The Matt Walsh Show - December 15, 2022


Daily Wire Backstage: 2022 Season Finale


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 16 minutes

Words per Minute

217.18991

Word Count

16,645

Sentence Count

1,399

Misogynist Sentences

32

Hate Speech Sentences

51


Summary

Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, and Michael Knowles join the Daily Wire's own Jeremy Boring to discuss the Dark Knight Rises and its implications for the future of Christopher Nolan's Batman franchise.


Transcript

00:00:00.140 Hey everybody, this is Matt Walsh. Drop everything you're doing and check out the latest episode of Daily Wire backstage.
00:00:05.020 You're going to hear Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and yours truly,
00:00:09.000 talking about all the important issues affecting you and your family.
00:00:12.000 You don't want to miss it, unless you're a leftist, in which case, you're cancelled.
00:00:30.000 Oh, Merry Christmas, everybody, and welcome to the Daily Wire backstage.
00:00:44.200 Don we now our gay apparel? Yes. Yes, we do. We donned.
00:00:50.540 I am Jeremy Boring. I am joined by Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, and Michael Knowles,
00:00:55.920 and we're going to be talking about so many important things that we haven't even made up yet.
00:01:00.000 You're in for quite a treat. But I want to tell you, before we get started,
00:01:04.880 that at the end of this show, we're going to have an unbelievable members block.
00:01:07.460 That's for our Daily Wire Plus members. If you're not a Daily Wire Plus member,
00:01:10.500 head over to dailywireplus.com, click that subscribe button, grab a membership,
00:01:14.840 join us for the rest of the show and the wonderful things we're going to discuss,
00:01:18.600 including our Secret Santa, names were drawn, money was spent, and shenanigans will ensue.
00:01:26.260 That's going to be in the members block, as well as our chance to answer questions from you,
00:01:31.240 our members. Which brings me to sacrilege, which was spoken just moments before the cameras rolled,
00:01:36.900 when one Matthew Bartholomew Walsh suggested that the Dark Knight does not hold up, end quote.
00:01:44.180 What the hell, dude?
00:01:46.340 I put it on for my kids. They're probably too young to watch it in the first place.
00:01:50.000 You're old, this is nine.
00:01:51.200 Yeah, they were...
00:01:51.940 What?
00:01:54.300 They were traumatized.
00:01:55.440 They cried and cried.
00:01:56.120 My wife was shooting me dirty looks the whole time.
00:01:58.340 Well, yeah.
00:01:58.800 It's not appropriate.
00:01:59.640 I can't imagine why, because she's a good parent.
00:02:01.680 It's been a while since I've seen it, but then I'm also reassessing it,
00:02:03.600 and I'm thinking, like, first of all, the Batman voice really did bother me.
00:02:07.840 The Batman voice is a mistake.
00:02:09.560 It's hard to take seriously.
00:02:10.660 The Two-Face storyline is an absolute afterthought.
00:02:13.340 They just throw them in.
00:02:14.340 Yeah.
00:02:14.500 They turn them into Two-Face 30 seconds before the movie's over,
00:02:18.280 and it just didn't...
00:02:19.580 I just didn't think it...
00:02:20.440 It didn't have...
00:02:21.740 I think it really is that Heath Ledger's Joker,
00:02:25.820 you take that out of it, and it's just kind of a basic B-plus Batman film.
00:02:29.200 And also, as a sequel compared to the original with Adam West,
00:02:33.220 it doesn't look bad.
00:02:34.400 The original is much...
00:02:35.140 And I would like to add, I always liked the first movie best of everything,
00:02:38.580 and I preferred Batman Begins.
00:02:40.100 Batman Begins is a great movie.
00:02:40.940 It is.
00:02:41.320 The first 45 minutes of Batman Begins is just spectacular.
00:02:43.480 See, this is the thing.
00:02:44.500 I think the first 45 minutes of Batman Begins are fabulous,
00:02:49.060 and then the movie doesn't hold up.
00:02:50.240 I agree with that.
00:02:51.040 The Dark Knight...
00:02:51.980 I don't agree with the Two-Face criticism.
00:02:53.460 I think it's just a different...
00:02:54.560 They're using Two-Face in a different way
00:02:56.480 than we're used to seeing villains used in film.
00:02:58.280 The Batman voice is a problem.
00:03:00.020 I watched Dark Knight Rises recently,
00:03:02.820 and between Batman voice and Bane voice...
00:03:05.740 Yeah.
00:03:05.960 And listen, Tom Hardy's an unbelievable actor.
00:03:08.440 Well, Nolan also uses sound in the theater
00:03:10.700 in a way that I'm not particularly fond of,
00:03:13.000 and I'm a Nolan fanboy.
00:03:13.940 When you actually see these in the theater,
00:03:15.600 you now have to watch Nolan films with the subtitles on
00:03:18.360 so you can actually understand what the dialogue is.
00:03:21.000 But...
00:03:21.240 How are you a Nolan fanboy, though?
00:03:22.820 To me, he's a cold director.
00:03:24.760 He doesn't really...
00:03:25.840 Oh, wait a minute.
00:03:26.920 I forgot who I was talking about.
00:03:27.800 I'm sorry.
00:03:28.300 I'm sorry.
00:03:29.620 He talks really fast.
00:03:31.100 Yeah, exactly.
00:03:31.480 The honest answer is that he is a director with ambition.
00:03:35.200 He tries to do interesting and fun and creative things.
00:03:38.440 And so I actually cut a video that's going to come out shortly on YouTube
00:03:41.860 previewing the films for next year.
00:03:43.440 And there's like 13 big films next year.
00:03:45.220 And of the 13 films, 11 of them are either sequels or remakes.
00:03:49.360 11.
00:03:49.940 Yeah.
00:03:50.000 And a couple of other legacy properties,
00:03:53.060 like a Mario movie or a Barbie movie.
00:03:55.200 There are two that are original movies,
00:03:56.840 one from Scorsese, one from Nolan.
00:03:58.200 The only guy who now has a budget to make actual creative film
00:04:01.580 is Christopher Nolan.
00:04:03.360 And there's stuff that he does that...
00:04:04.540 Like, I didn't like Tenet.
00:04:05.580 I thought Tenet was not good.
00:04:06.820 But Inception is brilliant.
00:04:09.540 I'm the only person who likes Interstellar.
00:04:11.220 I love Interstellar.
00:04:11.940 I think Interstellar is fantastic.
00:04:15.120 Interstellar was an insult to me.
00:04:16.740 I was so excited for Interstellar.
00:04:18.500 There wasn't a single alien.
00:04:20.120 Boy, there's...
00:04:20.720 Yes, there's no aliens.
00:04:22.460 Which was really disappointing.
00:04:23.920 But then I thought it would be a film about space
00:04:25.760 and we spent the whole time listening to Anne Hathaway
00:04:27.420 talk about the power of love.
00:04:29.480 It's like, that's the thing...
00:04:29.860 That's not true.
00:04:30.420 It's three hours long.
00:04:31.040 She does that for like seven minutes.
00:04:32.120 Okay, but he's just...
00:04:33.300 He beats you over the head with the message rather than...
00:04:35.400 Like, we don't need the speech about how...
00:04:36.760 I don't care about that part.
00:04:37.380 That part of the...
00:04:38.100 But the creation of the planets is amazing.
00:04:40.880 Oh.
00:04:41.120 Like, the water planet and ice planet...
00:04:43.200 I will say, you allude to the film that's coming out next year,
00:04:46.040 which is Oppenheimer.
00:04:46.920 Right.
00:04:47.300 I read this week that he...
00:04:49.760 You know, the whole movie culminates apparently in the Trinity test,
00:04:52.540 the first atomic explosion ever to happen on planet Earth.
00:04:55.680 Dude, don't spoil it.
00:04:56.720 And he refused...
00:04:57.740 And he refused to use CG.
00:05:00.000 He said if he's going to make the movie...
00:05:00.900 He just actually blew up.
00:05:01.780 They have to figure out how to create an atomic explosion.
00:05:04.540 Really?
00:05:05.240 Right.
00:05:06.280 Without...
00:05:06.720 60,000 people were killed.
00:05:08.380 He created...
00:05:09.060 That's a shock.
00:05:09.780 He created his own stock of film.
00:05:11.440 He actually did.
00:05:12.040 He created his own stock of film that has ever been used.
00:05:14.060 Of IMAX film.
00:05:14.360 Of IMAX film.
00:05:15.180 Yeah.
00:05:15.540 Just so that it would not degrade.
00:05:16.500 And it irradiated all the members of the crew.
00:05:18.260 Just to make sure that it was realistic.
00:05:19.960 I've said many times of Nolan, I don't think...
00:05:22.300 With the exception of Dark Knight, which I think may be a perfect movie
00:05:24.500 without Batman...
00:05:25.040 Other than Batman voice.
00:05:26.580 I think that he rarely sticks the landing.
00:05:30.620 But he is the most ambitious filmmaker.
00:05:32.780 I love the...
00:05:33.460 But he's the only...
00:05:34.380 He's the only filmmaker who could have made the rescue of Dunkirk.
00:05:37.700 A down...
00:05:38.140 You know, like a down...
00:05:38.720 Right.
00:05:38.840 You know, when those ships show up on the horizon, it's supposed to be the moment when
00:05:42.120 you stand up and cheer, and you're like, oh, there's a ship, you know?
00:05:45.620 There's no passion for that.
00:05:46.720 Oh, a ship.
00:05:47.340 70 millimeter.
00:05:48.240 But do you think, if you take Heath Ledger's performance out of that film, is it still a
00:05:52.640 great film?
00:05:54.320 I think it's a very good film, and Heath Ledger's performance certainly takes it to a whole other
00:05:59.040 place.
00:05:59.340 But even, I mean, I feel sort of out of place here, because I hate all of these movies,
00:06:03.280 and I don't watch any of the superhero ones, and I'm not...
00:06:06.220 I don't want to seem like a total Philistine and totally out of the culture, but has there
00:06:10.040 been any great, like actually great movie in the last 30 years?
00:06:17.420 Like the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
00:06:18.280 The Lord of the Rings was the closest thing to a great movie.
00:06:20.400 I walked out of Lord of the Rings.
00:06:21.520 I have to say...
00:06:21.940 I got bored in the words.
00:06:22.740 I have to say, I really believe that Godfather is the last great American movie.
00:06:27.780 Yeah.
00:06:27.960 However, the Lord of the Rings was...
00:06:29.260 So, Clavin, this brings us right back to the conversation you and I were actually having
00:06:32.140 before the show.
00:06:32.740 Which one?
00:06:33.080 Because we were talking about...
00:06:34.780 We were actively talking about this.
00:06:36.380 So, I just was talking with Robert George from Princeton, and we were talking about art
00:06:41.300 and how I cannot...
00:06:42.420 I don't think a good book is actually...
00:06:43.720 Like a great book.
00:06:44.420 Not good.
00:06:44.780 A great book has been written since about 1965 in the United States.
00:06:48.320 And I think that the reason for that...
00:06:49.960 There may be a couple of exceptions.
00:06:51.080 I think maybe American Pastoral was written a little after that.
00:06:53.480 And mostly as a critique of the current culture.
00:06:55.540 I think there have been some great books.
00:06:57.080 But I think there are rare and few...
00:06:58.380 Werewolf cop.
00:07:00.660 Great thing.
00:07:01.460 The thing that is good and great and also...
00:07:04.040 But the reason for that is because art for nearly all of human history was directed at
00:07:09.040 actual big and interesting questions.
00:07:10.840 And then in the 60s, we decided that all of those questions had been decided in the negative.
00:07:14.560 There was no God.
00:07:15.340 There was no system of morality.
00:07:16.380 There was nothing to struggle against.
00:07:17.680 And so all art was directed at either upholding the system of morality and upholding the truth
00:07:23.600 and justice of God or at denying that in transgressive ways.
00:07:28.140 But without the standard there at all, when the standard is obliterated, there's nothing
00:07:31.420 interesting to be done with film anymore.
00:07:33.300 Everything...
00:07:33.620 The scales of everything just become extraordinarily small.
00:07:37.460 The scope of every film becomes very, very...
00:07:39.860 There have been some great...
00:07:40.660 You said any great films in the last 30 years?
00:07:42.400 Yeah.
00:07:43.500 Another one I re-watched last week was No Country for Old Men.
00:07:46.620 Oh.
00:07:46.820 That's a good film.
00:07:47.340 It's so good.
00:07:48.040 Which I think, the first time I saw it, I was...
00:07:50.580 Hail Caesar is also very good.
00:07:51.540 So first of all...
00:07:52.060 I was lukewarm on it, especially the ending, and I watched it after re-watching it several
00:07:55.700 times.
00:07:56.100 This is a great...
00:07:56.840 And it's particularly the end, the last scene, when he's talking about this dream of seeing
00:08:00.360 his father and how he's waiting for him out in the cold, in the dark.
00:08:03.000 I think it's a truly great film.
00:08:05.080 It's in my top 10.
00:08:06.160 But one of the reasons for that is because it's based on a Cormac McCarthy novel, and Cormac McCarthy
00:08:11.120 deals with questions.
00:08:12.260 It's about God and death.
00:08:14.060 And that entire film is about the nature of fate and death.
00:08:16.520 I mean, that's what that film is.
00:08:17.320 This is one of the reasons I couldn't get on the Top Gun 2 train, even though I enjoyed
00:08:20.000 it as a spectacle, a kind of rollercoaster ride.
00:08:23.740 You know, if you can't name your enemies, it's because you can't name what you're fighting
00:08:27.860 for or against.
00:08:29.140 And so it was a completely empty film, except for the beauty.
00:08:32.660 It was wonderful to watch.
00:08:33.600 It was exciting and fun.
00:08:34.880 I'm not knocking it as a kind of brainless entertainment.
00:08:37.880 But it was brainless.
00:08:38.640 Oh, no.
00:08:38.880 So I totally disagree with you, and I'll tell you the reason I disagree with you.
00:08:41.160 And it's not because you're wrong.
00:08:42.780 Okay.
00:08:43.260 You're actually right.
00:08:44.200 Yeah.
00:08:44.420 But I actually found the film moving.
00:08:46.660 And the reason I found the film moving is not because of the film.
00:08:48.780 It's because of what it's actually fighting in the culture.
00:08:50.880 Meaning that the enemy of the film is not in the film.
00:08:53.100 The enemy of the film is all of Hollywood.
00:08:55.020 The enemy of the film is a Hollywood that would never show a Taiwanese flag on the back
00:08:59.500 of a jacket.
00:09:00.180 A Hollywood that would never just have the United States military as the good guys.
00:09:04.060 A film where a bunch of white men are competent at things.
00:09:07.520 A film in which a traditional male-female couple actually gets together.
00:09:11.700 Hollywood fights every single aspect of this, and this film didn't do any of that.
00:09:15.520 And so I found it actually nostalgically sad.
00:09:18.340 It was actually sad to me to watch the film because I watched it and I enjoyed it.
00:09:21.600 And I'm like, well, why aren't there more of this?
00:09:23.920 And there aren't more of these because Hollywood refuses to make it.
00:09:26.420 I actually thought that it was a bad movie.
00:09:28.740 I enjoyed the hell out of it.
00:09:30.480 I think the plot is so stupid.
00:09:32.160 Well, you're a plot specialist.
00:09:33.620 The plot is so stupid.
00:09:35.740 And there's no excuse for the plot to be so stupid.
00:09:38.320 You could have written five lines that made almost every set piece work and actually make sense.
00:09:46.280 But it doesn't matter.
00:09:46.900 It's obviously a spectacle.
00:09:47.980 Obviously, it's fun.
00:09:49.180 I also found it moving.
00:09:50.360 I agree with everything that you're saying about what it means in the culture.
00:09:54.300 And I'll say the one other thing I'll say about it.
00:09:56.960 I think that it is the greatest nakedly nostalgic movie I've ever seen.
00:10:01.780 Because it somehow manages to do pure fan service, but in ways almost every time that bring maturity to the character.
00:10:13.320 What do you think about the—
00:10:14.320 Which I found really interesting.
00:10:15.480 There's a line Robert Nisbet, who's a sociologist in the 50s, used about nostalgia.
00:10:21.000 And this is why it made me sad.
00:10:22.740 The reason nostalgia is sad, he says, is because nostalgia is what's left when the thing itself is worn away.
00:10:27.920 And so the idea of the sacred, which is worn away in our culture, or the idea of the importance of male-female relationships, or the idea of the importance of competence and American patriotism, these have worn away.
00:10:41.300 And so you feel nostalgic for them.
00:10:42.540 And so much of our culture now is built on nostalgia, and then we refuse to acknowledge that there were things about that time that were better.
00:10:49.680 Not everything was better, but it's a culture that simultaneously tries to leech off of the things that were amazing about, for example, the 1980s and making Stranger Things.
00:10:58.300 And you're nostalgic.
00:10:58.940 You're watching it.
00:10:59.760 Why are you nostalgic?
00:11:00.560 What was so great about the 1980s?
00:11:01.600 You can't say.
00:11:02.180 Nothing was great about the 1980s.
00:11:03.260 It's a place of terrible racism and homophobia.
00:11:05.400 Sexism is horrible.
00:11:06.360 Reagan was president then.
00:11:07.320 You can't mention it.
00:11:07.940 But we're all watching Stranger Things and feeling nostalgic because we're watching Stranger Things.
00:11:12.440 And this is half the stuff that's on TV now.
00:11:14.240 You're watching something, and they're doing—I mean, even Disney Plus series like WandaVision, which are based entirely on nostalgia for old TV.
00:11:20.840 Why are you nostalgic for old TV?
00:11:22.220 Old TV is kind of bad.
00:11:23.360 When you watch shows from the 50s, particularly, they start to get better in the 60s, a lot of the old shows from the 50s that are not, you know, the hour-long specials are really not very good.
00:11:31.760 And you're nostalgic for that because what you're nostalgic for is a more innocent time when people actually took morality seriously,
00:11:36.840 even if they were doing it wrong in ways—
00:11:38.780 It's even worse than that because they've made movies.
00:11:41.080 Recently, they made one called Schmigadoon, which was a takeoff on Brigadoon.
00:11:44.580 Remember in Brigadoon, they go back and they find old Scotland, and they find this guy.
00:11:48.920 It's a great musical.
00:11:49.940 A guy who's in a kind of loveless engagement with this woman in New York, and he finds that the old values bring him back to life, and he falls in love with the Scottish girl.
00:11:58.260 They remade it where they go back into the Scottish, old Scottish town, teach them it's better to be homosexual, and it's better to, you know, have this.
00:12:04.180 Then there was this movie that was just about going back into Ozzie and Nelson TV, and I cannot remember the name.
00:12:10.320 I mean, that's Pleasantville also, right?
00:12:11.720 Pleasantville.
00:12:12.200 Pleasantville.
00:12:12.740 He goes back and he says, but, you know, the problem is you guys don't have sex, and you don't know anything life is about.
00:12:18.200 Right, it's black and white, and as soon as they discover sex, then all the color comes into the world.
00:12:21.960 So it's not only that they won't let you be nostalgic about what was worthwhile, they want to go back and ruin it, you know?
00:12:26.540 Right, right.
00:12:26.880 Let us go back and destroy it.
00:12:27.940 Though it is worth remembering nostalgia is history after a few drinks, and part of our longing for that period is because the innocent time was our own childhood.
00:12:36.680 So, you know, yes, the culture was more innocent in certain ways, but, you know, on this point of the nostalgic movies.
00:12:42.020 I'm going to challenge you very briefly on that.
00:12:44.360 I watched, over the Thanksgiving break, I went to see my in-laws in Kansas, and my father-in-law, and the great tradition of father-in-law, father's in-law, was watching Gunsmoke.
00:12:55.700 I, the longest-running live-action television show of all time, made 645 episodes of this show.
00:13:04.160 I've never seen a single frame of it in my life.
00:13:06.920 I watched the last 15 minutes of an episode that he was watching, and I was so transfixed.
00:13:11.740 I came home and downloaded Season 1, Episode 1 on Paramount+.
00:13:15.540 Now, as it turns out, I did not know this at the time, that is a lie, and someone should sue Paramount+.
00:13:20.360 It was actually, it's billed as Season 1, Episode 1, it's actually Season 7, Episode 1.
00:13:25.700 But what that means is that this is something like the 240th episode of Gunsmoke that I watched.
00:13:32.420 I believe it was shot in 1962, and like all television from the early 60s, the writing is sublime.
00:13:39.960 It is hard-boiled.
00:13:42.500 Yeah.
00:13:42.860 It is subtle.
00:13:43.980 It never, it has no sentimentality anywhere in it, and I realized that all modern shows are about a character going on a journey in which he overcomes his flaws.
00:13:55.920 And what's amazing about Gunsmoke is that it's about, it's about the justice of God walking among mortal men.
00:14:03.820 And among mortal men, there is nothing interesting at all about Matt Dillon.
00:14:08.000 He is just the justice of God.
00:14:10.460 The supporting characters who come through bring all of the color, all of the things that are interesting, because they have to encounter the justice of God.
00:14:19.200 So these unbelievable performances.
00:14:21.820 I would sit here, honestly, for 45 minutes and recount the entire plot.
00:14:25.560 I loved it so much.
00:14:26.640 I've been going back here.
00:14:27.680 And that is not my childhood.
00:14:29.200 I am nostalgic for something that I never even experienced before.
00:14:31.480 Yeah, I totally agree with you.
00:14:32.300 I've been watching a bunch of old films lately.
00:14:34.040 So over the last couple of days, I watched Battleground, which was a movie from 1949, and is sort of the predicate for Band of Brothers.
00:14:40.180 And it's great.
00:14:41.560 It's really phenomenal.
00:14:42.480 The movies that they made in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, some of the 60s, a little bit of the 70s, are really fantastic.
00:14:48.500 Again, they're the best movies.
00:14:49.180 You can find that on, I mean, maybe part of the issue here is that you're talking about there are no great books.
00:14:54.400 Also, the issue with films, maybe people are just moving into different mediums.
00:14:57.180 The great storytellers these days are in different mediums.
00:14:59.360 I just don't think TV is that great.
00:15:00.540 Well, okay, so if Vince Gilligan was Russian in the 1870s, maybe he would have written Crime and Punishment.
00:15:08.920 Instead, he made Breaking Bad.
00:15:11.120 Right.
00:15:11.560 Breaking Bad is about hate and morality.
00:15:14.400 Right.
00:15:14.800 Thinking on big issues.
00:15:15.520 Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are not about someone overcoming their flaws.
00:15:19.240 It's sort of the opposite of that.
00:15:20.840 Chernobyl, I think, is one of the masterpieces of all time.
00:15:24.480 I agree with that.
00:15:25.240 And it was made recently.
00:15:26.200 I agree with this.
00:15:27.540 The spirit moves from form to form.
00:15:30.660 But I think overall, the spirit is being lost.
00:15:32.760 I mean, I think there are things on TV that are great.
00:15:35.500 But if you read the Rotten Tomatoes reviews, everything is 100%.
00:15:37.940 Yeah, I know.
00:15:38.440 Literally everything.
00:15:39.340 But remember, there's this telescoping thing, too.
00:15:41.740 There's a lot of, you go back, I love 40s music.
00:15:44.700 Yeah, yeah.
00:15:44.940 When you go back and listen to 40s music, there's a lot of dross.
00:15:47.440 But it all goes away over time.
00:15:48.880 And so you telescope it down.
00:15:49.860 Yeah, but if you look at the Oscar nominees from 1942.
00:15:51.860 Oh, it's amazing.
00:15:52.380 Well, that was...
00:15:52.740 Every single movie.
00:15:53.680 1939 was the peak of the movie industry.
00:15:55.660 1939 is unbelievable.
00:15:56.660 It's unbelievable.
00:15:57.260 Every single movie.
00:15:58.340 Every single movie.
00:15:58.560 And it's not just the Oscar winner.
00:16:00.760 It's also a great movie.
00:16:02.100 An Oscar nominee is a great movie and a box office success.
00:16:04.880 Right.
00:16:05.040 So that's the other thing that's worth pointing out here, is that the things that we consider
00:16:08.700 now box office successes are capturing a tiny slice of the market.
00:16:12.080 The stuff that was a box office success was the thing that won the Best Picture Oscar
00:16:15.800 in 1951 and also was a great piece of art.
00:16:17.780 Right.
00:16:18.160 Right.
00:16:18.740 That's what it is.
00:16:19.500 You would see movies like The Best Years of Our Lives was, I believe, the biggest box
00:16:22.500 office winner of that year.
00:16:24.080 And it is a two-hour, 45-minute treatise about what it's like for men to come back from World
00:16:28.040 War II and reintegrate into American society.
00:16:29.660 And it's difficult.
00:16:30.340 It's difficult.
00:16:30.680 It's not an easy movie.
00:16:31.780 Yeah.
00:16:32.020 And it was like the number one box office movie because people used to be mature in this
00:16:35.000 country and used to actually deal with real issues.
00:16:36.660 If you're old enough to remember any of the movies that Ben and Drew are talking
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00:17:58.940 Andrew Klavan.
00:17:59.400 Has anybody watched The Peripheral?
00:18:02.480 Yeah.
00:18:02.980 Yeah, I thought it was pretty good.
00:18:04.280 It was enjoyable.
00:18:05.020 You know, the thing about The Peripheral that got me is, it's William Gibson, who's a very
00:18:09.320 talented science fiction writer.
00:18:10.920 I don't really love that kind of science fiction writing because it has no characters in it.
00:18:14.260 But he invents this role.
00:18:15.180 He's an idea guy.
00:18:15.860 He invented The Matrix, basically, before there was The Matrix.
00:18:18.920 And that's what this movie is.
00:18:20.920 However, the minute it started, I thought, who wrote the dialogue on this?
00:18:23.720 And it's a guy named Scott B. Smith.
00:18:25.880 Scott B. Smith was, for two novels, the second best genre novelist in America, next to me.
00:18:31.780 And he wrote a book called The Simple Plan, which is just a wonderful book.
00:18:37.300 He was, to be clear, the first best genre title writer.
00:18:43.120 Yeah, he did have that.
00:18:44.280 And then he went Hollywood.
00:18:46.020 And he's just done all this mediocre work.
00:18:48.400 So it was nice to see him at work.
00:18:49.760 And the dialogue was really hot.
00:18:51.400 And a couple of the character things were good.
00:18:52.940 And ultimately, it's one of these multiverse movies.
00:18:56.560 Yeah, I mean, the end of it doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:18:58.520 It's got some stuff in it that's really nice.
00:19:00.960 The brother-sister relationship, particularly, is very nice.
00:19:03.400 That's the best thing in it.
00:19:03.880 But again, Hollywood can't help itself.
00:19:05.760 And so in the part of one of the key inspector has to be a transgender woman.
00:19:10.240 Yes, yes.
00:19:10.660 Who's very, very obviously a transgender woman.
00:19:12.240 I thought Severance was a great show.
00:19:15.740 That was really interesting.
00:19:16.780 I'm not sure what...
00:19:17.460 Although I'm never going to understand how John Turturro and Christopher Walken are supposed to end up to that.
00:19:22.380 That's the weirdest gay couple of all time.
00:19:23.700 Yeah, well...
00:19:24.100 We'll have to see if that's a great show.
00:19:25.620 I have to see where it goes.
00:19:27.100 Yeah.
00:19:27.760 It had...
00:19:28.300 The best thing about it was the outside.
00:19:30.680 You know, it's the outside where people will have these conversations.
00:19:34.460 Like, they're take-offs on, like, Park Slope, you know, conversations.
00:19:38.480 And people sit around going...
00:19:39.600 You know, back in the day, they didn't call World War I World War I.
00:19:42.900 And it wasn't...
00:19:43.460 That wasn't politically correct.
00:19:45.160 There was no World War II yet.
00:19:47.900 People are so stupid and vapid.
00:19:49.820 It's really...
00:19:50.680 Have you guys watched...
00:19:51.580 I was really into this recently.
00:19:52.980 Harry and Meghan on Netflix.
00:19:55.180 I thought it was really great.
00:19:56.860 Really great work.
00:19:57.700 Members...
00:19:58.700 My own dear, beloved, probably watching right now, grandmother, my lovely nana, asked me if I had watched Harry and Meghan.
00:20:05.400 And I died a little inside.
00:20:08.000 I'm not Harry and Meghan.
00:20:09.360 I actually had to watch part of it for the show.
00:20:11.700 I went through it, you know, on behalf of the audience.
00:20:15.000 That woman gets more villainous every single day.
00:20:18.640 The disrespect that she shows to the...
00:20:21.080 The woman is dead, okay?
00:20:22.920 This, like, one of the greatest women of the 20th century is dead.
00:20:25.280 And she's still disrespecting her on camera.
00:20:27.380 And her husband has to watch.
00:20:29.000 It was so...
00:20:29.880 It was the...
00:20:30.680 You're talking about transgender characters in movies.
00:20:32.700 It was...
00:20:33.020 Whatever occurred there, it was much more emasculating to watch Harry.
00:20:36.780 The worst cuckold of all time.
00:20:37.940 Yeah, kind of.
00:20:39.120 Yeah.
00:20:40.120 And what is this thing...
00:20:41.940 How come nobody ever asked these people what they have accomplished?
00:20:44.920 Elizabeth the Queen, Queen Elizabeth II, you know, we have to say she accomplished something.
00:20:49.620 She had a marvelous...
00:20:50.820 What has Meghan ever done?
00:20:52.500 She was on...
00:20:53.320 She was on...
00:20:53.540 She held up the suitcase on that game show, right?
00:20:57.460 And it was very hard for her.
00:20:58.500 It was very hard.
00:20:58.940 It was a brutal, brutal experience for her.
00:21:00.540 People were looking at her for her beauty.
00:21:02.560 They cast her for her beauty in a game show where she holds up a suitcase.
00:21:04.920 How dare they?
00:21:05.740 How dare they?
00:21:07.720 And certainly, she would have been married into the royal family if she were 300 pounds and had a giant wart right here.
00:21:13.220 This point that you're making...
00:21:14.120 Is that phobic now?
00:21:15.160 This point you're making is so important.
00:21:16.680 I said something about it on Twitter recently.
00:21:18.240 Like, every time you see any sort of post about some sort of peak human achievement, Elon Musk lands a rocket on a ship at sea, NASA lands their first lunar...
00:21:29.380 You know, fires off their first lunar mission in living memory and returns it safely to Earth, probably going to start a new manned space program.
00:21:37.620 There's always these comments that are like, well, why don't you try doing something for the country, the world we've got right here first?
00:21:45.120 And I'm always like, who's we?
00:21:47.080 Who's we?
00:21:47.600 You've done nothing.
00:21:48.720 That guy landed a rocket on a ship at sea.
00:21:51.140 An enormous achievement for a human being.
00:21:53.600 And you're complaining because he doesn't give you his money.
00:21:56.240 But you know what?
00:21:56.800 This is...
00:21:57.100 Like the guys who pulled down statues.
00:21:58.260 It is exactly like the guys who pulled down statues.
00:22:00.200 This is one of the things that, again, to mention Top Gun, I think that there is just an anger against competence in our society.
00:22:07.920 Yes.
00:22:08.320 People are angry at the competent.
00:22:10.540 Like, if you're competent, this is a sign that you are somehow discriminatory or bigoted.
00:22:13.620 Because competence obviously suggests a meritocracy.
00:22:15.640 Meritocracy suggests that maybe people in some mild way kind of deserve what they get as a general matter in life.
00:22:20.340 And we're never allowed to suggest that sort of thing.
00:22:22.640 And that's why, again, in Top Gun, when you're watching people be competent, I just realized I enjoy watching films and movies where people are competent.
00:22:28.820 And it doesn't happen.
00:22:30.240 And part of the reason it doesn't happen is because if it's a movie filled or a show filled with competent people, the writer actually has to be good at his craft.
00:22:36.920 If there's a bunch of incompetence, you can create the dumbest ways possible out of a corner.
00:22:40.500 You write yourself into a corner and someone just does a dumb thing.
00:22:42.500 And then suddenly you're out of the corner.
00:22:43.880 If it's filled with competent people, that's actually difficult.
00:22:46.040 Because now you have to say, what would intelligent people do that would get them out of this situation or put them into this situation in the first place?
00:22:52.020 And so I think so much of the writing is so bad now.
00:22:55.220 Just because people do dumb stuff.
00:22:57.240 And you're like, why would they possibly do that?
00:22:59.600 I mean, this is your thing.
00:23:00.640 You watch movies all the time and read scripts.
00:23:03.780 And it's like, why is this person doing this?
00:23:05.040 Are they just an idiot?
00:23:06.040 And the answer is, yeah, they're an idiot.
00:23:07.160 Like, there's nobody who's competent on TV or in movies anymore.
00:23:09.640 That's interesting.
00:23:10.120 I haven't ever heard, we've never discussed this idea of a sort of growing hatred of competence.
00:23:14.920 But I think that there is something to it.
00:23:16.340 Well, growing hatred of competence and dignity.
00:23:18.580 I mean, that's what, when Meghan makes fun of the Queen and having to bow to the Queen,
00:23:22.380 it's making fun of dignity and formality.
00:23:25.440 And that, I mean, you see this now.
00:23:27.660 I'm on a crusade.
00:23:28.620 I think we need to ban athleisure wear.
00:23:30.740 I think athleisure wear is a communist plot to destroy the country.
00:23:34.400 Like soccer.
00:23:35.340 Like soccer, actually.
00:23:36.380 Exactly like soccer.
00:23:37.460 And so it just deprives you of dignity.
00:23:40.420 And it speaks to a lack of respect for oneself.
00:23:44.020 But people...
00:23:44.380 Can I wear it in my house or...
00:23:45.620 No.
00:23:46.160 Not even in my house.
00:23:46.940 No, you can't.
00:23:47.540 A tuxedo to bed.
00:23:48.800 A tuxedo, at least to dinner.
00:23:50.300 I mean, that's...
00:23:50.880 Speaking of Harry and Meghan, you watch The Crown.
00:23:52.800 And my favorite scenes, it's when Elizabeth and Prince Philip are sitting to dinner alone.
00:23:58.520 And he's wearing a tuxedo.
00:23:59.880 That was a better time.
00:24:01.340 And it just...
00:24:02.580 When you engage in ritual, whether we're talking about political ritual, religious ritual,
00:24:07.520 you know, we're incarnational beings.
00:24:09.760 And so it's like, when you...
00:24:11.420 You've got to put your body into it.
00:24:12.880 And that's going to affect the way you think of yourself.
00:24:14.660 I completely agree with this.
00:24:15.920 I do think...
00:24:16.880 And I worry about it, like, personally, because I grew up in the 60s when it all fell apart.
00:24:21.260 And I'm a naturally kind of casual person.
00:24:24.680 So I just fell into it.
00:24:26.000 And now I think, like, you know, I should have worn a tie my entire life.
00:24:30.220 In bed, I should have worn a tie.
00:24:31.060 Yes.
00:24:31.720 Honey, I'm coming to bed.
00:24:33.060 Are we getting rid of ritual or just replacing...
00:24:37.080 The pronoun thing, for example, is a...
00:24:39.340 That's a modern...
00:24:40.380 That's what it is.
00:24:41.060 It's a ritual.
00:24:41.900 You can't get rid of ritual because we have bodies and we're...
00:24:45.120 It is a replacement of ritual, but I think that actually...
00:24:47.700 We're pretending that the ritual went away and it didn't.
00:24:49.660 It transformed into a ritual of the catechism of poverty.
00:24:52.240 Of course, yes.
00:24:53.120 It used to be that everybody aspired to be rich.
00:24:55.080 And so you dressed like you were rich even when you were poor.
00:24:57.420 Right?
00:24:57.560 If you look at the people on the bread lines during the Depression,
00:25:01.080 they are wearing suits in the bread lines in the Depression.
00:25:03.500 Yeah.
00:25:03.640 And then now, you have people who are the embezzlers of billions of dollars at FTX,
00:25:10.200 and they're literally getting money given to them because they are wearing gym shorts
00:25:13.260 and a baggy t-shirt, and they haven't exercised, and they're slob.
00:25:16.260 You know this in L.A.
00:25:17.160 You go into an L.A. restaurant, and you can always pick out the richest guy in the room
00:25:20.540 because he's wearing a ripped t-shirt and sweatpants, right?
00:25:23.520 He's the sloppiest dressed person there.
00:25:26.860 And it's become this kind of cult of degradation and poverty.
00:25:32.060 Why did it take us so long to come up with these arguments, though?
00:25:33.880 Because when I was a kid, things like the rituals in Judaism where you wear a shawl,
00:25:39.520 and people say, well, why do you have to do that?
00:25:41.920 And they didn't know.
00:25:43.280 They didn't have the answer.
00:25:44.100 I remember in school listening to teachers.
00:25:46.040 Well, you went to a reformer conservative school.
00:25:47.700 That's a problem right there.
00:25:48.500 Okay, no.
00:25:49.420 When I went to school, the answer is obvious.
00:25:50.920 It says directly in the good book that you are supposed to wear fringes upon the corners
00:25:55.060 of your garments.
00:25:56.100 And in the Talmud, it talks about you're supposed to do this.
00:25:58.280 Actually, it says, uritamotol, you're supposed to look at them, and this is supposed to remind
00:26:01.300 you of your obligations on earth.
00:26:03.520 You're supposed to wear a funny garment in order to remind—I mean, the reason we wear
00:26:06.900 a kippah now also, right?
00:26:07.780 It's supposed to remind you constantly that you're subject to a higher power.
00:26:10.620 That's why you do it.
00:26:11.540 But the entire corpus of Talmudic law was written in order to explain why you do this ritual.
00:26:15.320 I completely agree with you, and I also agree with what you're saying.
00:26:17.920 But the people didn't know.
00:26:19.340 The people in charge—
00:26:20.700 You know what?
00:26:21.040 But this is actually a deeper point, because the reason they didn't know is because they
00:26:25.780 relied, and it was okay to just rely on the tradition.
00:26:28.760 It was just okay.
00:26:29.820 Because it worked.
00:26:30.240 And we have decided that that's no longer enough.
00:26:32.860 And I know this has been a drum I've been beating for a year now, quoting Oakshot to Michael,
00:26:35.460 and Michael—
00:26:36.240 I know.
00:26:36.260 My heart's beating out of my chest.
00:26:37.520 But it is true that the vast majority of the things that we do in life are inherited traditions,
00:26:42.660 and we used to just say that was okay.
00:26:44.580 You didn't have to explain why it was that you—why it was important to dress well.
00:26:49.620 Why it was important—I mean, we've gotten so basic now that it's like,
00:26:52.360 why is it important to marry a person of the opposite sex as opposed to a person of any random gender?
00:26:57.440 I have to come up with an argument for this now, and I think because we were—because only the wisest
00:27:02.960 were people who had actually bothered to come up with sort of a rationale.
00:27:06.700 Everybody else just relied on the fact that there was a rationale, and they're like,
00:27:09.100 I don't need to know how to explain this, because why would I possibly need to know how to explain this?
00:27:12.880 You know, there's actually—here's a bit of what we would call in Hebrew Devar Torah, right?
00:27:15.940 Here's a little bit of biblical wisdom.
00:27:17.860 So this is taught to me by a rabbi near where I live named Rabbi Goldberg.
00:27:21.860 I thought that was really good.
00:27:22.720 So in Hebrew, the word for taste and the word for reason are the same word.
00:27:26.040 The word is ta'am, okay?
00:27:28.080 And so there's a really nice idea.
00:27:30.580 Why is that?
00:27:31.020 Why are they the same word?
00:27:31.800 It's spelled tet-ein-mem.
00:27:33.740 Why are they the same word?
00:27:34.880 Because reason, just like you eat food to nourish you, but taste is what gives you pleasure
00:27:42.000 from the food, you do the rituals and you do the things in life to nourish you.
00:27:46.160 You don't actually have to have a reason as to why you're doing it.
00:27:50.200 The reason just makes it better.
00:27:52.060 The reason makes it better.
00:27:53.040 The reason lives on top of the nourishing mechanism that is the rituals and traditions
00:27:58.020 that you've been handed.
00:27:58.980 And what we've done is we've reversed that.
00:28:01.600 We've basically said that every tradition is subject to tabula rasa reasoning.
00:28:06.420 Explain to me why everybody should wear a suit.
00:28:07.720 They shouldn't wear a suit.
00:28:08.300 You should wear athleisure.
00:28:09.100 How do I defend a necktie?
00:28:11.100 I don't know.
00:28:11.520 I'm just going to wear it.
00:28:12.280 I mean, this is why Burke defends the naughtiest word that you're not allowed to say today,
00:28:16.500 which is prejudice.
00:28:17.880 Prejudice in its simplest form, which is prejudgment, which we all engage in all the time.
00:28:24.480 We have to.
00:28:25.280 I cannot write a 50-page treatise on every single thing that I am going to do before I do it.
00:28:30.720 I would be absolutely paralyzed.
00:28:32.740 I'd be impotent.
00:28:33.340 I couldn't act in the world.
00:28:34.660 And so we rely on these things.
00:28:36.560 We always did.
00:28:37.900 But now, in the last 50, 60 years, it has completely flipped such that every single little thing
00:28:45.820 that we would just take for granted out of common sense, we now have to provide some
00:28:49.440 hyper-rationalist explanation for it.
00:28:51.280 That's why the best answer, I think, is the drum I'm always beating, is it's about burden
00:28:57.440 of proof.
00:28:57.860 So if you're the one coming along challenging the thing that people have been doing for generations,
00:29:02.760 that's fine.
00:29:03.680 You can challenge it.
00:29:04.640 In fact, I'm interested to hear your challenge.
00:29:06.420 But you have to explain why.
00:29:08.140 It's not up to me to defend what everyone's been doing forever.
00:29:11.360 What is your problem with it?
00:29:13.040 And instead of asking people that, instead of saying, what's your issue with this?
00:29:16.840 What's your argument against it?
00:29:18.880 Instead, we scramble around looking for justifications.
00:29:21.480 I think we should—we've already lost the game when we do that.
00:29:24.440 Should we shift it back to you?
00:29:26.540 You explain what the issue is.
00:29:28.560 And then we can go from there.
00:29:29.360 But they can't do that.
00:29:30.200 I think because people who are radical and challenge the tradition very often don't have
00:29:34.540 a reason and they're very passionate about it, I think that people of traditional bent
00:29:37.300 immediately look to short-circuit the conversation by looking for some sort of compromise.
00:29:42.620 And they always think that this will be the last compromise.
00:29:45.380 I mean, I think that's what you saw at the White House yesterday, right?
00:29:48.920 You get 12 Republicans in the Senate to vote in favor of enshrinement of same-sex marriage
00:29:52.340 because this will be the final compromise.
00:29:53.900 This will finally be where the buck stops.
00:29:56.040 And it's like, well, no, it won't.
00:29:58.200 He's telling you it won't be.
00:29:59.280 He's telling you—in 2006, this same schmuck was on national television.
00:30:03.920 Joe Biden.
00:30:03.940 People may not know exactly what we're saying here.
00:30:05.360 Yeah, sorry.
00:30:05.760 You're talking about the president of the United States had a schmuck.
00:30:07.380 Yeah, that schmuck.
00:30:07.940 I mean that schmuck, the president of the United States.
00:30:10.580 It's Yiddish for president.
00:30:11.540 Right, Mr. Schmuck president of the United States.
00:30:13.440 Because they finally passed this Respect for Marriage Act.
00:30:18.060 Respect for Marriage Act.
00:30:18.540 We only name acts that are precisely the opposite of what they are now.
00:30:21.500 The Inflation Reduction Act, the Respect for Marriage Act.
00:30:24.120 It's a mandate now.
00:30:26.140 Soon it'll be the So You Can Keep Your Kids Act.
00:30:28.500 Right.
00:30:29.740 And so Joe Biden goes out there and he, in 2006, says,
00:30:33.400 we don't need a constitutional amendment to protect marriage
00:30:35.640 because everyone believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.
00:30:38.440 I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act.
00:30:40.300 What exactly is the problem?
00:30:41.620 Why would you even want to pass a constitutional amendment?
00:30:43.720 We're now 16 years later, and he's basically, not basically,
00:30:46.080 he's openly saying that you are a bigot.
00:30:47.840 You are a bigot, and probably, you are a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe,
00:30:51.340 transphobe, if you believe in traditional marriage rather than same-sex marriage.
00:30:56.060 I mean, he actually said that.
00:30:57.280 I mean, I think we have a clip, actually, of the president of the United States
00:30:59.440 actually saying that racism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia,
00:31:04.520 being anti-semitic, they're all the same.
00:31:07.100 All the things I don't like are in the same box.
00:31:08.480 Let's play the clip.
00:31:11.320 Racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, transphobia, they're all connected.
00:31:18.000 But the antidote to hate is love.
00:31:21.240 This law and the love it defends strike a blow against hate in all its forms.
00:31:28.000 I love you guys so much, I will punch you in the face to enforce my perspective
00:31:31.120 on the evils of your traditional marriage.
00:31:32.920 It was so profound, man.
00:31:33.280 And then he says that he kept saying over and over, this is the first step.
00:31:39.000 I was like, wait a damned minute, homophobe a second.
00:31:42.220 So just to get this straight, no pun intended, just to get this straight,
00:31:46.820 the original case was, don't criminalize what you do in our bedroom.
00:31:49.660 And everyone was like, okay, fair enough.
00:31:51.220 I mean, those laws were not enforced in the first place, all right, fine.
00:31:53.500 And then it was, well, we would like civil unions so that we can go visit our partners
00:31:57.580 in the hospital and bequeath property to one another.
00:32:00.100 And people were like, okay, fine.
00:32:01.720 And then they're like, well, we want same-sex marriage,
00:32:03.500 and it's going to be called the exact same thing as marriage.
00:32:05.100 And many of us were like, well, now you're starting to edging on our marriage.
00:32:07.820 But they said, well, no, no, no, how does that affect you?
00:32:09.920 If we get married, how does that affect your marriage?
00:32:11.680 And most people, not understanding the flaw in that argument, were like, okay, fine.
00:32:15.160 And then they're like, but we definitely, definitely will never say that your church
00:32:18.580 has to do what we want it to do, or that your business has to do what we want it to do,
00:32:21.700 or that we have to indoctrinate your kids with this stuff.
00:32:23.500 Or that we have to make sure that your educational institutions mirror all of our values.
00:32:26.840 We would never do any of those things.
00:32:28.300 So I have a question.
00:32:29.540 Why in the world, unless you're an insane, stupid jackass, would you believe them?
00:32:34.220 They've been lying every step of the way.
00:32:35.640 Not only that, not only that, this thing that's happening with children,
00:32:38.520 like, you know, I'm past the point where anything shocks me, you know?
00:32:41.460 You just, after a while, you've seen too much.
00:32:43.740 But this is, what shocks me is not that they're doing it to children.
00:32:47.000 What shocks me is that people have not shown up with pitchforks and torches, you know,
00:32:51.220 to say, like, that's great, you're going to do that, but now we're going to take you out
00:32:54.460 and throw you in the river.
00:32:56.380 Joe Biden, in this speech, where he was, it demonstrates what the actual agenda is.
00:33:00.480 Because in this speech, where he was supposedly upholding the value of male-male monogamous
00:33:04.920 relationships, which was, again, the way that the left portrayed same-sex marriage,
00:33:08.720 was it's exactly the same as traditional marriage, except it doesn't produce kids
00:33:11.440 and it's two dudes or two ladies.
00:33:12.960 But then, he's in the same speech, saying that you have to be in favor of transing the kids.
00:33:19.800 What do these things have to do with one another?
00:33:21.540 They have nothing to do with one another, theoretically, but in reality, they have everything to do
00:33:24.360 with one another, because they're about the, everything, because they're about the destruction
00:33:27.240 of the idea that there is a distinction between the sexes that matters, and more importantly,
00:33:30.940 they are directed against the nuclear family.
00:33:32.400 They're directed against the idea that there are intermediate institutions in society that
00:33:36.060 shape and mold us from family to religious community.
00:33:39.440 And the left considers these things actively bad, and these things have to be obliterated.
00:33:43.080 They will not stop until we are a society of atomized individuals on the one hand, and
00:33:46.480 an overarching national government on the other, and nothing in between.
00:33:49.520 That means eliminating women.
00:33:50.620 That means getting rid of women.
00:33:51.640 You've got to get rid of it.
00:33:52.340 You cannot.
00:33:53.160 Women are relational.
00:33:54.360 They're the things that bind people together.
00:33:55.920 They're the things that give men their motivations.
00:33:57.920 You have to basically erase them or make them.
00:33:59.720 Well, they've done a great job of convincing women not to be women.
00:34:01.680 That's what they do.
00:34:02.580 They convince the women first.
00:34:03.820 It was also so disingenuous, because they say, well, why do you care about what we do in our
00:34:08.120 own homes, and then what the direct consequence of what they do in their own homes is to light
00:34:13.220 up the people's home, the people's house in the rainbow flag, because obviously this is
00:34:17.120 not just a personal question.
00:34:18.480 This is a political question, but it was always BS anyway, because the libs go in, and they
00:34:22.900 tell me what kind of light bulbs I'm allowed to screw in in my bedroom, but we're not allowed
00:34:27.780 to have anything to say about what marriage is.
00:34:30.340 You can't grow grain to feed your own family, because it prevents you from engaging in interstate
00:34:35.520 commerce.
00:34:35.700 That's right, and you know, the thing is, I actually do have, I have a right as someone
00:34:41.400 in self-government to discuss how people relate to one another and what the definition of marriage
00:34:46.580 is, and frankly, I think that we have a right to talk about what people, what happens in
00:34:51.100 people's bedrooms.
00:34:51.960 Like, for instance, if you are not sleeping on a Helix mattress, you need, you need a
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00:36:06.260 This minute.
00:36:07.440 You're right this minute.
00:36:08.100 It was kind of amazing.
00:36:11.700 I'm saying that they say this is the first step.
00:36:13.620 No, no, we would never.
00:36:14.920 We're not coming after your churches.
00:36:16.120 We're not coming after your kids.
00:36:17.380 So, Karine Jean-Pierre, world's most untalented press secretary.
00:36:20.080 She was asked a direct question by Brian Karam, who's one of the world's most untalented
00:36:25.040 reporters.
00:36:25.920 And he asked her, but his question was actually the correct one from the left side of the
00:36:29.620 aisle, which is, why does this bill, the Respect for Marriage Act, which that's how I respect
00:36:35.640 people is I just completely redefine them into non-existence.
00:36:38.600 That's my favorite way.
00:36:39.580 And then I destroy their businesses.
00:36:40.620 Yeah, exactly.
00:36:41.200 It's my favorite thing.
00:36:42.660 He says, so why does this bill enshrine bigotry?
00:36:46.660 And she had no answer for it.
00:36:49.020 Like none.
00:36:49.800 She didn't even bother trying to say that it wasn't enshrining bigotry because, of
00:36:52.100 course, she believes that it's bigotry.
00:36:53.140 She believes that religion is a cover for bigotry.
00:36:55.740 Yeah.
00:36:56.280 And so all these morons, like, I'm sorry, Senator Mitt Romney and all of the morons who
00:37:01.700 voted on the Republican side of the aisle for this in the Senate.
00:37:03.640 Awful.
00:37:04.080 Incredible.
00:37:04.320 I'll give them the benefit of the doubt of thinking that they're not malicious and that
00:37:10.620 they're just unbelievably stupid and naive.
00:37:12.980 Anybody who believes that the left is going to stop at this is out of their damned minds.
00:37:17.960 The only thing that stands between the left doing this at the federal level right now,
00:37:21.960 the only thing that stops that is the Supreme Court.
00:37:23.740 That is the only thing that stops this.
00:37:25.000 And that is cold comfort because, frankly, you don't know what the Supreme Court is going
00:37:29.400 to do 5, 10, 15 years from now.
00:37:31.720 And so this notion that the left is somehow going to come to an arranged agreement, that
00:37:36.280 they're going to come to a compromise.
00:37:37.900 How many times can you feed this alligator?
00:37:39.740 And how, I mean, this is the black knight in Monty Python at this point.
00:37:43.740 There are no limbs left.
00:37:44.820 You're stumping around here.
00:37:45.920 It doesn't even make sense from their perspective.
00:37:47.940 Right.
00:37:48.220 Because if gay marriage is a human right, you have a human right to it.
00:37:52.060 And they often will compare denying gay marriage to, like, slavery.
00:37:56.860 Well, interracial marriage is in this bill.
00:37:58.560 Right.
00:37:58.840 So, you know, if it's a human right, then it would be correct that a church wouldn't have
00:38:04.400 the right to take it away from you.
00:38:05.200 Just like a church, a church could say, oh, well, in our religion, we believe in slavery.
00:38:09.100 That doesn't mean that you keep slaves in your basement because you don't, even from
00:38:12.180 a religious standpoint, you can't take away someone's basic human right.
00:38:14.520 Right.
00:38:15.000 So if we're agreeing that you have a human right to gay marriage, then it's not a far
00:38:20.800 leap.
00:38:21.120 It's not a leap at all.
00:38:21.960 It's just another step to say, well, of course, churches can't take away someone's human right.
00:38:25.520 Once you've agreed with that, you've already agreed to the destruction of religious liberty.
00:38:29.860 Actually, I've been thinking about that, too, and I'm not quite sure that holds together
00:38:33.460 because you can have a right to do something that's wrong.
00:38:36.700 I mean, we do have rights to do, we should have rights to do things that are wrong.
00:38:39.920 We can, you have the right to say things that the left doesn't believe that.
00:38:43.140 Also, Drew, you're talking to a couple of Catholics here.
00:38:45.140 There is that, you know, that liberal stuff.
00:38:47.260 That's not a lie.
00:38:47.940 The truth is, I'm actually not a believer that you have the right to do something that's
00:38:51.980 wrong.
00:38:52.320 I think that you may have an immunity from the government in doing something that's wrong.
00:38:55.280 That's not the same.
00:38:55.640 That's what I'm saying.
00:38:56.880 I'm trying to distinguish between the two because we're kind of sloppy about how we discuss
00:38:59.520 rights.
00:38:59.840 Okay.
00:39:00.040 Well, you have a political right to say things that are ugly and stupid, and you know,
00:39:03.520 you have a political right.
00:39:04.520 I personally think you have a political right to be a bigot.
00:39:06.580 But the left doesn't, but the left doesn't believe that, right?
00:39:08.520 So I'm saying from a less perspective, from the less perspective, if you have enshrined
00:39:13.480 gay marriage as a human right, then it's just, it's a logical conclusion that obviously churches
00:39:18.580 aren't allowed to deny that from their perspective.
00:39:21.360 So it's just, whether they say it or not, it makes no difference.
00:39:25.120 That is 100% where it leads.
00:39:26.780 You see the whole thing is religious because Joe Biden, the most amazing thing that he did
00:39:30.680 at this signing ceremony, it wasn't bringing the drag queen who does the creepy stuff to the
00:39:34.540 kids, it wasn't bringing all the Hollywood celebrities.
00:39:37.420 And he said that this was exactly what the Declaration of Independence was all about.
00:39:42.920 Yeah.
00:39:43.140 And he said-
00:39:44.040 Oh, look, look at the wigs.
00:39:45.360 That's right.
00:39:47.180 There would have been a more coherent argument because what he said was the Declaration of
00:39:51.000 Independence talks about our natural rights that we have because they are secular values.
00:39:57.320 That's what he said.
00:39:58.180 He said from the Declaration of Independence, which explicitly grounds those rights in our creator,
00:40:03.480 which grounds those rights in not being secular values, they are religious values, because
00:40:07.700 those rights don't make any sense without God.
00:40:10.060 Yes.
00:40:10.360 And he completely inverted it.
00:40:12.020 Also, I mean, the attempt to separate off natural rights and natural law is completely
00:40:15.560 nonsensical.
00:40:16.280 Exactly.
00:40:16.380 Where is he even getting the term natural rights except for the rubric of natural law?
00:40:19.600 And natural law tradition is grounded in Judeo-Christian and largely Catholic theology.
00:40:24.240 Yeah.
00:40:24.740 I mean, it's just, it's an absurdity.
00:40:26.960 But again, the absurdity is sort of the point.
00:40:29.620 They can, they've appointed government as God.
00:40:32.060 That's what this is.
00:40:32.720 It is the whole reason why there are so many people who wanted the government to grant gay
00:40:36.540 marriage in the first place.
00:40:37.320 Because if you ask people why gay marriage is important, you already had all the benefits
00:40:40.480 of marriage.
00:40:40.820 You just weren't calling it marriage.
00:40:41.880 Yep.
00:40:42.060 So why do you need gay marriage?
00:40:43.040 What's the difference?
00:40:43.520 You were getting the tax benefits.
00:40:44.440 You were getting all of the contractual benefits.
00:40:45.820 Why do you need to call it marriage?
00:40:46.800 And the answer is because we want the moral imprimatur of the state, which is actually God,
00:40:51.380 determining for us what is right and what is wrong.
00:40:53.740 And now that God has spoken, none can speak counter to the great God of government.
00:40:57.340 And the state which can coerce you to affirm it.
00:40:59.200 Right.
00:40:59.400 I do have some gay friends who get frustrated.
00:41:02.100 Wait, you have gay friends?
00:41:03.140 I know.
00:41:03.800 I'm, I am much, I'm not a Catholic.
00:41:06.660 They get upset when we talk about this because we have changed, the world is different.
00:41:15.440 We have made substantial social change, societal change, and there are people who've premised
00:41:20.900 their lives, ordered their lives around these concepts.
00:41:23.720 That happens very, very rapidly.
00:41:25.260 That's a consequence of social engineering is that you've engineered society.
00:41:30.220 You did do that.
00:41:31.300 So I have friends and they, they will hear us talk about gay marriage and they will say,
00:41:35.820 you know, I, I ordered my life around it.
00:41:39.620 I'm in a committed monogamous relationship.
00:41:42.540 I want, you know, I want the, I don't want to go back to a time when I have to live in
00:41:49.680 fear and I don't want to go back in a time where I don't have, you know, the, the sort
00:41:53.120 of, um, civil rights, you know, the hospital rights, the bequeathing property rights, all
00:41:57.660 the things that you mentioned.
00:41:58.700 You just fix that with a few bills and contracts.
00:42:00.980 I mean, well, this is the problem.
00:42:02.920 I think you could have, we didn't.
00:42:06.320 This is why I was, I was adamantly against gay marriage, adamantly against gay marriage.
00:42:12.180 I always believed that there were, that, that the most fabulous and creative people historically
00:42:17.960 ever to live, gay men, could probably create something fabulous for themselves that probably
00:42:23.280 would pass muster in society, but that wouldn't encroach on the very concept of marriage
00:42:27.120 itself.
00:42:27.480 I think the language around that matters a great deal.
00:42:30.920 We didn't do that.
00:42:32.380 And this is where I think the challenging part of the conversation is, is that since we,
00:42:39.880 you could say, don't say we, I opposed it, but we meaning.
00:42:43.200 The society.
00:42:43.780 The society.
00:42:45.540 Did, did change the definition of marriage to make it, marriage was always inclusive of
00:42:51.760 gay people.
00:42:52.160 It just wasn't, it included them marrying, but now we have changed the definition of
00:42:57.260 marriage to say that a man can marry a man, a woman can marry a woman for better or for
00:42:59.960 worse.
00:43:00.180 We did it.
00:43:01.040 Millions of people have ordered their lives around it.
00:43:02.980 People have adopted children on this, on this basis.
00:43:05.760 Again, you might say, I don't believe that two men should be able to adopt a child.
00:43:09.720 Of course.
00:43:10.100 That, that isn't, I'm not saying, what do you believe?
00:43:12.000 I'm saying, they do, but can't we just stop it?
00:43:15.340 And?
00:43:15.680 Well, see, this is the thing.
00:43:17.340 You can't really just stop it.
00:43:18.520 It's not the same as abortion, for instance, where, where you're actually committing a crime.
00:43:23.380 You know, if, if, if a man sleeping with a man is a sin, it's not, it, it's not a sin
00:43:29.240 against us.
00:43:30.020 You know what I mean?
00:43:30.580 Okay.
00:43:30.800 But let me just, let me just, let me just, let me just, right.
00:43:34.520 Exactly.
00:43:34.920 That I think both you and Ben are talking about is this difference between the micro and
00:43:40.120 the macro, you know, if, if you have a friend and he's gay and he's sleeping with a, it really
00:43:45.360 doesn't bother most people at all.
00:43:47.700 We all, you know, we, there was just, there's a new biography of J. Edgar Hoover.
00:43:50.480 I mean, I'd prefer not to think too much about it.
00:43:51.960 You don't want to think about it at all.
00:43:52.960 Yeah.
00:43:53.120 But, but, but there's a biography of J. Edgar Hoover where Nixon would send him a Christmas
00:43:57.120 invitation to the Christmas party to him and his boyfriend, you know, because they
00:44:00.920 all knew he was like living with a guy.
00:44:02.360 And it doesn't bother people.
00:44:04.780 And it never, it never really has in American life.
00:44:07.440 People always knew this existed, you know, in, in, in certainly in sophisticated, you
00:44:11.740 know, coastal circles, people always knew this was going on.
00:44:15.120 But when the society says that this is a right, and this is something that this is on a par
00:44:21.740 with marriage, which is just a lie, then this, this, the society becomes a lying society.
00:44:26.880 And the same thing was true with abortion.
00:44:28.220 We think like, there's always going to be abortions.
00:44:31.060 That's always, that's always happened.
00:44:32.440 It always will happen.
00:44:33.280 And that's an evil, but we live in a world with evil in it.
00:44:36.060 But when the Supreme Court says it's a right for you to kill that, then you become evil.
00:44:40.540 Then the country becomes evil.
00:44:41.240 And so on this point, I mean, but this is why I was, I was trying to distinguish between
00:44:44.780 the language of rights that we were talking about earlier.
00:44:47.260 Yeah.
00:44:47.480 But I want to get, but I actually want to get down to this very practical question.
00:44:50.900 Well, I've got an answer.
00:44:51.360 What does one do now?
00:44:53.320 Not, not what, not what should we do?
00:44:55.080 Here's what we do.
00:44:55.900 The Democrats were bragging today about how even the ones who voted for the Defense of Marriage
00:45:00.780 Act, like the president, got rid of the Defense of Marriage Act and they repealed it.
00:45:04.500 And so just like they repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, I think Republicans, if they
00:45:07.700 could ever muster a spine and some other anatomical features could repeal the quote unquote respect
00:45:12.840 for marriage act, they could do that.
00:45:14.300 We could overturn Obergefell.
00:45:15.660 To your point, Jeremy, people have ordered their lives, gay guys have ordered their lives
00:45:18.860 to create something that resembles more than was previously done, something like a marriage.
00:45:25.160 But they can continue to do that without the sacralization, as you're discussing then,
00:45:32.140 of the state.
00:45:32.820 And so when I think back, just to use a personal example, two of my absolute favorite teachers
00:45:36.820 in high school were gay and, you know, just, and Republicans, by the way, and just great
00:45:42.560 guys, you know, love them to death.
00:45:44.720 Dawn they then their gay apparel?
00:45:47.620 They did.
00:45:48.240 They had very gay apparel, actually.
00:45:49.940 Yeah, they donned.
00:45:51.020 But they, you know, they had a kind of committed, stable relationship long before gay marriage
00:45:57.820 existed.
00:45:58.240 I don't think they supported gay marriage.
00:45:59.520 I don't want to speak for them, but I don't think they supported the idea of gay marriage.
00:46:02.040 And they just did that.
00:46:03.080 And they just did.
00:46:03.740 And people could continue to do that without the state pretending that it's the same thing
00:46:06.980 as marriage.
00:46:07.300 And for the adoption, we just stop it.
00:46:09.580 You know, there are a lot of problems here.
00:46:11.300 Not just gay adoption.
00:46:12.480 I don't just mean to single out the people who, you know, are attracted to the same sex.
00:46:16.120 I'm talking about single parent adoption, obviously wrong.
00:46:20.260 The IVF is so, I think is not moral, but it's obviously abused incredibly.
00:46:25.680 No fault divorce is at the heart of a lot of these problems.
00:46:27.980 I think it's the heart of a lot.
00:46:28.640 It is.
00:46:29.120 And we could just, we could just get rid of it.
00:46:31.520 And there, and, and, you know, there are social consequences that come from that.
00:46:35.380 People will have children that, you know, and they're going to continue to raise them
00:46:38.400 in that way.
00:46:38.780 But we can, we can do something.
00:46:40.300 We're not totally in.
00:46:41.040 We can do that because, because actually what we hear from the left, we heard from Biden about
00:46:45.140 people have the right to love each other.
00:46:46.860 Well, right.
00:46:48.520 And, and no, no one, no one can take away your ability to love another person.
00:46:52.140 It's of course you can continue to love whoever you want.
00:46:53.960 There was never any law preventing anyone from loving someone else.
00:46:57.140 So you, you change the laws.
00:46:58.760 It's not going to change that at all.
00:46:59.740 You're still loving.
00:47:00.220 Well, but I am saying that I'm not trying to be clever.
00:47:04.120 There is a difference between loving someone and living with them, having joint property and
00:47:08.740 raising kids.
00:47:09.420 The one thing that makes it different than abortion, you said that it's different than abortion.
00:47:13.220 I don't fully agree with the reasons you laid out, but here's one that makes it very different
00:47:17.540 than abortion.
00:47:18.400 If you, if you change from having abortion in your society, be lawful to not having abortion
00:47:24.560 be lawful in your society, you are stopping something from happening.
00:47:28.600 The individual act of abortion that will not happen because of that law changing is the
00:47:33.840 one tomorrow.
00:47:34.780 You can't do anything about the abortion that took place three days before this happened,
00:47:39.220 right?
00:47:39.400 Wouldn't, it would have to be the same, I think, if you were to, to make these kinds
00:47:45.120 of changes to adoption law or gay marriage or any other thing.
00:47:47.960 Well, you're not going to take people's kids away.
00:47:49.460 You're not going to be able to break up the unions that they've created and the civil rights
00:47:53.320 But you couldn't, you couldn't.
00:47:54.260 Nobody was talking about doing that in the first.
00:47:55.460 Oh, but people, they'd still be literate.
00:47:56.640 I'm asking us to, I'm asking us to, none of us have said anything about this.
00:48:02.040 But what are we going to, no one's going to, I'm asking us to talk.
00:48:03.600 No one's saying that you're going to go in and say, hey, you, move out, move out from
00:48:06.780 your roommate's house.
00:48:07.760 Like, get that kid back to.
00:48:09.260 Yeah, but there's no, there would no, be no legal mechanism even to do that.
00:48:12.200 I mean, first of all, kids get taken out of homes all the time because of abuses.
00:48:15.460 So that would continue, but it would, it wouldn't change.
00:48:17.820 That's not what we're talking about.
00:48:18.680 But that's not what we're talking about.
00:48:19.980 And so, yeah, there'd be no way.
00:48:21.120 I have to say that I kind of tend to agree with Knowles on this, at least in terms of aims.
00:48:25.000 I think that, you know, there's no reason to say we can't do something.
00:48:28.100 There's no reason to say that things can't change.
00:48:30.720 What they can't do is they can't go backwards.
00:48:32.140 And that's what you're kind of getting at.
00:48:33.100 That's what I'm getting at.
00:48:33.820 They can't go backwards, but that doesn't mean they can't go forward to a new thing.
00:48:36.940 We have to remember that before, it's not like gay people weren't being gay, but a lot
00:48:41.600 of them were being forced into situations that were degrading both to them and to the society.
00:48:46.060 I mean, when people were getting together in bathrooms and, you know.
00:48:48.840 And bath houses.
00:48:49.520 And bath houses and things like that.
00:48:50.640 That was actually bad for society.
00:48:52.960 Maybe not as bad as what we have now, but certainly it wasn't a good thing.
00:48:56.820 And so, yeah, I think there is a level of tolerance.
00:48:59.260 You can go forward into a new thing that is different than the thing we got.
00:49:03.740 And I don't know why, when they essentially feed us a crap sandwich, we can't say, this
00:49:07.940 is a crap sandwich.
00:49:08.780 We don't want this anymore.
00:49:09.860 Not to punt on the issue completely, but do we even have to get into the weeds of discussing
00:49:13.560 all the practical implications of how this will be implemented?
00:49:16.720 Because it's not actually ever going to happen in reality.
00:49:20.800 I don't know about that.
00:49:21.300 Yeah.
00:49:21.380 And the left, they, the left.
00:49:23.080 That's the thing that knows the same.
00:49:24.120 Yeah.
00:49:24.420 The left never does this.
00:49:26.340 Like, they talk about the ideals and what they want.
00:49:28.520 And they don't get into the weeds at all about the practical, how we practically implement it.
00:49:32.940 And I think sometimes on the right, we do that almost too much.
00:49:35.360 We allow our, rather than just, right now, all that matters is the ideal, what marriage
00:49:40.520 is supposed to be.
00:49:42.160 Well, I agree.
00:49:42.760 And I'm all for upholding marriage and, and distinguishing marriage from gay marriage.
00:49:47.280 Like, even if all they had come up with, with was the term gay married, like, even that
00:49:53.460 would be better than just marriage, right?
00:49:55.100 Certainly.
00:49:55.340 By the way, if we could get rid of no-fault divorce, we would get rid of gay marriage.
00:49:58.000 The truth is, as intermediate steps to desacralizing marriage and reinstituting traditional marriage,
00:50:05.100 I mean, there, there are certain things that, that we certainly could, and in my opinion,
00:50:08.880 should do.
00:50:09.460 I mean, for example, we should get the federal government out of the business of marriage
00:50:12.500 entirely, which, because what business is it of the federal government in the first
00:50:16.440 place?
00:50:16.740 This was always a fundamental political unit.
00:50:18.520 I agree with you.
00:50:19.760 But if we can't get there, then why don't we start with disestablishing it at the federal
00:50:23.820 level entirely, and then at least I will have the ability to have my state defined when
00:50:27.960 marriage looks like, can live in a state that actually agrees with me about what marriage
00:50:30.700 looks like.
00:50:31.100 Or, here's another alternative, what if we defanged all of the insane structure of anti-discrimination
00:50:37.060 law that we've come up with that prevents people from actually making decisions about
00:50:41.100 their own life?
00:50:41.940 And then they can make decisions about what are the consequences of whether they believe
00:50:45.160 somebody is married or not.
00:50:46.520 Yeah.
00:50:46.600 What if we just did that?
00:50:47.340 Instead of having the government come in with this heavy boot and just stamp somebody
00:50:49.480 in the face that doesn't like what it's doing.
00:50:50.660 I have to interrupt just to say that, you know, one of the things about listening to Ben is
00:50:53.800 an old expression comes to mind.
00:50:55.400 He really knows beans.
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00:52:12.700 There's something, there's another point I think that's worthy of discussion here,
00:52:15.240 and that is just the simple fact that we can try to redefine whatever we want, but in the
00:52:19.180 same way that we are currently trying to redefine male as female and female as male, and it's
00:52:22.820 just a lie, and it's not true, there is only one marriage.
00:52:25.980 Yes.
00:52:26.240 Yeah, we can try to redefine this as much as we want.
00:52:28.540 We can pretend that two men is the same as a man and a woman, and that the fundamental
00:52:31.840 basis of society is not a man, a woman, and a child.
00:52:34.120 We can try to pretend that that's the case.
00:52:35.420 That is not the case.
00:52:36.380 And if we continue along these lines, the real consequence, yes, it'll be paid by people
00:52:40.460 in our society, and yes, it'll be paid by children who are indoctrinated with lies,
00:52:43.740 and yes, it'll be paid by a society that increasingly devalues the fundamental relationship that stands
00:52:48.880 at the heart of all durable civilizations.
00:52:50.540 But what's going to end up happening is that we as a civilization just will not be the winners.
00:52:54.360 That's all that's going to happen, because when you run directly up into the face of reality,
00:52:57.240 it turns out other civilizations don't have quite the same problems.
00:52:59.400 Yes, it's true.
00:52:59.940 And so we can play this game as much as we want to play this game, and it's all fun and
00:53:03.920 games up until precisely the point that our society has no children, which we don't, a
00:53:07.800 society where people don't get married, which they are not, a society in which the center
00:53:10.900 of all human life is the sexual identity, which is essentially what we've now created,
00:53:14.840 and that will last about two or three generations, and then there won't be anything left to preserve.
00:53:17.900 This is such a key, because they come out and they cleverly redefine the Cambridge dictionary
00:53:23.920 definition of woman, now it means man also, and Merriam-Webster has followed suit, and
00:53:29.620 what do we do?
00:53:32.140 We say, okay, well, you got your 2022 dictionary, well, I got my 2012 dictionary, and now we're
00:53:38.080 going to have a battle of the dictionary definitions.
00:53:39.900 But it just doesn't matter.
00:53:40.920 I mean, to your point, Matt, and to the heart of your movie, the answer to what is a woman
00:53:45.560 is not some stupid definition in whatever dictionary.
00:53:49.240 The answer to what is a woman is, a woman's a woman, and you know what it is, and shut
00:53:52.680 up.
00:53:53.040 Just shut up.
00:53:54.000 You know what a woman is, and a woman is, she's the kind of person that's not a man.
00:53:59.080 That's what a woman is.
00:54:00.020 And we all know it, and that will be true no matter what these editors put in whatever
00:54:04.000 dumb dictionary they come out with.
00:54:05.600 I agree, but there is a, can I, I agree, but one of the social consequences, we can talk about
00:54:10.380 all the social consequences of Obergefell.
00:54:13.200 One of them is that even gay men that I know who oppose the redefinition of marriage get
00:54:21.100 married.
00:54:21.440 Well, they're the more likely people to get married because they're conservative.
00:54:24.600 Right.
00:54:25.140 And in fact, I think that you will end up in, I think that the path we're on will lead
00:54:29.940 to a place where the Christian church is gay, and marriage is gay.
00:54:35.780 Like, I think there's a chance, I think there's a chance that in not that long, that 20 years
00:54:40.540 from now, you are more likely to go to church if you are gay.
00:54:44.000 You are more likely to be married if you are gay because they're the only, they're the only
00:54:48.820 ones who want these things anymore because they feel they've been excluded for them.
00:54:52.180 They're pursuing them.
00:54:53.280 And everyone else has essentially abandoned them.
00:54:56.020 Is this, or you ask you this though, because you can quote scripture in a way that I can't,
00:54:59.960 I can never remember exactly.
00:55:01.780 But in Romans, isn't there a passage where St. Paul said, I wish I looked this up before
00:55:06.720 I came on, but I still, I still wouldn't be able to memorize it.
00:55:08.840 But where St. Paul says, they abandoned God and therefore God gave the desires of their
00:55:14.180 hearts over to themselves.
00:55:16.100 And the women started sleeping with women, and the men started sleeping with women.
00:55:19.220 And I think of that, and I think like, wait a minute.
00:55:22.080 That's not good, you know?
00:55:23.980 You are right that in a certain fundamental sense, one of the big things that happens here
00:55:27.940 is it's not just an external attack that's happened on the churches.
00:55:30.560 The churches have destroyed themselves from within.
00:55:32.300 Yes.
00:55:32.640 Synagogues do.
00:55:33.400 And so in an attempt to modernize themselves, they've taken in the secular catechism, and
00:55:38.060 they've made it the heart of their own religion.
00:55:39.420 And this is something Benedict talked about a lot.
00:55:41.340 Yes.
00:55:41.640 It's something that a lot of Orthodox rabbis have talked about, and most obviously Joseph
00:55:45.900 Soloveitchik, who is sort of one of the key founders of Israel University, which is now
00:55:49.000 being sued to have a gay club.
00:55:51.080 And, but many of the mainline Protestant churches are giving in, many Catholic areas.
00:55:57.000 Don't just say Germany.
00:55:58.120 The evangelical churches too.
00:55:59.380 The evangelical churches, a lot of the synagogues are giving in.
00:56:02.220 And once you give up the thing that you stood for, which was the traditional wisdom, what
00:56:07.380 the hell good are you?
00:56:08.640 And why exactly would people go to church?
00:56:10.240 The only people who are going to go to church are the people who want the medal.
00:56:12.500 And the people who historically wanted the medal from you don't want that medal anymore.
00:56:15.600 So you're right.
00:56:16.440 The only people who will go are the people who want that imprimatur so that they can
00:56:19.640 put it on their wall.
00:56:20.320 But there's an amazing thing that happened in the Catholic Church, which even with...
00:56:24.660 It was called the Reformation.
00:56:25.620 It was called...
00:56:25.980 Yeah.
00:56:26.740 It did start with the Catholic Church.
00:56:28.080 I liked it.
00:56:28.960 But you know...
00:56:29.420 He's always bringing up the Peace of Westphalia.
00:56:32.340 We were due for a mention of the Peace of Westphalia.
00:56:34.800 Westphalia, carry on.
00:56:35.580 All right, you guys.
00:56:36.020 And go.
00:56:36.660 You know, when I think of some of the most liberal...
00:56:38.380 Hello, my honey.
00:56:39.740 Some of the most liberal popes we ever had.
00:56:41.380 Paul VI, right?
00:56:42.760 Super liberal pope, includes Vatican II.
00:56:44.960 But Paul VI, everyone expected him to follow the Protestants and the Lambeth Declaration
00:56:49.340 and endorse free love and contraception and abortion, all these things.
00:56:55.180 And he didn't.
00:56:55.840 He came out with Humanae Vitae and he said, nope, sorry.
00:56:58.580 The traditional teaching is true.
00:57:00.180 No contraception, no abortion, no nothing.
00:57:02.880 Sex has a purpose.
00:57:03.740 You know, he reaffirms that.
00:57:04.420 People were shocked.
00:57:05.440 Pope Francis, who everyone portrays as a big lib and with some good reason.
00:57:09.540 But Pope Francis has said that gay marriage is not a mere political issue.
00:57:13.120 It's a machination of the father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God.
00:57:16.720 He did say that.
00:57:17.240 He did say that.
00:57:17.800 He came out.
00:57:18.340 He told the German bishops to cut it out.
00:57:20.540 He said that you can't have Christian gay marriage ceremonies.
00:57:24.720 I mean, he's become very conservative on this sort of issue.
00:57:27.600 And the reason for it, by the way, I don't know what they think about...
00:57:29.940 I don't know what these men think about personally, obviously, but they can't do it because
00:57:33.860 of a fact of the Catholic Church, which is...
00:57:36.320 John Henry Newman explained this.
00:57:37.620 He was converting, obviously, from Protestantism to Catholicism.
00:57:41.060 And he said, with Protestantism and with so much modern thought, you follow your individual
00:57:46.280 conscience, which is good.
00:57:48.160 We all like following our individual conscience.
00:57:50.080 But with Catholicism, there's a big role for individual conscience.
00:57:54.060 But ultimately, you must submit your obedience to the authority of the church.
00:57:58.700 And so to zoom it out a little bit from denominational kinds of arguments, this is the thing about
00:58:04.660 tradition, is that we surrender a little bit of our individual will and our own individual
00:58:12.260 rationalistic ideas to just the way things have worked in the past and a little deference
00:58:17.140 for our elders and our country and to tradition.
00:58:19.800 That's what we used to do.
00:58:21.440 And things tended to work a lot better before we surrendered that idea.
00:58:25.480 Honor your father and mother.
00:58:26.180 Honor your father and mother.
00:58:27.380 To Jeremy's point, I don't think in 20 years it's going to be only gay people at church.
00:58:31.340 But I think it's more likely there'll just be no churches left in 20 years.
00:58:34.920 But it is true that this is one thing...
00:58:37.060 Let's actually do get back...
00:58:38.160 Yeah.
00:58:38.840 Let's get back together in 20 years.
00:58:40.480 Well, yeah.
00:58:41.560 It's true that...
00:58:42.900 This is something that came up in my conversation with Joe Rogan on this issue, and it always
00:58:47.760 comes up, is that basically Christians and religious people in general lost the marriage
00:58:53.600 argument 50 or 60 years ago because we gave up.
00:58:56.820 You know, there are...
00:58:58.100 Marriages are not just fundamentally procreative.
00:59:00.420 They're also monogamous and permanent.
00:59:02.660 Right.
00:59:03.020 And those are the three pillars, you might say, of marriage.
00:59:05.100 And we gave up two of the pillars.
00:59:06.540 We said that, well, it doesn't have to be permanent.
00:59:09.320 And if it's not permanent, that means it's not monogamous.
00:59:10.980 It means we...
00:59:11.580 Basically, the church is bought into polygamy.
00:59:13.920 It's just you have to do it one at a time rather than all at once.
00:59:16.420 And once that happened, it was like you can still make the argument for so-called traditional
00:59:22.660 marriage, but it's a much weaker argument.
00:59:24.520 And people just don't believe you anymore when you say that you cherish the marriage sacrament.
00:59:30.200 I think it just got to a point where the other side, they just didn't buy it.
00:59:33.360 They didn't believe that we really cared.
00:59:35.240 And if you got rid of that, if you got rid of no-fault divorce and remarriage,
00:59:39.220 marrying and all that stuff, then you'd get rid of gay marriage because a very small
00:59:42.440 percentage of gay men are going to stay married and be monogamous.
00:59:45.940 I mean, that's just not...
00:59:46.480 Well, I mean...
00:59:47.260 But one of the positive consequences of gay marriage is that probably for the first time
00:59:54.700 in history, a lot of gay men are considering that question.
00:59:57.300 Yes.
00:59:57.740 No, that is positive.
00:59:58.920 You're right.
00:59:59.120 It's at least an option.
00:59:59.880 And as I said, it's better than...
01:00:01.120 I don't think that that trade was worth it.
01:00:02.640 Well, but it's better than the meeting in...
01:00:04.500 I'm not suggesting that it's worth it, but I am saying that there are positive consequences.
01:00:08.680 Yeah, sure.
01:00:09.640 I mean, the two major changes that have happened societally, the major changes, are one, that
01:00:14.860 marriage has been so redefined over the past 50 years that it essentially was transformed
01:00:18.180 into a voluntaristic arrangement rather than family being a matter of consanguinity and
01:00:24.460 production of family units that provide the basis for society.
01:00:27.680 That's what they were.
01:00:28.240 They were just natural family units.
01:00:29.560 The basis of the family was largely duty, not love.
01:00:32.640 Yeah.
01:00:32.760 Which, by the way, is what it ends up being.
01:00:34.500 Right.
01:00:34.780 Okay?
01:00:35.000 I mean, you love each other and that love comes with duties.
01:00:38.260 The fundamental durable nature of marriage and a family is a duty-based relationship.
01:00:42.580 You don't spend every day in a tizzy over your spouse.
01:00:45.440 You spend every day doing your duty because you are a married person who loves your spouse.
01:00:49.800 And the same thing is true for your children.
01:00:51.320 And so when we redefined family units themselves away from consanguinity and from procreation
01:00:56.460 and from being those little platoons into a voluntaristic arrangement, that was the first
01:01:01.280 change and it atomized individuals.
01:01:03.500 And that further atomization of individuals has now been exacerbated by same-sex marriage
01:01:06.780 because all the stuff that I said before was prior to same-sex marriage.
01:01:09.620 Right.
01:01:09.820 Right?
01:01:09.940 The destruction of the family unit is prior to same-sex marriage.
01:01:12.640 And so when you hear people who are talking about same-sex marriage, they say, well,
01:01:15.040 you know, your family units were already broken.
01:01:17.160 What do you have to say about same-sex marriage?
01:01:18.460 The answer is, I mean, I have a lot to say about both of those things.
01:01:22.340 Right?
01:01:22.680 And not, you don't get to throw in my face the failure of marriage and say, okay, so
01:01:26.760 now we just get to redefine the institution entirely.
01:01:28.840 You're right about the failure of the institution.
01:01:31.940 And that's our fault.
01:01:33.320 And then there's been another thing added on top of that.
01:01:35.400 And the other thing that's been added on top of that is this idea that the core of your
01:01:39.680 being is your sexual identity.
01:01:41.100 This is the thing that matters most about you in the world.
01:01:43.820 And that it is not about your duties to family in the traditional sense.
01:01:47.500 About your duties to have children and create children and live with the wife that you have
01:01:52.060 and with whom you have created children.
01:01:53.720 And build a family unit that includes, yes, a vital mother and, yes, a vital father.
01:01:57.400 None of that is imposed upon you.
01:01:59.020 These are all impositions by a cruel, vicious society.
01:02:01.660 And really what lies at the heart of you is your desires.
01:02:04.960 Well, I mean, there's nothing more, and I use this word advisedly, satanic, than the
01:02:09.200 idea that what lies at the core of you is your desires.
01:02:11.500 Of course.
01:02:11.780 That is literally the temptation.
01:02:12.940 But you're, you mean your appetites.
01:02:15.280 Yes.
01:02:15.380 You don't mean your high desire.
01:02:16.140 No, no, no.
01:02:17.040 I mean your passions.
01:02:19.420 The things that you want at any given moment.
01:02:23.780 I have to say, this brings to mind the wonderful poem of Ogden Nash, who said,
01:02:28.660 Oh, duty, why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie?
01:02:35.200 Which kind of defines our entire society.
01:02:39.720 Well, that's super depressing.
01:02:41.120 You guys have anything else to talk about?
01:02:42.180 You want to go back to the movies?
01:02:42.880 All the best movies were made by gay guys.
01:02:48.400 That is actually just true.
01:02:49.740 That is.
01:02:50.400 I know that'll hurt the feelings of my dear, sweet Nana, who is also still watching.
01:02:54.500 But yes, even in the heyday.
01:02:55.780 Jewish gay guys, would you?
01:02:56.880 Even in the heyday of all the great movies.
01:03:00.260 This is my whole point.
01:03:01.860 This is why they.
01:03:02.400 He just loves Vincenzo Minnelli.
01:03:03.880 This is why I guarantee you they could have come up with a great name for the institution
01:03:10.360 they wanted to create.
01:03:10.780 But the funny thing is, is their best work, the best work by gay people is gay people pretending
01:03:14.760 to be straight.
01:03:15.780 There's something about that.
01:03:17.020 It's just like Irving Berlin writing White Christmas.
01:03:19.380 There's something about the outsider creating something that gives it this wistfulness and
01:03:22.960 this beauty.
01:03:23.340 By the way, the best work of anybody in any society comes when people tamp down their
01:03:29.540 sexual desires.
01:03:31.420 And no one talks about it now because we're told that we're just all steam engines and
01:03:35.840 we've got to let steam off.
01:03:37.160 This is true.
01:03:37.840 Hemingway said never have sex until nighttime.
01:03:39.940 Yes.
01:03:40.520 Yeah, that's right.
01:03:41.880 But never more than one woman at a time.
01:03:44.300 That's right.
01:03:44.880 By the way, you know who said this?
01:03:46.040 Freud would have agreed.
01:03:47.100 Yeah, exactly.
01:03:47.500 That's right.
01:03:48.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:03:48.540 Right.
01:03:48.980 Right.
01:03:49.580 Sublimation was an actual thing.
01:03:50.700 Yeah, the golden sublimation.
01:03:52.620 Right, exactly.
01:03:53.180 And then it was Wilhelm Reich and the rest of the crew who decided that part was, we
01:03:57.300 need to dispense with all of the sublimation.
01:03:59.100 The sublimation was actually the problem.
01:04:00.240 By the way, a lot of people don't know who Wilhelm Reich is.
01:04:02.980 Just for those who are unaware, he's a man who believed that the fundamental force in the
01:04:08.140 universe was something called an orgone.
01:04:10.260 And the orgones, you had to sit in a wooden box, I don't know what you're doing in there,
01:04:13.760 to have a lot of orgasms, to accumulate orgones.
01:04:17.440 And if you simply had enough orgasms, you could cure cancer, war, sadness, poverty, everything.
01:04:25.120 How did this not beat Scientology to, like, most important Hollywood?
01:04:28.180 Also, hey, I'm willing to try, but you know.
01:04:30.940 I'll try anything once.
01:04:32.380 Well, he became a Christian.
01:04:33.320 This is what Orson Bean believed before his birth.
01:04:34.840 He didn't believe it when he got older, but when I...
01:04:37.180 Oh, James Dallinger believed it.
01:04:38.920 It's hard to believe that once the prostate gives out.
01:04:40.780 I became a Christian, I mean, that was...
01:04:43.800 Orson Bean, every single time I think about our lost friend Orson Bean, I smile.
01:04:50.500 He sees...
01:04:51.080 What a wonderful little...
01:04:52.460 Wonderful person.
01:04:53.280 ...light that just moved through our lives there for a season.
01:04:56.380 Yeah, yeah.
01:04:58.020 He told the dirtiest joke I've ever heard at his son-in-law's funeral.
01:05:02.920 That was a great moment.
01:05:04.340 Even I, my jaw kind of went down.
01:05:06.300 He was like a, kind of an, the anime character of a, of a Hollywood celebrity.
01:05:13.460 You would have loved him.
01:05:17.680 To switch topics, what do you make of the Sam Bankman freedom of it all?
01:05:21.300 You know, it's, it's just quite a coincidence.
01:05:25.260 Yeah.
01:05:25.440 And it's just damn bad luck that the day before he was going to have to testify,
01:05:30.760 the second largest owner of the Democratic Party was going to have to testify about all
01:05:34.340 of his scams and crimes that paid for all their elections.
01:05:37.340 Dagnabbit, he just got arrested.
01:05:38.640 Couldn't testify.
01:05:39.480 What are the odds?
01:05:40.200 Oh, well, moving on.
01:05:41.080 I'm just going to put it here.
01:05:41.720 Sam Bankman free did not kill himself.
01:05:45.200 You see Hillary creeping.
01:05:47.140 This is the fundamental, the fundamental problem of our time is that there is no reason for
01:05:52.120 conspiracy theories to be discounted.
01:05:54.420 Right.
01:05:54.560 Yes.
01:05:54.860 It's information.
01:05:55.640 Information crisis.
01:05:56.460 We, it is an information crisis.
01:05:57.800 We cannot trust the source of any information.
01:05:59.660 We were talking this morning, Drew and I, about what is the truth of the COVID vaccines?
01:06:05.460 How, how right were we?
01:06:06.660 How wrong were we?
01:06:07.260 We all kind of had different positions at different points of time in this whole thing.
01:06:11.560 Although people sometimes criticize some of us for some of our positions.
01:06:15.200 And I would like to say almost everyone who criticizes us would be vaccinated if we hadn't
01:06:19.540 sued the federal government to stop the vaccine mandate.
01:06:21.640 So pound sand.
01:06:22.480 But the question is what, Drew's question was how right and how wrong were we?
01:06:28.580 And the answer is it is, it is genuinely in this moment unknowable because all of the
01:06:35.160 institutions, all of those intermediary institutions that used to hold power to account have now
01:06:40.260 become instruments of the state and instruments of the left.
01:06:42.560 You simply can't, you can't even say facts don't care about my feelings.
01:06:45.920 You can't even say I let the data drive my understanding.
01:06:49.200 It is impossible to know what is happening in the world.
01:06:53.080 Has anyone even done, have, have, has there been a comparison?
01:06:56.100 Because we keep hearing these stories of people dying suddenly at the age of 25.
01:06:59.480 And has there been.
01:07:00.960 They've just started it, right?
01:07:02.160 So in Europe, they've barred now the use of the Moderna vaccine for people under the age of 30
01:07:06.260 because of the myocarditis events that were occurring.
01:07:08.260 But how many, how many people under the age of 30 die suddenly of cardiac events in 2019 versus now?
01:07:14.920 Do we know that?
01:07:15.180 The government has not spent the money to study this.
01:07:16.880 The government has not spent the money to study mask efficacy.
01:07:18.700 The government has not spent the money to actually.
01:07:20.740 In Germany, there was a test where they found of 25 people, four of them, they attributed it to the vaccine.
01:07:27.440 25 people who died young of that heart disease, that four of them had, they attributed it to the disease.
01:07:34.040 And that's why, and that's why DeSantis brilliantly is now having.
01:07:37.540 Right.
01:07:37.740 Well, I mean, it depends on the 25, like, as opposed to how many, right?
01:07:41.480 I mean, these are very small sample sizes.
01:07:42.760 But again, they banned Moderna in large swaths of Europe for people who are under the age of 30 because the risks of the virus are significantly lower than the risks of actually taking the vaccine for people who are young.
01:07:55.020 I mean, they're still trotting out the idea that you should be vaccinating your six-month-old.
01:07:58.700 There's not only no longitudinal data, there's no data, period, on the efficacy.
01:08:01.960 Fauci this week was making that argument.
01:08:03.880 I mean, it's totally insane.
01:08:05.900 Honestly, as somebody who, you know, listen, I traveled in the expert circles, right?
01:08:10.340 I went to Harvard Law.
01:08:11.300 I tend to have a lot of respect for people who spend their entire career studying vaccines as opposed to, you know, people who have spent the last five minutes reading up on it on Wikipedia.
01:08:17.780 But it turns out that those people were lying to us.
01:08:20.220 And that's a serious problem, really.
01:08:21.780 I mean, I get a lot of—
01:08:23.160 And that there was no media to hold them to account.
01:08:25.780 Right.
01:08:25.940 And that because we have such worship of the expert class now, unrelated experts will back the claims of experts outside of their own field, right?
01:08:36.500 It's just an amazing—it is an amazing moment.
01:08:38.360 We should probably stop talking about it so they don't ban us on YouTube.
01:08:40.580 We're about to go to our members block.
01:08:42.560 And members block is where we're going to interact for the next little bit with our DW Plus members.
01:08:46.800 We're going to exchange gifts in our Secret Santa.
01:08:49.420 We're going to answer questions.
01:08:50.680 But before we part, there are two things that I think are very important for us to touch on while we're still alive for the masses, for the people.
01:08:59.440 Hoi polloi.
01:08:59.980 The hoi polloi.
01:09:01.200 One of them is Jeremy's razors.
01:09:04.900 Yeah.
01:09:05.060 And the reason is, if a person wanted to buy a great gift for that gentleman in their life whose masculinity is under constant threat from the woke left,
01:09:16.020 who's being asked to drag a blade across his face in service of companies who want to teach your daughter to shave,
01:09:23.580 who's being asked to subordinate the very essence of his manhood in service of an agenda that says that he might as well be a woman,
01:09:32.180 and very likely is one, this man needs to be given the greatest Christmas gift of all time, a Jeremy's razor.
01:09:40.400 And if you order one right now, and when I say right now, I mean, no, right now.
01:09:46.060 Because literally tomorrow, which many of you will be watching this, and it will already be tomorrow,
01:09:50.600 will be the last day in which one could make such an order and still receive this before Christmas,
01:09:56.180 put under the tree for that gentleman in your life who deserves to be treated like a man.
01:10:00.120 And Jeremy's razors.com, if you go right now, you're going to get 30% off.
01:10:03.480 While you're doing it, you can head over to Daily Wire Plus, click on that store icon,
01:10:07.000 all of our Daily Wire merch, including our gift subscriptions.
01:10:10.500 If you order them in the next 24 hours, 30% off, and you'll still receive that gift card to put in the stocking for Christmas.
01:10:18.180 You couldn't think of a better gift, I don't think, than a Daily Wire Plus membership for, you know,
01:10:22.320 the kid heading off to college, somebody who needs access to this kind of information,
01:10:25.500 who's being subjected to all kinds of, you know, woke propaganda all the time.
01:10:30.580 So, dailywireplus.com, click on the store, head over to jeremysrazors.com, 30% off in both places,
01:10:35.920 and right now is the time to do it if you want something before Christmas.
01:10:38.720 And that brings me to that last thing that we absolutely need to talk about, Christmas.
01:10:43.400 This is the last time we're going to see each other before Christmas.
01:10:46.320 So, I thought, in the past, we've talked about really important Christmas issues,
01:10:51.620 we've talked about what does it mean that God walked among man,
01:10:54.880 what does it mean that, you know, the so-called Son of God and God reigned on a throne in far-off Rome
01:11:02.180 when Christ was born and laid in a manger.
01:11:06.420 But the one thing that we've never done is just had a conversation, the four of us,
01:11:10.540 about how we're going to drive Ben out of our city in celebration.
01:11:16.480 You know, and it's long overdue.
01:11:18.700 Long overdue.
01:11:19.240 We really haven't been doing our bit.
01:11:21.980 I just want the Cossack hat.
01:11:23.660 That's all I want.
01:11:24.360 The furry hat.
01:11:25.580 Drew, you're next to go, my friend.
01:11:28.620 Maybe the hat will protect me.
01:11:30.040 I don't know.
01:11:30.800 Turns out not.
01:11:31.620 Turns out not, historically speaking.
01:11:33.720 Yeah, Stephen Crowder, actually, on his podcast, he asked me, like,
01:11:36.840 what's your favorite thing about Christmas?
01:11:38.840 And I said, well, that we don't do pogroms anymore.
01:11:43.280 That is my favorite thing about Christmas.
01:11:45.260 That old tradition.
01:11:46.240 That is a great answer for Stephen Crowder.
01:11:48.580 But you do live in a culture that celebrates Christmas.
01:11:51.780 It's true.
01:11:52.320 What is your view of living in a culture that celebrates Christmas?
01:11:55.760 I mean, I would much rather live in a culture that celebrates Christmas than a culture that disdains it.
01:11:59.980 And I think that that's essentially what we're on the verge of.
01:12:03.440 As a Jew, I think it's very important that Christians go to church.
01:12:06.140 And I think it's very important that they take the gospel seriously.
01:12:08.060 And I think it's very important that they take the religious precepts seriously because a Christian world is a better world,
01:12:13.180 not just for Jews in the American context, which is obviously true,
01:12:17.660 but also is a better world for the values that it helps to propagate.
01:12:20.720 So you don't get offended when someone wishes you a Merry Christmas.
01:12:22.820 No, in fact, last night at the holiday party, a bunch of people were coming over and saying,
01:12:26.320 Happy Holidays, and I would respond, Merry Christmas.
01:12:28.280 And you said to me, what I thought was a great line, you said,
01:12:31.940 I don't mind if they say Merry Christmas because they're not having a pogrom.
01:12:35.060 No religious Jews ever get offended by Merry Christmas.
01:12:39.720 This is 100% correct.
01:12:40.280 It is only secular people, Jews and Gentiles alike, who pretend to be offended by Merry Christmas.
01:12:45.460 Because as Ben and I have discussed of late, the world is really breaking into the two camps of believe in God, do not believe in God.
01:12:54.800 And that isn't...
01:12:55.900 People who believe in God are in this room.
01:12:58.520 That isn't always where the lines are.
01:13:02.600 But it seems more and more in this moment that that's where the lines are.
01:13:06.060 And so in that sense, we're all in a very important struggle together.
01:13:10.060 For our parting words on the true meaning of Christmas, I'm going to leave you with a blast from the past.
01:13:16.020 We're going to head over to Members Block.
01:13:17.560 We'll see you there in three minutes.
01:13:19.220 And we'll let one Andrew Klavan wish you the true spirit of the season.
01:13:27.220 Lights, please.
01:13:28.040 And the glory of the Lord shone round about them.
01:13:43.600 And they were sore afraid.
01:13:45.060 And the angel said unto them,
01:13:48.060 Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
01:13:54.920 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
01:14:00.840 And this shall be a sign unto you.
01:14:03.200 You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
01:14:07.600 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
01:14:15.140 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.
01:14:25.380 That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
01:14:30.640 Who the hell is Charlie Brown?
01:14:32.200 Special effects are just great.
01:14:43.680 I love it so much.
01:14:45.040 And it's funny to think about how much bigger we are as a company today than when we made that video.
01:14:49.760 You look so young there.
01:14:52.140 What we realized this morning is how few people have seen it.
01:14:56.520 Our audience was so much smaller back then.
01:14:59.480 It all happened so fast, too.
01:15:01.340 I had some of our mutual friends who are celebrating their first Christmas over to the house this week to watch Charlie Brown Christmas is what it's called, right?
01:15:10.500 Charlie Brown Christmas.
01:15:11.920 And it's remarkable how cruddy the animation is.
01:15:16.500 Not just rudimentary, cruddy.
01:15:18.140 It's so great, though.
01:15:19.080 And it's so good.
01:15:20.080 It's so great.
01:15:20.900 I put it on for my kids, and my son said, Daddy, why are we watching this?
01:15:26.180 For whatever reason, they didn't.
01:15:27.700 They didn't get it.
01:15:28.220 It didn't, yeah.
01:15:29.040 It's because you destroyed them with the Batman film.
01:15:31.040 Maybe.
01:15:32.180 They're still traumatized from Heath Ledger.
01:15:34.140 I don't know.
01:15:36.300 So it's Christmas time.
01:15:38.020 We have gifts for one another.
01:15:40.080 Secret Santa, we've done it almost every year.
01:15:43.460 It's ended in near disaster, friendship ending ruin every single time.
01:15:47.820 So it's, why not do it again?
01:15:49.620 So I don't even know how it came to be that we each were tasked with buying a gift for the person who we were.
01:15:58.480 But I thought we'd get right to it.
01:16:00.320 That sounds great.
01:16:00.880 Because, you know, in the past, I have gotten great Secret Santa presents.
01:16:04.280 Have you?
01:16:04.500 Yes.
01:16:04.820 You gave me one of my favorites last year.
01:16:07.160 You gave me a nice, juicy meatball in tinfoil.
01:16:09.960 I loved that.
01:16:10.840 Ben gave me, I still have it on display in my office, in a beautiful Tiffany box.
01:16:15.500 It was a nice little future diamond.
01:16:18.560 You know, a nice, black, coal-ish.
01:16:21.880 A Santa Claus lives every year.
01:16:23.560 That's right.
01:16:24.240 Yeah.
01:16:24.680 So they're great.
01:16:25.340 So I look forward to this year.
01:16:26.580 All right.
01:16:26.880 Well, I think we should start with you, Michael.
01:16:28.180 Okay.
01:16:28.820 So I open, mine is here on my left.
01:16:30.720 That's your gift right there.
01:16:31.520 Okay.
01:16:31.700 All right.
01:16:32.500 And I don't, obviously, I don't know, because it's a Secret Santa, so I don't know who my secret, okay.
01:16:37.700 All right.
01:16:38.220 All right.