00:00:00.000Well, LeBron James, who I have been a fan of as a basketball player anyway, he had remained conspicuously silent about the whole China thing up until last night.
00:00:12.640And then finally, he decided to open up and share some thoughts about it.
00:00:16.820And listen, we use words like amazing way too often, and so much so that I think the word has lost all meaning.
00:00:24.660But his response to the controversy with China and the NBA, it really is amazing for a number of reasons.
00:00:34.480So right off the bat here, I want to play this clip for you of what LeBron James said last night.
00:02:31.180That's why the team of on-staff physicians at BrickHouse Nutrition created Field of Greens.
00:02:36.040Field of Greens is an easy way for you to add fruits and vegetables to your daily routine without spending hours in the produce section, hiring a home chef, taking cheap supplements or anything like that.
00:02:47.320And also there's the expense of, now I know especially for me, because we've got kids, and so you want to have produce, you want to have fruit and vegetables and everything available for everybody.
00:02:58.320But it's just, you spend all that money on produce, and especially if you have kids in the house, within 30 minutes it feels like all the produce you bought is gone.
00:03:06.280And then you have to go and spend and mortgage your house again to buy more produce.
00:04:15.920He hasn't been educated on the wonders of communism.
00:04:19.800Well, he hasn't been re-educated, I suppose, is what he means to say.
00:04:23.520And he cautions that, you know, exercising your free speech can have ramifications.
00:04:28.460Sorry, what he actually said was, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen, as opposed to the ramifications for the positive that can happen.
00:04:38.620There are ramifications for the negative that can happen.
00:04:42.260And remember, LeBron James is the one telling the rest of us to get educated.
00:11:51.420And that's why, you know, for these guys to come out and complain about Trump or whatever, that's, there's no courage in that.
00:12:00.980Now, I'm not, I have never been one of those shut up and dribble types.
00:12:08.600I've never been one of those who thought that, well, athletes should never chime in about politics and should never give their opinion.
00:12:15.720No, I mean, these guys have a platform.
00:12:17.340If they want to use it, if they want to use it to express their points of view, then they can do that.
00:12:22.740This whole idea that, and it kind of annoys me too sometimes when you've got people saying to athletes, ah, shut up and stop talking about politics.
00:12:29.740Well, you talk about politics, okay, whatever your job is, I'm sure that whatever you do for a living, I'm sure it doesn't include talking politics, yet you still talk politics, don't you?
00:13:16.740But now is your chance to use your platform to take a stand that is really meaningful and really important and that will require some courage because, yeah, you could lose.
00:13:34.120You're still going to be rich at the end of it.
00:13:36.980Even if you sell less shoes and even if the NBA loses some money, you're all still going to be millionaires at the end of it.
00:13:42.480But, yeah, you are putting a little bit on the line.
00:13:44.700And they're not even willing to do that because when it comes down to it, a lot of people just are not willing to make any sacrifice whatsoever.
00:13:54.880They'll say anything and take any stand up until the moment when they're required to make the smallest little sacrifice.
00:14:01.240And then all of a sudden it's, oh, no, never mind.
00:14:05.820Just completely disgraceful and shameful across the board, but not surprising in the least bit.
00:14:11.660Okay, I don't want to be a broken record, but, you know, as we talked about my man Christopher Columbus yesterday, my good buddy Columbus.
00:14:38.600So they've got red paint all over the statue with a message that says, stop celebrating genocide.
00:14:43.720Now, I know there's no room for actual facts in this discussion, okay, when we talk about Columbus committing genocide.
00:14:51.720I realize that the people who throw paint on a statue have probably never read even one page of one book about this subject.
00:14:59.660Okay, I very much doubt that they've sat down and said, let me actually research the history of Columbus, his voyages, what actually happened.
00:15:57.680The diseases, now sometimes you'll hear from people who even think that diseases were spread intentionally.
00:16:04.520Well, they couldn't have done that even if they wanted to because back in the 15th and 16th century, people didn't understand how diseases were spread in the first place.
00:16:14.000Spreading diseases by germs was not something that people understood.
00:16:16.920It'd be another 250, 300 years before the germ theory of disease was formulated.
00:16:21.440So to call the accidental spreading of disease genocide is just ridiculous and factually inaccurate.
00:17:04.800I think everyone understands that the European settlers, some of them engaged in atrocities and horrible things happened, and some of them were bad people.
00:17:13.320I think we have fully and probably sufficiently acknowledged that, and I don't think anyone denies it, right?
00:17:22.160So I think that's all, that's sort of been covered.
00:17:29.300But we also have to, you know, this whole thing of judging historical people, especially people that lived centuries ago, 500 years ago or more, by modern standards is so absurd.
00:17:45.780And the problem is, when you do that, if you're going to do that, and this is what I think people don't understand.
00:17:51.260If you're going to judge historical people by modern standards, then here's the result.
00:17:57.920Every single person, without exception, okay, every single person who existed anywhere on earth at any point up until about, I don't know, 50 years ago, will be a bigot by our standards today.
00:18:15.580If we are taking modern standards and applying it to historical people, then all of them, we have to basically write off all of them, all of our ancestors.
00:18:23.620It doesn't matter where you live, what your race is, religion, doesn't matter.
00:18:26.920All of our ancestors were all scumbag bigots, all of them across the board.
00:18:45.360They had views that we find even reprehensible today.
00:18:49.020If we realize that, but at the same time, we say to ourselves, well, but we can't, what, are we going to say that the entire world was populated, but there was just nothing good about them?
00:18:58.340Not only that, but that is, on top of being an absurd view, it's also incredibly arrogant and egotistical, you know, talk about, I think it was C.S. Lewis talked about chronological, maybe it was G.K. Chester, one of them, one of those guys, talked about chronological snobbery and this idea that, well, because we're the most recent people to exist, we are so much better than everyone who existed before us.
00:19:21.380And because we can, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see their flaws.
00:19:27.140We can't see our own flaws, but we can see theirs as we look back in time.
00:19:31.140So that's, it's chronological snobbery and it's B.S. to do that.
00:19:35.180I think we have to come up with a more nuanced perspective and not a perspective that excuses things that were obviously evil and wrong.
00:19:43.620So, Europeans who just slaughtered Native Americans, and that did happen, obviously that's evil and wrong.
00:20:52.200And they saw violence as a perfectly legitimate way to sometimes solve a problem.
00:20:56.940And I would say that they weren't necessarily wrong about that.
00:20:59.560Now, the violence that they used, you know, in certain situations was wrong.
00:21:04.680So they applied that incorrectly in some cases, in many cases.
00:21:09.300But I think that we're not exactly always correct that violence is always wrong.
00:21:13.740Of course, there are situations where violence is okay.
00:21:16.540I think, you know, maybe our ancestors were too far on one end of that spectrum to sometimes too eager to settle problems through violence.
00:21:26.600Whereas we've gone too far in the other direction with this idea that it's never okay, there's never any situation, it's totally wrong all the time.
00:21:33.260I think that that is a sort of ridiculous view as well.
00:21:39.400But that's the first thing we have to keep in mind, okay?
00:22:05.560So if you had said to someone in the 14th century, for example, all human beings are equal, they're all exactly, they are all worth the same, they're all equal in moral worth and dignity, probably doesn't matter who you're talking to.
00:22:22.460It doesn't matter what country you're in, what culture, what race you're saying that to.
00:22:26.440So that would have seemed, it wouldn't have meant anything to them.
00:22:31.280It would have seemed like it just, it would not have processed.
00:22:36.220Because that is a, the idea of universal human equality is very modern.
00:22:44.020Think about, think about this, that, you know, all humans are created equal, endowed by their creator, so on and so forth.
00:22:51.580But even when that was written into the Declaration of Independence, as we know, it was so far ahead of its time that the men who came up with this idea and who wrote that down, they themselves didn't even fully apply it.
00:23:06.040Because, of course, they still, you know, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.
00:23:10.540Washington, George Washington owned slaves.
00:23:13.060So, in fact, from when that was written to when it would actually be fully enacted in our country, that was, you know, that's like 180, 190 years or something.
00:23:23.900It would be a very long time from when that was originally conceived of and written down to when we actually lived in a country where everybody was legally equal.
00:23:32.940So, it is a very, again, it's a very modern concept.
00:23:37.460And that's just not a concept that people, you know, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 years ago had.
00:23:46.240And that's one of the reasons why slavery was an acceptable practiced institution all across the world in nearly every culture and civilization.
00:25:23.980And the other thing is, if you had land, you realized that you would have to fight to protect it.
00:25:32.780And you didn't have, you couldn't spend time, you know, feeling sorry for yourself about that.
00:25:37.060You just, you had to fight to protect what you had.
00:25:39.500And if you couldn't, then you weren't going to keep it.
00:25:43.620And it's very easy for us now, especially in the West.
00:25:47.420And it's not like this for everybody in the world, of course.
00:25:49.500But for us in the West, as we live in this luxurious, comfortable world, for us, you know, we're living this comfortable lifestyle.
00:25:59.100And we have the benefits now of hindsight.
00:26:03.940And we were born into a world where the truth of, for instance, the equal worth and dignity of all human beings has been, had been passed down to us and taught to us from childhood.
00:27:36.380The new masculinity is a six-year-old girl playing dress up.
00:27:39.920So, when my six-year-old daughter plays dress up, she is now the example of masculinity for men everywhere, apparently.
00:27:47.660Now, again, I know there's no point, as I said, in introducing logic into this discussion.
00:27:52.700But I can't help but point out that these efforts to redefine masculinity make no sense in light of the fact that the very concept of manhood is supposedly subjective and effectively meaningless now.
00:28:05.980If it doesn't really mean anything to be a man, then what's the point of coming up with a new masculinity?
00:28:11.760In other words, in order for a biological female to identify as a man, which is a thing now that she can do, doesn't manhood then have to be masculine in order for that to make sense?
00:28:23.700Isn't the whole damn point of identifying as a man, isn't that the whole point of it?
00:28:32.580Isn't that effectively what you're saying?
00:28:35.260In other words, aren't you basically saying, you say, I identify as a man.
00:28:38.520What you're really saying is, I identify as a masculine person.
00:28:42.640If masculinity is now feminine, then what does it mean for a woman to identify as a man?
00:28:50.300So she identifies as a man, but men are like women.
00:28:53.980So she identifies as a man who's essentially a woman.
00:28:57.460She's a man who's a woman who's a man who's a woman.
00:29:04.740The whole concept of identifying as a man or identifying as a woman depends on those things being distinct and defined.
00:29:13.820You know, it really depends on men being masculine and women being feminine.
00:29:18.640But if we're tearing down masculinity and femininity, then everyone might as well stay their own genders because we're all just sort of meeting in the middle anyway, right?
00:29:27.420We're all just getting together, meeting in the middle, swapping clothes, and it's a free-for-all.
00:29:30.980And then in that case, if everything is fluid and it's all sort of, hey, it's whatever, you're a woman, then, okay, if that's what it is, you kind of have to choose is the point.
00:29:42.700We're either doing that or we're doing a thing where being a man is something objective and definable, but sometimes a woman could identify as one.
00:29:55.800So you could do one or the other, but you can't really do both.
00:30:18.660Says, hey, Matt, my name is Stephen, and my parents spanked me growing up.
00:30:22.820I'm 20 and don't have kids yet, so I'd like to point out that I contradict the case you had explained yesterday where people think fondly on their spankings because they spank their own kids.
00:30:32.920I was far more deviant than my siblings and got significantly more spankings because of it.
00:30:36.520However, I'm grateful that my parents spanked because it did teach me discipline and ultimately taught me to respect my father in a way that I don't know I would have if they used other disciplinary methods.
00:30:47.020My parents also never hit out of anger.
00:30:49.340If I was in trouble, they'd send me to my room, and before they spanked, they'd go pray in their room to make sure they were making the right decision.
00:30:55.140And then they'd talk through what I did wrong, and afterwards, they'd have me pray for forgiveness.
00:30:59.740I may be an outlier in that my parents never once hit me out of anger, but I just thought your argument didn't take into perspective an experience like mine where I don't look back fondly but could easily be misunderstood as such.
00:31:11.380Yeah, well, that's not – I think my argument did take into account exactly your situation, Stephen.
00:31:15.940That's what I was saying is that I think that although we don't spank our kids, it's not – we just decided that's not right for our family.
00:31:24.000I think if you are, as a parent, doing it not out of anger, not because you're unleashing your frustration, not because you're just pissed off, but you're doing it – you're taking, as I said, kind of a business-like approach.
00:31:39.560And this is also important, which I didn't talk about yesterday, but that you have spanking as a penalty for certain things, and the child knows ahead of time that that is the penalty for that thing, whatever it is, okay?
00:31:55.640And then in that case, then that takes the anger out of it even more.
00:31:59.460It's just, okay, that was the penalty.
00:32:31.280It sounds like your situation was what we're talking about here, a valid form of discipline.
00:32:37.320I just wonder of all the parents who do spank their kids, and of course, any parent you talk to, they're going to say that they never spank in anger.
00:32:48.000I don't think any parent's going to come out and say, oh, yeah, I hit my kid all the time because I'm ticked off.
00:32:54.980But I do wonder, of all the parents who spank their kids as a form of discipline, what percentage of them do it sometimes or even regularly out of anger.
00:33:05.980And I suspect that it's probably a rather large percentage.
00:33:08.660And in the case of those parents, they are physically abusing their kids.
00:33:26.100And I'm not saying – a parent who one time spanked their kid out of anger, I'm not saying that they are a terrible parent and they should lose their kids and, you know, or their kids are ruined for life or anything.
00:33:36.300I'm not saying that I'm just – but it is a serious – that's a serious issue.
00:33:40.720And that's a line that you just never want to cross.
00:34:21.760This is not so much a question for the mailbag as it is a comment on one of today's questions, specifically the one regarding priestly celibacy.
00:34:27.600As a convert to Catholicism from evangelical Protestantism, I had similar views regarding celibacy.
00:34:32.460To me, it seemed too much of a burden to be placed on men that might otherwise have chosen the vocation.
00:34:37.040Since then, my opinions have become more nuanced.
00:34:39.020I will certainly agree that allowing priests to marry won't solve the pedophilia problem.
00:34:43.280Pedophiles are attracted to any situation where they have authority, trust, and privacy with young boys.
00:34:47.640Scout leaders, athletic coaches, church youth group leaders, these are all fertile fields for pedophiles.
00:34:52.340But you make the case that desire to have a family is a noble and natural thing
00:34:55.520and that priestly celibacy is an unnecessary denial of those basic and good instincts.
00:34:59.640What I have come to believe, however, is that celibacy is not a burden.
00:35:02.300It is a grace that God grants those called to the priesthood.
00:35:05.220The Apostle Paul even says that it would be better for his followers if they were more like him, celibate,
00:35:10.160but it is better to marry than to burn with lust icing.
00:35:13.300He makes it clear that a married man cares for the needs of his family,
00:35:16.480but a celibate priest is free to take care of the things of God.
00:35:19.860After all, Christianity is a religion of self-denial.
00:35:21.960Jesus tells us that if we are to follow him, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross.
00:35:25.700That a priest is called celibacy is a gift and an opportunity to mortify the flesh in the service of a higher spiritual goal.
00:35:31.480In spite of the paucity of vocations, I would rather have fewer committed priests than lower the bar to get the numbers up.
00:35:39.100I think that's a perfectly valid argument.
00:35:41.080That certainly is the argument in favor of it.
00:35:56.660I just, um, I just, there are two things I have to, we have to take into account.
00:36:02.480Uh, one is the reality of the situation.
00:36:07.380So we could say, yeah, it would, it's great if priests can carry this cross and, and, and exhibit this kind of self-control and on top of all the other benefits.
00:36:20.020Now, the thing about, you know, if you're a priest, if you're a pastor, you've got your flock, that's really a full-time job.
00:36:26.760And so if you've got your own family, then of course your family has to come first and you have to put your flock second.
00:36:33.340One of the advantages of having celibate priests is that you focus a hundred percent on your, um, on your priestly duties.
00:36:40.520And I think that's a, that's a, that's maybe the, in some, even though, even though that's the practical argument, I think maybe that's the best argument for priestly celibacy.
00:36:48.320Because it's a, it's, you know, you talk to, um, people in Protestant denominations, for example, and they'll tell you that this is, this can be a real problem.
00:36:56.120And this is why it's a real issue in some Protestant churches, Protestant churches, where, uh, the pastors, you know, they have problems in their own families and with their marriages because they're being torn by these two demands.
00:37:09.960Um, and so I, I think that practically speaking, that's a very good reason to have celibate priests.
00:37:18.640But again, now we run up against the reality and the reality is that a very large percent, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's clear that a very large percentage of priests are simply not living up to that.
00:37:33.760And, um, so do we just charge on ahead and say, yeah, you know, they'll figure it out eventually.
00:37:40.080Or do we say, maybe it's time to consider making a change?
00:37:45.900Um, and then the other part of it is, like I said yesterday, I really feel like the desire to have a family and have a wife is good and natural and noble.
00:38:01.420I don't think it's a lesser vocation than celibacy at all.
00:38:05.180I think that they're just different and there's a place for both, I suppose.
00:38:12.660But, um, we are ruling out, as I said yesterday, you, the, the, the Catholic church is excluding, is in principle ruling out men who have a very strong, healthy, natural, and noble desire to have a wife and a family.
00:38:32.480And that, that, that is a whole category of men that we're saying, nope, you're, we don't have a place for you in the priesthood.
00:38:39.800And I'm just wondering if that's in the end, uh, a good strategy.
00:38:47.380I think maybe those men have something to offer.
00:38:50.700Even though there are those very real practical difficulties, as I mentioned, I still think those men have something to offer and, and maybe we should welcome them.
00:38:59.660But, um, there are, you know, there's, there's a, I still, I don't know.
00:39:06.620I'm, I'm a little torn on it, I guess, as you can see from Carly.
00:39:27.220All through my wife's pregnancy, okay, we debated this.
00:39:31.280And, um, I liked Emma as the first name, Grace as the middle.
00:39:36.100My wife wanted Emma Grace as the whole first name, like to do a two name, first name deal.
00:39:41.600And I told her again and again, again, I made the point that if we do that, we're going to have to spend our whole lives clarifying to everyone that Emma Grace is her first name.
00:39:51.680You know, one, it's the whole first name, two names, not first in the middle, two name, first name.
00:39:56.800Every time we're at an appointment, we're anywhere, you know, someone asks us her name.
00:40:01.980Every time we're going to have to go, they're going to say, what's her name?
00:40:13.920It's on our whole lives and her whole life.
00:40:16.460We're going to have to have this conversation over and over and over and over again, millions of times, literally.
00:40:24.120We will have consigned her to a life of explaining her name to people.
00:40:28.340And that is, there are some people who live a life like that.
00:40:30.740And if you have a name, you know, if you have a name that's confusing, confusing spelling, whatever, for any, whatever reason, you know what it's like.
00:40:37.920Your whole life, you have to explain your name.
00:40:40.440And that is the life of a two named person.
00:40:42.600She will wander the countryside, ostracized, abandoned by society, while people point their fingers at her and say, here comes the two name.
00:40:59.740A week after she was born, a week after she was born, a week, seven days, my wife came to me and said, man, this is really getting annoying after having to explain the name thing to people.
00:41:28.960But, of course, my wife tries to act like I hadn't been arguing this all the time.
00:41:32.240When she came to me and said, oh, this is getting annoying, she didn't say, she didn't preface it with, oh, it turns out you were right.
00:41:39.880She said it as if no one had brought this up before, trying to underplay, which I understand, okay, because she can't let me have this I told you so moment.
00:41:51.420It's just strategically, in a marriage, you can't let your spouse have one like this because you're always looking for the I told you so, which is a healthy thing to do in a marriage, by the way.
00:42:28.960We're going to officially change it and make it so Grace is the middle name.
00:42:35.660And no matter how my wife tries to downplay it, the fact remains that for the rest of our lives, I will have this story about the week that our daughter spent with a different name than the one she ended up with.
00:42:46.960And how it was changed because I was right and I told you so.
00:43:03.720It's just, you know, especially at, look, everyone knows, not to be stereotypical, but in a marriage, the husband doesn't get as many of the I told you so's.
00:43:11.620So when you get one as a husband, you got to grab onto that one.
00:44:26.860Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:44:30.420You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
00:44:36.840But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
00:44:39.780So come on over to The Andrew Klavan Show and laugh your way through the apocalypse with me, Andrew Klavan.