Order of Man - November 07, 2023


ANDREW KLAVAN | Your Life is a Work of Art


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per Minute

201.91

Word Count

12,622

Sentence Count

876

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary

Andrew Klavan is an award-winning author of The House of Love and Death, among many other books, as well as the podcast host of The Andrew Klavan Show with The Daily Wire. He s also seen on both sides of the political and spiritual spectrum as a liberal turned conservative.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Every single man listening to this podcast sees issues with the current culture and yet far too many men are unwilling to do anything about it.
00:00:09.080 Whether it's a disdain for current culture commentary or a bad case of apathy, ignoring what we see going on around us isn't going to lead to anywhere positive.
00:00:19.640 My guest today, author and podcast host, Andrew Klavan, is a man who is and has been for decades actively engaged in dealing with the decline of our current culture through writing, producing films, and podcast commentary.
00:00:34.640 Today we talk about rationalization and justification for doing the wrong things, why so many people tap dance around biological reality, why we're losing this country through the movies and the arts, changing culture through art,
00:00:47.920 when and when not to compromise, and ultimately viewing your own life as a work of art.
00:00:54.280 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
00:00:59.860 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.
00:01:09.480 This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
00:01:13.300 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:01:18.600 Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler. I'm your host and the founder of this movement, the Order of Man movement and podcast.
00:01:26.900 Grateful that you're here. Grateful that you're tuning in. Thank you for supporting us.
00:01:31.880 Thank you for believing in us and for spreading the message and then ultimately living your life as the men that we have a desire to become.
00:01:39.460 People are relying upon us. Family, friends, colleagues, co-workers, strangers, neighbors, employees are relying on us to step up and be the kind of man that we are capable of becoming.
00:01:49.760 And it's my goal to give you all of the tools and resources you need to do just that.
00:01:53.700 This podcast is just one of the ways that we do that. We have our exclusive Brotherhood, the Iron Council.
00:01:59.060 We've got events. We've got merchandise. We've got all sorts of things going on.
00:02:04.400 Social media accounts, obviously, that you can follow and band with us with.
00:02:07.860 And we're trying to make a difference and reclaim and restore masculinity in a world that is increasingly dismissive and hostile towards it.
00:02:16.180 I've got a great one for you lined up today. Before I do, I just want to mention that I've got my good friends over at Montana Knife Company.
00:02:22.980 They just announced that they're releasing a new knife. It's called the Whitetail Knife and it is specifically designed and made for our Whitetail Hunters.
00:02:33.360 I just got back from a hunt last week. I could have used this knife. It wasn't available then, but I am excited for my upcoming Whitetail Hunts,
00:02:40.540 which I do have another one that I think we're going to be going on in December.
00:02:44.520 So you can bet that I'll be using my Montana Knife Company knife.
00:02:47.720 That one comes out very, very quickly. So what I would suggest is head to MontanaKnifeCompany.com.
00:02:54.220 Get signed up for notifications because they're going to sell out and I want you to have one of those Whitetail Knives.
00:02:59.800 Go to MontanaKnifeCompany.com, sign up for notifications, and then when you purchase that knife, use the code ORDEROFMAN to save some money.
00:03:07.800 I want you to save some money if you're going to spend some. So use the code ORDEROFMAN to save some money.
00:03:12.140 All right, let's get to my guest. His name is Andrew Klavan. I've been a longtime follower of this man and listening to him for years now.
00:03:21.060 He is the podcast host of The Andrew Klavan Show with The Daily Wire. The Daily Wire is on my playlist.
00:03:28.660 It's Andrew Klavan, Ben Shapiro, and Matt Walsh take up a lot of my consumption of podcast time.
00:03:35.940 But anyways, back to Andrew. He is an incredibly talented and award-winning author of his latest book, The House of Love and Death, among many dozens of other books.
00:03:46.500 And as a popular podcast host of The Andrew Klavan Show, he uses his wit and humor to address some of the most polarizing cultural topics of the day.
00:03:55.240 He's also seen both sides of the political and spiritual spectrum as a man who not only was once liberal turned conservative, but through his own Christian conversion as well.
00:04:06.920 So he's well-versed. He's got a lot of great information, very grounded, very principled, and I think you're going to enjoy this podcast.
00:04:15.740 Andrew, thanks for joining me on the podcast. I've been looking forward to this one for some time now.
00:04:20.360 That's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:04:21.800 Yeah, I've had Ben on the podcast. I think we were going to have Matt on the podcast. It was a little before What Is A Woman came out, and then he got busy, I'm sure, with the popularity of that.
00:04:36.560 And I was telling you before we hit record on this conversation, between you and Matt and Ben, that consumes a lot of my podcast listening time.
00:04:45.440 Well, I'm glad to hear it. I guess I'm glad to hear it. I'm not sure it's good for you, but still.
00:04:49.760 I haven't totally got behind Michael Knowles just yet, so I will have to work into that one a little bit.
00:04:57.580 Well, if you get behind him, I'd put him in a chokehold. It's the only thing that keeps him quiet.
00:05:01.460 Well, I enjoy your take because contrary to the other guys in the Daily Wire lineup, you seem to bring a lot more comedic relief, which I think is a welcomed element of this commentary when it comes to culture and political events and current events.
00:05:23.640 It's because everything's just so hard. It's so challenging, and it's so toxic and negative, but you bring this comedic relief that I think is much appreciated, at least on my end.
00:05:34.460 Well, I appreciate that. I've always had this strange glitch in my sense of humor that my wife has scolded me about many times, which is that I find corruption funny.
00:05:44.220 I know that corruption is in some ways a terrible thing because it can end up doing terrible things to people, but if you just isolate it on its own, it's usually the stupidest thing a human being can do, and yet they do it with such vigor and verve that it's hilarious.
00:05:59.680 You know, that people just somewhere along the line, some guy thinks, you know, yeah, I'm going to cheat to get my kid into college, or, you know, I'm going to steal votes or whatever the things that people do, and you just think it's the stupidest possible way forward, and yet people keep doing it.
00:06:14.320 It's just something very funny about the human condition.
00:06:16.400 Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, we talk about this quite often is that it seems to me that there's this natural man inside all of us that navigates towards that, right?
00:06:30.740 The lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you can to accomplish the results without the effort, immediate instant gratification, and we know better, and yet, to your point, we continue to fall into it all the time.
00:06:42.440 Yeah, so there's an old joke about what is a lie? A lie is an abomination to God, but a friend in need, and it's like, that's what I think we do, you know, in the moment, in the moment, it helps to lie.
00:06:55.220 Down the road, no matter how many times you learn this lesson, down the road, it's going to catch up with you, but people just can't seem to get around it, and it's also, you degrade yourself, you know, people are unhappy when they live like this, and you're actually much happier if you live as straight as you can.
00:07:07.660 That's an interesting point. I think that there's a lot to be said for that with regards to mental, not illness necessarily, but just the emotional and mental strain and weight that comes with living a life out of integrity with yourself.
00:07:21.700 Yeah, and the way, you know, it puts you in this position of honor among the people who love you, you know, if your wife knows that you are who you say you are, if your kids know that you'll do what you say you're going to do, if your friends get to understand that, you know, you walk with respect and dignity in the world instead of having to constantly feel that you're hiding some deep, dark secret that you can't get out.
00:07:45.980 You know, you're just, you're just less afraid all the time. You don't have to worry about so much.
00:07:50.980 Right. Yeah. Just a clear light conscience, right?
00:07:54.320 Yep, absolutely. And by the way, as you get to be, you know, my age, which is like 172, you know, you start to, it just enhances your life. The past, as long as you have had integrity in the past, it enhances your life in the present. You're just in a much, much better place.
00:08:11.340 And I know so many people, I worked in Hollywood for a while and I know so many people who sold out to get something they wanted in the moment and their lives are such, such a dreadful thing. It's like, it's like, you know, in a Christmas carol, the ghost who drags that chain around. That's what they're like. And it's just, I just don't feel like that. And it's, it's a great relief.
00:08:29.780 Yeah. Well, how did you get hooked up with the Daily Wire? Because it seems like it's a deviation from the, the route that you were taking with regards to writing books. And then you just mentioned alluded to the fact that you spent time in Hollywood with directing and having some of your, your, your books turned into films. What was that transition like for you?
00:08:48.680 Well, it was kind of bizarre. You know, I, I came back, I, I lived in England for seven years. I left in the nineties because I got sick of political correctness. And I just thought, you know, I just want to get out of the country for a year. So I took my family to London for a year and we stayed for seven years.
00:09:04.080 And I was a liberal when I left, I was kind of a disgusted liberal, but I was still a liberal. And when I came back, I realized that all the people who were saying the things that I thought I'd been away from American politics. I didn't see the shift, but when I got back, I realized all the people who were saying the things that I thought were conservatives. They were at national review, Rush Limbaugh, who I'd been told was the greatest devil who had ever risen from hell. I was listening to him. I thought, no, this guy's actually kind of making a lot of sense, you know?
00:09:30.840 And so it put me in a weird position because I had just started working in Hollywood after a life of writing novels. And after 9-11 happened, Hollywood began to churn out these anti-American films. And they were not just anti-war. They were basically saying our soldiers were rapists, our soldiers were killers, and we were picking on the innocent Muslims and all this stuff.
00:09:54.100 And I thought, you know, I don't actually care what your opinion is. It's a free country. You have whatever opinion you want. But it's wrong to make movies that depict our guys as the bad guys while they're being shot at. You know, that's a bad action, no matter what your belief system is, because it's giving propaganda to the enemy.
00:10:11.160 And, like, if you look at the great Vietnam films that were anti-Vietnam, but they were all made after the guys had come home. And some of them, like Oliver Stone's pictures, were made by people who had been there.
00:10:21.160 And you thought, okay, well, you know, sure, tell me what you saw and what you think, but don't do it while our guys are in the field.
00:10:27.160 So I started talking about that. And I started saying, you know, this is bad.
00:10:31.240 And my Hollywood career, which had been going exceptionally well, just turned off, you know, like this.
00:10:38.540 So my income literally went from, like, six and seven figures to zero.
00:10:43.800 And so I wasn't going to stop talking. I mean, there were guys literally getting blown up.
00:10:49.320 So the idea that I wasn't getting to write some stupid movie was like nothing, you know, didn't.
00:10:53.940 I mean, it was painful to lose the income, but still, you know, I wasn't going to change that.
00:10:59.320 And I bumped into a guy who was also a mystery writer named Roger Simon.
00:11:04.280 And he was starting a place that was kind of the Daily Wire before there was the Daily Wire.
00:11:08.480 It was called PJTV. And he asked me if I would come on and do videos.
00:11:12.420 And I said, man, the last thing I want is to be in front of a camera.
00:11:15.400 I've lived my life in my room, making up stories, you know, doing research.
00:11:18.820 I love that life. I do not want to be a public figure, you know.
00:11:22.100 And he said, well, just look at what we're doing.
00:11:24.080 So I looked and I don't know if you remember, got Bill Whittle.
00:11:26.360 He was just a terrific commentator, very serious and very, you know, fact-based.
00:11:31.560 And this is history and all this stuff.
00:11:33.420 But he was a high-level talent, but just very, very, you know, dead-faced and into the camera.
00:11:38.840 So I called up Roger and I said, I will do this if you let me do Bill Whittle as Monty Python.
00:11:44.380 If you just let me make fun of what this guy is doing, you know, because I love it.
00:11:47.760 It's great. It's great stuff, but it's just not the way I look at the world.
00:11:50.220 I have a much more comical sense of the world.
00:11:51.960 And so he said, sure. And I came in and did it and it just kind of took off.
00:11:56.320 You know, I was shocked. Like I thought it was still very early internet days.
00:12:00.940 And so these satirical videos would get like, you know, over a million hits.
00:12:04.320 And suddenly, like I was recognized places.
00:12:07.780 And Jeremy Boring, who was a friend of Bill Whittle's, and Ben Shapiro, who I knew kind of in passing, we would see each other from time to time.
00:12:16.060 And they came to me and said, you know, after PJTV, after I left PJTV, they said, we're going to start a new enterprise.
00:12:22.460 Would you do it for us? And I said, sure. You know, it was fun.
00:12:25.940 You know, so I did it for them. We had an enterprise called Truth Revolve.
00:12:30.560 And it went very well, but we got fired.
00:12:32.380 They basically, it was a donor supported thing and the donors just pulled out.
00:12:37.380 And so Jeremy Boring, who's really the genius behind the Daily Wire, he just said, hold on a minute, because I'm going to rebuild this on a capitalist model so we don't have to deal with donors.
00:12:48.840 And he rebuilt it in the form of the Daily Wire.
00:12:52.240 And we started doing it.
00:12:54.140 It was me and Ben and Jeremy in Jeremy's pool house at his backyard in L.A.
00:12:58.780 And we were just on a coffee table with a mic and we do like these 15 minute, 20 minute podcast.
00:13:03.760 And within about five years, it was a billion dollar TV studio producing all kinds of content.
00:13:11.440 And it was it was shocking. You know, it was a shocking transition.
00:13:15.700 And for a guy like me, who seriously, you know, writers are kind of loners.
00:13:19.600 We like to be by ourselves. We're kind of lone wolf, want to think on our own and all this stuff.
00:13:23.780 To me, I was walking into places and being mobbed by people who were like a third my age.
00:13:30.420 And like, you know, like I was a musician, a rock star or something like that.
00:13:35.160 Right. Right.
00:13:35.700 It was it was a genuine shock to the system.
00:13:38.340 I have to tell you, it was a real change of lifestyle.
00:13:41.340 But I really did begin to feel because of my absence from the country.
00:13:47.040 I felt that our culture was so damaged and so in need of voices of voices who weren't afraid of being canceled or being yelled at or being called names that I thought I had no choice.
00:13:59.520 You know, I there was no way out of it, basically.
00:14:02.540 Yeah. So it was a different life than I was expecting.
00:14:04.960 But it's I've had a great time and the people are great.
00:14:07.320 You know, the people, you know, you talk about Ben and Matt and I tease Knowles all the time because he's a buddy.
00:14:12.020 But like they're all terrific people. So it's just been an absolute pleasure.
00:14:16.500 Yeah. I mean, I can even tell when I watch your listen to your your live backstage podcast.
00:14:21.460 You can tell you guys are just good friends hanging out, having a good time.
00:14:24.920 And that's the way I think it should be.
00:14:27.460 It was, you know, building the thing.
00:14:29.240 It was just really like the four of us.
00:14:31.180 It was Ben and Knowles and Jeremy and me.
00:14:33.920 And we spent all our time just talking and arguing and getting around and smoking cigars.
00:14:38.840 And then suddenly we were in this corporation.
00:14:41.720 You know, it kind of happened while we were getting around.
00:14:43.940 And so, yeah, it was a great experience.
00:14:47.040 Yeah. Tell me a little bit about I'm fascinated by Jeremy Boring because he's not a public facing person.
00:14:52.720 He's, you know, I think from my perspective, anyways, he's behind the scenes while it's you and Michael and Ben and Matt and the crew out there forward facing to the public.
00:15:01.680 But he seems like a very fascinating, very intelligent, savvy businessman.
00:15:08.240 I'm very interested about Jeremy.
00:15:10.960 Yeah, no, he is a really interesting guy.
00:15:13.760 He used to kind of he used to be I was talking about this guy, Bill Whittle.
00:15:17.920 He used to just hang around with Bill Whittle.
00:15:19.520 And so I would I was working with Bill and I would see this guy and I would listen to him and I would think, you know, he's kind of offbeat.
00:15:25.600 He's kind of offbeat. Like, you know, it didn't occur to me that he was, you know, a cut above or anything like that.
00:15:31.480 But I thought, like, he has actually interesting ideas and conversation with him is interesting.
00:15:35.520 And and so what I then began to learn about him was that he had a fascination with the way things work and that which is something that, you know, the mechanics of things, the way things hold together.
00:15:48.960 And and he has incredible business instincts.
00:15:53.240 He every person who works with him, he has a way of finding what it is about them that appeals to people.
00:16:00.820 And I can I can I won't, but I can name people who while they were following him around or letting him kind of, you know, work on their careers, they became famous.
00:16:11.100 And the minute they broke with him, they just disappeared.
00:16:13.660 He just had a way of saying, you know what it is.
00:16:15.920 The thing about you that people want to hear is this.
00:16:19.520 And and I, who am very protective of who I am and what I want to say, because I want to speak for myself still, I would learn, you know, like, OK, I'm not going to do anything that's against, you know, my principles or what I believe.
00:16:31.460 But if I phrase this this way or I put it this way or I concentrate on this, it's going to get the message out further.
00:16:37.260 And he's just got a it's a literal form of genius the way he does that.
00:16:41.880 And he saw it and Ben, he understood, like, I've been around broadcasting all my life because my dad was a DJ.
00:16:47.840 And I I I knew when I heard Ben that he was a major broadcasting talent, but I would never have known how to build him into the thing that Jeremy built him in.
00:16:58.180 And he's just been really, really good at that.
00:17:00.540 And I think sometimes I think sometimes the behind the scenes of it, you know, he he likes to be in front of the camera.
00:17:08.160 But I think he's just so good at what he does behind the camera that I think it it's kind of a it's just kind of compels him to be doing what he's doing.
00:17:18.460 And he's you know, he's there's not not one of us.
00:17:22.800 It's only he is the only one who has taken this thing and turned it into what it is.
00:17:29.500 The rest of us are talent. You know, we we are we do hopefully good work and all that stuff.
00:17:34.420 But he's the one who has manipulated it and worked it into a great business.
00:17:39.080 And it really is a gift that he has.
00:17:41.760 I always tease. I used to call him the God King.
00:17:45.280 And he adopted that as as his slogan, you know, the God King of the Daily Wire.
00:17:51.300 But yeah, he's a fascinating guy and a good guy. And I really enjoy knowing.
00:17:55.660 So so that so God King, that that was your that was your nickname.
00:18:00.140 I'm afraid so. Yeah, he's OK.
00:18:01.780 He always complains. He always complains.
00:18:03.500 People say to him, oh, he calls himself the God King.
00:18:06.220 And he's saying, I didn't do it. Clavin did it.
00:18:07.880 That's what I was going to ask. I was just going to ask that because I thought, does this guy really call himself the God King?
00:18:13.360 I didn't know that you started it. So that actually makes me feel a little better about Jeremy.
00:18:17.640 Yeah, he just thought it was funny and picked it up.
00:18:20.260 Yeah. Well, I like when you guys do your campaigns, not only your campaign, everything.
00:18:25.940 So I'm going through all of this right now.
00:18:27.800 I'm a big follower of you guys and I look at, you know, Jeremy's Razors and I hate Harry's.
00:18:34.680 Right. And then you look at the she her bar.
00:18:37.660 I'm like, this stuff is genius.
00:18:39.180 And then, you know, what is a woman obviously blew up probably the most I would say, at least anecdotally, the most impactful documentary, I would say, maybe in the past five to 10 years.
00:18:52.280 Yeah.
00:18:52.720 And then you have Candace's convicting. Is it convicting a murder? Convicting a murder.
00:18:59.580 Convicting a murder. Yeah.
00:19:00.720 It's just amazing. And then you have Benke now with children's entertainment. It's just amazing. All of these little moves. And I'm just I'm standing on the sidelines thinking this team is just on top.
00:19:13.360 Not only are they on top of it, they're out ahead of it, predicting what needs to be happening and what needs to be created. It's very fascinating.
00:19:19.440 You know, the funny thing about this is when I started talking, when I came back from England and I started talking to people, I kept saying, you know, this stuff is not just low hanging fruit, it's fruit lying on the ground because no one will touch it.
00:19:33.760 So, so, so for instance, a long time ago, when I was still at PJ TV, I did a video how to solve the Middle East crisis by having the one state solution where you just give everything to the Jews, because they're much better at running things than everybody else.
00:19:49.720 Clearly, clearly.
00:19:50.460 Give the whole Middle East to the Jews. Yeah. So I thought that joke is so obvious, the one state solution, that someone must have made it, you know, and I didn't want to steal someone else's joke.
00:20:00.260 So I went online and I'm looking for it. I'm looking for it. No one had made the joke. And I thought, wow, you know, and that just happens again and again.
00:20:08.520 There's nobody making the obvious jokes about the way leftism destroys everything. Everything it touches turns to crap.
00:20:15.700 Every single thing that leftism comes near is done with great self-righteousness and great vigor and, you know, we're the progressives and it just crumbles to dust.
00:20:25.160 And no one is making jokes about it because everybody in Hollywood and everybody in the business is a leftist and they're all cowards.
00:20:31.360 They, you know, they're afraid to say what is, they're afraid to say what is a woman, you know?
00:20:35.780 And so in some ways, in some ways, it's simple, except that it takes a little bit of guts and you have to be willing to be canceled and called racist and all the other things that they call you that, you know, people don't like that, especially people like us who weren't racist.
00:20:49.920 Because, you know, we don't like being called, oh, sorry about that. We, uh, we don't like being called those names, but, but if you just are willing to take the heat, um, all those jokes and all those stories are just waiting to be told.
00:21:05.080 Yeah. It is interesting when you talk about not, not wanting to say what is a woman. It's very interesting to watch people tap dance around that question.
00:21:13.120 Like clearly, clearly they know the answer to the question and they just cannot bring themselves to completing the sentence. It's hilarious. Like you said, it's sad, but it's also hilarious.
00:21:27.460 That's it. That's it. Yeah. And, and, you know, it is, it is, it is a, uh, you know, testimony to the power of other people's opinions. Like people want to be liked.
00:21:41.520 And now that we're all online, you know, you can be liked by a million people. And so it's a great power that people have over you. And it's, it's amazing that one day some angry and angry, lesbian college professor will say, well, there's no such thing as gender. You just, you just are whatever you identify as.
00:22:00.320 And, and, and within, you know, a year that becomes absolute doctrine. It becomes absolute gospel truth. So if I say, well, you know, a man, men and women are different and a man can't become a woman.
00:22:12.120 I'm actually demonetized on YouTube. And you want to say to them, well, why, what, what evidence do you have? What science is behind this? It's nothing. There's nothing there. And so it's this, it's this massive power of shaming and censoring and finger pointing that just makes people silent.
00:22:30.020 And to me, the fact that a woman can be asked, what is a woman and say, I don't know, it is, is so sad and so shocking, but as you say, also hilarious, you know, and so all those stories and jokes are just waiting to be told.
00:22:44.760 Yeah. I was, I was hunting this last week and, and we had shot a couple of deer, me and some friends of mine, and I had shot a doe and I put it up on the rack and skinned it and cleaned it and gutted it and everything else.
00:22:55.420 And he had shot a buck and cleaned it and skinned it and gutted it. And I looked over and the difference was noticeable just in size alone, right? Between a buck, the male and a doe, a female.
00:23:07.260 And I said to him, I'm like, yeah, but you know, men and women are the same.
00:23:13.820 And it's just, it's again, it's hilariously sad that we can look at something that's so biologically evident and people will say, well, you know, but humans is different.
00:23:25.420 No, it's not different. It's we're part of nature. We, we, yes, we were more intelligent, you know, than other species out there. And there's social constructs that certainly we have created a culture, for example, would be one of those things, or just community presences is a socially constructed thing, but we can't, that doesn't usurp biological truth.
00:23:47.420 Right. And in fact, we build, we build these social constructs out of biological truth. I mean, it's not, it's not that, it's not that God decrees that women wear skirts and men wear pants. We do that because it's beautiful. It makes, it takes something that we love. This is the thing that drives me nuts. I have to tell you, like the love between men and women is the central joy of life.
00:24:10.240 I mean, that is the thing that makes life worth living. Every song, every story, every movie, every play book is all about the love of men and women. And these guys have managed to make it problematical, as they would say, simply by theorizing it out of existence.
00:24:25.440 Of course, you know, you know, you know, the French, they say, vive la difference, you know, hooray for the difference. You know, it's only these people who think that any difference is somehow bad. These social constructs are there for a reason. They grow out of who we are. They are built on top of who we are. They're not making us anything new.
00:24:44.440 I have to tell you, just in terms of the comedy of it all, probably the most controversial thing I ever said was after watching, oh, it was about that monster hunter. I can't remember what it was on Netflix. It was a fantasy about a monster hunter.
00:25:02.080 And it had a woman, it had a woman in a sword fight, a medieval sword fight. And I said, a woman would be crushed in a medieval sword fight. A woman would be, I said, they wouldn't even kill her. They just walk through her to get to the man behind her.
00:25:13.820 And people went nuts and people were challenging me to sword fights. And I was like, no, you know, you cannot be thinking this. Just take a look at what it looks like. You know, it's not that a sword is so heavy. It's not heavy for five minutes, but on the sixth minute, it becomes very, very heavy.
00:25:31.440 And these guys, you know, and it's just hilarious what people will tell themselves if they think it makes the world a better place. And if they think people will hate them, if they don't agree, it's, it's a comedy of lies. Yeah.
00:25:44.720 Yeah. I think, I think you alluded to something that's important is what is the, the social risk of buying into this or, or bucking the current system. Right. You know, it's right. If you speak the truth, then there is a risk of you being canceled.
00:26:01.860 There is a risk of you at a minimum being called out for being a misogynist or a racist or a homophobe or a transphobe or this or that, which really isn't, maybe it's just the nature of the work that you and I do.
00:26:14.240 So at this point, people say, how do you deal with all the things people say? I'm like, I don't really even hear it anymore. It's just so common. I can't even hear it. It just, it just becomes background noise that I've, I've become accustomed to.
00:26:26.600 That, well, that is the thing. And you know, your own heart, you know, you don't hate anybody, you know, you're just trying to speak the truth as you see it. And so eventually you either go with that or you're dominated by other people, you know, other people's opinion becomes your conscience instead of your conscience. And, and I think that that's, you know,
00:26:44.240 I think that only lasts so long, even in the Soviet union with the full power of the government to enforce it, people ultimately started to say, you know what, this system is working, you know? And I think it took, it took a long time because you went to prison for it here.
00:26:58.800 They've almost got to that point. There are times when they'll send you to prison. I mean, they've, they've burst into the homes of people who oppose abortion and things like that. But still, we still have enough freedom where if you start to say, you know what,
00:27:12.660 I'm going to start making jokes about this, it really collapses. I mean, these things are just, they're so sensitive to humor. They're so fragile. You know, why, why do trans people, the trans movement is, is a violent movement because all you have to do is say, you know, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes and the whole thing vanishes. The whole make-believe vanishes. You know, all you have to do is look at Rachel Levine and go, this person is psycho.
00:27:37.760 You know, this isn't a woman, this is a psycho guy. And, and, and it's just, it's like the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. You know, the scales fall from everybody's own child thing. And the more fragile it is, the more they have to censor you to try and keep it in place.
00:27:52.340 Ultimately, I, I think that effort gets just too much for society to bear. And so it matters that there are people like us who aren't afraid, you know, it matters that, that we say these things because then other people start to think like, yeah, that's, that's kind of true. I want to say that too.
00:28:08.340 Yeah. Well, and I think comedy is a great approach and this is why I think comedy needs to be protected maybe more so than, than any other form of communication because we, we've historically allowed our comedians to say the things that we don't let anybody else say.
00:28:23.940 So it's this little outlet, it's this little vein. And obviously there's a tinge of truth or total truth in every comedic sketch or every joke that's told. And, and that's why it's so powerful that we need to protect that, that comedy, I think.
00:28:36.700 Yeah. And, and, and the, they know the, whatever you want to call them progressives, they know this and we don't. And that, that was what I started with. That's what, when I started talking about this, I started saying, you know, you guys don't realize you guys are so worried about some congressional district in Ohio. You don't realize you're losing the country at the movies. You're not losing at the box, at the ballot box. You're losing at the box office. You know, this is, this is where, and they know it. That's why they keep us out.
00:29:05.680 That's why they shut us down. That's why if a, if a movie actor, God forbid that some movie star comes out and says, you know, I'm voting for Trump.
00:29:12.800 They just absolutely hammer him where, whereas if a politician does it, they attack him, but it's not the same. They know that the culture is where we live and the culture is where our minds and hearts and consciences are shaped.
00:29:24.740 And so they just want to keep iron and control on it. And that's why the internet is so important. And that's why they're trying to control the internet. I mean, look at Elon Musk taking over Twitter and making it X.
00:29:35.680 The government is now investigating every business he's in. He used to be the hero of the left and now he's being investigated. You know, why? Because they know that the culture is what matters.
00:29:46.040 Man, let me take a break from the conversation very quickly. I told you earlier, I recently got back from a week long hunt in Minnesota. And as important as hunting is to me, it pales in comparison to the value in banding with other men in this battle of life.
00:30:01.600 Too many men go at it alone. They don't have any friends or colleagues or acquaintances or accountability or brotherhood that they can lean on and rely on in times of comfort and in crisis.
00:30:13.120 And that's why I created the iron council as a tool, not only to give you the systems of structure and accountability, but to introduce men from all over the world to the power of a committed brotherhood.
00:30:26.880 We're not currently open. So that's the bad news. But if you want to be notified when we open back up again in a week, excuse me, a month and a half, then you could head to order a man.com slash iron council.
00:30:40.900 Again, that's order a man.com slash iron council sign up to be notified. And that way, when we open back up and you're ready to hit the ground running for January 1st, you can be the first to be notified again, order a man.com slash iron council. We'll see you inside.
00:30:54.500 I think, uh, as you were talking about Hollywood and being ostracized, obviously you, you receive some of that. The one exception to this and not totally, but who's able to have some staying power, I think is somebody like Chris Pratt, who, you know, you, you hear him talk about his conservative values, his Christian principles, and he talks about it openly and publicly.
00:31:14.560 And you can, you know, he receives a lot of backlash, but for whatever reason, uh, he's managed to maintain his foothold in Hollywood as an A-list celebrity. That's kind of an interesting phenomenon to me.
00:31:24.700 Yeah. Well, he got, I mean, he kind of kept it down. He kept it quiet until he, he got a foothold and he still, he still keeps it, you know, soft. He plays it soft, but that's fine. But, but yeah, he's, he's an exception. Clint Eastwood is an exception. Uh, you know, guys who are, who are untouchable like that. Um, but it's really hard. I mean, even, even guys think of like the most outspoken actor I can think of as John Boyd.
00:31:52.080 I, I, I, I know actors who've been taken aside by guys like Boyd and just said, told, you know, like keep your mouth shut until you make it. And then maybe you can start talking because they will crush you. And I, I mean, we used to have a, when I was in Hollywood, we had a thing called the, uh, the friends of Abe, which was a secret society of conservatives. And they called it the friends of Abe because in the old days, when people were ashamed of being gay, they called them friends of Dorothy, you know, like in the wizard of Oz.
00:32:19.740 So we were the friends of Abe, like Abe Lincoln, cause we had to keep it quiet. And it, it was embarrassing. Like I used to complain about it. I would say, look, I don't want to be quiet. I, you know, I'm, I'm happy to speak, but a lot of the people in the organization were, you know, lighting guys and voiceover guys and, you know, uh, uh, small time actors.
00:32:39.740 And they'd be crushed if it came out. So it was like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. You come and say, you know, hi, my name is Andrew and I'm a conservative. And, and, you know, it was like, no, it was really, it was really awful. Because at the same time you were doing that, you were going into script meetings and pitch meetings.
00:32:58.740 And people were saying to you like that George W. Bush, he's a Nazi, isn't he? In the meeting, in a business meeting. And so, and if you did what I would do is I would just say, well, I'm on, I'm on the other side. They would throw, throw me out of the room. I can't, I can't say on the air, some of the things that were said to me.
00:33:16.680 And God forbid, if you were a black person and said conservative things, that was, it was heartbreaking the way they were treated, you know? And so, and so the secrecy thing is, was bad for us, but it was there because, you know, they were just, their control over the culture is what matters to them. And they're smart.
00:33:37.980 Yeah. I mean, yeah. Well, you know, to go back to your comment about being, being black, I think about somebody like Candace Owens. I mean, I, you know, everybody has heard the, the names that she's been called, the, the attacks, the threats that, I mean, it's unreal. And this is the, this is the side of peace, right? That does all of this stuff. I don't understand that at all. I want to go back to something you said, because we skipped over it.
00:34:01.420 You said Jeremy Boring had this great ability to know what other people wanted to hear from, from certain people like yourself, for example, what would he say about you? What would he say is your skillset and people wanted to hear from you?
00:34:16.220 Well, for instance, I, I came in and the idea with me, we sort of had these plans that, you know, was that I was going to do essentially a kind of late night show. You know, I was not going to be the political commentator and all this. And we, you know, Jeremy came to me and he said, listen, you know, we,
00:34:31.240 this is, that's the place we want to get to, but we are just a political site by nature. And you have to kind of focus on that and try to do your humor through that and try to get at the culture through that. And I thought like, okay, you know, you got to fish where the fish are. There's no point in my talking if nobody's listening, you know?
00:34:46.120 And so that was really, really helpful to the way I shaped things. You know, again and again, we've, we've been in conversations where we shaped the show and, and made it, you know, you can't be anything but what you are. You can't pretend. I can't pretend to be a clown. I can't pretend to be, you know, an acrobat or anything like that.
00:35:07.200 I can only do what I do, but you can put it in certain contexts. And there are certain things that certain avenues that you can take that people are open to. And he's just really been helpful about that. And he's, he really has with everybody done that.
00:35:21.980 And it's, for a long time before this, he was the hidden hand behind a lot of stuff like Prager University, all kinds of video stuff that he was, that he was being consulted on. And this was the first time he got a chance to sort of do it for himself. And I think it, you know, the result is obvious.
00:35:40.080 Yeah. It's, it's, it's been, it's been unbelievable to, to see how he's, he and you have been able to, to grow this business. Now, I guess, I guess I want to fast forward and bouncing around a little bit here. Cause I have so many different questions and thoughts on this.
00:35:54.940 You, you had also mentioned this idea of being in Hollywood where you, you know, this more conservative friends of Abe type group gets ostracized. But if I understand correctly, you, you grew up and came from a liberal background.
00:36:08.500 And, and, and, but then you, it's interesting when you talk about moving to England because it was too politically correct here. Did you experience the same thing there? And obviously that was, I'm, I'm assuming before you decided that you were no longer a liberal and you were more conservative in your approach to life and culture.
00:36:27.400 Yeah. I mean, what happened was I stopped paying attention to American politics. Yeah. I lived an English life. My kids were in British schools. My friends were British. I read British papers.
00:36:38.500 You know, it was the Clinton era. He was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. I sort of, you know, we all knew about it, obviously, but it just was not what I was paying attention to. I was paying attention to British politics and British idea of British. I watched British television shows. That's what I was doing.
00:36:51.160 And so, and so, and so it helped me, it helped detach me from the culture in which I'd grown up. And so I could think for myself, I could just think like, oh, here's, instead of saying, oh, here's Donald Trump and I hate him, or here's Barack Obama and I hate him.
00:37:07.040 Here were people I didn't know anything about saying things. And I could just say, well, that doesn't sound right to me. That sounds false to me, you know? And, and I remember vividly a, a very, very famous literary agent who was a friend of mine being interviewed in an American paper saying she would never handle a book by Rush Limbaugh because he was so evil.
00:37:28.460 And I wrote her in those days, we didn't have email. We were just starting to get email. I actually wrote her a letter saying, you know, I'm sure he's as evil as you say he is, but actually conservatives are the ones being censored, not the left. And you should actually support people and let them express their ideas.
00:37:45.600 So that, like, I didn't even know how far a shift that was. You know, if I had been in America, everybody would have jumped down my throat. But in Britain, like nobody really knew who Rush was. And so, you know, it's just a kind of, it was obvious to me, you know?
00:37:59.800 So that was, that was really, it was really helpful to get away. And Britain also was about 10 years behind us in terms of political correctness. Now, I think it's worse over there. But then it was still, you know, the mass immigration hadn't started. It was still very much a British country. It was losing it, but it still had it.
00:38:21.760 And I got in a couple of real fights with people. But because I was an American, it wasn't vicious, if you see what I mean, because they kind of thought of me as an alien, a guest, somebody who might come up with something, you know, you know what I mean? It was easier to have those arguments with people. And so it just transformed me without my knowing I was being transformed. It was a very painless process, you know, and helpful.
00:38:50.280 And now I go back and they look at, now I'm their conservative friend. When I go back to talk to my British, you know how people have a gay friend, I'm their conservative friend.
00:39:00.820 Or a black friend or something, you know? So, but if I had been like that at the beginning, I think it would have been harder for me to make friends because I was in the arts. The arts are kind of typically liberal. And I knew all the people in the British arts, but they just kind of took me as an eccentric American type, I think.
00:39:19.040 Right. So when did you start to realize that the path that you're on with regards to liberalism wasn't the path that you wanted to be on or wasn't serving you well? Or did something transpire or did it just gradually happen over time with age and wisdom? Like what did that look like for you?
00:39:36.060 Well, at first it was very subtle because what would happen was I would look for people who were thinking the things that I was thinking, right? I was thinking my thoughts because I'd been away.
00:39:45.300 And I found them on National Review. They had a thing called The Corner where Jonah Goldberg would speak to some other writer. And I think, yeah, that makes sense to me.
00:39:53.280 And when I heard Rush and I thought, no, he's actually kind of funny and sensible and all this stuff. But then 9-11 happened. And 9-11 happened. And there was kind of a pause about two days.
00:40:04.060 And then David Letterman, who for your younger audience was like the hip late night comedian at the time. David Letterman came on his show and he said, and I'm from New York. All my family was in New York. So it was a devastating, I was devastating for everybody, but it was personally devastating to me.
00:40:23.140 And I was watching David Letterman and he said, you know, I have to think about this out loud. I have to ask myself, why do they hate us? And I thought, are you kidding? You know, they hate us because we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. I mean, they're Nazis. These are literal Nazis. They just, you know, I don't have anything against an Islamic person.
00:40:46.220 But this version of Islam that they're putting forward is a small, mean, brutal, violent version of this religion. And it's a Nazi religion. And of course, they're supposed to hate us. We should be glad they hate us. It would be terrible if they didn't. It's like asking. It was just like asking why Hitler hated us. He hated us because we were us, you know. And I thought that a top, this was, you know, this was a top late night comedian. He would be Stephen Colbert today, I guess, would be the guy.
00:41:14.180 And you think like, you know, why would he even ask himself that? And that was a change from when I left. When I left, there was political correctness. There was silly stuff going around. There was, you know, radical feminism, as we called it at the time. All that stuff was there. But I don't think that a mainstream guy would have gotten up and said, like, we really have to fix ourselves so these fascists stop attacking us. You know, that's a crazy thing to say, you know.
00:41:40.440 And so that was kind of the wake up call where I thought, whoa, things have really changed and not in a good way. And this should not be, it should not be, you know, free speech is fine. I don't want him to be arrested for it. But it should not be socially acceptable to put us second to a culture like that.
00:42:00.920 And I still feel that way. And that was why when they started to make these movies, you know, Lions for Lambs and Redacted and all these rendition, they all even sounded the same.
00:42:11.620 All these movies in which our soldiers were the bad guys, you know, in that situation. And again, you want to be anti-war, that's fine. But our soldiers were not the bad guys. They were the good guys.
00:42:23.540 And so what was fascinating about this is to show you what a bubble these people are in. All these movies bombed. Every single one of them bombed. Green Zone, they all bombed.
00:42:33.080 And Variety, which is the trade paper of show business, you know, they wrote an article saying, well, people just don't want to see movies about the war on terror.
00:42:42.760 No, they don't want to see movies about the war on terror where we're the bad guys.
00:42:47.640 And then Clint Eastwood made American Sniper, the biggest grossing R-rated film of all time, one of the biggest grossed R-rated films of all time.
00:42:55.560 So help me. Variety put out an article. Gee, we thought people didn't want to see the war, you know, films about the war on terror.
00:43:03.560 They couldn't figure it out. It was an absolute mystery to them what the problem was.
00:43:07.760 And that was an honest film. It showed you the horrors of war. It showed you all the things that, you know, that it's not fun.
00:43:13.420 That you had to kill people, kill children and things like that. It was a genuine depiction of war and what war actually is.
00:43:21.380 But we were the good guys, you know, I mean, and the guy says I would stand before the throne of God and defend every time I pulled the trigger.
00:43:32.540 And you couldn't help watching them thinking, yeah, of course. Yeah. And, you know, I'd stand right there with you.
00:43:37.080 You know, of course you would. And and that's why it was a hit.
00:43:40.520 You know, it was a great movie, but it was also a movie that depicted the truth.
00:43:43.920 And so this is this is like the problem that I discovered coming back.
00:43:47.560 And this was the thing that really changed me because I'm a culture guy. That's what I do.
00:43:51.900 I write novels. I have written movies. You know, it's like that. That's my life.
00:43:56.020 And I could see that that had become toxic and poisonous, one sided.
00:44:00.920 And the people like me were being blacklisted and kept out of it.
00:44:04.860 And it was it was bad for the country.
00:44:06.800 Yeah, well, I see the same thing with what's going on with Israel and Hamas right now.
00:44:14.100 It's like the amount of support that's behind Hamas, like just popular support, cultural support.
00:44:21.600 I don't understand the ram the justifications for for what is happening.
00:44:25.780 I it's hard for me to fathom. And I'll be the first to admit I'm not I'm not well versed on everything that's going on in the Middle East.
00:44:32.320 But I but I think I can look at it and figure out pretty quickly who the good guy is and who the bad guy is, the equation.
00:44:39.620 But it seems to me like we're actively fighting against that that reality.
00:44:45.120 That's that is I mean, look, again, I'm happy to concede their complexities and all this stuff.
00:44:51.400 But if you're out protesting and chanting in favor of people who cook babies alive and rape women on the bodies of their murdered boyfriends, you're on the wrong side.
00:45:04.180 You know, it's such a little light should go on in your head.
00:45:06.860 But but as part of the comedy of it all, you know, you have these, you know, LGBTQ people saying, oh, hooray for Palestine.
00:45:13.800 While the Palestinians are saying, if you come here, we will kill you because we hate LGBTQ people and feminists.
00:45:20.360 I mean, I love Susan Sarandon, the actress saying I stand with Palestine, a place where they would dress her like she was the ghost of Christmas yet to come.
00:45:27.460 You know, I mean, a place where the kind of movies she's made would get her killed.
00:45:31.080 And so the kind of silliness of it and the the obvious blindness of it is evidence of an ideology that has no relationship to reality.
00:45:41.700 You know, that's that's what happens when you have an ideology that isn't in tune with reality.
00:45:45.820 And that's all culture. It's all culture. It's all people thinking, oh, this is what makes me a good person.
00:45:50.760 You know, and and if it's not, if the Daily Wire and other if the Daily Wire doesn't succeed in entering the culture sphere, if other people don't imitate us, we will never win because they will keep convincing each generation anew that this madness is the truth and it will will go down in flames.
00:46:13.320 But I'm very I'm hopeful. I'm very hopeful we will change the culture, but it has to be done. It's a work that has to be taken on.
00:46:19.900 Yeah, no, I'm hopeful and optimistic, too, especially with you guys leading the charge of of entering cultural conversations, artistic film, like other businesses.
00:46:32.400 These are the kind of conversations and businesses and organizations that that need to start.
00:46:36.560 I mean, it's yeah, it's absolutely imperative that we try to recapture some of this because we're not going to do it in the military.
00:46:44.020 It doesn't seem like anymore. We're not going to do it at the academia level.
00:46:49.260 Even the medical community is corrupted and we're not going to do it there.
00:46:53.260 So I think we need to begin to infuse some of these conversations into the cultural and art art talks that we've been having.
00:46:59.760 You know, when they were Disney was going to make a live action version of Snow White and the actress started going around saying, yeah, but she's not going to, you know, run off the prince.
00:47:11.620 That's she's not going to be saved by some man. And, you know, we're not going to have romance and all this stuff.
00:47:16.460 So Jeremy announced that he would make a live action version of Snow White in accordance with the actual story.
00:47:22.460 And I texted him. He was overseas and I texted him and I told him, I said, I will I will die with your name on my lips.
00:47:29.340 I said, I will be calling your name on my deathbed because that is so funny and such a great you know, it's such a great thing for people to see someone say like, oh, if you don't want to do it, we'll do it.
00:47:39.180 You know, instead of instead of just complaining, which has been the kind of default mode for conservatives up to this point, you know, and I used to say to people, you know, the culture will only be saved by people who love it.
00:47:51.160 The arts can only be saved by people who love the arts. You can't sit around and say, oh, there's too much nudity.
00:47:56.520 There's too much this. There's too much of that. And not make beautiful stuff because anyone can complain.
00:48:01.500 But to make stuff is what the arts are all about. And I'm thrilled that we're doing it, you know.
00:48:07.020 Yeah, I think you well, you guys did the Snow White with Brett, Brett Cooper, right?
00:48:12.460 She's they're making it. They haven't made it yet.
00:48:14.700 They're making. Yeah. I actually saw something the other day that said that they're Disney is pausing their rendition of Snow White.
00:48:20.580 I don't know if that's accurate or not, or if that's just, you know, fake news.
00:48:24.360 No, no, apparently it is. I think they were testing it and it was terrible.
00:48:28.660 And, you know, there have been a couple of hilarious ones. They have Blade.
00:48:33.140 You probably don't remember Blade. It was a great actions trilogy with Wesley Snipes as a good guy vampire.
00:48:40.880 So they started remaking it and they have that great actor.
00:48:44.260 I can't pronounce his first name. It's Marashala or something. Marashala Ali.
00:48:47.780 I don't know.
00:48:48.680 Twice. Terrific actor. So he's going to be in this thing.
00:48:51.240 And they're writing the scripts and slowly it turns into an all female cast fighting the patriarchy.
00:48:58.260 And they looked at it and said, we can't make this, you know, we cannot make this.
00:49:01.140 Nobody will come to see it. So it's like they really have a disease.
00:49:04.660 They have a social disease, you know, that has infected their brains.
00:49:09.920 And if they don't, they're not going to change, but we have to compete with them and drive them into the forest.
00:49:16.000 I mean, that's the only way to do it.
00:49:18.000 Yeah. Well, how does your how do you I mean, you've written a ton of different novels and you've got a new one coming out.
00:49:23.600 And I'm curious how how writing novels, does that fit into the concept or is that something that is just a thing that you love to do and you want to create?
00:49:33.660 And there's no greater purpose to it other than you like to create, entertain and put that type of information out of the world.
00:49:40.060 Well, well, I love telling stories and I love writing, writing stories and I love prose.
00:49:45.920 I actually love writing prose and I I've always maintained that we can't change the culture by making conservative culture, by having conservatives make culture.
00:49:57.140 The way you change the culture is by having artists, which is what I am, who are conservative artists who believe in freedom, artists who believe in men and women, artists who believe in God creating good stuff.
00:50:10.280 So that's my my mission.
00:50:12.440 I'm I'm really good at what I do.
00:50:14.580 I my books of what before I became political, my books won all kinds of awards that were made into films.
00:50:20.440 You know, I mean, I and and now the last three books I've written have been on bestseller lists.
00:50:26.080 So, you know, I know what I'm doing.
00:50:29.120 So I don't sit down and say, OK, now I'm going to show people, you know, talk about conservatism.
00:50:34.040 I just write the world the way I see it.
00:50:36.600 And I do it fearlessly.
00:50:38.180 I don't write the world saying, oh, you know, you know, women are women.
00:50:42.740 But here's a woman who's going to beat a guy up, you know, with her fists, with her tiny little fists, beat this guy up.
00:50:48.180 I just don't write that scene.
00:50:51.240 So so I write the world as it is.
00:50:53.640 And that, to me, is how you get things done.
00:50:56.740 You know, you mentioned this book.
00:50:57.740 I do want to plug my book, if I may.
00:50:59.360 You know, this.
00:50:59.880 Yeah, of course.
00:51:01.280 The new book is called The House of Love and Death.
00:51:03.220 And it's part of this this bestselling series about a guy named Cameron Winter, who is essentially, you know, all the stories recently that have been about men have been about antiheroes.
00:51:15.580 So you have like The Sopranos, you have Breaking Bad and you have The Shield, guys who are corrupt.
00:51:21.580 And the reason for that is when masculinity is outlawed, the only men are outlaws.
00:51:27.160 You know, that's that's the only express.
00:51:28.880 So what I wanted to do is take a guy who was an outlaw, who was a bad guy, who finally just says, no, wait a minute.
00:51:34.600 I'm going to see if I can change that, turn that around.
00:51:37.300 So my guy, Cameron Winter, is a guy who has worked for the government.
00:51:40.060 He's done terrible things.
00:51:41.200 But now he actually just wants to see if he can become essentially go from being an antihero to being a hero.
00:51:47.040 And to me, that's the journey I think that that men are on.
00:51:50.920 And I'm not lecturing about I'm just telling stories about a guy who's trying to do it.
00:51:54.300 And so far, like people have really loved them.
00:51:57.240 And I think I think there's some of the best work I've ever done.
00:52:00.160 So I'm really excited about it.
00:52:01.740 And I do like to pound them and see if I can get people to go out and try them because I think they're different.
00:52:07.620 Yeah, well, you know, and what I like is admittedly, I up until relatively recently, I haven't read a whole lot of novels.
00:52:13.380 It's mostly self-help and personal development, you know, because that's the space I'm in, which is great.
00:52:18.940 But I got burnt out on a lot of those books, you know, it was all the same information and telling me things that I pretty much already knew, just a new way of looking at it or a new system in order to enact it.
00:52:30.260 But the reason I like novels like yours is because you see yourself in in the individual.
00:52:35.820 Right. And you can see what that that individual is working through the the the redeeming qualities, the not so redeeming qualities.
00:52:44.420 Like you can find yourself in those characters if they're developed and written well, which I know yours are.
00:52:50.300 That's exactly I think that that's exactly right.
00:52:52.800 That is exactly the description of what art does.
00:52:55.540 It gives you an experience.
00:52:57.080 It doesn't it doesn't tell you stuff.
00:52:58.620 It lets you live stuff vicariously.
00:53:01.100 And you come away just like you might come out of an actual experience in your life thinking, wow, I really that really changed me.
00:53:07.740 I think art does that at a level, too.
00:53:10.160 You know, you read enough good stuff, you start to see the world much more richly and deeply.
00:53:15.380 And I just think that that is a really, really healthy thing.
00:53:18.340 And it's one of the things that has been so toxic about this left wing culture.
00:53:23.480 So I'm trying to imagine what men who listen to this podcast might be thinking now.
00:53:27.900 And I've heard things like this where, you know, it's nice that you found an outlet and that you've made money and you've been successful in Hollywood and been successful in other ventures.
00:53:36.820 And I would love to follow a passion of mine, but, you know, I have to put food on the table.
00:53:40.640 And we're talking about changing the culture through art, which many guys that listen have things they'd be interested in doing, but don't feel like they can do that based on their current circumstances.
00:53:51.080 What would you say or how would you encourage a man in that position?
00:53:55.200 Well, first of all, you have to realize that, like, artists, artists are an important part of the culture.
00:54:02.240 You know, they reflect the culture back at you.
00:54:04.500 And so you can see it more easily and you can contain it.
00:54:07.980 But everybody's part of the culture, like everything you do and the way you live and the way you appear to other people and the things you say and the things you believe in.
00:54:16.340 Those are all part of the culture.
00:54:17.660 And so if you're a guy like I know a lot of guys, especially in Hollywood, who behind the scenes yammer on about their conservative beliefs, but when they get out into the public, they don't say a word because they're so scared.
00:54:29.940 That's part of the culture that affects that is a work of culture, that fear, that silence, that unwillingness to speak your mind is a work of culture.
00:54:38.620 If you are a guy who speaks with integrity and acts with integrity and treats the people around you with integrity, you are making a huge, huge difference on the culture.
00:54:47.620 It is amazing what one man with integrity can do in a culture.
00:54:52.260 It's amazing what people who will speak honestly.
00:54:55.040 Look, I don't think we need to speak angrily or meanly or cruelly to anybody.
00:54:59.760 I just think you speak the truth and take the hits.
00:55:02.960 That changes the culture all the time.
00:55:04.980 I think that every single person is carrying the culture like a candle in his hand.
00:55:10.700 And if he behaves in accordance with his beliefs, if his beliefs are sound, if he shows himself to be both honest and strong and joyful, that to me is just like throwing a cigarette into a dry forest.
00:55:29.400 I mean, that will have more effect than you can possibly imagine on all the people around you, especially the young people, especially in the case of men.
00:55:38.440 It will have an effect on the women around you.
00:55:40.340 And I think it's just an enormous thing.
00:55:42.800 And I think people don't, you know, people get sloppy.
00:55:45.240 They don't pay enough attention.
00:55:46.480 They stay too drunk.
00:55:47.480 They stay too stoned to think about it.
00:55:49.780 They don't think, you know, what is my life is my contribution to the culture.
00:55:55.160 It's important that I live it in a way that makes other people want to live it this way, too.
00:56:00.940 You know, and I think that before you even think about the novel you want to write but can't get around to, you should think about your life because it's the one work of art that you have complete control over, not in terms of what happens to you, but in terms of how you react to it and how you show yourself to be.
00:56:17.140 Yeah, well, and I also think as you were talking about this, speaking your mind, but also this idea of compromise, I think too often people are compromising their own values or certain things that they shouldn't be.
00:56:30.400 Compromise is great, I think, in certain circumstances, but I don't believe that it's inherently virtuous to compromise.
00:56:37.040 And I think that people believe that, you know, it's like we need to be nice.
00:56:41.040 We need to get along.
00:56:41.780 It's like, no, I'm not really willing to compromise on a lot of this stuff, and yet we make those concessions all the time, which leads us down a negative path, I believe.
00:56:50.840 Yeah, no, I mean, it's really interesting.
00:56:52.900 If you have like chocolate and vanilla, you can mix them together.
00:56:55.660 But if you have chocolate and crap, you can't.
00:56:57.880 You can't compromise.
00:56:59.420 So it really depends.
00:57:00.960 You know, you're with a person of goodwill trying to find a way forward.
00:57:03.960 Yeah, sure, I have no problem with compromise.
00:57:05.920 But if I'm with a person, you know, you were talking before about Israel and the people saying the two-state solution, you can't negotiate that with people whose charter literally says we are going to exterminate you.
00:57:17.940 There can't be two states, one of which is dedicated to exterminating the other.
00:57:22.900 So, yeah, there are plenty of places where people of goodwill can compromise, but there's no place where people can compromise with lies and evil.
00:57:30.040 Yeah, I mean, you see that with the calls for a ceasefire.
00:57:33.660 It's like, hmm, a little late for a ceasefire.
00:57:36.240 You know, that would have been helpful about a month and a half ago before everything kind of went down.
00:57:41.820 And now the can has been opened, so to speak.
00:57:45.440 It ain't going to close itself.
00:57:47.580 Yeah, yeah.
00:57:48.100 Well, it is.
00:57:49.120 I mean, it really is funny, too, when you look back, say, at World War II, which most people agree was a just war.
00:57:55.600 You know, we dropped the atom bomb on a civilian population.
00:58:00.040 We dropped bombs on Dresden, a civilian city in Germany.
00:58:04.180 You know, war is a terrible thing.
00:58:06.120 I'm completely against it in every situation, except those situations where you have to fight it.
00:58:10.880 You know, that's the thing.
00:58:12.240 It's a grave evil that you go to to prevent a worse evil.
00:58:17.500 And that's the situation the Israelis are in.
00:58:19.920 And I just think, like, again, just going back to your idea of compromise, there are moments when you just can't.
00:58:26.900 There are things and people and organizations with whom you cannot compromise.
00:58:32.380 Yeah, yeah.
00:58:33.660 Well, as we wind this down, are there things that you have coming up?
00:58:37.040 Are there things either you personally, other than the book, because you've got the book, which is called The House of Love and Death.
00:58:43.080 Are there other things coming down the line personally or from Daily Wire that we should be aware of as well?
00:58:47.420 Yeah, personally, I'm working on this series.
00:58:51.200 I'm hoping the series will go about 10 books.
00:58:52.900 So this is the third book.
00:58:54.120 I've already written the fourth book, and I'm hoping for that to go on.
00:58:57.300 And I've recently gotten started writing nonfiction, which has been really exciting.
00:59:02.960 I'm a convert, a late convert to Christianity.
00:59:06.640 And I've been writing about that and why I came to that belief and why that's shaped my worldview the way it does.
00:59:12.480 And at the Daily Wire, you know, Jeremy is often, I don't even know where he is now.
00:59:18.420 He's in Europe somewhere making this Pendragon series, which is a very popular series of novels about King Arthur.
00:59:24.760 And he's turning that into a streaming series.
00:59:29.080 And so there's lots and lots of stuff.
00:59:30.700 And the Daily Wire, in general, has started just putting out children's content.
00:59:37.060 And so it really is branching out.
00:59:38.540 And it's very, very exciting to me because I've been banging this drum for 20 years.
00:59:43.180 And to actually be part of watching it, you know, come to fruition is just incredibly moving to me.
00:59:48.220 And I just and, you know, what I really hope is that people will start to compete with us.
00:59:53.160 Come on out, you know, come out, get into the get into the arena.
00:59:55.560 You know, I don't I don't want us to be the only one.
00:59:58.460 I want us to be the best.
00:59:59.680 I want us to win, you know, all that stuff.
01:00:01.940 But I think I want a million people to do it because I think Hollywood is a rotten structure.
01:00:07.760 I think it's ready to collapse.
01:00:09.080 And I think this is the way to do it.
01:00:11.380 Yeah. Well, tell us where to connect with you.
01:00:13.360 Learn more about what you're doing.
01:00:14.300 Pick up a copy of the book and everything else.
01:00:16.700 Well, you can get the book on Amazon, which is always helpful because it sends it up the rankings, the House of Love and Death.
01:00:21.960 You can find out more about what I do at andrewclavin.com.
01:00:25.120 It's K-L-A-B-A-N.
01:00:27.600 And I'm also an X as Andrew Clavin at Andrew Clavin.
01:00:31.900 We'll sync everything up.
01:00:33.220 I want to tell you, I appreciate you.
01:00:34.620 I appreciate the battle that you guys are in, too.
01:00:36.500 I mean, and it is a battle.
01:00:37.520 Like, it truly is a battle to the Overton window has been moved so far to the left.
01:00:42.880 And I think that you guys aren't just just trying to hold on.
01:00:47.180 I think you're actively making offensive movements.
01:00:52.240 I don't mean offensive.
01:00:53.320 I mean, you're playing offense, right?
01:00:55.640 So, I love what you guys are doing.
01:00:57.840 I'm a big supporter.
01:00:58.780 And I'm grateful and glad that you could join me on the podcast today.
01:01:02.060 Thanks.
01:01:02.480 It's been great being here.
01:01:03.380 And I'm encouraged by what you say.
01:01:04.960 And I think it's been a great experience.
01:01:07.600 All right, gentlemen, there you go.
01:01:10.620 My conversation with the one and only Andrew Clavin.
01:01:13.200 I hope you enjoyed that podcast.
01:01:15.580 I did.
01:01:16.480 I've been looking forward to talking with him for some time now.
01:01:18.860 And like I said in the podcast and to him that I've been a longtime follower of his work.
01:01:22.920 And I appreciate his humor and the lightheartedness in which he addresses some very serious conversations.
01:01:28.740 It brings something to the equation and to the table that I think is much needed in our very contentious political and cultural and societal discussions.
01:01:38.680 So, I hope that you will tune in to Andrew.
01:01:41.260 You'll check out his podcast, The Andrew Clavin Show, and also his latest book, The House of Love and Death, among many other books that he's written.
01:01:48.880 Also, just tag him.
01:01:50.800 Take a screenshot right now.
01:01:52.000 Tag him.
01:01:52.460 Tag myself.
01:01:53.100 Let people know what you're listening to.
01:01:54.720 And let him know that you had heard him here on the Order Man podcast.
01:01:57.920 That helps him realize it was a good decision to join us.
01:02:01.660 It lets other people see.
01:02:03.700 And then it helps us land and secure other incredible podcast guests that can bring information to you that I hope will serve you in some way as you're on your own path to reclaiming and restoring masculinity.
01:02:15.660 All right, guys.
01:02:16.320 We'll be back tomorrow.
01:02:17.280 Until then, go out there.
01:02:18.080 Take action and become the man you are meant to be.
01:02:20.860 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.
01:02:23.680 If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the Order at orderofman.com.