Happy Independence Day! Today's guest is Andrew Clavin, host of the Daily Wire and author of the book The Great Good Thing. Andrew talks about why he loves America and why we should all do the same.
00:06:53.000But that it was his doing that and his stepping down after his second term in office, which set the standard for all presidents afterward.
00:07:02.140I mean, ultimately, after FDR served four terms, we had to put it into law.
00:07:06.320But 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.
00:07:17.320And really, until 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.
00:07:29.120That that tide that George Washington started has started to turn.
00:07:33.720And now we actually have, you know, clowns like Chuck Schumer in the Senate begging Donald Trump to make law when 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.
00:07:49.940The executive executes the law and the judges rule between them, which is the way it was supposed to be.
00:07:55.360So that was that really is George Washington really takes the credit for keeping us from having a king.
00:08:00.640They would have crowned him king. They would have gladly made him king.
00:08:03.440They would have gladly made the presidency a kingly office.
00:08:06.520But Washington stopped them because of his virtue, because he was a virtuous man.
00:08:11.040And that is an amazing thing that that can happen in history.
00:08:13.640And 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.
00:08:21.220And it's an amazing, amazing thing and can't be sold short.
00:08:24.900As for empire, one of the other things about the people we're talking about, their links to the past.
00:08:29.860The founders were steeped in classical literature and classical philosophy and classical wisdom.
00:08:35.560And a lot of the people that they loved, like Montesquieu and John Locke, were steeped also in the Bible and also in classical learning.
00:08:43.680And if there's one thing that the classics will teach you is that empire is its own grave digger.
00:08:49.480You know, that you spread and you spread until finally you can't spread any further.
00:08:53.700You can't hold the world on your shoulders.
00:08:55.480And they were very, very cognizant of that.
00:08:58.060Washington was very cognizant of avoiding, you know, in foreign entanglements.
00:09:02.720And that became sort of it's not isolationism.
00:09:05.920It was the fact that we had these oceans.
00:09:54.120There was a moment when the Berlin Wall fell and everything seemed almost, I mean, it's coming to the close, the close of the millennium.
00:10:03.400There was a messianic hope that maybe we were beyond history.
00:10:06.900There was that famous book by Francis Fukuyama to that effect.
00:10:10.280But 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.
00:10:39.020But 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.
00:10:51.540And I'm worried if the outward expressions of American success can be mimicked by America's enemies.
00:10:58.960And if that fools, I mean, I'll just stop there and let you answer.
00:11:03.380What about those who imitate only the material successes of America without the moral success of America?
00:11:11.480And China, of course, is the big experiment in this.
00:11:13.800Can they have a free market without having a free people?
00:11:16.840I got to tell you that deep in my heart, I suspect this is not going to work.
00:11:21.520I know everybody says China's the future and it's all going to be great and it's all going to happen.
00:11:25.860You know, I think one of two things is going to happen.
00:11:28.060Either 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.
00:11:36.740I think those are two things that are going to happen.
00:11:56.600It's a tension between the individual's desires and the community in which he lives.
00:12:02.080And that's what conservatism is all about.
00:12:03.800It'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.
00:12:17.720It's that tension between the great society and the individual person that makes freedom work.
00:12:23.360You 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, always like an old man living in his kid's garage.
00:12:37.300People always talk about there's always some country they've never been to where they think socialism works.
00:12:41.580So 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.
00:12:48.860But those countries live on off us in a lot of ways.
00:12:51.860If they use cell phones, if they use cars, if they, you know, use all the things, if they don't have a military that can defend them but depend on our military to back them up.
00:13:01.340Well, 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.
00:13:08.540What'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.
00:13:21.020Severe poverty has dropped something like 50 percent over the last few decades.
00:13:26.460I mean, really over a very short period of time because of what you're talking about, property rights, free markets.
00:13:31.320And 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.
00:13:39.220We have Venezuela right off our, you know, right off our our stern.
00:13:45.080We can look at it falling, descending into socialist destruction.
00:13:48.920And yet we still have people who think that socialism is a good thing.
00:13:52.940We have this incredible system that preserves our freedom through a division of powers and powers set against each other.
00:14:01.220And yet we have people who want the executive to be made stronger, who think the Constitution is an outdated document.
00:14:07.280It is amazing the power that bad ideas have with the human race.
00:14:11.480If it weren't for original sin, I think we would all recognize now that freedom and capitalism are the ways to go.
00:14:17.540But I think we are a broken creature, humanity, and we're always going to be sucked back into those bad ideas.
00:14:23.800I 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.
00:14:38.480And 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.
00:14:46.840I'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.
00:14:58.520And and I think it's when people come on mass from a country that does not share the same moral code.
00:15:06.560And I want to just talk about something that's a little uncomfortable.
00:15:09.260Pakistani Muslim rape gangs in the UK.
00:15:11.360I can't think of anything more uncomfortable.
00:15:13.580But 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.
00:15:22.600But it's not that when a rape happens in North America, typically it's a solitary crime of opportunity.
00:15:28.460Someone grabs, you know, a mugger grabs a woman in an alley or I mean that.
00:15:32.700And and if you hear the cry, help, help, I'm being raped.
00:15:40.160Whereas 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.
00:15:46.460I read the story about a bus in Pakistan where someone was being raped in the back of the bus.
00:15:51.660The bus driver pulled over and joined in.
00:15:54.540And I know I'm you're probably thinking, what the hell are we talking about as we're talking about America, but I'm talking about a high trust society versus a low trust society.
00:16:02.880And you bring in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people from a place where if a woman is not covered in a hijab, if she's not under the custody of her guardian, brother, husband, father, whatever, she's fair game, easy meat.
00:16:17.580And 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.
00:16:35.580We think I owe this stranger a duty because we're all Canadian, American Brits.
00:16:39.440What 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?
00:16:51.440You know, so many bad ideas have to go into a tragedy like these rape gangs.
00:16:57.220But 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.
00:17:05.020And they say this themselves, they did nothing because they were afraid of being called bigoted or Islamophobic.
00:17:35.280But to say that you come here and you're an American, even if you don't hold to those values,
00:17:39.760to 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 the cripple, the good in the face of evil.
00:17:52.220The 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.
00:18:12.620Those are the two different kinds of people that there are.
00:18:15.120Everybody else falls into that range of person, no matter what color you are, no matter where you come from.
00:18:21.060If 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.
00:18:34.180If they are not, you know, it says in the Bible, it says they are created in God's image, male and female.
00:18:40.200And 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.
00:18:51.360You have essentially written out 50 percent of the human race.
00:18:54.700The other day in the Washington Post, they ran an article by a feminist saying, basically, I hate all men.
00:19:00.080And my feeling was, well, you've just written off 50 percent of the world.
00:19:03.840You really shouldn't be writing in a newspaper.
00:19:06.080You know, you really shouldn't have that attitude and have that spread.
00:19:08.200Spread. 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.
00:19:17.600OK. And you have a philosophy, leftism, telling authorities that if you criticize that, you are somehow a bigot.
00:19:25.820And I just think that that is a recipe for disaster.
00:19:29.240And the disaster happened. And no wonder they had to lock Tommy Robinson up.
00:19:33.180You know, once they expose that, the whole leftist system collapses.
00:19:37.620The leftist system collapses and the anti-Western hatred collapses.
00:19:41.920And I just think those two ideas linked together have been a disaster.
00:19:46.140And it is it is throat clutchingly awful to me, not just that there could be rape gangs because that could happen,
00:19:52.840but that the authorities sat and watched it happen for fear of being called bigoted.
00:19:58.900I thank you for that answer. And it's raised five more questions in my mind, but I know you're pressed for time.
00:20:03.800I 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.
00:20:12.600But Donald Trump ran on an explicitly pro-American promise.
00:20:17.800I mean, his slogan was make America great again.
00:27:03.040But, of course, on that date, May 14th, the Gaza Strip erupted in protest and violence.
00:27:08.220It was acting like a bunch of petulant five-year-olds whose toy truck had been taken away because Palestinians consider East Jerusalem their capital.
00:27:16.940So that's why they were content with the U.S. Embassy being in Tel Aviv.
00:27:20.380But 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.
00:27:27.860So hope you are all having a fantastic 4th of July.
00:27:31.080I brought along my Make America Great Again hat.
00:27:33.960I actually put this hat over in front of the flower bed.
00:27:37.720And 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.
00:27:44.760Because, as we all know, many presidents before President Trump promised to do this and move this embassy.
00:27:51.060But President Trump was the one who had the moxie and the guts and the balls to do so.