Andrew Klavan contrasts Canada’s negotiated independence with America’s revolutionary tradition, arguing the latter preserved global freedom by defeating Nazism and opposing Soviet expansion. He credits Washington’s constitutional restraint over Wilson, Schumer, or Obama’s overreach, warning China’s rise may lack America’s moral foundations—property rights, rule of law, free media—without which markets fail. Klavan criticizes leftist bigotry toward cultural values, citing UK police inaction against Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, and feminism’s rejection of gender distinctions, while praising Trump’s 2017–2019 economic growth (3.8% unemployment, GDP expansion) and judicial/military strength despite media demonization. Ultimately, he frames America’s prosperity as a cultural triumph rooted in enduring civic principles. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Happy Independence Day, why Canadians love America.
It's July 4th and you're watching the Ezra Levant Show.
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There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government of why I'm publishing is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Welcome back.
Well, it's the 4th of July, which is a very special day.
It's not just a national day.
It's a day of independence, which has a certain meaning, a revolutionary day here in Canada.
We sort of haggled and negotiated our way into independence, and it shows in our motto, Peace, Order, and Good Government, that's very Canadian.
The United States, well, they're all fireworks and guns, and God bless them.
It's what's kept the world as free as it has been and fought for freedom even in the darkest hours.
Joining us now for this special 4th of July holiday show is our friend Andrew Clavin.
He's the host of the Andrew Clavin Show on the Daily Wire and he's the author of the book, The Great Good Thing.
Andrew, it's great to have you back on the show.
I remember last time we had a big sit-down.
It was over Christmas and we talked all about your journey, your political journey, even your religious journey.
Today I'd like to talk a little bit more about America.
And we're Canadians mainly up here, but we have an affection for America.
I think a lot of people around the world do.
Why do you think that is?
Well, for one thing, there is actually not a single person walking the earth who is a free man politically or free woman politically who does not at least owe some small debt of gratitude to the United States of America, to the people who have fought to keep the world safe from Nazism, to the people who stood up to the Soviet Union and brought them down, to the people who, if left to their own devices, actually couldn't defend themselves,
but are not under attack because anybody who attacks them knows that they would be messing with the United States.
So this is a country that not only put the idea of a new kind of freedom into the air in 1776, but also has maintained that freedom as it has spread through the world.
I mean, the world is becoming a freer place, and a lot of that freedom can be traced back to July 4th, 1776, when a bunch of very, very brave men put their lives and honor on the line to say, no, we want to be free and we want to construct a government that works from the bottom up instead of from the top down.
You know, not too far away from July 4th, 1776 was the French Revolution and its echoes and liberté, egalité, fraternité.
And why is it that the American Revolution took the path it did?
It didn't lapse back into a monarchy.
It didn't lapse into the horrors that we saw.
Can you tell me the difference morally between the U.S. Revolution and the French Revolution?
And I mean, on the other hand, what does America owe to the French thinkers and to the British thinkers?
Well, you know, I mean, that's a complex question, but for one thing, one of the most important things about the American Revolution was it wasn't a radical break with the past.
It was actually carrying on the tradition of the past into the next level.
It was people who said, you know, you have deprived us of our rights as Englishmen by taxing us without representation.
We want those rights back and we want to construct a government that will be protected, where the people will be protected from that ever happening again.
The French Revolution got caught up in a romantic abstraction of what human beings could be.
There was this underlying idea that if you stripped away society, if you stripped away history, if you stripped away culture, man would be born free.
As Rousseau said, man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.
But what the founders of America understood was no, it was actually an accretion, a collection of tradition, custom, culture that had led us to this freedom and would lead us on to the next freedom.
So they didn't break the bonds with the past.
They didn't break the bonds with humanity.
They didn't break the bonds with culture.
They simply wanted to extend them to the next phase using, as you say, a lot of the thinking that had been going on in the 18th century.
The French made the terrible, terrible mistake of thinking that human beings are naturally good and it's culture that makes them bad.
The left makes this same mistake.
Right now, as you and I are speaking, they are making that same mistake.
What the Americans understood was that no, mankind is greedy, it loves men, love power, they love wealth, and what they tried to do is create a system in which each person's desire to do better would somehow lead to everyone doing better.
And right this, as we sit here, the United States Constitution is the longest-lasting Constitution in human history, and that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
You know, I know that a lot of the things we believe in in Canada, the Magna Carta, free speech, America believes in them, maybe even more than Canada.
We still have the Queen on our passport and our stamps and our currency.
How is it that Americans kept the freedom stuff, kept the heritage going back 800 years to the Magna Carta, but dispensed with two key British ideas.
One is the idea of royalty, and the other, the idea of empire, the British empire that colonized the world.
Rudyard Kipling called it the white man's burden to help liberate the world.
Is America actually an empire?
And is there actually a bit of royalty creeping into the presidency?
Or are you guys, have you abandoned those truly?
Well, all good questions.
I mean, nothing, you cannot look at the history of America without looking at George Washington.
You know, when you go back and look at this man and read about him, he is a man of true virtue, which is not often the case with most people and almost never the case with great men.
He is one of the few truly great and good men who ever lived.
And he was so dedicated.
Look, you know, he set aside a kingdom.
He was given a kingdom.
At the end of the Revolutionary War, he was the head of the army.
He was beloved of the people.
And instead of saying, okay, now I rule this place, he went to the civil authorities and in a big ceremony that he meant to show the people what was going on, he handed over his sword, he resigned his commission, and he left town.
And King George in England said, if he does that, he will be the greatest man, one of the greatest men of the age.
I can't remember the exact quote, but that, it was his doing that and his stepping down after his second term in office, which set the standard for all presidents afterward.
I mean, ultimately, after FDR served four terms, we had to put it into law.
But until that time, it was simply the power of George Washington who kept presidents from being king, who kept the president from overtaking the legislature, who kept the president from becoming overblown.
And really, it was until Woodrow Wilson started, the progressive Woodrow Wilson, the anti-constitutional Woodrow Wilson, started to say, well, the president should be as strong as he wants to be, that that tide that George Washington started has started to turn.
And now we actually have clowns like Chuck Schumer in the Senate begging Donald Trump to make law and Barack Obama bragging that he could make law essentially with a pen and a phone.
Instead of saying no, the lawmakers make the law, the executive executes the law, and the judges rule between them, which is the way it was supposed to be.
So that really is, George Washington really takes the credit for keeping us from having a king.
They would have crowned him king.
They would have gladly made him king.
They would have gladly made the presidency a kingly office, but Washington stopped them because of his virtue, because he was a virtuous man.
And that is an amazing thing that that can happen in history.
And it really does feel like the presence of God was there to give us that, to give humanity that moment and that man at that moment.
It's an amazing, amazing thing and can't be sold short.
As for empire, one of the other things about the people, we're talking about their links to the past.
The founders were steeped in classical literature and classical philosophy and classical wisdom.
And a lot of the people that they loved, like Montesquieu and John Locke, were steeped also in the Bible and also in classical learning.
And if there's one thing that the classics will teach you, is that empire is its own gravedigger, you know, that you spread and you spread until finally you can't spread any further.
Kinds of People and Freedom00:10:06
You can't hold the world on your shoulders.
And they were very, very cognizant of that.
Washington was very cognizant of avoiding foreign entanglements.
And that became sort of, it's not isolationism.
It was the fact that we had these oceans.
They kind of defined our continent.
And once we had spread out to take over this part of the continent, that was it.
That was the end of it.
There's always this talk about the American empire.
But if there's an American empire, it is a cultural empire, an empire of thought.
And that is a very, very different thing, both morally and practically.
You know, whenever I lived in England for a long time and the English would huff and puff and say, well, you're really an empire.
And I would say, you will know we're an empire when the prime minister is one of us.
You know, as long as you're electing your own prime minister, we ain't an empire.
We are a powerful friend.
And I think that we have remained that so long.
You know, will it continue?
Very little in life lasts forever.
This country has lasted quite a long time as it is.
And so I cross my fingers in hope.
There was a moment when the Berlin Wall fell and everything seemed almost, I mean, it was coming to the close of the millennium.
There was a messianic hope that maybe we were beyond history.
There was that famous book by Francis Fukuyama to that effect.
But it's easier to copy certain outward affectations of Americanism, drinking Coke or Starbucks, listening to pop music, using a smartphone, than the underlying civic infrastructure.
And that's what worries me now.
When I look at China's economic growth, they equal America in many ways economically, even technologically, and that scares me.
But they do so, so far at least, without having property rights, rule of law, a man's home is his castle, an independent judiciary, lively debates amongst political parties, a free media.
And I'm worried if the outward expressions of American success can be mimicked by America's enemies.
And if that fools, I mean, I'll just stop there and let you answer.
What about those who imitate only the material successes of America without the moral success of America?
It's such a great question.
And China, of course, is the big experiment in this.
Can they have a free market without having a free people?
I got to tell you that deep in my heart, I suspect this is not going to work.
I know everybody says China's the future and it's all going to be great and it's all going to happen.
You know, I think one of two things is going to happen.
Either the political system will be reformed to make people more free, or the free market itself will collapse and their economy will collapse with it.
I think those are two things that are going to happen.
You cannot have, I do not believe that you can have ultimately free markets without having a free people.
And also, you know, freedom is, I think it's the natural law.
I think it is what people want and what they desire.
And it's not freedom to do whatever you want.
It's not freedom.
It's ordered liberty.
It's a tension between the individual's desires and the community in which he lives.
And that's what conservatism is all about.
It's trying to adjust that tension, not letting one side get too powerful, not letting the individual start to get so obsessed with himself.
that he starts to lose his connection to the greater society, his responsibility to the greater society.
It's that tension between the great society and the individual person that makes freedom work.
You know, the really interesting thing when you talk about the Berlin Wall falling down, when you talk about the collapse of communism, which collapses everywhere, socialism always lives in the garage.
It's always like an old man living in his kid's garage.
People always talk about, there's always some country they've never been to where they think socialism works.
So they'll talk about Norway or, you know, Denmark or something like that, someplace where it just seems like it's kind of more socialist than we are.
But those countries live off us in a lot of ways.
If they use cell phones, if they use cars, if they use all the things, if they don't have a military that can defend them but depend on our military to back them up, well then they're really living off our capitalism and they're living off our freedoms and their socialism is really just a stepchild of our capitalism.
What's amazing to me is that, except that I know people so well that it's not that amazing, is that capitalism has now is on the path to eliminate poverty from the third world.
Severe poverty has dropped something like 50% over the last few decades.
I mean, really over a very short period of time because of what you're talking about, property rights, free markets.
And yet, and yet we have these clowns voting for somebody like Bernie Sanders who is an open socialist while he makes a million dollars a year.
We have Venezuela right off our, you know, right off our stern.
We can look at it falling, descending into socialist destruction, and yet we still have people who think that socialism is a good thing.
We have this incredible system that preserves our freedom through a division of powers and powers set against each other, and yet we have people who want the executive to be made stronger, who think the Constitution is an outdated document.
It is amazing the power that bad ideas have with the human race.
If it weren't for original sin, I think we would all recognize now that freedom and capitalism are the ways to go.
But I think we are a broken creature, humanity, and we're always going to be sucked back into those bad ideas.
I think you, I mean, there's a whole generation that's grown up not only with the luxury of capitalism that perhaps they take for granted, the luxury of peace that perhaps we take for granted, but also the language of the social justice left.
And I'm worried about millennials who tell pollsters that they think socialism should be given a try, that they don't think free speech is important.
I'm worried about millennials, but I'm actually, because of my travels to the United Kingdom, when Tommy Robinson, the UK activist reporter, worked for us, I've learned about another threat to democracy.
And I think it's when people come en masse from a country that does not share the same moral code.
And I want to just talk about something that's a little uncomfortable.
Pakistani Muslim rape gangs in the UK.
I can't think of anything more uncomfortable.
But what's I've been thinking a lot about them because that's what's thousands and thousands of Indigenous British girls have been raped.
But it's not, when a rape happens in North America, typically it's a solitary crime of opportunity.
Someone grabs, you know, a mugger, grabs a woman in an alley.
And if you hear the cry, help, help, I'm being raped, people help.
A man who hears that will help.
Whereas I read this horrific story, and forgive me for giving you these graphic anecdotes as a setup, but I'd like your answer to it.
I read this story about a bus in Pakistan where someone was being raped in the back of the bus.
The bus driver pulled over and joined in.
And I know you're probably thinking, what the hell are we talking about, Ezra?
We're talking about America, but I'm talking about a high-trust society versus a low-trust society.
And you bring in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people from a place where if a woman is not covered in the hijab, if she's not under the custody of her guardian, brother, husband, father, whatever, she's fair game, easy meet.
And so these men work systemically in rape gangs as allies, something that's inconceivable to me as a Canadian, American, a Brit, where we have a high trust society where if we see a vulnerable person on the street, we don't think, I'm a predator, I can take advantage.
We think I owe this stranger a duty because we're all Canadian-American Brits.
What happens when you invite in millions of people who don't share your moral code or even the trust, the mutual trust that comes with being in a country for decades or centuries?
You know, so many bad ideas have to go into a tragedy like these rape gangs.
But the two that stand out, I mean, what's so shocking about this is that the police knew and did nothing.
And they did nothing, and they say this themselves.
They did nothing because they were afraid of being called bigoted or Islamophobic.
That is a bad idea.
You know, it is, listen, it is a good, e plurbus unum is a good idea to make one out of many is a good idea.
To say that, you know what, when you come to these shores, it doesn't matter where you come from, doesn't matter what color your skin is, adopt the values of the Constitution, adopt the values of the Declaration, you're an American.
Congratulations.
That's one thing, okay?
To say that.
But to say that you come here and you're an American, even if you don't hold to those values, to say that to criticize a series of ideas, which is what a religion is, to say that it's wrong or bigoted to criticize a series of ideas, is essentially to cripple the good in the face of evil.
The second bad idea and the idea that we have to criticize is the treatment of women in Islamic countries, the entire vision of women in Islamic countries.
I am an anti-feminist.
I do not believe in feminism.
Why?
Because I believe that there are two kinds of people in the world, just two.
There's only two kinds of people.
There are men and there are women.
Those are the two differences.
Those are the two different kinds of people that there are.
Everybody else falls into that range of person, no matter what color you are, no matter where you come from.
If those two kinds of people are not equally valuable, not because they're the same, which is what some feminists say, but in their differences, if they are not equally valuable, you have got a problem in the way you look at the world.
If they are not, you know, it says in the Bible, it says they are created in God's image, male and female.
And if you do not believe that, if you do not hold to that essential Western principle that these people, feminine and masculine, are of equal value in the sight of God, you have lost your way.
You have essentially written out 50% of the human race.
The other day in the Washington Post, they ran an article by a feminist saying, basically, I hate all men.
Why Did It Take a Guy Like That?00:06:56
And my feeling was, well, you've just written off 50% of the world.
You really shouldn't be writing in a newspaper.
You really shouldn't have that attitude and have that spread.
So now you have these people moving into England en masse, moving into Germany en masse, who do not respect the value of the female human, okay?
And you have a philosophy, leftism, telling authorities that if you criticize that, you are somehow a bigot.
And I just think that that is a recipe for disaster and the disaster happened.
And no wonder they had to lock Tommy Robinson up.
Once they expose that, the whole leftist system collapses.
The leftist system collapses and the anti-Western hatred collapses.
And I just think those two ideas linked together have been a disaster, and it is throat-clutchingly awful to me.
Not just that there could be rape gangs, because that could happen, but that the authorities sat and watched it happen for fear of being called bigoted.
That to me is obscene.
Well, you know, and I thank you for that answer, and it's raised five more questions in my mind, but I know you're pressed for time.
I just want to ask you about, this is the 4th of July, and we spent a lot of time talking about a different related subject, a cultural subject there.
But Donald Trump ran on an explicitly pro-American promise.
I mean, his slogan was make America great again.
He used the phrase America first.
And by many measures, he's doing it.
So I just want to ask you a partisan question because you're very philosophical.
You think a lot about the culture.
And as so many people have noted, culture is upstream from politics.
So you're not going to fix politics if there's a culture broken.
But here we are, 520 odd days into Trump's presidency.
You got unemployment at 3.8%.
You got GDP growth blazing.
You've got possible peace with North Korea.
You've got energy production at new records.
America is exporting energy.
If you care about global warming, I don't.
But if you do, carbon dioxide emissions are falling under Trump, even though he's out of the UN deal.
I mean, you get massive tax cuts.
I mean, just win, win, win.
I got to ask you a really simple question.
The left is freaking out.
The media is freaking out.
But maybe Donald Trump really is making America great again?
He is doing a great job.
And I say that as somebody who really disliked him when he came on the scene.
I still don't like him as a person.
I mean, I think he can be rude and borish and all that.
He is doing a great job.
And I think we have to ask ourselves, why did it take a guy like that?
Why did it take a man who is a little less polite than, for instance, I am?
Why did it take a guy who fights so strongly and in such a hard, bare-knuckle way to do what's simply the right thing?
Cut taxes, draw back the government, appoint constitutional judges, wipe ISIS.
You left out the fact that he erased ISIS because he erased them so completely that we don't even think about them anymore.
I mean, he is doing a spectacular job.
And I think the question we all need to ask ourselves is, why did it take such a tough guy?
And I think the answer is simple.
You know, when Reagan brought down the Soviet Union and restored the American economy, they attacked him every single day as a racist, as a clown, as a warmonger, as a film actor who didn't know what he was doing.
When Rudy Giuliani stepped into the cesspool of New York and turned it into the greatest city on the face of the planet, virtually, and I won't say single-handedly because he had a lot of help from the cops and the police commissioner, but he was the leader there.
They attacked him every single day as a racist, as a bigot, as a bully, as a bad guy.
You have got, our press is so bad.
Our press is so corrupt, so biased, so leftist, so much a spokesman for the Democrat Party, that you have to be made of something like steel to stand up to them.
And even though, you know, I myself rear back and draw back when I hear some of the hard-boiled, bullying things that Donald Trump says, it unfortunately seems to take a man of that caliber to stand up to this tirade in order to do what is simply the right thing, which is to make us free, to make government smaller, make individuals more allowed to do more things.
That is what makes us prosperous.
That's what brings peace, that and strength, military strength.
And I just think he's doing a great job.
And there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance there for me.
I didn't think he was going to be a good president.
I still don't particularly like him personally all the time.
But, you know, there is no denying when a guy does a great job.
Listen, I would rather be wrong and have my country thrive than have been right about Trump and see us suffer.
So the fact that I have to take it back and say, you know, what I was wrong about Trump doesn't mean a thing to me because the country is doing great.
And I have not seen it like this really since the 80s, since Reagan took office and restored our prosperity.
It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
And the press is doing everything they can to make it seem like we have some kind of crisis going on.
Ain't no crisis, pal.
These are the good times.
Well, for those of us around the world who admire America and are grateful to it, it's a great thing to see.
Andrew, I know you've got a run.
It's such a pleasure to spend this time with you.
I could talk to you all day, and I know that our folks can tune in every day to the Andrew Clavin show on the Daily Wire.
And let me plug your book.
We talked about your book last time.
We had you on for an extended interview over Christmas.
The book is called The Great Good Thing, and we'll put a link up to Amazon if people want to buy it right on our website.
Andrew, it's great to see you again.
And from your Canadian friends and other friends around the world, you know, we hope America continues to be strong because those are values that we ourselves believe in too.
So good luck as one of our favorite Americans.
We salute you too because I know you're part of the cultural fight.
Thanks very much.
It's great talking to you.
All right, there you have it.
Andrew Clavin on this 4th of July.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Well, isn't Andrew Klaben one of your favorite guys?
He's one of my favorite guys.
So smart.
And one of the few interviews where I just ask a question, and I don't want it.
I'm always wanting to interrupt.
I always want to make a point.
You know me.
My favorite interview question is, blah, Am I right?
Okay, it's an admission.
I talk too much in my own interviews.
Not that way with Andrew Clavin.
I am listening on his every word because I learned so much from him.
He's with the Daily Wire, of course, but he's very generous with his time for us.
I love the American spirit.
I'm a Canadian, proud to be, don't want to leave.
But it's interesting to hear about the American idea.
And thank goodness we have the luck to be a neighbor to that mighty state.
American Embassy Opening00:02:04
Hey, I pre-recorded that because I'm actually in Israel today.
Take a quick look at what we filmed over there.
Hi, everybody.
Happy 4th of July from Israel.
I hope you all are having a fantastic day.
I'm Amanda Head reporting for The Rebel from our new, beautiful, big, bright, shining U.S. Embassy here in Israel.
We have got a group of people.
As you all know, you've been following our excursion throughout Israel, and we've got a group of people from all over the world.
We have British, we have Australian, we have South African, of course, Canadian.
And then I think I'm one of maybe two Americans.
But even though we were vastly outnumbered, everyone wanted to come and see this embassy.
It's 4th of July, so it's closed.
There's no one here.
As far as security, you know, they do have people protecting the grounds.
But as far as staff, there is no one here.
But it was opened, as many of you know, on May 14th of this year.
On May 14th of 19, what was that?
1948.
That was when Israel declared independence.
So that was a very momentous and important date for them.
It's a beautiful property.
But of course, on that date, May 14th, the Gaza Strip erupted in protest and violence, acting like a bunch of petulant five-year-olds whose toy truck had been taken away because Palestinians consider East Jerusalem their capital.
So that's why they were content with the U.S. Embassy being in Tel Aviv.
But as we all know, if you've ever been to Jerusalem, you know that there is no disputing the fact that Jerusalem is indeed the capital of Israel.
So hope you are all having a fantastic 4th of July.
I brought along my Make America Great again hat.
Actually, put this hat over in front of the flowerbed, and the other people on this tour, people who are not from the United States, were gathering around taking a picture of this hat in front of the flag.
Because, as we all know, many presidents before President Trump promised to do this and move this embassy, but President Trump was the one who had the moxie and the guts and the balls to do so.