Dana and Stephen talk about how they met, how they became friends, and what it's like being a liberal in the 90s and early 2000s. They also talk about what it was like growing up in a conservative household.
00:01:58.000But a lot of people may not necessarily know your background, how you came into it, because my background was always stand-up comedy, entertainment, and yours was a little bit different.
00:02:07.000So let's talk about that, because I've realized this.
00:02:33.000I'm not, I used to not only be a dirty, dirty liberal, but I was also one of those annoying fembot feminists, like the type who would have gotten mad about the Bud Light St.
00:03:02.000But no, the more educated I became and the more that I grew up, And matured, that's when I started very slowly converting and being a mom was a huge part of it.
00:03:14.000It's kind of hard when your whole family is liberal.
00:04:25.000I've never heard a dog say roof, nor bow-wow.
00:04:27.000But there's an R. If you, Stephen, if you go to Southern Missouri, there's an R in Warsh.
00:04:32.000It's either Warsh or Warsh, depending.
00:04:35.000What we need to do is take people from Missouri and send them to England to teach them how to pronounce an R, and then you can meet at an intersect.
00:04:49.000Whenever I hear, like, Charles Cook, whenever I hear him talk, I just want to, I secretly, in the back of my head, obviously, because it's in the back of my head, I think, you're a fake Englishman.
00:08:37.000If Republicans need to know a strategy right now, first off, far and away, the winningest issue are guns for conservatives.
00:08:44.000A lot of people, they try and paint you as extremists.
00:08:46.000That's where they go to assault weapons.
00:08:48.000They try and muddy those waters because guns are a very winning issue because there are a lot of Democrats, like you mentioned, who are still pro-Second Amendment.
00:08:56.000And then you've got feminism is overreached, where people are rejecting it, freedom of speech now since liberals have lined up directly across from it, and then Islamic terrorism.
00:09:05.000People are okay with calling Islamic terrorism Islamic terrorism, not the administration.
00:09:09.000So those four issues, the strongest of which I would say are guns.
00:09:13.000Is that why you focused on that, do you think, a lot?
00:09:16.000Because you think it's something that can reach across the aisle and appeals to people other than just rah-rah-rah Republican?
00:09:23.000No, I focused on it because people were threatening to kill my kids, and they were coming to my house, and it took me off.
00:09:29.000Yeah, so I decided that it was going to be a focus, because if somebody's going to sit here and issue threats out of one side of their mouth and then talk about from the other side of their mouth disarming me, I'm going to have a real problem with that person.
00:09:53.000I had someone assisting me with research, but I buried myself in statistics for over a year so I could get this book compiled and get it finished because I was tired of hearing all of these arguments, especially from people who know absolutely crap about guns.
00:10:07.000I was so tired of hearing people sit here and use the words clip and magazine as though they're two interchangeable things.
00:10:13.000Made up fairytale unicorn terms, like assault weapon.
00:10:16.000And I had one chick, she's with the Moms Demand anti-gun lobbyists.
00:10:21.000They're like the Bloomberg professional lobbyists.
00:10:23.000That's what they do, is talk crap about gun owners.
00:11:15.000Well, I mean, really, and even to an extent, that's even kind of an incorrect classification because anything is an assault, whatever.
00:11:21.000But, I mean, really what they should be saying is this has select fire capability, this does not.
00:11:25.000Meaning you can flip the giggle switch on a military-grade rifle and you can go to full auto, whereas with a semi-automatic rifle, one that lacks the select fire capability, you can't.
00:11:35.000But they don't want to get into the nitty-gritty and all of that because those are facts.
00:11:39.000And facts are scary things to people who need people to remain uninformed so they can push paranoia and fear.
00:14:06.000So obviously the stereotype is, right, the conservative Christian gun owner, you know, cleaning a shotgun on a French porch, you know, etc.
00:15:39.000I'm tired of men constantly being attacked.
00:15:41.000And Stephen, honestly, that was one of the single biggest things.
00:15:44.000That was like the lever that just kicked it all off.
00:15:48.000That's how I started on the path to actually acknowledging that, okay, maybe I am a conservative because I brought a young man into the world, a boy that I'm raising into a young man.
00:15:59.000Face to face with the fact that all of the biggest demons that he's going to have to battle in his life are things for which I used to advocate and use all of my power to promote and make ever more prevalent in society.
00:16:11.000And so part of my punishment, I think, or part of my coming to terms with that is I'm going to now help my young men navigate all of those landmines that I set in my past as a progressive feminist.
00:16:24.000I had landmines and I thought about when I stepped outside and Hopper was in the backyard and now that the snow has melted, it's been a very unpleasant experience.
00:16:46.000Women who've made aggressive passes at either me or my friends, older women.
00:16:50.000Particularly, I'll tell you, there was a situation at a gym with what one would now call a cougar, where if I were to do what she had done to me, I'd be hauled off in cuffs.
00:17:00.000And if I did it and it went public and people said, hey, that's sexual harassment, I would hang my head and say, you know what?
00:18:52.000And I don't want to embarrass any ladies, and I don't really like to talk about my kids' private lives, because they're this digital generation.
00:18:59.000Let's bring you on after, and then without embarrassing, you'll explain a little bit.
00:20:19.000So this girl was texting just, you know, a little, it was just a little inappropriate, I think, and not something that a 13-year-old young lady needed to be texting my son.
00:22:11.000And I think it's really important to make that distinction.
00:22:13.000And the way I look at it, and one of the things, you know, even though my advice is that I say the word edible snakes way too much, that's my big advice.
00:22:21.000But one of the things that I always do is, I mean, I'll say a little prayer for whoever my kids' future wives are going to be.
00:22:28.000Because I think that's really important as well.
00:22:30.000I'm keeping in mind that we're teaching him to look for someone with whom he's going to spend the rest of his life and who's going to be a member of our family, who's going to be raising my grandbabies at some point.
00:22:42.000You know, heaven forbid, that's still like 40 years off.
00:22:45.000But it's important, and I want him to be able to make that decision intelligently, and I want him to be able to have that, I don't know, emotional IQ, I think, for lack of a better way to put it, to be able to identify those traits or virtue and lack thereof in a woman.
00:23:05.000And it's really important to not just tell our boys that, but also to show them.
00:23:10.000I remember one time when they were still pretty young, we were in the toy line at Target, or toy aisle, and I took them down to the toy aisle, and I showed them the Bratz dolls, and I said, don't ever bring home a girl that wears this much makeup to Mama, because I'll turn on the hose and I'll hose her off on the walk.
00:23:24.000And then you come home from your TV hits, and you're like, get it off me!
00:23:40.000I think it's really important to teach boys that.
00:23:44.000And at the same time, it's important to teach women what to look for those good virtues in a man.
00:23:50.000But it's also good to teach women, which we talk about empowering women.
00:23:54.000Why can't we empower women to be virtuous women?
00:23:57.000Why is virtue looked at as though it is a negative instead of a positive?
00:24:01.000Because ultimately, you know, those are the kind of women that men gravitate towards when it concerns picking out someone to be their partner.
00:24:12.000And you know, what's more empowering, and I know feminists are already going to get mad about this, because I'm not saying it's necessary, but what's more empowering to a strong woman than a strong man who undergirds her and supports her values?
00:24:26.000Women who take personal offense like that, they don't know, and I will say this very slowly so there's no mistaking of my words, they don't understand what a partnership is.
00:24:36.000That is what a successful partnership is.
00:25:01.000I guess if you were gay or if your partnership involved going into the ladies' restroom hand-in-hand at Planet Fitness, then they'd be cool with it.
00:25:09.000By the way, where are all the rape culture activists with that?
00:25:12.000We're allowing tallywhackers in women's locker rooms.
00:25:15.000It bothered me because I looked at that as though it was an attack on women.
00:25:56.000I found that offensive, the fact that the woman was slut-shamed.
00:26:02.000The same slut-shaming that you see feminists complain about, that was done to the woman who said, I'm really uncomfortable with the man being in the locker room.
00:26:12.000I'm not ever going to apologize for being watchful over my security.
00:26:17.000Women are told, Stephen, you know this, women are told if you see something, say something, be constantly aware of your surroundings, unless it's politically incorrect.
00:26:23.000Planet Fitness beats down the human spirit.
00:26:25.000I mean, first off, you know, for example, they, and we talk about this in the video that's going up here where I did go undercover into Planet Fitness as a lady.
00:26:34.000I didn't go in as a transgender, by the way.
00:27:33.000You go in as a fat person and you leave as a fat person who feels good about being a fat person with a couple extra Tootsie Rolls in your stomach.
00:30:07.000Let me say this, because I don't know about you, but when I heard of Planet Fitness, right, and I heard the lunk alarm, no judgment zone, no squats are allowed, no deadlifts.