Ep. 8 - FLECCAS TALKS Why The Right Wins Online
Episode Stats
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Summary
On this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, host Ben Shapiro is joined by the Dartmouth Graduate, Austin Fletcher, to talk about his new YouTube channel, "Fleckus Talks," and why he thinks the right is better than the left on the internet.
Transcript
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We are joined today on the Michael Knowles Show by Fleckus Talks, the YouTube star, the Dartmouth graduate, the troller of lefties all over the Internet.
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Plus, we'll also have Antonia Okafor and Zoe Rachel to join the panel of deplorables.
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We'll be talking about the giant Trump chicken, a 13-million-year-old ape, and gay seatbelts.
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So we've got our first in-studio guest ever, Fleckus Talks, Austin Fletcher.
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If you haven't seen this guy, he's put up like three videos on the Internet, and he's just the biggest thing on YouTube.
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He's put up 24 videos. He's been on Tucker Carlson. He's been all over the place.
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We're at the March for Truth here, June 3rd, Pershing Square, downtown LA.
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We're heading down to town hall, and we're going to yell about why we don't like Trump, so he hopefully quits.
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Kathy Griffin actually spoke for all of us and took the hit for the entire planet.
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Hey, guys, it's Fleckus. We're out here at Hollywood Boulevard, Walk of Fame, protecting Donald Trump's star from these people trying to deface it.
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I hate Donald Trump. I'm a socialist, a true socialist, and he is nothing but a fascist.
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Because Trump is against everybody who's not in his class.
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I look at it like anybody that's not, like, I don't know what's Trump's situation because he's friends with Kanye West, so you can't really say he's racist.
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Welcome to our illustrious studios in our little cramped closet, the broom closet of the Ben Shapiro show.
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So, the first question I have to ask, why are conservatives so much better at the Internet?
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Why are we so much better at YouTube and trolling the left?
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I think it's kind of coming down to the cultural fight.
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I think the left and the right are fighting for the culture right now, and I think we're really doing a better job online.
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I mean, the left's kind of been controlling the mainstream media.
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They've been controlling, like, movies and films and TV, but we're kind of slowly taking it back, and the next frontier is the Internet.
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You know, the Hollywood mainstream media are totally stacked against conservatives.
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We also found out Google and YouTube are stacked against conservatives.
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They're going to start censoring the videos, apparently.
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Google is firing people for putting common sense into a memo, but we're still dominating.
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Like, is YouTube a conservative platform, or are we going to need to look for other places once they shut us down?
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I think at one point, YouTube was a conservative platform, but right now, we need to, I think, find a different platform because of the recent, you know, the ADL is doing the censorship of certain YouTube profiles.
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And someone tagged me in one of the things on Twitter and was like, hey, you've got to watch out, man.
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I'm sure they're going to look at whoever they're talking to about it.
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I think it might be, yeah, one of the problems.
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You're clearly a smart conservative guy, and you're out here doing comedy.
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Dartmouth produces all of these great conservatives.
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Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingram, our buddy Josh Riddle and the Young Cons guys, Peter Robinson, George Rutler, so on and so forth.
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I think it has a lot to do, I mean, on campus, especially lately, it's been very divisive when it comes to the left versus the right.
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And I think it's an extreme amount of leftists, like movements, leftists, classes, professors.
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Everything is so left that it makes people that are going to head to the right head there sooner.
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So I think when you're up there and, you know, Cinco de Mayo, the party gets canceled because they were planning on serving tacos, and you're like, okay, wait a minute, that's kind of BS.
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And then it makes people wake up and have, like, their, you know, red pill moments, if you will, sooner.
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I only became conservative in the last couple years.
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In college, I mean, I didn't know how much I supported Obama because I didn't actually do anything political at all.
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I saw him give a speech, and he cried, and I'm like, this guy cares for the people.
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You know, his whole thing was pushing change when I was in college.
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But realistically, I didn't participate in politics.
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And it wasn't until, I mean, the campaigns this last year where I really woke up and saw what was going on.
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I saw how the left and the mainstream media is pandering to these people who don't actually know what's going on.
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And they just pushed this idea of, oh, yeah, you're morally superior.
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If you're moral, you know, you'll support Hillary Clinton.
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And that was the red flag for me because they're politicizing morality, which is completely inappropriate.
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That's interesting, especially on the Dartmouth front.
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Being at Dartmouth, I guess, moved you more to the right.
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Do you find that there's any – Dartmouth always had the reputation of being the more conservative Ivy League school.
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Do you think the professors were targeting conservatives, as has happened in a lot of other schools?
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So I think when I first started in 2008, it was pretty okay.
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But then in the last 10 years or so, it's really heading in a direction where there's no more debate.
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And I think, you know, Ben Shapiro made a great point.
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You know, he said 10 years ago he used to go do speeches.
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He either liked it or he hated him, and he walked out.
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They're destroying campuses, flipping over cars because people want to come talk.
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And with that, I think the silent majority needs to be less silent.
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And I think we need to kind of take a stand and show that we're proud to be conservative,
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show our values are actually more in line with what a self-proclaimed college liberal would think.
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We're not as bad as, you know, the old Republicans they think we are.
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I even noticed that we graduated in the same year, in 2012.
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And I noticed it from my freshman year to my senior year.
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Everybody was jumping for joy, except for the five of us Republicans on campus were swinging vodka in one of the freshman dorms.
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It seems much more vicious, much more tense than it was.
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Because a lot of times people will write in for the mailbag or whatever and say,
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if I'm a conservative at college, should I speak my mind or should I hide and get good grades?
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I think the answer used to be you kind of hide and get good grades because get the good grades, that's going to help and whatever.
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But now I think, I mean, I'm starting a movement myself.
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I have some people who are going to go out to college campuses this fall and start interviewing protesters and events at liberal, you know, liberal events at their local colleges.
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And interview the people and just have a discussion and then send me the footage and then I'm going to chop it up and make like a, you know, best of the fans of Fluckus Talks.
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And we need to get in the faces of the liberals nonviolently and say, what are you doing here?
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And ask questions where people need to explain themselves because we need to stop the politicization of morality.
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Is it just you're reading certain things, you're talking to certain people, or you're just getting progressively disgusted by the lefties?
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So it's a combination of, yeah, getting constantly disgusted by the left.
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All these social justice warriors and everything they're pushing is just so soft.
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That's what America was all about a few years ago.
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That's like when my grandparents came here and they were tough.
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And my grandma came here and she worked in a factory and sewed dresses and took care of her family and saved all the money she could to help, you know, her daughter.
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And then it keeps, you know, those values need to be instilled.
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And I think it's just like the universities have become this safe space and it's too safe.
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This is a little bit of a tangential point, but you're also of Italian descent, as I am.
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Of immigrant groups, Italians tend to be quite Republican.
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And my family on the Italian side is because of that toughness, that I don't know how to put it, that je ne sais quoi, they tend to vote Republican.
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What is it about the Italian culture that does that?
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It's just they, for me at least, my mom came from a family where they came from nothing.
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And they came from Italy with a few dollars in their pocket.
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They came here, dropped out of high school, and just worked.
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And she remembers the lessons she learned for her parents.
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And I think it's, Italians have, it's like a little toughness.
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They really appreciate grit and hard work and not making excuses.
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And that's where my wooden spoon microphone comes from.
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So you have, so for those who haven't seen it, Austin's microphone is a wooden spoon with a tape recorder taped to it.
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So it's kind of just bringing the wooden spoon back to these leftists because growing up, if I misbehaved, my mom would pull the spoon out and whack it on the table and, you know, calm down.
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And I listened because I don't want to hit the wooden spoon.
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And now these protesters, mostly millennials, are out in the streets having a big temper tantrum.
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And it's because no one gave them the wooden spoon.
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No one gave them a tough structural upbringing.
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And now they, you know, they're calling for socialism.
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They want everyone to be, you know, equal outcome.
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Do you think, we talked about this a little bit yesterday, millennials have this reputation of being snowflakes, of being coddled.
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They haven't been exposed to the realities of the world.
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They've also, they're going to inherit a lot of big national debt.
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Do you think, do you think we're being too hard on millennials or is it just a fact of life and we got to straighten them out?
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I think, I think the millennial group is still forming.
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And imagine it being like clay and we're still deciding who these people are going to become, what the culture is going to be, what the main message of this generation is going to be.
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So I think we're in a point now where we can kind of decide, you know, who the millennials are in a few years from now.
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Right now, they're coming across as a little soft, a little entitled.
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They're more educated than ever, but they're sitting in student loan debt with no job.
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And they're trying to tell us how the country should run, how the government should be run, how the economy should be run.
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And it's kind of like, just because you're educated and took a class about this doesn't mean that you should be in charge.
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Like, there's a system here and it involves being tough.
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It involves, you know, failing and getting back up and going again.
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And they're very credentialed, but just because they took a class doesn't mean they're educated at all.
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I don't know that these people, they might have higher SAT scores, but I don't know that they are more educated than a class from the 1940s or 50s.
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But they're more entitled than ever, which is a huge issue because, I mean, years back, not everyone went to college, you know?
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So either, you know, graduate high school, did you do good enough in high school and care about certain stuff?
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To party for four years and drink a bunch of beer?
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These people now are, I don't know, why should we give them credibility?
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As is your Ivy League birthright, you immediately go to Wall Street.
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Just like, you know, when I graduated, they had, I got three emails from Yale's employment office or office of God knows what.
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And the first one said, a career panel about finance.
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And the other one said, a career panel in the law.
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And then the third one said, alternative career paths.
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She told all the kids, you know, go to good college.
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So I reached out to some alumni football players and got hooked up with an internship, which led to a full-time job.
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And that was basically just following my parents' path, which I'm so happy I did because it was a great experience.
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I learned about waking up at 5 in the morning every day.
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I learned about staying late until, you know, you're the last one there.
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A number of my friends were working on Wall Street.
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And then they make you go out for drinks with people, and you can't leave until everyone's done.
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So, you know, you're out until 2, 3 in the morning.
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No, you're not going out for those damn drinks.
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And you have to come back to work, like, three hours later.
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Sometimes I went straight to work from, like, you know, hosting clients or whatever.
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And then from there, I learned what I didn't want to do.
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And I learned that I wanted to create my own content.
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I want to create my own brand and just get out there and create something that can affect people in a bigger way.
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You're on Wall Street, Dartmouth graduate, king of the world.
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You're guaranteed to make a lot of money, have a good life.
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And then you decide to make the very wise decision to throw all of it away to go piss off lefties at airports and on the Internet.
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And I said, actually, I was going to give you guys a two-weeks notice next week.
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When my contract was up, I'm planning on moving to California.
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And then some people said, you're making the worst mistake of your life.
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And then, yeah, and then after a couple of years of making comedy, before this, I wasn't huge into politics until this past election.
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And I'm so happy I became passionate about it because it's my favorite thing in the world right now.
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You leave your Wall Street job to go do comedy in Hollywood.
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These are really niche paths you're following here.
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But it's, you know, you don't look like a banker.
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Why do these guys at these protests allow you to humiliate them on video?
00:16:22.000
Well, I think a lot of the conservative interviewers, like Jesse Waters and those types, they'll come at you with the suit and the microphone and the, you know, production crew.
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And they do a lot of post-production sound effects.
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And they cut to a, you know, Jack Nicholson clip where he goes, what are you talking about?
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And then they're like, all right, this guy got roasted.
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If we can actually hear these people out, then we can decide really if they make sense.
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So I sneak up on them, you know, wearing clothes like they wear.
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And they'll be like, oh, I'm here because Donald Trump's worse than Hitler and he's going to kill all the Jews.
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Well, you know, you don't look like a smart conservative.
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And then you are a smart conservative and it catches them off guard.
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They talk about playing dumber than their mark.
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Do you think that is the way to engage lefties?
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Because people look at Trump and you look at Trump in either one or two ways.
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You either think he's a brilliant, you know, mastermind savant, or you think, oh, he's some real estate idiot who's in charge of the country.
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Who's just coincidentally succeeded in like four different industries and reached the top of all of them.
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And if you look at him like he's, so if you're here and you look at him like he's dumb, he knows that.
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And he embraces that, kind of embraces his like, you know, his Queens, New York.
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And he lets you think that because now when you're looking at him down like this, he's really up here making moves, you know, and he has your reaction to him planned for.
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He knows what you're going to think about all the stuff he does.
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I think it is really hard to imagine that a guy would succeed in television, real estate, casinos.
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He beats 16 of the most prominent politicians in the country and then takes out the Clintons.
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Do you think conservatism is ascendant right now?
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Do you think in the age of Trump we're just winning, winning, we're getting sick and tired of winning?
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Or do you think, you know, some of the never Trump people say really it's a Pyrrhic victory.
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The way I watch the news now, which is, it's actually been working out.
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I watch the mainstream news like CNN, for example, and I watch it backwards.
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So I'll see the leaking of, oh, Manafort's house got raided a month ago and that gets leaked.
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I see that as, okay, some big news is coming for the right and that's their preemptive thing
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to kind of like eat up the news cycle when it's happening.
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That's an interesting theory and not, probably not far from the truth.
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New York Times just got caught in this big climate change report lie.
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If ever they weren't activists against the Republican Party.
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I think we've got to try to, I've got to try your strategy.
00:20:03.360
That, so you're, you're reaching out to these college kids.
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Do you think, we're talking about post-millennials, really.
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We're talking about these kids who are in college now.
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If we were the Obama generation, do you think there's a chance that the dominant culture among
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these young people, the, or not dominant, but the subversive and cool culture is finally
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Are we finally seeing that or are we kidding ourselves?
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And I think the strongest movements are kind of like these cult followings and these like,
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And that's right where we're falling into here.
00:20:39.720
Um, I think the younger generations, generation Z, right?
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And they don't like getting their news from TV.
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They like the Reddits and 4chan and all that kind of stuff.
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So it's like these people aren't going to just take what's fed to them and say, oh,
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And the ways of the old Republicans where it's kind of in your face, America, guns, all
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these things, that's getting adjusted and the parties are rebranding.
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They keep pushing Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, it's like so bad.
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But the right is rebranding and the new young conservative movement is going to take pride
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They love knowing the facts because then they can go debate anybody and say it pretty much
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And they're slowly fighting back and taking back the culture.
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And I think we're coming into a really cool nonviolent war here.
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And they're fighting this sentimental PC hogwash that we've been imbued with for decade upon
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It is an exciting time, almost as exciting as bringing on the panel of deplorables.
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We've got Zoe Rachel and Antonia Okafor, and Fleckis is going to stick around.
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So we've got all of these internet-y people here.
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I've got to ask, all of us in our political lives, every person here is sort of a product
00:22:09.780
So, Zoe, is it because the internet as a whole leans right, or is it because everything else
00:22:17.260
Well, the conversation is about, I got the email for a conservative culture, and I was
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like, conservative internet culture, we got one?
00:22:30.220
No, but in terms of it leaning right or leaning left, it's a foundation of leftism that the
00:22:39.980
Now, let me just kind of do this from the lens of my own experience, because I don't
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want to make this about me and make it sound self-absorbed.
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But as I'm examining it, I know that it's a leftist foundation, because when it comes
00:22:52.000
to people like me, they don't want people to see people like me at all.
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Because my work isn't trying, I'm not trying to make, I'm not trying to make leftists angry.
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I usually make them laugh, and the leftists can't have that.
00:23:07.780
I, I, I'm getting confused in our, yeah, I'm sorry.
00:23:10.680
The world view is absurd, and it's easy to make jokes out of.
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So, but the thing is, is what, what, what they'll do is that they'll try to mask my work
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They don't even send trolls after me anymore, because trolls equals views.
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They don't want my views to go up, and sometimes when the trolls come, they end up reconsidering
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what it is that they thought, so they can't have that either.
00:23:31.240
So, basically all that to say is, when you, to your question of, does it lean right or
00:23:37.400
Google, YouTube, this is their platform, this is their foundation that we're making use
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And, you know, speaking, I've lived under the bridge for a very long time, and I can say,
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while the internet and these platforms might be left, those trolls definitely lean right.
00:23:52.200
Antonia, do you think this right-wing online activism, the, the laughs and the serious commentary
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and the facts and all of that, does it translate into real political results, or are we all
00:24:06.060
Yeah, no, I definitely think that it, there has results, definitely.
00:24:10.140
I think that really, like I said, like you said, I started out with the internet culture,
00:24:18.360
And I think because people, just like he was saying, like Zoe just said, that because
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they, when they do see people like me and they're like, oh my gosh, that's not what I think of
00:24:27.380
Well, now their, their stereotypes have changed.
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And really, basically their whole, their whole foundation has changed because the left has
00:24:38.940
So, um, I think, yeah, the more, and that's why we don't see people like us because it
00:24:44.180
really is changing people's minds and making people, I mean, that's what changed me.
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I saw someone else who was a black conservative and I was like, whoa, they exist.
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And then I was like, okay, well, I guess I could come out of the closet now.
00:24:54.880
So, uh, yeah, I think it does make a difference.
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It just, it smashes this whole vision that we've been presented with.
00:25:01.320
I don't think anybody on the screen right now is what people think of when they think
00:25:06.880
Maybe even, you know, my jacket's a little too loud.
00:25:08.880
Usually it's the Brooks brothers buttoned up, the hair parted, all of that, that, and
00:25:13.060
also you've actually had some very real results in, in your activism on guns.
00:25:17.820
And, uh, and obviously, you know, we were talked about last week, the number of black
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women in particular who are, who are purchasing guns and getting permits is way up.
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So we're, at least with you, we're seeing real results when you have mugs, like the
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three of us, probably not as effective, but at least Antonia Okafor is.
00:25:36.380
I mean, you went to Yale and you are still a conservative.
00:25:40.420
So I think you should give yourself a law marker.
00:25:44.260
The thing that Yale can do is either make you into a kind of left-wing automaton, or it
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makes you such a reactionary that you'd go completely in the other direction.
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You know, on that, I have to address all you cheapskates out there because you cheapskates
00:25:58.960
who want to keep watching this panel of deplorables, discuss all the news of the day and get the
00:26:05.420
You can't do it unless you go to dailywire.com right now and subscribe.
00:26:08.840
It's $10 a month, $100 a year, and you get everything.
00:26:16.560
All three of which are in the top 25 on news and politics in the entire world.
00:26:21.960
Don't be a cheapskate, and you get all the rest.
00:26:36.840
Forget about all of this internet news, this culture, this politics.
00:26:40.640
We need to talk about the really important issues.
00:26:42.940
According to the Washington Post, some idiot assembled a giant inflatable chicken with
00:26:48.340
golden Donald Trump hair outside of the White House on Wednesday.
00:26:57.320
Austin, President Obama's strategy in Libya was called leading from behind.
00:27:03.080
His strategy on North Korea was called strategic patience.
00:27:06.600
And yet they're accusing our side of being chickens.
00:27:12.720
I think it's, yeah, definitely partially projecting.
00:27:18.180
So if he comes out and says, you know, everyone's great, and I love the left, I love the right,
00:27:22.800
and all people are equal, they get mad about it.
00:27:25.300
Kim Jong-un comes out and threatens to nuke us or nuke Guam, you know, one of our provinces.
00:27:34.760
Something we haven't done in the past, and now it's, you know, he's being offensive or
00:27:43.900
Whatever he does, they have to do the opposite, I guess.
00:27:45.840
And on this kind of psychobabble thing, Zoe, the Democrats called Bush a chicken hawk.
00:27:54.160
They said that George W. Bush had daddy issues and was trying to resolve what his father didn't
00:28:01.500
Why do they love making these insinuations instead of talking about real issues and real
00:28:08.800
Well, if we're going to use the term psychobabble, let's toss in the word projection because that's
00:28:13.680
They're projecting their own disposition onto somebody else.
00:28:16.700
And if they want to call Donald Trump a chicken, man, have you guys seen that viral video, man,
00:28:22.120
where he has this cat, like, batting this little mouse around, right?
00:28:29.200
Because this cat is batting this mouse around, just playing with it, and this chicken comes
00:28:33.400
out of nowhere, man, and snatches up this mouse and just starts bashing it on the floor,
00:28:39.400
Now, if you're going to call Donald Trump a chicken, that's what it's like.
00:28:42.040
Because it's like Hillary's the cat, like, batting around CNN, saying, you guys are going
00:28:49.200
And then Donald Trump the chicken just comes and says, nope, mine.
00:28:57.820
We need to get that as exactly the right image.
00:29:05.940
Now, Antonia, we're lucky that we have Antonia here because your reputation and your motives
00:29:13.680
People insinuate all sorts of cycle babble on you.
00:29:20.300
Or do you just ignore them and move on and keep doing what you're doing?
00:29:25.340
Yeah, I completely, I always just ignore because I'm better than everybody.
00:29:34.640
I definitely talk to them and I definitely respond.
00:29:37.760
I try to, depending on my mood, actually, like, have a coherent conversation that's not
00:29:42.860
just, well, you suck back or, you know, something like that.
00:29:55.720
It's really just student loan money that I'm going to have to pay back later.
00:29:58.560
But really, when I do come down to it, I tell them, especially, like, when it comes to the
00:30:03.000
race issue, they'll be like, oh, you're a token.
00:30:11.140
Basically, they're telling me that because I'm a black person, another black person is
00:30:14.860
telling me as a black person that because I am a black person, that's the only, like,
00:30:23.980
And then yet they're like, oh, well, you know what?
00:30:25.600
We really need, like, affirmative action and we need all these different things because
00:30:28.220
I just don't understand this culture that does not think that black people are able
00:30:31.900
to actually have thoughts outside of being controlled by somebody.
00:30:38.080
You only have brains if you parrot what everybody else is saying.
00:30:41.060
But if you think for yourself, then you're totally brain dead.
00:30:46.860
If you think for yourself and it's not the problem, exactly.
00:30:59.540
It's going to get them on that YouTube watch list.
00:31:01.580
Now, KLM, the Dutch airline, has recently gotten into the news because they tweeted out
00:31:12.120
And they had one where it was the male buckle and the female buckle.
00:31:14.840
And then they had one where it was the male buckle and the male buckle.
00:31:17.720
And then one where it was the female buckle and the female buckle.
00:31:19.640
And the tweet read, it doesn't matter who you click with.
00:31:25.620
Now, there is just one issue with this image that only one of them clicks.
00:31:32.780
Now, Zoe, is this the stupidest tweet of all time?
00:31:38.020
You know, we are talking about KLM on the show today.
00:31:43.800
You know, the law of nature itself dictates that you can't connect poles to poles and
00:31:59.000
That is about as accurate an analysis as I've heard of this.
00:32:06.360
Talk about this is Twilight Zone type stuff, man.
00:32:09.140
It's just by the laws of nature, that doesn't work.
00:32:15.340
Adam, man, I don't even know how to respond to that.
00:32:21.720
You're saying it doesn't matter whom you click with.
00:32:31.560
It's like, what you going to hold that together with?
00:32:37.500
And if it doesn't click, roll it up and duct tape.
00:32:46.100
Why do we care what KLM thinks about homosexuality or Pride Month or whatever?
00:32:52.540
Well, why is Teen Vogue writing articles about how you can have anal sex?
00:32:58.220
I canceled my subscription, so I haven't read the article.
00:33:00.740
Well, I mean, as I'm telling you, it was just day and age that anything goes, apparently.
00:33:08.880
But the funny thing, too, is that at first I was like, oh, man, that social media intern
00:33:12.860
is totally, like, not getting any school credit on that.
00:33:19.660
If it was just the text, it would have been, like, a social media intern.
00:33:22.840
But then they actually put thought into it, had a picture, you know, displayed it,
00:33:33.480
So I'm just like, yeah, I'm not flying with that airline, obviously.
00:33:41.020
I mean, the fact that I was, like, looking at it, and people were thinking, well,
00:33:45.220
but that doesn't actually click, and then they say it in the actual text.
00:33:49.660
I wonder what the safety demonstration looks like.
00:33:55.080
Now, Austin, you make leftists say stupid things on video.
00:34:00.580
But KLM is showing us that leftists will just say stupid things themselves,
00:34:16.920
And I've realized, too, in the last, especially the last year,
00:34:20.600
if you're going to put something on the Internet,
00:34:27.120
So once I saw this come up, I was like, all right, here it comes.
00:34:30.660
And sure enough, all the conservatives went right after it.
00:34:34.100
And I'm sure KLM will be out with, like, a, you know, some, you know, an amendment to it.
00:34:39.800
They'll come out with some sort of, like, retraction down the road.
00:34:44.340
Because anything you put out right now, if it doesn't line up with certain groups,
00:34:54.420
There has been a discovery of a 13-million-year-old ape skull that shows what human ancestors may have looked like.
00:35:03.400
Why was it necessary for God to put this fake skull on earth to test our faith?
00:35:12.820
It's just a perfect opportunity to continue to be faithful, though.
00:35:17.180
We have to ignore science, selectively, of course.
00:35:20.100
And we have to kind of, you know, decide what we believe and what we don't believe.
00:35:24.380
Well, now you sound like the left, because we need some science, but we need to selectively ignore science.
00:35:30.240
You know, the same people who tell us that men are really women if they say they're women, but not if they don't say they're women.
00:35:35.800
They accuse us, conservatives, of denying science.
00:35:39.080
Antonia, do you think there is a conflict between faith and science?
00:35:43.680
Well, first of all, I remember specifically that Zodos said that he was going to identify as a woman,
00:35:48.720
so there would be half an equal representation of genders in this panel, but fine, I'll have to tweet about it later.
00:36:08.400
I mean, for me, I mean, I'm a woman of faith, and I definitely believe that.
00:36:12.740
I think all of the stuff that's happening is really just showing, is just backing up our faith.
00:36:18.020
I mean, I'm a Christian, so I still believe, though, that God has had a plan for people, and this is part of his plan.
00:36:26.160
And we're just, science is uncovering what he already has done.
00:36:33.240
A lot of people, they'll say, well, do you believe in Genesis, or do you believe in the Big Bang?
00:36:38.600
And people forget, because not only are they science deniers, but they're history deniers, that it was a Catholic priest who discovered the Big Bang.
00:36:48.280
And the more that we learn about science, the more light that's been shown on our faith, it seems to me.
00:36:54.420
Are you a science denier, a God denier, or both?
00:36:58.000
Oh, man, I'm a denier of neither, and I'll tell you what, man.
00:37:03.320
You know, the things that they claim to, you know, come up with in science, you know, these are all discoveries.
00:37:08.400
That's all you can really do in science is discovery.
00:37:10.160
And the things that they discover are things that the Bible has already talked about.
00:37:12.960
You know, when they talk about even the Big Bang, right, or when they're talking about how the universe is expanding.
00:37:17.240
You know, they say that the universe is contracting.
00:37:22.780
Well, the Bible already told us that the Lord spreads out the heavens like a tent.
00:37:25.840
That has to start from a compressed point and then open up.
00:37:28.760
In terms of the ape skull, I don't know how they tie that to us.
00:37:33.220
If they want to go ahead and see themselves as descendants of apes, go ahead, you know, be my guest.
00:37:36.880
It was a descendant of Joe Biden, or an ancestor, rather, of Joe Biden, I think.
00:37:41.360
That facial structure seems to add up somehow, but I guess they're trying to put a date on Earth.
00:37:46.360
And the thing is, if you read the Bible, the Bible lets you know quite clearly that there was an Earth before the Genesis account.
00:38:04.720
We have Zoe Rachel, Antonia Okafor, and Fleckis Talks.
00:38:09.960
We have got a lot of mailbag questions today, so we are going to fly through these.
00:38:19.100
Should a conservative walk through a hyper-leftist school unseen to survive, or should they try to explain their beliefs to their peers?
00:38:25.820
Austin, I guess we talked about that a little bit.
00:38:28.040
I take a different view than I think most people.
00:38:31.500
I think a lot of people say, put your head down, get the good grades, get out of here.
00:38:35.720
I personally am convinced, at least on one occasion, my grades were hurt at Yale because of my views.
00:38:42.680
Only on one occasion, though, which says a lot about the school.
00:38:48.780
I was the head of every conservative Republican thing.
00:39:02.200
Since I've been, you know, I was an actor in New York and theater, film, TV, out here as well, and I was always open about my politics.
00:39:10.480
Did it hurt me at Yale academically or socially?
00:39:21.540
I don't think that you should be denying what you think.
00:39:29.480
There are risks to both sides, and I don't think there's an easy answer on it.
00:39:33.600
But what I would do is be honest about your point of view.
00:39:40.580
A lot of talk over this NASA planetary defender position.
00:39:43.940
Is there any chance that a certain best-selling author, Ivy League-educated, Sicilian provocateur will be applying?
00:39:51.280
The thought of you being the only line of defense between me and the threat of alien annihilation makes me truly believe in Trump's America.
00:40:05.320
Ever since my blank book became the number one bestseller, I now know this isn't the real world.
00:40:20.800
I'm looking for the most comprehensive definition of what conservatism is.
00:40:24.540
Would it be fair to say that the most comprehensive guide would be the entirety of the Federalist Papers?
00:40:31.260
Or does the Federalist Papers delve outside the scope of what conservatism is?
00:40:37.260
I think conservatism evades definition, though.
00:40:43.140
Ordered liberty, human dignity, and a skepticism of ideology.
00:40:49.040
Everyone should read The Federalist cover to cover.
00:40:51.340
If you're in this country, you should have read The Federalist.
00:40:55.880
Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Conscience of a Conservative, Bill Buckley.
00:41:06.060
Michael Oakeshott gave a definition of ideology in the essay Rationalism and Politics.
00:41:11.540
It was so influential to my political view that I memorized it.
00:41:15.740
He defines ideology as the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition.
00:41:22.620
And that's why the rationalists always get a bunch of cockamamie ideas and ignore reality in front of them.
00:41:29.380
A lot of times college professors seem to be saying, who cares if it works in practice?
00:41:35.540
And so I recommend reading those guys and always having a healthy skepticism of ideology, of checklists, of political tests one way or the other,
00:41:47.460
and taking it as a whole, institutions, the institutions of the West, and the ideas that have guided them and that have come out of them.
00:41:56.280
This is a much more serious question than that.
00:42:04.660
Right-hand man to Commandant Klavan, beater of Shapiro in a game of chance.
00:42:10.100
Can you confirm or deny that Andrew Klavan, the master of the multiverse and slayer of PC dragons, is an extraterrestrial shapeshifter?
00:42:18.700
Can I confirm or deny that fish swim or that birds fly?
00:42:34.460
And the second question is, please expand on your reversion to Christianity.
00:42:42.300
I was an atheist, agnostic, practical atheist from 13 to 20, 21, 22.
00:42:50.020
And one thing that was strange is everyone at Yale was an atheist, but the smartest people at Yale were Christian, particularly Catholic or Eastern Orthodox in my experience.
00:42:59.020
And so I started to contemplate the arguments for God.
00:43:02.780
I think a lot of people come to religion and Christianity in particular because of a religious experience, a numinous experience of some sort, ineffable.
00:43:15.700
There were about a dozen good ones, and I was just convinced.
00:43:18.960
I thought the arguments for God were better than the arguments against God, in particular, rather, the ontological argument, which was formed by St. Anselm of Canterbury and then later reformulated by Leibniz and Gödel.
00:43:31.640
And the one that got me was the modal ontological argument, which was put forth by Alvin Plantinga, a Calvinist out of Notre Dame.
00:43:38.800
The argument, I'm not doing it justice, but the simple argument is this.
00:43:45.720
He has all the great-making characteristics, none of the corrupting characteristics.
00:43:55.020
It's much more elegant when you read it, but that's the gist of the argument.
00:43:58.120
It convinces no one, but it did convince me, and I think C.S. Lewis, too.
00:44:02.860
And after that, the ineffable experiences come,
00:44:06.720
particularly coincidences, the Christian view of the world is semiotic.
00:44:12.680
And then I found a church, coincidentally St. Michael's Church in New York,
00:44:16.860
where Fr. George Rutler is the pastor, and I recommend reading him as well.
00:44:20.760
And that might bring you to a reversion or conversion, too.
00:44:25.540
Hey, MK, I listened to your defense of Christianity and Catholicism in episode four.
00:44:29.200
With admiration, I have to wonder if you're more Catholic than the current pope.
00:44:33.080
I don't think I'm more Catholic than the pope, but I do understand where you're coming from.
00:44:37.820
The pope has been saying some things that have raised eyebrows.
00:44:41.940
You know, there have been plenty of bad popes, generally speaking.
00:44:46.860
And the pope, there's a confusion over papal infallibility.
00:44:50.480
The pope is fallible, except when he's infallible.
00:44:53.900
And by some counts, the pope has only invoked infallibility, speaking ex cathedra seven times, ten or eleven times.
00:45:04.800
Not that I'm calling Francis a bad pope, but perhaps he gives us bad popes to show us that they're fallible,
00:45:13.880
Dear Michael, loved the riveting read on reasons to vote for Democrat.
00:45:17.660
It's on the coffee table for anyone who wants to be enlightened.
00:45:19.760
My super serious question is, does the Donald let you borrow his tanner or do you glow naturally?
00:45:25.600
No, my mother was Sicilian, though, which does explain why I look like I was on the face of the sun.
00:45:40.840
Michael, I've been following Roaming Millennial for a while now,
00:45:43.900
and I was not only surprised, but very happy to see you bring her on your show.
00:45:48.040
Can you tell us why you chose Roaming for your panel of deplorables,
00:45:51.500
and can you tell us if you plan on bringing her on for a while?
00:45:55.700
You know, I am getting married to my wonderful fiancée, sweet little Elisa, soon,
00:46:00.120
and so I've been bringing Roaming on as a sort of audition for when we do finally form our right-wing,
00:46:06.780
apocalyptic, polygamous cult, and she could be a sister wife.
00:46:13.560
That is the whole mailbag, and that takes up all of my time with Fleckis Talks.
00:46:23.560
I guess this is the end of this week, so come back on Monday, and we'll do it all again.