April 13, 2024 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
01:09:36
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 39 — Tucker vs. Israel? Abortion and 2024? Who Broke Marriage?
In this week’s ThoughtCrime, Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, Andrew Kolvet, and Blake Neff answer many crucial questions, including:-Who bears more blame for the declining state of marriage, men or women?-Is Tucker Carlson's critique of Israel's treatment of Christians fair?-Is abortion the albatross that will destroy the GOP in 2024? And if so, what's the fix?THOUGHTCRIME streams LIVE exclusively on Rumble, every Thursday night at 8pm ET.Go to https://twc.health/cj and use promo code CJ for 10%...
- From the age of big brother. - If they wanna get you, they'll get you.
DNSA specifically targets the communications of everyone.
They're collecting your communications. - Okay, it is thought crime time everybody.
In the studio, we only have one person, Producer Andrew.
Hey, only me.
Well, just only one person.
Remote is Blake.
Blake, you're blocking the eclipse.
Yes, the eclipse is over.
It was great.
I know you just think it was a bunch of clouds.
It was like a dark object.
It went dark for a bit.
It gets dark every night.
But it was actually pretty fun, I have to say.
It was a quasi-spiritual experience, some people say.
Jack, what'd you do for the eclipse?
I made sure to look directly at it for as long as possible to gain the supernatural powers for the 2024 election.
Now, I didn't travel like Blake did.
People don't realize this, but Blake is actually part of a group of eclipse worshipers, and they travel to every single eclipse around the world.
It's kind of a Reddit thing that they do.
And, you know, when they're not in their prayer circles praying to Dr. Fauci, they go and pray to the eclipses.
Well, speaking of supernatural powers, we might need it after the latest Supreme Court decision in Arizona.
What's up going on in Arizona?
What's that?
Something significant.
Who wants to walk us through it?
Blake or Andrew?
Andrew, you want to take it?
You know, I think, you know, we have a good rundown here, and let me just make sure I pull it up.
But yeah, I mean, basically, we have a... Okay, so there was a 15-week law that was the law of the land in Arizona that was predicated on the fact that Roe v. Wade was also the law of the land.
But then Roe v. Wade gets overturned by the Supreme Court, which basically nullifies this 15-week ban that was in Arizona, Doug Ducey's abortion law.
And what that did is it sent it back to a Civil War era law, when Arizona was still a territory.
And that law basically outlaws all abortion in the state of Arizona.
This obviously has massive political implications for a lot of reasons.
Arizona was polling in such a way that we were hearing rumors that Biden and the Democrats were not putting much hope in Arizona at all, right?
It's one of the key swing states.
You would have expected the opposite.
But their polling and their internals and the work that Turning Point Action is doing was all leading to a predicament for them where they were not investing in Arizona as you might expect.
Well, I think all that changed yesterday.
One thing that I think is important to understand, so this is the logic of the left.
They think if abortion now becomes the issue, that that will drive low-propensity, Democrat, abortion-loving people to the polls.
And therefore, whatever deficit that Joe Biden was experiencing is now going to be made up by these low-prop, pro-abortion people.
They're going all in on it.
And they're going all in on it, right?
So what people need to understand is that there already was an abortion.
The issue was going to be on the ballot via referendum in Arizona.
So there was already going to be an abortion issue on the ballot.
And the only other swing state where that's true is Nevada, which actually is very interesting to me, Charlie, with everything that we've been talking about with Nebraska and forcing Joe Biden to play in the Sun Belt.
Well, Nevada and Arizona have abortion on the ballot.
So it's been a very chaotic last 24 hours, last 48 hours, because there seems to be a predisposition by conservatives to basically toss the life issue out, right?
So Trump preempts this on Monday, right?
Or was that on Tuesday?
Maybe it was on Tuesday, I apologize.
It was Monday.
It was the day of the eclipse.
Yeah, so Trump preempts it, issues his statement, throwing it back to the states, And incredibly, the next day, this Arizona Supreme Court ruling comes out and basically says that the law of the land is still this Civil War-era law.
So, everybody's confused what it means.
Charlie, you've got some interesting ideas I think we need to get into.
And then, in the legislative session out of Arizona, all hell's breaking loose.
The Democrats are yelling, shame, and there's blood on your hands inside
of the uh... legislation that inside the house here in arizona i mean it's it's it's a very wild scenario and i know that this is look at the the democrats have one maybe two attack factors the only attack that they have is taking donald trump off the ballot and that didn't happen and number two was roe v wade an abortion and our side is currently very disorganized on this not unified i mean i'll tell you i'm getting it from both sides right now
And I've been, not me, because actually people respect my opinions on this.
I have gotten a little bit of ridicule and condemnation, but by both sides, let me explain.
I have pastor group chats of people that are incensed that the Republican Party is not saying the Arizona ban is not the best thing ever.
That's number one, saying that Carrie Lake and Trump should come out and say this is the best thing ever, we should make it the law of the land.
Then I have other people on the other side that are patriots, donors and activists alike, that say we need to make this a non-issue or else we're going to get obliterated in November.
And so you kind of have these two factions, and they're all calling each other's names, they're all pointing fingers at one another, and my position was, love the ruling, I want abortion to not be the law of the land.
Bad timing.
Why?
It's not even a close fit to the will of the people, and if you have something that is not in the fit of the will of the people, it's not sustainable, And it also creates massive political backlash.
So that's my position.
As I said, try to get something on the ballot that is a pro-life win, which would be a heartbeat bill.
And I think that we have the best, most prudent, reasonable solution that's been proposed.
But I am not afraid, I don't care how much this gets clipped by the media, to state this is a problem.
It's a problem.
And acting as if it doesn't exist is foolish.
Jack, please, sorry, I had to get that all out.
No, no.
And we should, of course, bring up our positions.
But before we get to that, on this, and I'll even say, you know, I said, first and foremost, because this is such a problem right now, that we should lead the show with this, and we're not even planning to talk about it this week.
But here's something that, and I say this as a non-Arizona that is confusing to me, that in the ruling from the state Supreme Court, if I have this correct, so Doug Ducey passes this 15-week bill Back in 2022.
So, even under Dobbs, or even under Roe v. Wade, I guess it was at the time, I think, Dobbs hadn't been finalized yet, that hadn't been issued yet.
And so, wouldn't this 2022 law supersede the 1854 law?
And I guess the state Supreme Court, if I have this correct, and, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I was talking to, you know, someone who's one of those law talking guys, And said, well, essentially the 2022 bill doesn't include language that says that it supersedes it.
And essentially the state Supreme Court said, look, we essentially say that it's a situation where both laws are now in effect at the same time because of the 2022 law, not including that language.
The court didn't want to interpret things into it that were not there.
And then basically punts it back to the legislature and says, look, you guys passed this stuff.
You go fix it.
Is that the situation?
Because I still don't quite understand why the 2022 law doesn't itself just supersede the original law.
Blake, you would have an answer on that?
I mean, I literally have the law open right now and I'm checking it.
But my guess, frankly, is this was a thing that you saw with pro-life activists in many states, which is obviously pro-life activists want to ban abortion.
But they also were aware for 50 years that the Supreme Court has restricted their ability to do that.
And so there was always the pro-life push of pass the most pro-life law that will survive a court challenge, try to gradually undermine it by getting the Supreme Court to allow further and further bans.
So what you would get in states, I know when I was growing up in South Dakota, they would have things like this.
Is they would have laws that essentially are, this is the law because of the current Supreme Court situation.
If the Supreme Court's ruling were to change completely, if Roe were to go away, we would have a new law come into play.
Sometimes they would call these trigger laws, as in, so if they pull the trigger and get rid of Roe, a stricter law comes into play.
And that's actually why several other states do have strict abortion laws going right now.
And so I suspect that the way the Arizona 15-week ban was constructed is pro-lifers didn't want to repeal the stricter law they had if that suddenly became and I suspect that's what came into play here that made this happen.
Yes, so what I don't appreciate is some of the conversations I've had around this is punting.
Andrew, and you know some of these conversations.
People say, oh, don't worry about it.
We'll just kind of figure it out.
I think that's foolish.
I think it's short-sighted.
And I think the Democrats are salivating at the one lane they have to overachieve a dismal record coming into November.
Yeah, if you act like this doesn't exist, then you're essentially creating a vacuum that Democrats are going to fill.
So you've got to come out with something that That at least offers an alternative.
And there's a couple reasons why, Charlie.
You know, I think that the Republicans can be guilty of taking the pro-life vote for granted.
And what you want is you want something that will inspire the pro-life vote, that will get the activists out and get them on board.
I think to your recommendation of a heartbeat bill, you know, this is about the strictest laws that are getting passed.
But it plays offense on the topic, too.
It plays offense.
And actually, I mean, you know, What's ironic about the psychology of this is because if nothing gets done, yeah, in theory you could get the 1864 law, right?
But that's not going to happen.
If you do not have something else on the ballot, guess what's going to happen?
You're going to have unlimited late-term abortion because that's the referendum that's already on the ballot in November, right?
That's going to pass.
If you don't do anything, you're going to have late-term abortions.
So, the heartbeat bill is about as aggressive as a precedent that we've seen set in the country.
We've seen it in Arizona.
Texas has something similar.
Blake, Jack, you probably know the other states.
But this is actually an opportunity to go on the offense, to get excited about it, get inspired by it, and actually, you know, sort of take some of the wind out of the other side's sails.
And here's the other thing.
And Jack, I'd specifically love your instincts on this, but the fact that Trump came out the day before and preempted that is either really just good politics, or it just happened to be a stroke of luck, whether they planned this or not.
Knowing what I know about Politics, I tend to think it was probably lucky, but does that give us an opportunity from a messaging standpoint to sort of decouple top-of-ticket from down-ballot issues?
For example, can enough voters in the state of Arizona separate the fact that Trump is saying, hey, I want to give it to the states, let the will of the voters prevail in the state, but I'm still going to pull the lever for Trump?
How many in a state like Arizona do you see people voting for maybe a pro-abortion stance, but also pulling the trigger for Trump?
20 to 30 percent?
Well, to answer your question, yeah, I think there's a percentage, but let's also point out that it's... So even with Donald Trump kind of putting out his statement, which is, you know, it is not as... saying it should be at the states.
It should be at the state level and saying that he doesn't want to get behind a federal ban.
Then you've got people on the pro-life side saying this is essentially pro-choice.
You've got other people saying, no, it's pro-life, just not at the federal level.
But I would also point out that Donald Trump isn't the only candidate on the ballot, because there are definitely going to be two or potentially more than two candidates that are pro-choice.
So you've got Joe Biden, who's pro-choice.
Then you're going to have RFK, who is polling at, I'd have to pull up the latest Arizona poll to see, but he's pulling at 12-13% in a lot of these swing states.
And then you're also going to have Jill Stein, you're going to have Cornel West.
So it's not just a possibility of Trump pulling over some of that vote, but also how much of that vote is going to be split across these presidential candidates is something we're going to have to look at.
Yeah, and look, I was texting with some pastors about this, and I can read a room really well.
And I've been saying this, I've been warning people about this.
If I go and speak and I talk about the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, I get golf claps at churches.
If I say that we need to ban transgender care, enthusiastic response.
If I say that we need to deport illegals, cheering.
But there is a huge discomfort with rank-and-file Christians with the ideal of banning abortion.
It's just too radical for many Christians.
I just think that's a colossal failure on the part of Christian leaders.
Of course it is.
Certainly within the Catholic Church, a well-known There's a big split where you have some priests who are very adamant on it, and you have some who are terrified to ever talk about it.
And morally, I think that's completely unacceptable, and I think it has to be regarded as unacceptable in Protestant churches as well.
If a pastor is going to be brave enough to defy a COVID ban, if they're going to be brave enough to oppose child mutilation, why can't they be brave enough to say, yeah, if you're a Christian, you have to regard abortion as extremely wrong and extremely evil?
well they will and in that way they are a bit of That's just less than 5%.
And you have to say it all the time, because otherwise people don't hear it.
And it's less than five percent, right?
It's less than five percent of pastors that would be saying that.
Well, yeah, and I think you had a conversation with Matt Walsh that was really, really good on this, and I encourage people to go back on the podcast and listen to it, but, you know, we are constantly hounded as conservatives to retreat on these issues we don't have a choice right now we have to we have to we have to go on offense yeah no we have to but here's the thing they told us they told us the same on immigration yeah they told us we had to give amnesty to win the votes we had to go give amnesty trump proved everybody wrong
now i understand that abortion is a different issue than than immigration and you know the trans issue is different guns are different but But at the same time, I do believe that if the conservative movement loses its moral clarity on the issue of abortion, we will pay for it tenfold.
That being said, this is why I like your idea so much, if we put together an alternative, a heartbeat bill, not only are you going to give the base something to get excited about, you still might lose in the polls.
And if you lose the polls, then we have an opportunity to say, guess what?
We have more convincing to do, more persuading to do.
We know we have.
But hopefully, hopefully that could, if we're going to lose a little bit on abortion, maybe we're going to make it up a little bit by just offering an alternative in the future.
And to Jack's point, I think looking at the polls, Jack, RFK is polling at an average of 10.4% in Arizona.
Right now, the numbers are, according to the Hill Election HQ, 42.5% average for Trump, 36.6% average for Biden, and 10.4% average for RFK.
And I completely believe that with our ballot chase in Arizona, which we're trying to get hundreds of thousands of votes in this ballot chase.
We're hiring like crazy right now.
So this is a big operation.
If you couple that with RFK, you offer an alternative, you give something people to get excited about.
Do not press panic yet.
There's an urgency, but we can win Arizona.
There needs to be, and I don't think the legislature is going to do this, what I think the Arizona legislature is likely to do, based on just public reporting, is I bet they're likely to capitulate and put something on Katie Hobbs' desk as some sort of bargain.
Like a 26-week limit.
That would be a mistake.
Or a 15-week limit to reinstitute what Ducey had, and only have the term go through the election.
The status quo.
What about just a compromise to say they're gonna and again I'm going to come back to this because the heartbeat bill that's a ton of work and a lot of time that we frankly don't don't have.
I'm not against it but I'm saying that is that what about the compromise to just say we're we're gonna we want the 2022 law to go in because that's the one we all voted for at the time.
Well, yeah, the 2022 law will, the Democrats will probably block that, though.
That's the point, is that some of the Republicans are not gonna, this is what, and I would love to see polling, like, America's actually becoming more pro-abortion.
This is not a big surprise.
This is something, I think, if there's a big failure of the pro-life movement, I think it was failing to anticipate this, but it's understandable because it happens a lot.
It happens so often, in fact, that this is something that Like political scholars wrote about in the past, they called it the hollow hope, which is generally people like activist groups see a Supreme Court win as this culmination that will like burst, you know, once they get their win at the Supreme Court, they'll get everything else they want to.
But controversial Supreme Court rulings usually create backlash.
If you want past examples, when you got like those pro crime rulings from the Supreme Court in the 60s, Miranda versus Arizona, the backlash was we got Tough on crime laws that massively increase criminal penalties, you know, how long people went to jail.
And so what you see after Dobbs is, you know, it's not a total wipeout, but you're seeing maybe like a 10% shift in terms of who identifies as pro-choice, who wants abortion to be legal in all or almost all circumstances.
You basically, I'd say you'd see like a 10 to 15% of people who in the past were signaling they were somewhat pro-life.
As like a tribal affiliation, and then now that it's a live political issue, they're going, actually just kidding, just kidding.
Please don't change things.
If I get my girlfriend pregnant, I want to make it go away.
And that just seems to be the situation as it is right now.
But I do agree.
I don't, I certainly, as someone who like you guys cares a lot about the pro-life movement, there's several things in play.
First of all, it's a very, Powerful moral issue and it's one that is kind of abstract, you know?
The unborn are kind of difficult to see for the most part.
It does require a certain sort of abstract moral reasoning.
And as a result, it's very dependent on people getting really, really fired up about it.
And so it's a difficult thing to handle because the only way we're ever going to get wins on it is to really whip people up to care a lot about it.
And the inevitable side effect of that is we're going to have people Who care a lot about it, who are absolutists on the issue, who reject all compromise on the issue.
And if you want a good comparison, look at the abolitionist movement in the 1800s.
You would have, you know, people, abolitionists would attack Abraham Lincoln because he was not a true enough believer on abolition.
Uh, William Garrison, the founder of the Liberator, he would say, we need to throw out the Constitution.
We should, the North should secede from the Union because the Union has legal slavery.
You'd have, you know, you'd have John Brown who would try to, you know, kill people and start slave uprisings.
You would have these radicals on the far end of the issue because that's how passionate it made people.
And it is going to be like, I don't want to, I think The big hazard right now is there are forces within the Republican Party that want the pro-life issue to go away.
They've never cared about it.
They find these holy rollers annoying.
They think they're the ones holding the party back from getting everything they want on taxes or whatever.
And they want to get rid of them, and they think they can.
And this has happened in other countries.
So as someone who cares a lot about that issue, I do think we have to be aware that the big hazard right now is we lose this election, they blame it all on the pro-lifers, and we never ever get a pro-life bill introduced at the federal level or in any non-super-red state again.
But Blake, the first part is actually the bigger hazard, which is the loss, right?
And we still have time to make sure we don't lose on the political issue.
Blake, in your wisdom politically, what can be done, if anything, to make sure we're not catastrophically, you know, obliterated on this issue?
And somehow 2024 becomes a referendum again on abortion as the country is collapsing.
Blake, what do you think we could do?
I think President Trump's statement on Monday was a very good start, where he manages to say, I am pro-life.
I like the ruling that we did with Dobbs.
But at the same time, I am not going to come in and impose a law that is massively opposed by a large majority of Americans.
That's essentially what he's saying.
When he says, I'm leaving it to the states, he's saying, I am not going to come in and impose something only 30% or 20% or 15% of the public will back.
or 20% or 15% of the public will back.
And I think at the federal level, Anytime they bring up abortion, you say an abortion ban is not on the ballot for president because President Trump says it's not on the ballot.
And so the only thing you can do is then, if you wanna have the moral counterattack, you say, the only person who's making abortion a huge federal issue is Joe Biden, and he wants it legal until birth with taxpayer funding, all of that.
The most extreme possible one, the other way, and he wants to get rid of all choice on the issue.
And I think that's how you can counterattack to it.
You say there is no abortion ban on the ballot or president.
At the state level, I think that's a tougher one because it goes by state.
The Arizona situation is going to be complicated.
Like you, Charlie, I like the law.
I don't know that, I don't really know whether introducing some other vote As an alternative is the best strategy because you're really just you're tripling down on oh there's all this abortion stuff on the ballot and then there's going to be reporting comparing you know the law with this middle thing but what the pro-abortionists want and it's already going to be on the ballot.
Well I was going to say it's already on the ballot and this ruling just made it ten times bigger.
It made it ten times So now every single young woman in Arizona will 100% vote Democrat out of fear because they're told to because there's an 1864 law that's going to put your best friend in jail.
It's easy to blame young women, but truthfully I feel what really drives the problem is there's a lot of like conservative leaning middle-aged women, you know, people who live in the suburbs.
It's women in general.
Those women who go to, well, I don't even think it's actually, it's not overall in the polling on the issue, the split between men and women is not dramatic, but it's probably, if you're looking for women who would vote Republican and then have decided to switch their votes Just this election over abortion, I would say the person you're looking for is like a upper middle class suburban woman.
Because they're swing voters in general.
It's very simple.
The abortion referendum, as it is right now in Arizona, will pass.
And it'll probably pass by 10 points.
Therefore, if you want Donald Trump to become president, you need people that want to vote for no restrictions on abortion to also vote for Trump.
Period.
Period.
There is no other path.
Yeah.
The abortion referendum will pass based on polling.
They have so much money.
They have paid circulators, and this Supreme Court decision will make it, like, way more likely to pass.
Um, yeah.
Like, way more likely to pass.
They're thrilled.
And so the question is... Charlie.
Yes?
So let me ask you that question, right?
You know, you guys are Arizona, I'm from the other part of the country, so...
Are there people, enough people, like who Blake is describing, who might be for this initiative, but also decide that they... I mean, think about it, right?
You say, this is the ballot initiative, I'm for the ballot initiative because of X, Y, and Z, but on issues like the economy, immigration, inflation, which is crazy right now, I think President Trump should be president.
So basically, I guess what I'm saying is, Are President Trump's statements this week and his big statement earlier this week enough to separate himself from that issue?
We don't know.
But that's where, that's going to be the question.
Joe Biden's going to try to run as well as the ballot referendum.
Yeah, that's the point.
Just to, you know, point out, there are states where we lost votes related to abortion, where we still won other offices in the 2022 midterms.
And that's even at the direct state level.
So I think, If you just insist on Trump's statement, you just repeat Trump's statement every time it comes up at the federal level.
You say, this is what Trump said.
There is not, like the Arizona referendum, whatever way you feel about it, will have no difference on what the president does after this election.
And I think if you're very adamant on that point, you have the added advantage that you can still call out the really radical stuff that Democrats want.
Because, again, Democrats want federal funding for all of this.
They want to make it illegal for doctors to, like, not perform abortions or not be, you know, not have to learn how to do abortions.
They want all of this insane, deranged stuff.
And it is good to have the impulse to hit back on that.
But I do think the most straightforward way is every election that has the presidency on it heavily revolves around that presidential vote.
And so if you're able to say the presidential vote is not a referendum on abortion, say it over and over again.
The presidential vote is not a referendum on abortion because President Trump is not going to do this thing.
Then you actually even spread that out to other offices because how people vote on president is by far the most important.
Yes.
And of how they vote on every.
And there is a lot of evidence and data to show that in states like Arizona, people will split their tickets and they will have nuanced voting patterns down the ballot.
Right.
Well, yeah.
And.
And I agree, to the extent that his messaging that we're able to decouple this from a referendum on abortion, state by state by state, including Arizona, so that people split tickets, a good indicator of just how politically savvy, even if the pro-life groups were grumbling, Of how savvy his messaging was on this, on Eclipse Day, on Rapture Day, was that they were really quiet about it.
The biggest critique of Trump's statement on abortion was, he's lying.
We don't believe him.
Right?
That was the biggest critique.
He's lying.
It's not gonna work.
The best part is, that won't work.
A big part, one of the best advantages we have is not just that they wanna run against abortion, but that Democrats want to say Trump is a theocrat, a Christian nationalist thing.
And our best advantage is nobody is going to believe that.
Because the idea that Donald Trump is a theocrat is absurd.
Charlie, are we gonna lose any of the pro-life votes?
We could, but I mean the question is how big a number and are they really gonna go... What are they gonna do?
Vote for Kennedy?
Go third party?
I mean... That's what's so insane about all of this.
I'll read you a text from a pastor and it's just the way it is.
I think they'll calm down, but he says...
In good faith, I cannot get me or my congregation, this is a battleground state pastor, me, in good faith, I will not or my, get my congregation to vote for Trump as long as he continues to say that Arizona and these other states need to change their abortion laws.
Full ban on abortion, zero compromise, end of story.
Yeah, it's almost, yeah, go ahead Jack.
I was just going to say, what's interesting about this, and Blake, you hit on the same thing I was thinking about, was that this really is, and what this law does is it provides a kind of, the original law, so the pre-Civil War law that just kicked in in Arizona, this is like the Joy Reid version of what she says the Republican Party today represents, and what the conservative movement today represents.
This is the Christian nationalism thing, right?
Because if you watch Joy Reid, she claims as though, and this is something, it's amazing that the left always does this, and it goes back to like their version of Marxism, is that, you know, they always claim that the right is totally in power, that, you know, it isn't that the left has been in power since the 1960s.
No, no, no, it's the right is in power, and they're gonna impose the, what's that show?
The Handmaiden's Tale is gonna be imposed if we don't fight harder, and that it's just behind every corner, it's right around every tree, And normally it's just kind of silly because it never gains any traction because anyone in the real world can see that Trump just isn't like that.
He's not a theocrat.
But what this law does is it gives them something to point at tangibly in the real world that actually feeds into their conspiracy theory about the Christian theocracy that is waiting in the wings to take over the country.
That's exactly why they love this thing so much and why they're satiating over it.
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OK, next topic, guys.
Next topic is.
So this is a video that's been seen.
Last I checked, about 13 million times It's, uh, Tucker Carlson responding.
He's, uh, has a new video out about the, uh, the war in Gaza where he interviews a Lutheran pastor.
I guess they have those in Palestine.
But he interviews a Lutheran pastor about the situation for Christians in the Holy Land.
To get a sense of the tone, how about we play number 94?
In October, a Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip was hit by an airstrike.
We're showing the video now.
The church is in ruins.
At least 17 people were killed that day.
And again, that was hardly the first time that fighting in that region killed Christians.
You'll remember the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem almost 20 years ago.
Where a clergyman was killed in the church with American weapons and Christian clergy in our country said nothing.
And you may be asking yourself, well, wait a second, if Christian leaders won't stand up for the lives of Christians, why have them in the first place?
And that's probably a good question.
So you would think that in Congress, where there are many self-professed Christians, somebody might be piping up on behalf of their brethren in the Holy Land, but no.
Just the opposite, in fact.
For example, at a town hall event last month, Michigan Congressman Tim Walberg, a former evangelical pastor, said he would like to see the region treated like Hiroshima was treated.
Watch this.
We shouldn't be spending a dime on the humanitarian aid.
It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Get over it quick.
The same should be in Ukraine.
If you watch this whole video, it's about 42 minutes long, but the tone of the video from Tucker, who's been, you know, probably the most popular voice on the right for, you know, the pundit voice on the right for five years now, five, six, seven years now, is it's very, very critical of the Israeli government and essentially very sympathetic
to the Palestinian side, he asks a lot of questions where you can just tell by Tucker's tenor and such that he's very critical of the way Christian lawmakers in the United States support Israel and their approach to the entire thing.
So it obviously plays into what we've been discussing over the last few months, that there is this very clear shift happening on the right, on the unity of the right's support of Israel, and how they feel about it in general.
And I guess it stood out to me as a little bit jarring.
It's hard to imagine that we got to this point where to just, you know, three four years ago with all the discussion of them moving the embassy to jerusalem and all of that yeah i can sell clips from the interview yeah do we let's play another clip i haven't watched the whole thing yet okay uh let's do a clip 90.
how free are christians to practice christianity in israel we cannot deny that there are many freedoms in in in the state of israel yes but it's not as free as people think the Do you know that evangelicals as churches are not officially recognized in Israel?
Not recognized by the government of Israel?
By the government of Israel.
Evangelism is illegal in Israel.
Wait, I'm sorry, may I ask you to stop there?
What does that mean, evangelism is illegal in Israel?
It's against the law to evangelize in Israel.
Yeah, I don't really know what he means by that.
I mean, I've been to churches in Israel.
I feel like I've evangelized in Israel.
Yeah.
It's a complicated thing.
So this is what caused a lot of, obviously, back and forth.
That's a very broad statement.
It is a very broad statement.
So, you will sometimes see it said by people of a certain persuasion.
They will say, Christian missionary activity in Israel is illegal.
And this is not true.
You are allowed to convert to Christianity in Israel.
You are allowed to promote Christianity in Israel.
Now, what is also true is, one, Israel obviously, unlike us, has control of its borders.
And there is a history of them being, they don't like to let in people that they think are just going to be proselytizing in Israel.
They find it annoying for people to do that.
And a lot of activist groups in Israel dislike it.
A few years ago, there was a push This is true in a technical sense.
Israel sort of has denominations that it officially recognizes as churches.
This matters a lot because, for example, marriages in Israel are handled through religious bodies.
I look into this and this is true in a technical sense.
Israel sort of has denominations that it officially recognizes as churches.
This matters a lot because for example, marriages in Israel are handled through religious bodies.
They don't have civil marriage in Israel.
So they recognize 10 Christian churches in Israel, like Catholic church, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, a few others.
And they don't have an evangelical church that they recognize.
That said, you are allowed to be an evangelical in Israel, and you are allowed to practice it in whatever manner you wish.
But it is true that it is not recognized the same way that other faith groups are.
in Israel, and that's kind of what stands out in this interview, is there's a mix of stuff that is true with stuff that is exaggerated and I think can be maliciously reframed, and often is, by people who dislike Israel for a million other reasons.
Yeah, I mean, but I've been to evangelical churches in Israel.
Yeah, me too.
The Jerusalem Baptist Church, not to mention, you know, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, so...
And let's be honest, Israel knows who their allies are in the States.
Well, but let's just also, what I don't like about that clip, I don't know that guy that was saying, if you're a 20 year old serious Christian, you've never been to Israel, watching that clip, you think Israel's hostile to Christians.
My personal experience is the opposite.
I got, like, convoys and treated really well.
They know who their allies are in the states.
They know that evangelicals are their number one.
What Blake has said is also true, though, is that there is a fear that there could be a major come to Jesus.
Well, they're a Jewish state.
They see themselves as a Jewish state, so they see that as a threat.
But, you know, Torah-observant, Bible-believing Jews, Old Testament, are some of the easiest converts to Christianity.
And there is, and I don't know, you have to fact-check me on this, but there is something called the Forbidden Verse, which is Isaiah 53, which is, I don't know if it's illegal, but it's really not, you're not supposed to share it very much, which is like the gateway to Christianity, because it is the most accurate...
What does it say, Charlie?
It's, uh, you're by his stripes.
Whoa, whoa, Charlie, come on!
You gotta, you can't just leave us hanging, man.
You were pierced by your transgressions out of a root, a root out of dry ground you came.
Um, it basically tells the entire, from incarnation to the passion to the ministry.
He grew up before the, uh, before him, like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground he He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain.
Like one whom people hide their faces, he was despised and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our sufferings, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted, but he was pierced For our transgressions and he was crushed for our iniquities.
The punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we are healed.
Let's go!
And it says here, there's a website called 1israel.org, 1 for Israel, Israel 53, the forbidden chapter.
In fact, there's a YouTube channel that I used to watch of messianic Jews that would walk around the streets of Israel and approach Jews and ask them, do you know about Isaiah 53?
And it's a very successful way to spread the gospel.
You know they know this for sure.
Of course, and so what Blake is saying is true, but it's also this guy that went on Tucker's show, it's a complete misrepresentation of the reality of Israel.
Jack?
Well, I'll just throw out two.
One is a point, and then a question for Charlie.
You know, and just in case there's anyone listening to us that isn't aware of this, Um, which I always try to think of, like, the guy in the back who has no idea about the subject material.
Isaiah is not part of what you would consider the Christian Bible.
Isaiah is part of the Old Testament.
What Christians consider the Old Testament.
Well, it's the New Testament or the Old Testament.
It's all the Christian Bible.
But yeah, I know, you're right.
Old Testament versus New Testament.
It's part of the Tanakh.
What Jews would consider the Christian Bible.
Correct.
Correct.
That's what I'm saying.
So, but Charlie, this is what I wanted to ask you, though.
When you say, you know, Torah-believing Jews are some of the most likely to convert.
Why is that?
Well, it's because Jesus is a fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecy.
And they're waiting for the Messiah, and many Bible-believing, Torah-observant, Tanakh-understanding Jews actually have never read the New Testament Scriptures.
And when they do, I've actually been able, the Holy Spirit led him to Jesus, but I've seen a Jew become a Messianic Christian.
I don't know if you ever have, Andrew.
It's an amazing thing.
I know a bunch of Messianic Jews.
When they tell you the story, when they first read Matthew or John, which are the two best Gospels, they start crying.
Well, I can't say best.
No, best Gospels for Jews.
Oh, I see, I see.
Matthew is the Jewish Gospel.
I was like, I like them all.
No, no, no, but Matthew is the Jewish Gospel.
100%, you're 100% right on that.
But guys, this whole 53 just keeps going.
Look at all of these prophecies that it touched.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.
That's a prophecy right there.
Remember, this was written 1,500 years before Jesus.
Yeah, he was led by the lamb before the slaughter.
You know, yet who of his generation protested?
Oh, he was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, right?
Was it Nicodemus?
Yeah, I mean like there's so much stuff here.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin.
There you go, an offering for sin.
Exactly.
So Isaiah 53 is like the nuclear bomb chapter.
I don't know if you could find any phrase that better sums up Christianity.
The actual miracle of the resurrection, the miracle of the atonement, the miracle of Calvary.
All of it, right?
That sentence right there.
And it's found in Isaiah.
People need to understand that.
So if I would have had this guy on my show, I would have asked him, whatever his name is, I would have said, hey, like, why didn't you mention that Bethlehem is largely controlled by the Palestinian Authority?
So this was brought up a lot, and I don't think it's the own a lot of people did, because at least in the interview with Tucker, he's not saying like, oh, we face a lot of oppression in our day-to-day religious life.
In Bethlehem with the implication that Israel's behind that.
What he does talk about is, he talks about the difficulty in going to Christian holy sites because obviously Israel, again, they control their borders.
So they control, they have the barrier with West Bank.
There's not a lot of free movement across that barrier.
You need an individual permit to do it.
So there's a lot of complaints about that, that they can't go to East Jerusalem easily because Israel's basically annexed that part of it.
So he talks about stuff like that.
He talks about the impact of the war.
He talks about financial support for Israel by Christian churches and the comparative, in his view, lack of support for Christian sites.
Tucker actually complains, I don't think we have that as a clip, but Tucker complains in the interview about seeing, I think, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and how shabby it is that he thinks a lot of the Christian churches in Israel kind of look like dumps and that You know, he's upset that Christians don't seem to fret about that in comparison to other things that they financially support.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is from the 300 A.D.
It's about a thousand years old.
No, it's 1700 years old.
But the current building is about a thousand years old.
And has nothing to do, necessarily, with the government.
It's actually because, and I know this, Constantine, it used to be the Temple of Venus.
Any tension?
The current building is about 1,000 years old.
There's been a church there for 1,700 years.
It's quite old, but the issue there is it's because it's basically joint controlled by a variety of churches.
So the Orthodox, the Roman Catholics.
That's correct, they shift.
And so it shifts, it shifts who's in control of a certain time.
So basically, and this is an issue with a number of the holy sites, Where, yes, it's under the Israeli government, but it actually has more to do with an issue between the churches, people arguing over how it should be, you know, done, who should pay for it, all sorts of different things.
You know, not to mention the various arguments between, you know, the Catholics and Orthodox.
Believe me, you want, you know, you want to get into that.
But so, it really is a management issue because it's shared jointly between these organizations.
Go ahead.
that have so much differences of opinion.
I specifically asked that question when I was there.
It's not like, no, I agree.
Like I wish that it was in better upkeep for sure.
I certainly agree with that.
But I don't know that you can lay the blame for that specifically on like just the Israeli government.
There's a whole ton of issues there.
- Let me just say- - Just because- - Go ahead. - Just because we've said his name and we haven't, the name of the guy that Tucker interviews is Munther Isaac.
And so I just wanted to get that out there Because we've always said we don't know his name, but He is an evangelical Lutheran pastor.
So I think he grew up Orthodox.
There's not really a lot of Lutherans native to Palestine.
Yeah.
How's religious liberty in Jordan for Christians?
Like not great.
Okay.
It's fine, but there's always, there's always this element about it.
You know, Christians in Egypt.
There are millions of Christians in Egypt.
The Coptics.
They're not treated well.
They face a harder time and more danger than Christians do in Israel.
They're not treated well.
So I want to just say this.
I had a lot of people text me about this, really upset about this interview, really fired up about it.
A lot of pro-Israel folks.
And my response is the same as, look, you know I like Israel.
I've had a great time there.
But you guys have to understand, you're losing the American people.
Right, Andrew?
But I'm not getting through to people when I say that, and the Israel strategy is kind of like, we're white-knuckling, we don't care, I guess.
It's using a lot of, like, coercive force, is I think the way it feels like, right?
Like, the ADL up to its own tricks, but now they feel like the conservatives and the liberal Jews are kind of bound together after October 7th, but yeah, I agree.
I mean, there's no getting around the fact that as you go from older to younger, the support for Israel wanes, right?
I personally watched some of these clips.
I did not watch the full thing, didn't have time, but I've watched a number of the clips now just before the show.
And a lot of the issues I bring up, I actually have a lot of sympathy for Israel's perspective, right?
If I was not a Christian, and there was all these Christians that wanted to come visit the holy sites that were in my land, and I was the one Jewish nation on planet Earth, I'd keep a live eye on if they were trying to convert everybody.
Now, as a Christian, I think it's pretty great.
Like, I hope a bunch of Jews become Christians.
I think that'd be great, but I certainly understand their position of being watchful of it.
Even this Lutheran, evangelical Lutheran pastor, You have to assume everybody on that side of the border wants you dead.
That's on them.
And so, yeah, if you could just fake being a Christian and then you get through, imagine how many Christians would all of a sudden appear out of thin air on the Jordan side, right?
In the West Bank.
So I have a lot of sympathy for Israel, even as I'm hearing this, but Charlie, you're totally right.
In general, this is a larger cultural movement, and It makes me sad, to your point, Blake.
I think a lot of people are using other grievances they have against Israel, and they're attaching it to some of this stuff.
Whether or not you could have a really reasonable conversation and understand where Israel's coming from.
They're attaching other grievances, they're reading into it what they already think about Israel, and I think it's more endemic of the drift that we've seen even in some conservative circles.
Jack, really quick, then I gotta talk about coffee.
Jack, really quick, yeah.
Yeah, no, I'll just throw out there that, you know, this has been one of those things where I think in the social media era, people are getting more information and direct information from battlefields and from places that, you know, a lot of times in the past they thought had been kind of settled, but then all of a sudden you'll get something like, you know, a guy, a congressman, former congressman, Justin Amash, right?
So he's Palestinian, but he's, I believe, Coptic.
So his family is Christian and his family, as far as I know, was associated with one of these churches that was hit in a strike that was caught in the crossfire.
And one of these things, he had someone who was like in his extended family was killed in this.
And so the power of that kind of thing going out on social media is 10 times more powerful than anything anyone has ever considered before from this area.
Because usually they just hear like, oh, you know, Israel good, Palestinians bad.
And so I think the impact of that to what you guys are saying is something that completely hasn't been addressed and there's so many blanket you know throwing out labels there of oh you're anti-semitic if you criticize this oh you're anti-semitic if you bring this up and it's like well wait you know people didn't even know that there were christians in gaza to begin with and i think that's where the issue comes from it's
It's been so detrimental, I will say, a lot of the overreaction, like, you know, Charlie, you've been called anti-Semitic in this, which is, which, if you know Charlie Kirk for seven, I've been working with Charlie for, I guess, seven years now, you are the most, You send 150 kids to Israel every year.
I honor the Shabbat.
I read the Torah in Hebrew.
All our campuses through Turnpike USA have activism kits.
The crazy thing is, the fact that they would dare Serious people on the internet, or at least formerly considered serious people.
Let me go even further.
There was an article in the Washington Times that said I must be displaced as CEO of Turning Point USA.
I'm not kidding.
I'm a threat to Jewry around the world.
The damage that this has done, now I want to at least extend an olive branch that October 7th is extremely Well, I've been resolutely pro-Israel, despite the names they're calling me.
But some of the weird overreaction and stuff that we've all observed, if you're not Jewish, I think we have to try our best to say, listen, what they went through was existential to them, and so there are going to be reactions that don't necessarily make logical sense, they're only emotional.
So I'm trying to give room for that, but the fact that somebody like Charlie Kirk could be called an anti-Semite Jack, to your point, I'm just saying, this has been so detrimental to their ability to consolidate support in traditional places where they've had it for years.
I've said this story publicly, and Andrew, you just kind of mentioned it.
When you talk about sending kids to Israel, Charlie came to me a couple of years back and said, hey, we're doing this Israel trip.
Do you want to go?
And I said, you know, I'd love to.
But as a matter of fact, Charlie, I would love if I could get my family to come along.
Charlie said, don't even worry about it.
They'll all be taken care of and sent my entire family to go and visit the Holy Land.
It was it was the trip of our lives.
My family still talks about it.
And, you know, it was something where he didn't even ask for anything in return.
Well thank you, that touches me Jack.
To send people to the Holy Land is one of the greatest things I believe we can do.
I just want to read this quote.
In addition to that, this guy Jeffrey Shapiro writes, Mr. Kirk should resign or be removed as head of Turning Point USA or the right will and should suffer the consequences of its inaction.
Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a former Washington prosecutor who served on the Board of Advisors and he literally was a former DOJ prosecutor and he's like pseudo-threatening me in this Washington Times piece.
Remember the reason for them calling you an anti-Semi Charlie is because you asked why the intelligence failed in the first place.
You can't do that.
But, like, that's it!
That's it!
And this is where— I made an astute observation.
We still don't have an answer to that.
No, remember, they ended up firing somebody there, like, two weeks later.
No, not only that.
We have, like, tons of articles that show that they did have, like, a name for the potential breaking of the wall.
But they didn't take it seriously enough.
And we're not—we're not ascribing— Oh, remember the New York Times came out with John Harvey?
Yes, there was an analyst.
There was an analyst who had the data.
No, we're not ascribing motivations or intentions.
We're analyzing a fact pattern that doesn't click.
Yeah.
If you're upset at the U.S.
government for letting 9-11 happen, does that make you anti-American?
Do you know who said he loved what I said?
Dennis Prager.
He said, Charlie, you were spot on with what you said.
Yeah.
Well, love Dennis.
The best line from this Washington Times piece, because I just found it, some might say Mr. Kirk's comments demonstrate ignorance, but he may just lack a conscience or be evil.
Literally.
It's so ridiculous.
In retrospect, it's terrible.
When pro-Israel people say, why are we losing the debate?
I'm like, because Jeffrey Scott Shapiro went out and attacked, correct me if I'm wrong, Jack, out of all the major conservative Christian social media influencers, I think I'm one of the largest pro-Israel voices out there.
That's non-Jewish.
Here's another.
Ben Dominich tweeted, if Charlie Kirk remains the head of TPUSA, The right has an anti-Semite problem that will follow them into the coming elections.
What a dumb person.
What an absolute idiot.
He's either paid or he's mentally, like, unfit to drive a automobile.
Like, that's how, like, insanely dumb that person who you just mentioned is.
Like, I am so viscerally annoyed by that person.
All right.
Oh, so we have two options here.
We can approach this.
We have the OnlyFans Influencer going Christian, or we have who's responsible for breaking marriage in response to your discussion.
I kind of want to go marriage.
All righty.
All righty.
So I'll set the stage on this.
Last week, you, Charlie Kirk, the anti-Semite who's going to destroy us all in the elections, had some comments on marriage.
Women contacting you wanting to find husbands and you say, You know, like, uh, you might have waited too long.
Can we clarify something?
Yeah, can we clarify something?
One of the things that bothered me about this story was Charlie's, the direct quote, and sorry, if the audience, maybe you need to be caught up.
Jack, fill in the gaps where I missed this.
You're good at that.
But Charlie was talking at a church, and he asked about this, and he said, the direct quote was, if you wait to get married until you're in your 30s, to the females, You are, quote, less attractive in the dating pool.
You did not say they were less attractive.
There's many, many women in their 30s that are absolutely beautiful, okay?
That's not what you were saying.
You're saying there is a smaller pool, there's less options, they're also for men that want to have kids, you know, that kind of thing.
I mean, I'm not saying it was the most delicate framing of that sentence, but just to be You know, very precise about that.
You were not calling people ugly, okay?
No, I wasn't.
No, I was saying, again, you said it fine, so I don't need to add anything to it.
Yeah, go ahead.
Alright.
Go ahead, Blake.
I just had to... This, of course... I'm fired up still from the last thing.
This started, you know, Charlie's, you know, once-a-month instance of being, like, the number one conversation driver in America, and then this provoked a response to an article that I read, and then we had a bit of discussion before the show, So, there's a writer, Scott Greer, we've talked about the Greer Head Pledge before, like should we not watch?
Or listen to rap, or get tattoos, or watch the NFL, all of that.
But he had an article where he titled it, Stop Blaming Men for the Marriage Crisis.
And I'm gonna read a quote from it, which I think you guys can put on screen.
He says, Charlie Kirk upset a lot of women last week.
In a discussion on unmarried women preferring Democrats, he said, ladies in their 30s are, this is Greer's wording, past their prime and struggle to find a husband.
This is obviously true, but impolite to say.
Kirk's statement naturally inspired outrage among liberals as well as among conservatives.
That shouldn't surprise anyone.
Kirk's opinion runs counter to the prevailing conservative narrative about the decline of marriage.
Conservatives say that it's men's fault and we need to do more to shame males into stepping up.
But this male-focused answer isn't correct.
I won't read the whole article, but what he gets into is he argues, he cites Senator Josh Hawley, who we've talked to quite a bit, where you have this very male-focused thing that men need to get better jobs, stop playing video games, stop watching porn, stop doing all these destructive things.
Get improved and then marry women have families.
And what he argues is the reason marriage is in decline is mostly women driven.
That they are encouraged to focus on their careers, to delay looking for a husband, and then they're fed a bunch of excuses afterwards that like, you know, it's the entire world that's wrong.
You didn't screw up if you wait too long and you're in your 30s and you're not able to get married.
And so our debate Which we're gonna have here is, who broke marriage?
Men or women?
It has to be all one or all the other.
It can't be that both of them have some responsibility.
I mean, I think it's both.
I think what Greer is pinpointing, what I was saying is that men get all the blame and you're not even allowed to mention anything that women could do differently.
And I think that's totally fair, is that are there decisions and cultural norms and habits that women, specifically women in their 20s, are doing that make marriage rates go down and You know, make it less likely for families to be... Well, I think that was evident in the reaction to that clip, which, you know, it was... How was the reaction, Andrew?
I don't know.
It was basically... Actually, I will say... A ton of people... I would actually say what I was looking at, more people were defending it, but there was a couple of loud voices that were getting upset about it.
Plus, there was the whole birth control piece of it, which I think is like, you know, it's like a sacred cow for There's a ton of evidence behind that.
I think a lot of people just think that women should be the one that are talking about it, and it's like, well, you know, how do you expect us, A, to know that that's the rule, and B, why can't we be supportive?
I have a platform, I'm talking about a topic.
Anything where they say only men or only women can talk about it is like BS.
So it's ridiculous.
Unless it's like a sensory phenomenon.
Like, what does it feel like to give birth?
Okay, men shouldn't weigh in on that.
Of course, I agree.
Any moral issue, any societal issue, everyone can weigh in.
I've not really read too much of Scott Greer's stuff.
I did read this before the show.
I like You know, first of all, let me say, I actually endorse Senator Hawley.
I think men respond well to being called up.
I think you have to call men up.
And called out.
And called out.
But called higher, right?
And to be better.
I know that the biggest leaps and improvements I've made in my life is when I encounter somebody that challenges me to do more, to be better, to be stronger.
And so I think that's just a part of the male experience.
But I do think it is weird, and he did call this out, that it's basically we've created a culture, especially on the right, where it's okay to call men out.
We could belittle men all we want, but you can't do that with women.
And I think that part of that might just be because women receive criticism differently.
Emotionally, there's a different process that they tend to go through.
But it's a fair critique of the whole thing, because what we're essentially doing, if you look at pop culture in Hollywood, Jack, I know you will agree with me on this.
A lot of people have pointed out that fathers in Hollywood over the years have become dumber and basically just shallow husks of the previous great fathers from the 50s and 60s, right?
Now we have Homer Simpson, right?
So what the conservative movement is essentially doing is we're just mimicking the larger culture that we're trying to impact, or at least ostensibly trying to impact.
And we're just putting all the blame at the men.
And I think that's ultimately why that clip created a conversation is because you broke that rule.
You put some of the blame at women, and saying you should prioritize marriage more than your career, and don't take birth control if it's gonna delay those really, really important life decisions and your future happiness.
Go ahead.
Sorry, Jack.
No, no, I actually, so like, I agree and disagree with you, right?
And not that I disagree with anything that you say, I just mean in terms of, yes, it's true that women do need to uphold their fair share of this and they need to take their fair share of lumps the same way that men have taken their fair share of lumps and how many shows have we done talking about the decline of masculinity in america i think it's probably if you went through like thought crime topics it's probably our our number one or at least top five but those don't go viral jack why don't they go viral yeah funny enough
but the minute you but here's what i will say though the other piece of this is that the reason and this kind of answers charlie's question the reason that you got so much flack for those comments specifically charlie even though there are lots of women who agree 100 with what you said is that what you're really seeing is a power play you're going to
You're seeing a power play whereby in these comments are valid if women make them, if these are choices that women make, because women are the ones that are allowed to make Men are only allowed to affirm the decisions of the women that have been made.
This is where people missed even greater.
I was talking to parents.
I was saying parents do not allow your daughters to get on this.
So I'm not allowed to give advice to parents?
And specifically Christian parents.
Which by the way, speaking as a Catholic, not exactly a radical position to take.
for, you know, religious Christians to be against birth control.
It's a pretty standard topic for us.
And I would say that most people that are on birth control, they don't know all the risks.
They don't know all of the costs associated.
So, yeah, I mean, it's on both.
But the way the dating conversation is presented, especially when I talk to young women, I say, are you happy with the pool of young men out there?
They say, oh no, they're terrible, they're self-interested, they have no ambition.
Of course.
I say, are you guys doing everything perfectly?
They say, well, we have our act together and we're not to blame for this.
There's an incredible amount of pride that young ladies have.
I'm surprised that that's been your experience.
I have never asked that question, so I'm going off of your take.
I find that shocking.
Where, maybe I'm wrong, there's a major manosphere self-improvement movement.
Oh man, it's a whole industry.
Is there a female sphere self-improvement industry?
I just don't think it's as developed yet.
It's coming, it's nascent.
It exists, and some of it's really weird.
Like you can find, you know, there's like a subreddit called...
There's a subreddit called Female Dating Strategy, and it's extremely mentally ill if you read it, so I would not recommend checking it out.
It has to mature.
Female Dating Strategy, be a woman.
But it's an interesting question, you know, like, one thing the article I mentioned earlier highlights is another article by Brad Wilcox, and it's titled, from the Institute for Family Studies, And it's titled, Where Have All the Good Men Gone?
And that's kind of, that's often the framing that is popular if people want to blame men for the decline in marriage, that men are in decline, good men are not available.
And there's some merit to this.
You know, if you go to a college campus, most of the students at most campuses now, Are women.
Most of the people who finish are going to be women.
The number of men, the number of people who are falling into like disastrous lives where they're not really fit to marry anyone, that's going to be more men than women.
They're the ones who live at home, don't have any job, aren't in education, are doing nothing with their lives, are just addicted to games or porn or nothing in particular.
And I do think that fixing that problem, I lean towards it being a male thing, just in that I think women naturally do follow men and look towards men.
And so if men are a disaster, a lot of things flow out of that.
And if you are making men a higher quality group of people across the board, that will spread throughout society.
But I could be wrong in that.
You could easily flip it the other way.
Sorry, sorry Blake, go ahead.
If women were more, you know, if you had a social change of women more concertedly encouraging like traditional morality, don't sleep with men as often, and you know kind of shun people who do it too easily, then that would also encourage marriage.
That would encourage commitment.
What you very much have is, you have the consequence of high individualism and basically Anarchy in terms of personal decision making and so no one has held to account for bad behavior basically and that's going to encourage lots of bad behavior.
So, I agree with you.
I believe that the most direct route from fixing this solution is to create higher quality men.
I do.
I actually do.
Because in some respects, the whole debate that was sparked was a tacit acknowledgment that men hold an immense amount of sway.
Because it was all sort of like, why are the men hijacking this conversation?
Well, okay.
Because it was an acknowledgment that That power exists.
So I do believe that if men become high quality, become worth following, endeavor to be men worthy of leading a family and being in a marriage relationship, obviously, that women will follow suit.
But I also do think, as somebody who's married to a woman that is a conservative woman and she celebrates my masculinity, that's an important part of this discussion.
Women need to Obviously, need to give space for men to be men.
And I don't think that exists in enough measure in our current culture.
I have one.
Yeah, go ahead.
Super quick.
Super quick point.
Men have to be able to say no.
Men have to be able to be in a relationship with a woman and say no.
Whoever came up with that phrase, happy wife, happy life, is an idiot.
And men need to stop believing that that is the only thing.
And the most masculine word in the English language is the word no.
Men being able to say no to women may be the one thing that saves Western society.
I mean, happy wife, happy life.
I agree with you, but it's totally fine to use that as a little bit of a thing.
It's okay.
Jack, are you saying it's really unhappy wife, happy wife?
Unhappy wife, happy life?
Yeah, that would be the character.
I don't think I can agree with that as a married man here, but maybe Jack.
No, the reason is because people take that to mean do whatever your wife says at all times, never push back, never stand up for yourself, always be a pushover for whatever she wants to say yes to, which is wrong.
I completely agree.
But this is the issue, that it makes men like, oh, whatever you want, honey bear!
