | |
| But what they won't do is they won't then proceed to explain Why it is right to fight for the protection of marriage. | |
| They won't do that. | |
| They'll fight for the right, but not for what is right. | |
| And that's a big problem. | |
| Because our main message should be, or take abortion for instance. | |
| Yes, we should have the right to voice our pro-life views. | |
| So if you're standing up for our right to voice our pro-life views, thank you. | |
| But more important than that is the fact that we are right about those views. | |
| And so that's our main message. | |
| Our main message is not, I have the right to say these things. | |
| Our primary message should be, I am right about these things. | |
| And that's why you should listen to me. | |
| Not just because I have the right to say it, but because I'm right in saying it. | |
| I think conservatives have just... | |
| have... Not been as willing to make that point. | |
| So then just look at what's happened in our culture over the last several decades. | |
| We've taken all this freedom, all of this great and wonderful freedom, and we've used it to destroy the family, destroy marriage, destroy babies, destroy the church, destroy ourselves. | |
| With our freedom, we've invented the drug epidemic, the divorce epidemic, the suicide epidemic, the porn epidemic, the depression epidemic, on and on and on. | |
| We have the freedom to satisfy our desires, yet we don't know what we should desire, what will bring us true joy and fulfillment, so we run around just indulging every whim and we plunge ever deeper and deeper into despair and ruin because of it. | |
| In fact, we have so much freedom to indulge our whims and we have so many desires that now what we do in our culture is we plunge deep into the recesses of our subconscious and we bring to the surface just every degrading, perverse desire we can find and we present it to the world and we fight for the right to indulge it. | |
| Meanwhile, nobody's happy. | |
| Nobody knows why we're even here. | |
| What's the point of anything? I'm not arguing against freedom here. | |
| This is not an argument against freedom. | |
| This is an argument for the thing that is deeper than freedom. | |
| And that thing fundamentally is truth, virtue, God, morality. | |
| That's what we should be fighting for. | |
| And the problem is that the right is less and less concerned with fighting for those things, for truth, God, morality, virtue. | |
| And so it only continues to lose the actual battle, the real battle, the battle for the thing that matters. | |
| We're losing because we've surrendered it and we won't even fight it anymore. | |
| This is the left's primary objective is the destruction of truth and morality. | |
| The destruction of the moral fabric of our civilization, that is the left's main primary objective. | |
| So if you are not fighting against them on that battlefield, fighting against their efforts to undermine the moral fabric of our civilization, if you're not fighting them there, then you're not fighting them. | |
| You're really not doing anything. | |
| You may be arguing with them on a million other topics, but if you will not dive in on that point, And say, no, this is right. | |
| This is moral. We are fighting for this because of that. | |
| If you won't do that, then you're not fighting them. | |
| You're not doing anything. In fact, I would say even you're a coward. | |
| And you're not really helping. | |
| So how do Kanye West and Roseanne factor into this? | |
| I mean, not in a very important way, but what I see here in the right's love affair with leftist celebrities who happen to like Donald Trump, I see a symptom of this problem. | |
| The right will hold their affinity for Trump and maybe their affinity for free speech. | |
| They'll hold those things up as the most important things, further marginalizing, further ignoring, further surrendering the battle for truth, virtue, morality, and God. | |
| The right will embrace some figure Who is fully a proponent of degeneracy and moral relativism and every other evil known to man. | |
| And the right will embrace them just because they said some positive stuff about Trump. | |
| And on the other side, if there's a figure who is really fighting the battle against degeneracy and moral relativism and fighting for truth and fighting for those things, yet who is not sufficiently on board with Trump, well, they're going to be alienated and exiled. | |
| That's what we've done. We'll kick people out. | |
| I mean, they could be engaged just down in the trenches on this central battlefield here. | |
| But if they're not saying the right things about Trump, we say, get out. | |
| We don't want you. So I think, you see, we are not winning. | |
| We've surrendered. We've given up. | |
| We've given up. And that's what allows us to, you know, Celebrate. | |
| Because some celebrity likes Trump. | |
| As if that will have any bearing whatsoever on the one thing that matters. | |
| But it seems the one thing that matters doesn't really matter to us anymore. | |
| And so what I see happening right now is it used to be you had the moral relativists and then you had those on the other side. | |
| Who fought for objective morality and truth. | |
| And now what I think is going to happen is you have just two factions who are both moral relativists fighting for domination and control. | |
| Not fighting for truth or anything, not fighting for anything beyond that, but just fighting for domination and control of the culture so that their brand, their variety of relativism may be supreme. | |
| I don't see any kind of real victory in that personally. | |
| So, I hate to be a party pooper, but there it is. |