Ep. 1430 - Jon Stewart Explains Why Freedom Makes Everything Suck
Summary
In recent weeks, we ve heard more and more about the degradation of our cities, the filthy, dangerous subways, the drug-ridden streets, the skyrocketing crime. How did things get so bad so quickly? Why is this happening? Lucky for us, Jon Stewart has the answer.
Transcript
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In recent weeks, we've heard more and more about the degradation of our cities,
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the filthy, dangerous subways, the drug addict-lined streets, the skyrocketing crime.
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How did things get so bad so quickly? Do we really have to live this way? Why is this happening?
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Right. Because the difference between our urinal-caked, chaotic subways and your
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candelabra-ed, beautiful subways is the literal price of freedom.
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Urine everywhere is the price of freedom. It's definitely the price of the liberals' version
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of freedom. That part's true. The problem with Jon Stewart's argument is that we used to have nice
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things not that long ago. Our subways used to be cleaner. Our streets used to be mostly free
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from crackheads and criminals. We used to punish criminals and stop them from gallivanting all
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over our communities and terrorizing us. That wasn't that long ago. Were we really less free
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then? We were less free seven years ago? Really? We were less free three years ago? I don't think so.
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I think we all know that we're all much more free when cops arrest criminals and the streets aren't
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lined with the corpses of drug addicts, which means that what the libs call freedom is in fact the
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opposite. And we got to fight that false freedom tooth and nail before it makes us all slaves.
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I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. There's a girl on TikTok who is finally clearing up the age-old question of
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The liberals are very, very confused about what freedom is. If freedom is criminals running around
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and dudes going into the girls' room and urine and drugs and excrement everywhere,
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give me a little more authoritarianism, please. You know, I'll take it, actually. Because,
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ironically, what the libs are calling freedom is a kind of slavery. It's slavery to the base passions.
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It's slavery to the irrational impulses of capricious criminals. What liberals are calling
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authoritarian is much more in line with freedom. It's much more in line with the Founding Fathers
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conception of freedom. It's much more in line with the classical and Christian conceptions of freedom.
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Because freedom requires limits, just like a poem requires limits to be beautiful. It needs meter.
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That rhyme is sometimes helpful. So, too, our societies require some limits.
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Because there's always just a trade-off. If you give dudes the freedom to go into the women's
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bathroom, you deprive women of the freedom to have their own bathrooms. If you give drug addicts
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the freedom to shoot up heroin on the street, you deprive ordinary law-abiding citizens of the freedom
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to walk their streets in peace, unmolested and unaccosted by vagrants and indigents and criminals.
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There's always a cost here. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So, what kind of freedom are we
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talking about? Are we talking about the freedom of the lower passions and the irrational appetites
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to drive us all completely insane? Or are we talking about true freedom, which involves knowledge?
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It involves acknowledging reality. Men and women are different. Certain things are crimes. Certain
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things are not crimes. We do good. We avoid evil. Involves the intellect. And it involves disciplining
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the will and saying, no, crackhead, don't shoot up or don't smoke your crack on the streets of San
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Francisco. No, big husky fella, don't go into the girl's bathroom. No, homeless people, don't
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defecate on the streets. No, you gotta behave, okay? This comes back to a very basic concept
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which the liberals have forgotten. And I'm not even just theorizing that the liberals have forgotten
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this. The libs in one of their big house organs admitted they forgot this. The concept is called
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The Natural Law. Politico has a big hit piece out on Christian nationalism. That's the new boogeyman
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on the left. Christian nationalism is on the rise. Trump allies prepare to infuse Christian nationalism
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in a second administration. Spearheading the effort is Russell Vaught, president of the Center for
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Renewing America, part of the conservative consortium preparing for Trump's return to power. Oh no, here
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comes Christian nationalism. And what is at the heart of Christian nationalism? At the heart of
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Christian nationalism, they say, is natural law. Now, let's see, where can I find this beautiful
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definition that they try to, yes, here we are. In 2019, Trump's then Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo,
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set up a federal commission to define human rights based on the precepts Vaught described, specifically
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natural law and natural rights. I like how in this, they don't even seem to recognize the phrase
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natural rights, which is much more common in modern American parlance. Even that they don't understand.
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And they certainly don't understand natural law. Politico writes, natural law is the belief that
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there are universal rules derived from God that can't be superseded by government or judges. While it
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is a core pillar of Catholicism, in recent decades, it's been used to oppose abortion, LGBTQ rights,
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and contraception. Okay, well, at least they tried. At least, they didn't try that hard, though.
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Because what's, I mean, I guess ultimately everything's derived from God, because God's
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the creator of all things that are created. But the natural law is very specifically
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the law that can be understood universally, purely by human reason, without divine revelation.
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I guess they actually kind of got the meaning of natural law, which forms a bedrock aspect,
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not just of theology and philosophy and morality, but also of American jurisprudence and constitutional
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law and the common law tradition. They just, they couldn't even get it right. They couldn't even
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Google it. These are the guys at Politico. They're supposed to be the really smart journalists.
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They're not these just fringe bloggers. They're supposed to be the mainstream guys. They have
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absolutely no idea what it is. And it's a core of Catholicism. That's true. Catholicism certainly
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has quite a lot to do with the natural law. But the natural law being the natural law is,
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well, it's just kind of part of every civilization. All people can recognize this. What the natural law
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comes down to most basically is do good and avoid evil. This is something that all human beings have
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an impulse for, an inclination of, purely through our reason. Even that today, though, the libs will
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look at you like you've got three heads if you suggest that maybe perhaps we should consider doing
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good and avoiding evil. I'll say, good and evil? How the hell are we supposed to know what that is?
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Well, because you have reason, and you have something called a conscience, and you're pretending
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that you don't, but even you do. We all do. That's part of it. In recent decades, the natural
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law has been used to oppose a bunch of stuff that's crazy and obviously contrary to human flourishing.
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Yeah, I guess that's true. I guess it does. Very sad state of American politics that not only
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does the dominant political power deny the natural law, they don't even know what it is. Not so long
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ago, though, you had really eloquent defenders and articulators of this. There was a great debate
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when Barack Obama was running for Senate from Illinois. He was running against Alan Keyes,
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a wonderful Republican candidate who unfortunately did not make it to hold higher office.
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Alan Keyes, they were debating gay marriage back in those days. There was a debate over whether or
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not we would redefine marriage, and Alan Keyes argued against it on the basis of natural law.
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Mr. Keyes, on the Channel 7 debate last Thursday night, you said, and I'm quoting you,
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where procreation is in principle impossible, marriage is irrelevant. You went on to say it was
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irrelevant and not needed. What about marriage between people who are well beyond their childbearing age?
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No, no, it's simply a misunderstanding. The word in principle means relating to the definition of,
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not relating to particular circumstances. So if an apple has a worm in it, the worm is not part of
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the definition of the apple. It doesn't change what the apple is in principle. So the fact...
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It retains... No, it retains... To act as if concepts are laughable means that you want to be irrational.
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No, I'm going to put a pause there. Alan Keyes, man, what a prince among men. I really wish this
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guy had made it to the Senate or higher, because he's looking at the questioner, and you hear this
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objection all the time. They say, well, hold on, Michael. If you object to radically redefining
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marriage from what it's always been, just on the basis that a couple of fellows can't have a kid
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together, why then? Do you think that women past the age of menopause shouldn't get married? Do you
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think that couples who are likely to be sterile, if, I don't know, the woman has endometriosis or
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something, that they should not be allowed to get married? And Alan Keyes is just there. He could
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probably fall asleep. He's so bored with this idiotic line of questioning. By the way, I'm not
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even sure that the questioner holds to it. The questioner is leading Keyes to this great point
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about the apple-ness of the apple. But Keyes, he just looks, he says, you just don't understand the
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phrase in principle. Just because the particular circumstances of something might have a defect
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in this fallen world doesn't change the reality in principle. In principle, the union of a man and a
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woman is open to life, and marriage is ordered toward the procreation and education of children.
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Two dudes, they might be the nicest dudes in the world. We got nothing against them.
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But the union of two dudes is not in principle open to having children. It is not ordered toward
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the end that marriage is ordered toward. So it just isn't marriage. It's not that we want to keep
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them from having the right to marriage or anything like that. It just, at the most basic definition
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of marriage, it is not and can never be that, he goes on.
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Reason, excuse me, you said it was irrelevant and not needed.
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Reason, by means of concepts and definition, we also make laws by means of definitions. And if you
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don't know how to operate with respect for those definitions, you can't make the law.
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An individual who is impotent or another who is infertile does not change the definition of
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marriage in principle. Because between a man and a woman in principle, procreation is always
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possible. And it is that possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first
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place. As a matter of law, excuse me, as a matter of law and government. But when it is impossible,
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as between two males or two females, you're talking about something that's not just incidentally
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impossible. It's impossible in principle. And that means that if you say that that's a
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marriage, you are saying marriage can be understood in principle apart from procreation.
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Obama just taking notes, completely destroyed by Alan Keyes' argument.
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...it's definition in such a way as, in fact, to destroy the necessity for the institution,
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since the only reason it has existed in human societies and civilizations was to regulate from
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a social point of view the obligations and responsibilities attendant upon procreation.
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This is a really good argument. I wish that this had been the debate over redefining marriage. There
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really was no debate over redefining marriage because intelligent and common sense voices like
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Alan Keyes were pushed out of that debate and it just became a dumb debate over who has the right to
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do whatever. And really it was a debate not over right. It shouldn't have been a debate over
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rights. It should have been a debate over definitions. What can we know using our reason
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from nature? And the answer from the liberals today is not very much at all. The one thing you
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really learn from this Politico article, not only is that liberals have thrown out even the
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basic aspects of reasonable argument, but the other thing you learn is Christian nationalism
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is going to be a huge talking point for the libs in 2024. Here come the Christian nationalists.
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They want to impose a theocracy or whatever. My rejoinder to them would be if you guys think
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that Christian nationalism is bad, just wait until you see unchristian nationalism. Trust me,
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you're going to like that a lot, a lot less. Christian nationalism, if we live in a nation,
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our nation's going to be animated by something. It can be animated by paganism. It can be animated
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by atheism. The worst regimes in all of history have been atheist regimes. It can be animated by,
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I guess it could be animated by Hinduism. We don't have that many Hindus in America.
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Or it can be animated by Christianity. Which one do you think is going to be better? Which one do you
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think is going to be more conducive to the flourishing of everybody, Christians and non-Christians
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alike? I think the answer is pretty clear. There is much more to say. First though,
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Speaking of nature, Madonna has fallen off a chair. She's fallen, and she sort of can get up,
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at least. She was at some concert. You see her on stage. She's being dragged by one of her singers.
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And the singer trips, and she goes straight down. Madonna's 65 years old. You do not want to be
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taking falls at 65 years old. She keeps singing while lying on the ground. One of her backup
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singers comes to help her up, but she actually gets herself up for most of it, which is pretty
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impressive. And she gets back on the chair, you know, sitting open-legged and dancing around in a
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pretty sultry way. And then she flips around to a slightly more comfortable position, and they kind
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of recover. Okay. It's very sad. Very, very sad because Madonna is 65 years old and should not be
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dancing on stage like she's a 21-year-old stripper. But she's doing that. That has been her act. And she
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was the best at that act in the 80s when she kind of came onto the scene. And the act has gotten sadder
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and sadder every year. Not because she's not still good at it. She's actually shockingly good at singing
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and dancing around and getting up when she falls for a 65-year-old pop star. But it's sad because
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that's not the sort of thing 65-year-olds are supposed to do. It's a little risque for anyone to dance like
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that. But it's a lot more normal for a 25-year-old to dance like that than for a 65-year-old.
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The biggest modern pathology, I think, that affects us is the inclination to deny time.
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I think this is one of the aspects of liberalism. We want to deny time. We want to deny history.
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Liberalism is all about denying history. Forget about the past. They were all dumb. They were all evil.
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They don't know anything. We know everything now. And nothing's ever going to change. No one's ever
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going to call us immoral. No one's ever going to call us ignorant. No, no, no. We've figured it all
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out. And now the time and politics is frozen forever in this endless present. You see this
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in young liberal people. I mean, this is why, in large part, I think millennials in the cities don't
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want to get married. They don't want to have kids. They want to remain kids themselves forever.
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This is why you're seeing a perpetual suspended adolescence. This is why you're seeing 35-year-olds
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brag on social media that they're adulting because they paid a bill or something. It's all about a
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denial of time. You even see this in some modern forms of religion. A lot of modern religion is
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very Gnostic. It is inclined to deny the physical world. It's inclined to deny the history of the
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religion. It's inclined to deny the great people. It's the great saints of the religion. It's inclined
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toward, away from worship and liturgy. It's just kind of floating in your head. And we all want to
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be just floating in the air. That's why people are going to put on the Apple Vision Pro, and they're
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going to deny the importance of their bodies, and they're going to embrace Gnostic ideologies like
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transgenderism or transhumanism. They're going to try to upload their minds to the cloud so they can
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deny the reality of time, which has a beginning and a middle and an end, and then you die. And then what
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happens after you die is something they don't want to think about. It's not particularly new.
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This is a pathology that's affected us for centuries now. It's not good.
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The things that were normal for you to do at 20 are not generally normal for you to do at 50
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or 60 or 70. Boozy and Liss Champagne Brunch. I always attack brunch because brunch is just the
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sacrament. Brunch is the liturgy of the millennials. But boozy champagne brunch when you're 22 is one
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thing. Going out every weekend and, you know, that's one thing. Boozy champagne brunch when you're
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62 is a sadder thing. You should be doing other things. You got to grow. You got to develop. You're
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going to grow or you're going to die. And we're all going to die someday, even though everyone seems to
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be trying to deny that. Now, speaking of growing up, there are a father and a daughter who are sniping
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at each other on social media. And they're both social media influencers, which means that something
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has gone terribly, terribly wrong in this family. For any of them to be social media influencers,
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but certainly for both of them to be. The daughter made a video in which she accused her father of being
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absentee when she was a kid. What's a piece of trauma that you have that's funny? It has to
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actually be funny. I'll go first. My dad abandoned my family when I was five years old. That is a wife
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and four kids. He abandoned us and then pursued amateur breakdancing. And he got really good.
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He like blew up. Like he became like a D-list celebrity status, like viral breakdancer. He became
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like the oldest actively competing breakdancer in the world. Then he got a Good Morning America
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and talk shows and Washington Post wrote about him and he went super viral and he did all these
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interviews and he danced with Paul Abdul. The worst part, damn it, he's good. He should not be able to
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move his body like that. It's like impossible. It's beautiful. Hey, dad. Thank you, Maddie. Like there
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was no split custody or anything. Like he just like left four kids to do that. He may not have paid for some
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of my medical bills growing up, but he did give me this breakdancing merchandise. So that's him.
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He's on his b-boy name because his name is Ben Hart. You know, I'll get texts like this. Happy
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birthday question mark. And then like links to his, to his breakdancing video. That's true.
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Funny trauma, like actual funny ha ha trauma. I need to hear it. Okay. So the daughter airs her
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grievances. His father, he left me. He wouldn't pay my bills. He forgets when my birthday is. He makes a
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joke about forgetting my birthday. He wasn't around when I was a kid. But the reason this video is
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going viral is because the father has responded to her. And I've even seen some conservatives
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sharing this video of the father as though it's an epic takedown by a father, maybe a right wing
00:22:11.540
leaning father. He's wearing a Bitcoin shirt. It's an epic takedown of this father to his spoiled brat,
00:22:18.560
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Social media influencer daughter goes viral saying, my dad abandoned the family when we were kids.
00:23:36.180
The father then goes viral. Number of conservatives posting him around because he epically,
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epically destroyed his daughter on social media with facts and logic.
00:23:45.880
First, I can see that as a five-year-old, Maddie would see her dad as having abandoned the family.
00:23:52.880
One day I was living there. The next day, I wasn't. And that will look like abandonment to a child.
00:23:59.140
But married couples do get divorced about half the time in America. And I was just living a mile or so
00:24:04.860
down the street in LaGrange, Illinois. We just weren't living under the same roof.
00:24:09.540
Now, about not paying medical bills, that's just not correct. Here was the financial arrangement
00:24:15.920
of the divorce. Maddie's mom, my ex-wife, got $2 million at the get-go. Out of the gate.
00:24:23.040
A lump sum payment. Plus, I was paying her $18,000 per month in child support and alimony.
00:24:30.480
This was later reduced to $12,000 per month. And of course, I paid health insurance and out-of-pocket
00:24:36.400
medical costs. I also put $600,000 into the kids' college fund. In all, I paid out about $5 million
00:24:43.380
to my ex-wife to cover costs for her and the kids. And this is in $2,005. So add 50% to account for
00:24:51.800
inflation. In other words, I was not a deadbeat dad at all.
00:24:55.520
I was not a deadbeat dad at all, you see, because I gave my wife a lot of money.
00:24:59.860
Now, he goes on in the video. He has like a 10-minute response here. And he says, yeah,
00:25:04.680
look, the divorce was, it was mostly my fault. It was about 70% my fault. But look, I gave him a
00:25:10.560
bunch of money. And now the kids, most of them have good jobs. So they're making money. So quit
00:25:15.380
complaining. And I thought, not only is that one of the dumbest arguments I've ever heard, not only
00:25:22.320
does that argument completely miss the point that your daughter was raising, but it's one of the least
00:25:27.120
conservative arguments I've ever heard. I cannot understand how a conservative would post this
00:25:33.780
video and say that the father is somehow the good guy here. He's saying, yeah, everything you said
00:25:40.180
is true. I did abandon my family. I did pursue my professional breakdancing career. But hey,
00:25:46.720
you got some money. So isn't that all good? Talk about knowing the price of everything and the value
00:25:52.420
of nothing. He doesn't really apologize for the divorce. He says, oh, my wife and I, we were
00:25:58.380
incompatible. So yeah, I traumatized our four kids. And I did. I literally abandoned them. But hey,
00:26:05.000
you know, they got some money. Isn't that fine? Isn't that? What are you talking about, man?
00:26:12.020
Absolutely pathetic. I have no, look, these people are both social media influencers and they're
00:26:17.880
probably both just absolutely dreadful. But if I had to pick a side here, I'm certainly picking
00:26:23.320
the side of the daughter to say nothing of the fact that this father is taking to social media
00:26:27.560
to destroy his daughter with facts and logic. Are you kidding me for the public, for the amusement
00:26:31.520
of your followers? I don't care how in the wrong you think your daughter is. That is a despicable
00:26:36.300
behavior. And then it gets even crazier because the daughter responded. Her first video was kind of
00:26:40.520
funny. It was in response to this question, name a funny trauma you have. And I say, here's a funny
00:26:43.960
trauma. My dad abandoned me to become a professional breakdancer and he's actually pretty good.
00:26:47.200
But then her response is, actually, now my father's just lying about everything.
00:26:51.960
But I know my dad posted like a 10-minute video or whatever being like, you know, my daughter's
00:26:56.540
lying. We have a great relationship. I have a great relationship with all my kids. That's
00:27:00.020
just objectively not true. Like, guys, we're all freaking out about this in my family group
00:27:03.480
chat right now. We're being like, he's so unhinged and delusional. We don't know if he
00:27:06.940
actually believes his own narrative or if he's lying on purpose, but he's just like a weird
00:27:11.340
guy. He said he lived down the street from us. That's not true. Or like, if he did, it was only
00:27:15.500
for a few months maybe. But actually, for most of my childhood, he lived in Florida with
00:27:20.700
his new wife. Like, basically, like, I don't want to get into this. Like, again, like, my
00:27:24.800
video was basically like sanitizing the situation and like poking fun at the lightest parts of
00:27:29.700
that childhood trauma. But obviously, in real life, it was a lot more like complicated and
00:27:34.080
traumatic. And it was really hard. He left us, immediately married another woman. We didn't
00:27:37.680
hear from him for years. And then he would visit every few months and we'd go out to dinner.
00:27:41.260
But like, he truly had no hand in raising us at all.
00:27:45.520
Yeah, I'm totally on the girl's side here. This is such
00:27:49.020
late 20th century cope from this father. This is just such nonsense to say, well, look,
00:27:57.320
all that really matters is money. You know, I wrote them a big check, so I can't be blamed
00:28:02.180
for anything. That's an error that not only the left has made, but the right has made as well.
00:28:06.800
But that's the primary function of a father actually is not to make a lot of money. There
00:28:11.080
are very excellent fathers who have not made a lot of money. Primary function of a father is to
00:28:15.060
be a father, to be steadfast, to live up to his vows that he made to his wife and the love between
00:28:21.760
him and his wife that is so real that it actually creates other people. And then to fulfill his
00:28:25.320
obligations to those children. That's his job. And those obligations are a lot deeper than money.
00:28:29.620
So he leaves them and the girl's saying, yeah, you gave us a lot of money, but that doesn't
00:28:35.440
matter. She's obviously screwed up from it. I'm not surprised at all. There is just no excuse for
00:28:41.120
this. No excuse. The rot in our politics goes down probably 93% to this one issue of no-fault
00:28:53.980
divorce. And the reason for that is not just that it screws up kids and it's not just that
00:28:58.380
encourages selfish behavior in adults. And it's not just, it's that the family is the basic
00:29:04.860
political unit. Politics, politics is how we all get along together. Politics is, cannot be an
00:29:11.640
individual thing because it involves multiple people. It's, it's the public life. And the basic
00:29:17.260
unit of that, the smallest possible unit is the family. So if you blow up the family, as you do with
00:29:22.380
no-fault divorce, then you blow up all of politics. And then they justify it with all these
00:29:28.740
totally BS expressions. They justify it by saying, oh, kids are resilient. I don't know, that girl
00:29:33.880
hasn't seen that resilient. In fact, most children of divorce I know, they're resilient. They get by,
00:29:37.860
life goes on. You know, there are tough things in life, but it hurts them forever. Even, I know adults
00:29:44.400
whose parents get divorced when they are adults and it totally screws them up. So no, don't give me that.
00:29:50.340
Or what's the other line? They say, well, it's better for the parents to get divorced
00:29:54.580
if they're unhappy in their marriage. It's much better for the children if the parents totally
00:29:58.800
split up and explode their world, you know, so they can be happy chasing some second or third wife.
00:30:04.700
Rather than, you know, suppress their feel-feels for a little bit and learn to make their marriage
00:30:08.820
work. Yeah, no, that's not true either, man. It's just so, ah, it's just unbelievable. No one in
00:30:14.720
history has really thought this. No serious society has ever thought this. But a society
00:30:20.180
that totally turns away from the common good and focuses only on personal interest and selfishness
00:30:27.200
is going to believe this kind of thing. And then when the victims of this profound social disorder
00:30:33.860
come out and say, hey, actually, that was bad. And I don't, I wish you hadn't done that.
00:30:38.920
What's the answer? The answer is, ah, shut up. You made a lot of money. Oh, you made a lot of money.
00:30:43.720
Okay. A lot of money. A lot of money can buy you a cup of coffee, I guess. It certainly won't
00:30:49.560
reassemble society. And now speaking of family, great. Today's a big family and natural law show.
00:30:57.160
I'm just noticing this now. Elon Musk, one of the most influential men in the world,
00:31:02.000
has just come out to destroy contraception with facts and logic. I love it. You know,
00:31:09.340
all of the rich guys basically are big, selfish libs. And Elon Musk is a weirdo who has all sorts
00:31:16.540
of weird companies and weird ideas. And he is, I'm not, I don't know that he's a rock-ribbed
00:31:20.660
conservative. I have no idea what his religious views are. But he does, oddly enough, keep articulating
00:31:28.200
points that are very conservative and even quite Christian and even, even quite orthodox. You know,
00:31:36.200
I mean, he's basically articulating Catholic sexual ethics here, but he's doing it in a funny Elon way.
00:31:43.060
So he tweets out, or he ex-posts out, he says, hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles the
00:31:49.480
risk of depression, and triples the risk of suicide. This is the clear scientific consensus,
00:31:53.140
but very few people seem to know it. Thank you. Thank you, Elon. And then he cites the NIH.
00:31:57.620
NIH. So when all the dumb scientific libs show up and they say, um, could you please provide your
00:32:03.480
sources? Could I please see a study? Which most studies are just nonsense anyway, but Elon indulges
00:32:09.700
them and he says, okay, here's a study from your favorite institutions. Here you go, the NIH. You
00:32:14.460
all like that, right? Hey, Dr. Fauci works there and you're big fans of him. Anyway, they back up what
00:32:19.000
I'm saying, which is that hormonal birth control is really bad. It makes you fat, doubles the risk of
00:32:22.800
depression, triples the risk of suicide. And he's not even making an argument citing Humanae Vitae or
00:32:27.660
something. He's not citing some bioethical tract. He's just saying, hey, these are the medical
00:32:32.040
consequences that are likely to occur with birth control. Um, and why, so why would you do it?
00:32:38.500
And then this raises the deeper question of, of hormonal birth control, which is why do it? If
00:32:46.960
we know it's got all of these negative effects, if we know that what the libs have told us about
00:32:53.360
contraception for years is not true, and then we say, oh, it's no big deal. It's fine. Yeah,
00:32:57.440
it totally screws up women's hormones for years or maybe decades at a time, but there are no,
00:33:01.760
no negative side effects of that whatsoever. Yeah, absolutely. Put your 12 year old on the pill.
00:33:06.180
Okay. That's all obviously wrong. And Elon is citing the scientific evidence here. So then the
00:33:10.500
question is why use it at all? What's the reason? And the only, the only reason is so that you can
00:33:20.620
have promiscuous sex is promiscuous sex good for you. It may be, it's something you want to do. We
00:33:26.660
all, we all desire things that are naughty and not, not good for our flourishing, but I'm not,
00:33:30.640
I'm not talking about your lower will here. I'm not talking about that lower app, appetitive kind of
00:33:35.860
freedom that the libs are always trying to foist on us. I'm saying we zoom out here. You're just,
00:33:40.600
you're reading Elon's tweets. Elon is like commander data. He's pretty rational guy a lot of the time.
00:33:45.340
And you're saying, okay, what rational reason do I have to take hormonal birth control or to put my
00:33:51.620
child on hormonal birth control? The only reasons you can really come up with are so that I or she can
00:33:58.900
have a promiscuous sex with random dudes. We hope without consequences. Is that going to be good
00:34:05.500
for us? Probably not. So that could be as good for us as finding a good guy and settling down and
00:34:10.520
getting married and then being open to life and having kids. Probably not. So, okay. So that's
00:34:14.460
not a good reason. And then maybe even within marriage, there's some married couples who use
00:34:17.920
hormonal birth control, but why, why do they do it? So that they can prevent having children,
00:34:21.860
but why would they want to not have children? The natural end of marriage, as Alan Keyes was explaining
00:34:26.940
to us earlier, is procreation and the education of children. And when we get married, we give of
00:34:32.200
ourselves, ideally, totally to the other spouse in a lifelong bond that will not be broken, even by
00:34:37.760
absentee dads who want to go breakdance and chase tail. So, so then why wouldn't you want to give of
00:34:44.080
yourself entirely? When you use contraception, you're, you're withholding something. You're
00:34:48.680
withholding something that's actually very important and you're preventing your love with your spouse
00:34:53.480
from really reaching its fullest potential and becoming so real that it becomes another person.
00:34:58.440
So why would you even want to do that? You might say, well, maybe in some grave circumstance,
00:35:03.280
it would present a mortal threat if, if my wife were to get pregnant or something like that. Those,
00:35:10.060
those instances are exceedingly rare and there are more bioethically sound ways to, to deal with
00:35:16.500
those circumstances. If you want, that's sort of a separate conversation, but at the very least,
00:35:20.540
if we're talking about 99% of the time, it's because what they say, well, I don't want to have
00:35:25.360
another kid. I don't want to have to wake up early. Kids are loud and annoying and they, you know,
00:35:29.100
they're messy and they tell, okay, that's one reason. Well, you know, okay, man, what else are
00:35:32.680
you doing? Like play fewer video games, go to the bar a little bit less. But yeah, that's true. Kids
00:35:37.200
are a lot of work, but they're worth it. Or they'll say, well, we can't afford a kid right now.
00:35:42.480
Well, I, okay, it's, it's important to be able to pay for your kids, but it's good to have kids to pay
00:35:46.020
for. And I promise you in, on your deathbed, you're not going to be longing for those thousands and
00:35:52.620
thousands of dollars you spent on the kid. You're more likely to regret not having the kid. Kids are
00:35:59.000
worth more than money, but our civilization doesn't seem to understand that anymore. We seem to think
00:36:04.660
that money just solves everything. Not only the materialists on the left, but many materialists on
00:36:10.860
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00:37:46.040
My favorite comment yesterday is from user MP9R, who says, Joy Reid and her culturally appropriated
00:37:53.740
blonde hair. Stunning that people actually listen to this woman. It is so outrageous that that woman
00:37:58.240
wears Karen face every day. She does. She goes up there. She does a middle-aged suburban white lady
00:38:06.800
minstrel show with her Karen. She's appropriating a culture that is not hers, and she should be
00:38:13.620
canceled for it, I say. Speaking of women's issues, a young woman has gone viral on TikTok
00:38:21.780
for finally cracking an equation that has puzzled men in particular for all of human history.
00:38:32.720
And that is why women break up with them. The question is, what do women want? And this woman
00:38:40.300
with the aid of some kind of whiteboard, maybe it's just a piece of paper, she has broken it all down.
00:38:46.380
Okay, this is you guys. You guys are in a happy relationship, and now all of a sudden you have
00:38:50.140
one simple, fixable problem. For this example, we're going to use no good morning text. And your
00:38:57.300
girlfriend who loves you, she's really happy with you. She comes to you and she tells you, she's like,
00:39:01.080
hey, do you think we could start doing good morning texts? Like, it'd mean a lot to me if you texted me
00:39:04.980
good morning. So you, her loving boyfriend, agree to give her good morning texts. But something
00:39:09.880
happened, and for whatever reason, you stopped giving her good morning texts, so now we have a
00:39:13.760
bigger problem. She now thinks that you don't care enough about her to send her good morning texts.
00:39:21.100
So now your girlfriend, who has never picked fights before in her life, starts picking a bunch of
00:39:25.520
little fights about all these different things because she believes that you do not care enough.
00:39:31.080
Through all of these picking fights with you though, she still loves you and likes you enough to want
00:39:36.200
to be with you, even though you guys have all these little problems now. Until one day these become
00:39:43.100
unattractive to her. She's going to realize that all of these little things that you do that remind
00:39:50.160
her that you don't care about her enough are unattractive. And so now the problem is not these
00:39:55.140
things. It's not even that you don't care enough. It's not even that she never got good morning texts.
00:40:00.980
It's that she literally does not like you anymore. Quod erat demonstrandum. That's breakupology,
00:40:11.540
as she writes at the top of that paper. And I think she's half right. I think she's half right.
00:40:18.480
Her point is that women are kind of crazy and irrational. That's the beginning. The woman
00:40:24.700
wants a good morning text, which is, I think my answer would just be no. I wouldn't break up with
00:40:31.700
a woman who asked me that. But I would say, no, I don't think so. I'll send you texts when I would
00:40:35.680
like to send you texts. But good morning. I always wish you a good morning. But I'm not going to just
00:40:40.900
be at your beck and call to make any kind of silly show that you like. Some things I'll accommodate,
00:40:46.540
but some things I won't. And the way that I'll come to my conclusion about that is using my reason.
00:40:51.160
No, she's half right that women will make these irrational demands. And where she's especially
00:40:55.940
right is that if you agree to them and then renege on that, they're going to lose it. They're going to
00:41:00.320
be really angry and might break up with you. But what she's not quite getting here is that what women
00:41:06.240
also want is for a man to lead them. So the woman makes the demands, sometimes rational,
00:41:17.220
sometimes irrational. And then the man, demonstrating his care for her, does not merely
00:41:22.800
put himself in a subservient position and say, whatever you want, honey, I'll send you a text
00:41:25.940
anytime today. I'm sorry, my text was three minutes late today. The man says, hey, love you. You're
00:41:31.660
great. That's totally crazy. So we're not going to do that. This thing that you've just requested,
00:41:36.300
that's reasonable. That's true. And actually, you're right. I should do that. And then man's
00:41:39.260
got to keep his word, which is part of leadership and caring and romance and a healthy relationship
00:41:45.780
that we hope leads into a real marriage. But it can't be only one side of that equation. She's
00:41:51.920
just getting it. She's just missing the biggest part of the picture. And people will write in.
00:41:57.700
We've been talking about divorce and splitting up a lot today, I guess. People will write in.
00:42:01.960
They'll say, how does one resolve a conflict in a marriage or even boyfriend and girlfriend?
00:42:09.200
How does one, you know, I want this thing and she wants that thing. And men are from Mars and women
00:42:14.260
are from Venus. How are we going to come to any resolution? And the answer ties right back to what
00:42:18.480
we were talking about since the top of the show, ties right back to that natural law, ties right back
00:42:21.780
to reason. Your battles are not just duels of irrational will. You know, I want McDonald's
00:42:30.440
for dinner. You want Burger King for dinner. We're just going to, neither of us is going to give an
00:42:33.940
inch and we're going to duke it out until my will dominates her will or vice versa. That's not going
00:42:39.340
to get you anywhere. That's good. That'll lead you to break up. There is such a thing as reason and
00:42:44.880
you both have it. Even the women. They do, actually. They do. Contrary to what Jack Nicholson
00:42:52.120
says in that famous movie, As Good As It Gets. He writes women so well because he just thinks of a
00:42:58.980
man and then takes away reason and accountability. But women do have some reason, you know, and men
00:43:01.880
have some reason too. And the way that you can resolve a conflict is by saying, okay, what is the
00:43:08.760
principle that's at stake in this debate that we're having, this conflict? And what is good
00:43:14.520
to do? And what is the truth of the matter? And then what is good to do? And some things like
00:43:21.240
Burger King or McDonald's might be a little trickier to resolve. And then in that case,
00:43:25.180
maybe the man just says, honey, you want Burger King? Let's go get some Burger King.
00:43:28.720
But maybe certain issues like what city are we going to live in are a little more reasonable where
00:43:37.020
you say, okay, look, honey, I'm the man of the house and I'm the primary breadwinner and we're
00:43:43.380
following my career and my job took me to a new city. And so we, you just, even though you might
00:43:47.740
not like this city, that I think that's where we're going to go. And I'll try to make this move
00:43:52.880
nice for you and I'll try to accommodate as best I can. And, but this is, I think what we have to do.
00:43:58.460
And then the woman, even if she really likes the place she's living, even if she really doesn't
00:44:01.440
want to go to wherever you're going to go, the woman can say, well, you're right. You're the head of
00:44:05.000
our household. And in order to provide for us and have a roof over our head and to have a person
00:44:11.460
actually leaving the family, it is reasonable for us to go, even if it doesn't necessarily satisfy
00:44:15.960
my preferences at the moment. That's, that's reason. And you can apply that. You don't have
00:44:21.180
to just wait until you're married for 10 years. You can apply that even down to your little good
00:44:25.380
morning texts. Now, speaking of women, Nikki Haley is still in the presidential race and the rubber is
00:44:34.380
about to meet the road, baby, because Nikki Haley's home state primary, South Carolina is on Saturday.
00:44:39.740
The polls are not looking very good for her. They are looking very good for Donald Trump.
00:44:42.920
Nikki is saying, I'm going to stay in to fight through South Carolina. And even if I lose,
00:44:48.240
I'm going to stay in even then. Some of you, perhaps a few of you in the media
00:44:54.100
came here today to see if I'm dropping out of the race.
00:45:01.340
Well, I'm not. We've all heard the calls for me to drop out. We all know where they're coming from.
00:45:07.240
The political elite, the party bosses, the cheerleaders in the commentator world.
00:45:13.960
The argument is familiar. They say I haven't won a state, that my path to victory is slim.
00:45:21.500
They point to the primary polls and say I'm only delaying the inevitable. Why keep fighting
00:45:27.760
when the battle was apparently over after Iowa? That's why I refuse to quit. South Carolina will
00:45:35.620
vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I'll still be running for president. I'm not going anywhere.
00:45:43.480
Okay. I am not going to voice any opinion on Haley's continuing to stay in the race. You know,
00:45:49.320
I like Nikki very much personally. And so she can stay in the race as long as she wants.
00:45:53.460
This was a bad speech. I don't know who wrote this speech for her. It's not effective.
00:45:57.140
One, she's reminding all of her voters and all of the public that she doesn't have a chance to
00:46:05.200
actually win the nomination. I thought that was unnecessary. She's suggesting that Donald Trump
00:46:12.400
actually did kind of earn the nomination. If she really wanted to make the claim that this is a
00:46:16.680
totally rigged primary and I'm fighting as the voice of the people, she shouldn't have said it
00:46:20.140
was over after Iowa. She should have said there are many people who think this was over before it
00:46:23.240
began. We know that. They thought it was over before it began. This was a sham of a primary.
00:46:27.460
I'm proving to them it's not a sham of a primary. But she didn't phrase it that way. She phrased it
00:46:31.340
almost in a way to say, yeah, Trump proved that he's going to be the nominee because he won in Iowa.
00:46:35.080
Not effective. And then she goes on and she says, you know, it's the political elite
00:46:40.700
who want Trump. And no one believes that because they know that the elite are trying to put him in
00:46:45.480
prison for the rest of his life. So that's never going to be persuasive. Nikki Haley's lane in the race,
00:46:51.240
and she's been very good at running in that lane, is that she is the candidate of more of the Beltway
00:46:56.220
crew. She's more the candidate of the centrists and the political establishment, at least as the
00:47:00.760
Republican nominee. She's got the money from the Koch network. And so I don't know. I'm not saying
00:47:05.980
that's a good thing. I agree. It probably gives her a very narrow lane to win the presidency.
00:47:10.100
But if that's your lane, run in that lane. Don't change strategy at the end. No one's going to
00:47:14.360
believe, you know, you're the voice of the people. You know, you're the populist leader against
00:47:19.780
establishment Donald Trump. That's just simply not credible. But she, I think, is the one thing
00:47:25.600
she's doing properly here is she's managing expectations. She's saying, yeah, I'm almost
00:47:29.340
certainly going to lose South Carolina, but I'm going to stay in the race anyway and hope that a
00:47:33.780
lightning bolt comes down and takes out Donald Trump. That part, at least, is, I think, a pretty
00:47:38.680
accurate assessment of where the race stands. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to
00:47:43.620
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